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MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  XXXVII. 


MACMILLAN'S 


ifc 


VOL.  XXXVII. 

NOVEMBER  1877,  TO  APRIL  1878. 


Bonbon: 

MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 
29  &  30,  BEDFORD  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN;  AND 


1878. 


LONDON : 

R.  CLAY,  SONS,  AND  TAYI.OB,  PRIJfTRRS, 
BRKAD  STKBET  HILT. 


CONTENTS. 


PACK 

African  Exploration  and  its  Results.    By  SIR  RUTHERFORD  ALCOCK 85 

Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men.     By  PROFESSOR  MAX  MULLER 510 

Arnold,  Thomas,  D.D.     By  the  REV.  CANON  FABRAR 456 

Autumn 176 

Before  the  Snow.    By  A.  LANG 314 

Burial  Laws,  An  "  Anglican  "  View  of  the.     By  the  REV.  G.  H.  CURTEIS     ....  505 

Burial,  The  English  Law  of.     By  the  DEAX  OP  WESTMINSTER 411 

Clergy  and  the  Theatre,  The.     By  the  REV.  A.  T.  DAVIDSON, 497 

Constantinople.    By  JAMES  BRTCB 337 

Corn,  My  Pet 73 

Daphne 476 

Dulcissima     Dilectissima  !    A  Passage  in  the  Life  of  an  Antiquary.     By  R.  FER- 

GUSSON,  M.P 231 

Ears  and  Eyes.     By  J.  NORMAN  LOCKYER 203 

Education,  The,  of  After  Life.     By  the  DEAN  OF  WESTMINSTER 97 

Famines  and  Floods  in  India 236 

German  Universities.     By  WALTER  C.  PERRY 148 

Grande  Dame,  de  1'Ancien  Regime,  La.     By  LADY  AUGUSTA  CADOGAN  : — 

Part  II 389 

Greek  Mother's  Song,  A 217 

Heliogoland.    By  ANNIE  BRASSET 171 

"  II  Re  Galantuomo."    By  JAMES  MONTGOMERY  STUART 373 

Insanity,  Modern  Life  and.     By  D.  HACK  TUKE,  M.D 130 

Ketshwayo,  King,  A  Visit  to.     By  MAGEMA  MAQWAZA.     Communicated  by  BISHOP 

COLENSO 421 

Lavardin,  Dr.     A  Sketch.     By  Miss  CROSS 192 

Me  and  My  Mate.     A  "Whitby  Story 65 

Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England.     By  a  STAFF-OFFICER 323 

Note  on  ditto 432 

Mohl's  "  Livre  des  Rois. "    By  PROFESSOR  E.  H.  PALMER 74 

Musgrave,  Young.     By  MRS.  OLIPHANT  : — 

Chapters  xxxn. — xxxv 33 

„       xxxvi. — XL.  (Conclusion) 108 

Narrow  Escape,  A.     By  M.  LAING  M BASON 141 

Natural  Religion  : — 

Part  X 178 

Naval  Education,  On.     By  a  NAVAL  NOBODY 315 

Olympia,  The  Discoveries  at.     By  GUSTAV  HIRSCIIFELD         55 


vi  Contents. 

PAOE 

Oxford  and  Cambridge,  German  Views  of.  By  WALTER  C.  PERRY 406 

Pall  Mall,  In 336 

Panslavists  and  the  Slav  Committees 68 

Quirinal  to  the  Vatican,  From  the 404 

Rapid  Transportation  of  Armies,  The.  By  JAMES  H.  HAYNIE,  Captain  U.  S.  Army  491 

Religion,  The  Proposed  Substitutes  for.  By  GOLDWIN  SMITH 257 

Russia,  The  Reform  Period  in.  By  H.  SUTHERLAND  EDWARDS  : — 

Part  1 161 

„  II 304 

Schliemann's  Mycensa.  By  the  REV.  J.  P  MAHAFFY 218 

Sebastian.  By  KATHARINE  COOPER  : — 

Chapters  i. — iv 266 

„  v.— ix 353 

„  x. — xii 433 

Shelburne,  Lord.  By  E.  J.  PATNB 380 

Sonnets,  Two — I.  Her  Laureate ;  II.  Hereafter.  By  MRS.  MOULTON 504 

Stokes,  Dr.  William,  of  Dublin :  A  Personal  Sketch.  By  the  REV.  J.  P.  MAHAFFY  .  299 

Style.  By  T.  H.  WRIGHT 78 

Thiers,  M. :  A  Sketch  from  Life.  By  EMILY  CRAWFORD 1 

Turkish  Army,  A  Month  with  the,  in  the  Balkans.  By  G.  J.  PLAYFAIR  .  .  .  .  .  286 

Ulfilas,  The  Gothic  Fragments  of.  By  PROFESSOR  STANLEY  LEATHES 482 

Valentine's  Day,  1873.  (An  Unpublished  Poem.)  By  the  REV.  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  147 

War  Campaign,  The,  and  the  War  Correspondent.  By  MAJOR  W.  F.  BUTLER  .  .  398 


Contributors  to  tfris  ftolame. 


ALCOCK,  SIR  RUTHERFORD. 
BRASSEY,  ANNIE. 
BRYCE,  JAMES. 
BUTLER,  MAJOR  W.  F. 
CADOGAN,  LADY  AUGUSTA. 
COOPER,  KATHARINE. 
CRAWFORD,  EMILY. 
CROSS,  MISS. 
CURTEIS,  REV.  G.  H. 
DAVIDSON,  REV.  A.  T. 
EDWARDS,  SUTHERLAND. 
FARRAR,  REV.  CANON. 
FERGUSON,  R.,  M.P. 
HAYNIE,  JAMES  H. 
HIRSCHFELD,  GUSTAV. 
LANG,  A. 

LEATHES,  PROFESSOR  STANLEY. 
LOCKYER,  J.  NORMAN. 
MAGEMA  MAGWAZA. 
MAHAFFY,  REV.  J.  P. 
MOULTON,  MRS. 
MULLER,  PROFESSOR  MAX. 
OLIPHANT,  MRS. 
PALMER,  PROFESSOR  E.  H. 
PAYNE,  E.  J. 
PERRY,  WALTER  C. 
PLAYFAIR,  G.  J. 
SMITH,  GOLD  WIN. 
STUART,  JAMES  MONTGOMERY. 
TUKE,  D.  HACK. 
WESTMINSTER,  THE  DEAN  OF. 
WRIGHT,  T.  H. 


MACMILLAN'S   MAGAZINE. 

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MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE 


NOVEMBER,  1877. 


M.  THIERS :   A  SKETCH  FROM  LIFE, 


BY   AN    ENGLISH    PENCIL. 


[THREE  years  ago,  at  a  soiree  at  the 
house  of  M.  Thiers,  the  author  of 
this  biography  asked  his  assistance 
in  collecting  materials  for  a  sketch 
of  his  eventful  life.  He  kindly 
said,  "  I  will  give  you  every  assist- 
ance in  my  power.  Call  on  me  in  the 
mornings,  when  I  am  not  so  much  ab- 
sorbed by  visitors — at  six  o'clock,  if 
you  like.  Bring  a  list  of  questions. 
Question  me  without  fear  of  giving 
offence.  I  shall  answer  truthfully, 
asking  nothing  of  your  friendship,  but 
something  of  your  indulgence."  He 
was  as  good  as  his  word.  To  render 
him  the  justice  he  deserves  longer  ex- 
planations would  be  needed  than  the 
space  in  these  pages  can  afford. — E.  C.] 

THE  French  Revolution  had  a  first 
and  second  growth.  That  of  1789  was 
associated  with  the  storms,  the  showers, 
the  sunshine,  the  wild  blasts,  the  fresh- 
ness, bloom,  and  promise  of  spring.  It 
came  up  in  Floreal  and  Prairial,  and 
ripened  in  Thermidor  and  Fructi- 
dor.  That  of  1830  was  brilliant,  but 
autumnal.  Its  flowers  came  out  on 
the  eve  of  a  long  winter,  and,  save 
in  a  few  exceptional  plants,  had  no 
great  development.  The  men  of  the 
States-General  were  impelled  by  lofty 
motives ;  in  working  for  France  they 
conceived  they  were  working  for  the 
world.  In  their  estimation  the  loss 
of  a  colony  was  of  small  importance 
compared  to  the  denial  of  a  principle. 
No.  217. — VOL.  xxxvn. 


Splendid  talents  were  not  wanting  in 
the  generation  of  1830.  But  they 
were  deficient  in  the  vis  vitce  of  youth 
and  the  sacred  fire  that  inspires  noble 
aims.  Of  this  second  growth  M.  Thiers 
was  one  of  the  highest  types.  His 
long  life  is  closely  bound  up  in  the 
French  history  of  the  last  half  cen- 
tury. The  fierce  light  of  journalism 
which  played  on  him  in  his  zenith, 
showing  with  prosaic  distinctness  his 
public  and  private  failings,  was,  as 
the  evening  of  his  career  drew  nigh, 
succeeded  by  a  semi-obscurity,  which 
presaged  one  of  the  worst  political 
hurricanes  of  modern  times.  In  his 
seventy-third  year  he  emerged  from 
the  partial  retirement  in  which  he 
had  lived  after  the  coup  d'etat,  to 
save  France  from  wreck.  He  suc- 
ceeded beyond  the  hopes  of  friends 
confident  in  his  great  abilities.  The 
task  he  accomplished  has  no  parallel 
in  history.  The  difficulties  he  had 
to  deal  with  were  many  and  stu- 
pendous. He  compared  himself  to  a 
pilot  engaged  to  bring  a  shattered  hulk 
safely  into  port  in  the  face  of  a  raging 
and  dangerous  sea,  with  a  jealous  cap- 
tain, and  a  mutinous  crew,  who  threw 
him  overboard  the  moment  he  had  re- 
fitted the  ship.  Thiers,  President  of 
the  Third  Republic,  well  redeemed 
the  errors  into  which  intemperate  love 
of  action,  passion  for  his  country's 
glory,  and  ambition,  had  hurried  him 
in  younger  life.  His  political  sun 


M.  Thiers. 


may  be  said  to  have  set  when  he  was 
ejected  from  the  Presidency  in  1873. 
But  after  it  went  down  its  rays  shot 
up  from  below  the  horizon,  and  cast 
upon  the  illustrious  octogenarian  a 
brighter  glow  than  it  ever  did  at  any 
earlier  period  of  his  career. 

There  was  not  much  that  was  epic 
in  the  astonishingly  rapid  and  suc- 
cessful struggles  of  M.  Thiers — first 
against  poverty,  and  then  for  fame  and 
power.  It  was  not  that  he  was  desti- 
tute of  courage,  for  in  him  that  quality 
was  carried  to  the  extreme  of  in- 
trepidity and  audacity.  But  it  was 
allied  with  an  amount  of  address  which 
we  do  not  generally  associate  with  the 
heroic  character.  He  was  rather  the 
hero  of  a  child's  story,  than  of  a  poem 
intended  to  celebrate  great  faculties 
and  surplus  activities  devoted  to  great 
ends,  although  he  was  in  no  small 
measure  endowed  with  both.  From 
youth  to  old  age,  when  a  nettle  was 
raised  to  strike  him,  he  never  shrank 
from  roughly  handling  it.  But  he 
preferred,  when  it  was  possible,  to  talk 
the  person  who  flourished  it  into  lay- 
ing it  down.  Violent  conflict  with  an 
enemy  was  repugnant  to  him.  He  was 
often  called  a  worshipper  of  force,  but 
in  reality  he  had  small  sympathy  with 
it  when  not  manifestly  directed  by  in- 
tellect. In  northern  races,  the  bar- 
barian constantly  breaks  out  in  the 
finest  gentleman.  There  was  not  a 
trace  of  barbarism  in  Thiers,  notwith- 
standing the  poverty  in  which  he  was 
reared.  Bismarck,  who  is  not  a  man 
of  very  delicate  feeling,  was  charmed 
with  his  super-civilisation,  and  at  Ver- 
sailles complimented  him  upon  it. 
"Talk  on,  talk  on,  I  beseech  you," 
he  said  to  him,  when  they  had  laid 
aside  grave  business  for  lighter  con- 
versation. "  It  is  delightful  to  listen 
to  one  so  essentially  civilised."  There 
was  not  a  trace  of  the  primitive  man 
in  Thiers.  He  was  the  heir,  truly,  of 
all  the  ages  in  the  foremost  rank  of 
time,  and  of  the  races  who  made  the 
Mediterranean  basin  the  centre  of 
antique  civilisation. 

M.  Thiers  was  born  in  a  troublous 


period  of  the  world's  history.  The 
eighteenth  century  was  going  out  in 
social  and  political  storm  and  up- 
heavals at  the  time  of  his  birth, 
which  happened  at  Marseilles  on  the 
16th  of  April,  two  years  and  nearly 
nine  months  before  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, with  its  mechanical  and  industrial 
revolutions,  came  in. 

In  the  diary  of  the  physician  who 
attended  at  this  event,  this  curious 
entry  was  made — "  A  cinq  heures  ce 
matin,  j'ai  assiste  a  1'accouchement  de  la 
fille  d'Amic.  Douleurs  des  plus  vives, 
et  prolonges  pendant  vingt  heures. 
Presentation  mauvaise.  Temps  de  ges- 
tation presque  dix  mois.  Enfant  du 
sexe  masculin,  turbulent,  et  trcs  viable, 
quoique  ses  membres  inferieurs  sont 
peu  developpes.  La  jeune  mere  ctait 
en  proie  a  des  grands  chagrins,  ce 
qui  explique  ces  accidents.  Son  mari 
s'est  sauve  de  chez  lui,  et  elle  ne  sait 
pas  ce  qui  lui  en  est  devenu.  La 
femme  Lhommara  s'est  trouvee  aupres 
de  sa  fille." 

An  inauspicious  entrance  truly  on 
life's  stage  !  The  deserted  young  wife, 
whose  miseries  are  thus  briefly  re- 
corded, had,  ten  months  previously, 
made  a  love  match,  and  in  conse- 
quence quarrelled  with  her  family. 
They  were  of  Levantine  origin,  and, 
among  themselves,  spoke  in  the  Greek 
dialect.  "The  woman  Lhommara" 
was  the  aunt  of  the  poet  Chenier,  and 
the  wife  of  an  enterprising  and  rich 
merchant  named  Amic.  Taking  pity 
on  her  daughter  in  her  distress,  she 
gave  her  and  a  tribe  of  step- children 
shelter  in  a  house  belonging  to 
herself,  which  happened  to  be  un- 
let.  It  was  then  numbered  15, 
in  the  fifth  isle,  or  block,  of  the  Rue 
des  Petits  Peres,  a  new  street,  con- 
necting the  Place  St.  Michel  with 
the  suburb  of  La  Plaine,  and  called 
after  a  Jesuit  confraternity  which  had 
formerly  established  itself  on  a  pro- 
perty through  which  it  ran.  "  40  " 
is  the  number  this  house  now  bears. 
It  is  valued  at  22,000  francs,  but  was 
not  worth  half  that  sum  in  1797. 
Madame  Amic  mortgaged  it  in  1816, 


M.  Tkiers. 


to  enable  Thiers  to  study  law ;  and 
when  she  went  in  1825  to  live  atBouc, 
where  he  purchased  a  cottage  for  her 
and  his  mother,  she  sold  it  for  13,000 
francs  to  a  M.  Delestrade.  Madame 
Thiers  is  now  negotiating  its  purchase. 
She  intends  to  furnish  it  with  part  of 
her  late  illustrious  husband's  art  collec- 
tion and  books,  and  present  it  to  the 
town  of  Marseilles. 

The  Amies  and  Lhomma^as  belonged 
to  the   same   Levantine    clan.     They 
were   warm-hearted    people,  quick  to 
resent  and  sharp  in  their  resentment, 
but    soon    disposed     to    forgive    and 
forget.      They    appear    also    to   have 
been  enthusiastic  Royalists.    Their  re- 
putation  as  such  induced  Thiers  the 
elder,  who  was  a  friend  of  theirs,  to 
fly  for  shelter,  in  the  White  reaction  of 
Thermidor,  to  the  house  of  his  future 
father-in-law.      While    hiding    there, 
Amic's  daughter,  a  young  girl  of  re- 
markable beauty,  energy  of  character, 
and  keenness  of  tongue,  fell  in  love 
with  him.     She  pitied  him  for  his  mis- 
fortunes, was  dazzled  by  his  brilliant 
parts  and  plausible  manners,  and,  re- 
gardless of    his    poverty  and    family 
encumbrances,   insisted    on    espousing 
him.     To  understand  a  great  man  well 
we  should  know  something  of  his  family 
history.     In   troubled  times   French- 
women have  strong  political  sentiments, 
and  know  how  to  assert  them.    Thiers's 
mother  was  no  exception.    The  honey- 
moon over,    she  quarrelled   as    much 
with  her  husband  about  his  opinions 
as  about  his  convivial   habits,   which 
tended  to  keep  him  in  the  poverty  into 
which  he  had  fallen.   Her  royalism  was 
not  modified  later  in  life  by  her  son's 
successes,  and  she   mourned  over  his 
revolutionary  leanings  when  he  arrived 
at  man's  estate.     Her  husband  was  a 
little  mercurial  person  of  almost  uni- 
versal aptitudes,  great  wit,  too  great 
enterprise,    and    a    petulant    temper, 
which    ill    disposed   him  to  bear  the 
lash  of  his  wife's  tongue.     A  Royalist 
emigre,  the   Marquis  de  Fonvielle  of 
Toulouse,  sketched  a  portrait  of  him 
in    1808    which    might   serve    for    a 
caricature   of    our    M.    Thiers.      The 


marquis  made  a  voyage  with  him 
from  Genoa  to  Carthagena  in  Spain, 
on  board  the  Virgen  del  Pilar,  and 
said  of  him,  in  writing  to  a  relation  in 
France  :  "  This  little  man  is  a  talking 
and  gesticulating  encyclopaedia,  and  the 
most  amusing  creature  I  ever  came 
across.  One  cannot  start  any  subject 
with  which  he  is  unfamiliar.  It  is  im- 
possible to  have  seen  any  wonderful 
thing  that  he  has  not  witnessed.  He 
knows  the  entire  globe,  round  which 
he  tells  us  he  sailed  with  Captain  le 
Marchant.  I  somehow  doubt  if  he 
ever  did,  though  he  bears  cross-ex- 
amination well,  and  surmounts  with 
address  every  objection  to  his  story. 
He  is  precise  in  the  employment  of 
technical,  scientific,  and  nautical  terms, 
in  the  description  of  the  countries 
visited  by  the  captain,  in  the  desig- 
nation of  latitudes,  officers,  men, 
and  log-book  dates.  He  reasons 
better  than  any  sailor  on  the  art  of 
navigation,  explains  with  surprising 
clearness  the  manoeuvres  of  the  crew, 
demonstrates  as  pat  as  the  alphabet 
the  laws  of  storms  and  currents,  and 
shipbuilding.  If  asked  to  give  an. 
account  of  what  passes  in  the  moon, 
he  would  be  at  no  loss  to  furnish  one. 
He  parrots  every  scientific  theory  and 
system,  and  really  he  looks  like  a  par- 
rot raised  in  some  incomprehensible 
way  into  a  human  being." 

This  "  talking  encyclopaedia,"  just 
before  the  birth  of  his  son  Adolphe 
Louis,  was  employed  as  a  dock-porter ; 
but  he  had  seen  prosperous  days,  and 
had  been  educated  for  the  bar.  His 
father  belonged  to  the  burgess  aristo- 
cracy which,  from  1560  to  1775,  when 
Marseilles  lost  its  liberties,  exercised 
well-nigh  uncontrolled  sway  over  that 
town.  Moreover,  he  was  annalist  to 
the  Hotel  de  Ville,  and  wrote  an 
erudite  history  of  Provence.  The 
annalist  was  the  son  of  a  notable 
cloth  merchant,  a  friend  of  M.  de 
Marbffiuf,  the  governor  of  Corsica, 
and  had  built  himself  a  palatial 
mansion  in  the  Rue  de  Mazade.  He 
was  magnificent  in  his  expenditure, 
and  a  man  of  brilliant  parts.  The 

B  2 


M.  Thiers. 


fame  of  his  suppers — which  had  an 
artistic  character — reached  to  Paris, 
and  his  house  was  the  resort  of  the 
chief  people  of  Marseilles.  In  making 
a  venture  with  the  American  colonies 
he  was  ruined.  He  lived  to  the  age 
of  ninety-seven.  His  son,  the  archi- 
vist, died  in  his  ninety-fifth  year  at 
Mentone,  whither  he  fled  from  the 
Republicans,  who  persecuted  him  for 
having  incited  the  burgess  party  to 
seize  on  the  Jacobins  representing  the 
Convention,  and  throw  them  into  the 
dungeons  of  the  Chateau  d'If.  M. 
Thiers's  father,  following  the  revolu- 
tionary current,  helped  to  release  the 
prisoners.  For  this  service  he  was 
named  Registrar  to  the  Tribunal 
of  Public  Safety,  a  position  which, 
under  the  White  Terror,  drew  upon 
him  the  wrath  of  the  Royalists,  and 
led  to  his  taking  refuge  in  the  house  of 
Ainic,  where  he  met  his  second  wife. 
The  illustrious  statesman  who  died 
last  September  was  not,  therefore,  as 
has  been  frequently  said  and  written, 
the  son  of  an  illiterate  workman. 
His  father,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a 
man  of  excellent  education,  and,  for 
the  city  in  which  he  lived,  of  high  ex- 
traction and  unquestionably  ancient 
lineage.  M.  Thiers  resembled  him  in 
every  point,  except  his  incapacity  to 
succeed.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  dis- 
appearing suddenly,  to  engage  in  the 
strangest  kind  of  mercantile  and  other 
ventures,  and  of  not  turning  up  for 
long  periods,  when  he  re-appeared 
empty-handed,  but  full  of  hope.  The 
English  fleet,  which  prevented  him 
from  executing  a  military  contract 
obtained  in  1797,  did  not  prevent  his 
going,  soon  after,  to  Italy.  He  went 
there  as  impresario  of  a  company 
of  players  which  he  had  formed.  At 
Milan  one  of  his  actresses  obtained 
for  him  the  monopoly  of  the  gaming- 
tables. Thence  he  pushed  on  to  Naples, 
where  his  wit  and  unflagging  spirits 
gained  him  influential  patrons  at 
Court  and  the  favour  of  Joseph  Bona- 
parte and  his  wife,  whom  he  had  known 
at  Marseilles. 

For  a  while   he  led  a  splendid  life. 


Suddenly  collapsing,  he  turned  up  in 
Carthagena,  where  he  started  a  house 
of  business,  and  then  sold  it  to  go  to 
Madrid.  In  that  city  King  Joseph 
and  Queen  Julie  (nee  Clary)  took 
him  by  the  hand,  and,  but  for  the 
crash  of  Vittoria,  he  might  have 
prospered.  The  presence  of  the  Eng- 
lish, however,  served  as  an  excuse 
for  not  sending  more  money  than  he 
did  to  his  suffering  family ;  and  the 
direct  pressure  of  their  arms  on  his 
business  speculations  helped  to  foster 
in  his  son's  mind  the  intensely  national 
and  bellicose  spirit  which  the  stirring 
events  of  the  Consulate  and  Empire 
had  generated  in  it.  This  brilliant, 
roving,  speculative  Marseilles  Micawber 
had  a  passion  for  houses,  which  he 
transmitted  to  Adolphe.  In  1831,  full 
of  hope  in  the  patronage  of  the  creator 
of  the  July  Monarchy,  he  hastened  to 
Paris  with  a  scheme  for  irrigating  and 
reclaiming  the  Crau  desert  outside  of 
Marseilles.  Thiers  severelyadmonished 
him,  and  asked  him  what  he  owed  him. 
"Everything,"  urged  the  prodigal 
parent.  "  Do  you  think  that  if,  when 
my  grandfather  failed,  I  had  resigned 
myself  to  a  life  of  penurious  economy 
and  stagnation,  you  would  be  the  man 
you  are  I "  The  argument  told.  The 
son,  who  had  a  strong  instinct  of  filial 
duty,  granted  his  father  a  pension,  and 
sent  him  to  Carpentras  to  direct  the 
post-office,  with  authority  to  appoint  a 
daughter  by  his  first  wife  deputy  post- 
mistress. There  the  old  man  took  a 
cottage  at  a  short  distance  from  the 
Allee  des  Platanes,  and  lived  in  com- 
pany with  a  pack  of  dogs.  He  fre- 
quently got  into  the  hands  of  Jews, 
who  speculated  upon  the  scandal  it 
would  occasion  if  they  arrested  him  for 
debt.  In  1833,  Thiers,  then  Minister 
of  Public  Works,  gave  him  12,000f.  for 
consenting  formally  to  his  marriage 
with  the  co-heiress  of  M.  and  Madame 
Dosne.  To  insure  the  non-appearance 
of  his  troublesome  parent  at  the  wed- 
ding, the  minister  for  three  weeks  pre- 
viously hired  all  the  places  in  the  stage 
coaches  running  from  Carpentras  and 
other  towns  of  the  Vaucluse  to  Lyons. 


M.  Tkiers. 


When  length  of  day  runs  in  the 
blood,  traditions  are  tenacious.  Those 
of  the  Thiers  family  went  back  to  the 
very  origin  of  the  city  which  for 
generations  they  had  helped  to  rule, 
to  agitate,  and  to  enrich.  It  was  said 
that  they  belonged  to  a  servile  Punic 
colony,  transplanted  from  Africa  by 
the  Romans,  of  which  vestiges  ex- 
isted up  to  a  very  recent  period. 
There  seems  to  have  been  in  the  race 
that  subtlety,  that  tenacity  which 
hides  itself  under  a  flexible  exterior, 
that  genius  for  dealing  with  present 
difficulties,  and  that  repugnance  to 
abstract  theories,  which  distinguished 
the  Carthaginians.  At  a  fete  given 
by  Marseilles  to  Mirabeau,  an  allusion 
was  made  to  this  Punic  legend  by  the 
Committee  of  Management.  They  de- 
cided that  at  the  gala  representation 
in  the  theatre  their  illustrious  guest 
should  sit  between  two  young  ladies 
of  remarkable  beauty — Mademoiselle 
Thiers,  aunt  of  the  statesman,  and 
Mademoiselle  Noble ;  Mirabeau  be- 
tween the  noblesse  and  the  tiers  was 
the  pun  they  proposed  to  put  in  ac- 
tion. Mademoiselle  Noble,  or  Nobili, 
of  Italian  ancestry,  was  dressed  to  per- 
sonify old  Rome,  and  Mademoiselle 
Thiers,  Carthage,  the  trading  state  of 
antiquity.  The  play  was  the  bourgeois 
Gentilhomme.  Mirabeau  asked  the 
young  ladies  did  it  interest  them  1 
"  What  more  interests  us,"  replied 
Mademoiselle  Thiers,  "is  to  find  our- 
selves beside  the  Gentilhomme  Bour- 
geois." The  mot  was  repeated  by  the 
great  orator  in  the  salon,  and  its  author 
became  the  heroine  of  the  evening. 

Thiers  was  adopted  in  early  infancy 
by  his  grandmother  Madame  Amic.  She 
got  two  flourishing  merchants,  named 
Rollardin  and  Barthelicre,  to  stand  for 
him  at  the  baptismal  font ;  and  it  was 
well  for  him  that  she  did.  Leaving 
the  house  in  the  Rue  des  Petits 
Peres  to  her  unhappy  daughter — with 
whom,  when  her  own  fortune  was  en- 
gulphed  in  a  subsequent  disaster,  she 
went  back  to  live — she  tcok  her  grand- 
son to  her  bastide,  or  country  house. 
It  was  on  one  of  those  limestone  hills 


clad  with  parasol  pines  which  run  east 
of  the  city  into  the  Mediterranean. 
The  bright  sun,  the  bright  sea,  the 
aromatic  herbage,  and  the  balsamic 
emanations  from  woods  that  gave 
shelter,  but  did  not  impede  the  cir- 
culation of  the  air,  were  powerful 
stimulants  to  mind  and  body.  In  his 
writings  M.  Thiers  recurs  to  the  im- 
pressions he  received  in  childhood  on 
that  luminous  hillside,  looking  down 
on  the  blue  glinting  bay  and  crowded 
port.  He  was  allowed  to  run  about 
wild.  When  the  bastide  was  sold,  and 
Mme.  Amic  obliged  to  share  her 
daughter's  lodging,  she  did  not  cur- 
tail her  favourite  grandchild's  liberty. 
His  playground,  after  he  went  back 
to  the  Rue  des  Petits  Peres,  was  an- 
other limestone  hill,  now  built  over, 
and  called  Les  Baumettes,  from  caverns 
in  its  flank.  Thiers  was  a  young 
Ishmael  among  the  street  Arabs  that 
gathered  there.  To  his  latest  days  he 
recurred  with  pleasure  to  his  boyish 
games  and  warfare  at  Les  Baumettes. 
His  recollection  of  them  and  of  the 
happy  tone  they  gave  his  intellect 
prompted  him  to  give  a  cold  reception 
to  schemes  for  endowing  France  with 
infant  schools.  M.  Thiers  often  sus- 
tained against  Guizot,  who  was  a 
thorough  schoolmaster,  that  young 
children  are  better  employed  bird- 
nesting  and  thrashing  each  other  out 
of  doors,  than  locked  up  in  ugly,  close 
rooms,  poring  over  lessons  which  they 
should  be  allowed  only  to  glance  at. 

The  boy  Thiers  had  a  very  narrow 
escape  of  receiving  no  education  what- 
ever. His  grandmother  was  loath  to 
part  with  him.  She  feared  for  his 
health,  for  which  his  phenomenal  small- 
ness  augured  ill.  Then  she  dreaded  to 
part  with  the  small  sum  of  money  that 
remained  to  her  after  the  wind-up  of 
her  affairs.  WhenRollardin — one  of  the 
child's  godfathers  and  kind  protectors 
— set  on  Joseph  Chc'nier  to  obtain  for 
him  a  demi-bourse  at  the  Lycce,  the 
mother  protested  against  a  son  of  hers 
ever  wearing  Bonaparte's  livery,  or 
eating  bread  provided  by  him.  The 
Due  d'Enghien's  execution  had  revived 


M.  Tliiers. 


her  old  royalist  fanaticism.  She  exe- 
crated the  Emperor  and  the  Empire, 
and  thought  no  good  could  come  of 
their  schools  for  higher  instruction. 
Bartheli^re — the  other  godfather,  with 
whom  the  young  Adolphe  spent  his 
Sundays,  and  who  divined  the  future 
that  was  before  him — interfered.  He 
threatened  to  apply  to  the  still  absent 
father,  who  had  a  legal  right  to  decide 
as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  boy  was 
to  be  educated.  Under  this  menace 
the  two  ladies  yielded,  and  Thiers  was 
prepared  to  compete  for  the  demi- 
bourse,  for  which  his  cousin  Chenier 
obtained  him  a  nomination.  At  the 
examination  which  was  to  open  to  him 
the  doors  of  the  Lyceum  he  obtained 
high  marks.  Rollardin  bought  his 
outfit,  and  Bartheliere  undertook  to 
pay  those  school  expenses  which  the 
municipality  did  not  bear. 

Thiers's  first  Black  Monday  was  in 
October,  1808.     A  good  boy  he  cer- 
tainly was  not,  but  an   able  boy  he 
constantly  proved   himself.     To  keep 
at  the  head  of  his  form  he  scarcely 
needed  to  apply  himself,  so  rapid  was 
his    apprehension    and    so    tenacious 
his  memory.     In   the  humanities   he 
was  weak,  unless  when  asked  to  com- 
ment on  the  classic  authors  that  he 
had  to  study.    The  leisure  his  superior 
capacity  secured  for  him.  was  spent  in 
practical  jokes  and  escapades,  cleverly- 
imagined  and  boldly-executed.   A  more 
mischievous  sprite  never  tormented  an 
usher.     In  planning  a  trick,  it  was  his 
way  to   ingratiate    himself   with   the 
masters,  and  to  secure  the  favour  of 
probable  witnesses.     Under  the  Mar- 
seilles professors  his  higher  faculties 
did  not  assert  themselves.     They  were 
suddenly  brought  out  by  the  menace 
of    expulsion,   conjoined    with     fresh 
family  disasters,  and  the  arrival  from 
Paris  of  a  teacher  for  whose  memory 
M.   Thiers,   to   the   end   of    his   life, 
entertained  a  profound  reverence. 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he 
knew  what  it  was  to  venerate  as  well 
as  to  love  a  human  being.  Maillet- 
Lacoste,  the  new  professor,  was  a 
young  man  of  noble  and  engaging 


countenance.      His   air   and   manners 
were   those   of   a   perfect  gentleman, 
contrasting  strongly   with   the  easily 
excited  provincial  pedagogues,  under 
whom    Thiers     had    heretofore    been 
placed.     Master  of  himself  in  all  cir- 
cumstances, he    soon   became    master 
of  the  Lyceans   in  his  class.     Thiers 
was  the  disciple  and  pupil  of  Maillet- 
Lacoste,   who  in  teaching  him  mathe- 
matics    sought    to    raise  his    moral 
standard.       The   Parisian    tutor    was 
a     martyr     to     his    political     faith. 
Issuing    with    a   high    number   in    a 
batch    of    190    from    the    Polytech- 
nique,  where  he  had  been  a  comrade 
of    Arago,    he   elected   to  be   a    civil 
engineer.      But,  writing   a   pamphlet 
against    the    Consulate,    and    signing 
a  protest  against  the  Empire,  he  was 
sent  in  disgrace  to  teach  mathematics 
at  the  Lyceum  of  Marseilles.    In  talk- 
ing politics  he  was  reserved     But  the 
precocious  intellect  of  Thiers  led  him 
to     unbosom     himself,     and     master 
and    pupil    discussed   political    ethics 
during  the  evening  recreation  in  the 
arcades  of  the  court.    On  the  Thursday 
holidays  they  visited  the  museum,  and 
a  library  formed  out  of  the  spoils  of 
the    Convents    and  Chateaux  of  Pro- 
vence.    Maillet-Lacoste  was  alive  and 
in  obscurity  when  Thiers  became  Pre- 
sident  of   Louis    Philippe's    Council. 
His  old  pupil — who,  if  at  times  a  slip- 
pery politician,  loved  the  intimate  com- 
panionship of   honest   men,    and   was 
firm  in  his  friendship  for  them — wrote 
him  an  affectionate  letter  in  which  he 
offered  him  an  important  post  in  the 
department     of     Public    Instruction. 
Maillet-Lacoste     declined     in     terms 
which,  if  read  by  the  light  of  subse- 
quent    events,     seem    prophetic.     "  I 
cannot,"     he  said,    "accept   anything 
from  you  since  you  have  broken  with 
those  who  wished  to  found  a  Republic 
in  1830.     You  then  condemned  France 
to  another  series  of  political  convul- 
sions.    The  peasantry  still  remember 
with  affection  the  regime  to  which  they 
owe  their   emancipation.      They   hate 
Bonaparte,    their    recollections    being 
still  fresh  of  how  he  took  their  sons 


M.  Thiers. 


for  the  cannon's  maw.    They  also  hate 
the    Bourbons,    their    secular    oppres- 
sors.    The  priests  labour  among  them 
to   distort    the  Republican    tradition, 
and  are  likely  to  succeed.     You  will 
live,  I  am  persuaded,  to  see  the  down- 
fall of    your  Citizen    King,    and    the 
priest- deceived  people  refusing  to  let 
you  have  a  Republic  when  you  want 
one.     They  will  impose  on  you  some 
sort  of  clerical  despotism — perhaps  the 
Empire  minus  Bonaparte  and  plus  the 
Jesuits.     The  days  of  July  robbed  me 
of  a  fondly-cherished  hope.     I  used  to 
think    your   luminous   intellect    could 
not  long   be    taken    in    by   a   system 
resting  neither  on  instinct  nor  prin- 
ciple.      Those   participating    in    your 
government  will  condemn  themselves 
to  a  course  of   unworthy  expedients, . 
the  example  of  which  will  rot  the  fibre 
of    the    nation.      You    are    exposing 
yourself  to  be  tempted  precisely  where 
you   are   weakest.     The  best   thing  I 
can  wish  you  is  to  be  soon  obliged  to 
retire  from  office,  and  that  for  a  long 
time." 

Under     the     quickening     influence 
of  Maillet-Lacoste  Thiers  soon  found 
work,  for  which  he  had  a  prodigious 
capacity,   easier   than  idleness.      The 
many-sidedness    of    his   mind   placed 
him   foremost    in    most    branches    of 
learning.     But  no  effort  of   ths  will 
could   enable  him   to   master  foreign 
languages,  or  commit  to  memory  long 
passages  from  the   Latin   and  Greek 
authors.     All  he  could  attain  to  by 
persevering   labour   was  to  read  and 
understand    a   Greek    or    Latin   book 
at   sight.     The   ideas  they   expressed 
he  rapidly  caught  up,  made  his  own, 
and  retained ;  but  the  words  in  which 
they  were  embodied  slipped  from  him, 
though  when  he  met  them  again  he  re- 
membered them  at  once.     A  language 
of  Gothic  origin  had  no  hold  whatever 
upon  his  mind.     It  was  forgotten  as 
soon  as  learned.  When  M.  Thiers  was 
engaged  in  his  historical  work  he  tried 
hard  to  learn  German  and  English,  in 
order   to    read    tb.3   pamphlets,   news- 
paper articles,  street  songs,  and  state 
papers    bearing   on   the    wars  of    the 


First  Republic  and  of  Napoleon.    The 
labour   was    fruitless.     The   historian 
acquired     Italian    because     his     ears 
in   childhood   were    familiarised   with 
the   Provencal   dialect.     He   believed 
that  but  for  the  fact  of  his  mother's 
family     and    friends    having    spoken 
among  themselves  in  a  Greek  patois, 
Homer,  in  whose  spirited  battle-pictures 
he  revelled,  would  have  been  to  him  a 
sealed  book.     But  the  literary  aliment 
on  which  his   imagination  chiefly  fed 
was  not  borrowed  from  antiquity.  Boys 
in  the   public   schools   of   France,    at 
the  beginning   of   the  century,   when 
Thiei's  was  a  boy,  were  encouraged  to 
read  the  Moniteur.     He  devoured  its 
accounts  of  Napoleon's  prodigious  vic- 
tories,   and    triumphal   marches   and 
counter-marches    over    Europe.      He 
followed  the  "  Grande  Armee  "  over 
the  atlas  which  lay  in  his  desk,  and 
explained  to  his  class-fellows  strategi- 
cal and  geographical  points,  and  the 
obstacles   which  the   Conqueror  over- 
came.    The  Bulletin  de   I  Empire  was 
read    aloud    by   professors    to    their 
pupils  in  the  Lycees.     It  was  written 
in  a  tawdry,  declamatory  style  for  the 
ignorant   multitude,  which    furnished 
raw  material  for  Bonaparte's  armies, 
and  facts  were  too  often  made  to  give 
place  for  high-flown  epithets.     Thiers 
amused  himself  by  taking  a  bulletin 
of  victory  for  a  theme,  and   expand- 
ing  it   into    a    full    account    of    the 
battle,  which  he  read  aloud  at  recrea- 
tion  in  the    court-yard,    and  carried 
home  with  him  to  his  relations  on  the 
Sunday  following.     His  grandmother 
carefully  stored  up  these  juvenile  com- 
positions, suggested  by  the  bombastic 
poverty  of  the  official  newsman's  style. 
A  sketch  of   the   Bridge  of   Lodi — a 
retrospective    study — is    as     full    of 
action  as  one  of  Horace  Vernet's  battle- 
pieces.      These   early   writings,  some 
few  of  which  still  exist,  were  permeated 
with   the    military  spirit  of  the   time 
in  which  they  were  written.     Thiers 's 
genius    was     awakened    by    the    in- 
creasing din  of  war,  and  by  the  bon- 
fires on  the  Provence  mountains  which 
blazed  forth  the  news  of  land-victories 


8 


M.  Tliicrs. 


to  hostile  fleets  standing  out  at  sea. 
In  a  youthful  essay  he  maintained,  with 
an  argumentative  skill  which  must 
have  astonished  his  preceptors,  that 
France,  to  avoid  being  the  weakest, 
should  be  the  strongest  of  European 
powers.  Her  exceptional  advantages 
would  render  her  an  object  of  cove- 
tous enmity,  and  tempt  less  favoured 
nations  to  plunder  her.  In  sup- 
porting his  thesis,  Thiers  argued 
against  the  too  easy  exchange  of  agri- 
cultural wealth  for  money,  which  he 
thought  would  weaken  the  real  sinews 
of  war,  and  tend  to  the  accumulation 
of  treasure  and  the  diminution  of  de- 
fensive power.  He  maintained  that 
a  strong  population  with  simple  habits 
and  intelligence  had  more  expansive 
power  than  one  that  was  wealthy 
and  luxurious.  This  idea,  in  1872, 
governed  M.  Thiers's  commercial  po- 
licy, as  shown  in  the  Navigation  Bill, 
and  was  at  the  bottom  of  his  opposi- 
tion to  the  Second  Emperor's  com- 
mercial treaties.  To  mathematics  as 
to  composition,  Thiers  applied  himself 
at  school  with  ardour.  He  had  a  taste 
for  them,  and  knew  that  proficiency 
in  them  would,  if  he  grew  tall  enough 
to  qualify  him  for  military  service, 
enable  him  to  make  a  figure  in  the 
army.  Fifty-eight  years  later,  his 
early  love  for  science  came  out  again. 
At  Tours,  in  the  month  of  October, 
1870,  he  procured  a  whole  library  of 
scientific  works,  which  he  studied  with 
ardour.  This  occupation  calmed  the 
fever  into  which  he  was  thrown  by 
the  memorable  events  of  that  year,  and 
the  political  inactivity  in  which  he  was 
kept  by  the  jealousy  of  the  Delegate 
Government,  and  the  fears  of  M. 
Clement  Laurier,  lest  one  so  expert 
in  the  analysis  and  management  of 
budgets  should  interfere  with  the 
financial  schemes  in  which  he  had  em- 
barked. At  Bordeaux  he  went  through 
a  course  of  physics  and  chemistry  in 
the  following  months  of  November 
and  December. 

Thiers  having  in  1814  completed  the 
university  curriculum,  his  demi-bnv.rse 
dropped,  and  he  returned  to  the  house 


in  which  he  first  saw  the  light.  The 
long  block;xde  and  the  naval  triumphs 
of  the  English  had  well-nigh  reduced 
Marseilles  to  a  state  of  inanition.  His 
grandmother,  to  whom  he  owed  so 
much,  had  let  the  lower  floors  of  her 
house  to  a  shopkeeper,  and  had  antici- 
pated several  years'  rent.  She  was 
sharing  her  pittance  with  Madame 
Thiers  in  the  garret  story.  The  latter  did 
what  she  could  to  earn  a  little  money, 
sometimes  doing  needlework  for  an 
army  contractor,  sometimes  keeping 
the  accounts  of  her  mother's  tenant, 
and  sometimes,  in  the  hot  weather, 
selling  iced  coffee  on  a  stand  in  the 
Place  St.  Michel.  One  of  her  daugh- 
ters had  learned  confectionery.  She 
it  was  who  set  up  a  table  d'kdte 
in  the  Rue  Basse  du  Rempart,  and 
placed  on  the  signboard  "Pension 
bourgeoise  de  Madame  Ripert,  soeur  de 
M.  Thiers,  ancien  President  du  Conseil 
du  Roi  Louis  Philippe."  A  step- 
daughter had  started  on  a  gay  career, 
and  subsequently  died  in  a  hospital  at 
Carpentras.  There  were  other  children 
in  a  miserable  condition,  for  whom 
Adolphe  ultimately  provided.  To 
Charles  he  gave  a  consular  appoint- 
ment, and  he  bought  a  farm  in  Nor- 
mandy for  Isabelle,  who  died  there 
unmarried,  in  the  year  1874. 

Thiers  cheated  this  wretchedness  by 
borrowing  books  and  by  reading  in 
the  town  library.  The  godfathers 
continued  to  ask  him  to  their  houses, 
and  were  in  many  ways  useful  to  him. 
He  contributed  to  his  own  support  by 
painting  miniatures,  a  branch  of  art  in 
which  he  attained  excellence.  He  often 
exercised  himself  in  oratory  in  the 
cockloft  in  which  he  slept.  His  grand- 
mother and  a  lad  of  his  age  were  his 
audience.  The  former  thought  him 
superior  to  Mirabeau,  whom  she  had 
heard.  He  at  that  time  cultivated  the 
Ciceronian  period,  and  also  the  bom- 
bastic manner  of  Napoleon's  military 
harangues.  At  Rollardin's  table  he  sus- 
tained discussions  with  Royalists — 
who  were  then  on  the  winning  side — 
in  a  more  natural,  and  we  may  sup- 
pose more  effective,  style.  His  warm- 


M.  Thiers. 


9 


hearted  old  friend  advised  him  to  go  to 
the  bar,  the  army  being  closed  against 
him  on  account  of  his  dwarfish  stature. 
Bartheliere  and  Chenier,  on  the 
other  hand,  advised  his  entering 
a  counting-house,  where  he  would 
be  received  on  advantageous  condi- 
tions. But  Thiers  was  too  fond  of  the 
Muses  to  forsake  them.  He  somehow 
imagined  he  was  to  play  a  great  part 
in  the  history  of  his  country,  but  did 
not  well  sea  how  he  could  open  to 
himself  a  literary  and  public  career. 
Old  Madame  Amic  found  him  the 
means.  Encouraged  by  her  friends, 
and  by  a  non  juring  priest  of  whom 
she  took  counsel,  she  realised  her  little 
property  so  far  as  she  was  able,  and 
went  to  settle  at  Aix,  an  old  parlia- 
mentary town,  rich  in  historical  re- 
mains and  in  chateaux  stored  with 
works  of  art.  There  there  was  a  law- 
school  of  repute,  which  her  grandson 
entered  in  1816.  In  it  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Mignet,  his  true  and  in- 
separable friend  for  ever  after.  Thiers 
was  gifted  with  an  irrepressibly  san- 
guine spirit.  He  used  to  divert  him- 
self at  Aix,  planning  how  to  rule 
France  when  he  should  be  a  minister. 
"Quand  je  serais  ministre  "  was  often 
in  his  mouth.  On  reaching  the  minis- 
terial altitude,  he  was  to  drive  an 
unfortunate  old  apple-woman,  whose 
stall  faced  the  law  school,  in  a  coach 
and  four  through  the  town,  and  bid 
the  Prefect  appoint  her  son  concierge 
to  the  Prefecture.  The  latter  part  of 
the  promise  he  kept.  Moreover,  he 
used  to  tell  his  mother  and  grand- 
mother that  out  of  his  ministerial 
salary  he  would  buy  a  certain  cottage 
in  the  romantic  village  of  Bouc,  half- 
way between  Marseilles  and  Aix.  He 
was  better  than  his  word.  In  1832  he 
sent  for  the  former  to  share  with  him  the 
grandeur  of  his  ministerial  residence  ; 
but  feeling  herself  out  of  her  element 
there,  and  disliking  the  cold,  foggy 
winter  of  Paris,  she  elected  for  the 
Bouc  cottage,  where  Mme.  Amic  was 
already  comfortably  installed.  In  this 
retreat  they  both  died  at  advanced 
ages,  as  their  tombstones  testify. 


If  M.  Thiers  had  sought  through 
France  he  could  not  have  found  at 
this  stage  of  his  career  another  insti- 
tution so  well  fitted  to  prepare  him  for 
the  course  he  was  to  run  as  the  one  to 
which  he  went  to  study  law.  Aix  was 
the  capital  of  Provence  under  Rene  of 
Anjou.  From  the  time  of  its  union 
with  France,  it  was,  in  the  old  juridi- 
cal language,  a  pays  d'etat.  It  enjoyed 
privileges  unknown  elsewhere,  except 
at  Marseilles,  and  was  the  seat  of  a 
parliament  for  a  hundred  years.  The 
scenery  about  it  is  superb,  and  the 
town  and  its  environs  are  in  them- 
selves an  historical  museum.  There 
was  much  wealth  in  the  locality,  which 
with  the  liberties  enjoyed  by  a  highly- 
gifted  race  of  people,  conduced  to  intel- 
lectual activity.  Mignet  was  an  Aixois. 
His  social  relations  there  were  valuable 
to  Thiers.  They  embraced  opulent  and 
very  hospitable  parliamentary  families 
spared  by  the  Revolution.  The  Mar- 
quis d'Albertas  had  a  gallery  of  which 
any  monarch  might  have  been  proud, 
and  culled  from  every  modern  state 
in  which  art  had  flourished.  Vanloo's 
genius  was  discovered  by  an  Albertas, 
and  his  pencil  employed  to  decorate 
the  chateau.  The  Marquis  de  Lagoy 
was  an  amateur  of  rare  medals,  in 
collecting  which  he  had  encumbered  his 
estates.  He  had  had  the  good  fortune, 
when  the  armies  of  Bonaparte  were 
plundering  Italian  villas,  palaces,  con- 
vents, and  galleries,  to  acquire  port- 
folios filled  with  sketches  and  draw- 
ings of  the  old  masters.  The  collection 
formed  by  the  Marquis  de  Bourguignon 
de  Fabrigoule  he  had  since  left  to 
the  museum  of  Aix.  The  Marquis  de 
la  Roehette  and  M.  Sallier,  by  whom 
the  finances  of  the  Bouches  du  Rhone 
were  then  directed,  had  also  galleries 
and  private  museums  in  which  compa- 
rative studies  could  be  made  of  ancient 
and  modern  schools,  and  history  learned 
from  Gallo-Roman  bronzes,  coins, 
marbles,  cameos,  and  inscriptions. 
Thiers,  who  intuitively  turned  to 
what  was  beautiful  in  art  and  nature, 
here  formed  healthy  and  refined  tastes. 
He  endeavoxu-ed,  when  fame  and 


10 


M.  Tliiers. 


fortune  had  crowned  his  industrious 
youth  and  manhood,  to  reproduce  in  his 
house  in  the  Place  St.  Georges  what 
he  remembered  in  the  mansions  of  the 
parliamentary  notables  at  Aix. 

The  French  aristocracy  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  had  one  very  salient 
virtue  :  it  was  disposed  to  encourage' 
merit  wherever  it  might  be  found.  In 
its  social  usages,  apart  from  the  Court 
of  Versailles,  it  was  in  this  respect  de- 
mocratic. Rousseau,  after  giving  a  pic- 
ture of  the  corruption  and  giddiness  of 
the  ladies  of  rank  who  directed  opinion, 
hastened  to  say  their  faults  were  re- 
deemed by  their  penetration  in  discern- 
ing the  meritorious,  and  their  genero- 
sity in  aiding  and  bringing  them  for- 
ward if  they  were  poor  and  in  obscurity. 

The  parliamentary  families  of  Aix 
adhered  under  the  Restoration  to  the 
intellectual  traditions  of  the  last  cen- 
tury. Thiers  was  taken  up  and 
cherished  by  some  of  them.  He  was  a 
delicious  toy  for  old  Voltairean  nobles. 
No  doubt  they  objected  to  his  poli- 
tics, which  were  Jacobin ;  but  they 
put  up  with  him  for  the  sake  of  his 
loquacious  wit,  and  the  zest  it  gave  to  the 
conversation  in  which  he  mingled.  A 
salon  or  a  cercle  where  he  talked  became 
an  intellectual  gymnasium.  To  exercise 
himself  in  full  liberty  in  dialectics,  he 
at  this  time  formed  a  club  called  the 
Cenacle.  At  first  it  was  intended  for 
none  but  law-students ;  but  judges 
tinged  with  liberalism,  and  nobles  who 
wished  well  to  the  new  reforms,  having 
sought  to  join  it  and  being  admitted, 
it  grew  into  one  of  the  first  debating 
societies  in  France.  Its  founder  was 
its  youngest  member.  Mignet  was  a 
year  older.  D  Arlatan  de  Lauris  was 
already  a  judge  of  the  Court  of  Appeal 
and  a  member  of  the  Academy  of 
Aix,  a  circumstance  which  enabled 
him  to  render  the  master-mind  of 
the  Cenacle  a  service  that  opened  to 
him  the  road  to  the  far-off  capital. 

Eleven  miles  from  Aix,  on  the  south- 
ern flank  of  Mount  Libaou,  in  the 
midst  of  woods  and  cascades,  and 
standing  out  on  a  rocky  platform,  there 
is  a  feudal  castle,  square,  massive,  and 


gloomy,  with  turrets  at  its  angles.  Its 
vast  hall,  built  by  the  Romans,  was  an 
armoury,in  which  are  collected  weapons 
of  all  ages  and  countries.  The  other 
apartments,  some  of  them  of  gran- 
diose proportions,  are  sculptured  and 
painted  by  master-hands.  Cardinal 
Isoard  was  the  owner  of  this  castle  in 
1818,  and  had  constructed  an  oratory 
wherein  to  enshrine  the  body  of  St. 
Severin,  presented  to  him  by  Pius 
VII.  Before  the  castle  had  come  into 
his  possession  it  belonged  to  the  Vau- 
venargues  family,  and  was  presented 
to  Joseph  de  Clapiers  Vauvenargues, 
first  Consul  of  Aix,  as  a  reward  for 
his  devotion  in  relieving  the  victims 
of  the  great  Marseilles  plague.  He 
was  the  father  of  Vauvenargues  the 
moralist,  who  died  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
two,  in  the  retreat  of  Prague,  and  was 
styled  by  Voltaire  the  "  master-mind 
of  the  eighteenth  century."  D'Arlatan 
de  Lauris  was  connected  with  the  De 
Vauvenargues,  and  took  Thiers  to  see 
their  castle.  He  also  recommended 
him  to  the  cardinal,  who  received  him 
graciously  and  asked  him  to  come  often 
and  study  the  old  rooms  and  hall  in 
detail.  "While  there  Thiers  conceived 
the  idea  of  writing  the  life  of  Vauven- 
argues, which  he  confided  to  D'Arlatan. 
Being  without  money  he  proposed  to 
publish  by  subscription.  His  friend  not 
only  encouraged  him  in  the  idea,  but — 
without  revealing  his  motive, which  was 
to  do  a  kindness  to  the  young  student — 
he  suggested  to  the  Academy  to  grant  a 
prize  of  500  francs  for  an  eulogium  on 
Vauvenargues.  His  pretext  was  that 
they  should  not  be  surpassed  in  libe- 
rality by  the  Academyof  JS"ismes,  which 
had  offered  the  same  sum  for  an  essay 
on  Charles  VII.  That  prize  had  been 
won  by  Mignet.  He  went  to  Nismes 
to  be  crowned  towards  the  end 
of  1820,  and  thence  to  Paris  to  find 
materials  for  another  prize  offered  by 
the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  "  on  the 
state  of  government  and  legislation  in 
France  at  the  accession  of  St.  Louis, 
and  the  institutions  founded  by  that 
king."  But  to  return  to  Aix  and 
Thiers. 


M.  TJiiers. 


11 


The  essays  on  Vauvenargues  were 
to  be  sent  in  anonymously,  with  sealed 
envelopes  containing  the  authors 
names.  Thiers  having  read  his  at  the 
Ct-nacle,  the  secret  of  his  authorship 
got  out.  One  half  of  the  Academy  was 
for  him,  and  the  other  half  against. 
The  adjudicati  <n  was  put  off  to  the 
next  session.  Thiers  for  this  paper  ob- 
tained an  honourable  mention.  But  in 
the  interval  between  the  two  sessions, 
he  wrote  in  a  different  style,  and  from 
another  point  of  view,  a  second  essay. 
The  faithful  Mignet,  to  whom  he  sent  it, 
transcribed  it  and  posted  the  copy  in 
Paris.  It  had  for  its  epigraph,  "  Man 
is  in  the  world  to  act ;  the  greater  his 
activity  the  better  he  accomplishes  his 
destiny."  Action,  the  essayist  re- 
garded as  the  supreme  rule  and  end  of 
life,  and  freedom  and  energy  to  act  the 
supreme  felicity  of  existence.  This 
estimate  of  happiness  was  sinc3re.  M. 
Thiers  had  no  experience  of  the  beatific 
vision  of  the  Hindoo.  Incentives  to 
devouring  activity  rejuvenated  him 
when  he  was  old,  and  rescued  him  from 
the  physician's  hands  when  medicine 
and  hygienics  failed.  But  to  pursue 
the  narrative  of  his  life,  and  show 
more  completely  the  slender  hinge  up- 
on which  his  destinies  and  the  greater 
ones  involved  in  them  turned.  The 
stratagem  of  the  Paris  postmark  suc- 
ceeded. Aix  rang  with  laughter  when 
the  trick  played  on  the  Royalists  was 
discovered.  There  were  public  rejoic- 
ings in  honour  of  Thiers.  The  Cenacle 
gave  a  banquet  in  his  honour,  at  which 
he  announced  his  intention  of  starting 
immediately  for  Paris.  On  the  day 
following  he  was  entertained  in  the 
name  of  the  Liberal  party  by  M. 
Borely,  an  eccentric  judge,  and  an 
offer  was  made  him  of  a  seat  in  the 
Chamber  for  Aix  at  the  next  vacancy. 
It  was  not  however  accepted  before 
1830. 

It  is  commonly  and  erroneously 
understood  that  Thiers  and  Mignet 
journeyed  together  from  Aix  to  Paris. 
His  fellow-traveller  was  Mery,  one  of 
the  brilliant  band  turned  out  by  Mar- 
seilles under  the  Restoration.  They 


passed  through  Burgundy  in  the  merry 
vintage  season,  seeking  hospitality  in 
farmhouses  and  country  inns,  often 
dining  at  the  wayside  on  bread  and 
cheese  and  a  bunch  of  grapes,  and 
visiting  the  noteworthy  places  lying 
near  their  route.  Weary  of  body  and 
sore  of  foot,  but  buoyant  with  hope, 
Thiers  entered  the  "  maison  meublee," 
in  the  Passage  Montesquieu,  in  the 
garret  of  which  Mignet  lodged.  In 
the  darkness  of  the  unlighted  corridor 
the  tired  traveller  knocked  at  the 
wrong  door.  The  room  he  fell  upon 
was  occupied  by  another  Marseillais, 
Rabbe,  a  polemist,  rugged,  violent, 
forcible,  and  pitiless,  who,  for  the  ill- 
luck  of  the  Monarchy,  was  drifted  by 
a  domestic  hurricane  to  Paris.  He 
was  giving  a  bowl  of  hot  wine  to  some 
brother  Bohemians,  when  he  heard  a 
knock  at  the  door.  On  opening,  a  little 
man  with  a  bundle  in  his  hand  entered, 
and  said  he  was  looking  for  M.  Mignet, 
whom  Rabbe  knew  to  be  out.  The 
stranger  asked  to  be  allowed  to  sit 
down  until  his  friend's  return,  and 
advanced  towards  the  table  looking 
wistfully  at  the  hot  wine.  He  wore  a 
coat  that  had  been  green  and  was  faded 
into  yellow,  tight  buffi  trousers  too 
short  to  cover  his  ankles,  and  dusty 
and  glossy  from  long  use,  a  pair  of 
clumsy  Blucher  boots,  and  a  hat 
worthy  of  a  place  in  an  antiquary's 
cabinet.  His  face  was  tanned  a  deep 
brown,  and  a  pair  of  brass-rimmed 
spectacles  covered  half  his  face. 

Mignet,  when  he  entered,  embraced 
him.  In  the  expansiveness  of  his  joy 
he  asked  him.  to  share  his  room.  He 
spoke  of  himself  as  a  millionnaire,  which 
relatively  to  the  recipient  of  his  hospita- 
lity he  was.  Had  he  not  been  awarded 
a  first  prize  by  the  Academy  of  In- 
scriptions and  Belles  Lettres  for  his 
essay  on  France  under  St.  Louis  1  and 
had  not  Chatelain,  his  fellow-towns- 
man, chai-ged  him  with  the  foreign 
editorship  of  the  Courier  Franqais,  in 
which  he  was  pelting  away  at  the 
Monarchy  in  a  series  of  letters  on 
English  history  '?  But  in  sharing  his 
poor  chamber  he  did  not  forget  that 


12 


M.  Thiers. 


Madame  Thiers  had  said  to  him  of  her 
son — "  Adolphe  will  never  go  afoot. 
He  will  first  hang  on  to  the  back  of 
a  carriage,  and  then  work  his  way 
to  the  top,  throw  the  driver  over  and 
seize  hold  of  the  reins."  It  may  be 
observed  that  she  spoke  in  anger, 
which  is  cruel.  When  she  so  de- 
nounced her  son,  she  was  excited  by 
the  assassination  of  the  Due  de  Berri 
and  the  birth  of  the  Due  de  Bordeaux, 
events  which  did  not  shake  his  politi- 
cal opinions.  But,  it  may  here  be 
observed  that,  in  his  old  age,  M. 
Thiers  returned  so  far  to  the  Royal- 
ism  of  his  mother  as  to  speak  with 
unfeigned  admiration  of  the  good  faith 
and  chivalrous  impulses  of  the  Cornte 
de  Chambord,  "  qui  n'a  jamais  voulu 
mettre  son  drapeau  dans  sa  poche." 

While  Mignet  was  deducing  from 
his  moral  consciousness  a  system 
of  English  policy  applicable,  as  he 
thought,  to  France,  Thiers  was  spend- 
ing his  days  in  the  museums  and  public 
libraries.  Party  passions  had  reached 
a  white-heat  pitch  in  1821.  Napo- 
leon had  just  died.  The  govern- 
ment was  in  the  hands  of  old  emigre*, 
who  had  forgotten  nothing  of  the 
ancient  regime  and  learned  nothing  of 
the  new,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
they  were  at  Coblentz,  and  elsewhere 
abroad,  while  the  changes  effected  by 
the  Revolution  were  operating.  On 
the  other  side  there  was  a  youthful 
nation.  The  carnage  of  Bonaparte's 
wars  had  left  France,  in  1814,  peopled 
with  aged  men,  women  young,  old,  and 
middle-aged,  and  boys.  The  state 
might  have  been  likened  to  a  ship  in 
full  sail,  in  a  heavy  sea,  with  an  in- 
experienced pilot,  and  without  bal- 
last. There  were  scarcely  any  men 
in  the  prime  of  life.  Guizot — a  patri- 
arch among  the  Liberals  of  1821 — 
was  entering  his  thirty-third  year. 
Royalists  tore  Voltaire  out  of  his 
grave,  and  threw  his  bones  into  a 
ditch,  pursued  the  old  Conventionals, 
and  made  Louvel's  crime  a  pretext  for 
a  movement  to  restore  the  lands,  con- 
fiscated and  sold  by  the  revolutionary 
government,  to  their  rightful  owners, 


and  to  re-establish  entails  and  primo- 
geniture. Republicans  called  Marie  An- 
toinette a  Messalina  and  a  traitor  to  the 
country  over  which  she  reigned.  In 
thus  throwing  stones  at  her  they  hoped 
to  hit  the  Duchesse  de  Berri,  her  niece, 
a  dissipated,  thoughtless,  and  fanatical 
princess,  and  her  daughter,  the  child- 
less Duchesse  d'Angouleme,  to  whom 
misfortune  had  imparted  bitter- 
ness, without  the  majesty  of  trials 
nobly  borne.  She  was  the  Queen 
in  expectancy.  Her  husband — in 
most  things  a  nullity — had  very  de- 
cided opinions  about  the  Revolution 
and  the  Liberals  :  for  just  then  nobody 
was  bold  enough  to  call  himself  a 
Revolutionist  or  a  Bonapartist.  Thiers 
— who  knew  very  little  about  the 
Revolution  beyond  the  fact  that  it 
enabled  Bonaparte,  at  that  time  his 
hero,  to  overrun  Europe — thought  he 
should  like  to  study  the  men  engaged 
in  it.  This  he  did  in  the  Moniteur 
and  the  other  gazettes  published  in 
Paris  in  the  interval  between  Turgot's 
dismissal  and  the  18th  Brumaire.  He 
found  all  the  journals  that  he  wanted 
at  the  Bibliotheque  Royale.  The  notes 
he  took  there  were  the  commencement 
of  his  history,  which  grew  up  under 
his  hand  almost  of  itself.  Mignet 
simultaneously  began  his  history  of 
the  Revolution,  which  was  published 
in  1824,  and  at  once  attained  a 
European  reputation.  Six  translations 
of  it  were  brought  out  in  the  course  of 
three  years  in  Germany  alone. 

Thiers  was  called  to  the  Aix  bar. 
His  acumen  and  legal  knowledge 
were  admitted  by  his  brethren  of  the 
long  robe,  and  by  the  judges  there. 
Rollardin,  to  keep  him  in  the  South, 
promised  to  obtain  for  him  the  best 
commercial  •  clients  at  Marseilles.  In 
emigrating  to  Paris,  he  counted  a  good 
deal  on  his  professional  knowledge  as 
a  means  of  advancement.  But  when 
he  arrived  there,  he  found  that  his 
poverty  excluded  him  from  practising 
as  a  barrister.  To  belong  to  the  order 
of  advocates  in  Paris  it  is  not  enough 
to  have  passed  brilliant  examinations. 
The  council  of  the  order  must  be  satis- 


M.  Thier*. 


13 


fied  that  the  person  s?eking  admittance 
is  already  in  receipt  of  an  income 
placing  him  above  the  temptations  of 
•want.  Moreover,  he  must  have  a 
respectably-furnished  domicile,  and 
produce  proof  that  the  furniture  is 
paid  for.  The  admission  fees  were  not 
very  heavy  ;  but  they  were  altogether 
beyond  the  reach  of  Thiers,  whose 
fortune  was  comprised  in  the  500 
francs  awarded  him  by  the  Aix  Aca- 
demy, and  a  small  sum  which  his 
grandmother  had  squeezed  out  of  her 
narrow  pittance.  He  had  therefore  to 
lay  aside  the  reasonable  ambition  of 
making  a  name  and  winning  honourable 
ease  at  the  Paris  bar.  His  pen,  or  per- 
haps his  pencil,  was  thesole  resource  that 
remained  to  him.  Fans  were  studied 
in  the  shop  windows,  and  an  attempt 
was  made  to  paint  others.  Applica- 
tions for  employment  were  addressed 
to  booksellers  and  newspaper  editors, 
and  accompanied  by  copies  of  the 
prize  essay.  A  letter  of  introduction 
from  Dr.  Arnaud,  a  member  of  the 
Cenacle,  was  forwarded  to  Manuel, 
the  deputy  for  Marseilles,  a  narrow- 
minded,  hot-headed  man,  who,  however, 
was  endowed  with  the  fervid  eloquence 
of  the  South,  and  was  intelligent 
enough  to  see  the  irremediable  incom- 
patibility between  the  Bourbons  and 
Revolutionary  France.  When  he  re- 
ceived the  letter,  he  made  a  memo- 
randum of  it  with  the  intent  of  making 
an  appointment  with  M.  Thiers.  But, 
in  the  stirring  parliamentary  incidents 
which  his  daring  attacks  on  the  mon- 
archy called  forth,  he  forgot  all  about  it. 
Thiers  heard  that  the  Due  de  Laroche- 
foucauld  Liancourt  wanted  a  secretary, 
and  lay  in  wait  in  the  lobby  of  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  for  Manuel,  from 
whom,  on  making  himself  known,  he 
obtained  a  recommendation  to  the 
Due,  with  another  to  Bodin  of  the 
Constitutionnel.  There  is  hardly  a 
biographer  of  Thiers  who  does  not 
confound  this  passage  of  his  life  with 
the  riot  in  the  Salle  des  Pas  Perdus 
provoked  by  Manuel's  arrest.  Manuel 
was  torn  from  his  seat  by  the 
collar  by  two  gendarmes,  and  dragged 


to  gaol.  Thiers,  then  reporting  for  a 
newspaper,  rushed  from  the  gallery, 
and,  reckless  of  the  danger  which  he 
ran,  harangued  the  bystanders,  and 
called  on  them  to  rescue  their  out- 
raged representative  like  men.  This 
happened  soon  after  the  death  of 
Louis  XVIII.  (a  king  in  many  points 
resembling  our  Charles  II.),  and  in  the 
beginning  of  the  regne  du  parti  pretre 
under  Charles  X.,  the  mitigated  James 
II.  of  the  House  of  Bourbon.  General 
Foy  also  died  this  year,  and  Thiers 
organised  a  monster  manifestation  at 
his  funeral — to  protest  against  the 
grant  of  an  indemnity  of  a  milliard 
to  the  emigres,  and  against  the  sacri- 
lege law,  in  virtue  of  which  a  man  who 
insulted  the  Host  in  a  street  proces- 
sion was  condemned  to  lose  his  hand. 
The  incident  Manuel  and  the  Foy 
funeral  made  Thiers  known  to  the  tur- 
bulent youth,  the  discontented  Bona- 
partist  officers,  and  the  disaffected 
proletaires.  But  more  than  two  years 
before  these  events  took  place  he  had 
obtained  and  resigned  the  secretary- 
ship at  the  Due  de  Liancourt's,  and 
had  become  a  journalist  under  Manuel's 
auspices. 

This  is  how  he  entered  the  Consti- 
tntionnel.  They  wanted  an  art  critic  ; 
Thiers  was  asked  if  he  thought  him- 
self equal  to  a  review  of  the  Salon? — a 
task  proposed  by  an  editor  anxious 
at  once  to  honour  Manuel's  recom- 
mendation, and  to  rid  himself  of  his 
protege,  whose  aesthetic  education  he 
was  far  from  suspecting.  Thiers's  first 
notice  was  a  literary  event.  Dela- 
croix, then  an  unknown  artist,  had 
exhibited  his  Dante  and  Virgil  in 
Hell.  Thiers  wrote :  "  That  of  all 
the  pictures  in  the  Salon,  this  was 
the  one  that  most  revealed  a  coming 
master.  One  saw  in  it  a  powerful 
conception  and  the  free  flow  of  talent. 
It  presented  with  epic  force  to  the 
critic's  eye  the  selfishness  and  despair 
of  hell.  In  the  treatment  of  a  sub- 
ject which  lay  on  the  confines  of  the 
fantastic,  severity  of  taste  was  ob- 
servable. The  drawing,  which  hasty 
judges  might  think  deficient  in  dignity, 


14 


M.  Thiers. 


was,  whatever  were  its  defects,  re- 
deemed by  the  truth  of  the  details, 
and  the  fidelity  with  which  the  poet's 
vision  was  rendered.  The  pencil  was 
ample  and  firm,  the  colour  vigorous, 
though  perhaps  crude.  Delacroix,  de- 
signed his  figures,  grouped  them,  and 
set  them  in  action  with  the  boldness 
of  a  Michael  Angelo  and  the  fecundity 
of  a  Rubens." 

Of  David's  Rape  of  the  Sabines  he 
said :  "In  making  these  reflections 
in  the  interest  of  art  present  and 
future,  we  do  not  the  less  consider 
David  in  the  light  of  a  great  master. 
A  man  who  has  worked  a  revolution 
in  the  taste  of  a  nation  with  so  keen 
a  perception  of  the  beautiful  as  the 
French  must  be  an  artist  of  the 
highest  order.  He  has  rendered  an 
important  service  to  our  school.  But 
it  is  undesirable  that  a  superstitious 
admiration  of  his  works  should  pre- 
vent new  geniuses  from  coming  for- 
ward. We  must  take  care  not  to 
imprison  present  and  future  art  in 
the  limits  of  a  style  which  in  the  hands 
of  imitators  must  become  cold  and 
pedantic.  No  doubt  a  prime  condition 
of  art  is  correctness  of  outline.  But 
it  may  be  asked  whether  under  this 
pretext  critics  do  not  check  the  in- 
spiration of  those  artists  who  seek  to 
throw  more  life,  more  health,  and 
more  of  nature's  truth  and  freshness 
into  their  works.  M.  David  delivered 
us  from  the  conventions  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  He  formed  others,  the 
destruction  of  which  in  their  turn 
should  not  annoy  him  and  his  admirers. 
One  epoch  should  never  be  jealous  of 
another ;  nor  should  those  who  have 
made  a  step  forward  prevent  others 
from  making  another." 

Thus  M.  Thiers' s  first  achievement 
was  to  deliver  French  art  from  the 
pseudo-classic  tyranny  of  David,  and 
to  obtain  justice  for  Delacroix,  whom 
Baron  Gros  had  publicly  called  a  lunatic 
and  a  signboard-dauber.  The  manage- 
ment of  the  Const itutionnel,  judging 
Thiers  by  the  success  of  his  Salon, 
gave  him  permanent  and  well-paid 
employment.  His  department  was  the 


"  Varietes  "  on  the  third  page.  They 
were  to  embrace  literary  criticisms, 
biographies,  and  scientific  papers  well 
baited  to  catch  idle  readers.  The  next 
telling  article  was  a  review  of  Mont- 
losier's  French  Monarchy.  Montlosier 
was  a  eulogist  of  Louis  Quatorze, 
whom  Thiers  condemned  because  on  its 
road  to  St.  Denis,  his  body  was  neg- 
lected by  his  courtiers,  and  followed  by 
the  imprecations  of  the  people.  The 
reviewer  maintained  that  had  Louis 
Quatorze  been  a  great  king,  who  exer- 
cised despotism  for  the  glory  of  the 
nation,  his  death  would  have  been 
attended  with  a  reaction  in  his  favour ; 
and  the  Parisians — who  are  prompt  to 
strike  in  anger,  but  quick  to  forget 
and  forgive  the  faults  of  patriotic 
though  severe  rulers — would  have  fol- 
lowed his  hearse  in  silent  sorrow. 
Fifty-six  years  after  this  judgment 
was  passed  the  people  of  Paris,  ob- 
livious of  the  hard  chastisement  in- 
flicted on  them  by  M.  Thiers,  escorted 
his  remains  in  speechless  grief  to  the 
tomb  in  Pere-la-Chaise. 

Thiers's  literary  merits  and  dash 
rapidly  brought  up  the  Constitutionnel 
to  be  the  leading  organ  of  the  bour- 
geoisie. He  was  endowed  with  nothing 
short  of  a  genius  for  journalism. 
Prompt,  agile,  gifted  with  ready  tact, 
and  quick  to  feel  the  public  pulse,  and 
to  divine  smouldering  passions  and 
bring  them  to  the  surface,  he  instinc- 
tively eluded  the  snares  and  pitfalls  in 
his  road.  When  the  superior  deities 
refused  to  listen  to  him,  he  knew -well 
how  to  array  the  Acherontians  on 
his  side,  though  in  rousing  them  he 
ever  took  high  ground.  Sentiments 
and  ideas  which  vaguely  agitated  the 
multitude  he  shaped  with  ready  skill 
into  clear  aphorisms,  which  circulated 
like  current  coin.  He  did  not  fear 
repeating  himself,  but  was  careful  to 
vary  the  form  of  his  repetitions.  It 
was  an  axiom  of  his  that  when  a 
speaker  wants  to  carry  away  a  stolid 
assembly  or  uncultured  mass,  he  should 
often  present  the  same  argument,  but 
each  time  in  a  new  verbal  dress.  Thiers 
had  a  native  repugnance  to  what  was 


M.  Thicrs. 


15 


hazy.     His  mind  turned,  of  itself,  to- 
wards the  light.     However  obscure  a 
controverted  point,  he  laid  his  finger, 
as  if  by  intuition,  on  the  knot  of  the 
question,   and  with    an    address  that 
charmed   the    bystanders,    undid    the 
bewildering   tangle.     Louis  XVIII. 's 
death    heightened    the  growing  anta- 
gonism between  royalty  and  the  na- 
tion, which  had  been  roused  from  the 
passivity  of  depletion  by  the  Liberal 
movement  in  Spain,  and  its  suppres- 
sion by  a  French  army  under  the  Due 
d'Angouleme's    command.     Thiers    at 
this   juncture   was    enjoying  literary 
laurels   culled  in  the  Pyrenees,  from 
which  he  wrote  a  series  of  letters  to 
the  Constitutionnel  describing  his  holi- 
day tour.     It  was  asked  if  he  might 
not  advantageously  be  promoted  to  the 
political    department.      The    manager 
thought  he  could,  and  finding  he  struck 
a  national  chord,  was  for  letting  him 
work  with    an    unfettered  pen.     But 
the  more  timid  shareholders  sought  to 
moderate  the  trenchant  vigour  of  his 
polemics.     To    have    a    voice    in    the 
direction,  he  purchased  a  share  with 
borrowed  money  procured  through  the 
instrumentality  of  Schubart,an  obscure 
German    bookseller,    the    original    of 
Balzac's  Schmucke,  in  Le  Cousin  Pons. 
This    Schubart   used    to    dine   at    la 
Mere  Saguet's,  a  cheap  gargotte  in  the 
Passage    Montesquieu,    with    Charlet 
the  caricaturist,  Sigalon,  Mignet,  and 
Thiers,  for  whom  his  admiration  was 
extravagant.     Schubart  rendered   his 
idol  the  service  of  taking  him  to  Baron 
Cotta,  the  opulent  German  publisher, 
and  asking  him  to  grant  the  loan  the 
young    journalist    stood    in    need    of. 
Under  the  new  impulsion  the  Consti- 
tutionnel   took  a   well-defined   colour, 
attained     the     largest    circulation    a 
French  newspaper  was  ever  known  to 
command,    and    forced    the   King   to 
place    M.    de    Martignac,    a    dynastic 
Liberal,   at  the  head  of   the  govern- 
ment.    The  debates  in  the  Chamber 
furnished  M.  Thiers  with  his  themes. 
The  daily   "copy"  was  written  in  a 
clear  hand,   which  advanced   steadily 
across  the  paper  in  lines  wide  apart 


to  leave  room  for  corrections.  As 
each  page  was  filled  it  was  cast  on 
the  ground.  The  task  done,  a  clerk 
picked  up  the  sheets  and  set  them  in 
order.  The  blotting-paper  was  seldom 
used.  Thiers  bore  interruption  in 
speaking  better  than  in  writing. 
Before  sitting  down  to  his  desk,  he 
studied  authorities  with  Benedictine 
patience  and  minuteness,  and  classified 
his  subjects.  But  from  the  moment 
he  took  his  broad-nibbed  goose  quill 
in  hand  until  he  had  done  with  it  he 
did  not  raise  his  eyes  from  the  quire 
of  glazed  foolscap  before  him.  This 
habit,  formed  in  the  bureaux  of  the 
Constitutional,  he  never  dropped. 

His  article  sent  to  press,  the  rest  of. 
the  evening  was  spent  in  society.  As 
he  slept  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  he 
was  able  without  fatigue  to  sit  up 
late  at  night.  Lafitte,  a  Bonapartist 
banker,  and  the  associate  in  military 
contracts  and  other  speculations  of 
Ouvrard  and  Dosne,  whose  eldest 
daughter  is  now  Thiers's  widow,  opened 
to  him  the  great  world  of  the  Liberal 
salons.  The  exquisite  man  of  the 
world  whom  this  generation  will  not 
easily  forget,  who  was  never  more 
at  home  than  at  the  Elysce  receiving 
the  representatives  of  the  Great 
Powers,  "was,"  says  Lomenie,  "re- 
marked in  Lafitte's  and  Talley- 
rand's drawing-rooms  for  his  fluent 
speech  and  vivid  southern  imagination. 
The  dwarfishness  of  his  statiu'e,  the 
oddity  of  his  visage,  half  hidden  by  a 
pair  of  goggles,  the  singular  cadence 
of  his  voice,  his  jerking  motions,  the 
see-saw  action  of  his  shoulders,  his 
short  legs,  his  want  of  manner,  fan- 
tastic clothing,  and  manifest  genius, 
contributed  to  fix  attention  on  him." 
The  fame  of  a  duel  arising  from  a  love 
affair,  one  of  the  few  really  romantic 
episodes  in  his  long  existence,  helped 
to  lionise  him.  At  Aix  M.  Thiers 
believed  himself  to  be  eternally  ena- 
moured of  a  young  girl  of  majestic 
beauty  and  decayed  family.  He 
courted  her,  wrote  verses  about  her, 
was  affianced,  shed  bitter  tears  in 
parting,  and  kept  up  a  tender  corre- 


1C 


M.  Thiers. 


spondenco   with   her   extending    over 
many  months.     The  fame  of  his  news- 
paper articles  reaching  Aix,  where  a 
maiden's  bloom  soon  fades,  the  young 
lady's  father  came  to  Paris  to  call  upon 
Thiers  and  ask  him  to  fulfil  his  pro- 
mise.    Poverty  was  pleaded  in  stay  of 
execution.     A  year's  delay  was  asked 
and   granted.      At  the   close   of    the 
twelve  months  there  was  another  visit. 
M.  Thiers  vowed  unalterable  affection, 
but  represented  that  his  income,  which 
was   precarious,  would   not  suffice  to 
keep  both  his  mother  and  a  wife.     He 
therefore  begged  for  a  further  delay, 
which   drew   on   him   the   ire   of   his 
visitor,  who  next  day  insulted  him  in 
the  lobby  of  the  Chamber.     A  chal- 
lenge ensued.     The  offender's  seconds 
were  Rabbe  and  an  Aixois  lawyer,  and 
those   of  the   offended  party   Mignet 
and  Manuel.    The  young  lady's  father 
was  allowed  to  fire  first.    Aiming  low, 
to  make  sure  of  his  adversary,  he  shot 
between  his  legs.    Thiers  fired  into  the 
air.     The  match  was  broken  off ;  the 
girl  died  of  grief ;  her  lover  preserved 
an  affectionate   remembrance   of   her. 
Unsolicited,  when  he  became  a  king- 
maker   and    minister,    he    gave    her 
brothers   and   father   lucrative    situa- 
tions.    Her  letters   and   love   tokens 
he  preserved  in  a  drawer.     In  his  ex- 
treme old  age  he  was  known  to  shed 
tears  over  them.    This  episode  dropped 
from  the  memory  of  his  contemporaries. 
A  second  and  a  hotter  duel  was  fought 
with    Bixio    in    the    garden    of    the 
Chamber   of  Deputies   in  1849,   that 
representative  having,  on  Thiers  de- 
claring for  Louis  Napoleon,  taxed  him 
with   treachery.       Want   of    physical 
courage  was  not  a  defect  of  the  little 
great  man,  who  in  his  ministerial  uni- 
form headed  the  troops  sent  to  dislodge 
the  insurgents  from  the  Rue  Transno- 
nain,  in  one  of  the  terrible  street  wars 
that  disturbed  and  closed  the  reign  of 
Louis  Philippe.     A  witness  of  the  dis- 
charge of  Fieschi's  infernal  machine  yet 
living  says,  that  on  that  occasion  the 
king  remained  cool,  and  that  Thiers, 
undaunted  by  the  explosion,    jumped 
from  his   horse,  and  ran   to  examine 


the  house  whence  the  smoke  issued. 
A  few  inches  taller,  and  his  skull  would 
have  been  carried  away.  The  bullets 
that  went  over  his  head  lodged  in 
Marshal  Mortier. 

Thiers,  when  he  was  a  journalist, 
maintained  the  native  vigour  of  his 
mind  by  a  strong  feeding  process.  He 
never  suffered  his  brain  to  grind  chaff. 
If  he  wished  to  describe  a  battle  he 
visited  the  fields  in  which  it  was  fought, 
talked  with  the  peasants,  made  notes  of 
current  legends,  compared  them  with 
the  more  precise  evidence,  consulted 
strategists,  studied  military  bulletins, 
and  commissariat  returns,  and  checked 
them  with  the  market  prices.  A  visit  to 
Prince  Jerome  Bonaparte  at  Florence 
for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  the  loan 
of  historical  documents,  put  him  on 
the  track  of  an  intrigue  carried  on  by 
Queen  Hortense,  Comte  d'Orsay,  and 
Lady  Blessington.  Its  object  was  to 
open  France  to  Napoleon's  proscribed 
family  by  procuring  the  translation 
of  the  Emperor's  remains  from  St. 
Helena  to  the  Invalides.  Lord  Pal- 
merston  in  1840  on  learning  Thiers's 
bellicose  intentions  from  King  Leo- 
pold— whose  wife  was  warned  by 
Louis  Philippe  —  lent  himself  to 
this  intrigue,  as  a  source  of  embar- 
rassment to  "  the  Government  of 
March."  Guizot,  then  Ambassador 
at  the  Court  of  St.  James's,  was 
instructed  to  defeat  it,  and  to  bribe 
the  inhabitants  of  Gore  House  to  sell 
him  Bonapartist  secrets.  He  declined 
to  enter  into  relations  with  Lady  Bles- 
sington, giving  as  his  excuse  the  irre- 
gularity of  her  position.  "Thus," 
said  M.  Thiers  to  the  writer  of  this  ar- 
ticle, "  through  Guizot's  false  Puritan- 
ism, Louis  Philippe  neglected  a  clever 
woman  and  her  still  more  talented 
paramour,  whose  knowledge  of  Bona- 
partist conspirators  would  have  been 
invaluable  in  showing  where  to  -sup- 
press ferments  that  were  not  without 
influence  in  February,  '48." 

When  Thiers  was  engaged  in  pub- 
lishing his  Tdblettes  Historiques — which 
happened  in  the  third  year  of  his 
sojourn  in  Paris  —  Talleyrand  met 


M.  Thiers. 


17 


him  at  the  Comte  de  Flahault's, 
hailed  him  as  the  leader  of  "la  Jeune 
Garde,"  which  he  insinuated  was  to 
upset  the  restored  Monarchy.  He 
encouraged  him  to  visit  him  at  the 
Hotel  St.  Florentin,  and  ask  for  in- 
formation concerning  the  court  of 
Louis  XVI.,  and  the  meeting  of  the 
States-General.  There  the  young  jour- 
nalist grew  to  be  the  head  of  the 
Liberal  party,  which  embraced  three 
distinct  sections.  Talleyrand  had  been 
offended  by  the  royal  family.  To 
avenge  himself  he  encouraged  the 
"  Jeune  Garde "  (Thiers,  Mignet, 
De  Remusat,  and  Victor  Cousin)  to 
repeat  the  English  Revolution  of  1688, 
and  to  discern  a  William  of  Orange 
in  the  Due  d' Orleans,  "who  without 
stirring  a  step  was  always  advancing  to 
the  throne."  Louis  Philippe  kept  aloof 
from  the  promoters  of  his  candidature. 
At  the  same  time  he  made  the  bour- 
geoisie feel  that  he  was  their  man.  While 
seeking  to  render  himself  popular  by 
placing  the  Due  de  Chartres,  his  eldest 
son,  in  the  Lycee  Henry  IV.,  he  avoided 
Talleyrand  and  the  habitues  of  his  Green 
Salon,  and  he  never  saw  Thiers  before 
the  Sunday  preceding  the  promulgation 
of  the  Ordinances.  The  circumstances 
under  which  they  found  themselves  in 
the  same  room  are  too  remarkable  to 
be  omitted  here. 

Thiers  was  on  intimate  terms  with 
a  Mme.  de  Courtchamp,  the  wife  of  a 
notary.  This  lady  had  a  summer  resi- 
dence at  Bessencourt,  in  the  valley  of 
Montmorency ,  near  the  Chateau  St.  Leu, 
where  the  children  of  Philippe  Egalite 
were  brought  up  by  Madame  de  Genlis, 
where  Hortense  Bonaparte  received 
the  allied  sovereigns,  and  where,  on 
the  return  of  the  Bourbons,  the  last  of 
the  Conde's  went  to  live  with  Sophie 
Dawes,  an  Englishwoman  whom  he 
had  imported  from  Vauxhall,  and 
had  married  under  false  pretences 
to  the  Baron  de  Feucheres.  At  St. 
Leu  there  was  a  theatre,  built  for 
Madame  de  Genlis  and  her  pupils. 
Mine,  de  Feucheres  was  fond  of  acting 
on  its  boards.  French  ladies  who 

J\T0.    217. — VOL.   5XXVII. 


would  not  enter  her  drawing-room  had 
no  objection  to  go  to  her  theatricals, 
and  to  talk  to  her  and  accept  her  re- 
freshments in  the  green  room.  Marie 
Amelie,  however,  with  her  grown-up 
daughter,  Louise,  afterwards  Queen 
of  the  Belgians,  and  her  sister- 
in-law,  Madame  Adelaide,  visited 
the  Baroness.  On  the  25th  of  July 
there  was  a  theatrical  fete  at  the 
Chateau  to  which  Mme.  de  Courtchamp 
was  asked  along  with  her  family  and 
friends.  M.  Thiers  had  come  from 
Paris  to  spend  the  Sunday  with  her, 
and  was  taken  by  her  to  the  fete.  They 
were  placed  close  to  the  Due  d' Orleans 
and  the  Baroness.  Mme.  de  Courtchamp 
said  in  a  low  voice,  pointing  to  Louis, 
Philippe,  "  That's  your  future  king." 
"Do  you  hear,"  cried  the  English- 
woman joyously,  "  what  this  lady  calls 
you  1  She  says  you  are  the  future  king." 
As  the  company  were  in  the  green-room 
in  the  interval  between  the  acts  an  aide- 
de-camp  of  the  Due  de  Bourbon,  who 
had  galloped  the  whole  way  from  Paris, 
came  in  with  the  tidings  that  the 
Ordinances  were  signed,  and  would  be 
posted  on  the  walls  of  Paris  the  next 
day.  Thiers  hearing  it  took  leave  of 
his  friends.  The  Baroness  de  Feucheres 
ran  after  the  notary's  wife,  and  said, 
"  Press  him,  if  there  should  be  a  revo- 
lution, to  think  of  the  Due  d' Orleans. 
What  a  wise,  noble  king  he  would 
make  !  I  am  sure  he  will  consent.  In 
any  case  Madame  Adelaide  will  make 
him.  I  have  congratulated  her,  and 
she  takes  it  well." 

Thiers  in  the  days  of  July  went 
back  to  Bessencourt.  Mme.  de  Feu- 
cheres drove  over  there  to  tell  Mme. 
de  Courtchamp  that  she  was  going  to 
Neuilly  to  influence  the  Orleans  family. 
They  were  looking  to  her  to  obtain  the 
Conde  heritage  for  the  Due  d'Aumale, 
who  indeed  obtained  it  on  the  death  of 
the  Due  de  Bourbon  in  the  month 
of  August  following,  less  7,000,000 
francs,  secured  (in  a  presumably  forged 
will)  to  the  Baroness.  M.  Thiers,  in 
retailing  this  anecdote  to  the  person 
now  writing  it,  ended  by  saying,  "  Je 

0 


18 


M.  Thiers. 


vous   dis  la  veritu   comme   si   j'etais 
devant  Dieu."  l 

The  History  of  the  Revolution  ap- 
peared in  monthly  parts.  Its  two  first 
volumes  came  out  in  the  names  of 
Thiers  and  Felix  Bodin,  a  well-know  a 
journalist,  who  stood  sponsor  as  an  at- 
traction to  readers,  but  had  no  part  in 
the  authorship.  From  the  18th  Bru- 
maire  to  1823,  the  date  of  the  opening 
number,  the  name  of  every  actor  in  the 
Revolution  who  did  not  turn  against 
it  had  been  delivered  to  obloquy. 
Thiers's  temerity  in  standing  up  as 
the  champion  of  the  States-General  and 
Convention  alarmed  the  Liberals.  One 
newspaper  only,  the  Constitutionnel, 
noticed  the  first  and  second  volumes. 
The  great  defect  of  the  work  is  its 
being  in  ten  volumes,  as  it  is  the 
greatest  defect  of  The  Consulate  to  be 
in  twenty.  Its  author  had  not  the 
time  to  be  briefer.  If  his  style  was 
rapid,  clear,  simple,  and  pictur- 
esque, it  was  redundant  and  often 
garrulous.  His  muse  was  not  draped 
in  antique  folds.  She  went  slipshod 
and  wore  a  bourgeois  dressing-gown. 
The  third  volume  was  rapidly  bought 

1  "Whatever  chance  there  was  of  the  Due 
d'Orleans's  elevation  to  the  throne  being  sanc- 
tioned by  opinion,  he  threw  it  away  in  shield- 
ing the  Baroness  de  Feucheres  from  justice,  and 
in  accepting  for  his  son,  the  Due  d'Aumale, 
the  legacy  of  the  Conde  estates.  None  of  the 
presumed  murderers  were  tried.  A  property 
belonging  to  the  domain  of  St.  Leu  was  given 
to  the  official  who  cut  down  the  Due's  body 
from  the  window-bolt  to  which  it  was  found 
attached  by  the  neck  with  a  cravat,  tied, 
not  in  a  slip,  but  in  a  tight  knot.  Louis 
Philippe's  consort  was  a  pure  and  virtuous 
princess  ;  but  when  it  transpired  that  during 
the  Due  de  Bourbon's  life  she  had  in- 
terested herself  in  trying  to  get  Madame  de 
Feucheres  presented  at  court,  and  was  in  the 
habit  of  writing  affectionate  letters  to  her, 
Marie  Amelie's  virtues  militated  against  the 
new  dynasty.  Those  personally  unacquainted 
with  her  unjustly  condemned  her  as  a  hypo- 
crite, and  spoke  of  her  as  an  accomplice  in 
"the  mysterious  strangulation."  A  popular 
song,  called  La  Heine  Cagotte,  wrongly  attri- 
buted to  Beranger,  was  sung  under  the  palace 
windows.  Its  vogue  was  due  to  the  asper- 
sions which  it  cast  on  the  queen.  When 
Paris  learned  how  she  had  sent  her  eldest  son 
to  visit  the  cholera  patients  at  the  H6tel 
Dieu,  this  lampoon  fell  into  discredit. 


up.  In  proportion  to  the  reactionary 
violence  of  the  old  emigres  at  court 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  young  nation 
for  the  History  rose.  Thiers  stirred 
ashes  under  which  fire  lay  smouldering. 
Political  passions  were  intensified  by 
proprietary  interests  which  had  no 
other  justification  than  the  justice  of 
the  Revolution.  If  we  could  imagine 
the  French  peasants  and  bourgeoisie 
menaced  by  the  party  of  moral  order 
with  the  confiscation  of  all  the  real 
property  taken  from  the  privileged 
classes  in  '93,  we  might  form  a  vivid 
idea  of  the  course  of  events  in  Charles 
the  Tenth's  reign. 

The  monthly  parts  of  M.  Thiers's 
History  affected  the  nation  more 
deeply  than  the  speeches  of  M.  Gam- 
betta  do  now.  It  was  unfortunate  for 
France  that,  in  proving  the  right  of 
the  active  and  intelligent  classes  to 
the  wealth  which  had  lain  idle  from 
time  immemorial  in  the  hands  of  the 
King,  Church,  and  Aristocracy,  he  pro- 
vided and  indeed  suggested  arguments 
to  the  Socialists,  who  up  to  1830 
scarcely  counted  in  French  politics. 
It  would  have  been  more  conducive  to 
quietness  in  the  ensuing  reign  if  he 
had  simply  pleaded  the  fait  accompli 
without  attempting  its  justification  in 
a  land  where  untutored  men  can  be 
logicians. 

Thiers,  whose  polemics  had  changed 
the  composition  of  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  and  wrested  the  administra- 
tion from  le  parti  pretre,  did  not  cease 
to  work  for  the  Constitutionnel  while 
pursuing  his  engagements  with  the 
booksellers.  He  furthermore  wrote 
regularly  for  the  Globe,  and  for 
De  Remusat's  Encyclopedic  Progres- 
siste.  In  1828  he  brought  out  a 
book  on  Law  and  his  Financial 
System,  and  on  English  banking, 
which  he  afterwards  studied  in  Lon- 
don, Manchester,  and  Liverpool,  as 
well  as  his  ignorance  of  English  would 
admit.  While  driving  these  enter- 
prises abreast  he  also  drew  up  a  plan 
for  a  universal  history,  to  obtain  ma- 
terials for  which  he  purposed  spend- 
ing ten  years  in  travel  along  with 


M.  Thiers. 


19 


Victor  Jacquemont.  La  Place  was 
preparing  his  voyage  of  circumnaviga- 
tion; Thiers  asked  leave  to  join  the 
expedition  as  its  historiographer.  He 
was  named  by  M.  Hyde  de  Neuville, 
on  condition  of  his  bearing  all  his  own 
expenses.  His  outfit  was  bought  and 
his  sea-chest  on  the  road  to  Havre, 
where  La  Favorite  lay,  when  Charles  the 
Tenth's  Liberal  premier, De  Martignac, 
was  brusquely  dismissed,  and  the 
clerical  Prince  Polignac,  whose  policy 
was  guided  by  the  direct  inspirations 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  gazetted  in  his 
stead.  This  act  and  the  May  coup  de 
ttte  of  Marshal  MacMahon  are  closely 
analogous.  Thiers,  overrating  the 
strength  of  the  reaction,  turned  back 
to  do  battle  for  the  bourgeoisie  against 
it.  The  generation  brought  up  in 
Napoleon's  Lycces  was  at  his  back. 
There  was  scarcely  any  middle-aged 
generation  to  moderate  its  youthful 
zeal.  Fire  is  a  good  servant,  but 
a  bad  master.  It  might  be  said  to 
have  had  the  mastery  in  France  be- 
fore it  burned  itself  out  in  the  days  of 
July.  Thiers,  feeling  the  Constitutionnel 
clogged  with  timid  shareholders  averse 
to  risk,  yet  eager  for  somebody  else  to 
strike,  resolved  to  found  a  journal  of 
his  own,  in  which  to  fight  the  reaction 
with  a  free  pen.  Among  all  his  rich 
and  discontented  friends  he  did  not 
find  one  to  stake  a  franc  on  the  enter- 
prise. He  had  to  fall  back  on  Mignet, 
Armand  Carrel,  and  Savelot,  a  strug- 
gling bookseller.  The  paper  was 
called  the  National.  Its  object  was 
to  hold  the  Bourbons  within  the 
charter,  in  the  avowed  hope  that,  find- 
ing the  door  shut,  they  would  jump 
out  of  the  window  and  break  their 
necks.  The  rich  bourgeoisie  did  not 
answer  to  his  whip  as  well  as  he 
expected.  The  populace  answered 
too  well.  At  a  review  the  Dauphine 
and  the  Duchesse  de  Berri  were 
menaced  by  the  mob,  and  the  troops 
looked  on  with  folded  ai*ms.  Thiers, 
who  certainly  was  urged  to  action 
by  no  mean  motive,  afterwards 
regretted,  and  with  reason,  that  he 
had  not  waited  a  little.  France  was 


not  yet  ripe  for  the  Revolution  of 
which  he  was  the  artificer.  Having 
hastened  its  outbreak,  he  had  not  the 
power  or  the  wisdom  to  bring  it  to  a 
happy  issue. 

"Who  are  they  now  imitating  in 
Paris  ? "  wrote  Cavour  to  his  French 
Egeria.  In  1830  there  were  two  op- 
posing currents  of  imitation.  At  the 
Tuileries  the  energetic,  ruthless,  half- 
barbarous  Czar  Nicholas,  the  secret 
ally  of  the  French  Court  in  a  plan  for 
remodelling  the  maps  of  Europe  and 
Northern  Africa,  was  set  up  by  the 
Gascon  Polignac  as  a  model  to  the 
weak-brained,  amiable,  and  bigoted  old 
king,  who  had  passed  his  youth  at  the 
fancy  farm  of  the  Trianon,  in  playing 
the  part  of  Colin  in  theDevin  du  Village. 
Benjamin  Constant,  the  founder  of  the 
doctrinaires,  and  his  adepts  were  full 
of  the  English  Revolution  of  1688, 
which,  without  at  all  understanding, 
they  wished  to  repeat,  but  did  not  ex- 
actly know  how.  But  the  last  thing 
they  would  have  thought  of  was  an 
appeal  to  the  fighting  Faubourgs. 
Thiers's  love  of  action,  in  his  prime, 
was  excessive.  He  was  imbued  with 
the  military  spirit  of  the  Empire,  and, 
though  not  rancorous  or  revengeful, 
was  fired  by  a  feeling  of  hatred  against 
the  dynasty.  Hatred  is  a  distorting 
medium,  and  it  misled  Thiers.  Talley- 
rand, who  had  an  antipathy  to  straight 
lines  in  politics,  while  encouraging 
him  in  his  revolutionary  strategy, 
pushed  him  into  the  doctrinaire  cur- 
rent. Armand  Carrel  stood  out  against 
the  bourgeoisie  monarchy  when  it  was 
mooted  to  him ;  Mignet  and  De  Remu- 
sat  were  committed  to  it  in  their 
newspaper  articles,  and  would  on  no 
account  retract  what  they  had  ad- 
vanced. Thiers,  who  at  the  beginning 
of  1830  had  no  distinct  aim  beyond 
forcing  Charles  X.  to  ''break  his  neck," 
allowed  Carrel,  who  was  a  downright 
sort  of  man,  to  write  in  a  Republican 
sense.  The  court  winked  at  his 
leaders ;  but  it  could  not  help  taking 
issue  on  the  one  in  which  Thiers  held 
up  the  Due  d' Orleans  as  the  consti- 
tutional rival  of  the  unconstitutional 

c  2 


20 


M.  Tldcrs. 


king.  He  was  prosecuted.  Before  a 
week  was  over  a  patriotic  subscription 
covered  the  fine  of  75,000  francs 
imposed  upon  him.  This  manifes- 
tation was  met  by  the  Ordinances, 
which  cowed  the  221  deputies,  who  had 
just  been  re-elected  against  the  king 
and  De  Polignac,  and  intimidated  the 
bourgeoisie  which  had  fattened  under 
the  Empire  and  during  the  sojourn  of 
the  Allies  in  Paris.  Thiers,  with  the 
utmost  difficulty,  and  as  much  by  dint 
of  finessing — in  which  he  was  assisted 
by  De  Remusat — as  by  force  of  elo- 
quence, prevailed  on  forty  out  of  the 
forty-three  editors  of  journals  who, 
at  the  first  alarm,  ran  on  Monday 
morning  to  deliberate  at  the  National 
office — to  sign  the  protest  which  he 
drew  up  in  their  presence.  Having 
heard  of  the  Ordinances  on  Sunday 
night  at  St.  Leu,  he  was  not  taken  by 
surprise.  He  sent  the  protest  to  press, 
and,  at  considerable  personal  risk, 
superintended  the  printing.  Standing 
on  the  shoulders  of  Nestor  Roqueplan, 
a  young  Marseillais  journalist— the 
only  Nestor,  the  wits  remarked,  among 
the  men  of  1830 — he  posted  the  docu- 
ment on  the  walls  of  his  own  house  in 
the  Rue  de  la  Grange  Bateliere.  On  the 
27th  his  doctrinaire  friends  and  the 
221  were  preparing  to  fly  from  him. 
The  stone  flung  by  a  child  from  the 
rubbish  of  a  house  in  the  Palais  Royal, 
which  the  Due  d' Orleans  had  freshly 
demolished,  and  the  deadly  reprisals 
taken,  happened  just  as  Thiers  was 
beginning  to  lose  heart.  The  boy's 
corpse,  borne  by  some  masons,  was 
made  a  rallying-point  for  the  excited 
populace,  which  marched  through  the 
centre  of  the  city,  crying,  "  Death  to 
the  murderers  of  the  innocent !  " 

Thiers,  coming  out  of  the  house  of 
Cadet  Gassecourt  in  the  Rue  St.  Honore 
— where  he  was  organising  a  com- 
mittee of  resistance — met  the  excited 
crowd.  In  the  street  he  found  him- 
self between  the  armed  populace  and 
the  soldiers,  who  were  headed  by  a 
Bonapartist  officer  known  to  him.  The 
order  to  fire  was  on  the  colonel's  lips. 
Thiers  cried,  Vive  la  tigm .'  A  glance 


of  intelligence  passed  between  him 
and  the  colonel,  which  the  foremost 
emeittiers  noticing,  gave  a  sign  to  the 
people  to  disperse  to  the  right  and  left 
into  the  side  streets,  to  rally  again  in 
a  few  moments.  The  troops  marched 
to  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  The  same 
evening  De  Remusat,  who  acted  as  a 
scout  for  Thiers  in  the  days  of  July, 
ran  to  tell  him  of  a  meeting  at 
Guizot's.  Generals  Sebastian!,  Gerard, 
and  Lobau,  Lafitte  the  banker,  Casimir- 
Perier,  Manguin,  and  others  were 
consulting  there  on  the  best  way 
of  patching  up  the  quarrel  with  the 
court.  Thiers  flew  to  the  Rue  Ville 
1'Eveque,  where  he  was  coldly  re- 
ceived, Guizot  reproaching  him  with 
confounding  the  desire  with  the  power 
of  the  government,  which  he  himself 
thought  too  weak  to  be  long  dangerous. 
The  generals  were  ill  disposed  towards 
the  dynasty.  However,  on  military 
grounds  they  advised  submission.  As- 
suming that  Paris  was  going  to  rise, 
the  insurrection  would  be  hemmed  in 
near  the  Hotel  de  Ville  and  crushed. 
Prompted  by  the  widow  and  son  of 
Marshal  Ney,  his  own  son-in-law, 
Lafitte  started  a  plan  for  sending  a 
deputation  to  Marmont.  the  Minister 
of  War,  avowedly  to  protest  against 
fratricidal  bloodshed,  but  really  to 
ascertain  the  price  he  would  set  upon 
inaction.  While  minister  and  banker 
were  parleying,  which  they  did  with 
an  affectation  of  blunt  honesty,  Royer 
Collard  came  to  warn  Thiers  that  a 
warrant  was  out  for  his  arrest  and 
that  of  his  partners  in  the  National. 
Dejected  at  the  weak-kneed  attitude 
of  the  bourgeoisie,  who  pretended  to  see 
nothing  but  a  gasconade  in  the  Polignac 
Ordinances,  they  all  Avent  to  hide, 
first  in  the  Vale  of  Montmorency,  and 
then  at  St.  Ouen,  at  the  house  of  a 
Royalist  lady,  a  friend  of  De  Re- 
musat's,  who  undertook  to  keep  them 
informed  of  the  course  of  events.  He 
sent  them  word  next  morning  that 
Paris  was  well  up,  and  Marmont 
opposing  the  Revolution  feebly.  They 
might  return  in  safety,  which  they  at 
once  did.  Had  they  remained  a  few 


M.  Thiers. 


21 


hours  more  away  the  crisis  would 
have  had  a  different  end.  In  their 
absence  the  National  had  become  the 
head-quarters  of  the  insurrection.  They 
found  it  in  possession  of  Cavaignac, 
Bastide,  and  Joubert,  the  inventor  of 
barricades.  Thiers  was  received  with 
the  cry  of  Vive  la  Republique ! 
Before  he  had  time  to  look  about  him 
De  Eemusatj  again  ran  in  to  apprise 
him  of  a  meeting  at  Lafitte's  to  con- 
sider proposals  expected  from  the 
king.  Thiers  went  thither  in  breath- 
less haste,  and  got  there  before 
Charles's  envoys.  In  vehement  terms 
he  addressed  the  meeting,  saying  that 
what  the  situation  required  was  not  a 
change  of  government  but  a  change  of 
dynasty.  It  was  argued  that  the  king 
was  too  weak  to  do  much  harm.  Thiers 
answered  that  the  country  did  not 
need  a  weak  administration,  but  one 
strong  in  the  confidence  of  France,  and 
willing  and  able  to  restore  her  to  her 
legitimate  rank  in  Europe.  What 
dynasty  would  he  propose1?  he  was 
asked.  Napoleon  II.  was,  for  the 
time  being,  out  of  the  question.  The 
few  present  favourable  to  a  republic 
only  thought  of  one  as  an  expedient 
for  keeping  open  the  Bonapartist  suc- 
cession. Thiers  cited  1688.  Louis 
Philippe's  name  was  advanced.  But 
would  that  prince  risk  accepting  a 
crown  which  the  Great  Powers  might 
force  him  to  relinquish  1 

Thiers  thought  of  what  he  had  heard 
at  St.  Leu,  which  emboldened  him  to 
go  to  Neuilly  and  make  an  offer  of 
the  crown.  But  what  of  the  victorious 
populace  which  had  borne  the  brunt  of 
the  battle  ?  De  Remusat  undertook 
to  gain  his  kinsman  Lafayette  and, 
by  his  instrumentality  Paris,  to  the 
Orleans  scheme.  It  was  De  Remusat 
who  proposed  holding  the  regal  title  in 
reserve,  until  the  victors  of  the  bar- 
ricades had  laid  down  their  muskets. 
Meanwhile,  the  Due  d'Orleans  was  to 
bear  the  title  of  lieutenant-general  of 
the  kingdom.  Ary  Scheffer,  the  drawing 
master  of  the  young  Orleans  princesses, 
offered  to  go  with  Thiers  and  procure 
him  an  audience  of  the  Due  orDuchesse, 


or  Madame  Adelaide.  The  Prince 
de  la  Moskowa  placed  his  carriage  at 
their  disposal.  The  roundabout  drive 
they  were  forced  to  take  to  Neuilly 
was  interrupted  by  dangerous  adven- 
tures which  would  have  filled  a  super- 
stitious man  with  dark  apprehensions, 
and  which  did  shake  Thiers 's  nerves. 
On  reaching  the  Due's  villa  the  Ulysses 
sent  to  negotiate  with  him  was  shown 
to  his  highness's  cabinet.  A  blue- 
eyed,  flaxen-haired  lady  of  noble  pre- 
sence, Marie  Amelie,  granddaughter  of 
Marie  Therese,  a  niece  of  Marie  Antoi- 
nette, entered.  She  informed  M.  Thiers 
that  the  Due  was  at  Riancy,  in  the 
Forest  of  Bondy.  The  envoy  then 
stated  his  mission.  He  was  dusty  and 
grimy,  and  his  dress  disordered  ;  the 
Duchesse  treated  him  with  hauteur, 
spoke  severely  of  the  part  the  Natio- 
nal had  taken  in  working  Paris  into 
a  revolutionary  fever,  and  refused  the 
crown  in  her  husband's  name.  Madame 
Adelaide  here  came  in.  Thiers  sus- 
pected, and  always  retained  the  sus- 
picion, that  the  Due  dOrleans  was 
eavesdropping,  and  had  instructed  her 
what  to  say.  It  was  his  opinion  that 
they  both  thought  Marie  Amelie  had 
been  too  categorical.  M.  Thiers  again 
stated  his  mission  to  the  princess.  No 
man  ever  knew  better  how  to  bait  a 
hook.  "Very  frank,  very  outspoken  in 
public,  and  on  the  whole  very  consist- 
ent in  his  politics,  which  were  rather 
"  National  than  Liberal,"  he  was  of 
Carthaginian  subtlety  in  turning  dif- 
ficulties and  recruiting  adherents.  So 
he  audaciously  pointed  to  the  flaw  in 
the  title  to  the  colossal  estates  which 
the  giddy,  warm-hearted  Duchesse  de 
Berri  had  wheedled  the  king  into  re- 
storing to  the  Orleans  family ;  an  illegal 
act  of  favour,  it  may  be  observed,  which 
gave  consistency  to  the  report  that  the 
court  intended  to  restore  the  properties 
confiscated  at  the  Revolution  to  their 
rightful  owners.  CharlesDix,  M. Thiers 
declared,  was  down  for  ever;  unless 
Louis  Philippe  replaced  him  he  would 
be  unable  to  retain  the  appanages  he 
inh  rited  from  the  illegitimate  child- 
ren of  Mine,  de  Montespan  and  Lcuis 


22 


M.  Thiers. 


Quatorze.  The  Republicans  would — and 
that  legally — take  them  from  him,  and 
then  plunder  the  rest  of  his  property. 
"  I  am,"  said  Thiers,  "  a  son  of  the  Re- 
volution. I  know  the  audacity  of  its 
personnel.  The  Due  d'Orleans's  popu- 
larity is  our  only  safeguard.  His  refusal 
will  facilitate  the  success  of  the  Repub- 
licans, who,  after  devouring  him  and  his, 
will  turn  round  and  rend  us."  The 
princess,  affecting  to  be  struck  by  the 
great  and  noble  part  her  brother  could 
perform  in  saving  France  from  a 
Second  Republic,  which  she  assumed 
would  take  the  guillotine  for  its 
fulcrum,  assured  M.  Thiers  that  Louis 
Philippe  would  devote  himself  to  the 
country  and  accept  the  crown.  At  his 
request  she  agreed  to  go  in  the  evening 
into  Paris,  escorted  by  General  Sebas- 
tiani,  and  repeat  this  promise  to  a 
meeting  of  the  Deputies.  Two  days 
previously  the  Baroness  de  Feucheres 
had  been  at  Neuilly. 

De  Remusat  with  equal  success  con- 
ducted the  negotiations  at  the  Hotel 
de  Ville,  where  Lafayette  was  bent 
on  setting  himself  up  as  a  second 
"Washington. 

Thiers  was  a  fatalist  in  theory. 
His  whole  active  life  was  in  contra- 
diction to  his  fatalism.  Yet  the  con- 
sequences of  his  actions  justified  his 
fatalistic  doctrines.  Wounded  patrio- 
tic pride  moved  him  at  Aix,  and  in  the 
Constitutionnel,  to  attack  the  Elder 
Branch,  whom  the  Allies  had  imposed 
on  France.  The  Revolution  of  his 
making  did  not  get  rid  of  the  subser- 
vience of  the  government  to  foreign 
states.  Indeed  it  was  a  link  in  the 
great  chain  of  causes  which  culminated 
in  the  mighty  westward  roll  of  the 
Teutonic  wave  in  1870.  His  aim,  in- 
definite in  January,  when  he  was 
founding  the  National,  had  clearly 
shaped  itself  in  July.  It  was  to  erect 
a  monarchy  of  which  he  would  be  the 
master,  and  employ  it  in  restoring  the 
military  glory  of  France.  He  thought 
a  king  owing  him  his  crown,  of  domes- 
tic habits,  fond  of  counting  up  his 
money,  and  intelligent  enough  to  un- 
derstand his  minister's  value  and  his 


own  weakness,  would  hamper  him  less 
than  a  turbulent  democracy,  in  exe- 
cuting his  design.  His  mistake  was 
in  not  testing  the  temper  of  the 
tool  before  he  entered  on  the  task. 
Louis  Philippe  and  Thiers  did  not 
complete  each  other.  They  got  in  one 
another's  way.  As  Citizen  King,  the 
July  Monarch  was  without  that  social 
prestige  in  which  the  English  heredi- 
tary Queen  finds  a  compensation  for 
her  limited  authority.  The  day 
Helene  of  Mecklenburg,  Duchesse 
d' Orleans,  made  her  entry  into  Paris, 
an  apple- woman  said  to  a  grande  dame 
of  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain,  "  Is  it 
fair  of  you,  who  can  see  the  bride  at 
the  Tuileries,  to  shut  out  my  view  of 
her  1"  "  What  a  mistake  ! "  returned 
the  lady.  "  You  have  much  more 
chance  than  I  of  being  invited  to  the 
court  balls  of  the  bourgeois  Philippe." 
The  Republicans  railed  at  him  for  im- 
peding the  Revolution  in  accomplishing 
its  destinies.  He  was  fond  of  power, 
but  under  the  constitution  he  was  to 
have  no  personal  action  on  public 
affairs,  and  not  being  an  elector, 
or  a  national  guard,  or  a  deputy  or 
a  juror,  he  was  less  than  the  plainest 
bourgeois.  Meanly  prudent  in  his 
foreign  policy,  he  would  risk  his  good 
name  and  the  peace  of  France  to  fur- 
ther the  advantageous  settlement  of  a 
son  or  daughter.  Lord  Palmerston  was 
enabled  to  defeat  Thiers' s  spirited 
policy  in  consequence  of  the  Princesse 
Louise  d'Orleans's  marriage  with  King 
Leopold.  Unhampered  by  Louis 
Philippe,  Thiers  would  have  taken  up 
what  was  national  and  progressive  in 
the  Bonapartist  tradition.  The  early 
laurels  of  Louis  Napoleon,  and  the 
commanding  place  he  took  up  in 
Europe  in  1852,  show  that  M.  Thiers 
was  not  over-sanguine  in  his  estimate  of 
the  fighting  force  of  France.  He  urged 
Louis  Philippe  to  brave  the  Powers 
whom  Talleyrand  feared,  by  sending 
an  expedition  into  Belgium.  "  This 
is,"  he  said,  on  hearing  of  the  fall  of 
Antwerp,  "  a  good  beginning ;  there 
must  be  at  least  twenty  years'  war, 
which  I  hope  to  direct,  before  France 


M.  Thiers. 


23 


will  be  her  own  mistress,  and  Europe 
find  her  real  balance."    In  the  opening 
years  of  the  Monarchy,  the  incompat- 
ible tempers  of  the  king  and  the  king- 
maker   did    not    appear,   the     latter 
having  thrice  refused  a  portfolio  until 
he  had  served  an  apprenticeship  in  a 
subordinate  department.      To   enable 
himself  to  master  exchequer  business, 
an  institution  of  the  Empire  was  re- 
vived in  his  favour,  and  he  was  made 
Councillor  of    State   to  the  Finance 
Ministry.     Practically  he  directed  this 
department  the  whole  of  the  time  that 
he    was    Under- Secretary    to    Baron 
Louis  Lafitte  and  Casimir-Perier.     He 
emerged  from  the  penumbra  when  he 
thought  "  Providence  stood  in  need  of 
him  to  crush  the  Duchesse  de  Berri's 
Vendcan  rising."      The  unlooked-for 
termination  of  that  Legitimist  move- 
ment  brought    much    odium    on   M. 
Thiers  and  his  monarch.    A  caricature 
of  1832  gives   a  back  view  of  Louis 
Philippe  in  a  court  dress,  tricoloured 
clocks  to  his  silk   stockings,  and  tri- 
coloured ribbons  bordering  his  sabots. 
He  has  a  bunch  of  gaoler's   keys  in 
one  hand,  and  the  charter  in  the  other, 
and  is  seated  on  three  cages.  "  Blaye  " 
is  written  on  the  uppermost,  in  which 
there  is  a  fair  young  lady,  the  Duchesse 
de  Bern,  weeping.     In  the  two  lower 
ones  are  "La  Force,"  and  "  La  Bicetre," 
filled    with    journalists    and    beaten 
emeutiers.    Underneath  is  the  ditty  : — 

"  Le  Roi  po,  po,  po, 
Le  Roi  pu,  pu,  pu, 
Le  Roi  po, 
Le  Roi  pu, 
Le  Roi  po,  pu,  laire." 

Notwithstanding  this,  the  "popular" 
king  was  a  clement  prince,  and  Thiers 
was  not  a  bloodthirsty  minister.  He 
disliked  useless  loss  of  life.  But  if 
fighting  was  inevitable  he  did  not  mind 
what  number  of  men  were  slain.  He 
had  an  ,  unavowed  leaning  towards 
Lynch  law,  and  a  repugnance  to  exe- 
cutions in  cold  blood.  This  explains 
at  once  his  terrible  severity  in  dealing 
with  insurrections,  and  his  leniency  to 
Prince  Louis  Napoleon  after  the  Strass- 
burg  affair,  and  to  Bazaine  and  the 


officials    of    the    Third    Empire.      In 
putting   down  rebellion   he   was  out- 
wardly a  stickler   for  legality.      His 
hardest  actions  were  sanctioned  by  the 
letter  of  the  law.     The  immorality  of 
a  law  did  not  trouble   him.     What- 
ever he  saw  he  saw  well ;  but  he  was  too 
short-sighted  to  perceive  what  dreadful 
ferments  would  be  occasioned  by  using 
weapons  forged  by  dishonest  legisla- 
tors.    Law  was  rigorously  followed  in 
the  military  tribunals  which  went  on 
sitting  after  the  fall  of  the  Commune, 
and  still  sit.     Yet  in  itself  and  in  its 
consequences  this  expedient  was  odious 
and  fraught  with  danger.     M.  Thiers's 
excuse  before  posterity  will  be  that 
between  the  White  Terrorists  of  the 
Assembly    and    a    Bonapartist    con- 
spiracy, fostered  by  Prince  Bismarck, 
he  was  forced  to  hurry  on  the  peace 
negotiations.     M.  Thiers  had  nobody 
near    him    save   M.    St.    Hilaire,    to 
support    him     in    his    wish    for    an 
amnesty  from   which  only    the    mur- 
derers of  the  generals  at  Montmartre 
and  of  the  hostages  should  be  excluded. 
The  Piepublican  members  of  his  cabinet 
were  opposed  to  clemency — M.  Jules 
Simon    from   fear    of    passing    for    a 
Communard    in    the    Assembly,    M. 
Victor  Lefranc  from  ambition  to  marry 
his    two    children    to    the    son    and 
daughter  of  Samazeuil  the  financialist, 
M.  Dufaure  from  native  hardness,  and 
M.  Jules  Favre  from  weakness,  and  in- 
capacity to  resist  the  loud,  undiscerning 
cry  for  vengeance  on  the    Federals. 
Thiers   pleaded    warmly    for     Ptossel 
before  the  "  Pardons  Committee,"  but 
his  eloquence  was  lost  on  M.  Piou,  the 
vice-chairman.     He  secretly  protected 
Rochefort  and  Courbet,  and  connived 
at  the  escape  of  numbers  of  misled  but 
excellent  persons,  who  would  have  been 
shot  if  sent  to  stand  their  trials  before 
courts-martial.  I  heard  him  say,  on  the 
eve  of  the  general  elections  of  1876, 
that  he  had  no  option  between  harsh- 
ness   to    the   prisoners   and  a  revolt 
which  would  have  brought  the  Germans 
down  again  on  France.     For  a  whole 
week  there  were  20,000  captives,  and 
scarcely  400  police,  soldiers,  and  gend- 


24 


M.  Thiers. 


armes  to  guard  them.  Orders  were 
given  to  shoot  pitilessly  any  one  who 
grumbled,  any  one  showing  a  dispo- 
sition to  mutiny,  or  to  escape ;  and  to 
arrest  anybody  found  commiserating 
the  vanquished. 

Thiers's  advent  to  power,  which  in  all 
his  long  career  he  exercised  for  little 
more    than    five    years,   was    always 
coincident   with    wide-spread    tumult 
and    insurrection.       His    antecedents 
under  the  July  government  deprived 
him  of  the  moral  force  which  might 
have    enabled    him    to     show     more 
leniency  than  he  did  in  putting  down 
the  risings  under  Louis  Philippe's  reign. 
Workmen    did   not   see  by   virtue  of 
what  divine  or  other  law  the  middle 
classes  were  to  have  the  monopoly  of 
revolt.       "The     gentleman-premier," 
Comte  Mole,    was    able  to  grant  the 
amnesty  which   Thiers  felt  bound  to 
refuse.  In  the  "  Proces  de  la  Cour  des 
Pairs,"  Carrel  and  Cavaignac  charged 
him  with  first  .inciting   the  Parisians 
to  rebel,  and  then  cheating  them  out 
of  the  Republic  they  had  won,  and 
of  which  he  himself  became  eventually 
the  patron.     The  part  he  acted  in  the 
daya  of  July  stood  in  his  way  in  1848, 
and    again    in   1871,  when    he    was 
suspected  of  playing  the  game  of  the 
Royalists.      This  suspicion   did  more 
than  anything  else  to  fan  the  flames 
of  civil  war  in  1871.     Nevertheless, 
it  was  unjust.     M.  Thiers  then  wished 
to  stand  by  the  Republican  form  of 
government,  for   which   he    had  prc- 
nounced    at    Berryer's    funeral,    and 
again   at   Bordeaux,   when   the  news 
of   the    fall    of    Paris    reached    him 
there.     Both  there  and   at  Tours  he 
repeatedly  told  the  diplomatists  in  com- 
munication with    him,    that    nothing 
else  was  possible.     When  the  Orleans 
princes — who  in  violation  of  the  law 
were  staying  at  the  Due  Decaze's  seat 
at  Grave,    near  Libourne — came   pri- 
vately to  see  M.  Thiers  at  the  Hotel 
de  France,  he  intreated  them  to  go 
back  to   England  and  stay  there  till 
France    had    calmed    down,    and   the 
statute  proscribing  them  was  repealed. 
They  appealed    to  his   devouement   as 


an  old  minister  of  Louis  Philippe 
to  become  their  partisan.  Thiers  ex- 
pressed his  respect  i'^r  the  late  king, 
but  told  them  that  he  was  the  servant 
of  his  country  alone.  When  they  went 
away  Madame  Thiers  asked  who  he 
had  been  talking  with  in  his  bedroom. 
"Les  Princes  d' Orleans.  Ces  jeunes 
gens,  je  les  connais,  n'est-ce  pas  1  Eh 
bien !  toujours  eux ;  eux  d'abord :  le 
pays  apres.  Quand  j'ai  servi  le  pero, 
je  ne  servais  pas  sa  fortune — je  servais 
la  France.  Je  respecte  beaucoup  la 
nu'moire  du  roi,  mais  les  affaires  de 
ses  enfants  ne  sont  pas  cellee  de  la 
patrie.  II  les  a  trop  souvent  con- 
fondus ;  moi,  je  ne  les  confond  pas. 
Ces  princes  veulent  que  je  me  refasse 
Orleaniste.  Moi,  je  desire  faire  le 
salut  de  mon  pauvre  pays." 

In  one  of  our  morning  conversations 
M.  Thiers  gave  me  a  long  explanation, 
the  substance  of  [which  I  here  paren- 
thetically give,  on  the  influence  of 
family  affairs  on  Louis  Philippe's  public 
actions.  The  policy  of  his  reign  might 
be  divided  into  two  parts.  In  the  first 
part,  the  king  was  ostentatiously  con- 
stitutional. From  first  to  last  he  was 
himself  a  Yoltairean  ;  but  from  1832, 
the  date  of  his  eldest  daughter's  mar- 
riage with  the  King  of  the  Belgians,  he 
took  pains  to  favour  the  Protestant 
form  of  religion  and  of  free  thought. 
Between  '40  and  '48,  his  efforts  con- 
verged towards  the  transformation  of 
his  government  into  a  personal  one. 
The  feelings  of  the  court  on  religious 
questions  underwent  a  violent  change. 
Jesuitism  was  encouraged  to  be  ag- 
gressive. Marie  Amelie,  who  was  a 
paragon  of  domestic  virtue,  was,  un- 
happily for  the  Monarchy,  a  bigot;  but, 
for  reasons  that  will  shortly  appear, 
she  kept  her  bigotry  down  in  the  first 
of  the  two  periods,  and  sacrificed 
religious  prejudices  to  the  extent  of 
consenting  to  the  marriage  of  the 
Prince  Royal  with  a  Protestant  prin- 
cess who  was  not  susceptible  of  be' 
ing  converted  to  Catholicism. 

About  1841  the  queen  cast  off  the 
reserve  she  had  imposed  on  herself, 
and  entered  into  closer  relations  with 


M.  Thiers. 


25 


her  family  and  those  members  of  the 
Catholic  party  who  were  not  Legiti- 
mists. Any  one  expressing  sympathy 
with  the  Duchesse  d' Orleans,  a  meri- 
torious, enlightened,  and  unambitious 
princess,  was  treated  coldly  by  her 
mother-in-law.  The  causes  of  this 
change  from  ostentatious  constitu- 
tionalism and  free  thought  were  trace- 
able to  the  marriage  of  Queen  Victoria, 
in  the  following  way.  M.  Thiers,in  1831, 
wanted  to  annex  Belgium,  the  Catholics 
there  being  then  with  the  French. 
When  diplomatic  obstacles  were  raised, 
he  proposed  to  make  the  Due  de 
Nemours  king  of  that  state.  Louis 
Philippe  caught  at  the  scheme  ;  but, 
unknown  to  his  ministers,  the  English 
government  having  proposed  a  match 
between  Leopold  and  the  Princess 
Louise  of  Orleans,  Leopold  became  the 
king's  own  candidate.  It  was  the  same 
thing  to  him  to  have  a  daughter  queen 
or  a  son  king,  and  there  was  the 
advantage  that  the  princess  could  be 
raised  to  a  throne  without  disturbance 
or  danger.  At  Compiegne,  where  the 
Princess  Louise  was  married,  Leopold 
adroitly,  with  what  motive  may  be 
supposed,  encouraged  a  hope,  already 
formed,  but  not  expressed  beyond  the 
royal  circle.  It  was  to  secure  the 
hand  of  his  niece,  the  Princess  Victoria, 
for  the  Due  de  Nemours. 

The  Orleanist  monarchy  was  popular 
with  the  victors  of  the  Pveform  Bill 
Agitation,  who  owed  their  victory  in 
some  degree  to  the  contra  coup  of  the 
July  Revolution.  England  was  tired  of 
going  to  war  with  France.  She  might 
be  expected  to  regard  favourably  a  mar- 
riage which  would  be  a  pledge  of  peace. 
The  young  princess  was  being  brought 
up  in  very  liberal  ideas.  The  one  ob- 
jection, and  it  was  a  grave  one,  was 
the  I'eligion  of  the  Due  de  Nemours. 
Liberals  and  Tories  would  entertain 
an  equal  horror  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
suitor.  The  Due  should  become  a 
Protestant  before  the  match  could  be 
proposed.  Leopold  also  represented 
that  in  William  IV.'s  lifetime  no- 
thing could  be  done.  When  William 
died,  the  intrigue  which  had  been 


quietly  pursued  was  actively  pushed, 
forward.  The  marriage  of  the  Prince 
Royal  was  hurried  on,  and  celebrated 
at  Fontainebleau  against  all  prece- 
dent, according  to  both  Lutheran  and 
Catholic  rites.  A  family  Bible  was 
presented  by  the  officiating  pastor  to 
the  bride  and  bridegroom  before  the 
whole  court.  M.  Jules  Janin,  sum- 
moned from  Paris  to  furnish  the 
Debats  with  an  account  of  the  wedding, 
was  requested  to  give  prominence  to 
this  incident,  and  to  the  Lutheran 
celebration.  Protestants  were  ap- 
pointed to  the  best  places  in  the  new 
household.  The  bride's  stepmother,  a 
Princess  of  Hesse  Homburg,  was  set 
on  to  write  letters  eulogising  the 
Orleans  family  to  her  connections  in 
England. 

Louise  of  Belgium,  who  was  invited 
to  the  coronation  of  Victoria,  undertook 
to  show  a  miniature  of  the  Due  de 
Nemours  to  the  young  Queen.  Ary 
Scheffer  was  engaged  to  do  a  profile 
likeness  in  crayon  having  the  same 
destination.  A  campaign  was  got  up 
in  Algeria  to  give  the  suitor  an  op- 
portunity of  playing  the  hero.  The 
Chamber  being  economic,  Louis 
Philippe  out  of  his  own  pocket 
doubled  the  credit  opened  to  furnish 
the  brilliant  equipage  in  which  Marshal 
Soult  outshone  every  other  ambas- 
sador in  the  procession  from  Buck- 
ingham Palace  to  Westminster.  Soult 
was  instructed  to  natter  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  and  to  feast  Apsley  House 
veterans.  In  conversing  with  English 
political  men,  he  was  to  dwell  on 
the  King's  Protestant  leanings  and 
his  attachment  to  constitutional 
principles.  It  was  with  surprise  and 
chagrin  that  Louis  Philippe  and  his 
wife  received  the  notification  of  the 
Queen's  engagement  with  Prince 
Albert.  Marie  Amelie  felt  herself 
in  the  situation  of  one  who  had  sold 
herself  to  the  tempter,  and  been 
cheated  by  him. 

The  Due  d'Orleans's  accidental  death 
soon  followed  —  an  event  which  she 
took  as  a  chastisement  inflicted  for 
having  lent  herself  to  his  marriage 


26 


M.  Thiers. 


with  a  Lutheran.  Louis  Philippe  had 
no  longer  any  family  inducement  to  clog 
himself  with  English  constitutional- 
ism. Catholic  matches  for  his  sons 
presented  themselves  at  Naples  and 
Madrid  ;  the  Nuncio  was  counted  to 
assist  in  removing  obstacles  to  them. 
Christina  and  Carlotta  came  to  Paris. 
The  Duchesse  d'Orleans  was  isolated, 
and  court  favour  withdrawn  from 
Protestants.  M.  Guizot  found  he  would 
either  have  to  retire  or  promote  per- 
sonal government,  Jesuitism,  and  the 
Spanish  marriages.  He  chose  the 
undignified  alternative.  Quinet  and 
Michelet  were  silenced  at  the  College 
of  France.  Thiers  felt  called  upon  to 
deliver  his  famous  speech  on  the 
strides  the  Jesuits  were  making  ;  Paris 
was  convulsed  with  religious  agita- 
tion ;  and  all  because  Louis  Philippe 
wanted  to  make  up  for  the  loss  of  an 
English  match  on  which  he  had  set 
his  heart,  by  obtaining  for  one  of  his 
sons  a  Neapolitan,  and  for  another  a 
Spanish  heiress.  M.  Thiers  well  sfid, 
"  Toujours  eux  ;  eux  d'abord  :  le  pays 
apres." 

Thiers' s  mistake  was  in  not  having 
made  his  own  conditions  when  he 
found  himself  imposed  on  the  Assembly 
by  the  national  voice  and  the  national 
disasters.  He  meant  to  found  a 
Republic.  Had  he  said  so  in  the  tri- 
bune at  Bordeaux  the  Commune  would 
have  never  attained  the  formidable 
proportions  it  did.  M.  Thiers  had 
little  in  him  to  draw  him  to  the  side 
of  monarchy  beyond  readiness  to 
adapt  himself  to  what  he  thought  the 
pressing  need  of  the  day.  From  time 
immemorial  Marseilles,  his  native  city, 
has  been,  in  manners,  customs,  and 
institutions,  essentially  democratic. 
He  loved  power  less  for  what  it 
brought  him  than  for  the  opportunities 
it  gave  him  of  exercising  his  vast  ener- 
gies and  varied  faculties.  The  re- 
proaches of  Carrel  and  Cavaignac  he 
may  have  merited,  but  not  the  suspi- 
cions of  the  people  of  Paris  at  the  end 
of  the  siege.  One  of  the  causes  of 
this  misunderstanding  was  the  privacy 
in  which  ho  lived  from  the  coup  d'etat, 


until  he  was  returned  by  a  Parisian 
arrondissement  to  the  Corps  Legislatif. 
The  multitude  does  not  note  slow 
transfoi-mations  even  in  the  opinions 
of  men  living  in  the  full  blaze  of 
publicity.  How  could  it  perceive  those 
operated  in  retirement  1  Thiers' s  com- 
patriots in  his  lifetime  fell  also  into 
the  error  of  judging  him  by  their  own 
vanity.  Self-confident  he  was,  but 
vain  never.  He  did  not  mind  what 
the  world  said  of  him,  provided  his 
own  judgment  pronounced  in  favour 
of  his  actions. 

In  his  direct  relations  Thiers  was 
kind  and  genial,  but  he  was  not  a 
benevolent  man.  His  great  rival, 
Guizot,  was  not  amiable,  but  he  was 
humane.  He  mourned  over  the  tragic 
destiny  of  the  class  whom  the  Greeks 
personified  in  Hercules,  and  the 
Hebrews  in  Samson.  He  wished  to 
restore  sight  to  the  poor  hoodwinked 
giant  at  whose  blindness  the  Philis- 
tines made  merry,  though  he  did  not 
see  much  harm  either  in  the  worship- 
pers of  Dagon  or  their  mirth,  and 
would  have  preserved  their  temple  to 
them.  The  immortal  side  of  the 
working  man  was  uppermost  in  his 
mind ;  but  he  forgot  that  the  way  to 
another  world  lies  through  this,  and 
that  the  soul's  health  often  depends 
on  earthly  surroundings.  Thiers  loved 
France,  the  nation ;  and  cared  very 
little  for  Frenchmen  beyond  his  per- 
sonal friends  and  acquaintances,  until 
he  became  their  idol.  The  popularity 
he  enjoyed  as  he  was  descending  to 
the  tomb  softened  him,  elevated  him, 
and  beautified  his  whole  being.  It 
would  not  be  correct  to  state  that  he 
was  enamoured  of  an  abstraction. 
"What  he  liked  was  the  peculiar  civili- 
sation of  which  Paris  is  the  centre, 
and  the  pleasant  land  that  gave  him 
birth.  He  would  secure  to  that  civili- 
sation all  the  liberties  necessary  to  its 
easy  development;  and  during  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  he  had  no 
more  pity  on  those  it  pressed  severely 
upon  than  a  victorious  general  for  the 
men  slain  in  battle,  or  a  priest  of  Jug- 
gernaut for  the  votaries  under  the  car- 


M.  Tliiers. 


27 


wheels.  His  easy  successes  prevented 
him  from  sympathising  with  the  unfor- 
tunate, if  their  misfortune  was  the 
only  claim  urged  for  his  pity.  Theo- 
retic fatalism  did  not  hinder  him  from 
eliminating  luck  from  the  factors  which 
go  to  build  up  individual  prosperity. 
If  people  did  not  get  on,  the  M.  Thiers 
of  1848  thought  it  was  their  own  fault. 
The  power  which  Louis  Napoleon  and 
his  Elysee  accomplices  won  by  bold 
gambling  modified  this  view,  which 
underwent  further  changes  towards 
1870,  when  he  thought  charity  to  the 
poor,  and  a  large  meed  of  it,  a  duty  of 
the  rich.  Speaking  of  luck,  I  remem- 
ber his  saying  one  day  that  he  ac- 
counted for  the  favour  the  Empress 
Eugenie  enjoyed  abroad  by  the  belief 
which  her  rise  in  the  world  induced  in 
a  lucky  star.  Young  women,  having  no 
fortune  but  pretty  faces,  were  en- 
couraged to  be  of  good  cheer  by  her 
dazzling  success.  For  some  years  after 
her  marriage  suicides  among  shop-girls 
and  seamstresses  underwent  a  remark- 
able diminution.  The  hope  that  Louis 
Napoleons  of  some  kind  would  pre- 
sent themselves  dissipated  suicidal  de- 
spondency. 

Thiers  was  neither  intriguing  nor 
meanly  ambitious.  When  he  saw 
men  in  power  blundering,  he  was 
moved  to  snatch  their  cards  from  them 
and  play  them  out.  If  he  could  not 
use  his  cards  according  to  his  own 
judgment,  he  threw  down  the  whole 
hand  and  went  away.  His  tenacity 
in  climbing  the  greased  pole  with  a 
ministerial  portfolio  on  the  top,  was 
only  equalled  by  the  agility  and  grace 
with  which  he  descended.  If  he  made 
a  mistake  he  had  no  difficulty  in  say- 
ing his  mea  culpa.  The  list  of  errors 
into  which  he  fell  in  trying  to  carry 
out  great  plans  was  a  long  one.  He  was 
wrong  in  stirring  up  the  paving-stones 
to  revolt  against  Charles  the  Tenth; 
he  was  wrong  in  taking  for  granted 
the  malleability  he  wished  to  find 
in  Louis  Philippe ;  he  was  wrong 
in  so  soon  unmasking  his  foreign 
policy ;  he  was  wrong  in  giving 
Louis  Napoleon  credit  for  sufficient 


intelligence  to  prefer  him — the  glori- 
fier  of  the  "Great  Emperor,"  and 
the  unrivalled  administrator — to  de 
Moray,  de  Persigny,  de  Maupas,  and 
Fleury.  Universal  suffrage  once 
granted,  he  was  wrong  in  seeking  to 
withdraw  it,  however  unripe  France 
was  for  it.  At  the  same  time  there 
was  wisdom  in  the  speech  in  which  he 
protested  against  political  power  being 
given  to  "  the  vile  multitude,"  since  he 
clearly  explained  that  by  that  term  he 
meant  a  swell-mob  of  vagrants,  unwill- 
ing to  create  settled  habitations  for 
themselves  and  their  families.  He  was 
right  in  trying  to  get  the  decheance  of 
the  Empire  voted  by  the  Corps  Legis- 
latif,  which  was  preparing  to  follow 
his  advice  when  it  was  invaded,  and  a 
Provisional  Government  proclaimed. 
But  he  was  grievously  wrong  in  re- 
fusing to  join  the  latter  on  the  4th  of 
September,  and  in  putting  himself  at 
the  head  of  the  delegate  branch. 

Another  of  his  errors  was  listening 
to  professions  of  unalterable  attach- 
ment from  M.  de  Falloux  and  his  party 
at  Tours,  and  assisting  them  to  secure 
the  return  of  a  "  Rural "  party  to  Bor- 
deaux. But  his  prime  mistake  of  all  was 
the  negotiating  peace,  which  he  alone 
was  competent  to  negotiate,  without 
first  imposing  his  own  conditions  on 
the  parties  who  turned  him  out  of 
the  Presidency  on  May  24.  M.  Thiers, 
with  a  bad  grace,  accepted  Gambetta, 
who  on  his  return  from  Russia  thought 
he  was  conspiring  with  the  Orlean- 
ists.  From  the  surrender  of  Metz 
he  was  in  open  enmity  with  the 
Dictator.  Every  effort,  after  the  30th 
of  October  seemed  to  him  a  waste  of 
strength.  He  wanted  to  economise 
the  national  resources,  and  recoil  the 
better  to  spring  forward ;  and,  with 
the  aid  of  such  allies  as  time 
and  jealousy  of  Prussia  would  create, 
endeavour  to  reconquer  the  Rhine 
frontier.  M.  Thiers,  at  the  Hotel  de 
Bordeaux,  evoked  on  every  side  latent 
hostility  to  Gambetta.  Sharpshooters 
of  the  press  were  set  on  against  him, 
and  poisonous  tongues  to  clamour.  He 
stood  between  the  Dictator  and  the 


28 


M.  Thiers. 


diplomatists  who  followed  the  delegate 
government  to  Tours.  Lord  Lyons, 
I  remember,  about  the  time  Lord  Odo 
Russell  was  at  Versailles,  called  on 
Gambetta  to  converse  with  him  on  the 
questions  then  uppermost.  M.  Thiers, 
informed  by  his  ubiquitous  agents, 
came  in  like  the  unbiddden  fairy  of 
the  story  at  the  royal  christening,  and 
nipped  in  the  bud  the  negotiations 
which  the  Dictator  was  feeling  his  way 
to  open. 

The  unwelcome  visitor  divined  the 
orders  given  to  let  nobody  pass  the 
ante-room  where  the  churlish  Pipe-en- 
Bois  kept  guard  ;  found  his  way  up  by 
a  back  stair,  and  walked  in,  unan- 
nounced, to  where  Gambetta  and  the 
Ambassador  thought  they  were  safe 
from  eavesdroppers  and  intruders. 
At  that  time,  when  mighty  issues  were 
at  stake,  to  have  offered  M.  Thiers  a 
share  in  the  government  would  have 
been  tantamount  to  abdication.  In  fact, 
it  was  impossible  for  men  of  ability, 
unless  they  were  of  docile  disposition, 
to  work  with  him.  When  they  had 
the  quality  of  docility  he  grew  attached 
to  them,  and  if  they  enjoyed  a  special 
superiority  over  him  he  bowed  before 
it.  He  accepted  M.  Barthelemy  St. 
Hilaire's  direction  on  questions  of 
political  probity,  and  was  guided  by 
him  in  advising  the  Assembly  to  orga- 
nise the  Republic. 

On  the  25th  of  May  the  ex-Presi- 
dent occupied  a  little  sunny  dusty 
entresol  in  the  Boulevard  Males- 
herbes,  in  the  corner  house  next  to  St. 
Augustine's  church.  The  heat  and 
noise  disturbed  him  at  his  work. 
MacMahon  was  at  the  Elysce,  and  the 
Hotel  Bagration  was  not  yet  dis- 
covered. Directly  he  had  moved 
there,  he  asked  M.  Leverrier  to 
continue  with  him  the  astronomical 
studies  in  which  in  his  rare  inter- 
vals of  leisure  he  had  taken  refuge 
from  the  petty  passions  that  raged 
around  him  at  Versailles.  He  received 
his  own  visitors  in  a  room  littered  with 
botanical  and  geological  specimens  and 
books  of  science.  Vauvenargues's  essay 
on  the  Human  Mind  lay  on  his  desk 


near  an  encyclopaedia  open  at  the  page 
"  Histoire  Naturelle."  "  He  had  seen 
a  good  deal  of  perverse  mankind,  and 
wished  now  to  refresh  himself  in  the 
works  of  the  great  God."  Louis,  his 
trusty  valet  de  cliambre,  told  his  master's 
friends  that  he  had  never  known 
him  in  a  more  cheerful  state  of  mind. 
His  conversation  was  lively  and  origi- 
nal, betraying  no  chagrin.  "When 
amusing  gossip  about  "  the  Dues  "  and 
"  the  Princes  "  iwas  retailed  to  him, 
his  face  lighted  up,  and  his  eye  took 
an  arch  expression.  He  was  unfeign- 
edly  sorry  when  he  thought  that  the 
Comte  de  Paris  "  se  deshonorait-"  in 
lending  himself  to  the  fusionist  in- 
trigue which  brought  forth  the  Sep- 
tennate.  M.  Thiers's  room  opened  into 
the  garden  of  the  Hotel  Bagration,  in 
which  on  Sunday  mornings  he  received 
his  visitors  between  seven  and  nine 
o'clock.  He  wore  a  padded  brown 
cashmere  dressing-gown,  a  broad- 
brimmed  hat,  a  black  cravat,  glazed 
shoes,  and  black  gaiters.  With  a 
magnifying  glass  he  would  run  off 
from  the  subject  of  conversation  to 
examine  a  blade  of  grass,  a  leaf,  a 
flower,  an  insect  that  caught  his  eye. 
At  half-past  nine  he  sat  down  to 
answer  private  letters,  which  he  could 
not  leave  to  his  secretary.  His  own 
notes  and  letters  were  written  on  gilt- 
edged  paper.  In  punctuating  he  re- 
read what  he  had  just  penned,  sen- 
tence by  sentence,  as  he  went  on,  but 
seldom  from  beginning  to  end. 

In  the  June  following  his  retirement 
to  private  life,  Bismarck,  who  wrote  to 
Manteuffel  that  France  was  in  the 
hands  of  an  TJltramontanist  faction, 
thought  seriously  of  retaining  Belfort 
as  a  security  for  the  observance  of  the 
treaty  of  Frankfort  by  the  new- 
government.  Thiers  got  Russia  to  in- 
terfere, and  went  to  Switzerland  in 
August  to  thank  Prince  Gortschakoff, 
who  was  there,  for  the  service  he  had 
rendered  to  the  French  nation.  Ver- 
dun evacuated,  and  the  war 'indemnity 
paid,  Manteuffel  wrote  to  Thiers  re- 
questing a  souvenir  of  their  personal 
relations.  The  ex-President  sent  the 


M.  T/ucrs. 


29 


marshal  the  History  of  the  Revolution, 
Consulate,  and  Empire,  with  an  auto- 
graph dedication.  But  before  he  could 
acknowledge  the  present,  tho  recipient 
had  to  ask  his  king's — for  ilanteuffel 
will  never  call  William  by  his  imperial 
title — -permission  to  accept  it.  "And 
so,  marshal/'  said  his  majesty,  "  you 
are  proud  of  this  handsome  gift1?" 
"  Yes,  sire,  it  is  a  literary  monument  " 
—which  in  point  of  bulk  it  certainly 
was,  for  it  was  in  fifty  volumes.  "  And 
what  have  you  thought  of  giving  in 
return?"  "Nothing  as  yet,  sire." 
"  Well,  to  pay  M.  Thiers  in  his  own 
coin,  send  him  in  my  name  and  yours 
the  works  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
which  my  secretary  is  charged  to  hand 
you." 

M.   Thiers   stood   by  himself   as   a 
parliamentary  orator.     I  do  not  affirm 
that  he  was  peerless,  but  I  say  that  no 
other  speaker  whom  I  have  ever  heard, 
or  heard  of,  resembled  him.     He  was 
called  a  frudhomme  spirituel  by  another 
tribune   of   his   time.      Certainly,    he 
spoke  to  catch  the  ear  of  M.   Prud- 
homme,   and   in   addressing   him,    let 
fall  pearls  and  diamonds,  which  were 
to  be  picked  up  by  intelligent  listeners. 
Greek  art  Avas  the  perfection  of  com- 
mon sense,  so  was  M.  Thiers's  oratory 
when  stripped  of  its  precautions  ora- 
toires,  the  object  of  which  was  to  gain 
a  favourable  hearing  from  stupid  bour- 
r/eois.      In  the  tribune,    he.  took   the 
attitude  of  a  man  at  the  wheel  in  a 
raging  storm.    Ascending  it,  his  hands 
were  filled  with  sheets    of   paper,   in 
which,  at  wide   distances   from   each 
other  notes  in  black,  red,  and  blue  ink 
were    traced    in    legible     characters. 
These  memoranda,  however,  were  not 
referred  to  in  the  course  of  the  inter- 
minable,    chatty     monologue,     which 
sparkled    with    brilliant    traits,    and 
culminated   in   a   period   that   passed 
into  general  circulation  directly  it  was 
uttered.     "All   the   ideas,"    said    St. 
Beuve,  "  flowed  from  facts  ;  "  and  he 
might  have   added,   facts  well  masti- 
cated    and     digested,     for    whatever 
Thiers  read — and  his  reading  was  uni- 
versal— he  made  his  own.     With  his 


small  stature  and  thin,  piping  voice, 
he  gave  the  impression  of  a  babe 
teaching  wisdom  to  doctors.  Wlien 
he  rose  to  philosophical  amplitude,  and 
— being  assured  that  Joseph  Prud- 
homme's  ear  was  caught — put  forth 
his  dialectic  vigour,  the  contrast  be- 
tween his  physical  weakness  and  his 
mental  power  was  very  impressive. 

Thiers  was  respected  by  Time  to 
the  last  hour  of  his  life.  When  death 
struck  him  his  faculties  were  unim- 
paired. A  premonitory  symptom  of  his 
end,  in  the  form  of  acute  pains  above 
the  nape  of  the  neck,  caused  him  to 
hesitate  just  after  the  1 6th  May,  when 
Gambetta  asked  him  to  lead  the  Re- 
publicans against  MacMahon.  They  , 
were  accompanied  by  bleeding  at  the 
nose.  Dr.  Barthe,  however,  who  was 
afraid  of  paralysis  of  the  lungs,  did 
not  pay  much  attention  to  these  symp- 
toms. The  family  of  the  statesman 
conjured  him  to  keep  quiet.  He  said 
he  would,  barred  his  door  for  three 
days  against  strangers,  felt  the  pains 
worse,  and  said  that  he  would  rather 
die  at  once. 

Resuming  his  life-long  habits,  and 
throwing  himself  with  ardour  into  the 
campaign  against  "  the  Dues,"  he  be- 
came quite  well,  and  told  his  friends 
that  in  the  heat  of  the  agitation  he  had 
picked  up  a  store  of  strength.  The  one 
thing  that  made  him  uncomfortable  was 
the  want  of  a  view  from  his  house, 
which  is  at  the  bottom  of  a  hill.  Noisy 
PhilistinismatDieppe  irritated  him,  and 
the  rolling  of  the  waves  on  the  shingle 
kept  him  awake.  The  terrace  of  St. 
Germains  commanded  a  fine  view,  and 
there  were  green  pleasant  drives  in  the 
vicinity ;  so  to  St.  Germains  he  went. 
Hi.s  last  earthly  lodging  was  in  the 
pavilion  in  which  Louis  Quatorze  was 
born,  with  whose  funeral,  as  already 
mentioned,  the  national  obsequies  of 
M.  Thiers  so  curiously  contrasted.1 

In  the  retirement  incidental  on 
the  coup  d'etat,  Thiers  began  to  "  edu- 
cate his  conscience."  The  death  of  his 
mother-in-law,  which  plunged  him  in 

1  See  the  critique  on  Montlosier's  History 
of  the  French  Monarchy — 1822. 


30 


M.  Thiers. 


the  deepest  grief,  helped  forward  the 
purifying  work.  He  rose  with  the 
events  which  brought  his  country  to 
the  brink  of  ruin.  A  sense  of  his 
popularity  mellowed  him  in  his  latter 
days,  when  his  features  took  a  dignity 
and  his  manners  a  sweetness  hither- 
to foreign  to  them.  Bonnat  and 
Mdlle.  Jacquemart  have  not  made  this 
transfiguration — for  transfiguration  it 
was — felt  in  their  portraits  of  him. 
The  best  likeness  1  have  seen  is  a 
three  sous  engraving,  striking,  charm- 
ing, and  impressive,  signed  "  Chapon," 
and  published  by  Alfred  Duquesne 
of  the  Rue  d'Hautfeuille,  Paris. 
His  Majesty,  le  Petit  Bourgeois, 
who  never  sought  to  rise  above  the 
bourgeoisie,  and  whose  death  made  a 
greater  stir  in  the  world  than  the  end 
of  the  most  powerful  king  or  emperor, 
is  there  shown  to  the  life.  In  one 
thing  it  fails.  I  am  sorry  to  say  it 
does  not  give  the  very  peculiar  hands 
of  Thiers.  They  were  the  hands  of  a 
toiler  and  an  artist.  In  their  general 
outline  they  were  square ;  the  last 
phalanx  of  the  finger  was  smooth  and 
pointed,  and  the  nail  narrow  and 
pinkish.  The  right  hand  opened  well 
to  gesticulate,  and  was  offered  frankly 
to  the  visitor,  without,  however,  demon- 
strative warmth.  The  left  remained 
shut,  with  the  thumb  extended  its  full 
length.  In  looking  at  a  portrait  or  a 
statue  which  pleased  him,  M.  Thiers 
made  use  unconsciously  of  his  thumb, 
as  though  he  were  modelling  in  clay  a 
likeness  of  what  he  was  admiring. 

Thiers7  s  sympathy  with  animals  was 
one  of  .  the  lovable  features  of  his 
disposition.  In  looking  over  memo- 
randa of  visits  paid  to  him  I  find  some 
of  a  breakfast  at  the  Elysee,  to  which 
General  Chanzy,  M.  Rouland,  the 
governor  of  the  Bank  of  France,  an 
African  traveller,  the  President's 
family  and  household,  and  I,  sat  down. 
The  conversation,  which  had  run  upon 
the  war  indemnity,  Count  Arnim's 
incredulity  as  to  its  payment,  and  the 
climates  of  Versailles  and  Enghien, 
turned  upon  horses,  M.  Thiers  going 
to  visit  a  horse  show  in  the  evening. 


He  expressed  great  sympathy  with  the 
chevaline  race,  and  spoke  in  glowing 
terms  of  the  exquisite  sensibility  of 
the  race  horse.  The  modern  thorough- 
bred, the  pride  of  English  grooming, 
was  not  so  picturesque,  he  said,  as  the 
old-fashioned  hunter.  But  it  was 
superior  in  its  capacity  to  express 
delicate  shades  of  feeling.  Blind 
people  had  a  sort  of  facial  sense  which 
enabled  them,  unassisted  by  their 
hands,  to  tell  the  height  of  a  man  in 
passing  him  by ;  whether  the  shutters 
of  a  shop  were  up  or  down,  or  whether 
the  countenance  of  a  person  before 
them  was  severe  or  smiling.  The 
whole  skin  of  the  thorough-bred 
horse,  he  imagined,  was  endowed  with 
this  sense.  He  thought  that  if  the 
horse  had  the  organ  of  speech  it  would 
be  the  most  demonstrative  being  in 
creation.  Nature  gave  it  a  mask 
which,  by  drawing  down  the  skin  tight 
over  its  face  debarred  mobility  of  ex- 
pression. It  could  not,  because  of  its 
bulk,  rub  against  a  human  being  like 
a  cat,  or  paw  like  a  dog,  or  wag  its 
tail,  or  whine,  or  utter  sounds  that 
caressed  the  ear.  Yet,  such  was  the 
intensity  of  its  feeling,  that  it  found 
channels  for  its  eloquent  expression. 
What  in  art  or  nature  was  there  so 
eloquent  as  the  eye,  the  nostril,  and 
the  quivering  skin  of  the  thorough- 
bred 1  M.  St.  Hilaire  here  observed 
that  the  skin-sensibility  of  the  horse 
is  becoming  more  developed.  I  ven- 
tured to  observe  that  the  race  horse 
one  sees  now  at  Longchamp  is  a  less 
splendid  animal  than  the  thorough- 
bred of  thirty  years  ago.  Thiers 
agreed  that  it  was  less  vigorous  and 
picturesque.  The  exquisite  barbs  of 
Gascony  were  instanced  as  an  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  the  persistence  of  a 
fine  type,  which  once  fixed  is  not  easily 
degraded. 

M.  Thiers' s  library  had  a  world- 
wide celebrity.  It  was  an  abridg- 
ment of  the  most  renowned  museums 
of  Europe ;  a  handy  edition  of  the 
greatest  works  of  art  in  the  cities  he 
had  visited  in  his  artistic  and  historical 
peregrinations.  He  commenced  his 


M.  Thiers. 


31 


collection  on  a  settled  plan  in  1833, 
when  he  sent  Sigalon  and  Boucoyran 
to  Rome,  the  one  to  copy  for  him  The 
Last  Judgment,  and  the  other  Raphael's 
paintings     in     the     Sistine     Chapel. 
Sigalon  died  as  he  finished  his  work, 
which  was  a  superb  interpretation  of 
the      original      masterpiece.       Thiers 
wanted  it   to   fill   the  space  over  his 
library     mantelpiece.       The      copyist 
happily  caught  the  precise,  firm  touch 
of  Michael  Angelo,  who  painted  neatly 
and  with  an    unfevered  hand  the  pro- 
digious beings   that   rose   before    his 
mind's  eye.     The  transparent  water- 
colour  tones,   as  they   were   managed 
by   Sigalon,    came  nearer   to  the  old 
frescoes  than  could  an  oil  rendering. 
When   the   statesman    and   historian 
felt   his   eyes   tired   he   was   fond   of 
resting  them,  especially  on  wet  days, 
on  the   souvenirs  of  galleries  he  had 
seen,  on  the  walls  around  him.     They 
were  hung  with  nice  judgment.    Each, 
suiting  its  next  neighbours,  retained  its 
full  value.     From  his  desk  M.  Thiers 
was  able  to  contemplate  reductions  of 
the  Sistine  Madonna,  The  Assumption 
of   Titian,    the   Bolognese    St.  Cecilia, 
St.  Jerome's  Death,  Raphael's  School  of 
Athens,    The    Sibyls,  The  Acts   of    the 
Apostles,     and     The      Transfiguration, 
which  was  opposite  The  Last  Judgment. 
Choice  prints  were  transferred  to  the 
panels  of   the  doors  and  coated  with 
a   yellowish  varnish.     The  bookcases, 
not  higher  than  an  English  sideboard, 
were  of  a  tone  to  harmonise  with  the 
pictures    and    statues.      M.    Thiers' s 
ofiicial  relations  enabled  him  to  pro- 
cure photographs  and  copies  of  what 
was   best    worth    reproducing  in  the 
Eoyal,  Papal,  Grand  Ducal,  and  civic 
palaces  of  Italy,  Spain,  Dresden,  Hol- 
land,   and    Belgium.       The   Windsor 
collection  he  could  never  so  much  as 
see,  beyond  that  part  of  it  adorning 
the  chambers   to  which  Messrs.   Col- 
naghi's  tickets  procure  admission. 

M.  Thiers  made  few  hard-and-fast 
rules  in  his  life.  One  of  the  few  was 
to  "  defend  ferociously  the  public 
purse,"  and  the  other  not  to  give 
house-room  £o  anv  ^^  first-rate 


objects    of    virtu.     After   finding  out 
for  himself  what  was  super-excellent 
in  a  gallery,  his  way  was  to  sit  as  long 
as   was    possible    before    it,    and    to 
return  again  and  again  until  it  was 
well  fixed  on  his  brain.     He  then  get 
a  copy  made,,  if  of  a  fresco,  in  water- 
colours,  and  if  of  an   oil-painting,  in 
oils.     BuonaiToti — for  so  he  preferred 
to  call  Michael   Angelo,  to   associate 
him  with  that  other  giant,  Buonaparte 
— drew  him  seven  times  from  Paris 
to   Florence.      The  Sistine    Madonna 
attracted  him  to  Dresden  ;  and  he  tra- 
velled twice  through  Spain  to  see  the 
portraits  at  the  Escurial.    One  evening 
at  the  Place  St.  Georges,  the  weari- 
some   monotony    of    travelling    over, 
plains  was  talked  of.     Thiers  said  to 
the  person  who  started  this  subject — 
"  When  I  find  myself  in  a  flat  country 
I  shut  my  eyes  and  evoke  the  statues 
of  Michael  Angelo.     They  are  familiar 
spirits  who  answer  to  my  call.      I  am 
fond  of  their  companionship.     Michael 
Angelo  makes  us  feel  the  meaning  of 
the  apparently  tragic  destiny  of  man. 
Misery  is  a  spur  to  effort,  and  effort 
is  the  fountain  of  all  greatness.     His 
works  are  full  of  consolation.     What 
can  be  more  consoling  to  the  afflicted 
than    his    Nursing    Madonna  in    the 
chapel     of    the    Medici  ?      Affliction 
has     ennobled    her,    as    it     ennobles 
every  one  who  takes  it  for  what  it  is 
• — a   spur   to    stimulate  us   to  higher 
action.     In  contemplating  her  I  have 
often  thought  of  the  lesson  she  might 
have  given  to  a  certain  king  I  knew. 
The    tragic    destiny    of   her   Infant, 
whose    future   she    divines,   fills   her 
with  despair.     But  her  maternal  love 
will  not  be  a  hindrance  to  Him  when 
the  time  arrives  for  Him  to  remain  an 
obscure  proletaire,  or  become  the  most 
illustrious  Martyr  of  Progress.      She 
has   the   instinct    of    His    grandeur. 
Noble    pride    in    the    struggle    with 
maternal     tenderness    will    gain    the 
victory.      A  secular  tree  stripped   of 
its    leaves    and    resisting    the    wind 
affects  me  like  that  Madonna."     He 
bought     from     the     Salviati     family 
the  bronze  duplicate  of  this  marble, 


J/.   Thiers. 


which  was  given  by  Michael  Angelo 
to  Salviati,  Bishop  of  Florence.  Mme. 
Thiers  intends  to  present  it  to  the 
Louvre. 

The  doors  of  the  library  were  kept 
by  an  Apollo  and  a  Satyr,  copied  by 
Mercie  from  the  antique.  The  Last 
Judgment  was  flanked  by. reductions  of 
The  Vai~ne.se  Hercules,  and  The  Slave,  of 
Michael  Angelo,  which  is  conceived  in 
the  spirit  of  the  Nursing  Virgin. 
Bronzes  copied  for  M.  Thiers  from  the 
tomb  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  were 
stolen  from  the  Garde  Meuble,  where 
Fontaine,  the  Communist,  placed  them. 
They  were  never  found,  and  were  sorely 
missed  by  their  rightful  owner,  who 
called  them  the  "schoolmasters  of  his 
soul."  Other  copies  in  marble  were 
since  done,  but  somehow  they  did  not 
speak  to  M.  Thiers  the  same  language 
as  the  lost  ones.  Between  them  and 
the  bronzes  there  was  all  the  differ- 
ence that  a  pious  old  lady  might 
find  between  a  favourite  text  in  the 
Authorised  Version  of  the  Scriptures 
and  a  more  accurate  rendering  in  a 
new  translation.  Day  and  Night  and 
Dawn  and  Dusl-,  which  had  got  into 
the  hands  of  an  old-clothes-man,  were 
recovered.  They  stand  at  the  corners 
of  the  library.  A  common  sentiment, 
that  of  intense  grief,  agitates  them. 
Were  a  young,  heroic,  majestic  queen, 
whose  heart  is  open  to  compassion,  to 
hear  each  groan,  see  each  scene  of 
woe,  and  know  of  every. injustice  per- 


petrated in  her  state,  she  would  look 
on  the  world  with  the  profoundly  sad 
eyes  of  these  four  statues.  Between 
two  of  them  was  placed  an  alto  rilievo, 
in  terra  cotta,  of  an  entombment,  also 
by  Michael  Angelo. 

A  mere  list  of  the  other  grand, 
glorious,  and  charming  works  of  art 
in  the  library  and  its  ante-room  would 
be  tedious  ;  and  the  space  at  my  dis- 
posal does  not  admit  of  anything  fuller. 
I  shall  therefore  close  with  the  men- 
tion of  a  pen-and-ink  drawing  of  which 
M.  Thiers  once  said  :  "  All  military 
and  political  science  is  comprised  in 
that  sketch."  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
drew  it  rapidly,  probably  to  fix  a  feli- 
citous idea.  A  band  of  brave  knights, 
mounted  on  incomparable  chargers,  are 
fighting  an  army  of  skeletons  on  foot. 
The  host  of  dry  bones  have  the  best 
of  the  battle.  Some  are  falling,  and 
others  rising  from  the  ground  to  re- 
place them.  Infantry,  here,  sweeps 
away  cavalry.  The  starving  classes 
swamp  the  privileged  orders.  Famine 
seizes  upon  power.  We  admire  most 
the  noble  cavaliers.  But  the  artist 
forces  us  to  ask,  Why  did  they  feed 
their  horses  so  well  when  hunger  was 
decimating  their  fellow-men  ?  The 
skeletons,  whether  we  like  it  or  not, 
will  gain  the  victory,  for,  again  to 
quote  M.  Thiers,  "  They  are  struggling 
to  infuse  a  little  of  God's  justice  into 
man's  institutions." 

EMILY  CRAWFORD. 


33 


PART  XI. 
CHAPTER  XXXII. 

A   DELIVERER. 

THE  house  was  very  still  in  the  after- 
noon languor — all  its  life  suspended. 
Between  the  sick-room,  in  which  all 
the  interest  of  the  family  existence 
was  absorbed,  and  the  servants'  part 
of  the  house,  in  which  life  went  on 
cheerfully  enough  under  all  circum- 
stances, but  without  any  intrusion 
into  the  still  world  above  stairs,  there 
was  nothing  going  on.  Little  Lilias 
went  up  into  her  own  room,  and  down 
all  the  long  staircases  and  passages, 
without  meeting  or  seeing  any  one. 
Martuccia  was  in  the  old  hall,  tran- 
quilly knitting  and  waiting  for  her 
young  lady's  return ;  but  the  house 
was  empty  of  all  sound  or  presence, 
nobody  visible.  It  was  like  the  en- 
chanted palace  through  which  the 
young  prince  walks,  meeting  no  one, 
until  he  reaches  the  one  chamber  in 
which  the  secret  lies.  This  idea 
passed  through  the  mind  of  Lilias, 
pre-occupied  as  she  was.  Any  one 
might  come  in — might  pass  from  room 
to  room,  finding  all  deserted,  until  he 
had  penetrated  to  the  dim  centre  of 
the  family  life  where  death  was 
hovering.  She  went  down  the  oak 
staircase  with  her  light  foot,  a  little 
tremulous,  but  inspired  with  resolu- 
tion. It  was  the  afternoon  of  Nello's 
last  day  at  school.  He  had  not  quite 
made  up  his  mind,  or  been  driven  by 
childish  misery,  to  the  determination 
of  running  away  when  his  sister  set 
out  to  succour  him.  Had  he  waited, 
Lilias  no  doubt  would  have  arrived  in 
time  to  introduce  a  new  element  into 
the  matter  ;  but  what  could  the  little 
girl's  arrival  have  effected  ?  Who 
would  have  given  any  importance 
No,  217. —  VOL.  xxxvii. 


to  that  ?  They  would  have  taken 
Lilias  in,  and  made  a  little  prisoner 
of  her,  and  sent  her  back.  As  it 
was,  neither  knew  anything  of  what 
the  other  was  doing.  Lilias  had 
opened  her  most  secret  place,  a  little 
old-fashioned  wooden  box,  in  which 
she  kept  some  special  relics,  little 
trinkets  (half  toys,  half  ornaments), 
which  she  had  brought  with  her,  and 
the  remains  of  the  money  which  hen 
father  had  given  her  when  he  sent  the 
little  party  away.  There  had  been 
something  over  when  they  arrived,  and 
Lilias  had  guarded  it  carefully.  She 
took  it  out  now,  and  put  the  purse 
containing  it  within  the  bodice  of  her 
dress — the  safest  place.  It  might  be 
wanted  for  Nello.  He  had  the  best 
right  to  everything  ;  and  if  he  was  in. 

trouble .  Lilias  did  not  try  to  think 

what  kind  of  trouble  the  little  boy 
could  be  in.  She  took  her  little  store, 
and  went  away  with  her  heart  beating 
high.  This  time  she  would  herself  do 
it ;  she  would  not  trust  to  any  one. 
Mr.  Geoff  had  undertaken  to  deliver 
her  father,  and  stopped  her ;  but  he 
had  not  done  it.  Already  a  long  time 
had  elapsed,  and  nothing  had  hap- 
pened. She  would  not  trust  to  Mr. 
Geoff  or  any  one  this  time.  If  old 
'Lizabeth  had  not  gone  away  before 
Lilias  returned  to  the  hall,  she  had 
thoughts  of  asking  the  old  woman  to 
go  with  her ;  and  even  a  weak  inclina- 
tion to  take  Martuccia  as  a  companion 
and  support  had  crossed  her  mind. 
Martuccia  would  have  been  useless, 
but  she  would  have  made  all  the  dif- 
ference between  a  feasible  expedition 
and  an  impossible  one  ;  but  perhaps 
it  was  for  this  very  reason  that  Lilias 
rejected  the  idea.  No ;  this  time  she 
would  be  kept  back  by  no  advice. 
She  would  go  to  Nello's  aid  by  herself. 
He  should  owe  his  deliverance  to  no 


Young  Musgrave. 


one  but  his  sister.  Who  could  under- 
stand him  so  well — know  so  well  what 
he  must  want  ?  And  it  was  to  her 
that  papa  had  intrusted  Nello.  She 
made  dismal  pictures  to  herself  of  her 
little  brother  in  trouble.  What  could 
in  trouble  mean  1  She  thought  of  him 
as  out  in  the  cold,  out  in  the  rain, 
crying,  with  no  place  to  go  to,  lost  in 
a  strange  country  ;  or  perhaps  ill  with 
a  fever,  and  nobody  to  sit  by  him, 
nobody  to  give  him  a  drink  when  he 
wanted  it,  and  tell  him  stories.  What 
other  kind  of  trouble  was  possible  ? 
That  he  might  not  be  able  to  learn  his 
lessons  without  her  to  help  him,  and 
that  he  might  perhaps  be  whipped 
— could  such  an  atrocity  be  1 — just 
gleamed  across  the  child's  thoughts  ; 
but  it  made  her  heart  beat  so  with 
rage  and  indignation,  and  her  cheeks 
burn  with  such  a  flush,  that  she  thrust 
the  idea  aside  ;  but  so  long  as  he  was 
unhappy,  so  long  as  he  wanted  her, 
was  not  that  enough  1  She  buttoned 
her  little  coat  with  a  stout  but  trem- 
bling heart,  and  took  a  shawl  over  her 
arm  (was  not  that  how  travellers 
always  provided  themselves  ?),  and, 
with  her  sovereign  in  her  hand  for  im- 
mediate expenditure,  and  her  purse 
in  her  bosom,  went  down  the  silent 
stairs.  How  still,  how  deserted  it 
seemed  !  Mr.  Pen  came  out  from  the 
library  door  when  he  heard  the  step, 
to  see  who  it  was,  but  took  no  notice 
of  her  except  a  momentary  glance  of 
disappointment.  Thus  she  went  out 
of  the  house  brave  and  resolute,  yet 
with  a  tremor  of  the  unknown  in  her 
breast. 

Lilias  knew  what  to  do  :  to  walk  to 
Pennington,  where  the  railway  station 
was,  and  then  to  take  tickets,  and  to 
get  into  a  railway  carriage.  The  walk 
along  the  highroad  was  long,  but  it 
was  not  so  overwhelming  as  that  early 
expedition  she  had  made  all  alone  up 
into  the  hills  when  she  had  met  Geoff. 
How  glad  she  had  been  to  meet  him, 
and  to  hear  from  him  that  she  need  go 
no  further  !  Lilias  had  not  ceased  to 
believe  in  Mr.  Geoff,  but  nothing  had 
been  done,  and  her  heart  was  sick  of 


the  waiting.  She  did  not  want  to 
meet  him  now  ;  her  little  heart  gave 
a  jump  when  she  saw  any  one  riding 
towards  her  ;  but  it  was  certain  she 
did  not  want  to  meet  Geoff,  to  have 
her  mission  again  taken  out  of  her 
hands.  Nothing  was  more  likely  than 
that  she  should  meet  him,  and  her 
eyes  travelled  along  the  dusty  line  of 
road,  somewhat  wistfully  looking  out— 
in  hopes  not  to  see  him — which  much 
resembled  the  hope  of  seeing  him, 
though  it  was  differently  expressed. 
And  now  and  then  a  cloud  of  dust 
would  rise — now  and  then  a  horseman 
would  appear  far  off,  skimming  lightly 
over  the  long  line  of  road,  which  it 
took  Lilias  so  much  time  to  get  over. 
Once  a  beautiful  carriage  dashed  past 
her,  with  the  beautiful  lady  in  it 
whom  she  had  once  seen,  and  who 
had  kissed  and  cried  over  Nello 
without  taking  much  notice  of  Lilias. 
Could  it  be  that  the  beautiful  lady 
had  heard  too  that  he  was  in  trouble  ? 
Lilias  mended  her  pace  and  pushed  on. 
What  fancies  she  met  with  as  she 
plodded  along  the  road !  It  was  a 
long  dusty  highway,  running  for  a 
little  while  in  sight  of  the  lake,  then 
turning  through  the  village,  then 
striking  across  the  country  up  and 
down,  as  even  a  highroad  is  obliged 
to  do  in  the  north  country,  where 
there  is  nothing  but  heights  and  hol- 
lows. It  seemed  to  stretch  into  in- 
finity before  Lilias,  mounting  one  brae 
after  another,  showing  in  a  long  level 
line  here  and  there  ;  appearing  on  the 
other  side  of  that  clump  of  trees, 
beyond  that  far-off  farmhouse,  looking 
as  if  it  led  without  pause  back  to  the 
end  of  the  world.  Lilias  wove  one 
dream  after  another  as  she  went  along 
from  landmark  to  landmark.  How 
vivid  they  were  !  So  real,  that  the 
child  seemed  to  enact  every  scene  in 
them  as  they  floated  through  her 
mind  ;  far  more  real  than  the  actual 
events  of  her  life.  She  saw  herself 
arriving,  at  a  great  spacious  place, 
which  was  Nello's  school — undefined, 
yet  lofty  and  wide  and  splendid,  with 
marble  pillars,  and  great  colonnades 


Young  Musgrave. 


35 


and  halls.  She  saw  people  coining  to 
gaze  and  wonder  at  the  little  girl — 
the  little  wandering  princess  —  who 
had  come  to  seek  her  brother.  The 
girl  looked  at  them  all,  and  said, 
"  Take  me  to  Nello."  The  girl  turned 
round  upon  them,  and  her  lip  curled 
with  scorn.  (Lilias  suited  the  action 
to  the  word  ;  and  her  innocent  lip  did 
curl  with  what  version  of  fine  disdain 
it  could  execute.)  What  did  she  care 
for  all  they  could  do  for  her  ?  "  It  is 
my  brother  I  want,"  she  said.  This 
was  how  she  carried  on  her  parable. 
Perhaps  her  own  little  figure  was  too 
much  in  the  front  of  all  these  visions. 
Perhaps  her  own  fine  indifference  to 
all  blandishments  and  devotion  to 
Nello  was  the  chief  principle  made 
apparent.  This  was  how  it  ran  on, 
however,  accompanying  and  shorten- 
ing the  way.  She  made  long  dialogues 
between  herself  and  the  master,  be- 
tween herself  and  Nello.  How  he 
clung  to  her;  how  glad  he  was  that 
she  had  come.  "  It  is  Lily ;  I  knew 
Lily  would  come,"  she  made  him  say. 
He  would  not  be  surprised  ;  he  would 
know  that  this  was  the  most  natural 
thing.  If  they  had  locked  her  up  in 
prison  to  keep  her  away  from  him, 
what  would  it  have  mattered  ?  Lilias 
would  have  found  a  way  to  go  to  him 
when  Nello  was  in  trouble  ;  and  Nello 
knew  that  as  well  as  she. 

She  was  very  tired,  however,  and 
it  was  dark  when  she  arrived  at  Pen- 
nington.  Lilias  put  on  her  grand  air, 
but  it  was  rather  difficult  to  impose 
upon  the  stationmaster  and  porters. 
They  all  wanted  to  be  very  kind,  to 
take  care  of  her,  and  arrange  every- 
thing for  the  little  traveller.  The 
stationmaster  called  her  "  my  dear," 
and  wanted  Lilias  to  go  to  his  house, 
where  his  wife  would  take  care  of  her 
till  the  morning.  "  You  are  too  little 
to  travel  by  the  night  train,"  he  said  ; 
and  the  porters  were  eloquent  on  the 
wickedness  of  sending  a  little  lady  like 
this  by  herself.  "  I  am  going  to  my 
brother,  who  is  ill,"  Lilias  said,  with 
dignity.  "  And  have  you  no  mamma 
to  go  to  him,  my  little  miss  I "  said 


the  porter  friendly,  yet  respectful. 
They  were  all  very  kind.  No  one 
knew  her,  and  they  asked  many  ques- 
tions to  find  out  who  she  was.  They 
said  to  each  other  it  was  well  seen 
she  had  no  mother,  and  made  Lilias's 
heart  swell  so,  that  she  forgave  them 
for  treating  her  as  a  child,  rather  than 
as  the  little  princess  she  had  dreamed 
of  being.  Finally,  they  arranged  for 
her  that  she  should  travel  to  the  great 
junction  where  Nello  had  met  Bamp- 
fylde — at  once — and  that  the  guard 
should  take  care  of  her,  and  put  her  in 
the  night  train,  which  arrived  at  a 
very  early  hour  in  the  morning  at  the 
station  she  wanted  to  go  to.  All  this 
was  arranged  for  her  with  the  kindest, 
care  by  these  rough  men.  They  in- 
stalled her  in  the  little  waiting-room 
till  the  train  should  go.  They  came 
and  fetched  her  when  it  was  going, 
and  placed  her  in  her  corner.  "  Poor 
little  lady  !  "  they  said.  Lilias  was 
half-humiliated,  half-pleased  by  all 
these  attentions.  She  submitted  to 
them,  not  able  to  be  anything  but 
grateful  to  the  men  who  were  so  kind 
to  her,  yet  feeling  uneasily  that  it  was 
not  in  this  homely  way  that  she  meant 
them  to  be  kind.  They  did  not  look 
up  to  her,  but  looked  down  upon  her 
with  compassionate  tenderness,  as  upon 
a  motherless  little  girl— a  child  who 
recalled  children  of  their  own.  Just 
so  the  good  woman  looked  upon  her  who 
got  into  the  train  along  with  her.  "  All 
that  way,  and  all  alone,  my  poor  little 
thing  1 "  the  woman  said.  It  hurt 
Lilias's  pride  to  be  called  a  poor  little 
thing,  but  yet  it  was  pleasant  to  have 
some  one  to  creep  close  to.  The  world 
did  not  seem  to  be  as  it  is  represented 
in  books,  for  nobody  was  unkind. 
Lilias  was  very  glad  to  sit  close  to 
her  new  acquaintance,  feeling  comfort 
unspeakable  in  the  breadth  of  the 
honest  shoulder  against  which  she 
leant  as  she  travelled  on  in  the  dark. 
Those  breadths  of  country  which  Nello 
had  watched  flying  past  the  window 
were  almost  invisible  now.  Now  and 
then  a  darker  gloom  in  the  air  showed 
where  the  hills  were  high  over  the 

B  2 


36 


Young  Musgrave. 


railway  in  a  deep  cutting-.  Sometimes 
there  would  be  gleams  of  light  visible 
here  and  there,  which  showed  a  village. 
Her  companion  dropped  into  a  doze, 
but  Lilias,  leaning  against  her,  was 
far  too  much  excited  for  sleep.  She 
watched  the  moon  come  out  and  shine 
over  the  breadth  of  country,  reflecting 
itself  in  the  little  streams,  and  turning 
the  houses  to  silver.  It  was  late  then, 
quite  late,  for  the  moon  was  on  the 
wane.  And  the  train  was  slow,  stop- 
ping at  every  station,  creeping  (though 
when  it  was  in  motion  it  seemed  to 
fly)  across  the  plains  and  valleys. 
It  was  midnight  when  they  got  to 
the  junction,  and  Lilias,  with  her 
great  eyes  more  wide  awake  than 
ever,  was  handed  out.  There  were 
only  a  few  lights  burning,  and  the 
place  looked  miserable  and  deserted, 
the  cold  wind  sweeping  through  it, 
and  the  two  or  three  people  who  got 
out,  and  the  two  porters  who  received 
them,  looking  like  ghosts  in  the  im- 
perfect light.  The  guard,  who  lived 
there,  was  very  kind  to  the  little  girl 
before  he  went  off  to  his  house.  He 
wanted  to  take  her  with  him  to  make 
her  comfortable  till  the  morning,  but 
Lilias  could  not  be  persuaded  to  wait. 
At  last  he  established  her  in  a  corner, 
the  least  chilly  possible,  wrapping  her 
shawl  round  her  feet.  There  she  was 
left  alone,  with  one  lamp  to  bear  her 
company,  the  long  lines  running  into 
darkness  at  either  side  of  her,  black- 
ness taking  refuge  in  the  high  roof  of 
the  station  above  the  watchlight  of 
that  one  lamp.  How  strange  it  was 
to  sit  all  alone,  with  the  chill  of  the 
air  and  gloom  of  midnight  all  around 
her !  Nobody  was  stirring  in  the 
deserted  place.  The  one  porter  had 
withdrawn  to  some  warm  refuge,  to 
reappear  when  the  train  came.  But 
little  Lilias  sat  alone  in  her  corner, 
sole  inhabitant  of  the  big,  chilly, 
desolate  place.  How  her  heart  jumped 
to  her  mouth  !  What  tremors  and 
terrors  at  first  every  sigh  of  the  wind, 
every  creak  of  the  lamp,  gave  her. 
But  at  last  she  perceived  that  nothing 
was  going  to  happen,  and  sat  still,  and 


did  not  trouble  except  when  imagina- 
tion suggested  to  her  a  stealthy  step, 
or  some  one  behind  in  the  darkness. 
How  dreary  it  was !  the  night  wind 
sang  a  dismal  cadence  in  the  telegraph 
wires,  the  air  coursed  over  the  deserted 
platforms,  the  dark  lines  of  way,  and 
blew  the  flames  of  gas  about  even 
within  the  inclosure  of  the  lamp. 
Just  then  Nello  was  creeping,  stum- 
bling out  of  the  window,  making  his 
way  through  the  prickling  hedge, 
standing  alone  eying  the  moon  in  the 
potato  field.  Lilias  could  not  even 
see  the  moon  in  her  corner.  Nothing 
was  before  her  but  the  waning  gleam 
of  that  solitary  lamp. 

At  last  the  train  came  lumbering 
up  through  the  darkness,  and  the 
porters  reappeared  from  corners 
where  they  had  been  attendant. 
One  of  them  came  for  Lily,  kind 
as  everybody  had  been,  and  put  her 
into  a  carriage  by  herself,  and  showed 
her  how  she  could  lie  down  and  make 
herself  comfortable.  "  You'll  be  there 
at  five  o'clock,"  the  porter  said. 
"  Lie  down,  little  miss,  and  get  a 
sleep."  Never  in  her  life  had  Lilias 
been  more  wide  awake,  and  there 
was  no  kind  woman  here  with  broad 
shoulders  to  lean  upon  and  feel  safe. 
The  train  swept  through  the  night 
while  she  sat  upright  and  gazed  out 
with  big,  round,  unslumbering  eyes. 

Lilias  watched  and  waked  through 
the  night,  counting  out  the  hours  of 
darkness,  saying  her  prayers  over  and 
over,  feeling  herself  lost  in  the  long 
whirl  of  distance  and  gloom  and  con- 
fusing sound  ;  but  as  the  night  began 
to  tremble  towards  the  dawning,  she 
began  to  doze  unawares,  her  eyes, 
closing  in  spite  of  herself,  and  much 
against  her  will;  and  it  was  with  a 
shiver  that  she  woke  up,  very  wide 
awake,  but  feeling  wretched,  in  conse- 
quence of  her  doze,  at  the  little  road- 
side station,  one  small  house  placed 
on  the  edge  of  a  wide  expanse  of 
fields,  chiefly  pasture  land,  and  with 
no  character  at  all.  A  great  belt  of 
wood  stretched  to  the  right  hand,  to 
the  left  there  was  nothing  but  fields, 


Young  Musgrave. 


37 


and  a  long  endless  road  dividing  them, 
visible  for  miles,  with  a  little  turn  in 
it  here  and  there,  but  nothing  beside 
to  break  its  monotony.  Lilias  clam- 
bered out  of  the  carriage  when  she  felt 
the  jar  and  clang  of  the  stoppage,  and 
heard  the  name  of  the  station  drowsily 
called  out.  The  man  in  charge  of  it 
gazed  at  her  as  though  she  had  dropped 
from  the  clouds ;  he  did  not  even  see 
her  till  the  train  was  in  motion  again, 
creaking  and  swinging  away  into  the 
distance.  To  see  her  standing  there 
with  her  great  eyes  gave  him  a  thrill 
of  strange  sensation,  almost  of  terror. 
Fatigue  and  excitement  had  made  her 
face  paler  than  usual,  and  had  drawn 
great  circles  round  her  eyes.  She 
looked  like  a  ghost  standing  there  in 
the  faint  grey  of  the  dawn,  cold  and 
trembling,  yet  courageous  as  ever. 
"Mr.  Swan's?  Oh,  yes,  I  can  tell 
you  the  way  to  Mr.  Swan's ;  but  you 
should  have  spoken  sooner.  They've 
been  and  carried  off  your  luggage." 
Lilias  had  not  strength  of  mind  to 
confess  that  she  had  no  luggage,  and 
indeed  was  too  much  confused  and 
upset  by  her  snatch  of  sleep  to  be 
sure  what  he  was  saying,  and  stumbled 
forth  on  the  road,  when  he  showed  her 
how  to  go,  half-dazed,  and  scarcely 
more  than  half-conscious.  But  the 
pinch  of  the  keen  morning  air,  and 
the  sensation  of  strange  stillness  and 
loneliness,  soon  restored  her  to  the 
use  of  her  faculties.  The  benevolent 
railway  man  was  loath  to  let  her  go. 
"It's  very  early,  and  you're  very 
small,"  he  said.  "You're  welcome 
to  wait  here,  my  little  lady,  till  they 
send  for  you.  Perhaps  they  did  not 
expect  you  so  early?"  "Oh,  it  does 
not  matter,"  said  Lilias.  "  Thank 
you;  I  am  quite  able  to  walk."  The 
man  stood  and  watched  her  as  she 
made  her  way  in  the  faint  light  along 
the  road.  He  dared  not  leave  his 
post,  or  he  would  have  gone  with  her 
out  of  sheer  compassion.  So  young, 
and  with  such  a  pale  little  beautiful 
face,  and  all  alone  at  such  an  hour  of 
the  morning,  while  it  was  still  night  ! 
"  It  will  be  one  of  them  boyses 


sisters,"  he  said  to  himself  with 
singular  discrimination.  And  then 
he  recollected  the  pale  little  boy 
who  had  gone  to  Mr.  Swan's  so  short 
a  time  before.  This  gave  a  clue  to 
the  mysterious  little  passenger,  which 
set  his  mind  at  rest. 

And  Lilias  went  on  along  the 
darkling  road.  It  was  not  possible 
to  mistake  the  road — a  long  white 
streak  upon  the  landscape,  which 
was  visible  even  in  the  dark ;  and  it 
was  not  altogether  dark  now,  but  a 
ghostly,  damp,  autumnal  glimmer  of 
morning,  before  the  sunrising.  The 
hedges  had  mists  of  gossamer  over 
them,  which  would  •  shine  like  rain- 
bow webs  when  the  sun  rose.  The 
fields  glimmered  colourless  still,  but 
growing  every  moment  more  percep- 
tible in  the  chill  drowsiness  of  the 
season — not  cold  enough  for  frost,  yet 
very  cold.  Everything  was  grey,  the 
few  shivering  half-grown  trees  in  the 
hedgerows,  the  sky  all  banked  with 
clouds,  the  face  of  the  half-seen 
landscape.  There  was  one  cottage  by 
the  roadside,  and  that  was  grey  too, 
all  shut  up  and  asleep,  the  door  closed, 
the  windows  all  black.  Little  Lilias, 
the  one  moving  atom  in  that  great 
still  landscape,  felt  afraid  of  it,  and 
of  herself,  and  the  sound  of  her  own 
steps,  which  seemed  loud  enough  to 
wake  a  whole  world  of  people.  It 
seemed  to  Lilias  that  the  kindly  earth 
was  dead,  and  she  alone  a  little  ghost, 
walking  about  its  grave.  None  of  her 
dreams,  none  of  the  poetry,  nor  any- 
thing out  of  her  fairy  lore  could  help 
her  here.  The  reality  was  more  than 
any  dream.  How  still ! — how  very 
still  it  was  !  —  how  dark  !  and  yet 
with  that  weird  lightening  which  grew 
about  her,  making  everything  more 
visible  moment  by  moment,  as  if  by 
some  strange  magical  clearing  of  her 
own  tired  eyes  !  She  was  so  tired,  so 
worn  out ;  faint  for  want  of  food, 
though  she  was  not  hungry — and  for 
want  of  rest,  though  she  did  not  wish 
to  go  to  sleep.  Such  an  atom  in  all 
that  great  grey  insensible  universe, 
and  yet  the  only  thing  alive  ! 


38 


Youny  Musgrave. 


No — not  the   only   thing.     Lilias's 
heart  contracted   with    a   thrill,  first 
of  relief,  then  of  fear,  when  she  saw 
something  else  moving  besides  herself. 
It  was  in  one  of  the  great  fields  that 
stretched  colourless  and  vast  towards 
the    horizon.     Lilias   could    not    tell 
what  it  was.     It  might  be  a  spirit ; 
it  might    be   an    enchanted   creature 
bound   by  some   spell   to   stay  there 
among  the  ploughed  furrows ;  it  might 
be   some   mysterious   wild   beast,  the 
legendary  monster,  of  whose  existence 
children  are  always  ready  to  be  con- 
vinced.    She  concealed  herself  behind 
a   bush,  and   looked   anxiously   down 
the  long  brown  furrow.     It  was  some- 
thing very  little — not  so  big  as  a  man 
— smaller  even  than   herself ;    some- 
thing that  toiled  along  with  difficulty, 
stumbling  sometimes,  and  falling   in 
the   soft  earth.     By  and    by  a  faint 
breath  of  sound  began  to  steal  towards 
her — very   faint,  yet   carried   far   on 
the  absolute  stillness  of  the  morning. 
Some  one  who  was  in  trouble — some 
one  who  was   crying.     Lilias's  bosom 
began  to  swell.     She  was  very  tired 
and  confused  herself  ;  very  lonely  and 
frightened  of  the  dead  world,  and  of 
her    own    forlorn    livingness    in    it. 
But  the  sound  of  the  feeble   crying 
brought   her    back    to    herself.     Did 
she  divine  already  who  it  was  1     She 
scrambled  through  a  gap  in  the  hedge, 
jumped  across  the  ditch,  and  plunged 
too  into  the   yielding,  heavy   soil   of 
the  ploughed   furrow.     She   was   not 
surprised.     There  did  not  seem  to  be 
anything  wonderful  in    meeting   her 
brother  so.     Had  she  not  been  sent  to 
him  because  he  was  in  trouble  ?     It 
was  natural  that  he  should  be  here  in 
the   cold,  dim   morning,   in   the   wild 
field,  toiling  along  towards  her,  faintly 
crying  in  the  lost  confusion  and  misery 
of  childish  weariness,  his  way  lost,  and 
his   courage   lost,   and   all    his    little 
bewildered  faculties.     She  called  out 
"  Nello  !  " — cautiously,  lest    any    one 
should    hear — "  Nello  !  "    and    then 
there  was  an  outcry  of  amazement  and 
joy— "Oh,  Lily!"     It  was  a   half- 
shriek  of  incredulous  happiness  with 


which  poor  ISTello,  toiling  through  the 
field,  weary,  lost,  forlorn,  and  afraid, 
heard  the  familiar  sound  of  her  voice. 
He  was  not  so  much  surprised  either. 
He  did  not  think  it  was  impossible, 
though  nothing  could  have  been  more 
impossible  to  an  elder  mind.  Children 
hold  no  such  reckonings  as  we  do  with 
probability.  He  had  been  saying, 
"  Oh,  Lily  !  my  Lily  !  "  to  himself— 
crying  for  her- — and  here  she  was  ! 
He  had  no  doubt  of  it,  made  no  ques- 
tion how  she  got  there,  but  threw 
himself  upon  her  with  a  great  cry 
that  thrilled  the  dim  morning  through 
and  through,  and  made  the  sleep-bound 
world  alive. 

And  they  sat  down  together  in  the 
furrow,  and  clung  to  each  other,  and 
cried — for  misery,  but  for  happiness 
too.  All  seemed  safe  now  they  had 
found  each  other.  The  two  forlorn 
creatures,  after  their  sleepless,  wintry 
night,  felt  a  sudden  beatitude  creep 
over  their  little  weary  bodies  and 
aching  hearts.  Two  —  how  different 
that  is  from  one !  They  held  each 
other  fast,  and  kissed,  and  were 
happy  in  the  dark  furrow,  which 
seemed  big  enough  and  dark  enough 
to  furnish  them  both  with  a  grave. 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

THE    BABES    IN   THE    WOOD. 

"ARE  you  very  hungry,  Nello  ?  " 

"  Oh  very,  vtry.  Are  you  1  I  have 
not  had  any  breakfast.  It  was  night, 
dark  night  when  I  came  away.  Have 
you  had  any  breakfast  Lily  'I  " 
P  "  How  could  I  when  I  have  been  in 
the  railway  all  the  night  ?  Do  you 
think  you  can  get  over  the  ditch ! 
Jump !  I  jumped,  and  you  always 
could  jump  better  than  I." 

"  You  forget  everything  when  you 
goto  school,"  said  Nello,  mournfully; 
"  and  I  am  all  trembling — I  cannot 
help  it.  It  is  so  cold.  Oh,  Lily,  if 
they  come  up- — if  they  find  us — you 
will  not  let  them  take  me  back  ]  " 

"  Never,  Nello ;  but  let  us  get  on;  let 
us  get  on  to  the  railway.  Quick,  it  is 


Young  Musgrave. 


39 


not  far  off.  If  you  would  only  jump  ! 
Now  give  me  your  hand.  I  am  cold 
too,  but  we  must  get  over  it,  we  must 
get  over  it  !  "  said  Lilias,  almost  cry- 
ing. PoorNello's  limbs  were  cramped, 
he  was  chilled  to  the  heart.  He  did 
not  feel  it  possible  to  get  on,  all  the 
courage  was  gone  out  of  him.  He  had 
kept  up  until,  after  scrambling  through 
many  rough  places,  his  poor  little  feet 
had  sunk  in  that  soft,  newly-ploughed 
furrow.  This  had  taken  all  the  life 
out  of  him,  and  perhaps  his  meeting 
with  Lilias,  and  the  tumult  of  joyful 
emotion  it  caused,  had  not  increased 
Nello's  power  of  endurance.  He  had 
always  had  the  habit  of  trusting  to 
her.  But  Lily  it  was  quite  certain 
could  not  drag  him  over  the  ditch. 
He  made  an  effort  at  last  to  jump  and 
failed,  and  stuck  in  the  mud.  That 
accident  seemed  at  the  moment  to 
make  an  end  of  them  both  in  their 
utter  weariness.  They  mingled  their 
tears,  Lilias  hanging  on  upon  the  bank 
above,  Nello  in  the  heavy  soil  below. 
The  cry  relieved  them,  however,  and 
by  and  by,  by  the  help  of  his  sister's 
hand,  he  managed  to  scramble  up  the 
bank,  and  get  through  the  scattered 
bushes  on  to  the  highroad.  One  of 
his  feet  was  wet  and  clogged  with  the 
mud,  and  oh,  how  tired  they  both  were ! 
tit  for  nothing  but  to  lie  down  and  cry 
themselves  to  sleep. 

"Oh,  Nello,  if  you  were  at  home 
should  you  ever,  ever  want  to  go  away 
again?" 

Nello  did  not  make  any  reply.  He 
was  too  tired  for  anything  but  a  dull 
little  sob  now  and  then,  involuntary, 
the  mere  breathing  of  his  weakness. 
And  the  highway  looked  so  long,  longer 
even  than  the  fields.  There  was  always 
some  hope  at  the  end  of  a  field  that 
deliverance  might  come  round  the 
corner,  but  a  long  unchangeable  high- 
way, how  endless  it  was  !  They  went 
on  thus  together  for  a  little  way  in 
silence,  then,  "Oh,  Lily,  I  am  so 
hungry,"  said  Nello.  What  could  she 
do  ?  She  was  hungry  too,  more  hungry 
than  he  was,  for  she  had  eaten  nothing 
since  the  afternoon  of  the  previous  day. 


"I  have  a  shilling  in  my  pocket, 
but  we  cannot  eat  a  shilling,"  said 
poor  Lilias. 

"And  I  have  a  shilling  too — more 
than  that — I  have  the  golden  sovereign 
Mary  gave  me — " 

"  We  must  just  hurry — hurry  to  the 
railway,  Nello,  for  we  cannot  eat 
money,  and  the  railway  will  soon  take 
us  home  ;  or  there  is  a  place,  a  big 
station  where  we  could  buy  a  cake. 
Oh!  "  cried  Lilias,  with  a  gleam  of 
eager  satisfaction  in  her  eyes. 

"What  is  it,  Lily?" 

"Look,  only  look!"  She  dragged 
him  forward  by  the  arm  in  her  eager- 
ness. "  Oh,  a  few  steps  further,  Nello 
— only  a  few  steps  further — look  !  "  » 

The  roadside  cottage,  which  had  been 
so  blank  as  she  passed,  had  awoke — 
a  woman  stood  by  the  door—  but  the 
thing  that  caught  Lilias' s  eye,  was  a 
few  stale  cakes  and  opaque  glasses 
with  strange  confectionery  in  them. 
It  was  these  that  gave  strength  to  her 
wearied  feet.  She  hurried  forward, 
while  the  woman  looked  at  the.  strange 
little  pair  in  wonder.  "  Oh,  will  you 
give  us  a  little  breakfast  ?  "  she  said  ; 
"  a  little  milk  to  drink,  and  some  bread 
and  butter  for  this  little  boy  ?  " 

"Where  have  you  come  from,  you 
two  children,  at  this  hour  in  the 
morning1?  "  cried  the  woman  in  con- 
sternation. 

"  Oh,  we  are  going  to  the  train,"  said 
Lilias.  "We  are  obliged  to  go,  we 
must  get  the  early  train,  and  we  don't 
know,  we  dcn't  quite  know  when  it 
goes ;  and  my  poor  little  brother  has 
fallen  into  the  mud — see!  and — he 
got  his  breakfast  so  very  early  before 
he  came  away  that  he  is  hungry  again. 
We  have  plenty  of  money,"  cried  the 
little  girl,  "plenty  of  money.  We 
will  give  you  a  shilling  if  you  will  give 
us  some  milk  and  bread." 

"A  shilling !  two,  three  shillings," 
said  Nello,  interposing.  He  was  so 
hungry ;  and  what  was  the  good  of 
shillings  ?  you  could  not  eat  them.  The 
woman  looked  at  them  suspiciously. 
They  were  not  little  tramps;  they 
were  nicely-dressed  children,  though 


•40 


Young  Musyrave. 


the  little  boy  was  so  muddy.  She  did 
not  see  what  harm  it  could  do  to  take 
them  in ;  likewise  her  heart  was 
touched  by  the  poor  little  things, 
standing  there  looking  up  at  her  as 
though  she  was  the  arbiter  of  their 
fate. 

"  You  may  come  in  and  sit  by  the 
fire  ;  there's  no  train  for  two  hours  yet. 
It's  not  six  o'clock.  Come  in,  you  poor 
little  things  and  rest,  and  I'll  give  you 
some  nice  hot  tea.  But  you  must  tell 
me  all  the  truth,  for  I  know  you've 
run  away  from  somewhere,"  she  said. 

"No,"  said  Lilias,  looking  her  in 
the  face.  "  Oh,  no,  I  have  not  run 
away  from  anywhere.  My  little 
brother  was  not  happy,  and  I  came  to 
fetch  him,  that  is  all.  I  did  not  run 
away." 

"And  what  sort  of  people  was  it  that 
sent  a  baby  like  you?"  said  the  woman. 
"  Coma  in,  you  poor  little  things,  and 
sit  by  the  fire.  What  could  your  mother 
ba  thinking  of  to  send  you " 

"We  have  not  got  any  mother." 
Nello  took  no  share  in  this  conversa- 
tion. He  was  quite  lost  in  the  delight 
of  the  strange  old  settle  that  stood 
by  the  fire.  Nestling  up  into  the 
corner  he  thought  he  would  like  to  fall 
asleep  there,  and  never  move  any  more. 
"  We  have  not  got  any  mother,"  Lilias 
said  ;  "and  who  could  come  but  me? 
No  one.  I  travelled  all  night,  and  now 
I  am  going  to  take  him  home.  We  are 
children  without  any  mother."  Lilias 
could  not  but  know  that  these  words 
ware  a  sure  passport  to  any  woman's 
heart. 

"  You  poor  little  thing,,"  the  woman 
said,  with  the  tears  in  her  eyes. 
Whether  it  has  its  origin  in  the  self- 
complacency  of  womankind,  it  is 
difficult  to  say,  but  whereas  men  are 
generally  untouched  by  the  unhap- 
piness  of  being  fatherless,  women  are 
defenceless  in  most  cases  before  a 
motherless  child.  Such  a  plea  has  in- 
stant recognition  with  high  and  low. 
No  mother !  everything  is  pardoned, 
everything  conceded  to  a  creature 
with  such  a  plea.  She  was  not  quite 
satisfied  with  the  story,  which  seemed 


to  her  very  improbable,  but  she  could 
not  refuse  her  succour  to  the  mother- 
less children.  Her  little  shop,  such 
as  it  was,  had  no  visitors  till  much 
later  in  the  day,  when  the  village 
children  went  past  her  door  to  school. 
She  had  made  her  own  tea  which  stood 
keeping  itself  hot  upon  the  hob,  and 
she  came  in  hastily  and  put  out  cups 
and  saucers,  and  shared  the  hot  and 
comfortable  fluid,  though  it  was  very 
weak  and  would  not  have  suited  more 
fastidious  palates  than  the  children's. 
What  life  it  seemed  to  pour  into  their 
wearied  little  frames  !  The  bread  was 
coarse  and  stale,  but  it  tasted  like 
bread  from  heaven.  Nello  in  his  cor- 
ner of  the  settle  bagan  to  blink  and 
nod.  He  was  even  falling  asleep,  when 
suddenly  a  gig  rattled  past  the  win- 
dows. The  child  sprang  up  in  a 
moment.  "  Oh,  Lily,  Lily  !  "  he  cried 
in  horror,  "  they  are  after  me  !  what 
shall  I  do?" 

The  woman  had  gone  to  the  back  of 
the  house  with  the  cups  they  had  used, 
and  so  was  not  near  to  hear  this  reve- 
lation. 

"  Who  is  it  ?  "  cried  Lilias,  peering 
out  of  the  window.  She  was  restored 
to  herself,  and  the  name  of  an  enemy, 
a  pursuer  put  her  on  her  mettle.  She 
had  naver  had  such  a  thing  before,  but 
she  knew  everything  about  it,  how  to 
behave.  "  Come,  Nello,  come,"  she 
said,  "  we  will  go  out  the  back  way 
where  nobody  is  looking.  Let  us  go 
away,  let  us  go  away  before  any  one 
can  come  here." 

Lilias  seized  some  of  the  cakes  which 
the  woman  had  put  in  paper  for  them ; 
wonderful  productions  which  nothing 
but  a  child's  appetite  could  contem- 
plate— and  put  down  two  shillings  in 
the  centre  of  the  table.  On  second 
thoughts  it  seemed  better  to  her  to  go 
out  at  the  front  and  get  round  under 
cover  of  the  hedge  to  the  wood  on  the 
other  side  of  the  station,  which  ap- 
peared temptingly  near,  rather  than 
incur  the  risk  of  speaking  to  the 
woman.  It  did  not  occur  to  her  that 
her  own  presence  was  enough  to  put 
any  one  completely  off  the  scent  who 


Young  Musgrave. 


41 


was  seeking  Nello.  She  got  him 
away  out  of  the  house  successfully, 
and  through  the  gap  behind  the 
hedge  where  was  a  little  footpath. 
"  Now  we  must  run — run  !  We  must 
get  past,  while  they  are  asking  at 
the  station.  We  must  not  say  a 
word  to  the  woman  or  any  one.  Oh, 
Nello,  run — run!  "  Nello,  still  more 
anxious  than  she  was,  managed  to  run 
for  a  little  way,  but  only  for  a  little 
one.  He  broke  down  of  all  places  in 
the  world  opposite  to  the  station, 
where  Mr.  Swan  was  standing  talking 
to  the  keeper.  When  Nello  saw  him 
through  the  hedge  he  turned  round 
and  clasped  his  sister  convulsively, 
hiding  his  face  on  her  shoulder.  Lilias 
did  not  dare  to  say  a  word.  They  were 
hid  from  view,  yet  any  movement 
might  betray  them  or  any  sound.  She 
stood  with  trembling  limbs,  bearing 
Nello's  weight  upon  her  shoulder,  and 
watched  through  the  hawthorn  bush. 

"  Nobody  has  been  here,  not  a 
mouse,  far  less  a  little  boy.  The  train 
is  not  due  for  two  hours,"  said  the 
stationkeeper. 

"A  bit  of  a  little  fellow,"  said  Mr. 
Swan.  "  I  can't  think  he  could  have 
got  so  far;  more  likely  he's  lying 
behind  a  hedge  somewhere,  but  I 
thought  it  best  to  try  first  here." 

"He's  not  here,"  the  stationkeeper 
said  again.  He  answered  curtly,  his 
sympathies  being  all  with  the  fugitive, 
and  he  could  not  but  give  the  troubled 
schoolmaster  a  corner  of  his  mind. 
"  It's  only  a  month  since  you  lost  the 
last  one,"  he  said.  "If  it  was  my 
house  the  boys  ran  away  f rom  I  should 
not  like  it." 

"  Talk  of  things  you  know  something 
of,"  said  Mr.  Swan  hotly  ;  and  then  he 
added,  shaking  his  head,  "it  is  not 
my  fault.  My  wife  and  I  do  every- 
thing we  can,  but  it's  those  rough  boys 
and  their  practical  jokes." 

"Little  fellows  they  don't  seem  to 
understand  these  kind  of  jokes,"  said 
the  railway  man. 

Mr.  Swan  shook  his  head.  It  was 
not  his  fault.  He  was  sorry  and  vexed 
and  ashamed.  "  I  would  rather  have 


lost  the  money  twice  over,"  he  said. 
But  he  turned  and  gave  a  searching 
glance  all  round.  Lilias  quaked  and  her 
heart  sank  within  her.  She  held  her 
little  brother  close  to  her  breast.  If  he 
should  stir,  if  he  should  cry,  all  would 
be  over.  She  knew  their  situation 
well  enough.  Either  their  enemy 
would  go  away  and  get  bloodhounds, 
and  fierce  wicked  men  to  put  on  their 
track,  during  which  time  the  fugitives 
would  have  time  to  get  into  some 
wonderful  cave,  or  to  be  taken  into  some 
old,  old,  house  by  some  benevolent 
stranger,  and  so  escape  ;  or  else  he 
would  come  straight  to  the  very  place 
where  they  were,  guided  by  some  in- 
fluence unfavourable  to  them.  Lilias. 
stood  and  held  her  breath.  "  Oh,  be 
still,  Nello,  be  still,  he  is  looking!" 
she  whispered  into  Nello's  ear.  Her 
limbs  were  nearly  giving  way,  but 
she  resisted  fate  and  held  out. 

The  schoolmaster  made  long  inspec- 
tion of  all  the  landscape.  "  He  was 
specially  commended  to  me,  too — I 
was  warned — I  was  warned,"  he  said. 
Then  he  tui-ned  to  the  stationkeeper, 
giving  him  the  most  urgent  injunctions. 
"  If  he  comes  here  you  will  secure  him 
at  once,"  he  said,  filling  Lilias  with 
dismay,  who  did  not  see  the  shrug  of 
the  man's  shoulders,  and  the  look  with 
which  he  turned  aside.  Thus  their 
retreat  was  cut  off  tha  little  girl 
thought,  with  anguish  indescribable  ; 
how  then  were  they  to  get  home  ?  This 
thought  was  so  dreadful  that  Lilias 
was  not  relieved  as  she  otherwise 
would  have  been  by  the  sound  of  the 
wheels  and  the  horse's  hoofs  as  the 
gig  turned,  and  their  enemy  drove 
away.  He  had  gone  in  his  own  person, 
but  had  he  not  left  a  horrible  retainer 
to  guard  the  passage  ?  And  how,  oh 
how  was  she  to  take  Nello  home  1  She 
did  not  know  where  the  next  station 
was.  She  did  not  know  the  way  in 
this  strange,  desolate,  unknown 
country.  "  Nello,"  she  cried,  in  a 
whisper  of  despair,  "  we  must  get  into 
that  wood,  it  is  the  only  thing  we  can 
do ;  they  will  not  look  for  us  there. 
I  don't  know  why,  but  I  feel  sure  they 


42 


Young  Musgrave. 


will  not  look  for  us  there.  And  per- 
haps we  shall  meet  some  one  who  will 
take  care  of  us.  Oh,  Nello,  rouse  up ; 
come  quick,  come  quick !  Perhaps 
there  may  be  a  hermit  living  there; 

perhaps .  Come,  Nello,  can  you 

not  go  a  little  further  ?  Oh,  try,  try  ! " 

"  Oh  Lily,  I  am  so  tired — I  am  so 
sleepy." 

"  I  am  tired,  too,"  she  said,  a  little 
rush  of  tears  coming  to  her  eyes; 
and  then  they  stumbled  on  together, 
holding  each  other  up.  The  wood 
looked  gay  and  bright  in  the  early 
morning.  The  sun  had  come  out, 
which  showed  everything,  and  the 
bright  autumn  colour  on  the  trees 
cheered  the  children  as  the  painted 
skin  of  the  leopard  cheered  the  poet : — 

"  Si  che  a  bene  sperar  m'era  cagione 
Di  quella  fera  alia  gaietta  pelle 
L'ora  del  tempo,  e  la  dolce  stagione." 

The  trees  seemed  to  sweep  with  a 
great  luxuriance  of  shadow  over  a 
broad  stretch  of  country.  It  must  be 
possible  to  find  some  refuge  there. 
There  might  be — a  hermit,  perhaps, 
in  a  little  cell,  who  would  give  them 
nuts  and  some  milk  from  his  goat— 
or  a  charcoal-burnerj  wild  but  kind, 
like  those  Lilias  remembered  to  have 
seen  in  the  forest  with  wild  locks 
hanging  over  their  eyes.  If  only  no 
magician  should  be  there  to  beguile 
them  into  his  den,  pretending  to  be 
kind  !  Thus  Lilias  mixed  fact  and 
fiction,  her  own  broken  remembrances 
of  Italian  woods  sounding  as  fictitious 
among  the  English  elms  and  beeches  as 
the  wildest  visions  of  fancy.  For  this 
wood,  though  it  had  poetic  corners  in 
it,  was  traversed  by  the  highroad  from 
end  to  end,  and  was  as  innocent  of 
charcoal-burners  as  of  magicians.  And 
it  turned  out  a  great  deal  further  'off 
than  they  thought.  They  walked  and 
walked,  and  still  it  lay  before  them, 
smiling  in  its  yellow  and  red,  wav- 
ing and  beckoning  in  the  breeze,  which 
was  less  chilly  now  that  the  sun  was 
up.  The  sun  reached  to  the  footpath 
behind  the  hedge,  and  warmed  the 
little  wayfarers  through  and  through 


— that  was  the  best  thing  that  had 
happened  to  them — for  how  good  it 
is  to  be  warm  when  one  is  chilled  and 
weary ;  and  what  a  rising  of  hope 
and  courage  there  is,  when  the  misty 
dawn  disperses  be-fore  the  rising  of 
the  brave  sun  ! 

Nello  almost  recovered  his  spirits 
when  he  got  within  the  wood.  There 
were  side  aisles  even  to  the  highroad, 
and  deep  corners  in  its  depths  where 
shelter  could  be  had,  and  the  ground 
was  all  flaked  with  shadow  and  sun- 
shine ;  and  there  were  green  glades, 
half- visible  at  every  side,  with  warm 
grass  all  lit  by  the  sun. 

"  Let  us  go  and  sit  down,  Lily.  Oh, 
what  a  pretty  place  to  sit  down  !  Oh, 
Lily,  I  cannot — I  cannot  walk  any 
more  ;  I  am  so  tired,"  cried  Nello. 

"  I  am  tired,  too,"  she  said,  with  a 
quiver  in  her  mouth,  looking  vainly 
round  for  some  trace  of  the  charcoal- 
burner  or  of  the  hermit.  All  was 
silent,  sunny,  fresh  with  the  morning, 
but  vacant  as  the  fields.  And  Lilias 
could  not  be  satisfied  with  mere  rest, 
though  she  wanted  it  so  much.  "  How 
are  we  to  get  home,  if  we  dare  not  go 
to  the  railway  1  and  there  is  no  other 
way,"  she  said.  "Oh,  Nello,  it  will 
be  very  nice  to  rest — but  how  are  we 
to  get  home? " 

"  Oh,  never  mind  ;  I  am  so  tired," 
said  weary  little  Nello.  "  Look,  Lily, 
what  a  warm  place.  It  is  quite  dry, 
and  a  tree  to  lean  against.  Let  u» 
stay  here." 

Never  had  a  more  tempting  spot 
been  seen ;  green  soft  turf  at  one  side  of 
the  big  tree,  and  beech-mast  soft  and 
dry  and  brown,  the  droppings  of  the 
trees,  on  the  other.  The  foot  sank  in 
it,  it  was  so  soft,  and  the  early  sun  had 
dried  it,  and  the  thick  boughs  over- 
head had  kept  off  the  dew.  It  was  as 
soft  as  a  bed  of  velvet,  and  the  little 
branches  waved  softly  over  it,  while 
the  greater  boughs,  more  still,  shaded 
and  protected  the  children.  They  sat 
down,  utterly  worn  out,  and  Lilias 
took  out  her  cakes,  which  they  ate 
together  with  delight,  though  these 
dainties  were  far  from  delicious ;  and 


Young  Musgravc. 


43 


then,  propped  up  against  each  other, 
an  arm  of  each  round  the  other,  Nello 
lay  across  Lilias's  lap,  with  his  head 
pillowed  upon  her ;  she,  half-seated, 
half-reclining,  holding  him,  and  held 
in  her  turn  by  a  hollow  of  the  tree  ; 
these  babes  in  the  wood  first  nodded, 
then  dozed,  and  woke  and  dozed  again 
— and  finally,  the  yellow  leaves  drop- 
ping now  and  then  upon  them  like  a 
caress  of  nature,  the  sun  cherishing 
their  little  limbs,  fell  fast  asleep  in 
the  guardianship  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 
THE    NEW-COSIER. 

NOBODY  in  the  sick-room  said  a  word 
of  the  great  consternation  and  wonder 
and  fear  that  sprung  to  life  in  them 
at  the  appearance  of  the  stranger. 
How  could  they,  though  their  hearts 
were  full  of  it  ?  when  all  their  care 
and  skill  were  wanted  for  the  patient, 
who,  half-conscious,  struggled  with 
them  to  raise  himself,  to  get  out  of 
bed.  To  find  out  what  he  wanted,  to 
satisfy  the  hazy  anxiety  in  his  mind, 
and  do  for  him  the  something  what- 
ever it  was  that  he  was  so  anxious  to 
do,  was  the  first  necessity  of  the 
moment,  notwithstanding  the  new 
excitement  which  was  wild  in  their 
veins.  Where  did  he  come  from  1 
How  had  he  got  here  ? — familiar,  un- 
mistakable, as  if  he  had  been  absent 
but  a  day.  How  did  he  know  he  was 
wanted  ?  And  was  it  he — really  he — 
after  all  those  dreary  years  1  These 
questions  surged  through  the  minds 
of  all  the  bystanders,  in  an  impetuous, 
yet  secondary  current.  The  first 
thing,  and  the  most  urgent,  was  the 
squire.  Brother  and  sister,  friend 
and  friend,  had  not  leisure  to  take 
each  other  by  the  hand,  or  say  a  word 
of  greeting. 

Mary  and  her  newly- arrived  assist- 
ant stood  side  by  side,  touching  each 
other,  but  could  not  speak  or  make 
even  a  sign  of  mutual  recognition.  He 
took  her  place  in  supporting,  and,  at 


the  same  time,  restraining  the  patient. 
She  held  her  father's  hand  with  which 
he  seemed  to  be  appealing  to  some  one, 
or  using,  in  dumb  show,  to  aid  some 
argument. 

"  The  little  boy,"  he  said,  hoarsely  ; 
"  bring  me  the  little  boy." 

"Is  it  JS'ello  he  means?"  the 
stranger  asked,  in  a  low  voice. 

"  I — think  so — I — suppose  so,"  said 
Mary,  trembling,  and  wholly  overcome 
by  this  strange  ease  and  familiarity, 
and  even  by  the  sound  of  the  voice  so 
long  silent  in  this  place.  But  he  took 
no  notice— only  followed  his  question 
by  another. 

"  Why  not  bring  the  child,  then? 
That  might  satisfy  him.  Does  he  cara 
for  the  child  ;  or  is  it  only  a  fancy,  a 
wandering  in  his  head  1  Anyhow,  let 
them  bring  him.  It  might  be  of  some 
use." 

"  Do  you  think  he — knows  ?  Do 
you  think  he  understands — and — 
means  what  he  is  saying?" 

Mary  faltered  forth  these  words, 
scarcely  knowing  what  she  said,  feel- 
ing that  she  could  not  explain  how 
it  was  that  Nello  was  not  near — and 
finding  it  so  strange — so  strange  to  be 
talking  thus  to — John;  could  it  be 
really  John  ?  After  all  that  had  sun- 
dered them,  after  the  miseries  that 
had  passed  over  him,  the  price  still  set 
upon  his  head,  was  it  he  who  stood 
so  quietly,  assuming  his  household 
place,  taking  his  part  in  the  nursing 
of  the  old  man  ?  She  could  not  be- 
lieve her  senses,  and  how  could  she  talk 
to  him,  calmly  as  the  circumstances 
required,  gently  and  steadily,  as  if  he 
had  never  been  away  ? 

"Most  likely  not,"  he  said;  "but 
something  has  excited  his  fancy,  and 
the  sight  of  my  boy  might  calm  it. 
Let  some  one  bring  Nello." 

He  spoke  with  the  air  of  one  used 
to  be  obeyed,  and  whom  also  in  this 
particular  it  would  be  easy  to  obey. 

"We  sent  him  to  school.  I  am 
very  sorry — I  was  against  it,"  said 
Mary,  trembling  more  and  more. 

Mr.  Pen  was  frightened  too.  It 
is  one  thing  doing  "for  the  best," 


Young  Musgrave. 


with  a  little  unprotected  parentless 
child,  and  quite  a  different  thing  to 
answer  the  child's  father  when  he 
comes  and  asks  for  it.  Mr.  Pen 
paled  and  reddened  ten  times  in  a 
minute.  He  added,  faltering — 

"  It  was  by  my  advice — John.  I 
thought  it  was  the  best  thing  for 

him.     You  see  I  did  not  know " 

Here  he  broke  off  abruptly  in  the 
confusion  of  his  mind. 

"Then  it  is  needless  saying  any 
more,"  said  the  stranger,  hastily,  with 
a  tone  in  which  a  little  sharpness  of 
personal  disappointment  and  vexation 
seemed  to  mingle. 

This  conversation  had  been  in  an 
undertone,  as  attendants  in  a  sick- 
room communicata  with  each  other, 
without  intermitting  their  special 
services  to  the  patient.  The  squire 
had  been  still  in  their  hands  for 
the  moment,  ceasing  to  struggle, 
apparently  caught  in  some  dim  con- 
fused way  by  the  sound  of  their 
voices.  He  looked  about  him  con- 
fusedly, like  a  blind  man,  turning  his 
head  slightly,  as  if  his  powers  were 
baing  restored  to  him,  to  the  side  on 
which  John  stood.  A  gleam  of  half- 
meaning,  of  interest  and  wavering, 
half  roused  attention,  seemed  to  come 
over  his  face.  Then  he  sank  back 
gently  on  his  pillows,  struggling  no 
longer.  The  paroxysm  was  over.  The 
nurse  withdrew  her  hand  with  a  sigh 
of  relief. 

"  Now,"  she  said,  "if  we  leave  him 
perfectly  quiet,  he  may  get  some 
sleep.  I  will  call  you  in  a  moment 
if  there  is  any  change." 

The  woman  saw,  with  her  expe- 
rienced eyes,  that  something  more 
than  could  be  read  on  the  surface 
was  in  this  family  combination  She 
put  them  gently  from  the  bedside,  and 
shaded  the  patient's  eyes  from  the 
light,  for  it  was  nearly  noon  by  this 
time,  and  everything  was  brilliant 
outside.  The  corridor,  however,  into 
which  they  passed  outside  was  still 
dark,  as  it  was  always,  the  glimmering 
pale  reflections  in  the  wainscot  of  the 
lon»  narrow  window  on  the  staircase 


being  its  sole  communication  with  the 
day. 

Mary  put  out  her  hands  to  her 
brother  as  they  emerged  from  the 
sick-room. 

"Is  it  you — you,  John?" 
"Yes,"  he  said,  grasping  them,  "it 
is  I — I  do  not  wonder  you  are  startled. 
I  heard  my  father  was  worse — that 
there  was  a  change  —  and  came  in 
without  warning.  So  Nello  has  been 
sent  away  ?  May  I  see  my  little  girl  1 
You  have  been  good  to  her,  I  am  sure, 
Mary." 

"  I  love  her,"  said  Mary,  hastily, 
"  as  if  she  were  my  own.  John — do 
not  take  my  little  companion  away." 

He  had  been  grave  enough,  and 
but  little  moved  hitherto  by  the  meet- 
ing, which  was  not  so  strange  or  un- 
locked for  to  him  as  to  them.  Now 
his  countenance  beamed  suddenly, 
lighting  all  over,  and  a  tender  mois- 
ture came  to  his  eyes. 

"  It  is  what  I  have  desired  most  for 
her,"  he  said,  and  took  his  sister's 
hands  and  kissed  her  cheek.  "  But 
send  for  my  little  Lily,"  he  added, 
with  an  indescribable  softening  in  his 
voice. 

Here  Miss  Brown  who  had  been 
following,  came  out  from  the  dusk  of 
the  room  behind.  "  I  beg  your  pardon, 
ma'am.  I  did  not  like  to  tell  you  in 
your  trouble ;  but  I'm  very  uneasy 
about  Miss  Lily." 

"  Has  she  never  come  in  yet  ?  You 
said  she  had  gone  out  for  a  walk." 

"  I  said  whatever  I  could  think  of 
to  save  you,  Miss  Mary.  We  none  of 
us  know  where  she's  gone.  I've  sent 
everywhere.  She  is  not  at  the  Vicar- 
age, nor  she's  not  at  the  village,  and — 
oh,  what  will  Mr.  John  think  of  us  ?  " 
cried  the  woman  in  tears.  "  Not  one 
in  the  house  has  seen  her  since  yes- 
terday, and  Martuccia  she's  breaking 
her  heart.  She  says  Miss  Lily  has 

gone  after  her  brother  j  she  says " 

"  Is  Martuccia  here  ? " 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Miss  Brown,  with 

a  curtsey.       She  could  not  take  her 

eyes  off    him  as  she  afterwards  said. 

More  serious,  far  more    serious  than 


Young  Musgrave. 


45 


when  he  was  a  young  gentleman  always 
about  the  house,  but  the  same  man,  still 
the  same  man. 

"  Then  send  her  to  me  at  once.  It 
is  you,  Martha,  the  same  as  ever,"  he 
said,  with  a  momentary  smile  in  the 
midst  of  his  anxiety.  Just  as  Mr. 
John  used  to  do — always  a  kind  word 
for  everybody,  and  a  smile.  She 
made  him  another  curtesy,  crying  and 
smiling  together. 

"And  glad,  glad,  sir,  to  see  you  come 
home,"  she  said.  There  was  this 
excuse  for  Miss  Brown's  lingering, 
that  Mary  had  rushed  off  at  once  to 
find  Martuccia.  John  bowed  his  head 
gravely.  He  had  grown  very  serious. 
The  habit  of  smiling  was  no  longer 
his  grand  characteristic.  He  went 
down  stairs  and  into  the  library,  the 
nearest  sitting-room  in  his  way,  the 
door  of  which  was  standing  open. 
Eastwood  was  there  lingering  about, 
pretending  to  put  things  in  order,  but 
in  reality  waiting  for  news  of  the  old 
squire.  Eastwood  had  not  let  this 
man  in.  He  had  not  got  admission 
in  any  legitimate  way. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  sir — "  he  began, 
not  altogether  respectfully,  with  the 
intention  of  demanding  what  he  did 
there. 

"  What  1  "  said  the  stranger  look- 
ing up  with  a  little  impatience. 

Eastwood  drew  back  with  another, 
"Beg  your  pardon,  sir,"  and  his  tone 
was  changed.  He  did  not  know  who 
it  was,  but  he  dared  not  say  anything 
more.  This  was  the  strangest  house 
in  the  world  surely,  full  of  suspicions, 
full  of  new  people  who  did  not  come 
in  at  the  front  door. 

When  Martuccia  came,  her  story, 
which  had  been  almost  inarticulate 
in  her  broken  English,  flowed  forth 
volubly  enough  to  her  master,  whom 
she  recognised  with  a  shriek  of  delight. 
She  gave  him  a  clear  enough  account  of 
what  had  happened.  How  an  old 
woman  had  come,  a  peasant  of  the 
country,  and  told  Miss  Lili  that  her 
little  brother  was  in  trouble.  This 
word  she  transferred  to  her  narrative 
without  attempting  to  translate  it,  so 


that  Mary  standing  by,  who  did  net 
understand  the  rest,  seemed  to  hear 
nothing  but  this  word  recurring 
again  and  again.  Trouble  !  it  was  an 
ominous  word.  Nothing  but  trouble 
seemed  to  surround  them.  She  stood 
and  listened  anxiously,  though  she  did 
not  understand. 

"It  is  clear  then,"  said  her  brother, 
turning  to  her,  "  that  Lily  has  gone 
after  her  little  brother,  supposed  to  be 
in  some  mysterious  trouble.  When 
did  he  go,  and  where  did  he  go,  and 
who  persuaded  you  to  send  him 
away  ?  " 

"  It  was  Randolph — Randolph  has 
been  here.  I  believe  he  wanted  to  be 
kind.  He  said  Nello  was  being  ruined 
here,  and  so  did  Mr.  Pen.  It  was" 
against  my  will — against  my  wish." 

"  Randolph  ! "  he  said.  This  alarmed 
him  more  than  all  the  rest.  "  Both  my 
children !  I  thought  I  should  find 
them  safe — happy  in  your  hands 
whatever  happened  to  me — 

"  Oh,  John,  what  can  I  say  ?  "  cried 
Mary,  wringing  her  hands.  No  one 
could  be  more  guiltless  of  any  un- 
kind intention,  but  as  was  natural, 
it  was  she  who  bore  the  blame. 
A  man  may  be  pardoned  if  he  is  a 
little  unjust  in  such  circumstances. 
John  was  ready  to  rush  out  of  the 
house  again  directly,  to  go  after  his 
children,  but  what  could  be  done  un- 
less the  railway  helped  him?  Mary 
got  the  time-tables  and  consulted  them 
anxiously ;  and  Mr.  Pen  came  in  and 
stood  by,  very  serious  and  a  little 
crestfallen,  as  one  of  the  authors  of 
the  blunder.  And  it  was  found,  as  so 
often  happens,  that  nothing  was  to  be 
done  at  the  moment.  The  early  train 
was  going  off  as  they  talked,  the 
next  did  not  go  till  the  evening,  the 
same  by  which  Lilias  had  travelled 
on  the  night  before.  And  in  the 
meantime  what  might  be  happening 
to  the  little  girl  who  was  wandering 
about  the  world  in  search  of  her 
brother?  While  the  brother  and 
sister  consulted,  Mr.  Pen  looked 
sorrowfully  over  their  heads  which 
were  bent  over  these  time-tables.  He 


Young  Musgrave. 


did  not  himself  pretend  to  understand 
these  lines  of  mysterious  figures.  He 
looked  from  one  face  to  another  to 
read  what  they  meant.  He  was  too 
much  abashed  by  his  own  share  in 
the  misfortune  to  put  forward  his 
advice.  But  when  he  saw  that  they 
were  both  at  their  wits'  end,  Mr.  Pen 
suggested  that  the  place  where  Nello 
was  was  nearer  to  Randolph  than  to 
themselves,  and  that  he  might  get 
there  that  night  if  he  was  informed 
at  once,  and  give  them  news,  at  least 
let  them  know  whether  Lilias  had 
reached  the  house  where  her  brother 
was.  "And  I  will  go  by  the  first 
train,"  Mr.  Pen  said  timidly.  "Let 
me  go,  as  I  have  had  a  hand  in  it. 
John  knows  I  could  not  mean  any 

harm  to  his  boy ." 

Nobody  had  meant  any  harm,  but 
the  fact  that  the  two  children  were 
both  gone,  and  one,  a  girl  like  Lilias, 
wandering  by  herself  no  one  knew 
where,  was  as  bad  as  if  they  had 
meant  it  a  hundred  times  over.  Who 
could  it  be  who  had  beguiled  her  with 
this  story  of  Nello's  trouble  ?  If  John, 
who  had  suffered  so  much,  and  who 
had  come  from  the  country  where 
feuds  and  vengeance  still  flourish,  sus- 
pected an  enemy  in  it,  suspected  even 
his  brother  who  had  never  been  his 
friend,  who  could  wonder  ?  They  tele- 
graphed to  Randolph,  and  to  Mr.  Swan, 
and  to  the  stations  on  the  way,  John 
himself  hurrying  to  Pennington  to  do 
so.  And  then  when  all  this  was  done, 
which  made  an  exciting  bustle  for  a 
moment,  there  was  nothing  further 
possible  but  to  wait  till  evening  for 
the  train.  Such  pauses  are  due  to  the 
very  speed  and  superior  possibilities 
of  modern  life.  A  post>chaise  was 
slower  than  the  railway,  but  it  could 
be  had  at  once,  and  those  long  and 
dreary  hours  of  delay  of  time  which 
one  feels  to  be  lost,  and  in  which 
while  we  wait,  anything  fatal  may 
happen,  are  the  reverse  side  of  the 
medal,  the  attendant  disadvantage  up- 
on headlong  speed  and  annihilation 
of  distance.  What  a  miserable  house 
it  was  during  all  that  eternal  day  ! 


anxieties   of   every    kind    filled   their 
minds — those    which    concerned     life 
and    the     living    coming     uppermost 
and  shutting  out  the  solemn  interest 
of  the  chamber  over  which  death  had 
been  hovering.     The  squire  slept,  but 
only    his     nurse,    unmoved     in     pro- 
fessional calm,  watched  over  him ;  and 
when  he  woke,  still  wrapped  in  a  mist 
and  haze  of  half -consciousness,  which 
subdued  all  his  being,  yet  with  an  aspect 
less   deathlike,  Mary  came  and  went 
in  an  enforced  stillness  almost  beyond 
bearing,   not   daring  to  stay  long   in 
one  place  lest  she  should  betray  her- 
self.    She  dared  not  allow  herself  to 
think  of  little  Lilias,  perhaps  in  evil 
hands,  perhaps  wandering  alone.     Her 
little  Lily  !     Mary  felt  it  would  be 
impossible   to  sit  still,  impossible  to 
endure  at  all,  if   she  did  not    thrust 
away  this  thought.     A  little  woman- 
child,  at  that  tender  age,  too  young 
for  self -protection,  too  old  for  absolute 
impunity  from  harm.  Mary  clasped  her 
hands  tightly  together  and  forced  her 
thoughts  into  another  channel.    There 
was  no  lack  indeed  of  other  channels 
for   her    anxieties ;    her   father   thus 
lying  between  life  and  death,  and  her 
brother  with  all  the  penalties  of  old 
on  his  head,  going  and  coming  without 
concealment,  without  even  an  attempt 
to    disguise  himself.     It  would  have 
been  better  even  for  John,  Mary  felt 
instinctively,  if  the   squire   had  been 
visibly    dying     instead    of     rallying. 
What  if  he  should  wake  again  to  full 
consciousness,  and  order  the  doors  of 
his    house    to    be   closed   against  his 
son  as  he  had    done    before  1     What 
if  seeing  this,  and  seeing  him  there 
without      attempt     at     concealment, 
rejected    by  his  own   family,  the  old 
prosecution    should   be    revived    and 
John  taken?     After  that — but  Mary 
shuddered  and  dropped  this  thread  of 
thought   also.      The  other  even,    the 
other,  was  less  terrible.     Thus  passed 
this  miserable  day. 

Randolph  had  been  alarmed  even 
before  the  family  were,  though  in  a 
different  fashion.  Almost  as  soon  as 
he  had  seated  himself  at  his  respectable 


Young  Musgrave. 


47 


clergymanly  brexkfast-table,  after 
prayers  and  all  due  offices  of  the 
morning,  a  telegram  was  put  into  his 
hand.  This  made  his  pulse  beat 
quicker,  and  he  called  to  his  wife  to 
listen,  while  a  whole  phantasmagoria 
of  possibilities  seemed  to  rise  like  a 
haze  about  the  yellow  envelope,  ugliest 
of  inclosuras.  What  could  it  be  but 
his  father's  death  that  was  thus  inti- 
mated to  him,  an  event  which  must 
have  such  important  issues  1  When 
he  had  read  it,  however,  he  threw 
it  on  the  table  with  an  impatient 
"Pshaw!  the  little  boy,  always  the 
little  boy,"  he  cried ;  "  I  think  that 
little  boy  will  be  the  death  of  me." 
Mrs.  Randolph,  who  had  heard  of  this 
child  as  the  most  troublesome  of 
children,  gave  all  her  sympathy  to  her 
husband,  and  he  contented  himself 
with  another  message  back  again, 
saying  that  he  had  no  doubt  Mr. 
Swan  would  soon  find  the  little  fugitive 
who  had  not  come  to  him,  as  the  school- 
master supposed.  The  day,  however, 
which  had  begun  thus  in  excitement, 
soon  had  other  incidents  to  make  it 
memorable.  Early  in  the  afternoon 
other"  telegrams  came.  The  one  he 
first  opened  was  from  Mr.  Pen;  this 
at  least  must  be  what  he  hoped 
for.  But  instead  of  telling  of  the 
squire's  death,  Mr.  Pen  telegraphed 
to  him  an  entreaty  which  he  could  not 
understand.  "  Lilias  is  missing  too  — 
for  God's  sake  go  at  once  to  the 
school  and  ascertain  if  she  is  there." 
What  did  he  mean — what  did  the 
old  fool  mean  ? 

"Here  is  another,  Randolph,"  said 
his  wife,  composing  her  face  into 
solemnity.  "I  fear — I  fear  it  must 
be  bad  news  from  the  castle." 

In  the  heat  of  his  disappointment 
and  impatience  Randolph  was  as 
nearly  as  possible  exclaiming  in  over 
sincerity,  "  Fear  ! — I  hope  it  is  with 
all  my  heart."  But  when  he  opened  it 
he  stood  aghast — his  brother's  name 
stared  him  in  the  face — "  John  Mus- 
grave." How  came  it  there — that 
outlawed  name  ?  It  filled  him  with 
such  a  hurry  and  ferment  of  agitation 


that  he  cared  nothing  what  the  message 
was ;  he  let  it  drop  and  looked  up 
aghast  in  his  wife's  face. 

"Is  it  so  1  "  she  said,  assuming  the 
very  tone,  the  right  voice  with 
which  a  clergyman's  wife  ought  to 
speak  of  a  death.  "  Alas  !  my  pool- 
dear  husband,  is  it  so  ?  is  he  gone 
indeed  ? " 

But  Randolph  forgot  that  he  was  a 
clergyman  and  all  proprieties.  He 
threw  down  the  hideous  bit  of  paper 
and  jumped  to  his  feet  and  paced  about 
the  room  in  his  excitement.  "  He  has 
come,  confound  him  !  "  he  cried.  Not 
gone,  that  would  have  been  nothing 
but  good  news — but  this  was  bad 
indeed,  something  unthought  of,  never 
calculated  upon  ;  worse  than  any  mis- 
giving he  had  ever  entertained.  He 
had  been  uneasy  about  the  child,  the 
boy  whom  everybody  would  assume  to 
be  the  heir ;  but  John — that  John 
should  return — that  he  should  be 
there  before  his  father  died — this  com- 
bination was  beyond  all  his  fears. 

After  he  had  got  over  the  first  shock 
he  took  up  the  telegram  to  see  what  it 
was  that  "  John  Musgrave,  Penning  - 
hame  Castle," — the  name  written  out 
in  full  letters,  almost  with  ostentation, 
no  concealing  or  disguising  of  it,  though 
it  was  a  name  lying  under  the  utmost 
penalties  of  the  law — had  to  say  to  him. 
"  My  little  daughter  has  been  decoyed  away 
under  pretence  that  her  brother  was  in 
danger.  You  can  reach  the  place  to-day. 
I  cannot.  Will  you  serve  me  for  once, 
and  go  and  telegraph  if  she  is  safe  ?  " 
This  was  the  communication.  Ran- 
dolph's breast  swelled  high  with  what 
he  felt  to  be  natural  indignation.  "  I 
serve  him  !  I  go  a  hundred  miles  or 
so  for  his  convenience.  I  will  see 
him  —  hanged  first. ' '  Hanged  —  yes, 
that  was  what  would  happen  to  the 
fellow  if  he  was  caught,  if  everybody 
were  not  so  weakly  indulgent,  /so  ready 
to  defeat  the  law.  And  this  was  the 
man  who  ventured  to  bid  him  "  serve 
him  for  once,"  treating  him,  Randolph, 
a  clergyman,  a  person  irreproachable, 
in  this  cavalier  fashion.  What  had  he 
to  do  with  it  if  the  little  girl  had  been 


48 


Young  Musyrave. 


decoyed  away  ?  No  doubt  the  little 
monkey,  if  all  were  known,  was  ready 
enough  to  go.  He  hoped  in  his  heart 
they  were  both  gone  together,  and 
would  never  be  heard  of  more. 

When  he  came  as  far  as  this,  how- 
ever, Randolph  pulled  himself  up  short. 
After  all,  he  was  not  a  bad  man,  to 
rejoice  in  the  afflictions  of  his  neigh- 
bours ;  he  only  wished  them  out  of 
his  way  ;  he  did  not  wish  any  harm  to 
them ;  and  he  felt  that  what  he  had 
just  said  in  his  heart  was  wicked,  and 
might  bring  down  a  "  judgment."  To 
come  the  length  of  a  wish  that  your 
neighbour  may  not  thrive  is  a  thing 
that  no  respectable  person  should  allow 
himself  to  do;  a  little  grudging  of 
your  neighbour's  prosperity,  a  little 
secret  satisfaction  in  his  trouble  is  a 
different  matter — but  articulately  to 
wish  him  harm  !  This  brought  him 
to  himself  and  made  him  aware  of  his 
wife's  eyes  fixed  upon  him  with  some 
anxiety.  She  was  a  gentle  little  believ- 
ing sort  of  woman,  without  any  brains 
to  speak  of,  and  she  thought  dear  Ran- 
dolph's feelings  had  been  too  much  for 
him.  Her  eyes  were  fixed  on  him  with 
devout  sympathy.  How  much  feeling 
he  had,  though  he  did  not  speak  much 
of  it ;  what  strong  affections  he  had  ! 
Randolph  paused  a  little  to  calm  him- 
self down.  These  all-trusting  women 
are  sometimes  an  exasperation  un- 
speakable in  their  innocence,  but  still 
on  the  other  hand,  a  man  must  often 
make  an  effort  not  to  dispel  such 
belief.  He  said,  "  No,  my  dear,  it  is 
not  what  I  thought ;  my  father  is  not 
dead  but  suffering,  which  is  almost 
worse ;  and  my  brother  whom  you  have 
heard  of — who  has  been  such  a  grief  to 
us  all,  has  come  home  unexpectedly — 

"Oh,  Randolph!"  The  innocent 
wife  went  to  him  and  took  his  hand 
and  caressed  it.  "  How  hard  upon 
you  !  How  much  for  you  to  bear ! 
Two  such  troubles  at  once." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  he  said,  accepting  her 
sympathy;  "  and  the  little  boy  whom  I 
told  you  of,  whom  I .  took  to  school : 
well,  he  has  run  away " 


"  Oh.  Randolph,  dear,  what  moun- 
tains of  anxiety  upon  you  !  " 

"You  may  say  so.  I  must  go,  I 
suppose,  and  look  after  this  little 
wretch.  Put  me  up  something  in  the 
little  portmanteau — and  from  thence  I 
suppose  I  had  better  go  on  to  Penning- 
hame  again.  Who  knows  what  trouble 
may  follow  John's  most  ill-advised 
return  ? " 

"  And  they  all  lean  so  on  you,"  said 
the  foolish  wife.  Notwithstanding 
these  dozen  years  of  separation  between 
him  and  his  family,  she  was  able  to 
persuade  herself  of  this,  and  that  he 
was  the  prop  and  saviour  of  his  race. 
There  is  nothing  that  foolish  wives  will 
not  believe. 

Randolph,  however,  wavered  in  his 
decision  after  he  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  go  on.  Why  should  he  go, 
putting  himself  to  so  much  trouble  at 
John's  order  1  He  changed  his  mind 
half  a  dozen  times  in  succession. 
Finally,  however,  he  did  go,  sending 
two  messages  back  on  his  way,  one 
to  John,  the  other  to  Mr.  Pen.  To 
John  he  said  :  "  I  am  alarmed  beyond 
measure  to  see  your  name.  Is  it  safe 
for  you  to  be  there  ?  Know  nothing 
about  little  girl,  but  hear  that  little  boy 
has  run  away  from  school,  and  am 
going  to  see."  Thus  he  planted,  or 
meant  to  plant,  an  additional  sting  in 
his  brother's  breast.  And  as  he 
travelled  along  in  the  afternoon,  going 
to  see  after  Nello,  his  own  exasperation 
and  resentment  became  so  hot  within 
him,  that  when  he  arrived  at  the 
junction,  he  sent  another  message,  to 
Mr.  Pen.  He  did  not  perhaps  quite 
know  what  he  was  doing.  He  was 
furious  with  disappointment  and  an- 
noyance and  confusion,  feeling  him- 
self cheated,  thrust  aside,  put  out  of 
the  place  which  he  ought  to  have 
filled.  Nello  would  have  had  harsh 
justice  had  he  been  brought  before  him 
at  such  a  moment.  "Little  trouble- 
some, effeminate  baby,  good  for  no- 
thing, and  now  to  be  ruined .  in  every 
way !  But  I  wash  my  hands  of 
him,"  Randolph  said. 


Young  Musgrave. 


49 


CHAPTER    XX  XT. 
ANOTHER    HELPER. 

ON  that  same  morning  when  so  many 
things  occurred,  young  Lord  Stanton 
was  seated  in  the  library  at  Stanton, 
with  a  great  deal  of  business  to  do. 
He  had  letters  to  write,  he  had  the 
accounts  of  his  agent  to  look  over,  and 
a  hundred  other  very  pressing  matters 
which  demanded  his  close  attention. 
Perhaps  it  was  only  natural  in  these 
circumstances  that  Geoff  should  be 
unusually  idle,  and  not  at  all  disposed 
to  tackle  to  his  work.  Generally  he 
was  so  much  interested  in  what  was 
real  work  that  he  did  it  heartily,  glad 
of  the  honest  compulsion  ;  but  on  this 
morning  he  was  unsettled,  and  not  in 
his  usual  mood  of  industry.  He 
watched  the  leaves  dropping  from  the 
trees  outside,  he  listened  idly  to  the 
sounds  within ;  he  scribbled  on  the 
margin  of  his  accounts,  now  a  bit  of 
Latin  verse  (for  Mr.  Tritton  was  an 
elegant  scholar),  now  a  grotesque 
face,  anything  but  the  steady  calcula- 
tions he  ought  to  have  made.  Now 
and  then  a  sudden  recollection  of  some- 
thing he  had  read  would  cross  his 
mind,  when  he  would  get .  up  in  the 
middle  of  a  letter  to  seek  the  book  in 
which  he  thought  it  was  and  verify  his 
recollection  on  the  spot,  a  thing  he 
would  not  have  taken  the  trouble  to 
do  had  that  floating  recollection  had 
any  connection  with  the  work  in  which 
he  professed  to  be  engaged.  In  short 
he  was  entirely  idle,  distracted  and 
desceuvre.  Mr,  Tritton  was  reading  to 
Lady  Stanton  in  her  morning  room.  It 
was  early  ;  the  household  were  all 
busy  and  occupied,  all  except  the  young 
master  of  it  who  could  not  settle  to 
his  work. 

He  was  sitting  thus  when  his  easily 
distracted  attention  was  caught  by  a 
movement  outside,  not  like  anything 
that  could  be  made  by  bird  or  dog,  the 
only  two  living  creatures  likely  to  be 
there  so  close  to  his  window.  It  was 
the  same  window  through  which  he 

No.  217. — VOL.  xxxvu. 


had  gone  out  the  evening  he  made  his 
night  expedition  to  the  hills.  The 
sound  caught  his  attention  as  any- 
thing would  have  done  that  gave  him 
an  excuse  for  raising  his  head  from  the 
letters  he  was  now  trying  to  write, 
having  given  up  the  accounts  in 
despair.  When  he  saw  a  shadow 
skirt  the  grass,  Geoff  watched  with 
eager  interest  for  what  would  follow — 
then  there  was  a  pause,  and  he  had 
bent  over  the  letter  again  thinking  it 
a  mere  trick  of  fancy,  when  a  sound 
close  to  him  made  him  start  and  look 
up.  Some  one  was  standing  with  his 
back  to  the  morning  light,  standing 
across  the  window  sill  with  one  foot 
within  the  room.  Geoff  started  to  his 
feet  with  momentary  alarm.  "  Who 
are  you  ?  Ah  !  is  it  Bampfylde  ?  "  he 
said. 

"  Just  me,  my  young  lord.  May  I 
come  in  and  speak  a  word  1 " 

"Certainly — come  in.  But  why 
not  go  to  the  front  door  and  come  in 
like  any  one  else  ?  You  do  not  sup- 
pose I  should  have  shut  my  doors  on 
you  ?  " 

"  Maybe,  no  ;  but  I'm  not  a  visitor 
for  the  like  of  you.  I'm  little  credit 
about  a  grand  house.  I've  not  come 
here  for  nothing  now,  but  to  ask  you 
a  service." 

"  What  is  it,  Bampfylde  ?  If  I  can 
do  anything  for  you  I  will." 

"  It's  not  exactly  for  me,  and  you 
can  do  it  if  you  will,  my  young  lord. 
It's  something  I'm  hindered  from 
doing.  It's  for  the  young  ones  at  the 
castle,  that  you  know  of.  Both  the 
bairns  are  in  trouble,  so  far  as  I  can 
judge.  I  gave  the  little  boy  a  carrier 
to  let  off  if  he  wanted  help.  Me, 
and  still  more  the  old  woman,  we 
misdoubted  that  brother.  And  nigh  a 
week  ago  the  carrier  came  home,  but 
I  was  away,  on — on  a  hard  job,  that 
I'm  on  still ;  and  she  did  not  under- 
stand. And  when  I  saw  her  and  told 
her  yesterday  what  the  sign  was,  what 
does  the  old  woman  do  but  tell  the 
little  lady — the  little  miss — and  so  far 
as  I  can  tell  she's  away.  The  crea- 
ture herself,  a  flower  of  a  thing,  no 

E 


50 


Young  Musgrave. 


bigger  than  my  arm,  the  very  image 
of  our  Lily — her — that  atom — she's 
away  to  deliver  her  brother,  my  young 
lord,"  said  the  vagi-ant,  leaning  against 
the  window.  "  I'm  most  worn  out  by 
the  same  soi't  o'  work.  There's  far  too 
much  of  that  bsen  done  among  us  one 
way  and  another ;  and  she's  away  now 
on  the  same  errand — to  save  her 
brother.  It's  laughable  if  you  think 
on't,"  he  said,  with  a  curious  gurgle  in 
his  throat  of  forlorn  ridicule.  Geoff, 
who  had  leaned  forward  at  the  name 
of  the  children,  saw  that  Bampfylde 
was  very  pale  and  worn,  his  clothes 
in  less  order  than  usual,  and  an  air  of 
utter  weariness  and  harassment  about 
him.  He  looked  like  a  man  who  had 
not  slept  or  undressed  for  days. 

"  Has  anything  new  happened  ?  " 
Geoff  asked  hurriedly.  "  Of  course  I 
will  do  whatever  I  can  for  the 
children — but  tell  me  first — has  any- 
thing happened  with  you  1 " 

"Ay,  plenty,"  said  the  rough  fellow 
with  a  great  sigh,  which  was  not  senti- 
ment but  fatigue.  "  If  that  will  not 
vex  you,  my  young  lord,  saving  your 
presence,  I'll  sit  down  and  rest  my 
bones  while  I  talk  to  you,  for  I'm 
near  dead  with  tiredness.  He's  given 
us  the  slip — I  cannot  tell  you  how. 
Many  a  fear  we've  had,  but  this  time 
it's  come  true.  Tuesday  was  a  week  he 
got  away,  the  day  after  I'd  been  to 
see  about  the  little  lad.  We  thought 
he  was  but  hanging  about  the  fells  in 
corners  that  none  but  him  and  me 
know,  as  he  once  did  before,  and  I  got 
him  back.  But  it's  worse  than  that. 
Lord  !  there's  many  an  honest  man 
lost  on  the  fells  in  the  mists,  that  has 
a  wife  and  bairns  looking  to  him. 
Would  it  not  be  more  natural  to  take 
the  likes  of  him,  and  let  the  father  of 
a  family  go  free  ?  I  cannot  touch  him, 
but  there's  no  law  to  bind  the 
Almighty.  But  all  that's  little  to  the 
purpose.  He's  loose  ranging  about  the 
country  and  me  on  his  heels.  I've  all 
but  had  him  three  or  four  times,  but 
he's  aye  given  me  the  slip." 

"  But  this  is  terrible ;  it  is  a  danger 
for  the  whole  country,"  said  Geoff. 


"The  children!"  The  young  man 
shuddered,  he  did  not  realise  that  the 
children  were  at  a  distance.  He  thought 
of  nothing  more  than  perhaps  an  ex- 
pedition among  the  fells  for  Lilias — 
and  what  if  she  should  fall  into  the 
madman's  hands  ?  "  You  should  have 
help — you  should  rouse  the  country," 
he  said. 

"  I'll  no  do  that.  Please  God,  I'll 
get  him  yet,  and  this  will  be  the  end," 
said  Bampfylde  solemnly.  "  She  can- 
not make  up  her  mind  to  it  even  now. 
She's  infatuate  with  him.  I  thought 
it  would  have  ended  when  you  put 
your  hand  into  the  web,  my  young 
lord." 

"It  is  my  fault,"  said  Geoff.  "I 
should  have  done  something  more ; 
but  then  Mr.  Musgrave  fell  ill,  and  I 
have  been  waiting.  If  he  dies,  every- 
thing must  be  gone  into.  I  was  but 
waiting." 

"  I  am  not  blaming  you.  She 
cannot  bide  to  hear  a  word,  and  so 
she's  been  all  this  long  time.  Now 
and  then  her  heart  will  speak  for  the 
others — them  that  suffer  and  have 
suffered — but  it  aye  goes  back  to  him. 
And  I  don't  blame  her  neither,"  said 
Bampfylde.  "  It's  aye  her  son  to  her 
that  was  a  gentleman  and  her  pride." 
He  had  placed  himself  not  on  the 
comfortable  chair  which  Geoff  had 
pushed  forward  for  him,  but  on  the 
hard  seat  formed  by  the  library  steps, 
where  he  sat  with  his  elbows  on  his 
knees,  and  his  head  supported  in  his 
hands,  thus  reposing  himself  upon 
himself.  "  It's  good  to  rest,"  he  said, 
with  something  of  the  garrulousness 
of  weakness,  glad  in  his  exhaustion  to 
stretch  himself  out,  as  it  were,  body 
and  soul,  and  ease  his  mind  after  long 
silence.  He  almost  forgot  even  his 
mission  in  the  charm  of  this  momen- 
tary repose.  "  Poor  woman  !  "  he 
added,  pathetically  ;  "  I've  never 
blamed  her.  This  was  her  one 
pride,  and  how  it  has  ended — if  it 
were  but  ended  !  No,"  he  went  on 
after  a  pause,  "  please  God,  there  will 
be  no  harm.  He's  no  murdering- 
mad,  like  some  poor  criminals  that 


Young  Musgrave. 


51 


have  done  less  harm  than  him.  It's 
the  solitary  places  he  flees  to,  not  the 
haunts  o'  men :  we're  brothers  so 
far  as  that's  counting.  And  I  drop 
a  word  of  warning  as  I  go.  I  tell  the 
folks  that  I  hear  there's  a  poor  crea- 
ture ranging  the  country  that  is  bereft 
of  his  senses,  and  a  man  after  him. 
I'm  the  man,"  said  Barnpfylde,  with 
a  low  laugh,  "  but  I  tell  nobody  that ; 
and  oh  the  dance  he's  led  me  !  "  Then 
rousing  himself  with  an  effort,  "  But 
I'm  losing  time,  and  you're  losing 
time,  my  young  lord.  If  you  would  be 
a  help  to  them  you  should  be  away. 
Get  out  your  horse  or  your  trap  to 
take  you  to  the  train." 

"  Where  has  she  gone  —  by  the 
train?" 

"  Ay  —  and  a  long  road.  She's 
away  there  last  night,  the  atom,  all 
by  herself.  That's  our  blood,"  said 
Bampfylde,  with  again  the  low  laugh, 
which  was  near  tears.  "  But  I  need 
not  say  our  blood  neither,  for  her 
father's  suffered  the  most  of  all,  poor 
gentleman — the  most  of  all !  Look 
here,  my  young  lord,"  he  said,  sud- 
denly, rising  up,  "  if  I  sit  there  longer 
I'll  go  to  sleep,  and  forget  everything ; 
and  we've  no  time  for  sleep,  neither 
you  nor  me.  Here's  the  place. 
There's  a  train  at  half-past  eleven 
that  gets  there  before  dark.  You 
cannot  get  back  to-night ;  you'll  have 
to  leave  word  that  you  cannot  get 
back  to-night.  And  go  now ;  go  for 
the  love  of  God  !  " 

Geoff  did  not  hesitate  ;  he  rang  the 
bell  hastily,  and  ordered  his  dog- cart 
to  be  ready  at  once,  and  wrote  two 
or  three  lines  of  explanation  to  his 
mother.  And  he  ordered  the  servant, 
who  stared  at  his  strange  companion, 
to  bring  some  food  and  wine.  But 
Bampfylde  shook  his  head.  "  Not 
so,"  he  said  ;  "  not  so.  Bit  nor  sup  I 
could  not  take  here.  We  that  once 
made  this  house  desolate,  it's  not  for 
us  to  eat  in  it  or  drink  in  it.  You're 
o'er  good,  o'er  good,  my  young  lord  ; 
but  I'll  not  forget  the  offer,"  he 
added,  the  water  rushing  to  his 
eyes.  He  stood  in  front  of  the  light, 


stretching  his  long  limbs  in  the 
languor  of  exhaustion,  a  smile  upon 
his  face. 

"  You  have  overdone  yourself, 
Bampfylde.  You  are  not  fit  for  any 
more  exertion.  What  more  can  you 
do  than  you  have  done  ?  I'll  send 
out  all  the  men  about  the  house, 
and " 

"Nay,  but  I'll  go  to  the  last — as 
long  as  I  can  crawl.  Mind  you  the 
young  ones,"  he  said;  "and  for  all 
you're  doing,  and  for  your  good  heart, 
God  bless  you,  my  young  lord  !  " 

It   seemed  to  Geoff  like  a   dream 
when  he  found  himself  standing  alone 
in  the  silent  room  among  his  books, 
with  neither  sight  nor  sound  of  any 
one  near.     Bampfylde  disappeared,  as 
he  had  come,  in  a  moment,  vanishing 
among  the  shrubberies ;  and  the  young 
man  found  himself  charged  with  a  com- 
mission he  did  not  understand,  with 
a  piece  of  dirty  paper  in  his  hand, 
upon   which   an  address   was   rudely 
scrawled.     What  was  he  to  do  at  this 
school,  a  day's  journey  off,  about  which 
he  knew   nothing  1     He   would    have 
laughed   at  the  wild   errand   had   he 
not  been  too  deeply  impressed  by  his 
visitor's  appearance  and  manner  to  be 
amused  at  anything.     But  wild  as  it 
was,  Geoff  was  resolved  to   carry  it 
out.     Even  the  vaguest  intimation  of 
danger  to  Lilias  would  have  sufficed  to 
rouse  him,  but  he  had  scarcely  taken 
that  thought  into  his  mind.    He  could 
think  of  nothing  but  Bampfylde,  and 
this  with  a  pang  of  sympathy  and  in- 
terest which  he  could  scarcely  explain 
to  himself.    As  he  drove  along  towards 
the    Stanton   station,  the   first    from 
Pennington,  his    mind   was    entirely 
occupied  with  this  rough  fellow.  Some- 
thing tragic  about  him,  in  his  exhaus- 
tion, in  the  effusion  of  his  weakness, 
had  gone  to  Geoff's  heart.     He  looked 
eagerly   for   traces   of  him  —  behind 
every  bush,  in  every  cross  road.     And 
to  increase  his    anxiety,  the   servant 
who  accompanied  him  began  to  enter- 
tain him  with  accounts  of  a  madman 
who  had  escaped  from  an  asylum,  and 
who  kept  the  country  in  alarm.    "Has 

E  2 


52 


Young  Mv.sgrave. 


he  been  seen  anywhere  ?  has  he  harmed 
any  one  ?  "  Geoff  asked,  eagerly.  But 
there  were  no  details  to  be  had ; 
nothing  but  the  general  statement. 
Geoff  gave  the  man  orders  to  warn 
the  gamekeepers  and  out-door  ser- 
vants, and  to  have  him  secured  if 
possible.  It  was  scarcely  loyal  per- 
haps to  poor  Bampfylde,  who  had 
trusted  him.  Thus  he  had  no  thought 
but  Bampfylde  in  his  mind  when  he 
found  himself  in  the  train,  rushing 
along  on  the  errand  he  did  not  under- 
stand. It  was  a  quick  train,  the  one 
express  of  the  day ;  and  even  at  the 
junction  there  was  only  a  few  minutes 
to  wait :  very  unlike  the  vigil  that 
poor  little  Lilias  had  held  there  in 
the  middle  of  night  under  the  dreary 
flitkering  of  the  lamp.  Geoff  knew 
nothing  of  this ;  but  by  dint  of  think- 
ing he  had  evolved  something  like  a 
just  idea  of  the  errand  on  which  he 
was  going.  Lilias  had  been  warned 
that  her  brother  was  not  happy,  and 
had  gone,  like  a  little  Quixote,  to  re- 
lieve him.  Geoff  could  even  form  an 
idea  to  himself  of  the  pre-occupation 
of  the  house  with  the  Squire's  illness, 
which  would  close  all  ears  to  Lilias 's 
appeal  about  Nello's  fancied  unhap- 
piness.  Little  nuisance  !  Geoff  him- 
self felt  disposed  to  say — thinking  any 
unhappiness  that  could  happen  to 
Nello  of  much  less  importance  than 
the  risk  of  Lilias.  But  he  had  not, 
of  course,  the  least  idea  of  Kello's 
flight.  He  arrived  at  the  station 
about  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
adding  another  bewilderment  to  the 
solitary  official  there,  who  had  been 
telegraphed  to  from  Penninghame,  and 
already  that  day  had  been  favoured 
by  two  interviews  with  Mr.  Swan. 
"  A  young  lady  ?  I  wish  all  young 
ladies  were —  Here's  a  message 
about  her ;  and  the  schoolmaster,  he's 
been  at  me  till  I  am  sick  of  my  life. 
What  young  lady  could  there  be  here  ? 
Do  you  think  I'm  a-hiding  of  her]" 
he  cried,  with  that  instinctive  suspi- 
cion of  being  held  responsible  which 
is  so  strong  in  his  class.  Geoff,  how- 
ever, elicited  by  degrees  all  that  there 


was  to  find  out,  and  discovered  at  the 
same  time  that  the  matter  was  much 
more  serious  than  he  supposed.  The 
little  boy  had  run  away  from  school ; 
the  little  girl,  evidently  coming  to 
meet  him,  had  disappeared  with  him. 
It  was  supposed  that  they  must 
have  made  for  the  railway,  as  the 
woman  in  the  cottage  close  by  had 
confessed  to  having  given  them  break- 
fast ;  but  they  had  disappeared  from 
her  ken,  so  that  she  half  thought 
they  had  been  ghost-children,  with  no 
reality  in  them ;  and  though  the 
country  had  been  scoured  everywhere, 
neither  they,  nor  any  trace  of  them, 
were  to  be  found. 

This  was  the  altogether  unsatis- 
factory ground  upon  which  Geoff  had 
to  work,  and  at  five  o'clock  on  an 
October  afternoon  there  is  but  little 
time  for  detailed  investigation  of  a 
country.  His  eye  turned,  as  that  of 
Lilias  had  done,  to  the  wood.  It  was 
the  place  in  which  she  would  naturally 
take  refuge.  Had  the  wood  been  ex- 
amined, he  asked.  Yes,  every  corner 
of  it.  Geoff  was  at  his  wits'  end,  and 
did  not  know  what  to  do ;  he  went 
down  the  road  where  Lilias  had  gone 
in  the  morning,  and  talked  to  the 
woman,  who  told  him  a  moving  story 
of  the  tired  pair,  and  declared  that  she 
would  not  have  let  them  go,  seeing 
very  well  that  they  were  a  little  lady 
and  gentleman,  but  that  they  had 
stolen  away  when  her  back  was 
turned.  Geoff  stood  at  the  cottage 
door  gazing  round  him,  when  he 
saw  something  that  no  one  else 
had  noticed,  a  small  matter  enough. 
Caught  upon  the  hedge,  which  reached 
close  to  the  cottage,  there  was  a 
shred  of  blue — the  merest  rag,  a  few 
threads,  nothing  more — such  an  almost 
invisible  indication  as  a  savage  might 
leave  to  enable  his  companions  to  track 
him — a  thing  that  could  be  seen  only 
by  instructed  eyes.  Geoff's  eyes  were 
inexperienced,  but  they  were  keen ; 
and  ho  knew  the  colour  of  Lilias' s 
dress,  which  the  other  searchers  were 
not  aware  of.  He  disentangled  the 
threads  carefully  from  the  twig.  One 


Young  Musgrave. 


53 


long  hair,  and  that  too  was  Lilias's 
colour,  had  caught  on  the  same  thorn. 
This  seemed  to  him  a  trace  unmis- 
takable, notwithstanding  that  the 
woman  of  the  cottage  immediately 
claimed  it.  "  Dear,  I  did  not  know 
that  I  had  torn  my  best  blue  dress," 
she  said,  with  genuine  alarm.  Geoff, 
however,  left  her  abruptly,  and  fol- 
lowed out  his  clue.  He  hastened  by 
the  footpath  behind  the  hedge  towards 
the  wood.  It  was  the  natural  place 
for  Lilias  to  be.  By  this  time  the 
young  man  had  forgotten  everything 
except  the  girl,  who  was  at  once  a 
little  child  appealing  to  all  his  ten- 
derest  sympathies,  and  a  little  visionary 
princess  to  whom  he  had  vowed  him- 
self. She  was  both  in  the  combination 
of  the  moment — a  tired  child  whom  he 
could  almost  carry  away  in  his  arms, 
who  would  not  be  afraid  of  him,  or 
shrink  from  these  brotherly  arms ;  but, 
at  the  same  time,  the  little  mother- 
woman,  the  defender  and  protector  of 
one  more  helpless  than  herself.  Geoff's 
heart  swelled  with  a  kind  of  heavenly 
enthusiasm  and  love.  Kever  could 
there  have  been  a  purer  passion.  He 
hurried  through  the  wood,  and  through 
the  wood,  searching  in  all  its  glades 
and  dells,  peering  into  the  very  hol- 
lows of  the  old  trees.  There  was 
nothing  :  was  there  nothing  ?  Not 
a  movement,  not  a  sound,  except  the 
birds  chirping,  the  rush  of  a  rabbit  or 
squirrel,  the  flutter  of  the  leaves  in  the 
evening  air.  For  it  was  evening  by 
this  time,  that  could  not  be  denied  ;  the 
last,  long,  slanting  rays  of  the  sun  were 
sloping  along  the  trunks  and  roots  of 
the  trees,  and  the  mossy  greenness  that 
covered  them.  The  day  was  over  in 
which  a  man  could  work,  and  night — 
night  that  would  chill  the  children 
to  the  heart,  and  drive  them  wild 
with  fear — desolate,  dark  night,  full 
of  visionary  terrors,  and  also  real 
dangers,  was  coming.  Geoff  had  made 
up  his  mind  certainly  that  they  were 
there.  He  did  not  think  of  a  magi- 
cian's cave  or  a  hermit's  cell,  as  Lilias 
had  done,  but  only  whether  there  was 
some  little  hut  anywhere,  where  they 


could  have  found  refuge — a  hollow, 
unknown  to  him,  where  they  might 
have  hid  themselves,  not  knowing  a 
friend  was  near.  The  sun  had  lit  up 
an  illumination  in  the  west,  and  shone 
through  the  red  and  yellow  leaves 
with  reflections  of  colour  softer  and 
more  varying,  but  still  more  brilliant 
than  their  own.  The  world  seemed  all 
ablaze  between  the  two,  with  crimson 
and  gold — autumn  sun  above,  autumn 
foliage  below.  Then  tone  by  tone, 
and  colour  by  colour  died  out  from 
the  skies,  and  the  soft  yet  cold  gray 
of  the  evening  took  possession  of  all. 
The  paths  of  the  wood  seemed  to  grow 
ghostly  in  the  gathering  dusk,  the 
colour  stole  out  of  the  trees,  the  very 
sky  seemed  to  drop  lower  as  the  night 
gathered  in.  Geoff  walked  about  in  a 
kind  of  despair.  He  called  them,  but 
there  came  no  answer ;  he  seemed  to 
himself  to  poke  into  every  corner,  into 
the  damp  depths  where  the  cold  dew 
seemed  to  ooze  out  from  the  ground, 
weighing  down  every  leaflet.  He  was 
sure  they  were  there.  Must  they  spend 
the  night  in  the  dark,  and  be  frozen  and 
frightened  to  death  before  the  morning? 
Geoff's  heart  was  full  of  anxiety  and 
pity.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  must 
stay  there  to  keep  them  company, 
whether  he  could  find  them  or  not. 

When  all  at  once  he  heard  a  sound 
like  a  low  sob.  It  seemed  to  come 
from  the  ground  close  to  where  he 
was  standing,  but  he  could  see  nothing 
but  a  little  tangle  of  wild  brambles, 
long  branches  with  still  a  solitary  berry 
here  and  there,  the  leaves  scanty, 
scarlet  and  brown  with  the  frost.  They 
were  all  clustered  about  the  trunk 
of  a  big  tree,  a  little  thicket,  prickly 
and  impregnable,  but  close  to  the  path. 
And  was  it  the  breathing  of  the  night 
air  only,  or  some  wild  creature  in 
the  brushwood,  or  human  respiration 
that  came  soft,  almost  indistinguish- 
able in  the  soft  murmur  of  the  wood  1 
He  stood  still  scarcely  venturing  him- 
self to  breathe,  so  intent  was  he  to 
listen ;  and  by  and  by  he  heard  the 
sound  again.  A  child's  sob,  the  soft 
pathetic  reverberation  of  a  sob,  such  as 


54 


'Young  Musgrave. 


continues  to  come  after  the  weeping  is 
over.  With  trembling  eagerness  yet 
caution,  Geoff  put  aside  the  long 
tangles  of  the  bramble  which  fell  in  a 
kind  of  arch.  It  was  a  hard  piece  of 
work,  and  had  to  be  done  with  caution 
not  to  disturb  the  poor  little  nestlings, 
if  nestlings  there  were.  Then  Geoff 
disclosed  to  the  waning  light  the 
prettiest  pathetic  picture.  It  was  not 
the  same  green  hollow  in  which  the 
children  had  first  taken  refuge.  They 
had  been  roused  by  the  sound  of  pas- 
sengers through  the  wood,  and  the 
voices  of  the  people  who  were  search- 
ing for  themselves,  and  had  woke  up 
in  fright.  When  these  noises  ceased 
they  had  strayed  deeper  into  the  wood 
to  another  and  safer  shelter,  Nello 
being  too  frightened  and  miserable  to 
go  on  as  Lilias  wished.  At  last  they 
had  found  this  refuge  under  the 
bramble  bushes  where  nobody  surely 
could  ever  find  them,  meaning  to  lie 
there  all  day  and  creep  out  at  night 
to  continue  their  journey.  Lilias 
had  seated  herself  first,  spreading  out 
her  skirt  to  protect  her  brother  from 
the  damp.  There,  lying  with  his  head 
and  shoulders  supported  on  her  lap, 
he  had  gone  to  sleep  again,  while 
Lilias  waked  and  pondered ;  very 
anxious,  frightened  too,  and  dissatis- 
fied with  the  loss  of  time.  She  sat 
erect  supporting  Nello,  and  gazed  up 


at  the  dark  figure  in  the  twilight 
with  alarmed  eyes,  which  seemed  to 
grow  larger  and  larger  as  they  shone 
in  a  passion  of  terror  through  the 
long  tangles  of  the  bush.  Lilias  had 
covered  her  brother  with  her  shawl — 
she  drew  it  over  him  now,  covering 
the  white  little  face  on  her  arm. 
"  What  do  you  want  with  me  ?  I 
am  only  resting.  There  is  no  one 
here  to  do  any  harm,"  she  said,  with 
the  sob  coming  again  in  spite  of  her. 
She  thought  it  was  the  cruel  school- 
master, the  more  cruel  uncle  who  had 
condemned  Nello  to  so  many  sufferings. 
She  held  her  arms  over  him  protect- 
ing him — resolute  not  to  let  him  be 
taken  from  her.  "  Oh,  do  not  meddle 
with  me !  "  she  went  on,  growing  more 
and  more  desperate.  "  I  have  some 
money  I  will  give  you,  if  you  will 
only — only  leave  me  alone.  There  is — 
nobody — but  me." 

Oh  that  sob !  if  she  could  only 
swallow  it  down  and  talk  to  him,  this 
robber  chief,  this  Robin  Hood,  as  if 
she  were  not  afraid ;  for  sometimes 
these  men  are  kind  and  do  not  hurt 
the  weak.  Lilias  gazed,  nothing  but 
her  eyes  appearing,  glowing  through 
the  gathering  shade :  then  suddenly 
threw  her  brother  off  her  lap  in  a 
transport  of  wild  delight.  "  Oh  Nello, 
Nello,  Nello  !  "  she  cried,  till  the  wood 
rang.  "It  is  Mr.  Geoff  !  " 


To  be  continued. 


55 


THE    DISCOVERIES    AT    OLYMPIA. 


' '  Here,  son  of  Saturn !  was  thy  fav'rite  throne, 
Mightiest  of  many  such !    Hence  let  me 

trace 

The  latent  grandeur  of  thy  dwelling-place." 

BYBON. 

THE  English  press  has  taken  kindly 
notice  of  the  excavations  begun  two 
years  ago  by  the  German  Empire  in 
the  plain  of  ancient  Olympia ;  but  it 
is  not  easy  to  form  from  such  scattered 
materials  a  connected  idea  of  what  has 
actually  been  rescued  from  a  slumber 
of  over  1,000  years;  and  thus  while 
universal  attention  has  been  attracted 
by  the  discovery  of  Schliemann's  trea- 
sures, too  little  has  been  known  about 
the  explorations  at  Olympia  to  excite 
interest  even  among  cultivated  people. 
And  yet  the  Elgin  marbles  themselves 
were  a  scarcely  greater  gain  to  Europe 
than  these  discoveries  at  Olympia ;  and 
the  circumstances  connected  with  them 
are  so  singular  and  curious  as  to 
throw  an  entirely  new  light  upon  a 
period  of  history  hitherto  enveloped  in 
complete  obscurity. 

Olympia  differs  essentially  from  all 
other  places  of  antiquity  which  have 
been  restored  to  the  light  of  day.  It 
was  neither  a  city  like  Ephesus  or 
Pompeii ;  a  solitary  monument  like  the 
Mausoleum  at  Halicarnassus,  or  the 
Temple  of  Apollo  at  Phigaleia;  nor  a 
city  of  the  dead  like  those  of  Etruria 
and  some  others  lately  discovered  in 
Greece.  It  contained  none  but  sacred 
buildings  and  monuments,  and  was  the 
richest  and  most  celebrated  of  all  the 
ancient  Greek  sites  consecrated  to  the 
worship  of  the  gods  and  to  national 
festivities.  We  have  nothing  like  it 
in  modern  times.  When  we  wish  to 
assemble  our  own  countrymen,  or  re- 
presentatives from  many  nations,  to 
some  great  Exhibition  or  Festival,  we 
either  erect  a  new  building  or  adapt 
and  decorate  one  already  in  existence. 
After  the  festival  is  over,  the  building 


itself  retains  no  trace  of  solemnity. 
Thus  it  was  not  only  in  point  of  art 
that  the  ancients  had  the  advantage 
over  us ;  they  had  permanent  establish- 
ments always  ready  for  a  festival  on  a 
grand  scale,  and  peculiarly  fitted  for 
the  exhibition  of  works  of  art  of  every 
description. 

Various  reasons  might  be  assigned 
for  this  difference,  but  we  cannot  en- 
ter here  into  the  social  and  political 
aspects  of  the  subject;  suffice  it  to 
say  that  such  places  as  Delphi,  the 
Isthmus  of  Corinth,  and  above  all 
Olympia,  were  not  only  devoted  to 
popular  festivals,  but  were  also  the 
centres  of 'a  religious  worship,  and  un- 
interruptedly recognised  as  such  by 
all  Greeks  from  the  remotest  anti- 
quity. They  may  be  compared  to  festal 
halls  always  in  readiness  for  guests, 
and  the  very  sound  of  their  names 
calls  up  before  us  a  picture  of  the 
lofty  temples,  solemn  and  silent ;  the 
costly  gifts,  symbols  of  an  intimate  in- 
tercourse between  the  gods  and  men, 
not  only  filling  the  temple,  but  standing 
under  the  open  sky  like  the  creations 
of  Nature  herself ;  the  pillared  halls, 
the  shady  groves  in  whose  delicious  twi- 
light spring  forth  refreshing  streams, 
while  the  incense  from  the  altars  rises 
in  clouds  towards  heaven.  And  such 
was  Olympia,  which  is  now  being 
systematically  explored,  and  of  which 
indeed  the  greater  part  has  already 
been  laid  bare. 

It  was  situated  on  the  western  side 
of  the  Peloponnesus,  in  Elis,  a  tract 
of  land  unlike  any  ether  in  Greece, 
cut  off  from  the  surrounding  country 
by  a  range  of  hills,  and  at  some  dis- 
tance from  the  highroad,  a  circum- 
stance which  more  than  anything  con- 
tributed to  preserve  its  sanctity  in 
the  midst  of  the  commotions  and  party 
quarrels  so  common  in  Greece. 

The  plain  of   Olympia   lies   in  the 


56 


TJie  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


pleasant  valley  of  Alpheus,  in  an 
angle  formed  by  the  rivers  Alpheus 
on  the  south  and  Cladeus  on  the  west, 
and  bounded  on  the  north  by  a  hill 
somewhat  like  a  Phrygian  cap,  which 
bore  the  name  of  Cronion,  from  the 
primeval  worship  of  the  father  of  ths 
gods  (Cronos),  which  went  on  there. 
The  extreme  length  of  the  Altis — as 
the  sacred  plain  was  called,  from 
aXaoq,  the  grove  of  Zeus — does  not 
amount  to  more  than  400  metres 
(about  430  yards),  and  its  extreme 
breadth  to  200  metres.  Any  one 
accustomed  to  our  modern  exhibitions 
and  places  of  that  nature  would  be 
astonished  at  the  smallness  of  these 
dimensions,  but  they  are  quite  in 
keeping  with  those  of  other  celebrated 
sites  of  antiquity,  such  as  the  Acro- 
polis at  Athens  and  that  at  Delphi, 
whose  beauty  consists  not  in  absolute 
size  but  in  relative  proportion. 

Zeus  succeeded  to  the  dominion  of 
his  father,  Cronos,  at  Olympia,  and 
indeed  it  was  here  that  he  is  said  to 
have  fought  and  conquered  him.  A 
thunderbolt  in  his  temple  showed  to 
later  ages  the  form  under  which  the 
god  had  manifested  himself,  and  the 
special  origin  of  his  worship,  for  each 
flash  of  lightning  was -looked  upon  as 
a  sacred  sign  from  him. 

The  great  Olympian  festival  rose  by 
degrees  from;  very  small  beginnings. 
The  worship  of  Zeus  on  this  spot 
seems  to  have  been  connected  at  an 
early  date  with  games  or  contests  which 
recurred  at  fixed  intervals ;  but  before 
777  B.C.  all  is  too  uncertain  for  his- 
tory. At  that  date  the  victors  in  the 
races,  then  the  only  form  of  contest, 
first  began  to  be  commemorated ;  the 
games  were  held  every  fifth  year,  and 
the  reckoning  by  Olympiads,  a  period 
of  four  years,  was  started — a  most 
important  fact  in  ancient  chronology. 
In  time  many  other  games  were  added 
to  the  races — in  particular  wrestling 
and  boxing  matches,  chariot-races  with 
two  and  four  horses  (the  most  im- 
portant of  all  the  added  games),  and 
even  competitions  between  trumpeters 
and  heralds.  The  Olympic  games  to 


a  certain  extent  took  the  place  of  our 
public  press.  Before  this  assembly  of 
their  fellow-countrymen,  authors  read 
aloud  their  compositions — Herodotus 
was  the  first  to  do  so — artists  ex- 
hibited their  creations,  and  despotic 
rulers,  such  as  Alexander  the  Great  and 
Flamininus,  announced  anything  they 
wished  to  make  known  to  the  whole 
Hellenes.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
in  the  course  of  centuries  this  plain  be- 
held all  the  great  men  of  Greek  antiquity. 

So  long  as  Olympia  remained  in  the 
hands  of  the  small  neighbouring  state 
of  Pisa,  it  was  a  place  of  inconsider- 
able importance ;  but  when,  in  the 
50th  Olympiad  (about  577  B.C.), 
after  innumerable  feuds,  it  came 
finally  under  the  dominion  of  Elis, 
the  largest  city  in  the  district,  it  en- 
tered upon  a  period  of  exuberance, 
such  as  Athens  alone  equalled,  and  no 
spot  in  the  ancient  world  surpassed. 

It  was  the  Eleans  who  made  Olympia 
an  appropriate  site  for  festivals  on 
a  grand  scale.  They  had  already 
built  the  temple  of  Zeus,  probably  as 
early  as  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  and 
afterwards  (about  430-420  B.C.)  for  its 
completion  and  adornment  engaged  the 
services  of  Phidias  and  his  companions, 
who  had  just  finished  their  work  at 
the  Parthenon,  and  were  at  the  zenith 
of  their  fame.  Phidias  himself  carved 
the  statue  of  Zeus  in  gold  and  ivory,  a 
work  which,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  the  ancients,  gave  a  fresh  impetus  to 
religion,  and  as  a  wonder  of  the  world, 
attracted  the  awestruck  admiration  of 
later  ages.  It  was  not  till  the  final 
overthrow  of  heathendom,  about  the 
beginning  of  the  fourth  century  after 
Christ,  that  this  statue  was  removed 
from  the  place  it  had  occupied  for  over 
800  years  to  Byzantium,  where  it 
perished  not  long  after  in  a  conflagra- 
tion. Phidias's  companions  adorned 
the  entablatures  of  the  temple  with 
bas-reliefs,  and  the  pediment  with 
magnificent  compositions  of  statues 
after  the  manner  of  the  Parthenon, 
and  these,  as  we  shall  presently  show, 
have  fortunately  been  discovered  in  a 
perfectly  recognisable  form. 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


57 


In  the  course  of  time  the  Olympian 
plain  became  a  dwelling-place  for  all 
the  gods.  In  addition  to  the  temple 
of  Zeus,  the  Eleans  consecrated  large 
Doric  temples  to  Hera,  and  the  mother 
of  the  gods,  and  a  sacred  place  for 
Pelops  and  Hippodamia.  To  meet 
the  requirements  of  the  games,  other 
buildings  sprang  up — a  council  hall, 
a  prytaneion,  a  gymnasium,  and  houses 
for  the  priests.  Numerous  gods  also 
had  altars,  as  the  guests  of  Zeus,  for 
it  was  necessary  to  consider  the  re- 
ligious wants  of  each  and  all  among 
the  crowds,  comprising  the  whole  of 
civilised  Greece,  who  during  eleven 
centuries  flocked  here  either  as  spec- 
tators or  competitors ;  and  each  com- 
petitor hoping,  if  the  gods  were 
favourable,  to  receive  the  wild  olive 
wreath,  which  was  the  only  prize  of 
victory  awarded  here.  Any  one  who 
considers  how  highly  the  Greeks  prized 
that  perfection  of  bodily  training 
which  was  required  to  make  a  man 
winner  in  these  contests,  will  under- 
stand how  such  a  victory  cast  a  halo 
over  the  whole  after  life  of  the  victor ; 
how  the  city  which  had  given  him 
birth  would  receive  him  with  almost 
intoxicating  festivities,  and  reward 
him  with  the  highest  permanent 
honours. 

For  this  reason,  states,  princes,  and 
private  persons  vied  with  each  other  in 
showing  honour  to  Olympia  and  the 
Olympian  gods.  The  foot  of  Mount 
Cronion  was  studded  with  treasure- 
houses,  erected  by  various  single  states, 
in  the  form  of  small  temples  filled 
with  statues  and  precious  things  of  all 
kinds ;  while  even  those  who  struck 
the  severest  blows  at  Greece,  such  as 
Philip  of  Macedon  and  Mummius, 
sought  to  propitiate  the  Olympian 
Zeus  by  rich  presents,  an  example 
which  was  followed  by  the  Roman 
emperors.  A  perfect  host  of  statues 
of  Zeus  and  other  deities  were  dedi- 
cated on  different  occasions  by  states 
and  pi'ivate  persons.  One  of  the  most 
characteristic  features  of  this  mag- 
nificent scene  of  temples,  halls,  public 
buildings,  and  monuments  was  formed 


by  the  statues  which  each  victor  at 
the  games  was  privileged  to  erect  on 
the  sacred  plain,  a  privilege  which, 
by  directing  attention  to  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  human  body,  con- 
tributed perhaps  more  than  anything 
else  to  the  perfection  ultimately 
attained  by  Greek  art. 

A  document  of  Pliny's  time  tells 
us  that  the  number  of  statues  at 
Olympia  then  amounted  to  3,000,  and 
there  is  no  ground  for  supposing  this 
to  be  an  exaggeration.  We  know,  from 
inscriptions  and  ancient  authors,  of 
statues  of  victors  erected  during  a 
period  of  900  years,  from  the  sixth  to 
the  229th  Olympiad ;  in  addition  to 
which  we  have  the  testimony  of 
Pausanias  of  Asia  Minor,  who  in  his 
work  of  ten  books,  describing  his 
travels  through  Greece,  about  A. D.  170, 
mentions  nearly  240  statues  of  victors 
at  that  time,  adding  expressly  that  he 
only  notices  the  most  remarkable. 

Nearly  a  fifth  part  of  Pausanias's 
Periegesis  is  devoted  to  Olympia,  and 
we  are  indebted  to  him  more  than  to 
any  other  author  for  enabling  us  to 
understand  at  once  the  meaning  of  the 
remains.  It  seems  almost  providential 
that  this  indefatigable  "Periegetes" 
should  have  drawn  up  an  inventory  as 
it  were  of  the  works  of  more  ancient 
times  existing  at  that  moment  in 
Greece,  for  it  was  not  long  before 
the  storm  of  barbarians  burst  in  upon 
them,  before  triumphant  Christianity 
systematically  destroyed  everything 
connected  with  the  heathen  worship, 
and  before  nature  herself,  by  means  of 
terrible  earthquakes,  seemed  to  con- 
spire with  those  other  elements  to 
complete  the  ruin  of  the  ancient 
world. 

At  the  end  of  the  fourth  century,  394 
A.D.,  a  stringent  law  was  passed,  pro- 
hibiting the  Olympian  games  for  ever  ; 
but  so  indestructible  was  the  attach- 
ment of  Greece  to  the  old  faith,  that 
the  prohibition  had  to  be  re-enacted 
long  afterwards.  And  it  is  probable 
that  the  assemblies  were  held  there 
in  secret  even  when  the  time-honoured 
spot  must  have  presented  a  melan- 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


choly  picture  of  desolation,  for  in 
A.D.  396  Alaric  and  his  Gothic  hordes 
encamped  for  the  winter  close  by,  and 
we  tremble  to  think  how  many  master- 
pieces may  have  been  destroyed  for  the 
sake  of  the  metal.  For  most  of  the 
statues  at  Olympia,  and  indeed  in  an- 
cient Greece  generally,  were  of  bronze. 
The  smaller  temples  were  probably 
wilfully  destroyed  for  the  sake  of  the 
materials ;  the  large  ones  were  over- 
thrown by  earthquakes,  and  also  suf- 
fered from  a  fire  which  is  reported 
to  have  taken  place  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fifth  century  ;  but  stone 
buildings  would  not  be  essentially 
damaged  even  by  such  accidents  as 
these. 

For  over  a  thousand  years  history 
tells  us  nothing  of  this  once  eventful 
spot.  From  this  time  Olympia  sinks  as 
it  were  into  the  earth,  and  no  written  re- 
cord remains  of  a  single  event  on  a  spot 
once  so  teeming  with  ideal  life.  Many 
centuries,  nay,  over  a  thousand  years 
passed,  before  the  world  had  arrived  at 
a  sufficiently  advanced  stage  to  recall  to 
mind  the  treasures  which  in  all  prob- 
ability lay  buried,  and  awaiting  their 
resurrection,  beneath  the  Olympian 
plain.  Meantime  Greece  passed,  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  from  the  decrepit 
hands  of  the  Byzantines  into  the 
power  of  the  Franks,  and  afterwards 
into  that  of  the  Turks,  from  whose 
dominion,  as  we  know,  it  has  been 
set  free  scarcely  fifty  years. 

It  is  little  more  than  a  hundred 
years  since  the  first  European,  Richard 
Chandler,  visited  the  Olympian  plain, 
and  the  state  of  things  he  found  was 
melancholy  indeed.  The  glories  of 
the  past  were  represented  by  a  couple 
of  Roman  brick  buildings,  standing 
in  the  midst  of  an  unhealthy  swamp, 
which  here  and  there  bore  traces  of 
the  holes  dug  by  Turks  and  Greeks  in 
search  of  stone  wherewith  to  build 
their  inartistic  huts. 

This  first  visitor  was  succeeded  by 
Dodwell,  Gell,  and  Leake,  and  then  by 
Stanhope,  who  was  the  first  to  make 
an  accurate  plan  of  the  spot.  From  a 
large  fragment  of  a  column  which  had 


risen  to  the  surface  in  the  middle  of 
the  plain,  these  travellers  fixed  the 
probable  site  of  the  temple  'of  Zeus, 
and  their  conjectures  were  confirmed 
by  the  explorations  of  the  French 
scientific  expedition  to  the  Morea  in 
1829,  which  determined  the  position 
and  dimensions  of  the  temple,  and 
proved  it  to  be  that  of  Zeus  by  the 
discovery  of  some  bas-reliefs  represent- 
ing the  labours  of  Hercules,  and  which 
are  named  by  Pausanias  as  among  its 
ornaments. 

After  this  the  plain  was  again  left 
to  repose.  The  narrow  trenches  made 
by  the  French  became  overgrown  by 
brushwood,  and  the  inhabitants  of 
Druva,  a  small  hamlet  nestling  above 
the  Cladeus  valley,  peacefully  culti- 
vated their  maize,  barley,  currants, 
and  vines  above  the  old  arena.  Only 
towards  the  south  the  Alpheus  occa- 
sionally broke  away  great  pieces  of 
the  soil,  and  disclosed  the  remains  of 
antique  bronzes,  greaves,  helmets,  and 
spears,  evidences  of  departed  glories 
in  strange  contrast  with  the  poverty- 
stricken  present. 

At  length  Professor  Curtius  of  Berlin 
took  up  the  idea,  originated  by  Winckel- 
mann,  of  exploring  the  Olympian  plain; 
and  it  was  mainly  owing  to  his  exer- 
tions, warmly  supported  by  the  imperial 
family,  that  the  German  Reichstag 
voted  in  1875  a  grant  of  171,000 
marks  (£8,550)  for  the  purpose ;  after- 
wards adding  another,  of  190,000  marks 
(£9,500).  The  enterprise  was  a  purely 
scientific  one  and  eminently  disinter- 
ested, since  the  Greek  laws  strictly 
prohibit  the  exportation  of  antiquities; 
and  Germany  will  therefore  reap  no 
advantage  from  her  discoveries  beyond 
the  casts  and  photographs  which  have 
been  taken,  and  which  are  open  to  all 
the  world. 

The  present  writer,  who  had  already 
travelled  much  in  Greece,  and  to  whom 
was  intrusted  the  scientific  direction 
of  the  expedition,  arrived  with  his 
technical  colleague,  Adolf  Bbtticher, 
the  architect,  at  the  scene  of  opera- 
tions on  the  12th  of  September,  1875. 

Level   as   the   sea-shore   the    well- 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


59 


cultivated  plain  lay  stretched  before 
us,  and  but  for  a  few  brick  ruins  in- 
dicating an  earlier  existence  of  some 
kind,  we  might  have  been  in  a  virgin 
country.  Indeed  the  soil  looked  so 
innocent  as  to  draw  from  me  the  re- 
mark, that  to  keep  up  our  hopes  at  all 
we  must  constantly  bear  in  mind  the 
undoubted  discoveries  of  the  French, 
and  those  often  since  made  by  accident. 

The  preliminary  difficulties  of  our 
undertaking  should  not  be  over- 
looked. Pyrgos,  the  nearest  town, 
lay  at  a  distance  of  nearly  three  hours 
and  could  only  be  reached  on  horse- 
back ;  the  plain  itself  was  entirely 
uninhabited,  while  the  neighbourhood 
offered  only  the  most  scanty  means  of 
subsistence  for  a  large  body  of  work- 
men. As  for  our  own  manner  of  living 
that  would  require  a  special  chapter. 
True,  a  house  had  been  built  on  pur- 
pose for  us,  but  during  the  first  winter 
we  were  not  even  protected  from  wind 
and  rain.  Then,  too,  the  plain  is  un- 
healthy for  a  lengthened  stay,  and 
both  we  and  our  workmen  suffered 
from  constant  attacks  of  fever  with 
all  their  consequences,  while  both  our 
workmen  and  the  villagers  of  the 
neighbourhood  reminded  us,  by  their 
almost  daily  demands  for  medicines, 
of  the  risks  we  were  encountering  from 
the  climate. 

We  began  our  work  on  the  4th  of 
October,  1875,  with  very  few  men  at 
first,  for  the  inhabitants  could  not 
understand  our  object,  and  therefore 
held  aloof  ;  but  by  degrees  their  confi- 
dence in  us  increased  and  then  we  had 
no  difficulty  in  obtaining  workmen. 
The  Greeks,  always  ready  for  busi- 
ness, built  huts  at  the  foot  of  Mount 
Cronion  and  on  the  Cladeus  for  the 
men  to  eat  and  sleep  in ;  we  ourselves 
erected  a  smithy  and  a  large  hut  for 
taking  plaster  casts  ;  and  at  length  the 
Greeks  added  a  provisional  museum. 
Thus,  by  the  end  of  our  first  season — 
October  to  April,  for  work  stops  in 
May  for  the  summer — we  were  employ- 
ing one  hundred  and  eighty  workmen, 
and  in  the  second  year  nearly  three 
hundred.  The  Greek  Government 


constructed  a  road  from  Olympia  to 
the  port  of  Katakolo  ;  visitors  came 
from  far  and  near,  and  the  Olympian 
plain  once  more  became  the  scene  of 
active,  bustling  life. 

We  took  the  temple  of  Zeus  as  the 
centre  of  our  explorations,  and  dug 
on  all  its  four  sides,  and  at  a  distance 
of  about  a  hundred  feet,  trenches  which 
were  gradually  widened  until  the 
temple  and  its  immediate  surround- 
ings were  completely  laid  bare. 

It  was  long  before  the  silent  plain 
spoke.  For  many  long  weeks  our 
handbarrows  carried  away  nothing  but 
sand,  which  lay  in  compact  masses 
under  the  thin  layer  of  top-soil. 
Exploring  has  all  the  excitement  of 
gambling,  and  it  takes  a  great  deal  to 
quench  hope  even  when  it  has  been 
long  deferred  ;  but  I  must  confess  that 
our  spirits  sank  as  day  after  day 
revealed  fresh  heaps  of  sand  and  no- 
thing more.  At  length,  however,  we 
were  rewarded.  Slowly  and  gradually 
the  remains  of  three  extinct  races,  piled 
one  upon  another  like  geological  strata, 
were  rescued  from  their  death-sleep, 
and  we  could  once  more  realise  the 
Varied  and  beautiful  picture  which  the 
plain  had  presented  before  it  was 
choked  up  with  sand.  At  first  the  eye 
could  distinguish  nothing  but  a  con- 
fused mass  of  fragments  of  columns 
and  capitals,  architraves  and  blocks 
of  stone,  inscriptions  and  remains  of 
statues,  terra-cottas  and  tiles;  but  it 
soon  became  evident  that  these  frag- 
ments were  not  in  the  positions  in 
which  they  had  originally  fallen  or 
been  thrown  down,  but  that  they  had 
been  used  in  constructing  huts  of  a 
barbarous  kind,  which  had  spread  like 
cobwebs  over  much  earlier  remains. 
This  was  the  uppermost  or  latest 
stratum.  The  question  occurs,  Who 
and  what  manner  of  people  could  these 
have  been,  so  utterly  devoid  of  know- 
ledge of  the  past  and  respect  for  its 
relics,  as  thus  to  have  reduced  one 
of  the  most  richly  ornamented  and 
most  celebrated  sites  of  antiquity  to 
a  miserable  village1?  But  on  going 
further  we  come  upon  traces  still 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


more  significant  of  events  of  which 
no  history  has  reached  us.  Under 
the  network  of  huts  we  arrived  at 
the  second  stratum,  which  consists 
of  strong,  well-built  walls,  also  of  a 
date  subsequent  to  the  fall  of  the  old 
world,  since  they  are  formed  entirely 
of  ancient  materials,  and  are  carried  so 
close  up  to  the  temple  of  Zeus  that  it 
forms  the  corner,  and  the  point  d' 'appui, 
of  a  square  fortress,  covering  an 
area  of  10,000  square  metres  (about 
10,900  square  yards).  This  is  not 
an  isolated  case.  On  many  others  of 
the  ancient  Greek  sites — Athens  for 
instance — an  early  Byzantine  race 
concentrated  themselves  with  all  the 
courage  of  despair  on  some  small  space, 
which  they  fortified  as  best  they  could 
with  the  old  materials  ready  to  their 
hands,  and  there  made  a  stand  against 
the  inroads  of  the  barbarians,  who 
poured  in  in  ever-increasing  numbers 
from  the  sixth  century  downwards. 
These  Byzantines  undoubtedly  de- 
molished many  of  the  smaller  build- 
ings at  Olympia  to  make  their  walls, 
and  in  this  way  an  immense  mass  of 
the  ancient  materials  have  been  pre- 
served. Buried  coins,  of  the  wretched 
copper  coinage  of  those  degenerate 
days,  seem  to  confirm  the  notion 
that,  here  as  elsewhere,  these  hostile 
incursions  took  place  towards  the  end 
of  the  sixth  century,  for  we  found 
none  later  than  the  immediate  suc- 
cessors of  Justinian.  And  indeed  an 
account  does  exist  of  a  great  Slav  in- 
vasion into  the  Peloponnesus  in  589, 
when  Elis  is  expressly  mentioned  as 
one  of  the  districts  ravaged. 

The  walls  just  mentioned  are  not 
the  only  traces  of  the  early  Byzan- 
tine population.  It  is  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  after  the  triumph  of  the 
Christian  faith  its  followers  w^ould  en- 
deavour to  set  up  the  standard  of  the 
Cross  on  so  important  a  stronghold 
of  heathen  worship  as  Olympia,  and  ac- 
cordingly we  unearthed,  to  the  west 
of  the  temple  of  Zeus,  an  ancient 
building  which  had  been  converted 
into  a  spacious  church,  the  interior 
arrangements  of  which  are  still 


perfectly  recognisable  in  all  their 
details,  the  whole  bearing  evident 
traces  of  long  use.  We  also  found 
the  dead  of  the  period  buried  in  solid 
tombs  formed  out  of  antique  slabs  of 
stone  and  tiles,  with  Christian  emblems, 
or  with  the  base  earthenware  urns 
still  used  throughout  Greece  for  the 
same  purpose.  It  is  strange  to  think 
of  Byzantine  priests  upon  the  sacred 
plain  of  Zeus,  moving  slowly  along 
in  solemn  procession,  chanting  their 
monotonous  strains,  or  bearing  their 
dead  to  the  grave.  Their  surround- 
ings— had  they  had  the  knowledge  or 
the  intellect  to  appreciate  them — must 
have  daily  reminded  them  of  the  past ; 
for  when  these  strong  walls  were 
built  at  least  half  the  temple  of 
Zeus  was  still  standing,  and  even 
the  columns  to  the  south  and  east, 
which  had  been  overthrown — probably 
by  the  destructive  earthquakes  of  522 
and  551 — were  still  completely  ex- 
posed to  view.  The  Byzantine  child- 
ren played  among  the  prostrate  and 
broken  bodies  of  gods  and  heroes, 
and  no  doubt  often  damaged  out  of 
mere  wantonness  objects  which  we 
now  regard  with  the  deepest  reverence. 
These  also  passed  away,  their  walls 
crumbled  or  were  destroyed  piecemeal, 
and  both  their  buildings  and  the 
ancient  relics  they  surrounded  and 
entombed  were  obliterated  beneath 
the  miserable  dwellings  of  the  latest 
race  —  probably  not  of  Slav  but  of 
Greek  origin — who,  if  we  may  trust 
the  evidence  of  some  coins  we  dis- 
covered, were  leading  a  peaceful  if 
somewhat  barbarous  existence  down 
to  the  eleventh  century. 

Such  were  the  last  inhabitants  of 
the  sacred  Altis.  Sic  transit  gloria 
mundi !  They  also  died  out  or  migrated. 
The  unhealthiness  of  the  plain  in- 
creased, the  woods  had  been  cut  down, 
no  precautions  were  taken  to  pro- 
tect the  hills  from  the  consequences 
of  the  peculiarly  heavy  rains  of  the 
district,  and  nature  went  on  her  way 
undisturbed.  The  earth  was  gradually 
washed  down  from  Mount  Cronion 
and  the  surrounding  hills  on  to  the 


The.  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


61 


old  soil,  the  Alpheus  and  Cladeus  over- 
flowed and  left  their  deposits  on  the 
land,  and  this  process  went  quietly 
on  for  centuries,  until  by  the  time  of 
our  visit  a  level  surface  of  sand  from 
ten  to  seventeen  feet  deep  was  spread 
above  all  the  ancient  strata. 

But  to  return  to  our  operations. 
Beneath  the  confused  remains  of  these 
two  later  races  the  features  of  real 
antiquity  began  at  length  unmistak- 
ably to  emerge. 

Before  us  lay  the  temple  of  Zeus, 
ruined  indeed  by  repeated  shocks  of 
earthquakes,  but  with  almost  all.  its 
constituent  portions  there,  the  broken 
columns  lying  each  in  front  of  its 
old  position,  and  for  the  most  part 
merely  requiring  the  proper  appli- 
ances to  set  them  in  their  places 
again.  The  stone  of  which  it  is 
built  is  a  shell-conglomerate  of  the 
country  called  by  the  ancients  poros, 
which  has  been  overlaid  with  a  fine 
reddish  stucco.  The  dimensions  are 
extraordinarily  large  for  Greece,  ex- 
ceeding those  of  the  principal  temple 
at  Psestum,  and  nearly  equalling 
those  of  the  Parthenon.  It  is,  in  fact — 
to  take  a  familiar  example — of  larger 
area  than  the  transept  of  Westminster 
Abbey.  It  measures  211  feet  6  inches 
long  by  86  feet  6  inches  broad.  From 
the  floor,  which  was  surrounded  by 
three  steps,  rose  the  columns,  whose 
diameter  is  about  7  feet  10  inches,  with 
a  height  of  34  feet  8  inches.  There 
are  thirteen  on  each  side,  north  and 
south,  and  six  at  each  end,  east  and 
west.  Upon  them  rested  the  entabla- 
ture, and  then  the  pediments,  the 
points  of  which  brought  up  the  ex- 
treme height  of  the  building  to  69  feet 
4  inches.  The  pillars  surrounded  the 
cella,  the  temple  proper,  which  had  a 
vestibule  at  each  end  supported  by  two 
smaller  columns,  and  was  divided  by 
two  rows  of  columns  into  three  aisles. 
Of  all  this  part  quite  enough  remains 
to  show  what  the  whole  has  been. 
The  broad  centre  aisle  led  up  to  the 
Zeus  of  Phidias,  of  which  nothing  is 
left  but  the  base.  Another  main 
ornament  of  the  temple  however,  the 


statues  in  the  pediments,  are  wonder- 
fully perfect.  They  were  found  before 
the  east  and  west  fronts,  some  lying 
open  on  the  ground,  and  some  built 
over. 

The  only  groups  of  figures  on  pedi- 
ments which  have  come  down  to  us 
from  the  ancients  are  those  of  the 
temple  of  Athena  at  ./Egina,  now  at 
Munich,  and  those  of  the  Parthenon, 
known  as  the  Elgin  Marbles,  in  the 
British  Museum.  The  first,  represent- 
ing a  struggle  over  the  body  of  a  fallen 
hero,  are  in  tolerably  good  preservation, 
but  are  not  mentioned  by  any  ancient 
author.  Pausanias  describes,  though 
only  very  briefly,  those  of  the  Parthe- 
non ;  of  which  the  important  centre 
groups  are  missing. 

Of  the  statues  at  Olyrnpia  we  know 
much  more,  for  Pausanias  has  cata- 
logued all  the  masterpieces  there 
with  a  minuteness  of  which  we  have 
scarcely  another  example  in  ancient 
times.  And  again,  while  the  artists 
who  carved  the  statues  at  ^Egina  are 
absolutely  unknown,  and  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  determine  the 
actual  work  of  Phidias  at  the  Par- 
thenon, at  Olympia  we  know  not 
only  the  names  of  the  sculptors 
of  the  figures  on  the  temple  of 
Zeus,  but  also  that  they  were  com- 
panions or  pupils  of  Phidias  himself. 
The  east  pediment  is  the  work  of 
Paionios  from  Mende  in  Thrace,  and 
the  west  of  Alkamenes,  "  the  cleverest 
sculptor  in  the  world  after  Phidias,"  as 
Pausanias's  guides  remarked. 

This  alone  is  sufficient  to  make  the 
statues  of  Olympia  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance in  the  history  of  art;  but 
their  value  is  still  further  enhanced 
by  the  fact  that  we  found  large 
portions  of  every  single  figure,  and 
a  number  of  extraordinarily  fine 
heads,  particularly  from  the  western 
pediment.  Hitherto  we  possessed 
scarcely  a  head  of  that  period  in 
good  condition ;  but  here  we  have 
the  faces  of  men,  women,  and  gods 
portrayed  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
throw  an  entii'ely  new  light  on  that 
first  grand  period  of  Greek  art,  which 


62 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


dates  from  the  last  third  of  the  5th 
century  B.C.  The  dimensions  of  the 
pediments  are  almost  equal  to  those 
of  the  Parthenon.  The  space  to  be 
filled  with  statues  was  as  nearly  as 
possible  82  feet  8  inches  long,  by 
10  feet  high  in  the  middle.  Thus 
the  centre  figures  were  10  feet  high, 
and  from  them  the  composition  was 
carried  right  down  to  the  corners, 
various  devices  of  attitude,  position, 
and  size  being  resorted  to  in  the 
figures  in  order  to  overcome  the  re- 
strictions of  space,  both  sides  being 
at  the  same  time  in  keeping  with 
the  laws  of  symmetry,  which  were 
strictly  observed  even  in  the  latest 
times  of  ancient  art. 

Each  pediment   contained  no    less 
than  twenty-one  figures  in  beautiful 
Parian  marble.     In  that  to  the  east 
was  represented  the  preparations  for 
the   chariot-race    between    CEnomaus, 
the  old  king  of  Elis,  and  Pelops,  the 
new-comer  from  Asia  Minor,  who  gave 
his  name  to  the  Peloponnesus,  and  by 
his   victory  won  the  hand   of   Hippo- 
damia,     daughter    of   CEnomaus,    and 
with  her  the  kingdom.     This  race  was 
the  prototype  of  the  Olympian  games. 
I  will  briefly  describe  the  composition 
as  it  presented  itself  bit  by  bit  to  our 
eyes.    The  rescued  portions  are  for  the 
most   part  only  ten-si,  and    but  three 
heads   remain,  the  rest  having   been 
destroyed  by  fanatical  hands.    History 
tells  us  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
games  the  combatants  were  all  sworn 
before  the  statue  of  Zeus  Horkios  ;  and 
accordingly  here  the  commanding  form 
of    Zeus    occupies    the   centre,    with 
CEnomaus,    Pelops,    and    their    com- 
panions grouped  around.      CEnomaus 
stands  on  the  god's  left  hand,  with  his 
wife    Sterope,    a   dignified,   matronly 
figure,  by  his  side.      Pelops  and  Hip- 
podamia  are  on  the  right  of  Zeus ;  then 
follow  on   each  side  the  four  horses, 
with  the  charioteer  seated  in  front,  and 
a  servant  to  rein  them  in  behind.     In 
this  manner  the   direct  and  indirect 
participators  in  the  race  are  brought 
into  proximity  with  the  god.     In  the 
corners,  as  in  the  west  pediment    of 


the  Parthenon,  the  two  rivers,  Alpheus 
and  Cladeus,  are  introduced  as  peace- 
ful spectators,  framing-in  the  com- 
position as  their  prototypes  inclose 
the  Olympian  plain.  By  the  Alpheus 
sits  a  maiden — in  all  probability  his 
beloved  nymph  Arethusa — and  by  the 
Cladeus  the  figure  of  a  boy,  the 
meaning  of  which  cannot  now  be 
deciphered. 

The  figures  in  the  pediment  are 
ranged  quite  simply  one  after  the  other, 
and  the  whole  is  characterised  by  a 
calm  solemnity  thoroughly  in  keeping 
with  the  sanctity  of  the  temple  over 
whose  main  entrance  it  was  placed.  In 
the  west  pediment — by  Alkamenes — 
no  such  considerations  seem  to  have 
restricted  the  fancy  of  the  artist. 
This  pediment  evidently  fell  at  a 
later  period  than  the  eastern  one, 
neither  has  it  been  built  over  since, 
so  it  is  much  less  injured ;  and  we 
found  nine  heads  in  very  good  pre- 
servation. 

Alkamenes  has  chosen  for  his  sub- 
ject the  fight    between  the   centaurs 
and  Lapithse  at  the  marriage  between 
Pirithous  and  Deidamia.     Here  also 
the  centre  figure  is  a  god — Apollo.    So 
far  we  have  found  only  the  head,  which 
is    grand,  and   closely  resembles   the 
Apollo  Belvedere  in  expression,  though 
sterner  and  harsher.     Here,  as  in  the 
frieze  from   Phigaleia  in   the  British 
Museum,  the  god  is  represented  com- 
ing in  wrath  to  the  aid  of  his  Greeks, 
who  are  in  urgent  need,  for  on  each 
side  two  centaurs  have  already  seized 
their  prey,  on  the  one  hand  the  bride 
of  Pirithous,  and  a   Greek   boy,  and 
on  the  other  two  women,  who  resist 
desperately.     On  Apollo's  right  hand 
is  Pirithous  hastening  to  the  rescue  of 
his  wife ;  on  his  left  Theseus  hewing 
down  an  intoxicated  bearded  centaur  ; 
while  each  of  the  other  centaurs   is 
engaged  by  an  opponent.     The  battle 
rages  over  the  heads  of  the  kneeling 
and    falling   women,  who    fill  in  the 
composition  of  this  tumultuous  scene, 
which  is  wonderfully  complete,  though 
made  up   of   so  few   elements.      The 
corners,  however,  are  peaceful ;  in  each 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


63 


lies  a  female  figure  quietly  looking  on, 
intended  doubtless  as  a  personification 
of  the  scene  of  action,  like  the  river- 
gods  on  the  eastern  pediment.  A  union 
of  grandeur  and  simplicity  character- 
ises the  heads  on  this  pediment ;  some 
of  them  taken  alone  look  almost  inani- 
mate, but  when  set  on  their  bodies 
their  expression  at  once  becomes  over- 
powering. And  such  is  the  case 
throughout.  All  is  coherent,  all, 
as  it  were,  stamped  at  one  blow ;  and 
it  is  only  by  taking  each  work  as  a 
whole  that  we  realise  the  extraordinary 
power  of  expression,  the  life,  and  the 
boldness  of  conception  and  composi- 
tion, possessed  by  the  great  masters  of 
that  time. 

The  artists  who  created  these 
grand  and  extensive  compositions  can 
naturally  have  had  but  a  very  small 
share  in  the  actual  execution  of  the 
figures.  For  this  native  Peloponnesian 
workmen  must  have  been  employed, 
which  would  explainboth  the  inequality 
in  the  workmanship  of  the  different 
figures,  and  the  general  poverty  of  the 
drapery,  for  the  strong  point  of  Pelopon- 
nesian artists  was  the  nude.  It  is  the 
same  case  with  the  bas-reliefs  of  the 
Metopes,  of  which  we  discovered  large 
blocks — for  instance  an  Athena  and  a 
Heracles  bearing  the  globe,  with  Atlas 
and  one  of  the  Hespei'ides.  When  I  add 
that  we  found  an  enormous  quantity  of 
the  marble  tiles  from  the  roof,  and  a 
great  number  of  lions'  heads  which 
served  as  gurgoyles  to  carry  off  the 
water  from  the  roof  to  the  gutters, 
enough  will  have  been  said  to  show  the 
condition  in  which  the  temple  of  the 
Olympian  Zeus  has  been  restored  to  life. 

In  addition  to  sculptures  connected 
with  the  architectural  discoveries,  we 
found  independent  works  which  be- 
speak a  power  of  execution  of  the 
highest  order.  The  first  discovery 
we  were  fortunate  enough  to  make 
WAS  a  work  fully  equal  in  value  to 
tho  Elgin  Marbles,  and  that  not 
only  from  the  period  at  which  it  was 
executed,  but  from  its  intrinsic  merit. 
This  was  the  Nike  of  Paionios 
of  Mende,  the  sculptor,  as  we  have 


already  seen,  who  designed  the  eastern 
pediment  of  the  temple  of  Zeus.  Close 
by  a  fine  block  of  marble  inscribed 
with  the  names  of  the  artist  and  of  the 
Messenians  who  dedicated  it — just  as 
they  were  seen  and  read  by  Pausanias — 
lay  the  beautiful  figure,  broken  into 
two  pieces.  It  is  true  that  such 
important  portions  as  the  head,  the 
arms,  the  large  wings,  and  the 
lower  part  of  the  left  leg  are  mis- 
sing ;  but  what  remains  is  worthy  of 
the  highest  admiration.  The  statue 
was  a  gift  from  the  spoil  taken  from 
the  Lacedaemonians  on  the  Island  of 
Sphacteria,  by  the  combined  forces  of 
the  Messenians  and  Athenians.  It  ac- 
cordingly represents  the  goddess  in 
the  act  of  flying  down  from  heaven 
bringing  victory ;  her  right  foot  just 
touches  a  rock,  which  a  flying  sea-gull 
indicates  to  be  an  island,  namely, 
Sphacteria;  while  her  exquisite  form  is 
veiled  but  not  concealed  by  a  light 
drapery,  the  folds  of  which  express 
so  naturally  the  movement  of  flying, 
and  the  action  of  the  opposing  current 
of  air,  that  we  can  scarcely  believe 
it  to  be  wrought  in  so  stubborn  a 
material  as  marble.  For  this  latter 
effect  we  may  indeed  have  been  pre- 
pared by  the  Elgin  Marbles,  but  the 
boldness  of  the  composition  at  Olympia 
is  something  quite  new  and  unexpected, 
and  makes  us  suddenly  realise  the  fact 
that  hitherto  we  have  had  no  adequate 
conception  of  the  power  and  versatility 
of  Greek  art  at  its  highest  period  of 
development. 

Before  the  east  front  of  the  temple, 
where  we  found  the  Nike,  we  came 
upon  another  famous  spot  of  the 
sacred  plain.  Here  stand  rows  of  bases, 
forming  narrow  streets  leading  from 
the  south ;  and  here  we  tread  in  the 
very  footsteps  of  Pausanias,  reading 
the  inscriptions  which  he  read,  and 
which  are  still  in  situ,  although 
the  works  they  refer  to  have  all  dis- 
appeared. Between  the  bases  just 
mentioned  and  the  east  front  is  an 
open  space,  sloping  gradually  up  to 
the  temple,  and  paved  with  marble 
slabs,  in  which  small  squares  are 


The  Discoveries  at  Olympia. 


clotted  about,  showing  the  positions 
of  the  sacred  trees  —  shady  planes, 
which  even  in  later  days  justified  the 
name  of  Altis  (grove).  Before  the 
centre  of  the  east  front  is  a  platform, 
with  the  remains  of  an  altar  still  re- 
cognisable, though  destroyed  by  fanati- 
cism. From  this  point  the  sacrificing 
priests  would  see  before  them  a  per- 
fect forest  of  votive  offerings — gods, 
heroes,  and  victors  —  all  testifying 
to  the  greatness  of  the  god. 

The  works  hitherto  mentioned  be- 
long to  the  first  great  period  of  Greek 
art,  but  in  continuing  our  excavations 
we  found  specimens  of  other  periods 
also. 

Experimental  trenches,  dug  from 
the  temple  of  Zeus  northwards  to- 
wards Mount  Cronion,  laid  bare  first 
the  foundations  of  the  treasure-houses, 
and  then  a  large  niche  containing 
more  than  a  dozen  statues,  in  Pen- 
telican  marble,  of  the  families  of 
Herodes  Atticus  and  the  Emperor 
Marcus  Aurelius. 

One  of  our  chief  treasures,  however, 
was  discovered  by  means  of  a  trench 
dug  northwards  from  the  western  half 
of  the  temple  of  Zeus,  which,  at  a  dis- 
tance of  80  metres  (about  260  feet) 
to  the  north  of  the  temple,  disclosed 
the  very  important  ruins  of  the 
temple  of  Hera.  This  was  of  quite 
unexpected  proportions,  52  metres 
long  (about  171  ft.  6  in.)  and  19-20 
broad  (about  58  ft.),  with  16  columns 
on  each  side  and  6  at  each  end.  The 
main  outlines  are  in  perfect  preserva- 
tion, with  nearly  all  the  columns  still 
erect  for  a  height  of  from  6  to  10  feet, 
while  the  capitals  and  fragments  of 
the  upper  portions  lie  uninjured  below. 
Apart  from  its  architectural  interest, 
this  temple  is  of  great  value  in  the 
history  of  art,  for  in  it  was  found,  so  far 
in  excellent  condition,  a  Hermes  (nearly 
perfect  down  to  the  knees)  carrying  the 
boy  Dionysus  (only  half  preserved) — 
the  identical  work  which  Pausanias 
saw  in  the  temple,  and  which  he 
calls  re^vTj  Itpa^i-reXovQ,  "  a  work  of 
Praxiteles."  Even  if  we  ascribe  it  to 


the  school  of  Praxiteles  rather  than 
to  the  great  master  himself,  this  life- 
like statue  is  a  priceless  treasure. 

Such,  very  briefly  stated,  are  the 
main  results — and  only  the  main  re- 
sults— of  the  excavations  at  Olympia. 
But  there  are  other  items,  hardly  in- 
ferior in  interest  to  statues  and  col- 
umns. Ancient  Olympia  was  a  kind 
of  record-office,  preserving  the  most 
important  documents  of  several  states, 
engraved  on  bronze  or  marble.  Of 
these  inscriptions  we  found  not  a 
few.  An  enormous  number  of  small 
bronzes — figures,  weapons,  &c. ;  beauti- 
ful terra-cottas ;  especially  roof-tiles 
exquisitely  ornamented,  and  with  the 
colours  quite  fresh;  coins,  and  many 
objects  in  lead,  iron,  glass,  etc.,  have 
fortunately  survived.  More  of  such 
objects,  as  well  as  of  inscriptions  and 
marble  statues,  will  yet  be  discovered 
as  the  excavations  are  continued ;  of 
this  our  previous  experience  assures 
us,  even  if  we  must  consider  the 
chapter  concerning  the  temples  of  Zeus 
and  Hera  as  already  closed. 

The  Olympian  plain  now  presents 
a  spectacle  which  some  months  ago 
few  would  have  ever  dreamed  of 
beholding;  that  which  was  for  cen- 
turies but  an  empty  name  is  now 
full  of  life  and  meaning,  and  fresh 
light  has  been  thrown  on  every  phase 
of  Greek  existence.  A  unique  portion 
of  the  ancient  world  has  risen  from 
the  earth,  its  noble  features  bearing, 
like  those  of  an  aged  man,  traces  of 
varied  fortunes,  hard  usage,  and  the 
long  lapse  of  time.  While  we  can- 
not help  renewing  our  lamentations 
because  so  much  that  is  ideal  has 
disappeared  for  ever,  we  unfeignedly 
rejoice  at  having  been  permitted  to 
restore  to  the  light  of  day,  even  if 
in  ruins,  so  much  that  will  yet  exer- 
cise its  civilising  influence  for  many 
generations,  and  infallibly  attract 
the  admiration  of  all  who  have  a  real 
love  for  classic  life  and  classic  studies 
— the  foundation  of  all  our  modern 
culture. 

GUSTAV    HlRSCHFELD. 


65 


ME    AND    MY    MATE. 

A  WH1TBY  STORY. 

MATES  1  ay,  we've  been  mates  together 
These  threescore  years  and  more ; 

Lord,  how  we  used  to  lake  and  cuff 
In  t'  caves  down  there  on  t'  shore. 

Well,  he  were  as  bad  as  orphaned, 
His  father  were  drowned  at  sea, 

And  his  mother,  poor  fond  dateless   soul, 
Could  do  nought  with  such  as  he. 

So  my  father,  as  were  a  kindly  man, 
Though  slow  in  his  speech  and  stern, 

Sent  us  both  off  to  the  whalery, 
Our  bit  and  sup  to  earn. 

And  we  were  mates  in  the  cold  and  the  toil, 

And  mates  o'er  a  cheery  glass, 
Till  we  parted,  as  better  men  have  done, 

For  we'd  words  about  a  lass. 

Poor  Nance  ! — her  red  lips  and  bright  blue  eyes, 
And  her  smiles  for  one  and  another, 

I  wot  those  pretty  ways  of  hers 

Came  betwixt  us,  friend  and  brother. 

And  she  wouldn't  have  neither  him  nor  me, 
But  took  up  with  an  inland  chap 

As  daren't  step  in  a  boat  nor  haul  a  rope ; 
But  he'd  brass — we  hadn't  a  rap. 

Still,  for  all  we  heard  her  wedding  bells, 

Changed  blows  are  bitter  coin; 
We're  hard  to  part,  we  Yorkshire  folk, 

But  we're  harder  yet   to  join. 

Well,  it  were  dree  work  to  meet  on  t'  pier, 
Nor  once  "Well,  mate"  to  say; 

And  one  to  start  with  the  lifeboat  crew, 
And  the  other  to  turn  away. 

To  go  alone  for  the  Sunday  walk  ; 

To  smoke  one's  pipe  alone ; 
For  while  we  shunned  each  other  like, 

We'd  go  with  never  a  one. 

Only  when  the  herring  got  agate, 

And  the  lobster-pots  were  set, 
We  were  partners  in  the  Nance,  you  see, 

So  we  went  together  yet. 

!"o.  217. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


66  Me  and  My  Mate. 

Together,  but  never  a  word  we  spoke 

Out  on  the  dancing  waves ; 
Under  sunlight,  or  moonlight,  or  great  white  stars, 

As  silent  as  men  in  their  graves. 

I  tell  you,  we've  sate  as  sullen  as  aught, 
One  at  t'  sheet  and  one  at  t'  helm, 

Till  the  very  ripples  seemed  to  call, 

"  Shame  !  shame  ! "  in  the  sound  of  them. 

Silent  we  pulled  the  fish  aboard; 

Silent  we  turned  her  head, 
And  steered  her  home,  and  leaped  ashore, 

And  never  a  word  we  said. 

The  very  bairns  stood  back  afeard 

As  we  came  glooming  in, 
And  ever  and  aye  I  knew  my  heart 

Grew  heavier  in  its  sin. 

One  day  the  sky  grew  coarse  and  wild, 
And  the  wind  kept  shifting  like, 

As  a  man  that  has  planned  a  murder, 
And  doesn't  know  where  to  strike. 

"Best  stay  ashore,  and  leave  the  pots; 

There's  mischief  brewing  there;  " 
So  spoke  old  Sam  as  could  read  the  clouds; 

But  I  had  an  oath  to  swear, 

And  I  muttered,  "  Cowards  might  bide  at  home," 
As  I  glanced  at  Will  the  while; 

And  he  swung  himself  aboard  the  Nance, 
With  one  queer  quiet  smile. 

Out  ran  the  rope — up  went  the  sail — 

She  shot  across  the  bar, 
And  flew  like  a  bird  right  through  the  surf 

As  was  whitening  all  the  scar. 

We  reached  the  pots,  and  Will  stretched  out 

To  draw  the  bladder  near ; 
I  looked  astern,  and  there  well-nigh  broke 

From  my  lips  a  cry  of  fear. 

For,  flying  over  the  crested  waves, 

Terrible,  swift,  and  black, 
I  saw  the  squall  come  sweeping  on — 

All  round  us  closed  the  wrack. 

The  boat  heeled  over  to  the  blast, 

The  thunder  filled  the  air, 
Great  seas  came  crashing  over  us — 

Scarce  time  to  think  a  prayer. 


Me  and  My  Mate.  G7 

But  'mid  the  foam  that  blinded  us, 

And  the  turmoil  of  the  sea, 
I  saw  "Will  seize  the  bladder  up 

And  heave  it  right  to  me. 

Can  you  understand,  you  landsmen1? 

It  was  all  the  chance  he  had ; 
Ay,  thou  mayst  growl  thy  fill  out  there, 

But  I'll  tell  the  truth,  old  lad  ! 

It  was  all  the  chance  he'd  got,  I  say, 

And  he  gave  it  to  his  mate  ; 
I'd  one  hand  on  it,  and  one  in  his  hair, 

When  they  found  us,  nigh  too  late. 

For  Sam  had  sent  the  lifeboat   out, 

And  they  pulled  us  both  aboard ; 
There  was  not  a  plank  of  the  Nance  afloat ; 

But  I've  got  the  bladder  stored. 

And  whenever  I'm  vext,  or  things  go  wrong, 

If  Will  should  not  be  nigh, 
I  light  my  pipe,  and  sit  nigh  hand 

Where  it  hangs  there  safe  and  dry. 

And  I  know  through  good  and  evil 

We  are  mates  on  to  the  end, 
For  the  Book  says,  there  is  no  greater  love 

Than  to  give  one's  life  for  one's  friend. 

S.  K.  P. 


F  2 


63 


PANSLAVISTS  AND   THE  SLAY  COMMITTEES. 


So  much  has  been  said,  both  true  and 
false,  of  the  doings  of  the  Russians 
and  the  Slav  Committees,  during 
the  late  war  in  Servia  and  the  other 
Christian  provinces  of  Turkey,  that  a 
few  words  at  this  season  may  not  be 
otherwise  than  a  propos.  The  sight  of 
an  absolute  monarchy  taking  part  with 
rebels  against  their  rightful  master  is, 
indeed,  surprising  enough  to  attract 
universal  attention.  In  modern  times 
we  have  but  one  precedent  for  such  a 
thing  ;  viz.,  the  assistance  that  France, 
under  Louis  XVI.,  gave  to  the  Ameri- 
cans in  their  struggle  against  England. 
And,  in  fact,  on  examining  closely  the 
social  condition  of  the  two  countries, 
the  resemblance  is  somewhat  striking. 
As  France  in  1789  pulled  against  the 
bit  of  absolutism,  so  does  Russia  now. 
France  was  then  on  the  eve  of  her  great 
revolution ;  and  whoever  is  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  the  present  situation, 
and  with  public  opinion  in  Russia, 
can  scarcely  hide  from  himself  the 
likelihood  of  similar  events  soon  oc- 
curring there. 

The  following  remarks  are  the  result 
of  personal  observations  on  the  spot, 
and  of  a  long  and  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Russians  of  all  classes  ; 
and,  dark  as  some  of  the  conclusions 
may  be,  they  are  not  one  shade  too 
dark  for  the  facts.  All  the  reforms, 
all  the  concessions,  of  the  Russian 
government  will  not  avert  the  catas- 
trophe ;  they  will  be  too  late,  and  will 
no  longer  satisfy  any  one.  The  Russian 
people  will  accept  them  as  something 
to  which  they  have  a  claim,  and  will 
ask  more, — more  than  the  govern- 
ment, of  whatever  kind,  could  pos- 
sibly accord.  On  the  other  hand,  to 
take  such  forcible  measures  as  the 
Emperor  Nicholas  would  have  done, 
even  if  still  feasible,  would,  in  all 


probability,  have  no  other  result  than 
to  retard  by  a  year  or  two  the  in- 
evitable outbreak  of  the  revolution. 
But  that  the  Russian  government  even 
now  has  no  longer  the  power  in  its 
own  hands,  has  been  amply  shown  by 
the  events  in  Herzegovina,  Monte- 
negro, and  Servia,  and  by  the  more  re- 
cent outbreak  of  the  present  war.  The 
Russian  government,  the  actual  govern- 
ment, the  Czar,  did  not  wish  for  this 
war.  It  was  forced  on  him.  But 
how,  by  whom?  By  the  people,  by 
public  opinion.  Public  opinion,  how- 
ever, in  every  country,  above  all  in  a 
country  so  little  politically  matured 
as  Russia,  does  not  exist  of  itself,  it 
is  formed.  Who  then  has  formed 
public  opinion  at  present  in  Russia? 
The  Panslavists, — t.e,the  liberals,  the 
radicals,  that  enormous  party  which 
hates  the  Russian  state  in  its  present 
exterior  form,  whose  ideal  is  a  Slav  con- 
federation, and  which  has  incorporated 
itself,  and  made  itself  a  power,  in  the 
Slav  Committees  which  almost  every 
considerable  town  south  of  Moscow 
possesses — these,  and  not  the  Russian 
government,  have  lit  and  fanned  the 
flame  of  insurrection  among  the  Slavs 
of  Turkey.  It  was  they  who  urged  on 
and  sustained  Servia  and  Montenegro 
in  their  late  war  ;  it  is  they  who  have 
brought  about  the  present  struggle ;  a 
war — not  to  take  Constantinople,  not 
to  execute  the  supposed  will  of  Peter 
the  Great,  not  to  destroy  Turkey,  or 
to  deliver  the  oppressed  Christians 
from  the  yoke  of  Islam;  but  a  war 
to  crush  Russia  in  its  present  form 
of  government,  the  absolute  rule  of 
the  Czar. 

We  have  heard  Russian  officers,  not 
one  but  many,  say  that,  "  If  Russia 
were  to  conquer  with  brilliant  success 
in  this  war,  it  would  be  our  greatest 


Panslavists  and  the  Slav  Committees. 


69 


misfortune.  For  it  would  apparently 
prove  to  the  people  that  the  govern- 
ment, its  principles,  and  mode  of  pro- 
ceeding, had  been  good,  and  that 
nothing  required  to  be  changed."  Not- 
withstanding all  this,  however,  let  it 
not  be  supposed  that  the  Russian  army 
would  fail  to  do  its  duty  conscien- 
tiously. The  Russian  officers  and  men 
have  too  much  pride  and  discipline 
for  that  to  happen ;  and  a  war  against 
the  Turks,  their  hereditary  enemies, 
is  too  popular,  and  of  too  religious  a 
nature.  But  their  opinions  are  signifi- 
cant, and  cannot  be  without  influence 
on  the  course  of  events.  The  Panslav- 
ists, and  members  of  the  different  Slav 
Committees,  will  even  here  exert  all 
their  force,  not  to  let  the  fruit  of 
their  trouble  and  intrigues,  and  the 
millions  expended,  escape  them. 

But  what  then  are  the  Slav  Commit- 
tees ?  How  are  they  formed  ?  What 
end  have  they  avowedly  in  view  ? 
What  do  they  aim  at  in  reality  ?  And 
what  means  have  they  at  their  disposal? 

We  will  endeavour  to  answer  these 
questions.  The  Slav  Committees,  whose 
principal  seat  is  at  Moscow,  and  whose 
president  is  Mons.  Aksakoff,  a  privy 
councillor,  form  the  centre,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  head  and  arms,  of 
the  Panslavists, — in  other  words,  the 
Revolutionists.  The  time  when  they 
were  publicly  constituted,  in  the  form 
they  now  possess,  coincides  with  the 
outbreak  of  the  revolution  in  the 
Herzegovina. 

The  Russian  government  can  scarcely 
doubt  the  important  rdle  that  these 
Committees  will  one  day  play,  and 
that,  after  a  couple  of  years  or  so, 
these  same  innocent  Committees, 
which  exist  in  all  the  great  towns, 
and  the  presidents  of  which  are 
often  women,  will  have  become  more 
powerful  than  the  government  itself. 
The  Red  Cross  was  their  mask  :  and 
their  collections,  to  which  the  Court 
subscribed  largely,  were  made  for  the 
benefit  of  the  poor  rayahs  and  fugi- 
tives in  Dalmatia,  Montenegro,  and 
Servia.  But  from  the  beginning  the 


greater  part  of  this  money  found  its 
way  to  insurgents.  As  the  director 
of  the  hospital  at  Cettinje,  one  of  the 
principal  hospitals  in  Montenegro, 
said  to  the  writer,  "  In  order  to  tend 
the  wounded  one  must  first  procure 
them  to  tend.  That  will  cost  us  half 
our  money;  the  other  half  we  will 
scrupulously  employ  in  healing  them." 

At  this  period  the  Russian  govern- 
ment seemed  to  believe  that  it  was 
they  who  profited  by  the  work  of  the 
Slav  Committees ;  without  having  an 
inkling  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  was 
they  who  were  being  worked  by 
others.  The  government  made  use  of 
the  Committees  to  occasion  constant 
new  difficulties  to  the  Porte ;  to  feed 
the  insurrection  incessantly;  after- 
wards to  bring  about  a  new  revolt  in 
Bulgaria,  and  then  to  urge  on  the 
Servians  and  Montenegrins  to  take 
part  in  the  melee.  The  Committees  by 
their  numerous  partizans  did  exactly 
what  they  were  ordered;  and  with 
the  funds  at  their  disposal  were 
enabled  to  carry  out  their  intrigues, 
by  which  they  managed  to  entangle 
the  government  in  their  meshes.  They 
adroitly  drew  on  the  government  after 
them,  step  by  step,  till  they  forced  it 
finally  into  the  Turkish  war,  so  much 
desired  by  them,  so  much  dreaded  by 
the  Czar. 

These  revolutionists  rely  on  force, 
that  is  to  say,  on  the  greater  part  of 
the  army;  on  influence, —  the  clergy  and 
nobility ;  on  intelligence, — the  youth 
of  the  country ; 1  on  power,  for  they 
have  much  money  at  their  disposal. 

Having  attempted  to  portray  the 
characteristics  of  the  Slav  Committees, 
let  us  see  more  in  detail  what  activity 
they  have  displayed  in  connection  with 
late  events,  and  at  the  same  time  say 
a  few  words  on  the  military  force  of 
the  Southern  Slavs ;  not  so  much  con- 
cerning their  tactical  organization  (of 
this  one  cannot  reasonably  speak,  with 

1  In  Eussia  only  quite  lately  have  schools 
been  generally  established  ;  and  education  is 
not  general  among  the  fathers  of  the  present 
generation. 


ro 


Panslavists  and  the  Slav  Committees. 


the  exception  of  the  Servian  force),  but 
of  their  warlike  valour  and  morale. 

For  various  reasons,  the  insurrection 
had  always  more  chances  of  success  in 
Herzegovina  than  in  Bosnia.  First 
because  in  the  former  the  proportion 
of  the  Christian  semi-serfs  to  the 
Mohammedan  begs,  or  landlords,  was 
much  larger ;  secondly,  because  of  its 
proximity  to  Montenegro,  whose  in- 
habitants are  much  more  capable  of 
undertaking  a  guerilla  warfare  in  its 
support,  than  the  Servians  are  for 
Bosnia,  since,  although  richer,  they 
are  far  less  energetic  and  warlike. 
Montenegro  has  also  always  enjoyed 
among  the  Southern  Slavs  a  popu- 
larity and  authority  far  greater  than 
that  of  Servia ;  and  if  one  of  the  ex- 
isting dynasties  had  the  prospect  of 
giving  a  monarch  to  the  Southern 
Slavs,  united  into  one  kingdom,  it 
•would  never  be  the  Obrenovitz  or 
Karageorgevics,  but  the  Pietrowitz 
Isfjegusch,  the  princely  family  of  Mon- 
tenegro and  Breda;  of  which  even  its. 
political  opponents  allow  that  it  has 
given  to  this  little  state  a  series  of 
distinguished  and  energetic  rulers. 

In  Russia  the  fact  was  soon  recog- 
nised, that  the  proper  lever  to  upset 
the  equilibrium  of    Turkey  must  not 
be  sought  in  Servia,  the  larger  country 
of  the  two,  but  in  Montenegro.     And 
as,  on  account  of  the  features  of  the 
country,  and  bases  of    operation,  the 
insurrection  was  divided  into  two  parts, 
of  which  one,  that  of  Bosnia,  took  part 
with  Servia,  the  other,  that  of  Herze- 
govina,  with    Montenegro ;    and    as, 
moreover,   the   prince    of    the    latter 
country  was  the  real  head  of  the  revolt, 
and  promised  infinitely  more  than  the 
Servian  Prince  Milan,  Russia  decided 
to   favour   Herzegovina  first.      When 
we  say  Russia,  be   it  understood  that 
we  mean  less  the  government  than  the 
people,  the  Panslavists  and  their  Com- 
mittees, which,  as  we  said  before,  about 
this  time  assumed  the  form  in  which 
they  now  exist. 

The  first  deputies  of  these  societies 

began   their  more   active   labours    in 


the  early  part  of  the  winter  of  1875, 
at  Ragusa  and  Cettinje.  The  insur- 
rection had  commenced  in  the  pre- 
vious July,  and  had  been  directed,  as 
all  such  undertakings  are,  during  the 
first  few  months  with  a  feverish  acti- 
vity, without  being,  for  all  that,  more 
than  a  sort  of  brigandage  organised 
on  a  large  scale.  Small  expeditions 
against  the  Turkish  convoys  were  un- 
dertaken, with  more  or  less  success. 
Several  .villages  and  farms,  belonging 
to  Mohammedans,  were  pillaged  and 
burnt,  and  the  inhabitants  mostly 
killed.  Numerous  engagements  took 
place  against  small  Turkish  detach- 
ments, generally  terminating  in  the 
insurgents'  favour. 

Peko  Pavlovitch  and  Lazar  Sot- 
schitza  now  began  to  take  the  lead. 
Ljubibratich  was  never  so  considerable 
and  important  a  partizan  as  these  two 
were.  He  was  an  ostentatious  speaker, 
with  a  little  more  polish  than  the  other 
chiefs,  and  would  have  made  a  fair 
agitator ;  but,  for  a  leader,  he  was 
wanting  in  that  personal  courage  which 
his  rivals,  above  all  Peko  Pavlovitch, 
possessed  in  such  a  high  degree. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  winter  of 
1875  the  insurrection  seemed  to  be 
dying  out.  Turkey  had  proclaimed  an 
amnesty,  of  which  many  availed  them- 
selves. The  insurgents,  of  whom  there 
remained  only  a  few  hundreds,  retired 
to  the  almost  impassable  mountains 
of  the  Suttorina.  They  were  wanting 
in  everything — arms,  money,  and  even 
provisions.  Montenegro,  poor  by  na- 
ture, and  scarcely  able  to  support  its 
own  inhabitants,  would  assuredly  have 
been  compelled  to  withdraw  from  the 
insurrection ;  and  this  one,  like  so 
many  others,  would  have  been  extin- 
guished, had  not  help  appeared  at  the 
supreme  moment. 

With  the  extinction  of  the  insur- 
rection Russia  would  have  been  little 
pleased,  and  the  Panslavists  still  less. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  the  Slav  Com- 
mittees judged  it  apropos  to  intervene, 
and  appeared  on  the  scene,  apparently 
in  concert  with  their  government. 


Panslavists  and  the  Slav  Committees. 


71 


Their  representatives  were  M.  Was- 
siltschikoff,  at  C.ettinie.  and  M.  Was- 
selitsky  Bogodarowitz,  at  Ragusa. 
Their  most  active  agent  there  Avas  the 
Russian  Colonel  Monteverde ;  their 
bankers,  Messrs.  Boscovitch,  a  well 
known  firm  at  Ragusa.  But  the  soul 
of  every  enterprise,  the  centre  of 
all  the  intrigues,  was  the  Russian 
consul  -  general,  Jonin,  at  Ragusa. 
M.  AVassiltchikoff  was  at  Cettinje 
nominally  as  the  director  of  the  hos- 
pital for  the  wounded  insurgents ;  and 
he  it  was  who  made  the  pleasing  re- 
mark cited  above  as  to  the  employment 
of  funds  for  procuring  wounded  to  tend. 
M.  Wasselitsky  was  playing  the  phi- 
lanthropist at  Ragusa ;  he  had  merely 
come  to  distribute  money  and  food 
among  the  families  of  the  poor  rayahs  ! 
Colonel  Monteverde,  afterwards  sub- 
chief  of  the  staff  to  General  TchernaieS 
in  Servia,  was  there,  writing  as  corre- 
spondent for  the  Russki-Mir,  under  the 
name  of  Peter  Petroff,  while  M.  Jonin 
had  for  his  right  hand  Madame  de 
Monteverde,  by  whom  he  was  deeply 
captivated,  one  of  those  beautiful, 
accomplished  women,  of  brilliant  wit, 
who  have  already  played  so  important 
a  role  in  Russian  diplomacy.  The 
threads  of  the  Panslavist  agitation 
and  confederacy  were  united  in  the 
salon  of  Colonel  Monteverde,  who,  as 
confidential  man  of  the  Slav  Commit- 
tee, mandatory  of  the  insurrectionary 
chiefs,  and  at  the  same  time  agent  of 
the  Russian  consul,  made  himself  the 
intermediary  of  all  parties. 

The  small  house  which  Monteverde 
occupied  in  the  outskirts  of  Ragusa, 
was  the  scene  of  many  piquant  episodes 
of  that  time.  Among  others  was  an 
interview  which  occurred  on  ]S"ew 
Year's  Eve  between  the  Russian  consul- 
general,  Jonin,  and  the  chiefs  of  the 
insurgents.  .  It  is  not  difficult  to  guess 
what  passed,  when  we  remember  that 
immediately  after  it  the  insurgents 
shook  off  their  winter  sloth,  and  again 
showed  themselves  active  everywhere. 
There  is  also  a  very  significant  anec- 
dote, in  connection  with  this  memor- 


able night,  about  Peko  Pavlovitch, 
the  Yoivode  of  Herzegovina,  which 
has  been  often  told,  but  of  the  authen- 
ticity of  which  there  is  no  doubt. 
To  testify  to  Madame  de  Monte- 
verde his  grateful  sense  of  the  hospi- 
tality he  had  received  at  her  hands, 
Peko,  on  taking  his  leave,  promised 
her  the  first  Turkish  head  he  should 
himself  cut  off ;  and,  in  fact,  some 
weeks  later  a  letter  arrived,  dic- 
tated by  the  gallant  savage, — for  he 
could  not  write— in  which  he  an- 
nounced his  latest  success,  and  ended 
with  excusing  himself  for  not  having 
kept  his  word :  but,  though  heads 
taken  by  himself  were  not  wanting, 
yet  he  was  fairly  at  a  loss  to  know 
how  to  get  one  through  the  Austrian 
Custom  House ! 

In  January,  1876,  the  first  officers 
actually  serving  in  the  Russian  army 
arrived  at  Cettinje  and  Ragusa,  either 
to  take  part  in  the  engagements,  or  to 
watch  the  progress  of  the  insurrection. 
The  first  of  these,  almost  without  ex- 
ception, soon  went  away.  European 
officers  were  rarely  able  to  follow  the 
Montenegrins  and  Herzegovinians  on 
foot  across  their'  rugged  mountains ; 
and  even  if  one  was  a  sufficiently 
good  mountaineer  to  keep  up  with 
them  on  their  long  marches — which 
was  quite  the  exception — one  found  no 
opportunity  of  turning  one's  military 
knowledge  to  account,  for  there  was 
neither  tactical  organization,  nor  any 
particular  sort  of  arms ;  while  the 
native  chiefs,  who  knew  the  art  of 
war  in  their  own  mountains  thoroughly 
— and  indeed  showed  an  astonishing 
talent  for  it,  and  were  most  practical 
in  resources — were  so  jealous  of  their 
position,  and  so  distrustful  of  strangers 
that  they  would  never  ask  or  accept 
advice.  Consequently,  a  European 
officer  lost  all  prestige,  had  no  autho- 
rity, and  instead  of  being  a  good  chief, 
was  likely  to  become  a  bad  soldier. 
The  arrival  of  these  gentlemen,  the 
activity  of  the  Slav  Committees,  the 
direct  encouragement  of  the  Russian 
government, — for  they  cannot  pretend 


72 


Panslavists  and  the  Slav  Committees. 


that    M.    Jonin,   the    consul-general, 
acted  independently  —  together  with 
considerable    help    in    money,   provi- 
sions, arms,  and  ammunition,  at  once 
effected    the    desired    change   in   the 
general  state  of    feeling ;    the   direct 
consequence  of   which  was  the  reani- 
mation   of    the   .insurrection.      Until 
that   time   the    insurgents   had    been 
only  peasants,  malcontents,  miserably 
armed    Heiduks,  patriotic    brigands ; 
they  now  became  corps  of  volunteers, 
well-armed,  and  with  some  discipline,  to 
whom  the  Montenegrins  sent  between 
2,000  and  3,000  of  their  best  warriors, 
to  assist  in  many  enterprises,  such  as 
the   defence   of    the    Duga   Pass    in 
the  months  of  April  and  May.     The 
Prince     of     Montenegro,     supported 
by    the     Russian     government,    sup- 
plied  with  money  and  provisions  by 
the  Committees   which  he  well  knew 
how   to    make    the    most    of,    threw 
aside    the   mask    assumed    till    then, 
and  took  part,  more   or   less    openly, 
with    his    oppressed    brethren.       The 
perfect   accord   existing   between   the 
Russian    government    and    the    Slav 
Committees  with  regard  to  the  insur- 
gents,  showed   itself   at  the   time  of 
the  negotiations  in  the  Suttorina,  in 
April,    1876,   when   the   governor   of 
Dalmatia,  Baron  Rodich,  endeavoured 
to   negotiate   between  the  rebels  and 
the   commissioners  of   the  Porte,  Ali 
and  Mukhtar  Pashas.     M.  de  Wesse- 
litsky    arrived    there,    accredited    by 
Prince  Gortschakoff  himself,  to  invite 
the  insurgents,  in  unison  with  General 
Rodich,  to  lay  down  their  arms,  and 
state  conditions  which  the  Porte  would 
be  able  to  grant ;    at  the  same  time 
knowing  that  some  days  before,  Colonel 
Monteverde  had  started  on  one  of  his 
frequent  journeys  to  the  camp  of  the 
insurgents,   with  orders  not  to  place 
any  faith  in  Turkey's  promises,  and  to 
submit  such   conditions   as  could  not 
possibly  be  accepted.    That  that  would 
necessarily  lead  to  the  outbreak  of  the 
war,  for  which  Servia  and  Montenegro 
were  preparing,  no  one  doubted. 

When  that  event  did  occur,  these 


Committees  had  been  actively  at  work 
for  eight  or  nine  months,  until  be- 
lieving themselves  sufficiently  power- 
ful and  well  organized,  they  threw 
aside  the  mask  altogether,  and  openly 
enrolled  troops  to  send  to  Servia,  under 
the  very  eyes  of  their  government, 
which  remained  neutral  in  the  war. 

It  would  be  superfluous  in  this  short 
article  to  enter  into  a  detailed  account 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  Russians 
during  the  Servian  War  and  in  their 
occupation  of  Belgrade.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that,  after  being  supplied  by  the 
Committees  in  the  different  towns  of 
Russia  with  means  to  reach  Belgrade, 
the  volunteers  on  arrival  reported 
themselves  to  the  Slav  Committee 
there,  by  whom  they  were  enrolled 
and  paid  during  the  war,  and  drafted 
into  the  different  corps ;  those  recom- 
mended by  the  Committee  as  officers, 
receiving  commissions  from  the  Servian 
War  Office. 

There  have  been  so  many  conflicting 
accounts  of  the  number  of  Russians 
taking  part  in  the  campaign,  that  it 
may  be  well  to  mention  here  what 
may  be  taken  as  evidence  of  their  true 
number.  In  a  private  conversation  at 
Belgrade  last  January,  after  the  eva- 
cuation of  the  Russians  and  of  the 
hospitals,  the  secretary  of  the  above 
Committee,  in  speaking  of  the  severe 
losses  the  Russians  had  sustained  in 
Servia,  told  us  that,  from  the  returns  of 
the  War  Office,  and  of  the  hospitals,  and 
their  own  sources  of  information,  they 
had  traced  that  out  of  9,000  that  had 
set  foot  in  Servia,  only  2,900 — less 
than  a  third — had  lived  to  return  to 
their  own  country. 

We  have  now  shown  some  of  the 
principal  proceedings  of  the  Slav  Com- 
mittees. Without  them  there  would 
have  been  no  insurrection  in  Herze- 
govina and  Bosnia, — at  least  none  of 
any  importance;  there  would  have 
been  no  revolt ;  no  massacres  in 
Bulgaria ;  no  war  in  Servia  and 
Montenegro  ;  no  long  mobilisation  in 
Russia ;  no  war  in  the  east.  But  also 
there  would  be  no  ruin  of  the  Russian 


Panslavists  and  the  Slav  Committees. 


governmental  power ;  no  general  over- 
throw of  the  order  of  things — in  a 
word,  no  realization  of  the  Panslavist's 
ideals. 

What  will  be  the  consequence  of 
this  war,  should  it  terminate  as  for- 
tunately for  Russia  as  is  even  still 
possible  ?  Russia  will  emerge  ruined 
and  exhausted  ;  the  misery  and  general 
discontent,  already  great,  will  increase 
each  day,  and  we  shall  then  see  abso- 
lutism shivered  for  ever. 

Only  a  rapid  and  very  fortunate 
termination  of  the  war,  which  until 
now  has  been  anything  but  brilliant, 
could  still  upset  the  subtle  plan  of  the 
Panslavist  leaders,  prepared  with  great 


foresight  and  cunning,  and  executed 
hitherto  with  consummate  ability. 
But  of  such  a  termination  there  is 
little  probability,  for  the  government 
has  fallen  into  the  snares  laid  for  it ;  it 
has  made  blunders  which,  without  even 
these  snares,  are  incomprehensible. 
Winter  approaches,  and  even  if  the 
Turkish  army  should  be  beaten,  the 
difficulties  of  the  country,  the  vast 
expanse  of  the  theatre  of  war,  the 
hardihood  as  well  as  the  fanaticism  of 
the  Turkish  soldiers,  satisfy  us  that 
rapid  triumphs,  either  on  this  or  the 
other  side  of  the  Balkans,  are  not  to 
be  attained  by  the  Russians. 

N. 


MY  PET  CORN. 

I  STOOD  beside  an  awkward  puddle, 

And  saw  a  lady  opposite, 
Who,  suddenly  across  it  bounding, 

Upon  my  pet  corn  did  alight ! 

At  this  promiscuous  adventure 
I  felt  not  only  hurt,  but  piqued ; 

And,  caring  not  my  voice  to  govern, 
Unceremoniously  I  shrieked. 

Then  I,  in  explanation,  added  : 

"You've  trodden  on  a  corn  which  shoots!" 
And  she,  in  counter  explanation : 

"  I  wanted  not  to  wet  my  boots  ! " 

At  first,  I  more  than  half  expected 

That,  on  inquiry,  I  should  find 
The  lady  had  escaped  from  Bedlam, 

Out  of  her  manners  and  her  mind. 

But  now  I've  come  to  the  conclusion 
That  people  in  their  minds  are  born 

Who,  not  to  wet  e'en  their  goloshes, 
Would  tread  upon  a  neighbour's  corn. 


MOHL'S    "LIVRE   DES   ROIS." 


THE  early  history  of  a  nation  is  always 
preserved  in  the  form  of  ballads   or 
popular  legends ;  and  these,  related  by 
generation  after  generation  of  rhapso- 
dists,  gradually  assume  more  unity  of 
form   until   some   Homer   arises    and 
casts  the   whole  into  the  shape  of  a 
connected  epic  poem.     The  origin  of 
the  ballad  itself  is  nearly  always  in- 
volved  in    the    obscurity   of    remote 
antiquity,  and  it   is  but  seldom  that 
the  individual  authorship  of  the  epic 
version    can    be    with   any  certainty 
traced.      Persian  literature   offers  us 
the  curious  spectacle  of  a  single  man, 
in  comparatively  recent  times,  under- 
taking, at  his  sovereign's  request,  the 
editing  of  the  whole  legendary  history 
of  his  country  in  an  epic  form ;  and 
not  only  completing  his  task  in  a  per- 
fectly satisfactory  manner,  but  produc- 
ing a  work  which  has  taken  as  strong 
a  hold  upon  the  hearts  and  imagina- 
tion of   his   countrymen  as  ever   the 
Iliad  or  the  Odyssey  did  upon  the  soul 
of   a  Hellenic  patriot.      Scarcely  less 
remarkable  is  it  to  find  a  scholar  in 
Europe,  after  a  lapse  of  nearly  eight 
centuries,   successfully  combating  the 
apparently  insurmountable  difficulties 
of    such    a   task,    and   producing   an 
acaurate  edition  and   translation   of, 
and   commentary   upon,   the   gigantic 
work. 

Persia,  comparatively  insignificant 
as  the  country  is  to-day,  has  played  so 
important  a  part  in  the  history  of  the 
human  race,  its  conquests  have  been 
so  widely  extended,  its  empire  so  vast, 
and  its  monuments  so  magnificent,  that 
we  need  not  wonder  if  the  memories 
of  these  past  glories  lingered  in  later 
times  under  the  guise  of  popular 

1  Lc  Livre  des  Rois.  Par  Abou'lkasim 
Firdousi ;  traduit  et  commente  par  Jules  de 
Mchl,  &c.  Paris :  Imprimerie  Rationale,  1876. 
(London  :  Triibner.) 


legends  "and  ballads,  celebrating  the 
exploits  of  heroes,  who,  mythical 
though  they  appeared,  were  real  re- 
flections of  the  figures  of  the  kings, 
generals,  and  dynasties  of  a  bygone 
age.  Persia,  in  fact,  had  almost  un- 
rivalled memories  of  former  greatness, 
and  for  that  very  reason  had  a  wealth 
of  popular  tradition  that  few  countries 
could  boast. 

Naushirwan,   the    contemporary  of 
Mohammed,    appears   to   have    made 
some  attempt  to  collect  and  preserve 
these   legends,   and   ordered    such  as 
could  be  obtained  to  ba    reduced  to 
writing,  and  deposited  in  the  archives 
of  his  kingdom.     Yezdegird,  the  last 
of  the  Sassanian  dynasty,  intrusted  a 
learned   noble   of  his    court,     named 
Danish wer,  with  the  task  of  arranging 
the  materials  collected  by  Naushirwan, 
and  of  filling  up  the  gaps  in  the  narra- 
tive ;    both  of  which  commissions  he 
executed  with  the  assistance  of  several 
mobeds   or   priests.      This   Danishwer 
belonged  to  the  class  called  Dihkans, 
or  heads  of  the  old  county  families  of 
Persia  ;  a  class  by  which  the  ancient 
local    and    family    traditions    would 
naturally  be  preserved.     Danishvver's 
work  survived  the  fanatic  iconoclasm 
of  the  Arab  conquerors  of  Persia,  and 
was  subsequently  translated  from  the 
Pehlavi  into  the  current  Persian  dia- 
lect  at   the    close  of   the   ninth  cen- 
tury of  our  era,  by  order  of   Yakub 
ibn   Lees,    founder    of    the   Soffaride 
dynasty,  and  the  first  prince  of  purely 
Persian  extraction,  who  detached  him- 
self from  the  caliphate.   The  Samanide 
kings,  who  next  succeeded  to  the  throne 
of  Iran,  carried  on  the  historical  re- 
searches  of    their    predecessors,    and 
Danishwer' s   book  was   again  revised 
and  amplified,  this  time  by  a  Guebre 
poet  named  Dakiki.     When  the  em- 
pire of   the  Samanides  fell   into   the 


Mohl's  "  Livre  des  Rois" 


75 


hands  of  the  Ghaznavide,  Mohammed 
ibn  Sebuktagin,  the  second  monarch  of 
that  race,  about  the  year  1030  A.D., 
contrived  to  make  himself  entirely 
independent  of  his  suzerain,  and, 
although  himself  a  fanatical  Muslim, 
gave  the  greatest  encouragement  to  the 
development  of  national  Persian  in- 
stitutions, and  especially  to  the  study 
of  the  literature  a  ad  ancient  histori- 
cal monuments  of  the  country.  His 
great  ambition  was  to  form  a  col- 
lection which  should  surpass  those  of 
the  Sassanian  and  Samanian  kings, 
and  to  have  it  turned  into  one  complete 
and  poetical  whole.  The  princes  and 
nobles  in  the  various  provinces  will- 
ingly came  to  his  aid,  and  he  soon  re- 
ceived a  great  number  of  manuscripts 
and  family  traditions,  many  of  them 
from  persons  who  had  devoted  their 
whole  lives  to  such  archaeological 
researches.  The  mass  of  tradi- 
tional and  historical  matter  thus  col- 
lected was  ultimately  intrusted  for 
versification  to  a  poet  named  Firdousi, 
who  nobly  acquitted  himself  of  the 
task,  and  produced  the  Shah-Nameh,  or 
"  Book  of  Kings,"  a  magnificent  epic, 
consisting  of  more  than  60,000  coup- 
lets. How  this  labour  of  a  life-time 
was  rewarded  with  base  ingratitude 
and  meanness  by  the  monarch,  through 
the  jealousy  of  Firdousi's  rivals ;  and 
how  the  aged  poet  died  in  exile  of  a 
broken  heart,  after  penning  one  of  the 
bitterest  satires  on  his  master  that 
has  ever  been  written,  we  have  not 
space  to  describe. 

From  the  preceding  remarks,  we  see 
that  the  "  Book  of  Kings"  is,  in  a  his- 
torical point  of  view,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  secular  compilations  in 
existence,  and  does  really  contain  the 
whole  of  the  Folk  Lore  of  ancient 
Persia.  From  the  very  nature  of  the 
work,  and  the  language  in  which  it 
was  written,  it  has  scarcely  received 
at  the  hands  of  historians  the  ex- 
haustive searching  which  it  deserves  ; 
but,  thanks  to  the  almost  incredible 
perseverance  of  Jules  de  Mohl,  whose 
loss  the  world  cf  oriental  learning  has 
had  recently  to  deplore,  it  is  now 


completely  translated  into  French. 
The  work  was  undertaken  in  1826,  in 
consequence  of  an  order  from  the  king, 
who  wished  to  publish  the  text,  trans- 
lation, and  commentary  of  the  Skah- 
Nameh  in  the  grand  series  of  mag- 
nificent folio  volumes  which  were 
being  issued  in  order  to  show  of  what 
wonders  of  typography  the  Imprimerie 
Eoyale  of  France  was  capable.  Of 
all  the  works  commenced  for  this 
sumptuous  series,  Mohl's  alone  has 
been  brought  to  a  satisfactory  con- 
clusion. The  huge  size  and  num- 
ber of  the  volumes,  and  the  high 
price  which  such  typographical  per- 
fection required,  naturally  restricted 
its  circulation  ;  but  the  French  version 
is  now  being  published  in  a  more 
popular  and  accessible  form  by  the 
widow  of  the  translator. 

Jules  de  Mohl  was  born  at  Stutt- 
gard  on  25th  October,  1800,  and  was 
the  second  of  four  brothers,  all  of 
whom  rose  to  considerable  eminence  in 
politics  and  science.  He  was  at  first 
destined  for  the  Evangelical  ministry, 
and  entered  the  University  of  Tubingen 
in  1818,  where  he  gained  more  than 
one  prize  for  theology.  Although  to 
the  last  a  Christian  in  his  faith  as 
well  as  his  life,  he  held  broad  and 
somewhat  rationalistic  views,  which  he 
considered  incompatible  with  pastoral 
duties.  He  therefore  turned  his  atten- 
tion in  preference  to  philology  and 
philosophy.  On  leaving  Tubingen,  he 
wrote  in  an  album  the  sentence  which 
he  took,  and  ever  afterwards  acted  up 
to,  as  the  motto  of  his  life,  "  Truth  in 
science  and  in  life." 

Turning  naturally  towards  the  East 
for  the  solution  of  the  great  problems 
with  which  his  favourite  studies  deal, 
he  commenced  the  study  of  oriental 
languages;  and  attracted  by  such  names 
as  Silvestre  de  Sacy  and  Abel  Remusat, 
who  occupied  the  chairs  of  Arabic  and 
Chinese  at  Paris,  he  took  up  his  resi- 
dence in  the  French  capital. 

In  1825,  the  Wurtemberg  govern- 
ment offered  him  the  post  of  Professor 
of  Hebrew  at  Tubingen,  granting  him 
leave  to  reside  some  time  longer  in 


76 


MohVs  "Litre  dcs  Hois." 


France  for  the  purpose  of  continuing 
his  oriental  studies.  The  attractions 
of  the  charming  literary  society  in 
which  he  moved,  were,  however,  too 
strong  for  him ;  and  when  the  time 
came  for  him  to  commence  his  active 
duties  at  his  own  university,  he  found 
that  he  could  not  tear  himself  away 
from  his  French  friends;  and  in 
1831  he  sent  in  his  resignation,  deter- 
mined to  fix  his  permanent  residence 
in  Paris,  and  subsequently  took  out 
letters  of  naturalisation  as  a  French 
subject. 

Until  1826,  Mohl  had  made  Chinese 
his  principal  study,  and  had  already 
published  several  important  works  on 
that  language;  but  he  then  began 
to  turn  his  attention  more  exclusively 
to  Persian ;  receiving  at  the  same  time 
the  royal  commission  to  undertake  the 
publication  of  the  Shah-Nameh.  For 
fifty  years  this  was  his  chief  work ;  and 
the  complete  edition  which  he  has  left 
behind  him  is  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able monuments  of  erudition  and 
assiduity  in  the  whole  range  of  liter- 
ature. When  we  remember  the  im- 
mense length  of  the  poem,  the  number 
of  the  traditions,  and  the  obscurity  in 
which  remote  antiquity  has  involved 
many  of  them,  the  historical  puzzles, 
and  the  archaic  idioms  which  the  Shah- 
Nameh  contains,  the  feat  appears 
almost  unexampled  in  the  annals  of 
oriental  research. 

The  principal  hero  of  the  Shah- 
Nameh  is  Rustam,  whose  exploits  ex- 
tend over  several  reigns,  and  whose  life 
is  of  more  than  antediluvian  dura- 
tion. He  is  represented  as  a  warrior 
of  superhuman  strength  and  courage, 
and  is  ever  the  ready  champion  of  the 
Persian  kings.  His  career  in  many 
respects  resembles  that  of  Hercules, 
although  the  Persian  hero  had  only 
seven  labours  to  perform,  instead  of 
twelve.  One  of  the  most  touching 
episodes  in  the  book  is  that  of  Rus- 
tam and  his  son  Sohrab ;  a  brief 
sketch  of  this  will  form  a  good  speci- 
men of  the  contents  of  the  "  Book  of 
Kings." 

Rustam  being  engaged  upon  a  hunt- 


ing excursion  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Turan,1  killed  a  wild  ass,  and  while  he 
roasted  it  in  the  forest  allowed  his 
faithful  charger  Rukhush  to  graze  at 
liberty.  Having  satisfied  his  hunger, 
and  refreshed  himself  by  sleep,  the 
hero  awoke  to  find  his  incomparable 
steed  missing.  He  at  once  went  to 
Samengan,  a  small  border  state,  and 
haughtily  complained  to  the  king  that 
his  horse  had  been  stolen.  The 
monarch  promised  to  make  careful 
search  for  the  lost  charger,  and  en- 
tertained Rustam  with  magnificent 
hospitality.  When  the  Persian  hero 
had  retired  to  rest,  a  beautiful  damsel 
appeared  by  his  bedside,  and  telling 
him  that  it  was  she  who  had  caused 
Rukhush  to  be  stolen,  in  order  to 
bring  Rustam  to  the  Court  of  Sa- 
mengan, declared  her  passion  for 
him,  and  begged  him  to  demand  her 
in  marriage  of  her  father.  Rustam, 
himself  smitten  with  the  damsel's 
beauty,  readily  consented,  and  the 
fair  Tahmenah.  was  wedded  to  him 
on  the  following  day.  Like  the 
knights-errant  of  Christian  chivalry, 
Rustam  was  constrained  to  depart 
again  immediately  upon  his  adven- 
tures, but  before  parting  from  his 
bride  he  left  with  her  an  amulet, 
directing  her  in  the  case  of  a  daughter 
being  born  to  him,  to  bind  it  on  the 
child's  hair ;  but  in  case  she  should 
have  a  son  she  was  to  bind  it  round 
his  arm.  In  due  course  a  son  was 
born,  and  named  Sohrab ;  he  inherited 
his  father's  virtv.es  and  bravery,  and 
at  the  age  of  ten  years  was  the  most 
doughty  knight  at  court. 

Tahmenah,  fearing  to  be  deprived  of 
her  noble  son,  bade  him  conceal  his 
father's  name,  and,  in  answer  to  a 
message  from  Rustam,  sent  word  that 
a  daughter  had  been  born  to  him. 

The  youthful  Sohrab,  however,  was 
in  no  way  inclined  to  conceal  his 
father's  name ;  but,  in  spite  of  his 
mother's  entreaties,  set  out  himself 
in  search  of  him,  determined  at  the 
same  time  to  do  deeds  of  chivalry 

1  Turan  is  the  general  name  for  all  countries 
but  Iran,  i.e  ,  the  Aryan  laud,  Persia  proper. 


MohVs  "Litre  des 


77 


worthy  of  his  valiant  lineage.     For  a 
war-horse  he  had  a  foal  of  his  father's 
famous  Rukhush,  mounted  upon  which, 
and  equipped  with  suitable  armour,  he 
sallied  forth  to  conquer  the  King  of 
Persia,  and  set  his  own  sire  upon  the 
throne.      Afrasiab,   the  Tartar    king, 
sent  an  army  to  his  assistance,  with 
instructions  to  his    two    generals   to 
bring  Sohrab    and    Rustam,  unrecog- 
nized by  each  other,  to  single  combat, 
in  the  hope  that  the  latter,  the  dreaded 
foe  of  the  king,  might  fall  before  the 
more  youthful  warrior.     On  his  way, 
Sohrab   fought   and   conquered   a   fa- 
mous warrior,  named  Hujir,  whom  he 
took  prisoner.     A  young  maiden,  the 
daughter   of  the   commandant  of  the 
fortress  from  which  Hujir  had  sallied, 
then  donned  a  helmet  and  coat  of  mail 
and  engaged  herself  in   combat  with 
the  stripling.     Of  course  she  was  soon 
worsted   in   the  fight,    and   her  visor 
falling  off,  Sohrab  discovered  her  sex, 
and  became  deeply  enamoured  of  his 
beautiful  foe.     Before  taking  her  cap- 
tive, he  yielded  to  her  entreaty,  and 
allowed  her  to  re-enter  the  fortress, 
from  whence,  to  his  great   disappoint- 
ment, she  escaped  with  her  father  on 
the   following   morning  by  means   of 
secret  passages.      The  fugitives   soon 
spread  far  and  wide  the  tidings  of  the 
approach  of  the  invader,  describing  his 
youth,  gigantic   stature,  and  indomit- 
able  valour.      Preparations   were   at 
once  made  for  repelling  the  enemy,  and 
Rustam,  after  a  short  delay  occasioned 
by  a  quarrel  with  the  King  of  Persia, 
at  last  joined  the  ranks,  and  at  length 
the  two  armies  were  brought  to  close 
quarters,  and  a  decisive  battle  appeared 
to  be  imminent.      Sohrab,   reconnoit- 
ring the  Persian  camp  from  a  distance, 
was  naturally  anxious  to  ascertain  if 
his  father  were  present ;  but  although 
he  recognised  all  the  marks  and  tokens 
of  which  his  mother  had  told  him,  yet 
so  well  did  his  treacherous  allies  play 
their  part,  that  he  was  made  to  believe 
that  Rustam  was  absent  from  the  field. 
His  captive,  Hujir,   also,  thinking  to 
save  Rustam  from  being  attacked  un- 
prepared, favoured  the  delusion,  and 


after  various  minor  incidents,  fat  her  and 
son  at  length  stood  face  to  face  in  mor- 
tal conflict,  Sohrab  as  champion  of  the 
Turanian  legions,  and  Rustam  fighting 
for  the  Iranian  side.  A  fierce  pro- 
longed duel  ensued,  which  Firdousi 
describes  in  remarkably  stirring  and 
vigorous  language  ;  and  in  the  end,  as 
might  have  been  expected,  the  youthful 
warrior  succumbs,  after  having,  how- 
ever, several  times  gained  the  advan- 
tage, and  been  deprived  of  it  by  Rus- 
tam's  superior  cunning  and  experience. 
Mortally  wounded,  at  last  the  youth 
breaks  out  into  a  passionate  speech, 
from  which  the  broken-hearted  father 
discovers  too  late  that  he  has  killed  his 
own  brave  son. 

The  dying  warrior  youth  then  ex- 
hibits the  talisman,  which  Tahmenah 
had  received  from  his  father,  and  bound 
upon  his  arm ;  the  mutual  recognition 
is  complete,  and  the  episode  is  shortly 
afterwards  brought  to  a  close  with  the 
description  of  the  mother's  anguish 
and  death. 

Those  versed  in  German  legendary 
lore  will  recognise  in  the  story  of 
Rustam  and  Sohrab  the  incidents  of 
Das  Hildebrandslied. 

It  is  only  necessary  here  to  mention 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  Sohrab  and 
Rustum — a  poem  of  extraordinary 
beauty — -in  which  the  main  incidents 
are  those  of  the  Persian  tale,  though 
in  the  speeches  and  other  details  Mr. 
Arnold  has  followed  the  bent  of  his 
own  genius. 

The  reader  will  see  from  this  slight 
sketch,  that  the  Shah-Nameh,  in  addi- 
tion to  its  undoubted  historical  and 
mythological  value,  possesses  a  great 
deal  of  real  human  interest,  and  has 
many  passages  of  great  poetic  beauty. 
The  edition  now  issued  by  Madame  de 
Mohl,  having  brought  the  work  within 
the  reach  of  ordinary  readers,  it  is  sure 
to  take  a  high  place  among  standard 
popular  works,  and  will  long  remain 
a  striking  monument  of  unexampled 
erudition,  industry,  and  research. 

E.  H.  PALMER. 


78 


STYLE. 


A  RECENT  historian  of  Rome,  towards 
the  close  of  his  famous  attempt  to 
undeceive  the  world  at  large  with 
respect  to  the  genius  of  Cicero,  sums 
up  his  argument  in  the  following 
words  : — "  Ciceronianism  is  a  problem 
which,  in  fact,  cannot  be  properly 
solved,  but  can  only  be  resolved  into 
that  greater  mystery  of  human  nature 
— language,  and  the  effect  of  language 
on  the  mind." 

These  words  are  suggestive — sug- 
gestive, too,  of  a  wider  question  than 
at  first  sight  appears.  That  men  are 
influenced  by  language  at  least  as 
much  as  by  ideas ;  that  power  of 
expression  is  intimately  associated 
with  mental  grasp  generally ;  even 
that  a  fascination  is  exercised  by 
style  to  which  nothing  equivalent  is 
found  in  the  accompanying  thought 
— these  are  acknowledged  truths, 
readily  granted.  But  it  is  a  most 
singular  thing  that  they  are  so  readily 
granted  :  it  is  singular  that  the  ques- 
tion is  not  oftener  asked  —  Why  is 
this  so  ? 

How  is  it  that  language,  which  is 
but  the  vehicle  of  thought,  comes  to 
have  a  force  which  is  not  the  mere 
weight  of  that  which  it  carries  ? 
Even  where  this  is  not  the  case, 
where  there  is  an  equivalence  of  value 
in  both  style  and  ideas,  great  concep- 
tions being  nobly  expressed,  how  is  it 
that  the  matter  and  the  form  seem  to 
have  independent  claims  upon  the  at- 
tention ?  In  a  word,  what  is  that  in 
language  which  is  not  mere  expressive- 
ness of  the  obvious  intentions  of  the 
writer,  but  is  yet  a  merit? 

At  first  sight  there  appears  to  be 
a  simple  answer  to  the  question.  Any 
of  the  numerous  treatises  on  style  or 
rhetoric  abound  with  rules  for  the 
embellishment  of  discourse  :  the  reader 
learns  the  importance  of  a  choice  of 
fitting  words,  of  the  judicious  use  of 


figures  of  speech,  of  the  effect  of  melo- 
dious sentences  and  suitable  cadences  : 
he  is  instructed  in  the  manipulation  of 
complex  constructions,  and  discovers 
the  force  of  the  gradation,  the  anti- 
thesis and  the  climax  :  in  short,  he  is 
easily  led  to  the  conclusion  that,  be- 
sides expressiveness,  language  may  have 
the  merit  of  beauty. 

That  this  distinction  is  a  superficial 
one  has  been  shown  with  great  ability 
in  an  article  by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
on  the  "  Philosophy  of  Style."  l  He 
there  traces  all  excellence  of  compo- 
sition to  two  principles — Economy  of 
the  Attention,  and  Economy  of  the 
Sensibility  of  the  recipient.  Assuming 
that  a  reader  can  have  at  his  command 
only  a  definite  amount  of  power  of 
attention,  it  is  clear  that  whatever 
part  of  this  is  employed  on  the  form 
of  a  composition  must  be  subtracted, 
and  leave  so  much  the  less  to  be  occu- 
pied in  the  matter.  In  its  popular 
aspect  this  is  a  truth  familiar  to  all. 
If  any  author  is  said  to  have  an  ob- 
scure style,  it  is  meant  that  his  form 
obstructs  his  matter — that  it  absorbs 
an  inordinate  amount  of  the  reader's 
attention.  If  he  is  tedious,  it  is  be- 
cause his  language,  by  its  monotony 
or  redundancy,  exhausts  our  energies, 
and  leaves  us  correspondingly  defi- 
cient in  the  mental  vigour  to  be 
devoted  to  what  he  has  to  say. 

But  Mr.  Spencer  pushes  his  theory 
yet  further.  He  shows,  with  great 
ingenuity,  how  various  ornaments  of 
style,  at  first  sight  most  remote  from 
mere  utility,  are  in  reality  but  devices 
of  language  which  subserve  the  same 
purpose  of  economising  attention. 
Thus  the  canon  which  prefers  words 
of  Saxon  to  words  of  Latin  origin  is 
justified  by  the  greater  familiarity 
of  the  former,  recalling  the  associa- 

1  Ussays :  Scientific,  Political,  and  Specula- 
tive. Vol.  ii.  Essay  I. 


Style. 


79 


tions  of  childhood,  and  their  compara- 
tive brevity,  which  adds  to  their  force 
what   it    diminishes    from    the    effort 
required  to  recognise  them.     On  the 
other   hand,    the    occasional  effect   of 
polysyllabic   words    is    attributed   to 
their  associated  significance  :    for  the 
effort  involved  in  deciphering  or  using 
them,  by  hinting  at  a  corresponding 
weightiness    in    the    things    implied, 
gives  a  force  to  an  epithet  which  may 
do  for  a  sentence.     The  same  principle 
which  explains  the  rules  for  choice  of 
words  is  also  found  adequate  to  the 
solution  of  the  reasons  why  some  one 
order  of  words  is  more  effective  than 
another ;    why   certain    sequences    of 
sentences    are     better    than    others ; 
what  are  the  respective  merits  of  the 
direct  and  indirect  style  ;  and  so  forth. 
Then  follows  an  analysis  of  the  various 
figures   of   speech — Metaphor,  Simile, 
and  the  like — in  which  their  amenable- 
ness  to  the  same  law  is  established  : 
and,  finally,  the    applicability  of   the 
theory,  even  to  the  complex  imagery 
of  the  poet,  is  exhibited  in  a  passage 
which  it  would  be  an  injustice  to  the 
writer  not  to  quote  at  length  : — 

"  Passing  on  to  a  more  complex  application 
of  the  doctrine  with  which  we  set  out,  it  must 
now  be  remarked  that  not  only  in  the  struc- 
ture of  sentences,  and  the  use  of  figures  of 
speech,  may  economy  of  the  recipient's  mental 
energy  be  assigned  as  the  cause  of  force  ;  but 
that  in  the  choice  and  arrangement  of  the 
minor  images,  out  of  which  some  large  thought 
is  to  be  built  up,  we  may  trace  the  same  con- 
dition to  effect.  To  select  from  the  sentiment, 
scene,  or  event  described,  those  typical  ele- 
ments which  carry  many  others  along  with 
them  ;  and  so,  by  saying  a  few  things,  but 
suggesting  many,  to  abridge  the  description  ; 
is  the  secret  of  producing  a  vivid  impression. 
An  extract  from  Tennyson's  Mariana  will 
well  illustrate  this  : — 

'  All  day  within  the  dreamy  house 
The  door  upon  the  hinges  creaked, 
The  blue-fly  sung  in  the  pane,  the  mouse 
Behind  the  mouldering  wainscot  shrieked, 
Or  from  the  crevice  peered  about. ' 

The  several  circumstances  here  specified  bring 
with  them  many  appropriate  associations. 
Our  attention  is  rarely  drawn  by  the  buzzing 
of  a  fly  in  the  window,  save  when  everything 
is  still.  While  the  inmates  are  moving  about 
the  house,  mice  usually  keep  silence ;  and  it  is 
only  when  extreme  quietness  reigns  that  they 


peep  from  their  retreats.  Hence  each  of  the 
facts  mentioned,  presupposing  numerous 
others,  calls  up  these  with  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctness ;  and  revives  the  feeling  of  dull  soli- 
tude with  which  they  are  connected  in  our 
experience.  Were  ail  these  facts  detailed, 
instead  of  suggested,  the  attention  would  be 
so  frittered  away  that  little  impression  of 
dreariness  would  be  produced.  Similarly  in 
other  cases.  Whatever  the  nature  of  the 
thought  to  be  conveyed,  this  skilful  selection 
of  a  few  particulars  which  imply  the  rest  is  the 
key  to  success.  In  the  choice  of  competent 
ideas,  as  in  the  choice  of  expressions,  the  aim 
must  be  to  convey  the  greatest  quantity  of 
thoughts  with  the  smallest  quantity  of 
words."  1 

But  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  rest  con- 
tent with  deducing  what  may  be  called 
the  adventitious  charms  of  poetry  from 
this  principle  ;  he  even  thinks  that  its 
distinctive  characteristic — the  restric- 
tions of  metre — may  be  explained  by 
the  same  law.  "The  pleasure,"  he 
says,  "which  its  measured  movement 
gives  us  is  ascribable  to  the  compara- 
tive ease  with  which  words  metrically 
arranged  can  be  recognised."  5  Most 
people  will  be  startled  at  the  first 
sight  of  this  bold  dictum,  but  Mr. 
Spencer  is  not  the  man  to  shrink  from 
the  logical  consequences  of  his  prin- 
ciples, and  they  lead  to  more  than 
this. 

Any  one  who  has  attentively  read 
the  article,  or  even  the  brief  resume  of 
it  just  given,  will  have  seen  that  the 
theory  furnishes  a  canon  for  deter- 
mining, with  some  degree  of  certainty, 
which  of  two  styles  is  the  better.  To 
quote  again  :  "  The  relative  goodness 
of  any  two  modes  of  expressing  an 
idea  may  be  determined  by  observing 
which  requires  the  shortest  process  of 
thought  for  its  comprehension."  3 

Clearly,  then,  there  must,  in  every 
case,  be  some  form  of  expression  which 
is  absolutely  the  best ;  in  other  words, 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  an  ideal  style. 
Mr.  Spencer  accepts  the  conclusion, 
but  at  the  same  time  reminds  us  that 
style  must  vary  with  its  subject- 
matter. 

"  The    perfect  writer   will   express 

1  Essays  :  Scientific,  Political,  and  Specula- 
tive. Vol.  ii.  Essay  I.,  p.  34. 

-  Hid.  p.  39.  3  ma,  p.  33. 


Style. 


himself  as  Junius,  when  in  the  Junius 
frame  of  mind ;  when  he  feels  as 
Lamb  felt,  will  use  a  like  familiar 
speech ;  and  will  fall  into  the  rugged- 
ness  of  Carlyle  when  in  a  Carlylean 
mood."  * 

The  reservation  is  a  proper  one,  and 
with  it  the  ai-gument  seems  unimpeach- 
able. Yet  when  Mr.  Spencer  throws 
the  conclusion  into  the  form  of  an 
epigram,  and  tells  us  that  "to  have 
a  specific  style  is  to  be  poor  in  speech," 2 
he  makes  the  utmost  possible  demand 
upon  our  loyalty  to  exact  reasoning. 
Like  Adeimantus  in  the  Republic,  we 
are  "  confounded  by  this  novel  kind 
of  draughtsplaying,  played  with  words 
for  counters." 

But  if  the  foregoing  theory  be  care- 
fully reviewed,  it  will  be  seen  that 
throughout  it  the  treatment  is  what 
may  be  described  as  objective  rather 
than  subjective.  Or,  to  avoid  words  in 
which  there  is  a  degree  of  ambiguity, 
the  definite  product  language  is  more 
or  less  isolated  from  the  agency  using 
it,  and  viewed  more  in  relation  to  the 
reader's  than  the  writer's  mind.  But 
there  is  another  aspect  of  the  relation, 
which  cannot  be  left  out  without  pro- 
ducing a  result  which  must  be  one- 
sided and  may  be  inaccurate.  The 
following  pages  will  be  an  attempt  to 
supply  this  omission  by  a  consideration 
of  the  nature  of  the  various  devices  of 
language,  regarded  as  the  outcome  of 
the  mind  that  employs  them. 

That  "  to  have  a  specific  style  is  to 
be  poor  in  speech "  has  not  been  im- 
plied in  the  judgments  which  the 
world  has  from  time  to  time  passed 
upon  its  greatest  writers.  Perhaps  it 
would  be  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that 
much  in  proportion  as  an  author  has 
reached  a  high  eminence  in  his  art 
there  has  been  found  in  his  produc- 
tions a  corresponding  tendency  to  an 
individuality  of  expression.  Is  it  not 
a  common  complaint  against  inferior 
artists,  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  in 
painting  or  music,  that  their  compo- 
sitions lack  character  and  originality  ? 

1  Essays  :  Scientific,  Political,  and  Specula- 
tive.   Vol.  ii.    Essay  I.,  p.  47.        2  Ibid.  p.  46. 


Uniformity  is  the  distinguishing  fea- 
ture of  mediocrity,  while  the  work  of 
genius  is  at  once  recognised  and  at- 
tributed to  the  origin  whose  impress 
it  bears.  And  a  little  reflection  will 
show  that  this  is  exactly  what  is  meant 
by  "  style."  Various  tricks  of  voice, 
gesture,  and  dress  are  associated  by 
every  one  with  his  friends,  glimpses  of 
the  hidden  self  being  granted  in  such 
half-unnoticed  revelations.  The  chief 
value,  indeed,  of  such  peculiarities 
rests  in  the  fact  that  they  are  com- 
monly unknown  to  the  man  himself. 
For  all  of  us,  even  the  most  sincere, 
are  to  a  certain  extent  actors  in  our 
intercourse  with  others,  and  play  a 
part  that  has  been  self-assigned,  often 
without  due  pondering  of  the  player's 
power.  Nature,  however,  peeps  out 
in  countless  little  traits  of  character, 
which  find  their  expression  in  language, 
habit,  and  even  in  movements.  By 
what  subtle  union  such  tricks  of  man- 
ner are  linked  with  what  Dr.  Johnson 
has  called  "  the  anfractuosities  of  the 
human  mind,"  is  a  curious  and  intricate 
question,  but  no  one  will  doubt  the 
fact  of  the  connection.  "That's 
father  !  "  cries  the  child  as  she  hears 
the  well-known  footfall  in  the  hall ; 
"  How  like  the  man  !  "  we  exclaim 
when  some  characteristic  remark  is 
reported  to  us.  Spite  of  the  progress 
in  complexity  from  a  sound  to  a  senti- 
ment, each  obeys  the  same  law ;  and 
the  connection  between  the  footfall 
and  the  foot,  between  the  speech  and 
the  mind  that  conceived  it,  is  one  and 
the  same. 

Let  us  follow  out  the  thought  a 
little  further.  Not  only,  to  put  the 
fact  in  its  popular  aspect,  has  every 
one  his  peculiarities ;  but  there  are 
degrees  of  peculiarity  accompanying 
degrees  of  individuality;  as  a  man 
deviates  in  character  from  the  type 
ordinarily  met  with,  so  are  his  habits 
singular  to  himself,  till  a  point  is 
reached  where  the  personality  is  re- 
markable, and  the  behaviour  eccen- 
tric. "Where  such  manners  are  perfectly 
unaffected  they  are  a  reflection  of  a 
self  that  stands  alone  among  many,  so 


Style. 


81 


that  the  common  dictum,  that  genius 
is  eccentric,  has  a  philosophical  foun- 
dation. There  is  no  need  to  linger  on 
the  numerous  and  tolerably  obvious  re- 
servations which  make  it  impossible 
to  convert  the  proposition,  in  other 
words,  to  infer  unusual  power  from 
singularity  ;  the  broad  fact  remains 
that  where  there  is  that  marked 
originality  called  genius,  it  is  an 
originality  not  of  thought,  emotion,  or 
pursuits,  but  of  the  man. 

The  application  of  this  to  literary 
style  is  easy,  and  will  be  found  to  lead 
to  some  interesting  results. 

In  its  powers  of  direct  expression, 
language  is  tolerably  efficient,  and 
were  there  nothing  but  facts,  con- 
sidered objectively,  to  be  conveyed, 
even  a  simpler  vehicle  would  suffice. 
Swift,  in  one  of  the  most  humorous 
passages  of  Gulliver's  Travels,  describes 
a  set  of  philosophers,  who,  disdaining 
language  as  the  ordinary  means  of  ex- 
pressing their  thoughts,  preferred  to 
carry  with  them  a  pack  of  the  things 
most  commonly  referred  to  in  every- 
day parlance,  by  the  dexterous  mani- 
pulation of  which  they  contrived  to 
carry  on  long  conversations.  Now 
this  represents,  with  the  necessary 
freedom  of  caricature,  a  real  truth 
with  regard  to  a  certain  class  of  dis- 
course. In  any  written  composition, 
the  less  the  author's  personality  is 
involved  in  the  matter  treated,  the 
simpler  the  language  which  suffices. 
The  extreme  form  of  this  truth  is 
found  in  the  case  of  Algebra,  where 
the  discourse  is,  so  to  speak,  per- 
fectly dispassionate,  and  the  symbol- 
ism perfectly  adequate.  Similarly,  the 
language  employed  in  mathematical 
proof  is  found  adequate  in  proportion 
as  the  statements  are  purely  objective. 
As  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of  literary 
composition  the  author's  personality 
creeps  in,  and  brings  with  it  a  corre- 
sponding complexity  of  language,  not 
merely  the  complexity  of  structure  of 
sentences,  but  of  choice  of  words,  use 
of  figures  of  speech,  and  all  the  refine  - 
ments  of  elaborate  writing.  It  is  true 
that  much  more  than  this  has  to  be 
taken  into  consideration  ;  the  subjects 

No.  217. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


themselves  are  infinitely  more  complex 
as  the  scale  is  ascended,  the  distinctions 
are  more  delicate,  the  contrasts  present 
more  sides  to  view,  the  gradations  are 
subtler.  But  is  not  this  a  corollary 
from  the  main  principle  ?  Is  it  not 
because  we  are  then  dealing  either 
with  facts  of  our  own  or  the  general 
consciousness;  with  ideas,  emotions, 
desires,  and  so  forth ;  or  at  any  rate  with 
external  facts  looked  at  from  the  point 
of  view  of  an  interested  and  question- 
ing observer,  that  there  is  this  increase 
in  complexity,  or,  in  other  words,  de- 
crease in  adequacy  of  language  1 

But  this  idea  admits  of  yet  further 
development.  The  facts  perfectly 
expressed  in  algebraical  symbols 
receive  a  nearly  perfect  expression  in 
mathematical  language.  The  termi- 
nology of  science  is  found  very 
tolerably  sufficient,  if  strictly  adhered 
to,  and  mostly  where  expository  and 
descriptive.  In  history  and  biography 
what  we  may  call  the  subjective  ele- 
ment is  strong,  and  there  we  find  all 
the  refinements  of  composition.  These 
express,  not  only  facts  and  aspects  of 
facts,  not  only  are  there  delicate  im- 
plications of  expression,  embodied  in 
all  the  recognised  figures  of  rhetoric, 
the  trope, the  simile, and  the  metaphor; 
but  there  are  the  glimpses  at  the  very 
self  of  the  author  which  lurks  in  un- 
conscious tricks  of  diction  and  turns 
of  thought,  and  emerges  in  epithets,  in 
repetitions,  and  in  phrases.  In  poetry 
the  author  reigns  supreme,  and  there 
too  the  imperfection  of  language  is 
most  manifest.  In  a  very  fine  passage 
every  word  is  charged  with  meaning 
and  riveted  to  its  place,  in  fact  the 
vehicle  is  strained  to  its  utmost  tc* 
bear  the  load  imposed  upon  it.  Hence 
Coleridge's  well-known  definition  of 
poetry  as  "  the  best  words  in  the  best 
order."  Meanwhile  the  personality  of 
the  Poet  pervades  every  line  of  every 
poem,  a  hardly  recognised  but  unfail- 
ing presence.  He  colours  each  picture, 
and  is  a  spectator  at  every  scene  ;  he 
is  beside  Ulysses  in  the  island  of 
Calypso ;  with  him  he  witnesses  the 
death  of  Argus  and  the  insolence  of 
the  suitors ;  he  shares  the  recognition 

G 


82 


Style. 


of  Penelope  and  the  welcome  to  home  ; 
and  when  dire  retribution  seizes  the 
usurpers  he  looks  upon  their  fall. 

Not  that  this  personality  is  directly 
obtruded  upon  the  hearer's  notice  ;  in 
the  instance  of  Homer,  it  is  markedly 
withdrawn,  the  characters  speak  of 
themselves,  the  descriptions  are  meant 
to  serve  no  moral  end.  But  what  is 
never  brought  before  us  as  an  avowed 
element  in  the  composition  is  every- 
where present  in  the  form  of  the 
narrative,  —  we  never  hear  the  accents 
of  the  voice,  though  we  are  always 
listening  to  its  tones.  Take  as  an 
illustration  of  this  a  passage  of  pure 
description  from  the  Odyssey  :  — 


p.eya 


. 

Kedpov  T1  fvKfdroio  6vov  T'  dva  vljaov  68a>8fi 
8cu.ofi.tvw  T]  8'  ev8ov  doiStaoucr'  OTTI  KaX»;, 
i<rrbv  fTroi%op.(VT]  xpvfrdr)  Kep/aS'  vfpaivev. 
V\TJ  8e  (rnfos  dfi<f>i  TTftyvKei  T7;Xe$oco<ra, 
K\^6pi)  T'  aiyeipos  re  Kal  eva>8r)s  Kvirdpuro-os. 
fvda  be  T  opvides  rajaier/TrrepcH  evvd£ovro, 
(ntanrt  s  T'  'IprjKes  re  raitryXcca'O'oi  re  Kopavcu 
dvdXiai,  TftcrivTf  OaXdcrcria  epya  [j.ffj.rj\(v. 
1]  8'  avrov  TfTawcrro  Trepi  cnreiovs  y\a(pvpoio 


Kpfjvai  fff^tiris  Tri&vpfS  p'eov  t/Scm  Xev/ca, 

\\f]\a>v  rrrpa/i/iewu  aXXuSi?  a\\ij. 
i  8e  Xet/i<Si/ey  /LtaXaKoi  I'ov  fj8e  cre\ivov 
ov  fvQa  K  (nurd  KOI  dddvaros  nep  eVeX- 


(ppecrlv  y<rw- 

v.  59—74. 


An  analysis  of  this  passage  which 
points  out  its  beauties  will  be  found 
also  to  draw  attention  precisely  to 
those  parts  where  the  author's  presence 
is  latent.  The  smell  of  the  cedar 
and  the  voice  of  the  divine  songstress 
accompanying  the  music  of  her  loom, 
are,  by  the  epithets  "  fragrant "  and 
"sweet"  made  part  of  the  real  or 
imagined  experience  of  the  poet ; 
while  the  word  eTrotx0/-1*'''/  suggests, 
and  just  .suggests,  glimpses  that  he 
catches  of  her  form  as  she  moves  at 
her  work  within  the  cave.  Then  he 
describes  the  wood  that  shades  her 
abode,  implying,  by  an  epithet,  how 
that  too  appeals  to  another  sense, 
joining  with  the  incense  that  burns 
close  by  in  a  mixture  of  pleasant 
smells.  Another  feature  is  introduced  : 


there  are  birds  harbouring  in  the 
branches,  and  the  word  tvva^ovTo  that 
describes  this,  by  an  implied  compari- 
son with  the  sleeping- chambers  of 
man,  shows  a  sort  of  tender  way  of 
looking  at  nature.  It  is  more  than  if 
it  were  merely  said,  "there  were  birds 
in  the  branches."  Again,  the  allusion 
to  the  sea  in  the  words  r^ffiVre  Ba\da- 
cria  epya  pe prjXu'  is  a  direct  reflection 
of  the  poet's,  in  no  way  forming 
part  of  a  description  merely  meant 
to  call  up  an  actual  scene,  in- 
stead of  a  particular  way  of  look- 
ing at  a  scene.  The  same  is  true 
of  the  words  that  describe  the  vine, 
bending  with  its  burden  of  ripe 
clusters,  of  the  labyrinth  of  streams, 
and  the  patches  of  violet  and  parsley 
round  them  :  the  accompanying  ad- 
jectives draw  attention  to  beauties  the 
poet  has  noticed,  and  wishes  us  to 
notice  as  well.  There  is  hardly  need 
to  point  out  how  the  words  with  which 
the  whole  concludes  are  but  an  ex- 
clamation of  wonder  and  admiration 
on  the  part  of  the  poet  at  the  scene  he 
has  called  up. 

But  this  is  not  all,  for  besides  the 
selection  of  these  various  elements 
there  is  the  mode  of  their  combination 
into  a  definite  picture,  the  order  in 
which  the  images  follow  one  another, 
and  the  gradation  and  transition  of 
ideas  which  are  all  part  of  the  art, 
that  is,  of  the  mind — of  the  self — of 
the  author.  At  a  distance  the  senses 
of  sight  and  smell  are  first  caught  by 
the  glimmer  of  the  fire  and  the  fra- 
grance of  what  is  burning  in  it ;  as 
Hermes  approaches  he  hears  the  sound 
of  the  goddess  singing  at  her  work ; 
coming  still  closer,  he  has  leisure  to 
mark  the  minute  details  of  the  scene, 
the  cavern,  the  grove,  and  the  vine ; 
while  the  words  dfla'j'aroc  Trep  in  the 
concluding  lines  leave  him  in  amaze- 
ment at  the  beauty  of  the  whole. 

Now  this  may  sound  like  hyper- 
criticism,  and  it  would  behypercriticism 
if  it  were  meant  that  all  these  points 
were  before  the  mind  of  the  poet, 
forming  part  of  an  intentional  study 
of  effect.  On  the  contrary,  the  impli- 
cation is  the  direct  reverse.  It  is 


Style. 


83 


because  Homer  was  such  or  such  a 
man,  because  he  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  regarding  what  he  saw  after  a 
certain  fashion  of  his  own,  that  when 
he  set  himself  to  compose  poetry  he 
composed  it  as  he  did.  Hence  there 
is  a  deep  meaning  in  the  saying  of 
Milton,  that  he  who  would  write  good 
poetry  must  make  his  life  a  poem.  It 
is  by  virtua  of  a  thousand  minute 
traits  of  character,  the  gradual  deposit 
of  life's  experiences,  that  any  one'speaks, 
writes,  even  walks  and  moves,  as  we 
see  him  do.  For  there  must  be  some 
reason  why,  if  'two  men  set  about  de- 
scribing a  scene,  or  giving  even  a 
plain,  unvarnished  account  of  some 
event,  the  mode  of  their  narration 
differs,  differs,  too,  in  such  a  way  that 
each  can  be  ascribed  to  its  author,  as 
we  say,  by  internal  evidence,  that  is, 
by  its  style.  While,  then,  no  better 
explanation  appears,  that  theory  of 
style  may  perhaps  be  provisionally 
accepted  which  identifies  it  with 
character  —  with  unconscious  revela- 
tions of  the  hidden  self. 

This  conclusion  needs  a  little  further 
elaboration  before  it  is  compared  with 
that  view  of  what  is  called  the  philosophy 
of  style,  which  resolves  all  the  devices 
of  composition  into  schemes  for  econo- 
mising the  reader's  attention.  It  is 
necessary  to  point  out,  and  this  may 
be  done  briefly,  how  not  only  is  style 
generally  the  impress  of  the  author's 
self,  but  that  there  is  a  correspond- 
ence between  the  distinctive  features  of 
any  particular  passage  and  the  points 
at  which,  in  the  manner  just  indicated, 
the  writer's  personality  glides  into 
the  discourse.  This  is  not  difficult,  if 
what  has  been  already  said  be  accepted. 
What  indeed  is  meant  by  saying  that 
an  author  is  best  where  his  writing  is 
most  natural  ? 

Is  it  not  implied  that  the  happiest 
touches  are  those  which  are  original — 
that  those  phrases  and  expressions  are 
most  welcome  to  the  reader  which  set 
the  matter  they  convey  in  a  new  light 
— and  that  the  light  in  which  the  writer 
himself  sees  it1?  If  the  foregoing 
passage  from  the  Odyssey  be  reviewed 
it  will  be  found  that  its  beauties  are 


coincident  with  the  parts  where  the 
presence  of  the  poet  seems  to  be  hinted, 
and  this  is  equally  true,  though  not 
equally  discernible  in  all  writing  that 
is  at  all  elaborate. 

Now,  how  does  all  this  square  with 
the  dictum  that  "to  have  a  specific  style 
is  to  be  poor  in  speech  1  "     It  will  not 
at  first  sight   appear  so  very  incom- 
patible.    In  a  certain  sense,  style  at 
all  owes  its  existence   to   the  imper- 
fection of  the  vehicle  of  thought.  Were 
language  a  perfectly  adequate  means  of 
embodying  ideas,  what  is  now  to  be 
looked  for  in  the  mode  of  statement 
would  be  found  directly  declared   in 
the  statement  itself.  For  the  countless 
devices  of  language,  the  gestures  and 
tones  of   discourse,  the  thousand  rhe- 
torical figures  of  written  composition, 
are  really  one  and  all  simple  propo- 
sitions not  capable  of  exact  expression 
in  the  body  of   the  narrative.     They 
are  the  lights  and  shades  of  the  pic- 
ture,   or    perhaps     rather    the    finer 
touches,  which  are  to  tickle   the   im- 
agination   of    the    reader    with    sug- 
gested beauties.     And  it  is  exactly  in 
these   refinements  of   expression  that 
the  deepest  meaning  of  any  author,  in 
other  words,  his  self  resides.     There  is 
something   pathetic   in  the   reflection 
that  we  walk  this  world  half  hidden 
from  one  another,  a  constant  struggle 
going  on  to  make  known  the  thoughts, 
beliefs,  and  aspirations  of  the  real  but 
partly  imprisoned  being,  which  never 
can  be  known  exactly  as  they  are  to 
any  but  the  mind  that  conceives  them. 
Like   savages,  we    speak    mostly    by 
signs,  which  serve  us  well  enough,  but 
leave  much   uncommunicated.      It  is 
well,  however,  that  this  imperfection  is 
an  imperfection  that  produces  beauty, 
that  the  grating  of  the  machine  is  not 
harsh,  but    musical.       Mr.     Herbert 
Spencer  is  successful  in  showing  that 
the   various   devices   of   language   do 
serve  to  the  economy  of  the  reader's 
attention,  and  that  beauties  of  style 
are  beauties  partly  because  they  effect 
this  end.     But   he   has   not  raised  a 
question  which  seems  closely  akin  to 
the  subject.     Why  is  it  needful  to  have 
recourse   to  these   expedients   at   all, 

G  2 


Style. 


and  why  is  there  an  infinite  variety 
in  every  man's  use  of  them  1  The 
answer  to  these  questions  seems  to 
give  an  insight  into  a  higher  law,  to 
which  Mr.  Spencer's  pi-inciple  stands 
rather  as  an  empirical  generalisation. 
It  is  this  : — that  each  man's  inmost 
nature  is  a  secret  to  all  but  himself — 
and  that  a  secret  which  in  no  two 
cases  is  the  same.  Every  attempt  to 
communicate  it  partly  fails,  and  so 
language  is  full  of  compromises  and 
expedients ;  each  nature  to  be  revealed 
is  different,  and  so  there  is  a  countless 
variety  of  styles.  This  then  is  not 
due  to  poverty  of  speech,  rather  it  is 
due  to  multiplicity  of  individualities, 
each  speaking  its  own  language  and 
telling  its  own  tale. 

The  ideal  style,  then,  is  for  an  ideal 
being,  but  for  an  ideal  being  who  is  to 
be  without  personality.  The  perfect 
writer  may  write,  now  like  Junius, 
now  like  Lamb,  now  like  Carlyle,  but 
like  himself  he  can  never  write.  He 
cannot,  as  we  say,  express  himself.  A 
significant  phrase,  for  after  all  it  is 
when  a  man,  as  far  as  he  can,  expresses 
himself,  that  his  communication  is 
most  worth  having.  It  is  the  one 
thing  of  which  he  certainly  knows 
something,  where  he  can  indeed  speak 
with  authority.  It  is  not  so  much 
what  a  man  knows,  as  how  he  knows 
it,  not  so  much  the  extent  as  the 
quality  of  his  information,  that  gains 
him  a  right  to  be  heard.  Originality 
is  far  oftener  originality  of  expression 
than  idea,  a  fresh  aspect  of  something 
old,  not  a  discovery  of  something  new. 
And  so  there  starts  up  here  an  answer 
to  the  difficulties  encountered  at  the 
outset,  "  Why  men  are  influenced  by 
language  at  least  as  much  as  by 
ideas ;  "  and  "Why power  of  expression 
is  intimately  associated  with  mental 
grasp  generally."  Partly,  no  doubt, 
because  in  language  resides  the  per- 
sonality of  the  speaker  or  writer,  and 
men  are  influenced  by  personality — 
but  far  more  for  another  reason.  The 
highest  form  of  ability  is  something 
which  pervades  the  whole  being  ;  it  is 
not  restricted  to  an  intellect  preter- 


naturally  acute,  to  vividness  of  imagi- 
nation, or  fineness  of  feeling  ;  but  it 
is  the  manifestation  of  a  nature — of  a 
self,  which  is  really  great.  And  it 
has  been  seen  that  it  is  in  expression, 
or  style,  that  the  self  of  the  author  is 
to  be  sought.  That,  then,  is  a  true 
instinct  which  so  intimately  associates 
power  of  expression  with  power  of 
character  generally.  Of  this  power, 
too,  the  distinguishing  feature  "is  its 
individuality.  Just  as  in  animal  life 
the  ascent  of  the  scale  of  creation  is  a 
process  of  differentiation  of  functions  ; 
just  as  a  higher  form  of  life  is  marked 
off  from  a  lower  form  by  greater 
speciality  of  shape,  by  powers  more 
accurately  defined,  by  habits  more 
peculiarly  its  own ;  so  in  the  compari- 
son of  man  with  man,  something  simi- 
lar to  this  law  is  traceable,  pointing- 
out  that  the  -superiority  of  genius  in 
degree  is  mainly  a  consequence  of  its 
difference  in  kind. 

Thus  nature  seems  to  speak  in  a 
continued  protest  against  uniformity, 
by  a  thousand  analogies  insisting  upon 
the  supreme  importance  of  the  indi- 
vidual. And  the  critical  verdict  which 
pronounces  that  writing  best  which  is 
the  most  natural  can  be  affiliated  to- 
as  wide  a  law  as  this.  Whether  or  no 
it  be  thought  that  each  man  is  put 
into  the  world  the  possessor  of  some 
particular  truth,  which  his  acts  or 
words  can  set  before  his  fellow-crea- 
tures, it  is  at  any  rate  clear  that  the 
inevitable  speciality  of  each  man's  ex- 
periences must  present  things  to  him 
in  an  aspect  which  can  be  exactly  the 
same  for  no  other.  There  are  no  real 
doubles  in  the  world,  no  such  thing  as 
identity  in  constitution  and  circum- 
stances. While,  then,  this  is  so,  there 
is  a  significance  in  style,  a  value  in  the 
unconscious  self-revelations  of  traits 
of  personality.  However  a  man  may 
fail  of  the  object  he  sets  before  him  in 
what  he  does  or  says,  yet  if  there  has 
been  in  him  that  conscientious  fidelity 
to  his  purpose,  which  is  but  an  attempt 
to  express  himself,  his  work  will  not 
have  been  wasted,  though  its  direct 
worth  be  unimportant. 

T.  H.  WRIGHT. 


85 


AFRICAN  EXPLORATION  AND  ITS  RESULTS. 


WHEN  Livingstone  was  driven  from 
Kolobeng,  the  missionary  station  in 
the  Bechuana  country,  by  the  Boers, 
in  1852,  his  house  plundered  and  all 
his  belongings  destroyed  or  carried 
off,  it  was  little  dreamed  that  in 
sending  him  homeless  with  his  face 
to  the  north,  the  first  step  was 
taken  towards  opening  up  the  vast 
continent  beyond.  Yet  so  it  proved. 
By  successive  geographical  explora- 
tions, continued  through  little  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  mys- 
tery of  all  ages  was  solved.  The 
sources  of  the  Nile  were  discovered, 
with  the  great  lakes  their  feeders, 
while  the  Congo,  fed  by  another  group 
of  great  lakes  a  little  further  south,  has 
been  traced  through  its  whole  course 
to  the  Atlantic.  As  the  great  Mission- 
ary himself  records  in  the  preface  to 
his  first  Journals,  "  the  Boers  resolved 
to  shut  up  the  interior  and  I  deter- 
mined to  open  the  country,  and  we 
shall  see  who  have  been  most  success- 
ful— they  or  I."  He  may  well  have 
felt  in  after  years,  with  some  touch  of 
pride,  that  an  overruling  power  had  by 
his  humble  instrumentality  turned  the 
short-sighted  malevolence  of  the  Boers 
into  a  means  of  attaining  the  very  end 
they  most  desired  to  prevent.  In  de- 
stroying a  civilising  and  Christian 
mission,  they  set  free  the  Missionary 
who  was  destined,  alone  and  defence- 
less, to  brave  successfully  the  dangers 
of  the  Kalahari  desert — the  forest  and 
the  jungle  with  their  wild  beasts,  and 
still  more  savage  tribes  of  natives, — 
and  only  end  his  life  when  a  chosen  band 
of  kindred  spirits  had  followed  his  ex- 
ample in  generous  emulation.  Not 
indeed  until  these  had  revealed  to  the 
world  the  hidden  sources  of  the  great 
Egyptian  river,  with  a  vast  system  of 


inland  seas  and  lakes,  and  another 
was  in  the  field  where  he  spent  his 
last  breath,  ready  to  complete  his 
glorious  mission  by  solving  the  re- 
maining problem  of  African  geo- 
graphy. Stanley's  latest  achievements, 
identifying  the  Lualaba  and  Congo  as 
one  river,  and  tracing  it  in  a  course  of 
more  than  1,400  miles  through  the 
equatorial  regions  to  the  Atlantic,  has 
crowned  the  work  of  so  many  illustri- 
ous travellers  and  scientific  explorers, 
and  fully  realised  the  hope  which  so 
long  sustained  the  failing  strength  and 
health  of  Livingstone  in  his  latest 
journeyings.  He  was  not  destined  to 
succeed  himself,  but  to  him  belongs 
the  merit  of  having  led  the  way  so 
soon  to  be  followed  by  others  younger 
and  stronger,  for  whom  that  future 
glory  was  reserved. 

As  we  look  over  the  muster-roll,  and 
those  who  formed  this  heroic  band 
pass  one  by  one  before  the  mental 
vision,  headed  by  the  veteran  martyr 
and  missionary  himself,  and  in  the 
foremost  rank  Burton,  Speke,  and 
Grant,  by  whom  the  great  lakes  and 
"the  mystic  fountains  of  the  Nile" 
were  unveiled ;  Baker  and  Gordon  fol- 
lowing close,  with  the  "White  Nile  and 
Albert  Nyanza  emblazoned  as  the 
trophies  of  their  prowess ;  Cameron, 
who  spanned  Africa  in  his  stride ;  and 
Stanley,  with  the  tribute  of  the  Congo 
in  its  vast  sweep  to  the  Atlantic  in  his 
hand — it  seems  more  like  a  dream  than 
sober  reality  that  such  achievements 
have  been  crowded  into  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  and  be  the  work  of  a 
single  generation.  Yet  so  it  is ;  and 
if  a  feeling  of  doubt  or  incredulity 
should  arise  in  any  mind  as  to  the 
vastness  of  the  labour  bestowed,  and 
the  distances  traversed  through  pre- 


86 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


viously  unknown  regions,  both  north 
and  south  of  the  equator,  within  that 
brief  period,  by  adventurous  explorers 
at  the  hazard  of  their  lives,  a  glance 
at  the  map  recently  issued  by  the 
Exploration  Committee  of  the  Royal 
Geographical  Society  will  suffice  to 
dispel  any  lingering  scepticism.  On 
this  sketch-map  all  the  various  routes 
taken  by  African  travellers,  singly  or 
in  expeditions,  have  been  carefully 
marked  in  broad  red  lines.  The  effect 
is  rather  that  of  a  railway  map  of  a 
civilised  country  in  Europe,  with  its 
many  intersecting  lines  proceeding 
from  every  point  of  the  compass,  than 
the  itinerary  of  routes  taken  by  hardy 
explorers  across  vast  regions  of  that 
terra  incognita  of  which  Dean  Swift 
wrote  in  the  last  century — 

"  Geographers  in  Afric  maps 
With  savage  pictures  fill  their  gaps, 
And  o'er  uninhabitable  downs 
Place  elephants  for  want  of  towns." 

Nor  was  the  accusation  wholly  un- 
founded. The  ancients  apparently 
knew  little  or  nothing  of  equatorial 
and  Central  Africa  beyond  some  re- 
ports and  traditions  of  great  inland 
lakes,  recorded  by  Ptolemy  in  the 
second  century.  In  the  days  of  the 
Pharaohs,  we  know  from  Herodotus 
that  the  rulers  of  Egypt  and  Ethiopia 
desired  in  vain  to  discover  the  sources 
of  the  Nile.  The  secretary  of  Minei  va  in 
the  city  of  Sai's  had  merely  a  fable  to  re- 
late about  "  two  hills  with  conical  tops, 
Crophi  and  Mophi,  between  which," 
he  said,  "are  the  fountains  of  the 
Nile,  fountains  which  it  is  impossible 
to  fathom  ;  half  the  water  runs  north- 
ward into  Egypt,  half  to  the  south 
towards  Ethiopia."  Diodorus  Siculus, 
much  later,  could  get  no  better  infor 
mation  from  the  learned  priests  at 
Memphis.  Neither  Phoenicians,  Greeks, 
nor  Romans,  when  the  latter  held  sway 
inEgypt,  knew  anything  of  the  interior 
of  Africa  beyond  a  few  unreliable 
reports  of  slaves,  brought  from  un- 
known regions.  Nero  sent  an  explor- 
ing expedition  up  the  Nile,  which  got 
no  further  than  Khartoum.  It  was 


not  until  the  Arabs,  and  after  them 
the  Turks  came  on  the  scene,  and  the 
introduction  of  the  camel  enabled  the 
Arab  traders  to  traverse  the  Great 
Sahara  and  penetrate  to  the  Soudan 
with  their  caravans,  that  more  positive 
knowledge  was  obtained.  Some  settled 
on  the  Niger,  others  wandered  from 
kingdom  to  kingdom,  while  adven- 
turers among  them  often  established 
their  rule  over  native  tribes  and  their 
chiefs.  Down  the  eastern  coast  as  far 
as  Zanzibar  they  founded  royal  dynas- 
ties still  extant.  They  no  doubt  pene- 
trated to  the  very  centre  of  Africa  and 
along  the  two  coasts,  as  far  as  Senegal 
and  Gambia  on  the  west,  and  to  Sofala 
on  the  east,  and  planted  colonies  at 
Mombas,  Melinda,  and  other  places. 
It  was  from  the  Arab  sources  of  in- 
formation, and  from  the  Portuguese  at 
a  later  date  on  the  west  coast — teste 
Duarte  Lopez's  map  in  Pigafelta's 
"  Congo  " — that  Europe  derived  all 
the  information  as  to  the  interior  and 
great  inland  lakes,  some  of  which 
found  a  place  in  the  maps  of  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries.  But 
even  this  was  lost  in  the  succeeding 
ages,  and  it  was  not  until  the  gi-eat 
maritime  discoveries  of  the  Portuguese 
in  the  fifteenth  century,  that  Africa 
beyond  the  Mediterranean  littoral 
assumed  any  importance.  When  it 
ceased  to  be  the  granary  of  Italy, 
and  was  covered  by  the  Pashaliks 
of  Turkey,  it  lost  all  its  value.  But 
the  discoveries  of  the  Portuguese 
along  the  west  coast,  under  Prince 
Henry,  first  led  to  the  importation 
of  slaves  to  Europe,  and  subsequently, 
after  the  discovery  of  the  New- 
World  and  the  West  Indies,  to  the 
slave-trade  on  a  vast  scale  for  the 
labour  market  there.  As  far  as 
history  goes  back  the  curse  of  Noah 
on  Ham  and  his  descendants  seems 
to  have  received  a  literal  fulfilment 
in  the  African  race.  They  not  only 
have  supplied  slaves  to  the  descend- 
ants of  Shem  and  Japheth,  but  have 
enslaved  each  other,  and  become  the 
"servants  of  servants," — for  some  are 
even  slaves  to  slaves  in  their  own  land. 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


87 


Their  transportation  to  the  western 
hemisphere  did  not  create  slavery  in 
Africa,  but  it  added  all  the  horrors  of 
the  "middle  passage'1 — in  which  every 
iniquity  culminated. 

For  the  next  three  centuries  Africa 
became  the  slave  preserve  of  the 
West,  and  supplied  the  labour  for  the 
American  and  West  Indian  tropic  plan- 
tations. It  has  been  estimated  that 
more  than  12,000,000  were  exported 
in  that  period.  How  many  perished  in 
the  capture  and  with  unspeakable  suli'er- 
ings  endured  in  the  middle  passage, 
who  can  estimate  ?  If  Livingstone's 
experience  may  be  trusted,  he  believed 
that  ten  were  slain,  or  died  in  the 
journey  to  the  coast  for  every  one 
shipped  !  In  1845  evidence  was  given 
to  a  Parliamentary  Committee  on 
the  Slave  Trade  that,  exclusive  of 
any  slave  trade  on  the  West  Coast, 
25,000  were  annually  shipped  from 
the  East  Coast  into  Arabia,  Persia, 
and  Central  Asia.  How  many  in  ad- 
dition were  transported  down  the  Nile 
to  Egypt  and  thence  to  Turkey  it  is 
difficult  to  estimate.  It  may  well  have 
been  said  therefore  that  Africa  from 
time  immemorial  has  been  "  one  of  the 
great  labour-producing  countries  of 
the  world."  Under  happier  influences 
it  might  still  perform  that  office  by 
the  free  cultivation  of  the  African  soil, 
and  supply  cotton,  sugar,  rice,  and 
every  tropical  product,  as  much  as 
the  world  could  take.  In  the  mean- 
time there  is  ground  for  hope  that 
such  a  consummation  is  neither  im- 
possible nor  far  distant.  The  know- 
ledge of  the  physical  geography, 
resources,  and  climate  of  Central 
Africa,  which  has  been  so  largely 
increased  in  the  last  twenty  years, 
has  revealed  the  vast  capabilities  both 
of  the  soil  and  the  people.  All  Europe 
is  alive  to  the  possible  future  which  is 
opening  for  Africa,  and  every  nation 
is  in  movement  to  profit  by  the  op- 
portunity of  claiming  its  share  in 
a  good  work  and  a  new  market  for 
its  merchants.  Great  Britain  alone, 
so  long  in  the  foremost  rank  in  all 
that  concerned  the  suppression  of  the 


slave  trade  and  the  exploration  of  the 
continent,  hangs  back  as  if  indifferent. 
But  it  cannot  be  so  in  reality.  Nor 
is  it  true  in  any  sense  of  the  govern- 
ment, whatever  it  may  be  with  regard 
to  the  public.  In  proof  of  this  it 
may  be  mentioned,  that  within  the 
last  month  a  convention  with  the 
Khedive  of  Egypt  has  been  signed, 
provisionally  defining  the  limit  of 
Egyptian  territory  on  the  East  Coast 
at  Has  Hafoun,  to  the  exclusion  of 
all  slave  trade  within  such  line.  A 
previous  convention  of  a  similar 
kind  entered  into  with  the  Sultan  of 
Zanzibar,  takes  the  coast  from  the 
point  at  which  the  Egyptian  border 
now  ceases  down  to  the  commencement 
of  the  long  coast-line  claimed,  but 
only  partially  occupied,  by  the  Portu- 
guese. We  must  hope  that  if  to  Portu- 
gal belongs  the  unenviable  distinction 
of  having  been  the  first  of  European 
States  to  commence  the  slave  trade  on 
the  West  Coast,  she  will  all  the  more 
carefully  avoid  the  odium  of  being  the 
last  to  abandon  it.  And  in  that  case 
the  whole  coast-line  of  Africa  may  now 
be  considered  closed  to  the  most  des- 
perate or  daring  of  the  slave- dealers. 
These  are  results  which  geographers  and 
statesmen  may  alike  rejoice  in  as  their 
joint  work,  and  worthy  of  both.  These 
conventions  are  the  crowning  acts  of 
a  policy  endorsed  by  all  the  great 
Western  Powers  at  the  Congress  of 
Vienna  so  far  back  as  1815.  The 
Plenipotentiaries  there  assembled 
signed  the  ever- memorable  declara- 
tion that  the  slave  "traffic  is  repug- 
nant to  the  principles  of  humanity 
and  universal  morality  ' ' — that  "  the 
public  voice  in  all  civilised  countries 
calls  aloud  for  its  suppression" — and 
that  it  was  "the  wish  of  their  sove- 
reigns to  put  an  end  to  a  scourge 
which  desolates  Africa,  degrades 
Europe,  and  afflicts  humanity."  Great 
Britain,  at  a  cost  of  20,000,0007.  paid 
in  compensation  to  the  slave-owners  in 
the  West  Indies,  had  abolished  slavery 
in  her  own  dominions,  in  1807  ;  but 
to  obtain  the  general  suppoit  and  co- 
operation of  the  other  Great  Powers 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


of  Europe,  was  a  victory  over  chartered 
injustice  and  wrong,  and  an  imposing 
array  of  vested  interests,  often  more 
difficult  to  overcome  than  armies  in  the 
field. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  such  a 
victory  would  never  have  been  won, 
had  the  state  of  ignorance  on  all 
subjects  connected  with  the  geo- 
graphy of  the  great  continent  and  the 
condition  'of  its  people,  which  existed 
down  to  nearly  the  end  of  last 
century,  continued.  To  Mungo  Park, 
Houghton,  Horneman,  the  Landers, 
and  many  more  of  the  earlier  ex- 
plorers, is  due  the  first  impulse  in  this 
direction.  The  uncertainty  and  con- 
fusion that  prevailed  as  to  the  interior 
of  Africa  was  such,  that  in  1788  a  few 
learned  and  scientific  men  were  led  to 
form  a  society,  styled  the  African  Asso- 
ciation, for  promoting  the  exploration 
of  inner  Africa.-  And  it  was  under 
their  auspices  that  these  earlier  travel- 
lers and  missionaries  prosecuted  their 
travels.  But  many  failures  disheart- 
ened, and  the  loss  of  lives  at  length  so 
discouraged  the  association,  that  feel- 
ing the  inadequacy  of  their  means  for 
a  work  so  costly,  both  in  life  and 
money,  they  merged  in  1831  into  the 
Geographical  Society.  This  body, 
therefore,  which  now  numbers  be- 
tween three  and  four  thousand  mem- 
bers, and  has  gathered  many  of  its 
best  laurels  in  the  field  of  African 
discovery,  may  claim  to  be  the  heirs 
of  these  earlier  patrons  and  promoters 
of  geographical  exploration  in  Africa. 

Mungo  Park  proceeded  in  1795  from 
the  Gambia  River  on  the  West  Coast 
to  the  Niger,  and  after  following  the 
river  as  far  as  the  town  of  Silla,  he 
•explored  the  intervening  countries, 
and  determined  the  southern  border 
of  the  Sahara,  returning  in  1797.  In 
1805  he  started  on  a  second  journey 
in  the  same  regions  in  which  he  lost  his 
life,  having  been  killed  by  the  natives 
.somewhere  beyond  Timbuctoo. 

It  would  be  foreign  to  my  present 
rpurpose  to  give  any  recapitulation 
of  the  numerous  and  successive  ex- 
plorers of  Africa,  both  north  and 


south  of  the  Equator,  and  from  the 
East  and  the  West  Coast,  towards 
the  close  of  the  last  and  the  first 
half  of  the  present  century.  It  must 
suffice  to  say  that  they  have  been 
of  many  nationalities  —  Portuguese, 
French,  Italian,  German,  and  Dutch, 
besides  English.  Some  of  these  expe- 
ditions have  been  despatched  by  our 
own  and  by  other  governments,  as  was 
the  one  sent  under  the  command  of 
Captain  Tucker,  in  1816,  to  the  River 
Congo,  which  was  at  that  time  sup- 
posed to  be  the  lower  course  of  the 
Joliba  or  Niger.  This,  like  the  later 
one  in  1841,  under  Captain  Trotter,  was 
a  disastrous  undertaking,  and  neither 
of  them  added  much  to  our  geogra- 
phical knowledge.  Both  were  failures 
indeed,  and  attended  with  a  melan- 
choly loss  of  life.  The  termination  of 
the  Niger  (otherwise  Joliba  and  Ka- 
wara)  remained  doubtful,  until  in  1830 
it  was  settled  by  Richard  Lander  and 
his  brother,  who  traced  the  river  to 
its  mouth. 

In  all  these  progressive  steps  of 
African  exploration,  so  earnestly  pur- 
sued and  so  speedily  destined  to  re- 
move the  thick  veil  of  darkness  and 
ignorance  that  covered  all  the  interior 
of  Africa,  there  have  been  many 
agencies  and  several  different  in- 
fluences at  work.  Geography  and  the 
discovery  of  new  regions,  would  have 
little  value  if  they  merely  gratified 
curiosity  and  enlarged  the  limits  of 
our  knowledge.  The  most  enthusiastic 
votary  of  scientific  exploration  and  geo- 
graphical information,  would  scarcely 
keep  up  his  interest  in  the  work,  if 
he  did  not  believe  it  might  bear  fruit 
• — that  some  time,  far  or  near,  it  might 
and  would  be  fruitful  in  good,  though 
it  could  not  always  clearly  be  seen  in 
what  way,  or  at  what  time.  Nothing 
that  is  really  barren  in  the  field  of 
research  can  long  survive,  or  make 
good  its  claim  to  human  interest.  It 
is  impossible,  therefore,  that  so  many 
costly  efforts,  involving  the  sacrifice  of 
health  and  life  itself  in  numerous 
cases,  should  have  been  made  con- 
tinous,  if  the  knowledge  sought  did 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


89 


not  point  to  some  ulterior  objects  of 
utility  and  desire.  To  know  that  a 
vast  continent  existed,  stretching  from 
the  Mediterranean  to  the  Southern 
Ocean — or  even  that  it  contained  some 
180,000,000  of  a  black  race  scattered 
over  its  surface,  divided  by  great  de- 
serts, rivers,  lakes,  and  primeval 
forests,  would  not  be  an  adequate 
motive  for  strenuous  exertions  and 
great  sacrifices.  But  if  this  country, 
with  its  teeming  population  of  millions, 
were  known  to  be  the  scene  of  wrongs 
which  were  an  outrage  to  humanity 
—  and  for  which,  in  part  at  least, 
Christian  nations  and  the  whole  civil- 
ised world  were  more  or  less  directly  re- 
sponsible,— a  desire  to  remedy  the  evil 
would  naturally  arise.  If  in  addition 
it  were  ascertained  that  the  greatest 
proportion  of  these  millions  of  the 
human  race  were  steeped  in  bar- 
barism, and  given  over  to  the  most 
hideous  idolatry,  cannibalism,  and 
devil-worship,  in  furtherance  of  which 
human  victims  were  annually  and 
daily  sacrificed  by  thousands, — are 
there  any  Christians  who  would  not  at 
some  time  of  their  lives  feel  that  a  duty 
was  laid  upon  them,  by  the  simple  know- 
ledge of  the  fact,  to  take  some  steps 
for  the  redemption  of  a  whole  race  from 
such  heathenism  and  revolting  cruelty 
by  the  influences  of  civilisation  and 
religion1?  The  missionary  feels  this, 
and  so  devotes  life  and  energy  to  that 
end.  The  humanitarian  and  philan- 
thropist, even  of  the  most  lukewarm 
temperament,  contributes  his  money  to 
such  an  object ;  and  the  suppression 
of  slave-dealing  and  of  human  sacri- 
fices to  idols,  by  the  inculcation  of  a 
purer  religion,  becomes  the  common 
object  of  both  missionary  and  philan- 
thropist. But  other  and  more  mun- 
dane interests  come  also  into  play. 
Governments  and  states  which  formed 
colonies  and  settlements  to  promote  a 
slave  trade,  found  colonists  and  traders 
remained  after  the  slave  traffic  had 
been  abandoned,  whom  they  were  bound 
to  protect.  Colonial  and  political  in- 
terests dictate  exploratory  expeditions, 
and  demand  geographical  knowledge 


of  territories  beyond  their  limits. 
Commerce  gradually  increases,  while 
geographical  discovery  opens  up  new 
fields  for  enterprise  and  legitimate 
trade  to  step  in  and  take  the  place 
of  the  suppressed  slave-traffic ;  thus 
promply  utilising  the  work  of  geographi- 
cal and  scientific  explorers.  Without 
the  knowledge  which  it  is  the  special 
business  of  these  to  collect,  the  mer- 
chant is  helpless  and  ignorant,  and  no 
exchange  of  goods  or  trade  on  a  large 
scale  can  be  established.  The  mer- 
chant and  the  manufacturer  soon  join 
their  interests  in  appeals  to  the  govern- 
ment for  extension  and  more  infor- 
mation, and  that  which  began  with 
purely  scientific  exploration  and  geo- 
graphy, ends  in  largely  promoting 
religion  and  philanthropy,  as  well  as 
meeting  political  requirements  and 
the  demands  of  commerce.  Who  is 
there  that  is  wholly  without  interest 
in  any  of  these  objects,  and  what  State 
can  afford  to  despise  or  neglect  them  ? 
To  all  of  these,  African  explorers  have 
rendered  incalculable  service  during 
this  last  twenty-five  years,  and  neither 
the  extent  nor  the  importance  of  this 
service  can  be  reduced  to  a  money 
value.  For  putting  aside  all  consider- 
ations of  justice  and  humanity,  com- 
merce has  not  had,  since  the  discovery 
of  a  new  world,  so  vast  a  field  for 
profitable  enterprise  opened  to  it  as 
Africa  will  soon  present. 

England  more  especially,  as  the  first 
maritime  and  commercial  nation  in  the 
world,  with  its  power  founded  and 
maintained  mainly  by  its  commerce 
and  colonies,  is  still  dependent  on  these 
for  the  continuance  of  its  wealth,  and 
other  elements  of  strength.  At  this  mo- 
ment especially,  more  than  at  any  other 
epoch  in  our  history,  it  is  essential  that 
new  markets  should  be  found  for  its 
manufactures.  With  strikes  at  home, 
increasing  the  cost  of  labour  and  its 
products — competition  and  protective 
tariffs  abroad,  even  in  our  own  colo- 
nies, the  once  unlimited  field  for  our 
industries  is  rapidly  narrowing  to  an 
alarming  extent.  The  United  States 
demand  for  our  goods  has  diminished 


90 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


nearly  fifty  per  cent  within  the  last  few 
years.1     Russia  and  China  both  adopt 
a  policy  the  effect  of  which  is  to  close 
Central    and    Eastern    Asia    to    our 
trade.     India  even  is  giving  signs  of 
commencing  a  race  of  competition  by 
native  looms.     Free  trade  is  as  abhor- 
rent to  Spain  as  it  is  to  Russia,  or  the 
United  States,  and  nowhere  is  in  the 
ascendant,  to  whichever  quarter  of  the 
globe  we  turn.     It  maintains  a  losing 
fight  with  protection   in   France   and 
Germany,  while  it  is  repudiated  utterly 
by  our  own  offspring  and  descendants 
— with    few    exceptions  of    no   great 
importance.     Where,    then,  shall    we 
look  for  customers  unfettered  by  such 
restrictions,  unless  it  be  in  Africa, — a 
country  with  millions  of  an  uncivilised 
race  capable  of  supplying  cotton  and 
sugar,  sago  and  rice,  with  every  other 
tropical  product  in  demand,  for  the  rest 
of  the  world,  if  required,  in  exchange 
for  manufactured  goods,  and  the  pro- 
duce of  our  workshops  of  every  kind  1 
With  these  general  data  before  us  it 
seems  worthy  of  serious  inquiry  how 
Great  Britain    may  best    secure    this 
open  market  of  the  future,  while  tak- 
ing her  place   among  the   nations    of 
the  world  in  efforts  to  bring  about  in 
Africa  a    new  era  of  civilisation  and 
commerce,  in  a  way  calculated  to  prove 
a  blessing  and  not  a   curse,   as   both 
the  one  and  the  other  have  so  often 
become  to  races  of  inferior  civilisation. 
As  to  the  practical  means  of  attain- 
ing the  main  objects  of  all  these  efforts 
there  is  a  general  consensus  of  opinion. 
One  or  more  practicable  waggon-roads 
from  the  East  Coast  to  the  lakes — or  to 
one  of  them — safe  from  the  tsetze  fly, 
and  through  a  line  of  country  not  made 
impassable   by  intractable   or  hostile 
natives.     Such  roads  are  already  ad- 

1  The  Statesman's  Year  Book  for  1877  gives 
the  following  totals  of  British  home  produce 
imports  into  the  United  States  : — 

1872  .     .     .     £40,736,597. 

1873  .     .     .        33,574,664. 

1874  .     .     .        28,241,809. 

1875  .     .     .        21,868,279. 

The  imports  having  commenced  to  decline 
from  the  first  of  these  years,  1872,  in  a 
rapidly  increasing  ratio. 


vancing  favourably  in  at  least  two 
directions  towards  Tanganyika  and 
Nyassa.  The  next  desideratum  is  a 
steamer — one  or  more— upon  each  of 
the  great  inland  seas.  And  this  also 
is  on  the  point  of  being  realised. 
One  is  already  on  Lake  Nyassa. 
Another  must  by  this  time  be  on  the 
Albert  or  Victoria,  if  not  on  both,  by 
the  energetic  action  of  Gordon  Pa.sha, 
aided  by  the  efforts  of  his  predecessor, 
Sir  Samuel  Baker. 

The  third  and  more  remote  object 
which  Mr.  Stanley's  brilliant  exploit 
in  tracing  the  Congo  will  do  much 
to  advance,  is  a  continuous  line  of 
communication  between  the  East  and 
the  West  Coast  of  the  Continent,  south 
of  the  equator,  with  Nyassa  or  Tan- 
ganyika, midway,  as  central  deputs 
and  connecting-links.  Subsidiary  lines 
through  the  lake  regions,  which  would 
connect  the  trunk  road  with  the  Nile 
basin — the  lower  course  of  the  Congo 
to  the  north,  and  the  Zambesi  country 
to  the  south — might  debouch  at 
convenient  points  on  the  sea  coast. 
Whether  this  great  trunk  road 
should  be  maintained  by  the  establish- 
ment of  a  series  of  permanent  posts 
under  European  superintendency,  or 
whether  it  might  be  sufficient — at  any 
rate  as  a  commencement — to  appoint 
native  agencies  at  certain  intermediate 
points,  and  to  rely  on  the  efforts  of  in- 
dividual travellers  and  the  influence 
of  local  traffic  to  keep  up  a  regular 
communication  along  the  line,  would 
depend  on  the  degree  of  public  support 
accorded  to  the  undertaking  by  Great 
Britain  alone,  or  several  countries  in 
conjunction. 

As  to  cost,  if  we  take  into  considera- 
tion the  money  and  lives  already  ex- 
pended since  this  country  first  placed 
a  squadron  on  the  West  Coast  to  pre- 
vent the  export  of  slaves  and  protect 
our  own  settlements,  any  sum  at  all 
likely  to  be  spent  or  asked  for,  in 
establishing  stations  and  practicable 
routes  across  Southern  Africa  must 
be  infinitesimal,  and  too  insignificant 
to  demand  serious  thought.  It  is  now 
many  years  ago  that  a  series  of  letters 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


were  published,  addressed  to  the  late 
Lord  Brougham  by  Mr.  James  Mac- 
queen,  who  went  in  great  detail  into 
this  subject.  He  says  the  expenditure 
is  so  great  as  to  be  almost  incredible, 
and  adds,  writing  in  1856, — "  It  runs 
in  vast  sums  through  every  annual 
finance  account  and  money  return 
presented  to  Parliament  during  the 
last  fifty-five  years."  Sir  John  Bar- 
row, even  twenty  years  earlier  (Quar- 
terly Review,  1825,  p.  605),  estimated 
the  cost  of  the  squadron  on  the  African 
Coast  alone,  bounties  for  capture,  and 
expense  of  Mixed  Commissions,  at 
500,0002.  yearly.  Some  Parliamentary 
returns  later,  carried  the  naval  expen- 
diture as  high  as  1,000,0002.,  and  in 
the  Parliamentary  Eeturn,  No.  670,  of 
1846  (see  Fourth  Report  of  Slave-Trade 
Committee,  1848),  it  is  estimated  at 
706,4502.  yearly.  Taking  this  as  a 
basis,  and  including  a  numerous  list 
of  other  charges  strictly  consequent  on 
our  efforts  during  the  fifty- five  years 
to  suppress  the  African  slave-trade, 
Mr.  Macqueen  makes  the  total  cost 
52,023,684/.,  irrespective  of  the 
20,000,0002.  paid  to  the  West  India 
proprietors  of  slaves  for  their  emanci- 
pation. Over  70,000,0002.  sterling! 
In  view  of  this  enormous  expen- 
diture, from  which  we  have  derived 
little  or  no  commercial  advantage,  if 
we  compare  what  would  now  be  re- 
quired to  entirely  suppress  any  slave 
traffic  on  the  coast  for  foreign  demand, 
and  create  a  great  and  profitable  com- 
merce, equally  advantageous  to  the 
Africans  and  ourselves,  we  cannot 
but  be  struck  by  the  vast  dispropor- 
tion between  expenditure  and  pro- 
mised results.  From  5,0002.  to  10,0002. 
spent  annually  for  the  next  few  years, 
in  surveying  and  exploration,  it  is 
estimated  would  go  a  long  way,  if 
not  entirely  suffice,  to  open  one  or 
more  direct  and  practicable  roads 
from  the  East  Ccast  to  the  lakes  and 
a  trunk  line  across  the  continent, — 
1,400  miles  of  which  might  be  by 
steam  navigation  on  the  river  Congo, 
as  we  now  know.  Of  course,  the  first 
cost  of  steamers  and  road-making 


would  have  to  be  provided  in  addi- 
tion. What  means  might  be  required 
to  connect  the  Congo  and  the  Zambesi, 
or  their  tributaries,  it  would  be  pre- 
mature yet  to  say.  Cameron  has 
spoken  of  a  short  canal ;  possibly  a 
tram-road  might  be  practicable  in 
parts.  In  any  case  there  is  but  this 
missing  link  to  be  filled  up  to  estab- 
lish direct  though  interrupted  water 
communication  (on  account  of  the 
number  of  cataracts  and  necessary 
portages)  across  the  continent.  From 
the  mouth  of  the  Zambesi,  on  the 
eastern  coast,  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Congo  on  the  western,  the  greater 
part  may  be  traversed  by  navigable 
rivers.  The  lakes  would  in  such  a 
system  become  subsidiary,  and  stretch 
the  lines  of  commerce  from  the  Zam- 
besi and  Congo  northward  to  the  Nile 
and  the  Mediterranean,  and  thus  put 
the  three  oceans — the  Atlantic,  the  In- 
dian, and  the  Mediterranean — in  con- 
nection the  whole  length  and  breadth  of 
the  continent.  Can  this  be,  it  will  be 
asked?  and  is  it  possible  such  vast 
results  might  be  effected  in  the  next 
few  years,  and  at  an  outlay  of  less  than 
one-tenth  of  the  sum  this  country  has 
continued  spending  annually  for  more 
than  fifty  years,  and  for  the  attainment 
of  only  one  of  the  objects  here  contem- 
plated ?  Many  sober-minded  people 
will  probably  ask  this  question  with 
more  or  less  of  incredulity.  Yet  not 
only  is  this  possible,  but  railroads  and 
telegraphic-lines  would  follow  quickly 
on  the  steps  of  the  pioneers  who 
should  make  practicable  waggon- 
tracks,  though  of  course  at  a  greater 
expenditure  of  capital.  The  trade 
that  must  spring  up  would,  however, 
readily  supply  what  might  be  needed. 
No  doubt  there  are  some  whc 
will  be  disposed  to  treat  all  such  fore- 
casts of  a  possible  future  for  Africa — 
and  for  Great  Britain  also,  if  its  Go- 
vernment, its  manufacturers,  and  mer- 
chants, will  adopt  the  proper  means 
—  as  purely  visionary,  or  little  better 
than  the  hallucinations  of  enthusiasm 
and  a  lively  imagination.  Perhaps  the 
best  corrective  for  such  depreciatory 


92 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


judgments  will  be  a  quotation  from  one 
of    these    letters   written    more   than 
twenty  years  ago  before  there  was  any 
question    of     the  brilliant  discoveries 
of    Livingstone,     and    his    successors 
opened  up  a  new  vista,  extending  from 
the  centre  of  Africa  to  the  Mediterra- 
nean.    Judging  from  the  general  tone 
and  tenor  of  Mr.  Macqueen's  letters,  he 
does  not  strike  me  as  having  been  an 
enthusiast,  or    even   a  very  sanguine 
man.      Let    us    see    what    he     says. 
Speaking   of    the    small    return    and 
miserable   results   in  trade  or   profit, 
of    such  a   large   and   long-continued 
expenditure,  he  asks  : — "Are  all  the 
enormous   sums   above   mentioned   to 
be  lost  ?    Certainly  all  will  be  so,  un- 
less something  is  wisely  and  effectually 
done  for  Africa,   and  in  Africa."     I 
quote  this  writer,  though  not  agree- 
ing   with    him    on     some    important 
points,  and  more  especially  as  regards 
our  future  policy,  and  the  probable  re- 
sults of  a  large  development  of  commerce 
upon  the  future  destinies  of  the  native 
population.  He  argues  in  one  place,  but 
very  inconsistently,  that  the  African 
chiefs,  if  they  found  a  demand  for  tro- 
pical produce  would  set  their  slaves  to 
cultivate  it  in  order  that  they  might 
sell  or  exchange  it  for  such  few  imports 
as  they  covet  or  require.    Finding  that 
their  slaves  were  becoming  more  valu- 
able  by   the   greater    value  of    their 
labour,  they  would  seek  to  increase  this 
number  at  the  expense  of  the  next  tribe 
who  might  be  too  weak  to  resist  a  raid; 
even  if  they  were  not  further  tempted 
to  supply  slave  labour  to  the  foreigner 
for  the  cultivation  of  tropical  produce 
on  African  soil,  by  the  offer  of  a  price 
which   would   yield    more   money  for 
the  hands  than  he  could  realise  by  the 
sale  of  their  produce.     Certainly  under 
either  of  these  conditions  the  domestic 
or    internal    slave    trade,    which   has 
always  existed,  would    be   rather  in- 
creased   than    discouraged.       But    a 
demand  for  ivory,  or  any  other  pro- 
duct of  Africa,  is  apparently  open  to 
the  same  objection.     The  greater  the 
demand  the   greater   the    increase   of 
labour      to     meet     it.       Hence     he 


comes  to  the  conclusion  that  legiti- 
mate commerce  will  not  of  itself 
redeem  or  civilise  Africa.  Living- 
stone, in  one  passage  of  his  first, 
work,  Missionary  Travels,  expresses  a 
similar  doubt,  but  at  the  close  of  the 
volume  he  says,  "  We  ought  to  en- 
courage the  Africans  to  cultivate  for  our 
markets,  as  the  most  effective  means, 
next  to  the  Gospel,  of  their  elevation." 
And  Mr.  Macqueen  himself  argues 
elsewhere  that  only  by  commerce  can 
slavery  be  suppressed.  He  would,  how- 
ever, encourage  manufacturing  industry 
in  Africa,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  in 
what  consists  the  difference,  as  to 
slave  and  free  labour,  between  manu- 
facturing and  agricultural  processes  ? 
He  inveighs  against  the  instructions 
said  to  have  been  given  by  the  home 
government  to  Dr.  Livingstone  to  pro- 
mote the  growth  of  raw  material  to 
exchange  for  foreign  manufactures. 
It  is  with  singular  inconsistency  there- 
fore that  he  shortly  after  urges 
"  the  truth  that  the  cultivation  of 
Africa  and  the  exportation  of 
the  productions  so  numerous  and 
so  valuable,  raised  by  the  Africans 
themselves,  is  the  only  true  path 
to  take  to  abolish,  not  only  the 
slave  trade,  but  African  slavery.1'  He 
arrives,  therefore,  in  the  end  at  the 
point  from  which  I  took  my  departure, 
and  he  more  especially  urged  upon 
Sir  Robert  Peel,  the  paramount  im- 
portance of  encouraging  the  growth 
of  cotton  in  Africa,  and  so  preventing 
our  great  dependence  upon  the  United 
States  for  that  staple  of  our  greatest 
manufacturing  industry.  He  then  re- 
peated his  conviction  that,  "African 
agriculture  was  the  basis  of  African 
commerce  and  freedom." 

In  this  conclusion  I  perfectly  agree, 
and  as  to  the  results  on  the  domestic 
slavery  of  Africa,  of  increased  agri- 
culture and  demand  for  its  products, 
we  must  I  think  carefully  distinguish 
between  the  slave  traffic  for  the  supply 
of  a  foreign  market  and  a  domestic 
institution.  Not  only  in  Africa,  but 
over  the  whole  of  Asia,  domestic 
slavery  has  always  existed,  under 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


93 


every  form  of  government,  native  or 
foreign,  and  been  legally  sanctioned. 
With  the  Jews,  in  the  time  of  Moses, 
as  with  other  races,  the  legislation 
regulating  slavery  may  have  left  much 
to  be  desired  in  the  way  of  humanity, 
but  still  in  affording  a  certain  pro- 
tection, it  also  legally  authorised  the 
bondage. 

When  it  is  said  therefore  that  we 
should  utterly  repudiate  any  connec- 
tion with  this  employment  of  slaves 
by  native  chiefs,  it  is  neither  more  nor 
less  than  to  require  the  cessation  of 
all  intercourse  or  relations  with  the 
African  race.  Slavery  and  a  slave 
trade  have  existed  in  Africa  from  the 
days  of  Abraham  and  the  Pharaohs — 
for  aught  we  know,  from  the  earliest 
population  of  the  country  in  pre-his- 
toric  periods,  and  twenty  centuries 
before  any  Europeans  ever  visited 
either  the  West  or  the  East  Coast.  And 
to  all  appearance  slavery  will  con- 
tinue to  exist  among  the  natives  them- 
selves, in  despite  of  any  efforts  of 
European  powers  to  suppress  it,  un- 
til Civilisation,  Commerce,  and  Chris- 
tianity all  combined  eradicate 
it  by  the  same  slow  processes 
which  led  to  the  disappearance 
of  feudalism  and  serfdom  in  Europe. 
Slavery  and  an  internal  slave  trade  are 
too  deeply  rooted  in  the  customs  and 
tribal  laws,  sanctioned,  recognized,  and 
submitted  to  by  the  whole  population 
of  every  rank  and  degree,  for  any 
alteration  to  be  effected  by  the  will  of  a 
Foreign  power.  Every  offence  and  every 
crime  is  readily  commuted  for  slavery, 
and  every  prisoner  taken  in  war  be- 
comes a  slave — -as  was  once  the  prac- 
tice in  Europe,  and  is  still  all  over 
Asia.  It  has  well  been  said,  therefore, 
that  we  might  as  well  try  to  dam  up 
the  Niger  or  the  Congo,  as  attempt  by 
our  legislation  or  forcible  interference, 
to  root  out  slavery  and  an  internal 
slave  trade  in  Africa.  It  must  be 
left  to  time  and  other  influences  to 
effect  a  change — as  the  same  institu- 
tion was  left  by  the  Founder  of 
Christianity  in  Judea.  The  progress 
of  knowledge,  civilisation,  and  com- 


merce will  do  much — the  spirit  of 
Christianity  still  more,  once  that  free 
access  into  the  interior  can  be  obtained 
by  the  means  now  under  consideration. 
That  this  is  neither  so  hopeless  nor 
remote  in  prospect,' as  many  are  dis- 
posed to  think,  may  be  inferred  with 
certainty  by  much  recent  evidence 
from  the  most  trustworthy  sources,  as 
to  the  actual  state  of  the  country 
and  the  population  in  large  portions. 
Lieutenant  Shergold  Smith,  writing  to 
Dr.  Kirk  from  Kagei  Usekuma  so  late 
as  May  19th  last,  reports  a  rough 
journey  from  Nguru,  and  says  that 
of  360  men  with  whom  he  left  that 
place,  only  six  arrived  at  the  end  of 
the  journey  ;  all  the  rest,  from  fear  or 
bad  faith,  having  deserted,  in  conse- 
quence of  which  they  lost  half  their 
goods — beads  and  cloth  — and  were  in 
danger  of  being  stopped  altogether 
for  want  of  carriers.  Notwith- 
standing such  an  untoward  be- 
ginning, Lieutenant  Smith  adds  that 
"  the  country  is  very  productive,  and 
provisions  of  all  kinds  exceedingly 
cheap.  Cattle  graze  by  hundreds  on 
the  plains,  which  are  very  extensive, 
offering  at  times  a  sea  horizon.  I 
have  not  met  with  a  trace  of  slavery, 
nor  do  I  see  any  signs  of  it  here. 
The  Arab  Songoro,  who  is  living  and 
trading  here,  and  has  a  bad  name 
from  Stanley,  has  not  shown  us  any- 
thing but  kindness.  His  trade  seems 
perfectly  legal  in  ivory."  Take  this, 
in  connection  with  the  equally  recent 
satisfactory  report  of  Dr.  Kirk,  of 
expeditions  in  other  directions,  and 
it  is  impossible  to  deny  the  encou- 
raging prospect  opened  of  rapid  and 
permanent  progress.  We  are  surely 
warranted,  by  all  that  has  preceded, 
in  believing  that,  although  we  cannot 
by  any  exercise  of  power  at  once  put 
an  end  to  slavery,  it  will  gradually 
cease  by  the  operation  of  natural 
causes,  if  there  be  no  facilities  for 
shipping  slaves  away  from  the  country. 
Diplomacy  has  done  much — perhaps 
all  that  is  possible  or  needful — within 
the  last  two  or  three  years  to  effect 
this  object.  The  treaty  lately  entered 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


into  with  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar, 
and  still  more  recently,  one  with 
the  Khedive  of  Egypt,  for  the  total 
suppression  of  the  slave  trade,  give 
fair  promise  of  being  effective.  The 
co-operation  of  Colonel  Gordon  in  the 
Soudan  and  region  of  the  Upper 
Nile  is  a  further  guarantee  for  good 
faith  and  success,  while  the  no  less 
zealous  and  able  assistance  of  Dr. 
Kirk,  our  Consul -General  at  Zanzi- 
bar, is  a  sufficient  pledge  of  loyalty 
in  that  quarter. 

Mr.  Stanley's  second  letter  in  the 
Daily  Telegraph,  dated  from  Nyangwe, 
October  20,  1876,  before  he  started  on 
his  journey  westward,  which  has 
appeared  while  this  paper  is  in  the 
press,  contains  much  that  is  opposed 
to  the  view  I  have  taken  in  the  pre- 
ceding pages,  both  as  regards  the  slave 
trade,  and  the  best  mode  of  promoting 
the  rapid  development  of  commerce. 
In  reference  to  the  continuance  of  a 
slave  trade  on  a  wholesale  scale,  and 
with  all  its  worst  accompaniments  of 
slave-hunting  raids  and  destruction  of 
life,  Mr.  Stanley  charges  the  Sultan  of 
Zanzibar  with  allowing  his  subjects, 
and  especially  Said  bin  Salim,  the 
Governor  of  TJnyamyembe,  "  an  officer 
in  the  employ  of  Burghash,  Prince  of 
Zanzibar,"  to  be  actively  engaged  in 
this  illegal  traffic.  This  Said  bin 
Salim,  to  the  best  of  his  knowledge 
and  belief,  is  one  of  the  principal  slave- 
traders  in  Africa,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  most  trusted  agent  of  the  authori- 
ties at  Zanzibar.  If  this  be  indeed 
true,  there  is  justification  enough  for 
the  denunciation  both  of  the  principal 
and  his  agent.  It  constitutes  an  in- 
dictment against  the  Sultan  himself,  so 
dishonouring  and  fatal  to  all  trust  in 
any  treaty  engagements,  that  I  cannot 
doubt  it  will  lead  to  a  searching  in- 
quiry, and  further  action  on  the  part 
of  Her  Majesty's  Government.  Never- 
theless, I  am  not  disposed  to  modify 
what  I  have  said  above,  until  the 
parties  so  directly  charged  have  been 
heard,  and  the  result  known.  The  de- 
fence of  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar,  or  any 
of  his  agents  implicated  in  the  most 


iniquitous  traffic  which  the  wickedness 
and  greed  of  man  has  ever  devised,  is 
no  concern  of  mine.  By  their  own 
acts  they  must  stand  or  fall,  and  if 
even  a  small  part  of  what  is  now 
alleged  against  them  be  proved,  I  trust 
they  will  fall  never  to  rise  again.  But 
inasmuch  as  we  have  equally  direct 
evidence  from  Dr.  Kirk,  Her  Majesty's 
Consul-General  at  Zanzibar,  of  an 
entirely  contradictory  character,  re- 
specting the  disposition  of  the  Sultan 
Burghash,  to  open  up  the  country  to 
English  trade,  and  to  facilitate  the 
making  of  roads  into  the  interior,  so 
far  as  his  sovereign  authority  extends, 
we  must  give  him  the  benefit  of  such 
testimony.  Nothing  could  well  be 
more  inconsistent  than  for  any  au- 
thority, Arab  or  European,  to  directly 
sanction  or  promote  by  its  own  officers 
and  agents  a  flagrant  breach  of  treaty, 
and  yet  lend  eveiy  aid  to  Englishmen 
to  be  the  witnesses  of  his  bad  faith,  and 
the  evil  done  in  his  name.  The  same 
remark  applies  in  great  part  to  the 
suspicion  attaching  to  the  Khedive's 
bona  fides  in  the  treaty  engagements 
recently  entered  into  with  us.  The 
presence  of  Colonel  Gordon,  and  the 
almost  absolute  power  with  which  he 
has  been  invested  over  the  whole 
Soudan  and  region  of  the  Upper  Nile 
should  be  strong  evidence  of  the  good 
will  of  the  Khedive,  even  though  it 
may  for  a  time,  and  to  a  certain  extent, 
be  frustrated  by  the  corruption  of  his 
officers,  and  the  incorrigible  vice  of  his 
Subjects,  long  engaged  in  the  slave 
trade. 

On  the  other  points  of  trade  and 
missionary  labours,  and  the  direction 
which  these  should  take,  referred  to  in 
this  letter  of  Mr.  Stanley's,  I  am  con- 
strained to  make  one  or  two  remarks, 
opposed,  as  his  opinions  are,  to  the 
plan  of  operations  suggested  in  this 
article.  Mr.  Stanley  speaks  with  the 
advantage  which  can  hardly  be  too 
highly  estimated,  of  personal  observa- 
tion and  great  experience  as  a  traveller 
through  Central  Africa,  from  sea  to 
sea,  and  in  many  regions  never  before 
trodden  by  the  foot  of  a  white  man. 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


95 


His  opinions,  therefore,  are  deserving 
of  great  consideration,   and  can  only 
be  called  in  question  with  some  dif- 
fidence.     He    expresses,   however,   a 
very  decided  opinion  against  attempt- 
ing to  push  trade  from  the  east  coast, 
based  upon  the  condition  of  the  tribes 
on  the    two    sides   of  the  continent. 
Gathered   into   large   kingdoms,  gov- 
erned despotically,  and  subject  to  the 
rule    of    one   chief,   in    East    Central 
Africa,  and  infinitely  subdivided  in  the 
West,  from  Lake  Tanganyika  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Congo  river,   he  says  : 
"  The  people  are  gathered  in  small  in- 
significant districts,  towns,  or  villages, 
each  governed  by  its  respective  chief, 
all  animated  by  an  intense  thirst  for 
trade  ;    but  equally  distinguished  for 
their  idolatry,  hostility  to  each  other, 
and  foolish  pride."     From  these  rela- 
tive  conditions    of    the    eastern  and 
western     populations,     Mr.     Stanley- 
arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  the  two 
sides  of  the  African  continent  should 
be  acted  on  by  two  different  influences. 
The    missionary   would  be    the  more 
powerful  agent  and  by  his  labours  af- 
ford the  most  fitting  means  of  approa  ch  on 
the  eastern  side,  while  on  the  western 
side  the  trader  should  precede  the  mis- 
sionary.    But  there  are  other  condi- 
tions both  of  a  physical  and  political 
character,  which  point  to  a  somewhat 
different  conclusion.     The  approach  to 
the  great  inland  seas  of  Central  Africa 
would  appear  to  be  much  easier,  both 
for   trader  and  missionary,  from   the 
east   coast,  than   the    mouth   of   the 
Congo  on  the  west,  with  its  numerous 
cataracts.     For  the  labours  of  the  mis- 
sionary undoubtedly   the  great  king- 
dom  of  Mtesa,  with  a  population  of 
5,000,000,    according  to  Mr.  Stanley, 
would  afford  a  very  favourable  basis. 
Mtesa  himself  might  be  converted  by 
one  effort,  since  he  is  so  well  disposed, 
and  has  asked  for  missionaries  to  be 
sent  to  him.    All  his  subjects  might  be 
converted,  in  the  same  manner — as  all 
barbarous  nations  of  Europe  were  con- 
verted, after  Constantine  had  led  the 
way.     There  are  besides  the  kingdoms 
of  Ruanda  with  a  like  population,  of 


Urundi,  with  3,000,000,  Asagara,  and 
many  others.  By  all  means  let  mission- 
aries hasten  to  prosecute  their  labours 
in  these  several  territories.  They  can 
have  no  similar  prospects  in  AVestern 
Central  Africa.  But  it  is  as  regards 
trade  that  I  think  Mr.  Stanley  may  be 
mistaken  in  his  conclusions.  In  the 
first  place  there  are  well  beaten  trade 
routes  approaching  the  lakes  in  several 
directions  from  the  coast  opposite 
Zanzibar.  A  bullock  waggon  road  has 
already  been  formed  by  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Rogers,  and  is  being  rendered  practic- 
able. Facilities  for  a  barter  trade  have 
existed  from  old  date  in  this  direction, 
which  can  scarcely  be  found  on  the 
western  side.  The  many  subdivisions 
of  the  land  among  a  thousand  small 
tribes  and  petty  chiefs,  some  ruling 
over  "a  hundred-acre  field,"  and  hos- 
tile to  each  other,  must  go  far  to  make 
any  combinations  for  a  large  trade  or 
security  practicable.  The  first  condi- 
tion of  such  a  trade  is  a  free  transit,  or 
the  power  of  entering  into  valid  engage- 
ments with  those  in  possession  of  the 
land  for  a  secure  passage  with  regulated 
rates  or  duties  of  transit.  This  would 
seem  to  render  the  approach  from 
the  mouth  of  the  Congo  to  the  point 
where  the  uninterrupted  navigation  of 
steamers  might  begin,  a  slow  opera- 
tion, and  one  which  for  a  long  time 
must  be  of  doubtful  issue. 

I  would  say  in  conclusion,  that  who- 
ever earnestly  and  truly  desires  to 
benefit  the  millions  of  this  slave- 
haunted  continent,  where  all  laws, 
human  and  divine,  are  habitually  out- 
raged— whoever  hopes  to  heal  this 
"  open  sore  of  the  world,"  as  Living- 
stone designated  the  slave  trade,  where 
"  all  the  land  is  foul  with  mon- 
strous wrong" — must  join  in  the 
prayer  that  whatever  be  the  cost  or 
difficulty  of  the  efforts  now  making, 
they  may  prove  successful.  Nor  can  I 
conceive  any  one  interested  in  the 
prosperity  and  power  of  this  country 
not  feeling  anxious  to  see  trade 
advanced  by  the  opening  of  a  new 
market  of  such  unlimited  capacity, 
and  so  wholly  unoccupied  by  hostile 


96 


African  Exploration  and  its  Results. 


tariffs  and  a  protective  policy.  This 
wax*  of  "  tariffs,"  to  which  Sir  Stafford 
Northcote  has  recently  alluded,  as 
partly  being  waged,  and  partly  threat- 
ened against  us,  denouncing  it  as  an 
"  antagonism  offered  to  free  trade  by 
the  nations  of  America  and  Europe,  in 
regard  to  which  Great  Britain  cannot 
afford  to  be  neuti'al," — points  to  a 
fundamental  condition  of  our  well 
being  as  a  nation.  Our  interests,  it 
cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  are 
inseparably  bound  up  with  the  de- 
velopment of  commerce;  and  protec- 
tive tariffs  are  established  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  introduction  of  our 
trade.  These  can  only  be  successfully 
met  by  finding  new  markets  not 
subject  to  such  injurious  restrictions, 
and  Africa  offers  a  larger  and  a  fairer 
field  than  either  Asia,  Europe,  or 
America  under  the  existing  protective 
policy.  It  will  be  well  to  remember 
also  that  it  offers  this  fair  field  only 
because  it  is  not  already  pre-occupied 
by  those  with  whom  hostile  and  pro- 
tective tariffs  are  in  favour.  If  we 


desire  to  profit  by  this  great  market 
of  the  future,  it  bahoves  us  to  lose  no 
time  in  occupying  the  ground  our- 
selves, so  as  to  render  impossible  the 
extension  of  the  same  system  in  Africa 
which  now  so  generally  and  injuriously 
prevails  elsewhere.  Whoever  desires 
therefore  any  of  the  great  ends  here 
indicated  must  no  less  earnestly  desire 
to  promote  the  continuous  and  sys- 
tematic exploration  of  the  African 
continent.  They  must  desire  it 
if  for  no  other  reason,  because  it  is 
evident  no  step  can  be  taken  in  any 
one  of  the  above  paths  of  progress 
and  enlightenment  for  the  benefit 
alike  of  the  African  race  and  the 
rest  of  the  world,  until  geographers 
have  first  prepared  the  way,  and  by 
pioneer  work  removed  impediments 
too  numerous  and  full  of  peril  to  be 
successfully  encountered  by  merchant, 
capitalist,  or  missionary,  without  such 
aid  as  trained  and  scientific  explorers 
can  alone  afford. 

KUTHERFORD   ALCOCK. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 

DECEMBER,  1877. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  AFTER  LIFE. 

(An  Address  delivered  on  the  occasion  of  the  new  session  of  University  College,  Bristol, 

October  27, 1877.  )l 


IT  is  said  that  the  late  King  of 
Prussia,  on  seeing  Eton  College,  ex- 
claimed, "  Happy  is  that  country 
where  the  old  is  ever  entwined  with 
the  new,  where  the  new  is  ever  old, 
and  the  old  is  ever  new."  That  is 
most  true ;  but  if  he  had  come  to 
Bristol  at  this  time,  he  might  have 
even  improved  on  his  remark,  and  said, 
"  Happy  is  that  country  where  the  old 
is  ever  giving  birth  to  the  new,  where 
the  new  is  ever  springing  from  the 
old."  For  in  the  Cathedral  he  would 
have  seen  the  Abbey  Church  of  Robert 
Fitzharding,  the  fine  old  descendant  of 
the  wild  sea-kings,  awakening  into  a 
new  life,  and  stretching  forth  a  gigantic 
arm  which  had  seemed  to  be  paralyzed 
to  its  very  socket.  And  he  would  have 
seen  the  new  start  of  a  young  institu- 
tion of  teachers  sent  into  this  com- 
mercial city,  in  large  measure  by 
the  energies  of  two  ancient  colleges, 
which  a  hundred  years  ago  would  have 
been  thought  the  most  retrograde  and 

1  University  College,  Bristol,  was  founded 
in  1876,  "to  supply  for  persons  of  both,  sexes 
above  the  ordinary  school  age  the  means  of 
continuing  their  studies  in  science,  languages, 
history,  and  literature  ;  and  more  particularly 
to  afford  appropriate  instruction  in  those 
branches  of  applied  science  which  are  em- 
ployed in  the  arts  and  manufactures."  The 
funds  of  the  College  are  chiefly  derived  from 
local  contributions  ;  but  the  College  receives 
subsidies  from  Balliol  College  and  New  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  and  from  the  "Worshipful  the 
Clothworkers'  Company  of  London. 

No.  218. — VOL.  xxxvu. 


the  most  exclusive  of  all  our  academical 
communities.  I  have  spoken  of  the 
Cathedral  of  Bristol  in  the  proper 
place.  Let  me  now  say  a  few  words 
on  its  new  College. 

I  will  not  go  back  to  the  question 
of  the  utility  of  such  institutions 
themselves.  This  was  sufficiently  set 
forth  some  years  ago  by  my  excellent 
friend,  the  Master  of  Balliol,  who  has 
done  so  much  for  Oxford  and  for 
Bristol,  and  by  those  many  other 
distinguished  persons  who  then  ad- 
dressed you.  The  college  has  been  be- 
gun, and  it  is  not  of  the  college,  but  of 
its  work  that  I  have  to  speak.  And, 
in  so  doing,  it  has  been  suggested  to 
me  that  it  might  be  useful  to  make  a 
few  general  remarks  on  a  commonplace 
subject — the  Education  of  After  Life.  It 
is  closely  connected  with  the  special 
functions  of  this  institution,  and  it 
has  this  further  advantage,  that  its 
consideration  may  not  be  altogether 
without  profit  to  the  more  miscellane- 
ous public. 

In  what  sen?e  can  education  be 
said  to  be  carried  on  at  all  in  an  in- 
stitution so  rudimentary,  so  slightly 
equipped  as  this  1  You  have  no 
buildings,  you  have  no  antiquity, 
you  have  no  traditions,  you  have 
no  discipline,  you  have  none  of 
those  things  which  in  our  older  insti- 
tutions are  almost  the  atmosphere  in 
which  education  lives,  and  moves,  anrl 


98 


Tlie  Education  of  After  Life. 


has  its  being.  You  have  them  not ; 
and  we  do  not  for  a  moment  underrate 
the  loss.  But  there  are  here,  at 
any  rate,  two  materials  of  education, 
which  may  continue  throughout  life, 
and  which  are,  perhaps,  after  all,  the 
only  two  indispensable  elements — the 
teachers  and  the  taught. 

1.  The  teachers — let  me  say  some- 
thing of  them.  When  at  Oxford,  in  my 
younger  days,  there   were  discussions 
about  the  reforms  of  the  university ; 
there  was  one  want  which  we  regarded 
as  supremely  felt,  and  this   was   the 
want  of  professors,  that  is  to  say,  of 
teachers,   who  might  be  "as  oracles, 
whereat  students  might  come  "  in  their 
several  branches  of  knowledge.     These 
were  in  consequence  called  into  exist- 
ence, and  amongst  you  also  they  exist 
already.     I  am  not  now  speaking  per- 
sonally of  the  actual  professors,  though 
doubtless  your  practical  experience  of 
them  would  bear  out  much   of    what 
I  say.     But  I  speak  of  the  advantage 
to    any    community,    to    any    young 
man    or    woman,    of    being    brought 
into  contact  with  higher  intelligences. 
No  operation  in  the  way  of  external 
impulse,  or  stimulus,  or  instruction,  in 
our  passage  through  this  mortal  exist- 
ence, is  equal  to  the  impression  pro- 
duced upon  us  by  the  contact  of  in- 
tellects   and    characters    superior    to 
ourselves.     It  is  for  this  reason  that  a 
college  like  yours  must  always  have  the 
chance  of    contributing,    directly  and 
forcibly,    to    the    elevation    of  those 
among  whom   it   is   placed.     A  body 
of    men,    brought    together     by    the 
enthusiasm  of   teaching    others,  with 
a  full  appreciation  of   great  subjects, 
with  an    ardent    desire  of    improving 
not  only  others  but   themselves,  can- 
not fail  to  strike  some  fire  from  some 
one  soul  or  other  of  those  who  have 
the  opportunity  of  thus  making  their 
acquaintance.      It   need  not  be   that 
we  follow  their  opinions ;  the  opinions 
may   vanish,    but  the   effect   remains. 
Socrates  left  no  school    behind  him  ; 
the   philosophers   who    followed   him 
were  broken  into  a  thousand  sections, 
but  the  influence  and  stimulus  which 


Socrates  left,    never  ceased,  and  has 
continued  till  the  present   hour.      If 
we  look  for  a  moment  at  the  records, 
on  the  one   hand,   of   aspirations   en- 
couraged, of   great   projects    realised ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  of  lost  careers, 
of  broken  hopes,  how  often  shall  we 
find  that  it  has  been  from    the  pre- 
sence   or    from    the    want    of    some 
beneficent,     intelligent,     appreciative 
mind  coming  in  among  the  desponding, 
the  distressed,  the  storm-tossed  souls 
of  whom  this  world  contains  only  too 
many.     To   take  the  example  of  two 
poets — one  whose  grave  is  in  the  ad- 
jacent county,  one  belonging  to  your 
own  city — how  striking  and  how  com- 
forting is  the  reflection  of  the  peaceful, 
useful,  and  happy  close  of  the  life  of 
George  Crabbe,  the  poet ;  for  eighteen 
years    pastor     of     Trowbridge.      All 
that    happiness,    all   that    usefulness, 
he  owed  to  the  single  fact,  that,  when 
a  poor,    forsaken  boy  in   the   streets 
of  London,  he  bethought   himself  of 
addressing  a  letter  to  Edmund  Burke. 
That  great  man  had  the  penetration 
to  see  that  Crabbe  was  not  an  im- 
postor— not  a  fool.     He  took  the  poor 
youth   by  the  hand,    he    encouraged 
him,  he  procured  for  him  the  career 
in  which  he  lived  and  died.     He  was, 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  the  in- 
strument of  his   preservation  and  of 
his  regeneration.     On  the  other  hand, 
when,   with  Wordsworth,  we  think  of 
Chatterton,  "  the  marvellous  boy,  the 
sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  his  pride," 
how  impossible  it  is  to  avoid  the  re- 
flection, that  if  he  had  met  with  some 
congenial  sphere,  such  as  this  college 
now  presents,   some   kindly   hand   to 
lead  him  forward,  some  wise  direction 
(over  and  above  the  kindness  which  he 
met  from  personal  friends)  that  might 
have  rescued  him  from  his  own  despe- 
rate  thoughts,  we  should   have  been 
spared  the  spectacle  of  the  premature 
death  of  one  whose  fate  will  always 
rank  amongst  the  tragical  incidents  of 
the  history  not  only  of  Bristol  but  of 
England. 

It  is  too  much  to  expect  that  there 
may  be  a  Burke  amongst  your  profes- 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


99 


sors,  or  a  Chatterton  amongst  your 
pupils.  But  the  hopeful  and  the  melan- 
choly lesson  are  both  worth  remem- 
bering. 

2.  And  now,  leaving  the  body 
of  teachers,  these  two  instances  re- 
mind me  to  turn  to  the  body  of 
students.  I  can  but  plunge  in  the 
dark  to  give  any  advice,  but  this  much 
is  surely  applicable  to  all  of  them.  I 
will  do  my  best,  and  perhaps  here  and 
there  a  word  may  be  useful. 

Bear  in  mind  both  the  advan- 
tages and  the  disadvantages  which  the 
voluntary  education  of  students  in 
after  life  involves  by  the  mere  fact 
of  the  freedom  of  choice  - —  freedom 
in  studies,  freedom  in  subjects,  free- 
dom of  opinions.  A  self-educated 
man  is,  in  some  respects,  the  better, 
in  some  respects  the  worse,  for  not 
having  been  trained  in  his  early  years 
by  regular  routine.  We  have  an  illus- 
tration of  both  the  stronger  and  the 
weaker  side  of  self -education  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Buckle,  the  author  of  the 
History  of  Civilization.  At  the  time 
of  his  greatest  celebrity,  it  was  often 
remarked  that  no  man  who  had  been 
at  regular  schools  or  universities  could, 
on  the  one  hand,  have  acquired  such 
an  enormous  amount  of  multifarious 
knowledge,  and  such  a  grasp  of  so 
many  details ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  no  one  but  a  self-educated  man, 
feeding  his  mind  here  and  there,  with- 
out contradiction,  without  submission, 
without  the  usual  traditions  of  common 
instruction,  could  have  fallen  into  so 
many  paradoxes,  so  many  negligences, 
so  many  ignorances.  It  is  enough  to 
state  this  fact,  in  order  to  put  you 
on  your  guard  against  the  dangers 
of  your  position,  and  also  to  make 
you  feel  its  hopes  and  opportuni- 
ties. Over  the  wide  field  of  science 
and  knowledge  it  is  yours  to  wander. 
The  facts  which  you  acquire  will 
probably  take  a  deeper  hold  on 
your  minds  from  having  been  sought 
out  by  yourselves;  but  not  the  less 
should  you  remember  that  there  are 
qualifying  and  controlling  influences 
derived  from  the  more  regular  courses 


of  study  which  are  of  lasting  benefit, 
and  the  absence  of  which  you  must 
take  into  account  in  judging  of  the 
more  desultory  and  the  more  inde- 
pendent researches  which  you  have 
to  make.  A  deaf  person  may  acquire, 
and  often  has  acquired,  a  treasure  of 
knowledge  and  a  vigour  of  will  by  the 
exclusion  of  all  that  wear  and  tear,  of 
all  that  friction  of  outer  things,  which 
fill  the  atmosphere  of  those  who  have 
the  possession  of  all  their  senses.  But 
nevertheless  a  deaf  person,  in  order 
not  to  be  misled  into  extravagant  esti- 
mates of  his  own  judgment,  or  of  the 
value  of  his  own  pursuits,  should  always 
be  reminded  that  he  has  not  the  same 
means  of  correcting  and  guarding  his 
conclusions  and  opinions  as  he  would 
have  if  he  were  open  to  the  insensible  in- 
fluence of  "the  fibres  of  conversation," 
as  they  have  been  well  called,  which  float 
about  in  the  general  atmosphere,  that 
for  him  has  no  existence.  Self -education 
is  open  both  to  the  advantages  and 
disadvantages  of  deafness ;  knowledge 
is  at  some  entrances  quite  shut  out, 
whilst  such  knowledge  as  gets  in 
occupies  the  mind  more  completely, 
but  always  needs  to  be  reminded  that 
there  is  a  surrounding  vacuum.  With 
this  general  encouragement,  and  this 
general  warning,  let  us  proceed. 

3.  There  are  in  connection  with 
this  institution,  two  chief  depart- 
ments of  human  knowledge  open  to 
those  who  educate,  themselves — Science 
and  Literature.  Of  Science,  which 
provides  for  the  larger  part  of  your 
instruction,  I  can  unfortunately  say 
but  little,  for  the  simple  reason  that, 
from  my  own  ignorance,  I  have  no- 
thing to  contribute  on  the  subject. 
Still,  I  cannot  be  insensible  to  the  im- 
mense enjoyment  which  every  branch 
of  it  must  furnish  to  those  with 
whom  it  enters,  not  merely  into  the 
pleasures,  but  into  the  actual  work, 
of  their  daily  life.  It  is  hard,  for 
example,  to  overstate  the  advantage 
which  it  must  be  to  those  who  are 
immersed  in  the  business  and  the 
commerce  of  a  great  town  like  this, 
that,  amidst  the  fluctuations  of  specu- 
H  2 


100 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


lation,  and  the  interminable  discus- 
sions of  labour  and  capital,  they 
should  have  fixed  in  their  minds 
the  solid  principles  of  political  eco- 
nomy. It  was  with  a  thrill  of  de- 
light, quite  apart  from  agreement  or 
disagreement,  that  I  read  not  long  ago 
of  one  of  our  chief  public  men  in  Par- 
liament taking  his  stand  aloof  from  his 
party,  and  in  despite  of  his  own  in- 
terests, in  defence  of  the  dry  and  arid 
science  of  political  economy,  which 
he  thought  was  unduly  depreciated 
anomgst  large  classes  of  our  country- 
men. Dry  and  arid  it  may  be,  but  I 
cannot  doubt  that  it  is,  as  it  were,  the 
backbone  of  much  of  our  social  system, 
and  it  gives  a  backbone  to  all  into 
whose  minds  it  has  thoroughly  entered. 

Then  in  geology,  astronomy,  chem- 
istry, and  the  natural  sciences  gene- 
rally, what  a  large  field  is  open 
before  you  for  your  pleasure  and  profit ! 
When  Wordsworth  said  in  his  fine 
ode  that  there  had  passed  away  "a 
glory  and  a  freshness  "  from  the  earth, 
he  little  thought  that  there  was  another 
freshness  and  glory  coming  back,  in  the 
deeper  insight  which  science  would  give 
into  the  wonders  and  the  grandeur  of 
nature.  I  have  heard  people  say  who 
had  travelled  with  Sir  Charles  Lyell, 
that  to  see  him  hanging  out  of  the 
window  of  a  railway  carriage,  to 
watch  the  geological  formations  as  he 
passed  through  a  railway  cutting,  was 
as  if  he  saw  the  sides  hung  with 
beautiful  pictures. 

4.  Then,  when  we  come  to  literature, 
what  a  world  of  ideas  is  opened  by  a 
public  library,  or  even  a  private  library 
— by  such  libraries,  great  or  small,  as 
have,  by  individual  or  corporate  munifi- 
cence, been  opened  in  every  quarter  of 
Bristol.  What  a  feast  there  is  in  a 
single  good  book  ! 

We  sometimes  hardly  appreciate 
sufficiently  the  influence  which  lite- 
rature exercises  over  large  phases  of 
the  world.  By  literature  I  mean  those 
great  works  of  history,  poetry,  fiction, 
or  philosophy  that  rise  above  profes- 
sional or  commonplace  uses,  and  take 
possession  of  the  mind  of  a  whole 


nation,  or  a  whole  age.  It  was  pointed 
out  to  me  the  other  day  how  vast  an 
effect  had  been  wrought  by  the  famous 
Persian  poet  Ferdusi,  in  welding  to- 
gether into  one  people  the  discordant 
races  of  the  Mussulman  conquerors 
and  the  indigenous  Persians,  by  his 
great  poem  on  Persian  history,  which 
he,  belonging  to  the  Mussulman  con- 
querors, wove  out  of  the  legendary  lore 
of  the  conquered  race.  But,  indeed,  it 
is  not  necessary  to  go  to  Persia  for  an 
example.  How  vast  an  influence  for 
good  has  been  exercised  on  this  cen- 
tury by  the  novels  of  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
It  is  not  only  that  by  superseding 
the  coarser,  though  often  vigorous, 
fictions  of  the  last  century  they 
purified  the  whole  current  of  English- 
literature — it  is  not  only  that  they 
awakened  an  interest  in  the  past,  and 
also  gave  a  just  view  of  the  present 
and  the  future,  beyond  almost  any 
writings  of  our  time,  but .  that  they 
bound  together,  in  an  indissoluble 
bond,  the  two  nations,  Scotland  and 
England,  which  before  that  time  had 
been  almost  as  far  asunder  as  if  one 
of  them  had  been  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Channel,  instead  of  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Tweed.  Often  it  has  been 
said,  and  truly,  that  no  greater  boon 
could  be  conferred  on  Ireland  than  that 
a  genius  as  wide-spreading,  as  deeply 
penetrating,  and  as  calmly  judging,  as 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  could  be  raised  up  to- 
give  a  like  interest  to  the  scenery,  the 
history,  the  traditions,  and  the  cha- 
racters of  Ireland. 

I  have  given  these  two  examples  of 
the  national  influence  of  literature, 
because  they  show,  on  a  great  scale, 
what  can  be  effected  by  the  finest- 
thoughts  put  into  the  finest  words. 
To  be  conversant  with  them  is  an 
education  of  after  life  which  never 
ceases.  We  read  such  books  again  and 
again,  and  there  is  always  something 
new  in  them.  Spend,  if  possible,  one 
hour  each  day  in  reading  some  good 
and  great  book.  The  number  of  such 
books  is  not  too  many  to  overwhelm 
you.  Every  one  who  reflects  on  the 
former  years  of  his  education,  can  lay 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


101 


his  finger  on  half  a  dozen,  perhaps  even 
fewer,  which  have  made  a  lasting  im- 
press upon  his  mind.  Treasure  up 
these.  It  is  not  only  the  benefits 
which  you  yourself  derive  from  them 
— it  is  the  impression  which  they  leave 
upon  you  of  the  lasting  power  of  that 
which  is  spiritual  and  immaterial.  How 
many  in  all  classes  of  life  may  say 
of  their  own  experience  that  which 
was  said  in  speaking  of  his  library, 
by  one  of  your  most  illustrious 
townsmen,  who  was  my  own  earliest 
literary  delight,  Robert  Southey  : — 

"  My  days  among  the  dead  are  past ; 

Around  me  I  behold, 
Where'er  these  casual  eyes  are  cast, 

The  mighty  minds  of  old  : 
My  never-failing  friends  are  they, 
With  whom  I  converse  day  by  day. 

"  With  them  I  take  delight  in  weal 

And  seek  relief  in  woe  ; 
And  while  I  understand  and  feel 

How  much  to  them  I  owe, 
My  cheeks  have  often  been  bedew'd 
With  tears  of  thoughtful  gratitude. 

•*'  My  thoughts  are  with  the  dead  ;  with  them 

I  live  in  long-past  years, 
Their  virtues  love,  their  faults  condemn, 

Partake  their  hopes  and  fears, 
And  from  their  lessons  seek  and  find 
Instruction  with  an  humble  mind." 

And  even  perhaps  some  of  the 
youngest  or  homeliest  amongst  us 
need  not  scruple  to  add — 

"  My  hopes  are  with  the  dead  ;  anon 

My  place  with  them  will  be, 
And  I  with  them  shall  travel  on 

Through  all  futurity ; 
Yet  leaving  here  a  name,  I  trust, 
That  will  not  perish  in  the  dust." 

5.  But  it  is  not  only  by  books, 
whether  of  literature  or  science,  that  the 
self -education  of  after  life  is  assisted. 
When  Joan  of  Arc  was  examined 
before  her  ecclesiastical  judges,  and 
was  taunted  with  the  reproach  that 
such  marvellous  things  as  she  pro- 
fessed to  have  seen  and  heard  and 
done  were  not  found  written  in  any 
book  which  they  had  studied,  she 
answered  in  a  spirit  akin,  and  in  some 
respects  superior,  to  the  well-known 


lines  in  which  Hamlet  replies  to 
Horatio.  She  replied,  "  My  Lord  God 
has  a  book  in  which  are  written 
many  things  which  even  the  most 
learned  clerk  and  scholar  has  never 
come  across."  Let  me  take  several 
examples,  showing  how  education  may 
be  carried  forward  apart  from  books. 

Let  me  touch  on  the  experiences 
presented  to  our  eyes  and  ears  by 
travel.  In  this  age  it  is  one  of  the 
peculiar  advantages  offered  to  all 
classes,  or  almost  all  classes,  which, 
in  former  times,  was  the  privilege 
only  of  a  few,  that  the  great  book  of 
foreign  countries  and  the  phenomena 
of  nature  have  been  opened  to  our 
view.  We  hardly  appreciate  how 
vast  a  revelation,  how  new  a  creation 
has  been  opened  to  us  in  these  respects 
within  the  last  fifty  years.  A  century 
ago  not  only  were  the  scenes  to  be 
visited  closed  against  us,  but  the 
eye  by  which  we  could  see  them  was 
closed  also.  The  poet  Gray  was  the 
first  human  being  who  discovered  the 
charms  of  the  English  lakes  which 
are  now  able  even  to  enter  into  a 
battle  of  life  and  death  against  the 
mighty  power  of  a  city  like  Manches- 
ter, because  of  the  enthusiastic  interest 
which  they  have  enkindled  in  the 
hearts  of  all  who  visit  them.  The  glories 
of  the  valley  of  Chamounix  were  first 
made  known  to  the  European  world 
by  two  Englishmen  at  the  close  of  the 
last  century.  Before  that  time  the 
cherished  resorts  of  such  gifted  per- 
sonages as  Voltaire  and  Madame  de 
Stael  were  so  selected  as  carefully  to 
exclude  every  view  of  Mont  Blanc  and 
his  great  compeers.  But  in  our  time 
all  these  various  forms  of  beauty 
and  grandeur  are  appreciated  with  a 
keenness  and  sought  with  an  enjoy- 
ment which  must  add  new  life  and 
new  vigour  even  to  the  most  secluded 
amongst  us. 

6.  Besides  the  education  which  dis- 
tant travel  may  give  there  is  also  a 
constant  process  of  self-education  which 
may  be  carried  on  nearer  home.  It  is 
not  only  that  in  each  successive  age, 
or  at  least  in  the  age  in  which  we 


102 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


live,  a  new  eye  or  faculty  lias  been 
created  by  which,  we  are  enabled  to 
see  remote  objects  which  to  our  fore- 
fathers were  absolutely  unknown; 
but,  according  to  the  familiar  story 
which  we  read  in  our  childhood,  every 
human  being  may  pass  through  the 
most  familiar  scenes  with  "eyes"  or 
"  no  eyes."  Let  me  illustrate  this 
by  the  instruction  which  can  be  con- 
veyed to  an  inquiring  and  observant 
mind  by  the  city  in  which  our  lot  is 
cast.  "  What  a  book  !  "  as  Joan  of 
Arc  would  have  said — "  what  a  book 
of  endless  interest  is  opened  to  us 
in  Bristol !  "  How  it  tells  its  own 
story  of  the  long  unbroken  continuity 
of  importance  in  which  it  stands  second 
amongst  British  cities  only  to  London. 
It  is,  as  Lamartine  says  of  Damascus, 
a  predestinated  city.  Why  was  it  of 
such  early  political  eminence?  Be- 
cause, if  I  may  use  knowledge  im- 
parted to  me  since  I  came  among 
you,  it  was  the  frontier  fortress  of 
the  English  race  in  the  south,  as 
Chester  was  in  the  north— to  keep  a 
watch  on  the  wild  Welshmen  in  their 
hills  beyond  the  Severn.  Why  was 
it  of  such  early  commercial  eminence, 
before  the  'birth  of  Manchester, 
or  Liverpool,  or  Birmingham,  or 
Glasgow1?  Because  it  stood  near  the 
mouth  of  that  great  estuary  by  which 
alone  at  that  time  England  was  able 
to  hold  communion  with  the  unknown 
West,  with  the  Atlantic,  and  with  the 
Transatlantic  world.  At  the  mouth 
of  the  Severn,  yet  what  in  those  early 
days  was  even  yet  more  valued,  not 
quite  at  the  mouth — parted  only  by 
that  marvellous  cleft  of  the  Avon,  up 
which  the  ships  of  old  time  came  steal- 
ing, as  by  a  secret  passage,  on  the  back 
*  of  the  enormous  tide  of  the  Bristol 
Channel,  beyond  the  grasp  of  the 
pirate  or  buccaneer  of  the  open  sea.1 
And  why  did  it  become  the  scene 
of  all  those  pleasant  tales  of  Miss 
Burney,  or  Miss  Edgeworth,  or  Miss 

1  "  The  ancient  cities  of  Greece,  on  account 
of  the  piracy  then  prevailing  on  the  sea,  were 
built  rather  at  a  distance  from  the  shore." 
(Thucydides,  i.  7.) 


Austin,  in  later  days,  which  made  its 
localities  familiar  to  the  childhood  of 
those  who,  like  myself,  knew  Bristol 
like  a  household  word  fifty  years  be- 
before  they  explored  it  for  themselves  ? 
It'  was  the  gush  of  mineral  springs, 
the  "hot  wells,"  now  forgotten,  but 
then  the  rallying-point  of  fashion 
and  society,  beneath  your  limestone 
rocks.  And  what  makes  it  such 
an  ever-growing,  ever-inspiring  centre 
of  institutions,  such  as  Clifton  Col- 
lege, already  venerable  with  fame, 
and  this  new  University  College? 
It  is  the  unrivalled  combination  of 
open  downs,  and  deep  gorges,  and 
distant  views,  and  magnificent  foliage 
— magnificent  still,  in  the  wreck  and 
devastation  which  causes  even  a 
stranger  almost  to  weep,  as  he  passes 
through  the  carnage  of  gigantic  trunks 
with  which  the  late  hurricane  has 
strewed  the  park  of  King's  Weston. 
These  are  amongst  the  lessons  which 
the  education  of  after  life  may  bring 
out  from  the  pages  of  this  vast  illu- 
minated book  of  the  natural  situation 
of  Bristol,  which,  more  even  than  the 
Charter  of  King  John  or  the  Bishopric 
of  Henry  VIII. ,  have  given  to  it  its 
long  eventful  history  and  its  never- 
ceasing  charm. 

7.  Apart  from  the  education  to  be 
derived  from  inanimate  objects,  there 
is  the  yet  deeper  education  to  be 
derived  by  those  who  have  senses 
exercised  to  discern  between  true  and 
false,  between  good  and  evil,  from  the 
great  flux  and  reflux  of  human  affairs, 
with  which  the  peculiarity  of  our  times 
causes  all  to  become  more  or  less  conver- 
sant. One  of  the  experiences  which  the 
education  of  life  brings  with  it,  or 
ought  to  bring  with  it,  is  an  increasing 
sense  of  the  difference  between  what  is 
hollow  and  what  is  real,  what  is  artifi- 
cial and  what  is  honest,  what  is  perma- 
nent and  what  is  transitory.  "  There 
are,"  says  Goethe,  in  a  proverb  pointed 
out  to  me  long  ago  by  Lord  Houghton 
as  a  summary  of  human  wisdom, 
"many  echoes  in  the  world,  but  few 
voices."  It  is  the  business  of  the  edu- 
cation of  after  life  to  make  us  more 


TJie  Education  of  After  Life. 


103 


and    more  alive    to  this    distinction. 
Think  of  the  popular  panics  and  excite- 
ments -which  we  have  outlived — of  the 
delusions  which  we  have  seen  possess 
whole  masses  of  the  people,  educated 
and  uneducated,  and  then  totally  pass 
away.     You    have,    many    of  you,    I 
doubt    not,   heard    the    story    of    the 
conversation  of  the  most  famous  of  all 
the    Bishops    of    Bristol    as   he   was 
walking  in  the  dead  of   night  in  the 
garden  of  the  now  destroyed  episco- 
pal palace.     "  His  custom,"  says   his 
chaplain,    "  was   when  at    Bristol   to 
walk  for  hours  in  his  garden  in  the 
darkest  night  which  the  time  of  year 
would  afford,  and  I  had  frequently  the 
honour  to  attend  him.  He  would  take  a 
turn  and  then  stop  suddenly  short,  and 
ask   the    question,   '  Why  might    not 
whole  communities  and  public  bodies 
be  seized  with  fits  of  insanity  as  well 
as    individuals?       Nothing   but    this 
principle,     that    they    are    liable    to 
insanity  equally  at  least  with  private 
persons,    can   account   for   the    major 
part  of  those  tragedies  of  which  we  read 
in  history.'     I   thought   little,"   adds 
the  Chaplain,  "  of  the  odd  conceit  of 
the   Bishop,  but   I  own    I  could    not 
avoid    thinking    of    it    a   great    deal 
since,  and  applying  it  to  many  cases." 
Yes.  Bishop  Butler  was  right.  Such 
madnesses  have  occurred  many  and  many 
a  time  before,  and   they  have  indeed 
been  enacted  many  and  many  a  time 
since.     The  madness  of  the  people  of 
London   in  the  riots   of  Lord  George 
Gordon;   the  madness  of   the  people 
of   Birmingham    when    they    burned 
the   library    of    Dr.    Priestley  ;    the 
madness    of    the   people    of    Bristol, 
which   laid    waste  in  1831   the  very 
garden  in  which  Bishop  Butler  made 
the  remark   one  hundred   years  ago ; 
the    innumerable    theological     panics 
which  I  have  seen  rise  and  fall  away 
in  my  own  day — are  all  examples  of  the 
danger  to   which  we   are  exposed   in 
public  agitations  unless  by  the  stern 
education  of  after  life  we  deliberately 
guard  ourselves  against  it. 

It  is  with  no  view  of  producing  an 
undue  distrust  either  of  human  nature 


or  of  popular  judgments  that  I  dwell 
on  the  deep   conviction  of  the  insta- 
bility of  temporary  judgments  which 
this  experience  of   life  impresses  upon 
us.     Like  all  insanity,  it  is  best  met 
by    sanity.     Like    all    falsehood  and 
hollowness,  it  is  best  resisted  by  a  de- 
termination on  the  part  of  those  who 
know  better,  not  to  give  way  by  one 
hairsbreadth    to    what  they  know  in 
their  own  minds  to  be  a  fiction  or  a 
crime.       If  we  all  of  us,  as  communi- 
ties, as  parties,  as  churches,  are  liable 
to   these  fits  of   madness,    it   is    the 
more  necessary  that  we  should  educate 
ourselves  to  be  our  own  keepers.     And 
as  in  actual  insanity,  so  in  those  meta- 
phorical insanities,    it  is  encouraging 
to  remember  that  one  keeper,  one  sane 
keeper,  is  often  quite  enough  to  con- 
trol many  madmen.     "When  one  verger 
by  his  own   stout  arm    and    resolute 
speech  saved   Bristol  Cathedral  from 
the  raging  mob,  he  did  what  many  a 
magistrate,  or  politician,  or  ecclesiastic 
under  analogous  circumstances  might 
do,  and   what  they  have  often  failed 
to  do  and  so  have  well  nigh  ruined 
the  commonwealth.     In  these  illusions 
of  which  we  are    speaking,  it  is  not 
so  difficult  after  all  to  detect  the  ring 
of  a  true  or  of  a  hollow  word,  it  is  not 
impossible  to  scent  out  with  an  almost 
infallible  instinct   the  savour   of   the 
rotten  or  decaying  or    acrid   element 
in  human  opinion,   or  to  see   wherein 
is  to  be  found  the  light  and  glory  and 
sweetness  of  the  eternal  future. 

8.  And  this  leads  me  to  speak 
of  that  education  which  is  given  in 
our  age  and  in  our  country  more 
than  in  any  other,  namely  : — educa- 
tion in  public  affairs  or  politics.  I  re- 
member when  in  Russia  that  a  Russian 
statesman  was  speaking  of  the  im- 
portant effects  to  be  hoped  from  the 
endeavour  to  give  more  instruction  to 
the  people,  "  but,"  he  said,  "  there  is 
one  process  of  education  which  has 
been  more  effectual  still,  and  that  is 
the  reform  in  the  administration  of  our 
courts  of  law  and  the  introduction  of 
trial  by  jury.  This  by  bringing  the 
peasants  into  the  presence  of  the  great 


104 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


machinery  of    the   State,    by  making 
them  understand  their  own  responsi- 
bility, by  enabling   them  to  hear  pa- 
tiently the  views  of  others,  is  a  never- 
failing  source  of  elevation  and  instruc- 
tion."    Trial   by  jury,    which  to   the 
Russian  peasant  is  as  it  were  but  of 
yesterday,  to   us    is  familiar   by  the 
growth  of    a  thousand   years.     It    is 
familiar,  and  yet  it  falls  only  to  the  lot 
of  few.   I  have  myself  only  witnessed  it 
once.    But  I  thought  it  one  of  the  most 
impressive  scenes  on  which  I  had  ever 
looked.     The  twelve  men,  of  humble 
life,  enjoying  the  advantage  of  the  in- 
struction of  the  most  acute  minds  that 
the    country   could    furnish;     taught 
in    the    most    solemn   forms    of    the 
English    language   to    appreciate  the 
value    of    exact    truth ;    seeing    the 
whole  tragedy  of   destiny   drawn   out 
before  their  very  eyes,  the  weakness  of 
passion,   the  ferocity  of   revenge,  the 
simplicity  of  innocence,  the  moderation 
of  the  judge,  the  seriousness  of  human 
existence— this  is  an  experience  which 
may  actually  befall  but  a  few,  but  to 
whomsoever   it  does   fall   the  lessons 
which  it  imparts,  the  necessity  of  any 
previous  preparation  for  it  that  can  be 
given,    leap  at  such    moments  to  the 
eyes  as   absolutely  inestimable.     But 
what  in  its   measure   is   true   of    the 
education  which  a  juryman  receives,  and 
of  the  necessity  of  education  for  dis- 
charging the  functions  of    a  juryman, 
is    true    more     or    less    of     all    the 
complex    machinery    by    which    the 
duties,  the    hopes,    and    the   fears  of 
English  citizens  are  called  into  action. 
And    here   again  the  past   history  of 
Bristol    furnishes   so    admirable     an 
example    of   an   important   lesson    of 
political  education  that  I  cannot  for- 
bear directing  your  attention  to  it.     I 
mean  Mr.  Burke' s  speech  in  the  Guild- 
hall at  Bristol,  in  which  he  refers  to 
certain   points   in    his    parliamentary 
conduct  in  the  year  1770.     In  making 
this   reference  you  will    not   suppose 
that  I    am   so    indiscreet    as    to    be 
entering  on  any  political  question,  or 
taking  the  side  of  any  political  party. 
I  am  not  favouring  either  the  Anchor 


or  the  Dolphin.  I  am  not  giving  any 
advice  to  either  of  your  respected 
members,  nor  to  any  distinguished 
persons  who  may  come  here  on  the 
day  of  your  great  benefactor  Colston. 

No — but  I  am  trying  to  impress  upon 
you  all  the  value  of  the  education  of 
after  life  in  raising  you  to  the  height 
of  that  great  argument  in  which  you 
have  to  confront  the  grave  emergencies 
of  our  time    and  country.     Burke  is 
speaking  against  the  folly  of  electors 
trying     to    engage    their    representa- 
tives in  matters  of   local    or  peculiar 
interest,    as    distinct    from  the    great 
questions  of  national  policy,    "  Look, 
gentlemen,"   he  says,    "to  the  whole 
tenor    of     your     member's     conduct. 
Try     whether    his     ambition    or    his 
avarice   has   jostled   him   out    of   the 
straight  line  of  duty,  or  whether  that 
grand  foe  of  the  offices  of  active  life, 
that  master-vice  in  men  of  business,  a 
degenerate  and  inglorious   sloth,  has 
made    him   flag   and  languish  in   his 
course?     This    is   the   object   of    our 
inquiry.     If   your   member's    conduct 
can    bear    this    touch,    mark    it    for 
sterling.     He   may   have   fallen   into 
errors  ;  he  must  have  faults  ;  but  our 
error    is    greater    and    our   fault    is 
radically  ruinous  to  ourselves  if  we  do 
not  bear,  if  we  do  not  even  applaud, 
the  whole  compound  and  mixed  mass 
of  such  a  character.     Not  to  act  thus 
is  folly ;  I  had  almost  said  it  is  im- 
piety.    He  censures  God  who  quarrels 
with     the     imperfections     of     man." 
"  When  we  know  that  the  opinions  of 
even  the  greatest  multitudes  are  the 
standard  of  rectitude,   I   shall  think 
myself  obliged  to  make  those  opinions 
the  masters  of  my  conscience.     But  if 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  Omnipo- 
tence itself  is  competent  to  alter  the 
essential    constitution    of    right   and 
wrong,  sure  I  am  that  such  things  as 
they  and  I  are  possessed  of  no  such 
power.     No  man  carries  further  than 
I  do  the  policy  of  making  government 
pleasing    to    the    people.      But     the 
widest    range    of    this    politic    com- 
plaisance is  confined  within  the  limits 
of  justice.     I  would  not  only  consult 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


105 


the  interest  of  the  people,  but  I  would 
cheerfully  gratify  their  humours.  We 
are  all  a  sort  of  children  that  must  be 
soothed  and  managed.  I  think  I  am 
not  austere  or  formal  in  my  nature. 
I  would  bear,  I  would  even  myself 
play  my  part  in,  any  innocent  buf- 
fooneries to  divert  them.  But  I  never 
will  act  the  tyrant  for  their  amuse- 
ment. If  they  will  mix  malice  in 
their  sports  I  shall  never  consent  to 
throw  them  any  living,  sentient 
creature  whatsoever — no,  not  so  much 
as  a  titling  to  torment."  "I  could 
wish  undoubtedly  to  make  every  part 
of  my  conduct  agreeable  to  every  one 
of  my  constituents.  But  in  so  great 
a  city,  and  so  greatly  divided  as  this, 
it  is  weak  to  expect  it.  In  such  a 
discordancy  of  sentiments  it  is  better 
to  look  to  the  nature  of  things  than 
to  the  humours  of  men.  The  very 
attempt  towards  pleasing  everybody 
discovers  a  temper  always  flashy,  and 
often  false  and  insincere.  Therefore, 
as  I  have  proceeded  straight  onward 
in  my  conduct,  so  I  will  proceed  in 
my  account  of  those  parts  of  it  which 
have  been  most  excepted  to.  But  I 
must  first  beg  leave  just  to  hint  to 
you  that  we  may  suffer  very  great 
detriment  by  being  open  to  every 
talker.  It  is  not  to  be  imagined  how 
much  of  service  is  lost  from  spirits 
full  of  activity  and  full  of  energy, 
who  are  pressing,  who  are  rushing 
forward,  to  great  and  capital  objects, 
when  you  oblige  them  to  be  continu- 
ally looking  back.  Whilst  they  are 
defending  one  service  they  defraud 
you  of  an  hundred.  Applaud  us  when 
we  run ;  console  us  when  we  fall ; 
cheer  us  when  we  recover ;  but  let  us 
pass  on — for  God's  sake,  let  us  pass 
on!" 

I  venture  to  quote  these  words  of 
everlasting  wisdom  from  one  of  the 
greatest  masters  of  the  English 
language  and  of  English  political 
science,  because  they  well  express 
that  kind  of  public  education  which 
the  mere  experience  of  life  ought  to 
give  us,  quite  irrespective  of  the 
special  political  party  to  which  one 


may  be  attached.  No  doubt,  as  Mr. 
Burke  says,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
know  how  far  to  concede  to  popular 
feeling,  or,  indeed,  how  far  popular 
feeling  is  likely  to  be  correct.  We 
must  all  work  with  such  instruments 
as  are  at  hand.  Yet  not  in  politics 
only,  but  in  all  public  affairs,  not  on 
one  side  only,  but  on  both  sides  of 
public  life,  it  is  a  peculiar  danger  of  the 
generation  in  which  our  lot  is  cast 
that  we  are  often  tempted  to  abandon 
the  lofty  and  independent  line  which 
Mr.  Burke  and  the  electors  of  Bristol 
then  assumed.  Often,  more  often,  I 
fear,  than  in  the  days  of  our  fathers, 
we  meanly  abdicate  the  function  of 
leading  the  opinion  of  those  whom 
we  ought  to  lead,  and  prefer  to  follow 
the  opinion  of  those  who  are  no  better 
— who  are,  it  may  be,  worse  than  our- 
selves. Sometimes,  instead  of  choosing 
courses  which  we  believe  to  be  for  the 
good  of  the  country  or  for  the  good 
even  of  the  particular  principles  which 
we  represent,  we  are  weak  enough  to 
bow  to  the  temporary  exigencies  of 
some  passing  war-cry  on  which  we  our- 
selves have  no  conviction  at  all,  and 
which  we  only  encourage  for  the 
purpose  of  acquiring  power  or  in- 
fluence to  ourselves  or  our  friends. 
It  would  be  easy  to  illustrate  this 
branch  of  public  education  by  exam- 
ples nearer  home;  but  let  us  take  the 
career  of  that  distinguished  French 
statesman  who  has  just  gone  to  his 
rest.  M.  Thiers  had,  no  doubt,  many 
faults,  and  upon  his  memory  will  al- 
ways rest  the  burden  of  one  or  two 
of  the  greatest  misfortunes  which  have 
overtaken  his  country ;  but  it  is  to 
the  later  years  of  his  course  that  I 
would  call  your  attention.  When 
during  the  German  war  of  1870  the 
condition  of  France  had  become  well 
nigh  desperate ;  when  the  passions, 
whether  of  the  people  or  of  their 
leaders,  still  refused  to  accept  even 
the  slightest  proposals  of  peace,  it 
was  predicted  by  sagacious  persons, 
both  in  France  and  in  England,  that 
the  difficulty  of  arriving  at  any  ter- 
mination of  that  disastrous  conflict 


106 


TJie  Education  of  After  Life. 


was    enhanced    by   the   circumstance 
that  any  statesman  who  ventured  so 
far  to  resist  the  torrent  of  national 
frenzy  as  to  make  overtures  to  Ger- 
many,   would    be    certain   to    forfeit 
every  chance  of  future  political  suc- 
cess.    One    man,    however,    in    that 
extreme    emergency  was   found   suffi- 
ciently patriotic  to  sacrifice  the  objects 
of  his  own  ambition — vast  as  it  was 
— to  what  he  believed  to  be  the  good 
of  his  country.  That  man  was  Adolphe 
Thiers.     And   what  was  the   result? 
All  the  predictions  of  which  I  have 
spoken  were   signally   falsified.     The 
act  of  pacification  by  which  it  was  be- 
lieved  that  his  personal  career    was 
ruined  became  the  stepping-stone  by 
which,  without  dissent  and  with  almost 
universal  applause,  he  mounted  to  the 
highest  place  in  the  government  of  his 
country.     And  yet,  once  more,  hardly 
had    he    been   there   seated   when  a 
second   catastrophe  overtook   the   na- 
tion, before  which  some  of  those  who 
usually  undertook  to  inspire  and  lead 
the  masses  turned  and  fled  in  dismay. 
The   Commune   was   in  possession   of 
Paris ;    the   working    classes   of   that 
great  metropolis  had  seized  the  citadel 
of  the  state.     Again  it  was  predicted 
that  no  minister  who   undertook  the 
terrible  task  of  suppressing  that  for- 
midable insurrection  could  ever  regain 
the  confidence  or  the  affection  of  the 
mass  of  the  Parisian  people.     And  yet 
what   was   the   result?     After   a  re- 
conquest  of  the  capital,  accompanied 
by  severities  which  I  do  not  presume 
to   judge,  but  which   certainly   were 
not    calculated   to   conciliate   the   re- 
gard of  those  whose  power  was  thus 
summarily  broken,   the   same  states- 
man   was    conveyed   to    his   grave — 
lamented   not   merely   by  the  upper 
classes  of  society  which  he  had  pre- 
served from  ruin,  but  with  a  singular 
and  mysterious  silence  and  solemnity 
of   grief  through   the   midst   of    the 
very  population   which   he   had   thus 
rudely  vanquished.     I  repeat  that  I 
do  not  refer  to  these  incidents  as  an 
advocate   of    that  remarkable  man — 
he   has  much  to  answer   for;  and  I 


am  not  here  either  to  defend  or  to 
condemn — but  these  acts  in  the  last 
great  epoch  of  his  life  are  an  en- 
couragement to  all  those  who,  in 
the  spirit  of  Edmund  Burke,  are 
steadfast  to  the  dictates  of  their  own 
consciences,  confident  that  they  will 
reap  their  reward  before  God  and 
posterity,  but  not  without  the  just 
hope  that  they  may  even  reap  it  in 
the  gratitude  of  those  whose  folly 
they  have  resisted.  These  and  the  like 
acts  are  lessons  to  us  that  the  people 
have,  at  the  bottom  of  their  hearts, 
more  sense  and  more  justice  than  we 
give  them  credit  for.  We  may  trust 
that  the  mass  of  our  fellow-country- 
men, if  we  have  had  the  courage  in  a 
good  cause  to  thwart  their  unreasoning 
frenzy,  will  acknowledge  at  last  that 
they  were  mistaken,  and  that  we  were 
right.  This  is  the  education  of  public 
life,  on  which  much  more  might  be 
said — on  which  I  could  not  say  less ; 
but  on  which,  perhaps,  I  have  said 
enough. 

9.  There  is  one  more  general  re- 
mark on  the  education  of  experience 
which  brings  us  back  to  our  college. 
We  live  in  these  days  more  rapidly 
than  our  fathers  did ;  we  see  more 
changes ;  we  live,  as  it  is  said,  many 
lives  in  one.  Now,  of  this  rapid 
growth  and  various  experience,  there 
is  one  important  lesson.  It  shows 
us  how  great  are  the  possibilities 
and  capabilities  of  human  existence. 
A  friend  of  mine  last  year  with 
singular  courage  accomplished  the 
rare  and  difficult  task  of  ascending 
Mount  Ararat.  Two  days  after  he 
had  come  down,  his  companion  ex- 
plained to  an  Armenian  Archimandrite 
at  the  foot  of  the  mountain  what  my 
friend  had  done.  The  venerable  man 
sweetly  smiled,  and  said,  "It  is  im- 
possible." "  But,"  said  the  inter- 
preter, "  this  traveller  has  been  up 
and  has  returned."  "No,"  said  the 
Archimandrite,  "no  one  ever  has  as- 
cended, and  no  one  ever  will  ascend 
Mount  Ararat."  This  belief  in  the 
impossibility  of  what  has  been  done  is 
uncommon,  but  the  belief  in  the  impos- 


The  Education  of  After  Life. 


107 


sibility  of  what  may  be  done  is  very 
common;  and  it  is  one  delightful  pecu- 
liarity of  the  history  of  Bristol  that 
it    enables  us  to  bear  up  against  this 
natural  prejudice.     It  might  have  been 
thought  impossible  that  there  should 
have  been  discovered  a  North  America 
as  well  as  a  South  America.    Yet  it 
was  discovered  by  a  Venetian  seaman 
who  sailed  from  the  harbour  of  Bristol. 
It  was  thought  that  no  steamer  could 
ever  cross  the  Atlantic.     Dr.  Lardner 
proved  to  demonstration  in  this  very 
city  of    Bristol   that    such   an  event 
could  never  take  place ;  and  the  late 
Lord    Derby  said    that   of    the  first 
steamer  which  crossed  he  would  engage 
to    swallow  the   boiler.     Yet   such  a 
steamer   started   from   the    docks   of 
Bristol,  and  safely  reached  New  York. 
It    might    have    been    thought    that 
there  was  something  impossible  in  the 
idea  of  a  beneficent  institution,  living 
from  hand  to  mouth,  supported  by  the 
indomitable  faith  of  one  man,  living 
on  Providence.     Yet  this  also  has  been 
fulfilled  on  Ashley  Down.     It  might 
have  been  thought  impossible  that  the 
rough  lads  of  Kingswood  should  ever 
be  reformed  or  that  the  women  of  India 
should  ever  be  moulded  by  European 
influences.     Yet   this  also  was  accom- 
plished   in    our     own    day,    by    the 
faith  and  energy  of  a  wise  and  gentle 
woman,  dear  to  Bristol — Mary  Carpen- 
ter.    It  might  have  been  thought  im- 
possible that  an  institution  like  this 
should  ever  have  sprung  into  existence, 
that  Oxford  should  ever  have  come  to 
Bristol — that  three   hundred    Bristol 
students  should  have  been  listening  to 
lecturers  from  Oxford,  Cambridge,  and 
Dublin.     Yet  it  has  been  done.     All 
these  discoverers  have  ascended  Mount 
Ararat,  and  though  the  most  incredu- 
lous Archimandrite  may  shake  his  head 
and   sweetly   smile,    and    say   that  it 
cannot    be,    yet    these    things,   great 
and  small,  have  been  achieved — and 
achieved  in  safety. 


This  is  one  of  the  best  fruits  of  the 
education  of  after  life.  It  encourages 
the  hope  that  impossibilities  may 
become  not  only  possibilities  but  ac- 
tualities. There  is  a  great  company 
here  of  the  "Merchant  Venturers," 
called  so,  I  am  told,  because  they 
made  some  of  those  mighty  ventures 
in  former  times  by  which  new  lands 
were  found — new  wealth  and  know- 
ledge poured  into  this  ancient  city. 
But  there  are  still  many  voyages  to  be 
made,  still  much  wealth  to  be  expended, 
still  new  Ararats  to  be  scaled.  We 
are  all  of  us  Merchant  Venturers — we 
all  of  us  must  venture  something,  if 
we  would  leave  something  worth  living 
for,  nay,  if  we  would  have  something 
to  look  forward  to  hereafter.  Nil 
desperandum  must  be  written,  as  in 
the  porch  of  the  Redcliffe  Church,  so 
over  the  entrance  of  every  stage  of  our 
existence. 

Yes,  over  every  stage.  For  this  is 
the  last  word  I  will  venture  to  say 
concerning  the  education  of  life.  In 
the  transformation  of  opinion  which 
is  imperceptibly  affecting  all  our  con- 
ceptions of  the  future  state,  and  in  the 
perplexities  and  doubts  which  this 
transformation  excites,  the  idea  that 
comes  with  the  most  solid  force  and 
abiding  comfort  to  the  foreground  is 
the  belief  that  the  whole  of  our 
human  existence  is  an  education — not 
merely,  as  Bishop  Butler  said,  a  pro- 
bation for  the  future,  but  an  educa- 
tion which  shall  reach  into  the  future. 
The  possibilities  that  overcome  the  im- 
possibilities in  our  actual  experience 
show  us  that  there  may  be  yet  greater 
possibilities  which  shall  overcome  the 
yet  more  formidable  impossibilities 
lying  beyond  our  experience,  beyond 
our  sight,  beyond  the  last  great 
change  of  all.  Through  all  these 
changes,  and  towards  that  unseen  goal, 
in  the  words  of  Mr.  Burke,  let  us  pass 
on — -for  God's  sake,  let  us  pass  on  ! 

ARTHUR  P.  STANLEY. 


108 


YOUNG  MUSGRAVE. 


PART  XII. 
CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

THE     BEGINNING    OF    THE    END. 

GEOFF  took  the  children  home  without 
let  or  hindrance.  There  was  no  inn 
near  where  they  could  pass  the  night ; 
and  as  he  had  no  legitimate  right  to 
their  custody,  and  was  totally  unknown 
and  very  young,  and  might  not  awaken 
any  lively  faith  in  the  bosom  of  autho- 
rity as  against  the  schoolmaster  or  the 
uncle,  he  thought  it  wisest  to  take  them 
away  at  once.  He  managed  to  get 
some  simplest  food  for  them  with 
difficulty — a  little  bread  and  milk — 
and  made  them  lie  down,  propped 
amid  the  cushions  of  a  first-class 
carriage,  which  was  to  be  hooked  on 
to  the  evening  train  when  it  arrived. 
Before  they  left  the  little  station  he 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  Ran- 
dolph Musgrave  arrive,  looking  sour 
and  sullen.  Geoff  did  not  know  that 
Randolph  had  done  anything  unkind 
to  the  children.  Certainly  it  was  none 
of  his  fault  that  Lilias  was  there  ;  but 
what  good  partizan  ever  entered  too 
closely  into  an  examination  of  the 
actual  rights  and  wrongs  of  a  question  1 
Randolph  might  have  been  innocent — 
as  indeed  he  was — of  any  downright 
evil  intention ;  but  this  availed  him 
nothing.  Geoff  looked  out  of  the 
window  of  his  own  carriage  as  they 
glided  away  from  the  station,  and 
gazed  with  intensest  schoolboy  plea- 
sure on  the  glum  and  sour  counte- 
nance of  the  churlish  uncle,  who,  but 
for  his  own  intervention,  might  have 
wrought  destruction  to  those  new 
babes  in  the  wood.  He  shivered 
when  he  thought  of  the  two  helpless 
creatures  lying  under  the  brambles, 
too  frightened  to  move,  and  feeling  to 
their  hearts  all  the  fantastic  horrors 
of  the  darkness.  Now,  though  still 


in  movement,  and  undergoing  still 
further  fatigue,  the  absolute  rest  which 
had  fallen  upon  their  childish  spirits 
from  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  there, 
touched  the  young  man  to  the  heart. 
They  were  willing  to  let  him  take 
them  anywhere ;  their  cares  were  over. 
Nello  had  even  made  a  feeble  little 
attempt  to  shake  his  draggled  plumes 
and  swagger  a  little,  sore  and  uncom- 
fortable though  he  was,  before  he 
clambered  into  the  carriage ;  and 
Lilias  lay  in  the  nest  he  had  made 
for  her,  looking  out  with  eyes  of 
measureless  content — so  changed  from 
those  great,  wistful,  unfathomable 
oceans  of  anxiety  and  fear  which  had 
looked  at  him  through  the  brambles  ! 
She  put  her  hand  into  his  as  he 
settled  himself  in  his  corner  beside 
her  —  the  little  soft  child's  hand, 
which  he  warmed  in  his  strong  clasp, 
and  which  clung  to  him  with  a  hold 
which  did  not  relax  even  in  her  dreams ; 
for  she  went  to  sleep  so,  holding  him 
fast,  feeling  the  sense  of  safety  glow 
over  her  in  delicious  wai'mth  and  ease. 
Through  all  the  night,  even  when  she 
slept,  at  every  movement  he  made  her 
soft  fingers  closed  more  firmly  upon 
his  hand.  It  was  the  child's  anchor 
of  safety  ;  and  this  clinging,  conscious 
and  unconscious,  went  straight  to 
Geoff's  heart.  In  the  dark,  under  the 
waning  light  of  the  lamp  overhead, 
he  watched  the  little  face  sinking  into 
sleep,  with  now  a  faint  little  smile 
upon  it — a  complete  relaxation  of  all 
the  strained  muscles — with  a  sensa- 
tion of  happiness  which  was  beyond 
words.  Sometimes,  for  the  mere 
pleasure  of  it,  he  would  make  a 
movement  wantonly  to  feel  the  re- 
newed clasp  of  the  little  hand  and  see 
the  drowsy  opening  of  the  eyes.  "  Are 
you  there,  Mr.  Geoff  1 "  she  said  now 
and  then,  with  a  voice  as  soft  (he 
thought)  as  the  coo  of  a  deve.  "  Yes, 


Young  Musgrave. 


109 


my  Lily ; "  he  would  say,  with  his 
heart  swelling  in  his  young  bosom ; 
and  Lilias  would  drop  to  sleep  again, 
smiling  at  him  with  sleepy  eyes — in 
what  ease  and  infinite  content !  As 
for  Nello,  he  snored  now  and  then 
out  of  very  satisfaction  and  slum- 
bering confidence  ;  little  snores,  some- 
thing between  a  little  cherub's  trum- 
pet and  the  native  utterance  of  the 
tenderest  of  little  pigs — at  that  age 
when  even  little  piggies,  by  reason  of 
babyhood,  have  something  cherubic 
about  them  too. 

At  midnight,  at  the  great  junction, 
a  tall,  sunburnt,  anxious-faced  man 
walked  along  the  line  of  carriages, 
looking  in  with  eager  looks.  "Are 
these  your  children  ?  "  he  said  to 
Geoff,  seeing  the  two  little  figures 
laid  up  among  the  cushions,  and  not 
remarking  how  young  their  compa- 
nion was.  He  spoke  abruptly,  but 
taking  off  his  hat  with  an  apologetic 
grace,  which  Geoff  thought  "  foreign," 
as  we  are  all  so  apt  to  suppose  un- 
usual courtesy  to  be.  A  sudden  in- 
spiration seized  the  young  man.  He 
did  not  know  who  this  was,  but  some- 
how he  never  doubted  who  it  was  the 
stranger  sought.  "  They  are  the  little 
Musgraves  of  Penninghame,"  he  said, 
simply,  "  whom  I  am  taking  home." 

The  tall  stranger  wavered  for  a 
moment,  as  though  he  might  have 
fallen;  then,  in  a  voice  half -choked, 
he  asked,  " May  I  come  beside  you?  " 
He  sat  down  in  the  seat  opposite  to 
Geoff,  after  an  anxious  inspection  of 
the  two  little  faces,  now  settled  into 
profound  sleep.  "Thank  God!"  he 
said.  "They  are  all  I  have  in  the 
world." 

Who  could  it  be?  Geoff's  ears 
seemed  to  tingle  with  the  words — 
"All  I  have  in  the  world."  He  sat 
in  his  dark  corner  and  gazed  at 
this  strange  new-comer,  who  was  more 
in  the  light.  And  the  new-comer 
gazed  at  him,  seeing,  after  a  while, 
the  child's  hand  clasped  in  his — a 
mark  of  trust  which,  sweet  as  it  was, 
kept  young  Geoff  in  a  somewhat  forced 
attitude,  not  comfortable  for  a  long 


night  journey.  "  I  do  not  know  you,'r 
he  said,  "  but  my  little  girl  seems  to 
put  her  whole  trust  in  you,  and  that 
must  make  me  your  grateful  servant 
too." 

"  Then  you  are  John  Musgrave  ?  " 
cried  the  young  man.  "  Oh,  sir,  I  am 
glad  ! — most  glad  that  you  have  come 
home  !  Yes,  I  think  she  likes  me ; 
and,  child  or  woman,"  cried  young 
Geoff,  clasping  the  little  hand  close 
with  a  sudden  effusion,  "  I  shall  never 
care  for  any  one  else." 

Serious,  careworn,  in  peril  of  his 
life,  John  Musgrave  laughed  softly  in 
his  beard.  "  This  is  my  first  welcome 
home,"  he  said. 

Geoff  found  a  carriage  waiting  for 
him  at  Stanton,  his  first  impulse 
having  been  to  take  the  children  to 
his  mother.  He  gave  them  up  now 
with  a  pang,  having  first  witnessed 
the  surprise  of  incredulous  delight 
with  which  Lilias  flung  herself  at  her 
waking  upon  her  father.  The  cry 
with  which  she  hailed  him,  the  illu- 
mination of  her  face,  and,  Geoff  felt, 
utter  forgetfulness  of  his  own  claims, 
half-vexed  the  young  man  after  his 
uncomfortable  night  ;  and  it  was 
with  a  certain  pang  that  he  gave 
the  children  up  to  their  natural 
guardian.  "  Papa,  this  is  Mr.  Geoff," 
Lilias  said ;  "  no  one  has  ever  been  sa 
kind  ;  and  he  knows  about  you  some- 
thing that  nobody  else  knows." 

John  Musgrave  looked  up  with  a 
gleam  of  surprise  and  a  faint  suffusion 
of  colour  on  his  serious  face.  "  Every 
one  here  knows  about  me"  he  said, 
with  a  sigh ;  and  then  he  turned  to- 
the  young  guardian  of  his  children. 
"  Lily's  introduction  is  of  the  slight- 
est," he  said.  "I  don't  know  you, 
nor  how  you  have  been  made  to  take 
so  much  interest  in  them — how  you 
knew  even  that  they  wanted  help ; 
but  I  am  grateful  to  you  with  all  my 
heart,  all  the  same." 

"  I  am  Geoffrey  Stanton,"  said  the 
young  man.  He  did  not  know  how  to 
make  the  announcement,  but  coloured 
high  with  consciousness  of  the  pain 
that  must  be  associated  with  his  name. 


110 


Young  Musgrave. 


But  it  was  best,  he  felt,  to  make  the 
revelation  at  once.  "  The  brother  of 

Walter     Stanton,    whom   .      As 

Lilias  says,  sir,  I  know  more  about 
you  than  others  know.  I  have  heard 
everything." 

John  Musgrave  shook  his  head. 
"  Everything  !  till  death  steps  in  to 
one  or  another  of  the  people  con- 
cerned, that  is  what  no  one  will  ever 
know  ;  but  so  long  as  you  do  not 

shrink  from  me,  Lord  Stanton  

You  are  Lord  Stanton,  is  it  not  so  ?  " 
"I  am  not  making  any  idle  brag," 
said  Geoff.  "I  know  everything.  It 
was  Bampfylde  himself — Dick  Bamp- 
f ylde — who  sent  me  after  the  children. 
I  know  the  truth  of  it  all,  and  I  am 
ready  to  stand  by  you,  sir,  whenever 

and  howsoever  you  want  me " 

Geoff  bent  forward  eagerly,  holding 
out  his  hand,  with  a  flush  of  earnest- 
ness and  enthusiasm  on  his  young 
face.  Musgrave  looked  at  him  with 
great  and  serious  surprise.  His  face 
darkened  and  lighted  up,  and  he 
started  slightly  at  the  name  of  Bamp- 
fylde. At  last,  with  a  moment's  hesi- 
tation, he  took  Geoff's  outstretched 
hand,  and  pressed  it  warmly.  "  I 
dare  not  ask  what  it  is  you  do  know," 
he  said,  "  but  there  is  nothing  on  my 
hand  to  keep  me  from  taking  yours ; 
and  thank  you  a  thousand  times — 
thank  you  for  them.  About  every- 
thing else  we  can  talk  hereafter." 

In  ten  minutes  after  Geoff  was 
whirling  along  the  quiet  country 
road  on  his  way  home.  It  was  like 
a  dream  to  him  that  all  this  should 
have  happened  since  he  last  drove 
between  these  hedgerows,  and  he  had 
the  half-disappointed,  half-injured 
feeling  of  one  who  has  not  carried 
out  an  adventure  to  its  final  end. 
He  was  worn  out  too,  and  excited, 
and  he  did  not  like  giving  up  Lily 
into  the  hands  of  her  father.  Had 
it  been  Miss  Musgrave  he  would  have 
felt  no  difficulty.  It  was  chilly  in  the 
early  morning,  and  he  buttoned  up  his 
coat  to  his  chin,  and  put  his  hands  in 
his  pockets,  and  let  his  groom  drive, 
who  had  evidently  something  to  say 


to  him  which  could  scarcely  be  kept 
in  till  they  got  clear  of  the  station. 
Geoff  had  seen  it  so  distinctly  in  the 
man's  face,  that  he  had  asked  at  once, 
"  Is  all  right  at  home  ?  "  But  he  was 
too  tired  to  pay  much  attention  to 
anything  beyond  that.  When  they 
had  gone  on  for  about  a  quarter  of 
an  hour,  however,  the  groom  himself 
broke  the  silence.  "I  beg  your  par- 
don, my  lord 

"  What  is  it  ?' '  Geoff,  retired  into 
the  recesses  of  his  big  coat,  had  been 
half  asleep. 

Then  the  man  began  an  excited 
story.  He  had  heard  a  scuffle  and 
struggle  at  a  point  of  the  road  which 
they  were  about  approaching,  when  on 
his  way  to  meet  his  master.  Wild 
cries,  "not  like  a  human  being,"  he 
said,  and  the  sound  of  a  violent  en- 
counter. "  I  thought  of  the  madman 
I  was  telling  your  lordship  of  yester- 
day." 

"  And  what  was  it  ?  "  cried  Geoff, 
rousing  up  to  instant  interest ;  upon 
which  the  groom  became  apologetic. 

"  How  could  I  leave  my  horse,  my 
lord  ?  —  a  young  beast,  very  fresh, 
as  your  lordship  knows.  He'd  have 
bolted  if  I'd  left  him  for  a  moment. 
It  was  all  I  could  do,  as  it  was,  to 
hold  him  in  with  such  cries  in  his  ears. 
I  sent  on  the  first  man  I  met.  A  man 
does  not  grapple  with  a  madman  unless 

he  is  obliged  to " 

"  But  you  sent  the  other  man  to 
do  it,"  said  Geoff,  half -amused,  half- 
angry.  He  sprang  from  the  phaeton 
as  they  came  to  the  spot  which  the 
groom  pointed  out.  It  was  a  little 
dell,  the  course  of  a  streamlet,  widen- 
ing as  it  ascended,  and  clothed  with 
trees.  Geoff  knew  the  spot  well. 
About  half  a  mile  further  up,  on  a 
little  green  plateau  in  the  midst  of 
the  line  of  sheltering  wood  which 
covered  these  slopes,  his  brother's 
body  had  been  found.  He  had  been 
taken  to  see  the  spot  with  shuddering 
interest  when  he  was  a  child,  and 
had  never  forgotten  the  fatal  place. 
The  wood  was  very  thick,  with  rank, 
dark,  water-loving  trees  ;  and  whether 


Young  Musgrave. 


Ill 


it  was  fancy  or  reality,  had  always 
seemed  to  Geoff  the  most  dismal  spot 
in  the  county.  All  was  quiet  now, 
or  so  he  thought  at  first.  But  there 
was  no  mistaking  the  evidence  of  wet, 
broken,  and  trampled  grass,  which 
showed  where  some  deadly  struggle 
had  been.  The  spot  was  not  far  from 
the  road — about  five  minutes  of  as- 
cent, no  more — and  the  young  man 
pressed  on,  guided  by  signs  of  the 
fray,  and  in  increasing  anxiety ;  for 
almost  at  the  first  step  he  saw  an 
old  game-pouch  thrown  on  the  ground, 
which  he  recognised  as  having  been 
worn  by  Bampfylde.  Presently  he 
heard,  a  little  in  advance  of  him,  a 
low  groan,  and  the  sound  of  a  sym- 
pathetic voice.  "  Could  you  walk, 
with  my  arm  to  steady  you  ?  Will 
you  try  to  walk,  my  man  ? ' '  Another 
low  moaning  cry  followed.  "  My 
walking's  done  in  this  world,"  said 
a  feeble  voice.  Geoff  hurried  forward, 
stifling  a  cry  of  grief  and  pain.  He 
had  known  it  since  he  first  set  foot  on 
that  fatal  slope.  It  was  Bampfylde's 
voice  ;  and  presently  he  came  in  sight 
of  the  group.  The  sympathiser  was 
the  same  labouring  man,  no  doubt, 
whom  his  groom  had  sent  to  the 
rescue.  Wild  Bampfylde  lay  propped 
upon  the  mossy  bank,  his  head  sup- 
ported upon  a  bush  of  heather.  The 
stranger  who  stood  by  him  had  evi- 
dently washed  the  blood  from  his 
face  and  unbuttoned  his  shirt,  which 
was  open.  There  was  a  wound  on  his 
forehead,  however,  from  which  blood 
was  slowly  oozing,  and  his  face  was 
pallid  as  death.  "  Let  me  be — let  me 
be,"  he  said  with  a  groan,  as  his  kind 
helper  tried  to  raise  him.  Then  a 
faint  glimmer  of  pleasure  came  over 
his  ghastly  face.  "Ah.  my  young 
lord  !  "  he  said. 

"What  is  it,  Bampfylde?  What 
has  happened?  Is  he  much  hurt?" 
cried  Geoff,  kneeling  down  by  his 
side.  The  man  did  not  say  anything, 
but  shook  his  head.  The  vagrant 
himself  smiled,  with  a  kind  of  faint 
amusement  in  the  mournful  glimmer 
of  his  eyes. 


"Not  hurt,  my  young  gentleman; 
just  killed,"  he  said;  "but  you're 
back — and  they're  safe  ?  " 

"  Safe,  Bampfylde  ;  and  listen  ! — 
with  their  father.  He  has  come  to 
take  care  of  his  own." 

A  warmer  gleam  lighted  up  the 
vagrant  s  face.  "  John  Musgrave 
here !  Ah,  but  it's  well  timed," 
he  cried  feebly.  "  My  young  lord, 
I'm  grieved  but  for  one  thing,  the 
old  woman.  Who  will  take  care  of 
old  'Lizabeth  ?  and  she's  been  a  good 
woman— if  it  had  not  been  her  son 
that  went  between  her  and  her  wits. 
I'm  sorry  for  her,  poor  old  body ; 
very,  very  sorry  for  her,  poor  'Liza- 
beth. He'll  never  be  taken  now,  my 
young  lord.  Now  he's  killed  me, 
there's  none  will  ever  take  him.  And 
so  we'll  all  be  ended,  and  the  old 
woman  left  to  die,  without  one — 
without  one !  " 

"  My  cart  is  at  the  foot  of  the 
hill,"  said  Geoff,  quickly,  addressing 
the  labourer,  who  stood  by  with  tears 
in  his  eyes;  "take  it,  and  bid  the 
groom  drive  as  fast  as  the  horse  will 
go  —  and  he' s  fresh  —  for  the  first 
doctor  you  can  find ;  and  bid  them 
send  an  easy  carriage  from  Stanton — 
quick  !  For  every  moment  you  save 
I'll  give  you " 

"  I  want  no  giving.  What  a  man 
can  do  for  poor  Dick  Bampfylde,  I 
will,"  cried  the  other  as  he  rushed 
down  the  slope.  The  vagrant  smiled 
feebly  again. 

"  They're  all  good-hearted,"  he  said. 
"  Not  one  of  them  but  would  do  poor 
Dick  Bampfylde  a  good  turn  ;  that's 
a  pleasure,  my  young  lord.  And  you — 
you're  the  best  of  all.  Ay,  let  him  go, 
it'll  please  you  ;  but  me,  my  hour's 
come." 

"  Bampfylde,  does  it  hurt  you  to 
speak  ?  Can  you  tell  me  how  it  was  ?  " 

The  poor  fellow's  eyes  were  glazing 
over.  He  made  an  effort  when  Geoff's 
voice  caught  him  as  it  were,  and 
arrested  the  stupor.  "  Eh,  my  young 
lord?  What  need  to  tell?  Poor 
creature,  he  did  not  know  me  for  a 
friend,  far  less  a  brother.  And  mad-  • 


112 


Young  Musgrave. 


ness  is  strong — it's  strong.  Tell  the 
old  woman  that — it  was  not  me  he 
killed — but — one  that  tried  to  take 
him.  Ay — we  were  all  playing  about  the 
beck,  and  her  calling  us  to  come  in — 
all  the  family  ;  him  and — Lily — and 
me.  I  was  always  the  least  account — 
but  it  was  me  that  would  aye  be  first  to 
answer  ; — and  now  we  are  all  coming 
home — Poor  old  'Lizabeth — Eh  !  what 
were  you  saying,  my  young  lord  ?  ' ' 

"  Bampfylde  !  has  he  got  clear  off 
again,  after  this  1  Where  is  he  ?  Can 
you  tell  me — for  the  sake  of  others  if 
not  for  your  own." 

"  For  mine  ! — Would  it  mend  me 
to  tell  upon  him? — Nay,  nay,  you'll 
never  take  him — never  now ;  but  he'll 
die — like  the  rest  of  us — that  is  what 
puts  things  square,  my  young  lord — 
death  ! — it  settles  all ;  you'll  find  him 
some  place  on  the  green  turf — we  were 
aye  a  family  that  liked  the  green  grass 
underneath  us — you'll  find  him — as 
peaceable  as  me." 

"Oh,  Bampfylde,"  cried  Geoff, 
"  keep  up  your  courage  a  little  !  the 
men  will  come  directly  and  carry  you 
to  Stanton." 

"  To  carry  me — to  the  kirkyard — • 
that's  my  place ;  and  put  green  turf 
over  me — nothing  but  green  turf.  So 
long  as  you  will  be  kind  to  old 
'Lizabeth;  she'll  live — she's  not  the 
kind  that  dies — and  not  one  of  us  to  the 
fore  !  What  did  we  do — we  or  our 
fathers'?"  said  the  vagrant  solemnly. 
"But,  oh,  that's  true,  true — that's 
God's  word  :  Neither  he  did  it  nor  his 
fathers — but  that  the  works  of  God 
might  be  manifest.  Eh,  but  I  cannot 
see — I  cannot  see  how  the  work  of 
God  is  in  it.  My  eyes— there's  not 
much  good  in  my  eyes  now." 

Geoff  kneeled  beside  the  dying  man 
not  knowing  what  to  do  or  say.  Should 
he  speak  to  him  of  religion  ?  Should 
he  question  him  about  his  own  hard 
fate,  that  they  might  bring  it  home  to 
the  culprit  ?  But  Bampfylde  was  not 
able  for  either  of  these  subjects.  He 
was  wading  in  the  vague  and  misty 
country  which  is  between  life  and 
death.  He  threw  out  his  arms  in  the 


languor  and  restlessness  of  dying,  and 
one  of  them  dropped  so  that  the  fingers 
dipped  in  the  little  brook.  This 
brought  another  gleam  of  faint  pleasure 
to  his  pallid  face. 

"Water — give  me  some — to  drink," 
he  murmured,  moving  his  lips.  And 
then,  as  Geoff  brought  it  to  him  in  the 
hollow  of  a  leaf,  the  only  thing  he 
could  think  of,  and  moistened  his  lips 
and  bathed  his  forehead — "  Thank 
you,  Lily,"  he  said.  "  That's  pleasant, 
oh,  that's  pleasant.  And  what  was  it 
brought  you  here — you  here1? — they're 
all  safe,  the  young  ones — thanks  to — . 
Eh !  it's  not  Lily — but  I  thought  I 
saw  Lily ;  it's  you,  my  young  lord  1  " 

"  Yes,  I  am  here — lean  on  me, 
Bampfylde.  What  can  I  do  for  you? 
what  can  I  do?"  Geoff  had  never 
seen  death,  and  he  trembled  with  awe 
and  solemn  reverence,  far  more  deeply 
moved  than  the  dying  vagrant  who 
was  floating  away  on  gentle  waves  of 
unconsciousness. 

"Ay,  Lily — d'ye  hear  her  calling  ? — • 
the  house  is  dark,  and  the  night's  fine. 
But  let's  go  to  her — let's  go  ;  he  was 
aye  the  last,  though  she  likes  him 
best."  Bampfylde  raised  himself  sud- 
denly with  a  half-convulsive  move- 
ment. "  Poor  'Lizabeth — poor  old 
'Lizabeth  ! — all  gone — all  gone  !  "  he 
said. 

And  what  an  hour  Geoff  spent  sup- 
porting the  poor  head,  and  moisten- 
ing the  dry  lips  of  the  man  who  was 
dead,  yet  could  not  die  !  He  did  not 
know  there  had  been  such  struggles  in 
the  world. 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 
A   TEAITOE. 

MB.  PENNITHOBNE  was  at  the  Castle 
almost  all  the  day  during  which  so 
many  things  occurred.  While  the 
children  wandered  in  the  wood  and 
young  Lord  Stanton  went  in  search  of 
them,  the  vicar  could  not  leave  the 
centre  of  anxiety.  There  was  no  pos- 
sibility of  going  upon  that  quest 
till  the  evening,  and  good  Mr. 
Pen  thought  it  his  bounden  duty  to 


Young  Musgrave. 


113 


stay  with  John  to  "  take  off  his  atten- 
tion," to  distract  his  mind  if  possible 
from  the  object  of  his  anxieties.  It 
was  all  John  Musgrave  could  do,  by 
way  of  consideration  for  an  old  friend 
to  put  up  with  these  attentions,  but  he 
managed  to  do  so  without  betraying 
his  impatience,  and  Mr.  Pen  thought 
he  had  performed  the  first  duty  of 
friendship.  He  suggested  everything 
he  could  think  of  that  might  have 
happened ;  most  of  his  suggestions 
going  to  prove  that  Lilias  was  in  very 
great  peril  indeed,  though  she  might 
be  saved  in  various  ingenious  ways. 
And  he  took  Mary  aside  and  shook  his 
head,  and  said  he  was  afraid  it  was  a 
very  bad  business.  He  believed,  good 
man,  that  he  was  of  the  greatest  use  to 
them  both,  and  congratulated  himself 
on  having  stayed  to  discharge  this 
Christian  duty.  But  Mrs.  Pen  at  the 
vicarage  got  cross  and  nervous,  and  did 
not  think  her  husband  was  doing  his 
duty  to  his  home.  When  a  telegram 
came  in  the  afternoon,  she  was  not  only 
curious  but  frightened — for  telegrams 
she  thought  were  always  messages  of 
evil.  What  could  it  tell  but  harm  ? 
Perhaps  that  her  father  had  been  taken 
ill  (Mr.  Pen  himself  had  no  family  nor 
anybody  to  speak  of  belonging  to  him); 
perhaps  that  the  investment  had  gone 
wrong  in  which  all  their  little  money 
was.  She  tore  it  open  in  great  agitation, 
and  read  as  follows  : — 

"  John  Musgrave  is  in  the  country  and 
near  you.  Do  you  remember  wliat  is 
your  duty  as  a  magistrate,  and  what  is 
the  penalty  of  not  performing  it?" 

Mrs.  Pen  read  the  alarming  missive 
two  or  three  times  over  before  she 
could  understand  what  it  meant.  John 
Musgrave  !  by  degrees  it  became  clear 
to  her.  This  was  why  her  husband 
deserted  her,  and  spent  his  whole  day 
at  the  Castle.  He  a  magistrate  whose 
first  duty  it  was  to  send  John  Mus- 
grave to  prison.  The  penalty — what 
was  the  penalty1}  The  poor  woman 
was  in  such  a  frenzy  of  agitation  and 
terror  that  she  did  not  know  what  to 
believe.  What  could  they  do  to  him 
if  it  was  found  out  ?  She  went  to  the 

No.  218.— VOL.  xxxvn. 


window  and  looked  for  him.  She  went 
out  and  walked  to  the  garden  gate. 
She  was  not  able  to  keep  still.  The 
penalty — what  was  it?  Could  they 
put  him  in  prison  instead  of  the 
criminal  he  allowed  to  go  free? 
That  seemed  the  most  natural  thing, 
and  imagination  conjured  upx  before 
her  the  dreadful  scene  of  Mr.  Pen's 
arrest,  perhaps  when  he  was  going  to 
church,  perhaps  when  the  house  was 
full  of  people — everybody  seeing — 
everybody  knowing  it.  Mrs.  Pen  saw 
her  husband  dragged  along  the  road  in 
handcuffs  before  she  came  to  an  end  of 
her  imaginations.  Was  there  nothing 
she  could  do  to  save  him  ?  She  was 
ready  to  put  herself  in  the  breach,  to 
say  like  a  heroine,  "  Take  me,  and 
let  him  go  free  !  "  but  it  did  not  appear 
to  her  likely  that  the  myrmidons  of 
the  law  would  pay  any  attention  to 
such  a  touching  interposition.  Then 
it  occurred  to  her  to  look  who  it  was, 
a  thing  she  had  not  noticed  at  first, 
who  had  sent  this  kind  warning.  But 
this  alarmed  her  more  and  more.  'It 
was  some  one  who  called  himself 
"  Friend,"  who  had  taken  the 
trouble,  from  a  distant  place  in  the 
midland  counties,  to  telegraph  thus  to 
Mr.  Pennithorne.  A  friend — it  was 
then  an  anonymous  warning — a  very 
alarming  thing  indeed  to  the  vulgar 
mind.  Mrs.  Pen  worked  herself  up 
into  a  state  of  intense  nervous  agi- 
tation. She  sent  for  the  gardener  that 
she  might  send  him  at  once  to  the 
Castle  for  her  husband.  But  before  he 
came  another  train  of  reflections  came 
across  her  mind.  John  Musgrave  was 
her  William's  friend.  He  was  devoted 
to  the  family  generally  and  to  this 
member  of  it  in  particular.  Was  he 
not  capable  of  going  to  prison — of 
letting  himself  be  handcuffed  and 
dragged  along  the  public  road,  and 
cast  into  a  dungeon  rather  than  give 
up  -his  friend  to  justice  1  Oh,  what 
could  the  poor  woman  do  ?  If  she 
could  but  take  some  step — do  some- 
thing to  save  him  before  he  knew. 

•All  at  once  there  occurred  to  Mrs. 
Pen  a  plan  of  action  which  would  put 

i 


114 


Young  Musgrave. 


everything  right — save  William  in 
spite  of  himself,  and  without  his  know- 
ledge, and  put  John  Musgrave  in  the 
hands  of  justice  without  any  action  of 
his  which  could  be  supposed  unfriendly. 
She  herself,  Mrs.  Pen,  did  not  even 
know  John,  so  that  if  she  betrayed 
him  it  would  be  nothing  unkind, 
nobody  could  blame  her,  not  Mary 
Musgrave  herself.  When  the  gardener 
came,  instead  of  sending  him  to  the 
Castle  for  her  husband,  she  sent  him 
to  the  village  to  order  the  fly  in  which 
she  occasionally  paid  visits.  And  she 
put  on  her  best  clothes  with  a  quiver  of 
anxiety  and  terror  in  her  heart.  She 
put  the  telegram  in  her  pocket,  and 
drove  away — with  a  half  satisfaction  in 
her  own  appearance,  and  half  pride  in 
bidding  the  man  drive  to  Elfdale,  to 
Sir  Henry  Stanton's,  mingling  with 
the  real  anxiety  in  her  heart.  She  was 
frightened  too  at  what  she  was  about  to 
do — but  nobody  could  expect  from  her 
any  consideration  for  John  Musgrave, 
whom  she  had  never  seen ;  whereas  to 
save  her  husband  from  the  consequences 
of  his  foolish  faithfulness,  was  not  that 
the  evident  and  first  duty  of  a  wife  ? 
It  was  a  long  drive,  and  she  had  many 
misgivings  as  she  drove  along,  with 
plenty  of  time  to  consider  and  re- 
consider all  the  arguments  she  had 
already  gone  over ;  but  yet  when  she 
got  to  Elfdale  she  did  not  seem  to  have 
had  any  time  to  think  at  all.  She 
was  hurried  in,  before  she  knew,  to 
Sir  Henry  Stanton's  presence.  He 
was  the  nearest  magistrate  of  any  im- 
portance, and  Mrs.  Pen  had  a  slight 
visiting  acquaintance  of  which  she  was 
very  proud,  with  Lady  Stanton.  Had  she 
repented  at  the  last  of  her  mission,  she 
could  always  make  out  to  herself  that 
it  was  Lady  Stanton  she  had  come  to 
visit.  But  it  was  Sir  Henry  whom 
she  asked  for,  alarm  for  her  husband 
at  the  last  moment  getting  the  better 
of  her  fears. 

Sir  Henry  received  her  with  a  great 
deal  of  surprise.  What  could  the 
little  country  clergyman's  wife  want 
with  him  ?  But  he  was  still  more  sur- 
prised when  he  heard  her  errand.  John 


Musgrave  at  home — within  reach — 
daring  justice — defying  the  law  !  His 
wife  had  told  him  of  some  supposed 
discovery  which  she  at  least  imagined 
likely  to  clear  Musgrave,  by  bringing 
in  another  possible  criminal,  but  that 
must  be  some  merely  nonsensical  theory 
he  had  no  doubt,  such  as  women  and 
boys  are  apt  to  indulge — for  if  anything 
could  be  worse  than  women,  Sir  Henry 
felt  it  was  boys  inspired  by  women, 
and  carrying  out  their  fancies.  There- 
fore he  had  paid  very  little  regard  to 
what  his  wife  said.  Mrs.  Pennithorne 
had  the  advantage  of  rousing  him  into 
excitement.  What  !  come  back  ! — 
daring  justice  to  touch  him — insulting 
the  family  of  the  man  he  had  killed,  and 
the  laws  of  the  country !  Sir  Henry 
fumed  at  the  audacity,  the  evident  ab- 
sence of  all  remorse  or  compunction. 
"  He  must  be  a  shameless,  heartless  ruf- 
fian," he  said,  and  then  he  looked  at  the 
harmless  little  woman  who  had  brought 
him  this  news.  "It  is  very  public- 
spirited  .to  bestir  yourself  in  the 
matter,"  he  said.  "  Have  you  seen  the 
man,  Mrs.  Pennithorne,  or  how  have 
you  come  to  know  ?  " 

"  I  have  not  seen  him,  Sir  Henry. 
I  don't  know  anything  about  him, 
therefore  nobody  could  say  that  it 
was  unkind  in  me.  How  can  you 
have  any  feeling  for  a  person  you 
never  saw?  I  got — the  news  to-day 
when  my  husband  was  at  the  Castle — 
lie  did  not  tell  me — he  has  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  He  is  a  great  friend  of 
the  Musgraves,  Sir  Henry.  And  I 
was  told  if  he  knew  and  did  not  tell 
it  would  bring  him  into  trouble — so  I 
came  to  you.  I  thought  it  was  a 
wife's  duty.  I  did  not  wait  till  he 
came  in  to  show  him  the  telegram, 
but  I  came  straight  on  to  you." 
"  Then  you  got  a  telegram  ? " 
"Did  I  say  a  telegram?"  she  said, 
frightened.  "  Oh — I  did  not  think 
what  I  was  saying.  But  why  should 
I  conceal  it  ?  Yes,  indeed,  Sir  Henry, 
this  afternoon  there  came  a  telegram. 
I  have  never  had  a  moment's  peace 
since  then.  I  thought  at  first  I  would 
send  for  him  and  see  what  he  would 


Young  Musgrave. 


115 


do,  but  then  I  thought  —  he  thinks 
so  much  of  the  Musgraves.  No  doubt 
it  would  be  a  trouble  to  him  to  go 
against  them  ;  and  so  I  thought  before 
he  came  in  I  would  come  to  you.  I 
would  not  do  anything  without  con- 
sulting my  husband  in  any  ordinary 
way,  indeed,  I  assure  you,  Sir  Henry. 
I  am  not  a  woman  of  that  kind ;  but 
in  a  thing  that  might  have  brought 
him  into  such  trouble " 

"  And  is  this  telegram  all  you  know, 
Mrs.  Pennithorne  ?  " 

A  horrible  dread  that  he  was  going 
to  disapprove  of  her,  instead  of  com- 
mending her,  ran  through  her  mind. 

"It  is  all,"  she  said,  faltering;  "I 
have  it  in  my  pocket." 

To  show  the  telegram  was  the  last 
thing  in  her  mind,  yet  she  produced 
it  now  in  impetuous  self-defence. 
Having  made  such  a  sacrifice  as  she 
had  done,  acted  on  her  own  authority, 
incurred  the  expense  of  the  fly,  ab- 
sented herself  from  home  without  any- 
body's  knowledge  (though  William 
was  far  too  much  wrapped  up  in  the 
Musgraves  to  be  aware  of  that),  it 
was  more  than  Mrs.  Pennithorne 
could  bear  to  have  her  motives  thus 
unappreciated.  She  held  out  the 
telegram  without  pausing  to  think. 
He  took  it  and  read  it  with  a  curious 
look  on  his  face.  Sir  Henry  took 
a  low  view  of  wives  and  women  in 
general.  If  she  belonged  to  him  how 
he  would  put  her  down,  this  meddling 
woman  !  but  he  was  glad  to  learn  what 
she  had  to  tell,  and  to  be  able  to  act 
upon  it.  To  approve  of  your  informant 
and  to  use  the  information  obtained 
are  two  very  different  things. 

"This  is  a  threat,"  he  said;  "this 
is  a  very  curious  communication,  Mrs. 
Pennithorne.  Do  you  know  who  sent 
it  1  Friend !  Is  it  a  friend  in  the 
abstract,  or  does  your  husband  know 
any  one  of  the  name  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  who  it  is.  Oh  no, 
Sir  Henry.  William  knows  no  one — • 
no  one  whom  I  don't  know !  His 
friends  are  my  friends.  My  husband 
is  the  best  of  men.  He  has  not  a 
secret  from  me.  If  I  may  seem  to  be 


acting  behind  his  back  it  is  only  to 
save  him,  Sir  Henry ;  only  for  his 
good." 

"  You  are  acting  in  the  most  public- 
spirited  way,  Mrs.  Pennithorne  ;  but 
it  is  very  strange,  and  I  wonder  who 
could  have  sent  it.  .Do  you  know  any 
one  at  this  place  ?  " 

"  Nobody,"  she  said,  compos- 
ing herself,  yet  not  quite  satisfied 
either,  for  public-spirited  was  but  a 
poor  sort  of  praise.  She  was  conscious 
that  she  was  betraying  her  husband  as 
well  as  John  Musgrave,  and  nothing 
but  distinct  applause  and  assurance 
that  she  had  saved  her  William  could 
have  put  her  conscience  quite  at 
ease. 

"It  is  very  odd — very  odd,"  be 
said  ;  "  but  lam  very  much  obliged  to 
you  for  bringing  this  information  to 
me,  and  I  shall  lose  no  time  in  acting 
upon  it.  For  a  long  time — a  very  long 
time,  this  man  has  evaded  the  law; 
but  it  will  not  do  to  defy  it — it  never 
does  to  defy  it.  He  shall  find  that  it 
is  more  watchful  than  he  thought." 

"  And,  Sir  Henry,  of  course  it  is  of 
my  husband  I  must  think  first.  You 
will  not  say  he  knew  ?  You  will  not 
let  him  get  into  trouble  about  it  1  A 
clergyman,  a  man  whom  every  one 
looks  up  to  !  You  will  save  him  from 
the  penalty,  Sir  Henry  1  Indeed  I 
have  no  reason  to  believe  he  knew  at 
all ;  he  has  never  seen  this  thing.  I 
don't  suppose  he  knows  at  all.  But 
he  might  be  so  easily  got  into  trouble  ! 
Oh,  Sir  Henry  !  you  will  not  let  them 
bring  in  William's  name  1 " 

"  I  shall  take  care  that  Mr.  Penni- 
thorne is  not  mentioned  at  all,"  he 
said,  with  a  polite  bow;  but  he  did 
not  add,  "  You  are  a  heroic  woman 
and  you  have  saved  your  husband," 
which  was  the  thing  poor  Mrs.  Pen 
wanted  to  support  her.  She  put  back 
her  telegram  in  her  pocket  very 
humbly  and  rose  up,  feeling  herself 
more  a  culprit  than  a  heroine,  to  go 
away.  At  this  moment  Lady  Stanton 
herself  came  in  hurridly. 

"  I  heard  Mrs.  Pennithorne"  was 
hear,"  she  said,  with  a  half  apology  to 

i  2 


116 


Young  Musgrave. 


her  husband,  "  and  I  thought  I  might 
come  and  ask  what  was  the  last  news 
from  Penninghame  — if  there  was 
any  change.  I  am  not  interrupting — • 
business  ?  " 

"  No  ',  you  will  be  interested  in  the 
news  Mrs.  Pennithorne  brings  me," 
said  Sir  Henry,  with  a  certain  satis- 
faction. "  Mr.  Musgrave's  son  John, 
in  whom  you  have  always  shown  so 
much  interest,  Walter  Stanton's 
murderer " 

"  No,  no,"  she  said,  with  a  shudder, 
folding  her  hands  instinctively  ;  "no, 
no  ! "  The  colour  went  out  of  her 
very  lips.  She  was  about  to  hear  that 
he  had  died.  He  must  have  died  on 
the  very  day  she  saw  him.  She 
listened,  looking  at  her  husband  all 
pale  and  awe-stricken,  with  a  gasp 
in  her  throat. 

"Is  here,"  said  Sir  Henry,  deliber- 
ately. "  Here,  where  it  was  done, 
defying  the  law." 

Mary  uttered  a  great  cry  of  mingled 
relief  and  despair. 

"  Then  it  was  he — it  was  he — and 
no  ghost  1 "  she  cried. 

"  What !  you  knew  and  never  told 
me  ?  I  am  not  so  happy  in  my  wife," 
said  Sir  Henry,  with  a  threatening 
smile,  "as  Mr.  Pennithorne." 

"  Oh,  was  it  he — was  it  he  ?  no  spirit 
but  himself  ?  God  help  him,"  cried  Lady 
Stanton,  with  sudden  tears.  "No,  I 
could  not  have  told  you,  for  I  thought 
it  was  an  apparition.  And  I  would 
not,  Henry,"  she  added,  with  a 
kind  of  generous  passion.  "  I  would 
not  if  I  could.  How  could  I  betray 
an  innocent  man  ?  " 

"Happily  Mrs.  Pennithorne  has 
saved  you  the  trouble,"  he  said,  get- 
ting up  impatiently  from  his  seat.  He 
resented  his  wife's  silence,  but  he 
scorned  the  other  woman  who  had 
brought  him  the  news.  "  Do  not  let 
me  disturb  you,  ladies,  but  this v  is  too 
important  for  delay.  The  warrant 
must  be  out  to-night.  I  trust  to  your 
honour  or  I  might  arrest  you  both," 
he  said  with  a  sneer;  "two  fair 
prisoners — lest  you  should  warn  the 
man  and  defeat  justice  again." 


"  Henry,  you  are  not  going  to  arrest 
him — to  arrest  him — after  what  I  told 
you  ?  I  told  you  that  Geoff ' ' 

"  Geoff  !  send  Geoff  to  your  nursery 
to  play  with  your  children,  Lady 
Stanton,"  he  cried,  in  rising  wrath, 
"  rather  than  make  a  puppet  of  him  to 
carry  out  your  own  ideas.  I  have  had 
enough  of  boys'  nonsense  and  women's. 
Go  to  your  tea-table,  my  lady,  and  leave 
me  to  manage  my  own  concerns." 

Then  Lady  Stanton — was  it  not 
natural  ? — with  a  white,  self-contained 
passion,  turned  upon  the  other  com- 
monplace woman  by  her  side,  who 
stood  trembling  before  the  angry  man, 
yet  siding  with  him  in  her  heart  as 
such  women  do. 

"  And  is  it  you  that  have  betrayed 
him ?  "  she  cried  ;  "do  you  know  that 
your  husband  owes  everything  to  him 
— everything  1  Oh,  it  cannot  be  Mr. 
Pen's  doing — he  loved  them  all  too  well. 
If  it  is  you,  how  will  you  bear  to  have 
his  blood  on  your  head  ?  God  knows 
what  they  may  prove  against  him  or 
what  they  may  do  to  him;  but 
whatever  it  is,  it  will  be  a  lie,  and  his 
blood  will  be  on  your  head.  Oh, 
how  could  you,  a  woman,  betray  an 
innocent  man  1 " 

Lady  Stanton's  passion,  Sir  Henry's 
lowering  countenance,  the  sudden 
atmosphere  of  tragedy  in  which  she 
found  herself,  were  too  much  for  poor 
Mrs.  Pen.  She  burst  into  hysterical 
crying,  and  dropped  down  upon  the 
floor  between  these  two  excited  people. 
Perhaps  it  was  as  good  a  way  as 
another  of  extricating  herself  out  of 
the  most  difficult  position  in  which  a 
poor  little,  well-intentioned  clergy- 
woman  had  ever  been. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

THE   MOTHER. 

THE  afternoon  of  the  day  on  which 
poor  Bampfylde  died  was  bright  and 
fine,  one  of  those  beautiful  October 
days  which  are  more  lovely  in  their 
wistful  brightness,  more  touching,  than 
any  other  period  of  the  year.  Summer 


Young  Musgrave. 


117 


still  lingering,  the  smile  on  her  lip 
and  the  tear  in  her  eye,  dressed  out 
in  borrowed  splendour,  her  own  fair 
garniture  of  flowers  and  greenery  worn 
out,  but  wearing  her  Indian  mantle 
with  a  tender  grace,  subdued  and 
sweet.  The  late  mignonette  overblown, 
yet  fragrant,  was  sweet  in  the  little 
village  gardens,  underneath  the  pale 
china  roses  that  still  kept  up  a 
little  glow  of  blossom.  Something 
had  excited  the  village ;  the  people 
were  at  their  doors,  and  gathered 
in  groups  about.  Miss  Price,  the 
dressmaker,  held  a  little  court. 
There  was  evidently  something  to 
tell,  something  to  talk  over  more 
than  was  usual.  The  few  passengers 
who  were  about,  stayed  to  hear,  and 
each  little  knot  of  people,  which  had 
managed  to  secure  a  new  listener,  was 
happy.  They  were  all  in  full  tide  of 
talk,  commenting  upon  and  discussing 
some  occurrence  with  a  certain  hush, 
at  the  same  time,  of  awe  about  them, 
which  showed  that  the  news  was 
not  of  a  joyful  character — when  some 
one  came  down  through  the  village, 
whose  appearance  raised  the  excite- 
ment to  fever-point.  It  was  the 
well-known  figure  of  the  old  woman 
in  her  grey  cloak — so  well  known  up 
the  water  and  down  the  water — which 
thus  suddenly  appeared  among  them — 
Old  'Lizabeth  Bampfylde !  The  gossips 
shrank  closer  together,  and  gazed  at 
her,  with  eager  curiosity  all,  with  sym- 
pathy some.  They  drew  away  from 
her  path  with  a  feeling  which  was 
half  reverence  and  half  fear.  "  Does 
she  know — do  you  think  she  knows  ?  " 
some  of  them  asked ;  and  exclamations 
of  "  Poor  old  body — poor  woman." 
were  rife  among  the  kind-hearted ; 
but  all  under  their  breath.  'Lizabeth 
took  no  notice  of  the  people  in  her 
path;  perhaps  she  did  not  even  see 
them.  She  was  warm  with  her  long 
walk  from  the  fells,  and  had  thrown 
off  her  hood,  and  knotted  her  red 
handkerchief  over  her  cap.  She  went 
along  thus  with  the  long  swing  of  her 
still  vigorous  limbs,  stately  and  self- 
absorbed.  Whatever  she  knew  her 


mind  was  too  much  occupied  to  take 
any  notice  of  the  people  in  her  way. 
She  had  walked  far,  and  she  had  far 
to  walk  still.  She  went  on  steadily 
through  the  midst  of  them  without  a 
pause,  looking  neither  to  the  right  nor 
the  left.  There  was  a  tragic  directness 
in  the  very  way  she  moved,  going 
straight  as  a  bird  flies,  at  least  as 
straight  as  the  houses  permitted, 
minding  no  windings  of  the  road.  The 
people  in  front  of  her  stood  back  and 
whispered;  the  people  behind  closed 
upon  her  path.  Did  she  know  ?  would 
she  have  had  the  fortitude  to  come 
walking  down  here  all  this  long  way 
had  she  known  ?  was  she  going  to 
Stanton  where  they  were  ?  Last  of  all, 
timidly,  the  people  said  among  them- 
selves, "  Should  not  some  one  tell  her  2 
some  one  should  speak  to  her  ;  "  but 
by  this  time  she  had  passed  through 
the  village,  and  they  all  felt  with  a 
sensation  of  relief  that  it  was  too 
late. 

'Lizabeth  walked  on  steadily  along 
the  waterside.  It  was  a  long  way 
that  she  had  still  before  her.  She 
was  going  all  the  way  down  the  water 
to  Sir  Henry  Stanton' s,  as  Mrs. 
Pennithorne  had  gone  the  day  before. 
The  walk  was  nothing  to  her,  and  the 
long  silence  of  it  was  grateful  to  her 
mind.  She  knew  nothing  of  what 
had  happened  on  the  other  side  of  the 
lake.  Up  in  her  little  house  among 
the  hills,  all  alone  in  the  strange 
cessation  of  work,  the  dead  leisure 
which  seemed  to  have  fallen  upon  her, 
she  had  thought  of  everything  till  her 
head  and  her  heart  ached  alike. 
Everything  now  seemed  to  have  gone 
wrong.  Her  daughter  dead  in  exile, 
and  her  daughter's  husband  still  a 
banished  man,  all  for  the  sake  of  him 
who  was  roaming  over  the  country 
a  fugitive  escaped  from  her  care.  The 
life  of  her  son  Dick  had  been  ruined 
by  the  same  means.  And  now  the 
cycle  of  misfortune  was  enlarging. 
The  little  boy,  who  was  the  heir  of  the 
Musgraves,  was  lost  too  because  he 
had  no  one  to  protect  him — Lily's 
child;  and  the  other  Lily,  the  little 


118 


Youny  Muse/rave. 


lady  whom  she   felt  to  be  her  own 
representative,  as  well  as  Lily's,  who 
could  tell  what  would  become  of  her  ? 
It  seemed  to  'Lizabeth  that  this  child 
was  the  most  precious  of  all.     All  the 
rest  had  suffered  for  the  sake  of  her 
madman ;    but    the  second  Lily,   the 
little  princess,  who  had  sprung  from 
her  common  stock,  nothing  must  touch. 
Yet  it  cannot  be  said  that  it  was  for 
Lily's  sake  that  she  made  up  her  mind 
at  last;  it  was  nothing  so  simple,  it 
was  a  combination   and  complication 
of  many  motives.     He  was  gone  out  of 
her  hands  who  had  been  for  years  the 
absorbing  occupation  of  her  life.   Dick 
was  after   him,   it  was  true;  but  if 
Dick  failed,  how  was   he  to  be  got 
without   public   help  1   and   that  help 
could   not  be  given  until  the  whole 
story  was  told.     Then  her  own  lone- 
liness wrought  upon  her,  and  all  the 
whispers  and  echoes  that  circled  about 
the  cottage,  when  he  was  not  there. 
Her  son,  ill-fated  companion,  the  ruin 
of  all  who  had  any  connection  with 
him,  absorbed  her  so  much  in  general, 
that  she  had  no  time  to   survey  the 
surroundings,    and  think  of  all   that 
was,  and  had  been,   and   might    be. 
Was  it  he  after  all  that  was  the  cause 
of   all   the   suffering?     What  did  he 
know  of  it  ?     The  story  of  Lily  and  of 
John  Musgrave  was  a  blank  to  him. 
He  knew  nothing  of  what  they  had 
suffered,  was  innocent  of  it  in  reality. 
Had   he   known,  would  he  not  have 
given    himself    up   a   hundred    times 
rather  than  the  innocent  should  suffer 
for   him  ?     Was   it   he,  then,  or  his 
mother   who   was  the  cause    of    all  ? 
Several  times,  during  their  long  agony, 
such      thoughts      had      overwhelmed 
'Lizabeth' s    mind.      They    had   come 
over  her  in  full  force  when  the  chil- 
dren came  to  the  Castle,  and  then  it 
was  that  she  had  been  brought  to  the 
length  of  revealing  her  secret  to  young 
Lord    Stanton.     Now  everything  was 
desperate   about  her ;    the  little   boy 
lost,    the    madman   himself   lost ;    no 
telling   at  any  moment  what  misery 
and   horror  might   come   next.      She 
thought  this  over  day  after  day  as  the 


time  passed,  and  no  news  came ;  waiting 
in  the  great  loneliness,  with  her  doors 
all  open,  that  he  might  come  in  if  some 
new  impulse,  or   some   touch  of   use 
and  wont,  should  lead  him  back,  her 
ears  intent  to  hear  every  sound ;  her 
mind  prepared  (she  thought)  for  any 
thing ;  fresh  violence,    perhaps ;    vio- 
lence  to   himself  ;    miserable    death, 
terrible  discovery.      She  thought  she 
heard  his  wild  whoops  and  cries  every 
time  the  wind  raved  among  the  hills  ; 
if  a  mountain  stream  rushed  down  a 
little  quicker  than  usual,  swollen  by 
the  rain,  over  its  pebbles,  she  thought 
it   was   his   hurrying   steps.     It  was 
always  of  him  that  her  thoughts  were, 
not  of   her  other  son  who  was    pur- 
suing the  madman  all  about,  subject  to 
the  same  accidents,  and  who  might  per- 
haps be  his  victim  instead  of  his  captor. 
She  never  thought  of   that.    But  she 
was  driven  at  last  to  a  supreme  reso- 
lution.    Nobody  could  doubt  his  mad- 
ness, could  think  it  was  a  feint  put  on 
to  escape  punishment  now.    And  God, 
who  was  angry,  might  be  propitiated 
if  at  last  she  made  Him,  though  un- 
willingly, this  sacrifice,  this  homage  to 
justice  and  truth.     This  was  the  idea 
which  finally  prevailed  in  her  mind. 
She  would  go  and  tell  her  story,  and 
perhaps  an  angry  God  would  accept, 
and  restore  the  wanderer  to  her.     If 
he  were  safe,  safe  even  in  prison,  in 
some  asylum,  it  would  be  better  at 
least  than  his  wild  career  of  madness, 
among   all   the   dangers  of  the  hills. 
She   had  risen  in  the   morning  from 
her  uneasy  bed,   where  she  lay  half- 
dressed,  always  watching,  listening  to 
every  sound,  with  this  determination 
upon  her.     She  would  propitiate  God. 
She  would  do  this  thing  she  ought  to 
have  done  so  long  ago.     She  did  not 
deny  that  she  ought  to  have  done  it, 
and  now  certainly  she  would  do  it,  and 
God  would  be  satisfied,  and  the  tide 
of  fate  would  turn. 

All  this  struggle  had  not  been  with- 
out leaving  traces  upon  her.  Her 
ruddy  colour,  the  colour  of  exposure 
as  well  as  of  health  and  vigour,  was 
not  altogether  gone,  but  she  was  more 


Young  Musgrave. 


119 


brown  than  ruddy,   and   this  partial 
paleness  and  the  extreme  gravity   of 
her  countenance  added  to  the  stately 
aspect  she  bore.     She  might  have  been 
a  peasant-queen,  as  she  moved  along 
with  her  steady,  long,  swinging  foot- 
step,   able    for    any    exertion,    above 
fatigue  or  common  weakness.     A  mile 
or  two  more   or   less,  what  did  that 
matter  ?     It  did  not  occur  to  her  to  go 
to  Mr.   Pennithorne,  though   he  was 
nearer,    with    her    story.     She    went 
straight  to  Sir   Henry  Stanton.     He 
had  a  family  right  to  be  the  avenger 
of  blood.     It  would  be  all  the  com- 
pensation that  could  be  made  to  the 
Stantons,  as  well  as  a  sacrifice  propi- 
tiating God.     And  now  that  she  had 
made  up  her  mind  there  was  no  detail 
from    which    she    shrank.     'Lizabeth 
never  remarked  the  pitying  and  won- 
dering looks  which  were  cast  upon  her. 
She  went  on  straight  to  her  end  with 
a  sense  of  the  solemnity  and  import- 
ance  of   her  mission  which    perhaps 
gave  her  a  certain  support.     It  was  no 
light  thing  that  she  was  about  to  do. 
That  there  was  a  certain  commotion 
and  agitation   about  Elfdale   did  not 
strike  her  in  the  excited  state  of  her 
mind.     It  was  natural  that  agitation 
should   accompany  her  wherever   she 
went.     It  harmonized  with  her  mood, 
and  seemed  to  her  (unconsciously)  a 
homage    and    respectful    adhesion  of 
nature  to  what  she  was  about  to  do. 

The  great  door  was  open,  the  hall  . 
empty,  the  way  all  clear  to  the  room 
in  which  Sir  Henry  held  his  little 
court  of  justice.  'Lizabeth  had  come 
by  instinct  to  the  great  hall  door — a 
woman  with  such  a  tragical  object 
does  not  steal  in  behind  backs  or 
enter  like  one  of  the  unconsidered 
poor.  She  went  in  unchallenged, 
seeing  nobody  except  one  of  the 
girls,  who  peeped  out  from  a  door, 
and  retreated  again  at  sight  of  her. 
'Lizabeth  saw  nothing  strange  in  all 
this.  She  went  in,  more  majestically, 
more  slowly  than  ever,  like  a  woman 
in  a  procession,  a  woman  marching  to 
the  stake.  "What  stake,  what  burn- 
ing could  be  so  terrible  ]  Two  of  the 


country  police  were  at  the  open  door ; 
they   looked   at   her  with   wondering 
awe,  and  let  her  pass.     What  could 
any  one  say  to  her  ?     An  army  would 
have   let  her  pass — the  mother! — for 
they  knew,  though  she  did  not  know. 
'Lizabeth  saw  but  vaguely  a  number 
of  people  in  the  room — so  much  the 
better ;  let  all  hear  who  would  hear. 
It  would  be  so  much  the  greater  pro- 
pitiation to  an  outraged  Heaven.     She 
came  in  with  a  kind  of    dumb  state 
about  her,   everybody  giving  way  be- 
fore her.     The  mother  !  they  all  said 
to  each  other  with  dismay,  yet  excite- 
ment.    Some  one  brought  her  a  chair 
with  anxious  and  pitying  looks.     She 
put  it  away  with  a  wave  of  her  hand, 
yet  made  a  little  curtsey  of  acknow- 
ledgment in  old-fashioned  politeness. 
It  never  occurred  to  her  mind  to  in- 
quire why  she  was  received  with  such 
obsequious   attention.     She   advanced 
to  the  table  at  which  Sir  Henry  sat. 
He  too  looked  pityingly,  kindly  at  her, 
not  like  his  usual  severity.     God  had 
prepared  everything  for  her  atonement 
— was  it  not  an  earnest  of  its  accept- 
ance that  He  should  thus  have  put 
every  obstacle  out  of  her  way  ? 

"Sir  Henry  Stanton,"  she  said, 
"I've  come  to  make  you  acquaint 
with  a  story  that  all  the  country 
should  have  heard  long  ago.  I've  not 
had  the  courage  to  tell  it  till  this 
moment,  when  the  Lord  has  given  me 
strength.  Bid  them  take  pen  and 
paper  and  put  it  all  down  in  hand  of 
write,  and  I'll  set  my  name  to  it.  It's 
to  clear  them  that  are  innocent  that 
I've  :come  to  speak,  and  to  let  it  be 
known  who  was  guilty ;  but  it  wasna 
him  that  was  guilty — it  wasna  him — 
but  the  madness  in  him,"  she  said,  her 
voice  breaking  for  a  moment.  "My 
poor,  distracted  lad  !  " 

"  Give  her  a  seat,"  said  Sir  Henry. 
"  My  poor  woman,  if  you  have  any 
information  to  give  about  this  terrible 

event " 

"Ay,  I  have  information — plenty 
information.  Nay,  I  want  no  seat. 
I'm  standing  as  if  I  was  at  the  judg- 
ment-seat of  God  ;  there's  where  I've 


120 


Young  Mv.sgrave. 


stood  this  many  a  year,  and  been 
judged,  but  aye  held  fast.  What  is 
man,  a  worm,  to  strive  with  his 
Maker!  but  me,  I've  done  that,  that 
am  but  a  woman.  I  humbly  crave  the 
Almighty's  pardon,  and  I've  made  up 
my  mind  to  do  justice  now — at  the 
last." 

The  people  about  looked  at  each 
other,  questioning  one  another  what  it 
was,  all  but  two,  who  knew  what  she 
meant.  Young  Lord  Stanton,  who 
was  close  to  the  table,  looked  across 
at  a  tall  stranger  behind,  by  whom 
the  village  constable  was  standing, 
and  who  replied  to  Geoff's  look  by  a 
melancholy  half  smile.  The  others 
looked  at  each  other,  and  'Lizabeth, 
though  she  saw  no  one,  saw  this  wave 
of  meaning,  and  felt  it  natural  too. 

"  Ay,"  she  said,  "  you  may  wonder ; 
and  you'll  wonder  more  before  all's 
done.  I  am  a  woman  that  was  the 
mother  of  three ;  bonny  bairns — 
though  I  say  it  that  ought  not;  ye 
might  have  ranged  the  country  from 
Carlisle  to  London  town,  and  not 
found  their  like.  My  Lily  was  the 
beauty  of  the  whole  water ;  up  or 
down,  there  was  not  one  that  you 
would  look  at  when  my  lass  was  by. 
What  need  I  speak  1  You  all  know 
that  as  well  as  me." 

The  swell  of  pride  in  her  as  she 
spoke  filled  the  whole  company  with  a 
thrill  of  admiration  and  wonder,  like 
some  great  actress  disclosing  the 
greatness  of  impassioned  nature  in 
the  simplest  words.  She  was  old,  but 
she  was  beautiful  too.  She  looked 
round  upon  them  with  the  air  of  a 
dethroned  empress,  from  whom  the 
recollection  of  her  imperial  state  could 
never  depart.  Rachel  could  not  have 
done  it,  nor  perhaps  any  other  of  her 
profession.  There  was  the  sweetness 
of  remembered  triumph  in  the  midst 
of  the  most  tragic  depths  ;  a  gleam  of 
pride  and  pleasure  out  of  the  back- 
ground of  shame  and  pain. 

"Ah!  that's  all  gone  and  past," 
she  went  on  with  a  sigh.  "  My  eldest 
lad  was  more  than  handsome,  he  was 
a  genius  as  well.  He  was  taken  away 


from  me  when  he  was  but  a  little  lad 
— and  never  came  home  again  till — 
till  the  devil  got  hold  of  him,  and  made 
him  think  shame  of  his  poor  mother, 
and  the  poor  place  he  was  born  in.  I 
would  never  have  blamed  him.  I 
would  have  had  him  hold  his  head 
with  the  highest,  as  he  had  a  right — 
for  had  he  not  gotten  that  place  for 
himself  ? — but  when  he  came  back  to 
the  waterside  a  great  gentleman  and 
scholar,  and  would  never  have  let  on 
where  he  belonged  to,  one  that  is  not 
here  to  bear  the  blame,"  said  'Lizabeth, 
setting  her  teeth — "  one  that  is  gone 
to  his  account  —  and  well  I  wot  the 
Almighty  has  punished  him  for  his  ill 
deeds — betrayed  my  lad.  Some  of  the 
gentry  were  good  to  him — as  good  as  the 
angels  in  heaven — but  some  were  as 
devils,  that  being  their  nature.  And 
this  is  what  I've  got  to  say:"  Here 
she  made  a  pause,  raised  herself  to  her 
full  height,  and  threw  off  the  red 
kerchief  from  her  head  in  her  agita- 
tion. "  I've  come  here  to  accuse  be- 
fore God  and  you,  Sir  Henry,  my  son, 
Abel  Bampfylde,  him  I  was  most 
proud  of  and  loved  best,  of  the  murder 
of  young  Lord  Stanton,  which  took 
place  on  the  morning  of  the  second  of 
August,  eighteen  hundred  and  forty- 
five — fifteen  years  ago  and  more." 

The  sensation  that  followed  is  inde- 
scribable. Sir  Henry  Stanton  himself 
rose  from  his  seat,  excited  by  wonder, 
horror,  and  pity,  beyond  all  ordinary 
rule.  The  bystanders  had  but  a  vague 
sense  of  the  extraordinary  revelation 
she  made,  so  much  were  they  moved  by 
the  more  extraordinary  passion  in  her, 
and  the  position  in  which  she  stood. 
"  My  good  woman,  my  poor  woman  !  " 
he  cried,  "this  last  dreadful  tragedy 
has  gone  to  your  brain — and  no  won- 
der. You  don't  know  what  you  say." 

She  smiled — mournfully  enough,  but 
still  it  was  a  smile — and  shook  her 
head.  "  If  you  had  said  it  as  often  to 
yourself  as  I  have  done — night  and 
day — night  and  day;  open  me  when 
I'm  dead,  and  you'll  find  it  here,"  she 
cried  —  all  unaware  that  this  same 
language  of  passion  had  been  used 


Young  Musgravc. 


121 


before — and  pressing  her  hand  upon 
her  breast.  "  The  second  of  August, 
eighteen  hundred  and  forty-five — if 
you  had  said  it  over  as  often  as 
me!" 

There  was  a  whisper  all  about,  and 
the  lawyer  of  the  district,  who  acted 
as  Sir  Henry's  clerk  on  important 
occasions,  stooped  towards  him  and 
said  something.  "  The  date  is  right. 
Yes,  yes,  I  know  the  date  is  right,"  Sir 
Henry  said,  half -angrily.  Then  added, 
"  There  must  be  insanity  in  the 
family.  What  more  like  the  effort 
of  a  diseased  imagination  than  to 
link  the  old  crime  of  fifteen  years 
ago  with  what  has  happened  to-day  ?  " 

"  Is  it  me  that  you  call  insane  1 ' ' 
said  'Lizabeth.  "  Eh,  if  it  was  but 
me !  But  well  I  know  what  I'm 
saying."  Then  the  wild  looks  of  all 
around  her  suddenly  impressed  the 
old  woman,  too  much  occupied  hitherto 
to  think  what  their  looks  meant.  She 
turned  round  upon  them  with  slowly- 
awakening  anxiety.  "  You're  looking 
strange  at  me,"  she  cried;  "you're 
all  looking  strange  at  me.  What  is 
this  you're  saying  that  has  happened 
to-day?  Oh,  my  lad  is 'mad!— he's 
roaming  the  hills,  and  Dick  after  him; 
he  doesna  know  what  he's  doing ;  he's 
out  of  his  senses ;  it's  no  ill-meaning. 
Lads,  some  of  you  tell  me ;  I'm  going 
distracted.  What  has  happened  to- 
day V 

The  change  in  her  appearance  was 
wonderful ;  her  solemn  stateliness  and 
abstraction  were  gone.  Here  was 
something  she  did  not  know.  The 
flush  of  anxiety  came  to  her  cheeks, 
her  eyes  contracted,  her  lips  fell  apart. 
"  Tell  me,"  she  said,  "  for  the  love 
of  God!" 

No  one  moved.  They  looked  at 
each  other  with  pale,  alarmed  faces. 
How  could  they  tell  her1?  Geoff 
stepped  forward  and  took  her  by  the 
arm  very  gently.  "  Will  you  come 
with  me  ? "  he  said.  "  Something  has 
happened  ;  something  that  will  grieve 
you  deeply.  I — I  promised  Dick  to 
tell  you,  but  not  hero.  Won't  you 
come  with  nie?  " 


She  drew  herself  out  of  his  grasp 
with  some  impatience.  "  There's  been 
some  new  trouble,"  she  said  to  herself 
— "  some  new  trouble !  No  doubt 
more  violence.  Oh,  God,  forgive  him  ! 
but  he  does  not  know  what  he's  doing. 
It's  you,  my  young  lord  ?  You  know 
it's  true  what  I've  been  saying.  But 
this  new  trouble,  what  is  it  1 — more 
blood  ?  Oh,  tell  me  the  worst ;  I  can 
bear  it  all,  say,  even  if  he  was  dead." 

"  'Lizabeth,"  said  Geoff,  with  tears 
in  his  voice — and  again  everybody 
looked  on  as  at  a  tragedy — "  you  are 
a  brave  woman ;  you  have  borne  a 
great  deal  in  your  life.  He  is  dead ; 
but  that  is  not  all." 

She  did  not  note  or  perhaps  hear 
the  last  words.  How  should  she? 
The  first  was  enough.  She  stood  still 
in  the  midst  of  them,  all  gazing  at  her, 
with  her  hands  clasped  before  her. 
For  a  moment  she  said  nothing.  The 
last  drop  of  blood  seemed  to  ebb  from 
her  brown  cheeks.  Then  she  raised 
her  face  upward,  with  a  smile  upon 
it.  "The  Lord  God  be  praised,"  she 
said.  "  He's  taken  my  lad  before 
me." 

And  when  they  brought  to  her 
the  seat  she  had  rejected,  'Lizabeth 
allowed  herself  to  be  placed  upon  it. 
The  extreme  tension  of  both  body  and 
mind  seemed  to  have  relaxed.  The 
look  of  tragic  endurance  left  her  face. 
A  softened  aspect  of  suffering,  a  kind 
of  faint  smile,  like  a  wan  sunbeam, 
stole  over  it.  The  moisture  came  to 
her  strained  eyes.  "  Gone  ?  Is  he 
gone  at  last  ?  On  the  hillside  was 
it  ?  —  in  some  wild  corner,  where 
none  but  God  could  be  near,  no  his 
mother?  And  me  that  was  dreading 
and  dreading  I  would  be  taken  first ; 
for  who  would  have  patience  like  his 
mother?  But  after  all,  you  know, 
neighbours,  the  father  comes  foremost ; 
and  God  had  more  to  do  with  him — 
more  to  do  with  him — than  even 
me." 

"Take  her  away,  Geoff,"  said  Sir 
Henry.  The  men  were  all  overcome 
with  this  scene,  and  with  the  know- 
ledge of  what  remained  to  be  told. 


122 


Young  Musyrave. 


Sir  Henry  was  not  easily  moved,  but 
there  was  something  even  in  his 
throat  which  choked  him.  He  could 
not  bear  it,  though  it  was  nothing  to 
him.  "  Geoff,  this  is  not  a  place  to 
tell  her  all  you  have  got  to  tell. 
Take  her  away — take  her — to  Lady 
Stanton." 

"Nay,  nay,"  she  said;  "it's  my 
death- doom,  but  it's  not  like  other 
sorrow.  I  know  well  what  grief  is. 
When  I  heard  for  certain  my  Lily 
was  dead  and  gone,  and  me  never  to 
see  her  more !  But  this  is  not  the 
same :  it's  my  death,  but  I  canna  call 
it  sorrow  ;  not  like  the  loss  of  a  son. 
I'm  glad  too,  if  you  understand  that. 
Poor  lad  ! — my  Abel  !  Ay,  ay  ;  you'll 
not  tell  me  but  what  God  understands, 
and  is  more  pitiful  of  His  handiwork, 
say  than  the  like  of  you  or  me." 

"  Come  with  me,"  said  Geoff,  taking 
her  by  the  arm.  "  Come,  and  I  will 
tell  you  everything,  my  poor  'Liza- 
beth.  You  know  you  have  a  friend 
in  me." 

"Ay,  my  young  lord  ;  but  first  let 
them  write  down  what  I've  said,  and 
let  me  put  my  name  to  it.  All  the 
more  because  he's  dead  and  gone  this 
day." 

"Everything  shall  be  done  as  you 
wish,"  said  Geoff,  anxiously;  "but 
come  with  me — come  with  me — my 
poor  woman ;  this  is  not  a  place  for 
you." 

"  No,"  she  said.  She  would  not 
rise  from  her  seat.  She  turned  round 
to  the  table  where  Sir  Henry  sat  and 
his  clerk.  "  I  must  end  my  work  now 
it's  begun.  I've  another  son,  my  kind 
gentlemen,  and  he  will  never  forgive 
me  if  I  do  not  end  my  work.  Write 
it  out  and  let  me  sign.  I  have  but  my 
Dick  to  think  of  now." 

A  thrill  of  horror  ran  through  the 
little  assembly :  to  tell  her  that  he 
too  was  gone,  who  would  dare  to  do 
if2  John  Musgrave,  whom  she  had 
not  seen,  stood  behind,  and  covered 
his  face  with  his  hands.  Sir  Henry, 
for  all  his  steady  nerves  and  unsym- 
pathetic mind,  fell  back  in  his  chair 
with  a  low  groan.  Only  young  Geoff, 


his  features   all    quivering,  the  tears 
in  his  eyes,  stood  by  her  side. 

"  Humour  her,"  he  said.  "  Let  her 
have  her  way.  None  of  us  at  this 
moment  surely  could  refuse  her  her 
way." 

The  lawyer  nodded.  He  had  a 
heart  of  flesh,  and  not  of  stone  ;  and 
'Lizabeth  sat  and  waited,  with  her 
hands  clasped  together,  her  head  a 
little  raised,  her  countenance  beyond 
the  power  of  painting.  Grief  and 
joy  mingled  in  it,  and  relief  and 
anguish.  Her  eyes  were  dilated  and 
wet,  but  she  shed  no  tears ;  their 
very  orbits  seemed  enlarged,  and 
there  was  a  quivering  smile  upon 
her  mouth — a  smile  such  as  makes 
spectators  weep.  "  Here  I  and 
sorrow  sit."  There  was  never  a  king 
worthy  the  name  but  would  have 
felt  his  state  as  nothing  in  this  pre- 
sence. But  there  was  no  struggle  in 
her  now.  She  had  yielded,  and  all 
was  peace  about  her.  She  would 
have  waited  for  days  had  it  been 
necessary.  That  what  she  had  begun 
should  be  ended  was  the  one  thing 
above  all. 

A  man  came  hurriedly  in  as  all  the 
people  present  waited  round,  breathless 
and  reverential  for  the  completion  of 
her  testimony.  Their  business,  what- 
ever it  was,  was  arrested  by  force  of 
nature.  The  kind  old  Dogberry,  from 
the  village,  who  had  been  standing 
by  John  Musgrave's  side,  by  way  of 
guarding  him,  put  up  his  hand  to  his 
forehead  and  made  a  rustic  bow  to  his 
supposed  prisoner.  "  I  always  knowed 
that  was  how  it  would  turn  out,"  he 
said,  as  he  hobbled  off  —  to  which 
John  Musgrave  replied  only  by  a  faint 
smile,  but  stood  still,  as  motionless  as 
a  picture,  though  all  semblance  of 
restraint  had  melted  away.  But  while 
all  waited  thus  reverentially,  a  sudden 
messenger  came  rushing  in,  and,  ad- 
dressing Sir  Henry  in  a  loud  voice, 
announced  that  the  coroner  had  sent 
him  to  make  preparations  for  the  in- 
quest. "  And  he  wants  to  know  what 
time  it  will  be  most  convenient  for  the 
jury  to  inspect  the  two  bodies ;  and  if 


Young  Musgrave. 


123 


they  are  both  in  the  same  place ;  and 
if  it's  true." 

There  was  a  univeral  hush,  at  which 
the  man  stopped  in  amazement.  Then 
his  eye,  guided  by  the  looks  of  the 
others,  fell  upon  the  old  woman  in  the 
chair.  She  had  heard  him,  and  she 
was  roused.  Her  face  turned  towards 
him  with  a  growing  wonder.  "  She 
here  !  O  Lord  forgive  me  !  "  he  cried, 
and  fell  back. 

"  Two  bodies,"  she  said.  A  shudder 
came  over  her.  She  got  up  slowly 
from  her  seat,  and  looked  round  upon 
them  all.  "  Two — another,  another  1 
oh  my  unhappy  lad  !  "  She  wrung  her 
hands,  and  looked  round  upon  them. 
"  Maybe  another  house  made  desolate  ; 
maybe  another  woman — "Will  you  tell 
me  who  the  other  was  1  " 

Here  the  labouring  man,  who  had 
been  with  Wild  Bampfylde  on  the  hill- 
side, and  who  was  standing  by,  sud- 
denly succumbed  to  the  strange  horror 
and  anguish  of  the  moment.  He  burst 
out  loudly  into  tears,  crying  like  a 
child.  "  Oh,  poor  'Lizabeth,  poor 
'Lizabeth!"  he  cried;  he  could  not  bear 
any  more. 

'Lizabeth  looked  at  this  man  with 
the  air  of  one  awakening  from  a  dream. 
Then  she  turned  a  look  of  inquiry  upon 
those  around  her.  No  one  would  meet 
her  eye.  They  shrank  one  behind 
another  away  from  her,  and  more  than 
one  man  burst  forth  into  momentary 
weeping  like  the  first,  and  some  covered 
their  faces  in  their  hands.  Even  Geoff, 
sobbing  like  a  child,  turned  away  from 
her  for  a  moment.  She  held  out  her 
hands  to  them  with  a  pitiful  cry,  "  Say 
it's  not  that,  say  it's  not  that !  "  she 
cried.  The  shrill  scream  of  anguish 
ran  through  the  house.  It  brought 
Lady  Stanton,  and  all  the  women, 
shuddering  from  every  corner.  They 
all  knew  what  it  was  and  how  it  was. 
The  mother !  What  more  needed  to 
be  said  1  They  came  in  and  surrounded 
her,  the  frivolous  girls,  and  the  rough 
women  from  the  kitchen,  altogether, 
while  the  men  stood  about  looking  on. 
Not  even  Sir  Henry  could  resist  the 
passion  of  horror  and  sorrow  which 


had  taken  possession  of  the  place.  He 
cried  with  a  voice  all  hoarse  and 
trembling  to  take  her  away  !  take  her 
away ! 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

THE  TRAGEDY  ENDS. 

'LIZABETH  BAMPFYLDE  went  on  to 
Stanton  that  same  afternoon,  where 
the  remains  of  her  two  sons  were 
lying.  But  she  would  not  go  in  Lady 
Stanton's  carriage. 

"  Nay,  nay — carriages  were  never 
made  for  me.  I  will  walk,  my  lady. 
It's  best  for  me,  body  and  soul." 

She  had  recovered  herself  after  the 
anguish  of  that  discovery.  Before  the 
sympathisers  round  her  had  ceased  to 
sob,  'Lizabeth  had  raised  herself  up 
in  the  midst  of  them  like  an  old  tower. 
The  storm  had  raged  round  her,  but 
had  not  crushed  her.  Her  face  and 
even  her  lips  had  lost  all  trace  of 
colour,  her  eyes  were  hollow  and 
widened  out  in  their  sockets,  like  caves 
to  hold  the  slow  welling  out  of  salt 
tears.  There  was  a  convulsive  trem- 
bling now  in  the  pose  of  her  fine  head, 
and  in  her  hands ;  but  her  strength 
was  not  touched. 

"Oh,  how  can  you  walk?"  Lady 
Stanton  said.  "  You  are  not  able  for 
it." 

"  I  am  able  for  anything  it's  God's 
pleasure  to  send,"  she  said  ;  "  though 
it's  little  even  He  can  do  to  me  now." 
The  women  stood  round  her  with 
pitiful  looks,  some  of  them  weeping 
unrestrainedly ;  but  the  tears  that 
'Lizabeth  shed,  came  one  by  one,  slow 
gathering,  rarely  falling.  She  put  on 
her  red  handkerchief  over  her  cap 
again,  with  hands  that  were  steady 
enough  till  that  twitch  of  nervous 
movement  took  them.  "  It  should  be 
black,"  she  said,  with  a  half-smile  ; 
"  ay,  I  should  be  a'  black  from  head  to 
foot,  from  head  and  foot,  if  there  was 
one  left  to  mind."  Then  she  turned 
upon  them  with  again  her  little  stately 
curtsey.  "  I'm  not  a  woman  of  many 
words,  and  ye  may  judge  what  heart 
I  have  to  speak;  but  I  thank  ye  all," 


124 


Young  Muagrave. 


and,  with  once  more  a  kind  of  smile, 
she  set  out  upon  her  way. 

John  Musgrave  had  been  standing 
by  ;  he  had  spoken  to  no  one,  not  even 
to  Lad)'  Stanton,  who,  trembling  with 
a  consciousness  that  he  was  there,  had 
not  been  able,  in  the  presence  of  this 
great  anguish,  to  think  of  any  other. 
He,  and  his  story,  and  his  return, 
altogether,  had  been  thrown  entirely 
into  the  background  by  these  other 
events.  He  came  forward  now,  and 
followed  'Lizabeth  out  of  the  gate. 
"  I  am  going  with  you,"  he  said.  The 
name  "  mother  "  was  on  his  lips,  but 
he  dared  not  say  it.  She  gave  a 
slight  glance  at  him,  and  recognised 
him.  But  if  one  had  descended  from 
heaven  to  accompany  her,  what  would 
that  have  been  to  'Lizabeth  ?  It  was 
as  if  they  had  parted  yesterday. 

"  Ay,"  she  said,  then,  after  a  pause, 
"  it's  you  that  has  the  best  right." 

The  tragedy  had  closed  very  shortly 
after  that  penultimate  chapter  which 
ended  with  the  death  of  Wild  Bamp- 
fylde.  When  the  carriage  and  its 
attendants  arrived  to  remove  him 
to  Stanton,  he  was  lying  on  Geoff's 
shoulder,  struggling  for  his  last 
breath.  It  was  too  late  then  to  dis- 
turb the  agony.  The  men  stood  about 
reverentially  till  the  last  gasp  was 
over,  then  carried  the  vagrant  ten- 
derly to  the  foot  of  the  hill,  with  a 
respect  which  no  one  had  ever  shown 
him  before.  One  of  the  party,  a 
straggler,  who  had  strayed  further  up 
the  dell,  in  the  interval  of  waiting, 
saw  traces  above  among  the  broken 
bushes,  which  made  him  call  some  of 
his  comrades  as  soon  as  their  first  duty 
was  done.  And  there  on  the  little 
plateau,  where  Walter  Stanton's  body 
'  had  been  found  fifteen  years  before, 
lay  that  of  his  murderer,  the  madman 
who  had  wrought  so  much  misery.  He 
was  found  lying  across  the  stream  as 
if  he  had  stooped  to  drink,  and  had 
not  been  able  to  raise  himself.  The 
running  water  had  washed  all  traces 
of  murder  from  him.  When  they 
lifted  him,  with  much  precaution,  not 
knowing  whether  his  stillness  might 


mean  a  temporary  swoon,  or  a  feint  of 
madness  to  beguile  them,  his  pale 
marble  countenance  seemed  a  reproach 
to  the  lookers-on.  Even  with  the 
aspect  of  his  victim  fresh  in  their 
eyes,  the  men  could  not  believe  that 
this  had  ever  been  a  furious  maniac 
or  manslayer.  One  of  them  went  to 
look  for  Geoff,  and  to  arrest  the  pro- 
gress ••  of  the  other  funeral  procession. 
"  There's  another  one,  my  lord,"  ho 
said,  "all  torn  and  tattered  in  his 
clothes,  but  with  the  look  of  a  king.'' 
And  Geoff,  notwithstanding  his  horror, 
could  not  but  look  with  a  certain  awe, 
upon  the  worn  countenance.  It  might 
have  been  that  of  a  man  worn  with 
great  labours,  with  thought,  with  the 
high  musings  of  philosophy,  or  schemes 
of  istatesmanship.  He  was  carried 
down  and  laid  by  the  side  of  his 
brother  whom  he  had  killed.  All  the 
cottagers,  the  men  from  the  fields,  the 
passengers  on  the  way,  stood  looking 
on,  or  followed  the  strange  procession. 
Such  a  piece  of  news,  as  may  be  sup- 
posed, flew  over  the  country  like  wild- 
fire. There  was  no  family  better 
known  than  the  Bampfyldes,  notwith- 
standing their  humble  rank.  The 
handsome  Bampfyldes  :  and  here  they 
had  come  to  an  end  ! 

Old  'Lizabeth  as  she  made  her  way  to 
Stanton,  was  followed  everywhere  by 
the  same  atmosphere  of  sympathy.  The 
women  came  out  to  their  doors  to  look 
after  her,  and  even  strong  men  sobbed 
as  she  passed.  What  would  become 
of  her,  poor  lonely  woman?  She  gave 
a  great  cry  when  she  saw  the  two  pale 
faces  lying  peacefully  together.  They 
were  both  men  in  the  full  prime  of 
life,  in  the  gravity  of  middle  age,  fully 
developed,  strongly  knit,  men  all 
formed  for  life,  and  full  of  its  matured 
vigour.  They  lay  side  by  side  as  they 
had  lain  when  they  were  children. 
That  one  of  them  had  taken  the  life  of 
the  other,  who  could  have  imagined 
possible  1  The  poacher  and  vagrant 
looked  like  some  great  general  nobly 
dead  in  battle — the  madman  like  a 
sage.  Death  had  redeemed  them 
from  their  misery,  their  poverty,  the 


Young  Musgrave. 


125 


misfortunes  which  were  greater  than 
either.  Their  mother  gave  a  great  cry 
of  anguish  yet  pride  as  she  stood  beside 
them.  "My  lads,"  she  cried,  "my 
two  handsome  lads,  my  bonny  boys  !  " 
'Lizabeth  had  come  to  that  pass  when 
words  have  no  meaning  to  express  the 
depths  and  the  heights.  What  could  a 
woman  say  who  sees  her  sons  stretched 
dead  before  her  ?  She  uttered  one  in- 
articulate wail  of  anguish,  as  a  dumb 
creature  might  have  done,  and  then, 
her  overwrought  soul  reeling,  tottered 
almost  on  the  verge  of  reason,  and  she 
cried  out  in  pride  and  agony,  "  My 
handsome  lads  !  my  bonny  boys  !  " 

"Come  home  with  me,"  said  John 
Musgrave.  "We  have  made  a  bad 
business  of  it,  'Lizabeth,  you  and  I. 
This  is  all  our  sacrifice  has  come  to. 
Nothing  left  but  your  wreck  of  life 
and  mine.  But  come  home  with  me. 
Where  I  am,  there  will  always  be  a 
place  for  Lily's  mother.  And  there 
is  little  Lily  still,  and  she  will  com- 
fort you " 

"Eh  !  comfort  me  !  "  She  smiled  at 
the  word.  "  Nay,  I  must  go  to  my 
own  house.  I  thank  you,  John  Mus- 
grave, and  I  do  not  deserve  it  at  your 
hand.  This  fifteen  years  it  has  been 
me  that  has  murdered  you,  not  my  lad 
yonder,  not  my  Abel.  What  did  he 
know  ?  And  I  humbly  beg  your  par- 
don, and  your  little  bairns'  pardon,  on 
my  knees — but  nay,  nay,  I  must  go 
home.  My  own  house — there  is  no 
other  place  for  me." 

They  came  round  her  and  took  her 
hands,  and  pleaded  with  her.  Geoff 
too — and  his  mother  with  the  tears 
streaming  from  her  eyes.  "Oh,  my 
poor  woman,  my  poor  woman  !  "  Lady 
Stanton  cried,  "stay  here  while  they 
are  here."  But  nothing  moved 
'Lizabeth.  She  made  her  little  curtsey 
to  them  all,  with  that  strange  smile 
like  a  pale  light  wavering  upon  her 
face. 

"Nay,  nay,"  she  said.  "Nay, 
nay — I  humbly  thank  my  lady  and  my 
lord,  and  a'  kind  friends — but  my  own 
house,  that  is  the  only  place  for  me." 

"  But  you  cannot  go  so  far,  if  that 


were  all.  You  must  be  worn  out  with 
walking  only — if  there  was  nothing 
more " 

"  Me — worn  out ! — with  walking  !  " 
It  was  a  kind  of  laugh  which  came 
from  her  dry  throat.  "Ay,  very  near 
— very  near  it — that  will  come  soon 
if  the  Lord  pleases.  But  good-day  to 
you  all,  and  my  humble  thanks,  my 
lord  and  my  lady — you're  kind — kind 
to  give  them  houseroom ;  till  Friday 
— but  they'll  give  no  trouble,  no 
trouble  !  "  she  said,  with  again  that 
something  which  sounded  like  a  laugh. 
Laughing  or  crying,  it  was  all  one  to 
'Lizabeth.  The  common  modes  of 
expression  were  garments  too  small 
for  her  soul. 

"  Stay  only  to-night — it  will  be  dark 
long  before  you  can  be  there.  Stay 
to-night,"  they  pleaded.  She  broke 
from  them  with  a  cry. 

"  I  canna  bide  this,  I  canna  bide 
it !  I'm  wanting  the  stillness  of  the 
fells,  and  the  arms  of  them  about  me. 
Let  me  be — oh,  let  me  be  !  There's  a 
moon,"  she  added,  abruptly,  "and 
dark  or  light,  I'll  never  lose  my  way." 

Thus  they  had  to  leave  her  to 
do  as  she  pleased  in  the  end.  She 
would  not  eat  anything  or  even  sit 
down,  but  went  out  with  her  hood 
over  her  head  into  the  gathering 
shadows.  They  stood  watching  her 
till  the  sound  of  her  steps  died 
out  on  the  way — firm,  steady,  un- 
faltering steps.  Life  and  death,  and 
mortal  anguish,  and  wearing  care  had 
done  their  worst  upon  old  'Lizabeth. 
She  stood  like  a  rock  against  them  all. 

She  came  down  to  the  funeral  on 
Friday  as  she  had  herself  appointed, 
and  saw  her  sons  laid  in  their  grave, 
and  again  she  was  entreated  to  remain. 
But  even  little  Lilias,  whom  her  father 
brought  forward  to  aid  the  pleadings  of 
the  others,couldnot  move  her.  "  Honey- 
sweet  ! "  she  said,  with  a  tender  light  in 
her  eyes,  but  she  had  more  room  for 
the  children  when  her  heart  was  full 
of  living  cares.  It  was  empty  now,  and 
there  was  no  more  room.  A  few 
weeks  after,  she  was  found  dying  peace- 
ably in  her  bed,  giving  all  kinds  of 


126 


Young  Miisgrave. 


directions  to  her  children.  "  Abel 
will  have  your  father's  watch,  he  aye 
wanted  it  from  a  baby — and  Lily  gets 
all  my  things,  as  is  befitting.  They 
will  set  her  up  for  her  wedding.  And 
Dick,  my  little  Dick,  that  has  aye  been 
the  little  one — who  says  I  was  not 
thinking  of  Dick?  He's  been  my 
prop  and  my  right  hand  when  a' 
deserted  me.  The  poor  little  house 
and  the  little  bit  of  land,  and  a'  his 
mother  has — who  should  they  be  for, 
but  Dick  ?  "  Thus  she  died  tranquilly, 
seeing  them  all  round  her ;  and  all 
that  was  cruel  and  bitter  in  the  lot  of 
the  Bampfyldes  came  to  an  end. 


CHAPTER    XL. 
CONCLUSION. 

JOHN  MUSGRAVE  settled  down  with- 
out any  commotion  into  his  natural 
place  in  his  father's  house.  The  old 
Squire  himself  mended  from  the  day 
when  Nello,  very  timid,  but  yet  brave 
to  repress  the  signs  of  his  reluctance, 
was  brought  into  his  room.  He  played 
with  the  child  as  if  he  had  been  a 
child  himself,  and  so  grew  better  day 
by  day,  and  got  out  of  bed  again,  and 
save  for  a  little  dragging  of  one  leg 
as  he  limped  along,  brought  no  external 
sign  of  his  "  stroke  "  out  of  his  sick- 
room. But  he  wrote  no  more  Mono- 
graphs, studied  no  more.  His  life  had 
come  back  to  him  as  the  Syrian  lord 
in  the  Bible  got  back  his  health  after 
his  leprosy — "  like  the  flesh  of  a  little 
child."  The  Squire  recovered  after  a 
while  the  power  of  taking  his  part  in 
a  conversation,  and  looked  more  vener- 
able than  ever  with  his  faded  colour 
and  subdued  forces.  But  his  real  life 
was  all  with  little  Nello,  who  by  and 
by  got  quite  used  to  his  grandfather, 
and  lorded  it  over  him  as  children  so 
often  do.  When  the  next  summer 
came,  they  went  out  together,  the 
Squire  generally  in  a  wheeled  chair, 
Nello  walking,  or  riding  by  his  side 
on  the  pony  his  grandpapa  had  given 
him.  There  was  no  doubt  now  as  to 
who  was  heir.  When  Randolph  came 


to  Penninghame,  after  spending  a 
day  and  a  half  in  vain  researches 
for  Nello — life  having  become  too 
exciting  at  that  moment  at  the  Castle 
to  leave  any  one  free  to  send  word 
of  the  children's  safety — he  found 
all  doubt  and  notion  of  danger  over 
for  John — and  he  himself  established 
for  ever  in  his  natural  place.  Whether 
the  Squire  had  forgotten  everything  in 
his  illness,  or  whether  he  had  under- 
stood the  story  which  Mary  took  care 
to  repeat  two  or  three  times  very  dis- 
tinctly by  his  bedside  no  one  knew. 
But  he  never  objected  to  John's 
presence,  made  no  question  about  him 
— accepted  him  as  if  he  had  been 
always  there.  Absolutely  as  if  there 
had  been  no  breach  in  the  household 
existence  at  all,  the  eldest  son  took 
his  place ;  and  that  Nello  was  the 
heir  was  a  thing  beyond  doubt  in  any 
reasonable  mind.  This  actual  settle- 
ment of  all  difficulties  had  already 
come  about  when  Randolph  came.  His 
father  took  no  notice  of  him,  and  John, 
who  thought  it  was  his  brother's  fault 
that  his  little  son  had  been  so  unkindly 
treated,  found  it  difficult  to  afford 
Randolph  any  welcome.  He  did  not 
however  want  any  welcome  in  such 
circumstances.  He  stayed  for  a  single 
night,  feeling  himself  coldly  looked 
upon  by  all.  Mr.  Pen,  who  spent  half 
his  time  at  the  Castle,  more  than  any 
one  turned  a  cold  shoulder  upon  his 
brother  clergyman. 

"  You  felt  it  necessary  that  the  child 
should  go  to  school  quite  as  much  as  I 
did,"  Randolph  said,  on  the  solitary 
occasion  when  the  matter  was  dis- 
cussed. 

"Yes,  but  not  to  any  school,"  the 

vicar  said.     "  I  would  rather "   he 

paused  for  a  sufficiently  strong  image, 
but  it  was  hard  to  find.  "I  would 
rather — have  got  up  at  six  o'clock 
every  day,  and  sacrificed  everything — 
rather  than  have  exposed  Nello  to  the 
life  he  had  there — and  you  who  are  a 
father  yourself." 

"  Yes  ;  but  my  boy  has  neither  a 
girl's  name  nor  a  girl's  want  of 
courage.  He  is  not  a  baby  that  would 


Young  Musyravc. 


flinch  at  the  first  rough  word.  I  did 
not  know  the  nature  of  the  thing," 
said  Randolph,  with  a  sneer.  "  I 
have  no  acquaintance  with  any  but 
straightforward  and  manly  ways." 

The  Vicar  followed  him  out  in 
righteous  wrath.  He  produced  from 
his  pocket  a  hideous  piece  of  pink  paper. 

"  Do  you  know  who  sent  this  ? "  he 
asked. 

Randolph  looked  at  it,  taken  aback, 
and  tried  to  bluster  forth  an  expres- 
sion of  wonder — 

"  I — how  should  I  know  ?  " 

"What  did  you  mean  by  it?" 
cried  the  gentle  Yicar,  in  high  ex- 
citement; "did  you  think  I  did  not 
know  my  duty  1  Did  you  think  I  was 
a  cold-blooded  reptile  like — like  the 
man  that  sent  that  ?  Do  you  think  it 
was  in  me  to  betray  my  brother]  I 
know  nothing  bad  enough  for  him  who 
made  such  a  suggestion.  And  he 
nearly  gained  his  point.  The  devil 
knows  what  tools  to  work  with.  He 
works  with  the  weakness  of  good 
people  as  well  as  with  the  strength 
of  bad,"  cried  mild  Mr.  Pen,  inspired 
for  once  in  his  life  with  righteous 
indignation.  "Judas  did  it  himself 
at  least,  bad  as  he  was.  He  did  not 
whisper  treason  in  a  man's  ears  nor  in 
a  woman's  heart." 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean," 
said  Randolph,  with  guilt  in  his  face. 

"  Not  all.  no  ;  fortunately  you  don't 
know,  nor  any  one  else,  the  trouble 
you  might  have  made.  But  no  less, 
though  it  never  came  to  pass,  was  it 
that  traitor's  fault." 

"When  you  take  to  speaking  rid- 
dles I  give  it  up/'  said  Randolph, 
shrugging  his  shoulders. 

But  Mr.  Pen  was  so  hot  in  moral 
force  that  he  was  glad  to  get  away. 
He  slept  one  night  under  his  father's 
roof,  no  one  giving  him  much  attention, 
and  then  went  away,  never  to  return 
again  ;  but  went  back  to  his  believing 
wife,  too  good  a  fate,  who  smoothed 
him  down  and  healed  all  his  wounds. 
"My  husband  is  like  most  people 
who  struggle  to  do  their  duty,"  she 
said.  "His  brother  was  very  un- 


grateful, though  Randolph  had  done 
so  much  for  him.  And  the  little  boy, 
who  had  been  dreadfully  spoiled,  ran 
away  from  the  school  when  he  had 
cost  my  husband  so  much  trouble. 
And  even  his  sister  Mary  showed  him 
no  kindness  ;  that  is  the  way  when  a 
man  is  so  disinterested  as  Randolph, 
doing  all  he  can  for  his  own  family, 
for  their  real  good." 

And  this,  at  the  end,  came  to  be  what 
Randolph  himself  thought. 

Mrs.  Pen,  after  coming  home 
hysterical  from  Elfdale,  made  a  clean 
breast  to  her  husband,  and  showed 
him  the  telegram,  and  confessed  all 
her  apprehensions  for  him.  What 
could  a  man  do  but  forgive  the  folly 
or  even  wickedness  done  for  his  sweet 
sake  ?  And  Mrs.  Pen  went  through 
a  few  dreadful  hours,  when  in  the 
morning  John  Musgrave  came  back 
from  his  night  journey  and  the  warrant 
was  put  in  force.  If  they  should  hang 
him  what  would  become  of  her  ]  She 
always  believed  afterwards  that  it 
was  her  William's  intervention 
which  had  saved  John,  and  she  never 
believed  in  John's  innocence,  let  her 
husband  say  what  he  would.  For  Mrs. 
Pen  said  wisely  that  wherever  there  is 
smoke  there  must  be  fire,  and  it  was 
no  use  telling  her  that  Lord  Stanton 
had  not  been  killed ;  for  it  was  in  the 
last  edition  of  the  Fellshire  History  and 
therefore  it  must  be  true. 

When  all  was  over  Sir  Henry  and 
Lady  Stanton  made  a  formal  visit  of 
congratulation  at  Penninghame.  Sir 
Henry  told  John  that  it  had  been  a 
painful  necessity  to  issue  the  warrant, 
but  that  a  man  must  do  his  duty 
whatever  it  is  ;  and  as,  under  Provi- 
dence, this  was  the  means  of  making 
everything  clear,  he  could  not  regret 
that  he  had  done  it  now.  Lady  Stanton 
said  nothing,  or  next  to  nothing.  She 
talked  a  little  to  Mary,  making  stray 
little  remarks  about  the  children,  and 
drawing  Nello  to  her  side.  Lilias  she 
was  afraid  of,  with  those  great  eyes. 
Was  that  child  to  be  Geoff's  wife  ?  she 
thought.  Ah  !  how  much  better  had 
he  been  the  kind  young  husband  who 


128 


Young  Musgrave. 


should  have  delivered  her  own  Annie 
or  Fanny.  This  little  girl  would  want 
nothing  of  the  kind  :  her  father  would 
watch  over  her,  he  would  let  no  one 
meddle  with  her,  not  like  a  poor 
woman  with  a  hard  husband  and 
stepdaughters.  She  trembled  a  little 
when  she  put  her  hand  into  John's. 
She  looked  at  him  with  moisture  in 
her  eyes. 

"I  have  always  believed  in  you, 
always  hoped  to  see  you  here  again," 
she  said. 

"Come,  Mary,  the  carriage  is  wait- 
ing," said  Sir  Henry.  He  said  after 
that  this  was  all  that  was  called 
for,  and  here  the  intercourse  be- 
tween the  two  houses  dropped.  Mary 
could  not  help  "taking  an  interest  "in 
John  Musgrave  still,  bub  what  did  it 
matter  1  everybody  took  an  interest  in 
him  now. 

As  for  Geoff  he  became,  as  he  had  a 
way  of  doing,  the  son  of  the  house  at 
Penninghame ;  even  the  old  Squire 
took  notice  of  his  kind,  cheerful  young 
face.  He  neglected  Elfdale  and  his 
young  cousins,  and  even  Cousin  Mary 
whom  he  loved.  But  it  was  not  to  be 
supposed  that  John  Musgrave  would 
allow  a  series  of  love  passages  to  go 
on  indefinitely  for  years  between  his 
young  neighbour  and  his  daughter 
Lilias,  as  yet  not  quite  thirteen  years 
old.  The  young  man  was  sent  away 
after  a  most  affecting  parting,  not 
to  return  for  three  years.  Naturally 
Lady  Stanton  rebelled  much,  she  who 
had  kept  her  son  at  home  during  all  his 
life ;  but  what  could  she  do  ?  Instead 
of  struggling  vainly  she  took  the  wiser 
part,  and  though  it  was  a  trial  to  tear 
herself  from  Stanton  and  all  the 
servants,  who  were  so  kind,  and 
the  household  which  went  upon  wheels, 
upon  velvet,  and  gave  her  no  trouble, 
she  made  up  her  mind  to  it,  and  took 
her  maid  and  Benson  and  Mr.  Tritton 
and  went  "  abroad  "  too.  What  it  is 
to  go  abroad  when  a  lady  is  middle- 
aged  and  has  a  grown-up  son  and  such 
an  establishment !  but  she  did  it :  "  for 
I  shall  not  have  him  very  long,"  she 
said  with  a  sigh. 


Lilias  was  sixteen  when  Geoff  came 
home.  Can  any  one  doubt  that  the  child 
had  grown  up  with  her  mind  full  of 
the  young  hero  who  had  acted  so  great 
a  part  in  her  young  life  ?  When  the 
old  Squire  died  and  Nello  went  to 
school,  a  very  different  school  from 
Mr.  Swan's,  the  idea  of  "  Mr.  Geoff" 
became  more  and  more  her  companion. 
It  was  not  love,  perhaps,  in  the 
ordinary  meaning  of  the  word; 
Lilias  did  not  know  what  that  meant. 
Half  an  elder  brother,  ^half  an  en- 
chanted prince,  more  than  half  a 
hero  of  romance,  he  wove  himself  with 
every  story  and  every  poem  that 
was  written,  to  Lilias.  He  it  was  and 
no  Prince  Ferdinand  whom  Miranda 
thought  so  fair.  It  was  he  who 
slew  all  the  dragons  and  giants, 
and  delivered  whole  dungeons  full  of 
prisoners.  Her  girlhood  was  some- 
what lonely,  chiefly  because  of  this 
soft  mist  of  semi-betrothal  which  was 
about  her.  Not  only  was  she  already 
a  woman  though  a  child,  but  a  woman 
separated  from  others,  a  bride  doubly 
virginal  because  he  was  absent  to 
whom  all  her  thoughts  were  due. 
"  What  if  he'should  forget  her  ]  "  Mary 
Musgrave  would  say,  alarmed.  She 
thought  it  neither  safe  nor  right  for 
the  child  who  was  the  beauty  and 
flower  of  Penninghame,  as  she  herself 
had  been,  though  in  so  different  a  way. 
Mary  now  had  settled  down  as  the 
lady  of  Penninghame,  as  her  brother 
was  its  lawful  lord.  John  was  not 
the  kind  of  man  to  make  a  second 
marriage,  even  if,  as  his  sister  some- 
times fancied,  his  first  had  but  little 
satisfied  his  heart.  But  of  this  he 
said  nothing,  thankful  to  be  able  at 
the  end  to  redeem  some  portion  of 
the  life  thus  swallowed  up  by  one 
of  those  terrible  but  happily  rare  mis- 
takes, which  are  no  less  wretched  that 
they  are  half  divine.  He  had  all  he 
wanted  now  in  his  sister's  faithful  com- 
panionship and  in  his  children.  There 
is  no  more  attractive  household  than 
that  in  which,  after  the  storms  of  life, 
a  brother  and  sister  set  up  peacefully 
together  the  old  household  gods,  never 


Young  Musgram. 


129 


dispersed,  which  were  those  of  their 
youth.  Mary  was  a  little  more  care- 
ful, perhaps,  of  her  niece,  a  little  more 
afraid  of  the  troubles  in  her  way  than 
if  she  had  been  her  daughter.  She 
watched  lilias  with  great  anxiety,  and 
read  between  the  lines  of  Geoff's  letters 
with  vague  scrutiny,  looking  always 
for  indications  of  some  change. 

Lilias  was  sixteen  in  the  end  of 
October,  the  third  after  the  previous 
events  recorded  here.  She  had  grown 
to  her  full  height,  and  her  beauty  had 
a  dreamy,  poetical  touch  from  the 
circumstances,  which  greatly  changed 
the  natural  expression  appropriate  to 
the  liquid  dark  eyes  and  noble  features 
she  had  from  her  mother  and  her 
mother's  mother.  Her  eyes  were  less 
brilliant  than  they  would  have  been 
had  they  not  looked  so  far  away,  but 
they  were  more  sweet.  Her  bright- 
ness altogether  was  tempered  and 
softened,  and  kept  within  that  modesty 
of  childhood,  to  which  her  youthful 
age  really  belonged,  though  nature 
and  life  had  developed  her  more  than 
her  years.  Though  she  was  grown  up 
she  kept  many  of  her  childish  ways, 
and  still  sat,  as  Mary  had  always  done, 
at  the  door  of  the  old  hall,  now  won- 
derfully decorated  and  restored,  but 
yet  the  old  hall  still.  The  two  ladies 
shared  it  between  them  for  all  their 
hours  of  leisure,  but  Mary  had  given 
up  her  seat  at  the  door  to  the  younger 
inhabitant,  partly  because  she  loved 
to  see  Lilias  there  with  the  sun  upon 
her,  partly  because  she  herself  began 
to  feel  the  cool  airs  of  the  north  less 
halcyon  than  of  old.  The  books  that 
Lilias  carried  with  her  were  no  longer 
fairy  tales,  but  maturer  enchantments 
of  poetry.  And  there  she  sat  absorbed 
in  verse,  and  lost  to  all  meaner  de- 


lights on  the  eve  of  her  birthday,  a 
soft  air  ruffling  the  little  curls  on  her 
forehead,  the  sun  shining  upon  her 
uncovered  head.  Lilias  loved  the  sun. 
She  was  not  afraid  of  it  nor  of  her 
complexion,  and  the  sun  of  October  is 
not  dangerous.  She  had  a  hand  up  to 
shade  the  book  which  was  too  dazzling 
in  the  light,  but  nothing  to  keep  the 
golden  light  from  her.  She  sat  warm 
and  glorified  in  the  long,  slanting, 
dazzling  rays. 

Mary  had  heard  a  horse's  hoofs, 
and,  being  a  little  restless,  came  for- 
ward softly  from  her  seat  behind  to 
see  who  it  was  ;  but  Lilias,  lost  in 
the  poetry  and  the  sunshine,  heard 
nothing. 

"  She  wept  with  pity  and  delight, 
She  blushed  with  love  and  virgin  shame, 
And,  like  the  murmur  of  a  dream, 
I  heard  her  breathe  my  name. 

"  Her  bosom  heaved — she  stepped  aside, 
As  conscious  of  my  look  she  stept — 
Then  suddenly,  with  timorous  eye, 
She  fled  to  me  and  wept." 

Mary  saw  what  Lilias  did  not  see, 
the  horseman  at  the  foot  of  the  slope. 
He  looked  and  smiled,  and  signed  to 
her  over  the  lovely  head  in  the  sun- 
shine. He  was  brown,  and  ruddy 
with  health  and  travel,  his  eyes  shin- 
ing, his  breath  coming  quick.  Three 
years  !  as  long  as  a  lifetime — but  it 
was  over.  Suddenly,  "  Lily — my  little 
Lily,"  he  cried,  unable  to  keep  silence 
more. 

She  sprang  to  her  feet,  like  a  startled 
deer;  the  book  fell  from  her  hands; 
her  eyes  gave  a  great  gleam  and  flash, 
and  softened  in  the  golden  light  of 
sunset  and  tenderness.  The  poetry 
or  the  life,  which  was  the  most  sweet  ? 
"Yes,  Mr.  Geoff,"  she  said. 


THE    END. 


No.  218.— VOL.  xxxvn. 


130 


MODERN  LIFE  AND  INSANITY. 


THE    relation    between    modern   civi- 
lized   life    and    insanity    cannot    be 
regarded  as  finally  determined  while 
a  marked  difference  of   opinion  exists 
in  regard  to  it  among  those  who  have 
studied    the    subject;    nor    can    this 
difference  be  wondered  at  by  any  one 
who  has  examined  the  data  upon  which 
a  conclusion  must  be  formed,  and  has 
found  how  difficult  it  is  to  decide  in 
which  direction  some  of  the  evidence 
points.     Statistics    alone    may   prove 
utterly  fallacious.      Mere  speculation, 
on   the    other    hand,  is    useless,  and 
indeed   is   only   misleading.     It  is   a 
matter   on   which  it   is   tempting   to 
write    dogmatically,     but    where    the 
honest   inquirer  is  quickly  pulled  up 
by  the  hard  facts  that  force  themselves 
on  his  attention.     Nothing  easier  than 
to  indulge  in  unqualified  denunciations 
of    modern    society;      nothing    more 
difficult  than    a   cautious   attempt   to 
connect  the  social  evils  of  the  present 
day    with    the    statistics    of    lunacy. 
Nothing  easier  than  to  make  sweeping 
statements     without     proof,    nothing 
more    difficult   than  to  apportion  the 
mental   injury  respectively  caused  by 
opposite  modes  of  life  ;  totally  diverse 
social  states  of  a  nation  often  leading 
to   the    same    termination — insanity. 
These  are  closely  bound  together  in  the 
complex  condition  of  modern  civilized 
society.  No  doubt  if  we  care  for  truth, 
and  avoid  rash  assertions,  we  do  it  at 
the  expense  of  a  certain  loss  of  force 
and  incisiveness.  Dogmatic  statements 
usually  produce  more  effect  than  care- 
fully -  balanced    and    strictly    logical 
positions.     Honesty,  however,  compels 
us  to  speak  cautiously,  and  to  confess 
the    difficulties    to     which    we    have 
referred. 

We  shall  not  enter  at  length  into  the 
question  which  is  at  once  raised  by  an 
inquiry  into  the  relation  between 


modern  life  and  insanity — whether 
lunacy  is  on  the  increase  in  England. 
Twenty  years  ago  there  was  one  lunatic 
or  idiot  officially  reported  to  577  of  the 
population ;  the  latest  returns  place 
it  as  high  as  one  in  370.  Were  we  to 
go  further  back,  the  contrast  would 
be  far  greater.  That  the  increase  of 
known  cases  of  insanity  has  been  very 
great,  no  one,  therefore,  disputes. 
Further,  that  the  attention  paid  to  the 
disease ;  the  provision  made  for  the 
insane ;  the  prolongation  of  their  lives 
in  asylums,  and  the  consequent  ac- 
cumulation of  cases,  and  other  circum- 
stances into  which  our  limits  forbid  us 
to  enter,  account  for  the  greater  part 
of  this  alarming  apparent  increase, 
is  certain.  Whether,  however,  there 
is  not  also  an  actual  increase,  un- 
accounted for  by  population,  or  by 
accumulation,  remains  an  open  ques- 
tion, which  statistics  do  not  absolute- 
ly determine.  At  the  same  time  we 
think  that  it  is  quite  probable  that 
there  has  been  some  real  increase. 

To  what  social  class  do  the  great 
mass  of  our  lunatics  belong,  and  to 
what  grade  of  society  does  the  striking 
apparent  increase  of  the  insane  point  1 
The  large  majority  of  lunatics  under 
legal  restraint  undoubtedly  belong  to 
the  pauper  population.  On  the  1st  of 
January,  1877,  of  the  total  number  of 
patients  in  asylums  and  elsewhere  (in 
round  numbers  66,600),  about  59,000 
were  pauper,  and  only  7,600  private 
patients.  These  figures,  however,  fail 
to  convey  a  correct  statement  of  the 
relative  amount  of  insanity  existing 
among  the  class  of  the  originally  poor 
and  uneducated  masses  and  the  class 
above  them,  because  in  a  considerable 
number  of  instances  members  of  the 
middle  and  still  higher  classes  have 
become  paupers.  Again,  the  wealthy 
insane  remain  very  frequently  at  home, 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


131 


and  do  not  appear  in  the  official  retiirns. 
We  believe  this  class  to  be  very  large. 
Probably  we  get  a  glimpse  of  it  from 
the  census  of  1871,  which  contained 
69,000  lunatics,  idiots,  and  imbeciles 
(and  we  have  good  reasons  for  knowing 
that  this  return  was  very  far  short  of 
the  truth),  yet  it  exceeded  the  num- 
ber given  by  the  Lunacy  Commissioners 
in  the  same  year  by  12,000  !  A  large 
number  no  doubt  lived  with  their 
families  because  these  could  well  afford 
to  keep  them  at  home.  None  would 
be  in  receipt  of  relief,  or  they  would 
have  appeared  in  the  Commissioners' 
Report.  Another  most  important 
qualifying  consideration  remains  — 
the  relative  numbers  of  the  classes  of 
society  from  which  the  poor  and 
the  well-to-do  lunatics  are  derived. 
Several  years  ago  the  Scotch  Commis- 
sioners estimated  the  classes  from 
which  private  patients  are  derived  at 
only  about  an  eighth  of  the  entire 
population  of  Scotland ;  a  proportion 
which  would  make  them  at  least  as 
relatively  numerous  as  the  pauper 
lunatics.  No  doubt  in  England  the 
corresponding  class  of  society  is  a 
larger  one  ;  but  whatever  it  may  be,1 
a  calculation  based  upon  the  relative 
proportion  of  different  social  strata  in 
this  country  would  vastly  reduce  the 
apparent  enormously  different  liability 
to  insanity  among  the  well-to-do  and 
the  poorer  sections  of  the  community, 
although,  with  this  correction,  the 
pauper  lunatics  would  still  be  rela- 
tively in  the  majority. 

The  disparity  between  the  absolute 
number  of  pauper  and  private  patients 
has  greatly  increased  in  recent  years. 
In  other  words,  the  apparent  increase 

1  "We  are  informed  by  Dr.  Fair  that  the 
proportion  between  the  upper  and  middle 
classes  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  lower  classes 
on  the  other,  is  as  15  to  85.  Calculated  on 
this  basis,  the  proportion  of  private  and 
pauper  lunatics  to  their  respective  popula- 
tions would  be  1  in  484  for  the  former,  and 
1  in  353  for  the  latter — a  very  different  result 
from  that  obtained  by  the  usual  method  of 
calculating  the  ratio  of  private  and  pauper 
lunatics  to  the  whole  population,  viz.,  1  in 
3,231,  and  1  in  415. 


of  insanity  is  mainly  marked  among 
those  who  become  pauper  patients.  This 
is  certainly  in  great  measure  accounted 
for  by  the  disproportionate  accumu- 
lation of  cases  in  pauper  asylums,  for 
reasons  into  which  it  is  not  now  need- 
ful to  enter.  It  assuredly  does  not 
prove  that  there  has  been  anything 
like  a  corresponding  growth  of  insanity 
among  the  poor  as  compared  with  the 
rich. 

In  any  case,  however,  the  illiterate 
population  does  yield  a  very  serious 
amount  of  insanity,  and  the  fact  is  so 
patent  that  it  shows  beyond  a  doubt 
that  ignorance  is  no  proof  against  the 
inroads  of  the  disease.  The  absence 
of  rational  employment  of  the  mental 
powers  may  lead  to  debasing  habits 
and  to  the  indulgence  in  vices  especially 
favourable  to  insanity,  less  likely  to 
attract  a  mind  occupied  with  literary 
and  scientific  pursuits.  No  doubt 
mental  stagnation  is  in  itself  bad,  but 
the  insanity  arising  out  of  it  is  more 
frequently  an  indirect  than  a  direct 
result.  If  a  Wiltshire  labourer  is  more 
liable  to  insanity  than  other  people,  it 
may  be  not  merely  because  his  mind 
is  in  an  uncultivated  condition,  but 
rather  because  his  habits,2  indirectly 
favoured  by  his  ignorance,  and  the 
brain  he  inherited  from  parents  in- 
dulging in  like  habits,  tend  to  cause 
mental  derangement.  It  is  conceivable 
that  he  might  have  had  no  more  mental 
cultivation,  and  yet  have  been  so  cir- 
cumstanced that  there  would  have  been 
very  little  liability  to  the  disease.  This 
distinction  is  extremely  important  if 
we  are  tracing  causes,  however  true 
it  would  remain  that  ignorance  is  a 
great  evil.  A  South  Sea  islander 
might  be  much  more  ignorant  than  the 
Wiltshire  labourer  and  yet  not  be  so 
circumstanced  that  he  would  be  likely 
to  transgress  the  laws  of  mental 
health.  The  ignorance  of  an  African 
tribe  and  that  of  a  village  in  Wilts 

2  Dr.  Thurnam,  the  late  superintendent  of 
the  Wilts  County  Asylum,  found  that  the 
proportion  of  cases  caused  by  drink  in  this 
county  was  very  high — in  one  year  (1872) 
amounting  to  34  per  cent. 

K    2 


132 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


may  be  associated,  the  one  with  very 
little,  the  other  with  very  much 
lunacy.  Mr.  Bright's  "residuum"  of 
a  civilized  people,  and  a  tribe  of  North 
American  Indians  are  alike  uneducated, 
but,  notwithstanding,  present  totally 
different  conditions  of  life.  We  have 
no  doubt  that  in  a  civilized  community 
there  will  always  be  found  by  far  the 
larger  number  of  insane  persons. 
There  are  three  grand  reasons  for  this. 
First,  because  those  who  do  become 
insane  or  are  idiotic  among  savages, 
"go  to  the  wall"  as  a  general  rule; 
the  other  reasons  are  to  be  discovered 
in  the  mixed  character  and  influence 
of  European  civilization ;  its  action  on 
the  one  hand  in  evolving  forms  of 
mental  life  of  requisite  delicacy  and 
sensibility,  easily  injured  or  altogether 
crushed  by  the  rough  blasts  from  which 
they  cannot  escape  in  life  ;  and  on  the 
other  hand  in  producing  a  state  con- 
founded, as  we  have  said,with  savagery, 
but  which  differs  widely  from  it,  and 
is,  simply  in  relation  to  mental  dis- 
orders, actually  worse.  Recklessness, 
drunkenness,  poverty,  misery,  char- 
acterise the  class  ;  and  no  wonder  that 
from  such  a  source  spring  the  hope- 
lessly incurable  lunatics  who  crowd 
our  pauper  asylums,  to  ths  horror  of 
ratepayers,  and  the  surprise  of  those 
who  cannot  understand  why  the  natives 
of  Madagascar,  though  numbering 
about  5,000,000,  do  not  require  a  single 
lunatic  asylum.  We  may  add  that 
they  do  not  destroy  the  few  insane  and 
idiots  which  they  have. 

It  is  constantly  forgotten  that  while 
there  is  nothing  better  than  true 
civilization,  there  is  something  worse 
than  the  condition  of  certain  savages, 
and  that  almost  anything  is  better 
than  that  stratum  of  civilized  society 
which  is  squalid,  and  drunken,  and 
sensual ;  cursed  with  whatever  of  evil 
the  ingenuity  of  civilized  man  has  in- 
dented, but  not  blessed  with  the 
counteracting  advantages  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  conclusion,  so  far  from 
damping  the  efforts  of  progress  and 
.modern  developments  of  science, 
should  stimulate  us  to  improve  the 


moral  and  physical  condition  of  this 
class  and  so  lessen  the  dangers  to 
mental  disorder  among  them.  The 
belief  that  savages  are  free  from  some 
of  the  insanity-producing  causes  pre- 
valent in  modern  civilized  England  is 
quite  consistent  with  the  position  taken 
in  this  article  that  education,  ample 
mental  occupation,  knowledge,  and  the 
regularly  trained  exercise  of  the 
faculties  exert  a  highly  beneficial 
influence  upon  the  mind,  and  thus 
fortify  it  against  the  action  of  some  of 
the  causes  of  insanity. 

The  relative  liability  of  manufac- 
turing and  agricultural  districts  to 
mental  disease  has  excited  much  dis- 
cussion. This  has  partly  arisen  from 
the  assumption  that  the  latter  may 
be  taken  as  the  representatives  of 
savages.  As  we  have  shown  this  to  be 
false,  the  comparison  between  these 
two  districts  does  not,  from  this  point 
of  view,  possess  any  value.  On  other 
grounds,  however,  it  would  be  very 
interesting  to  determine  whether 
urban  or  rural  lunacy  is  most  rife. 
Here,  however,  the  worthlessness  of 
mere  statistics  is  singularly  evidenced, 
and  the  difficulty  of  accurately  bal- 
ancing the  weight  of  various  quali- 
fying circumstances  becomes  more 
and  more  apparent.  An  agricultural 
county  may  be  found  here  and  there 
with  less  lunacy  than  a  manufacturing 
county,  but  if  a  group  of  counties  be 
taken  in  which  the  manufacturing 
element  is  greatly  beyond  the  average, 
and  another  group  in  which  the  agri- 
cultural element  greatly  preponderates, 
we  find  1  lunatic  to  463  of  the  county 
population  in  the  former,  and  1  to  388 
in  the  latter,  showing  an  accumulation 
of  more  insane  paupers  in  the  agricul- 
tural districts.  But  it  is  very  pos- 
sible that  if  we  knew  how  many 
become  insane,  the  result  would  be 
very  different  indeed.  This,  in  fact, 
has  been  found  to  be  the  case  in  Scot- 
land, where  the  Lunacy  Commissioners 
have  taken  great  pains  to  arrive  at  the 
real  truth.  In  a  recent  Report  it  is 
shown  that  while  three  Highland 
counties  have,  in  proportion  to  the 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


133 


population,  a  decidedly  heavier  per- 
sistent burden  of  pauper  lunacy  than 
two  manufacturing  counties  which  are 
chosen  for  comparison,  the  number 
of  lunatics  receiving  relief — that  is, 
actually  coming  under  treatment — is 
proportionally  larger  in  the  latter 
than  in  the  former.  In  other  words, 
the  proportion  of  fresh  cases  of  pauper 
lunacy  appearing  on  the  poor -roll  is 
higher  in  urban  than  rural  districts. 
The  Commissioners  refer  this  result 
partly  to  the  greater  prevalence  of  the 
active  and  transitory  forms  of  mental 
disorder — cases  which  before  long  are 
discharged — and  partly  to  the  greater 
facility  of  obtaining  accommodation 
in  an  asylum  free  of  charge  in  a  city, 
from  its  being  at  hand  ;  and  the  greater 
wealth  of  the  urban  districts  offering 
no  obstacle  to  admission.  They  attri- 
bute the  above-mentioned  persistent 
rural  lunacy  chiefly  to  the  constant 
migration  of  the  strong  from  the 
rural  to  the  urban  districts ;  the 
necessary  exodus  of  the  physically 
and  mentally  healthy  leaving  behind 
an  altogether  disproportionate  number 
of  congenital  idiots,  imbeciles,  and 
chronic  insane  in  the  agricultural 
counties.  Hence,  returning  to  Eng- 
land, it  is  quite  clear  that  the  mere 
ratio  of  accumulated  pauper  lunacy  to 
the  county  population,  which  is  con- 
stantly relied  upon,  proves  little  or 
nothing  as  to  the  relative  liability  to 
insanity  of  the  agricultural  and  manu- 
facturing districts.  One  conclusion 
only  can  be  safely  drawn  from  such 
figures,  until  minute  investigations 
have  been  made  into  the  circumstances 
attending  rural  and  urban  lunacy  in 
England  as  has  been  done  in  Scotland 
— namely,  that  while  theory  is  apt  to 
say  that  a  country  life,  passed,  as  it 
seems  to  be  supposed,  in  pastoral 
simplicity,  '  will  not  admit  of  the 
entrance  of  madness  into  the  happy 
valley,  fact  says  that  whatever  may 
be  the  ultimate  verdict  as  to  the 
relative  proportion  of  urban  and  rural 
lunacy,  a  large  amount  of  insanity  and 
idiocy  does  exist  in  the  country  dis- 
tricts, and  that  the  dull  swain,  with 


clouted  shoon,  but  too  frequently  finds 
his  way  into  the  asylum. 

A  glance  at  the  annual  reports  of 
our  lunatic  asylums  reveals  the  main 
occupations  of  the  inmates  and  the 
apparent  causes  of  their  attacks.  In 
a  county  asylum  like  Wilts  the  great 
majority  of  patients  are  farm  labourers, 
with  their  wives  and  daughters  ;  and 
next  in  order,  domestic  servants  and 
weavers.  The  number  of  farmers,  or 
members  of  their  families,  is  small. 
The  character  of  the  occupations  in 
the  population  of  an  asylum  like  that 
for  the  borough  of  Birmingham  of 
course  differs.  Here  we  find  mecha- 
nics and  artizans  heading  the  list, 
with  their  wives.  Those  engaged  in 
domestic  occupation  form  a  large 
number.  Shopkeepers  and  clerks 
come  next  in  order.  In  both  asylums 
are  to  be  found  a  few  governesses  and 
teachers.  Innkeepers,  themselves  the 
cause  of  so  much  insane  misery  in. 
others,  figure  sparingly  in  these  tables. 

Among  the  causes,  intemperance 
unmistakably  takes  the  lead.  This 
is  one  of  those  facts  which,  amid 
much  that  is  open  to  difference  of 
opinion,  would  seem  to  admit  of  no 
reasonable  doubt.  Secondly  follows 
domestic  trouble,  and  thirdly  poverty. 
At  the  Birmingham  Asylum,  out  of 
470  admissions  in  three  years,  11  cases 
were  attributed  to  "  over  application  " 
— a  proportion  much  lower  than  that 
observed  in  private  asylums. 

Recently,  Mr.  Whitcombe,  assistant 
medical  officer  at  the  Birmingham 
Borough  Asylum,  has  done  good 
service  by  publishing  the  fact  that, 
during  the  last  twenty-five  years,  out 
of  3,800  pauper  patients  admitted, 
into  that  asylum,  524,  or  14  per 
cent,  had  their  malady  induced  by 
drink,  and  that  the  total  expenditure 
thus  caused  by  intemperance  amounted, 
in  maintenance  and  cost  of  building, 
&c.,  to  no  less  than  50,373^.  during 
that  period. 

Some  years  ago  we  calculated 
the  percentage  of  cases  caused 
by  intemperance  in  the  asylums  of 
England,  and  found  it  to  be  about 


134 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


twelve.  This  proportion  would  be 
immensely  increased  were  we  to  add 
those  in  which  domestic  misery  and 
pecuniary  losses  owed  their  origin 
to  this  vice.  Although  ratepayers 
grumble  about  the  building  of  large 
lunatic  asylums,  it  is  amazing  how 
meekly  they  bear  with  the  great 
cause  of  their  burden,  and  how 
suicidally  they  resent  an}"  attempt 
made  to  reduce  by  legislation  the 
area  of  this  widespread  and  costly 
mischief. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  drink 
produces  much  less  insanity  in  War- 
wickshire outside  Birmingham  than  in 
Birmingham  itself. 

In  connection  with  this  aspect  of 
the  question,  an  interesting  fact,  re- 
corded by  Dr.  Yellowlees,  when  super- 
intendent of  the  Glamorgan  County 
Asylum,  may  be  mentioned  :  that 
during  a  "  strike  "  of  nine  months,  the 
male  admissions  fell  to  half  their 
former  number,  the  female  admissions 
being  almost  unaffected.  "  The  de- 
crease is  doubtless  mainly  due  to  the 
fact  that  there  is  no  money  to  spend 
in  drink  and  debauchery."  High 
wages,  however,  would  be  infinitely 
better  than  strikes,  if  the  money 
were  spent  in  good  food,  house-rent, 
and  clothing. 

The  diet  of  the  children  of  factory 
operatives  in  Lancashire  points  to  one 
source  of  mental  degeneration  among 
that  class.  Dr.  Fergusson,  of  Bolton, 
gave  important  evidence  not  long 
ago  which  indicated  the  main  cause 
of  their  debility  and  stunted  de- 
velopment, whether  or  not  they  are 
worse  now  than  they  were.  He  does 
not  consider  that  factory  labour  in 
itself  operates  prejudicially,  and  re- 
ports the  mills  to  be  more  healthy  to 
work  in  now  than  they  were  in  years 
past.  The  prime  cause  producing  the 
bad  physical  condition  of  the  factory 
population  is,  in  his  opinion,  the 
intemperate  habits  of  the  factory 
workers.  By  free  indulgence  in 
stimulants  and  in  smoking,  the 
parents  debilitate  their  own  constitu- 
tions, and  transmit  feeble  ones  to  their 


children.  Instead  of  rearing  them  on 
milk  after  they  are  weaned,  they  give 
them  tea  or  coffee  in  a  morning,  and 
in  too  many  instances  they  feed  them 
upon  tea  three  times  a  day.  In  short, 
they  get  very  little  milk. 

Mr.  Redgrave,  the  Senior  Inspector 
of  Factories,  does  not  consider  that 
this  miserable  state  of  things  has 
increased — we  hope  not — but  he  ad- 
mits that  more  women  are  employed 
in  the  mills  than  formerly,  and  that 
this  is  most  disastrous  to  the  training 
of  children.  Some  curious  figures 
have  been  published,  showing  the 
weight  of  children  at  various  years 
of  age  in  the  factory  and  agricultural 
districts,  the  comparison  being  greatly 
in  favour  of  the  latter. 

Another  cause  of  deterioration  men- 
tioned is  that  at  least  one  half  of  the 
boys  in  the  mills  from  twelve  to 
twenty  years  of  age  either  smoke  or 
chew  tobacco,  or  do  both;  a  habit 
most  prejudicial  to  the  healthy  de- 
velopment of  the  nervous  system.  It 
was  recently  observed  by  Mr.  Mun- 
della  that  the  lad  who  began  at  eight 
years  of  age  in  a  mine  without  educa- 
tion, and  who  was  associated  with  men 
whose  whole  ambition  was  a  gallon  of 
beer  and  a  bull  dog,  was  not  likely 
to  grow  up  to  be  a  Christian  and  a 
gentleman.  We  may  add  he  would 
be  very  likely  to  end  his  days  either 
in  a  prison  or  in  a  pauper  asylum. 
It  is  observed  in  a  recent  report  of  the 
Royal  Edinburgh  Asylum  that  "  such 
coal  and  iron  mining  counties  as  Dur- 
ham and  Glamorgan  produce,  in  twice 
the  proportion  we  do,  the  most  marked 
and  fatal  of  all  the  brain  diseases 
caused  by  excesses."  It  may  be  seated 
that  the  relation  between  crime  and 
insanity,  especially  weak  mindedness, 
is  one  of  the  most  intimate  character, 
both  in  regard  to  the  people  who  com- 
mit criminal  acts  and  their  descend- 
ants. Our  examination  of  the  mental 
condition  of  convicts,  and  of  their 
physiognomy  and  cerebral  develop- 
ment, has  long  convinced  us  that  a 
large  number  of  this  class  are  men- 
tally deficient ;  sometimes  from  birth ; 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


135 


at  other  times  their  mental  develop- 
ment being  arrested  by  their  wretched 
bringing  up.  From  the  reports  of  the 
English  convict  prisons  generally,  it 
appears  that  1  in  every  25  of  the 
males  is  of  weak  mind,  insane,  or 
epileptic,  without  including  those 
sufficiently  insane  to  be  removed  to 
an  asylum.  The  resident  surgeon  to 
the  general  prison  of  Scotland  at 
Perth  (Mr.  Thompson)  gives  a  pro- 
portion of  twelve  per  cent;  founded 
upon  a  prison  population  of  6,000 
prisoners. 

Having  referred  to  the  bearing  of 
the  habits  of  one  large  portion  of  the 
population  upon  the  manufacture  of 
insanity,  we  pass  on  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  relation  between  higher 
grades  of  modern  society  and  mental 
disorder.  It  has  been  observed  in 
institutions  into  which  private  and 
pauper  patients  are  admitted,  that  the 
moral  or  psychical  causes  of  lunacy 
are  more  frequently  the  occasion  of  the 
attack  with  the  former  than  the  latter 
class.  This  is  not  always  accounted  for 
— as  might  have  been  expected — by 
there  having  been  less  drink-produced 
insanity  among  the  well-to-do  patients; 
for  in  the  Eoyal  Edinburgh  Asylum, 
where  this  disparity  strongly  comes 
out,  there  is  even  a  higher  percentage 
of  insanity  from  this  cause  among 
the  private  than  the  pauper  lunatics. 
The  history  of  the  daily  mode  of 
life  of  many  members  of  the  Stock 
Exchange  would  reveal,  in  the  matter 
of  diet,  an  amount  of.  alcoholic  imbi- 
bition in  the  form  of  morning  "  nips," 
wine  at  luncheon,  and  at  dinner,  diffi- 
cult to  realise  by  many  of  less  porous 
constitutions,  and  easily  explaining 
the  disastrous  results  which  in  many 
instances  follow,  sooner  or  later,  as 
respects  disturbances  of  the  nervous 
system,  in  one  form  or  other.  In  fact, 
by  the  time  dinner  is  due,  the  stomach 
is  in  despair,  and  its  owner  finds  it 
necessary  to  goad  a  lost  appetite  by 
strong  pickles  and  spirits,  ending  with 
black  coffee  and  some  liqueur.  When 
either  dyspepsia  or  over  business 
work  is  set  down  as  the  cause  of  the 


insanity  of  such  individuals,  it  should 
be    considered     what     influence    the 
amount  of  alcohol  imbibed  has  exerted 
upon    the   final    catastrophe    as   well 
as  the  assigned  cause.     But  whatever 
may  be  the  relative  amount  of  insanity 
produced  among  the  affluent  and  the 
poor,  of  this   there  can  be  no  doubt, 
that  certain  mental  causes  of  lunacy, 
as    over-study   and    business    worry, 
produce    more     insanity    among    the 
upper   than   the    lower   classes.     We 
have    examined   the   statistics   of   six 
asylums     in     England     for     private 
patients   only,    and   have    found   this 
to  be  the  case.     At  one  such  institu- 
tion, Ticehurst,  Sussex,  we  find,  from 
statistics  kindly  furnished  us  by  Dr. 
Newington,    that   out  of   266  admis- 
sions, 29  were  referred  to  over  study, 
and  18  to  over  business  work.     Only 
28   were    referred    to    intemperance. 
Allowing    a   liberal    margin   for   the 
tendency  of  friends  to  refer  the  dis- 
ease to  the    former   rather   than   the 
latter  class,  the  figures  remain  striking, 
as  pointing  to  the  influence  of  so-called 
over- work.     We   say  "so-called"  be- 
cause there  is  an  apparent  and  ficti- 
tious  as    well   as   a  real   over-work. 
Both,    however,    may     terminate     in 
nervous  disorder.     Over-work  is  often 
confounded  with  the  opposite  condition 
—  want   of    occupation.      Civilization 
and   mental   strain    are   regarded   by 
many  as  identical,  and  in  consequence 
much  confusion  is  caused  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  present  question.     It  is 
forgotten  that  an  idle  life,  leading  to 
hysteria    and    to   actual   insanity,    is 
much  more  likely  to  be  the  product 
of    civilization   than   of    savagery   or 
barbarism.     This  is  quite    consistent 
with   the   other   truth,    that   without 
civilization  we  do   not  see  evolved  a 
certain   high  pressure,  also   injurious 
to    mental   health.     A    London   phy- 
sician,    Dr.    Wilks,    when    speaking 
of   a  common   class   of   cases,   young 
women  without  either  useful  occupa- 
tion  or    amusements,   in    whom    the 
moral  nature   becomes   perverted,    in 
addition  to   the  derangement   of  the 
bodily     health,    observes     that     the 


136 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


mother's  sympathies  too  often  only 
foster  her  daughter's  morbid  procli- 
vities, by  insisting  on  her  delicacy 
and  the  necessity  of  various  artificial 
methods  for  her  restoration.  It  is 
obvious  that  such  a  case  as  this  is  the 
very  child  of  a  highly-organized  so- 
ciety, that  is,  of  a  high  state  of  civili- 
zation, and  yet  that  such  a  young  lady 
is  not  the  victim  of  high  pi-essure 
or  mental  strain  in  her  own  person, 
although  it  is  certainly  possible  that 
she  may  inherit  a  susceptible  brain 
from  an  over-worked  parent.  How- 
ever, the  remedy  is  work,  not  rest ; 
occupation,  not  idleness.  We  certainly 
do  not  want  to  make  her  more  refined 
or  artificial,  but  more  natural,  and  to 
occupy  herself  with  some  really  useful 
work.  A  luxurious  idle  life  is  her 
curse.  That  insanity  itself,  as  well  as 
mere  hysteria,  is  developed  by  such  a 
mode  of  existence,  we  fully  believe. 
The  mind,  although  not  uneducated, 
deteriorates  for  want  of  either  healthy 
intellectual  excitement,  the  occupation 
of  business,  or  the  necessary  duties  of 
a  family.  Life  must  have  an  aim, 
although  to  achieve  it  there  ought  not 
to  be  prolonged  worry. 

In  the  same  way  there  is  the  lady 
instanced  who  eats  no  breakfast,  takes 
a  glass  of  sherry  at  eleven  o'clock, 
and  drinks  tea  all  the  afternoon,  and 
who,  "when  night  arrives,  has  been 
ready  to  engage  in  any  performance 
to  which  she  may  have  been  invited." 
Clearly  she  is  the  product  of  a  highly 
artificial  mode  of  life,  found  in  the 
midst  of  modern  civilization.  She  is 
certainly  not  suffering  from  mental 
strain ;  at  the  same  time  she  is  the 
outcome  of  the  progress  from  bar- 
barism and  the  hardy  forms  of  early 
national  life  to  our  present  complex 
social  condition.  We  have  particu- 
lary  inquired  into  cases  coming  under 
our  own  observation  in  regard  to  the 
alleged  influence  of  over -work,  and 
have  found  it  a  most  difficult  thing 
to  distinguish  between  it  and  other 
maleficent  agents  which,  on  close  obser- 
vation, were  often  found  to  be  associ- 
ated with  it.  We  do  not  now  refer  to 


the  circumstances  which  almost  always 
attach  themselves  to  mental  fatigue, 
as  sleeplessness,  but  to  those  which 
have  no  necessary  relation  to  them,  as 
vice.  Here  we  have  felt  bound  to 
attribute  the  attack  to  both  causes, 
certainly  as  much  to  the  latter  as  the 
former.  In  some  cases,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  could  not  doubt  that  long 
continued  severe  mental  labour  was 
the  efficient  cause  of  derangement. 
In  a  large  proportion  of  other  cases 
we  satisfied  ourselves  that  over-work 
meant  not  only  mental  strain,  but  the 
anxiety  and  harass  which  arose  out 
of  the  work  in  which  a  student  or 
literary  man  was  engaged.  The  over- 
work connected  with  business,  also 
largely  associated  with  anxiety,  proved 
a  very  tangible  factor  of  insanity. 
Indeed  it  is  always  sure  to  be  a  more 
tangible  factor  of  mental  disease  than 
over-work  from  study,  because  of  the 
much  greater  liability  to  its  invasion 
during  the  business  period  of  brain  life, 
than  the  study  period.  At  Bethlem 
Hospital,  Dr.  Savage  finds  that  there 
are  many  cases  in  which  over-work 
causes  a  break  down,  "  especially  if 
associated  with  worry  and  money 
troubles."  Among  the  women,  the 
cases  are  few  in  number.  In  one, 
where  there  was  probably  hereditary 
tendency,  an  examination,  followed  in 
two  days  by  an  attack  of  insanity, 
may  be  regarded  as  the  exciting  cause. 
Monotonous  work  long  continued  would 
seem  to  exert  an  unfavourable  in- 
fluence on  the  mind.  Letter-sorting, 
short-hand  writing,  and  continuous 
railway  travelling  are  instanced.  If 
diversified,  hard  work  is  much  less 
likely  to  prove  injurious.  During  a 
year  and  a  half  twenty  men  and  eight 
women  were  admitted  whose  attacks 
were  attributed  to  over-work.  The 
employments  of  architect,  surveyor,  ac- 
countant, schoolmaster,  policeman,  and 
bootmaker  were  here  represented.  Seven 
were  clerks,  two  of  whom  were  law- 
writers  ;  two  were  students,  one  being 
"an  Oxford  man  who  had  exhausted 
himself  in  get'ting  a  double  first,  and 
the  other  a  medical  student  preparing 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


137 


for  his  second  college."  Of  the 
women,  five  were  teachers,  one  a  school- 
girl, and  two  dressmakers.  Three 
of  the  teachers  were  in  elementary 
schools,  one  a  governess  and  the  other 
a  teacher  of  music  and  languages. 
If  over-work  alone  did  not,  strictly 
speaking,  cause  the  mental  break- 
down, still  the  concomitants  must  be 
blamed  for  these  melancholy  results. 

A   late   medical    officer    to  Rugby 
School   (Dr.  Farquharson),  in  defend- 
ing that  institution  from  a  charge  of 
injury  in  the   direction  of  which  we 
now   speak,  considers   that   instances 
of  mental  strain  are  more  common  at 
the  universities,  "  for  not  only  are  the 
young  men  at  a  more  sensitive  period 
of  life,  but  they  naturally  feel  that 
to    many    of    them  this  is  the  great 
opportunity — the  great  crisis  of  their 
existence  —  and     that    their    success 
or  failure  will   now  effectually  make 
or  mar  their  career.     Here  the  ele- 
ment  of   anxiety    comes     into    play, 
sleep  is  disturbed,  exercise  neglected, 
digestion    suffers,  and  the   inevitable 
result  follows  of  total  collapse,  from 
which  recovery  is  slow  and   perhaps 
never    complete." — (Lancet  ,  Jan.     1, 
1876.)     He  thinks  he  has  seen  an  in- 
crease of  headaches  and  nervous  com- 
plaints among  poor  children  since  com- 
pulsory attendance  at  Board    Schools 
was   adopted,  and  records  a  warning 
against     too     suddenly     forcing     the 
minds     of      wretchedly  -  feeble,     ill- 
fed     and     ill-housed     children,    and 
against  attempts  to  make  bricks  too 
rapidly   out   of   the   straw   which    is 
placed  in  our  hands. 

The  psychological  mischief  done  by 
excessive  cramming  both  in  some 
schools  and  at  home  is  sufficiently 
serious  to  show  that  the  reckless 
course  pursued  in  many  instances 
ought  to  be  loudly  protested  against. 
As  we  write,  four  cases  come  to  our 
knowledge  of  girls  seriously  injured 
by  this  folly  and  unintentional 
wickedness.  In  one,*  the  brain  is 
utterly  unable  to  bear  the  burden 
put  upon  it,  and  the  pupil  is  removed 
from  school  in  a  highly  excitable 


state ;  in   another,  epileptic  fits  have 
followed  the  host  of  subjects  pressed 
upon   the   scholar;    in   the   third,  the 
symptoms  of  brain  fog   have  become 
so  obvious  that  the  amount  of  school- 
ing   has  been  greatly   reduced  ;    and 
in  a  fourth,  fits  have  been  induced  and 
complete    prostration    of    brain    has 
followed.      These  cases  are  merely  il- 
lustrations of  a  class,  coming  to  hand 
in  one  day,  familiar  to  most  physicians. 
The    enormous    number    of    subjects 
which  are  forced  into  the  curriculum 
of  some  schools  and  are  required  by 
some  professional  examinations,  confuse 
and  distract  the  mind,  and  by  lowering 
its  healthy  tone  often  unfit  it  for  the 
world.  While  insanity  may  not  directly 
result   from  this    stuffing,    and   very 
likely    will    not,    exciting    causes   of 
mental    disorder    occurring   in    later 
life  may  upset  a  brain  which,  had  it 
been  subjected  to  more  moderate  pres- 
sure  would   have   escaped  unscathed. 
Training  in  its  highest  sense  is  for- 
gotten in  the  multiplicity  of  subjects, 
originality   is  stunted  and  individual 
thirst  of    knowledge   overlaid    by    a 
crowd  of   novel  theories  based   upon 
yet  unproved  statements.    Mr.  Brude- 
nell   Carter,  in  his  Influence  of  Edu- 
cation and  Training  in  Preventing  Dis- 
eases of  the  Nervous  System,  speaks  of  a 
large   public   school  in   London,  from 
which  boys  of  ten  to  twelve  years  of  age 
carry  home  tasks  which  would  occupy 
them  till  near  midnight,  and  of  which 
the   rules  and   laws  of   study  are  so 
arranged  as  to  preclude  the  possibility 
of  sufficient  recreation.     The  teacher 
in  a  High  School  says  that  the  host  of 
subjects  on  which   parents  insist  in- 
struction being  given  to  their  children 
is  simply  preposterous,  and  disastrous 
alike  to  health  and  to  real  steady  pro- 
gress in  necessary  branches  of  know- 
ledge.     The    other    day  we   met    an 
examiner   in   the   street   with  a   roll 
of   papers    consisting    of    answers   to 
questions.      He   deplored  the   fashion 
of   the   day;  the  number  of  subjects 
crammed  within  a  few  years  of  grow- 
ing life  ;    the  character  of    the  ques- 
tions which  were  frequently  asked;  and 


138 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


the  requiring  a  student  to  master,  at 
the  peril  of  being  rejected,  scientific 
theories,  and  crude  speculations,  which 
they  would  have  to  unlearn  in  a  year 
or  two.  He  sincerely  pitied  the  un- 
fortunate students.  During  the  last 
year  or  two  the  public  have  been 
startled  by  the  suicides  which  have 
occurred  on  the  part  of  young  men 
preparing  for  examination  at  the 
University  of  London  ;  and  the  press 
has  spoken  out  strongly  on  the  subject. 
Notwithstanding  this  the  authorities 
appear  to  be  disposed  to  increase 
instead  of  diminish  the  stringency  of 
some  of  the  examinations.  The  Lancet 
has  recently  protested  against  this 
course  in  regard  to  the  preliminary 
scientific  M.B.  of  the  London  Uni- 
versity, and  points  out  that  the 
average  of  candidates  who  fail  at  this 
examination  is  already  about  forty  per 
cent,  and  that  these  include  many 
of  the  best  students.  This  further 
raising  of  the  standard  will,  it  is  main- 
tained, make  a  serious  addition  to  the 
labours  of  the  industrious  student  who 
desires  the  M.D.  degree.  Whether 
this  particular  instance  is  or  is  not  a 
fair  example,  we  must  say,  judging 
from  others,  that  it  seems  to  be  thought 
that  the  cubic  capacity  of  the  British 
skull  undergoes  an  extraordinary  in- 
crease every  few  years,  and  that  there- 
fore for  our  young  students  more  sub- 
jects must  be  added  to  fill  up  the 
additional  space. 

The  master  of  a  private  school 
informs  us  that  he  has  proof  of  the 
ill  effects  of  over-work  in  the  fact  of 
boys  being  withdrawn  from  the  keen 
competition  of  a  public  school  career, 
which  was  proving  injurious  to  their 
health,  and  sent  to  him,  that  they 
might  in  the  less  ambitious  atmo- 
sphere of  a  private  school  pick  up 
health  and  strength  again.  He  refers 
to  instances  of  boys  who  had  been 
crammed  and  much  pressed  in  order 
that  they  might  enter  a  certain  form 
or  gain  a  desired  exhibition,  having 
reached  the  goal  successfully,  and  then 
stagnated.  He  says  that  the  too  ex- 
tensive curriculum  now  demanded  ends 


in  the  impossibility  of  doing  the  work 
thoroughly  and  well.  You  must 
either  force  unduly  or  not  advance  as 
you  would  wish  to  do ;  the  former 
does  injury,  and  the  latter  causes 
dissatisfaction. 

Of  mental  stagnation  among  the 
poor  we  have  already  spoken ;  an 
analogous  condition  among  the  well-to- 
do  classes,  not  to  be  confounded  with 
that  of  the  young  lady  already  de- 
scribed as  seen  in  the  London  phy- 
sician's consulting-room,  deserves  a 
passing  observation.  Excessive  acti- 
vity and  excessive  dulness  may  lead 
to  the  same  dire  result.  Hence  both 
conditions  must  be  recognised  as 
factors  in  the  causation  of  mental  dis- 
ease. We  have  said  that  the  indirect 
action  of  the  latter  is  more  powerful 
than  its  direct  action,  but  there  are  no 
doubt  cases  of  insanity  which  arise 
from  the  directly  injurious  influence 
of  intellectual  inactivity.  The  intelli- 
gence is  inert ;  the  range  of  ideas  ex- 
tremely limited ;  the  mind  broods 
upon  some  trivial  circumstance  until  it 
becomes  exaggerated  into  a  delusion; 
the  mind  feeds  upon  itself,  and  is 
hyper-sensitive  and  suspicious,  or  it 
may  become  absorbed  in  some  morbid 
religious  notions  which  at  last  exert  a 
paramount  influence  and  induce  re- 
ligious depression  or  exaltation.  From 
the  immediate  surroundings  of  the 
individual,  whether  in  connection  with 
parental  training  or  from  ecclesiastical 
or  theological  influences,  or  perhaps  a 
solitary  condition  of  life,  there  may 
be  a  dangerously  restricted  area  of 
psychical  activity.  Prejudices  of 
various  kinds  hamper  the  free  play  of 
thought;  the  buoyancy  of  the  man's 
nature  is  destroyed ;  its  elasticity 
broken ;  its  strength  weakened  ;  and 
it  is  in  fine  reduced  to  a  state  in  which 
it  is  a  prey  to  almost  any  assertion 
however  monstrous,  if  placed  before  it 
with  the  solemn  sanctions  which 
from  education,  habit,  or  predilection 
it  is  accustomed  to  reverence.  Fantastic 
scruples  and  religious  delusions  fre- 
quently spring  up  in  this  soil.  Such 
persons  have  been  saved  from  the 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


139 


evils  of  drunkenness  and  vice ;  they 
have  also  been  sheltered  from  worry 
and  excitement,  yet,  to  the  astonish- 
ment of  many,  they  become  the  inmates 
of  a  lunatic  asylum.  They  have  in 
truth  escaped  the  Scylla  of  dissipation 
or  drink,  only  to  be  shipwrecked  on 
the  Charybdis  of  a  dreary  monotony 
of  existence.  On  this  barren  rock  not 
a  very  few  doubtless  perish,  and  if 
parents  they  transmit  to  a  posterity 
deserving  our  sincerest  pity,  mediocre 
brains  or  irritably  susceptible  and 
unstable  nerve  tissue. 

On  the  dangers  arising  from  waves 
of  religious  excitement,  it  would  be 
easy  to  dilate,  but  we  shall  content 
ourselves  with  remarking  that  if  they 
have  been  exaggerated  by  some,  they 
have  been  improperly  ignored  or  denied 
by  others.  They  are  real ;  and  fright- 
ful is  tho  responsibility  of  those  who, 
by  excited  utterances  and  hideous 
caricatures  of  religion,  upset  the  men- 
tal equilibrium  of  their  auditors, 
whether  men,  women,  or  children. 

One  remarkable  feature  of  modern 
life — Spiritualism — has  been  said  to 
produce  an  alarming  amount  of  in- 
sanity, especially  in  America.  It  has 
been  recently  stated  by  an  English 
writer  that  nearly  10,000  persons, 
have  gone  insane  on  the  subject,  and 
are  confined  in  asylums  in  the  United 
States ;  but  careful  inquiry,  made  in 
consequence,  has  happily  disproved 
the  statement,  and  we  learn  that  the 
amount  of  insanity  produced  from  this 
cause  is  almost  insignificant  —  much 
less  than  that  caused  by  religious 
excitement. 

Looking  broadly  at  the  facts  which 
force  themselves  upon  our  attention, 
we  may  say  that  a  study  of  the  re- 
lation between  modern  life  and  in- 
sanity, shows  that  it  is  of  a  many- 
sided  and  complex  character ;  that  the 
rich  and  the  poor  from  different 
causes,  though  certainly  in  one  respect 
the  same  cause,  labour  under  a  large 
amount  of  preventible  lunacy ;  that 
beer  and  gin,  mal-nutrition,  a  dreary 
monotony  of  toil,  muscular  exhaustion, 
domestic  distress,  misery,  and  anxiety, 


account  largely,  not  only  for  the 
number  of  the  poor  who  become  insane 
in  adult  life,  but  who  from  hereditary 
predisposition,  are  born  weak-minded 
or  actually  idiotic  ;  that  among  the 
middle  classes,  stress  of  business, 
excessive  competition,  failures,  and, 
also  in  many  cases,  reckless  and  in- 
temperate living,  occasion  the  attack  ; 
while  in  the  upper  classes  intemperance 
still  works  woe — and  under  this  head 
must  be  comprised  lady  and  gentle- 
men dipsomaniacs,  who  are  not  con- 
fined in  asylums ;  that  while  multi- 
plicity of  subjects  of  study  in  youth 
and  excessive  brain-work  in  after  life 
exert  a  certain  amount  of  injurious 
influence,  under- work,  luxurious  habits, 
undisciplined  wills,  desultory  life,  pro- 
duce a  crop  of  nervous  disorders,  ter- 
minating not  unfrequently  in  insanity. 
In  a  state  of  civilization  like  ours,  it 
must  also  happen  that  many  children 
of  extremely  feeble  mental  as  well  as 
bodily  constitutions  will  be  reared 
who  otherwise  would  have  died.  These 
either  prove  to  be  imbeciles,  or  they 
grow  up  only  to  fall  a  prey  to  the  up- 
setting influence  of  the  cares  and 
anxieties  of  the  world.  A  consider- 
able number  of  insane  persons  have 
never  been  really  whole-minded  people  ; 
there  has,  it  will  be  found  on  careful 
inquiry,  been  always  something  a 
little  peculiar  about  them,  and  when 
their  past  life  is  interpreted  by  the 
attack  which  has  rendered  restraint 
necessary,  it  is  seen  that  there  had 
been  a  smouldering  fire  in  the  consti- 
tution for  a  lifetime,  though  now,  for 
the  first  time,  bursting  forth  into 
actual  conflagration. 

Lastly,  modern  society  comprises  a 
numerous  class  of  persons,  well-mean- 
ing, excitable,  and  morbidly  sensitive. 
Some  of  these  are  always  on  the 
border-land  between  sanity  and  in- 
sanity, and  their  friends  are  sometimes 
tempted  to  wish  that  they  would 
actually  cross  the  line,  and  save  them 
from  constant  harass.  When  they 
do,  it  is  easier  to  make  allowance  for 
them  and  their  vagaries. 

Whatever    uncertainty  there    may 


140 


Modern  Life  and  Insanity. 


attach  to  some  aspects  of  this  inquiry, 
unquestionable  conclusions  have  been 
drawn  ;  and  if  these  only  accord  with 
results  arrived  at  from  other  consider- 
ations, they  are  valuable  as  confirm- 
ing them.  Had  there  appeared  to  be 
among  the  poor  and  ignorant  a  strik- 
ing immunity  from  attacks  of  insanity, 
a  strong  argument  would  have  been 
afforded,  and  would  probably  have 
been  employed,  against  the  extension 
of  education  at  the  present  day  to  the 
working  classes.  Nothing,  however, 
in  our  facts  or  figures  supports  such 
an  anti-progressive  view;  and  if  the 
educated  classes  did  not  sin  against 
their  mental  health  in  so  many  ways, 
they  would  doubtless  compare  more 
favourably  than  they  do,  in  fact  as 
well  as  in  mere  figures,  with  the  un- 
educated poor.  So  again  with  regard 
to  intemperance  and  all  that  it  in- 
volves, in  spite  of  the  difficulty  of  dis- 
criminating between  the  many  fac- 
tors which  often  go  to  make  up  the 
sum  total  of  causes  of  an  attack,  we 
have  no  doubt  of  the  large  influence 
for  mental  evil  exerted  by  drink — 
always  admitting  that  where  the  con- 
stitution has  no  latent  tendency  to 
insanity,  you  may  do  almost  what  you 
like  with  it,  in  this  or  any  other  way, 
without  causing  this  particular  disease. 
A  man  will  break  down  at  his  weak 
point,  be  it  what  it  may. 

Again,  the  lessons  are  taught  of  the 
importance,  not  of  mere  education,  but 
a  real  training  of  the  feelings ;  the 


evil  of  mental  stagnation,  not  simply 
per  se,  but  from  the  train  of  sensual 
degradation  in  one  direction,  and  of 
gloomy  fanaticism  in  the  other,  engen- 
dered, and  the  danger  of  dwelling  too 
long  and  intently  on  agitating  religious 
questions,  especially  when  presented 
in  narrow  and  exclusive  forms  which 
drive  people  either  to  despair  or  to  a 
perilous  exhaltation  of  the  feelings. 
To  true  religious  reformers,  the  physi- 
cian best  acquainted  with  the  causa- 
tion of  mental  disease  will  award  his 
heartiest  approval.  Only  as  the  high 
claims  of  duty,  demanded  from  man 
by  considerations  of  the  dependence 
of  his  work  in  the  world  upon  mental 
health,  of  what  he  owes  to  his  fellow- 
men,  and  of  what  he  owes  to  God,  are 
fulfilled  as  well  as  acknowledged,  will 
civilized  man  benefit  by  his  civiliza- 
tion, as  regards  the  prevention  of 
insanity.  Unpreventible  lunacy  will 
still  exist,  but  a  great  saving  will  be 
effected  for  British  ratepayers  when 
that  which  is  preventible  shall  have 
been  reduced  to  a  minimum  by  the 
widest  extension  of  a  thorough,  but 
not  oppressive  and  too  early  com- 
menced education,  by  the  practical 
application  of  the  ascertained  truths- 
of  physiological  and  medical  science, 
and  by  the  influence  of  a  Christianity, 
deep  in  proportion  to  its  breadth, 
which  shall  really  lay  hold  of  life  and 
conduct,  and  mould  them  in  accord- 
ance with  itself. 

D.  HACK  TUKE. 


141 


A  NARROW  ESCAPE. 


THE  incident  I  am  about  to  relate 
occurred  during  the  Franco-German 
war.  The  letter  in  which  I  gave  an 
account  of  it  never  reached  London, 
and  consequently  was  never  published 
in  the  paper  I  represented  during  the 
campaign  in  France.  I  have  related 
the  story  to  private  friends,  but  it  has 
never  before  appeared  in  print.  My 
reason  for  publishing  it  now  is  that 
it  may  give  people  in  general  some 
idea  of  the  perils  and  dangers  which 
a  special  correspondent  of  a  paper  has 
sometimes  to  go  through  if  he  en- 
deavours to  do  his  duty  towards  his 
employers. 

I  was  with  MacMahon's  army  from 
the  time  it  left  Strassburg  until  the 
battle  of  Worth.  After  that  bloody 
and  hard-fought  engagement  I  was 
taken  prisoner  by  the  Germans,  but 
released  almost  immediately  upon 
giving  my  parole  in  writing  that  I 
would  not  join  the  French  camp  for 
at  least  seven  days.  To  follow  the 
retreating  army  through  the  defiles  of 
the  Vosges  was  almost  impossible ;  all 
the  more  so  as  I  should  have  had  to 
pass  through  the  German  forces,  which 
were  following  up  the  French,  and  to 
which  I  was  not  accredited,  and  my 
orders  were  to  remain  and  accompany 
the  French.  The  carriage,  an  old 
travelling  britska,  which  I  had  bought 
at  Strassburg,  as  well  as  two  old  screws 
of  horses  which  I  had  purchased  at  the 
same  place,  together  with  all  my  per- 
sonal baggage,  and  everything  except 
the  clothes  on  my  back,  were  looted 
by  the  German  camp  followers  after 
the  battle  of  Worth.  To  procure  an- 
other conveyance  either  by  purchase 
or  hire  was  utterly  impossible.  I  had 
therefore  no  choice  left  but  to  start 
walking  to  my  destination,  and  in 
four  days  managed  to  accomplish  the 
forty  miles  between  Worth  and 


Carlsruhe.  The  trip  was  not  a  plea- 
sant one.  The  road  leading  from 
Alsace  into  Germany  was  like  Cheap- 
side  at  high  noon.  There  was  one 
continual  stream  of  carts,  carriages, 
and  ambulances  going  towards  the 
frontier,  and  another  coming  out 
towards  the  army.  The  former  con- 
tained numerous  French  prisoners, 
some  thousands  of  wounded  Germans, 
and  regiments  which  had  suffered  so 
much  at  the  battle  of  Worth  as  to 
be  utterly  unfit  for  service.  The  string 
of  conveyances  coming  from  the  Rhine 
were  filled  with  provisions  of  all  sorts, 
ammunition,  medical  stores,  doctors, 
sisters  of  charity,  a  number  of  recruits 
on  their  way  to  the  front,  and  some  regi- 
ments which  had  not  yet  seen  service, 
and  which  were  pushing  forward  to 
join  their  respective  brigades  in  France. 
As  a  matter  of  course  every  inn  and 
tavern  along  the  whole  road  was  full 
night  and  day.  As  fast  as  one  set  of 
drivers  or  soldiers  vacated  a  place  of 
entertainment,  they  were  succeeded 
by  another  batch  of  their  comrades. 
Untold  gold  would  not  have  procured 
a  bed  for  any  one.  I  slept  four  nights 
on  the  road,  and  on  each  occasion  was 
glad  to  put  up  with  a  little  dirty  straw, 
shaken  down  in  a  corner  of  the  same 
room  where  a  score  or  more  of  German 
boors  were  carousing  over  their  Lager 
beer.  It  is  wonderful  what  three  days 
without  washing  and  three  nights 
sleeping  in  filthy  quarters  will  effect. 
When  I  arrived  at  Carlsruhe,  on  the 
morning  of  the  fifth  day  I  was  so 
covered  with  vermin  from  head  to  toe, 
and  was  otherwise  in  such  a  state  of 
dirt  and  filth,  that  I  was  ashamed  to 
go  into  Grbsse's  Hotel.  I  went  to  the 
baths,  sent  a  note  across  to  the  banker 
on  whom  I  had  a  letter  of  credit,  and 
that  gentleman  very  kindly  sent  one  of 
his  clerks  with  the  money  I  wanted. 


142 


A  Narrow  Escape. 


I  then  had  a  thorough  wash,  had  my 
hair  and  beard  clipped  short,  and 
rubbed  in  with  a  certain  powder,  burnt 
the  clothes  I  had  on  me,  and  sent  to  a 
shop  where  ready-made  garments  were 
to  be  had  to  purchase  others.  Un- 
fortunately I  could  get  nothing  to  fit 
me  except  the  most  impossible  coat 
that  the  mind  of  man  could  conceive. 
It  was  light-grey  in  colour,  a  frockcoat 
as  to  its  shape,  very  short  in  the  waist, 
very  long  in  the  skirt,  and  with  black 
velvet  collar  and  cuffs.  I  note  this 
vestment  particularly,  for,  as  it  will 
presently  be  seen,  it  was  the  cause  of 
much  of  my  future  trouble. 

A  couple  of  days'  rest  at  Carlsruhe, 
two  or  three  hot  baths,  plenty  of  soap, 
and  some  clean  under- linen1  soon  re- 
stored me  to  something  like  comfort. 
On  the  third  day  I  was  able  to  leave 
for  Baden.  Thence  I  went  over  the 
Swiss  frontier  to  Basle,  and  by  that  time, 
as  the  limit  given  by  my  parole  to  the 
Germans  had  expired,  I  crossed  the 
French  frontier,  made  my  way  by  rail 
to  Laon,  was  arrested  there  as  a  German 
spy,  released  again  after  a  few  hours' 
detention,  purchased  a  carriage  and 
horses — the  rail  having  been  cut  by 
order  of  the  French  authorities — to 
replace  those  I  had  lost  at  Worth, 
and  passing  through  Chalons  and 
Epernay  {of  champagne  notoriety), 
arrived  at  Rheims  on  the  afternoon 
of  the  third  day  after  leaving  Basle. 

The  confusion  at  Rheims  I  shall 
never  forget  the  longest  day  I  have  to 
live.  Marshal  MacMahon  was  about 
to  commence  what  afterwards  proved  to 
be  the  retrograde  movement  by  which 
he  hoped  to  afford  assistance  to  Bazaine 
and  the  garrison  at  Metz.  In  and 
about  Rheims  there  were  four  divi- 
sions of  the  French  army,  amounting 
nominally  to  60,000  men.  But  the 
muddle  and  mess  in  which  the  whole 
army  appeared  to  be,  the  utter  want 
of  anything  like  discipline  in  any  por- 
tion of  the  force,  literally  defies  de- 
scription. Officers  and  soldiers  of  all 
ranks  seemed  to  come  and  go  between 
the  camp  and  the  town  how  and  when 
they  pleased.  In  the  camp  a  sentry  was 


to  be  seen  here  and  there ;  but  the 
listless  apathy  of  the  soldiers,  the 
eagerness  with  which  every  individual 
in  the  whole  force  seemed  bent  on 
providing  for  his  own  wants,  utterly 
regardless  of  all  matters  of  duty,  must 
have  been  seen  to  be  believed.  And  if 
I  had  the  pen  of  a  Dickens  or  a 
Thackeray  to  describe  the  state  of  the 
French  camp  that  morning,  my  story 
would  be  simply  looked  upon  as  grossly 
exaggerated. 

And  yet,  as  everybody,  military  and 
civil,  French  or  foreigner,  in  Rheims 
or  in  the  adjacent  camps,  knew  full 
well,  the  day  was  a  most  momentous 
one  for  France.  Notice  had  been  stuck 
up  all  over  the  town  that  at  four  P.M. 
the  last -train  would  take  its  departure 
for  Paris,  and  that  immediately  after 
the  rails  would  be  cut  for  a  consider- 
able distance.  The  Uhlans  of  the 
German  army  had  been  seen  that 
morning  at  Chalons,  which  was  only 
about  a  dozen  miles  distant.  The 
telegraph  wires  had  been  cut  near 
Epernay,  which  was  known  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  the  enemy.  In  the  even- 
ing, and  it  was  already  past  noon,  the 
Marshal  would  commence  his  move- 
ment towards  Metz;  and  after  that 
all  who  remained  in  Rheims  would  do 
so  at  their  own  risk,  as  the  German 
army  was  certain  to  arrive  there 
within  the  next  twenty-four  hours. 

The  scene  at  the  railway  station 
literally  baffled  all  description.  For 
every  possible  seat  in  the  trains,  which 
kept  leaving  every  hour  for  Paris,  there 
were  at  least  fifty  applicants.  The 
better  class  of  citizens  seemed  to  have 
stowed  away  all  their  valuables  in 
small  handbags  or  portmanteaus,  and 
were  content  to  fly  with  their  families, 
leaving  their  houses  to  the  mercy  of 
the  invaders.  Not  so,  however,  with 
the  workmen  and  labouring  people. 
They  seemed  to  think  that  not  only 
were  the  railway  officials  bound  to  find 
room  for  them  in  the  train,  but  also 
for  their  beds,  bedding,  chairs,  tables, 
chests  of  drawers,  cooking-pots,  spades, 
hammers,  and  in  many  cases  all  the 
contents  of  their  shops.  I  saw  one  old 


A  Narrow  Escape. 


143 


woman  perfectly  furious  because  the 
chief  of  the  station  told  her  it  was 
utterly  impossible  for  the  train  to  carry 
away  two  milch  cows  and  a  calf  which 
belonged  to  her.  Another  individual 
was  using  the  worst  of  bad  language 
because  the  railway  officials  declined 
to  book  a  horse  and  cart  which  he 
wanted  to  take  with  him  out  of  reach 
of  the  Germans.  When  to  scenes  like 
this  is  added  the  fact,  that — with  that 
want  of  forethought  which  seems  to 
have  been  the  curse  of  the  French 
throughout  the  war  —  not  a  single 
extra  official  or  additional  ticket-clerk 
had  been  added  to  the  station  on  such 
an  emergency,  it  may  easily  be  con- 
ceived how  everything  went  wrong, 
and  nothing  seemed  to  go  right. 

As  regards  the  want  of  discipline 
and  inexplicable  laisser  oiler  of  the 
French  army  at  this  supreme  moment 
of  the  nation's  destiny,  I  may  men- 
tion a  circumstance  of  which  I  was 
eye-witness  on  that  day  at  the  camp 
near  Rheims.  A  splendid  hussar  regi- 
ment— if  I  mistake  not  it  was  the  Eighth 
Hussars — joined  Marshal  MacMahon's 
army  that  morning.  They  had  come 
by  forced  marches  all  the  way  from 
Dijon,  and  both  men  and  horses  were 
greatly  fatigued  when  they  reached 
their  destination.  In  an  English  or  a 
German  cavalry  regiment  not  a  soul 
would  have  been  allowed  to  quit  the 
lines  of  the  corps  until  every  one  of  the 
850  horses  had  been  cleaned,  watered, 
fed,  and  their  backs  inspected.  In 
other  words,  from  the  colonel  to  the 
junior  cornet,  and  from  the  senior 
sergeant-major  to  the  youngest 
trumpeter,  one  and  all  would  have  had 
to  remain  at  "  stables  "  until  every 
charger  in  the  regiment  had  been  seen 
to  and  cared  for.  This  would  have 
lasted  upwards  of  an  hour.  But  not 
so  in  the  French  service.  The  horses 
had  been  hardly  picketed  when,  with 
one  single  exception,  namely,  the  officer 
of  the  day,  every  one  of  the  commis- 
sioned ranks  betook  themselves  off  to 
breakfast,  and  the  men  .very  quickly 
followed  the  example  set  by  their 
superiors.  I  will  venture  to  say  that, 


in  the  whole  of  that  regiment,  there 
was  not  a  single  horse  properly  in- 
spected that  morning.  Some  had  their 
saddles  taken  off,  some  had  them  left 
on.  Here  and  there  a  trooper,  perhaps 
one  of  every  twenty,  might  be  seen 
going  through  a  make-believe  cere- 
mony of  languidly  rubbing  his  horse 
with  a  currycomb.  Some  horses  were 
fed  before  they  were  watered ;  others 
were  watered  before  they  were  fed. 
They  were  all  encrusted  with  mud  and 
dust  about  their  legs,  hocks,  manes,  and 
tails.  The  grey  horses  looked  a  sort 
of  dirty  brown;  the  bays  appeared 
powdered  with  grey  hairs.  The  single 
officer  who  remained  in  the  lines  sat 
upon  one  of  the  baggage  carts  smoking 
a  cigar.  In  short,  from  first  to  last  I 
never  witnessed  such  a  decided  case  of 
irregular  conduct  amongst  regular 
troops.  And  yet  this  was  one  of  the 
finest  cavalry  regiments  of  the  French 
service.  It  had  not  gone  through  any 
portion  of  the  campaign,  but  had  just 
arrived  from  provincial  quarters,  and 
had  joined  the  army  in  the  field  at  a 
moment  when  the  efficiency  of  every 
man  and  every  horse  was  a  matter  of 
vital  interest. 

As  evening  approached,  and  the 
time  for  the  departure  of  the  last 
train  to  Paris  drew  near,  matters  be- 
came more  and  more  confused.  How 
that  train  ever  got  off,  leaving  as  it 
did  at  the  railway  station  some  two 
or  three  thousand  persons  who  were 
anxious  to  get  away,  was  always  a 
matter  of  mystery  to  me.  But  it  took 
its  departure  not  more  than  an  hour 
after  the  appointed  time,  leaving 
Rheims  to  await  the  coming  of  the 
German  army  on  the  morrow.  Mac- 
Mahon's army  marched  out  on  the 
road  to  Metz  about  four  P.M.,  and,  not 
wishing  to  be  mixed  up  more  than  was 
needful  with  the  troops,  I  took  my 
departure  a  little  later,  going  by 
another  route  to  a  village  some  ten 
miles  from  Rheims,  where  I  slept  that 
night,  and  the  following  evening 
reached  the  small  town  of  Mouson, 
where  I  remained  twenty-four  hours, 
and  then,  wishing  to  get  more  exact 


144 


A  Narrow  Escape. 


information  as  to  the  movements  of 
the  Marshal  and  his  army,  drove  to 
Sedan,  a  small,  fortified  town,  which, 
some  ten  days  later,  was  the  scene  of 
the  celebrated  battle  which  may  be 
said  to  have  crushed  the  French  nation 
and  troops. 

I    found   Sedan    full   of    staff    and 
commissariat  officers,  several  of  whom 
I  had  known  at  Strassburg,  and  others 
that  I  had  been  acquainted  with  a  few 
years  before  in  Algiers.     The  colonel 
who  commanded  the  "place"  was  an 
old   Parisian   acquaintance.      He   re- 
ceived  me   most   kindly — as,  indeed, 
officers  of   the  regular  French   army 
always  do  receive  strangers — gave  me 
all   the   information   I   required,    en- 
dorsed   my   Foreign    Office    passport, 
entertained  me  very  hospitably  at  an 
excellent  dejeuner,  and  sent  me  on  my 
way  rejoicing,  recommending  me  to  go 
to  a  certain  village  in  the  valley  of 
the  Meuse,  where  I  should  be  pretty 
certain  on  the  following  morning  to 
meet  with  MacMahon's  head- quarters. 
I  returned  to  the  small  cabaret  out- 
side the  walls,  where  I  had  left  my 
carriage  and  horses,  and  while  paying 
for  what  the  latter  had  consumed  was 
not  a  little   astonished  at  the   surly 
insolence   with   which   the   people   of 
the  small  inn  spoke  to  me.    My  coach- 
man, who  was  a  German-Swiss,  told 
me  that  he  had  been  accused  of  being 
a  Prussian  spy,  and  that  the  people  of 
the  inn,  as  well  as  their  neighbours, 
declared  that  the  commandant  de  place 
must  be  a  traitor  to  France  if  he  did 
not  imprison  me  for  daring  to  come 
near  a  French  garrison ;  intimating  at 
the  same  time  that  they  were  perfectly 
certain  that  I  was  no  Englishman,  but 
a  spy  of  Bismarck's.     Knowing,  how- 
ever, that  at  this  time  the  French  in 
general   were    suffering  greatly  from 
"Prussian   spy   on   the   brain,"    and 
feeling  certain  that  the  commandant's 
endorsement   of    my   passport   would 
see  me   through  any  trouble,  I  paid 
little   attention    to   the   man's   fears. 
The  horses  were  put  to,  and  I  started 
on  my  journey,  which,  I  very   soon 
had  good  reason  to  fear  would  be  the 


last  one  I  should  ever  undertake  on 
this  side  of  the  grave. 

We  had  proceeded  about  four  miles 
from  Sedan,  when  suddenly,  at  a  sharp 
turn   of   the  road,  we   came   upon   a 
body   of    men   drawn   up   across   the 
latter.     They  were  armed  with  mus- 
kets, wore  military  pouches,  and  were 
dressed  in  a  sort  of  irregular  uniform, 
by  which  I  knew  them  to  be  Francs- 
tireurs,  that  most  undisciplined  body 
of  undisciplined  troops  which   did  so 
much  harm  to  their  own  cause  during 
the  whole  campaign.     There  were,  as 
nearly  as  I  could  judge,  some  fifty  or 
sixty  of   them.     They  had  been  evi- 
dently  waiting    for    us.     They    sur- 
rounded  the   carriage   in  a   moment, 
and,  with  frantic  yells,  among  which 
the   only  words   to   be   distinguished 
were,  "  Le  sacre  espion  Prussien  !  "  they 
pulled  me  on  to  the  road,  bound  my 
hands  with  cords,  and,  had  their  arms 
been   loaded,    I    believe    they   would 
there  and  then  have  shot  me.    I  asked 
them  where  their  officers  were,  but  in 
reply  they    only   vented   on   me   the 
foulest    abuse,    saying   they   had    no 
officers,   and    that   when    Frenchmen 
caught  a  Prussian  spy  they  knew  how 
to  treat  him.     Why  or  wherefore  they 
did   not  touch  my  coachman — whose 
accent     betrayed     very    plainly     his 
German  origin — I  never  could    make 
out.     He  was  allowed  to   remain  on 
his  driving-seat,  where  he   sat   abso- 
lutely green  with  fear.     In  the  mean- 
time, the  first  excitement  having  sub- 
sided, about  ten  of  them  formed  them- 
selves into  what  they  were  pleased  to 
call    a    conseil    de    guerre,    and    pro- 
ceeded to  try  me  for  what  they  had 
already  fully  determined  in  their  own 
minds   I   was    guilty  of,   namely,    of 
being  a  Prussian  spy. 

I  asked  again  where  their  officers 
were,  and  whether  I  could  speak  to 
any  of  them ;  but  they  answered,  with 
imprecations,  that  there  were  no 
officers  present,  that  I  was  a  Prussian 
spy,  and  ought  to  be  shot  at  once.  I 
was  buffeted,  knocked  down  in  the 
most  cowardly  manner,  and  kicked 
when  on  the  ground.  When  I  asked 


A  Narrow  Escape. 


145 


to  be  taken  back  to  Sedan,  that  the 
commandant  de  place  might  judge  my 
case,  I  was  told  that  the  commandant 
was  like  the  rest  of  the  French  army — 
a  traitor ;  and  one  ruffian,  who  was 
even  more  ruffianly  than  his  fellows, 
seized  his  musket  by  the  muzzle,  and 
declared  that,  if  I  spoke  again,  he 
would  brain  me  with  the  butt. 

I  need  hardly  say  that  the  so-called 
trial  was  the  veriest  farce  ever  en- 
acted under  that  name.  The  unfor- 
tunate grey  coat  with  the  black  velvet 
collar  was  declared  by  one  of  my 
judges  to  be  of  German  make.  I  was 
asked  where  I  got  it,  and  when  I  told 
them  it  had  been  purchased  at  Carls- 
ruhe,  a  regular  howl  was  set  up,  as  if 
I  had  avowed  myself  to  be  an  intimate 
friend  of  Bismarck.  The  very  fact  of 
having  in  my  possession  a  coat  that 
was  purchased  in  Germany  was  deemed 
sufficient  proof  of  my  being  a  German 
and  a  spy.  When  I  offered  to  show 
them  my  papers,  and  declared  that  I 
was  an  Englishman,  with  an  English 
passport,  they  yelled  at  me  in  de- 
rision. One  dirty-looking  miscreant 
came  forward  and  said  he  could  speak 
English  very  well,  and  would  soon  find 
out  whether  or  not  my  tale  was  true. 
He  addressed  me  in  some  jargon  which 
sounded  like  English,  but  of  which 
I  could  make  no  sense,  and  in  which, 
except  the  words,  "You  speak  very 
well,  Englishman,"  there  was  no  mean- 
ing whatever.  However,  I  answered 
him  in  my  own  language,  thinking 
that,  by  doing  so,  I  should  at  any 
rate  raise  a  doubt  in  his  mind.  But, 
to  my  amazement,  no  sooner  had  I 
answered  him  than  he  turned  round 
to  his  companions  and  declared  I  was 
a  German,  and  had  spoken  to  him  in 
that  tongue.  This  seemed  quite 
enough,  not  merely  to  convince  the 
rabble — for  they  had  already  been 
so — but  it  was  more  than  enough  to 
make  them  declare  their  sentence. 
"2  mortf  a  mort /"  went  round  the 
circle,  and  I  was  then  and  there  con- 
demned to  death.  I  was  taken  to  a 
dead  wall,  some  ten  yards  off,  put  up 
with  my  back  against  it,  twelve  men 
were  ordered  to  load  their  muskets 

No.  218.— VOL.  xxxvn. 


there  and  then,  two  were  told  off  to 
give  me  the  coup  de  grace,  should  I 
require  it ;  and,  as  a  finale  to  my  sen- 
tence, one  of  the  scoundrels  produced 
a  watch,  and  told  me  they  would  give 
me  ten  minutes  to  prepare  for  death. 

In  the  course  of  a  not  uneventful 
life  I  have  passed  through  some  mo- 
ments which  were  far  from  pleasant. 
But  in  all  my  experiences  nothing 
ever  equalled,  and  I  hope  nothing 
ever  will  equal,  the  first  few  minutes 
of  that  time  which  they  told  me  re- 
mained between  me  and  death.  To 
be  shot  with  no  more  ceremony  than  a 
mad  dog,  and  in  all  probability  my 
fate  never  to  be  heard  of  by  fritnds 
at  home,  seemed  the  hardest  of  hard 
lines.  I  have  often  heard  how,  un- 
der similar  circumstances,  a  man's 
whole  life  passes  in  review  before 
him.  I  cannot  say  that  this  was  my 
experience.  My  feelings  were  almost 
too  bitter  for  my  ideas  to  form  them- 
selves into  anything  like  shape.  I 
had  faced  death  more  than  once  in 
my  life,  and  had  not  on  such  occasions 
shown  more  cowardice  than  most  men. 
But  to  die  on  the  road-side,  in  an  out- 
of-the-way  corner  of  France,  murdered 
by  a  pack  of  bloodthirsty  ruffians, 
without  even  a  fellow  countryman 
near  me  who  could  tell  those  I  had 
left  behind  the  whereabouts  of  my 
grave,  seemed  indeed  a  hard  fate. 

With  some  people,  and  I  confess 
myself  to  be  one  of  the  number,  the 
greater  the  dilemma  in  which  they  are 
placed,  the  more  certain  are  they  to 
invent  some  loophole  by  which  to 
escape.  Five  out  of  the  allotted  ten 
minutes  had  already  passed,  when  a 
thought  struck  me  to  try  a  plan, 
which  I  put  into  immediate  execution . 
"  Voyczj  messieurs"  I  called  out,  "you 
have  condemned  me  to  death ;  but 
according  to  the  laws  of  France  not 
even  an  assassin  is  executed  without 
seeing  a  priest.  I  therefore  ask  you. 
au  nom  de  la  France  et  de  la  justice  " 
(with  Frenchmen  you  must  always  use 
high-sounding  words  if  you  want  to 
get  round  them),  "to  send  for  M.  le 
Cure  of  the  nearest  Commune,  and 
let  me  see  him  before  I  die.'' 

L 


140 


A  Narrow  Escape. 


The  attempt  was  a  hazardous  one, 
and  might  have  ended — as  it  certainly 
would  have  done  with  the  Commu- 
nards of  Belleville  or  Montmartre — 
by  a  curtailment  of  the  five  minutes 
which  remained,  or  which  I  believed 
remained,  between  me  and  eternity. 
However,  like  many  desperate  at- 
tempts, it  was  successful.  A  dozen  or 
so  of  my  captors  whispered  together 
among  themselves,  and  then,  turning 
round,  exclaimed,  "  C'est  juste  !  c'est 
bien  juste  ;  il  a  le  droit  de  voir  un  pretre 
avant  de  mourir.  Envoyez  chercker  M.  le 
Cure  !  "  And  to  search  for  the  parish 
priest  a  couple  of  men  started  off  in 
different  directions. 

As  may  be  imagined,  I  was  not  a 
little  pleased  at  this  reprieve.  In  any 
case  it  would  give  me  time  to  collect 
my  thoughts ;  and  there  was  every 
chance  of  the  priest  having  some  influ- 
ence over  the  Franc -tireurs  and  per- 
suading them  to  allow  of  my  being 
taken  before  the  regular  civil  or 
military  authorities. 

Few  of  my  London  acquaintances 
would,  if  they  could  have  been  brought 
to  that  dead  wall,  have  recognised, 
in  the  dirty,  dusty,  half-stripped 
vagabond  that  sat  there,  their  gene- 
rally well-dressed  friend.  My  cap- 
tors had  taken  from  me — and  I  have 
never  seen  it  from  that  day  to  this — 
the  light-grey  coat  with  the  black 
velvet  collar  that  I  had  bought  at 
Oarlsruhe.  My  waistcoat  had  also 
disappeared.  My  captors  had  divested 
me  of  my  shoes,  in  order,  I  suppose, 
to  insure  my  not  running  away.  My 
billycock  hat  lay  by  my  side,  and  my 
fall  and  rollings  in  the  dust  had  given 
me  an  appearance  which,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,  was  far  from  cleanly.  In 
short,  I  looked  altogether  much  more 
like  one  of  those  houseless  creatures 
that  are  to  be  seen  of  an  evening 
waiting  for  admittance  into  the  casual 
ward  of  the  workhouse  than  like  the 
well-to-do  correspondent  of  a  pros- 
perous English  paper. 

The  time  passed  on,  and  M.  le  Cure 
did  not  arrive.  My  captors  began  to 
growl  and  grumble,  and  in  more  than 
one  quarter  I  heard  the  ominous 


words,  il  faut  en  finir,  muttered  in 
a  tone  which  left  no  doubt  of  their 
meaning. 

All  at  once  a  new  figure  appeared 
on  the  scene.  It  was  an  old  man, 
who,  by  his  belt  and  the  gun  under 
his  arm,  was  evidently  the  Garde 
Champetre  of  the  village,  and  on  whose 
blouse  the  red  ribbon  of  the  legion  of 
honour  showed  that  he  had  served  in 
the  army.  I  accosted  the  old  fellow 
with  a  civil  salutation,  and  told  him 
that  I  could  see  he  had  been  a  soldier, 
and  that  he  probably  could  perceive 
that  I  also  had  once  belonged  to  the 
profession  of  arms.  The  old  fellow 
brightened  up  in  an  instant,  and  said 
yes,  that  it  was  very  evident  I  had 
served ;  although,  how  he  came  to 
this  conclusion  I  was  at  a  loss  to 
understand. 

"  Perhaps,"  I  said  to  him,  "  you 
served  with  my  compatriots  in  the 
Crimea?"  (He  was  far  too  old  to 
have  done  so,  but  it  is  always  well  to 
flatter  a  Frenchman.) 

"  Oui,  monsieur,"  he  replied  ;  "fai 
serve  en  Crimee  avec  vos  braves  com- 
patriots." 

"And,"  said  I,  "you  perhaps  learnt 
their  language  ? " 

"  Mais  oui,  monsieur,"  he  replied, 
"  I  can  speak  your  language  a  little." 
"And  you  can  read  it1?"  I  said, 
giving  him  at  the  same  time  a  look 
as  I  put  to  him  what  lawyers  would 
call  "  a  leading  question. " 

The  old  fellow  seemed  to  understand 
me  at  once,  and  replied  that  he  could 
read  English  very  well. 

"Then,"  said  I,  motioning  to  him 
to  take  my  Foreign-Office  passport  out 
of  my  pocket,  "  will  you  have  the 
goodness  to  read  these  documents,  and 
to  inform  ces  braves  messieurs  that  I  am 
not  a  Prussian,  and  that  I  am  not  a 
spy ;  that  I  am  an  English  officer  of 
rank  (I  thought  it  better  to  colour  the 
picture  as  highly  as  possible),  travel- 
ling in  France  to  witness  how  brave 
Frenchmen  defend  their  native  soil, 
and  how  these  brave  men,  the  Franc- 
tireurs,  are  always  ready  to  die  for 
their  country." 

The  old.  fellow  took  my  passport  in 


Valentines  Day,  1873. 


147 


his  hand,  but  I  am  afraid  that  when 
he  said  he  could  read  our  language  at 
all  he  had  somewhat  economised  the 
truth.  He  held  the  document  in  his 
hand  upside  down,  gazing  at  it  for 
about  a  minute.  He  then,  with  a 
suddenness  which  astonished  me  not 
a  little,  undid  the  cord  which  bound 
my  hands,  clapped  my  hat  on  my  head, 
and,  exclaiming  in  a  loud  tone,  "  C'est 
vrai,  c'est  vrai,  monsieur  est  un  officier 
Anglais,  un  colonel  tres  distingue" 
hurried  me  to  the  carriage,  which 
was  luckily  only  a  few  yards  off, 
bundled  me  in,  and,  exclaiming  to 
the  coachman,  "  Allom,  cocker  •  fouettez, 
fouettez  !  ' '  sprang  on  the  box  himself, 
and  in  less  time  than  I  can  take  to 
describe  it,  we  were  tearing  along  the 
road  at  full  speed,  before  my  captors 
had  recovered  their  astonishment  at 


the  old  man's  audacity.  Some  of 
them  ran  after  us  for  a  short  distance, 
and  two  or  three  of  those  who  had 
loaded  their  muskets  for  the  purpose 
of  shooting  me  fired  after  us  as  we 
sped  on  our  way.  Even  then  I  had 
a  narrow  escape  from  these  blood- 
thirsty ruffians.  One  of  their  balls 
went  near  enough  to  my  head  to  make 
a  hole  in  the  crown  of  my  billycock, 
which  is  to  this  day  preserved  by  a 
friend  in  Brussels  as  a  relic  of  the 
war. 

The  old  Garde  Champetre  went  on 
with  me  to  Mouson,  where  I  had 
the  pleasure  of  getting  five  hundred 
francs  on  my  letter  of  credit,  and 
making  him  accept  the  same.  If 
ever  one  man  by  his  presence  of  mind 
saved  the  life  of  another,  that  veteran 
saved  mine. 

M.  LAING  MEASON. 


VALENTINE'S  DAY,  1873. 

(An  unpublished  poem.) 

Oh  !  I  wish  I  were  a  tiny  browny  bird  from  out  the  south, 
Settled  among  the  alder-holts,  and  twittering  by  the 
stream  ; 

I  would  put  my  tiny  tail  down,  and  put  up  my  tiny  mouth, 
And  sing  my  tiny  life  away  in  one  melodious  dream. 

I  would  sing  about  the  blossoms,  and  the  sunshine  and 

the  sky, 

And  the  tiny  wife  I  meant  to  have  in  such  a  cosy  nest  ; 
And  if  some  one  came  and  shot  me  dead,  why  then  I 

could  but  die, 
With  my  tiny  life  and  tiny  song  just  ended  at  their  best. 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 


148 


GERMAN    UNIVERSITIES. 


IN  a  former  article  I  endeavoured  to 
describe  the  schools  of  Germany,  com- 
pared them  with  those  of  England, 
and  pointed  out  the  features  in  which 
I  thought  that  the  German  scholastic 
system  was  superior  to  our  own.  I 
then  spoke  of  several  different  kinds 
of  school — the  Gymnasium,  the  Real- 
schule,  the  Blirger-schule,  and  the 
Gewerbe-schule,  but  directed  my 
chief  attention  to  the  Gymnasium,  or 
Classical  school,  which  still  enjoys  the 
highest  estimation,  and  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  preparing  boys  for  the 
universities ;  ;>  nd  which  is,  therefore, 
the  only  road  to  the  learned  professions 
and  the  service  of  the  state. 

I  come  now  to  a  subject  of  greater 
difficulty  as  well  as  interest;  for 
whatever  differences  may  exist  between 
the  schools  of  Germany  and  England, 
they  seem  unimportant  when  compared 
with  those  which  distinguish  a  German 
from  an  English  university.  Differences 
so  fundamental  and  essential,  that  it 
seems  strange  that  they  should  be 
called  by  the  same  name. 

"Whatever  opinion  a  man  may  have 
formed  of  the  German  universities, 
whether  he  sides  with  their  enthusiastic, 
and  sometimes  fanatical  admirers,  or 
their  hardly  less  zealous  opponents,  he 
cannot  deny  that  they  are  deserving 
of  our  most  earnest  consideration. 
Whether  the  waters  which  flow  from 
them  seem  to  us  sweet  or  bitter,  we 
know  that  they  flow  in  abundance, 
that  they  are  extremely  potent  in  their 
effects,  whether  for  good  or  evil,  and 
that  they  find  their  way  into  every 
channel  by  which  the  streams  of  specu- 
lation and  knowledge  are  conveyed  to 
the  minds  of  the  present  generation.  No 
man  of  any  country,  in  the  present 
day,  can  advance  far  along  the  path  of 
any  science,  without  accepting,  will- 
ingly or  unwillingly,  the  aid  of  a 
German  guide ;  and  our  most  ortho- 


dox divines,  as  well  as  our  most 
enthusiastic  sceptics  and  pessimists, 
seek  the  weapons  of  their  warfare  in 
the  German  armoury.  The  tables  of 
our  classical  scholars,  historians,  and 
physicists,  groan  under  the  weight  of 
German  editions  and  German  treatises ; 
our  grammars  have  been  completely 
remodelled  on  the  German  pattern, 
and  our  lexicons  and  dictionaries  are, 
for  the  most  part,  compilations  from 
German  sources.  Even  our  soldiers 
look  to  "the  spectacled  nation"  as  the- 
best  teachers  of  military  science.  It 
is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the- 
Germans  are  at  present  acting  the  part 
of  pioneers  in  every  advance  of  the 
great  army  of  science.  Nor  is  it  only 
in  England  that  this  remarkable  fact 
is  recognised.  "  A  little  German  uni- 
versity," says  Renan,  "  with  its  awk- 
ward professors  and  starving  Privat- 
docenten,  does  more  for  science  than 
all  the  ostentatious  wealth  of  Oxford." 
If  we  might  substitute  "  advance  of 
science  "  in  this  sweeping  sentence,  no 
one,  I  think  would  venture  to  deny 
it ;  though  many  would  maintain  that 
this,  with  all  its  importance,  is  not 
the  only  object  of  a  university. 

It  is  not  altogether  out  of  place, 
in  speaking  of  the  German  universities, 
to  refer  to  the  origin  of  universities  in 
general,  because  the  former  have  pre- 
served so  much  of  the  original  type. 
The  university,  which  in  most 
countries  is  now  regarded  as  an  insti- 
tution of  the  state,  was  originally  of 
the  nature  of  a  private  school.  The 
natural  impulse  in  the  heart  of  man  to 
display  his  knowledge  and  diffuse  his 
opinions,  induced  the  great  scholars  of 
the  middle  ages  to  become  teachers, 
and  in  those  days  teachers  were  of 
necessity  lecturers.  Their  fame 
attracted  students  from  all  quarters 
of  the  world,  and  the  presence  of 
hearers,  again,  was  a  powerful  attrac- 


German  Universities. 


149 


tion  to  teachers.  The  University  of 
Paris,  which  arose  in  this  way  as  early 
as  the  eleventh  century,  was  the 
model  of  the  German  universities, 
and  the  original  form  has  been  pre- 
served with  singularly  little  change  to 
the  present  day.  The  students  who 
thronged  to  Paris  from  all  parts  of 
Europe  were  classed  according  to  their 
nationality,  as  "  the  French,"  "  the 
English"  (which  appellation  included 
the  Germans),  "the  Normans,"  and 
"the  Picards."  Each  nation  chose 
its  own  Proctor,  and  the  four  Proctors, 
with  a  Rector  at  their  head,  governed 
the  whole  academical  body.  Originally 
there  was  but  one  Faculty,  that  of 
"Arts;"  but  as  the  sciences  of  Law 
and  Medicine  grew  in  importance,  the 
Students  of  Theology,  Law  and  Medi- 
cine, formed  separate  Corporations  or 
Faculties;  although  the  Faculty  of 
Arts  retained,  even  then,  some  of  its 
ancient  privileges,  of  which  the  new 
Corporations  could  only  partake  by 
graduating  in  Arts  also,  as  "  Masters 
of  Arts."  Such,  in  the  main,  was  the 
form  assumed  by  the  first  German 
University,  that  of  Prague,  in  1348. 
Others  were  founded  at  Heidelberg 
(1386),  Cologne  (1388),  Erfurt  (1391), 
Wiirzbuig  (1403),  Leipsic  (1409), 
Kostock  (1419),  Greifswalde  (1456), 
Freiburg  (1457),  Treves  (1472), 
Tubingen  (1477),  and  Frankfort-on- 
the-Oder  (1506),  which  was  the  last 
University  founded  before  the  Refor- 
mation. The  custom  of  living  in 
Colleges  (Bursae),  which  the  Germans 
had  adopted  from  the  French,  gener- 
ally prevailed  down  to  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  has  partially  maintained 
itself  among  the  Roman  Catholics 
down  to  the  present  time. 

The  first  Protestant  university  was 
founded  by  Philip  of  Hesse  at  Marburg 
in  1527,  and  received  a  constitution  in 
accordance  with  the  free  spirit  of  the 
new  era,  which  enabled  the  Medical 
and  Philosophical  Faculties  to  emanci- 
pate themselves  from,  ecclesiastical 
control.  The  sovereign  himself  became 
Rector  of  the  Marburg  university,  and 
personally  interested  himself  in  its 


welfare.  Universities  of  a  similar 
character  were  successively  founded  at 
Konigsberg  (1543),  Jena  (1558),  Kiel 
(1665),  and  Halle  (1694),  whichlast  is 
distinguished  as  being  the  first  at 
which  the  Professors  enjoyed  the  full 
Lehrfreiheit  (or  full  liberty  of  expres- 
sing their  opinion  on  the  subject  of  their 
lectures),  and  were  allowed  to  use  the 
German  language,  by  which  the  non- 
academical  world  was  drawn  into 
the  sphere  of  their  influence.  The 
University  of  Breslau  was  founded  in 
1702,  that  of  Gottingen  in  1737, 
Berlin  in  1809,  and  Bonn  in  1818. 

There  are  now  2 1  universities  in  the 
German  Empire  with  1,250  Professors 
and  somewhat  more  than  17,000 
students.  Of  the  German  Universities 
in  other  countries,  7  are  in  Austria, 
with  676  Professors  and  7,700 
students ;  4  in  Switzerland,  with  230 
Professors  and  1091  students,  and  one 
in  the  Baltic  Provinces  of  Russia,  with 
66  Professors  and  874  students. 

The  salaries  of  the  Professors  in 
ordinary  range  from  120/.  to  4502.,  ex- 
clusive of  fees.  In  the  case  of  very 
distinguished  men  they  rise  to  5007.  or 
even  600/.  per  annum. 

Referring  to  the  amount  expended 
on  the  universities,  Mr.  Gladstone  in 
a  recent  speech  at  Nottingham,  says ; 
"  I  think  about  70,000/.  is  the  sum 
expended  by  the  Germans  and  (he 
Government  of  Northern  Germany  in 
producing  that  which  is  absolutely 
necessary  in  order  to  give  efficiency  to 
the  higher  education  of  the  country." 
I  do  not  know  what  "the  Government 
of  Nortlwn  Germany ' '  exactly  means, 
but  Prussia  alone  spends  5,343,000 
marks  (267,150/.)  a  year  on  her  uni- 
versities ;  and  the  extraordinary  ex- 
penses of  the  present  year  amount  to 
3,000,000  marks  (150,000*.),  chiefly  for 
new  university  buildings.  The  total 
annual  sum  expended  for  educational 
purposes  in  Prussia  is  38,068,000 
marks  (1,903,400/.),  and  the  minister 
Falk  asks  for  an  additional  grant  of 
12,000,000  marks  (600,0007.). 

The  German  University  consists  : — 

I.    Of    the     Ordinary     Professors, 


150 


German  Universities. 


appointed  by  Royal  patent  and  paid  by 
Government ;  the  Extraordinary  Pro- 
fessors, named  by  the  king's  minister, 
who  are  not  entitled  to  any  salary,  but 
often  receive  a  small  one ;  and  the 
Privatim  docentes,  who  derive  their 
Licentia  docendi  from  the  Faculty  to 
which  they  belong,  and  depend  on  fees 
alone. 

II.  Of   the     various  directors    and 
officers   of  the  institutions  connected 
with    the    university — the   museums, 
observatories,      anatomical     theatres, 
laboratories,  &c. 

III.  Of  the  matriculated  students. 

IV.  Of  the  academical  police,  and 
the  inferior    officials,    as    secretaries, 
quaestors,  bedells,  &c. 

The  Professors  and  students  are 
divided  into  the  four  Faculties  of 
Theology,  Jurisprudence,  Medicine, 
and  Philosophy  (Arts),  under  which 
last  head  are  included,  not  merely 
Mental  and  Moral  Philosophy,  but 
the  Ancient  and  Modern  Languages, 
History,  Archaeology,  Mathematics,  the 
Physical  Sciences,  the  Fine  Arts, 
Political  Philosophy,  Political  Economy 
and  Diplomacy,  &c.  The  Minister  of 
Education  is  represented  at  some  uni- 
versities by  a  resident  "  Curator  and 
Plenipotentiary,"  who  acts  as  a  sort  of 
resident  Chancellor,  and  is  the  connect- 
ing link  between  the  university  and  the 
government.  The  immediate  govern- 
ment of  the  university  is  carried  on  by 
a  Senate,  composed  in  some  cases  of  all 
the  ordinary  Professors,  in  others  of  a 
certain  number  chosen  by  and  from 
them,  with  an  annually  appointed 
Sector  at  their  head.  The  Senate 
generally  consists  of  the  Rector,  the 
Ex-rector,  the  four  Deans  of  Faculty, 
some,  or  all,  of  the  ordinary  Professors, 
and  the  University  Jydge.  The 
Rector  is  chosen  by  the  ordinary  Pro- 
fessors, and  is  president  of  the  Senate. 
He  still  retains  the  old  title  of 
"  Magnificence,"  and  derives  a  salary 
from  a  percentage  on  fees  for  matri- 
culation, and  the  granting  of  testi- 
monials and  degrees.  The  University 
Judge  is  appointed  by  the  Minister 
of  Education,  and  transacts  the  legal 


business  of  the  university.  He  is  not 
a  Professor  but  a  practical  lawyer, 
whose  office  it  is  to  see  that  all  the 
transactions  of  the  Senate  are  in 
accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  land. 
He  is  also  the  connecting  link  between 
the  academical  authorities  and  the 
town  police. 

The  courses  of  lectures  (Collegia) 
delivered  by  the  Professors  are  of 
three  kinds  : — 

I.  Publica.  —  Every     ordinary    or 
extraordinary    Professor   is    expected 
to  deliver,  gratis,  two  courses  (of  at 
least  two  lectures  a  week),  extending 
through  the  whole  of  each  "  semester," 
on  some  material  point  of  the  science 
he  professes ;  and  these  are  the  "  Pub- 
lica  Collegia."     They  are   but   thinly 
attended  by  the  students. 

II.  Privata. — The   arrangement   of 
which  is  entirely  left  to  the  different 
Faculties.      These   are    the    principal 
lectures,   and    the   Professors   receive 
fees  (honararia)  from  those  who  attend 
them,  varying  according  to  the  num- 
ber of  hours  in  the  week  which  they 
occupy,  the  labour  required  in   their 
preparation,  the  cost  of  apparatus,  &c. 
These    lectures    generally   occupy   an 
hour  a  day,   four,   five,   or   six  times 
a  week.     The  most  usual  fee  is  about 
eighteen  shillings. 

III.  Privatissima. — These    are    de- 
livered  to   a    select    number,   in   the 
private   houses  of   the  Professors,  on 
terms  settled  between  them  and  their 
hearers. 

The  length  of  time  (at  least  three 
years)  which  intervenes  between  ma- 
triculation and  examination,  has  led 
to  a  practice  amongst  the  students  of 
taking  down  the  whole  lecture,  in  the 
manner  of  a  reporter,  in  order  to  study 
it  at  home.  And  this,  again,  has  in- 
duced the  Professors  to  dictate  their 
lectures  in  such  a  manner  that  they 
can  be  taken  down  almost  word  for 
word.  It  may  easily  be  imagined  how 
fatal  such  a  habit  must  be  to  the 
graces  of  elocution,  and  it  has  not 
unfairly  been  made  the  subject  of 
ridicule.  A  story  is  current  of  a 
German  Professor  at  Marburg,  who 


German  Universities. 


151 


went  so  far  in  his  desire  to  meet  the 
wishes  of  the  students  as  to  say  at 
the  end  of  one  of  his  sentences : 
"  Machen  die  Herren  gefiilligst  ein 
Kommachen"— Here,  gentlemen,  please 
to  place  a  comma.  Goethe  also  alludes 
to  it  in  his  Faust,  where  Mephisto- 
pheles,  in  the  garb  of  Faust,  is  giving 
advice  to  a  young  scholar  respecting 
his  behaviour  in  the  lecture-room  : — 

"  Doch  euch  des  Schreibens  ja  befleisst 
Als  dictirt'  euch  der  heilige  Geist." 

"  But  be  sure  you  write  as  diligently  as  if 
the  Holy  Spirit  were  dictating." 

No  single  thing  has  contributed 
more  to  injure  the  reputation  of  the 
German  universities  in  the  eyes  of 
oui-  countrymen  than  the  unprincipled 
manner  in  which  some  of  the  most 
insignificant  of  them  have  exercised 
their  right  of  conferring  degrees. 
Those  who  are  unacquainted  with 
Germany  naturally  involve  all  her 
universities  in  the  same  condemnation 
with  the  two  or  three  dishonourable 
corporations  who  have  virtually  sold 
their  worthless  honours  to  aspirants  as 
base  as  themselves.  A  short  account 
of  the  manner  in  which  degrees  are 
obtained  in  the  more  respectable  uni- 
versities of  Germany,  may  help  to  res- 
cue them  from  unmerited  reproach. 

Each  Faculty  has  the  exclusive  right 
of  granting  degrees  in  its  own  sphere, 
although  this  prerogative  is  exercised 
under  the  authority  of  the  whole 
university.  The  Theological  Faculty 
grants  two  degrees,  those  of  Licen- 
tiate and  Doctor.  The  Philosophical 
Faculty  also  grants  two,  "  Master  of 
Arts"  and  "Doctor  of  Philosophy," 
which  are  generally  taken  together. 
The  Medical  and  Judicial  Faculties 
give  only  one  degree  each,  that  of 
Doctor. 

Whoever  seeks  the  degree  of  Licen- 
tiate in  Theology,  and  of  Doctor  and 
Master  of  Arts  in  Philosophy,  must 
have  studied  three  years  at  a  uni- 
versity, and  must  signify,  his  desire  to 
the  Dean  of  his  Faculty  in  a  Latin 
epistle,  accompanied  by  a  short  cur- 
riculum vita*.  Before  he  can  be 


admitted  to  the  vivd  voce  examination 
he  is  expected  to  send  in  a  Doctor-disser- 
tation, an  original  treatise,  generally 
written  in  Latin,  in  which  he  must 
manifest  not  only  his  proficiency  in 
the  subjects  in  which  he  intends  to 
graduate,  but  some  power  of  original 
thought  and  independent  research. 
The  Dean  sends  this  treatise  round  to 
the  other  members  of  the  Faculty, 
who  have  to  declare  in  writing  their 
opinion  of  its  merits.  If  this  be 
favourable,  a  day  is  appointed  for  the 
grand  examination,  which  is  gene- 
rally carried  on  in  Latin,  and  which 
all  the  members  of  the  Faculty  are 
expected  to  attend  as  examiners.  The 
Doctorandus  is  then  subjected  to  a 
vivd-voce  examination  by  each  Professor 
in  turn,  after  which  it  is  decided  by 
simple  majority  whether  the  candidate 
has  satisfied  the  examiners  or  not.  If 
he  succeeds  he  is  directed  to  hold  a 
public  "  disputation "  (in  Latin),  in 
presence  of  the  Dean  and  Faculty,  on 
theses  of  his  own  selection,  which  are 
posted  at  the  gates  of  the  University. 
After  the  disputation  the  Dean  ad- 
dresses the  corona,  in  a  Latin  speech, 
and  hands  the  diploma  to  the  new 
graduate. 

To  obtain  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Theology  the  candidate  must  have 
finished  his  academical  studies  six 
years,  and  have  written  some  work, 
which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Faculty, 
is  a  valuable  contribution  to  Theo- 
logical literature. 

The  degree  of  Doctor  utriusgue  juris 
is  taken  in  nearly  the  same  way  as 
those  in  Theology  and  Philosophy, 
except  that  the  law  student  is  some- 
times subjected  to  a  written  examina- 
tion previously  to  the  oral  one. 

The  Medical  Faculty  is  the  only  one 
in  which  it  is  imperative  on  the  student 
to  take  the  degree  of  Doctor.  In  the 
other  Faculties  admission  to  the  pri- 
vileges and  honours  of  a  profession  is 
obtained  solely  by  passing  the  so- 
called  State  or  Government  examina- 
tion. 

The  testimony  of  many  distinguished 
German  schoolmen,  as  well  as  my  own 


152 


German  Universities. 


observations,  incline  me  to  think  that 
one  of  the  weakest  points  in  the 
German  university  system  is  the 
method  of  examination.  The  Staats- 
examina  in  the  Medical  Faculty,  for 
example,  are  conducted  by  a  commis- 
sion consisting  chiefly  of  the  Professors 
of  one  and  the  same  university ;  so 
that,  virtually,  a  student's  teachers 
are  his  principal  examiners.  The  case 
is  very  nearly  the  same  with  the 
so-called  Wissenschaftliche  Prufungs- 
•.ommission  for  masters  in  the  Gym- 
nasia and  other  schools.  The  necessary 
consequences  of  such  a  system  need 
hardly  be  pointed  out;  and  it  speaks 
well  for  the  professorial  body  in  Ger- 
many that  the  results  have  not  been 
sufficiently  injurious  to  excite  much 
public  attention.  An  English  examiner 
is  as  much  above  suspicion  as  an 
English  judge ;  and  though  accident 
may  place  an  Oxford  or  Cambridge 
man  higher  or  lower  in  a  class-list 
than  he  deserves,  he  never  attributes 
his  success  or  failure  to  a  bias  in  the 
mind  of  his  examiner.  But  should  we 
(with  all  our  trust  in  the  conscien- 
tiousness of  our  university  authorities) 
feel  the  same  confidence  if  the  exami- 
ning board  consisted  mainly  of  the 
pupils'  own  tutors,  and  the  heart  sat 
in  judgment  side  by  side  with  the 
head  1  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the 
German  system  tends  to  too  great 
leniency  on  the  part  of  examiners. 
The  reputation  of  great  severity  would 
tell  unfavourably  on  the  number  of 
students ;  for,  as  they  may  choose 
their  university,  they  are  likely  to  go 
where  they  can  obtain  their  degrees 
with  the  least  exertion. 

Whoever  wishes  to  enter  the  pro- 
fessorial career  as  Privatim  docens 
must  obtain  leave  of  the  Minister  of 
Instruction  to  announce  himself  for 
Habilitation  into  one  of  the  four  Facul- 
ties. This  permission  cannot  be  ob- 
tained until  three  years  after  he  has 
completed  his  studies  at  the  university. 
He  must  also  have  taken  the  degree  of 
Doctor.  His  application  is  made  by  a 
Latin  epistle  to  the  Dean,  accompanied 
by  a  curriculum  vitce,  and  a  treatise  en 


one  of  the  subjects  on  which  he  pro- 
poses to  lecture.  The  Faculty  ap- 
points, by  ballot,  two  commissioners, 
who  subject  the  testimonials  and 
treatise  of  the  candidate  to  a  rigid 
examination,  and  give  a  written  opi- 
nion of  his  merits.  The  above  men- 
tioned documents,  together  with  the 
judgment  of  the  commissioners,  are 
then  sent  round  to  every  member  of 
the  Faculty,  and  the  fate  of  the  candi- 
date is  decided  at  their  next  meeting 
by  simple  majority.  If  the  decision 
is  favourable  he  is  directed  by  the 
Dean  to  prepare  and  deliver  a  lecture 
on  some  subject  chosen  by  the  latter, 
after  which  the  members  of  the  Faculty 
hold  a  colloquium  with  him  on  the 
matter  of  his  discourse.  He  is  then 
finally  admitted  as  Privatim  docens. 

The  Privatim  docens  may  be  raised 
to  the  rank  of  Extraordinary  Pro- 
fessor at  any  time  after  his  Jtabilita- 
tion,  but  he  can  make  no  claim  to 
such  promotion  until  he  has  lectured 
for  three  years  at  the  university. 
The  academical  teacher,  having  ob- 
tained the  position  of  Extraordinary 
Professor,  has  full  opportunity  of 
proving  his  ability  before  the  uni- 
versity and  the  country.  He  stands, 
as  a  lecturer,  on  an  equal  footing  in 
all  respects  with  the  oldest  and  most 
distinguished  of  the  salaried  Pro- 
fessors, and  his  exclusion  from  acade- 
mical offices  must  be  reckoned  rather  as 
an  advantage  at  the  beginning  of  his 
career.  His  future  fate  is  very  much  in 
his  own  hands,  and  it  is  scarcely  possible, 
even  to  adverse  ministerial  influence, 
to  keep  him  from  obtaining  the  natural 
fruits  of  his  exertions.  The  profes- 
sorial chairs  of  all  Germany,  and  even 
of  many  other  countries — as  Switzer- 
land, Austria,  Russia,  &c. — are  open 
to  him,  and  the  active  rivalry  of 
different  States  insures  to  the  man  of 
genius  and  learning  a  fitting  sphere 
of  labour. 

The  stimulus  thus  given  to  exertion, 
both  on  the  part  of  those  who  seek  for 
name  and  fortune,  and  those  who  have 
already  attained  it,  Ls  extraordinary, 
and  the  advantage  accruing  from  it  to 


German   Universities. 


153 


the  students  and  the  public  corre- 
spondingly great.  The  Ordinary  Pro- 
fessor, however  great  his  attainments 
and  his  fame,  cannot  relax  in  his 
exertions  or  sleep  on  his  laurels,  if 
he  would  not  yield  his  hearers  and  his 
fees  to  some  "  Extraordinary  "  brother 
or  needy  and  acute  Privatim  docens. 
He  must  "  keep  moving,"  for  there 
are  numbers  pressing  on  his  heels. 
He  must  lead  his  pupils  forward,  or 
they,  careless  of  his  brilliant  ante- 
cedents, will  leave  him  to  follow  a 
less  renowned  but  more  active  and 
skilful  guide. 

The  foregoing  outline  may  suffice 
to  show  the  world-wide  difference 
between  the  academical  institutions  of 
England  and  Germany  in  external 
form ;  yet  they  differ  far  more  essen- 
tially in  the  spirit  which  animates 
them,  in  their  modus  operandi,  and  in 
the  objects  which  they  respectively 
pursue.  The  term  university  is  hardly 
applicable  to  our  great  academies ;  for 
they  do  not  even  profess  to  include 
the  whole  circle  of  the  sciences  in  their 
programme,  and  their  mode  of  teaching 
differs  in  hardly  any  respect  from  that 
of  a  school.  The  German  university, 
on  the  other  hand,  looks,  at  first  sight, 
like  a  mere  aggregate  of  technical 
schools,  designed  to  prepare  men  for 
the  several  careers  of  social  life.  Some- 
thing analogous  would  result  from 
bringing  together  in  one  place  our 
Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge, 
our  Theological  training  schools,  Inns 
of  Court,  Medical  schools  and  hos- 
pitals, and  our  British  and  Kensington 
Museums,  with  their  schools  of  art, 
and  then  dividing  the  whole  body  of 
teachers  and  students  into  four  facul- 
ties, and  bringing  it  under  the  control 
of  Her  Majesty's  Government.  Yet 
such  mere  juxtaposition  would  not 
alone  suffice  to  form  a  German  uni- 
versity. Such  a  collection  in  one  place 
of  professional  training  schools,  whose 
only  object  is  th3  rapid  preparation  of 
young  men  for  their  fut'ure  callings, 
does  exist  in  Paris;  and  yet  Gabriel 
Monod  could  say,  without  contradic- 
tion, that,  with  the  exception  of 


Turkey,  France  was  the  only  country 
in   Europe   which   possessed   no    uni- 
versity in   the   proper   sense   of   the 
word.     The  German  Faculties  are  also 
technical   schools,  but  they  are  inti- 
mately and   inseparably  united  by  a 
common  scientific  method,  which  makes 
the  practical  studies  of  each  a  medium 
of     the    highest     scientific    training. 
Preparation  for  a  profession  is  indeed 
the  main  object  of  a  German  university; 
but  it  is  not,  as  in  France,  the  only 
one.     The  great  principle  of  teaching 
in  the  former  is  the  continual  blend- 
ing  of   instruction   and   research,    and 
the  German  universities  are  such  good 
schools,    because    they   are   not    only 
places   of   instruction  but  workshops 
of     science.      The    enlargement     and 
strengthening  of  the  mind  which  the 
English  system  aims   at   exclusively, 
the   Germans    endeavour  to   combine 
with    preparation    for    the    practical 
business    of     life.     Their    Professors 
have  to  supply  the  State  with  a  suffi- 
cient  number  of   young  men  capable 
of  undertaking  the  duties  of  clergy- 
men,   schoolmasters,    lawyers,    physi- 
cians, civil  servants,  &c.,  and  we  know 
that  this  practical  end  is  fully  attained. 
But  the  successful  result  is  a  matter 
of  perpetual  astonishment  to  us,  with 
our  ideas  and  our  experience,  when  we 
come  to  consider  the  nature   of   the 
means  employed.     The  Professor  an- 
nounces a  course   of   lectures,  which 
the  student  may  attend  or  not  as  he 
pleases ;    and  these  lectures  are  not, 
as  we  might  expect,  a  compendium  of 
practical  knowledge,  which  his  pupils 
may  commit  to  memory  and  reproduce 
at  their  examinations,  and  use  at  their 
first  start  in  their  professional  career, 
but   generally   an    original    scientific 
investigation    of    some   new   field    of 
thought,  a   peering  from  the  heights 
of    accumulated   knowledge   into   the 
dim  and  cloud- shadowed  horizon.     In 
every  lecture  the  Professor  is  supposed 
to  be  engaged  in  the  act  of  creation, 
and  the  student  to  be   imbibing   the 
scientific    spirit     and    acquiring    the 
scientific  method — watchingthe  weaver 
at  his  loom  and  learning  to  weave  for 


154 


German   Universities. 


himself.  Whether  the  latter  does  his 
part  or  not  is  entirely  his  own  con- 
cern. He  is  never  questioned  in  his 
class  or  examined  at  the  end  of  the 
term  or  year,  and  may  pass  his  whole 
university  life  without  any  intimate 
personal  acquaintance  with  the  man 
whose  business  it  is  to  cultivate  his 
powers  and  fit  him  to  serve  his  gene- 
ration. The  sources  of  the  practical 
knowledge  he  needs  are  of  course 
pointed  out  to  him  for  private  read- 
ing, but  he  is  left  to  use  them  when 
and  how  he  pleases,  and  to  prepare 
himself  alone,  or  in  company  with  his 
fellow -students,  for  his  distant  exa- 
mination. Nor  is  the  higher  work  of 
the  Professor  supplemented,  as  with 
us,  by  private  tutors,  "coaches,"  or 
"  crammers."  In  fact,  there  is  no 
part  of  our  collegiate  system  which 
is  more  universally  reprobated  by  the 
Germans.  "What  we  want  for  our 
students,"  they  say,  "is  not  the 
assistance  of  private  tutors,  but  private 
independent  study  without  assistance." 
"  Away  with  all  supervision  and  drill- 
ing! If  you  were  to  subject  our  men 
to  private  tuition,  and  regulate  and 
inspect  their  studies,  you  would  de- 
stroy at  a  blow  the  scientific  spirit 
in  our  universities.  The  main  object 
of  a  university,  as  distinguished  from 
a  school,  is  to  foster  independent 
thought  — the  true  foundation  of  in- 
dependence of  character.  The  student 
must,  of  course,  be  fitted  to  gain  his 
livelihood,  but  show  him  where  the 
necessary  information  is  to  be  acquired, 
and  place  an  examination  in  full  view 
at  the  end  of  his  curriculum,  and  he 
will  prepare  himself  far  better  than 
if  he  were  crammed  by  others,  in  a 
manner  not  suited,  perhaps,  to  his 
mental  constitution." 

The  only  institution  in  a  German 
university  which  might  seem,  at  first 
sight,  to  contain  the  element  of  private 
tuition,  is  the  so-called  "Seminary," 
now  attached  to  all  the  four  Facilities. 
The  Seminary  is  composed  of  the  older 
and  more  advanced  students  in  their 
last  year,  who  assemble  periodically 
under  the  presidency  of  the  chief 


Professors  in  each  department.  The 
Seminarists  are  encouraged  to  treat 
some  subject  (suggested  by  the  Pro- 
fessors or  chosen  by  themselves)  inde- 
pendently, according  to  the  scientific 
method  which  they  are  supposed  to 
have  learned  from  attendance  at  the 
lectures.  These  treatises  are  read  and 
discussed  in  the  class,  and  generally 
commented  on  in  a  kind  of  summing- 
up  by  the  presiding  Professor.  Here, 
too,  the  main  object  is  to  foster  private 
reading  and  independent  research  on 
the  part  of  the  pupil,  who  is  not 
expected  to  display  his  knowledge  of 
other  men's  views,  but  to  go  to  the 
sources,  and,  as  far  as  his  powers  and 
lights  allow,  to  extend  the  field  of 
science  in  some  definite  direction. 
Such  treatises,  like  the  Doctor-disser- 
tations, may  be,  and  generally  are,  of 
little  value  in  themselves — i.e.,  to  the 
reader ;  but  they  are  of  the  greatest 
use  to  the  writer,  who  learns  thereby 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "  science," 
and  how  scientific  work  is  carried  on. 
He  is  taught  to  follow  out  one  problem, 
at  least,  to  its  ultimate  consequences, 
to  clear  one  field  for  himself,  on 
which  he  can  hoist  his  own  colours 
and  say  :  "  Here  I  stand  on  my  own 
ground,  and  on  my  own  legs ;  here 
no  one  can  teach  me  or  direct  me." 
The  power  acquired  by  such  an 
exercise  is  an  inestimable  possession, 
the  very  foundation  of  spiritual 
independence,  the  great  source  of 
mental  fertility.  Nor  does  it  neces- 
sarily lead,  as  we  might  fear,  to  one- 
sided narrowness  of  mind.  No  one  can 
thoroughly  investigate  a  subject,  how- 
ever special  and  limited  it  may  seem, 
without  coming  into  contact  on  every 
side  with  other  apparently  alien  mat- 
ters. The  deeper  we  penetrate,  the 
wider  must  we  make  the  opening  at 
the  surface  for  the  admission  of  air 
and  light  into  the  depths  below. 

At  the  risk  of  seeming  to  repeat 
myself,  I  will  now  recapitulate  the 
principal  characteristic  differences  be- 
tween the  German  and  the  English 
university. 

The  former,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a 


German,   Universities. 


155 


national  institution,  entirely  supported 
by  the  state,  subject  to  the  supervision 
and  control  of  the  central  government, 
frequented  by  all  but  the  poorest  classes 
of  the  community,  and  therefore  im- 
mediately and  directly  influenced  by 
political  and  social  changes.  The  latter 
is  a  wealthy  corporation  enjoying  a 
very  large  measure  of  independence, 
frequented  chiefly  by  the  higher  and 
more  conservative  classes,  but  little 
influenced  by  political  changes  or  the 
prevailing  opinions  and  customs  of  the 
masses,  dwelling  in  empyrean  heights 
remote  from  the  noise  and  heat  of  con- 
tending factions  and  all  the  changes 
and  chances  of  the  work-a-day  world. 

"  Semota  ab  nostris  rebus  sejunctaque  longe, 
Nam  privata  dolore  omni,  privata  periclis, 
Ipsa  suis  pollens  opibus  nihil  indiga  nostri." 

Again,  the  internal  government  of  the 
Corpus  Acad.  in  Germany  is  almost 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  actual 
teachers ;  and  the  most  eminent  pro- 
fessors are  also  the  chief  rulers  of 
the  university,  as  Rectors,  Deans  of 
Faculty,  or  members  of  the  Senate. 
In  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  lecturers  and  tutors, 
the  working  bees  of  the  community, 
have  but  a  small  share  of  its  wealth 
and  power,  which  is  for  the  most  part 
in  the  hands  of  learned  and  dignified 
"  Heads "  and  irresponsible  Fellows, 
who  are  not  expected  to  take  much 
part  in  the  actual  teaching.  The 
natural  result  is  that  we  have  many 
admirable  teachers,  and  many  very 
learned  men,  but  few  writers.  No  im- 
pulse of  rivalry  or  hope  of  promotion 
irresistibly  impels  our  scholars  to  give 
the  fruits  of  their  labour  to  the  world, 
and  they  too  often  enjoy  them  alone. 
We  have  always  the  uneasy  feeling 
that  there  are  men  at  our  universities 
who  might  well  compete  with  German 
Professors,  who  yet  do  little  for  the 
advancement  of  science,  and  are  almost 
unknown  beyond  their  college  walls. 

According  to  the  German  view  of 
the  matter,  the  Professor  ought  to  be 
a  learner  even  more  than  a  teacher. 
He  is  engaged  in  a  constant  race  and 
rivalry  with  competitors,  not  only  at 
his  own  university,  but  throughout 


the  great  republic  of  letters  to  which 
he  belongs,  and  in  which  he  seeks 
for  fame,  position,  and  emolument.  In 
the  choice  of  a  Professor,  therefore, 
the  university  (which  has  the  right  of 
proposing  names  to  the  Minister  of 
Education)  and  the  government  are 
guided  almost  entirely  by  the  com- 
parative merits  manifested  in  the  pub- 
lished writings  of  the  aspirants.  The 
questions  asked  are  :  "What  work  has 
he  done?"  "What  is  he  doing  1" 
A  vague  reputation  for  mere  learning, 
a  good  delivery,  or  a  pleasing  style 
will  avail  him  little.  They  prefer,  not 
the  best  teacher,  as  they  would  for 
the  Gymnasium,  but  the  greatest 
thinker,  the  most  creative  genius, 
and  leave  him  to  make  himself  in- 
telligible to  the  students  as  he  can. 
They  are  not  disturbed  at  hearing 
that  Professor  M.  or  ]S".  has  but  few 
hearers,  and  "  shoots  above  their 
heads  ;  "  or  by  such  cases  as  that  of 
the  Philosopher  Hegel,  who  said  that 
"only  one  of  his  pupils  understood 
him,  and  he  wmunderstood  him."  A 
light  set  on  a  hill,  they  think,  cannot 
be  altogether  hidden,  and  some  few 
may  catch  the  prophet's  mantle  as  he 
rises.  They  care  far  more  for  sub- 
stance than  form,  for  native  gold  than 
current  silver  coin ;  and  hence  it  comes 
that  so  many  German  Professors  and 
authors  are,  as  compared  with  their 
French  and  English  brethren,  dull  and 
awkward  lecturers,  obscure  and  un- 
readable writers.  And  thus  the  Ger- 
man scholar  works  directly  under  the 
eyes  of  the  government,  the  lettered 
public,  and  indeed  the  whole  nation. 
Every  sound  that  he  utters  is  imme- 
diately heard  in  the  vast  whispering- 
chamber  of  the  temple  of  knowledge — 
weighed  and  discussed  at  a  thousand 
centres.  A  new  discovery  in  science, 
a  new  edition  of  a  classic  author,  a 
light  thrown  on  the  history  of  the 
past,  any  proof,  in  short,  of  superior 
genius  or  talent,  may  not  only  give  him 
the  much-coveted  ''  Sitz  und  Stimme " 
(seat  and  voice)  in  the  general  council 
of  the  republic  of  letters,  but  insure 
him  a  higher  place  in  the  social  scale, 
and  offers  of  a  more  lucrative  post. 


156 


German   Universities. 


The  English  head,  professor,  or 
tutor,  when  once  appointed,  enjoys  a 
kind  of  monopoly  of  authority  or 
teaching,  and  may  do  his  ministering 
zealously  or  gently,  without  fear  of 
rivalry,  without  any  immediate  or 
certain  gain  or  loss  of  reputation  or 
emolument.  He  stands  in  no  relation 
either  to  the  government  or  the  public, 
to  both  of  which  he  may  be  almost 
unknown.  He  has  no  broadly-marked 
career  before  him,  in  which  distinction 
and  reward  necessarily  wait  on  great 
ability  and  great  exertion,  and  if  he 
is  ambitious  he  generally  leaves  the 
university  for  some  more  extensive 
and  promising  field  of  labour. 

The  difference  between  the  character 
of  the  English  and  German  student  is, 
if  possible,  still  more  striking.     When 
&n  English  boy  leaves  school  for  the 
university,  he  is  not  conscious   of   a 
very  sharp  break  or  turning-point  in 
his  life ;  he  is  only  entering  on  another 
stage  of  the  same  high-road.     He  goes 
to  pursue  nearly  the  same  studies  in 
very  nearly  the  same  way  as  before. 
He  expects  to  meet  his  old  companions, 
and  to  indulge  in  his  dearly-loved  boyish 
sports  on  the  river  and  in  the  field. 
He  enjoys,  of  course,  a  greater  degree 
of  freedom,  and  receives  a  much  higher 
kind  of  instruction,  in  accordance  with 
his  riper  age  and  greater  powers  ;  but 
the   subjects    of    his   study   are   still 
•chosen  for  him,  and   prosecuted,  not 
for  their  so-called  "utility,"  but  for 
their  value  as  gymnastic  exercises  of 
the  mind.     As  at  school  he  is  directed 
in  his  course,   and  the  instruction  is 
still     catechetical.      Throughout    the 
whole  of   his  career  at  college  he  is 
subjected   to  examination  in   certain 
fixed  subjects  and  even  books,  by  the 
study  of  which  he  can  alone   escape 
reproof    and    obtain   distinction    and 
reward.     His  mind  is  still  almost  ex- 
clusively receptive,  bound  to  take  the 
food  and  medicine  prepared  and  pre- 
scribed  for   him  by   duly   authorised 
purveyors   and   practitioners.      He  is 
still,  in  short,  in  general  training  for 
the  race  of  life,  and  is  allowed  no  free 
disposal   of  his  time  and  energy,  no 
free  indulgence  of  his  peculiar  tastes. 


How  different  the  feelings  and  ex- 
perience of  the  German  gymnasiast, 
as  he  passes  from  the  purgatory  of 
school  to  the  paradise  of  college  !  In 
his  boyhood  he  has  been  mentally 
schooled  and  drilled  with  a  strictness 
and  formality  of  which  we  have  no 
conception.  Every  step  he  takes  is 
marked  out  for  him  with  the  utmost 
care  and  precision  by  the  highest 
authority,  and  he  has  scarcely  a  mo- 
ment that  he  can  call  his  own.  It  is 
continually  dinned  into  his  ears  that 
he  is  not  to  reason  or  to  choose,  but 
to  learn  and  to  obey ;  and  he  does 
obey  and  learn  with  incredible  doci- 
lity and  industry,  and  toils  joylessly 
along  the  straight  and  narrow  path, 
between  the  high  and  formal  walls, 
from  stage  to  stage  of  his  arduous 
school-life,  clearing  one  examination- 
fence  after  another,  or  falling  amidst 
its  thorns,  till  the  last  is  surmounted 
which  separates  him  from  the  German's 
heaven. 

And   what    a    change   awaits    him 
there  !     The  cap  of  the  student  is  to 
him  the  cap  of  liberty ;  his  bonds  are 
loosed,  his  chains  struck  off,  he  is  in- 
troduced   into  the    Eden   of   freedom 
and  knowledge,  "  furnished  with  every 
tree  that  is  pleasant  to  the  sight  and 
good  for  food,"  and  told  that  he  "  may 
freely  eat    of    all."     The    very  same 
authorities,  central  and  local,  who  have 
hitherto    demanded   from   him   dumb 
and  blind  obedience,  and  controlled  his 
bodily   and  mental  freedom   in  every 
possible  way,  now  loudly  proclaim  to 
him   that    his   chief    duty,   the   chief 
principle  and  law  of  his  being,  is — to 
be  free.     The  Professors  contend  for 
his  applause   and    patronage,    society 
allows  him    the  greatest   latitude    as 
suited  to  his  age  and  profession ;  the 
very  police,  so  terrible  to  other  men, 
looks  indulgently  on  him,  as  a  privi- 
leged being,   and   mutters   as   it  sees 
him  kicking  over  the  traces,   "  Es  ist 
ja   ein  Student."     For    three   or   four 
long    years  no  one  has  the  right  to 
dictate  to  him,  or  to  bind  him  by  any 
tradition  or  any  rule.     He   must,  of 
course,  prepare  for  the  inevitable  ex- 
amination at  the  end  of  his  university 


German  Universities. 


157 


career,  but  he  may  do  so  how  and 
when  he  pleases,  and  in  the  meantime 
he  can  rest  from  the  exhausting  toils 
of  his  school  life,  and  cultivate  at 
leisure  the  powers  of  which  he  is  most 
conscious,  and  in  the  exercise  of  which 
he  most  delights.  He  has  several 
universities  from  which  to  choose,  and 
if  one  Professor  does  not  please  him 
he  can  generally  find  another  who  is 
lecturing  on  the  same  subject ;  and 
he  is  by  no  means  slow  in  recognising 
which  are  the  rising  and  which  the  set 
ting  stars  in  the  academic  firmament. 

It  is  often  remarked  that  much 
of  the  great  work  of  the  world  has 
been  done  by  self-taught  men,  and 
that  the  mind  grows  best  on  the  food 
it  chooses  for  itself.  To  a  certain 
extent  the  German  student  seems  to 
partake  of  the  advantages  of  the 
autodidact,  inasmuch  as  he  is  left  to 
choose  his  own  teachers,  and  work  at 
the  subject  he  likes  best  in  the  way 
he  likes  best ;  so  that  he  enjoys,  at 
the  same  time,  the  advantages  of  the 
highest  instruction  with  the  greatest 
freedom  of  self-development. 

That    such  a  system   should    have 
grown  up  in  a  red-tape  country  like 
Prussia,   and  been   found    compatible 
with    the    rigid    formality   of    other 
German    institutions,    under   a    "  pa- 
ternal "    government,     is    wonderful 
enough ;  and   that  it  should  succeed 
and  maintain  itself  in  such  an  atmo- 
sphere, is  still  more  remarkable.     The 
German  press  teems  with  proposals  for 
re-organising  the  schools  of  Germany, 
and   the    controversy   between  Gym- 
nasium and  Realschule  is  hotly  raging 
at  the  present  moment ;  but  hardly  a 
voice  is  raised  against  the  university 
system,  and  no  one  desires  to  curtail 
the  unbounded  freedom  of  the  student. 
One  and  all  the  Germans  love  their 
university,  as  the  English  love  their 
school,    and   look    back   with    tender 
regret  on  the  only  period  of  their  lives 
when  they  were  free.    "  Every  dog  has 
his   day ;  "    (the    English  dog  a  good 
many  days),  and  the  day  of  the  German 
dog  is  his  life  at  the  university.  Many 
of  the  best  and  even  grandest  songs  in 
his  language  were  inspired  by  the  free 


studies,  the  free  pleasures,  the  free 
companionship  of  his  college  career  ; 
and  when,  in  after  life,  great  warriors, 
statesmen,  and  scholars  meet  together 
on  some  festive  occasion,  it  is  not  as 
schoolboys,  but  as  "alte  Burschen  "  that 
they  delight  to  regard  themselves.  It 
is  true  that  the  most  uproarious 
dithyrambic  songs  and  music  of  the 
students'  Commers-buch  have  almost  in- 
variably a  touch  of  Horatian  pathos 
in  them  ;  but  this  arises,  not  from  any 
feeling  of  dissatisfaction  with  uni- 
versity life,  but  from  the  consideration 
of  its  short  duration,  from  the  bitter 
thought  that  the  student — 

"  Muss  auch  Philister  sein !  " 

must  soon  join  the  drilled  ranks  of 
the  despised  Philistines.  And  hence 
the  so  off- repeated  exhortation  to  prize 
and  enjoy  the  fleeting  hours  : 

"  Denkt  oft  Ihr  Briider  an  unsere  Jugend- 

frohlichkeit, 
Sie  kehrt  nicht  wieder — die  goldene  Zeit !  " 

"When  we  come  to  compare  the  results 
of  the  two  systems,  we  find  them  such 
as  we  might  expect.  The  Germans  are 
the  explorers  in  the  world  of  thought, 
and  the  first  settlers  in  the  newly- 
discovered  regions,  who  clear  the 
ground  and  make  it  tillable  and  habit- 
able. At  a  later  period  the  English 
take  possession,  build  solid  houses,  and 
dwell  there.  The  Germans  send  their 
students  out  into  the  fields  of  know- 
ledge, like  working  bees,  to  gather 
honey  from  every  side.  The  English 
lead  their  pupils  into  well-stored  hives 
to  enjoy  the  labours  of  others.  The 
German  student  cares  little  for  the 
accumulated  learning  of  the  past, 
except  as  a  vantage-ground  from 
which  to  reach  some  greater  height. 
He  has  little  reverence  for  authority, 
and  if  he  does  set  up  an  idol,  he  is 
very  apt  to  throw  it  down  again. 
His  chief  delight  is  to  form  theories 
of  his  own,  and  he  can  build  a  very 
lofty  structure  on  a  very  insufficient 
foundation.  As  compared  with  the 
"first-class"  Oxford  man  or  Cam- 
bridge wrangler,  he  has  read  but  little, 
and  would  make  a  very  moderate  show 
in  a  classical  or  mathematical  tripos 


158 


German  Universities. 


examination  ;  but  he  has  the  scientific 
method ;  he  is  thorough  and  inde- 
pendent master  of  a  smaller  or  larger 
region  of  thought ;  he  knows  how  to 
use  his  knowledge,  and  in  the  long 
run  outstrips  his  English  brothers. 
The  English  system  produces  the 
accomplished  scholar,  "well  up  in  his 
books ;  "  the  reverent  and  zealous 
disciple  of  some  Gamaliel ;  the  bril- 
liant essayist,  whose  mind  is  filled  with 
the  great  thoughts  and  achievements 
of  the  past,  who  deals  with  ease  and 
grace  with  the  rich  stores  he  has 
gathered  by  extensive  reading ;  the 
ready  debater,  skilled  in  supporting 
his  arguments  by  reference  to  high 
authority,  and  by  apt  quotations.  But 
he  is  receptive  rather  than  creative, 
his  feathers,  though  gay  and  glossy, 
are  too  often  borrowed,  and  not  so  well 
fitted  for  higher  flights  as  if  they  were 
the  product  of  his  own  mental  organ- 
ism. In  the  language  of  Faust,  we 
might  say  of  him — 

"  Erquickung  hast  du  nicht  gewonnen 
Wenn  sie  dir  nicht  aus  eigener  Seele  quillt  " 

The  German  has  read  less,  but  he 
has  thought  more,  and  is  continually 
striving  to  add  to  the  sum  of  human 
knowledge.  He  is  impatient  and  restless 
while  he  stands  on  other  men's  ground, 
or  sojourns  in  other  men's  houses ; 
directly  he  has  found  materials  of  his 
own,  whether  they  be  stones  or  only 
cards,  he  begins  to  build  for  himself, 
and  would  rather  get  over  a  difficulty 
by  a  rickety  plank  of  his  own,  than  by 
the  safe  iron  bridge  of  another.  The 
same  furor  Teutonicus  (the  tendency  to 
drive  everything  to  extremes),  which 
urges  on  the  powerful  intellect  to  great 
discoveries  in  the  regions  of  the 
hitherto  unknown,  also  goads  the 
little  mind  to  peer  with  fussy,  fever- 
ish restlessness  into  every  chink,  to 
stir  every  puddle,  "  to  dig  with  greedy 
hand  for  treasure." 

' '  Und  froh  sein  wenn  er  Regenwiirraer  findet. " 

The  Englishman  meanwhile  looks 
on,  and  patiently  waits  until  the  new 
intellectual  structure  has  been  well 
aired  and  lighted,  and  fitted  up  for 


comfortable  habitation.  The  German 
theologian  or  philosopher  is  often 
astonished,  and  not  a  little  amused,  to 
see  some  theory  or  system  taken  up  by 
English  scholars,  who  have  just  learned 
German,  which  has  long  become  obso- 
lete in  the  land  of  its  birth,  and  been 
disowned  perhaps  by  its  very  author. 

In  contemplating  the  past    history 
and  present  state  of  the  German  uni- 
versities, the  question  naturally  arises 
whether    the     extraordinary     mental 
fertility    which     characterises     them 
has  been  owing  to  peculiar   political 
and  social    conditions  ;  whether  it  is 
likely,   as    many  think,    to    be    inju- 
riously  affected   by  recent  important 
changes,  and  especially  by  the  amal- 
gamation   of     the    different    German 
states  into  one  great  empire,  under  the 
hegemony  of   Prussia.       The  literary 
fertility  of  their  universities  is  gener- 
ally accounted   for   by  crediting   the 
Germans  with  a  certain  disinterested 
love  of   knowledge  for  its  own  sake, 
as  contrasted  with  our  low  material 
hankering  after    loaves    and  fishes ! 
We  need  not   seriously  endeavour  to 
refute  so  preposterous  a  theory,  but 
only  point  to  the  facts  that  while  the 
encouragement  of  learning  and  research 
at  the  universities  has  been  one  of  the 
main  objects  of  the  state  in  Germany, 
there  is  no  country  in  Europe  in  which 
science  (in   the   widest   sense   of   the 
word),  has  received  so  little  encourage- 
ment from  government,  has  been  left  so 
entirely  to  reward  itself,  as  in  England. 
In  fact,  since  there  is  no  career  in  our 
universities  for  men  of  learning  and 
science,  no  reward  for  literary  activity 
and  successful  research,  the  wonder  is 
that  they  have  done  so  much,  and  can 
count   so   many   great   names   among 
their  members.     The  pre-eminence  of 
German  learning  is  owing  to  no  natural 
superiority   in    the    Germans,    either 
mental  or  moral.     To  understand  the 
intense  activity  which  prevails  in  their 
universities,  we  must  remember  that 
the  academic  career  has,  for  more  than 
a  century,  exercised  a  very  powerful 
attraction  on    the    most    active   and 
gifted  minds  of  the  nation.     Debarred 
by  the  despotic  nature  of  their  govern- 


German   Universities. 


159 


ment  from  the  arena  of  politics,  and 
by  class-distinction  from  any  fair 
chance  of  promotion  in  the  army  or 
the  service  of  the  state,  with  few 
opportunities  of  acquiring  wealth  in 
commercial  or  industrial  pursuits,  the 
more  ambitious  spirits  in  the  German 
bourgeoisie  have  sought  the  only  field 
of  honour  in  which  the  race  was  to  the 
swift  and  the  battle  to  the  strong. 
We  may  smile  at  the  small  salaries  of 
the  German  Professor,  but  when  com- 
pared with  other  government  officials 
in  his  own  country,  he  is,  or  rather 
was,  well  paid,  and  his  position  in  other 
respects  is  a  singularly  enviable  one. 
He  is  in  the  most  independent  position 
in  which  a  German  can  be  placed,  and 
enjoys  a  freedom  of  speech  which  is 
permitted  to  no  other  official,  whatever 
his  rank  may  be — a  freedom  which 
increases  in  exact  proportion  to  his 
abilities  and  fame.  His  peculiar 
privileges  are  owing  partly  to  the 
natural  scarcity  of  great  men,  and  the 
respect  which  they  inspire  into  their 
countrymen,  and  partly  to  the  keen 
competition  for  the  possession  of  the 
most  illustrious  scholars  between  the 
universities  of  the  numerous  inde- 
pendent states  into  which  Germany 
was,  till  recently,  divided.  This 
active  rivalry  enabled  the  distin- 
guished professor  to  hold  his  own  even 
against  kings  and  ministers.  When  the 
late  Duke  of  Cumberland,  as  King  of 
Hanover  (whose  motto  was  that  "  Pro- 
fessors and  harlots  can  always  be  had 
for  money  "),  expelled  the  seven  great- 
est men  in  Gottingen  for  a  spirited 
protest  against  his  coup  d'etat,  they 
were  received  with  open  arms  even  by 
despotic  Prussia.  When  the  great 
Latin  scholar  Eitschl  shook  off  the 
dust  of  his  feet  at  Bonn,  he  was  wel- 
comed with  the  highest  honours  by 
the  King  of  Saxony,  and  installed 
at  Leipsic. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  many  of 
these  circumstances,  which  tended  to 
draw  the  best  powers  of  the  nation 
into  connection  with  the  universities 
have  of  late  years  undergone  a  very 
important  change.  Political  life  offers 
greater  attractions ;  the  "  Burger  - 


licher  "  has  better  chances  of  promo- 
tion in  the  army  than  heretofore.  A 
larger  proportion  of  the  best  intellects 
of  the  nation  have  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  commerce  and  manufactures  as 
affording  a  better  prospect  of  advance- 
ment in  the  world.  Wars  and  rumours 
of  wars,  and  the  preparation  for  new 
contests,  are  not  favourable  to  the 
calm  concentration  of  mind  indis- 
pensable to  successful  study.  The 
position  of  a  professor,  moreover, 
is  less  attractive  than  it  was. 
With  the  union  of  the  German  states 
into  one  great  empire,  the  competition 
for  great  scholars  has  become  less 
lively.  The  cost  of  living  has  in- 
creased in  Germany  more  rapidly  than 
in  any  other  country  in  Europe,  and 
the  salaries  of  the  Professors  have  not 
been  proportionally  raised. 

The  maintenance  of  the  scientific 
spirit  is  endangered  too  by  the  very 
extension  of  the  boundaries  of  science 
of  which  that  spirit  is  the  chief  agent. 
The  mass  of  strictly  professional  know- 
ledge in  each  faculty  is  increasing 
every  day,  and  the  task  of  assimilating 
this  engrosses  more  and  more  of  the 
student's  time  and  energy,  and  leaves 
him  fewer  and  fewer  opportunities  for 
the  independent  prosecution  of  pure 
science.  We  hear  it  said  on  all  sides 
that  young  men  must  spend  at  least 
four  years  at  the  universities,  if  they 
are  not  to  sink  into  mere  "bread- 
students  ; "  and  appeals  have  been 
made  to  the  liberality  of  the  German 
public  to  enable  the  more  gifted 
students,  by  the  establishment  of 
small  Stiftungen,  to  spend  a  longer 
time  in  study.  Such  appeals,  by  the 
way,  meet  with  very  little  response  in 
Germany.  The  liberality  which  has 
filled  England  with  benevolent  insti- 
tutions of  every  kind  appears  to  be 
almost  unknown  elsewhere.  Com- 
plaints are  heard  in  many  quarters 
that  the  "  Nachwuchs"  the  after- 
growth, the  rising  generation  of  Pro- 
fessors, is  not  likely  to  equal  its  pre- 
decessors. It  is  not  long  ago  since  a 
minister  of  education  in  Prussia  com- 
plained of  the  difficulty  of  filling  up 
vacant  posts  in  the  universities  in  a 


160 


German   Universities. 


manner  satisfactory  to  himself  and 
the  students.  How  far  this  falling 
off  is  attributable  to  the  causes  men- 
tioned above,  or  the  general  dearth  of 
great  men  observable,  at  the  present 
time,  in  every  country  in  Europe,  re- 
mains to  be  seen.  One  thing,  however, 
is  absolutely  certain  that  neither  in 
Germany  nor  England  can  a  university 
be  sustained  by  the  exertions  of  "dis- 
interested" votaries  of  science.  With 
the  exception  of  the  Dls  geniti,  the 
born  priests  of  science,  men  will  not 
spend  long  years  in  laborious  study, 
without  hope  of  adequate  reward  in 
the  shape  of  money  or  position.  Science 
has  flourished  at  the  German  seats  of 
learning,  becausB  it  has  been  carefully 
fostered  and  judiciously  rewarded  by 
the  state.  It  has  not  flourished  at  our 
universities  because,  while  they  richly 
reward  the  first  fruits  of  the  youthful 
intellect,  they  offer  no  career  to  the 
man. 

The  foregoing  account  naturally 
suggests  a  number  of  practical  ques- 
tions and  considerations  in  connection 
with  our  own  collegiate  system.  It 
is  clear  that  we  cannot  have  a  uni- 
versity of  the  German  type,  which  is 
the  result  of  the  whole  history  of  Ger- 
many and  the  peculiar  institutions 
and  character  of  its  people.  We  can- 
not move  the  inns  of  court,  the 
London  hospitals  and  museums,  to 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  nor  can  we 
amalgamate  the  two  last  and  transfer 
them  to  London.  We  cannot  compel 
the  whole  ruling  class  of  the  country 
to  pass  through  the  university  as  a 
preparation  for  professional  and 
official  life.  We  cannot  intrust  the 
entire  teaching  to  lecturers,  and 
abolish  all  private  tuition  and  coach- 
ing, all  catechetical  instruction  and 
competitive  examinations.  And,  above 
all,  we  should  not  venture  to  leave 
our  young  men  without  the  moral 
supervision  and  religious  influences 
now  brought  to  bear  upon  them. 
But,  we  may  ask,  can  nothing  be  done 
to  foster  the  scientific  spirit  at  our  uni- 
versities, and  make  the  work  done 
there  more  fertile  of  results  ?  Might 
not  more  of  the  actual  teaching 


in   our   universities    be    intrusted  to 
professors,  in  the  German  sense  of  the 
word ;    and   might    not    a  career   be 
opened  to  them  sufficiently  attractive 
to  secure  the  services  of  the  ablest  men 
in   the   country,  and   excite  the   am- 
bition   of    the    rising   generation    of 
scholars?     Might  not  greater   efforts 
be  made  to  bring  great  thinkers  and 
investigators,     whether     natives     or 
foreigners,   into  connection  with   our 
universities  ?    Or  must  we  be  content 
that  the  latter  should  remain  only  great 
high  schools,  with  no  higher  aim  than 
the  production  of  learned  but  too  often 
barren     scholars     and     accomplished 
gentlemen  ?     Can  nothing  be  done  to 
encourage    independent   thought   and 
research  among  our  students  ?   If  it  be 
answered  that  our  men  are  so  over- 
burdened   by    the     "  getting    up    of 
books,"  and  preparation  for  ever-im- 
pending examinations,  that  they  have 
no  strength  left  for  the  pursuits   to 
which   nature  inclines  them,  would  it 
not    be    worth    considering    whether 
assiduous    cramming    and     perpetual 
examination    are  the   best   means   of 
enlarging  the  mind,  and  inspiring  it 
with  a   disinterested,  fervid   love    of 
knowledge?     The  question  is  not  an 
absurd  one,    for  we    know   that    the 
Germans,    whose  success    as  teachers 
we  acknowledge,  do  entirely  without 
competitive   examinations    and    class- 
lists,  and  consider  that  hasty  cramming 
too   often    produces    sickness    and   a 
loathing   for  all   mental   food.      Our 
system  of    racing   our   "  blood "  men 
for  magnificent  prizes  may,  they  think, 
produce  swift  runners  for  a  one -mile 
race,  but  not  good  roadsters  for  the 
journey  of  life. 

The  narrow  limits  of  a  magazine 
article  are  insufficient  for  the  proper 
discussion  of  these  and  other  questions 
of  the  deepest  interest,  and  they  are, 
no  doubt,  receiving  due  attention  from 
those  best  fitted  to  answer  them,  at 
the  universities  themselves.  These 
things,  therefore, 

"  Spatiis  exclusus  iniquis 
Prsetereo,  et  aliis  commemoranda  relinquo." 

WALTER  C.  PERRY. 


161 


THE  REFORM  PERIOD   IN   RUSSIA. 


OUR    system   of     party    government, 
whatever  advantages   it  may  possess, 
has  the  bad  effect  of  making  a  great 
number  of  persons  adopt  cut  and  dried 
political  views  in   regard  to  subjects 
which  need  not  and  ought  not  to  be 
looked   at  in   an  exclusively  political 
light.      If    an  Englishman   tells   you 
what   political   party   he   belongs    to, 
you  may  at  once  know  almost  certainly 
what  he  thinks  of  Russia  at  the  present 
moment,  and  also  what  he  thought  of 
Russia  fourteen  years  ago.     If  he  has 
a  bad  opinion  of  her  now,  when  she  is 
demanding  autonomy  for  Bulgaria,  he 
had   a  good   opinion  of    her   fourteen 
years  since  when  she  was  refusing  self- 
government  to  Poland.  If  he  applauds 
her  action  in  1877,  when  she  is  playing 
the   part   of  a  liberator  in  a   foreign 
country  where  the  work  of  liberation 
cannot  but  increase   her   own  power, 
he  condemned  her   conduct  in    1863, 
when   she   was    exercising   the  indis- 
putable  right   of    suppressing   an  in- 
surrection within  her  own  dominions. 
Each  of  these  two  sets  of  seemingly 
contradictory  views  is  marked,  never- 
theless, by  a  certain  consistency.     To 
defend  the  Russian  position  in  Poland, 
as  fourteen  years  later  to  defend  the 
Turkish  position  in   Bulgaria,  was  in 
each  case  to  show  faith  in  the  general 
utility  of  maintaining  the  status  quo. 
To  take,  on  the  other  hand,  the  part 
of  the  Poles  in  their  contest  with  the 
Russian     Government,  to    take    the 
part  of  the   Bulgarians    against    the 
Turks,  was  in  each  case  to  espouse  the 
cause  of  an  oppressed  nationality.    We 
are  too  active-minded  a  people,  how- 
ever, to  lose  much  time  in  accounting 
for  our  opinions  or  in  analysing  our 
motives;  and   the   great  majority   of 
those  who  are    really   interested    in 
the  present  war  take  a  keen  sporting 
view  of  it,  and  in  the  character  of  the 
No.  218. — VOL.  xxxn. 


Russophil  support  the  Russians,  or  in 
that  of  Turcophil  back  the  Turks. 

The  Russophil,  who  is  sure  to  be  a 
Liberal,  finds  it  convenient  to  forget 
the  past  history  of  his  newly-adopted 
country,  and  will  not  allow  even  her 
recent  misdeeds  (as  in  the  matter  of 
the  Greek  Uniates)  to  be  spoken  of. 
The  love  of  Russia,  however,  with 
which  he  is  reproached  by  his  enemies 
is  chiefly  shown  in  the  detestation 
he  expresses  of  everything  Turkish. 
Similarly  Turcophilism  consists  less  in 
affection  for  the  Turks  than  in  hatred 
of  the  Russians.  No  Turcophil  would 
wish  Turkish  marriage  customs,  or 
Turkish  slave-dealing,  or  the  Turkish 
method  of  administering  justice  to  be 
introduced  in  Europe.  But,  putting 
all  question  of  laws  and  customs  aside, 
the  Turcophils  declare  the  Turks  to  be 
better  men  than  the  Russians,  and 
ask  ingeniously  enough,  "  Whether  a 
good  Mahometan  is  not  preferable  to  a 
bad  Christian?  "  A  bad  Christian,  as 
an  individual,  .would  certainly  be  a 
less  desirable  man  to  have  dealings  with 
than  a  good  Mahometan.  But,  as  a 
general  proposition,  it  cannot  be  said 
by  any  one  who  believes  in  the  Chris- 
tian civilisation  of  Europe,  that  "  a 
good  Mahometan  is  preferable  to  a  bad 
Christian "  ;  since  the  latter  will  be 
in  contact  with  European  influences  to 
which  the  former  must,  except  in  the 
rarest  instances,  remain  a  stranger. 

The  Russians  may  be,  and  in  many 
respects,  no  doubt,  are,  bad  Christians. 
They  are  Christians  all  the  same  ;  and 
although  that  constitutes  no  reason  for 
supporting  them  in  an  unjust  or  un- 
necessary war  against  Mahometans,  it 
explains  why,  as  soon  they  had  freed 
themselves  from  the  Tartar  domination, 
they  entered  into  relations  with  vari- 
ous European  nations,  adopted  useful 
European  inventions,  and  encouraged 

M 


162 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


foreigners  from  various  parts  of 
Europe  to  visit  and  settle  in  their 
country.  The  movement  of  foreigners 
towards  Russia  became  more  marked 
with  each  succeeding  reign.  But  it 
began  with  the  accession  of  the  first 
Tsar  of  Muscovy ;  an  event  which  coin- 
cided nearly  enough  with  the  taking 
of  Constantinople  by  Mahomet  II. 
Peter  the  Great  is  usually  spoken 
of  as  the  first  Roman  sovereign  who 
endeavoured  to  Europeanize  Russia; 
and  his  efforts  in  this  direction  were 
so  much  greater  than  those  of  his 
predecessors  that  the  latter,  by  com- 
parison, would  seem  to  have  been  almost 
inclined  to  oppose  European  influences. 
But  the  Tsar  Ivan  married  the  daughter 
of  a  dispossessed  Christian  European 
sovereign ;  and  Sophia,  child  of  the  last 
Palseologus,  may  have  attracted  the 
Byzantine  architects,  followed  by  the 
Italian  architects,  artists,  and  artificers 
who  were  among  the  first  foreigners  to 
visit  Russia.  Under  Ivan  the  Terrible, 
Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  and  Germans, 
were  welcomed  at  Moscow.  This 
monarch  was  so  favourably  inclined 
towards  England,  that  he  made  a  pro- 
posal of  marriage  to  Queen  Elizabeth, 
who  declined  the  compliment  through 
a  special  embassy,  and  at  the  same 
time  offered — but  in  vain — the  hand 
of  one  of  her  ladies  of  honour  instead 
of  her  own.  Alexis  Michailwitch, 
father  of  Peter  the  Great,  not  only  en- 
couraged foreigners— like  all  his  pre- 
decessors, except  those  who  were  too 
much  occupied  with  domestic  affairs  to 
be  able  to  look  abroad — but  considered 
himself  so  fully  a  member  of  the 
European  family  of  kings,  that  he 
kept  up  a  sympathetic  correspondence 
with  Charles  I.  during  that  monarch's 
troubles,  and  after  his  execution, 
offered  money  and  men  to  his  son  in 
view  of  a  restoration. 

Peter  the  Great  was  a  strange  sort 
of  Christian,  and  he  had,  in  some 
respects,  Mahometan  tastes.  But  he 
considered  himself  a  Christian ;  he  had 
a  Christian-European  ideal  in  the 
matter  of  government  ;  and  precisely 
because  he  was  a  Christian  he  brought 


himself  into  contact  with  the  Christian 
civilization  of  the  west.  This,  to  the 
misfortune  of  his  subjects,  he  obviously 
would  not  have  done  had  he  been  a 
Mahometan  Tartar  or  Turk.  Since 
Peter's  time  Russia  has  gradually  been 
getting  more  and  more  European,  and 
the  Europeanized  class  has  gradually 
been  getting  larger  and  larger.  Not 
only  has  there  been  a  constant  current 
of  educated  immigrants  (as  of  teachers 
and  skilled  artizans)  from  the  west 
towards  Russia ;  but  the  educated 
class  in  Russia  has  increased  by  its 
own  natural  force  of  expansion.  The 
influence  of  the  German  nobility  in 
the  Baltic  provinces  conquered  by 
Peter  must  not  be  forgotten.  These 
descendants  of  the  sword-bearing 
knights  ("  gladiferi  ")  cannot  well  be 
dismissed  as  barbarians.  Nearly  all 
the  great  military,  governmental,  and 
foreign  diplomatic  posts  fell  into  their 
hands  ;  and  though  not  generally  liked 
in  Russia,  the  German  newspapers  of 
the  Baltic  provinces  must  have  exercised 
a  good  effect  on  high  Russian  society. 
They  in  any  case  swelled  in  a  remark- 
able manner  the  numbers  of  the  Russian 
educated  class,  which  some  years  later 
was  further  increased  by  a  good  many 
Poles,  from  Lithuania  and  Ruthenia, 
who  after  the  successive  partitions  of 
the  Polish  state,  took  service  in 
Russia. 

Since  Peter's  time,  and  especially 
during  the  reigns  of  Catherine  II.,  and 
of  Alexander  I.,  Russia  received  a 
number  of  eminent  men  from  Europe 
without,  until  quite  lately,  giving  one 
in  return.  A  Turcophil,  however, 
would  show  himself  a  very  ignorant 
Turcophil  if,  in  the  present  day,  he 
declared  himself  unable  to  name  any 
Russian  poets,  prose  writers,  painters, 
composers,  or  executive  musicians  who 
had  achieved  a  European  reputation. 
The  Germans,  who  translate  every- 
thing, translated  long  ago  the  poems 
of  Pushkin  and  Lermontoff,  and  the 
fables  of  Kriloff.  The  tales  of  Gogol 
have  been  translated  into  French  by 
M.  Louis  Viardot,  and  his  principal 
comedy  by  the  late  Prosper  Merimee. 


The  Rejorm  Period  in  Russia. 


163 


Mr.  Tourguenieff  seems  himself  to 
translate  his  own  admirable  novels 
into  French.  The  music  of  Glinka 
and  other  Russian  composers  has  found 
its  way  to  our  concert  rooms,  and  this 
master's  best  known  opera  is  about  to  be 
produced  at  the  Italian  Opera  of  Paris. 
All  this  is  no  doubt  as  tinkling  brass 
compared  to  the  sounder  and  more 
solid  civilization  of  England,  France, 
and  Germany.  But  only  such  names 
have  been  cited  as  are  already  familiar 
to  large  numbers  of  Englishmen  ;  and 
these  are  cited  simply  as  indications. 
Pianoforte-playing  is  not  civilization  ; 
yet  any  one  hearing  Rubinstein  play 
would  rightly  infer  that  he  must  have 
been  born  and  educated  in  a  civilized 
land. 

Because  Tourguenieff  writes  admir- 
able novels,  because  Yerestchagin's 
drawings  are  full  of  character,  because 
Glinka's  opera  is  about  to  be  given  at 
the  Theatre  des  Italiens,  and  because 
Rubinstein  is  a  magnificent  pianist,  it 
does  not  at  all  follow  that  the  Russians 
ought  to  be  allowed  to  advance  their 
frontier,  for  strategic  purposes,  as  far 
as  the  Balkans.  But  it  does  follow 
that  they  are  to  be  regarded  as  having 
given  some  proofs,  accepted  throughout 
Europe,  of  European  culture.  They 
have  not,  perhaps,  made  very  import- 
ant contributions  to  the  literature  and 
art  of  the  civilized  world,  but  they 
have  contributed  something.  They 
have  not  been  borrowers  alone.  Never- 
theless their  most  important  literary 
function  has  hitherto  been  to  spread 
throughout  Russia  a  knowledge  of  the 
literature  of  England,  France,  and 
Germany.  This  they  have  done  chiefly 
through  the  medium  of  magazines  and 
reviews,  of  which  a  greater  number 
are  published  in  Russia  than  in  any 
other  country  except  England.  "  Our 
reviews,"  wrote  Alexander  Herzen, 
a  great  many  years  ago,  "  penetrate  to 
the  borders  of  China,  and  enable  the 
inhabitants  of  Simbirsk  and  Tobolsk 
to  read  the  novels  of  Dickens  and 
George  Sand  a  few  weeks  after  their 
publication  in  London  and  Paris."  This 
was  written  in  the  days  of  the  Emperor 


Nicholas,  when  there  was  far  less 
literary  activity  in  Russia  than  there 
is  now. 

The  first  time  I  visited  Russia,  just 
twenty-one  years  ago,  I  was  much 
struck  by  the  great  development  of 
its  periodical  press,  and  still  more  by 
the  fact  that  in  none  of  the  numerous 
books  on  Russia  which  I  had  read  was 
its  existence  so  much  as  mentioned. 
Under  the  iron  despotism  of  Nicholas  no 
such  thing  as  political  journalism  could 
exist.  The  Moscow  Gazette,  belonging 
to  the  University  of  Moscow,  and  the 
St.  Petersburg  Gazette,  the  property  of 
the  University  of  St.  Petersburg — 
now  journals  of  real  importance — were 
at  that  time  petty  sheets,  containing 
little  beyond  official  announcements, 
government  advertisements,  and  scraps 
translated  from  foreign  newspapers.  Mr. 
Katkoff,  who  seven  years  afterwards 
was  to  become  more  popular  and  more 
powerful  than  any  journalist  has  ever 
been  in  a  free  country,  was  still  a  pro- 
fessor at  the  Moscow  University.  The 
journals  whose  names  our  editors  have 
at  last  learned  to  print  in  Russian — the 
Golos,  the  Novoe  Vremia,  and  a  dozen 
others — had  not  yet  come  into  being. 
The  monthly  and  half-monthly  reviews, 
however,  were  in  a  flourishing  con- 
dition, and  Mr.  Katkoff,  aided  by  his 
eminent  friend  and  fellow-professor, 
the  late  Mr.  Leonteff,1  had  just  started 
a  new  one,  the  Russian  Messenger,  which 
shared  with  the  long-established  Con- 
temporary the  honour  of  introducing 
into  Russian  periodical  literature  inde- 
pendent— if  at  first  somewhat  indirect 
— criticism  of  Russian  internal  affairs. 

It  was  felt  by  all  intelligent  persons 
that  serfdom  must  be  abolished,  and 
that  the  administration  of  justice 
must  be  reformed.  The  editor  of  the 
Russian  Messenger  wished,  moreover, 
to  see  some  measure  of  self-govern- 
ment introduced  ;  of  which  desire  signs 
might  be  seen  in  constant  references 
to  proceedings  in  the  English  Parlia- 
ment, articles  on  the  English  Constitu- 

1  An  interesting  memoir  of  this  gentleman 
appeared  in  one  of  the  first  numbers  of  the 
Deutsche  Rundschau. 


164 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


tion,  and  so  on.  There  could  be  no 
question  of  meddling,  for  a  long  time  to 
come,  with  Eastern  affairs  ;  and  it  was 
thought  that  Poland  had  lost  all  aspira- 
tion, or  at  least  all  positive  hope,  for  a 
separate  political  existence.  Thus  the 
Russians  could  give  themselves  up  to 
a  consideration  of  their  own  necessities 
and  wants ;  and  the  relaxed  condition 
of  the  censorship  allowed  it  to  be  seen 
that  writers  might  now  approach  with 
comparative  freedom  subjects  off  which 
they  would  quickly  have  been  warned 
in  the  Emperor  Nicholas's  time. 

Side  by  side  with  translations  from 
Grote's  History  of  Greece  and  Motley's 
Rise  of  the  Netherlands  were  appearing 
at  that  time  in  the  half-dozen  large 
reviews,  published  for  the  most  part 
once  a  fortnight,  numerous  translations 
from  contemporary  English  novelists, 
such  as  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  Mrs. 
Gaskell.  This  was  surprising  to  a 
stranger  as  proving  the  existence  of 
a  very  much  larger  reading  public  than 
was  generally  supposed  to  exist  in 
Russia,  and  of  a  reading  public  pos- 
sessing good  taste  and  capable  of 
interesting  itself  in  serious  studies. 

The  contents,  however,  of  these 
reviews  possessed  significance  of 
another  kind,  Tourguenieff,  Gregoro- 
vitch  and  other  native  writers  were 
contributing  tales,  nearly  all  of  which 
turned  on  the  miseries  of  faithful,  all- 
suffering  serfs  cursed  like  the  Anton 
Goremyka  of  Gregorovitch  and  the 
Moumounia  of  Tourguenieff,  with  cruel 
masters.  Mr.  Aksakoff,  a  member  of 
the  well-known  Slavophil  family,  one  of 
whom  is  now  president  of  the  notorious 
Moscow  "Slavonic  Committee,"  was 
publishing  in  National  Annals  sketches 
of  country  life,  and  of  the  relations 
between  proprietors  and  peasants, 
under  the  title  of  Family  Chronicles. 

At  least  as  remarkable  as  the  studies 
in  narrative  form  of  the  condition  of 
the  peasantry  were  some  satirical 
pictures  of  provincial  society  by  a 
writer  calling  himself  Schtchedrin,  in 
which  the  corruption  of  the  various 
classes  of  officials  was  unsparingly  and 
most  amusingly  exposed.  Law  at  that 


time  in  Russia,  instead  of  being  a  pro- 
tection,  was   at    once  a  terror  and  a 
trap.     Persons  who  had  been  robbed 
preferred  in  many  cases  to  keep  the 
matter   a  secret.      But   if  they  took 
proceedings  the  police  made  them  pay 
heavily,  even  though  they  proved  their 
case ;  while  if  they  failed  to  prove  it 
the  thief  also  made  them  pay.    When 
a  servant  robbed  his  master— supposing 
the  master  not  to  be  at  the  same  time 
the  owner — the  best  thing  to  do  with 
him  was  to  get  him  quietly  out  of  the 
house,    without    making   any    charge 
against  him,  for  to  call  a  man  a  thief 
was   a   very  serious   affair,  of  which 
the  police,  instructed  by  the   robber, 
would  assuredly  take  notice.  Whether 
as    accuser    or    as    accused,    it    was 
better   to  have    nothing   to    do   with 
the    police,    for    under    one    pretext 
or    another    they   could    compel    the 
attendance  time   after  time   of   those 
who  had  once  had  the  misfortune  to 
come  into  relations  with  them,  until  it 
at  last  became  necessary,  at  all  cost, 
to  terminate  the  connection.    Schtche- 
drin,   to    make    his     readers    laugh, 
showed  how  an  ingenious  police-officer 
might  make  money  by   carrying   the 
body  of  a  dead  man  first  to  one  village, 
then   to  another,  and  by  letting  the 
inhabitants  understand  at  each  place 
that   unless  they  came  to  terms  they 
might  be  held  answerable  for  the  death. 
This  story  might  have  been  borrowed 
from  the  Arabian    Nights.      Another, 
by  the   same  author,   of   which  some 
of    the   details    are   modern   enough, 
though  the  whole  in  spirit  is  essentially 
Asiatic,  had  its  origin  in  the   law  of 
compulsory    vaccination.       The   func- 
tionaries entrusted  with  the  duty  of 
seeing  that  the  peasants  were  vacci- 
nated, summoned  them  to  a  room  in 
which  stood  the  surgeon,  armed  with 
an  enormous  sabre,  ready  to  perform 
the    sanguinary    and     possibly    fatal 
operation  on  all  who  would  not  pay  to 
be  let  off. 

Satire  of  a  slightly  farcical  kind  was 
still  the  only  weapon  with  which 
official  abuses  could  be  attacked.  The 
utter  inadequacy  of  this  Harlequin's 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


165 


lath,  this  Punch's  baton,  had  been 
proved  in  the  case  of  Gogol's  admirable 
comedy,  at  which  the  Emperor  Nicholas 
had  shown  himself  so  unreservedly 
amused  that  the  author  had  felt  called 
upon  to  explain  in  a  preface  that 
"  behind  this  laughter  there  were 
bitter  tears."  Schtchedrin's  Provincial 
Sketches,  then,  were  remarkable  as 
containing  an  exposure,  at  once  more 
direct  and  more  complete  than  any 
that  had  previously  appeared,  of  the 
monstrous  and  grotesque  malpractices 
of  the  judicial  and  administrative  au- 
thorities. So  great  were  these  that  it 
seemed  scarcely  possible  they  could  be 
put  an  end  to  by  reforms  in  institutions 
alone.  Reforms,  however,  of  the  most 
sweeping  character,  after  being  care- 
fully prepared,  were  seven  years  after- 
wards introduced  ;  and  the  publication 
of  Schtchedrins  Provincial  Sketches 
may  be  said  to  have  marked  the  date  at 
which  the  impossibility  of  maintaining 
the  old  system  of  law  and  police  had  come 
to  be  so  fully  recognised  that  writers 
enjoyed  full  liberty  to  expose  its  ini- 
quity. Even  then  it  had  been  decided 
in  principle,  that  the  courts  should  be 
open  to  the  publ  c,  that  oral  instead  of 
documentary  evidence  should  be  taken, 
that  cases  should  be  tried  by  jury,  that 
barristers  should  be  admitted  to  plead, 
and  that  newspapers  should  be  allowed 
to  publish  reports  of  proceedings. 

The  reform,  or  rather  the  reconstitu- 
tion,  of  the  judicial  system,  and  the 
emancipation  of  the  serfs  are  the  two 
great  peaceful  measures  by  which  the 
reign  of  Alexander  II.  will  be  remem- 
bered ;  to  which  may  be  added  the 
introduction  of  local  self-government 
in  village  communes,  districts,  and 
provinces,  and  in  a  few  of  the  largest 
cities.  It  was  thought  at  the  time 
these  assemblies  were  formed  that  as 
communal  assemblies  sent  members 
to  district  assemblies,  and  as  from 
district  assemblies  were  elected  the 
members  of  provincial  assemblies,  so 
from  the  provincial  assemblies  deputies 
might  some  day  be  called  to  sit  in  a 
central  assembly  for  the  whole  empire. 
But  the  local  assemblies  seem  to  have 


been  devised  simply  to  meet  an  evident 
want,  and  to  enable  people  in  the 
country  and  in  country  towns  to 
get  streets  paved  and  lighted,  bridges 
built,  granaries  formed,  schools  estab- 
lished, and  so  on,  without  its  being 
necessary  at  every  step  to  make  appli- 
cation to  the  officials  of  a  highly 
centralised  administration,  which  had 
its  head-quarters  at  St.  Petersburg 
and  possessed  no  available  funds. 
A  blow  was  struck  at  Schtchedrin's 
corrupt  and  cruel  functionaries  as  well 
through  the  local  assemblies  as  through 
the  new  judicial  institutions. 

The  Russians  for  a  half-dozen  years, 
from  1857  to  1863,  worked  at  their 
reforms  almost  without  a  check;  in- 
deed the  judicial  reforms  were  intro- 
duced after  the  check  had  been  already 
received.  From  the  Emperor's  acces- 
sion until  the  actual  outbreak  of  the 
long-threatened  Polish  insurrection  the 
zeal  for  improvement  went  on  con- 
stantly increasing ;  and  now,  looking 
back  twenty  years,  one  may  see  that 
the  three  important  reforms  most 
urgently  needed  were  all  indicated  in 
the  periodical  publications  that  were 
appearing  at  the  end  of  1856  and  the 
beginning  of  1857. 

England  during  this  period  was 
popular  enough  in  Russia.  Mr. 
Katkoff,  who  possesses  a  remarkable 
knowledge  of  English  affairs  and  of 
the  nature  and  operation,  of  English 
institutions,  wrote  so  much  about 
England  and  the  English  constitu- 
tion, and  of  the  part  played  in  politics 
by  the  English  aristocracy,  that  the 
satrical  journal  of  St.  Petersburg 
represented  him  wearing  a  Scotch  cap, 
and  nicknamed  him  Lord  Katkoff. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  no  one 
who  now  writes  about  Russia  knew 
that  country  in  the  time  of  Nicholas. 
The  Russians  are  a  changeable  people, 
and  pass  quickly  from  one  mood  to 
another.  But  at  the  very  beginning 
of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II.  the  con- 
dition of  Russia  and  of  things  Russian 
can  scarcely  have  been  so  very  different 
from  what  it  was  at  the  very  end  of 
the  reign  of  Nicholas.  It  was  felt, 


166 


The  Reform  Period  in  Prussia. 


however,  when  Nicholas  died,  that  a 
heavy  weight  had  been  removed,  and 
it  may  be  that  the  reaction  by  which 
the  withdrawal  of  such  an  oppressive 
force  would  naturally  be  followed 
showed  itself  at  once  in  people's  con- 
versation. The  tyranny  of  the  Em- 
peror Nicholas  was  such  that  it 
would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  it ; 
but  it  seemed  to  me  on  first  arriving 
in  Russia  that  it  could  not  have  had 
such  a  deadening  effect  on  Russian 
society  as  was  generally  attributed  to 
it ;  and  the  travellers  who  visited 
Russia  in.  the  days  of  the  Emperor 
Nicholas  must  certainly  have  been 
wrong  in  declaring,  as  most  of  them 
did,  that  there  was  an  entire  absence 
of  intellectual  life  in  the  country.  The 
mass  of  the  reading  public  must  have 
been  the  same  at  the  end  of  the  last  as  at 
the  beginning  of  the  present  reign ; 
and  in  1 855,  as  in  1856,  Russian  readers, 
though  they  heard  not  a  word  about 
home  politics,  had  all  the  chief  pro- 
ductions of  European  literature  brought 
within  their  reach  through  the  large 
fortnight]  y  literary  miscellanies  already 
spoken  of. 

There  was  a  relaxation  in  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  censorship  immediately 
after  the  accession  of  the  present 
Emperor ;  and  it  has  been  shown  that 
already  at  the  beginning  of  1857 
Russian  writers  were  allowed  to  ap- 
proach such  subjects  as  the  condition 
of  the  peasantry,  the  effect  in  practice 
of  the  existing  judicial  and  administra- 
tive systems,  and  so  on.  Some  minor 
but  far  from  unimportant  reforms 
were  at  once  introduced  by  a  stroke  of 
the  pen.  The  price  of  foreign  pass- 
ports was  lowered  from  something 
like  forty  pounds  a  year  to  about 
thirty  shillings,  paid  once  for  all ; 
and  the  restriction  which  limited  the 
number  of  students  at  each  university 
to  three  hundred  was  unconditionally 
removed. 

Soon  afterwards  steps  were  taken 
for  establishing  railway  connection 
between  Russia  and  Western  Europe. 
This  last  measure  does  not  at  first 
sight  seem  to  be  one  of  those  which 


can  be  classed  under  the  head  of 
"reforms."  The  Emperor  Nicholas, 
however,  wished  to  have  as  little  as 
possible  to  do  with  the  West ;  and  not 
to  construct  railways  to  the  Western 
frontiers  was  as  much  part  of  his 
system  as  was  the  imposition  of  a 
fine  of  three  hundred  roubles  annu- 
ally on  Russians  travelling  abroad. 
It  was  evident  that  if  railways  were 
made  through  Russia  towards  Prussia 
and  Austria,  Russians  must  travel  by 
them  or  the  lines  would  never  pay  their 
expenses.  Accordingly  the  excessive 
tax  on  foreign  passports  could  not 
but  be  abolished  when  it  was  decided 
to  build  railways. 

The  Emperor  Nicholas's  truly 
despotic  regulation  in  regard  to  the 
number  of  students  to  be  admitted 
to  each  university,  besides  being 
hateful  in  itself,  could  not  be  main- 
tained in  presence  of  any  serious 
determination  to  reform  the  judicial 
and  administrative  systems.  But  four 
universities,  with  three  hundred  stu- 
dents at  each  university,  would,  ac- 
cording to  Nicholas,  supply  Russia 
with  a  sufficient  number  of  highly 
educated  men  to  keep  the  machine 
of  state  going  in  its  old  grooves, 
and  that  was  all  he  cared  for. 

Nicholas,  from  his  own  point  of 
view,  was  perfectly  right.  He  wished 
things  to  remain  quiet  in  Russia; 
and  though  opportunities  for  travel- 
ling abroad  and  for  obtaining  superior 
instruction  at  home  must  have  bene- 
fited the  country,  they  have  also 
proved  causes  of  disturbance.  If 
there  had  been  no  railways  to 
Russia,  Mr.  Herzen's  revolutionary 
journal,  the  Bell,  would  not  have  been 
introduced  so  largely  as  it  in  fact 
was  between  the  years  1860  and  1863. 
Nor  would  so  many  Russians  and 
Russian  Poles  have  visited  Mr.  Herzen 
in  London,  where  on  certain  days  his 
rooms  used  to  be  crowded  with  visitors 
of  all  kinds  from  his  native  land. 

Finally,  if  the  number  of  students 
at  the  universities  had  been  kept 
limited,  the  annual  crop  of — possibly 
not  dangerous,  but  certainly  trouble- 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


167 


some — revolutionists  turned  out  by 
these  seminaries  would  have  been  con- 
siderably smaller  than  it  now  seems  to 
be.  The  opinion  of  students  may  not  be 
very  important.  Still  less  to  be  feared 
is  their  action.  They  have  no  hold  on 
the  peasantry.  They  cannot  possibly 
move  the  army  ;  and  if  the  peasantry 
and  the  army  are  sound,  what  force 
is  there  in  Russia  to  bring  against 
the  government  1  Still  disaffection  is 
a  thing  to  be  guarded  against  in  a 
state  ;  and  the  Emperor  Nicholas  was 
determined  to  have  as  little  of  it  as 
possible.  It  was  not  only  or  chiefly 
by  his  ideas  that  the  university 
student  was  thought  likely  to  prove 
dangerous.  The  fact  had  also  to  be 
considered  that  if  the  universities 
turned  out  a  very  large  number  of 
students,  many  would  experience  great 
difficulty  in  finding  a  suitable  career. 

The  reforms  then  of  the  present  reign 
were  a  written  and  an  unwritten  re- 
form : — 1.  Permission  to  go  abroad  for 
every  one  who  chose  to  pay  ten  roubles; 
2.  Relaxation  of  the  censorship. 

New  journals  were  rapidly  started 
when  it  was  perceived  that  affairs  of  the 
day,  including  home  affairs,  might  be 
discussed  with  comparative  freedom ; 
and  numbers  of  books  on  subjects 
previously  forbidden  were  introduced 
and  translated,  when  it  was  found 
that  such  translations  could  be  offered 
for  sale.  Mill  On  Liberty  would  have 
been  a  popular  book  at  this  period, 
if  only  on  account  of  its  title.  The 
word  "  liberty "  was  fascinating  in 
itself.  The  thing  also  was  prized ; 
and  the  first  Russian  translation  of 
Mr.  Mills  book  was  followed  by  a 
second,  with  notes,  which  occupied 
more  space  than  the  text,  and  were 
intended  to  show  that  the  author's 
ideas  in  reference  to  liberty  were 
narrow.  Several  works  on  representa- 
tive government  were  translated,  and 
a  Russian  author  produced  an  account 
of  the  constitutions  and  charters  of 
the  various  countries  in  Europe  which 
possessed  free  institutions. 

One  of    the    door-keepers    of    the 


House  of  Commons  told  me  a  few 
years  afterwards  that  it  was  astonish- 
ing how  many  Russians  had  of  late 
looked  in  at  the  debates,  and  asked 
if  I  could  explain  this  to  him  un- 
accountable phenomenon.  The  ex- 
planation was  simple  enough.  The 
number  of  Russians  visiting  foreign 
countries  had  greatly  increased;  and  of 
these  a  certain  proportion  had  learned 
to  take  interest  in  our  parliamentary 
proceedings. 

Since  Russia  has  been  engaged  in 
a  war  with  Turkey,  it  is  often  said 
— what  was  never  said  before — that 
the    important     reforms     introduced 
in  Russia   during   the   present   reign 
have    been     ineffective.     They    have 
not,    perhaps,    given    such    beneficial 
results  as  were  expected  from  them. 
What   reforms   ever  did  ?     But  they 
have   done  good.     Even  if  they  had 
proved    failures,     they    would    have 
been  honourable  failures ;  for  it  was 
most     desirable    that    the     peasants 
should  be  emancipated,  that  the  judi- 
cial  system   should   be   reconstituted 
after   the   model    of    West-European 
systems,   and    that,    throughout    the 
country,  the  inhabitants   of  districts 
and  towns  should  be  enabled  to  at- 
tend to  local   affairs  and  levy   taxes 
for  local  improvements  without  being 
obliged  on  every  occasion  to  address 
requests  through  various  channels  to  a 
central  administration.     Russians  are 
still  liable  to  be  arrested  and  exiled 
in   virtue  of  an  administrative  order 
alone ;  and   in   a   political   case   now 
being  tried  in  St.  Petersburg,  though 
the  principle  of  publicity  is  admitted  in 
connection  with  it,  the  law  on  the  sub- 
ject is  none  the  less  evaded  by  so  filling 
the  court  with  prisoners,  to  the  num- 
ber of  nearly  two  hundred,  and  their 
counsel,  that  there  is  no  room  for  re- 
porters nor  for  outsiders  of  any  kind. 
To  reform  institutions  is  not  to  trans- 
form men,  and  the  Russians  of  to-day 
are  doubtless  in    many    respects  very 
like  the  Russians  of  twelve  or  twenty 
years  since. 

It  was  considered  the  proper  thing 
from  about  1860  to  1863  for  Russians 


168 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


of  advanced  liberal  tendencies,  who 
visited  the  West  of  Europe,  to  con- 
tinue their  journey  as  far  as  London, 
if  only  for  the  purpose  of  calling  on 
Mr.  Herzen.  Those  Russians  who 
thought  it  more  prudent  not  to  show 
themselves  at  the  house  of  this  de- 
clared enemy  of  Russian  autocracy 
(where  spies  easily  penetrated)  made 
a  point  all  the  same  of  bringing  home 
copies  of  his  journal.  It  was  the 
fashion  in  Russia  among  people  of  a 
certain  position  to  see  the  Bell 
(Kolokol)  apart  from  all  question  of 
sharing  its  views.  Those  who  suffered 
from  its  attacks,  equally  with  those 
who  sympathised  with  them,  wished  to 
see  what  revelations,  what  sarcasms, 
and  what  diatribes  each  next  weekly 
number  would  contain ;  and  stories, 
more  or  less  fantastic,  were  told  of 
the  ingenious  devices  by  which  it  was 
introduced.  Some  said  it  was  passed 
through  the  custom-house  in  sardine 
boxes,  others  in  bales  of  cotton.  The 
entry  into  Russia  must  certainly  have 
been  facilitated  by  custom  house  offi- 
cers, who  perhaps  were  bribed,  per- 
haps shared  Mr.  Herzen' s  political 
opinions.  Tt  is  certain  that  the  Kolo- 
Tcol  received  contributions,  and  possi- 
bly, therefore,  its  circulation  may  have 
been  helped  by  members  of  the  admi- 
nistration, who  either  were  anxious  to 
see  certain  official  abuses  corrected,  or 
who  merely  took  pleasure  in  seeing 
their  superiors  ridiculed  and  blamed. 

Mr.  Herzen's  genial  tone  pre- 
vented his  journal  from  being  classed 
with  works  directed  not  only  against 
the  evils  of  the  Russian  political 
system  and  the  corruption  of  Russian 
functionaries,  but  against  Russia  gene- 
rally. It  is  said  that  the  Emperor 
Alexander  read  the  Kolokol  regularly ; 
and  a  tale,  very  characteristic  of  this 
period,  was  told  of  a  special  Kolokol 
printed,  through  the  aid  of  interested 
persons  at  St.  Petersburg,  for  his 
Majesty's  own  particular  reading, 
from  which  an  article  exposing  these 
persons'  misconduct  had  been  omitted. 
But,  as  the  story  runs,  the  attack  on 
the  dishonest  officials,  cut  from  a 


genuine  number  of  the  Kolokol,  was 
forwarded  to  the  Emperor  in  an  en- 
velope ;  so  that  he  learned  at  the  same 
time  not  only  that  certain  misdeeds 
had  been  committed,  but  also  that  the 
authors  of  these  misdeeds  had  thought 
it  necessary  to  practise  upon  him  a 
gross  deception,  in  order  to  keep  from 
his  knowledge  the  accusation  made 
against  them. 

On  one  occasion,  in  1862,  a  list  of 
Russians,  who  had  called  on  Mr. 
Herzen  in  London,  and  who  were  to 
be  arrested  on  their  return  to  Russia, 
was  sent  to  the  Kolokol  office,  and  duly 
published  in  the  journal ;  not,  how- 
ever, before  some  few  of  the  visitors 
had  been  already  seized. 

In  the  year  1859  Mr.  Herzen  was 
calling  out  in  every  number  of  his 
journal  both  for  reforms  which  even 
now  are  not  in  action,  and  for  others 
which  a  few  years  afterwards  were  ac- 
tually introduced.  Emancipation  of  the 
peasantry,  abolition  of  corporal  pun- 
ishment, trial  by  jury,  were  three  of 
the  points  contained  in  Mr.  Herzen's 
charter;  which  also  contained  liberty 
of  the  press,  guarantees  against  arbi- 
trary arrest,  and  the  formation  of  a  re- 
presentative assembly.  It  would  be 
a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  Kolokol 
did  much  towards  bringing  about  or 
even  hastening  serf  emancipation,  of 
which  the  reform  of  the  judicial  system 
was  the  natural  accompaniment ;  and 
it  might  be  difficult  to  say  what  the 
positive  result  of  its  influence  really 
was.  "  Vivosvoco"  was  its  motto,  and 
it  certainly  had  an  awakening  effect. 
It  showed  itself  a  lively  censor  of 
the  administration,  and  must  have 
weakened  in  many  minds  the  respect 
for  state  authorities.  It  encouraged 
the  Poles  to  rise,  under  the  delusion 
that  Poles  fighting  for  national  liberty 
would  be  assisted  by  Russians  aspiring 
to  political  liberty ;  and  it  may  fairly 
be  regarded  as  the  natural  progenitor 
of  a  number  of  revolutionary  papers 
and  broadsides  which  were  circulated 
and  stuck  on  the  St.  Petersburg  walls 
in  1861  and  in  1862,  and  which  seemed 
to  be  connected  with  the  St.  Peters- 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


169 


"burg  press  of  that  period.  Mr.  Herzen 
was  an  admirable  polemical  writer,  and 
his  command  of  language,  no  less  than 
the  character  of  his  fine  sonorous  voice, 
showed  that  under  favourable  circum- 
stances he  might  have  been  a  great  orator. 
But,  an  exile  in  England,  he  could 
naturally  take  no  part  in  elaborating 
the  important  reforms  that  were  being 
prepared  in  Russia ;  and  the  part  he 
played  in  connection  with  his  naiive 
land  was — for  evil  and  for  good — that 
of  an  awakener  and  a  disturber. 

Mr.  Herzen,  though  by  far  the 
most  powerful  of  the  various  writers 
who  contributed  to  the  KolokoL,  had 
other  assistants  in  Ogareff  the  poet, 
his  coadjutor  from  the  beginning,  and 
Dakouninthe  revolutionist,  who  worked 
for  the  Kolokol  from  his  arrival  in 
London  after  his  escape  from  Siberia, 
early  in  1862,  until  the  outbreak  of 
the  Polish  insurrection  and  the  forma- 
tion of  the  western  diplomatic  league 
against  Russia,  when  the  Kolokol 
found  itself  all  at  once  reduced  to 
silence. 

From  the  accession  of  Alexander  II. 
until  the  Polish  insurrection  of  1863 
a  considerable  number  of  Russian 
writers  published  abroad  works  more 
or  less  revolutionary  on  the  subject  of 
Russia.  The  most  harmless  of  them, 
and,  as  many  Englishmen  will  think, 
the  most  rational,  was  the  late  Baron 
Firck,  better  known  by  his  nom  de 
plume  of  Schedo-Ferrotti.  He  was 
not  an  exile,  and — perhaps  for  that 
reason — was  regarded  by  the  exiles 
with  a  certain  suspicion.  Moreover, 
he  was  the  "  financial  secretary"  of  the 
Russian  Legation  at  Brussels ;  which 
justified  those  who  thought  his  views 
too  modest  in  saying  that  he  was  "  in 
the  pay"  of  the  government.  He 
proposed  to  pacify  Poland — or  at  least 
to  render  it  what  he  considered  justice 
— by  giving  a  constitution  to  the 
kingdom  of  Poland,  Lithuania  being 
regarded  as  part  of  Russia,  which, 
also,  was  to  have  its  constitution. 

The  late  Prince  Dolgoroukoff,  author 
of  a  multitude  of  books  on  Russian 
affairs,  desired  nothing  more  for 


Russia  than  constitutional  government 
of  an  aristocratic  pattern.  During  the 
reign  of  Nicholas,  being  at  the  time  a 
member  of  the  Russian  Embassy  at 
Paris,  he  had  offended  his  sovereign 
by  some  publication,  and  had  there- 
fore been  ordered  to  return.  "With  a 
gaiety  which  seldom  deserted  him  he 
offered  to  send  his  photograph,  but 
declined  to  go  back  himself ;  and  at 
the  same  time  begged  the  Emperor  to 
remember  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
Dolgoroukoffs  were  Tsars  of  Moscow 
when  the  forefathers  of  the  reigning 
house  were  not  even  dukes  of  Holstein- 
Gottorf.  It  was  a  sort  of  tradition  in 
the  Dolgoroukoff  family  to  demand 
constitutions ;  and  partly  perhaps  for 
that  reason,  but  also  for  more  valid 
ones,  which  are  to  be  found  in  his 
numerous  and  often  very  interesting 
works,  the  prince  in  question  called 
upon  Alexander  II.  to  form  a  parlia- 
ment. Prince  Dolgoroukoff  read  Her- 
zen's  books,  admired  his  talent,  and 
was  on  good  terms  with  him,  but 
without  sharing  his  views.  Herzen, 
however,  had  followers  who  went  far 
beyond  their  leader;  and  these  ad- 
vanced members  of  an  extreme  party 
had  but  a  poor  opinion  of  Prince  Dol- 
goroukofF,  who,  on  his  side,  had  no 
opinion  at  all  of  them. 

Herzen,  though  he  could  not  well 
have  gone  back  to  Russia,  had  not 
been  forced  to  leave  the  country,  but 
had  quitted  it  (towards  the  end  of 
the  Emperor  Nicholas's  reign)  because 
he  found  it  impossible  to  pursue  there 
his  vocation  as  a  writer.  He  was  a 
man  of  some  property,  which,  by  an 
ingenious  device,  and  through  the 
agency  of  Rothschild,  he  contrived  to 
save  from  confiscation ; x  and  his  asso- 
ciate in  the  direction  of  the  Kolokol, 
the  poet  Ogareff,  had  possessed  con- 
siderable property  in  land,  which  he 
had  voluntarily  abandoned  to  his 
peasants — not,  as  I  was  assured  by 
one  of  his  neighbours,  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  peasants.  However  that 
may  have  been,  Ogareff,  like  Herzen, 

1  See  L'Empereur  Rothschild  et  le  Banquier 
Nicholas.     Par  A.  Herzen. 


170 


The  Eeform  Period  in  Russia. 


was  a  thorough  enthusiast ;  or  rather 
while  Herzen  was  an  enthusiast,  Oga- 
reff was  a  fanatic. 

Dakounin  went  further  even  than 
Ogareff.  Ogareff,  for  instance,  held 
that  land  belonged  by  right  to  those 
who  cultivated  it,  but  was  willing, 
in  view  of  serious  difficulties,  to  see  a 
compromise  effected  by  which  a  portion 
of  every  estate  should  belong  to  the  so- 
called  proprietor.  So,  at  least,  Ogareff 
set  forth  in  a  little  book  on  Russia, 
dedicated  to  an  English  friend.  Dakou- 
nin, however,  was  not  a  man  of  com- 
promises. He  belonged  by  his  family 
to  a  class  of  landed  proprietors.  But 
he  appeared  as  a  revolutionary  leader 
in  1848  ;  and  in  1849,  after  the  sup- 
pression of  the  various  revolutionary 
movements  in  Germany,  was  made 
prisoner  and  delivered  over  to  the 
Russian  Government,  which  sent  him 
to  Siberia.  After  remaining  eleven 
years  in  Siberia,  where  one  of  his 
cousins  was  governor-general,  he 
profited  by  the  liberty  of  locomotion 
which  his  good  conduct  and  his 
apparent  resignation  had  gained  for 
him,  to  reach  the  coast  and  get  on 
board  an  American  vessel,  which  took 
him  to  Japan,  where  he  was  enabled 
by  the  French  embassy  in  Japan  to 
continue  his  voyage  to  New  York,  and 
ultimately  to  London. 

Dakounin  had  a  strong  objection  to 
everything.  England,  an  aristocratic 
country,  displeased  him  almost  as  much 
as  Russia,  the  country  of  autocracy. 
In  England,  moreover,  the  peasants, 


being  without  land,  seemed  to  him 
worse  off  even  than  the  still  uneman- 
cipated  Russian  serfs.  He  aimed  not 
merely  at  destruction  but  at  general 
disintegration.  Countries  were  to  be 
broken  up  into  provinces,  provinces 
into  districts,  districts  into  communes, 
while  every  commune  was  to  be  self- 
governing.  Among  other  advantages, 
this  system,  as  he  once  explained  to  me, 
would  do  away  with  patriotism,  and 
with  wars  for  national  aggrandisement 
and  the  justification  of  national  vanity. 
A  critic  of  Mr.  Dakounin' s  scheme 
pointed  out  that  there  could  be  no 
reason  why  the  process  of  disintegra- 
tion should  cease  at  the  commune.  The 
self-governing  commune,  he  suggested, 
might  be  divided  into  self  governing 
groups,  and  the  self-governing  groups 
into  self-governing  individuals.  Of 
course  every  one,  according  to  Dakou- 
nin's  system,  was  to  have  land  ;  and 
all  dignities,  all  offices,  were  to  be 
abolished. 

A  German  reformer,  to  whom  it  was 
objected  that  the  reforms  he  was  ad- 
vocating could  lead  to  nothing  but 
anarchy,  replied  that  "  a  genial 
anarchy"  was  not  a  thing  to  be  de- 
spised. The  anarchy,  however,  which 
Dakounin  wished  to  bring  about 
would  have  had  nothing  genial  in  it. 
The  political  sect  of  which  he  was  a 
leading  member  believe  neither  in 
God  nor  in  heaven,  but  only  in  the 
earth,  of  which  every  individual  ought 
to  have  his  own  little  piece. 

H.  SUTHERLAND  EDWARDS. 


To  be  continued. 


HELIOGOLAND. 


THERE  are  few  places  in  Europe  where 
the  traveller  may  feel  so  secure  from 
the  companionship  of  the  ordinary 
British  tourist  as  in  Heliogoland. 
And  yet  it  is  a  British  possession, 
and  has  been  one  ever  since  1814.  Up 
to  that  date  the  steep  rock  in  the  North 
Sea,  whose  name  is  sometimes  spelt 
Helgoland,  or  Heilgeland,  but  which 
we  call  Heliogoland,  had  remained  in 
uncoveted  and  undesired  possession 
of  the  Danes.  Early  in  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century,  however,  when 
strange  acts  of  appropriation  were  com- 
mitted under  the  influence  of  panic, 
and  justified  by  the  rough-and-ready 
laws  of  self-defence,  we  seized  upon 
this  little  group  of  islands  lying  in 
the  German  Ocean,  right  opposite  the 
mouths  of  the  great  rivers  Elbe  and 
Weser.  It  consists  of  Heliogoland, 
Sandy  Island,  and  several  reefs  and 
rocks,  of  which  only  two  have  been 
given  the  distinctive  names  of  the 
Monk  and  the  Steen.  Heliogoland 
itself  is  barely  a  mile  long,  and  its 
average  breadth  is  only  the  third  of 
a  mile.  Even  these  moderate  dimen- 
sions are  said  to  be  subjected  to  a 
steady  reduction  by  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  sea.  There  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that  the  whole  group 
of  islets,  which  bear  distinct  traces  of 
change  in  their  physical  geography, 
once  formed  a  single  island  —  large 
compared  to  the  size  of  any  of  its 
existing  fragments. 

A  bit  of  old  Frisian  doggerel  de- 
scribes vividly  enough  the  impression 
of  the  traveller  who  first  sees  Helio- 
goland in  its  summer  dress  : — 

"  Road  es  det  Lann, 
Gron  es  de  Kaut, 
Witt  es  de  Sunn  ; 

Deet  es  de  woaper  vant,  Helligeland." 
"  Red  is  the  land, 
Green  is  the  grass, 
White  is  the  sand  ; 
These  are  the  colours  of  Heliogoland." 


And  very  bright  and  pretty  these 
colours  looked  to  our  eyes,  when  we 
dropped  the  /Sunbeam's  anchor  in  the 
harbour  last  August,  after  a  swift  and 
safe  run  across  —  under  sail  —  from 
Margate  in  forty- eight  hours.  The 
ordinary  route  is  by  way  of  Hamburg, 
and  from  thence  by  steamers  making 
an  eight  hours'  voyage  three  times  a 
week.  Only  a  couple  of  these  hours, 
however,  are  spent  at  sea,  the  other 
five  being  occupied  by  a  slow  progress 
down  the  Elbe.  Heliogoland  is  a 
favourite  resort  of  Austrian  and  Ger- 
man families,  who  flock  here  during 
the  summer  months  to  enjoy  the  deli- 
cious sea-bathing,  and  the  inexpensive, 
pleasant,  sans-fagon  out-of-door  life. 

Indeed,  the  coup  d'ceil  which  first 
presented  itself  reminded  me  of 
nothing  so  much  as  one  of  the  scenes 
from  the  opera  of  the  Flying  Dutchman. 
There  was  the  same  bright  sea,  the 
dark  cliffs,  and  the  sandy  shore.  The 
same  sort  of  long  wooden  pier  strag- 
gled out  into  the  blue  water,  and  was 
crowded  with  groups  of  sturdy,  fair, 
North  -  Sea  fishermen.  They  were 
idling  about,  too,  in  true  theatrical 
fashion,  dressed  in  loose  trousers, 
light-blue  striped  sailor-shirts,  and 
blue  or  red  woollen  caps.  Nor  did  the 
women  look  less  picturesque  in  their 
bright  scarlet  or  yellow-bordered  pet- 
ticoats, light  over-dresses,  and  black 
or  chintz  sun-bonnets. 

Small  as  is  the  principal  island,  it 
yet  boasts  of  two  towns — one  on  the 
high  land,  and  one  on  the  low  land. 
There  is  as  much  as  170  feet  of  dif- 
ference between  the  two  "lands,"  and 
the  visitor  must  climb  203  steps,  if 
he  would  reach  the  upper  town  from 
the  sea-shore.  On  this  "Ober-land" 
stands  the  Government  House,  the 
Church,  the  batteries  and  their  maga- 
zine, and,  higher  than  all,  the  splendid 
lighthouse,  the  lantern  of  which  is  257 


172 


Hdiogoland. 


feet  above  the  sea-level.  This  light- 
house not  only  serves  as  a  warning 
from  the  rock  on  which  it  is  built,  but 
is  of  use  to  vessels  entering  the  Elbe 
or  the  Weser,  the  Eyder  or  the  Jade. 
There  are  about  350  houses  on  this 
high  ground,  and  eighty  on  the  lower 
portion  cf  the  island,  called  the 
"  Unter-land,' '  holding  between  them 
a  couple  of  thousand  inhabitants. 
These  dwellings  are  so  neat  and  clean, 
that  their  wooden  walls  and  red  roofs 
help  to  produce  an  indescribably  comic 
effect  of  the  whole  place  having  been 
just  taken  out  of  a  box  of  children's 
toys,  and  neatly  arranged  in  squares 
and  rows.  But  the  combination  of 
English  comfort  with  Dutch  cleanli- 
ness and  German  propriety  is  very 
agreeable  to  the  eye. 

The  church  is  a  curious  building, 
and  contains,  suspended  from  the  ceil- 
ing, several  models  of  ships  under  full 
sail,  presented,  ex  voto,  from  time  to 
time.  The  women  sit  by  themselves 
down  stairs,  in  pews  marked  with 
their  family  names ;  the  men  sit  in 
a  gallery  up  stairs,  round  which  has 
been  painted,  by  no  mean  artist,  a 
series  of  scenes  from  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments.  Some  years  ago  the 
clergyman  wished  to  paint  these  pic- 
tures out,  which  would  have  been  a 
great  pity  ;  for,  although  the  mode  of 
treating  the  subjects  has  not  been 
perhaps  strictly  ecclesiastical,  they 
deserve  to  be  retained  as  relics  of  a 
past  age.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  some 
loving  hand  may  even  yet  be  found 
to  copy  or  photograph  these  quaint 
old  designs,  ere  time  or  progress  deals 
still  more  hardly  with  them.  The 
font,  too,  is  especially  curious.  It  is 
held  up  by  figures  so  ancient  that 
cognoscenti  declare  they  must  be  the 
remaining  supports  of  some  ancient 
altar  to  a  heathen  deity.  When  a 
christening  takes  place  there  is  a 
preliminary  ceremony  of  filling  this 
font,  and  it  is  pretty  to  see  fifty  or 
a  hundred  children  advancing  up  the 
aisle  in  a  procession,  each  bearing  a 
little  mug  of  water.  The  service  is 
Lutheran.  The  clergyman  reads  from 


the  communion-table,  and  above  it  is 
placed  a  little  box  from  which  he 
preaches.  Besides  this  he  possesses 
a  pew  of  his  own,  exactly  opposite 
that  appropriated  to  the  Governor's 
use,  with  the  communion-table  be- 
tween. Both  these  pews  are  precisely 
like  opera-boxes,  and  have  windows 
to  open  and  shut.  It  is  not  so  long 
ago  since  prayers  used  to  be  offered 
up  in  this  very  church  for  wrecks ; 
and  it  was  an  established  custom,  if 
the  rumour  of  one  arrived  whilst 
service  was  being  performed,  for  the 
clergyman  to  shut  his  book,  seize  the 
long  hatchet-like  pike  placed  in  readi- 
ness for  such  an  emergency,  and  lead 
his  flock  to  their  boats.  But  the 
mission  was  scarcely  a  Christian  one, 
for  no  survivors  were  ever  permitted 
to  return  and  tell  the  tale  of  what 
sort  of  welcome  they  had  received  on 
these  inhospitable  rocks. 

We  must  remember,  however,  in 
mitigation  of  such  hard  and  cruel 
facts,  that  from  father  to  son  for 
many  and  many  a  bygone  generation 
the  trade  and  profession  of  each  male 
inhabitant  of  Heliogoland  had  been 
that  of  a  wrecker,  with  a  very  little 
exercise  of  the  pilot's  or  fisherman's 
more  gentle  craft  during  the  brief 
summer  months.  Indeed  it  has  taken 
the  strong  repressive  measures  insisted 
on  and  strictly  carried  out  by  the 
present  Governor,  to  at  all  subdue  this 
inborn  tendency  to  act  on  the  saying 
of  what  is  one  man's  extremity  being 
another  man's  opportunity.  The  great 
improvement  in  wrecking  morals  and 
manners  which  has  been  accomplished 
with  so  much  difficulty  is,  however, 
but  skin  deep,  and  will  even  now 
collapse  on  the  smallest  chance  of 
escaping  detection.  Whilst  the  Sun- 
beam lay  in  one  of  the  two  good 
harbours  of  these  islands,  she  was 
the  object  of  much  curiosity  and  in- 
terest. Amongst  her  numerous  visitors 
were  some  of  the  coast-guard.  They  had 
been  duly  shown  round  the  yacht,  and 
during  this  process  some  wag  inquired 
of  the  coxwain  of  their  gig  what  he 
would  like  to  take  first  if  the  vessel 


Heliogoland. 


173 


were    "sitting  on   the  rocks."     This 
is  a  euphemistic  equivalent  in  Helio- 
goland for  a  vessel  being  cast  away. 
A  half-regretful  gleam  came  into  his 
bright  blue  eyes  as  the  man  answered, 
wistfully,   "  I  hardly  know,   sir ;  but 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  copper  about." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  had  already 
observed    that     the    ventilators    and 
bright    brasswork   of   our   little    ship 
attracted  special  notice  and  many  ex- 
pressions of   half-envious  admii'ation. 
But    it    is    only    fair    to     add    that 
we    had     other    more    peaceful    and 
less  professional  visitors  from  among 
the  islanders  and   the  "  Bude-gaste," 
and  I  often  found  beautiful  bouquets 
of   flowers  and   graceful   messages  of 
thanks  awaiting  me  on   board  when 
we  returned  from  a  long  day  on  shore. 
The  present  Governor  of  Heliogo- 
land  has   indeed  made  enormous  re- 
forms   in    the    system    of    legalised 
wreckage  which  he  found  in  practice 
on  the  islands.     He  has  established  a 
volunteer  corps  of  native  coast-guards, 
superintended  by  eight  picked  coast- 
guardsmen  from  England.    Now,  there- 
fore, when  a  wreck  takes  place  on  the 
shore,    the   errand   of    those   battling 
with   the   beating   surf,   the   howling 
wind,    and    the    blinding    storms   of 
sleet   and   snow,   to   Avhere  the   poor 
ship  lies  stranded  on  the  rocks,  is  one 
of  succour  and  not  of  heartless  villany. 
Formerly  the  very  same  men  would 
have  only  hastened  to  the  spot  with 
their  pikes  and  hatchets,  to  cut  down 
the  bulkheads,  force  open  the  hatches, 
take  out  the  cargo,  and  break  up  the  ship 
as  quickly  as  might  be  for  the  sake  of 
appropriating  her  timbers,  copper,  and 
ballast.  As  for  the  unhappy  crew,  their 
fate  would  probably  be  similar  to  that  of 
some  passengers  by  coach  to  "Frisco" 
in  its  earliest  days,  of  whom  Artemus 
Ward   makes   mention   as   being    the 
objects  of  the   driver's  special  atten- 
tion.    This  worthy  used  to  make  his 
rounds,  -kingbolt  in  hand,  as  soon  as 
possible  after  an  accident,  and  proceed 
to  act  on  his  avowed  principle   that 
"  dead  men  don't  sue ;  they  ain't  on 
it."    But  in  these  more  civilized  days, 


if  rescue  has  come  too  late,  gentle 
hands  have  laid  the  unfortunate  mari- 
ners to  rest  in  this  bleak  spot,  and, 
through  the  kindness  of  the  Governor's 
wife,  each  grave  in  the  pretty  cemetery 
in  Sandy  Island,  even  though  name- 
less, has  been  marked  by  a  small  black 
cross,  bearing  the  name  of  the  ship- 
wrecked vessel  and  the  date  of  its 
loss,  whenever  it  was  possible  to 
ascertain  them.  The  rocket  apparatus 
has  been  used  on  many  occasions,  too, 
with  the  best  results. 

In  spite  however  of  the  utmost 
vigilance,  it  sometimes  happens  that 
the  old  trade  is  still  plied,  and  the 
Governor  told  me  the  following  story 
himself  : — 

He  was  one  day  lately  caught  in  a 
thick  fog  when  out  in  a  boat  shooting 
wild  sea-birds,  and  whilst  waiting  for 
the  mist  to  lift,  he  heard  a  sound  of 
hammering  in  the  direction  of   a  dis- 
tant reef.  His  practised  ears  soon  told 
him  what  it  meant,  and  in  spite  of  the 
difficulties  raised  on  the  spot  by  the 
crew   of  his    boat,    and    the    earnest 
efforts  they  made  to  dissuade  him,  he 
persisted  in  steering  towards  where  he 
knew  the  reef  lay.     Just  before  reach- 
ing it,  the  fog  lifted  slightly,  disclosing 
to  some  sentinel  wrecker  the  swiftly 
coming  boat.     In  a  moment  the  most 
absurd  stampede  took  place.     Out  of 
the  cabin  and  hold  of  the  unfortunate 
ship  the  disturbed  pillagers  swarmed 
like  bees,  hoping  to  reach  their  own 
boats    and    escape   unrecognised.     So 
rapid  were  their  movements,  that  only 
two  or   three   of  the  least  agile  were 
captured,  but  those  who  succeeded  in 
getting  away  left  behind  them  their 
large  axes    and   other    ship-breaking 
implements,  on  most   of  which   their 
names  had  been  branded,  and  which 
thus  furnished  the  means  by  which  the 
owners  were    captured  and   punished. 
Since  this  adventure  the  wreckers  have 
had  to  acknowledge  that,  like  Othello, 
"their  occupation's   gone,"  and  they 
have  taken  every  opportunity  of   en- 
listing themselves  on  the  side  of  law 
and  order. 

There  has  been  great  difficulty  too 


174 


Heliogoland. 


in  inducing  the  natives  to  use  the 
life-boats  brought  from  England.  On 
more  than  one  occasion  the  coast-guard 
men  have  found  the  air-boxes  broken 
and  the  linings  cut  by  the  natives, 
whilst  they  have  themselves  been 
absent  on  a  life-saving  expedition. 
But  these  obstacles  lessen  every  day, 
under  the  firm  yet  kindly  rule  of  the 
present  Governor,  who  takes  the 
liveliest  personal  interest  in  every 
detail  of  his  administration. 

The  Waal  Channel  separates  the 
Downs  or  Sandy  Island  from  Heliogo- 
land, and  both  islands  are  but  thinly 
covered  with  soil,  which  is  hardly  any- 
where more  than  four  feet  deep.  Still 
there  is  pasture  for  cattle  and  sheep  ; 
and  fair  crops  of  barley  and  oats  can 
be  raised  in  summer.  The  principal 
revenue  of  the  islands  is  derived  from 
fish,  which  are  sent  to  London  via 
Hamburg,  and  from  a  large  oyster-bed. 
For  the  last  fifty  years  it  has  also  been 
the  favourite  summer  bathing-place  of 
Austrians  and  Germans,  who  come  over 
in  great  numbers  between  June  and 
September.  The  life  led  by  these 
visitors  is  a  very  simple  and  informal 
one.  Nobody  seems  to  think  it  neces- 
sary to  walk  up  and  down  at  certain 
hours,  or  to  do  any  particular  thing  at 
regular  and  stated  periods.  You  may 
even  if  you  like  dig  sand-holes  with 
the  children  whilst  you  listen  to  lovely 
music  played  twice  a  day  by  a  band 
from  Carlsbad. 

To  enjoy  Heliogoland  you  must  be  a 
good  walker,  for  there  are  no  horses 
on  the  island,  and  every  place  has  to 
be  visited  on  foot.  There  is  a  nice 
breezy  walk  across  the  highest  point 
of  the  island  to  the  north  end,  where 
a  curious  rock  stands  boldly  out, 
almost  separate  from  the  mainland. 
The  cliffs  are  full  of  caves  and  grottoes, 
which  are  illuminated  twice  a  year. 
A  reckless  expenditure  of  blue  lights 
and  rockets  takes  place  on  these 
occasions,  producing,  I  am  assured,  a 
very  enchanting  and  magical  effect. 
We  were  so  unfortunate  in  the  weather 
during  our  short  stay,  that  one  of 
these  illuminations  which  was  impend- 


ing, and  formed  the  staple  subject  of 
conversation  during  many  weeks,  had 
to  be  postponed  over  and  over  again, 
and  we  never  beheld  it. 

The   system  of    bathing  at    Sandy 
Island  is  organised  to  perfection,  and 
it  was  impossible  to  help  contrasting 
it  with  the  sea-side  manners  of  Rams- 
gate,  where  we  had  last  bathed.  •   The 
"  Bade-ga'ste"  are  taken  across  to  Sandy 
Island  in  private  boats  or  in  omnibus- 
boats,  which  run  every  five  minutes, 
from  6  a.m.  to  2  p.m.     The  bather  pro- 
vides himself  with  a  ticket  before  start- 
ing, and  has  no  more  trouble.     Ladies 
and  gentlemen  bathe  on  different  sides 
of  the  island,  and  in  different  places, 
according  to  the  wind  and  tide.     We 
landed  in  our  own   boat,  and  I  was 
much  amused  at  the  respectful  distance 
at  which  the  old  pilot,  who  was  carry- 
ing my  bathing  gown,  stopped.     In  his 
dread   of    approaching   too  closely  to 
the  forbidden  precincts,  he  made  the 
"Bade-frau"  walk  at  least  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  to  meet  us.     It  certainly  was 
a  treat  to  bathe  in  such  pure  and  clear 
water  beneath  so  lovely  and  bright  a 
sky.     One  feels  like  a  different  being 
afterwards.     Part  of  the   programme 
consists  in  taking  a  "  Sonne-bad,"  and 
basking  in  the  balmy  air  on  the  little 
sand-hills,  sheltered  by  the  rocks  from 
too  much   wind  or  sun.     The  bather 
has  no  trouble  or  anxiety  on  his  mind 
about  machines  or  towels.     They  are 
all  provided  for  him,  and  the  price  is 
included  in  his  original  ticket.     After 
the  bath  it  is  de  rigueur  to  go  and  break- 
fast at  the  Restaurant  Pavilion  on  the 
beach,  where  you  feel  exactly  as  if  you 
were  sitting  on  the  glazed-in  deck  of 
a  ship.     The   food   is   excellent,  and 
Heliogoland  lobsters  fresh  out  of  the 
water  are  as  different  from  the  familial- 
lobster  smothered  in  salad  and  sauce, 
as  caviare,  newly  taken  from  the  stur- 
geon and  eaten   on   the  banks  of  the 
Volga,  is  from  caviare  eaten   on  the 
banks  of  the  Thames  out  of  a  china 
jar.     Then  after  this  excellent  break- 
fast, if  the  Bade-gast  is  inclined  for 
exercise,    he  may    stroll   about    very 
pleasantly  to   the   point  of  the  reef, 


Hdiogoland. 


175 


where  lie  will  hardly  be  able  to  turn 
his  head  without  seeing  the  ribs  of 
some  unfortunate  vessel  sticking  up 
out  of  the  sea-sand  ;  or  he  may  return 
to  the  mainland  and  listen  to  the 
sweet  music  of  the  Carlsbad  band, 
and  even  do  a  little  mild  shopping. 
The  specialities  of  the  island  consist  of 
hats,  muffs,  tippets,  and  many  pretty 
things  made  from  the  plumage  of  the 
grey  gull  and  other  wild  sea  -  birds 
which  nest  among  the  rocks.  Besides 
these  there  are  various  ingenious  little 
articles  manufactured  by  the  inhabit- 
ants during  the  long,  cold,  dark  winter 
evenings. 

The  "  Ober-land,"  or  upper  part  of 
the  town,  can  boast  of  several  good 
hotels  and  restaurants,  and  in  summer 
some  two  or  three  hundred  guests  sit 
down  daily  at  the  principal  table  d'hdte. 
For  evening  amusement,  there  is  a 
bright,  cheery  little  theatre,  where  a 
really  good  company  plays  nightly  the 
most  sparkling  and  pretty  pieces  with 
a  verve  and  finish  which  reminds  one 
of  a  French  play-house.  An  occasional 
ball  at  Government  House  is  a  great 
treat,  and  warmly  appreciated  by  the 
fortunate  guests. 

There  is  a  generally  received  fable 
to  the  effect  that  Heliogoland  is  over- 
run with  rabbits,  which  are  rapidly 
and  surely  undermining  the  whole  of 
Sandy  Island,  and  will  eventually  cause 
it  to  disappear  beneath  the  sea.  But, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  not  a 
single  rabbit  on  the  island,  nor  has 
there  been  one  in  the  memory  of  the 
present  generation.  The  wild  -  fowl 
afford  excellent  sport.  The  guillemots 
breed  in  immense  quantities  among  the 
picturesque  rocks  of  the  west  coast, 
and  in  the  autumn  large  numbers  of 
woodcock  land  here  on  their  way  south 
in  search  of  summer  climes.  In  the 
town  itself  two  large  poles  are  erected 
at  the  corner  of  every  street,  and  be- 
tween them  a  net  is  suspended,  by 
means  of  which  many  birds  are  caught 
during  their  flight.  Mr.  Gatke,  the  per- 
manent Secretary  to  the  Government, 
has  a  most  interesting  ornithological 
collection,  consisting  entirely  of  birds 


that  have  been^shot  on  the  islands,  but 
embracing  specimens  of  numerous 
foreign  varieties.  Many  of  those  we 
saw  must  have  found  their  way  hither 
from  Africa,  from  the  Himalayas, 
and  even  from  Australia,  besides  a 
peculiar  kind  of  gull  (Ross's  gull) 
from  the  arctic  regions,  of  which  even 
the  British  Museum  does  not  possess 
a  specimen.  Mr.  Gatke  talks  of  pub- 
lishing a  book  on  this  collection  of 
feathered  wanderers  whose  flight  has 
ended  here. 

During  the  winter  the  rocks  swarm 
with  wild-fowl  of  all  kinds — swans, 
geese,  and  ducks,  but  only  two  of  the 
species  breed  there,  the  razor-hawk 
and  the  guillemot.  In  the  spring, 
when  the  rocks  are  literally  covered 
with  these  birds,  the  effect  must  be 
inexpressibly  droll,  and  the  noise 
tremendous. 

Insignificant  as  the  place  seems  to 
most  of  us,  Heliogoland  has  given  a 
great  deal  of  trouble  in  her  day. 
Barely  ten  years  ago  she  was  the 
bugbear  of  insurance  offices  and  ship- 
owners, and  a  well-known  refuge  for 
masters  desirous  of  getting  rid  of 
their  vessels  in  a  comfortable  manner. 
No  vessel  once  on  the  neighbouring 
reefs,  or  on  the  main  island,  was  ever 
allowed  to  depart,  while  those  wrecked 
in  the  Elbe  or  the  neighbouring  rivers 
were  simply  plundered  by  the  Heliogo- 
land fishermen  and  pilots  under  the 
plea  of  salvage.  The  remuneration 
for  discharging  or  pilfering  a  cargo 
used  to  be  settled  in  full  assembly  of 
the  Vorsteherschaft,  whose  members, 
being  principally  pilot  officers  and 
wreckers  themselves,  were  naturally 
interested  in  the  amount  of  the  reward 
received  for  salvage. 

No  debts  could  be  recovered  in  the 
island,  no  legal  decrees  enforced,  and 
a  creditor  had  to  wait  for  the  death  of 
an  obstinate  debtor,  on  the  chance  of 
his  property  coming  before  the  court. 
The  credit  of  the  island,  until  lately, 
was  at  a  very  low  ebb  indeed,  and, 
in  order  to  increase  its  funds,  con- 
tracts for  public  gambling  were 
entered  into  between  the  Vorsteher- 


176 


Autumn. 


schaft  and  some  German  lessees, 
which  had  the  desired  effect  for  the 
moment.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine 
that  so  small  a  place  could,  in 
the  few  years  between  1815  and  1868, 
have  involved  itself  in  a  public  debt 
to  the  extent  of  7,000£.  At  pres- 
ent, in  spite  of  the  abolition  of  the 
gaming  tables  and  a  great  outlay  on 
public  works,  this  sum  has  been  re- 
duced to  somewhere  about  3,000/.  To 


the  wise  and  prudent  administration  of 
the  present  Governor,  this,  as  well 
as  every  other  improvement,  is  due. 
Under  his  beneficent  rule,  Heliogo- 
land  has  changed  so  much,  that  the 
visitor  of  even  fifteen  years  ago  would 
not  recognise  in  the  orderly,  neat, 
thriving  little  settlement,  the  ruinous, 
lawless,  bankrupt  island  of  those  com- 
paratively recent  days. 

ANNIE  BBASSEY. 


AUTUMN. 


THE  dying  leaves  fall  fast, 
Chestnut,  willow,  oak,  and  beech, 

All  brown  and  withered  lie. 
Now  swirling  in  the  cutting  blast, 
Now  sodden  under  foot — they  teach 

That  one  and  all  must  die. 

This  autumn  of  the  year 
Comes  sadly  home  to  my  poor  heart, 

Whose  youthful  hopes  are  fled. 
The  darkening  days  are  drear, 
Each  love  once  mine  I  see  depart 

As  withered  leaves  and  dead. 

But  is  it  all  decay  ? 
All  present  loss  ? — no  gain  remote  ? 

Monotony  of  pain  ? 

Ah  no  !    I  hear  a  lay 
The  robin  sings — how  sweet  the  note, 

A  pure  unearthly  strain. 

And,  of  all  flowers  the  first, 
Beneath  these  leaves  in  spring  shall  blow 

Sweet  violets  blue  and  white. 

So  all  lost  loves  shall  burst, 
In  springlike  beauty,  summer  glow, 

In  Heaven  upon  our  sight. 

M.  C.  C. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


JANUAKY,  1878. 


NATURAL  RELIGION. 


X. 


THE  instinct  on  which  we  pride  our- 
selves in  political  contests  seems  to 
desert  us  in  religious.  In  politics  we 
firmly  grasp  the  principle  that  the 
issue  must  always  be  practical,  never 
merely  logical  or  speculative.  We  stead- 
fastly put  aside  the  question,  Is  this 
or  that  true  ?  and  as  steadfastly  keep 
before  our  eyes  the  question,  Ought 
this  or  that  to  be  done  ?  It  is  curious 
to  see  that  in  the  great  religious  debate 
of  the  day  the  opposite  course  is  fol- 
lowed, and  that  it  is  supposed  to  be  a 
proof  of  a  masculine  way  of  thinking 
to  put  aside  the  question  what  ought 
to  be  done  until  the  public  has  made 
up  its  mind  what  is  true. 

We  find  ourselves  surrounded  in 
religion,  as  in  polity,  with  a  vast 
and  ancient  system  of  institutions. 
Each  system  has  its  practical  object. 
If  by  the  political  system  we  de- 
fend ourselves  against  our  enemies, 
and  preserve  order  and  shelter  in- 
dustry, so  by  the  religious  we  have 
been  in  the  habit  of  cherishing  by 
co-operation  the  higher  life  among 
us,  of  worshipping  together,  of  re- 
ceiving instruction  together  in  the 
highest  matters.  Now  as  to  the  political 
system,  we  have  been  perfectly  well 
aware  that  it  was  a  makeshift,  that 
other  systems  elsewhere  might  be  in- 
trinsically better— nay,  we  have  had 
no  objection  to  admit  that  the  theory 
upon  which  our  political  constitution 
was  for  long  periods  supposed  to  rest, 
No.  219 — VOL.  xxxvn. 


might  be  radically  false.  And  yet  we 
have  always  steadily  refused  to  enter- 
tain the  question  of  pulling  this  system 
down  and  building  up  another  in  its 
place.  For  a  long  time  we  absolutely 
refused  to  reform  it,  for  fear  of  shak- 
ing its  foundation ;  and  now  that 
we  have  overcome  this  timidity,  we 
find  that  a  process  of  gradual  reform 
may  save  us  the  risk  and  anxiety  that 
would  attend  all  schemes  of  destructive 
criticism  and  fundamental  reconstruc- 
tion. 

It  would  have  been  possible  to  pro- 
ceed in  another  way.  We  might  have 
given  to  dogma  the  same  importance 
in  politics  that  it  has  had  in  religion. 
Suppose  we  had  formulated  in  the  six- 
teenth century  the  principles  or  beliefs 
which  we  supposed  to  lie  at  the  basis  of 
our  national  constitution.  Suppose  we 
had  made  a  political  creed.  A  very 
strange  creed  it  would  have  been !  The 
doctrine  of  divine  right  and  the  power 
of  kings  to  cure  disease,  possibly  too  the 
whole  legend  of  Brute  and  the  deriva- 
tion of  our  state  from  Troy  would  have 
appeared  in  it.  This  creed  once  formu- 
lated would  have  come  to  be  regarded 
as  the  dogmatic  basis  upon  which  our 
constitution  rested.  Then  in  time  criti- 
cism would  have  begun  its  work 
Philosophy  would  have  set  aside  di- 
vine right,  science  would  have  ex- 
ploded the  belief  about  the  king's 
evil,  historical  criticism  would  have 
shaken  the  traditionary  history,  and 
each  innovation  would  have  been  re- 
garded as  a  blow  dealt  at  the  constitu- 


178 


Natural  Eeliyion. 


tion  of  the  country.  At  last  it  would 
have  come  to  be  generally  thought  that 
the  constitution  was  undermined,  that 
it  had  been  found  unable  to  bear  the 
light  of  modern  science.  Men  would 
begin  publicly  to  renounce  the  consti- 
tution ;  officials  would  begin  to  win 
great  applause  by  resigning  their  posts 
from  conscientious  doubts  about  the 
personality  of  King  Arthur ;  and 
those  who  continued  orthodox  would 
declare  that  they  felt  more  respect  for 
such  persons,  much  as  they  deplored 
their  heresies,  than  they  could  feel  for 
other  officials  who  continued  to  receive 
the  emoluments  of  the  State  when  it 
was  suspected  that  they  had  altogether 
ceased  to  believe  in  the  cure  of  the 
king's  evil,  and  when  they  explained 
away  with  the  most  shameless  laxity 
the  divine  right  of  the  sovereign.  If 
any  of  this  latter  school,  whom  we  may 
call  the  Broad  State,  should  argue  that 
the  State  was  a  practical  institution, 
not  a  sect  of  people  united  by  holding 
the  same  opinions,  that  it  existed  to 
save  the  country  from  invasion  and 
houses  from  burglary,  they  would  be 
regarded  as  impudent  sophists.  Was 
not  the  creed  there?  Were  not  all 
officials  required  to  subscribe  it  1  How 
then  could  it  be  affirmed  that  the  State 
did  not  stand  upon  community  of 
opinion,  upon  dogma  1  And  if  any 
of  these  sophists  were  evidently  not 
impudent,  but  well  meaning  and  high- 
minded,  they  would  be  regarded  as 
wanting  in  masculine  firmness  and  the 
courage  to  face  disagreeable  truths. 
It  would  be  generally  agreed  that  the 
honest  and  manly  course  was  to  press 
the  controversy  firmly  to  a  conclusion, 
to  resist  all  attempts  to  confuse  the 
issue,  and  to  keep  the  public  steadily 
to  the  fundamental  points.  Has  the 
sovereign,  or  has  he  not,  a  divine  right] 
Can  he,  or  can  he  not,  cure  disease  by 
his  touch  1  Was  the  country,  or  was 
it  not,  colonised  by  fugitives  from 
Troy?  And  if  at  last  the  public 
should  come  by  general  consent  to 
decide  these  questions  in  the  nega- 
tive, then  it  would  be  felt  that  no 
weak  sentiment  ought  to  be  listened 


to,  no  idle  gratitude  to  the  constitution 
for  having,  perhaps,  in  past  times 
saved  the  country  from  Spanish  or 
French  invasion  ;  that  all  such  con- 
siderations ought  sternly  to  be  put 
aside  as  irrelevant ;  that  as  honest 
men  we  were  bound  to  consider,  not 
whether  the  constitution  was  useful 
or  interesting,  or  the  like,  but  whether 
it  was  true,  and  if  we  could  not  any 
longer  say  with  our  hands  on  our 
hearts  that  it  was  so,  then,  in  the 
name  of  eternal  truth,  to  renounce  it 
and  bid  it  farewell ! 

In  spite  of  its  logical  appearance,  we 
should  all  feel  that  this  course  was  not 
only  practically  absurd,  but  actually 
illogical.  It  does  not  follow  because 
a  creed  has  been  put  forward  as  the 
basis  of  an  institution  and  this  creed 
has  been  disproved  that  the  institution 
has  been  deprived  of  its  foundation. 
There  is  another  alternative.  An 
ungrounded  claim  may  have  been 
made  for  the  creed,  and  the  institu- 
tion may  really  stand  upon  quite  a 
different  foundation.  When  we  are 
told  now-a  days,  See  how  the  tide  of 
scepticism  has  risen  round  the  creeds 
of  the  Church,  until  the  very  first 
article  of  all  is  just  disappearing  be- 
neath the  waves !  what  can  possibly 
remain  of  the  Church,  or  of  Chris- 
tianity, in  this  spiritual  deluge  ?  It 
is  obvious  to  answer,  Christianity  at 
any  rate  is  older  than  the  creeds ;  is 
it  not  possible  that  a  mistake  was  made 
when  it  was  supposed  that  those  creeds 
contained  the  very  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity 1  Surely  this  is  a  thing  not 
even  unlikely  ;  for  history  shows  that 
great  societies  or  institutions,  rising 
out  of  profound  needs  dimly  felt, 
commonly  give  a  more  or  less  un- 
satisfactory account  of  their  own  origin. 
It  was  never  supposed  that  imperial 
Home  was  destroyed  when  doubt  was 
thrown  on  the  story  of  the  Asylum  or 
Papal  Rome,  when  it  was  questioned 
whether  St.  Peter  was  ever  in  Italy. 

But  what  we  feel  most  when  we  are 
considering  political  questions  is  the 
practical  absurdity  of  this  scholastic, 
dogmatic  way  of  proceeding.  To  ask  a 


Natural  Religion. 


179 


large  public  to  constitute  itself  into  a 
jury  to  decide  philosophical  or  critical 
questions  is  to  put  it  into  a  false 
position.  Ignoramus  is  the  only  ver- 
dict which,  if  it  is  modest,  it  will 
venture  in  such  a  case  to  return. 
Their  views  on  such  matters  people 
must  take  with  what  caution  they  can 
from  those  who  know  better,  and  they 
may  be  sure  that  they  will  modify 
them  in  the  taking,  so  that  the  most 
carefully  stated  philosophical  propo- 
sitions will  acquire  something  of  a 
mythological  character  in  passing  into 
popular  creeds.  We  are  aware  in 
politics  that  we  are  only  safe  in  dis- 
cussing what  ought  to  be  done,  and 
that  we  must  carefully  avoid  raising 
the  question,  What  is  philosophically 
true?  And  so,  though  we  ai-e  well 
aware  that  the  State  must  have  a 
philosophical  basis,  that  there  must 
be  some  theoretical  ground  both  for 
authority  and  liberty,  yet  we  carefully 
put  all  these  questions  aside,  and  feel 
that  the  State  is  real  and  indestructible 
only  so  long  as  we  see  that  it  defends 
us,  that  it  gives  us  prosperity  and  well- 
being. 

It  is  not  equally  easy  to  maintain 
this  position  with  respect  to  our  reli- 
gious constitution.  The  wants  which 
the  State  supplies  are  so  urgent  and 
palpable,  that  in  comparison  with 
them  all  mere  political  doctrines  seem 
secondary ;  but  the  wants  of  the 
higher  life,  on  the  contrary,  are  by 
most  of  us  but  dimly  felt,  and  seem 
shadowy,  or,  as  we  call  it,  senti- 
mental, in  comparison  with  theologi- 
cal dogma.  Hence  the  same  public 
which  despises  doctrinairism  in  politics 
is  just  as  decided  and  united  in  despis- 
ing everything  but  doctrinairism  in 
religion.  It  is,  in  fact,  so  decided 
on  this  point,  that  it  will  scarcely 
listen  to  argument  about  it,  and 
seems  incapable  even  of  a  passing 
suspicion  that  it  may  be  wrong. 
With  the  same  contemptuous  laugh 
with  which  in  politics  it  puts  aside 
abstract  theories  for  practical  needs, 
it  refuses  in  religion  to  listen  to  prac- 
tical views,  and  thinks  it  masculine  to 


look  only  at  articles  of  technical  theo- 
logy attacked  and  defended  by  contro- 
versial specialists. 

Yet  a  time  will  naturally  come  when 
men's  eyes  will  be  opened  to  their 
enormous  mistake.  Perhaps,  indeed, 
this  time  is  now  coming,  for  it  is 
necessarily  brought  nearer  by  every 
apparent  victory  of  the  attacking 
party  in  the  controversy.  So  long 
as  the  reigning  theology  maintains 
itself  successfully,  no  practical  ques- 
tion comes  in  view ;  but  no  sooner 
does  it  appear  shaken  than  the  ques- 
tion occurs,  What  is  to  be  done  ?  and 
the  assailants  themselves,  embarrassed 
by  their  own  success,  are  compelled,  if 
only  for  decency's  sake,  to  offer  some 
equivalent  for  what  they  destroy.  In 
such  moments  it  flashes  upon  us  all 
that  religion  belongs  just  as  little  as 
politics  to  the  schools,  and  that  the 
concern  of  practical  men  in  the  one 
department  as  much  as  in  the  other 
is  not  with  scholastic  controversies 
but  with  urgent  practical  needs,  and 
that  they  deal  not  with  a  tabula, 
rasa  on  which  a  new  spiritual  house 
might  be  built  up  from  the  foundation 
on  a  new  design,  but  with  an  ancient 
house  in  which  we  have  all  lived  for 
centuries,  and  which  it  would  be  ex- 
ceedingly troublesome  and  uncomfort- 
able, if  not  impious,  to  pull  to  the 
ground. 

The  doctrinaire  method  might  in- 
deed be  justified  by  necessity  if  cer- 
tain assumptions  which  are  popularly 
made  were  true.  If  the  clergy  were 
right  in  supposing  that  they  were  com- 
missioned to  defend  an  immovable 
fortress  of  dogma,  that  in  the  original 
scheme  of  their  religion  no  allowance 
was  made  for  such  a  thing  as  progress, 
then  indeed  it  would  be  impossible  for 
them  to  regard  the  spiritual  wants  of 
man  in  the  same  plain  practical  way  in 
which  the  politician  studies  those  more 
material  wants  which  are  supplied  by 
the  State.  On  this  question,  however, 
we  need  say  nothing  more ;  we  have 
dwelt  long  enough  already  on  that 
which  is  too  evident  to  be  mistaken, 
that  in  the  original  scheme  of  Christi- 

N   2 


180 


Natural  Religion. 


anity  nothing  is  so  grand  and  admirable 
as  the  treatment  of  progress,  no  point 
so  capital  as  the  further  development 
which  is  reserved  for  the  system,  and 
the  indefinite  vista  which  is  opened  in 
the  future  of  new  dispensations  not 
less  divine  than  the  old.  It  is  too 
evident  to  be  mistaken,  that  so  far 
from  the  clerical  school  being  fettered 
by  the  terms  of  their  original  charter 
so  that  they  are  not  allowed  to  be  pro- 
gressive though  they  would,  it  is  the 
narrowness  of  their  own  prejudices, 
the  exclusiveness  of  their  own  profes- 
sional pedantry,  which  reads  itself 
into  the  Bible,  and  petrifies  and 
fossilises  what  is  there  full  of  vitality. 
But  there  is  a  misconception  on  the 
opposite  side  which  hinders  the  attack- 
ing party  from  taking  practical  views, 
just  as  this  hinders  the  clerical  party 
of  defence.  They  think  that,  though 
in  the  State  it  is  quite  possible  to  leave 
speculative  questions  in  abeyance  and 
proceed  at  once  with  practical  reforms, 
this  is  only  because  those  speculative 
questions  do  not  affect  the  essence  of 
the  State,  about  which  there  is  really 
no  difference  of  opinion ;  but  that  it 
is  not  possible  in  the  Church,  where  the 
question  in  dispute  concerns  those 
fundamental  beliefs  without  which 
there  cannot  be  a  Church,  actually 
the  very  existence  of  God  and  of  a 
future  life.  However  we  might  decide 
our  disputes  in  political  philosophy, 
they  think  it  would  be  still  necessary 
to  have  law-courts  and  policemen,  still 
essential  to  pay  soldiers  to  keep  off  the 
enemy,  and  still  highly  convenient  to 
have  a  post-office  to  carry  our  letters  ; 
but  if  on  the  contrary  the  religious 
debate  should  go  against  the  Church, 
we  should  be  obliged  at  last  to  pull 
down  our  pulpits  and  sell  off  our  com- 
munion-tables, inscribe  "eternal  sleep  " 
upon  our  cemeteries,  suppress  the 
clerical  profession,  add  the  Sunday  to 
the  working-days,  turn  our  churches 
into  halls  for  local  business  and  our 
cathedrals  into  county  markets  or 
concert -halls,  and  explain  to  boys  at 
school  and  youths  at  the  university 
that,  owing  to  an  unfortunate  over- 


sight, the  human  race  had  taken  a 
wrong  path  for  about  eighteen  cen- 
turies, during  which  time  it  had  been 
practically  under  a  sort  of  mental 
derangement,  and  that,  now  it  was 
necessary  to  forget  as  soon  as  possible 
that  idle  dream,  cancel  the  whole 
library  of  ecclesiastical  history  and 
ecclesiastical  literature,  and  begin 
again  at  the  point  where  Greek  philo- 
sophy and  classical  literature  stood 
when  the  oriental  inundation  sub- 
merged them.  This  fancy  too  begins 
to  seem  a  misconception  the  more  the 
moment  draws  near  for  realizing  it. 
There  is  really  no  more  question  of 
destroying  religion  than  of  destroying 
the  State.  The  wildest  innovators 
in  their  wildest  fit  have  recognised 
this.  They  always  set  up  some  goddess 
of  Reason,  some  image  of  Nature  if  not 
some  supreme  Being,  in  place  of  the 
objects  of  worship  which  they  re- 
nounced ;  and  since  that  time  how 
many  more  concessions  of  the  same 
kind  have  been  made  by  those  who 
have  been  most  uncompromising  in 
their  attacks  on  the  reigning  theology  ! 
Churches  of  the  Future  have  been  plan- 
ned in  which  the  old  Church  has  been 
freely  used  as  a  model,  the  centuries  of 
Christian  history  have  been  found  to 
be  replete  with  admirable  instruction — 
instruction  to  be  found  nowhere  else  ; 
it  has  been  discovered  that  our  modern 
civilization  has  grown  up,  not  in  spite 
of  the  Christian  Church,  but  out  of 
and  by  means  of  it.  Forms  of  worship 
adapted  for  the  Church  of  the  future 
are  in  preparation  or-  expected,  and  it 
is  thought  that  even  though  death  be 
in  reality  an  eternal  sleep,  yet  it  will 
not  in  the  long  run  be  advisable  to  say 
so  ;  but  that  we  must  resort  again  to 
those  "evasive  tropes,"  of  "  subjective 
immortality,"  or  "posthumous  ac- 
tivity," or  the  like,  which  poor  humanity 
has  positively  never  had  the  fortitude 
to  dispense  with  since  the  day  when 
the  shade  of  Achilles  reproved  Ulysses 
for  "  calling  death  out  of  its  name." 

Assuredly  many  more  concessions  of 
the  same  kind  will  be  made  in  the 
futtu-e.  As  the  sceptics,  who  hitherto 


Natural  Religion. 


181 


have  had  all  the  irresponsibility  of 
opposition,  begin  to  familiarize  them- 
selves with  the  practical  aspect  of  the 
subject,  they  will  discover  that  many 
dogmas,  many  phrases  to  which  they 
have  urged  abstract  objections,  may 
yet  practically  be  quite  well  allowed 
to  pass,  and  at  times  they  will  feel 
ashamed  of  the  tastelessness  of  their 
captiousness,  which  has  mistaken  poetry 
and  prophecy  for  logic,  and  criticised 
the .  visions  of  enthusiastic  hope  as  if 
they  were  meant  for  simple  matter  of 
fact.  Their  conversion  would  be 
greatly  hastened  by  a  little  more  gene- 
rosity on  the  part  of  their  opponents. 
If  it  were  acknowledged  not  merely 
that  much  of  what  is  urged  in  the 
name  of  modern  science  may  be  true 
even  though  it  seems  opposed  to  clerical 
formularies,  but  that  it  may  be  actually 
that  addition  to  our  religious  know- 
ledge, that  further  revelation  which 
Christianity  itself  promises,  then  it 
would  become  still  more  readily  com- 
prehensible that  the  religious  contro- 
versy of  the  age  is  not  the  internecine 
thing  it  seems  to  be,  and  tha  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  it  ought  to 
take  precedence  of  all  practical  re- 
ligious reforms,  and  ought  to  be  settled 
before  they  can  be  seriously  attended 
to. 

Much  has  been  said  of  a  reconcilia- 
tion between  Religion  and  Science  upon 
the  ground  of  speculative  controversy ; 
but  the  terms  proposed  have  generally 
involved  the  complete  submission  of 
one  side  or  the  other,  with  just  some 
slight  salve  for  its  wounded  vanity. 
In  speculative  controversy,  where  the 
only  object  is  speculative  truth,  all 
such  transactions  are  corrupt  and 
illusory.  What  is  needed  is  no  such 
reconciliation  between  the  specialists 
on  both  sides,  but  a  proper  contempt 
for  the  specialists  on  the  part  of 
practical  men.  Just  as  in  great  poli- 
tical crises  the  lawyers  have  been 
pushed  on  one  side,  so  in  great  reli- 
gious crises  should  the  theologians  and 
and  the  scientists.  And  this  would 
promptly  be  done  if  we  had  the  same 
grasp  of  the  substance  of  religion 


which  in  some  countries  men  have 
had  of  the  substance  of  politics.  For 
then  we  should  know  that  it  is  the 
nature  of  the  specialist  to  be  one-sided, 
that  he  pays  for  his  special  knowledge 
in  a  peculiar  ignorance  of  the  value  and 
the  bearings  of  it,  and  that  he  can 
scarcely  escape,  even  if  he  would,  from 
the  position  and  views  of  an  advocate. 
Do  we  suppose  that  religion  will  be 
the  better  for  being  made  the  subject 
of  an  endless  professional  litigation? 
Will  not  the  estate  be  swallowed  up 
in  the  costs  of  the  suit  ? 

What  this  substance  of  religion  is, 
these  papers  have  been  intended  to 
make  clear.  They  have  laboured  to 
show  that  no  dogmas  whatever,  not 
even  that  of  a  future  life,  not  even  that 
of  a  (so-called)  personal  God,  are  of  such 
importance  that  religious  life  must  be 
suspended,  practical  religious  reforms 
adjourned  until  the  professional  dis- 
putants can  come  to  a  conclusion  about 
them ;  nay,  that  Christianity  itself 
does  not  depend  upon  them  so  abso- 
lutely as  is  supposed.  It  is  true,  that 
if  there  is  no  future  life  for  man  the 
value  of  the  present  life  sinks  so  much, 
that  any  kind  of  earnestness  begins 
to  seem  affected  and  uncalled  for,  all 
moral  systems  and  disciplines  seem  a 
waste  of  trouble  ;  but  even  then  we 
should  remain  Christians  rather  than 
anything  else ;  even  then,  practical 
men  would  call  it  wise  to  make  the 
best  of  a  spiritual  constitution,  in  which 
"nineteen  hundred  years  have  garnered 
up  their  hopes  and  fears,"  which  has 
actually  brought  together,  nursed  and 
educated  to  civilization,  all  the  pro- 
gressive races — which  has  amassed  for 
mankind  an  inestimable  treasure  of 
sacred  memories,  sacred  thought,  sacred 
imagination — rather  than  to  supersede 
it  by  another,  which  after  all  the  ex- 
hausting convulsions  of  the  Revolution 
could  teach  nothing  which  could  not 
be  equally  well  taught  now  if  the  pro- 
gressive character  of  Christianity  were 
once  restored  to  it.  But  if  we  stop  at 
all  short  of  the  absolute  negation  of  a 
future  life — if  we  only  think  with  Mr. 
Mill  the  hope  of  it  worth  studious 


182 


Natural  Eeligion. 


cherishing,  then   it    becomes  at  once 
frivolous  to  allow  the  disputes   of  the 
schools    to   interrupt  us  in   the  work 
of  removing  the  corruptions  and  im- 
proving the  machinery   by  which  the 
higher  life,  by  which  religion,  is  kept 
alive    and    spread  among  populations 
always  gravitating  downwards  towards 
the  life  of  the  beaver,  or  fox,  or  swine. 
There  is  but  one  consideration  that 
could  make  us  think  otherwise,  and  it 
need  not  affect  us  much  in  England. 
When  a  religious    system,  great   and 
true  in  its  first  conception,  has  merely 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  profession, 
and  so  been  crippled  and  made  petty, 
sentimental,   and   childish,  nothing  is 
needed  but  to  rescue  and  restore  it.  But 
it  may  no  doubt  sink  lower,  so  that  its 
intrinsic  merits  can  no  longer  save  it, 
nay,  positively  increase  the  necessity 
of    destroying   it.      If   we    looked   at 
Christianity  with  the  eyes  of  a  French 
Liberal,  if  we  saw  it  not  merely  ham- 
pered by  a  feeble  clericalism,  but  made 
the  tool  of  a  powerful  and  subtle  sacer- 
dotalism, the  case  would  be  very  dif- 
ferent. Then  we  might  say,  it  concerns 
us  little  what  the  original  character 
of    Christianity  may  have  been.      It 
comes  before  us  as  part  and  parcel  of 
a  system  which  crushes  us.     If  it  was 
originally   beautiful  and    glorious,   so 
much  the  worse  ;  our  enemy  is  made 
all   the    more    mischievous    by  being 
dressed  in   such  charms.     We  cannot 
afford  to  do  it  justice  when  we  meet  it 
in  company  with  that  which  threatens 
us  with  destruction.     An  echo  of  this 
is  heard  in  our  English  religious  con- 
troversies.        Charges     are      brought 
against    Christianity    which    have    no 
meaning   here,    but    would    be    quite 
reasonable      where      Christianity      is 
practically    convertible    with    Ultra- 
montanism  and    Jesuitism.      English 
Liberalism   confounds    its    cause    too 
much  with  the  Liberalism  of  the  Con- 
tinent, and  talks  wildly,  as  if  it  were 
struggling  with  an  organized  cosmo- 
politan priesthood ;    nay,   it   actually 
turns  against  a  Church  dependent  on 
the    State     the    arguments    and    the 
invective  which  were    originally  used 


against  a  Church  whose  offence  it  is 
to  have  practically  deprived  the  State  of 
its  independence.    A  foreign  definition 
of  Christianity  has  crept  in  among  us 
which  identifies  it  with  the  organized 
Church  of  the  Middle  Ages.     Such  a 
definition  is  wholly  out  of  place  in  a 
country  which  has  for  centuries  drawn 
its  religious  inspiration  from  the  Bible. 
To   our   people,    the    Church    of    the 
Middle  Ages,  that  Church  against  the 
survival  of  which  continental  Liberal- 
ism struggles,  is  a  thing  which  would 
be  unknown,  even  by  tradition,  but  for 
some  cathedrals  which  witness  of  its 
glory,  and    for    Smithtield   memories, 
which  attest  the  fierceness  of  its  last 
struggles.    The  Christianity  which  has 
influenced  us  so  powerfully,  and  is  still 
so  fresh  in  all  our  minds,  has  scarcely 
anything     in     common      with      that 
mediaeval    Church.     It    has,    in    fact, 
scarcely    any     connection    with     the 
Middle   Ages.     Its    Bible    is    not    a 
mediaeval    book,   but  a    book    of    the 
ancient  world  restored  to  general  use 
and   knowledge    in   the    Renaissance. 
Our  popular   Christianity  has  its  be- 
ginning where  mediaevalism  ends ;  its 
earliest  traditions  are   of    a    struggle 
like  that  of  modern  Liberalism  against 
spiritual  tyranny;     the    great    occur- 
rences in    its    history    are   emancipa- 
tions, resistances,  heroic  achievements, 
the  defeat  of  the  Armada,   the  Cove- 
nant,   the    voyage  of  the  Mayflower, 
the  emancipation  of  the  slave.  Priestly 
influence  has  here  and  there  played  a 
great  part  in  it,  as  in  Scotland  ;  but 
the  staple  of  its  history,  as  of  its  Bible, 
deals  with  a  resistance  to  priestly  in- 
fluence,    and     sets    up    the    prophet 
against  the  priest  or  the  scribe. 

Let  us  not  passively  echo  the  party 
brawls  of  other  countries  as  if  we  had 
not  party  brawls  enough  of  our  own.  And 
let  us  not  allow  our  own  religious  life 
to  sink  into  a  mere  party  brawl.  Party 
life  just  now  is  at  a  low  ebb  among  us, 
as  well  as  religious  life.  There  is  a 
strong  feeling  that  each  may  be  en- 
livened a  little  by  contact  with  the 
other.  Sometimes  v/e  think  we  could 
almost  feel  religious  again  if  we  had  a 


Natural  Religion. 


183 


good  squabble  about  a  conscience  clause. 
Sometimes,  on  the  other  hand,  we  feel 
that  we  should  have  more  enjoyment 
of  our  Liberalism  if  there  were  a 
Church  to  disestablish.  Surely  cyn- 
icism could  scarcely  be  carried  to  a 
greater  length  than  in  the  recent  sug- 
gestion that  the  Liberal  party  might 
get  back  to  office  if  the  Noncon- 
formists could  see  their  way  to  an 
organized  onslaught  upon  the  Church. 

If  we  sweep  away  the  cobwebs  of 
inherited  prejudices  and  inveterate 
partisanship,  we  shall  see  at  the 
bottom  of  these  Church  controversies 
a  practical  question  of  vast  import- 
ance which  there  is  hope  of  solving 
by  union,  but  nofr.by  disunion.  We  see 
the  struggle  of  the  lower  with  the 
higher  life. 

If  this  phrase,  lower  life,  or  the  old 
religious  phrase,  world,  seems  vague,  let 
us  translate  them  into  the  language  of 
plain  facts.  We  mean  then  that  each 
class  of  society  shows  in  its  own  way 
that  when  the  mere  cares  of  livelihood 
are  satisfied,  or  if  they  are  not  felt,  it 
does  not  know  how  to  pass  the  time. 
In  other  words,  it  has  no  life  beyond 
that  of  the  animal.  Is  it  vague  to  say 
that  the  lower  classes  will  go  to  the 
public-house  ?  This  means  that  when 
they  have  their  wages  they  can  think 
of  nothing  else  which  they  would  like 
to  do  but  to  drink  and  chat.  Is  it 
vague  to  say  that  the  middle  class  in 
general  is  given  up  to  money-making, 
that  the  small  part  of  their  life  which 
is  otherwise  occupied  falls  into  hum- 
drum uniformity  without  charm  or 
freshness  ;  that  they  measure  men's 
worth  and  importance  by  their  wealth, 
and  that  in  choosing  the  occupation 
by  which  money  is  to  be  made  they  are 
generally  ready  to  renounce  any  inborn 
preference  or  vocation  for  the  chance 
of  making  a  larger  sum  1  Is  it  vague 
to  say  of  the  higher  classes  that  they 
appear  to  have  lost  the  high  ambitions 
which  used  once  not  to  be  uncommon 
among  them,  that  they  are  neither 
performing  great  public  services  nor 
setting  the  example  they  might  set  of 
a  dignified,  beautiful,  and  beneficent 


life,  but,  their  animal  wants  being 
satisfied,  appear  to  desire  nothing 
further  except  amusement  for  the 
passing  hour,  and  strong  sensations 
that  may  keep  off  ennui  ? 

This  is  the  want;  what  is  wanted 
is   the  higher  life.     Now   all  Church 
organizations    whatsoever     exist    for 
no  other  purpose  than  to  supply  it,  to 
foster  the  growth  of  such  life  in  men,  to 
give  it  food  and  exercise.    Churches  are 
not  societies  of  men  bound  together  by 
holding  the  same  opinions.     JS'o  fancy 
more  idle  ever  passed  into  a  common- 
place.    Holding  the  same  opinions  ia 
not  in  itself  a  tie  to  bind  men  together. 
If  they  agree,  why  should  they  come 
together  ?     It   is  rather  when  people 
differ     that     they    desire     to     meet. 
Churches  are  united  as  other  societies 
are  by  a  practical  object,  which  is  the 
desire  to  save  men's  souls.     If  indeed 
we  allow  a  clergy  to  garble  this  phrase, 
and  to  persuade  us  that  our  souls  are 
not  threatened   by  the  danger  which 
is  visible  to  all,  the  danger  of  being 
drowned  in  worldliness  or  animalism, 
but  by  quite  another  danger  which  we 
should  never  have  found  out  but  for  a 
supernatural  revelation,  and  which  is 
to  be  avoided,  not  by  the  means  which 
our  higher  instincts  point  out,  but  by 
quaint  processes  which  seem  to  have- 
something  of  magic  about  them,  then 
no  doubt  a  Church  will  come  practically 
to  mean  the   society   of    people   who 
have  been  induced  to  believe  this  story. 
But  this   too  is  a  consideration  which 
is  of  little  importance  in  England.  The 
religious   writers   of   the  last  age — a 
Maurice  and  others — have  broken  the 
neck  of  that  superstition.  It  is  widely 
diffused  through  all  schools,  and  has 
passed  into  our  religious  atmosphere, 
that  the  heaven  beyond  the  grave  and 
the  higher  life  here  are  identical,  and 
that  the  revelation  of  Christianity  is 
not  different   in   substance   from    the 
revelation  which  comes  everywhere  in 
advanced  societies  to  the  higher  minds. 
"Soul,"  and  "saving  the  soul,"  mean 
the  same  thing  in  a  Christian  mouth, 
and  in  the  mouth  of  any  one  who  takes 
a  high  view  of  life.     Without  signing 


184 


Natural  Religion. 


any  articles  we  may  all  take  our  place 
in  the  organizations  which  have  this 
for  their  object. 

If  so,  then  let  us  look  to  see  what 
progress  they  have  made  in  their  work. 
The  vast  achievements  of  the  great 
spiritual  heads  of  humanity  strike  the 
eye  at  once.  They  have  removed  the 
first  great  difficulties  which  philosophy 
might  have  continued  always  powerless 
to  deal  with.  They  have  cleared  a 
free  space  for  the  higher  life  to  expand 
in.  They  have  made  room  for  it  both 
in  time  and  space.  They  have  claimed 
for  man's  higher  life  a  seventh  part  of 
his  lifetime.  They  have  set  up  every- 
where the  church,  the  Parliament- 
house  of  the  Spiritual  State,  and  they 
have  created  the  clergy,  the  official 
class  or  administrators  of  the  higher 
life.  The  beginnings  are  made  here, 
but  it  should  have  been  a  matter  of 
course  that  these  were  only  beginnings. 
It  should  have  been  a  matter  of  course 
that  the  work  thus  begun  would  need 
to  be  developed  through  centuries,  that 
innovations  and  changes  would  be 
needed  in  each  successive  age,  that 
the  higher  life  itself  would  be  found 
subject  to  variation  and  development, 
and  that  into  ecclesiastical  machinery 
as  into  political,  abuses  would  creep, 
that  here  too  usurpations  of  authority 
would  be  committed,  and  that  there 
would  be  need  to  investigate  a  science 
of  spiritual  as  of  civil  government. 

But  we  have  adopted  quite  another 
and  perfectly  irrational  view  of  the 
subject.  When  we  meet  with  defi- 
ciences  or  abuses  in  this  department, 
instead  of  considering  how  they  may 
be  supplied  or  corrected,  it  is  our 
habit  to  wash  our  hands  of  the  whole 
matter,  sanctimoniously  expressing 
our  regret  that  we  have  not  found  ideal 
perfection  where  for  some  inexplicable 
reason  we  had  looked  for  it.  We 
adopt  the  same  vicious  method  which 
wTe  love  to  reprobate  in  the  politics  of 
foreign  countries.  Instead  of  persistent 
activity,  unwearied  good  temper  and 
timely  reform,  we  adopt  a  policy  of 
cold  abstention  and  ironical  reticence 
calculated  to  end  in  revolution.  When 


we  find  the  clergy  monopolising,  as  an 
official  class  will  always  strive  to  do, 
all  functions,  we  do  not  resist  them  but 
take  our  revenge  by  remarking  to  our- 
selves with  malicious  pleasure  that  in 
reducing  the  laity  to  ciphers  they  are 
committing  an  unconscious  suicide,  and 
are  destroying  themselves  by  destroy- 
ing the  Church.  When  rival  priesthoods 
tear  each  other  to  pieces,  we  are  not 
alarmed  lest  the  higher  life  itself  should 
suffer,  but  rather  amused  because  it 
gives  us  occasion  to  furbish  up  again 
some  rusty  sarcasms.  And  yet  we  do 
not  really,  if  we  will  ask  ourselves 
the  question,  wish  to  see  all  Churches 
fall  into  ruin ;  we  do  not  really  think 
that  it  would  be  convenient  to  begin 
again  from  the  beginning ;  we  shrink, 
when  we  take  the  trouble  to  reflect 
upon  it,  from  the  infinite  discomfort 
that  such  a  revolution  would  involve, 
from  the  despair  it  would  cause  to 
thousands  at  the  time,  and  the  well- 
nigh  incurable  prostration  and  debility 
it  would  leave  behind  it. 

The  practical  question,  if  we  can 
bring  ourselves  to  take  a  practical 
view,  is  this  : — Religion  or  the  higher 
life  starts  with  two  great  acquisitions, 
— what  is  the  best  use  that  can  be  made 
of  them1?  There  is  the  Sunday,  and 
there  are  all  the  churches  and  chapels 
in  Christendom  with  the  machinery 
and  personnel  attached  to  them.  We 
are  not  to  begin  by  adding  the  Sun- 
day to  the  week-days,  secularising  all 
the  churches  and  unfrocking  all  the 
parsons  in  order  that  perhaps  after- 
wards we  may  create  a  new  set  of 
institutions  which  will  certainly  be 
of  the  same  kind.  And  if  not,  then 
it  follows  that  we  are  not  to  help  the 
Churches  to  destroy  themselves.  We 
are  not  to  make  a  ring  round  the 
clerical  pugilists  and  applaud  their 
pugnacity ;  nor  are  we  to  say  with 
studied  decorum  that  we  decline  to 
assume  any  responsibility,  onlyJf  the 
Churches  see  their  way  to  committing 
suicide  we  are  ready  to  lend  them  any 
assistance  in  our  power  and  to  place 
our  party  organizations  at  their  dis- 
posal. But  we  are  to  consider  how 


Natural  Religion. 


185 


these  great  institutions  may  be  put  to 
the  best  use,  how  they  may  be  most 
wisely  reformed ;  and  if  we  find  that 
clerical  cliques  have  got  complete 
possession  and  control  of  them,  then  to 
resist  such  usurpation  by  ordinary 
temperate  methods. 

Why  then  do  these  two  great  insti- 
tutions, the  Sunday  and  the  Church, 
fail  of  their  object  ?  In  a  country 
where  all  enjoy  them,  why  should  the 
higher  life  remain  asleep  1  A  large 
space  is  cleared  for  it.  Business  is 
forbidden  to  absorb  the  whole  field  of 
our  life.  Why  should  nothing  better 
grow  there  ?  Why  should  nothing  but 
frivolity,  or  dulness,  or,  in  a  lower 
class,  drinking,  fill  the  hours  that  are 
not  spent  in  labour  ?  It  is  evident, 
surely,  that  though  we  have  cleared 
the  field  we  have  not  tilled  it,  though 
we  have  got  the  room  we  have  not 
furnished  it.  The  Sunday  is  there,  but 
how  terribly  dull  it  is !  The  Church 
is  there,  but  who  can  bring  himself  to 
listen  to  the  parson  1  And  yet  it  is  not 
any  defect  in  the  quality  of  the  food 
offered  to  it  that  makes  the  higher 
life  languish.  If  not  the  parson's  ser- 
mon, yet  the  sublime  Book,  the  work 
of  ages,  and  many  a  lofty  Liturgy 
devised  in  later  times,  are  precisely 
what  one  could  wish  and  much  more 
than  one  could  expect.  The  deficiency 
is  in  quantity  and  variety.  The  Book 
itself,  though  it  contains  so  much,  yet 
does  not  contain  all  that  is  needed. 
However  elevated  its  language  may 
be,  yet  it  was  written  two  thousand 
years  ago.  We  confess  its  insufficiency 
when  we  supplement  it  with  a  fresh 
discourse  from  a  living  mouth,  but 
what  a  melancholy  contrast  between 
the  inspired  words  of  some  ancient 
prophet,  words  for  uttering  which  he 
sufiered  persecution  from  the  profes- 
sional orthodoxy  of  his  time,  and  the 
modern  sermon  dictated  and  con- 
trolled by  that  very  orthodoxy  !  But 
even  if  an  leaiah  could  speak  from 
the  pulpit  as  well  as  from  the  lectern, 
do  we  suppose  that  that  alteration 
would  suffice]  Do  we  suppose  that 
the  higher  life  can  live  merely  on 


exhortations,    however    true   and   im- 
passioned. 

When  we  complain  of  the  deadness 
of  the  higher  life  among  us,  what  is  it 
that  we  want  ?  What  changes  would 
satisfy  us  I  It  is  when  we  ask  this 
question  that  we  recognise  the  pitiful- 
ness  of  the  clerical  ideal.  Those  de- 
voted evangelists,  whether  of  the  High 
Church  or  the  Low,  are  labouring 
to  bring  the  population  into  what  con- 
dition ?  If  they  could  succeed,"  the  doc- 
trines of  Darwin  and  Strauss  would 
be  forgotten  as  though  they  had  never 
been  broached.  In  other  words,  we 
should  think  of  the  Universe  and  the 
Bible  precisely  as  our  fathers  did,  and 
all  the  thought  and  genius  of  the  past 
age  would  appear  to  have  been  thrown 
away.  Science  would  become  a  Bridge- 
water  Treatise,  Poetry  would  imitate 
the  Christian  Year,  and  popular  lite- 
rature would  be  governed  by  the 
Religious  Tract  Society.  Who  can 
picture  this  without  seeing  at  the 
same  time  the  irresistible  mutiny  that 
would  follow  in  the  next  generation  ? 
Meanwhile  our  working  class,  instead 
of  being  jolly  drunkards,  would  come 
"  under  concern "  about  the  state  of 
their  souls  and  listen  to  revival 
preachers ;  young  men  of  the  middle 
and  upper  classes  would  begin  to  take 
orders  freely,  legislation  would  begin 
to  take  an  ecclesiastical  tinge,  and  the 
public  mind  would  be  convulsed  with 
new  Gorham  Cases.  Is  this  really 
what  we  want  ?  Are  these  really  the 
signs  of  His  coming,  and  of  a'new  birth 
of  the  higher  life  among  us  ? 

All  this  was  pretty  well  realized 
about  thirty  years  ago,  and  we  have 
seen  the  insufficiency  of  it,  and,  what 
is  more,  we  have  lost  it  again.  It  is 
a  paltry  ideal,  and  one  which  cannot 
be  held  when  it  is  grasped,  simply 
because  it  is  so  flimsy.  We  are  now 
all  of  us  asking  again,  how  shall  the 
people  be  kept  from  the  public-house  ? 
And  some  of  us  are  asking  also,  how 
shall  the  dull  Philistinism  or  empti- 
ness of  the  other  classes  be  healed  ? 
And  we  have  made  some  steps  towards 
the  true  solution.  We  say,  it  is  not 


186 


Natural  Religion, 


enough  to  tell  people  to  be  religious, 
you  must  occupy  their  minds  and  give 
them  a  taste  for  something  better  than 
drinking.  And  we  get  up  Penny 
Headings  and  Popular  Lectures  and 
Working  Men's  Colleges.  Dimly  at  the 
same  time  we  see  that  the  deficiencies 
of  the  better  classes  are  radically  of 
the  same  kind  and  require  the  same 
remedy.  What  takes  the  working 
man  to  the  public-house  is  the  same 
defect  which  ties  the  city  man  to  his 
desk  and  makes  his  life  monotonous 
and  unlovely.  It  is  the  ignorance  of 
anything  better, — the  want  of  oc- 
cupation for  his  higher  life.  And 
something  begins  to  be  done  for  him 
too.  We  have  begun  to  purify  the 
idea  of  culture,  and  to  understand 
that  we  must  present  it  for  the 
future  as  something  precious  and 
beautiful  in  itself,  and  no  longer 
merely  as  a  means  of  success  and 
money-making. 

These  are  the  new  convictions  which 
practical  reformers  have  lately  ac- 
quired. They  have  led  to  a  practical 
rebellion  against  the  clerical  revival 
of  the  last  age,  for  they  amount  to  a 
conviction  that  no  such  revival  can  by 
itself  regenerate  the  country.  And 
the  clergy  are  acknowledging  this  by 
enlarging  their  field,  by  taking  into 
their  province  much  which  hitherto 
they  regarded  as  secular.  They  do  so 
under  the  plea  that  that  which  is  in 
itself  secular,  such  as  music,  archi- 
tecture, popular  science,  may  be  made 
indirectly  serviceable  to  religion.  But 
meanwhile  a  great  change  and  advance 
of  opinion  has  been  taking  place 
among  the  professors  of  the  so-called 
secular  pursuits  thus  newly  patronised. 
The  future  historian,  describing  the 
present  age  of  English  history,  will 
mark  it  as  the  period  when  the  English 
mind  first  clearly  grasped  the  ideas  of 
Art  and  Science.  Look  at  our  present 
clear  conception  of  Art  in  its  different 
varieties  all  equally  to  be  honoured, 
the  poet  recognising  himself  as  the 
colleague  of  the  painter  or  musical 
composer  in  the  same  great  guild,  and 
see  what  a  space  has  been  traversed 


since  music  was  scarcely  known  and 
painting  regarded  as  an  ungentlemanly 
pursuit,  while  poetry  acknowledged  no 
connection  with  the  sister  arts,  but 
rather  classed  herself  with  wit  or  with 
learning.  In  like  manner,  what  a 
change  since  science  asserted  herself 
with  the  commanding  self-conscious- 
ness which  now  distinguishes  her  !  Not 
long  since  she  lay  huddled  up  indis- 
tinguishably  with  metaphysics  and 
Greek  scholarship  and  theology.  Now 
she  proudly  stands  aloof  from  all  such 
association,  and  declares  herself  called 
to  regenerate  the  world.  Both  in  the 
case  of  Art  and  of  Science  it  is  a  conse- 
quence of  the  new  distinctness  with 
which  they  are  now  conceived  that 
their  dignity  is  greatly  raised.  They 
take  a  religious  character.  The  artist 
would  be  ashamed  to  speak  of  him- 
self as  a  humble  caterer  for  the 
public  amusement,  as,  for  instance, 
a  Walter  Scott  always  did.  He  is 
now  in  a  manner  bound  to  exalt  his 
art  if  not  himself,  and  to  call  him- 
self a  priest  of  the  religion  of  Beauty. 
Nor  can  the  latter  any  more  be  content 
to  speak  of  science  as  an  elegant  and 
liberal  pursuit ;  it  is  a  point  of  honour 
with  him  now  to  proclaim  himself  a 
votary  of  the  religion  of  the  future. 

It  has  been  the  object  of  these 
papers  to  piece  together  all  these 
glimpses  which  in  different  quarters 
are  opening  upon  the  world,  and  divine 
the  whole  wide  prospect  which  will 
shortly  lie  before  us.  When  we  see 
on  the  one  side  the  clergy  confessing 
the  insufficiency,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
fund  upon  which  they  draw,  and  add- 
ing to  it,  under  various  pretexts,  much 
which  they  do  not  acknowledge  to  be 
religion ;  when  we  see,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  precisely  this  new  matter, 
which  the  clergy  find  they  cannot  do 
without,  is  at  the  very  same  time 
declared  by  those  to  whose  province  it 
belongs  to  have  the  character  of  re- 
ligion, we  are  forced  to  some  such 
conclusion  as  this  : — 

The  old  distinction  between  sacred 
and  profane,  religious  and  secular, 
was  a  perfectly  just  one,  but  a  mistake 


Natural  Religion. 


187 


was  made  in  drawing  the  line.  The 
line  was  so  drawn  as  to  leave  Art  and 
Science  among  things  secular,  whereas 
they  belong  properly  to  things  religious. 
And  consequently  the  great  religious 
reform  for  which  our  age  is  ripe  con- 
sists in  the  full  and  free  admission  of 
Art  and  Science,  their  independence 
being  at  the  same  time  preserved,  to 
the  honours  of  Religion. 

I  remind  the  reader  that  this  reform 
is  only  a  restoration  of  the  primitive 
view.  In  the  vigorous  periods  of 
religion  it  is  inseparable  from  science, 
and  finds  its  manifestation  in  art,  and 
the  traces  of  this  are  clearly  visible  in 
our  own  religion.  Our  Bible  begins 
with  a  cosmogony  which  was  the 
science  of  the  Jews.  All  our  earliest 
art  is  about  us  in  our  cathedrals  and 
churches.  The  schism  that  has  hap- 
pened since  has  not  really  arisen  from 
any  wish  on  the  part  of  Art  or  Science 
to  put  off  their  religious  character, 
but  only  to  become  independent  of  the 
religion  of  morality  or  humanity  by 
which  they  were  controlled.  They  did 
not  wish  to  be  secular,  but  to  be  in- 
dependent religions.  And  independent 
they  must  still  be,  only  they  must  be 
once  more  recognised  as  religions. 

Practically,  what  would  such  a  re- 
form involve  1  It  means  that  all  our 
penny  readings  and  well-meant  but 
too  humble  efforts  to  keep  the  people 
out  of  the  public-house  by  amusing 
them,  should  be  developed  into  that 
which  they  implicitly  contain,  namely, 
a  full  initiation  of  the  whole  people 
in  the  religion  of  Art ;  and  in  like 
manner  that  all  our  popular  lectures, 
schemes  of  technical  education,  and  so 
forth,  should  be  developed  into  such  a 
general  initiation  as  is  possible  into 
the  religion  of  Science.  It  means  also 
that  Art  and  Science  in  being  recognised 
as  religious  should  be  made  free  of  the 
Sunday ;  and  that,  in  order  to  avoid  a 
most  deplorable  breach  with  all  that  is 
sacred  in  the  past,  a  most  sad  quarrel 
with  our  dead  forefathers,  the  new 
institutions  should  not  conquer  their 
place  by  aggression  upon  the  parish 
church  and  clergy,  but  should  be 


welcomed  to  it  by  their  cordial  invita- 
tion. 

How  many  hesitating  steps  are  con- 
stantly taken  in  this  direction  !  Even 
evangelicals  admit  what  High  Church 
men  have  so  long  held,  that  religious 
services  must  become  what  they  call 
more  attractive.  Here  and  there  we 
have  seen  Science  Classes  opened  in 
connection  with  cathedrals,  clergymen 
lecturing  on  Political  Economy.  Some- 
thing has  even  been  attempted  towards 
a  reconciliation  between  religion  and 
the  theatre.  And  there  is  one  con- 
spicuous case  in  which  the  attempt, 
made  in  this  case  centuries  ago,  has 
had  most  important  consequences.  By 
means  of  the  Oratorio  a  really  fruitful 
alliance  between  religion  and  music 
was  long  since  concluded.  But  it  is  not 
precisely  such  an  alliance  as  this  that 
is  here  contemplated.  The  question  is 
not  how  Christianity  may  draw  the 
Arts  as  captives  in  her  triumphal  pro- 
cession, but  of  setting  up  the  Arts  in 
perfect  in  dependence  to  co  operate  with 
Christianity  in  that  work  in  which, 
whatever  may  be  their  quarrel  with 
Christianity,  they  are  her  natural  allies, 
namely,  the  work  of  stemming  worldli- 
ness  and  fostering  the  higher  life.  In 
the  recent  discussion  of  the  Sunday 
question  it  might  be  plainly  observed 
how  near  the  settlement  of  it  was  now 
felt  to  be,  and  it  was  also  instructive 
to  see  in  what  confusion  of  words  the 
opponents  of  the  proposal  took  refuge. 

Who  now  seriously  argues  that  the 
Sunday  is  desecrated  by  attention  to 
Art  and  Science  ?  But  it  is  strongly 
felt  that  the  Sunday  must  not  be 
abandoned  to  money-making,  and  an 
attempt  was  made  to  confuse  the  two 
things  by  pointing  to  the  money  that 
passes  at  the  entrance  to  theatres  and 
concert- rooms.  Certainly,  if  Art  and 
Science  are  not  distinguishable  from 
money-making,  nothing  will  be  gained 
by  throwing  open  the  Sunday  to  them, 
for  it  is  precisely  because  they  are 
antagonistic  to  the  spirit  of  money- 
making,  because  they  are  wanted  to 
fill  the  room  which  it  vacates  on  Sun- 
day, and  prevent  it  from  returning  in 


188 


Natural  Religion. 


tenfold  force  on  the  Monday  morning, 
that  we  call  them  in.  We  call  them  in 
in  aid  to  Religion,  or  more  properly  as 
having  themselves  the  nature  of  reli- 
gion, and  if  they  cannot  be  active  on 
the  Sunday  without  a  little  clinking 
of  coin  being  heard,  and  an  official  here 
and  there  losing  his  Sunday  freedom, 
the  same  is  true  of  religion  itself.  A 
new  church  cannot  be  opened  without 
increasing  the  amount  of  work  done 
on  Sunday,  work  for  which  money 
must  be  paid  ;  and  if  it  has  never- 
theless been  found  possible  in  the 
main  to  protect  Religion  from  being 
corrupted  by  the  spirit  of  money- 
making,  there  is  no  reason  why  Art 
and  Science  should  not  be  protected  in 
the  same  way. 

And  as  Religion  should  share  its 
day  with  Art  and  Science,  so  should 
it  share  its  local  vantage-ground  and 
endowments.  Hitherto  it  has  done 
this  in  some  degree.  It  has  been  the 
patron  of  primary  education ;  but  it 
has  not  yet  had  the  courage  to  hold 
out  the  hand  unconditionally  both  to 
Art  and  Science,  and  give  them,  with- 
out encroaching  on  their  independence, 
an  introduction  wherever  it  has  pene- 
trated itself. 

We  are  all  anxiously  considering 
how  we  may  better  the  condition  of 
the  working  class — whether  for  their 
own  sakes,  that  they  may  get  more  out 
of  their  lives,  or  for  the  sake  of  the 
State,  that  it  may  be  protected  from  the 
discontent  that  undermines  it.  What 
good  thing  can  we  give  them?  The 
suffrage  1  Increase  of  wages  ?  Organ- 
ization to  protect  them  against  capital  ? 
Or  some  share  in  the  profits  of  capital  ? 
Or  some  share  in  the  land  ?  But  all 
these  benefits  belong  to  the  lower  life. 
The  utmost  result  of  them  will  be  more 
of  that  leisure,  more  of  that  spending- 
money  which  the  public-house  is  always 
waiting  to  absorb.  A  much  greater  gift, 
rather  the  only  gift  worth  the  giving, 
would  be  the  gift  of  new  occupations, 
new  pursuits  belonging  to  the  higher 
life.  And  when  once  we  recognise, 
not  faintly  or  fitfully,  but  with  decision, 
that  these  pursuits  are  not  exclusively 


what  we  have  hitherto  called  Religion, 
that  they  are  not  exclusively  church- 
going,  or  hyrnnody,  nor  listening  to 
clerical  oratory  or  philanthropic  pro- 
jects ;  but  that  they  include  the  two 
grand  pursuits  of  Art  and  Science, 
religious  also  in  the  strictest  sense, 
surely  the  prospect  of  a  redemption  for 
poverty  and  labour  grows  more  dis- 
tinct before  our  eyes.  It  becomes 
more  clear  along  what  road  we  are  to 
travel,  and  we  perceive  the  meaning 
of  certain  indications  which  have  re- 
cently been  given  us.  We  have  been 
told  of  papular  amusements  in  use 
among  other  nations,  which  have  often 
the  nature  of  art,  and  which  make  the 
English  traveller  blush  for  the  joyless 
life  of  labour  in  his  own  country ; 
nay,  when  we  have  been  told  of  the 
Ammergau  Mystery,  it  has  flashed 
upon  us  that  Art  itself  may  be  born 
again,  by  being  associated  with  La- 
bour, as  much  as  Labour  by  being 
inspired  with  Art.  And  what  isthe 
moral  of  that  story  of  the  Scotch 
peasant-naturalist  1  Even  if  you  can- 
not perceive  that  that  eager  study  of 
Nature  is  religion  in  its  purest  form,  if 
it  almost  shocks  you  to  hear  it  asserted 
that  the  Object  of  his  worship  was 
actually  the  True  God,  still  you  can 
hardly  help  admitting  that  such  wor- 
ship belongs  to  the  higher  life,  and  is 
the  true  counter-charm  of  the  public- 
house. 

Nor  is  it  only  for  the  sake  of  a  dis- 
guise under  cover  of  which  they  may 
make  their  way  into  the  Sunday  that 
we  would  represent  Art  and  Science  as 
having  the  nature  of  Religion.  It  is 
quite  as  much  because  they  will  never 
be  rightly  cultivated  until  they  are 
recognised  as  in  some  sort  sabbatical 
pursuits.  When  the  clerical  party 
brand  them  as  forms  of  money- making, 
they  only  take  advantage  of  the  cor- 
ruption which  has  fallen  upon  them 
from  being  treated  as  secular.  Here 
again  we  only  follow  plain  indications 
which  the  history  of  Art  gives  us.  The 
work  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  was  prin- 
cipally directed  to  asserting  a  certain 
sacredness  in  Art,  and  to  rescuing  it 


Natural  Religion. 


189 


from  the  curse  of  commonness  or  vul- 
garity. So  long  as  it  is  bandied  about 
in  the  market,  it  does  not  perform  its 
true  function ;  it  does  not  elevate. 
And  is  not  this  its  fate  among  us  ? 
Who  among  us  ever  speaks  of  the 
elevating  effect  of  Art  ?  It  is  a  con- 
ception quite  foreign  to  our  minds. 
We  think  of  Art  as  amusing,  or  ex- 
citing, or  thrilling,  but  not  as  elevating. 
And  because  we  never  question  that  it 
is  a  commodity  to  be  bartered  against 
other  commodities,  we  make  it  up  like 
other  commodities  for  the  market ; 
and  hence  come  works  of  the  Dickens 
school,  in  which  the  most  startling 
effects  succeed  each  other  without 
repose. 

But  will   not  Religion,  in   the  old 
sense,  or  at  least  will  not  Christianity 
disappear,    when    so    much    hitherto 
deemed     secular     throngs     into    the 
precincts  which   were   sacred   to    it  ? 
Would    not   this    enlargement  of  the 
idea  of  religion   prove   a   step  to  the 
destruction  of    it  ?      Religion    larger 
would  be  also  fainter,  until  it  was  lost 
to  view.     Does  not  the  truly  religious 
man  resent  the  suggestion  that  there 
is   any  connection   whatever   between 
what  he  calls  Religion  and  Science  or 
Art  ?    Has  not  Religion  a  warmth,  an- 
tipathetic to  the  hard  and  cold  gran- 
deur of  Science  \     Has  it  not  an  awful 
solemnity   still    more    alien     to     the 
frivolity  of  Art  1     Yes  !  but  the  fact 
that  Christian  feeling  has  a    quality 
which  is  all  its  own  does  not  prevent 
it  from  having  another  quality  which  it 
shares  with  Science  and  Art.     Christi- 
anity  has,  and   always  will    have,   a 
jealousy  of  both  which  tends    to    be- 
come hostility  ;  nevertheless,  it  is  one 
with  them  in  its  resistance  to  worldli- 
ness  and  to  the  dominion  of  the  lower 
life.      It  would  gain  much  by  freely 
recognising  this  affinity.     In  the  first 
place,  it  would  escape  their  attacks. 
Those  negations  of  Science  which  are 
now  so  terrible  would  be  very  much 
qualified,     if    not     wholly    explained 
away,    if     Christianity    appeared     as 
the    zealous   friend    of    Science    and 
the   mediator    between   her  and   the 


people  ;  and  the  half-concealed  rebel- 
lion of  Art  might  be  appeased  in  the 
same  way.  But  it  would  gain  also  a 
more  solid  advantage.  There  is  much 
too  sharp  a  contrast  between  the  in- 
sipid vulgarity  of  an  ordinary  English 
life  and  the  height  of  the  moral  sub- 
lime in  the  New  Testament.  The 
higher  life  cannot  be  taught  by  pre- 
senting only  ideal  examples,  or  su- 
preme moments  of  it.  It  is  not  all 
rapture  and  devotion,  but  has  its  rou- 
tine and  its  ordinary  occupations. 
These  are  wanting  in  our  English 
religion,  just  as  in  our  English  Sunday 
there  is  nothing  between  dulness  and 
divine  service.  And  this  routine  of 
the  higher  life  should  be  furnished  by 
Science  and  Art,  that  is,  by  pure  con- 
templations into  which  self-interest 
does  not  enter,  while  admiration  and 
curiosity,  the  lower  forms  of  worship, 
are  kept  awake.  Formed  in  such  a 
routine,  would  men  appreciate  the 
New  Testament  less  than  they  do  ] 
Is  it  not  evident  that  some  such  pre- 
paration, some  such  use  of  happy  and 
peaceful  thoughts,  is  absolutely  de- 
manded of  those  who  would  enter 
into  the  Christian  view  of  life  1 

But  suppose  the  population  on  Sun- 
day flocking  into  picture-galleries  and 
museums,  and  concert-halls;  suppose 
even  plays  performed,  not  indeed  the 
vulgar  burlesques  or  loose  comedies 
that  pleased  the  theatre  in  its  unre- 
generate  days,  but  such  as  a  Christian 
.^Eschylus  might  write  for  a  Christian 
Athens,  is  it  not  evident  that  the  par 
son,  with  his  commonplaces,  would  be 
left  to  preach  to  himself  in  the  deserted 
church  ?  If  it  were  so,  if  the  church 
and  the  parson  held  their  ground  by 
means  so  purely  artificial,  would  there 
be  any  hope  of  protecting  them,  or 
would  they  be  worth  protecting  ?  But 
the  considerations  here  urged  do  not 
lead  to  the  conclusion  that  Art  and 
Science,  because  they  have  the  nature 
of  religion,  ought  to  take  the  place  of 
what  has  hitherto  been  called  religion 
among  us.  This  has  been  asserted 
over  and  over  again,  but  the  view 
here  taken  is  different.  There  is 


190 


Natural  Eeliyion. 


another  religion,  which  is  neither  Art 
nor  Science,  and  which  is  more  import- 
ant to  mankind  than  either,  the  reli- 
gion of  morality,  or  of  the  human  Ideal, 
which  in  its   historic  form  is  Christi- 
anity.   No  rebellion  would  have  arisen 
against  this  religion,  still   less   would 
it  have  been  possible  to  represent  it  as 
a  womanish  sentimentalism,  if  it  had 
rested  on  its  own  merits,   and  not  on 
the  one  hand  turned  Art  and  Science 
into  enemies,  by  trying  to  tyrannise 
over  them ;  and    on  the    other   hand, 
suffered  itself  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
a  profession.      Give   back  to  Christi- 
anity the  elasticity  and  the  modesty  of 
which  clericalism  has  robbed  it,  and  it 
will  appear  again  in  its  proper  place, 
that  is,  the   highest   place  among  the 
religions    which    compose    the  Higher 
Life.     But,  as  religion  is  larger  than 
Christianity,  even  when  Christianity  is 
most  justly  conceived,  so  is  the  true 
Christianity  far  larger  than  the  cleri- 
cal perversion  of  it.     If  it  is  the  reli- 
gion of  the  human  Ideal,   and  of  the 
human  race,  evidently  the  material  of 
it  must  ba  all  human  history,  and  all 
the  sciences  that  deal  with  man.     It 
must  not  confine  itself    to  a   narrow 
strip  of   history,   the  chronicles  of    a 
single  tribe,  or  to  the  narrow  thought 
and  science  of  that  tribe.     The  found- 
ers   of    Christianity    connected    with 
their  religion,  at  least,  the  whole  his- 
tory of  the  race   to  which   they   be- 
longed.      They    drew    no    distinction 
between    ecclesiastical    and   civil    his- 
tory.   We,  with  our  wider  knowledge, 
should  take  not  narrower,    but    still 
wider  views.     While   we    see   in  the 
origin     of     Christianity    the    highest 
point  in  the  history  of  humanity,  the 
simultaneous  revelation  of    the  Ideal 
and  of  the  Race,  we  ought  to  reject 
no  part  of  the  history  of   humanity, 
nor  to  imagine  that  some  of  that  his- 
tory is  sacred  and  some  profane.     In 
like  manner,  while  we  regard  one  type 
of  humanity  as  the  highest,  we  ought 
not  to  imagine   that  only  one  type  is 
worth     study     or     imitation.        And 
when  these    narrownesses  have    been 
avoided,  why  should  the  preacher  of 


Christianity  fear  to  be" [dull?  Why 
should  he  want  topics,  or  dread  the 
rivalry  of  Art  and  Science  ?  The  whole 
history  of  mankind  is  open  to  him  ;  or, 
if  such  catholicity  is  beyond  his  con- 
ception, at  any  rate  he  has  the  whole 
history  of  Christian  nations.  In  what 
sense  can  Jewish  history  be  sacred  in 
which  the  history  of  Christendom  is 
profane  ?  •  Teaching  on  the  duties  of 
men,  illustrated  by  history,  and  con- 
nected with  a  grand  consecutive  view 
of  the  plan  running  through  human 
history — why  should  we  fear  that  men 
would  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  this  ?  They 
would  not  do  so  if  they  could  once  rid 
themselves  of  the  suspicion  that  the 
teacher  is  fettered,  or  but  half  sincere, 
or  but  half  competent. 

This  view  of  the  coming  phase  of 
religion  is  realistic,  and  therefore  has 
its  shadows.     It  exhibits  religion  not 
as  a  kind  of  sacred  asylum  from  all 
the  anxieties  and  almost  all  the  acti- 
vities of  the  mind ;  not  as  giving  all 
that  the  intellect  desires  while  it  ab- 
solves the  intellect  from  trouble — con- 
clusions without  reasoning,  knowledge 
without  investigation,  and  poetry  with- 
out   imagination  ; — but     only    as    an 
asylum   from    worldly   and    material 
cares.     More  than  this :   it  does  not 
promise  that  religion  will,  in  its  next 
phase,  render  with  any  certain  efficiency 
that  service  for  which  alone  many  have 
valued  it.  Religion  may  become  less  po- 
tent in  consolation,  and  less  able  to  in- 
spire the  hope  of  immortality  into  souls 
not  naturally  .ardent.    Those  cold  mis- 
givings   which    hitherto     have    been 
thought  incompatible  with  all  religious 
beliefs,  that  there  is,  after  all,  nothing 
"behind    the    veil,"    will    beset    the 
religious   as  well  as  the  worldly,  as 
they  seem  to  have  done  in  Old  Testa- 
ment times.     In  that  voyage  towards 
a   colder  zone  on  which   we   are   all 
bound,  the  story  of  some  discoverable 
North  West  passage  will  be  less  uni- 
versally received,  and  some  will  affirm 
that  no  land,  after  all,  is  to  be  found 
about   the   Pole,  but  only  a   Sea   of 
Ancient  Ice.     Is  it  possible,  it  will  be 
said,  that  any  religion  worthy  of  the 


Natural  Religion. 


191 


name  can  subsist  amid  such  uncer- 
tainties ?  And  yet  religious  faith  and 
peace  have  lived  on  all  this  time  in 
spite  of  an  opinion  about  the  future 
infinitely  more  appalling  than  that. 
Meanwhile,  this  very  uncertainty  about 
immortality,  this  very  aversion  of  the 
religious  life  from  the  future,  will 
lead  to  one  good  result,  which  perhaps 
could  hardly  have  been  attained  by 
any  less  painful  means.  Religion  will 
now,  for  the  first  time,  fairly  under- 
take that  regeneration  of  the  present 
life  and  of  actual  society  which  it 
always  promised,  yet  always  inde- 
finitely postponed ;  and  in  doing  so  it 
will,  as  we  have  seen,  reunite  itself 
with  those  other  inspiring  influences 
from  which  it  ought  never  to  have 
been  separated.  Religion  will  once 
more  be  understood  as  the  general 
name  for  all  the  worships  or  habitual 
admirations  which  compose  the  higher 
life.  We  shall  no  longer  be  told  of 
high  feelings  which  make  men  un- 
selfish and  pure-minded,  and  raise  them 


above  vulgar  cares,  but  which,  never- 
theless, have  nothing  to  do  with 
religion.  We  shall  no  longer  hear  it 
said  of  some  man  of  science,  whose 
mind  is  possessed,  beyond  most  men's, 
with  the  thought  of  the  eternal  laws 
by  which  the  universe  is  governed, 
that  "it  is  to  be  feared  that  he  is  an 
atheist,"  nor  of  some  artist,  whose 
heart  is  touched  by  a  thousand  sights 
which  leave  other  men  cold,  that  "  he 
has  no  religion."  All  such  high  en- 
thusiasms will  be  recognised  as  having 
the  very  essence  of  religion,  and  they 
will  be  prized  the  more  rather  than 
the  less  for  appearing  in  the  instinc- 
tive, inarticulate  state.  But  of  all 
such  enthusiasms  it  will  still  be  held 
that  the  highest  and  most  precious  is 
that  which  has  man  for  its  object,  and 
which  manifests  itself  neither  in  works 
of  Art  nor  discoveries  of  Science,  but 
in  emancipations,  redemptions,  recon- 
ciliations, and  in  a  high  ideal  of  duty  j 
and  this  is  the  religion  which  bears  the 
name  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.j 


192 


DOCTEUR   IAVARDIN;   A   SKETCH. 


i. : 

"  Patitur  qui  viucit." 

DOCTEUR  LAVAEDIN  had  succeeded  in 
his  profession  in  a  way  that  made  more 
aspiring  men  envious,  his  success  being 
due  in  a  great  measure  to  his  want  of 
any  low  ambition.     The  lamp  in  his 
room  might  be  seen  burning  until  the 
small  hours,  as  he  bent  over  his  books 
and  microscope,  patiently  and  enthu- 
siastically searching  out  the  secrets  of 
pathology.     His  contemporaries  pitied 
him  as  a  man    of    brilliant   promise, 
stifling  his  chances  by  living  the  life 
of   a  hermit.     One   eminent  Parisian 
doctor,  a   good  deal  his   senior,  took 
him  to  task  in  a  kindly,  patronising 
way,    and    remarked   that    he   would 
never    get   on   unless   he    gave    good 
dinners,  and  gathered   around  him  a 
fashionable  clientele.      ''When  I   was 
your  age,  I  was  apparently  as  success- 
ful as  I  am  now,  though  I  had  then  to 
think    a   good   deal   more   about   my 
creditors   than   my  patients;  but  the 
game  was  worth  the  candles — nothing 
succeeds  like  success ;  behold  me  now, 
physician  in  ordinary  to  His  Majesty 
the  Emperor,    cross   of  the  legion  of 
honour,  and  received  in   all  the  best 
houses  of  the   beau   monde    of   Paris. 
You  have  the  same  chances,  if  you  go 
the   same   way  to   work."     Any  one 
less  self-satisfied  than  this  counsellor 
would  have  observed  the  half-suppressed 
ironical  curve  on  the  lips  of  the  younger 
man,  as  he  gravely  and  shortly  thanked 
the  elder  for  his  well-meant  advice. 
Ten  years  later  the  emperor  was  not, 
and  his  physician  in  ordinary,  having 
got    into    serious    money    difficulties, 
through   his   extravagant  living,  had 
borrowed  largely  from  Dr.   Lavardin, 
who  had    then    attained   a  foremost 
place  among  the  medical  men  in  Paris 
by  sheer  hard  work. 


He  had  learnt  to  perfection  the 
great]  professional  art  of  listening, 
and  treated  every  case  that  came 
before  him, !  whether  of  gentle  or 
simple,  as  the  most  important  in  hand. 
He  rarely  claimed  sympathy  from 
others  ;  when  he  did  sacrifice  his  na- 
tural reticence,  it  was  more  to  place 
himself  in  closer  communion  with  the 
suffering,  than  for  any  other  reason. 
There  were  some  who  pre-supposed 
that  beneath  his  simplicity  and  truth- 
fulness there  lay  unfathomed  regions 
of  astuteness  and  worldly  wisdom.  It 
was  not  so,  however,  he  had  simply  the 
wit  to  know  how  to  play  the  card  of 
truth  with  tact.  In  his  dealings  with 
sick  men,  he  found  it  necessary  to  be 
abrupt,  sometimes  to  harshness ;  in 
most  cases  cutting  them  off  from  a 
good  many  selfish  pleasures,  and 
frankly  telling  them  that  keeping  to 
their  work  would  answer  as  well,  if 
not  better,  than  a  visit  to  Monaco,  or 
a  trip  to  Vienna.  "  As  for  me,"  de- 
clared a  spoilt  boy  of  forty,  "  I  can  do 
nothing  unless  I  am  in  perfect  health." 
"  If  all  acted  on  that  principle,  I  fear 
there  would  be  little  work  accom- 
plished in  the  world,"  the  docteur  had 
unfeelingly  replied.  Women,  whom 
he  influenced,  looked  and  felt  invigor- 
ated by  his  medical  advice ;  those  of 
them  who  expected  him  to  order  their 
lives  according  to  their  wishes  always 
came  away  with  their  fees  unaccepted, 
and  in  time  these  ladies  drifted  into 
the  hands  of  more  amenable  prac- 
titioners. 

The  relation  of  such  a  human  being 
to  the  world  around  him  must  always 
be  full  of  peril.  But  the  peril  is  in- 
finitely increased  when  the  protected 
character  of  the  physician  comes  into 
play.  It  was  not  until  he  had  reached 
middle  life  that  Dr.  Lavardin  felt 
any  danger  to  himself  in  his  position. 


Docteur  Lavardin  ;  a  Sketch. 


193 


The  young  wife  of  one  of  his  staunch- 
est  friends  had  come  to  him  for  help 
and  comfort  in  her  wretchedness.  Her 
husband,  M.  D'Hauteville,  and  Dr. 
Lavardin  had  been  at  school  together, 
and  each  had  achieved  a  brilliant 
reputation,  D'Hauteville  especially 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  carrying  all 
before  him.  Later  on,  success  had 
become  not  only  a  habit,  but  a  neces- 
sity to  his  nature.  He  lived  on  the 
excitement  of  it.  During  the  final 
examinations,  however,  at  the  Ecole 
Polytechnique  he  could  not  keep  step 
with  Lavardin's  steady  pace ;  he  be- 
came worried  and  discontented,  and 
soon  dropped  from  even  his  second 
place.  Lavardin  little  cared  for  these 
competitive  successes.  He  wanted  to 
know  things  well,  because  he  really 
cared  for  the  knowledge,  but  not  for 
the  sake  of  out-distancing  his  friend. 
At  last  came  the  examination  for  the 
coveted  mathematical  prize — the  race 
was  between  Lavardin  and  D'Haute- 
ville. Lavardin  knew  the  prize  lay 
within  his  own  grasp,  but,  to  the  sur- 
prise of  every  one,  he  did  not  send  in 
his  papers  on  the  plea  of  ill-health, 
and  to  D'Hauteville  the  honours  were 
awarded. 

"You  were  ill  on  purpose,"  said 
D'Hauteville,  but  the  other  only 
laughed  it  off.  "  Take  my  word  for  it, 
you  will  never  get  on  in  life  if  you 
cede  to  others — if  you  let  your  heart 
take  the  place  of  your  head." 

"We  will  see,"  replied  Lavardin, 
with  quiet  confidence.  "  You  lay  too 
much  stress,  D'Hauteville,  on  the 
prizes  of  life ;  remember  there  is 
always  a  price  to  be  paid  for  them." 

D'Hauteville  was  now  an  over- 
worked rising  avocat ;  his  rich  mar- 
riage was  generally  looked  upon  as  one 
of  his  successes,  yet  he  had  not  filled 
the  wide  blanks  in  his  wife's  passion- 
ate, purposeless  existence.  She  had 
found  that  her  union  with  him,  in- 
stead of  being  the  realisation  of  all 
her  young  dreams,  was  but  the  abrupt 
awakening  to  a  series  of  disillusions, 
to  sterner  responsibilities  and  duties, 
to  additional  perplexities  and  fears. 

No.  219. — VOL.  xxxvu. 


She  had  no  children  to  occupy  and 
engross  her,  no  method  of  life,  no 
pressing  necessity  to  live  for  others. 
Her  husband,  too  busy  to  be  with  her 
much,  and  trusting  in  her  innate  good- 
ness, left  her  free  and  unquestioned 
liberty,  while  he  drowned  his  own 
heart's  disappointments  in  the  absorp- 
tion of  his  daily  labours — in  his  hard- 
won  successes.  But  she  had  no  absorb- 
ing work,  and  her  health  gave  way. 

"  Go  and  consult  Lavardin,  he  will 
put  you  right ;  he  is  the  best  friend  I 
have,"  said  her  husband,  hurrying 
away  with  his  briefs,  after  bestowing 
a  passing  kiss  on  her  pale,  cold  brow. 
So  to  the  physician  she  went. 

She  was  very  lovely,  very  pathetic, 
very  desolate ;  with  a  wide  capacity 
for  happiness,  for  loving,  for  living. 
Dr.  Lavardin's  heart  was  touched  and 
thrilled.  He  would  fain  have  dismissed 
the  case,  and  so  guarded  his  own  in- 
ward peace.  But  he  could  not.  He 
was  at  first  severe,  introduced  phil- 
osophy, told  her  that  happiness  is  not 
a  thing  to  be  claimed,  but  that  life  is 
both  possible  and  bearable  without  it. 
He  spoke  of  Time  as  the  Great  Healer, 
the  great  modifier,  and  that  we  must 
have  compassion  one  for  another.  But 
as  visit  followed  visit,  these  truths 
seemed  to  heal  her  wound  but  slightly. 
Feeling  he  had  been  too  harsh,  he 
spoke  again  more  gently,  until  she 
lifted  up  her  eyes  to  him  with  a  look 
he  never  forgot ;  then  his  breath 
came  quick  and  short ;  he  turned 
towards  her  passionately,  advanced, 
checked  himself,  and  wearily  sat  down 
in  the  furthest  corner  of  the  room. 
He  occupied  himself  for  a  moment  in 
writing,  and  as  Madame  D'Hauteville 
passed  out,  and  the  next  patient  came 
in,  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  dis- 
cover from  his  calm  manner  that  he 
had  passed  through  any  inward  con- 
flict. Patitur  qui  vincit.  Dr.  Lavardin 
suffered,  yet  he  was  loyally  true  to 
his  friend.  He  became  more  tolerant, 
however,  to  all  strictly  human  and 
momentary  weaknesses.  As  a  young 
man  he  had  been  very  hard  against 
any  lapse  from  his  own  high,  untried 

o 


194 


Doctiur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


standard.  All  young  people  are 
pitiless,  until  they  learn  through 
experience  the  truth  of  that  wise 
saying  —  Tout  comprendre  c'est  tout 
pardonner. 

The  next  news  that  his  patients 
heard  of  him  was  that  he  had  quitted 
Paris  and  gone  to  Amiens,  where  the 
cholera  was  raging,  and  where  doctors 
were  needed.  "  What  a  quixotic  fool 
the  man  is  to  throw  away  such  a 
practice  to  get  killed  off  by  pestilence 
in  the  provinces.  A  capital  first  plunge 
for  beginners,  no  doubt  (to  be  killed 
off),  but  for  a  man  like  Lavardin  !  "  So 
exclaimed  the  faculty,  so  mourned  his 
clientele.  It  was  not  quixotism,  how- 
ever ;  doctors  are  human,  though  the 
fact  seems  sometimes  to  be  forgotten ; 
and  no  power  would  have  induced  Dr. 
Lavardin,  in  his  calm  senses,  to  re- 
main in  a  position  where  he  had  the 
slightest  doubt  of  himself.  No  one 
was  dependent  upon  him  in  Paris ; 
his  private  practice,  though  very  lucra- 
tive, was  not  what  he  cared  for  most. 
His  heart  was  in  hospital  work,  and 
he  was  eager  to  try  new  remedies  for 
stamping  out  the  prevailing  epidemic. 
The  cholera  did  not  cut  him  off  as  his 
friends  predicted,  and  he  lived  to 
experience  in  himself  what  he  had 
taught  to  others,  that  life  is  both 
possible  and  bearable  without  any 
particular  happiness.  He  got  greyer, 
however,  and  settled  more  decidedly 
into  a  scientifically-abstracted  middle- 
aged  man,  and  after  the  excitement  of 
the  cholera  had  subsided,  he  in  a 
measure  gave  up  general  practice  and 
lived  a  studious,  though  a  benevolently 
useful  life.  The  good  people  of  Amiens 
were  very  grateful  to  him  for  his  self- 
sacrificing  devotion  during  their  time 
of  trial,  and  highly  gratified  that  he 
was  content  to  take  up  his  abode 
among  them.  It  showed  how  quickly 
appreciative  he  was  of  their  high 
moral  and  intellectual  standard,  and 
the  generally  advanced  opinions  of  the 
town.  Dr.  Lavardin  became  very 
popular  in  the  cercle,  though  he 
neither  played  high  nor  gossipped,  and 
was  very  often  asked  out  to  dinner, 


though  he  was  not  a  professed  talker, 
and  had  no  self-assertion.  Those  who 
gave  him  the  benefit  of  their  ideas 
would  remark  in  a  delighted  way,  11 
est  vraimerit  fort  spirituel ;  though  the 
docteur  had  in  all  probability  confined 
himself  to  expressions  such  as  lien 
possible,  mais  oui,  mais  non,  cela  s'entend, 
jwecisement.  From  his  sympathetically 
genial  manner  he  seemed  but  to  refrain 
from  carrying  all  before  him  in  order, 
benevolently,  to  give  younger  ones  a 
chance.  It  was  only  Sidonie,  his 
housekeeper,  who  knew  how  much  of 
ease  and  energy,  sweetness  and  strife, 
there  was  in  his  nature,  and  she  loved, 
feared,  and  respected  him  for  his  self- 
control.  The  townsfolk  thought  it  a 
mighty  piece  of  good  luck  his  getting 
such  a  treasure ;  even  M.  le  Cur6  had 
not  a  better  cook,  and  at  the  same 
time  it  was  considered  a  great  chance 
for  Sidonie  being  under  such  a  master, 
un  homme  comme  il  y  en  a  pen. 

Sidonie's  father  had  been  a  well- 
known  manufacturer  of  the  town; 
long  failing  health  and  unfortunate 
speculations  had  reduced  him  to  a  state 
of  bankruptcy,  and  obliged  his 
children  to  make  their  own  way  in 
the  world.  On  the  whole,  his  family 
had  done  well,  walking  uprightly  along 
the  straight  high  road  of  life,  every 
one  of  them  except  Sidonie  (whose 
character  was  a  mixture  of  pride  and 
impulse) ;  she  had  taken,  alas !  a 
wrong  step  on  that  hard,  pitiless  road. 
Her  lover  died,  and  for  a  time  she 
felt  all  the  bitterness  of  lonely  poverty 
and  all  the  anguish  of  a  proud,  dumb 
despair.  Other  ways  of  gaining  a  live- 
lihood failing  her,  she  succeeded  at 
last  in  becoming  a  first-rate  cuisiniere  ; 
and  as  time  went  on  it  was  she  who 
superintended  all  the  grand  repasts 
served  in  the  town,  and  recipes  revised 
by  her  were  considered  of  priceless 
value.  She  maintained  herself  and 
her  child  with  reticent  dignity  and 
independence ;  indeed  there  wero  some 
people  who  quite  resented  this  steadi- 
ness of  behaviour,  deeming  it  an  irre- 
concilable inconsistency.  It  was  only 
the  more  liberal-minded  who  recog- 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


195 


nised  that  she  was  no  ordinary  woman ; 
in  fact,  with  her  reputed  book-learning, 
and  her  grave,  dignified  manner,  she 
passed  as  a  rather  awe-inspiring 
personage.  "When  Dr.  Lavardin  first 
saw  her,  in  a  formidable  high  cap, 
completely  hiding  the  shape  of  her 
head,  and  her  heavy  grey  cloak,  he 
gave  a  little  inward  laugh,  almost  mis- 
doubting the  rumours  he  had  heard 
concerning  her  past  life,  doubting  too 
whether  this  delicate-minded  lady, 
with  her  deep- set  eyes  and  tensely 
closed  mouth,  would  exactly  suit  h's 
situation,  would  unquestioningly  obey 
his  behests :  for  our  docteur,  though 
mild,  was  a  mild  despot.  As  Dr. 
Lavardin  stood,  with  his  plump  sun- 
burnt hands  crossed  meditatively 
behind  him,  reading  by  slow  but  sure 
degrees  the  characters  of  her  face,  he 
startled  her  self-distrust  by  abruptly 
offering  extravagantly  high  wages. 
Her  pale  cheeks  flushed,  but  with 
more  pain  than  pleasure. 

"  I  am  not  worth  that,"  she  said ; 
"  I  cannot  take  so  much." 

"  I  think  differently,"  he  answered ; 
"those  are  my  terms;  I  shall  not 
change  them." 

She  looked  up  in  his  face  with 
wounded  pride. 

"  You  are  doing  it  because  you  are 
benevolent ;  but  I  am  not  a  subject  for 
benevolence ;  I  wish  to  stand  alone, 
and  take  but  what  I  rightly  earn.  I 
ask  only  for  justice." 

"And  I  consider  I  am  barely  doing 
you  justice.  Believe  me,  I  am  not 
acting  under  the  impulse  of  bene- 
volence, I  am  only  giving  way  to  my 
instinctive  knowledge  of  character." 
This  he  said  with  diffident  persuasive- 
ness. "  None  of  us  have  justice  done 
us,"  he  went  on,  dropping  his  eye- 
glasses, and  looking  down  at  her 
smilingly,  but  with  dimmed  eyes; 
"  we  are  always  either  over-rated  or 
under- rated ;  for  instance,  you  have 
under -rated  me,  in  considering  me 
more  generous  than  just." 

Still  she  protested,  still  he  insisted  ; 
she  would  have  her  way,  he  his.  It 
was  the  first  and  last  battle  between 


them.  Of  course  the  stronger  gained 
the  victory,  and  to  Sidonie  there  only 
remained  the  hope  that,  by  her  devo- 
tion to  his  interests,  she  might  in  some 
small  degree  repay  her  master' s  gener- 
osity. When  the  interview  was  over, 
and  she  had  passed  out  of  sight  into 
outside  darkness,  the  severe  mouth 
relaxed,  and  as  hot  tears  sprang  into 
the  impetuous  eyes,  she  bowed  her 
head,  crying  out  as  if  in  pain,  "  My 
boy,  my  boy." 

For  this  satisfactory  arrangement 
with  Dr.  Lavardin  necessitated  a 
mother's  separation  from  her  child. 
What  money,  or  what  assured  position 
could  make  up  to  her  for  her  son's 
loving  caresses'?  As  she  passed 
through  the  lamp-lit  streets,  her  cloak 
in  the  sleeting  rain  clinging  damply 
round  her,  more  than  one  wayfarer 
paused,  but  passed  gravely  by,  on 
observing  the  maternal  solicitude  im- 
printed on  her  face. 

II. 

"  He  cared  not  only  for  l  cases,'  but  for  John 
and  Elizabeth,  especially  Elizabeth." 

MOTHERS  recognised  at  once  that 
Dr.  Lavardin  was  too  staid  a  sub- 
ject for  any  matrimonial  project,  so 
were  happy  and  at  ease  with  him, 
and  guilelessly  expansive,  making 
what  use  they  could  of  him.  Passing 
over  their  daughters,  they  enlarged 
to  him  about  their  difficulties  with 
their  sons.  One  or  other  of  them 
would  naively  ask  him  to  find  some 
situation  in  Paris  that  would  suit 
her  eldest  boy — a  berth  with  good 
emolument,  little  work,  advancing 
prospects :  her  son,  she  was  sure, 
would  make  a  good  attache,  a  rare 
diplomat,  a  wise  leader  of  men, 
if  only  he  had  an  opening.  Dr. 
Lavardin,  as  he  listened  to  this 
fond  mother,  looking  over  his  spec- 
tacles with  a  serio-comic  gleam  in 
his  eyes,  would  never  fail  to  soothe 
her  by  gentle  compliments,  some- 
times even  unwittingly  stroking  the 
fair  hand  in  a  grandfatherly  way. 
And  however  elderly  or  stout  the 

o  2 


196 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


lady  might  appear  to  other  eyes, 
she  was  sure  to  have  an  agreeable 
consciousness  that  the  docteur  ad- 
mired her,  and  in  truth  he  did 
admire  the  maternal  love  that 
made  her  courageous  to  ask  favours. 
He  did  what  he  could,  for  no  woman 
ever  appealed  for  help  to  him  in 
rain. 

He  would  tell  the  husband  in  his 
business-like  way  of  a  cashier's  place, 
or  a  vacancy  for  a  medical  student. 
There  were  no  flatteries  in  his  speech 
to  the  man.     "The  duties  are  hard; 
but   all  work   is  hard."     The   father 
might   think    that   it  was  very  easy 
for  him  to  talk  thus,   living  in  ease 
and  comfort   with   Sidonie  as   house- 
keeper.    Yet,  after  toiling    all    day, 
had   not   the  evening   of   life   set   in 
for  Dr.   Lavardin?      Why  should  he 
not   enjoy   complete   and   remorseless 
leisure  ?     It  was  not  by  chance  that 
he  had  gained  his  money  and  position, 
but  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  rising 
with  the  dawn,  and  working  far  into 
the  night.     And  now  he  was  supposed 
to  have  lived  his  life,  and  was  going 
to    devote   himself    to   the   study   of 
scientific    subjects.      So   the   Amiens 
folk    glibly  explained   the    situation. 
How  very  ready  we  all  are  to  shelve 
our    friends,    while    for    ourselves — 
ourselves  —  how    difficult    to    realise 
that  we  have  in  truth  lived  the  best 
part   of    our    lives — we    expected   so 
much,      and     we    have  ? — what     we 
have    worked    for.    We  reap? — what 
we  have  sown.     But  why  should  Dr. 
Lavardin  ever  admit  or  allow  others 
to  assert  that  the  fulness  of  life  was 
over    for    him  ?     Surely   as   long    as 
the    beating    of    his   heart    goes    on 
evenly  and   strongly,    existence   with 
its  mysteries  and  miracles,  its  passions, 
and  pains,  is  still  before  him.     What 
though     he     has    gained     a     certain 
amount  of   philosophic  calm — he   can 
still  feel  the  sunshine  and  the  shadow, 
the  blue  sky  still  bends  above   him, 
the  world  surges  around  him.     There 
is   twilight   and  night,  and  the  long 
lonely  hours  of  dawn,  when  his  heart 
feels   desolate  —  ill   at  ease — longing 


for  something  which  has  not  come 
to  him,  has  not  been  attained — dead 
to  scientific  problems — 

"  Blank  to  Zoroaster  on  his  terrace  ; 
Blind  to  Galileo  on  his  turret." 

So  mused  Dr.  Lavardin  as  he 
wended  his  way  to  one  of  his  lady 
patients,  who  had  neither  daughters 
to  dispose  of  nor  sons  to  settle  in  life. 
She  was  not,  however,  one  of  the 
women  whom  the  docteur  influenced, 
nor  yet  was  she  of  those  who  retired 
from  his  consulting-room  with  their 
fees  in  their  hands,  for  the  very  good 
reason  that  she  never  brought  hers ; 
she  was  one  of  those  licensed  ladies 
who  "remember  to  forget"  to  bring 
their  purses  on  special  occasions. 

En  revanche,    her   welcome  to   Dr. 
Lavardin  in  her   own   house  was   of 
the  sweetest  and   easiest.       She  was 
charming  and  amiable,  wishing  no  one 
ill,  except  those,  of  course,  who  stood 
in  her  way,  and  all  she  did  then  was 
to  push  them  gracefully  but  promptly 
aside.     Though  left  a  widow  in  com- 
fortable circumstances,  she,  like  many 
others,  would  have  liked  more  money, 
could  have  easily  disposed  of  it,  on  her- 
self as  the  jewel,  and  on  her  house  as 
the  setting  of  the  jewel.     As  it  was 
"  she  did  her  best,"  as  she  often  told 
Dr.  Lavardin  with  a  plaintive  sigh ; 
and  he,  looking  at  her  and  her  ela- 
borate  setting,    sadly   re-echoed   that 
sigh.       Once     on     his     return    from 
visiting  the  wretchedest  part  of  the 
town,  amid  vice,  fever,  and  death,  he 
had   been   simple   enough    to    preach 
her  a  little  sermon — invigorating,  im- 
petuous,   fervent;    inveighing   against 
the  temptations  of  unshared  riches — 
the  banefulness  of  egoistic  lives.     As 
he  talked  he  got  white   and   tremu- 
lous, walked  about  the  room,  looking 
fiercely  in  earnest,  his  face  luminous, 
searching.     He  stretched  out  his  big 
brown   hands   as  if  to  shake  her  out 
of    herself.      An     answering    move- 
ment,   a   glance   of   understanding,    a 
checked  utterance  of  impulsive  sym- 
pathy,   might  at   that   moment    have 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


197 


subdued  and  thrilled  him,  perhaps 
captivated  him  for  ever.  But  the 
widow  was  calculating,  not  listening 
— "His  voice  is  too  loud;  he  is  too 
large  for  ordinary-sized  rooms ;  I 
should  hate  to  have  scenes  like  this ; 
I  like  repose  and  darkness,  and  it  is 
simply  agaqant  his  drawing  up  all  the 
blinds."  This  she  said  to  herself  con- 
solingly, feeling  him  drifting  out  of 
her  reach — beyond  her  depth.  "  De- 
cidedly he  has  passed  his  first  youth," 
was  her  after  deliberate  comment,  as 
she  gracefully  set  herself  to  answer 
him,  and  to  enlighten  him  with  her 
own  ideas  of  life  and  love,  duty  and 
friendship — her  aspirations,  her  hopes, 
her  fears,  her  sensations — herself  (for 
she,  too,  could  perorate  on  her  own 
pet  subject).  But  she  had  let  slip 
her  moment.  It  was  not  given  her 
to  interpret  the  expression  of  eyes 
intrenched  behind  their  spectacles,  nor 
the  movement  of  lips  covered  by  so 
thick  a  moustache. 

Such  were  the  little  shocks  that 
Dr.  Lavardin  received  on  his  passage 
through  life.  Yet  his  faith  in  human 
nature  did  not  die  out ;  he  still  went 
on  hoping  and  believing  that  "  there's 
perfect  goodness  somewhere  ;  "  always 
attributing  his  disillusions  to  some 
want  in  himself.  He  still  continued 
to  visit  the  widow  in  her  scented  and 
softly-cushioned  boudoir,  listening 
with  a  wonderful  patience  to  her 
monologues,  and  prescribing  mild 
tisanes  against  a  too  introspective 
and  luxurious  life.  Perhaps  he  hoped 
in  time  to  influence  her — or  was  it 
that  she  was  gradually  converting 
him  to  darkness  and  repose  ? 

Sidonie  had  a  strong  conviction  that 
even  the  best  of  men  are  apt  in  the 
end  to  fall  victims  to  a  woman's  per- 
sistent flatteries ;  and  as  the  visits 
went  on  she  trembled  for  the  fate  of 
her  master ;  for  what  are  poor  mortals 
to  do  but  accept,  in  default  of  better, 
something  lower  than  the  angels — 
accept  the  graceful  acting  of  a  feigned 
love  in  lieu  of  the  unbecoming  and 
benumbing  diffidence  of 'a  deep  reality. 
She  was  aware  of  this  possible  phase 


in  men's  lives,  and  in  silence  waited 
for  what  was  to  come.  Being  one  of 
those  who  have  felt  the  heavy  clouds 
of  suffering,  she  was  quickly  grateful 
for  passing  sunlit  gleams,  and  there- 
fore was  not  going  to  "  forestall  her 
date  of  grief ; "  but  by  fulfilling  the 
claims  of  every  day  as  it  passed  main- 
tained her  own  inward  peace.  In  ac- 
cepting God's  will,  knowing  that  He 
was  great  and  good,  she  prayed  for 
the  welfare  of  her  master,  believing 
him  also  to  be  great  and  good ;  and 
thankfully  remembered  how  she  had 
been  sheltered  and  set  on  high  from 
the  world's  rough  ways,  from  women's 
hard  looks,  and  from  men's  light 
words;  she  had  basked  securely  in 
the  sunshine,  and  she  was  not  now 
going  to  complain  because  the  clouds 
were  again  gathering  around  her. 

Possessing  still  a  rich  mine  of 
wealth  in  that  maternal  love  which 
no  one  could  take  from  her,  she  found 
courage  and  strength  in  watching  the 
vigorous  young  life  unfolding  itself 
before  her.  In  her  boy's  innocent 
prattle  and  broad,  trustful  smiles  she 
drew  her  comfort,  feeling  she  had 
her  share  of  love.  When  the  day's 
work  was  done  her  child  would  occa- 
sionally be  brought  to  her,  and  in  a 
little  sanctum  opening  out  of  the 
kitchen  the  mother  and  son  would 
have  quiet  play  together  in  the  danc- 
ing firelight.  They  were  sitting  thus 
beneath  the  shadow  of  the  great 
clock-frame  when  Dr.  Lavardin  re- 
turned home  from  one  of  his  visits  to 
the  widow  sooner  than  was  expected. 
She  did  not  hear  the  door  open,  and 
was  softly  singing — 

' '  Dis,  quel  est  1'araour  veritable  ? 

Celui  qui  respire  en  autrui. 
Et,  1'amour  le  plus  indomptable  ? 
Celui  ciui  fait  le  moins  de  bruit." 

It  was  the  same  Sidonie.  The  only 
difference  in  her  was  that  she  had 
her  child  on  her  knee  and  had  for- 
gotten all  household  cares.  Her  cap 
had  fallen  off,  and  her  usually  tightly- 
imprisoned  hair  fell  in  heavy  masses 
on  either  side  of  the  fine  outline  of  a 


198 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


noble  head.  One  of  the  boy's  hands 
had  fast  hold  of  a  twisted  plait,  while 
the  other  lay  sleepily  upon  her  bosom. 
Dr.  Lavardin  did  not  speak,  but  stood 
leaning  against  the  doorway,  watching, 
fearing  to  break  the  spell.  He  had 
seen  women  under  many  phases — 
under  the  influence  of  various  con- 
flicting passions — radiant  with  the 
might  of  love — dimmed  and  shrunken 
with  the  strain  and  conflict  of  self- 
suppression — glorified  with  victories 
over  temptations — repellent  with  the 
pre-occupation  of  an  intriguing  mind. 
But  never  before  had  he  beheld  a  face 
so  transformed  as  was  Sidonie's  with 
a  pure  maternal  love.  All  the  severe 
outlines  had  disappeared,  giving  place 
to  dimples  and  smiles,  while  the  un- 
conscious cooings  made  a  happy  rift 
in  the  austere  line  of  her  mouth.  The 
child  took  it  in  gravely  and  as  a 
matter  of  course  :  for  when  had  his 
mother's  eyes  looked  at  him  otherwise 
than  softly,  or  when  was  her  voice 
other  to  his  ears  than  the  sweetest  of 
all  music  ?  Only  he  nestled  closer  in 
the  infolding  arms,  and  beat  time 
with  his  fingers  on  the  gently- heaving 
breast.  But  to  Dr.  Lavardin  it  did 
not  come  as  a  matter  of  course. 

"  You  must  always  have  your  child 
with  you,  Sidonie,"  he  said,  speaking 
and  drawing  near,  though  he  had 
meant  to  have  kept  silent  and  re- 
tired. "  I  ought  to  have  thought  of  it 
before ;  but  it  is  your  fault ;  you 
spoil  me  and  make  me  selfish.  See 
how  the  little  one  has  clasped  my 
finger  and  will  not  let  me  go,  re- 
cognising a  friend,  though  a  tardy 
one.  You  know  we  have  plenty  of 
room  for  him.  I  make  one  condition, 
however,  of  his  becoming  a  member  of 
our  household." 

Sidonie  looked  up  shyly  perplexed, 
into  a  grandly  beautiful  face,  into 
love-lit,  compassionate  eyes. 

"Which  is,"  he  went  on,  in  a 
mock  voice  of  command,  "  that  you 
never  again  wear  a  cap." 

She  bowed  her  head,  and  touched 
with  trembling,  fervent  lips  the  hand 
held  prisoner  by  her  child. 


III. 

"All  people  have  sometimes  a  season  of 
mental  desperation  and  aberration,  when  they 
do  exactly  what  their  friends  would  least 
expect." 

IT  was  the  early,  buoyant  morning. 
The  widow's  casement  was  open,  and 
in  a  loose  luxurious  wrapper  she  was 
leaning  out,  resting  her  languid  elbows 
on  the  window  cushion.  Beneath,  in 
the  busy  street,  amid  odorous  piles  of 
fruits  and  flowers,  bright  costumes, 
and  shrill  voices,  passed  Sidonie  on 
her  way  to  market,  her  crown  of 
glistening  braids  wound  round  her 
well-poised  head,  her  dark,  subdued 
face  illumined  with  an  intense  inner 
light.  She  was  in  the  crowd,  but 
not  of  it.  There  was  a  new  rhythm 
in  her  carriage,  a  stately  cadence  in 
her  walk,  that  at  once  arrested  the 
widow's  attention,  who,  after  gazing 
intently  down  at  her,  suddenly  closed 
the  window,  and,  with  a  sharp  energy 
and  dangerously  sparkling  eyes,  began 
the  mysteries  of  an  elaborate  toilet. 
It  was  not  the  toilet  of  a  woman  in , 
dubious  anxiety,  with  passionate 
pulses,  intent  on  beautifying  herself 
for  the  sake  of  him  she  loves,  nor  yet 
that  of  a  gentle,  guileless  maiden, 
watching  in  the  mirror  the  reflected 
curves  of  her  white  arms,  as  she 
lingeringly  gathers  up  the  glory  of 
her  tresses.  It  was  rather  the  de- 
liberate adornment  of  an  experienced 
coquette,  where  there  was  neither 
innocence  nor  passion.  The  widow 
was  not  readily  prepared  to  part  with 
her  newly- acquired  liberty,  nor  to 
withdraw  the  plausible  veil  that 
screened  her  self-indulgent  life ;  she 
only  felt  the  need  of  a  more  piquant 
interest  in  that  life — a  fresh  proof 
that  her  powers  of  fascination  were 
not  on  the  wane.  If  she  did  not 
greatly  care  for  Dr.  Lavardin,  she  at 
at  any  rate  greatly  cared  that  he 
should  not  go  to  another.  As  she 
put  the  finishing  touch  to  her  red- 
dened lips  and  the  delicate  shadow 
beneath  her  eyes,  she  had  worked 


Dodeur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


199 


herself  up  to  a  pitch  of  almost 
righteous  indignation.  To  save  Dr. 
Lavardin  from  his  impending  fate 
would  be  a  deed  of  charity — an  act  of 
grace. 

Before  Sidonie  had  returned  from 
market  the  widow  was  in  the  doc- 
teur's  study. 

"  I  am  going  the  round  of  my 
friends,  begging  for  this  sad  case  of 
starvation,"  she  said,  in  soft,  per- 
suasive accents. 

The  appeal  had  been  drawn  up  that 
morning  by  herself — the  work  of  her 
ready  imagination — the  quick  inspira- 
tion of  a  moment.  Though  the  case 
detailed  was  a  purely  fictitious  one, 
she  truly  meant  to  give  the  money 
she  received  to  the  needy,  and  in 
after- confession  to  her  priest  would 
omit  no  tittle  of  the  lies  told  for  so 
good  a  cause,  believing,  as  she  did, 
that  the  end  justifies  the  means. 

Dr.  Lavardin  received  her  with 
open  arms ;  he  felt  that  morning  as  if 
he  could  take  the  whole  world  into 
his  embraces.  He  did  not  sermonise ; 
indeed,  was  quite  touched  by  this 
newly-awakened  consideration  for  the 
poor,  and  felt  remorsefully  that  he 
had  perhaps  done  her  injustice — had 
been  too  hard  upon  her  with  his 
sledge-hammer.  Here  she  was,  up 
and  dressed  betimes,  looking  almost 
lovely,  and  was  bestirring  herself 
for  others.  He  himself  had  idled 
away  the  morning  hours ;  Sidonie  had 
not  yet  shown  herself ;  all  night  he 
had  dreamed  fitfully  of  a  mother  and 
child — of  a  tangible  happiness  for 
himself — of  sweet,  flickering  smiles 
on  a  chastened  face.  And  now  he 
was  impatient  —  expectant,  feeling 
alternately  joyous  and  irritable ;  and 
there  was  nothing  and  no  one  to 
wreak  his  passing  spleen  upon  until 
she  appeared — this  lightly-glancing, 
softly- speaking  fairy,  scented  and 
furbelowed. 

After  perusing  her  document  he 
looked  down  at  her  searchingly,  hesi- 
tated an  instant,  and  then,  as  if 
ashamed  of  his  hesitation,  blushingly 
placed  a  bank-note  upon  the  paper. 


"Thanks,  thanks,"  she  exclaimed, 
drawing  close  to  him,  and  placing  her 
hand  in  his.  "Do  you  know,"  she 
went  on,  in  a  broken,  die-away  whis- 
per, "that  they  are  talking. of  you 
and  me  in  the  town  ?  They  say  you 
are  going  to  marry  at  last." 

The  hand  that  inclosed  hers  burned ; 
but  before  he  could  speak  Sidonie 
came  into  the  room  with  the  morning 
letters. 

"  Adieu,  then,  and  thanks  for  your 
contribution,"  concluded  the  fairy, 
disappearing  amid  soft  undulations  of 
drapery.  "  I  need  not  have  taken  so 
much  trouble  nor  have  gone  so  far," 
she  thought,  as  her  careless  glance 
fell  upon  the  grave,  colourless  face  of 
Sidonie,  whose  faint  voice  seemed  to 
come  from  some  difficult  distance  as 
she  answered  the  other's  complacent 
salutations. 

After  leaving  Dr.  Lavardin's  house 
the  widow's  intention  had  been  to  go 
direct  to  the  alley  so  graphically  de- 
scribed by  herself,  and  there  have 
persuaded  some  one  or  other  into  the 
belief  that  they  were  starving.  But 
the  heat  was  excessive,  the  way  was 
long  and  uncertain,  and  her  breakfast 
waited  for  her  at  home ;  besides,  her 
reception  by  Dr.  Lavardin  had  been 
most  flattering.  "What  need  for  fur- 
ther trouble  ? 

Sidonie  had  certainly  paled  under 
the  other's  glance,  seeming  no  longer 
the  same  woman  that  had  passed  on 
her  way  rejoicing,  illumined  with  the 
gladness  of  the  morning ;  yet,  in  the 
might  of  her  love,  she  felt  strong.  As 
she  shut  herself  up  in  the  kitchen, 
which  looked  in  the  garish  daylight 
so  bare  and  commonplace,  she  began 
at  once  her  round  of  duties  —  the 
wholesome  necessary  daily  work  that 
makes  life  possible  to  so  many  crushed 
spirits.  For  a  moment  she  held  her 
breath,  as  she  heard  Dr.  Lavardin's  step 
in  the  hall — a  quick,  eager  footfall — but 
he  did  not  come  to  her ;  he  passed  out 
by  the  front  door.  For  a  moment  she 
gave  a  stifled  sob,  and  then,  arrested 
by  a  little  echoing  cry  from  the  cot  in 
the  chimney  corner,  she  turned  to 


200 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


meet  her  child's  wide,  wondering 
eyes ;  awakening  from  his  dewy 
sleep,  he  was  ready  to  take  his  cue 
from  her  for  laughter  or  for  tears. 
She  smiled  at  him,  and  talked  his 
childish  language,  while  he  answered 
in  his  piping  treble.  She  would  not 
take  him  up,  however,  till  she  had 
finished  her  work  in  hand ;  he  must 
have  patience,  and  she  too.  And 
when  afterwards  she  bent  to  raise 
him,  and  felt  his  rosy  lips  pressing 
hers,  and  the  eager  little  arms  twined 
about  her  neck,  she  told  herself  she 
had  been  ungrateful  for  the  wealth 
she  already  possessed. 

Dr.  Lavardin  lost  much  time  that 
day  in  the  town,  trying  in  vain  to  find 
the  name  of  the  starving  people  for 
the  purpose  of  administering  instant 
relief.  On  the  other  hand,  he  gained 
a  good  deal  of  interesting  information 
about  himself. 

The  widow  had  certainly  been  cor- 
rect in  her  statement  concerning  the 
rumours  afloat  of  his  contemplated 
marriage. 

"  Yes,  I  certainly  am  thinking  of 
taking  unto  myself  a  wife  ;  mais  vous 
autres,  you  seem  to  know  more  about 
it  than  I  do  myself." 

This  he  said  laughingly  to  his 
friends  at  the  cercle ;  then  he  was 
about  to  hurry  home,  but  was  called 
back  for  a  consultation,  and  did  not 
regain  his  liberty  till  late  in  the 
evening.  In  his  own  house  his  study 
looked  bright  and  inviting,  but  he 
passed  on  to  the  room  beyond,  paused 
for  a  moment  on  the  threshold,  and 
then  entered. 

Sidonie  was  sitting  on  the  same  low 
chair  by  the  fire  under  the  tall  clock, 
but  instead  of  her  boy  on  her  knee, 
she  was  deep  in  the  study  of  Pascal's 
Pensees.  She  had  forgotten  her  cares 
and  herself,  and,  like  a  child  entranced 
with  the  newest  story-book,  she  sat 
isolated  and  absorbed  in  the  pages 
of  the  closely  printed  volume. 

"  That  is  mine,"  said  Dr.  Lavardin, 
coming  behind  her,  and  taking  the 
book  gently  out  of  her  hands.  He 
drew  in  a  chair,  and  began  reading  it 


aloud.  But  his  voice  failed  him.  "  I 
am  tired,"  he  said,  carelessly;  "you 
go  on  with  it."  And  he  threw  his 
head  back  into  the  shadow,  and 
watched  her  while  she  read.  Clearly 
and  firmly,  and  with  unhesitating 
distinctness,  she  began  at  once,  her 
sweet  soothing  contralto  forming  a 
marked  contrast  to  his  uneven  bass. 
He  had  been  self-conscious,  and  had 
had  truant  thoughts,  but  her  mind 
was  dipped  deep  in  the  subject-matter, 
and  she  was  only  conscious  of  obey- 
ing his  behests.  And  so  the  reading 
went  on,  filling  the  room  with  re- 
poseful harmony,  until  the  lamp 
nickered,  flared,  and  finally  went 
out. 

"  Now  we  have  only  the  firelight," 
said  Dr.  Lavardin,  leaning  forward, 
and  again  possessing  himself  of  the 
volume  and  the  hand  that  held  it. 
"Sidonie,"  he  went  on,  "I  came 
home  worn  out  and  worried,  and  this 
hour  has  been  so  full  of  rest  and  re- 
freshment. You  have  been  much  to 
me  already — very  much;  will  you 
not  be  more,  and  crown  my  life 
with  blessedness  by  becoming  my 
wife?" 

She  lifted  her  sorrowful  face  to 
his. 

"  I  am  not  worthy  to  be  your  wife," 
she  said,  trying  to  withdraw  her  hand 
from  his  firm  clasp ;  but  he  only  held 
her  closer. 

" Listen  !  "  he  went  on.  "I  have 
traced  and  learned  by  heart  your  life 
from  the  time  you  were  left  mother- 
less, and  with  a  father  powerless  to 
protect  you — there  have  been  head- 
strong impulses  at  work— much  self- 
sacrifice — sorrow  which  purifies.  What 
has  been  —  has  been."  His  voice 
broke,  and  he  pressed  her  hand  over 
his  burning  eyes.  "  Ah,  would  to 
God  we  had  met  earlier  in  life, 
when  we  could  have  helped  one 
another." 

"  But  it  is  too  late  now,"  she  said, 
with  mournful  resignation. 

"No,  it  is  not,"  he  replied,  turning 
upon  her  suddenly,  with  a  radiant 
countenance.  "It  is  never  too  late. 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


201 


You  have  already  attained  that  peace 
that  comes  only  to  the  few  who 

"  '  Have  learned  to  tread  the  narrow  way 
That  leads  through  labour  to  the  light  of 
day.' 

Help  me  to  find  it ;  let  us  labour  to- 
gether. For  I  too  have  had  expe- 
riences that  might  make  me  unworthy 
of  your  love ;  but  we  cannot  judge 
one  another  by  isolated  acts ;  we 
must  look  to  Ltheir  whole  lives — the 
standard  they  set  before  themselves, 
even  though  they  fail  to  attain  it — 
the  truth  and  sincerity  of  their  mo- 
tives, though  circumstances  and  the 
world's  harsh  judgment  may  set 
against  them  like  the  relentless  cur- 
rents of  a  strong  tide." 

He  did  not  press  her  for  an  answer, 
but  they  sat  together  through  the 
darkening  hours,  hand  clasped  in 
hand,  like  way-worn  travellers,  who 
have  at  last  reached  a  longed  for 
bourne  of  safety  and  repose. 

Dr.  Lavardin's  parting  words  to  his 
friends  at  the  cercle  caused  quite  a 
stir  of  excitement;  the  news  spread 
like  wildfire,  with  additions  and  emen- 
dations —  "  Impossible  !  "  "  Who  is 
she?"  "An  old  friend?"  "No, 
the  widow;  I  foresaw  it  long  ago." 
"It  is  an  arrangement."  "On  the 
contrary,  it  is  entirely  a  love-match, 
with  some  one  quite  young,  in  fact  a 
long  attachment."  "  I  don't  believe 
there  is  a  word  of  truth  in  it ;  Dr. 
Lavardin  is  only  laughing  in  his 
sleeve  at  us — these  Parisian  fellows 
will  say  anything — capable  de  tout." 
And  so  there  was  confusion  and  dis- 
cussion, every  one  professing  to  know 
the  ins  and  outs  of  the  case  better 
than  his  neighbour. 

The  news  was  a  nine- days'  wonder, 
and  before  the  mystery  was  solved  the 
two  whom  the  gossip  most  concerned 
passed  amid  the  clatter  of  tongues  and 
sabots,  and  the  clanging  of  many- 
toned  bells,  quietly  and  unnoticed  on 
their  way  to  church,  there  to  be  united 
in  the  bonds  of  holy  matrimony. 

When  the  travelling  carriage  con- 
taining the  newly-married  pair  had 


rolled  out  of  town,  the  loungers 
shrugged  their  shoulders,  and  touch- 
ing their  foreheads,  indicated  signifi- 
cantly that  "  the  season  of  mental 
aberration ' '  had  set  in  for  the  docteur ; 
while  the  women  in  their  salons  began 
tardily  to  realise  the  fact  that  this 
clever,  kind,  good  man  had  been 
veritably  looking  out  for  a  wife  all 
the  time  he  was  among  them.  What 
was  the  use  of  old  maiden  ladies  with 
their  powers  of  contracting  matrimo- 
nial alliances  if  they  thus  let  slip  so 
good  a  parti,  and  what  was  the  plea- 
sure of  hospitably  entertaining  in- 
fluential priests  if  they  did  not  look 
better  after  the  interests  of  their  flock  ? 

"  Tranquil  line  z-vous,  mes  cheres  ames," 
gallantly  replied  one  of  these  much- 
abused  agents  ;  "  Sidonie  was  the  only 
woman  who  would  have  suited  our 
friend,  and  in  marrying  her  he  has 
shown  himself  neither  so  clever  nor 
so  subtle  as  we  believed  him  :  and  as 
for  his  goodness !  he  seems  to  have 
trifled  inexcusably  with  the  widow's 
affections.  The  fact  is,  concluded  this 
debonnaire  prelate,  "  that  he  is  not 
quite  up  to  our  Amiens  standard." 

The  docteur  little  dreamed  that 
while  he  was  giving  himself  his  first 
holiday  in  life,  and,  like  a  boy  released 
from  school,  r-evelling  in  the  delights 
of  new  scenes  and  cities,  new  lan- 
guages and  faces,  that  he  was  the  sub- 
ject of  so  much  comment  and  specula- 
tion at  Amiens. 

In  due  time  he  returned  with  his 
wife  to  his  own  country,  and  settled 
once  again  in  Paris.  Many  men — 
most  very  successful  men — would  have 
shrunk  from  the  idea  of  coming  back 
to  the  scene  of  their  former  triumphs, 
taking  the  risk  of  being  forgotten — of 
being  overlooked.  But  our  docteur 
was  very  philosophic  on  such  matters, 
and  quietly  returned  to  his  old  house, 
and  to  the  same  life,  "but  with  such 
a  mighty  difference,"  as  he  gleefully 
remarked  to  Sidonie,  who  one  day  was 
shyly  and  anxiously  questioning  him 
if  he  did  not  regret  the  former  excite- 
ment of  occupation. 

"  Your  voice  and  the  boy's  voice  are- 


202 


Docteur  Lavardin;  a  Sketch. 


what  I  care  for  most  in  life,  and  after 
that  to  be  supreme  in  the  biggest 
hospital,  and  I  have  got  my  ambitions 
gratified,  and  am  very  happy ;  the 
world  takes  up  a  fashionable  medical 
man  at  forty,  and  may  whirl  him 
along  till  fifty-five,  if  he  can  stand  the 
strain,  and  then  he  is  dropped  as  sud- 
denly as  he  is  taken  up.  Now  I  have 
dropped  myself,  and  yet  somehow  I 
feel  that  I  have  risen.  I  am  wedded 
to  you,  my  Sidonie,  and  not  to  a 
fashionable  clientele.  A  great  English 
poet  has  said  that  those  '  who  love  in 
age  think  youth  is  happy  because  it 
has  a  life  to  fill  with  love.'  You  and 
I  are  not  so  young  that  we  can  afford 
to  waste  the  time  before  beginning  to 
"fill  our  lives  with  love." 

Gradually  the  old  patients  began  to 
return,  and  the  doctor  had  to  limit 
the  number  of  his  new  ones,  in  order 
to  give  himself  time  for  his  beloved 
hospital  work.  Among  his  friends 
came  D'Hauteville,  leaning  on  the 
arm  of  his  wife.  The  brisk,  hard 
energy  about  him  had  given  place  to 
a  softened,  touching  languor.  "  I  am 
shattered,  Lavardin,  somewhat  shat- 
tered," he  said,  holding  out  friendly, 
though  emaciated  hands.  "I  want 
you  to  send  us  for  our  second  honey- 
moon ;  our  first,  you  know,  was  a 
signal  failure — flashed  in  the  pan, 
didn't  it,  dear?" 


But  his  wife  interrupted  him.  "  I 
want  you  to  do  him  as  much  good 
physically,"  she  said,  turning  to  the 
doctor,  "  as  you  once  did  me  morally 
— you  roused  me  out  of  my  selfish 
lethargy,  and  from  a  spoilt  child  you 
have  made  a  woman  of  me." 

"And  I  have  come  to  acknowledge 
to  you,  Lavardin,  that  the  prizes  of 
life  are  not  worth  striving  for,  if  one 
sacrifices  for  them  the  welfare  of  those 
nearest  and  dearest  to  us ;  in  our 
haste  to  be  rich  and  to  be  foremost, 
we  may  sever  the  closest  ties,  and 
miss  all  restful  happiness." 

"  Well,' '  said  Dr.  Lavardin,  looking 
over  his  spectacles,  half-comically, 
half -solemnly,  "  my  sentence  of  punish- 
ment to  you  both  is — exile  from  Paris 
for  the  winter  to  the  warm  south,  and 
after  that  "  (turning  to  D'Hauteville) 
"  resumption  of  your  work  in  a  modi- 
fied degree.  We  all  overwork  at  one 
time  or  another,  and  then  we  are  apt 
to  fly  off  at  a  tangent,  and  doom  our- 
selves to  the  penalty  of  a  life-long 
holiday ;  in  the  same  way  we  make 
mistakes  and  suffer  from  misconcep- 
tions, deeming  them,  in  our  low  estate, 
irretrievable  —  everlasting,  whereas 
these  faults  and  failings  in  our  lives 
perhaps  help  us  to  a  wiser  knowledge 
of  ourselves,  and  to  a  more  perfect 
sympathy  with  our  fellow-beings." 

MABY  CROSS. 


203 


EAES  AND  EYES. 


THE  laws  and  phenomena  of  nature 
have  such  an  oneness  in  their  diver- 
sity and  are  so  exquisitely  inter- 
twined, that  it  is  possible  for  us  in 
the  consideration  of  any  new  aid  to 
a  proper  understanding  of  the  world 
outside  ourselves  to  help  our  concep- 
tions by  mental  images  derived  from 
the  older  sciences  or  ordinary  pheno- 
mena. This  is  especially  true  for  that 
new  eyesight,  so  to  speak,  with  which 
the  spectroscope  has  endowed  us,  an 
eyesight  which  enables  us  not  only  to 
revel  in  the  beauties  of  distant  uni- 
verses, but  in  addition 

"To  feel  from  world  to  world," 

and  thus  grasp  the  inner  material 
essence  as  well  as  outward  form. 

It  now  and  then  happens  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race  upon  this 
planet,  that  one  particular  generation 
gathers  a  rich  harvest  of  knowledge, 
this  advancement  generally  coming 
from  an  exceeding  small  germ  of 
thought. 

Several  such  instances  suggest  them- 
selves. How  once  a  Dutchman  expe- 
rimenting with  two  spectacle-glasses 
produced  the  telescope ;  and  how  the 
field  of  the  known  and  the  knowable 
has  been  enlarged  by  the  invention 
of  that  wonderful  instrument.  How 
once  Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  in  a  garden 
and  saw  an  apple  fall ;  and  how  the 
germ,  of  thought  which  was  started 
in  his  mind  by  that  simple  incident 
fructified  into  the  theory  of  universal 
gravitation.  Each  step  of  this  kind 
has  more  firmly  knit  the  universe  to- 
gether, has  welded  it  into  a  more  and 
more  perfect  whole,  and  has  enhanced 
the  marvellous  beauty  of  its  structure. 

Future  times  will  say  that  either 
this,  or  perhaps  the  next,  generation, 
is  as  favoured  a  one  as  that  which 
saw  the  invention  of  the  telescope  or 
the  immortal  discovery  of  Newton  : 


for  as  by  the  invention  of  the  tele- 
scope the  power  of  the  eye  was  almost 
infinitely  extended,  so  far  as  form 
was  concerned ;  as  from  Newton's 
discovery  we  learned  that  like  forces 
were  acting  in  like  manner  every- 
where ;  so  in  our  time  does  the  spec- 
troscope, by  enabling  us  to  subject 
visual  phenomena  to  a  most  searching 
analysis,  reveal  to  the  eye  like  matter 
acting  in  like  manner  everywhere. 

I  propose  in  the  present  paper  to 
endeavour  to  state  what  this  new  lan- 
guage of  light  enables  the  eye  to  do, 
and  to  lead  up  to  the  new  work  of  the 
Eye  by  referring  to  the  action  of  the 
Ear,  and  even  to  other  actions  more 
familiar  still. 

We  thus  begin  by  elementary 
notions  which,  when  fully  compre- 
hended, enable  us  to  build  on  them 
conclusions  which  will  be  so  many 
further  steps. 

By  means  of  post-offices,  railways, 
and  electric  telegraphs,  we  have  the 
idea  perpetually  brought  before  us 
that  in  one  place  a  man  or  a  thing 
sends ;  that  somewhere  else,  it  may 
be  near,  or  it  may  be  far  off,  we  have 
a  man  or  a  thing  which  receives ;  and 
that  between  the  man  or  the  thing 
which  sends,  and  the  man  or  the  thing 
which  receives,  there  is  a  something 
which  enables  the  thing  sent  to  pass 
from  one  place  to  the  other.  There 
does  not  seem  to  be  any  deep  science 
in  this,  nor  is  there;  but  these  con- 
siderations enable  us  to  make  an  im- 
portant distinction.  In  the  case  of 
two  boys  playing  at  ball,  one  boy 
throwing  the  ball  to  the  other,  we 
have  also  a  sender  and  a  receiver, 
and  the  thing  sent  goes  bodily  from 
the  one  who  sends  to  the  one  who 
receives.  So  in  a  parcel  sent  by  train, 
but  not  so  in  the  case  of  a  telegraphic 
message.  In  the  electric  telegraph 
office  two  instruments  may  be  seen — 


204 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


one  the  receiving  instrument,  the  other 
the  sender.  Between  the  office  in 
which  we  may  be  and  the  office  with 
which  communication  is  being  made, 
there  is  a  wire.  We  know  that  a 
thing  is  not  sent  bodily  along  that 
wire  in  the  same  way  as  the  boy  sends 
the  ball  to  his  fellow,  or  as  the  goods 
train  carries  the  parcel.  We  have 
there  in  fact  a  condition  of  motion 
with  which  science  at  present  is  not 
absolutely  familiar;  but  we  picture 
what  happens  by  supposing  that  we 
have  a  state  of  things  which  travels. 
The  wire  must  be  there  to  carry  the 
message,  and  yet  the  wire  does  not 
carry  the  message  in  the  same  way  as 
a  train  carries  a  parcel,  or  the  air 
carries  the  ball. 

Take  another  case.  I  burn  my 
foot,  I  instantly  raise  it.  To  make 
me  conscious  that  my  foot  had  been 
burnt,  a  message  (as  we  know  now) 
must  have  gone  from  my  foot  to  my 
brain,  and  a  return  message  must 
have  gone  from  my  brain  to  my  foot, 
to  tell  it  to  change  its  position  so  as 
not  to  be  burnt  any  more.  Now  it  is 
known  that  this  internal  transit  of 
messages  is  not  managed  by  electricity,  • 
but  it  is  imagined  that  although  elec- 
tricity is  not  here  at  work,  still  that 
there  is  something  which  behaves  very 
much  after  the  manner  of  electricity. 
No  one  imagines  that  the  pain  travels 
up  the  leg  and  then  back  again ;  it  is, 
in  fact,  a  state  of  things  which  travels 
up  from  the  nerve  of  the  foot  to  the 
brain ;  and  then  there  is  another  state 
of  things  which  travels  back  again 
from  the  brain  to  the  foot,  along 
another  set  of  nerves.  A  rope  will 
here  afford  us  a  useful  mental  image. 
By  shaking  a  rope  we  can  send  that 
state  of  things  we  call  a  wave  along 
it  without  the  rope  itself  travelling  as 
a  whole ;  this  will  help  to  give  us  an 
idea  of  what  is  meant  when  we  say 
that  a  state  of  things  travels  along  a 
wire  or  along  a  nerve  and  brings  about 
either  those  electrical  disturbances 
which  result  in  the  conveyance  of  a 
message,  or  that  nerve  action  which 
generates  the  action  of  the  brain. 


Next  to  dwell  more  especially  upon 
the  word  wav,  and  the  idea  which  that 
word  most  generally  calls  forth.  Let 
us  find  a  piece  of  tranquil  water  and 
drop  a  stone  into  it.  What  happens  ? 
— a  most  beautiful  thing,  full  of  the 
most  precious  teachings.  The  place 
where  the  stone  fell  in  is  immediately 
surrounded  by  what  we  all  recognise 
as  a  wave  of  water  travelling  outwards, 
and  then  another  is  generated,  and 
then  another,  until  at  length  an  ex- 
quisite series  of  concentric  waves  is 
seen,  all  apparently  travelling  out- 
wards— not  with  uncertain  speed,  but 
so  regularly  that  all  the  waves  all 
round  are  all  parts  of  circles  and  of 
concentric  circles. 

Let  us  drop  two  stones  in  at  some 
little  distance  apart.  What  happens 
then  ?  We  have  two  similar  systems 
each  working  its  way  outwards,  to  all 
appearance  independently  of  the  other. 

Now  these  appearances  are  as  if 
there  were  an  actual  outpouring  of 
water  from  the  cavity  made  by  the 
stone ;  but  if  we  strew  small  pieces  of 
paper  or  other  light  material  on  the 
water  surface  before  we  drop  the 
stone,  we  find  that  it  is  not  the  water 
which  moves  outwards,  but  only  the 
state  of  things  —  the  wave.  Each 
particle  of  water  moves  in  a  circular 
or  elliptic  path  in  a  vertical  plane 
lying  along  the  direction  of  the  wave, 
and  so  comes  again  to  its  original 
place.  Hence  it  is  that  only  the  phase 
goes  on. 

Let  us  now  pass  to  a  disturbance  of 
another  kind,  from  two  dimensions  to 
three,  from  the  surface  of  water  to 
air,  and  consider  the  question  of 
sound. 

We  hear  the  report  of  a  gun  or  the 
screech  of  a  railway  whistle,  or  any 
other  noise  which  strikes  the  ear. 
How  comes  it  that  the  ear  is  struck  ? 
Certainly  no  one  will  imagine  that  the 
sound  comes  from  the  cannon  or  from 
the  railway  whistle  like  a  mighty  rush 
of  air.  If  it  came  like  a  wind  we 
should  feel  it  as  a  wind,  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  no  rush  of  this  kind  is 
felt.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  we 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


205 


do  not  get  a  bodily  transmission,  so  to 
speak,  as  we  get  it  in  the  case  of  the 
ball  thrown  from  one  boy  to  the  other. 
We  have  a  state  of  things  passing  from 
the  sender  of  the  sound  to  the  re- 
ceiver; the  medium  through  which 
the  sound  passes  being  the  air.  A 
sounding  body  in  the  middle  of  a 
room,  for  instance,  must  send  out 
shells  of  sound,  as  it  were,  in  all 
directions,  because  people  above, 
below,  and  all  round  it  would  hear 
the  sound.  Replace  the  stone  by  a 
tuning-fork.  To  one  prong  of  this 
fasten  a  mirror,  and  on  this  mirror 
throw  a  powerful  beam  of  light. 
When  this  tuning-fork  is  bowed,  and 
a  sound  is  heard,  the  light  thrown  by 
the  attached  mirror  shows  the  fork 
to  be  vibrating,  and  when  the  tuning- 
fork  is  moved  we  get  an  appearance 
on  the  screen  which  reminds  us  of 
the  rope,  or  we  may  use  the  fork  in 
another  way,  and  obtain  a  wavy  record 
on  a  blackened  cylinder. 

Experiment  shows  that  we  have  at 
one  time  a  sphere  of  compression — 
that  is  to  say,  the  air  is  packed  closely 
together ;  and,  again,  a  sphere  of 
rarefaction,  when  the  particles  of  air 
are  torn  further  apart  than  they  are 
in  the  other  position.  The  state  of 
things,  then,  that  travels  in  the  case 
of  sound  is  a  state  of  compression  and 
rarefaction  of  the  air.  Hence  the 
particle  of  air  travels  differently  from 
the  particle  of  water  ;  it  moves  back- 
wards and  forwards  in  a  straight  line 
in  the  direction  in  which  the  sound  is 
propagated. 

This  backward -and-forward  move- 
ment results  in  the  compressions  and 
rarefactions  to  which  reference  has 
been  made,  in  consequence  of  the  im- 
pulse having  been  imparted  to  one 
molecule  after  the  other.  In  conse- 
quence of  the  pendulum-like  motion 
of  the  molecules  their  relative  posi- 
tions vary  at  each  instant  of  time. 

Each  particle  merely  moves  a  little 
forwards  and  backwards,  and  always 
comes  back  again  to  its  starting-point ; 
but  the  condensations  and  rarefactions 
are  gradually  transmitted  through  the 


whole  series  of  air  particles  from  one 
end  to  the  other. 

In  dwelling  upon  sound  pheno- 
mena, we  have  the  advantage  of 
dealing  with  things  about  which 
science  says  she  does  know  some- 
thing :  from  a  consideration  of  these 
known  facts  we  shall  be  able,  slowly, 
but  surely,  to  grasp  some  of  the  much 
less  familiar  phenomena  with  which 
the  eye  is  especially  concerned. 

We  all  know  that  some  sounds  are 
what  is  termed  high,  and  others  low,  a 
difference  which  in  scientific  language 
is  expressed  by  saying  that  sounds 
have  a  difference  in  pitch.  We  know 
that  the  difference  between  a  sound 
which  is  pitched  high  and  a  sound 
which  is  pitched  low  is  simply  this, 
that  the  pulses  or  waves,  as  we  may 
call  them  for  simplicity's  sake,  which 
go  from  the  sender-forth  of  the 
sound  (which  may  be  a  cannon,  a 
piano,  or  anything  else)  to  the  re- 
ceiver, which  is  generally  the  human 
ear,  are  of  different  lengths.  What  in 
physics  is  called  a  sound  wave  is 
constructed  as  follows :  We  have  a 
line  which  represents  the  normal  con- 
dition of  the  air  through  which  the 
sound  is  to  travel,  and  curves  which 
represent  to  the  eye — first,  the  relative 
amounts  of  compression  ( + )  and  rare- 
faction ( - )  brought  about  by  the 
sound  in  the  case  of  each  pulse,  and 
secondly  the  relationship  of  this  to 
the  actual  length  of  the  wave,  or, 
what  is  the  same  thing,  the  time 
taken  for  the  pulse  to  travel.  Thus 
we  may  have  long  waves  and  short 
waves  independently  of  the  amount  of 
compression  or  rarefaction,  and  much 
or  little  compression  or  rarefaction 
independently  of  the  length  of  the 
wave.  We  know  that  the  difference 
between  a  high  note  and  a  low  note, 
whether  of  the  voice  or  of  a  musical 
instrument,  is,  that  the  high  note  we 
can  prove  to  be  produced  by  a  suc- 
cession of  short  waves — such  pulses  as 
have  been  described — and  the  low 
note  by  a  succession  of  long  waves. 

Now  the  loudness  or  softness  of  a 
note  does  not  alter  its  pitch,  that  is, 


206 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


it  does  not  alter  the  length  of  its 
waves  or  the  rate  at  which  they 
travel.  I  can  send  a  wave  along  a 
rope  either  violently  or  gently,  but 
with  the  same  tension  of  the  rope  we 
shall  find  that  the  length  of  the  waves 
is  about  the  same.  Hence  then  the 
other  idea  added  to  the  idea  of  pitch. 

There  is  another  point  which  is 
worth  noting,  although  it  is  not  need- 
ful to  refer  to  it  in  any  great  detail, 
and  that  is  that  we  know  that  sound 
travels  with  a  certain  velocity,  and 
that  this  rate  is  subject  to  certain 
small  variations  owing  to  different 
causes. 

We  not  only  have  to  deal  with 
amplitude,  that  is,  the  departure  of 
the  +  and  -  parts  of  the  curve  from 
the  line,  and  velocity,  but  we  have 
this  most  important  and  very  beauti- 
ful fact  (for  fact  it  is),  which  some 
will  have  observed  for  themselves.  If 
a  person  in  a  room  in  which  there  is  a 
piano  presses  down  the  pedal  which 
removes  the  damper  from  the  strings, 
and  sings  a  note,  the  string  of  the 
piano  tuned  to  that  particular  note 
will  respond,  and  if  he  sing  another 
note,  then  another  string  will  reply, 
the  first  string  being  silent.  If 
the  experimenter  were  skilled  enough 
to  sing  one  by  one  all  the  notes  to 
which  the  strings  of  the  piano  are 
tuned,  all  the  strings  would  be  set 
into  vibration  one  by  one,  note  for 
note.  Nor  is  this  all.  Helmholtz  has 
shown  that  the  real  raison  d'etre  of 
articulate  speech  lies  in  .the  fact,  first, 
that  each  vowel  sound  consists  not  only 
of  a  fundamental  note,  but  of  a  vary- 
ing addition  of  overtones,  and,  secondly, 
that  our  ears  are  so  constructed  that 
we  can  pick  up  these  overtones  as  well 
as  the  fundamental  in  a  whisper,  as 
well  as  when  we  are  listening  to  a 
full  orchestra. 

Hence  if  we  sing  the  open  vowel 
sounds,  not  only  the  fundamental  but 
the  overtones  come  back  to  us.  The 
piano  speaks  so  far  as  vocal  chords  can 
speak.  The  Italian  a  is  especially 
rich.  It  is  a  very  striking  experi- 
ment to  sing  rapidly,  ah,  o,  ah,  o, 


damping  the  string  between  each 
note.  This  fact  may  be  explained  in 
this  way : — A  piano  wire,  or  similar 
sonorous  body,  which  is  constructed 
to  do  a  certain  thing — in  this  case 
to  sound  a  particular  note — always 
sounds  that  note  when  it  is  called 
upon  in  a  proper  way  to  do  it.  Now 
this  is  the  point.  The  proper  way 
may  be  either  (1)  that  a  particular 
vibration  should  fall  upon  it,  or  (2) 
that  it  should  be  set  to  work  to 
generate  that  vibration  in  itself.  If 
the  piano  wire  only  gives  the  same 
sound  when  struck  either  hard  or  soft, 
it  is  because  it  is  manufactured  to  do 
one  particular  kind  of  work,  and  it 
can  do  no  other. 

Now  we  may  pass  from  the  piano 
back  to  the  tuning-fork.    We  find  that 
by  using  different  quantities,  or  differ- 
ent   shapes,    of    metal,   these  instru- 
ments give  out  different  notes.     If  all 
be  of  the  same   metal,  the   different 
quantities   of    metal   will   give   us    a 
difference  in  the  pitch.     This  demon- 
strates that  the  pitch  of  a  note  is  in- 
dependent   of    any  particular  quality 
of   the   substance  set  into  vibration. 
Now  although  a  great  many  musical 
instruments  can  sound  the  same  note, 
yet   the   music,   the   tone,  which   one 
gets   out   of   them  is  very   different. 
That  is,  the  pitch,  being  the  same,  the 
quality  of  the  note  changes  because 
the   wave,    or   rather  the   system   of 
waves,  which  we  obtain  is  different. 
For  instance,  if  we  sound  a  note  upon 
the  violin,  or  the  French  horn,  or  the 
flute,  or  the  clarionet,  anybody  who 
knows   anything  of    music   will    tell 
which  is  in  question,  so  that  here  we 
have,  in  addition  to  wave  length  and 
wave    amplitude,    another    attribute, 
namely,  that  which  in  French  is  called 
"timbre,"  in   German  "klangfarbe," 
and  in  English,  "tone"  or  " quality." 
This  comes  from  variation  in  the  over- 
tones as  in  the  case  of  the  vocal  sounds 
before  referred  to. 

To  sum  up,  then,  what  we  have 
already  stated  with  regard  to  sound. 
When  we  deal  with  the  phenomena  of 
sound,  we  find  that  they  are  composed 


JEars  and  Eyes. 


207 


of  disturbances  cr  vibrations  connect- 
ing the  sender  with  the  receiver ;  that 
the  sound  may  vary  in  pitch;  that 
the  amount  of  the  sound  depends  upon 
the  amplitude ;  that  the  sound  is  in- 
dependent of  the  material  of  the 
sender  or  the  kind  of  disturbance,  so 
far  as  pitch  goes,  but  that,  so  far  as 
timbre  is  concerned,  it  is  to  a  certain 
extent  dependent  upon  the  nature  of 
the  material  and  of  the  kind  of  dis- 
turbance. 

So  much  for  the  present  about  the 
phenomena  on  which  the  use  of  our 
ears  depends. 

We  have  now  to  consider  that  kind 
pf  disturbance  to  which  we  owe  the 
sensation  of  light — light  being  to  the 
eyes  of  the  human  race  very  much 
what  sound  is  to  the  ears. 

Again,  for  simplicity's  sake,  let  us 
look  at  the  question  in  the  threefold 
point  of  view.  Let  us  deal  with  the 
sender,  the  receiver,  and  the  medium 
which  connects  the  sender  with  the 
receiver ;  first  observing  that,  so  far 
as  we  know  at  present,  not  to  go  too 
much  into  detail,  there  are  three  kinds 
of  receivers. 

There  is,  first  of  all,  that  marvellous 
instrument,  the  human  eye.  There  is 
next  also  a  very  marvellous  thing,  the 
photographic  plate. 

How  is  it  that  a  few  words  will 
awaken  in  each  one  of  us  many  memo- 
ries of  our  childhood  ?  Because  we 
saw  certain  things  in  our  childhood 
by  means  of  our  eyes ;  and  the  im- 
pressions which  we  received  by  means 
of  our  eyes  were  recorded  in  our 
brains,  and  we  possess  the  faculty  of 
being  able  to  call  them  back — to  re- 
collect them — again.  We  have  there 
a  permanent  method,  so  to  speak,  of 
recording  things  which  are  seen  by 
the  eye — of  recording  messages  from 
a  certain  sort  of  sender.  In  the 
photographic  plate  we  have  also  a 
permanent  record  of  a  certain  condi- 
tion of  things — whether  a  face,  a 
house,  or  a  ship,  or  a  particular  state 
of  the  sea  or  sky  ;  presented  to  a  par- 
ticular set  of  chemical  conditions  at 
some  past  time,  which  brings  back 


some  pleasant  remembrance  of  friends 
now  perhaps  far  away.  There  we 
have  two  receivers  which  more  or  less 
accurately,  and  more  or  less  per- 
manently, record  the  disturbance 
which  once  impinged  upon  them. 

Then  besides  the  eye  and  the  photo- 
graphic plate,  we  have  everything  else 
in  nature — the  houses  we  live  in,  the 
furniture,  the  familiar  faces  around  us, 
this  page  and  everything  else  on  the 
planet.  And  not  only  these,  but  every- 
thing in  the  Cosmos  which  does  not 
shine  by  its  own  light.  These  form  the 
third  class  of  receivers — that  is  to  say, 
those  which  do  not  record,  at  all  events 
obviously,  the  impressions  made  upon 
them,  and  more  or  less  perfectly  reflect 
light,  producing  light  echoes. 

So  much,  therefore,  for  receivers  of 
this  kind  of  vibration.  We  must  bear 
in  mind  that  at  night,  or  in  a  dark 
room,  the  things  mentioned,  and  such 
like  become  invisible.  Our  eyes  fail 
to  see  them,  a  fact  which  shows  that 
the  receiver  plays  a  very  important 
part.  On  the  other  hand,  everything 
in  a  bright  summer's  day  receives  light 
from  one  light  source — the  sun.  How 
is  it,  then,  that  with  the  first  class  of 
receiver,  the  eye,  we  are  enabled,  unless 
indeed  we  be  colour-blind,  to  see  all 
the  beautiful  and  glorious  varieties  of 
nature  in  its  ten- thousandfold  hues; 
while  the  other  receiver,  the  photo- 
graphic plate,  gives  us  but  black  and 
white  1  Why  are  roses  red,  and  why 
are  leaves  green  ?  There  is  the  same 
light  in  the  sky,  and  the  same  absence 
of  form — the  same  absence  of  visibility 
— in  the  dark ;  yet,  with  the  light 
coming  from  one  and  the  same  light- 
source,  we  get  all  these  different 
effects.  How  is  this  ?  It  drives  us 
to  the  conclusion,  either  that  the  re- 
ceivers, to  which  our  attention  has 
been  particularly  directed,  deal  with 
light  in  very  different  ways,  or  that 
by  some  means  or  other  they  manage 
to  get  hold  of  different  kinds  of  light. 

Here,  then,  we  must  seek  for  some 
explanation  of  the  various  colours  that 
our  eyes  reveal  to  us  We  have  referred 
to  the  receivers,  including  those  that 


208 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


reflect  the  light  which  they  receive  ; 
now,  let  us  consider  the  things  which 
send  out  the  light.  Among  these  are 
the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  gas,  and 
candles,  which  are  most  familiar  to  us 
as  sending  out  light.  And  it  will  be 
well  to  remark  here,  and  the  reason 
why  will  be  clear  by  and  by,  that  the 
light  which  all  these  senders  give  to 
us  is  white  light  in  the  main.  But  we 
get  other  kinds  of  light. 

We  have,  for  instance,  that  of  the 
electric  arc — a  very  powerful  source 
of  light,  only  a  very  little  less  power- 
ful (as  some  people  think)  than  the  sun 
itself.  It  proceeds  from  two  carbon 
poles,  which  are  rendered  intensely  in- 
candescent by  means  of  an  electric 
current. 

By  inserting  different  metals  be- 
tween these  poles,  we  find  that  we 
get  light  not  only  from  the  poles  of 
the  lamp  itself  (a  source  of  white 
light),  but  that  we  obtain  various- 
coloured  phenomena  by  this  addition. 

It  is  not  alone  by  means  of  the 
electric  arc,  or  spark,  that  these  phe- 
nomena can  be  produced.  On  putting 
salts  of  different  metals  into  the  flame 
of  the  Bunsen  burner,  we  observe  that 
the  colour  of  the  flame  will  depend 
upon  the  substances  put  into  it.  So- 
dium will  give  us  a  yellow  flame, 
lithium  will  impart  a  certain  redness 
to  the  flame,  and  thallium  a  green 
tinge.  Now,  if  instead  of  dealing 
with  metallic  salts,  we  prefer  to  take 
certain  gases,  and  render  them  brightly 
luminous  or  glowing,  by  means  of  the 
passage  of  an  electric  current,  we  shall 
in  that  case  also  get  differently-col- 
oured effects.  Some  of  these  gases 
are  red,  some  are  green,  some  are 
violet,  and  so  on. 

All  these  coloured  phenomena  of 
which  we  have  spoken,  are  things 
which  we  can  and  do  produce  with 
chemical  or  physical  instruments; 
but,  in  addition  to  those,  we  have 
various  colour-giving  bodies  in  the 
skies,  in  the  same  way  as  we  have 
the  sun,  the  moon,  and  those  stars 
which  are  not  brilliantly  coloured. 
All  who  were  fortunate  enough  to  see 


that  beautiful  comet  which  was  visible 
in  July,  1874,  must  have  noticed  that 
it  was  a  yellow-looking  comet — not  so 
yellow  as  a  sodium  flame,  but  still 
distinctly  yellow.  Those  who  have 
had  the  opportunity  of  observing  some 
of  the  stars  through  a  telescope,  or, 
what  is  nearly  as^good,  those  who  have 
been  across  the  Line  and  seen  some  of 
the  stars  of  the  Southern  Hemisphere, 
know  that  some  of  the  stars  in  the 
heavens  are  as  beautiful,  and,  so  to 
speak,  as  majestic  for  their  colour,  as 
others  are  for  their  brilliancy.  Again, 
those  who  have  seen  a  total  solar 
eclipse,  will  have  seen  a  large  and 
interesting  portion  of  the  sun  which 
we  cannot  see  at  any  other  time — a 
region  of  beautiful  colours  as  well  as 
of  grotesque  forms.  So  that  we 
see  that  both  in  the  heavens  and  on 
the  earth  we  get  instances  of  light 
which  is  white,  and  of  light  which  is 
coloured. 

So  much  for  the  senders.  Now  one 
word  about  the  medium ;  for,  as  we 
shall  understand,  in  the  case  of  light, 
as  in  the  case  of  electricity,  about 
which  we  are  uncertain,  and  as  in  the 
case  of  sound,  about  which  we  are  ab- 
solutely certain ;  there  is  no  trans- 
mission of  anything  but  a  state  or  a 
condition  of  things,  a  disturbance  or  a 
vibration,  between  the  sender  and  the 
receiver.  The  light,  for  instance, 
which  appears  to  be  given  out  by  a 
candle,  and  which  is  received  by  our 
eyes,  does  not  come  bodily  from  that 
candle,  like  so  many  small  bullets, 
any  more  than  bits  of  a  sounding  body 
impinge  upon  our  ears.  The  sender 
— in  this  case  the  candle — is  simply 
a  something  which  puts  something 
else  into  motion.  And  then  there 
is  a  something  which  conveys  that 
motion.  By  striking  a  bell  and  ring- 
ing it,  a  noise  may  be  made ;  but 
if  that  bell  is  put  into  a  glass  vessel, 
and  the  air  exhausted,  and  the  bell  is 
then  rung,  we  do  not  hear  it  at  all. 
How  is  this  ?  Because  the  carrier  of 
the  sound  waves  is  the  air ;  and 
when  we  take  the  air  away  we 
take  away  all  chance  of  getting 


Ears  and  Eyes, 


209 


sound  transmitted  from  one  place  to 
another.  We  know,  for  instance,  that 
in  our  moon  there  is  absolutely  no 
sound.  If  the  moon  were  teeming 
with  life  to-morrow,  no  one  could 
hear  another  person  speak.  No  sound, 
either  loud  or  soft,  could  be  heard  by 
any  inhabitant  of  the  moon,  because 
the  moon  practically  has  no  atmo- 
sphere, even  if  she  possesses  one  at 
all.  Still,  notwithstanding  that  there 
is  no  air  all  the  way  between  us  and 
the  moon,  or  all  the  way  between  us 
and  the  sun,  yet  we  get  light  from  the 
moon  and  from  the  sun.  How,  then, 
is  this  ? 

Physicists  imagine  that  there  is  a 
something  which  they  call    "ether," 
infinitely  more   attenuated    than   air, 
which  pervades   all   nature   and   per- 
meates all  bodies;  and  that   the  dis- 
turbance or  light  wave  produced  by  a 
light  sender,  or  radiator,  is  transmitted 
along  the  ether  very  much  in  the  same 
way  as  the   sound  state  is   transmit- 
ted along  the  air,  or  the  state  of  motion 
is  transmitted  along  a  rope.  Associated 
with  this  ether  we  have  the  undulatory 
theory  of  light,   which  supposes  that 
everything  which  sends  out  light  sets 
the  ether — this  subtle,  imponderable 
air,  so   to   speak — in  vibration  ;    and 
that  those  vibrations   travel,  without 
any  transmission  of  the  substance  of 
the  ether,  from  each  sender  of  light  to 
each  receiver  of  light.     Here  we  have 
one  of  the  great  triumphs  of  modern 
science,  because,  as  many  of  us  know, 
so  great  a  man  as  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
started  (and  he  was  quite  justified  in 
so  doing,  with  the  facts  at  his  disposal 
in  his  day)  what  was  called  the  "  cor- 
puscular" theory  of  light,  which  sup- 
posed that  little  shots  of  light,  so  to 
speak,  like  little  shots  out  of  a  cannon, 
were  emitted  from  every  sender  out  of 
light ;  in  fact,  that  the  ether  carried 
light  as  a  train  carries  a  parcel,  and 
not   as  a  telegraphic  wire   carries  a 
message.     That,   however,  is  not  the 
opinion    which   men   of   science    hold 
now.    They  have  changed  that  opinion 
because  their  basis  of  facts  has  been 
No.  219. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


enlarged.  Such  must  ever  be  the  con- 
dition of  science,  and  science  can  never 
be  so  flourishing  as  when  she  is  chang- 
ing her  opinions,  because  her  opinions 
can  never  be  changed  unless  she  has 
acquired  a  new  truth. 

Although,  then,  it  is  not  generally 
supposed  that  there  is  anything  in  the 
nature  of  an  atmosphere  extending  all 
the  way  between  us  and  the  sun,  yet, 
because  we  see  the  sun,  we  suppose  that 
there  is  some  medium  present,  which 
medium  has  been  named  the  ether.  As 
there  are  ninety-one  millions  of  miles, 
or  so,  between  us  and  the  sun,  and 
ninety-one  millions  of  miles  multiplied 
millions   of    times   between     us     and 
some    of   the   stars    that  we  can  see, 
we   are    bound   to    imagine  that  this 
medium  is  almost,  if   not   quite,  per- 
.  feet  in  its   capacity  for  transmitting 
light,  and  does  not  make  the  light  pay 
any  appreciable   toll   on  its   passage. 
We    know   that    our    atmosphere    is 
sometimes  so   constituted   that  sound 
travels  along  it  with  very  great  diffi- 
culty.    This    idea  will    enable    us   to 
appreciate  the   other — that   light  can 
have  no  great  difficulty  in  travelling 
across  the  ether,  seeing  that  it  reaches 
us  from  stars  immensely  distant.     We 
may,  therefore,  say  that  in  the   case, 
of  light  we  have  ether   as   a  general 
and  almost  perfect  medium  or  trans- 
mitter of  the  disturbance  produced  by 
a   radiating    body    to    those    various 
classes  of  receivers  to  which  attention 
has  been  drawn. 

How,  then,  are  we  to  picture  to  our- 
selves the  motions  of  the  particles  of 
ether  in  a  light  wave  ?  We  are  already 
familiar  with  the  circular  orbits  of  the 
molecules  of  a  water  wave  in  a  vertical 
plane  in  the  direction  of  motion,  and 
of  the  forward  and  backward  motion 
of  a  particle  of  air  in  the  direction 
of  motion  of  a  sound  disturbance. 
The  motion  of  the  particles  of  ether, 
as  imagined  by  modern  physicists,  is 
widely  different. 

In  the  first  place,  the  motion  is 
transverse  to  the  path  of  the  disturb- 
ance—  that  is,  the  vibrations  take 

p 


210 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


place  in  planes  perpendicular  to  the 
direction  of  the  ray. 

What,  then,  is  the  motion  of  the 
ethereal  molecules  in  this  plane]  It 
varies,  depending  doubtless  upon  the 
vibration  of  the  sender.  The  molecule 
may  describe  a  straight  path  or  an 
orbit — i.e.,  its  path  may  be  straight, 
circular,  or  elliptical — but  in  all  cases 
the  path  or  orbit  lies  in  a  plane  at  right 
angles  to  the  direction  of  the  ray. 

A  row  of  balls  in  a  straight  line  may 
be  taken  to  represent  particles  of  ether 
at  rest.  If  we  imagine  the  balls  to 
start  successively,  and  vibrate  uni- 
formly up  and  down,  we  shall  get  a 
wave  system  finally  established  along 
the  whole  line ;  we  shall  have  crests 
and  hollows,  and  we  at  once  get  the 
same  introduction  of  the  ideas  of  wave 
length  (the  length  from  hollow  to  hol- 
low, or  crest  to  crest),  and  of  ampli- 
tude, as  we  got  in  the  case  of  the  sound 
waves. 

Here,  then,  we  have  one  form  in 
which  the  mutual  attraction  or  elastic 
cohesion  of  the  ethereal  particles  con- 
veys a  disturbance. 

Now,  in  ordinary  light,  the  paths 
and  orbits  are  not  all  similarly  situ- 
ated. That  is,  the  straight  lines  de- 
scribed by  the  particles  may  pass 
through  the  central  line  at  different 
angles,  and  the  major  axes  of  the 
orbits  of  those  which  have  elliptic 
paths  may  also  cut  the  central  line 
at  different  angles ;  so  that,  to  quote 
Mr.  Spottiswode,1  "  although  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that  in  general  the 
orbits  of  a  considerable  number  of 
consecutive  molecules  may  be  simi- 
larly situated,  yet  in  a  finite  portion 
of  the  ray  there  are  a  sufficient  number 
of  variations  of  situation  to  prevent 
any  preponderance  of  average  direc- 
tion." 

A  word  now  as  to  the  length  of  light 
waves,  so  that  the  scale  on  which  the 
motions  of  the  molecules  of  ether — our 
medium — take  place  may  be  compre- 

1  Polarization  of  Light.  Nature  Series  (Mac- 
millan). 


bended.  A  comparison  with  the  waves 
of  sound  will  again  bring  out  other 
similarities  between  the  two  classes  of 
phenomena  brought  home  to  us  by  our 
ears  and  eyes. 

First,  then,  with  regard  to  sound. 
The  average  velocity  with  which  a 
sound  disturbance  is  propagated 
through  the  air  is  1,140  feet  in  each 
second.  It  has  been  demonstrated  by 
experiment  that  the  lowest  effective 
note  we  can  appreciate  as  music  is 
one  in  which  the  disturbances  enter 
the  ear  at  the  rate  of  16£  per  second. 

Imagine  then  a  column  of  air  1,140 
feet  long  with  sixteen  compressions 
and  rarefactions  along  its  length.  It 
is  clear  that  this  whole  wave  system 
must  beat  upon  our  ears  each  second, 
and  that  the  length  of  the  wave,  i.e. 
the  distance  from  maximum  compres- 
sion to  maximum  compression,  or  from 
minimum  rarefaction  to  minimum  rare- 
faction, must  be  nearly  70  feet. 

The  highest  appreciable  note,  accord- 
ing to  Helmholtz,  is  one  with  38,000 
vibrations  per  second. 

Between  these  extreme  limits,  then, 
we  have  all  the  glorious  world  of 
musical  sound  which  our  ears  are 
tuned  to  appreciate.  The  air  is  also 
teeming  with  sounds  both  below  and 
above  our  range. 

Now  as  regards  light  waves.  As  the 
ether  is  infinitely  more  subtle  and 
more  elastic  than  our  grosser  air,  so 
are  the  disturbances  propagated  with 
a  velocity  which  quite  baffles  our  com- 
prehension. The  latest  measurements 
tell  us  that  a  light  disturbance  travels 
at  the  rate  of  186,000  miles  in  a 
second  of  time.  Imagine  the  mole- 
cular agitation  depending  upon  this 
statement,  and  then  remember  that 
a  glowworm  can  set  it  all  going, 
and  that,  when  once  in  full  swing, 
the  distance  of  the  most  remote 
star  is  traversed  as  it  were  at  a 
bound,  and  without  sensible  loss  of 
energy. 

Then  as  to  the  dimensions  of  the 
light  disturbance.  The  length  of  the 
longest  wave  that  we  can  appreciate  is 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


211 


•00076009  of  a  millimetre1  (7G,009 
hundred-millionths  of  a  millimetre,  or 
about  -^^-0-  °^  an  inch)«  The  length 
of  the°  shortest  is  -00039328  of  a 
millimetre  (39,328  hundred-millionths 
of  a  millimetre,  or  about  -g^^nr  of  an 
inch).  The  longest  waves  are  red,  the 
shortest  violet.  Now,  as  in  186,000 
miles  there  are  298,000,000  metres, 
or  29,800,000,000,000,000,000  hun- 
dred-millionths of  a  millimetre,  and  as 
all  the  disturbances  must  enter  the 
eye  in  a  second,  we  have  for  the  num- 
ber of  disturbances  (or  wave  crests) 
per  second 

29,800.000,000.000,000,000  =  m  QQm         m 
76,009 

that  is  392  billions  of  disturbances 
entering  our  eye  each  second  in  the 
case  of  red  light,  and 

29,800,000,000,000,000,000  =  ^  m  m  m  m 
39,328 

that  is,  757  billions  in  the  case  of 
violet  light. 

We  must  next  observe  that  light  is 
not  necessarily  limited  to  transmission 
through  the  ether  in  free  space.  If  a 
glass  of  port  wine  is  held  up  to  the 
sun,  the  light  passes  through  it  and 
seems  red.  In  that  case  the  light  has 
had  to  pass  through  the  ether  plus  the 
port  wine,  and  there  we  can  see  that 
the  new  medium  has  made  an  enor- 
mous difference  in  the  light  which 
was  originally  sent  us.  Supposing  the 
light  from  an  electric  lamp  were  thrown 
upon  a  screen,  we  should  see  that  it  is 
a  white  light,  that  is,  the  same  kind 
of  light  as  we  obtain  from  the  sun. 
Imagine  that  the  light  is  really  coming 
from  the  sun  ;  by  interposing  a  piece 
of  blue  or  red  glass  (adding  these  sub- 
stances to  the  ether,  as  it  were),  we 
at  once  alter  the  condition  of  things, 
and  get  a  blue  or  a  red  light  upon  the 
screen.  So  it  is  clear,  that  if  we 
want  to  study  light  phenomena  com- 
pletely, we  must  not  only  take  into 
account  the  different  circumstances 
connected  with  the  sender  and  with 

1  A  millimetre  is  0'03927  of  an  inch. 


the  receiver,  but  also  the  different 
circumstances  connected  with  the 
medium  through  which  the  light  passes, 
or,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  with 
those  media  which  absorb  light ;  for, 
although  we  do  not  know  that  ether 
absorbs  the  light,  yet  practically  we 
know  that  everything  else  does.  We 
know  the  redness  of  the  sun  at  even- 
ing arises,  not  from  absorption  by  the 
ether,  but  from  the  absorption  of  the 
blue  waves  by  the  aqueous  vapour  in 
the  air,  through  a  great  thickness  of 
which  the  sunlight  has  to  pass  at  that 
time,  which  practically  does  for  the 
light  of  the  sun  what  the  piece  of 
red  glass  did  for  the  light  of  the 
electric  arc  in  the  experiment  above 
suggested. 

We  see  then,  still  dealing  with  our 
complicated  medium  (that  is,  ether  + 
matter  in  some  cases),  that  this  asso- 
ciation leads  to  an  absorption  of  light, 
so  that  the  receiver  does  not  get  all 
the  disturbance  set  up  by  the  sender,  in 
consequence  of  the  vibrations  of  the 
ether  being  used  up  by  the  molecules 
of  the  various  bodies  through  which 
they  have  to  pass. 

This  result  is  not  the  only  one 
which  follows  from  the  entanglement, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  ether  waves  among 
the  molecules  of  matter.  If  the  dis- 
turbance is  travelling  in  such  a  direc- 
tion that  it  passes  into  a  substance 
denser  than  air — such  as  water  or 
glass — at  an  angle,  the  direction  of 
disturbance  is  changed,  the  wave,  so 
to  speak,  has  changed  front,  and  the 
greater  difference  there  is  between  the 
density  of  the  two  kinds  of  matter, 
such  as  air  and  water,  or  air  and  dia- 
mond, thus  passed  through,  the  greater 
will  be  this  change  of  front,  that  is  to 
say,  the  more  will  the  direction  in 
which  the  light  travels  be  changed. 

But  the  change  of  front  is  accom- 
panied by  something  else  which  is  very 
much  more  important  for  our  present 
purpose,  and  this  can  be  studied  best 
when  we  make  the  disturbance  enter 
and  leave  the  denser  molecules  at  the 
same  angle. 

p  2 


212 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


This  can  be  accomplished  by  using 
in  the  first  instance  glass  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  material  addition  to  the 
medium,  and  shaping  it  into  the  form  of 
a  prism.  The  effect  observed  was  de- 
scribed by  Kepler,  and  an  explanation 
first  afforded  by  Newton  ;  but  it  has 
required  the  undulatory  theory  of  light 
to  render  a  complete  understanding  of 
it  possible. 

The  addition  of  the  molecules  of 
glass,  presented  in  the  way  referred  to, 
to  the  ether  disturbance,  results  (1) 
in  turning  the  ray  out  of  its  course, 
and  (2),  if  it  be  a  ray  of  white  light,  in 
splitting  it  up  into  its  constituents, 
each  constituent  being  represented  by  a 
different  colour,  or  (3)  if  the  ray  be  of 
any  special  colour,  in  causing  it  to 
travel  in  a  direction  which  is  constant 
for  the  same  colour,  but  different  for 
each. 

Glass  affords  us  an  instance  in  which 
the  dispersion  of  colour  thus  obtained 
is  normal,  that  is,  the  order  of  the 
colours  obtained  is  as  follows  : — 

Red,  orange,  yellow,  green,  blue, 
violet,  indigo. 

But  there  are  substances  the  action 
of  the  molecules  of  which  upon  the 
ether  is  very  different,  and  we  get 
abnormal  dispersion  so  called  because 
the  above  order  is  changed. 

The  prism  tells  us  that  a  beam  of 
white  light  is,  so  to  speak,  not  a  sim- 
ple thing,  but  that  it  may  be  likened 
to  a  rope  with  an  infinite  number  of 
strands.  If,  for  instance,  by  some  con- 
certed action  all  the  keys  of  a  piano  are 
pressed  down,  a  certain  sound  results, 
made  up  of  a  combination  of  all  the 
sounds  upon  the  keyboard.  This  then 
is  the  sound  representative  of  a  ray  of 
white  light.  The  reasoning  which  lies 
at  the  bottom  of  all  the  new  researches 
which  have  made  us  as  familiar  with 
matter  millions  and  millions  of  miles 
from  us  as  we  are  with  the  matter 
around  us,  arises  from  the  perfect 
establishment  of  the  idea,  that  a  ray 
of  white  light  is  universally  composed 
of  waves  of  light  of  various  lengths, 
just  as  that  clang  upon  the  piano  was 


also  composed  of  different  true  musical 
notes,  that  is  to  say,  of  waves  of  sound 
of  various  lengths,  and  that  each  light 
of  special  colour  is  composed  of  a  single 
wave-length,  or  of  a  special  combination 
of  wave-lengths. 

If,  then,  instead  of  letting  the  white 
light  which  we  get  from  the  sun  or  the 
electric  lamp  travel  through  a  fine 
slit  straight  from  the  sender  to  the 
receiver,  we  insert  a  prism  and  lens  in 
its  path,  we  observe  an  effect  of  a  com- 
plex nature ;  the  light  is  thrown  out  of 
its  course,  and  instead  of  the  lens 
painting  a  single  image  of  the  slit 
through  which  it  emerged,  as  it  did 
before — instead  of  the  image  of  the 
slit,  which  was  white  and  small  before 
— we  shall  have  a  rainbow-coloured 
image  stretching  across  the  screen.  By 
adding  a  second  prism  to  aid  the  action 
of  the  first,  we  get  the  same  effect  in- 
creased, as  might  be  expected.  That 
rainbow-coloured  band  is  what  in 
scientific  language  is  called  the  spec- 
trum. 

Now,  the  difference  between  the  blue 
light  at  one  end  of  the  beautifully  col- 
loured  band,  and  the  red  at  the  other, 
is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  differ- 
ence almost  identical  with  the  differ- 
ence between  a  low  note  and  a  high 
note  upon  the  piano.  The  reason  why 
one  end  of  the  coloured  band,  which 
in  future  we  shall  call  the  spectrum, 
is  red,  and  the  other  blue,  is  that  in 
light  as  in  sound  we  have  a  system  of 
disturbances  or  waves ;  we  have  long 
waves  and  short  waves,  and  what  the 
low  notes  are  to  music  the  red  waves 
are  to  light,  and  what  the  high  notes 
are  to  music,  the  blue  waves  are  to 
light. 

There  is  a  strict  analogy  between 
the  world  of  sound  and  the  world  of 
light.  Ears  are  tuned  to  hear  different 
sounds — some  people  can  hear  much 
higher  notes  than  others,  and  some 
people  can  hear  much  lower  notes  than 
others.  In  the  same  way  some  people 
can  see  colours  to  which  other  people 
are  blind ;  indeed,  the  more  we  go  into 
this  matter,  and  the  more  complete  we 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


213 


make  our  inquiries,  the  more  striking 
becomes  the  connection  between  these 
two  classes  of  phenomena. 

Hence  it  is  that  we  can  with  advan- 
tage utilise  the  phenomena  brought 
home  to  us  by  our  ears  as  a  sort  of  sub- 
soil plough,  to  enable  us  better  to 
understand  in  what  manner  our  eyes, 
perfectly  trained,  now  enable  us  to  cul- 
tivate fields  which  modern  science  has 
annexed  to  the  region  of  the  known — 
fields  wonderfully  rich  in  facts  dealing 
not  only  with  the  action  of  the  eye 
itself  and  the  various  qualities  of 
matter,  but  with  the  physical  bases  of 
matter  itself  ;  with  this  beautiful  and 
undreamt  of  expansion,  that  it  is  in- 
different whether  that  matter  is  in 
the  hand  of  the  experimenter  in  his 
laboratory,  or  whether  it  is  sending 
out  light  to  us  upon  this  earth  from 
the  very  confines  of  the  universe. 
Nature  is  so  absolutely  and  universally 
true  and  regular  in  all  that  she  does, 
and  modern  science  is  of  itself  such  a 
slight  regarder  of  time  and  space,  that 
when  it  is  a  question  of  studying  the 
smaller  aggregations  of  matter,  the 
spectroscope  enables  us  to  tell  not  only 
what  kind  of  matter  is  at  work,  but  it 
tells  us  a  great  deal,  and  will  tell  us  a 
great  deal  more,  about  the  actual  con- 
ditions of  that  matter.  Indeed,  it  is 
probable  that  in  a  few  years  we  may 
know  very  much  more  about  matter 
very  far  removed  from  our  own  planet 
than  we  do  of  a  great  deal  of  it  on 
the  very  planet  itself  on  which  we 
dwell. 

Let  us  assume  that  we  are  now  pre- 
pared to  take  what  we  know  about 
sound  as  representing,  with  more  or 
less  accuracy,  some  of  the  things  that 
we  know  about  light,  and  recapitulate 
the  points  which  have  already  been 
touched  on. 

Both  with  regard  to  sound  and 
light  we  may  consider  different  sub- 
stances, first  as  senders,  then  as 
receivers,  and  then  as  media.  First, 
as  to  the  senders  with  regard  to 
sound — sound  is  set  up  or  produced  by 
bodies  such  as  a  tuning-fork,  and  we 


know  that  sound  is  due  to  the  vibra- 
tions or  oscillations  of  that  tuning- 
fork  imparting  a  regular  disturbance 
to  the  air ;  the  sound  which  that  or 
any  other  body  produces  depending 
upon  the  kind  of  disturbance  which  it 
sets  up.  With  regard  to  light-sources, 
a  body  which  gives  out  light  does  for 
light  exactly  what  the  tuning  fork  does 
for  sound.  A  bell  ringing  is  the 
equivalent  of  a  fire  burning  or  a  star 
shining.  Both  with  regard  to  sound 
and  to  light  there  are  various  kinds  of 
receivers.  We  can,  for  instance,  by 
preparing  certain  surfaces  receive  and 
place  on  record  the  shape  and  length  of 
waves  of  sound — we  can  make  a  sound 
disturbance  permanent.  Photography 
provides  a  means  of  rendering  light 
disturbances  permanent.  Here  we 
have  two  receivers,  one  of  sound,  the 
other  of  light,  which  give  a  more  or 
less  permanent  record. 

With  regard  to  the  medium — always 
to  keep  to  our  phraseology — we  have 
the  air,  whose  function  it  is  to  trans- 
mit waves  of  sound  to  our  ears,  and  we 
have  the  ether  to  transmit  the  waves 
of  light  to  our  eyes. 

We  can  imagine  a  compound  sound 
composed  of  notes  of  all  possible  pitch ; 
we  have  an  exact  equivalent  of  this  in 
the  case  of  white  light,  which  gives  us 
a  continuous  spectrum,  that  is,  one  in 
which  from  the  red  end  to  the  blue  or 
violet  end  there  is  no  break  in  the 
light ;  like  an  army  going  into  action, 
there  are  no  vacant  places  in  the 
line. 

If  we  press  down  first  one  note  of 
the  piano  and  then  another,  we  get  an 
effect  due  not  to  a  complete  mixture 
of  all  possible  sounds,  but  to  each 
sound  by  itself.  Now  the  new  science 
of  spectrum  analysis,  which  has  so 
enormously  extended  the  field  of 
observation  open  to  our  eyes,  depends 
upon  this,  that  what  any  one  note 
of  a  piano  which  you  choose  to  touch 
does  for  sound,  each  particle  of 
matter  does  for  light.  Experiment 
has  shown  us  that  the  "light-note," 
so  to  speak,  given  out  by  the  sim- 


214 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


plest  particles  of  different  kinds  of 
matter,  differs  for  each  kind  of  matter. 
If  we  examine  the  spectrum  of  the 
light  sent  out  by  particles  in  a  state  of 
vapour,  such  as  the  vapour  of  sodium, 
for  example,  we  shall  have  the  equi- 
valent of  what  we  get  when  we  strike 
a  single  note  upon  the  piano.  We  have 
a  spectrum  composed  principally  of  a 
very  decided  line  in  the  yellow.  It  is 
very  important  that  the  connection 
between  the  yellow  line  and  the  single 
note  of  the  piano,  and  between  the 
continuous  spectrum  and  the  sound 
produced  by  sounding  all  the  notes  of 
the  piano  at  once,  should  be  perfectly 
understood.  Suppose  we  now  take  a 
metal  which  gives  us  a  line  not  in  the 
yellow  but  in  the  green  ;  the  metal 
thallium.  What,  it  may  be  asked,  is 
the  difference  between  the  light  being 
in  the  yellow  and  the  light  being  in 
the  green  ]  The  quality  of  the  "  light 
note  "  of  thallium  is  different,  so  to 
speak,  from  the  quality  of  the  light 


note  of  sodium,  as  tftr— • — -  is  different 


from 


and   this    is    a    dif- 


ference  (about  which  we  know  very 
little)  which  enables  us  to  tell  in  a 
moment  whether  \ve  have  to  do  with 
sodium  or  thallium,  when  we  make 
each  vapour  send  out  its  light. 

We  have  already  got  out  two  very 
different  characteristics  among  our 
light  senders.  We  have  first  of  all, 
that  light  source  which  gives  us  a 
continuous  spectrum,  that  is,  a  series 
of  waves  quite  complete  so  far  as  the 
simple  spectrum  goes,  and  we  have 
next  that  particular  kind  of  light 
source  which  instead  of  giving  us  a 
continuous  spectrum,  affords  us  one 
with  bright  lines,  that  is  to  say,  parts 
only  of  the  complete  spectrum  are 
represented  in  the  light,  because  parts 
only  of  a  complete  system  of  waves  is 
given  out.  We  get  light  which  is 
only  competent  to  give  us  a  few 


images  of  the  slit  instead  of  light 
which  is  competent  to  give  us  an  un- 
broken series  of  such  images.  Here 
we  deal  with  the  giving  out  of  light, 
or  radiation  phenomena. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the 
medium  which  a  light  disturbance 
employs  to  get  to  us  is  the  ether,  and 
the  ether  has  no  effect  upon  light 
except  to  transmit  it ;  that  if  in  the 
path  of  the  light  which  is  sent  to  us, 
and  received  by  us,  we  place  something 
else  besides  the  ether,  then  we  may 
to  a  very  large  extent  destroy  the 
qualities,  so  to  speak,  of  the  light 
disturbance. 

By  superadding  the  transmission 
through  glass  coloured  red  and  blue, 
to  the  transmission  through  the  ether, 
we  get  a  distinct  difference  in  the 
effect.  In  the  red  glass  something  is 
introduced  in  addition  to  the  ether, 
which  will  only  transmit  red  light ; 
the  blue  glass  transmits  the  blue  and 
stops  the  red — and  this  is  the  reason 
why  blue  glass  appears  blue. 

Here  we  are  dealing  with  a  class  of 
experiments  which  provide  us  with 
what  are  termed  absolution  pheno- 
mena ;  that  is,  the  differences  are  due 
not  to  the  sender  but  to  the  medium, 
and  the  medium  never  adds,  it  always 
subtracts  or,  as  it  is  termed,  absorbs. 
If,  instead  of  using  coloured  glasses, 
we  take  a  solution  of  potassic  perman- 
ganate— we  shall  observe  certain  dark 
bars  across  the  spectrum,  indicating 
that  there  is  in  Nature  a  class  of 
bodies  which  have  this  very  distinct 
effect  upon  the  spectrum.  Another 
experiment  will  enable  us  to  get  a 
much  more  definite  effect.  It  will  be 
recollected  that  sodium  vapour  was 
the  vapour  which,  when  added  to  the 
flame  of  the  Bunsen  burner,  gave  an 
intensely  yellow  light.  Let  us  study 
the  effect  of  using  sodium  vapour  as  the 
medium — not  as  a  source  of  light  but 
as  an  absorber.  This  we  can  do  by 
sending  the  white  light  of  the  electric 
arc  through  some  sodium  vapour  as 
well  as  the  prism  upon  its  way  to  the 
screen.  In  place  of  the  bright  yellow 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


215 


line  we  saw  before,  we  shall  see  a  dark 
line  upon  the  screen. 

This  experiment  gives  us  an  idea  of 
a  class  of  spectra  of  which  we  have 
very  few  natural  representatives  upon 
this  earth,  in  consequence  most  pro- 
bably of  the  complicated  molecular 
conditions  found  in  a  cool  planet — a 
class  for  which  we  have  to  search  the 
skies,  and  which  we  can  find  in  almost 
every  star  which  shines  on  the  face  of 
heaven. 

Here  again  an  analogy  drawn  from 
sound  will  help  us. 

Suppose  we  have  a  long  room  and  a 
fiddle  at  one  end  of  it,  and  that  between 
it  and  an  observer  at  the  other  end  of 
the  room  there  is  a  screen  of  fiddles, 
all  tuned  like  the  solitary  one.  We 
know  that  in  that  case,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  observer  would  scarcely  hear 
the  note  produced  upon  any  one  of  the 
open  strings  of  that  fiddle.  Why  ? 
The  reason  is  that  the  open  strings  of 
this  fiddle,  in  unison  with  all  the  other 
fiddles,  would  set  all  the  other  open 
strings  corresponding  to  it  also  vibrat- 
ing, and  upon  the  principle  that  you 
cannot  eat  your  cake  and  have  it  too, 
the  vibration  of  the  fiddle  cannot  set 
all  those  strings  vibrating,  and  still 
pass  on  to  the  other  end  of  the  room  as 
if  nothing  had  happened. 

The  work,  in  fact,  which  the  air,  the 
medium  in  this  case,  would  have  to  do 
to  make  its  vibration  audible  to  the 
ear,  would  be  locally  done,  so  to  speak, 
upon  the  screen  of  fiddles ;  the  work 
done  would  decrease  the  amplitude  of 
the  vibration,  and  the  effect  on  the  ear 
would  be  weakened. 

Now  this,  as  Professors  Stokes  and 
Angstrom  were  the  first  to  point  out, 
is  the  real  explanation  of  the  result 
above  mentioned. 

Here  we  have  a  striking  parallel 
instance  of  the  fact  that  light  pheno- 
mena are  due  to  vibrations  of  light 
sources,  communicated  to  us  not  by 
anything  coming  bodily  from  the  light 
source,  but  by  corresponding  vibrations 
set  up  in  the  mysterious  ether.  If  a 
sound  wave  travelling  along  the  air 


to  the  ear,  or  a  light  wave  travelling 
along  the  ether  to  the  eye,  finds  in  its 
path  a  vibrating  body  which  is  ready 
to  receive  the  vibration,  whether  it  be 
already  vibrating  sufficiently  to  give  us 
the  impression  of  sound  or  light  or  not, 
that  vibration  is  arrested  or  lessened, 
the  sympathising  body  taking  up  the 
vibration  in  whole  or  in  part. 

Light-senders  are  really  particles 
of  bodies  in  vibration,  and  if  there  be 
no  vibration,  there  will  be  no  sending 
out  of  light.  The  reason  why  things, 
such  as  gas,  flames,  candles,  the  sun, 
and  other  bodies  send  us  out  light  is 
this,  that  they  are  in  a  state  of  ener- 
getic vibration — in  that  state  which 
we  generally  call  hot. 

The  hotter  a  thing  is,  or,  in  other 
words,  the  more  energetic  are  its  vibra- 
tions, the  more  complete,  stable,  and 
strong  are  the  vibrations  of  the  parts, 
of  which  that  thing  is  composed.  The 
modern  physicist  tells  us  that  the 
stones  of  which  St.  Paul's  Cathedral 
is  built  consist  of  millions  upon 
millions  of  small  particles  called 
molecules ;  and  although  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral  seems  to  be  absolutely  at 
rest,  as  if  it  would  last  for  ever, 
and  although  each  particular  stone 
seems  equally  so,  yet  when  we  get 
down  into  the  intimate  structure  of 
each  stone,  and  of  every  part  of  the 
fabric,  we  get  nothing  but  a  multi- 
tudinous ocean  of  motion — that  what 
appears  to  us  solid,  and  at  rest,  is 
absolutely  in  a  perpetual  state  of 
unrest ;  in  fact,  its  stability  consists 
in  its  state  of  unrest. 

The  difference  between  a  source  of 
light,  such  as  a  glowing  solid  or  liquid, 
which,  when  analysed,  gives  us  a  con- 
tinuous spectrum,  and  a  gas  or  a  vapour 
which  does  not  give  a  continuous  spec- 
trum, and  which  does  not  therefore 
give  us  white  light,  is  simply  this, 
that  in  the  case  of  gases  and  vapours 
which  are  produced  by  the  atom- 
dissociating  power  of  electricity  and 
of  heat,  those  molecules  which  give  us 
those  coloured  phenomena  differ  only 
from  the  larger  ones,  which  give  us  a 


216 


Ears  and  Eyes. 


continuous  spectrum,  in  that,  owing 
to  the  action  upon  the  one  hand  of 
electricity,  and  upon  the  other  hand 
of  heat,  they  are  much  simpler  than 
the  others. 

As  we  melt  a  metal  such  as  sodium, 
or  even  other  metals  of  a  very  much 
more  refractory  nature;  all  of  those 
metals  which  give  us  the  beautiful 
rainbow  band  called  the  continuous 
spectrum  to  start  with,  come  at  last 
to  a  stage  at  which  the  specti'a 
consist  of  one,  two,  four,  eight,  or 
more  lines,  as  the  case  may  be.  But 
there  are  between  those  stages  other 
intermediate  spectra,  which  seem  to 
show  us  that  as  the  action  of  elec- 
tricity or  of  heat  is  allowed  to  go  on, 
those  particles,  whatever  they  may  be, 
of  which  solids  are  built  up,  and  which 
give  us  white  light  when  we  get  solids 
or  liquids  to  radiate,  really  become 
more  and  more  simple,  until  at  last 
we  get  that  line  spectrum  to  which 
reference  has  been  made.  Here  the 
eye  enables  us  to  follow  changes 
which  are  most  difficult  to  detect  in 
any  other  way. 

In  regard  to  elementary  matter,  we 
have  first  of  all  this  fact,  that  if  the 
particles  under  examination  send  us 
white  light,  we  get  a  continuous  spec- 
trum from  it ;  therefore  when  we  have 
to  deal  with  white  light,  we  know 
that  we  are  dealing  with  matter  in  a 
solid,  or  liquid,  or  densely  gaseous 
state,  but  we  do  not  know  what 
matter  it  is ;  it  may  be  any  of  the 
metals  ;  it  may  be  any  of  the  com- 
pounds which  will  stand  a  high  tem- 
perature; but  whether  it  is  bismuth, 
or  oxygen,  or  nitrogen,  or  lime,  we 
do  not  know.  But  when  we  have  got 
the  matter  simplified,  so  that  its  par- 
ticles, instead  of  being  complex  enough 
and  self-contained  enough  to  give  us 
this  white  light,  are  broken  up,  and 
give  us  coloured  light,  then  we  find 
that  no  two  substances  with  which  we 
are  acquainted  give  us  the  same  sets 
of  lines. 

Hence  the  origin  of  the  term  spec- 
trum analysis,  as  the  study  of  the 


spectrum  thus  enables  us  to  tell  one 
substance  from  another. 

These  coloured  senders,  these  par- 
ticles of  matter  otherwise  called 
molecules,-  which  send  out  coloured 
light,  which,  being  analysed,  gives 
us  these  lines,  are  really  and  truly 
things  infinitely  small  beyond  our 
conception,  but  yet  absolutely  and 
truly  vibrating  bodies,  and  the  spec- 
trum is  the  result  of  the  vibrations. 

That  idea  leads  us  further,  and  it 
enables  us  to  say  not  only  that  such 
and  such  a  spectrum  is  given  by  such 
and  such  a  substance,  but  also  that 
such  and  such  a  spectrum  is  given  by 
that  substance  within  a  certain  range 
of  temperature,  while  other  conditions 
are  not  without  their  influence. 

Hence,  with  vapour  as  a  sender  out 
of  light,  we  learn  from  the  spectrum 
its  quality,  its  density,  roughly  its 
temperature.  The  same  vapour,  when, 
instead  of  being  used  as  a  sender,  is 
used  as  a  medium,  gives  us  exactly 
the  same  spectrum  reversed,  so  that, 
to  take  an  example,  we  can  detect  the 
presence  of  sodium  vapour  when  it 
is  sending  out  light,  by  means  of  its 
vibrations  set  in  motion  by  heat,  and 
when  it  is  between  us  and  any  sender 
whatever  which  can  feed  it  with  those 
same  vibrations  ;  and  we  have  in  both 
cases  the  same  means  of  determining 
that  it  is  more  or  less  of  a  certain 
temperature,  and  that  its  density  is 
within  certain  limits. 

It  is  by  following  out  considera- 
tions of  this  kind  that  all  the  stars 
in  heaven  have  revealed  to  us  their 
constitution — that  is  to  say,  the  ele- 
ments of  which  they  are  built  up,  at 
what  temperature  they  exist,  and  a 
great  deal  of  their  meteorology,  by 
which  term  I  mean  the  nature  and 
extent  of  their  atmospheres,  and  the 
way  in  which  their  atmospheres  vary 
from  cycle  to  cycle. 

Here  indeed  we  are  in  the  presence 
of  a  new  music  of  the  spheres,  to  which 
our  eyes  are  rapidly  becoming  attuned 
As  in  the  old  one — 

"  Cycle  on  epicycle,  orb  on  orb," 


Greek  Mothers  Song.  217 

are  still  the  vibrating  chords  in  the  the  mysterious  and  enthralling  hiero- 

heavenly  chorus ;  but  the  cycle  is  the  glyphs  which  are  unfolded  before  it  in 

cycle  of  the  atom,  and  the  orbs  are  no  the   inner    recesses   of    nature.      My 

longer  distant  suns  dwarfing  our  imagi-  labour   will    not    have   been    thrown 

nations  by  their  vastness,  but  the  ulti-  away  if  I  have  proved  that  one  way 

mate  molecules  of  matter.  of  getting  into  this  inner  temple  is  to 

In  this  new  world  of  the  infinitely  enter  its  outer  inclosure  by  the  Portal 

little  as  in  that  of  the  infinitely  great,  of  the  Ear. 
the   eye    is    now   beginning  to    read  J.  NORMAN  LOCKYEE. 


GREEK  MOTHER'S  SOXG. 


0  where  is  peace  in  all  the  lovely  land? 

Since  the  world  was,  I  see  the  fair  and  brave 
Downward  for  ever  fighting  toward  the  grave. 

A  few  white  bones  upon  a  lonely  sand, 

A  rotting  corpse  beneath  the  meadow  grass 
That  cannot  hear  the  footsteps  as  they  pass, 

Memorial  urns  pressed  by  some  foolish  hand 

Have  been  for  all  the  goal  of  troublous  fears. 

Ah  !  breaking  hearts  and  faint  eyes  dim  with  tears, 

And  momentary  hopes  by  breezes  fanned 
To  flame  that  fading  ever  falls  again 
And  leaves  but  blacker  night  and  deeper  pain, 

Have  been  the  mould  of  life  in  every  land. 


ii. 

O  is  there  rest  beneath  the  meadow  flowers? 

Or  is  there  peace  indeed  beside  the  shore 

Of  shadowy  Acheron?  nor  any  more 
The  weary  rolling  of  the  sickening  hours 

Will  mark  the  interchange  of  woe  and  woe; 

Nor  ever  voices  railing  to  and  fro 
Break  the  sweet  silence  of  those  darksome  bowers? 

But  there  a  sorrowful  sweet  harmony 

Of  timeless  life  in  peaceful  death  shall  be 
In  woodlands  dim  where  never  tempest  lowers 

Nor  branding  heat  can  pierce  the  sunless  shade. 

O  sweet  for  ever  in  that  dreamful  glade, 
If  there  indeed  such  deepest  peace  be  ours  ! 


218 


SCHLIEMANN'S  MYCENAE. 


IT  is  a  long  time  since  any  book  has 
been  more  eagerly  expected  by  his- 
torians and  archaeologists  than  the  com- 
plete record  of  Dr.  Schliemann's  work 
at  Mycenae.  The  main  facts  have  long 
been  familiar  to  the  public  through  the 
columns  of  the  Times,  and  through 
the  published  discussions  of  learned 
societies.  But  these  were  only  fore- 
tastes of  the  fuller  and  more  deliber- 
ate work  which  has  now  appeared, 
and  which  adds  an  all-important 
element  hitherto  almost  completely 
withheld — I  mean  an  adequate  re- 
production of  the  treasure  by  illus- 
trations. We  tire  of  a  long  descrip- 
tion, and  fail  to  grasp  its  details ; 
but  a  picture  brings  the  object  be- 
fore us  in  an  instant.  It  is  from 
this  point  of  view  that  the  present 
book  will  be  found  completely  and 
thoroughly  satisfactory.  The  beauty 
of  the  engravings,  and  the  care  with 
which  they  have  been  executed,  exceed 
all  praise,  and  this  feature  makes 
the  work  an  epoch  in  archaeology,  and 
gives  it  a  solid  value  which  nothing 
can  destroy.  Any  careful  inquirer 
will  at  once  feel  the  faithfulness  of 
the  reproduction,  wherever  accurate 
reproduction  was  possible ;  and  I  can 
testify  from  a  personal  examination 
of  the  objects  themselves  at  Athens 
last  April,  that  in  most  of  the  cases 
(such  as  those  of  engraved  rings) 
where  the  reproductions  are  indis- 
tinct, the  originals  were  equally  ob- 
scure. There  is,  moreover,  a  profusion 
of  illustration  which  is  quite  beyond 
the  limits  of  strict  necessity,  and 
betokens  the  large  and  liberal  spirit 
with  which  the  publication  of  the  work 
has  been  conducted.  It  is  but  bare 
truth  to  assert  that  the  English  public 
owe  a  real  debt  of  gratitude  to  Mr. 
Murray  for  this  very  splendid  and 
costly  undertaking. 


The  literary  qualities  of  the  work 
are  by  no  means  so  high,  if  we  except 
the  ingenious  and  elegantly  written 
preface  with  which  Mr.  Gladstone  has 
introduced  the  work.  Dr.  Schliemann, 
as  a  mere  observer,  seems  to  me  singu- 
larly unequal.  Thus,  in  examining  the 
lions  on  the  gate  of  Mycenae,  he  was 
the  first  to  perceive,  and,  I  think, 
rightly,  that  the  faces  of  the  lions 
had  been  riveted  on,  and  were  there- 
fore of  metal.  Though  many  other 
travellers  had  seen  them,  they  did 
not  perceive  this  which  now  strikes  me 
as  certainly  true.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  describes  this  very  piece  of  stone  as 
the  same  hard  breccia  of  which  the  rest 
of  the  gate  is  built.  This  is  certainly 
wrong.  At  least,  all  other  observers 
differ  from  him.  Dodwell  and  Leake 
thought  it  basalt,  others  marble  of 
some  foreign  kind  ;  to  me  it  appeared 
a  grayish  blue  limestone  of  hard  grain, 
and  very  smooth,  but  quite  different 
from  the  adjoining  blocks.  Curtius 
quotes  the  French  expedition  to  the 
same  effect,  and  agrees  with  them.  We 
have  here,  then,  a  very  acute  and  a 
very  careless  observation  combined 
concerning  the  same  object. 

It  is  of  course  not  to  be  expected 
from  a  discoverer  that  he  shall  also 
be  a  logical  or  forcible  writer,  and 
perhaps  many  people  will  think  that 
the  mere  reprinting  of  the  chronicle 
of  his  work  as  it  appeared  in  the 
Times,  with  trifling  additions  and 
explanations,  is  the  best  and  most 
valuable  record  he  can  give  us  of  his 
labours.  But  the  subject  must  have 
gained  greatly  in  interest  and  in  clear- 
ness, if  the  author  had  rearranged  his 
materials,  and  brought  them  into  logi- 
cal order.  The  very  task  of  doing  this 
would  have  excluded  many  repetitions 
and  inconsistencies,  and  also  such 
trivialities  as  the  visits  of  the  Emperor 


Scklicmann's  Mycenae. 


219 


of  Brazil,  which  might  be  tolerable  in 
a  daily  paper,  but  are  unworthy  of  a 
permanent  record.  There  is,  moreover, 
one  passage,  at  least,  in  reference  to 
M.  Stamatakes  (p.  352),  which  be- 
tokens an  amount  of  spleen  very  un- 
worthy of  the  book,  and  which  ought 
surely  to  have  been  rewritten.1  Dr. 
Schliemann  has  accordingly  not  made 
the  most  of  his  great  subject.  It  re- 
quires constant  reference  to  the  maps 
and  plans  to  follow  his  involved  de- 
scriptions. His  historical  inferences 
are  hasty,  and  formed  without  any 
careful  balancing  of  evidence.  We 
also  miss  greatly  a  full  and  accurate 
index,  in  which  the  student  would  find 
a  clue  to  the  many  details  which  are 
presented  in  the  mere  accidental  order 
of  their  occurrence.  More  especially 
such  important  processes  as  riveting 
and  soldering,  or  substances  such  as 
linen  and  porcelain  find  no  place,  or  an 
accidental  place,  in  the  poor  and  hasty 
list  which  does  duty  for  the  index.  In 
a  book  which  retains  the  form  of  a 
journal,  such  a  key  is  simply  indis- 
pensable. 

Yet  is  it  not  ungrateful  to  utter 
these  criticisms  upon  the  man  who 
has  done  more  than  all  the  men  of  our 
day  in  furthering  Greek  archaeology  1 
Let  us  rather  thankfully  accept  the 
facts  he  has  furnished,  and  endeavour 
to  draw  them  together  into  some  sort 
of  unity.  It  will  then  remain  to  in- 
quire whether  we  can  venture  any 
conclusions  at  all  from  their  relations 
to  our  former  knowledge  upon  the 
subject. 

The  historical  notices  of   Mycense2 

1  If  M.  Stamatakes  was  really  the  respon- 
sible officer  appointed  to  watch  the  explora- 
tions,   and    take    charge   of    any    treasures 
when  found — if,  in  fact,  as  I  understood  at 
Athens,  he  was  sent  as  a  check  on  Dr.  Schlie- 
manu,   the  passage  to  which  I  refer  may  be 
more  easy  to  understand,  but  more  difficult  to 
characterise  by  its  proper  epithet. 

2  The  limits  of  this  article  compel  me  to 
pass  over  in  silence  Dr.  Schliemann's  prelimi- 
nary investigations  at  Tiryns,  which  are  very 
interesting.      It  was  likewise  impossible  to 
enter  into  any  detail  about  the  style  and  form 
of  particular  ornaments,  of  which  the  book 
exhibits  a  wonderful  profusion. 


are  collected  by  Dr.  Schliemann,  and 
put  together  with  the  poetical  allusions 
at  the  opening  of  his  third  chapter.  I 
will  here  repeat  them  with  such  modi- 
fications as  seem  to  me  necessary  to 
rectify  the  impression  produced  by  his 
account. 

The  Homeric  poems  speak  of  the 
city  as  well  situated,  broad-streeted, 
and  rich  in  gold — the  latter  epithet 
only  being  in  any  respect  peculiar  to 
it.  It  was  the  residence  of  Agamem- 
non, the  leading  king  in  Greece,  who  is 
recognised  as  the  leader  of  the  Trojan 
expedition.  Nevertheless,  this  mighty 
king  has  his  dominion  even  over  the 
neighbouring  plain  curtailed  by  the 
power  of  Diomede,  King  of  Argos, 
whom  Dr.  Schliemann  conveniently 
calls  his  vassal,  but  who.  all  through 
the  Iliad,  acts  quite  independently,  and 
is  a  far  more  important  hero  through- 
out the  larger  portion  of  the  poems.  This 
indication  of  the  rising  power  of  Ai'gos, 
whose  antiquity  is  attested  by  massive 
cyclopean  remains  of  the  same  kind  as 
those  of  Mycense,  is  assumed  as  an 
acknowledged  fact  by  the  traditions  of 
the  Dorian  invasion,  for  from  that  time 
on  Argos  is  named  as  the  main  city  of 
the  district,  and  even  lays  claim  to  a 
primacy  among  the  cities  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus. It  was  probably  in  connec- 
tionwith  this  transfer  of  power  that 
the  legends  of  the  terrible  domestic 
horrors  in  the  family  of  the  Atridte  be- 
came popular,  as  it  is  always  conve- 
nient to  justify  usurpation  by  the 
moral  principle  of  a  providential  re- 
tribution of  the  crimes  of  deposed 
rulers.  The  Homeric  poems  only 
mention  the  murder  of  Agamemnon 
by  his  wife,  and  the  revenge  of 
Orestes.  The  Cyclic  poets  indulged  in 
a  long  catalogue  of  murders  and  of  in- 
cest, and  this  awful  indictment  against 
the  fallen  house  of  the  Mycenaean 
kings  became  a  favourite  subject  with 
the  tragic  poets  of  the  fifth  century 
B.C.  at  Athens. 

But  so  completely  had  the  city  itself 
disappeared  from  the  list  of  historical 
cities  in  Greece,  that  the  poet  .^Eschy- 
lus,  writing  a  play  about  457  B.C.,  in 


220 


Schlicmanris  Mycence. 


which  the  central  object  upon  the  stage 
is  the  tomb  of  Agamemnon,  actually 
places  it  at  Argos,  and  completely 
ignores  Mycense.1  And  yet,  in  the 
poet's  youth,  he  had  fought  against 
the  Persians,  perhaps  in  company 
with  people  calling  themselves  My- 
censeans,  as  is  attested  both  by  an  ex- 
tant inscription,  and  another  copied  by 
Pausanias.  These  documents  at  Delphi 
and  at  Olympia  enumerated  the  cities 
which  had  joined  the  patriotic  side  in 
the  great  Persian  war.  The  succeed- 
ing poets,  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  dis- 
tinguish Argos  and  Mycense,  and  often 
mention  the  latter.  But  the  opening 
scene  of  Sophocles' s  Electro,  contains  so 
vague  a  picture  of  the  Argive  country, 
that  the  poet  can  hardly  have  had  clear 
notions  about  it,2  and  though  Euripides 
knew  something  of  the  cyclopean  walls 
of  Mycense,  and  mentions  them  so  par- 
ticularly, that  Dr.  Schliemann  thinks 
he  must  have  visited  them,  it  is  very 
remarkable  that  he  never  corrects  or 
censures  .^Eschylus's  inaccuracy  about 
Agamemnon's  tomb,  and  throughout 
his  Orestes  confuses  Argives  and  My- 
cenaeans  systematically.3 

Prom  this  time  onward  the  very 
name  of  Mycense  disappears,  though 
the  site  was  for  a  time  reoccupied,  till 
the  days  of  the  geographers  and  his- 
torians of  Roman  times.  Strabo  shows 
by  his  absurd  remark  "  that  not  a  ves- 
tige of  it  remained,"  that  he  was  writing 
at  second-hand.  Diodorus  and  Pausa- 
nias, on  the  contrary,  give  a  definite 
account  of  its  destruction  by  the 
Argives,  which  they  agree  in  placing 
after  the  Persian  wars  in  468-4  B.C. 
They  all  assert  that  it  was  in  their 
day — that  is,  in  the  first  and  second 

1  In  his  extant  plays    and   fragments   he 
never  mentions  Mycense — a  remarkable  fact. 

2  As  a  specimen  of  Dr.  Schliemann's  rea- 
soning, I  may  mention  that  he  supports  the 
notion  of  Sophocles's  ignorance  of  Mycenae, 
but   on  the  ground   (p.   347)   that   the  poet 
calls  Agamemnon's  tomb  a  mound,   whereas 
he  ought  to  have  known  that  it  was  a  deep 
grave  !     It  is,  indeed,  hard  on  Sophocles  to 
accuse  him  of  ignorance  because  he  did  not 
anticipate  Dr.  Schliemann's  theory  ! 

3  For  an  example  cf.  vv.  97—103. 


centuries  A.D. — a  mere  ruin.  Pausa- 
nias, in  describing  the  place,  speaks  of 
the  subterranean  treasure-houses  of 
Atreus  and  his  sons,  one  of  which  has 
been  open  since  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century,  and  perhaps  yery 
much  longer.  Another  has  recently 
been  explored  by  Mrs.  Schliemann,  and 
some  in  ruins  still  remain  to  be  un- 
earthed. Pausanias  further  speaks  of 
the  tombs  of  Atreus  and  of  Agamem- 
non and  his  friends  who  were  slain  by 
^Egisthus.  He  apparently  mentions 
four  tombs  —  one  of  Atreus,  one  of 
Cassandra,  which  was  disputed  by  the 
people  of  Amyclse,  one  of  Agamemnon, 
and  one  of  his  charioteer  and  Cassan- 
dra's two  children,  and  of  Electra 
(this  last  may  have  been  a  separate 
tomb) ;  then  outside  the  wall,  tombs 
of  Clytemnestra  and  of  ^Egisthus.  But 
from  the  general  character  of  Pausa- 
nias's  book,  I  do  not  think  we  can  at 
all  infer  that  his  enumeration  was 
meant  to  be  exhaustive.  It  has  like- 
wise been  disputed  whether  the  wall 
to  which  he  alludes  was  the  wall  of 
the  citadel  or  the  wall  of  the  town, 
nor  does  his  text  admit  of  this  point 
being  settled.  But  in  one  respect  I 
think  we  may  be  positive.  The  tombs 
which  he  mentions  were  clearly  tombs 
which  he  actually  saw.  He  mentions 
them  in  the  same  breath  with  the 
treasuries  still  extant.  He  specifies 
their  relative  position.  He  says  that 
the  Amyclseans  disputed  the  monument 
of  Cassandra.  Of  course  they  could 
not  have  disputed  about  a  mere  tradi- 
tion, when  Pausanias  says  they  dis- 
puted about  a  monument.  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann has  proved  that  all  the  tomb- 
stones and  tombs  he  discovered  must 
have  been  hidden  beneath  the  surface 
which  Pausanias  saw.  He  is  there- 
fore obliged  to  assume  that  Pausanias 
is  speaking  of  a  traditional  site,  and 
not  of  the  actual  monuments.  This 
theory  seems  to  me  quite  untenable. 

Such  being  the  whole  of  our  histori- 
cal evidence  about  Mycense,  I  will  add, 
before  leaving  it,  that  I  do  not  believe 
the  evidence  of  either  Diodorus  or  Pau- 
sanias, who  lived  many  hundred  years 


HcJiliemann's  Mycence. 


221 


after  the  events,  as  to  the  date  of  the 
destruction  of  Mycense.  I  think  they 
were  misled  by  the  name  Mm-ares  on 
the  Delphic  tripod  and  on  the  pedestal 
at  Olympia,  and  thought  this  to  be 
conclusive  evidence  of  its  endurance 
up  to  that  date.  But  I  will  show,  in 
the  forthcoming  number  of  Hermathena, 
sufficient  reasons  from  Pausanias's  own 
words  to  conclude  that  this  destruction 
by  the  Argives  took  place  long  before, 
and  that  Mycense  was  no  Hellenic  city 
in  the  days  of  ^Eschylus,  who  could 
not  else  have  ignored  it  so  remarkably 
in  his  play.  Furthermore,  I  do  not 
attach  the  smallest  weight  to  the  tra- 
dition repeated  by  Pausanias,  about 
A.D.  170,  that  the  tombs  of  Agamem- 
non and  his  party  were  at  Mycense,  and 
inside  the  walls,  when  I  find  ^Eschylus 
and  his  compeers  completely  ignorant 
of  the  fact — nay,  even  when  the  critical 
Euripides,  who  loves  to  note  defects 
in  .^Eschylus,  and  who  may  have  seen 
the  place,  is  ignorant  of  it.  I  take 
the  report  of  Pausanias's  cicerones, 
who  told  him  this  story,  to  be  of  the 
same  value  as  that  of  the  Egyptian 
cicerones,  when  they  told  Herodotus 
that  the  Great  Pyramid  was  built  by 
the  shepherd  Philitis.  There  were 
old  tombs  then  visible.  Nobody  knew 
to  whom  they  belonged ;  of  course 
they  were  assigned  to  the  most  cele- 
brated characters  known  in  Greek 
literature  as  resident  at  Mycense.  But 
if  there  be  any  legend  in  Pausanias 
which  seems  to  me  certainly  late  and 
artificial,  it  is  this  account  of  the 
Mycensean  tombs.  The  inferences 
which  I  have  so  far  drawn  are  purely 
historical  inferences,  based  on  a  criti- 
cal survey  of  our  Greek  tests.  I  now 
proceed  to  inquire  how  far  they  are 
corroborated  or  refuted  by  Dr  Schlie- 
mann's  discoveries. 

One  monument  at  Mycense  had  at- 
tracted attention  as  early  as  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century.  The 
treasure-house  of  Atreus,  as  it  is  com- 
monly called  after  Pausanias,  but 
"  tomb  of  Agamemnon,"  as  the  modern 
inhabitants  designated  it — this  remark- 
able subterranean  chamber,  which  was 


probably  opened  and  rifled  ages  ago, 
was  again  investigated,  apparently  by 
Lord  Elgin,  before  the  year  1806. 
This  is  proved  to  demonstration  by 
the  description  and  drawings  of  the 
chamber,  both  exterior  and  interior, 
given  by  Dodwell,1  whose  travels  did 
not  extend  beyond  that  year.  He 
began  to  examine  the  antiquities  of 
Greece  in  1801,  but  does  not  specify 
at  what  part  of  his  tour  he  visited 
Mycense.  His  account  of  the  treasure- 
house  is  quite  full  and  accurate,  and 
it  is  indeed  surprising  that  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann  should  have  given  credence,  in 
spite  of  this  demonstration  to  the  con- 
trary, to  the  cock-and-bull  story  told 
him  about  Yeli  Pasha,  and  his  excava- 
tion of  the  untouched  sepulchre  or 
monument  in  1810  (pp.  49-51).  Dod- 
well and  Leake  speak  of  "  Lord  Elgin's 
excavators  "  having  found  certain  very 
interesting  and  archaic  carved  stones 
about  the  entrance,  which  the  former- 
reproduces,  and  which  are  very  re- 
markable for  their  similarity  in  design 
to  some  of  Dr.  Schliemann's  gold 
treasure,  and  still  more  to  the  carved 
fragments  of  marble  found  at  the 
entrance  of  the  second  treasury  exca- 
vated by  Mrs.  Schliemann.2  Ernst 
Curtius  also  refers  to  Lord  Elgin's  ex- 
cavations in  his  account  of  the  build- 
ing. I  have  not  been  able  to  ascertain 
any  details  as  to  Lord  Elgin's  work 
here,  but  fancied  it  could  be  made  out 
from  the  collection  of  views  and  draw- 
ings which  passed  into  the  British 

1  There  are  equally  accurate  views  of  the 
treasury,  both  inside  and  outside,  by  Gell 
(Argolis),  and  a  parallel  description  by  Clarke, 
who  visited  the  place  about  1805,  and  who 
adds  (Travels,  vi.  p.  492):  "this  chamber  has- 
evidently  been  opened  since  it  was  first  con- 
structed, and  thereby  its  interior  has  been 
disclosed,  but  at  what  time  this  happened  is 
quite  uncertain — probably  in  a  very  remote 
age,  from  tJie  appearance  it  now  exhibits.'* 
Most  unfortunately,  Chandler,  travelling  some- 
thirty  years  earlier,  missed  the  place  by  acci- 
dent on  his  way  from  Argos  to  Cleonae.  I  can 
find  no  earlier  account  of  the  treasury,  though 
it  may  be  mentioned  in  some  book  I  have 
overlooked.  It  would  seem  that  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann, though  he  refers  to  these  books,  has. 
hardly  any  knowledge  of  them. 

9  Cf.  the  plates  of  these,  p.  140. 


222 


Schliemann's  Mycence. 


Museum  along  with  the  Parthenon 
marbles.  Dodwell,  indeed,  says  ex- 
pressly that  one  of  the  sculptured 
stones  which  he  reproduces  was  then 
in  the  Museum.  Mr.  A.  S.  Murray 
now  informs  me  that  the  evidence  I 
had  expected  is  not  to  be  had  in  the 
Museum,  and  is  therefore  still  buried 
in  the  unpublished  journals  of  Lord 
Elgin. 

The  Greeks  asserted  that  Veli  Pasha 
found  bodies  covered  with  gold  orna- 
ments, as  well  as  statues  outside  the 
mouth  of  the  chamber.  Discarding  the 
latter  statement,  it  seems  odd  that 
they  should  have  invented  the  former 
fact  altogether.  I  fancy  it  is  either 
the  report  of  a  far  older  raid  upon  the 
chamber,  or  is  dei'ived  from  the  rifling 
of  some  other  ancient  tomb  where  such 
things  were  really  found. 

But  it  is  high  time  to  turn  to  Dr. 
Schliemann's  more  splendid  excava- 
tions. Led  by  his  interpretation  of 
Pausanias,  that  the  tombs  of  Agamem- 
non and  his  friends  were  within  the 
Acropolis,1  he  began  to  dig  where  the 
accumulated  earth  was  deep,  the  bare 
rock  within  most  of  the  area  precluding 
any  hope  of  old  deposits.  I  will  en- 
deavour to  summarize  his  discoveries, 
not  in  the  order  in  which  he  attained 
them,  but  rather  in  the  probable  order 
of  their  antiquity. 

At  an  average  depth  of  nearly 
thirty  feet  below  the  present  surface, 
he  found,  in  chambers  cut  into  the 
rock,  five  tombs,  containing  fifteen 
bodies  of  various  ages  and  sexes, 
covered  with  all  manner  of  arms, 
vessels,  jewels,  and  rich  gold  orna- 
ments, including  six  gold  masks  upon 
the  faces,  and  several  thin  plates 
covering  the  breast,  with  indications  of 
the  face  and  figure  worked  upon  them. 
Dr.  Schliemann  habitually  speaks  of 
these  as  massive,  whereas  they  are 
really  very  thin  plates,  beaten  very 

1  This  inference,  which  is  opposed,  as  he 
justly  notes,  to  the  opinions  of  many  learned 
travellers,  is  not.  as  he  implies,  peculiar  to 
himself.  Dr.  Clarke  (Travels,  vi.  p.  494),  in 
a  learned  argument,  most  of  which  is  unsound, 
seems  to  hold  the  same  view. 


fine,  and  of  no  great  weight.  In  fact, 
the  general  impression  produced  by 
the  treasure  is  that  the  men  who 
made  it  wished  to  create  the  greatest 
possible  display  of  the  gold  they  pos- 
sessed. There  are,  no  doubt,  both 
massive  gold  rings  and  massive  jugs, 
but  the  general  character  of  the 
treasure  is  such  as  I  have  described. 
My  reasons  for  thinking  these  tombs 
far  the  oldest  record  found  at  Mycenie 
is  not  only  their  depth,  but  the  fact 
that  they  seem  to  have  been,  to  some 
extent  (perhaps  altogether),  ignored 
by  the  prehistoric  Cyclopean  builders 
of  the  large  house  south  of  the  main 
group.  For,  in  close  connection  with 
the*f  oundations  of  this  house,  was  found 
a  sixth  tomb,  partly  rifled  by  the 
builders  of  a  Cyclopean  water  conduit, 
which  led  past  it,  and  of  which  only  a 
small  but  most  precious  corner  was 
left  for  M.  Stamatakes  to  discover. 
This  tomb  was  only  twenty-two  feet 
under  the  soil,  and  yet  was  barely 
within  the  ken  of  these  builders. 
The  walls  of  the  tomb  are  alleged  by 
Dr.  Schliemann  (p.  352)  to  be  far  ruder 
than  those  of  the  Cyclopean  house. 
Among  all  the  other  tombs,  one  body 
only  in  the  first  sepulchre  had  been 
rifled,  but  apparently  by  people  dig- 
ging without  method  or  knowledge. 
Dr.  Schliemann's  account  of  the 
pottery  found  here  is  so  brief  (p.  295), 
that  I  cannot  understand  it ;  but  he 
places  the  act  of  robbery  in  very 
ancient  times. 

At  a  distance  of  ten  or  twelve  feet 
above  this  old  and  splendid  group  of 
sepulchres  were  found  a  group  of 
skeletons,  which  had  not  been  burnt, 
and  various  traces  of  possible  stone 
coffins,  and  other  evidences  of  tombs, 
which  seem  to  have  been  less  rich,  and 
differently  constructed.  And  here  there 
seems  to  me  some  evidence  in  the 
scattered  condition  of  the  stones,  and 
of  various  small  gold  and  obsidian 
objects,  that  a  considerable  number  of 
tombs  may  have  been  disturbed,  which 
were  originally  over  the  older,  and 
perhaps  in  no  relation  to  them.  People 
digging  for  treasure,  when  they  came 


Schliemanris  Mycence. 


223 


upon  this  shallower  layer,  would  not 
think  of  hunting  deeper,  and  so  the 
safety  of  the  deeper  tombs  was  secured. 
Above  these,  possibly,  later  tombs, 
come  a  certain  number  of  stone  slabs, 
with  very  primitive  carving  upon 
several  of  them,  and  which  Dr. 
Schliemann  supposes  to  have  been  in- 
tended to  mark  the  royal  tombs  far 
beneath. 

There  seem  to  have  been  twelve  or 
fifteen  of  these  tombstones  at  least.  In 
some  cases  the  unsculptured  stones 
were  found  ten  feet  below  the  orna- 
mented ones,  in  others  they  were  on 
the  same  level ;  but  Dr.  Schliemann  is 
so  positive  that  they  were  all  exactly 
over  the  five  royal  tombs,  that  he 
adopts  the  theory  of  their  being  re- 
newed periodically,  according  as  they 
became  covered  with  the  accumulation 
of  years  (p.  337).  But  if  the  place 
was  an  agora,  with  no  building  upon 
it,  and  with  no  other  interments  made 
in  it,  such  an  accumulation  is  incon- 
ceivable. It  seems  far  more  likely 
that  the  higher  tombstone  covered  a 
later  tomb,  and  that  we  have  to  do 
with  an  ancient  necropolis,  in  which 
interments  were  made,  at  least  occa- 
sionally, for  centuries. 

Apparently  on  a  level  with  the  high- 
est and  most  elaborate  of  the  tomb- 
stones,1 which  have  very  archaic  war 
and  hunting  scenes  carved  upon  them, 
such  as  the  Assyrian  kings  delighted 
in,  is  a  double  circle  of  upright  stone 
slabs,  with  transverse  horizontal  slabs 
joining  them  at  the  top  by  means  of  a 
carefully  cat  mortice.  Dr.  Schliemann 
tells  us  that  these  slabs,  which  were 
carefully  set  into  the  ground,  and  were 
loftier,  according  as  the  ground  was 
lower,  so  as  to  keep  the  circle  even,  are 
all  inclined  slightly  inward,  so  that  a 
man  sitting  on  them  would  find  room 
for  drawing  in  his  feet. 

I  confess  I  was  surprised  when  I  first 
read  this  statement,  for  it  did  not 
agree  with  my  own  observations  on 
the  spot  last  April.  It  seemed  to  me 

1  Dr.  Schliemann  does  uot  specify  the  depth 
of  the  stone  circle  below  the  surface,  but  I 
should  guess  it  at  about  ten  feet. 


that  only  a  few  of  the  slabs  were 
slanted,  and  this  by  the  accidental 
pressure  of  accumulated  debris  against 
them.  Many  of  them  stood  quite 
straight.2  When  Dr.  Schliemann  first 
describes  them,  he  admits  this  (p.  117 
note),  and  gives  a  special  reason  why, 
at  the  north  side,  the  slabs  must  all  be 
set  perpendicularly.  But  when  he 
has  advanced  to  the  theory  of  their 
being  seats  round  the  agora,  he  tells 
us  (p.  124),  "that  it  must  be  par- 
ticularly observed  that  the  ^v/^ole 
arrangement  of  slabs  slopes  inwards  at 
an  angle  of  75°."  This  appears  to  me 
a  gradual  and  unconscious  accommoda- 
tion of  the  facts  to  his  theory. 

As  I  have  already  said,  his  theory  is, 
according  to  Mr.  Simpson's  suggestion, 
that  it  was  the  agora  of  Mycenre,  and 
that  this  double  row  of  slabs  was  set 
up  to  afford  seats  round  it,  upon  which 
the  elders  or  nobles  used  to  sit.  In 
corroboration  of  this,  he  quotes  various 
ancient  authorities  on  the  circular 
seats,  or  circular  form  of  ancient 
agoras,3  and  assumes  that  Agamemnon 
and  his  friends  were  buried  as  heroes 
in  this  sacred  public  place  of  the  city, 
according  to  a  custom  elsewhere  ob- 
served in  the  case  of  founders  of  cities. 
This  theory,  that  the  agora  of  Mycente 
was  in  the  Acropolis,  seems  confirmed 
by  two  passages  in  the  Iliad  (B,  788, 
H,  345),  which  he  has  noted  (p.  339), 
and  which  speak  of  the  Trojan  agora  as 
being  at  the  door  of  Priam's  palace. 
Then  the  large  Cyclopean  house,  which 
he  thinks  the  palace,  is  close  beside  the 
circle. 

Nevertheless,  I  am  convinced  that 
this  inclosure  cannot  possibly  have 
been  a  Greek  agora,  and  must  have 

2  An  independent  observer,  Mr.  Simpson, 
who  saw  the  site  in  March  last,  and  who  de- 
scribes it  in  a  very  able  article  in   Fraser's 
Magazine  for  last  month,  though  he  was  the 
originator  of  the  agora  theory,  does  not  men- 
tion the  sloping  of  the  slabs. 

3  Some  of  the  passages  adduced,   such  as 
that   of    "Artemis  sitting  upon  the   famous 
circular  throne  of  the  agora,"  only  prove  that 
there  were  circular  seats  for  gods  in  the  agora, 
and,  indeed,  the  triple  figures  of  Hecate  still 
extant  at  Athens  and  Argos  actually  stand 
upon  a  circular  base. 


224 


Schliemann' s  Mycence. 


been  a  sepulchral  circle,  such  as  those 
erected  in  Ireland  and  elsewhere  by 
primitive  people  to  mark  the  graves 
of  their  chiefs.  All  the  passages  about 
the  circles  of  stones  in  Homeric  agoras 
seem  to  show  nothing  in  favour  of  the 
whole  agora  being  circular  and  closed 
in,  but  rather  that  there  was  in  every 
agora  a  sacred  circle  of  stone  seats  on 
which  the  elders  sat  and  judged.  I 
take  these  stones  to  have  been  lai-ge, 
single  blocks,  such  as  those  still  at 
Athens  in  historical  times,  and  called 
Jove's  voting  pebbles,  and  also  7T£<T<rot' l 
The  people,  of  course,  crowded  round 
outside  this  circle,  which  was  kept 
clear  by  heralds,  and  in  the  middle  of 
the  vacant  space  lay  the  fine,  or  money 
at  stake.  Such  I  conceive  an  agora  to 
have  been. 

But  here  we  have  the  whole  possible 
space  inclosed  with  a  complete  double 
circle  of  slabs,  so  that  there  is  only  one 
way  in.  From  the  so-called  royal 
palace,  there  is  no  way  for  entrance,  so 
that  the  king  would  have  been  obliged 
to  walk  round  to  the  opposite  point 
of  the  circle,  next  to  the  gate.  Is  this 
conceivable  ?  If  the  people  did  enter  and 
occupy  the  agora,  how  could  the  elders 
sit  round  on  the  outer  margin  and 
debate  across  the  crowd  1  Still  worse, 
the  crowd  must  have  been  standing 
upon  and  about  sepulchres,  and  lean- 
ing on  tombstones,  upon  spots  where 
the  charred  remains  show  that  sacrifices 
were  frequently  offered.  To  imagine 
that  a  protruding  rock  in  the  centre  was 
a  bema  or  platform  for  the  orators,  is  to 
make  confusion  worse  confounded,  for, 
so  far  as  I  know,  the  custom  of  speak- 
ing from  a  bema  is  completely  foreign 
to  heroic  times,  when  chiefs  rise  in  turn 
from  their  seats,  and  speak,  as  it  were, 
in  council  from  their  places,  not  ad- 
dressing the  crowd,  though  heard  and 
applauded  by  it.  Dr.  Schliemann 
actually  cites  passages  to  prove  the 
existence  of  the  bema,  which  have 

1  Cf.   "EvQa,    Albs  fj.eyd\oi   BOJKOI,   irfff<roi   Tf 
KaXovvTo.1  (Cratinus),  also — 

Treaaovs  irpofft\6&ii'  evQa.  8?)  ira\aiT3.Toi 

6dff(rovffn>  [Euripides,  Medea), 
and  the  Lexica  on  Aiis  <J>f  <f>oy. 


nothing  whatever  to  say  to  it,  except 
so  far  as  they  prove  its  absence  (cf .  p. 
125   and  notes).     To  me  such  suppo- 
sitions    seem     absolutely    untenable. 
We  have  a  few  exceptional  cases  of 
public  benefactors,  such  as  Brasidas, 
being    publicly    buried  close   by   the 
agora.    The  Greek  expression  is  gener- 
ally either  before  or  at  the  end  of  the 
agora.      But  there    is    evidence  that 
such  tombs  were  specially  inclosed  with 
a  QpiyKUQ  or  fence,  and   hallowed  by 
sacrifices,  nor   did   people   ever   walk 
about  over  them.    I  see,  therefore,  the 
most  insuperable   objections    to    this 
theory,  and  everything  to  support  the 
notion  of  its  being  a  sacred  sepulchral 
inclosure.     We    know  that   in   histo- 
rical  times    there   was   a   strict   law 
against  burials  within  the  walls,  but 
this  very   prohibition    points   to    an 
older  custom,  mentioned  by  Plato  and 
others,   of   burying  the   dead   in   the 
city  and  close  by  the  ordinary  dwell- 
ing-houses.    We  find  that  in  or  about 
this  inclosure  a  considerable  number 
of  bodies  have  been  laid.     We  find  its 
soil  very  much  disturbed,  as  if  it  had 
constantly  been  dug  and  replaced.  We 
find  no  traces  of  any  houses  within  it. 
We  even  find  foreign  earth  brought  to 
it  to  fill  the  tombs. 

All  these  facts,  brought  to  light 
by  Dr.  Schliemann,  seem  to  point  to- 
the  necessity  of  some  different  ex- 
planation than  his.  It  seems  not 
impossible  that,  when  the  Argives 
destroyed  Mycenae — probably  in  the 
days  of  Pheidon,  or  even  earlier — 
they  may  have  thought  it  necessary 
to  maintain  religious  offerings  and 
other  observances  on  a  site  long  since 
hallowed,  and  regarded  as  the  resting- 
place  of  heroes.  If  so,  when  they  partly 
pulled  down  the  wall,  and  dismantled 
the  city,  they  might  have  erected 
this  carefully-built,  but  not  very  sub- 
stantial, fence,  and  left  some  family 
in  charge  of  the  sacred  rites.  Such  a. 
proceeding  would  be  in  accordance 
with  Greek  feeling,  if  all  the  heroes 
of  Mycenae  could  not  be  transferred 
to  Argos.  But  what  is  here  ventured 
is  of  course  mere  conjecture,  and  only 


Scklicmanris  Mycencc. 


225 


intended  for  a  counter  conjecture  to 
what  the  author  proposes,  somewhat 
too  confidently,  in  his  book. 

There  are,  indeed,  such  colossal 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  any  theoiy, 
that  it  would  be  safer  and  more  modest 
to  press  no  suggestions,  but  merely 
state  fully  and  clearly  the  puzzles,  and 
let  them  wait  for  their  solution.  Here 
are  some  of  them: — -(1)  The  manner 
of  burial  of  the  royal  personages  is 
quite  foreign  to  the  Homeric  descrip- 
tions, and  in  some  respects  foreign  to 
anything  we  have  yet  found.  There 
are,  indeed,  cases  of  gold  masks  even 
in  Peru,  according  to  Mr.  Squier.  But 
there  is  no  case  of  such  lavish  use  of 
them  along  with  breast-plates  of  gold, 
except,  perhaps,  in  the  tombs  found  at 
Kertch  and  Alexahdropol,  which  were 
even  more  profuse  in  large  plates  of 
gold.  I  did  not  consider  the  Mycenaean 
masks,  when  I  examined  them,  to  be 
in  any  sense  personal  likenesses,  but 
conventional  faces  prepared  before- 
hand, and  kept  ready  for  the  occasion. 
But  the  laying  of  the  bodies  into  a 
deep  rocky  chamber  below  the  level  of 
the  earth,  the  packing  of  them  into  a 
compressed  bed  in  threes  and  fives, 
and  the  piling  in  of  earth  and  peb- 
bles on  splendid  treasures  —  these 
things  are,  indeed,  passing  strange. 
Both  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann  think  this  crushing  of  the 
bodies  into  a  close  space l  a  sign 
of  hurry  or  ignominy,  but  I  would 
remind  them  that  the  large  rocky 
chambers  were  filled  in  with 
care  by  artificial  walls,  so  that 
this  arrangement  must  have  either 
been  prepared  beforehand  by  the 
builders  of  the  tomb,  or,  if  done  at 

1  I  used  to  think  that  the  bodies  origi- 
nally lay  higher  in  the  tombs,  with  some 
wooden  structure  under  them,  and  that  the 
artificial  narrowing  at  the  bottom  of  the  tombs 
was  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  better  fire 
under  the  bodies,  which  were  lying  at  full 
length  above  it.  With  the  burning  of  the  fire 
the  bodies  would  sink  down,  and  then  the 
weight  of  material  lying  over  them  would 
crush  them  into  the  narrow  bottom.  But 
Mr.  A.  S.  Murray  has  lately  shown  in  the 
Academy,  that  in  the  Hallstadt  tombs  bodies 
seem  deliberately  crushed  into  narrow  beds. 
No.  219. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


the  time  of  the  funeral,  required  ad- 
ditional labour  and  time,  thus  directly 
contradicting  their  hypothesis.  This 
building  in  of  the  walls  of  the  cham- 
bers was  therefore  undoubtedly  part 
of  an  established  system  of  burial, 
and  the  evidence  goes  to  show  that  all 
the  bodies  were  entombed  with  great 
pomp  and  circumstance — in  fact,  in  a 
manner  the  very  reverse  of  the  legend- 
ary burial  of  Agamemnon.  Besides, 
the  Homeric  heroes  were  buried  on  the 
level  earth,  and  mounds  raised  over 
them ;  nor  might  the  shrewdness  of 
Homeric  sentiment  have  tolerated  such 
an  expenditure  of  gold,  had  they  even 
possessed  it. 

Again,  if  the  so-called  treasuries 
at  Mycense  are  tombs  —  a  theory 
which  I  am  disposed  to  accept — we 
have  the  curious  contrast  of  an 
immense  chamber,  and  even  two 
chambers,  being  allotted  to  a  king, 
into  which  access  was  preserved  by 
means  of  its  giant  portal.  If  this  be 
so,  these  great  chambers  are  the  work 
of  a  different  age,  or  of  a  different 
sort  of  men,  from  the  tomb-builders 
in  the  Acropolis.  It  is  a  great  pity 
that  Dr.  Schliemann  did  not  give  us 
accurate  drawings  of  the  bodies  in 
situ,  and  how  they  exactly  lay  in 
the  tombs,2  for  I  do  not  think  he 
offers  any  satisfactory  proof  that  they 
were  burnt  simultaneously,  even  in 
each  tomb.  He  says  (p.  336),  "  Owing 
to  the  enormous  depths  of  these  sepul- 
chres, and  the  close  proximity  of  the 
bodies,  &c.,  separate  interments  in  each 

2  A  writer  in  last  month's  Blackwood,  ap- 
parently under  the  guidance  of  Signor  Stama- 
takes,  as  he  calls  him,  not  only  speaks  of  the 
caldrons  and  weapons  haying  been  laid  in  a 
fixed  order  beside  the  bodies,  but  even  of  "a 
complete  case  [of  gold]  for  the  tender  limbs  of 
an  infant,  which  lay  folded  in  the  embrace  of 
its  mother."  This  latter  is  not  mentioned  in 
the  book  before  us,  I  did  not  see  it  in  the 
bank  at  Athens,  and  it  is  possibly  an  exagger- 
ated account  of  the  small  child's  mask  (p.  199). 
But  the  hint  of  some  order  in  the  laying  of 
the  ornaments  is  very  important,  and  points, 
I  fear,  to  such  enthusiastic  haste  in  the  first 
moving  of  them,  as  to  destroy  valuable  evi- 
dence concerning  the  exact  nature  of  the 
burial. 


226 


Schliemanris  Mycence. 


tomb  must  be  impossible."  But  in 
another  place  lie  tells  us  that  he  found 
a  tombstone  only  3^  feet  above  the 
tomb  ;  there  is  much  probability  of  a 
gradual  accumulation,  and  I  am  con- 
vinced that  when  the  bodies  were  laid 
there,  the  tombs  (as  the  possibility  of 
burning  in  them  proves)  were  close 
to  the  surface.  Moreover,  as  to  the 
proximity  of  the  bodies,  we  are  dis- 
tinctly told  that  there  were  "  separate 
funeral  piles  "  (p.  155). 

The  reader's  attention  should  be 
called  to  the  important  fact  that  the 
size  of  each  tomb  is  in  direct  propor- 
tion to  the  number  of  bodies  interred 
in  it.1  The  smallest  (11  ft.  6  in.  by 
9  ft.  8  in.)  has  one  body.  Three  of 
somewhat  the  same  size  (21i  ft.  by 
11^  ft.)  have  three  bodies  each,  except 
that  the  one  which  contains  women's 
bodies  is  smaller  than  the  others 
(16  ft.  8  in.  by  10  ft.  2  in.).  The 
largest  (24  ft.  by  18|  ft.)  has  its  much 
greater  breadth  occupied  by  five 
bodies,  of  which  two  are  at  right 
angles  with  the  other  three,  and  thus 
lie  exceptionally  north  and  south.2 
The  other  bodies  all  lie  across  the 
length  of  the  tombs.  These  facts 
•prove  to  demonstration  that  either 
the  tombs  were  specially  hewn  out  for 
a  fixed  number  of  bodies — which  makes 
all  hurry  out  of  the  question — or  that 
the  bodies  were  distributed  so  as  to 
fill  previously  constructed  tombs.  In 
the  latter  case  a  gradual  filling  of 
them  is  infinitely  more  probable  than 
a  series  of  deaths  of  great  people  in 
opportune  groups. 

(2.)  As  to  the  antiquity  of  the  tombs, 
no  man  pretending  to  any  insight  can 
doubt  their  being  very  old ;  and 
the  whispers  I  heard  at  the  Society 
of  Antiquaries  last  spring  about  a 

1  This  shows  the  value  of  Dr.  Schliemann's 
remark  (p.  345),  that  "the  graves  were  mere 
deep,  irregular,  quadrangular  holes,  into  which 
the  royal  victims  were  huddled  by  three,  and 
even  by  five  !  "  Not  to  speak  of  the  extra- 
ordinary plenty  of  "royal  victims,"  nothing 
could  be  more  orderly  than  the  laying  of  them 
in  their  tombs. 

a  In  the  Scythian  tombs  slaves  seem  to  have 
been  laid  across  the  feet  of  their  masters. 


possible  Frankish  origin  are  com- 
pletely silenced.  It  is  far  more  likely 
that  their  age  is  still  underrated,  and 
that  they  date  from  a  period  long 
anterior  to  what  is  called  the  Homeric 
epoch.3  This  is  plain  if  we  consider 
that  an  accumulation  of  twenty-five 
feet  of  soil  separates  them  from  the 
surface  of  Mycenae  when  it  was  de- 
stroyed by  the  Argives,  and  that  the 
sculptures  upon  this  latter  surface — 
the  latest  work  of  old  Mycense  4  are 
so  rude  and  archaic  as  to  be  fairly 
called  still  prehistoric.  The  strangest 
fact  about  them  seems  to  be  their  want 
of  advance  upon  the  oldest  work  deep 
beneath.  Even  the  very  walls  built 
close  to  the  circle  of  slabs  are  mostly 
poor  and  wretched,  made  of  little 
stones  and  badly  fitted,  so  that  we  ask 
in  wonder,  Can  the  builders  of  such 
walls  be  the  same  as  the  great  Cyclo- 
pean masons  of  the  circuit  walls,  and 
of  the  treasury  of  Atreus  ? 

But  if  the  remains  on  the  surface 
of  old  Mycenae  are  rude  and  primi- 
tive, the  products  of  the  tombs  are 
in  many  respects  most  beautiful  and 
highly  finished.  There  is  work  in 
these  tombs,  such  as  the  bull's  head 
(p.  215),  the  alabaster  vase  (p.  246, 
which  is  far  more  beautiful  than 
appears  in  the  woodcut),  the  jugs 
and  bracelets  reproduced  all  through 
the  book,  which  would  be  thought 
very  perfect  at  any  epoch.  But  this 
is  not  all.  Among  the  processes  used 
are  frequently  soldering,5  plating, 

3  This  view  is  favoured  by  the  writer  of  the 
interesting  article  in  Blackwood,  to  which  I 
have  already  referred.     He  seems  also  to  have 
abandoned  the    prevalent    theory  about  the 
agora,  to  judge  from  his  silence  on  the  point. 

4  Dr.  Schliemann  was  the  first  to  discover 
that  the  site  was  reocnupied  in  the  Macedo- 
nian times,  but  evidently  for  no  very  long 
period.     The  remains  of  this  later  occupation, 
which  lie  near  the  surface,  are  quite  distinct 
from  the  remains  of  the  older  city. 

5  The  index,  which  is  very  poor,  does  not 
give  this  head  at  all.     The  reader  will  find 
examples  on  pp.  164,  194,  206,  227,  231,  236, 
251,  280.  The  plates  accompanying  the  descrip- 
tions  make  it   certain  that   the  process  was 
used,  'along  with  the  older  and  simpler  rivet- 
ing, which  is  often  applied  as  an  ornament 
on  the  various  objects. 


Schliemann's  Mycence. 


227 


and  even  the  incrusting  of  gold  with 
crystal.  Among  the  substances  are 
fine  woven  linen,  porcelain,  glass,  ala- 
baster, amber,  ivory,  and  even  ostrich- 
eggs  !  How  are  we  to  account  for  the 
perfection  of  the  oldest,  and  the  rude- 
ness of  the  latest  remains  of  Mycense  ? 
Apparently  by  two  hypotheses,  both  of 
which  I  put  forward  with  no  great 
confidence. 

In  the  first  place  the  old  city  was 
destroyed,  not  in  468  B.C.,  as  Diodorus 
and  Pausanias  tell  us,  but  some 
centuries  earlier,  so  that  the  latest 
inhabitants  would  still  be  in  the  most 
archaic  condition  as  to  the  arts  they 
practised,  hardly  in  fact  more  advanced 
than  the  Homeric  age.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  beauty  of  the  execution  and 
variety  of  material  in  the  older  tombs 
are  only  to  be  explained  by  a  very 
ancient  and  lively  transmarine  com- 
merce, especially  with  Egypt.  We 
underrate  the  communications  among 
prehistoric  peoples.  We  forget  that 
Egypt,  long  before  this  period,  was  in 
no  "prehistoric"  condition,  but  the 
mother  of  arts  and  sciences,  and  teem- 
ing with  manufactures.  Though  the 
index  is  almost  silent  about  it,  any 
careful  reader  of  Dr.  Schliemann's 
book  will  notice  how  perpetually  he 
resorts  to  Egyptian  analogies.  I  fancy 
there  is  a  great  deal  more  of  the 
treasure  imported  than  is  usually 
imagined,  and  that  as  soon  as  this 
commerce  decayed,  the  native  artists 
and  handicraftsmen  found  themselves 
very  helpless,  and  rather  fell  back 
than  developed  in  their  skill.  Thus 
there  is  no  improvement  in  the  manu- 
facture of  glass.  With  the  bodies 
are  found  glass  objects  with  tubes  one 
within  the  other,  and  also  coloured. 
These  were,  I  suppose,  imported  from 
Egypt.  In  the  later  strata  there  are 
not  even  found  the  glass  bottles  com- 
mon elsewhere.  In  fact  the  native 
manufacture  of  glass  was  never  prac- 
tised there,  and  so  it  is  with  many 
other  objects.  With  the  exception  of 
a  single  inscription,1  I  cannot  find  one 

1  The  iron  keys,  figured  on  p.   74,   strike 
Dr.  Schliemann  as  late,  and  may  perhaps  have 


object  in  the  whole  book  which  compels 
us  to  refer  it  to  Greeks  of  the  opening  of 
the  fifth  century  B.C.  Nay,  rather  the 
absence  of  what  such  people  ought  to 
have  left  is  a  demonstration  of  my 
first  hypothesis.  The  very  archaic 
nature  of  the  pottery  found  on  the 
highest  level  of  the  old  Mycenae  seems 
to  corroborate  it. 

(3.)  The  artistic  character  of  the 
various  ornaments  is  no  less  a  subject 
for  discussion  and  doubt.  If,  as  I 
hold,  a  large  portion  of  it  was  im- 
ported from  abroad,  possibly  from 
Egypt,  why  is  it  that  we  cannot  trace 
this  foreign  element  more  distinctly 
in  the  type  and  style  of  the  orna- 
ments? An  attentive  observer  can- 
not study  the  treasures  of  the  Pales- 
trina  tomb  now  in  the  Collegio  Romano 
at  Rome,  without  being  struck  by 
the  Phoenician  or  Phcenico-Egyptian 
style  of  the  work,  and  their  foreign 
origin  seems  at  once  stamped  upon 
these  remains.  But  we  are  here  in  a 
much  later  epoch,  and  a  Phoenician  in- 
scription on  one  of  the  vessels  gives  us 
a  kind  of  evidence  wholly  missing  in 
the  vastly  more  ancient  treasures  of 
Mycenae.  Nevertheless  there  are  not 
wanting  a  few  strange  parallels.  Dr. 
Schliemann  mentions  (p.  332)  too 
briefly  a  small  wooden  box,  upon 
which,  he  says,  were  carved  in  relief 
a  lion  and  a  dog.  This  box  appeared 
to  me,  on  careful  examination,  to  have 
been  bound  round  the  sides  with  thin 
plates  of  silver  cut  square,  and  the 
little  animals,  of  which  two  dogs  were 
very  plain,  seemed  to  me  not  carved 
in  relief  upon  it,  but  stuck  on  it.  In  the 
Palestrina  treasure  there  is  a  closely 
similar  box,  with  wooden  animals 
riveted  on,  I  think,  to  the  sides  in 
the  same  way.  But  there  are  no  rivets 
visible  on  the  Mycenae  box.  I  take  both 

strayed  down  to  the  place  in  which  he  found 
them,  in  Macedonian  days.  He  unfortu- 
nately does  not  mention  the  depth  at  which 
they  were  found ;  the  very  case  in  which 
such  detail  would  have  been  most  im- 
portant. The  inscription  is  exactly  such  as 
might  be  derived  from  the  cult  of  the  old 
heroes  of  the  city  after  it  had  been  otherwise 
abandoned. 

Q  2 


228 


Schliemann's  Mycencc. 


objects  to  have  been  the  work  of  the 
same  school  of  art. 

Again,  Mr.  Newton  has  pointed  out 
that  the  vases  are  to  be  matched  in 
style  and  execution  with  those  of  an 
ancient  tomb  at  lalysos ;  and  now  we 
hear  that  the  ornaments  at  Spata  are 
very  similar.  An  ornament  in  the 
third  tomb,  marked  p,  46,  represent- 
ing a  female  face  surrounded  with 
leaves,  appeared  to  me  thoroughly 
Egyptian,  and  I  am  very  sorry  the 
directors  of  the  Bank  would  not  allow 
me  to  note  down  its  peculiarities  at 
the  time.1  But  after  making  all  al- 
lowances, after  discounting  the  ala- 
baster, tha  ivory,  the  ostrich  egg,  the 
blue  glass,  and  even  such  perfect  work 
as  the  great  bull's  head  in  gold  and 
silver,  there  still  remains  a  vast 
quantity  of  cups,  jugs,  buttons,  and 
caldrons,  which  seem  to  have  a  peculiar 
stamp,  and  which,  from  the  likeness 
they  bear  to  early  Greek  work,  strike 
us  as  being  plainly  its  direct  pro- 
genitor. Thus  the  splendid  vase, 
No.  213,  which  has  a  row  of  armed 
warriors  upon  it,  is  essentially  an  old 
Hellenic  vase  in  character.  Even  the 
extraordinary  signet-rings  and  en- 
graved gems  which  would  certainly 
seem  imported,  have  a  character  quite 
peculiar,  and  which,  I  fancy,  is  not 
easily  to  be  matched  in  other  ancient 
treasure.  Yet  if  I  am  right  about  the 
very  great  antiquity  of  the  tombs,  and 
if  the  legends  which  bring  the  house  of 
Pelops  from  Asia  are  to  be  believed, 
there  may  have  been  models  for  all  this 
work  in  the  old  civilizations  of  Asia 
Minor  which  are  now  lost. 

(4.)  Perhaps  the  most  salient  feature 
in  all  the  treasure,  regarded  as  a  whole, 
is  the  rich  and  varied  use  of  spiral 
ornamentation.  Any  one  acquainted 
with  the  old  Irish  gold  work,  or  illu- 
minated manuscripts,  is  astonished  to 
find  that  what  was  regarded  a  pecu- 

1  The  strictness  with  which  the  Greek 
officials,  who  were  most  courteous,  forbade  the 
taking  of  notes  or  sketches  when  visiting  and 
handling  the  treasure,  proved  a  serious  obstacle 
to  any  accurate  or  minute  criticism  of  the 
multitude  of  objects  exhibited  together. 


liarity  of  Celtic  ornamentation  reap- 
pears as  the  strongest  characteristic 
of  this  pre-historic  Greek  work.  The 
likenesses  between  the  Mycenaean  and 
Irish  spirals  are  not  actual  sameness 
of  pattern,  for  I  compared  them  by 
means  of  the  catalogue  of  the  Irish 
Academy,  which  I  carried  with  me. 
There  seemed  only  one  ring  in  both 
collections  made  on  the  same  pattern, 
and  if  there  are  other  exact  coin- 
cidences they  are  but  few.  Never- 
theless, the  general  character  of  the 
ornaments,  the  beating  out  of  fine 
gold  plates  for  diadems,  and  then  de- 
corating them  with  repousse  patterns, 
the  use  of  riveting  for  ornament,  the 
scarcity  of  soldering,  the  general  aim 
of  making  the  greatest  display  with  a 
small  quantity  of  gold — all  these  things 
afford  striking  analogies.  If  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann  had  examined  early  Irish  orna- 
mentation he  need  not  have  been 
astonished  (p.  85)  at  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  accuracy  and  symmetry  of 
the  patterns,  and  the  rudeness  of  the 
figures  on  the  Mycenaean  tombstones. 
This  very  contrast  is,  in  a  far  higher 
degree,  the  characteristic  of  the  famous 
Book  of  Kelts,  in  the  library  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin. 

But  it  does  not  seem  that  any  in- 
ference can  be  drawn  from  all  this, 
except  that  primitive  people — perhaps 
primitive  Aryan  people — will  develop 
the  same  sort  of  ornament  under 
similar  conditions.  It  would,  how- 
ever, be  surprising  if  any  special  kind 
of  ornamenting  were  really  proved 
Aryan.  I  may  add  that,  though  Dr. 
Schliemann  perpetually  talks  of  the 
swastika — a  cross  with  bent  ends — 
being  the  pattern  introduced  in  the 
Mycenaean  ornaments,  I  cannot  find  a 
single  honest  specimen  of  it  in  any  of 
the  engravings  through  the  book. 

(5.)  But  what  was  the  relation  of 
the  great  builders  of  the  cone-shaped 
chambers  to  the  builders  of  the 
tombs  in  the  Acropolis?  This  seems 
to  me  really  the  greatest  of  all 
the  puzzles  presented  by  Mycenae.  In 
the  so-called  treasuries  we  have  great 
solid  roomy  chambers,  built  with 


Schliemann' s  Mycence. 


229 


splendid  and  colossal  masonry,  appa- 
rently as  resting-places  for  the  dead. 
Within  the  Acropolis,  and  within  a 
circuit  of  similar  great  masonry,  though 
in  some  places  ruder,  we  have  the  dead, 
with  all  their  jewels,  buried  in  small 
rock  coffins,  with  layers  of  pebbles  and 
earth  covering  them.  There  seems  no 
trace  whatever  of  a  passage  into  the 
tombs  through  the  Cyclopean  wall  on 
their  west  side,  though  the  rapid  fall  of 
the  hill  would  have  made  it  not  difficult. 
But  Dr.  Schliemann  has  so  hidden  the 
great  Cyclopean  wall  here  by  throwing 
over  his  rubbish,  that  all  inquiry  into 
such  a  solution  is  at  present  impossible. 

Assuming  all  his  descriptions  to  be 
accurate,  and  these  tombs  to  be  really 
mere  holes  in  the  ground,  how  can  the 
same  people  have  built  the  House  of 
Atreus  ?  Let  me  add,  what  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann has  kept  out  of  sight  all  through 
his  book,  that  the  walls  he  unearthed 
round  the  stone  circle  are  mostly 
miserably  built,  with  ill-fitting  small 
stones — so  bad  as  to  look  like  Turkish 
walls,  and  that  the  fyuy/cor,  or  in- 
closure  of  slabs,  is  itself  flimsy  and 
poor  enough — in  fact,  as  Mr.  Simpson 
suggests,  a  mere  imitation  in  stone  of 
a  wooden  fence.  Though  I  have  heard 
Mr.  Newton  make  light  of  this  con- 
trast, and  say  that  the  same  people 
might  build  massive  walls  and  mere 
temporary  partitions,  I  cannot  but 
think  so  great  a  difference  in  execu- 
tion, especially  in  so  sacred  a  place,  is 
an  important  fact,  and  I  know  that 
Ernst  Curtius  thought  so  when  we 
talked  over  the  matter  at  Athens. 

If,  then,  these  contrasts  indeed 
separate  the  Mycenaean  tombs  into  two 
distinct  classes,  what  is  their  relation  1 
Mr.  Newton  is  said  by  Dr.  Schliemann 
to  think  the  treasuries  the  older. 
With  the  greatest  diffidence  I  venture 
to  suggest  the  reverse  theory,  and  that 
the  tombs  in  the  Acropolis,  with  all 
their  gold,  their  imported  manufac- 
tures, and  their  barbaric  splendour, 
are  the  work  of  an  older  and  richer 
race,  which  had  developed  personal  or- 
nament, but  which  had  not  learned  to 
build  with  the  skill  and  power  which 


belongs  to  the  Cyclopean  builders.  If, 
as  Mr.  Simpson  holds,  this  sort  of 
massive  building,  which  extends  only 
over  the  N.W.  Mediterranean,  was 
the  result  of  special  teaching  by  a 
special  race  of  builders,  we  can 
imagine  them  coming  to  Mycenae  after 
its  kings  had  become  powerful  by 
wealth  and  known  by  commerce.  We 
can  imagine  them  teaching  a  newer 
and  more  splendid  way  of  entombing 
the  dead,  in  which  the  rich  jewels  and 
offerings  should  not  be  hidden  and 
crushed,  but  safely  preserved  in  a 
spacious  tomb.  We  can  imagine  them 
rebuilding  the  Acropolis  wall  and 
gates,  and  making  Mycense  indeed  a 
"well-built  city."  But  if  the  Acro- 
polis had  already  been  such  a  fortress 
as  it  then  became,  it  is  inexplicable 
how  such  a  building  as  the  house  of 
Atreus,  whether  it  be  a  treasury  or 
a  tomb,  should  have  been  built  out- 
side the  fortification.  But  I  find 
myself  supporting  conclusions  instead 
of  abiding  by  my  intention  of  merely 
stating  problems. 

The  practical  issue  of  all  the  re- 
marks I  have  hazarded  upon  the 
splendid  book  before  us  is  this  :  We 
must  lay  aside  all  the  theories  con- 
tained in  it,  we  must  submit  all  the 
Greek  texts  quoted  at  random  to  a 
critical  revision,  and  see  how  many  of 
them  bear  on  the  question.  We  must 
further  insist  upon  the  accurate  estab- 
lishing of  each  fact  by  itself,  and  not 
in  relation  to  some  enthusiastic  hypo- 
thesis. When  all  the  literary  mate- 
rials are  thus  sifted,  men  of  long  expe- 
rience in  archaeology  may  proceed,  by 
the  light  of  the  admirable  illustrations 
in  the  book,  to  find  out,  through  com- 
parison and  analogy,  the  parentage 
and  the  probable  age  of  this  early 
and  barbaric,  but  yet  elaborate  and 
advanced,  handiwork. 

Whatever  the  result  may  be,  future 
generations  can  never  forget  the  labours 
and  the  successes  of  Dr.  Schliemann. 
There  are  many  merchants  in  England 
with  far  larger  fortunes  than  his,  and 
yet  which  of  them  is  inspired  with  the 
idea  of  applying  his  wealth  to  so  noble 


230 


Schliemanris  Mycenae. 


and  instructive  a  field  of  discovery  1 
How  few  men  there  are,  too,  who 
would  work  away,  in  spite  of  detrac- 
tion and  enmity,  and  labour  to  obtain 
knowledge,  or,  it  may  be,  treasure, 
which  ceases  to  be  his  own  as  soon  as 
he  has  found  it,  and  passes  by  law 
into  the  museums  of  the  Greek  nation  ? 
And  now  there  will  be  added  to  his 
trials  the  sceptical  doubts  and  the 
refutations  of  scholars,  who  sit  at 
home  and  view,  through  the  micro- 
scope of  criticism,  his  bold  and  poeti- 
cal theories !  It  is  not,  therefore, 
without  some  compunctions  that  I 
feel  the  tone  of  the  foregoing  article 
may  be  called  unsympathetic,  and 
perhaps  wanting  in  respect  for  so 
unique  and  brilliant  an  excavator. 
Most  of  the  objections,  however,  will 
be  found  to  lie,  not  against  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann's  genius  and  industry,  but  against 
the  theories  which  his  wonderful  and 
sudden  discoveries  induced  him  to 
adopt.  In  the  interests  of  truth  he 
will  pardon  me  for  submitting  these 
theories  to  an  adverse  criticism ; 
perhaps  my  objections  may  even  lead 
him  to  establish  them  on  better 
evidence. 

It  will  appear  from  like  considera- 


tions why  I  have  not  devoted  to  Mr. 
Gladstone's  brilliant  preface  an  ade- 
quate share  of  this  review.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone reasons  upon  Dr.  Schliemann's 
premises,  and,  assuming  that  the  tomb 
is  that  of  the  Homeric  Agamemnon, 
he  proceeds  to  show  that  its  circum- 
stances, and  the  nature  of  its  orna- 
mentation, are  not  contradictory  to 
the  inferences  which  may  be  drawn 
from  the  text  of  Homer.  Though 
fully  appreciating  the  ingenuity  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  reasoning,  and  the 
eloquence  of  his  exposition,  I  am  as 
yet  totally  unable  to  see  any  proba- 
bility in  the  identifying  of  any  of  the 
bodies  with  that  of  a  Homeric  Aga- 
memnon; and  until  this  difficulty  be 
overcome,  it  seems  premature  to  enter 
into  the  sifting  of  the  details  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  has  gathered  together 
with  his  usual  learning,  and  proposed, 
with  great  diffidence  and  modesty,  to 
support  a  merely  conjectural  theory. 
Nevertheless,  the  preface  adds  a  most 
agreeable  and  valuable  chapter,  and 
his  name  will  lend  additional  dignity 
and  importance  to  a  book  which  must 
be  regarded  as  marking  an  epoch  in 
the  study  of  antiquity. 

J.  P.  MAHAFFY. 


231 


DULCISSIMA 1     DILECTISSIMA ! 

A  PASSAGE  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  AN  ANTIQUARY. 


"  COME,  my  dears,"  said  I,  looking  in 
upon  the  room  where  my  children  were 
engaged  in  their  various  avocations ; 
"  come  and  see  what  a  very  interesting 
acquisition  I  have  got  to  my  collection 
of  antiquities.  It  is  the  remains  of  a 
little  Roman  girl  just  discovered  close 
to  the  place  where  the  foundations  of 
the  Roman  villa  were  turned  up  last 
summer ;  and  iti  seems  very  probable 
that  this  little  girl  was  a  daughter  of 
the  house.  Here  is  the  glass  jar — a 
more  elegant  and  beautiful  one  than  I 
have  ever  before  seen  used  for  the 
purpose — which  contains  her  ashes  ; 
here  is  the  lamp  to  light  her  on  her 
last  dark  journey  ;  here  are  the  little 
ornaments  she  used  to  wear— mark 
especially  this  exquisitely  enamelled 
fibula:  here  are  her  little  shoes  all 
quaintly  studded  with  brass  nails." 

"O.what  funny  shoes!"  exclaimed 
one  ;  "  there  must  have  been  very  bad 
roads  in  those  days,  when  even  little 
girls  wore  shoes  studded  with  nails 
like  that." 

"On  the  contrary,"  said  I,  "the 
Romans  were  the  first  road-makers  in 
the  world ;  but  never  mind  that  now, 
here  is  the  stone  tablet  which  records 
her  history,  and  a  very  interesting 
one  it  is." 

D    M 

LVC.    METKLLAE 

FILIOL.    DVLCISS.    DILECTISS. 

VIX.   ANN.    VI. 

"  The  letters  D  M  at  the  top  stand 
for  Diis  Manibus,  something  like," 
said  I,  with  a  free  translation  suited 
to  family  comprehension,  "  our  '  Sacred 
to  the  Memory  of.'  The  inscription 
then  reads  thus :  '  Sacred  to  the 
memory  of  Lucia  Metella,  a  little 
daughter  most  sweet,  most  tenderly 
beloved.  She  lived  six  years.'  Observe 
that  the  Romans  always,  as  Dr.  Bruce 


remarks,  avoided  the  mention  of 
death ;  they  tell  us  how  long  a  person 
lived,  never  when  he  died.  But  is  it 
not  interesting,"  I  went  on,  "to  find 
more  than  a  thousand  years  ago,  and 
among  a  stern  and  warlike  people  like 
the  Romans,  these  little  touches  of 
family  tenderness  and  love  ?  " 

"  0  how  very  interesting  !  What  a 
charming  acquisition !  How  excited 
Dr.  Harris  (Dr.  Harris  was  the  anti- 
quary of  the  district  next  in  repute  to 
myself)  will  be  when  he  sees  it !  "  were 
the  various  parting  remarks  made  by 
my  auditors,  as  they  scampered  back 
to  their  ordinary  employments. 

All  but  one.  My  Lily,  my  youngest, 
the  apple  of  my  eye,  still  stood,  her 
fair  head  resting  on  her  slender  arms, 
gazing  in  silence,  her  lips  slightly 
parted,  a  tear  trembling  in  each  soft 
blue  eye,  upon  the  relics  of  the  little 
Roman  girl.  At  last  she  spoke — 

"Papa,"  she  said,  "this  little  girl 
was  just  the  same  age  that  I  am." 

"Yes,  my  darling,"  I  said,  "that is 
so ;  and  moreover,"  I  added,  as  a  play- 
ful diversion  to  the  child's  gloom, 
"both  your  names  begin  with  L— 
another  coincidence." 

But  the  thought  that  was  in  the 
child's  heart  was  too  deep  for  playful- 
ness. After  a  pause  she  spoke  again 
in  pleading  tones — 

"Dear  papa,"  she  said,  "it  seems 
so  pitiful  for  this  poor  little  girl  to  lie 
here  among  all  these  queer  things." 

"My  darling,"  said  I,  "these  queer 
things,  as  you  call  them,  are  Roman 
things,  such  as  this  little  girl  was 
accustomed  to  see  around  her  every 
day  during  her  lifetime.  Indeed, 
many  of  them  came  from  the  villa  of 
which  it  seems  very  probable  that  she 
was  the  daughter." 

" But  dear  papa,"    she   said,    "you 


232 


Dulcissima  !    DUectissima ! 


would  not  like  me,  when  I  am  gone, 
to  be  laid  out  like  a  curiosity,  and  have 
strangers  come  and  examine  the  little 
things  I  used  to  be  fond  of,  and  remark 
what  funny  shoes  I  had." 

"Well — but,  my  dear  child,"  said  I, 
"  what  would  you  do  with  her  ?  " 

"I  would  bury  her,"  she  said,  with 
childish  seriousness,  "in  the  garden, 
beneath  the  weeping  ash,  where  good 
old  Cato  and  my  dear  little  dicky  and 
Willy's  white  rabbit  are  buried.  And 
— and,"  she  added,  in  a  lower  voice, 
"  I  would  add  upon  the  stone,  if  there 
is  room,  '  Suffer  little  children  to  come 
unto  me.' " 

"My  darling,"  I  said,  "I  think  all 
that  would  be  a  little  incongruous  ; 
but  I'll  tell  you  what  we  might  do," 
I  went  on,  as  a  device  occurred  to  me, 
which  I  thought  might  soothe  the  feel- 
ings of  the  child,  "  you  shall  gather 
from  time  to  time  fresh  flowers  to  lay 
upon  her  as  she  lies,  and  then,  if  her 
poor  little  spirit  can  look  down  upon 
this  world,  she  will  see  that,  though  a 
thousand  years  have  passed,  one  dear 
little  English  girl  still  watches  over 
her  with  tenderness  and  love." 

"  0  yes,"   she  said,  brightening  at 
the  idea,  "  I  think  she  would  like  that. 
I  will  gather  fresh  snowdrops  for  her 
now,   and   then  when   summer  comes 
again  I  will  change  them  for  violets." 
"  When  summer    comes  again  /  "     A 
sudden  pang  of  foreboding  shot  through 
my  heart  as  the  dear  child  spoke.    She 
too  was  most  sweet — she  too  was  most 
tenderly  beloved.      But  we  were  not 
without  our  fears  on  her  account,  and 
anxious  whispers  had  passed  between 
my   wife  and  myself   respecting  her. 
But  I  cast  aside  the  fears,  as  presently 
she  returned,  eager  in  her  little  work 
of  love,  with  the  snowdrops  she  had 
gathered,    and,     sitting  down  by   my 
side  as  I  was  engaged  in  making  out 
the  maker's  name  upon  the  vase,  she 
wove  them  with   deft  fingers    into  a 
pretty  wreath,  which  done,  she  rever- 
ently laid  it  in  its  place,  and  hand-in- 
hand  we  left  the  room  together. 

The  next  morning  after  breakfast  I 
had  a  considerable  amount  of  congenial 


work  to  do.  In  the  first  place  there 
was  a  full  and  detailed  account  of 
these  interesting  discoveries  for  the 
County  Society  of  which  I  was  Presi- 
dent, then  a  more  condensed  report  for 
the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  of  which  I 
was  a  Fellow,  various  questions  of  detail 
.had  to  be  examined  and  elucidated, 
and  in  the  course  of  the  morning  an 
artist  was  to  come  up  to  take  photo- 
graphs of  all  these  rare  and  beautiful 
objects.  While  I  was  thus  engaged 
my  wife  entered  the  room  with  a 
troubled  countenance. 

"I  am  very  uneasy,"  she  said, 
"  about  dear  Lily ;  she  talks  in  such  a 
strange  way  about  a  little  girl  in  white 
that  appeared  to  her  last  night.  Of 
course  it's  all  imagination,  but  I  am 
afraid  it  looks  as  if  there  was  some- 
thing not  quite  right  with  her." 

"We  must  have  it  looked  to  imme- 
diately," I  replied,  gravely;  "perhaps 
we  ought  to  have  had  some  better 
advice  before.  I  will  send  off  at  once 

to  London  for  Dr.  S ,  and  as  the 

distance  is  not  great,  we  may  have 
him  with  us  this  evening.  In  the 
meantime,  will  you  send  Lily  to  me, 
and  let  me  hear  what  she  has  to  say  ?  " 
"  Now,  my  darling,"  I  said,  as  Lily 
entered  the  room,  "  come  and  tell  papa 
all  about  it." 

She  climbed  upon  my  knee,  threw 
her  arms  about  my  neck,  and  hiding 
her  face  against  my  breast,  as  is  some- 
times the  wont  of  children  when  they 
have  something  grave  to  relate,  she 
went  on — 

"  I  fell  asleep,  you  know,  papa, 
dear,  with  my  thoughts  full  of  this 
poor  little  girl.  I  awoke  in  the  night 
with  a  trouble,  I  could  scarcely  tell 
what,  upon  my  mind.  When  I  looked 
up,  I  saw  standing  by  my  bedside  a 
little  girl  dressed  all  in  white,  and 
pale— oh !  so  pale.  She  held  in  her 
hand  a  wreath  of  snowdrops  like  the 
one  that  I  had  made,  and  looking  at- 
me  with  a  mournful  expression,  but 
still  very  very  kindly,  she  stretched 
forth  her  hand  as  if  to  hand  me  back 
the  wreath.  When  I  looked  again, 
she  had  disappeared." 


Dulcissima  !    Dilectissima ! 


233 


I  reasoned  for  some  time  with  the 
child,  trying  to  persuade  her  that 
what  she  fancied  she  had  seen  was 
only  the  result  of  her  own  excited 
imagination;  but  I  could  clearly  see 
that  though  her  deference  to  me  pre- 
vented her  from  disputing  anything  I 
said,  her  belief  in  the  reality  of  what 
she  had  seen  remained  unshaken.  I 
saw  too  that  the  feeling  on  her  mind 
was  something  more  than  mere  senti- 
ment. I  saw  how  deeply  she  felt 
pained  that  the  loved  daughter  of  a 
thousand  years  ago  should  be  treated 
so  differently  to  our  loved  ones  of 
to-day,  and  I  resolved  that,  great  as 
the  sacrifice  was,  it  should  not  stand 
in  the  way  of  the  happiness,  and  per- 
haps the  health,  of  my  beloved  child. 

So  at  last  I  said  to  her,  "  Well  now, 
my  darling,  just  tell  me  what  you 
think  should  be  done,  and  what  this 
little  girl  would  like  if  she  could  tell 
us." 

She  burst  into  tears,  flung  her  arms 
round  my  neck,  and  sobbed  out — 

"  O  !  dear  papa,  I  know  you  are  so 
fond  of  it." 

"My  darling,"  I  said,  "all  the 
antiquities  in  the  world  are  as  nothing 
— nothing  compared  to  my  dear  little 
girl's  peace  of  mind." 

"0,  dear  papa,"  she  said,  through 
her  tears,  "  how  can  I  ever,  ever  love 
you  enough  !  " 

"My  darling,"  said  I,  "I  know  you 
love  me  as  I  love  you.  But  now, 
what  is  it  you  think  this  little  girl 
would  like?" 

"  I  think  that  what  she  wants  is  to 
be  laid  in  her  grave  in  peace." 

"And  so  it  shall  be,"  I  replied; 
"  and  it  shall  be  done  at  once." 

So  we  dug  a  grave  in  the  corner 
of  the  garden  where  all  the  departed 
pets  of  the  family  were  laid,  and 
had  it  carefully  lined  with  flat  stones 
like  a  miniature  vault,  and  therein  we 
two — the  puzzled  gardener  looking  on 
— reverently  laid  the  young  Roman 
girl,  with  all  her  little  treasures 
disposed  around  her,  filled  in  the 
earth,  and  set  up  the  stone  tablet  at 
the  head. 

We  had  scarcely  finished  our  task 


when  a  well-known  form  was  seen 
stalking  up  the  avenue,  and  Lily, 
touching  my  hand  in  a  little  tremor, 
whispered — 

"  O  papa  !  Doctor  Harris  !  " 

Dr.  Harris  was  the  vice-president 
of  the  society  of  which  I  was  presi- 
dent, an  ardent  antiquary,  and  in  the 
main  a  very  good  fellow.  But  he 
was  one  of  those  men  whose  exces- 
sive vitality  sometimes  gives  an  ap- 
pearance of  roughness  to  their  manner. 
I  knew  full  well  that  the  sensitive 
nature  of  my  little  girl  made  her 
rather  shrink  from  his  somewhat 
boisterous  advances ;  and  I  had  a 
pretty  shrewd  guess  that  poor  Dr. 
Harris,  glaring  over  the  remains  with 
his  portentous  spectacles,  was  in  the 
mind's  eye  of  the  child  when  she 
made  her  appeal  on  Lucia's  behalf. 
He  was,  moreover,  a  man  utterly 
destitute  of  sentiment,  and  in  fact 
the  last  person  we  should  have  liked 
to  come  upon  us  in  our  present  em- 
ployment. I  advanced  to  meet  him, 
intending  to  explain  it  to  him 
privately.  But  as  he  approached,  he 
hallooed  out  with  all  the  force  of  his 
lungs — 

"Lucky  dog!  I've  heard  of  your 
discovery.  Everything  comes  to  you. 
Why  does  not  some  little  Roman  girl 
fling  herself  into  my  arms  ?  " 

And  as  he  spoke  he  stretched  out 
his  arms,  either  in  indication  of  his 
readiness  to  receive  such  a  visitor,  or 
as  a  salutation  to  my  little  girl,  who 
had  sheltered  herself  behind  me.  I 
took  him  aside  to  explain  to  him  the 
state  of  the  case. 

"The  fact  is,"  said  I,  "that  my 
dear  little  girl,  whose  health  you  know 
is  rather  delicate,  took  it  so  much  to 
heart,  that  for  her  sake  I  have  buried 
all  the  relics  again." 

"I  see,"  he  said,  "and  when  the 
fit's  over  you'll  dig  them  up  again." 

"Not  so,"  said  I,  for  some  of 
my  little  girl's  earnestness  had  im- 
parted itself  to  me ;  "  she  shall  lie 
in  her  grave  for  me  till  God  comes 
to  judge  the  world." 

"Well,  but,  I  say,"  he  went  on, 
"  suppose  I  come  up  some  morning 


234 


Dulcissima  !    Dilcctissima  ! 


with  a  brand  new  doll,  promise  me 
you  won't  stand  in  the  way  of  busi- 
ness." 

"My  dear  friend,"  said  I,  "when 
you  have  a  little  girl  like  my  Lily — 
I  recommend  you  to  take  the  pre- 
liminary steps "  (the  Doctor  was  a 
bachelor) — "you  will  get  to  know 
something  of  what  such  little  minds 
are  capable." 

"Ah!"  he  said;  "aft/  Now  let 
me  in  my  turn  give  you  a  little  bit 
of  advice.  In  case  a  couple  of  doctors 
come  up  some  morning  to  interview 
you,  if  they  should  try  to  lead  the 
conversation  to  this  subject,  be  on  your 
guard  lest  it  should  turn  out  to  be  a 
case  of  de  lunatico  inquirendo." 

So  saying,  all  in  perfect  good 
humour,  "it  was,"  as  people  said, 
"  his  way,"  he  took  his  departure, 
leaving  me  for  once  not  sorry  to  get 
rid  of  him. 

By  and  by  the  photographer  came 
up,  and  instead  of  the  relics  he  was 
sent  for  to  depict,  we  found  him  some 
work  to  do  in  the  shape  of  sundry  little 
groups  of  merry  and  happy  children. 

And  towards  evening  the  great  phy- 
sician from  London  made  his  appear- 
ance. He  was  one  of  those  few  men 
who,  in  addition  to  the  skill  born  of 
natural  sagacity  and  vast  experience, 
are  indued  with  something  of  that 
subtle  intuitiveness  which  is  a  gift  not 
to  be  acquired.  And  moreover,  he 
had  that  winning  charm  of  manner 
which  makes  even  the  most  sensitive 
of  patients  yield  up  their  inmost 
secrets.  He  listened  with  much  at- 
tention and  interest  to  the  story  we 
had  to  tell  him,  and  had  a  long  inter- 
view with  Lily  by  herself  before  he 
came  to  us  in  the  study,  where  we 
were  anxiously  waiting  for  his  opinion. 

"  Well !  "  he  said,  "  there  is  no 
great  harm  done  as  yet,  but  your 
little  girl  will  require  great  care — 
very  great  care."  And  he  then  went 
into  various  details,  which  it  is  not 
necessary  here  to  recapitulate.  Before 
taking  his  departure,  however,  he 
said — 

"Just  one  word  more.  Let  me  tell 
you,  my  friend,  you  never  did  a  wiser 


thing  than  when  you  yielded  to  your 
little  girl's — whim  I  don't  like  to  call 
it,  for  it  seems  more  of  a  sacred  feeling 
— about  the  Roman  girl.  I  know  well 
what  a  sacrifice  it  must  have  been,  but 
I  frankly  own  to  you  that  I  would 
not  have  liked  to  be  responsible  for 
the  case  of  this  child — so  sensitive 
as  she  seems  to  be  to  certain  deep 
impressions — with  such  a  burthen  on 
her  pure,  unselfish  little  mind." 

"I  cannot  tell  you,  doctor,"  said  I, 
"  how  thankful  I  am  to  you  for  that 
opinion,  for  now,  thus  fortified,  I  can 
set  down  my  foot  on  all  cavillers  and 
scoffers.  But  does  there  not  seem  to 
be  something  not  easy  to  understand 
in  all  this  ? "  I  went  on.  "  My  little 
girl  retired  to  rest  so  perfectly  satis- 
fied with  what  I  proposed,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  conceive  how  anything 
could  have  arisen  out  of  her  own 
inner  consciousness  to  produce  such  a 
remarkable  impression  upon  her 
mind." 

"  I  think  it  may  be  accounted  for 
on  natural  principles,"  he  replied. 
"  Your  little  girl's  own  idea  was  a 
genuine  one.  She  felt  pained  that  the 
remains  of  a  beloved  daughter  should 
be  exposed  to  the  vulgar  gaze  like, 
to  use  her  own  words,  '  a  curiosity.' 
Your  alternative  proposal,  intended 
for  the  purpose  of  soothing  her  mind 
and  at  the  same  time  keeping  your 
treasures,  was,  however  well-inten- 
tioned, something  of  a  sham.  Her 
deference  to  you,  and  perhaps  a  spe- 
cious show  of  sentiment  in  the  pro- 
posal, reconciled  her  to  it  in  the  first 
instance.  But  in  the  stillness  of  the 
night  her  little  mind,  brooding  over 
it,  waking  or  sleeping,  came  at  last  to 
see  it  in  its  true  light,  and  produced 
on  her,  unduly  excited  as  she  probably 
was,  this  remarkable  impression.  This 
seems  to  me  a  fair  way  of  accounting 
for  it,  but  nevertheless  I  would  not 
say  that  there  is  no  other.  Much  as 
I  despise  the  opinions  of  those  who 
would  have  us  believe  that  the  spirits 
of  the  loved  departed  come  back  to 
twitch  our  hair  and  to  play  tricks 
upon  tables,  I  dare  not  say  that  be- 
tween two  loving  and  kindred  spirits 


Dulcissima  !    Dilectissima  ! 


235 


circumstances  may  not  arise  to  create 
a  mysterious  bond  of  sympathy  for 
which  it  is  beyond  our  philosophy  to 
account." 

"  Something  of  that  sort,"  said  I, 
"  seems  to  have  been  the  belief  of  the 
Romans,  who  held  that  the  manes,  or 
spirits  of  the  departed,  attached  them- 
selves as  guardian  angels  to  kindred 
spirits  yet  on  earth." 

"Well,  however  it  be,"  said  he, 
rising  to  take  his  leave,  "  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  best  cure  for  all  such 
mental  disturbances  is  a  perfect  state 
of  bodily  health.  And  I  trust  that 
with  the  return  of  warm  summer 
weather,  your  dear  little  girl  may 
regain  all  her  wonted  health  and 
spirits." 

"  Amen  !  "  said  I.    "  Doctor,  amen  !  " 

*  #  *  *  # 

Summer  had  come  again.  The 
golden  sunlight  shed  a  glory  on  our 
stately  elms,  and  cast  their  flickering 
shadows  on  the  grass ;  the  birds — we 
all  loved  and  cherished  them — sang 
their  blithe  carols  on  every  side ;  all 
nature  around  seemed  wakened  to  new 
life  and  loveliness.  Within,  all  was 
darkness  and  desolation ;  for  the  edict 
had  gone  forth  that  Lily  was  to  die, 
and  not  to  live. 

I  had  prayed,  as  I  had  never  prayed 
before,  that  God  would  spare  me  this 
one  ewe  lamb,  but  it  was  not  to  be. 
In  spite  of  all  that  skill  and  tender- 
ness could  do,  the  disease  had  of  late 
so  rapidly  gained  ground,  that  now 
even  love  could  no  longer  hope.  She 
had  seen,  she  told  us,  the  little  Roman 
girl  once  more,  bright  and  glorious  as 
an  angel,  with  outstretched  arms  and 
loving  smiles,  waiting  to  welcome  her; 
and  too  well  we  knew  what  that  sign 
meant. 

I  stole  to  her  bedside  for  the  few 
minutes  during  which,  in  her  now 
weak  state,  I  was  allowed  to  be  with 
her.  I  found  her  propped  up  with 
pillows  so  that  she  could  get  a  view  of 
the  loved  garden  corner  where,  among 
the  childish  graves,  the  sunlight  flecked 
with  gold  the  grey  memorial-stone  of 


Lucia.  Her  fair  hair,  soft  and  glossy 
as  floss-silk,  hung  round  her  in 
tangled  waves,  that  told  of  the  rest- 
lessness of  weariness  and  pain.  Her 
sweet  face  was  drawn  in  by  hard, 
cruel  lines,  till  the  blue  eyes  stood 
out  unnaturally  large  and  bright ;  her 
poor  little  wasted  arms  trembled  as 
she  stretched  them  out  to  me.  The 
wan  little  face  lighted  up  with  smiles 
as  I  approached,  and,  taking  her  hand 
in  mine,  bent  over  her  to  listen  to  her 
accents,  now  scarcely  above  a  whisper. 

"  Oh  !  dear  papa  !  "  she  said,  "  how 
I  have  longed  for  your  coming.  It  is 
of  you  I  have  been  thinking  all  this 
morning.  How  good  you  have  been 
to  me  always — always — and  especially 
that  one  time  when  you  gave  me  up 
Lucia.  She  will  be  the  first  to  meet 
me,  for  she  will  run  before  the  rest, 
and  I  will  take  her  by  the  hand,  and 
lead  her  up  to  dear  Aunt  Mary  and 
grandmamma ;  and  I  will  take  her 
aside  and  tell  her  all,  and  she  shall 
love  you — Oh !  how  she  shall  love 
you  !  And  then,  oh,  dearest' — dearest 
papa  ! — when  you — come — we  — • — ' 
The  lips  still  moved  with  loving 
words,  but  the  feeble  voice  was 
choked. 

Yet  three  days  more,  and  I  stood 
again  by  her  bedside — to  kiss  for  the 
last  time  the  dear  lips  that  should 
never  smile  a  welcome  to  me  more — 
to  press  for  the  last  time  the  little 
hand  that  should  never  twine  itself 
in  mine  again.  All  trace  of  weari- 
ness and  pain  had  passed  away ;  she 
lay,  her  long  silky  lashes  veiling  her 
drooped  eyes,  as  in  the  slumber  of 
innocence  and  peace.  And  on  her 
breast  — laid  by  unseen  hands — was 
a  cluster  of  summer  violets. 

They  sleep  together  in  God's  acre — 
the  loved  ones  of  a  thousand  years 
apart.  It  was  Lily's  last  request 
that  the  little  Roman  girl  should  rest 
by  her  side  under  the  shadow  of  the 
text,  "Suffer  little  children  to  come 
unto  me." 

0,  Dulcissima  !  Dilectissima  ! 

R.  FERGUSON. 


236 


FAMINES    AND    FLOODS    IN    INDIA. 


"All  the  rivers  run  into  the  sea;  j-et  the 
sea  is  not  full ;  unto  the  place  from  \vhence 
the  rivers  come,  thither  they  return  again." — 
Ecclesiastes  i.  7. 

THE  sympathies  of  England  have  been 
so  thoroughly  aroused  by  the  terrible 
calamity  which  has  fallen  on  Southern 
India  that  no  excuse  seems  needed  for 
any  one,  however  insignificant  his  posi- 
tion may  be,  who  should  essay  to  con- 
tribute his  mite  of  information  on  the 
steps  which  are  necessary  for  miti- 
gating or  preventing  future  famines 
in  Hindustan.  On  so  important  and 
many-sided  a  subject  it  is  of  course 
to  be  expected  that  the  special  bias  of 
each  thinker  will  attach  a  greater 
weight  to  the  arguments  he  adduces, 
and  that  personal  experiences  will 
magnify  the  efficiency  of  the  remedies 
he  proposes.  Still,  in  the  present  in- 
complete state  of  our  knowledge,  this 
can  scarcely  be  deemed  an  evil ;  since 
the  thorough  sifting  of  the  evidence, 
which  must  result  from  the  deter- 
mination, of  the  English  public  to 
arrive  at  a  proper  judgment  on  this 
grave  question,  will  separate  the  chaff 
from  such  good  grain  as  may  reasonably 
be  expected  to  be  found  in  the  glean- 
ings of  earnest  labourers  on  so  wide  a 
field  of  research.  It  is  in  this  sense, 
therefore,  that  I  venture  to  ask  con- 
sideration for  such  facts  bearing  on 
the  problem  of  droughts  in  the  Car- 
natic  as  have  been  noted  in  a  tolerably 
varied  experience  of  twenty  years, 
which  have  been  chiefly  spent  in  the 
East. 

To  arrive  at  a  just  conclusion  as  to 
what  should  be  done,  it  is  necessary 
to  know  what  has  already  been  done. 
A  short  description  will  therefore  be 
given  of  the  results  of  irrigational 
expenditure  which  has  been  made  by 
the  English  in  Southern  India,  while 
a  brief  survey  will  be  taken  of  what 


remains  to  be  done  on  this  head. 
The  grave  question  will  then  be  raised 
whether,  concurrently  with  the  execu- 
tion of  such  works,  the  unremitting 
physical  decay  of  the  country,  which 
is  the  consequence  of  "what  men 
daily  do,  not  knowing  what  they  do," 
and  which  is  caused  by  the  necessities 
of  a  constantly  increasing  and  unin- 
formed population,  does  not  demand 
the  instant  interference  of  the  Govern- 
ment ?  I  shall  endeavour  to  impress 
the  extreme  urgency  of  this  question 
on  my  readers ;  since  not  only  the 
efficacy  of  future  outlay  on  irrigation 
works,  but  that  which  has  already 
been  made  in  the  past,  depend  on  its 
true  compi'ehension.  Whatever  may 
be  the  policy  which  is  ultimately  de- 
termined upon,  with  the  object  of 
mitigating  the  effects  of  famine  in 
India,  or  whether,  indeed,  any  such 
policy  be  adopted  or  not,  I  shall  show 
that  further  neglect  of  the  changes 
which  are  being  induced  by  the  de- 
structive action  of  mankind  must 
be  replaced  by  energetic  restorative 
measures,  if  Nature  is  to  be  robbed  of 
her  inexorable  revenge,  and  the  fatal 
march  of  wide-spread  calamity  is  to 
be  arrested. 

I  remember  assisting,  in  silence, 
some  sixteen  years  ago,  at  a  conversa- 
tion which  took  place  within  the  pre- 
cincts of  the  most  sacred  sanctuary  of 
South  Indian  vapidity :  I  mean  the 
bar  of  the  Madras  Club.  Jones  and 
Brown,  of  the  Civil  Service,  were* dis- 
cussing a  letter  which  Sir  Arthur 
Cotton,  of  the  old  corps  of  Madras 
Engineers,  had  addressed  to  one  of  the 
London  journals,  on  his  well-worn 
topic,  the  advantages  of  extending 
canals  of  irrigation  and  navigation  in 
India.  It  was  Agassiz  who  said  that, 
when  a  great  fact  was  brought  to 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


237 


light,  people  first  denied  its  truth,  but 
eventually  admitted  it,  with  the  quali- 
fication that  everybody  knew  it  before. 
The  Indian  career  of  Sir  Arthur  had 
been  spent  in  urging  his  views  against 
the  crass  opposition  of  a  now,  happily, 
obsolete  school,  and,  when  he  left  the 
country,  his  arguments  had  been 
thoroughly  accepted,  at  least,  in  prin- 
ciple. Brown  and  Jones  were  of  the 
old  obstructive  party,  and  had  fought 
in  the  ranks  of  the  beaten  side,  which 
could  not  brook  that  an  engineer 
should  show  a  civilian  how  to  develop 
and  improve  a  Collectorate.  But  stern 
facts  had  been  too  much  for  them,  for 
the  conversation  I  mention  ended  with 
the  sneer,  "Oh!  yes,  of  course ;  there's 
nothing  like  leather  !  "  These  wiseacres 
had  evidently  arrived  at  the  last  stage 
described  by  the  Swiss  naturalist,  and 
were  unwilling  to  allow  the  great 
hydraulic  engineer  and  statesman  any 
credit  for  the  benefits  he  had  con- 
ferred on  Southern  India — benefits, 
however,  which,  it  may  as  well  be 
remarked,  form  the  frequent  topic  of 
conversation,  and  call  forth  gratitude 
among  thousands  of  the  agricultural 
population  of  Madras. 

People  of  the  stamp  of  Brown  and 
Jones  forget  what  Sydney  Smith  said, 
that— 

"  He  is  not  the  discoverer  of  any  art  who 
first  says  the  thing ;  but  he  who  says  it  so 
long  and  so  loud  and  so  clearly,  that  he 
compels  mankind  to  hear  him.  He  is  the 
discoverer  who  is  so  deeply  impressed  with 
the  importance  of  his  discovery,  that  he  will 
take  no  denial,  but  at  the  risk  of  fortune  and 
of  fame  pushes  through  all  opposition,  and  is 
determined  that  what  he  thinks  he  has  dis- 
covered shall  not  perish  for  want  of  a  fair 
trial." 

It  is  the  great  merit  of  Sir  Arthur 
•Cotton,  that  through  good  report  and 
evil  report,  he  persistently  preached 
the'  necessity  of  extending  irrigation 
in  Southern  India;  and  to  such  an 
extent,  indeed,  did  he  press  his  views 
that  one  governor  of  Madras  was 
foolish  enough  to  deny  him  admission 
into  Government  House.  That  Sir 
Arthur  was  no  more  the  discoverer  of 
that  necessity  of  irrigation  for  the 


Madras  Presidency  than  Macadam 
was  the  first  person  who  broke  up 
stones  for  road-making  is,  of  course, 
perfectly  true. 

"  In  no  other  part  of  the  world,"  wrote  the 
late  lamented  Colonel  J.  0.  Anderson,  of  the 
Madras  Engineers,  "  has  so  much  been  done 
by  ancient  native  rulers  for  the  development 
of  the  resources  of  the  country.  The  further 
south  one  goes,  and  the  further  the  old  Hindoo 
polity  was  removed  from  the  disturbing  influ- 
ence of  foreign  conquest,  the  more  complete 
and  elaborate  was  the  system  of  agriculture, 
and  the  irrigation  works  connected  with  it.  ... 
Every  available  source  of  supply  was  utilised, 
and  works  in  advance  of  the  supply  have  been 
executed,  for  tanks  have  been  very  generally 
constructed,  not  only  for  general  rainfall,  but 
for  exceptional  rainfall.  .  .  .  Irrigation  from 
rivers  and  channels,  or  by  these  and  tanks 
combined,  was  also  carried  on.  ...  On  the 
whole,  the  channels  are  inferior  to  the  tanks, 
for  the  system  of  distribution  of  water  from 
them  is  very  defective." 

In  the  Carnatic  alone  there  are 
some  30,000  irrigation  tanks,  while 
from  the  top  of  a  hill  in  the  Colar 
district  of  Mysore,  it  is  said  that 
400  of  these  works  can  be  counted. 

Now  in  considering  facts  like  these, 
it  may  perhaps  be  asked,  In  what  lies 
the  importance  of  the  services  which 
Sir  Arthur  Cotton  has  rendered  to  the 
Government  and  to  the  population 
of  Southern  India?  For  many 
years,  it  may  be  remarked,  there 
was  an  influential  party  of  officials 
(chiefly,  of  course,  civilians)  who 
denied  that  any  public  benefit  what- 
ever had  accrued  from  the  expenditure 
which  had  been  entered  into  in  conse- 
quence of  the  perpetual  worrying  of 
the  Government  by  Sir  Arthur  Cotton 
and  those  who  supported  him.  Figures 
have,  however,  recently  become  avail- 
able, which  show  the  results  of  outlay 
made  upon  some  important  irrigation 
schemes  in  the  Madras  Presidency 
during  the  past  forty  years.  Since 
these  figures,  besides  their  general 
interest,  have  a  special  bearing  on  the 
state  policy  of  extraordinary  expendi- 
ture on  Indian  Public  Works — a  policy 
that  has  been  vehemently  attacked  in 
some  quarters  —  I  shall  submit  a 
resume  of  them  to  my  readers.  It 
should  be  remarked  that  the  figures, 


238 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


which  have  been  arrived  at  after 
years  of  contention,  are  due  to  the  in- 
vestigations of  an  official  committee, 
in  which  both  engineers  and  members 
of  the  Civil  Service  were  represented. 
I  would  specially  recommend  these 
results  to  the  consideration  of  Mr. 
J.  Dacosta,  who  stated  in  a  letter  to 
the  Daily  News  that — 

"A  fact  worthy  of  particular  attention  with 
regard  to  the  irrigation  works  in  India  is,  that 
while  the  schemes  devised  or  carried  out  hy 
the  British  Government  have,  as  an  almost  in- 
variable rule,  proved  to  be  failures,  the  native 
works  (some  of  which  we  restored  and  en- 
larged) have  been  successful,  and  have  sup- 
plied the  great  bulk  of  the  artificial  irrigation 
hitherto  enjoyed." 

I  will  now  state  the  disbursements 
and  receipts  for  each  of  the  works 
about  to  be  specified ;  up  to  the  latest 
date  for  which  the  detailed  figures  are 
available. 

(a)  The  Godavery  delta  system :  a 
British  work. — For  this,  it  appears, 
that  up  to  the  31st  March,  1875,  the 
outlay  was  691,055?.,  while  the  net 
revenue  receipts  which  were  due  to 
this  outlay,  amounted  to  1,746,822?., 
that  is,  there  was  a  prima  facie  gain  of 
1,055,767?.  The  committee  were,  how- 
ever, instructed  to  add  to  the  capital 
outlay  the  interest  charges  upon  it ; 
and  the  outlay  plus  the  interest  thus 
amounted  to  1,160,915?.  On  the 
other  hand  no  interest  was  allowed  to 
be  credited  on  the  past  revenue  derived 
from  the  works ;  so  that,  by  this  one- 
sided arrangement,  the  payments  into 
the  treasury,  in  excess  of  capital  and 
interest  charges,  were  reduced  to 
585,907?.  Had  such  interest  been 
allowed  upon  receipts,  or  had  receipts 
been  taken  in  reduction  of  capital 
outlay,  the  balance  standing  to  the 
credit  of  the  Godavery  delta  works 
would  have  been  947,340?.  on  the 
31st  March,  1875. 

(6)  The  Kistna  delta  system :  a 
British  work.  —  Up  to  the  before- 
mentioned  date,  the  outlay  amounted 
to  449,390?.,  while  the  interest  charges 
were  264,666?.,  making  a  total  of 
714,056?.  The  net  revenue  amounted 


to  686,621?.,  and  the  account,  there- 
fore, shows  a  loss  of  27,435?.  But 
had  interest  been  allowed  on  sur, 
plus  receipts,  as  a  set  off  against  in- 
terest on  outlay,  the  less  than  half- 
finished  Kistna  works  would  have 
had  a  balance  of  84,600?.  to  their 
credit. 

(c)  The  Cauvery  delta  system :  a 
British  extension  and  improvement  of 
a  Native  work. — The  capital  outlay 
amounted  to  134,809?.,  while  the 
interest  on  this  was  124,545?.,  thus 
making  the  charges  259,435?.  up 
to  the  same  date  as  before.  The 
revenue  returns  up  to  31st  March, 
1874,  were  2,146,345?.,  or  say 
2,254,345?.  up  to  the  31st  March, 
1875 — since  the  net  annual  revenue 
is  about  108,000?.  The  balance 
standing  to  the  credit  of  the  works, 
according  to  the  system  of  ac- 
count laid  down,  is  therefore  the 
difference  of  2,254,345?.  and  259,435?., 
or  1,994,910?.  only;  but  had  interest 
been  allowed  on  net  revenue  receipts 
as  well  as  upon  outlay,  the  balance 
standing  to  the  credit  of  the  Cauvery 
irrigation  system  would  have  been 
3,294,040?.  on  the  last  date  mentioned. 

The  general  result  of  these  three 
irrigation  systems,  as  regards  balances 
of  receipts  above  charges,  is  there- 
fore— 

With  Without 

Interest.  Interest. 

Godavery  .     £947,340  £585,970 

Kistna.     .         84,600  27, 

Cauvery     .   3,294,040  1,994,910 


TOTALS.  £4, 325, 980     £2,553,382 

N.B. — In  the  foregoing  figures  two  shillings 
have  been  taken  as  the  value  of  one  rupee. 

Now  the  whole  outlay  of  the  Madras 
Public  Works  Department  during  the 
past  forty  years  upon  the  above  three 
delta  systems,  and  on  thirty-two  other 
comparatively  important  irrigation 
schemes  in  Southern  India,  has 
been  less  than  two- and- a- quarter  mil- 
lions sterling.  Of  this  expenditure, 
1,275,335?.  disbursed  upon  the  Goda- 
very, Kistna,  and  Cauvery  systems 
have  been  recouped,  while  the  interest 
charges  thereon  have  been  repaid. 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


239 


The  accounts  for  five  only,  out  of  the 
thirty-two  other  schemes,  have  been 
ordered  to  be  prepared ;  while  those 
for  the  remaining  twenty- seven  works 
will  probably  never  be  compiled ;  but 
taking  the  extreme  supposition  that  all 
have  been  entirely  unremunerative  in 
the  past  (which,  however,  it  may  be 
said,  en  passant,  is  not  the  case),  and 
that  the  interest  charges  amount  to 
75  per  cent  on  the  expended  capital, 
the  sum  remaining  to  be  recovered  on 
these  works  will  be — 

Capital £974,665 

Interest 730,992 


TOTAL £1,705,657 

Deducting  this  from  the  amount  of 
2,553,382?.  standing  to  the  credit  of 
the  Godavery,  Cauvery,  and  Kistna 
works,  the  net  profits,  according  to 
the  one-sided  system  of  accounts  that 
has  been  described,  are  847,725?.  ; 
and  would  have  been  2,620,323?., 
had  interest  been  allowed  on  surplus 
receipts  paid  into  the  public  treasury, 
or  had  such  receipts  been  taken  in 
reduction  of  capital  outlay. 

At  the  lower  computation  it  is  thus 
seen  that,  at  any  rate,  a  lump  sum  of 
about  850,000?.  has  been  gained;  or, 
at  4|-  per  cent,  an  annual  income  of 
38,250?.  Besides  this,  the  present  net 
annual  revenue  of  the  three  great 
irrigation  systems  of  Southern  India 
stands  as  follows  : — 

Godavery £145,000 

Kistna 70,000 

Cauvery  ......       108,000 


TOTAL £323,000 

i.e.  the  above  works  are  paying  re- 
spectively 21,  15|,  and  80  per  cent 
per  annum  on  the  capital  outlay  made 
upon  them.  For  the  expenditure, 
therefore,  that  has  been  incurred,  an 
annual  revenue  of  361,250?.  has  ac- 
crued ;  and  this  return,  it  must  be 
remembered,  is  the  Government  share 
only  of  the  profits  resulting  from 
increased  production.  The  natives  of 
Southern  India  in  these  three  localities 
alone  have  also  acquired  an  increased 


annual  revenue  of  at  least  one-and-a- 
half  million  sterling,  or  a  capital  of 
thirty-three-and-a-half  millions  has 
been  added  to  the  value  of  the  lands 
they  cultivate ;  to  say  nothing  of 
their  indirect  gain  by  the  develop- 
ment of  trade  at  the  port  of  Coconada, 
which  the  Godavery  delta  works  have 
been  the  means  of  creating.  Taking 
the  gain  to  the  state,  and  the  gain  to 
the  people,  the  actual  wealth  that  has 
resulted  to  the  country  amounts  to  at 
least  forty- five  millions  sterling,  from 
the  policy  the  Government  has  pursued 
during  the  past  forty  years. 

The  further  expenditure  of  about 
one  and-a-half  millions  sterling  that 
is  required  to  bring  the  three  great 
delta  systems  and  the  next  five  more 
important  and  still  unfinished  irriga- 
tion schemes  of  Southern  India  to 
their  full  development,  may  be  ex- 
pected to  bear  analogous  results.  The 
interest  on  this  expenditure  may  be 
anticipated  to  raise  the  total  charges 
to  three  millions  sterling  before  the 
works  are  entirely  completed,  so  that 
the  future  annual  charge  on  this  head 
would  be  135,000?.  per  annum. 

Hazarding  the  extravagant  suppo- 
sition that  this  necessary  outlay  will 
not  increase  the  future  revenues  by  a 
single  shilling  above  their  present 
amount,  the  actual  gain  by  carrying  out 
the  above  specified  irrigation  works  of 
Southern  India  would  still  stand  at 
more  than  226,000?.  per  annum  ! 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  beyond 
all  question  that  the  further  necessary 
outlay  on  irrigation  in  Southern  India 
will  not  only  cause  the  revenue  to 
rise  steadily,  but  will  add  to  those 
guarantees  against  famines  which  all 
people  must  now  be  convinced  are 
more  and  more  urgently  demanded 
as  the  numbers  of  the  population 
increase.  The  second  class  system  of 
the  Pennair  river  irrigation  of  Nellore 
has  been  an  entire  success,  seeing  that 
the  return  of  net  revenue  on  the 
capital  outlay  has  reached  11^-  per 
cent.  The  now  nearly  completed 
system  on  the  Tambrapoorney  river 
of  Tinnevelly,  which  will  cost  about 


240 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


120,000£.,  already  returns  nearly  four 
per  cent,  and  may  be  expected  to 
reach  as  much  as  10  per  cent  when 
the  whole  of  the  lands  to  be  watered 
come  under  its  influence. 

Even  the  unsatisfactory  situation  of 
the  Madras  Irrigation  and  Canal  Com- 
pany, that  entails  a  present  charge  of 
about  80,000£.  per  annum  on  the  Indian 
revenues,  does  not  affect  the  position 
taken  up  in  the  foregoing  sketch  of 
the  benefits  which  have  been  derived 
from  this  class  of  outlay  by  the  state. 
I  have  not  the  information  that  would 
enable  me  to  explain  the  causes  of 
this  financial  fiasco.  Nor  have  I  that 
sufficient  acquaintance  with  other  parts 
of  India  which  would  justify  me  in 
entering  on  the  causes  of  certain  irri- 
gation works  in  the  Northern  Pro- 
vinces being  much  less  remunerative 
than  in  Madras.  Still  every  one  with 
the  most  elementary  knowledge  of  the 
subject  is  aware  that  topographical 
advantages,  as  well  as  the  existence 
of  a  system  of  irrigation  tanks,  whose 
previously  fluctuating  revenues  were 
guaranteed  immediately  upon  the  open- 
ing of  canals  which  supplied  them,  are 
the  chief  reasons  of  the  enormously 
favourable  results  which  have  been 
obtained  in  the  south  as  compared 
with  the  north  of  India.  All  such 
considerations  are,  however,  beside  the 
fact  of  the  efficiency  of  irrigation  works 
as  a  safeguard  against  famine.  In 
Bengal  alone,  where  there  was  a  dead 
loss  on  such  works  to  the  imperial 
revenues  during  1875-76  of  203,700^., 
it  is  important  to  note,  that  in  the 
year  of  drought  1873-74  the  value  of 
the  crops  saved  by  one  such  unfinished 
system  of  canals  amounted  to  480,OOOZ. ! 
Similarly,  it  is  certain  that  the  canals 
of  the  Madras  Irrigation  Company 
have  saved  thousands  of  lives  during 
the  present  calamity,  while  the  culti- 
vators have  been  driven  by  dire  neces- 
sity from  the  blind  adherence  to  old 
customs,  and  have  taken  up  in  this 
year  some  six  or  seven  times  the 
quantity  of  water  they  used  last  year 
on  agriculture.  It  appears  therefore 
that  even  in  a  strictly  commercial 


point  of  view  the  works  of  the  com- 
pany, notwithstanding  the  pecuniary 
waste  that  has  occurred  upon  them, 
may  be  regarded  hopefully. 

Such  is  the  outcome  of  the  policy 
which,  without  doing  injustice  to  many 
other  officers  of  the  Madras  Engineers 
who  ably  supported  him,  may  chiefly 
be  ascribed  to  the  genius  and  foresight 
of  Sir  Arthur  Cotton.  And  though  no 
such  enormous  results  as  have  been 
obtained  in  the  Cauvery  delta  can  be 
looked  for  from  future  outlay  in 
Southern  India,  and  though  no  other 
delta  remains,  like  that  of  the  God- 
avery,  to  be  transformed  from  com- 
parative desolation  to  fertility,  there 
is  yet  a  material  increase  of  revenue, 
and  a  co-existent  increase  of  national 
wealth,  to  be  obtained  in  the  first 
locality,  as  well  as  in  the  central 
portion  of  the  second.  Besides  these, 
the  Kistna  works  yet  remain  half 
finished,  in  consequence  of  the  refusal 
of  the  Government  of  India  to  allot 
funds  for  their  energetic  prosecution, 
until  the  whole  of  the  detailed  esti- 
mates, which  will  amount  to  more 
than  a  million  sterling,  have  been  pre- 
pared and  submitted.  Concurrently 
with  this  refusal,  the  local  engineer 
establishment  which  must  prepare 
these  estimates  is  kept  by  the  same 
supreme  authority  on  the  most  in- 
sufficient scale.  Such  a  course  must 
have  the  effect  of  indefinitely,  if  not 
dangerously,  delaying  the  day  when 
thousands  of  acres  of  land  shall  be 
brought  under  irrigation  to  supply 
large  quantities  of  food  for  the  popu- 
lation of  less  happily  situated  districts 
in  times  of  future  scarcity.  It  is  a 
case  like  this  that  makes  Madrassees 
sigh  for  the  decentralization  of  Indian 
Government  which  is  recommended  by 
Mr.  Bright.  However,  the  present 
sufferings  of  the  Southern  Presidency 
will  not  have  been  in  vain  should 
public  opinion  declare  itself  sternly 
against  the  continuance  of  so  suicidal 
a  policy  on  the  part  of  the  Government 
of  India. 

So  far  therefore  from  outlay  on  irri- 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


241 


gation  having  occasioned  any  financial 
embarrassment,  or  being  likely  to  do 
so,  in  Southern  India,  it  is  clear  that  it 
has  permanently  increased,  and  in  every 
probability  will  steadily  continue  to  add 
to  the  resources  of  the  Government 
and  the  general  wealth  of  the  people. 
With  these  facts  before  us,  can  it  be 
wondered  that  Mr.  Bright  should  lead 
the  way  in  pressing  on  public  atten- 
tion the  proposals  of  the  eminent 
hydraulic  engineer  to  whose  initiative 
and  consistent,  unremitting  counsel 
such  enormous  benefits  have  already 
been  conferred  upon  the  people  of 
Madras  ? 

It  may,  of  course,  be  just  possible 
'that  the  critics  of  Sir  Arthur  Cotton's 
policy  are  in  the  right,  and  that  he 
imperfectly  appreciates  the  needs  and 
dangers  of  India.  But  the  fact  is, 
that  on  the  one  side  stands  a  successful 
specialist,  while  on  the  other  stand  his 
opponents,  of  whom  it  is  no  disparage- 
ment to  say  that  neither  in  knowledge 
nor  in  practical  experience  do  they 
pretend  to  approach  the  authority 
whom  they  criticise  !  "  Under  which 
king,  Bezonian  ?  Speak,  or  die  !  " — for 
a  dying  matter  it  is  for  the  millions 
of  India,  as  sad  experience  has  shown. 

It  will  not  have  escaped  the  penetra- 
tion of  my  critical  readers,  that  in  the 
sketch  which  I  have  submitted  of  the 
effect  of  outlay  upon  irrigation  projects 
in  the  Madras  Presidency,  I  have  pro- 
minently noticed  those  great  works, 
where  the  volume  and  continuity  of 
the  available  water  supply,  as  well 
as  the  favourable  features  of  the 
country,  have  offered  very  advan- 
tageous conditions  for  success.  This 
course  has  been  necessitated  by  the 
circumstance,  that  for  these  great 
works  alone  have  the  capital  and 
revenue  accounts  been  as  yet  compiled 
from  the  state  records.  The  results 
are  sufficient  to  give  a  complete  denial 
to  those  who  have  had  the  stupid 
audacity  to  advance  that  the  incom- 
plete figures,  formally  available  for 
these  schemes,  were  nothing  but  "  a 
gigantic  swindle!"  Future  Jnvesti- 

No.  219. — XXXYII. 


gation  of  records  will  doubtless  show 
for  those  secondary  works  of  which 
the  capital  and  revenue  accounts  have 
not  yet  been  compiled,  that  the  great 
bulk  of  the  expenditure  which  has 
been  devoted  to  irrigation  during  the 
past  forty  years  (and  there  was  none 
of  any  moment  previously)  has  per- 
manently added  to  the  wealth  of 
Southern  India,  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  money  which  has  been  tem- 
porarily advanced  for  this  purpose. 
Incomplete  figures  are  however  avail- 
able for  one  of  such  irrigation  system?, 
viz.,  that  of  the  Palar  River,  and 
these  may  now  be  mentioned  ;  more 
especially  as  I  am  about  to  offer  some 
remarks  upon  the  works  of  which 
these  may  be  taken  as  a  type.  The 
essential  difference  distinguishing  the 
three  great  delta  systems  from  the 
greater  part  of  the  old  native  works 
of  the  Madras  Presidency  consists  in 
the  fact  that  the  food  supply,  which  is 
a  matter  of  certainty  in  the  former, 
goes  far  to  make  up  for  the  precarious 
nature  of  agricultural  operations  in 
the  latter.  And  between  these  two 
extremes  is  a  third  class  of  works, 
which  have  been  designed  to  utilise 
intermittent  supplies  of  water  by  sup- 
plementing the  deficiencies  of  the 
local  rain-fed  reservoirs. 

It  would  seem  that  the  revenue  de- 
rivable in  a  bad  year  from  the  Palar 
works,  which  belong  to  the  class  last 
mentioned,  does  little  more  than  pay 
their  actual  working  expenses  ;  though 
at  the  same  time  the  results  of  a  series 
of  years  are  considerably  more  favour- 
able. For  example,  up  to  the  31st 
March,  1873,  the  difference  between 
the  net  revenue  paid  into  the  Treasury 
and  the  interest  charges  on  the  capital 
outlay  amounted  to  47,962^.  ;  or,  in 
other  words,  something  less  than  one 
half  of  the  original  expenditure  had 
been  recouped.  These  irrigation  works 
appear  to  have  been  designed  for  the 
distribution  of  more  water  than  expe- 
rience has  shown  to  be  available  in 
ordinary  years,  and  in  this  respect 
they  may  be  admitted  to  be  a  failure, 
since  the  profits  which  were  anticipated 


242 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


from  the  outlay  made  upon  them  have 
not  generally  been  obtained.  The 
Palar  drains  a  tract  of  country  en- 
tirely dependent  upon  the  rainfall  of 
the  north-east  monsoon ;  and  it  is 
evident  that  it  must  be  a  more  expen- 
sive matter  to  draw  a  supply  for  a 
given  area  of  cultivation  from  a  river 
which  may  be  in  fresh  for  ten  days 
only  in  a  year,  than  from  one  which  is 
in  fresh  for  sixty  days  in  the  year,  as 
is  the  case  with  even  the  Pennair 
River  of  Nellore. 

The  question  arises,  how  it  was  that 
more  water  than  experience  has  shown 
to  be  actually  available  was  counted 
on  by  the  designers  of  the  Palar 
works  ?  And  I  venture  to  think  that 
the  answer  to  this  question  will  ma- 
terially assist  the  comprehension  of 
the  modus  operandi  of  drought  in  South 
India  generally,  and  will  indicate  the 
remedies  which  are  in  consequence 
called  for. 

Out  of  the  twenty-one  districts  of 
the  Madras  Presidency,  eighteen  are 
almost  entirely  removed  from  the  in- 
fluence of  the  heavy  rain,  which  falls 
during  the  south-west  monsoon  on 
the  slopes  and  summits  of  the  Western 
Ghauts.  In  some  of  these  eighteen 
districts  there  are  rivers,  such  as  the 
Godavery,  the  Kistna,  the  Cauvery, 
and  the  Tambrapoorney,  whose  sources 
are  partially  fed  by  these  rains,  and 
such  rivers  consequently  carry  toler- 
ably continuous  streams ;  which  are 
utilized  in  the  enormously  advan- 
tageous way  already  set  forth.  But, 
over  the  greater  part  of  the  Madras 
Presidency,  the  uncertainty  of  the 
rainfall  during  the  north-east  mon- 
soon necessitates  the  storage  of  water 
for  agricultural  purposes,  and  the 
numerous  irrigation  reservoirs  which 
are  scattered  over  the  face  of  the 
country  are  the  outcome  of  this  need  of 
the  cultivators.  Now,  as  heretofore, 
in  the  words  of  the  historian  Orme, 

"  The  revenues  of  the  Carnatic  depend  on 
the  quantities  of  water  which  are  reserved  to 
supply  the  defect  of  rain  during  the  dry  season 
of  the  year  ;  for  this  purpose  vast  reservoirs 
h;uve  been  formed,  of  which  not  only  the  con- 


struction, but  even  the  repairs  in  cases  of  in- 
undation, require  an  expense  much  beyond 
the  faculties  of  the  farmer  or  renter  of  land. 
If,  therefore,  the  avarice  of  the  prince  with- 
holds his  hand  from  the  preservation  of  these 
sources  of  fertility,  and  at  the  same  time  dic- 
tates to  him  an  inflexible  resolution  of  receiv- 
ing his  usual  incomes,  the  farmer  oppressed 
oppresses  the  labourer,  and  the  misery  of  the 
people  becomes  complete  by  the  vexations  of 
collections  exercised  in  times  of  scarcity,  of 
which  the  cruel  parsimony  of  the  prince  has 
been  the  principal  cause." 

Now  the  Palar  flows  through  the 
centre  of  the  tract  of  country  whose 
former  agricultural  and  fiscal  economy 
is  described  in  the  foregoing  passage. 

It  obviously  became  the  duty  of 
the  British  Government  on  succeeding 
to  the  possession  of  the  Carnatic  to 
take  every  means  to  do  away  with 
such  a  precarious  state  of  matters, 
and  to  put  agriculture  on  a  firmer 
basis,  by  intercepting  the  drainage 
water  carried  down  by  the  river  to  the 
sea,  and  to  divert  it  through  channels 
to  be  stored  in  the  reservoirs  which 
studded  the  face  of  the  country.  In 
this  way,  the  indefinite  nature  of  the 
cultivation  of  the  Carnatic  could,  in 
ordinary  years,  be  changed  into  a  cer- 
tainty, and  food  for  the  population 
would  always  be  guaranteed,  except  in 
seasons  of  minimum  rainfall. 

It  cannot  be  more  than  twenty-five 
years  since  the  Palar  works  were  com- 
menced, and  at  that  date  there  were 
trustworthy  rainfall  observations  at 
the  neighbouring  observatory  at 
Madras  for  a  period  of  forty  years 
previously.  These  records  would  cer- 
tainly have  formed  a  tolerably  sure 
guide  for  estimating  the  precipitation 
in  the  drainage  basin  of  the  river, 
when  taken  in  conjunction  with  such 
observations  on  the  actual  volume  of 
the  flowing  stream  as  were  doubtless 
made  at  the  time  the  project  was 
being  matured.  If,  therefore,  the 
present  quantity  of  water  flowing 
down  the  Palar  is  found  to  be  much 
less  than  that  for  which  the  details  of 
the  scheme  were  designed,  are  we 
necessarily  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  designers  of  the  Palar  works 
fell  into  a  blunder?  I  venture  to 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


243 


think  not,  and  will  now  give  reasons 
pointing  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
inadequate  irrigative  powers  of  this 
and  other  rivers  of  South  India  are 
due  to  a  constant  continuous  change 
in  the  physical  aspects  of  the  country 
through  which  they  flow.  Moreover, 
it  is  on  the  re-establishment  of  pre- 
viously existing  secular  conditions 
that  a  chief  dependence  must  be  placed 
for  modifying  the  disastrous  action  of 
drought  in  Southern  India  generally. 
Until  this  particular  problem  has  been 
satisfactorily  grappled  with,  I  confess 
I  see  but  qualified  advantages  to  be 
gained  from  the  expenditure  of  money 
on  such  irrigation  works  as  are 
chiefly  dependent  upon  the  rainfall  of 
the  north-east  monsoon  for  their 
efficacy.  At  any  rate,  the  solution  of 
the  problem  will  make  all  the  differ- 
ence whether  future  outlay  on  exten- 
sions and  improvements  of  old  works 
or  on  new  works  falling  under  the 
category  specified  will  be  a  decided 
financial  success ;  or  whether  one  more 
weapon  will  be  added  to  the  armoury 
of  those  who  think  it  useless  to  inter- 
pose for  preventing  the  workings  of 
natural  checks  upon  a  perpetually  in- 
creasing population  that  is  already 
of  enormous  dimensions.  Some  good 
people  suppose  that  it  is  to  emigra- 
tion we  must  look  for  establishing  a 
balance  between  the  population  and 
the  available  supplies  of  food.  This 
resource  may  come  into  play  in  some 
dim  future ;  but  meanwhile  it  cannot 
be  too  earnestly  noted  that  starvation 
and  disease  will  replace  the  checks  of 
old  times.  What  those  checks  on  the 
increase  of  the  Indian  population  were, 
the  readers  of  Orme's  History  will 
recall  from  the  vivid  accounts  which 
are  given  in  the  pages  of  that  work 
of  the  terrible  inroads  made  into  the 
Carnatic  by  the  marauding  armies  of 
the  Mahrattas  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Their 
leading  idea  in  making  war  was,  says 
the  historian,  to  do  "  as  much  mischief 
as  possible  to  the  enemy's  country. 
This  they  effect  by  driving  off  the 
cattle,  destroying;  tjh.e  harvest,  burn- 


ing the  villages."  ....  The  long 
continuance  of  these  horrors,  culmin- 
ated in  1782,  when  a  crisis  supervened, 
which  is  thus  described  by  a  writer 
in  the  seventh  volume  of  the  Asiatic 
Journal : — 

"For  some  years  previous  Hyder  Ally  had 
carried  on  a  successful  war  against  the  Com- 
pany, and  had  collected  almost  the  entire 
revenue  of  the  Carnatic.  The  whole  country 
was  overrun  by  his  cavalry.  .  .  .  The  Com- 
pany's finances  were  at  the  lowest  ebb,  and 
their  credit  exhausted.  The  Madras  army 
was  paid  and  fed  from  Bengal.  The  calamities 
of  war  were  at  this  time  made  more  terrible 
by  the  effects  of  a  dreadful  famine  which  de- 
populated the  Carnatic.  The  streets  of  the 
Fort  of  the  Black  Town,  and  the  Esplanade  of 
Madras,  were  covered  with  starved  wretches, 
many  of  whom  were  dead,  and  others  dying. 
The  vultures,  the  pariah  dogs,  jackals,  and 
crows  were  often  seen  eating  the  bodies  be- 
fore life  was  extinct !  " 

Then,  as  during  the  present  calamity, 
and  as  it  has  ever  been  in  India,  the 
famished  millions  came  to  the  seat  of 
Government  to  draw  their  last  breath, 
and  so  to  cast  a  last  silent  reproach  in 
the  teeth  of  their  rulers  ! 

In  perusing  the  narrative  of  Onne, 
the  Anglo-Indian  of  to-day  can  scarcely 
fail  to  be  struck  with  the  frequent 
mention  made  of  the  thickets  and 
forests  which  covered  the  now  bare 
and  arid  plains  of  the  Carnatic  and 
the  adjoining  provinces.  Scarcely  a 
battle  took  place  whose  site  was  not 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  woods,  while 
a  detailed  description  is  given  of  the 
jungles  formerly  covering  the  country 
from  the  latitude  of  Pulicat  on  the 
north  to  that  of  the  Coleroon  on  the 
south.  "Many  of  these  wilds,"  says 
the  historian,  "are  from  fifteen  to 
forty  miles  in  circumference,"  and 
swarmed  with  game.  It  would  be 
useless  to  quote  the  numerous  extracts 
describing  past  aspects  of  the  country, 
and  showing  to  what  an  enormous 
extent  the  jungles  of  the  Carnatic,  and 
of  the  Peninsula  generally,  have  been 
cut  down  during  the  past  century. 
One  very  interesting  passage  of  this 
nature  refers  to  the  thick  woods  sur- 
rounding the  stronghold  of  the  Rajahs 
of  Bobbily,  in  the  Northern  Circars,, 

R  2 


244 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


the  site  of  the  fearful  tragedy  in  which 
Bussy  was  made  an  umvitting  tool  by 
an  ancestor  of  the  present  Maharajah 
of  Vizianagram.  It  is  but  a  few  days 
ago  that  I  visited  the  locality,  and  as 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach  there  was 
nothing  but  a  sheet  of  rice-fields  under 
artificial  irrigation.  Such  are  the 
changes  which  a  century  of  peace  and 
order  has  induced  on  the  physical 
features  of  a  part  of  Hindustan,  the 
vastness  of  whose  ancient  forests  is 
specially  mentioned  in  the  Ramayana, 
where  the  whole  country  between  the 
Jumna  and  the  Godavery  is  described 
as  a  wilderness.  But  this  is  a  digres- 
sion from  the  actual  locality  with 
which  we  are  concerned. 

It  will  be  scarcely  necessary  to  refer 
my  readers  to  the  pages  of  Mr.  Marsh's 
work,  The  Earth  as  Modified  by  Human 
Action,  for  the  proof  of  the  fact  that, 
as  forests  are  cut  down,  the  springs 
which  flow  from  them,  and  conse- 
quently the  water-courses  which  are 
fed  by  these,  diminish  in  number, 
continuity,  and  volume.  Observations 
in  all  parts  of  the  world  have  estab- 
lished the  fact  that  the  diminution  of 
flowing  water  has  invariably  followed 
the  destruction  of  forests.  Nor  has 
the  removal  of  woods  a  less  certain  or 
less  marked  effect  upon  the  character 
of  floods  both  in  rivers  and  in 
torrents. 

"  The  surface  of  a  forest,"  says  Mr.  Marsh, 
in  the  work  just  mentioned,  "  can  never,  in 
its  natural  condition,  pour  forth  such  deluges 
of  water  as  flow  from  cultivated  soil,  since 
vegetable  mould  not  only  absorbs  nearly  twice 
its  own  weight  of  water,  but  when  saturated 
gives  off  moisture  to  the  mineral  earth  below. 
The  bed  of  leaves,  moreover,  that  has  not  yet 
been  converted  into  vegetable  mould  itself  re- 
tains a  very  considerable  proportion  of  rain, 
while  the  stumps  and  roots  of  fallen  timber, 
the  mosses,  fungi,  &c.,  in  all  forests  oppose 
a  mechanical  resistance  to  the  flow  of  water 
over  the  surface,  and  so  sensibly  retard  the 
rapidity  of  its  descent  down  declivities,  and 
divert  and  divide  streams  which  may  have 
already  accumulated  from  smaller  threads  of 
water.  .  .  .  Rivers  fed  by  springs,  and  shaded 
by  woods,  are  comparatively  uniform  in 
volume  ;  they  carry  but  little  gravel  or  sedi- 
ment from  the  high  lands  whence  thev  flow, 
and  their  channels,  therefore,  are  subject  to 
gradual  changes  only." 


Now  the  meteorological  conditions 
of  the  valley  of  the  Palar  and  of 
Southern  India  generally  may  not  in- 
correctly be  gathered,  as  I  said  before, 
from  the  observations  recorded  at  the 
Madras  Observatory.  In  the  period 
including  the  twelve  years  from  18li4 
to  1S75,  the  average  number  of  days 
during  which  the  north-east  monsoon 
lasted  was  thirty-eight,  while  the 
average  quantity  of  precipitation  was 
27 '6  inches.  It  has  already  been  ex- 
plained that  the  north-east  monsoon 
is  the  chief  source  which  feeds  the 
minor  rivers  of  the  Madras  Presidency 
flowing  into  the  Bay  of  Bengal.  On 
the  annual  rainfall  of  27 -6  inches  the 
cultivation  has  chiefly  to  depend ;  and 
were  it  possible  to  count  on  this 
average  with  tolerable  certainty  it 
would  be  a  simple 'enough  matter  to 
calculate  the  exact  state  of  the  food 
supply  of  the  country  subjected  to  its 
influence.  However,  the  question  is 
not  one  of  averages,  but  of  extremes, 
as  the  following  facts  will  show  : — 
During  the  period  of  the  twelve  years 
just  specified,  the  year  1867  had  a 
rainfall  during  the  north-east  monsoon 
of  10'4  inches  only,  i.e.,  17'2  inches 
less  than  the  average,  and  21 '4  inches 
less  than  the  rainfall  of  1866  ;  a  de- 
ficiency which,  it  is  needless  to  say, 
could  scarcely  be  compensated  for  by 
any  quantity  of  water  which  could 
possibly  be  stored  in  existent  irriga- 
tion reservoirs.  Again,  the  north-east 
monsoon  of  the  year  1872  had  a  rain- 
fall of  24 '8  inches  above  the  average, 
and  20-7  inches  above  that  of  1871. 
In  such  a  year  as  1872  the  effects  of 
an  excessive  fall  of  rain  in  Southern 
India  will  be  that  each  drainage  line 
will  be  changed  into  a  torrent,  and, 
rapidly  filling  up  the  first  or  highest 
of  the  chain  of  irrigation  tanks  which 
have  been  constructed  along  its  course, 
will  breach  it.  The  whole  body  of 
flowing  drainage,  strongly  reinforced 
by  the  contents  of  the  upper  tank 
which  has  burst,  rushes  violently  down 
to  the  next  tank,  breaches  that,  and 
then  precipitates  itself  upon  and  de- 
stroys the  third  one,  and  so  on.  This 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


245 


process,  it  must  be  remembered,  is 
going  on  along  scores  of  secondary 
valleys,  whose  floods  pour  into  the 
main  river,  and  sweep  away  expensive 
railway-bridges  or  cause  destructive 
inundations  of  crops  growing  upon  its 
banks.  Should  the  river  be  crossed 
by  a  weir,  or  anicut,  as  it  is  locally 
called,  the  probability  is  that  this 
work,  together  with  its  subsidiary 
sluices  which  regulate  the  entry  of 
water  into  the  irrigation  canals,  are 
more  or  less  seriously  damaged,  and 
their  usefulness  is  thus  impaired  until 
they  have  undergone  expensive  repair. 
During  extreme  Hoods  of  this  nature 
it  is  quite  possible  that  the  whole  of 
the  cultivation  under  the  tanks,  and 
other  irrigation  works  of  the  affected 
district,  may  be  completely  ruined ; 
and  should  a  year  of  scanty  rainfall 
•unfortunately  succeed  such  a  year  of 
flood,  a  famine  will  inevitably  super- 
vene, and  widespread  calamity  among 
the  people  will  certainly  result. 

Turning  to  the  recorded  figures  for 
the  flood  discharge  of  the  Palar  River, 
we  find  that  at  A  root,  above  which  the 
drainage  basin  has  an  area  of  3,700 
square  miles,  a  volume  of  270,000 
cubic  feet  per  second,  or  a  discharge 
of  74 '3  cubic  feet  per  second  per 
square  mile  has  been  registered.  Now 
an  extraordinary  flood  in  the  Arve, 
which  is  a  mountain  torrent  draining 
perhaps  the  most  precipitous  and 
snow-bound  district  in  the  world, 
amounted,  after  eight  days  of  continuoiis 
lieavy  rain  in  May  1856,  to  as  much 
as  21,700  cubic  feet  per  second,  i.e., 
nearly  29  cubic  feet  per  second  flowed 
off  each  square  mile  of  the  drainage- 
basin  of  770  square  miles.  The  drain- 
age carried  by  the  Palar  (whose  basin, 
it  must  be  noted,  is  about  five  times 
larger  than  that  of  the  Arve)  is  con- 
sequently 45  cubic  feet  per  second  per 
square  mile  in  excess  of  that  carried 
by  the  Arve  during  a  maximum  flood, 
and  some  conception  may  be  formed 
from  the  contrast  of  the  enormous 
rate  at  which  rain  must  be  discharged 
from  the  surface  of  the  comparatively 
level  country  that  the  Indian  river 


traverses.  Of  course  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  in  the  case  of  the  Palar 
we  are  dealing  with  tropical  rainfall ; 
but  the  extreme  instance  that  has 
been  given  from  the  Arve  narrows 
the  difference  in  this  respect  as  much 
as  possible.  Compared  with  the  basin 
of  the  River  Pennair  above  Nellore 
(which  again,  however,  is  five  and  a 
half  times  the  size  of  the  drainage 
basin  of  the  Palar  above  Arcot),  we 
find  that  this  latter  river  discharges 
56  cubic  feet  per  second  per  square 
mile  more  than  the  former.  In  this 
case,  again,  an  exact  comparison  can- 
not be  made,  since  the  larger  size  of 
the  Pennair  basin  must  act  as  a 
moderator  of  floods,  just  in  the  same 
way  that  the  larger  area  of  the  Palar 
basin  as  compared  with  that  of  the 
Arve  should  have  exemplified,  had  its 
physical  characteristics  not  prevented 
it  from  doing  so.  But  however  in- 
exact the  parallels  drawn  may  be, 
there  cannot  be  the  shadow  of  a  doubt 
that  the  quantity  of  water  flowing 
from  every  square  mile  of  country 
that  is  drained  by  the  Palar  in  maxi- 
mum flood  would  suggest  the  exist- 
ence of  those  evils  which  are  mentioned 
in  the  passages  quoted  from  Marsh 
even  to  people  who  have  never  visited 
the  Carnatic. 

To  put  this  in  a  clear  light  we  may 
consult  the  Madras  rainfall  figures  for 
the  years  1874,  1875,  and  1876  and 
see  what  relation  they  bear  to  the 
calamity  of  1877.  The  precipitation 
which  occurred  during  the  three  years 
specified  was  respectively  as  follows  : 
— 36-9  inches,  20'9  inches,  and  6'34 
inches.  Or,  in  other  words,  in  1874 
there  were  9' 3  inches  more  than  the 
average  fall,  while  in  1875  there  were 
6*7  inches  less,  and  in  1876  there  were 
21-26  inches  less  than  the  average 
rainfall.  The  results  show  that  while 
in  1875  the  rainfall  was  16  inches  less 
than  in  1874,  that  of  1876  was  14-56 
inches  less  than  in  1875;  that  is  to 
say,  a  year  when  rain  fell  in  quantities 
well  above  the  average  was  followed 
by  one  of  rain  well  below  the  average, 
and  this  again  by  another  of  very 


246 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


deficient  rainfall.  The  error  must 
not,  however,  be  made  of  supposing 
that  1874  was  a  very  exceptional  year 
as  regards  rainfall,  for  this  was  not 
the  case,  seeing  that  the  precipitation 
was  but  9-3  inches  above  the  mean; 
while  1872  (for  example)  had  a  rain- 
fall of  24 '8  inches  above  the  mean  of 
the  north-eastern  monsoon,  which  is 
the  season  we  are  at  present  con- 
sidering. The  year  1874  was,  in  fact, 
a  very  favourable  one  for  agricul- 
tural operations,  and  was  not  gene- 
rally characterised  by  disastrous 
floods.  These  of  course  did  some 
damage,  but  much  less  than  in 
1872,  when  the  rainfall  of  the 
north-eastern  monsoon  amounted  to 
52-4  inches,  or  24 -S  inches  above 
the  average,  as  has  already  been 
stated,  and  of  the  floods  of  that 
year  a  word  will  be  said  hereafter. 
But  though  1874  was  a  most  profitable 
year  for  agriculture  in  Madras,  much 
damage  was  nevertheless  done  by  the 
moderate  excess  of  rain  which  fell. 

This  will  be  plain  from  the  report 
of  the  Madras  Revenue  Board  for  the 
year  ending  31st  March,  1875,  which 
states  as  follows  : — 

"  The  quantity  (of  rain)  registered  in  the 
districts  of  Cuddapah,  Bellary,  Kurnool,  North 
Arcot  .  .  .  was  the  largest  within  the  last 
ten  years.  The  excessive  rain  that  fell  in  the 
month  of  October,  and  the  floods  which  rose 
to  an  unprecedented  height  in  the  districts 
of  Nellore,  Cuddapah,  Kistnab,  Kurnool, 
Chingleput,  North  Arcot,  South  Arcot,  and 
Tanjore,  in  the  months  of  July  and  Septem- 
ber, caused  breaches  in  the  banks  of  the  prin- 
cipal rivers  and  tanks,  and  to  some  extent 
injured  cultivation  ;  but  the  damage  done  was 
not  very  great,  and  entailed  the  granting  of 
but  slight  remission  of  land  assessment.  Very 
serious  injury,  however,  was  done  to  public 
works  in  the  districts  of  Nellore,  Kurnool,  and 
North  Arcot.  In  the  last-mentioned  district 
the  Palar  and  Poiney  anicuts  were  destroyed, 
and  the  Oheyar  anicut  sluices  washed  away, 
and  the  collector  reports  that  '  so  disastrous' a 
season  for  public  works  has  not  been  experienced 
for  many  years.' " 

This  passage  shows  exactly  what 
might  have  been  expected,  viz.,  that 
in  the  Carnatic  itself — the  part  of  the 
country  which,  probably  more  than 
elsewhere,  has  had  its  jungles  cleared — 


the  greatest  damage  resulted  from  the 
moderate  excess  of  rainfall  which 
benefited  most  of  the  other  districts 
of  the  Madras  Presidency.  More- 
over, the  water  which  flowed  so 
rapidly  off  the  arid  and  timber- 
denuded  country  was  lost  for  the 
succeeding  year,  whose  rainfall  was 
below  the  average,  and  agricultural 
operations  were  consequently  a  failure 
in  1875. 

"The  season,"  says  the  Report  of  the 
Madras  Revenue  Board  for  the  year  last 
mentioned,  "  was  a  remarkably  dry  one,  and 
contrasted  very  unfavourably  with  that  of  the 
preceding  year.  The  south-west  monsoon 
tailed  altogether,  and  the  north-east  monsoon 
also  to  a  considerable  extent.  The  principal 
rivers  received  their  freshes  very  late,  and 
they  were,  except  in  the  Kistna  and  God- 
avery,  very  scanty.  The  commencement  of 
cultivation  operations  was  thus  retarded,  and 
there  was  not  sufficient  water  to  bring  the 
crops  to  maturity.  The  itank  cultivation  suf- 
fered most,  but  dry  cultivation  also  suffered 
heavily,  and  the  yield  was  considerably  below 
the  average.  There  was  also  a  scarcity  of 
drinking  water  in  some  districts.  The  dis- 
tricts which  suffered  most  from  the  drought 
were  Bellary,  North  Arcot,  South  Arcot, 
Chingleput,  Salem,  and  Tinnevelly.  In  these 
districts  extensive  remissions  have  had  to  be 
granted,  and  the  collection  of  revenue  to  be 
suspended.  There  was  a  considerable  failure 
of  crops  also  in  the  districts  of  Elizagapatam, 
Cuddapah,  Tanjore,  Trichinopoly,  Madura, 
Nilgiris,  and  South  Canara.  Fears  were 
entertained  of  distress  in  the  districts  of 
Bellary,  North  Arcot,  Chingleput,  and  South 
Arcot,  and  relief  works  were  opened  in  some 
places.  Soon  after  the  close  of  the  year,  how- 
ever, there  was  a  favourable  change,  which 
happily  removed  all  cause  for  serious  Appre- 
hensions of  famine." 

But  the  failure  of  the  rains,  more 
especially  of  the  north-east  monsoon 
in  187G,  redoubled  the  gravity  of  the 
situation,  and  the  disaster  of  1877 
became  a  certainty  for  any  one  who 
had  followed  the  signs  of  the  times. 

Hitherto  reference  has  merely  been 
made  to  the  rainfall  of  the  north-east 
monsoon ;  but  the  line  of  argument 
already  entered  upon  will  be  seen  to 
have  still  more  cogency,  should  the 
figures  relating  to  the  total  precipita- 
tion of  the  year  be  taken ;  in  other 
words,  should  the  rainfall  of  the 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


247 


south-west  monsoon  be  included.  Take 
the  example  of  the  famine  of  1832. 
From  the  Madras  Observatory  rain- 
register  we  find  the  mean  yearly 
quantity  of  precipitation  for  sixty- 
three  years,  from  1813  to  1875,  to  be 
48-46  inches.  The  rainfall  of  1831 
was  44 '35  inches,  or  4*11  below  the 
average,  while  that  for  1832  was  but 
18*45  inches,  or  SO'Ol  inches  below 
the  average,  and  at  the  same  time 
25*9  inches  less  than  in  the  previous  year, 

1831.  Besides  this,  1828,  1829,  1830, 
were   all  years  of   deficient   rainfall, 
and  the  harvests  must  have  been  cor- 
respondingly bad,  and  thus  have  added 
to    the  scarcity   of   the   food   supply 
which  resulted  in  the  famine  of  1832. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  1827  was  a 
year  of  very  plentiful  rain,  the  amount 
registered  having  been  88 '41   inches, 
or  40 '05   inches   above   the   average. 
Had,  therefore,  the  drainage  water  of 
this  year,  instead  of  running  uselessly 
and  rapidly  to  sea,  been  protected  by 
forest  growth,  and  so   have   ensured 
the   permanency   of   natural   springs, 
the  deficiencies  of  the  five  years,  1828— 

1832,  might,  to  some  great  extent,  have 
been    provided    for.     For    the    mean 
rainfall  of  the  six  years,  1827-1832, 
amounted   to   43 '07  inches,  which  is 
but  5 -3 9  inches  below  the  mean   of 
sixty-three  years,  and  that  much  less 
rain  than  the  mean  quantity  enables 
an  ample  food  supply  to  be  raised  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that,  in  the  four 
years,  1833-36,  immediately  following 
the  famine  of   1832,  the  amount   of 
rain  registered  was  respectively  less 
than  the  average  by  11*35,  9 -46,  6-99, 
and   3*70   inches — i.e.,   there    was    a 
mean  deficiency  of  rain  for  these  four 
years  of  7 '88  inches  yearly,  without 
any   disaster    supervening.     This,    of 
itself,   is   sufficient   to   show   what   a 
large  proportion  of   the  annual  rain- 
fall   which   by  conservative   and   re- 
storative   measures   might   be   stored 
for  use  in   bad  years   is    now  abso- 
lutely lost.     The  famine  of  1853  is  an 
extreme  example  of  the  truth  of  the 
proposition,  that  drought  in  Southern 
India  should  not  entirely  be  attributed 


to  the  effect  of  deficient  rainfall,  but 
is  due  to  a  very  great  extent  as  well 
to  the  occurrence  of  previous  heavy 
falls  of  rain,  which  uselessly  flows 
away.  In  1851  and  1852  the  falls 
were  64*32  inches  and  72*69  inches 
respectively,  or  15 '86  inches  and  24*23 
inches  more  than  the  average,  while 
in  the  following  year,  1853,  there 
were  35*82  inches  registered,  or  12*61: 
inches  less  than  the  average.  The 
deficiency  of  this  year  should  scarcely, 
however,  of  itself  have  caused  a 
famine,  for  we  have  already  seen  that 
the  ordinary  years,  1833  and  1834, 
which  immediately  succeeded  the 
famine  of  1832,  had  a  deficient  rain- 
fall of  11*35  inches  and  9*46  inches 
respectively;  whereas  1853  not  only 
followed  1852,  in  which  there  was  an 
excess  rainfall  of  24*23  inches,  but 
1852  followed  1851,  in  which  there 
was  also  an  excess  of  15 '86  inches. 
The  real  notable  point  is  that,  in  the 
year  1853,  the  fall  was  36*87  inches 
less  than  in  1852,  or,  in  other  words, 
the  difference  of  precipitation  amounted 
to  three-quarters  of  the  whole  yearly 
mean  rainfall  of  Madras.  I  can,  un- 
fortunately, procure  no  records  of 
1851  and  1852;  but  it  may  unhesi- 
tatingly be  asserted  that  the  excess 
rainfall  of  both  these  years,  after 
doing  extensive  damage  to  irrigation 
works  and  to  the  crops,  ran  uselessly 
to  sea,  in  lieu  of  draining  gently 
through  the  soil  into  reservoirs  and 
wells,  where  it  might  have  provided 
for  the  drought  that  occurred  in  1853. 
If  now  we  divide  the  sixty-three 
years,  from  1813-75,  into  three  equal 
periods  of  twenty-one  years  each,  we 
shall  find  the  average  of  the  differences 
of  rainfall  between  one  year  and  the 
year  following  to  be  as  follows  : — 


From  1813  to  1833 

„     1834  to  1854 

1855  to  1875 


Inches. 
20*071 
12*800 
13*370 


It  seems  from  these  figures  that  such 
ill-effects  as  the  crops  of  the  Carnatic 
suffer  from  floods  and  succeeding 
droughts  should  have  been  expe- 


243 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


rienced  in  greater  intensity  in  the 
earliest  of  the  three  periods,  when  the 
country  was  certainly  more  timbered 
than  now.  But,  as  the  evils  referred 
to  are  more  patent  at  the  present 
time  than  formerly,  it  follows  that 
the  debasement  of  the  last  half  century 
has  exaggerated  the  harmful  effects  of 
the  lower  yearly  difference  of  rainfall 
in  the  latter  periods  beyond  the 
standard  of  the  damage  inflicted  by 
the  higher  yearly  difference  of  the 
first  period.  Of  course  the  population 
has  increased  enormously  between 
1813  and  1875;  but  this  is  an  addi- 
tional reason  for  regarding  with  a 
more  critical  eye  such  physical  pheno- 
mena as  might  pardonably  have 
escaped  attention  three-quarters  of  a 
century  ago,  when  the  proportion  be- 
tween the  population  and  their  power 
of  raising  food  was  much  more  favour- 
able than  it  is  at  the  present  day. 
We  shall  find,  indeed,  this  reasoning 
to  be  strengthened  by  looking  at  the 
yearly  differences  more -closely;  for  it 
appears  that  not  only  the  average  dif- 
ferences, but  the  extreme  differences, 
have  also  decreased,  and  this  more  re- 
gularly. Thus,  the  average  of  the 
three  maximum  differences  of  yearly 
rainfall  for  each  one  of  the  before- 
specified  periods  is  as  follows  : — 


From  1813  to  1833  . 
„  1884  to  1854. 
„  1855  to  1875  . 


Inches. 
41-37 
35-58 
32-10 


The  secular  effects  of  rainfall  in 
Southern  India  should  have,  therefore, 
year  by  year,  been  more  favourable; 
but  since  such  has  not  been  the  case, 
other  physical  conditions  must  have 
interposed  and  more  than  neutralized 
the  benefits  which  ought  to  have 
accrued  from  the  gradual  improve- 
ment that  has  taken  place  in  the 
regularity  of  the  yearly  precipitation. 
ix/  has  sometimes  been  advanced  that 
the  growing  intensity  of  Indian  famines 
is  due  to  an  absolute  decrease  of  rain- 
fall; but  a  reference  to  the  Madras 
rain  register  scarcely  bears  out  the 
statement.  Thus,  in  the  three  periods 
of  twenty-one  years,  between  1813  and 


1875,  the  average  precipitation  was  as 
follows : — 

Inches. 

From  1813  to  1833  ...  47  "63 
„  1834  to  1854  .  .  .  50-71 
„  1855  to  1875  .  .  .  47-04 

Consequently  the  clearings  of  jungle 
which  have  been  made  during  the  past 
three-quarters  of  a  century  have  not 
affected  the  total  quantity  of  rain  fall- 
ing ;  and  as  the  physical  effects  of 
drought  have  absolutely  increased  in 
intensity,  this  increase  must  be  attri- 
buted to  the  removal  of  those  conser- 
vative influences  which  former  aspects 
of  the  country  possessed. 

To  understand  what  actually  occurs 
in  Southern  India  during  a  year  of 
heavy  rain  reference  may  be  made  to 
the  reports  for  the  year  1872.  From 
a  revenue  point  of  view  the  season,  of 
course,  was  reported  as  having  been 
good,  since  the  net  increase  over  the 
collections  of  the  preceding  year  was 
more  than  85,000^.,  of  which  about 
60,000/.  was  due  to  a  decrease  under 
the  head  of  "  remissions  "  of  land  re- 
venue, on  various  accounts,  but  chiefly 
for  "  failure  of  cultivation,"  as  com- 
pared with  this  itemin!871.  However, 
the  Administration  Report  says  : — 

"  The  year  began  with  a  cyclone  .  .  . 
doing  great  damage  in  Chingleput,  South 
Arcot,  North  Arcot,  and  Salem,  and  making 
itself  felt  even  in  Tanjore  and  Trichinopoly. 
Vellore  in  North  Arcot  was  inundated  by  the 
bursting  of  tanks  above  it,  and  many  lives 
•were  lost ;  50,000  cattle  died  in  Salem.  The 
north-east  monsoon  began  early,  and  was  very 
heavy  at  first.  There  were  inundations  in  the 
Godayery  and  Kistna  districts.  Many  huts 
sunk  in  the  mud  at  Madras,  and  it  was  possi- 
ble for  some  days  that  two  large  tanks  not  far 
from  the  town,  and  on  a  higher  level,  would 
burst  and  do  great  damage.  A  portion  of  the 
Jine  of  railway  was  swept  away  in  North 
Arcot.  .  .  .  Cattle  disease  was  not  very  pre- 
valent, and  does  not  seem  to  have  been  very 
severe  in  any  districts ;  but  large  numbers 
died  in  Vizagapatam,  Godavery,  North  Arcot, 
and  Salem,  from  the  effects  of  the  unusually 
abundant  rain." 

The  collector  of  Chingleput  reports 
that 

"  Considerable  damage  was  done  to  the 
irrigation  works  by  the  heavy  floods.  .  .  . 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


249 


Keshaveram  anicut,  at  the  divergence  of  the 
(Jortelliar  and  the  Couni  ....  was  almost 
destroyed  by  the  autumn  floods." 

The  Cortelliar  is  the  river  princi- 
pally used  for  irrigation  in  this  district, 
and  its  sources  lie  in  the  hills  some 
forty  miles  from  the  Coromandel  coast, 
just  where  the  Eastern  Ghauts  turn 
west  to  form  the  northern  boundary 
of  the  Carnatic.  Twenty-five  years 
ago  the  slopes  and  bases  of  these  hills 
were  covered  with  thick  jungles,  all 
of  which  have  been  subsequently  cut 
down  for  use  as  fuel  on  the  Madras 
Railway.  The  consequence  of  these 
extensive  clearings  has  been  that  at 
the  present  time  the  river  is  in  violent 
flood  for  as  many  days  during  the 
north-east  monsoon  as  formerly  it  was 
in  moderate  flood  during  weeks  ! 

"  North 'fArcot,'}  like  Chingleput,  suffered 
much  from  the  cyclone,  and  from  the  floods  of 
the  north-east  monsoon.  Many  tanks  were 
breached,  occasioning  loss  of  property,  and  in 
the  case  of  the  two  tanks  above  Vellore,  up- 
wards of  one  hundred  lives  were  sacrificed." 

And  so  forth.  It  would  be  tedious  to 
my  readers  to  continue  quotations 
showing  what  damage  is  done  to  the 
irrigation  works  in  Southern  India 
during  a  burst  of  heavy  rain.  How- 
ever, a  few  words  require  to  be  added 
on  the  effect  of  these  floods  on  the 
public  health.  "Notwithstanding," 
says  the  Revenue  Board — and  the  use 
of  this  word  seems  to  indicate  a  sus- 
picion that  something  "  is  rotten  in 
the  state  of  Denmark," — "  notwith- 
standing the  abundant  rain,  the  year 
was  not  a  healthy  one,  and  the  amount 
of  mortality  during  the  year  was  greater 
than  in  its  predecessor."  Such  a  state 
of  things  is  chiefly  due  to  the  fact 
that  during  a  season  of  heavy  rain 
much  of  the  country  is  turned  into  a 
swamp  from  interference  with  those 
conditions  which  would  have  regulated 
the  flow  of  natural  drainage.  What 
should  have  been  a  blessing  to  the 
population  was,  in  fact,  turned  into 
a  curse,  from  forgetfulness  that  the 
earth  was  given  to  man  to  enjoy  and 
not  to  destroy.  Fever  especially 
raged  all  over  the  Presidency,  and  the 


deaths  from  this  disease  were  37,949 
more  than  in  the  preceding  year  ! 

A  letter  has  recently  appeared  in  the 
columns  of  the  leading  journal  bearing 
the  signature  of  a  well-known  member 
of  the  Madras  Revenue  Board  who  has 
filled  several  still  more  prominent 
situations  in  the  local  Indian  service. 
The  writer's  object  was  to  dissipate 
several  popular  English  fallacies  in 
connection  with  the  question  of  Indian 
famines.  One  such  fallacy  was  that 
an  expenditure  of  several  millions  ster- 
ling on  the  construction  of  irrigation 
works  would  be  a  sure  preventive  of 
future  calamities  of  this  nature.  Of 
twenty  millions  of  acres  under  culti- 
vation in  ordinary  years,  he  states 
that  probably  four-fifths  are  occupied 
by  the  inferior  dry  grains  which  form 
the  invariable  food  of  the  poorer  classes 
of  the  people.  Rice,  he  says,  is  much 
too  expensive  an  article  for  their  food. 
Considering  the  fact  that  the  Madras 
railway  lines  have  been  chiefly  engaged 
in  carrying  rice  into  the  distressed  dis- 
tricts, it  would  appear  that  the  famine 
is  for  the  most  part  due  to  a  defici- 
ency of  this  grain,  which  could  not  be 
grown  during  the  drought  that  pre- 
vailed, and  the  expenditure  on  irriga- 
tion works  deprecated  by  the  writer, 
would  thus  certainly  seem  to  be  called 
for.  But  putting  this  aside,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  poorer  classes  would  eat 
the  superior  food  if  they  could  procure 
it,  and  this  they  can  only  do  when 
irrigation  works  shall  be  largely  ex- 
tended. And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  dry 
cultivation  is  immediately  given  up  for 
wet  cultivation,  should  a  tank  for 
storing  water  be  formed  to  command 
the  fields.  Rice  is  unquestionably  the 
staple  food  of  the  people,  and  will  be 
grown  wherever  it  becomes  possible  to 
do  so.  Ragi  and  other  dry  grains  are 
merely  a  pis  aller,  because  the  land 
utilised  in  growing  them  will  not  pro- 
duce rice.  However,  even  for  the 
cultivation  of  the  inferior  grains  some 
water  is  required,  and  the  letter  goes 
on  to  say  that  every  inducement  has 
been  held  out  by  the  Government  for 


250 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


the  construction  of  wells  by  private 
capital ;    while   a  recent    enactment, 
applicable   to   all  India,  enables  any 
landholder  to  obtain  a  loan  from  the 
State  for  this  purpose  on  easy  terms 
as  to  repayment.     Granting  that  there 
are  a  few  localities  where  wells  may  be 
usefully  employed,  it  is  certainly  dis- 
heartening at  this  late  hour  to  find 
the  antiquated  idea  that  well  irrigation 
should   generally  be   encouraged  still 
favoured  among  the   highest  officials 
of  the  Empire.     Years  ago  Sir  Arthur 
Cotton   showed   that  irrigation   from 
wells  twelve  to  fifteen  feet  deep  was 
from  forty  to  eighty  times  more  expen- 
sive than  the  process  of  storing  drainage 
in  tanks  and   reservoirs.     Moreover, 
the  tank-stored  water,  charged   with 
fertilising  matter,  is  immensely  supe- 
rior to  well  water  for  cultivation  pur- 
poses.     However,  let  this  also  pass, 
for  there  is  another  objection  to  irri- 
gation from  wells,  which  bears  more 
immediately  on  the  subject  in  hand. 
What,  it  may  be  asked,  is  the   culti- 
vator to  do  when  his  wells  dry  up? 
Steam-pumps  being  beyond  his  pecu- 
niary resources,  his  well  is  of  a  moder- 
ate depth  only,  and  in  years  of  drought 
even  drinking  water  is  a  scarcity,  owing 
to  the  small  quantity  of  drainage  that 
percolates  through  the  soil,   and  the 
rapidity  with  which  such  rain  as  pre- 
viously fell  ran  off  the  surface  of  the 
denuded  country.  In  1875,  the  Madras 
Government  were  much  exercised  re- 
garding the  serious  way  in  which  the 
plantations  of  the  Forest  Department, 
situated  in  the    North  Arcot  district, 
had  suffered  from  drought.  The  Madras 
Conservator  of    Forests   has   also   re- 
marked, in  a  recent  report,  that — 

"  The  extreme  drought  of  the  past  two 
years  has  told  much  upon  the  appearance  of 
the  ceded  districts.  "  I  observed,"  he  writes, 
"not  a  few  trees  dead  and  dying  from  the 
drought ;  this  has  rarely,  if  ever,  come  under 
my  observation  before,  certainly  never  to  such 
an  extent." 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the 
drought  has  proved  fatal  to  the  Ca- 
suarina  trees.  Some  twelve  acres 
were  planted  at  Camalapore  with  about 


12,000  plants  intended  for  fuel  for  the 
railway ;  these  had  reached  a  height 
of  forty-five  feet  and  a  girth  of  from 
nine  to  twenty  inches,  and  were  grow- 
ing very  well  till  last  September,  when 
they  began  to  succumb  to  the  length- 
ened drought,  and  about  70  per  cent 
died  off.  Here,  there  is  actual  evidence 
of  the  growing  dessication  of  the 
country,  and  this  can  only  be  due  to 
the  fact  of  previous  excessive  rainfall 
having  entered  the  soil  in  insufficient 
quantities  to  support  vegetation  dur- 
ing the  subsequent  season  of  drought. 
Under  such  circumstances  (if  they 
continue)  it  will  scarcely  be  a  profitable 
matter,  either  to  the  state  or  to  the 
cultivator,  to  encourage  the  construc- 
tion of  wells  for  cultivation  purposes. 

For  1874  the  actual  extent  of  land 
cultivated  in  the  Madras  Presidency 
(excluding  Zemindary),  amounted  to 
14,236,072  acres  of  dry  and  3,510,615 
acres  of  wet.  Nearly  2,000,000  acres  of 
the  dry  cultivation  were  under  cotton 
and  indigo,  while  52,000  acres  of  the 
wet  cultivation  were  under  sugar-cane. 
Deducting  these,  there  remain  for  1874 
the  approximate  figures  of  12-£  mil- 
lions of  acres  under  the  dry  grains, 
and  3i  millions  of  acres  under  rice, 
i.e.  the  proportion  of  land  growing  in- 
ferior grains  to  that  under  rice  would 
be  about  -|ths  of  the  whole,  and  not 
4ths  as  stated  from  memory  in  the 
letter  previously  mentioned.  Still, 
this  lower  proportion  affords  matter 
for  serious  reflection,  and  gives  the 
key  to  the  uniform  poverty  of  the 
millions  who  cultivate  the  plains, 
which  are  situated  among  the  granitic 
and  granitoid  formations  prevailing  in 
South  India  generally.  Mr.  Croll  tells 
us,  in  his  work,  Climate  and  Time, 
that — 

"  The  rate  at  which  rivers  carry  down  sedi- 
ment is  evidently  not  determined  by  the  rate 
at  which  the  rocks  are  disintegrated  and  de- 
composed, but  by  the  quantity  of  rain  falling 
and  the  velocity  at  which  it  moves  off  the  face 
'  of  the  country.  Every  river  system  possesses 
a  definite  amount  of  carrying  power,  depend- 
ing upon  the  slope  of  the  ground,  the  quantity 
of  rain  falling  per  annum,  the  manner  in  which 
the  rain  falls,  whether  it  falls  gradually  or  in 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


251 


torrents,  and  a  few  other  circumstances.  When 
it  so  happens,  as  it  generally  does,  that  the 
amount  of  rock  disintegrated  on  the  face  of 
the  coiwitry  is  greater  than  the  carrying  power 
of  the  river  systems  can  remove,  there  a  soil 
necessarily  forms.  But  when  the  reverse  is  the 
case,  no  soil  can  form  on  that  country,  and  it 
will  present  nothing  but  barren  rock." 

In  the  above  abstract  proposition  is 
displayed  the  root  of  the  evil  which 
attaches  to  agriculture  on  the  arena- 
ceous soils  of  Southern  India ;  where 
the  lighter  fertilising  matters  are  car- 
ried oft'  by  the  rapidly  escaping  drainage, 
and  an  unseasonable  fall  of  rain,  at 
one  time,  washes  off  the  slight  dressing 
of  manure,  that  the  cultivator  can 
afford  to  place  upon  his  fields ;  and 
at  another,  sweeps  away  his  growing 
crops  entirely,  or  covers  them  with 
many  inches  depth  of  sand.  What  the 
country  is  now  urgently  in  want  of  is, 
in  short,  this  :  that  the  soil  which  has 
been  carried  off  its  surface  shall  be 
enabled  once  more  to  form,  and  that 
the  further  progress  of  physical  de- 
terioration should  be  energetically 
arrested.  Then,  when  the  fons  et 
origo  mali  has  been  annihilated,  but 
certainly  not  before,  we  may  hope  to 
lead  the  Hindoo  cultivator  along  that 
path  of  agricultural  improvement 
whose  effects  in  our  own  favoured 
island  produce  considerably  more  per 
acre  than  the  land  of  any  other  civi- 
lised country. 

To  exemplify  how  strangely  the 
conservative  action  of  woods  upon 
inundations  has  been  neglected  by 
some  of  the  most  eminent  of  Indian 
engineers,  and  into  what  false  reason- 
ing this  oversight  has  led  them,  I  will 
quote  one  more  passage  from  the  report 
of  the  late  Colonel  J.  C.  Anderson, 
which  I  have  before  made  use  of  in 
these  pages. 

"Very  exaggerated  views,"  he  says,  "of 
the  capabilities  for  sustaining  extensive  sys- 
tems of  irrigations  from  the  rivers  on  the 
eastern  coast  of  this  (Madras)  Presidency  have 
been  entertained  by  the  public,  and  have  been 
persistently  urged  on  the  notice  of  Govern- 
ment. Even  the  Commissioners  appointed  to 
inquire  into  the  Public  Works  system  in  the 
Madras  Presidency  would  have  led  the  readers 
of  their  report  to  the  conclusion  that  the 


superiority  of  Tanjore  over  the  districts  ad- 
jacent to  Madras  was  to  be  ascribed  mainly  to 
one  cause  only,  viz.,  that  capital  to  a  vast 
amount  had  been  invested  in  it  in  bringing 
water  to  the  fields,  while  they  lost  sight  of  the 
fact  that  Tanjore  has  extraordinary  natural 
advantages  in  possessing  a  deltaic  tract  of 
country  traversed  by  a  number  of  arms  of  the 
Cauvery ;  and  that  moreover  no  amount  of 
capital  expended  in  attempting  to  bring  water 
to  the  fields  in  North  Arcot  or  Madras  could 
place  these  districts  on  the  same  footing  as 
Tanjore,  unless  the  source  from  which  that 
water  was  to  be  drawn  could,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, have  been  made  as  abundant  and  as 
unfailing  as  the  Cauvery." 

And  so  it  is  very  generally  held  at 
present  that  outside  the  tracts  watered 
from  the  Cauvery,  Kistnah,  Godavery, 
and  Tambrapoorney,  there  is  no  water 
available  for  extending  irrigation  from 
the  minor  rivers  of  Southern  India. 

But  if  we  look  at  actual  facts,  is  it 
true  that  there  is  no  available  water 
that  could  be  employed  in  extending 
irrigation  ?  Has  not  sufficient  evidence 
been  already  adduced  in  the  foregoing 
pages  to  show  that  there  is  in  reality 
plenty  of  water  running  in  the  rivers 
whenever  rain  falls  ;  and  that  the  sole 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  utilising  it  is 
that  it  drains  so  rapidly  off  the  face  of 
the  land  that  it  is  impossible  practi- 
cally to  retain  it,  with  the  result  that 
instead  of  being  a  blessing  to  the  un- 
fortunate country,  all  water  in  excess 
of  what  is  required  for  the  moment  is 
actually  a  curse  ?  For  instance,  if  we 
turn  to  the  reports  from  the  Madras 
Collectorates  for  the  fortnight  ending 
13th  October,  1877,  we  find  the  follow- 
ing remarks  for  the  district  of  North 
Arcot : — 

"  There  has  been  a  decided  and  extremely 
satisfactory  improvement  in  the  season.  The 
rainfall  throughout  the  district  has  been 
very  copious,  and  the  Palar  and  other  rivers 
were  for  the  whole  fortnight  in  full  fresh.  Al- 
most all  the  river-fed  tanks  are  quite  full,  and 
the  rain -fed  tanks  have  received  good  supplies. 
The  cultivation  of  wet  crops  under  these 
sources  of  irrigation  is  in  active  progress,  and 
the  crops  under  wells  and  channels  are  all  in  a 
thriving  condition.  .  .  .  Agricultural  opera- 
tions are  in  a  remarkably  active  state.  The 
grant  of  loans  by  Government  for  purchasing 
seed  grain  has  had  a  beneficial  effect  in  stimu- 
lating agricultural  industry  on  the  part  of  the 
poorer  classes  of  ryots.  The  rainfall  has  been 


252 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


so  very  great  in  the  Punganoor  Zemindary, 
that  the  safety  of  its  tanks  has  become  a 
matter  of  considerable  anxiety.  No  less  than 
sixty  tanks,  including  the  large  one  at 
Sankararoyalpett,  yielding  an  annual  revenue 
of  Rs.  10,005,  are  already  reported  to  have 
breached.  Rain  is  falling  heavily  all  over  the 
district,  and  the  rain  at  Chittoor  on  the  night 
of  the  13th  inst.  amounted  to  five  and  a  half 
inches,  which  fell  in  about  six  hours." 

This  is  the  state  of  matters  before 
the  north-eastern  monsoon  has  set  in  ; 
and  yet  a  very  little  more  rain  would 
have  changed  the  long  hoped-for  bene- 
faction into  a  calamity  !  Again,  from 
Cuddapah,  it  is  reported,  ''The  weather 
is  all  that  could  be  desired  for  the  crops. 
Most  tanks  are  full."  And  in  the 
subdivision  of  this  district,  "  Nothing 
could  be  more  promising  than  the  agri- 
cultural prospects  at  present.  The 
chief  fear  is  the  breaching  of  tanks  from 
excessive  rain/"  Just,  too,  as  I  am 
despatching  this  MS.  from  India  the 
following  paragraph  appears  in  the 
columns  of  the  Madras  Mail: — "A 
private  telegram  from  Bellary  states 
that  it  has  been  raining  there  inces- 
santly since  last  evening.  Several 
tanks  have  burst.  Crops  are  suffering. 
Heavy  rain  is  also  reported  from 
Guntoor." 

Such,  then,  being  the  normal  con- 
dition of  affairs  whenever  a  heavy  fall 
of  rain  takes  place,  can  it  be  seriously 
asserted  that  water  for  extending  irri- 
gation is  not  usually  available  1  Then 
there  is  the  fact  that  every  two  or  three 
years  the  country  is  visited  by  a  cyclone, 
during  which  falls  of  rain  to  the 
amount  of  as  much  as  17i  inches  in 
the  twenty-four  hours  have  taken 
place  !  While,  however,  an  ordinary 
heavy  fall  of  rain  does  great  damage 
to  the  agriculture  of  the  country  under 
its  present  physical  aspects,  it  stands 
to  reason  that  the  precipitation  due  to 
cyclones  can  only  be  regarded  in  the 
light  of  a  scourge.  But  since  restora- 
tive and  conservative  measures  are 
urgently  required  for  placing  agricul- 
tural production  beyond  the  damaging 
influences  of  the  usual  vicissitudes 
of  seasons,  how  much  more  is  such 
a  policy  demanded  in  order  that 


we  may,  as  far  as  lies  within  our 
power,  ward  off  the  disasters  which 
follow  on  anomalous  falls  of  rain 
taking  place  during  tropical  hurri- 
canes. It  is  true  that  it  is  impossible 
to  prevent  some  of  the  local  effects  of 
these  deluges.  We  cannot  prevent 
rain  and  wind  from  beating  down  the 
crops  to  the  ground,  and  stripping  off 
the  ripening  ears  of  grain  ;  but  we 
may,  to  a  great  extent,  prevent  floods 
from  washing  the  crops  bodily  away, 
or  covering  them  with  sand ;  and  by 
making  the  flow  of  drainage  more 
equable,  we  may  minimise,  in  a  con- 
siderable degree,  the  damage  that  is 
now  done  to  storage  tanks  and  other 
irrigation  works.  In  these  respects, 
therefore,  we  may  do  much  to  neutral- 
ise evils,  and  may,  besides,  pluck  from 
the  very  affliction  that  smites  us  the 
means  of  reparation  and  recovery. 

Looking  inland  from  the  house  that 
I  occupy  on  the  shore  of  the  Bay  of 
Bengal,  one  sees  a  steep  ridge  of  hills 
which  touch  the  sea  some  little  way 
to  the  north.  From  there  they  run 
along  a  distance  of  nearly  seven  miles, 
rapidly  increasing  the  space  that 
lies  between  their  slopes  and  the  coast, 
after  which  they  turn  sharply  away 
inland  for  about  seven  miles  further, 
where  they  terminate.  Parallel  to 
this  second  direction  of  the  ridge,  and 
about  two  miles  south  of  it,  running 
directly  inland  from  the  shore,  another 
and  similar  line  of  hills  forma  the 
opposite  side  of  the  valley,  its  more 
distant  extremity  extending  two  miles 
beyond  -the  termination  of  the  first 
ridge.  Both  ridges  have  a  height  of 
less  than  1,000  feet  at  their  highest 
points;  their  formation  is  of  disinte- 
grating gneiss,  and  they  are  covered 
with  stunted  jungle,  which  clothes 
them  with  verdure  during  the  rainy 
season,  but  through  whose  dried  up 
dusty  branches  the  reddish-brown 
rock  is  seen  in  the  hot  weather.  The 
southern  ridge  is  entirely  bare  of  timber, 
and  is  furrowed  by  dry  ravines ;  but 
in  the  narrow  folds  between  some  of 
the  spurs  of  the  northerly  hills,  grow 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


253 


patches  of  heavy  jungle;  just  below 
which  again  are  gardens  of  various 
kinds  of  fruit-trees  rather  thickly 
planted  together.  In  the  water-course 
lines  of  these  valleys  flow  streams 
which  never  fail,  except  after  several 
consecutive  seasons  of  excessive 
drought.  Passing  round  the  inland 
extremity  of  the  northern  ridge,  and 
following  the  back  of  the  slope  for  a 
short  distance,  one  arrives  at  a  con- 
siderable circular  valley  or  dell  shut 
in  by  an  inclosing  spur.  The  sides  of 
the  dell  are  covered  with  trees,  and 
within  it  are  situated  ancient  Hindu 
temples,  which  were  erected  in  the 
thirteenth  century.  From  the  foot  of 
the  hill  the  inclosed  valley  is  entered 
through  a  massive  gateway,  after  pass- 
ing which,  one  finds  oneself  at  the 
bottom  of  a  broad  flight  of  masonry 
steps  conducting  to  the  different 
temples  which  stand  among  the  trees 
and  gardens  covering  the  hill  slopes. 
On  each  side  of  the  flight  of  steps  runs 
a  never-failing  stream  of  water  in  a 
masonry  conduit,  broken  by  cascades.  . 
These  streams,  it  is  needless  to  add, 
are  held  in  great  veneration,  and  their 
ilow  having  never  been  known  to  inter- 
mit, it  is  attributed  to  supernatural 
causes.  Now,  there  is  not  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt  that  the  timber  which 
exists  in  the  few  spots  described  of 
the  northern  ridge  is  the  sole  cause 
of  the  really  plentiful  water  supply 
that  is  here  available.  On  the  southern 
ridge,  where  there  is  not  a  single  tree, 
there  is  also  not  a  drop  of  water  now 
procurable,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  season  has  been  a  remarkably 
favourable  one,  and  that  more  than 
forty  inches  of  rain  have  fallen  during 
the  year,  to  the  end  of  October. 

The  valley  that  I  am  speaking  of 
has  an  area  of  220  square  miles,  and 
the  length  of  its  inclosing  water- 
shed line  is  about  250  miles,  of  which 
length  one-twentieth,  at  the  very  out- 
side, would  represent  the  space  occu- 
pied by  the  commencements  of  the 
watercourse  lines.  If,  then,  in  order 
to  prevent  the  drainage  that  falls 
along  the  watershed-line  of  the 


valley,  from  flowing  rapidly  away,  it 
were  determined  to  plant  patches  of 
forest,  say  200  yards  in  breadth,  in 
and  about  the  heads  of  the  drainage 
channels,  we  should  require  to  plant 
for  the  valley  under  consideration, 
250  x  1760  x  200  __  4,400,000 
4840 


=  910 


20  4840 

acres  nearly.  Turning  to  the  report 
of  the  Madras  Forest  Department  for 
the  official  year,  ending  31st  March, 
1875,  we  find  the  cost  of  plantations 
(excluding  teak)  to  be  about  51.  per 
1,000  trees,  looked  after  for  from  three 
to  four  years.  And  allowing  1,000 
trees  to  be  planted  on  each  acre,  the 
cost  of  the  proposed  plantations  for 
the  before  specified  valley  would  be 
4,55<M. 

Now,  since  there  are  about  80,000 
square  miles  in  the  Madras  Presidency 
which  would  require  to  be  treated  in 
the  same  way,  the  cost  to  be  incurred 

.,,     80,000        ,KKA       ,„     .,,. 
would  be      '         x  4550  =  If  millions 

sterling  nearly ;  which  can  only  be 
considered  a  ridiculously  small  expen- 
diture compared  with  the  benefits  to 
be  derived.  No  establishments  similar 
to  those  of  the  Forest  Department 
would  be  required  for  the  scheme  under 
consideration,  since  this  would  be 
more  efficiently  supervised  by  the 
revenue  authorities  working  through 
the  village  officers.  Neither  would  ex- 
penditure be  required  for  the  neces- 
sary land,  since  the  whole  of  the  lo- 
calities would  be  the  waste  grounds 
belonging  to  the  villages  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood ;  which,  as  well  as  those  at 
a  distance,  would  reap  an  ample  com- 
pensation from  the  plantations.  An 
additional  reason  why  the  proposed 
scheme  should  be  carried  out  entirely 
by  the  villagers  themselves  is,  that  its 
execution  would  be  one  great  step 
towards  the  urgently  called-for  reform 
of  teaching  the  cultivating  classes  the 
necessity  of  personal  independence  and 
self-reliance.  A  quarter  of  a  century 
of  our  rule  has  been  most  harmful  to 
the  people  in  this  respect ;  as  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that  the  ryots  in  the 


254 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


Zemindary  put  their  shoulder  to  the 
wheel  and  help  themselves  in  cases 
where  a  Government  ryot  invariably 
looks  to  the  officials  to  assist  him.  Five 
and  twenty  years  ago,  before  the 
Public  Works  Department  was  estab- 
lished, and  when  the  irrigation  works 
of  South  India  were  looked  after  by 
the  revenue  authorities,  every  ryot,  in 
conformity  with  immemorial  custom, 
was  bound  to  supply  the  labour  for 
carrying  out  certain  petty  and  emer- 
gent repairs ;  but  with  the  transfer  of 
the  works  from  the  hands  of  the  officers 
who  had  the  legal  power  to  inf  orce  this 
custom,  the  custom  itself  has  fallen 
into  desuetude,  with  the  result  of 
gradually  demoralising  the  agricultural 
population  in  all  that  regards  self-help. 
The  execution  of  the  proposed  scheme 
by  the  revenue  authorities  would  con- 
sequently afford  a  favourable  oppor- 
tunity of  re-establishing  a  system  which 
will  really  be,  under  existent  circum- 
stances, a  far-reaching  educational 
measure  for  the  masses  of  South 
India. 

It  may  be  useful  if  in  this  place  a 
pause  be  made  in  order  to  glance  at 
the  actual  effects  of  an  Indian  cyclone 
upon  the  public  wealth.  I  write  from 
a  district  which  was  visited  in  the  first 
week  of  October,  1876,  by  a  cyclonic 
storm  of  a  violent  character ;  and 
though  exact  figures  are  not  attainable, 
I  shall  be  able  to  give  my  readers  a 
sufficiently  accurate  notion  of  the 
damage  which  was  occasioned  by  the 
heavy  rainfall,  amounting  to  more  than 
seventeen  inches,  that  was  experienced 
during  twenty-four  hours.  In  the  first 
place,  the  actual  loss  of  human  life 
was  about  one  hundred  lives,  not  to  be 
estimated  in  money.  Then  comes  the 
destruction  of  1,000  cattle  and  13,000 
sheep,  the  value  of  which  may  be 
put  at  5,000?.  The  damage  done  to 
the  crops  by  wind  and  rain,  besides 
that  due  to  their  subsequently  wither- 
ing away  (owing  to  the  bursting  of 
irrigation  tanks),  as  well  as  the  injury 
done  them  by  sand  conveyed  by  flood- 
water,  was  estimated  at  150,000?.  To 
the  above  must  be  added  10,000?.  for 


damage  done  to  roads  and  bridges, 
30,000?.  required  for  the  repairs  of 
tanks,  channels,  and  irrigation  weirs  ; 
and  20,000?.  required  for  rebuilding  of 
houses ;  making  a  total  of  215,000?. 
for  losses  occasioned  by  the  storm 
spoken  of.  The  affected  area  measured 
about  2,500  square  miles,  and  the 
cost  of  planting  this  tract  of  country 
after  the  manner  already  described 
would  amount  to  about  52,000?.  Had 
the  plantations  existed  at  the  time 
of  the  cyclone,  it  is  true  enough 
that  they  could  not  have  prevented 
a??  the  loss  that  actually  occurred. 
But,  it  may  be  reasonably  asserted 
that  they  would,  in  all  probability, 
have  saved  a  quarter  of  the  whole 
damage  that  was  done,  by  restraining 
the  flood  of  drainage  from  covering  the 
country  ;  so  that  the  cost  of  planting 
the  2,500  square  miles  in  question 
would  have  been  paid  for  by  the  pro- 
tection which  would  have  been  afforded 
in  a  single  cyclone.  But,  even  were 
the  saving  much  less  than  I  have  sup- 
posed, the  expenditure  would  have 
been  well  worth  incurring,  putting 
out  of  consideration  the  more  per- 
manent benefits  which  such  plantations 
would  confer  on  this  tract  of  country 
in  ordinary  years. 

These  plantations,  by  increasing  the 
quantity  of  water  percolating  through 
the  soil,  would  add  enormously  to  the 
now  scanty  vegetation  that  is  available 
as  pasturage.  Being  specially  designed 
for  the  conservation  and  restoration  of 
the  moisture  of  the  country,  they  must 
necessarily  be  exempted  from  being 
drawn  on  by  the  people  for  fuel,  or 
from  being  used  by  them  as  grazing 
ground  for  cattle,  sheep,  or  goats. 
This  latter  point,  I  venture  to  assert, 
is  a  capital  one,  and  to  the  reckless 
way  in  which  it  has  been  neglected  in 
the  past  may  be  attributed  the  ex- 
tensive harm  that  has  been  done  to 
the  natural  drainage  of  Southern 
India.  In  spite  of  the  daily  and 
largely  increasing  demand  for  fuel, 
during  the  past  twenty-five  years 
more  especially,  the  jungles  and  forests 
bordering  the  watercourses  would 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


255 


not  have  undergone  such  utter  extinc- 
tion as  they  actually  have  had  it  not 
been  for  the  ravages  committed  by 
the  sheep  and  goats.  The  subject 
has,  one  may  say,  never  been  brought 
into  prominence  until  very  recent 
years  ;  but  now,  when  the  labours  of 
naturalists  and  physical  geographers 
have  shown  how  nice  and  exact  is  the 
balance,  through  all  nature,  between 
the  fauna  and  the  flora  of  a  country, 
and  how  disastrous  the  effect  upon  the 
one  may  be  from  a  disproportionate 
activity  of  the  other,  there  is  no 
further  excuse  for  shutting  our  eyes 
to  the  necessity  of  remedying  the 
grave  evil  which  has  already  been 
occasioned  on  this  head  in  South 
India. 

The  Government  report  for  the  year 
ending  31st  March,  1876,  states  the 
number  of  cattle  and  sheep  in  the 
Madras  Presidency  to  be  8^  and  6f 
millions,  respectively.  Besides  these, 
the  number  of  goats  would  (arguing 
from  known  numbers  on  smaller  areas) 
probably  be  13£  millions;  though  no 
official  figures  are  available  for  the  last- 
named  animals.  The  waste  lands  used 
as  pasturage  for  these  amount  to  five 
millions  of  acres  only  ;  so  that  on  each 
acre  we  have, 

1-65  Cattle, 
1'35  Sheep,  and 
27     Goats ; 

a  number  of  beasts  so  manifestly 
in  excess  of  what  the  present 
scanty  pasturage  can  support,  that 
the  reason  is  plain  why  the  young 
forest-trees  of  the  country  have  no 
chance  of  existence ;  and  why  the 
watercourses  upon  whose  banks  their 
stunted  skeletons  grow  are  mere  dry 
ravines  filled  up  with  stones  and 
sand. 

Mr.  Wallace,  in  his  work,  The 
Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals, 
mentions  how  "the  introduction  of 
goats  into  St.  Helena  utterly  de- 
stroyed a  whole  flora  of  forest  trees, 
and  with  them  all  the  insects,  mollusca, 
and  perhaps,  birds,  directly  or  in- 
directly dependent  upon  them."  And 


though,   of    course,  the   limited   area 
of     that    island     and    the    unlimited 
powers   of    reproduction   inherent   in 
goats    made    the    catastrophe    which 
supervened  in  St.  Helena  more  evident 
and    decisive,    there   cannot    be    the 
slightest   doubt  that  the   very    same 
process   of    destruction    is   going    on 
over  the  enormous  territory  of  South 
India,  and  is  fully  appreciable  by  those 
who  make  physiography  their  study, 
or  have,  like  myself,  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  observing  wide  deserts,  such 
as  those  of  Central  Asia,  where  natural 
restorative  processes    are    dominated 
and  rendered  of  no  avail  by  the  de- 
structiveness  of  the  flocks  and  herds 
of   the   nomadic   tribes.      It    was   in 
the   Kizzilkoom   desert   that    I    first 
appreciated    the    enormous    force    of 
these  scourges.     Once,  as  evening  fell, 
I   met  a    flock   of    goats    advancing 
across   the   wilderness   in  a  compact 
parallelogram,    one  of     whose   points 
was  occupied  by  the  leading  animal. 
The  dimensions  of  this  moving  mass 
I  judged  to  be  about  150  yards  long 
by  100  broad,   and   its   area    would, 
therefore,    have    been    7,500    square 
yards,  and  allowing  two  animals  per 
square  yard,  there  were  15,000  goats 
in   the  flock !     During  the  whole  of 
the  day  these  animals  had  been  scour- 
ing the  adjacent  country  for  miles  in 
search  of  food,  and  every  young  shoot 
of  vegetation  they  found  must  have 
been  destroyed  !     Under  such  circum- 
stances, is  it  any  wonder  that  no  water 
is  to  be  met   with,  and  that  nature 
presents  such  unchangeable  and  per- 
sistently repellent  aspects  for  mankind 
in  regions  where  the  youth  of  our  race 
was  passed  ? 

La  Bruyere  rsaid  that  most  men 
spend  one-half  of  their  lives  in  making 
the  other  half  miserable ;  an  apothegm 
whose  truth  few  of  us,  generally  speak- 
ing, have  not  had  some  opportunities  of 
realising.  Nor  is  the  career  of  com- 
munities less  subject  than  that  of  the 
individuals  composing  them  to  evils 
consequent  upon  ignorance  or  disre- 
gard of  the  laws  which  govern  the 
economy  of  the  universe.  Hence  the 


256 


Famines  and  Floods  in  India. 


importance  of  the  labours  of  the 
statesman,  the  man  of  science,  and 
the  philanthropist,  who  desire  to  palli- 
ate or  to  put  a  period  to  calamities  in- 
duced by  human  action,  in  spite  of  the 
bitter  experiences  of  bygone  empires 
and  populations. 

Of  labours  of  this  sort  the  present 
century  is  prolific  enough,  more  espe- 
cially in  reference  to  India.    Whether, 
however,  the  results  which  follow  suffi- 
ciently indemnify  them  is  perhaps  a 
question     worthy     of     consideration. 
Does  it,  for  example,  become  a  nation 
which  prides   itself   on  its    practical 
qualities  to  be  wasting  time  in  finding 
out  when  drought  may  exactly  be  ex- 
pected   rather   than    to    set   to  work 
energetically  in  order  to  prevent  the 
occurrence  of  any  drought  whatever? 
Photograph  the  sun  as  much  as  you 
please,  and  keep  ever  so  sharp  a  look 
out  as  you  will  on  the  number  of  his 
spots,  what  practical  good  will  these 
investigations  do  you  ?     While  floods 
and  famines  alternately  devastate  the 
land  with  unerring  certainty  and  in- 
creasing   intensity,    where,    I    would 
ask,  is  the  difficulty  of  seizing  the  evil 
that  requires  to  be  remedied  ?     Like 
the  philosophers  of  Laputa,  our  own 
are   engaged  upon  a  thousand  praise- 
worthy schemes  for  putting  everything 
on  a  new  and  improved  footing  within 
our  Eastern  Empire. 

"All  the  fruits  of  the  earth  shall 
come  to  maturity  at  whatever  season 
we  think  fit  to  choose,  and  increase  a 
hundredfold  more  than  they  do  at 
present,  with  innumerable  other  happy 
proposals.  The  only  inconvenience  is, 

BENGAL,  November,  1877. 


that  none  of  these  projects  are  yet 
brought  to  perfection;  and,  in  the 
meantime,  the  whole  country  lies 
miserably  waste,  the  houses  in  ruins, 
and  the  people  without  food  or 
clothes." 

If  this  be  not  a  true  picture  of  the 
actual  posture  of  many  well-meaning 
Englishmen  towards  India,  and  of  the 
state  of  this  country  at  the  present 
moment,  it  is  at  least  one  which  has 
very  fair  chances  of  being  true  before 
long  time  has  elapsed. 

And   here  my   task  is  ended.     Of 
the  want  of  communications  in  South- 
ern India  I  have  said  nothing,  because 
this  subject  has  been  so  exhaustively 
treated  by  Sir  Arthur  Cotton.     What 
he  prophesied  on  this  head  a  quarter 
of   a  century  ago   came   true  in  the 
Orissa  famine,  and  has  again  proved 
true   in   the  present   Madras   famine. 
On  the  one  hand,  thousands  of  bags  of 
rice   now  lie  rotting  on  the    Madras 
beach  which  the  railway  is  unable  to 
carry  to  districts  crying  out  for  food. 
On  the  other  hand,  millions  of  quarters 
of  wheat  are  unsaleable  on  the  banks 
of    the    Upper    Mahanuddy   and    its 
affluents,    while     the    population    of 
England,  according  to  the  Times,  will 
probably  pay  what  amounts  to  twenty 
millions  sterling  additional  for  their  next 
year's  bread.     But  these  are  questions 
altogether    beyond    the  scope  of   my 
present  design,  which  is  to  ask  atten- 
tion to  one  of  the  most  crying  evils — and 
in  my  own  opinion  the  most  crying  of 
the  evils — now  afflicting  Southern  India, 
i.e.,  the   increasing  desiccation  of  the 
country  from  the  reckless  destruction 
of  its  trees  and  forests. 

PHILINDUS. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 

FEBRUARY,  1878. 


THE  PROPOSED  SUBSTITUTES  FOR  RELIGION. 


THERE  appears  to  be  a  connection 
between  the  proposed  substitutes  for 
religion  and  the  special  training  of 
their  several  authors.  Historians 
tender  us  the  worship  of  Humanity, 
professors  of  physical  science  tender 
•us  Cosmic  Emotion.  Theism  might 
almost  retort  the  apologue  of  the 
spectre  of  the  Brocken. 

The  only  organised  cultus  without 
a  God,  at  present  before  us,  is  that  of 
Comte.  This  in  all  its  parts — its  high- 
priesthood,  its  hierarchy,  its  sacra- 
ments, its  calendar,  its  hagiology,  its 
literary  canon,  its  ritualism,  and  we 
may  add,  in  its  fundamentally  intoler- 
ant and  inquisitorial  character — is  an 
obvious  reproduction  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  with  Humanity  in  place  of  God, 
great  men  in  place  of  the  saints,  the 
Founder  of  Comtism  in  place  of  the 
Founder  of  Christianity,  and  even  a 
sort  of  substitute  for  the  Virgin  in 
the  shape  of  womanhood  typified  by 
Clotilde  de  Vaux.  There  is  only  just 
the  amount  of  difference  which  would 
be  necessary  to  escape  from  servile 
imitation.  We  have  ourselves  wit- 
nessed a  case  of  alternation  between 
the  two  systems  which  testified  to 
the  closeness  of  their  affinity.  The 
Catholic  Church  has  acted  on  the 
imagination  of  Comte  at  least  as 
powerfully  as  Sparta  acted  on  that 
of  Plato.  Nor  is  Comtism,  any  more 
than  Plato's  Republic  and  other 
Utopias,  exempt  from  the  infirmity  of 
claiming  finality  for  a  flight  of  the  in- 
dividual imagination.  It  would  shut 

No.  220. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


up  mankind  for  ever  in  a  stereotyped 
organisation  which  is  the  vision  of  a 
particular  thinker.  In  this  respect  it 
seems  to  us  to  be  at  a  disadvantage 
compared  with  Christianity,  which,  as 
presented  in  the  Gospels,  does  not  pre- 
tend to  organise  mankind  ecclesiastic- 
ally or  politically,  but  simply  supplies  a 
new  type  of  character,  and  a  new  motive 
power,  leaving  government,  ritual  and 
organisation  of  every  kind  to  determine 
themselves  from  age  to  age.  Comte's 
prohibition  of  inquiry  into  the  com- 
position of  the  stars,  which  his  priest- 
hood, had  it  been  installed  in  power, 
would  perhaps  have  converted  into  a 
compulsory  article  of  faith,  is  only  a 
specimen  of  his  general  tendency  (the 
common  tendency,  as  we  have  said, 
of  all  Utopias)  to  impose  on  human 
progress  the  limits  of  his  own  mind. 
Let  his  hierarchy  become  masters  of  the 
world,  and  the  effect  would  probably 
be  like  that  produced  by  the  ascend- 
ency of  a  hierarchy  (enlightened  no 
doubt  for  its  time)  in  Egypt,  a  brief 
start  forward,  followed  by  consecrated 
immobility  for  ever. 

Lareveillere  Lepaux,  the  member  of 
the  French  Directory,  invented  a  new 
religion  of  Theophilanthropy,  which 
seems  in  fact  to  have  been  an  organ- 
ised Rqusseauism.  He  wished  to  im- 
pose it  on  France,  but  finding  that,  in 
spite  of  his  passionate  endeavours,  he 
made  but  little  progress,  he  sought  the 
advice  of  Talleyrand.  "  I  am  not  sur- 
prised," said  Talleyrand,  "  at  the  diffi- 
culty you  experience.  It  is  no  easy 


258 


The  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


matter  to  introduce  a  new  religion. 
But  I  will  tell  you  what  I  recommend 
you  to  do.  I  recommend  you  to  be 
crucified,  and  to  rise  again  on  the 
third  day.  "  "We  cannot  say  whether 
Lareveillere  made  any  proselytes,  but 
if  he  did  their  number  cannot  have 
been  much  smaller  than  the  reputed 
number  of  the  religious  disciples  of 
Comte.  As  a  philosophy,  Comtism  has 
found  its  place,  and  exercised  its  share 
of  influence  among  the  philosophies  of 
the  time  ;  but  as  a  religious  system  it 
appears  to  make  little  way.  It  is  the 
invention  of  a  man,  not  the  spontane- 
ous expression  of  the  beliefs  and  feel- 
ings of  mankind.  Any  one  with  a 
tolerably  lively  imagination  might 
produce  a  rival  system  with  as  little 
practical  effect.  Roman  Catholicism 
was  at  all  events  a  growth,  not  an 
invention. 

Cosmic  Emotion,  though  it  does  not 
affect  to  be  an  organised  system,  is 
the  somewhat  sudden  creation  of  indi- 
vidual minds,  set  at  work  apparently 
by  the  exigencies  of  a  particular  situa- 
tion, and  on  that  account  suggestive 
primd  facie  of  misgivings  similar  to 
those  suggested  by  the  invention  of 
Comte. 

Now,  is  the  worship  of  Humanity  or 
Cosmic  Emotion  really  a  substitute  for 
religion?  That  is  the  only  question 
which  we  wish,  in  these  few  pages,  to 
ask.  We  do  not  pretend  here  to  in- 
quire what  is  or  what  is  not  true  in 
itself. 

Religion  teaches  that  we  have  our 
being  in  a  Power  whose  character  and 
purposes  are  indicated  to  us  by  our 
moral  nature,  in  whom  we  are  united, 
and  by  the  union  made  sacred  to  each 
other ;  whose  voice  conscience,  how- 
ever generated,  is ;  whose  eye  is 
always  upon  us,  sees  all  our  acts, 
and  sees  them  as  they  are  morally 
without  reference  to  worldly  success, 
or  to  the  opinion  of  the  world;  to 
whom  at  death  we  return ;  and  our  re- 
lations to  whom,  together  with  his 
own  nature,  are  an  assurance  that, 
according  as  we  promote  or  fail  to 
promote  his  design  by  self-improve- 


ment, and  the  improvement  of  our 
kind,  it  will  be  well  or  ill  for  us  in  the 
sum  of  things.  This  is  a  hypothesis 
evidently  separable  from  belief  in  a 
revelation,  and  from  any  special  theory 
respecting  the  next  world,  as  well  as 
from  all  dogma  and  ritual.  It  may 
be  true  or  false  in  itself,  capable  of 
demonstration  or  incapable.  We  are 
concerned  here  solely  with  its  practical 
efficiency,  compared  with  that  of  the 
proposed  substitutes.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  remark,  that  there  is 
nothing  about  the  religious  hypothesis 
as  here  stated,  miraculous,  supernatural, 
or  mysterious,  except  so  far  as  those 
epithets  may  be  applied  to  anything 
beyond  the  range  of  bodily  sense,  say 
the  influence  of  opinion  or  affection. 
A  universe  self-made,  and  without  a 
God,  is  at  least  as  great  a  mystery  as 
a  universe  with  a  God ;  in  fact  the 
very  attempt  to  conceive  it  in  the 
mind  produces  a  mortal  vertigo  which 
is  a  bad  omen  for  the  practical  success 
of  Cosmic  Emotion. 

For  this  religion  are  the  service  and 
worship  of  Humanity  likely  to  be  a 
real  equivalent  in  any  respect,  as 
motive  power,  as  restraint,  or  as  com- 
fort? Will  the  idea  of  life  in  God 
be  adequately  replaced  by  that  of  an 
interest  in  the  condition  and  progress 
of  Humanity,  as  they  may  affect  us 
and  be  influenced  by  our  conduct, 
together  with  the  hope  of  human  gra- 
titude and  fear  of  human  reprobation 
after  death,  which  the  Comtists  en- 
deavour to  organise  into  a  sort  of  coun- 
terpart of  the  Day  of  Judgment  ? 

It  will  probably  be  at  once  conceded 
that  the  answer  must  be  in  the  nega- 
tive as  regards  the  immediate  future 
and  the  mass  of  mankind.  The  simple 
truths  of  religion  are  intelligible  to 
all,  and  strike  all  minds  with  equal 
force,  though  they  may  not  have  the 
same  influence  with  all  moral  natures. 
A  child  learns  them  perfectly  at  its 
mother's  knee.  Honest  ignorance  in 
the  mine,  on  the  sea,  at  the  forge, 
striving  to  do  its  coarse  and  perilous 
duty,  performing  the  lowliest  func- 
tions of  humanity,  contributing  in  the 


The  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


259 


humblest  way  to  human  progress,  itself 
scarcely  sunned  by  a  ray  of  what  more 
cultivated  natures  would  deem  happi- 
ness, takes  in  as  fully  as  the  sublimest 
philosopher  the  idea  of  a  God  who 
sees  and  cares  for  all,  who  keeps  ac- 
count of  the  work  well  done  or  the 
kind  act,  marks  the  secret  fault,  and 
will  hereafter  make  up  to  duty  for  the 
hardness  of  its  present  lot.  But  a 
vivid  interest — such  an  interest  as 
will  act  both  as  a  restraint  and  as  a 
comfort — in  the  condition  and  future 
of  humanity,  can  surely  exist  only 
in  those  who  have  a  knowledge  of 
history  sufficient  to  enable  them  to 
embrace  the  unity  of  the  past,  and  an 
imagination  sufficiently  cultivated  to 
glow  with  anticipation  of  the  future. 
For  the  bulk  of  mankind  the  human- 
ity-worshipper's point  of  view  seems 
unattainable,  at  least  within  any  cal- 
culable time. 

As  to  posthumous  reputation,  good 
or  evil,  it  is,  and  always  must  be,  the 
appanage  of  a  few  marked  men.  The 
plan  of  giving  it  substance  by  insti- 
tuting separate  burial-places  for  the 
virtuous  and  the  wicked  is  perhaps 
not  very  seriously  proposed.  Any 
such  plan  involves  the  fallacy  of  a 
sharp  division  where  there  is  no  clear 
moral  line,  besides  postulating  not 
only  an  unattainable  knowledge  of 
men's  actions,  but  a  knowledge  still 
more  manifestly  unattainable  of  their 
hearts.  Yet  we  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  with  the  men  of  intellect,  to 
whose  teaching  the  world  is  listen- 
ing, this  hope  of  posthumous  reputa- 
tion, or,  to  put  it  more  fairly,  of  living 
in  the  gratitude  and  affection  of  their 
kind  by  means  of  their  scientific  dis- 
coveries and  literary  works,  exerts  an 
influence  of  which  they  are  hardly  con- 
scious ;  it  prevents  them  from  fully 
feeling  the  void  which  the  annihilation 
of  the  hope  of  future  existence  leaves 
in  the  hearts  of  ordinary  men. 

Besides,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  no 
attempt  has  yet  been  made  to  show  us 
distinctly  what  "humanity"  is,  and 
wherein  its  "holiness"  consists.  If 
the  theological  hypothesis  is  true,  and 


all  men  are  united  in  God,  humanity 
is  a  substantial  reality ;  but  otherwise 
we  fail  to  see  that  it  is  anything  more 
than  a  metaphysical  abstraction  con- 
verted into  an  actual  entity  by  philo- 
sophers who  are  not  genei'ally  kind  to 
metaphysics.  Even  the  unity  of  the 
species  is  far  from  settled ;  science 
still  debates  whether  there  is  one  race 
of  men,  or  whether  there  are  more 
than  a  hundred.  Man  acts  on  man, 
no  doubt ;  but  he  also  acts  on  other 
animals,  and  other  animals  on  him. 
Wherein  does  the  special  unity  or  the 
special  bond  consist  1  Above  all,  what 
constitutes  the  "  holiness  "  1  Indi- 
vidual men  are  not  holy ;  a  large  pro- 
portion of  them  are  very  much  the 
reverse.  •  Why  is  the  aggregate  holy  ? 
Let  the  unit  be  a  "complex  pheno- 
menon," an  "  organism,"  or  whatever 
name  science  may  give  it,  what  multi- 
ple of  it  will  be  a  rational  object  of 
worship  1 

For  our  own  part,  we  cannot  con- 
ceive worship  being  offered  by  a  sane 
worshipper  to  any  but  a  conscious 
being,  in  other  words,  to  a  person. 
The  fetish- worshipper  himself  probably 
invests  his  fetish  with  a  vague  person- 
ality, such  as  would  render  it  capable 
of  propitiation.  But  how  can  we  in- 
vest with  a  collective  personality  the 
fleeting  generations  of  mankind  ?  Even 
the  sum  of  mankind  is  never  com- 
plete, much  less  are  the  units  blended 
into  a  personal  whole,  or,  as  it  has 
been  called,  a  colossal  man. 

There  is  a  gulf  here,  as  it  seems  to 
us,  which  cannot  be  bridged,  and  can 
barely  be  thatched  over  by  the  reten- 
tion of  religious  phraseology.  In  truth, 
the  anxious  use  of  that  phraseology 
betrays  weakness,  since  it  shows  that 
you  cannot  do  without  the  theological 
associations  which  cling  inseparably  to 
religious  terms. 

You  look  forward  to  a  closer  union, 
a  more  complete  brotherhood  of  man, 
an  increased  sacredness  of  the  human 
relation.  Some  things  point  that 
way  :  some  things  point  the  other  way. 
Brotherhood  has  hardly  a  definite 
meaning  without  a  father  ;  sacredness 

s  2 


260 


The  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


can  hardly  be  predicated  without  any- 
thing to  consecrate.  We  can  point 
to  an  eminent  writer  who  tells  you 
that  he  detests  the  idea  of  brotherly 
love  altogether ;  that  there  are  many 
of  his  kind  whom,  so  far  from  loving, 
he  hates,  and  that  he  would  like  to 
write  his  hatred  with  a  lash  upon  their 
backs.  Look  again  at  the  inhuman 
Prussianism  which  betrays  itself  in 
the  New  Creed  of  Strauss.  Look  at 
the  oligarchy  of  enlightenment  and 
enjoyment  which  Renan,  in  his  Moral 
Reform  of  France,  proposes  to  insti- 
tute for  the  benefit  of  his  own  circle, 
with  sublime  indifference  to  the  lot 
of  the  vulgar,  who,  he  says,  "must 
subsist  on  the  glory  and  happiness  of 
others."  This  does  not  look  much  like 
a  nearer  approach  to  a  brotherhood  of 
man  than  is  made  by  the  Gospel. 

In  an  article  on  the  "Ascent  of 
Man"  we  referred  to  doctrines  broached 
by  science  at  the  time  of  the  Jamaica 
massacre.  We  neither  denied  nor  had 
forgotten,  but,  on  the  contrary,  most 
gratefully  remembered,  that  among 
the  foremost  champions  of  humanity 
on  that  occasion  stood  some  men  of  the 
highest  eminence  who  are  generally 
classed  with  the  ultra-scientific  school ; 
but  they  were  men  in  whose  philosophy 
we  are  persuaded  an  essentially  theo- 
logical element  still  lingers,  however 
anti-theological  the  language  of  some 
of  them  may  be.1 

We  are  speaking,  of  course,  merely 
of  the  comparative  moral  efficiency  of 
religion  and  of  the  proposed  substi- 
tutes for  it,  apart  from  the  influence 
exercised  over  individual  conduct  by 
the  material  needs  and  other  non- 
theological  forces  of  society. 

For  the  immortality  of  the  individual 
soul,  with  the  influences  of  that  belief, 
we  are  asked  to  accept  the  immortality 
of  the  race.  But  here,  in  addition  to 
the  difficulty  of  proving  the  union 
and  intercommunion  of  all  the  mem- 
bers, we  are  met  by  the  objection  that 
unless  we  live  in  God,  the  race,  in  all 

1  "We  are  not  aware  that  in  the  writings  of 
Mr.  Darwin  there  is  anything  to  prove  or  even 
to  suggest  that  he  is  not  a  theist. 


probability,  is  not  immortal.  That 
our  planet  and  all  it  contains  will 
come  to  an  end,  appears  to  be  the 
decided  opinion  of  science.  This 
"holy"  being,  our  relation  to  which 
is  to  take  the  place  of  our  relation 
to  an  eternal  Father,  by  the  adoration 
of  which  we  are  to  be  sustained 
and  controlled,  if  it  exists  at  all,  is 
as  ephemeral  compared  with  eternity 
as  a  fly.  We  shall  be  told  that 
we  ought  to  be  content  with  an  im- 
mortality extending  through  tens  of 
thousands,  perhaps  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands, of  years.  To  the  argumentum 
ad  verecundiam  there  is  no  reply.  But 
will  this  banish  the  thought  of  ulti- 
mate annihilation  ?  Will  it  prevent  a 
man,  when  he  is  called  upon  to  make 
some  great  sacrifice  for  the  race,  from 
saying  to  himself,  that,  whether  he 
makes  the  sacrifice  or  not,  one  day  all 
will  end  in  nothing  ? 

Evidently  these  are  points  which 
must  be  made  quite  clear  before  you 
can,  with  any  prospect  of  success,  call 
upon  men  either  to  regard  Humanity 
with  the  same  feelings  with  which 
they  have  regarded  God,  or  to  give  up 
their  own  interest  or  enjoyment  for 
the  future  benefit  of  the  race.  The 
assurance  derived  from  the  fondness 
felt  by  parents  for  their  offspring,  and 
the  self-denying  efforts  made  for  the 
good  of  children,  will  hardly  carry  us 
very  far,  even  supposing  it  certain  that 
parental  love  would  remain  unaffected 
by  the  general  change.  It  is  evi- 
dently a  thing  apart  from  the  general 
love  of  Humanity.  Nobody  was  ever 
more  extravagantly  fond  of  his  chil- 
dren, or  made  greater  efforts  for  them, 
than  Alexander  Borgia. 

It  has  been  attempted,  however, 
with  all  the  fervour  of  conviction,  and 
with  all  the  force  of  a  powerful  style, 
to  make  us  see  not  only  that  we  have 
this  corporate  immortality  as  mem- 
bers of  the  "  colossal  man,"  but  that 
we  may  look  forward  to  an  actual 
though  impersonal  existence  in  the 
shape  of  the  prolongation  through  all 
future  time  of  the  consequences  of  our 
lives.  It  might  with  equal  truth  be 


The  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


261 


said  that  we  have  enjoyed  an  actual 
though  impersonal  existence  through 
all  time  past  in  our  antecedents.  But 
neither  in  its  consequences  nor  in  its 
antecedents  can  anything  be  said  to 
live  except  by  a  llgure.  The  charac- 
ters and  actions  of  men  surely  will 
never  be  influenced  by  such  a  fanciful 
use  of  language  as  this  1  Our  being  is 
consciousness  ;  with  consciousness  our 
being  ends,  though  our  physical  forces 
may  be  conserved,  and  traces  of  our 
conduct — traces  utterly  undistinguish- 
able — may  remain.  That  with  which 
we  are  not  concerned  cannot  affect  us 
either  presently  or  by  anticipation ; 
and  with  that  of  which  we  shall  never 
ba  conscious,  we  shall  never  feel  that 
we  are  concerned.  Perhaps  if  the 
authors  of  this  new  immortality  would 
tell  us  what  they  understand  by  non- 
existence,  we  might  be  led  to  value 
more  highly  by  contrast  the  existence 
which  they  propose  for  a  soul  when  it 
has  ceased  to  think  or  feel,  and  for  an 
organism  when  it  has  been  scattered 
to  the  winds. 

They  would  persuade  us  that  their 
impersonal  and  unconscious  immor- 
tality is  a  brighter  hope  than  an 
eternity  of  personal  and  conscious 
existence,  the  very  thought  of  which 
they  say  is  torture.  This  assumes, 
what  there  seems  to  be  no  ground  for 
assuming,  that  eternity  is  a  boundless 
extension  of  time ;  and,  in  the  same 
way,  that  infinity  is  an  endless  space. 
It  is  more  natural  to  conceive  of  them 
as  emancipation  respectively  from  time 
and  space,  and  from  the  conditions 
which  time  and  space  involve;  and 
among  the  conditions  of  time  may 
apparently  be  reckoned  the  palling  of 
pleasure  or  of  existence  by  mere  tem- 
poral protraction.  Even  as  we  are — 
sensual  pleasure  palls;  so  does  the 
merely  intellectual :  but  can  the  same 
be  said  of  the  happiness  of  virtue  and 
affection?  It  is  urged  too  that  by 
exchanging  the  theological  immor- 
tality for  one  of  physical  and  social 
consequences,  we  get  rid  of  the  bur- 
den of  self,  which  otherwise  we  should 
drag  for  ever.  But  surely  in  this 


there  is  a  confusion  of  self  with  self- 
ishness. Selfishness  is  another  name 
for  vice.  Self  is  merely  conscious- 
ness. Without  a  self,  how  can  there 
be  self-sacrifice?  How  can  the  most 
unselfish  emotion  exist  if  there  is 
nothing  to  be  moved  ?  "  He  that 
findeth  his  life,  shall  lose  it ;  and  he 
that  loseth  his  life,  shall  find  it,"  is 
not  a  doctrine  of  selfishness,  but  it 
implies  a  self.  We  have  been  re- 
buked in  the  words  of  Frederick  to 
his  grenadiers — "  Do  you  want  to  live 
for  ever?"  The  grenadiers  might 
have  answered,  "  Yes ;  and  therefore 
we  are  ready  to  die." 

It  is  not  when  wre  think  of  the  loss 
of  anything  to  which  a  taint  of  selfish- 
ness can  adhere — it  is  not  even  when 
we  think  of  intellectual  effort  cut  short 
for  ever  by  death  just  as  the  intellect 
has  ripened  and  equipped  itself  with 
the  necessary  knowledge — that  the  no- 
thingness of  this  immortality  of  con- 
servated  forces  is  most  keenly  felt :  it 
is  when  we  think  of  the  miserable  end 
of  affection.  How  much  comfort  would 
it  afford  any  one  bending  over  the 
deathbed  of  his  wife  to  know  that 
forces  set  free  by  her  dissolution  will 
continue  to  mingle  impersonally  and 
indistinguishably  with  forces  set  free 
by  the  general  mortality  ]  Affection  at 
all  events  requires  personality.  One 
cannot  love  a  group  of  consequences, 
even  supposing  that  the  filiation  could 
be  distinctly  presented  to  the  mind. 
Pressed  by  the  hand  of  sorrow  crav- 
ing for  comfort,  this  Dead  Sea  fruit 
crumbles  into  ashes,  paint  it  with 
eloquence  as  you  will. 

Humanity,  it  seems  to  us,  is  a  fun- 
damentally Christian  idea,  connected 
with  the  Christian  view  of  the  rela- 
tions of  men  to  their  common  Father 
and  of  their  spiritual  union  in  the 
Church.  In  the  same  way  the  idea  of 
the  progress  of  Humanity  seems  to  us 
to  have  been  derived  from  the  Christian 
belief  in  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  through  the  extension  of  the 
Church,  and  to  that  final  triumph  of 
good  over  evil  foretold  in  the  imagery  of 
the  Apocalypse.  At  least  the  founders 


262 


The  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


of  the  Religion  of  Humanity  will  ad- 
mit that  the  Christian  Church  is  the 
matrix  of  theirs  :  so  much  their  very 
nomenclature  proves ;  and  we  would 
fain  ask  them  to  review  the  process  of 
disengagement,  and  see  whether  the 
essence  has  not  been  left  behind. 

No  doubt  there  are  influences  at 
work  in  modern  civilisation  which  tend 
to  the  strengthening  of  the  sentiment 
of  humanity  by  making  men  more 
distinctly  conscious  of  their  position 
as  members  of  a  race.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  unreflecting  devotion  of  the 
tribesman,  which  held  together  primi- 
tive societies,  dies.  Man  learns  to 
reason  and  calculate ;  and  when  he  is 
called  upon  to  immolate  himself  to  the 
common  interest  of  the  race  he  will 
consider  what  the  common  interest  of 
the  race,  when  he  is  dead  and  gone, 
will  be  to  him,  and  whether  he  will 
ever  be  repaid  for  his  sacrifice. 

Of  Cosmic  Emotion  it  will  perhaps  be 
more  fair  to  say  that  it  is  proposed  as  a 
substitute  for  religious  emotion  rather 
than  as  a  substitute  for  religion,  since 
nothing  has  been  said  about  embodying 
it  in  a  cult.  It  comes  to  us  commended 
by  glowing  quotations  from  Mr.  Swin- 
burne and  Walt  Whitman,  and  we 
cannot  help  saying  that,  for  common 
hearts,  it  stands  in  need  of  the  com- 
mendation. The  transfer  of  affection 
from  an  all-loving  Father  to  an 
adamantine  universe  is  a  process  for 
which  we  may  well  seek  all  the  aid 
that  the  witchery  of  poetry  can  supply. 
Unluckily,  we  are  haunted  by  the  con- 
sciousness that  the  poetry  itself  is 
blindly  ground  out  by  the  same  illimit- 
able mill  of  evolution  which  grinds 
out  virtue  and  affection.  We  are  by 
no  means  sure  that  we  understand 
what  Cosmic  Emotion  is,  even  after 
reading  an  exposition  of  its  nature  by 
no  ungifted  hand.  Its  symbola,  so  to 
speak,  are  the  feelings  produced  by  the 
two  objects  of  Kant's  peculiar  rever- 
ence, the  stars  of  heaven,  and  the 
moral  faculty  of  man.  But,  after  all, 
these  are  only  like  anything  else, 
aggregations  of  molecules  in  a  certain 
stage  of  evolution.  To  the  unscientific 


eye  they  may  be  awful,  because  they 
are  mysterious  ;  but  let  science  analyse 
them  and  their  awfulness  disappears. 
If  the  interaction  of  all  parts  of  the 
material  universe  is  complete,  we  fail 
to  see  why  one  object  or  one  feeling  is 
more  cosmic  than  another.  However, 
we  will  not  dwell  on  that  which,  as  we 
have  already  confessed,  we  do  not  feel 
sure  that  we  rightly  apprehend.  What 
we  do  clearly  see  is  that  to  have  cosmic 
emotion,  or  cosmic  anything,  you  must 
have  a  cosmos.  You  must  be  assured 
that  the  universe  is  a  cosmos  and  not  a 
chaos.  And  what  assurance  of  this  can 
materialism  or  any  non-theological  sys- 
tem give  1  Law  is  a  theological  term  : 
it  implies  a  lawgiver,  or  a  governing  in- 
telligence of  some  kind.  Science  can 
tell  us  nothing  but  facts,  single  or  ac- 
cumulated as  experience,  which  would 
not  make  a  law  though  they  had  been 
observed  through  myriads  of  years. 
Law  is  a  theological  term,  and  cosmos 
is  equally  so,  if  it  may  not  rather  be 
said  to  be  a  Greek  name  for  the  aggre- 
gate of  laws.  For  order  implies  intelli- 
gent selection  and  arrangement.  Our 
idea  of  order  would  not  be  satisfied 
by  a  number  of  objects  falling  by  mere 
chance  into  a  particular  figure  however 
intricate  and  regular.  All  the  argu- 
ments which  have  been  used  against 
design  seem  to  tell  with  equal  force 
against  order.  We  have  no  other 
universe  wherewith  to  compare  this  so 
as  by  the  comparison  to  assure  our- 
selves that  this  is  not  a  chaos  but  a 
cosmos.  Both  on  the  earth  and  in  the 
heavens  we  see  much  that  is  not  order 
but  disorder,  not  cosmos  but  acosmia. 
If  we  divine,  nevertheless,  that  order 
reigns,  and  that  there  is  design  beneath 
the  seemingly  undesigned,  and  good 
beneath  the  appearance  of  evil,  it  is 
by  virtue  of  something  not  dreamed  of 
in  the  philosophy  of  materialism. 

Have  we  really  come  to  this,  that 
the  world  has  no  longer  any  good 
reason  for  believing  in  a  God  or  a  life 
beyond  the  grave '(  If  so,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  deny  that  with  regard  to  the 
great  mass  of  mankind  up  to  this 
time  Schopenhauer  and  the  Pessimists 


The,  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


263 


are  right,  and  existence  has  been 
a  cruel  misadventure.  The  number 
of  those  who  have  suffered  lifelong 
oppression,  disease,  or  want,  who  have 
died  deaths  of  torture  or  perished 
miserably  by  war,  is  limited  though 
enormous ;  but  probably  there  have 
been  few  lives  in  which  the  earthly 
good  has  not  been  outweighed  by  the 
evil.  The  future  may  bring  increased 
means  of  happiness,  though  those  who 
are  gone  will  not  be  the  better  for 
them  ;  but  it  will  bring  also  increase 
of  sensibility,  and  the  consciousness  of 
hopeless  imperfection  and  miserable 
futility  will  probably  become  a  dis- 
tinct and  growing  cause  of  pain.  It 
is  doubtful  even  whether,  after  such  a 
raising  of  Mokanna's  veil,  faith  in 
everything  would  not  expire  and 
human  effort  cease.  Still  we  must 
face  the  situation :  there  can  be  no 
use  in  self-delusion.  In  vain  we  shall 
seek  to  cheat  our  souls  and  to  fill  a 
void  which  cannot  be  filled  by  the 
manufacture  of  artificial  religions  and 
the  affectation  of  a  spiritual  language 
to  which,  however  persistently  and 
fervently  it  may  be  used,  no  realities 
correspond.  If  one  of  these  cults 
could  get  itself  established,  in  less 
than  a  generation  it  would  become 
hollower  than  the  hollowest  of  eccle- 
siasticisms.  Probably  not  a  few  of 
the  highest  natures  would  withdraw 
themselves  from  the  dreary  round  of 
self-mockery  by  suicide  ;  and  if  a 
scientific  priesthood  attempted  to  close 
that  door  by  sociological  dogma 
or  posthumous  denunciation  the 
result  would  show  the  difference  be- 
tween the  practical  efficacy  of  a 
religion  with  a  God  and  that  of  a 
cult  of  "  Humanity  "  or  "  Space." 

Shadows  and  figments,  as  they  ap- 
pear to  us  to  be  in  themselves,  these 
attempts  to  provide  a  substitute  for 
religion  are  of  the  highest  importance, 
as  showing  that  men  of  great  powers 
of  mind,  who  have  thoroughly  broken 
loose  not  only  from  Christianity  but 
from  natural  religion,  and  in  some 
cases  placed  themselves  in  violent 
antagonism  to  both,  are  still  unable 


to  divest  themselves  of  the  religious 
sentiment,  or  to  appease  its  craving 
for  satisfaction.  There  being  no  God, 
they  find  it  necessary,  as  Voltaire 
predicted  it  would  be,  to  invent  one ; 
not  for  the  purposes  of  police  (they 
are  far  above  such  sordid  Jesuitism), 
but  as  the  solution  of  the  otherwise 
hopeless  enigma  of  our  spiritual  nature. 
Science  takes  cognisance  of  all  phe- 
nomena ;  and  this  apparently  ineradi- 
cable tendency  of  the  human  mind 
is  a  phenomenon  like  the  rest.  The 
thoroughgoing  Materialist,  of  course, 
escapes  all  these  philosophical  exigen- 
cies; but  he  does  it  by  denying 
Humanity  as  well  as  God,  and  redu- 
cing the  difference  between  the  organ- 
ism of  the  human  animal  and  that  of 
any  other  animal  to  a  mere  question 
of  complexity.  Still,  even  in  this 
quarter,  there  has  appeared  of  late  a 
disposition  to  make  concessions  on  the 
subject  of  human  volition  hardly  con- 
sistent with  Materialism.  Nothing 
can  be  more  likely  than  that  the  im- 
petus of  great  discoveries  has  carried 
the  discoverers  too  far. 

Perhaps  with  the  promptings  of  the 
religious  sentiment  there  is  combined 
a  sense  of  the  immediate  danger  with 
which  the  failure  of  the  religious  sanc- 
tion threatens  social  order  and  morality. 
As  we  have  said  already,  the  men  of 
whom  we  specially  speak  are  far  above 
anything  like  social  Jesuitism.  We 
have  not  a  doubt  but  they  would  re- 
gard with  abhorrence  any  schemes  of 
oligarchic  illuminism  for  guarding  the 
pleasures  of  the  few  by  politic  decep- 
tion of  the  multitude.  But  they  have 
probably  begun  to  lay  to  heart  the 
fact  that  the  existing  morality,  though 
not  dependent  on  any  special  theology, 
any  special  view  of  the  relations  be- 
tween soul  and  body,  or  any  special 
theory  of  future  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, is  largely  dependent  on  a 
belief  in  the  indefeasible  authority 
of  conscience,  and  in  that  without 
which  conscience  can  have  no  inde- 
feasible authority — the  presence  of  a 
just  and  all-seeing  God.  It  may  be 
true  that  in  primaeval  society  these 


264 


The  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


beliefs  are  found  only  in  the  most 
rudimentary  form,  and,  as  social  sanc- 
tions, are  very  inferior  in  force  to 
mere  gregarious  instincts  or  the  pres- 
sure of  tribal  need.  But  man  emerges 
from  the  primaeval  state,  and  when  he 
does,  he  demands  a  reason  for  his  sub- 
mission to  moral  law.  That  the  leaders 
of  the  anti-theological  movement  in  the 
present  day  are  immoral,  nobody  but 
the  most  besotted  fanatic  would  in- 
sinuate ;  no  candid  antagonist  would 
deny  that  some  of  them  are  in  every 
respect  the  very  best  of  men.  The 
fearless  love  of  truth  is  usually  ac- 
companied by  other  high  qualities,  and 
nothing  could  be  more  unlikely  than 
that  natures  disposed  to  virtue,  trained 
under  good  influences,  peculiarly  sen- 
sitive to  opinion  and  guarded  by  intel- 
lectual tastes,  would  lapse  into  vice 
as  soon  as  the  traditional  sanction  was 
removed.  But  what  is  to  prevent  the 
withdrawal  of  the  traditional  sanction 
from  producing  its  natural  effect  upon 
the  morality  of  the  mass  of  mankind  7 
The  commercial  swindler  or  the  politi- 
cal sharper,  when  the  divine  authority 
of  conscience  is  gone,  will  feel  that  he 
has  only  the  opinion  of  society  to 
reckon  with,  and  he  knows  how  to 
reckon  with  the  opinion  of  society.  If 
Macbeth  is  ready,  provided  he  can 
succeed  in  this  world,  to  "jump  the 
life  to  come,"  much  more  ready  will 
villainy  be  to  "  jump "  the  bad  con- 
sequences of  its  actions  to  humanity 
when  its  own  conscious  existence  shall 
have  closed.  Rate  the  practical  effect 
of  religious  beliefs  as  low  and  that  of 
social  influences  as  high  as  you  may, 
there  can  surely  be  no  doubt  that 
morality  has  received  some  support 
from  the  authority  of  an  inward  moni- 
tor regarded  as  the  voice  of  God.  The 
worst  of  men  would  have  wished  to 
die  the  death  of  the  righteous ;  he 
would  have  been  glad,  if  he  could, 
when  death  approached,  to  cancel  his 
crimes ;  and  the  conviction,  or  mis- 
giving, which  this  implied,  could  not 
fail  to  have  some  influence  upon  the 
generality  of  mankind,  though  no 
doubt  the  influence  was  weakened 


rather  than  strengthened  by  the  ex- 
travagant and  incredible  form  in 
which  the  doctrine  of  future  retribu- 
bution  was  presented  by  the  dominant 
theology. 

The  denial  of  the  existence  of  God 
and  of  a  future  state,  in  a  word,  is 
the  dethronement  of  conscience ;  and 
society  will  pass,  to  say  the  least, 
through  a  dangerous  interval  before 
social  science  can  fill  the  vacant  throne. 
Avowed  scepticism  is  likely  to  be  dis- 
interested and  therefore  to  be  moral ; 
it  is  among  the  una vowed  sceptics  and 
conformists  to  political  religions  that 
the  consequences  of  the  change  may 
be  expected  to  appear.  But  more  than 
this,  the  doctrines  of  Natural  Selection 
and  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest  are 
beginning  to  generate  a  morality  of 
their  own,  with  the  inevitable  corollary 
that  the  proof  of  superior  fitness  is  to 
survive — to  survive  either  by  force  or 
cunning,  like  the  other  animals  which 
by  dint  of  force  or  cunning  have  come 
out  victorious  from  the  universal  war 
and  asserted  for  themselves  a  place  in 
nature.  The  "  irrepressible  struggle  for 
empire"  is  formally  put  forward  by 
public  writers  of  the  highest  class  as- 
the  basis  and  the  rule  of  the  conduct 
of  this  country  towards  other  nations  ; 
and  we  may  be  sure  that  there  is  not 
an  entire  absence  of  connection  between 
the  private  code  of  a  school  and  its 
international  conceptions.  The  feeling 
that  success  covers  everything  seenm 
to  be  gaining  ground,  and  to  be  over- 
coming, not  merely  the  old  conventional 
rules  of  honour,  but  moral  principle  it- 
self. Both  in  public  and  private  there 
are  symptoms  of  an  approaching  failure 
of  the  motive  power  which  has  hitherto 
sustained  men  both  in  self-sacrificing 
effort  and  in  courageous  protest  against 
wrong,  though  as  yet  we  are  only  at 
the  threshold  of  the  great  change,  and 
established  sentiment  long  survives,  in 
the  masses,  that  which  originally  gave 
it  birth.  Benan  says,  probably  with 
truth,  that  had  the  Second  Empire 
remained  at  peace,  it  might  have  gone 
on  for  ever  ;  and  in  the  history  of  this 
country  the  connection  between  politi- 


The,  Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion. 


265 


cal  effort  and  religion  has  been  so  close 
that  its  dissolution,  to  say  the  least, 
can  hardly  fail  to  produce  a  critical 
change  in  the  character  of  the  nation. 
The  time  may  come,  when,  as  philo- 
sophers triumphantly  predict,  men, 
under  the  ascendency  of  science,  will 
act  for  the  common  good,  with  the 
same  mechanical  certainty  as  bees ; 
though  the  common  good  of  the  human 
hive  would  perhaps  not  be  easy  to 
define.  But  in  the  meantime  man- 
kind, or  some  portions  of  it,  may  be 
in  danger  of  an  anarchy  of  self-interest, 
compressed  for  the  purpose  of  political 
order,  by  a  despotism  of  force. 

That  science  and  criticism,  acting — 
thanks  to  the  liberty  of  opinion  won 
by  political  effort — with  a  freedom 
never  known  before,  have  delivered  us 
from  a  mass  of  dark  and  degrading 
superstitions,  we  own  with  heartfelt 
thankfulness  to  the  deliverers,  and  in 
the  firm  conviction  that  the  removal  of 
false  beliefs,  and  of  the  authorities  or 
institutions  founded  on  them,  cannot 
prove  in  the  end  anything  but  a  bless- 
ing to  mankind.  But  at  the  same  time 
the  foundations  of  general  morality 
have  inevitably  been  shaken,  and  a 
crisis  has  been  brought  on  the  gravity 
of  which  nobody  can  fail  to  see,  and 
nobody  but  a  fanatic  of  Materialism  can 
see  without  the  most  serious  misgiving. 


There  has  been  nothing  in  the 
history  of  man  like  the  present  situa- 
tion. The  decadence  of  the  ancient 
mythologies  is  very  far  from  affording 
a  parallel.  The  connection  of  those 
mythologies  with  morality  was  com- 
paratively slight.  Dull  and  half-animal 
minds  would  hardly  be  conscious  of 
the  change  which  was  partly  veiled 
from  them  by  the  continuance  of  ritual 
and  state  creeds ;  while  in  the  minds 
of  Plato  and  Marcus  Aurelius  it  made 
place  for  the  development  of  a  moral 
religion.  The  Reformation  was  a  tre- 
mendous earthquake  :  it  shook  down 
the  fabric  of  mediaeval  religion,  and  as 
a  consequence  of  the  disturbance  in 
the  religious  sphere  filled  the  world 
with  revolutions  and  wars.  But  it 
left  the  authority  of  the  Bible  un- 
shaken, and  men  might  feel  that  the 
destructive  process  had  its  limit,  and 
that  adamant  was  still  beneath  their 
feet.  But  a  world  which  is  intellectual 
and  keenly  alive  to  the  significance  of 
these  questions,  reading  all  that  is 
written  about  them  with  almost  pas- 
sionate avidity,  finds  itself  brought  to 
a  crisis  the  character  of  which  any  one 
may  realize  by  distinctly  presenting  to 
himself  the  idea  of  existence  without 
a  God. 

GOLDWIN  SMITH. 


266 


SEBASTIAN. 


CHAPTER  J. 

MONKSDEAN. 

THERE  is  on  the  southern  coast  a  little 
church  in  which  the  last  "Amen"  of 
Sunday  prayer  has  long  ago  been  said. 

Tired  apparently  of  witnessing  so 
many  burials  around  it,  it  has  decided 
to  bury  itself,  and  has  accordingly 
interred  its  greater  part  veiy  decently 
and  comfortably  under  its  own  rich 
growth  of  ivy,  woodbine,  and  moss. 

All  around  is  wild,  except  the  little 
churchyard — "  God's  acre"  in  less  than 
a  rood — which  gleams  with  new  white 
crosses,  and  glows  with  flowers — not 
wild,  but  garden  flowers,  flourishing 
gaily. 

The  resting-places  of  "the  rude 
forefathers  of  the  hamlet "  are  quite 
put  out  of  sight  by  these  newer  graves. 
At  first  the  great  brightness  which 
seems  the  law  of  the  place,  even  to 
the  breast  of  the  robin  on  the  gray 
roof,  to  the  gold  bronze  on  the  fallen 
leaf,  appears  unnatural  to  such  a  spot. 
But  as  the  ages  on  the  tombstones 
become  apparent  one  by  one,  showing 
that  those  who  lie  beneath  have  all 
perished  in  youth,  most  of  them  in 
very  early  youth,  one  grows  glad  at 
finding  this  little  garden  of  death  made 
so  sweet  and  fair  for  them. 

They  are  those  who,  sinking  into 
consumption,  had  been  brought  in 
forlorn  hope  to  the  town  a  few  miles 
off ;  the  soft  air  of  which  gives  new 
health  to  some,  or  to  the  dying  easier 
death. 

They  lie  there  among  myrtles  and 
roses,  ivy  and  mignonette,  and  tender 
words  graven  on  stones,  and  crosses 
white  as  their  own  purity. 

Seldom  are  they  alone.  No  sunny 
day  can  come — and  frequent  are  the 
sunny  days  here  the  whole  year  round 
— but  the  old  sexton  is  at  the  gate, 
on  the  watch  for  visitors  ;  and  cheer- 


fully garrulous  old  ladies  and  knap- 
sacked  young  tourists  are  sketching 
from  the  favourite  points  of  view. 
Many  a  young  couple  from  the  town 
hard  by,  trying  to  look  as  if  their 
honeymoon  had  waned  time  out  of 
mind,  yet  showing  its  newness  in 
their  every  glance,  grow  grave  in 
this  assemblage  of  youthful  sleepers. 

The  church  doors  are  open ;  the  sun 
shines  in,  lighting  the  worn  stone 
threshold  and  the  rotten  high-backed 
seats.  Dazzlingly  the  white  crosses 
shine  :  warmly  the  flowers  glow  and 
breathe.  Across  the  great  sea  come 
the  breeze  and  the  sunshine,  wrapping 
the  little  spot  around  like  the  spirit 
of  eternal  life,  banishing  every  thought 
of  gloom,  and  seeming  to  say  trium- 
phantly to  death,  "  You  laid  these 
children  here;  but  they  are  mine  for 
ever  now." 

And  the  same  breeze,  rushing  into 
the  little  open  church,  wakes  no  other 
echo  there  than  the  last  words  of 
Sunday  prayer,  "  Evermore.  Amen." 

But  it  was  long  before  that  young 
company  had  come  to  rest  in  the  little 
churchyard,  with  their  gay  flowers  and 
white  crosses ;  long  before  the  old  bell 
had  given  up  summoning  the  little 
congregation  to  Sunday  service ;  that 
the  childish  feet,  whose  wanderings 
make  the  subject  of  this  story,  had 
helped  to  wear  that  hollow  in  the 
stone  at  the  threshold. 

In  the  days  while  yet  "the  rude 
forefathers"  had  the  little  churchyard 
to  themselves,  the  Reverend  Amos 
Gould  was  rector  of  Monksdean. 

A  TTI pg,  unlike  his  namesake  the 
herdsman  of  Tekoah,  was  not  inspired 
by  the  beauty  of  the  scenes  in  which 
his  lines  had  fallen. 

Not  merely  did  he  find  no  comfort 
or  refreshment  in  them,  he  scarcely 
even  observed  them. 


Sebastian. 


267 


As  for  the  wonderful  village  street, 
which  was  more  like  a  chamber  pre- 
pared for  some  sylvan  festival  than 
the  scene  of  everyday  rustic  life,  he 
only  knew  that  the  people  in  it  were 
a  hard-headed,  close-fisted  community, 
who  thought  it  a  sign  of  British  inde- 
pendence to  resist  clerical  dictation  as 
much  as  possible. 

The  stories  about  the  church  when 
it  belonged  to  the  Norman  monastery 
brought  the  sexton  an  annual  harvest 
of  sixpences  and  shillings,  but  had  not 
the  faintest  interest  for  Amos  Gould. 

How  could  he  care,  he  would  ask, 
with  his  look  of  gentle,  frank  protest, 
to  hear  of  these  old  Norman  monks  ? 
Was  it  not  more  than  enough  for  him 
to  know  they  had  been  so  clumsy  as 
to  let  the  deeds  belonging  to  this  un- 
lucky little  church  be  burnt  at  their 
monastery  during  the  Civil  War,  and 
so  had  lost  its  tithes  for  ever  ? 

Then  there  was  the  well  in  the 
churchyard,  the  famous  old  well  of 
Saint  Anselm,  with  its  crumbling 
carved  archway,  of  which  antiquaries 
told  the  rector  he  ought  to  be  so 
proud. 

This,  he  owned,  might  have  been 
interesting  enough  in  its  day.  Pil- 
grims innumerable  came  then  to  prove 
its  healing  powers,  and  left  their  fees 
for  the  priest  on  its  sacred  stone. 
But  now  that  there  was  never  any- 
thing but  moss  upon  the  stone,  he 
could  not  pretend  to  see  any  charm 
about  it ;  neither  could  he  in  the 
battered  countenance  of  the  saint,  or 
in  the  time-pitted  cherubim  surround- 
ing it. 

Yet  it  would  be  erroneous  to  suppose 
that  Amos  Gould  was  a  malcontent 
or  a  grumbler.  No  man  was  ever 
further  than  he  from  being  either. 
He  merely  owned  these  things  in  his 
gentle  sincerity  of  heart  when  con- 
gratulated on  pleasures  he  could  not 
enjoy. 

In  the  same  way,  when  London 
clergymen  declared  he  ought  to  be 
above  all  the  ordinary  troubles  of 
householders  in  so  perfect  a  rectory, 
he  mildly  mentioned  the  slight  draw- 


backs of  smoking  chimneys,  draughts, 
and  want  of  space. 

He  was  often  told  that  such  a 
boundary  line  as  that  made  by  the 
gently-swelling  downs  on  one  side  and 
the  sea  on  the  other,  should  of  itself 
make  Monksdean  a  sort  of  paradise. 
But  when  even  such  a  boundary  is  as 
a  typical  prison  wall  closing  round  a 
man's  prospects,  and  shutting  him  in 
to  a  life  of  hard  work  and  one  hundred 
pounds  a  year,  no  wonder  the  eye 
should  weary  of  beholding  it,  the  head 
grow  sick,  "  the  whole  heart  faint." 

The  neighbouring  clergy  had  a  half- 
pitying  way  of  speaking  of  him  as 
"  little  Amos,"  alluding  rather  to  the 
general  smallness  of  his  life,  means, 
and  aims,  than  to  his  person,  which 
was  but  slightly  below  middle  height, 
and  somewhat  thick  set. 

His  face  was  pale  and  inclining  to 
pufnness,  his  hair  black,  rather  low 
on  the  forehead,  and  growing  in  a 
thick  even  border  round  his  cheeks 
and  chin.  His  mouth  was  well  formed, 
and  had  an  air  of  quiet  sociability. 
His  eyes  were  dark,  comely,  and  calm. 
They  were  always  grave,  though  seldom 
sad;  frank,  but  seldom  trustful.  When 
the  rest  of  the  face  smiled,  the  eyes 
were  still  grave ;  when  they  had  to 
look  on  great  sorrow,  they  were  still 
calm. 

Little  Amos  lived  on  a  sort  of  dead 
level  of  resignation.  He  kept  the 
eyes  of  his  spirit  looking  steadily 
before  him,  never  letting  them  look 
despairingly  down  or  hopefully  up- 
wards. When  he  said  he  "  hoped " 
he  meant  that  he  expected,  for  ex- 
pectation was  the  only  form  of  hope 
in  which  he  indulged. 

On  this  matter,  as  on  most  other 
matters,  Mrs.  Gould  and  himself  were 
of  one  mind. 

She  was  one  of  the  few  possessions 
on  which  his  friends  did  not  congratu- 
late him ;  and  the  only  one,  perhaps, 
on  which  he  could  have  well  borne 
much  congratulation. 

He  had  first  come  to  take  charge  of 
the  parish  in  the  illness  and  absence 
of  the  rector.  In  all  parish  matters, 


268 


Sebastian. 


about  which  he  wrote  to  the  rector, 
Amos  was  referred  to  "  Miss  Lang- 
worthy  and  my  daughters."  As  the 
eldest  of  these  last-mentioned  young 
ladies  was  but  sixteen,  and  had  eyes 
that  seemed  to  Amos  to  have  a  way 
of  making  him  lose  the  sense  of  what- 
ever she  said  to  him,  he  preferred 
always  to  consult  Miss  Langworthy. 
Her  clear  brown  eyes  assisted  rather 
than  hindered  his  comprehension.  She 
was  governess  to  the  rector's  family, 
and  was  held  in  much  esteem,  being 
a  lady  of  good  birth,  and  having  met 
with  the  trial  of  losing  a  comfortable 
fortune. 

Miss  Langworthy  was  tall  and 
large,  though  thin.  She  had  red 
hair  and  light  brown  eyes.  They 
were  not  handsome  eyes,  being  small, 
poor  in  colour,  and  having  scarcely 
perceptible  lashes  and  brows,  but 
they  had  a  look  of  keen  discernment 
and  clear  intelligence. 

When  it  was  seen  that  Mr.  Gould 
walked  about  so  much  with  Miss 
Langworthy,  and  paid  so  many  visits 
to  the  rectory,  though  such  visits  and 
walks  were  believed  to  be  necessary, 
yet  another  motive  than  parish  work 
was  assigned  for  these  things.  A  grave 
young  bachelor  parson  like  Amos  Gould 
and  a  young  lady  of  good  family,  edu- 
cation, and  taste  for  parish  work, — 
what  better  materials  could  the  gossips 
of  Monksdean  want  to  begin  with  ? 
Miss  Langworthy,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  was  joked  on  the  subject ;  but 
though  she  might,  perhaps,  be  betrayed 
into  a  slight  blush,  she  always  had 
ready  the  answer  that  what  she  did 
in  the  parish  she  did  from  simple 
duty,  and  she  was  sure  it  was  the 
same  with  Mr.  Gould. 

Miss  Langworthy,  however,  was  too 
highly  conscientious  a  person  to  dis- 
guise from  herself  certain  signs  that 
seemed  to  show  gossips  might  for  once 
be  right.  It  was  certainly  clear  to 
her  that  Mr.  Gould  came  to  the 
rectory  to  ask  some  questions  which 
might  have  been  as  easily  answered 
by  the  schoolmistress  or  sexton  as 
herself.  Therefore,  as  a  truthful- 


minded  person,  she  was  obliged  to 
confess  to  herself  he  liked  visiting 
at  the  rectory.  Then,  too,  she  could 
but  notice  he  invariably  stayed  longer 
if  she  happened  to  be  alone  when  he 
called.  If  she  sent  her  eldest  charge, 
Lillian  Armytage,  he  would  be  sure 
to  ask  to  see  Miss  Langworthy. 
When  Mr.  Gould  met  them  out,  and 
accompanied  them  a  short  or  long 
way  in  their  walk,  he  always  walked 
at  her  side.  Partly  in  prudence, 
considering  that  this  might  perhaps 
be  observed  by  others  as  well  as 
herself,  and  partly  from  a  little 
natural  womanly  curiosity,  Miss 
Langworthy  would  on  some  pretext 
or  other  manage  to  change  her  posi- 
tion. Mr.  Gould,  without  the  least 
idea  she  had  any  intention  for  doing 
so,  would,  before  traversing  many 
yards,  contrive  to  change  his,  and 
so  place  them  in  the  same  order  as 
before.  Did  he  know  that  doing  this 
caused  a  slight  red  to  tinge  Miss 
Langworthy's  cheek,  up  to  which  the 
top  of  his  hat  just  reached  ?  No  one 
could  answer  that  question,  for  Amos 
Gould's  heart  was  a  parish  mystery 
in  those  days.  Miss  Langworthy  had 
too  much  sense  and  good  taste  to  try 
to  precipitate  any  possible  intentions 
Mr.  Gould  might  have  concerning  her. 
She  went  about  her  work  in  the 
village  not  with  that  feverish  rest- 
lessness of  some  young  ladies  having 
hopes  similar  to  her  own,  but  with 
quiet  assiduity  that  won  Mr.  Gould's 
admiration — an  admiration  which  he 
very  openly  expressed,  too  openly  per- 
haps to  give  her  much  pleasure. 

Miss  Langworthy  was  too  shrewd 
a  woman  not  to  see  a  dim  possibility 
of  her  pretty  pupil  Lillian  being  the 
attraction  that  brought  Mr.  Gould 
so  often  near  them.  She  had  very 
carefully  watched,  and  not  only  had 
seen  the  signs  already  mentioned, 
denoting  as  she  considered  a  clear 
preference  for  herself,  but  had  seen 
also  that  Mr.  Gould  hardly  ever 
glanced  at  Lillian,  though  she,  like 
many  other  girls  oi  her  age  Miss 
Langworthy  had  known,  had  what  she 


Sebastian. 


269 


thought  a  silly,  tongue-tied,  blushing 
manner  whenever  Mr.  Gould  came 
near,  while  ordinarily  she  was  a  very  in- 
telligent, studious,  and  thoughtful  girl. 
Yet,  though  gifted  with  uncommon 
penetration,  was  Miss  Langworthy 
all  this  time,  and  indeed  all  her  life, 
utterly  ignorant  of  a  little  story 
going  on  just  then  under  her  very 
eyes,  proving  that  whether  Love  is 
blind  himself  or  not,  he  is  certainly 
very  clever  at  blinding  those  near 
whom  he  comes,  and  whom  he  finds 
inconveniently  in  his  way. 

Amos  did  remain  longer  at  the 
rectory  when  Miss  Langworthy  was 
alone.  As  a  naturally  observant 
person  she  could  but  notice  it.  She 
must  have  been  supernaturally  obser- 
vant to  know  the  real  reason  for 
this,  that  he  remained  merely  because 
he  could  not  tear  himself  away  while 
there  was  yet  a  chance  of  hearing  a 
light  step  coming — a  chance  of  seeing 
a  girl's  form,  innocent  face,  and 
drooping  hair,  entering  at  the  black 
oak-door  like  spring  through  wintry 
woods.  Then  Miss  Langworthy  might 
talk  on  of  driest  parish  matters  as  the 
slim  student  sat  at  her  book  by  the 
table,  her  little  hand  covering  the 
cheek  nearest  Amos,  her  glistening 
curls  drooping  his  way,  concealing  all 
but  an  eyelash  that,  whenever  he 
spoke,  quivered  or  lay  deathly  still. 
Miss  Langworthy  might  talk,  and 
Amos  listen  and  reply,  but  he  was  in 
a  world  above  and  beyond  parishes. 
Eden  was  recreated  in  the  little 
room,  and  Adam  again  woke  from  the 
"  deep  sleep  "  and  looked  on  Eve. 

One  day  Miss  Langworthy  was 
called  out  of  the  room  for  a  few 
minutes.  There  was  surely  no  harm 
in  the  eyes  of  Amos  turning  so 
eagerly  to  take  in  all  they  could  in 
that  brief  interval.  He  could  not 
pain  her  by  doing  so,  because  her  face 
was  turned  away,  and  hidden  by  her 
curls  and  supporting  hand.  And  yet 
he  wondered,  if  she  did  not  guess 
anything  of  his  gaze,  why  was  it  that 
the  curtain  of  curls  drooped  lower,  and 
that  there  was  fluttering  enough  under 


them  to  dislodge  from  the  holland 
bodice  a  spray  of  cluster  roses  that 
fell  upon  her  open  book  ?  Why  1 
indeed  :  a  question  to  keep  him  dream- 
ing many  a  day  and  wakeful  many  a 
night.  If  only  now  he  could  see  the 
dear  face  itself,  from  what  blunders 
he  might  be  saved  !  He  might  see  it 
only  studious  and  puzzled  over  the 
lesson,  almost  unconscious  of  his  pre- 
sence. What  folly  such  a  glimpse 
might  spare  him  ! 

Making  his  voice  as  cold  and  un- 
concerned as  possible,  he  said — 

"  What  pretty  roses  !  May  I  beg 
for  one  ?  " 

The  sweet  voice,  cold  as  his  own, 
answered  him — 

"  Oh,  certainly  !  " 

And  while  one  little  hand  offered 
the  spray,  the  other  held  back  the 
curls,  and  the  face  looked  out  at  him. 
No  archness  or  coquetry  was  in  it. 
Better  for  Amos  that  there  should 
have  been;  better  anything  for  poor 
Amos  than  the  reluctance  to  look — 
the  crimson  cheeks,  the  eyes  drooping 
before  the  adoration  of  his  own. 

The  rustle  of  a  silk  gown  in  the 
passage,  the  opening  of  a  door,  the 
glance  of  calm  brown  eyes,  and  Amos 
has  suddenly  fallen  from  Eden  back 
into — a  parish. 

Miss  Langworthy  looked  at  Amos, 
at  Lillian,  and  the  roses.  She  knew 
where  they  had  been ;  she  saw  clearly 
they  had  changed  places.  But  at  her 
glance  Lillian's  curls  were  tossed  back 
carelessly,  and  she  said  with  apparent 
unconcern — and  she  was  unconcerned 
as  to  her  governess's  looks — 

"  Can  we  get  down  some  more  of 
these  cluster  roses,  Miss  Langworthy  ? 
Mr.  Gould  admires  them  so  much." 

Miss  Langworthy  was  satisfied, 
and  never  gave  the  matter  another 
thought. 

No  spray  of  July  roses,  however, 
dropped  from  their  place  against  a 
maiden's  throbbing  heart;  but  that 
far  more  sensible  and  useful  insti- 
tution, a  parish  soup-kitchen,  was 
destined  to  change  the  course  of 
Amos  Gould's  bachelor  life. 


270 


Sebastian. 


A  day  or  two  after  he  had  gone 
home  to  his  lodging  over  the  post-office 
with  the  roses  in  his  hand,  he  heard 
something  that  made  him  resolve  never 
to  spend  another  moment  near  Lillian 
more  than  necessity  might  compel  him. 
She  was  not  positively  engaged,  he  dis- 
covered, but  under  such  a  promise  con- 
cerning Mr.  Dowdeswell,  her  father's 
patron,  the  Manchester  manufacturer 
and  owner  of  Combe  Park,  that  she 
could  not  honourably  break,  as  it  was 
to  hold  good  till  at  least  the  end  of 
the  year.  Perhaps  had  Amos  seen 
some  more  doubt  in  her  mind  at  first. 
his  sense  of  honour  might  not  have 
made  him  look  on  the  tacit  engage- 
ment as  sacredly  as  he  did,  in  spite  of 
Dowdes well's  wealth  and  his  own  poor 
prospects  in  comparison. 

But  he  could  not  mistake  the  tender 
and  pathetic  "  No "  that  had  been  in 
her  whole  manner  to  him  from  first  to 
last,  showing  him  her  wish  was  not  to 
break  faith  with  her  father  even  though 
she  could  not  completely  hide  her 
girlish  love  from  Amos. 

Amos  no  sooner  understood  the 
position  than  he  determined  to  help 
the  brave  and  tender  heart  in  its 
struggle. 

After  a  few  days  he  appeared  at  the 
rectory,  pale,  subdued,  but  cheerful, 
and  saw  Miss  Langworthy.  He  told 
her  that  in  answering  the  rector's  in- 
quiries concerning  his  family,  he  had 
felt  it  necessary  to  say,  that  as  he  did 
not  think  Miss  Lillian  looking  so  well 
lately,  he  strongly  advised  her  father 
to  send  for  her  that  she  might  pass  the 
rest  of  the  summer  with  him. 

He  saw  no  more  of  Lillian  till  the 
morning  Miss  Langworthy  was  to  take 
her  to  where  her  father  would  meet 
her.  Amos  walked  with  them  to  the 
coach,  talking  all  the  way  of  Miss 
Langworthy's  scheme  of  getting  up  a 
blanket  club  for  the  winter.  When  he 
had  assisted  her  into  the  coach,  he  took 
Lillian's  hand  and  held  it  with  a  firm 
kindliness  that  gave  her  courage  to 
look  at  him.  He  wished  her  to  do  so7 
for  it  seemed  due  to  him  she  should 
know  his  pain  and  yet  his  strength. 


But  he  had  to  mind  both  tone  and 
words,  for  Miss  Langworthy's  eyes 
were  on  them. 

"  If  I  have  taken  too  great  a  liberty 
in  writing  to  your  father  as  I  did,  I 
hope  I  am  forgiven." 

She  scarcely  let  her  eyes  meet  his, 
but  allowed  her  fingers  to  tighten 
round  his  like  a  frightened  child  cling- 
ing to  a  greater  strength  than  her  own. 
Three  little  sentences,  each  in  a  sort 
of  sigh,  came  from  her. 

"  It  was  very  good  of  you — I  am  so 
pleased  to  go.  Good-bye." 

And  so  the  rose  era  was  over,  and 
that  of  the  soup-kitchen  began. 

Miss  Langworthy,  after  remaining 
with  Lillian  a  few  days,  came  back  to 
her  younger  charges  at  the  rectory. 
She  seemed  more  bright  and  energetic 
than  ever,  and  Amos  was  so  thankful 
for  her  return  that  she  quite  blushed 
at  his  welcome.  All  with  him  was  to 
be  subservient  to  "  parish "  now,  and 
he  was  truly  glad  to  have  back  in  the 
village  one  who  talked  of  nothing  else, 
and  this  wonderfully  helped  him  in 
forgetting  the  rose-dream  and  coming 
back  to  reality. 

In  the  meantime  he  was  quite  un- 
conscious of  the  gossip  about  himself 
in  connection  with  Miss  Langworthy, 
and  felt  as  safe  in  talking  to  her  as  he 
did  in  chatting  to  the  village  post- 
mistress. While  nothing  changed  his 
natural  fixed  reserve,  he  became  more 
parochially  friendly  with  her  each  day, 
and  called  her,  with  grave  jocularity, 
his  "  rural  dean." 

In  the  autumn,  when  Lillian's  father 
died,  Mr.  Dowdeswell  presented  Amos 
to  the  living  of  Monksdean.  The 
orphans  and  Miss  Langworthy  stayed 
on  at  the  rectory  till  the  middle  of 
November,  and  then  it  was  that  Amos 
became  aware  of  the  position  in  which 
his  acceptance  of  Miss  Langworthy's 
help  had  placed  him. 

The  weather  being  severe,  Miss 
Langworthy  had,  assisted  by  Amos 
and  Mr.  Dowdeswell,  established  a 
soup-kitchen.  On  the  first  morning 
that  the  little  crowd  of  jug-bearers 
assembled  at  the  door  of  the  rectory 


Sebastian. 


271 


scullery,  Amos  made  his  way  through 
them,  commenting  pleasantly  on  the 
excellent  odour  of  the  soup-steam  issu- 
ing from  the  open  door  out  into  the 
frosty  air. 

On  entering  he  found  Miss  Lang- 
worthy  standing  by  the  copper  with 
a  huge  soup-ladle  in  her  hand.  She 
was  equipped  from  chin  to  foot  in  an 
apron  of  what  seemed  to  Amos  coarse 
kitchen  towelling,  and  wore  sleeves  of 
the  same  material  up  to  her  elbows. 
Amos  smiled;  the  sight  gratified  his 
parochial  mind,  just  as  a  well-appointed 
hearse  or  any  other  parish  matter 
admirably  conducted  might  have  done. 
He  smiled  with  such  full  approbation 
that  Miss  Langworthy  blushed.  The 
steam  prevented  Amos  from  seeing  the 
blush,  or  he  would  probably  not  have 
remarked  in  so  calm  and  matter-of- 
fact  a  manner,  or  indeed  in  any  manner 
at  all,  she  managed  these  things  so 
well  that  she  ought  to  be  a  clergyman's 
wife, 

Miss  Langworthy  had  naturally  a 
steady  hand,  but  the  soup-ladle  cer- 
tainly trembled  slightly  as  she  lowered 
it  into  the  copper.  She  wished  to 
make  no  possible  mistake,  but  it  really 
seemed  to  her  that  the  all-important 
moment  of  her  life  had  arrived.  Amos 
Gould  had  smiled  on  her  as  she  had 
never  seen  him  smile  on  any  other 
woman.  He  had  here,  in  his  own  back 
kitchen,  spoken  of  her  fitness  for  be- 
coming a  clergyman's  wife.  Surely, 
she  thought,  she  might  trust  her  own 
instincts ;  surely  that  which  all  the 
parish  had  so  long  expected  had  really 
come  to  pass.  But,  with  her  usual 
caution,  she  felt  that  perhaps  she  was 
a  little  too  perturbed  to  be  able  to 
estimate  his  words  and  manner  just 
then — she  must  wait  for  what  would 
follow. 

Amos,  innocent  as  the  smallest  child 
with  its  broken  mug  waiting  outside, 
took  the  vessel  presented  him  by  one 
of  the  foremost  old  women  at  the  door 
and  placed  it  on  the  edge  of  the  cop- 
per. As  good  or  evil  fate  would  have 
it,  it  happened  to  be  a  brown  and 


yellow  jug,  illustrating  the  story  of 
Boaz  and  Ruth.  Miss  Langworthy 
instantly  saw  it,  and  asked  herself 
why  should  he  have  chosen  to  take 
that  jug  first,  from  all  waiting  to 
thrust  theirs  into  his  hand  1  She 
filled  it,  while  Amos  stood  eying  the 
figures  on  it  with  slow  curiosity. 
Having  just  come  to  a  knowledge  of 
what  it  was  intended  to  represent,  and 
feeling  rather  proud  of  his  discovery 
as  Miss  Langworthy  filled  and  gave  it 
to  him,  he  held  it  up  before  her  with 
a  grave  smile,  saying — 

"I  don't  think  you  observed  the 
picture." 

To  his  amazement  a  voice  full  of 
agitation  replied — 

"Yes;  but  pray  say  no  more  just 
now,  Mr.  Gould." 

Amos  handed  the  old  woman  her  soup, 
and  passed  on  the  other  jugs  in  silence, 
which  was  perhaps  scarcely  what  he 
would  have  done  had  he  considered 
ccolly  as  he  could  wish.  For  some 
time  he  looked  perplexed  and  troubled, 
as  the  absurd  sense  of  the  blunder 
dawned  upon  him. 

He  escaped  as  soon  as  possible  from 
the  soup-kitchen,  but  from  its  results 
he  was  not  to  escape.  On  his  way  up 
the  lane,  he  met  some  one  who  asked 
him  when  he  intended  to  take  posses- 
sion of  the  rectory.  Amos  told  him 
the  late  rector's  family  and  Miss  Lang- 
worthy  would  be  leaving  in  a  week, 
and  that  then,  as  there  was  an  arrange- 
ment for  the  furniture  remaining  as  it 
was,  he  could  enter  immediately. 

"  I  suppose  she  will  not  be  long 
away  ?  "  said  his  neighbour. 

Amos  asked  why  ?  in  real  per- 
plexity. "What  could  he  mean,  Amos 
wondered,  since  he  could  not  have 
known  of  the  Boaz  and  Ruth  jug? 
His  friend,  however,  laughed  as  he 
turned  in  at  his  own  gate,  and  with 
a  parting  wave  of  the  hand  answered — 

"  Oh,  don't  you  suppose  we  have 
seen  it  all  from  the  first  ?  " 

Amos  was  an  obstinate  man  when 
he  chose  to  be,  but  he  was  a  most  tem- 
perate-minded and  considerate  man. 


272 


Sebastian. 


So  far  as  village  gossips  were  concerned, 
he  would  have  steadily  maintained  his 
own  course  and  calmly  defied  their 
censure.  But  his  whole  life  and  his 
whole  mind  being  now  devoted  to  his 
work,  whatever  might  seem  likely  to 
help  that  work  was  to  be  seriously 
considered  and  not  hastily  dismissed, 
even  if  he  felt  inclined  to  dismiss  it. 
He  was  a  just  man  too,  and  he  ques- 
tioned himself  very  closely  as  to 
whether  so  freely  accepting  Miss 
Langworthy's  help,  and  even  advice, 
he  had  not  perhaps  led  her  to  think 
more  than  he  intended. 

He  thought  of  little  else  all  day. 
In  the  evening,  as  he  was  packing 
some  of  his  books,  he  read  in  a  little 
old,  old  volume  these  words — 

"  No  memorie  liveth  in  the  hearte 
so  long  or  so  sweetlie  as  that  of  a  love 
slayne  bye  honour.  The  flowers  of  Maie 
repeat  to  us  the  storie,  the  loste  delite. 
The  birds  sing  of  it,  and  if  our  teares 
starte  with  their  first  notes  at  morning 
and  our  sighs  rise  with  the  flowers' 
odours,  such  teares  and  sighs  are  but 
as  dewes  and  breathes  from  heaven, 
wherein  was  laid  up  for  us  the  soule 
of  that  slayne  love." 

"Trash!"  said  Amos,  flinging  the 
book  away  angrily.  "The  idiot  that 
wrote  that  had  nothing  to  do  but 
scribble."  And  he  said  to  himself,  as 
he  rose  and  laid  on  the  fire  a  withered 
little  spray,  that,  had  the  writer  of  the 
offending  paragraph  a  parish  to  work, 
he  would  have  known  he  must  crush 
the  flower  under  his  feet  that  re- 
minded him  of  such  a  love,  and  wring 
the  bird's  neck  rather  than  endure  the 
anguish  of  having  "the  lost  delite" 
recalled.  Somehow  this  little  passage 
had  more  to  do  in  determining  him  to 
ask  Miss  Langworthy  to  be  his  wife 
than  anything  else,  for  it  showed  him 
how  entirely  he  must  shut  out,  if  he 
would  live  and  work  at  all,  his  brief, 
ethereal,  dreamy,  but  all  too  exquisite 
romance  of  the  rose. 

So  he  went  to  see  Miss  Langworthy 
that  same  evening,  proposed,  and  was 
accepted. 


CHAPTER  II. 

SEBASTIAN. 

HAD  the  parish  of  Monksdean  been  as 
richly  endowed  ecclesiastically  as  it 
was  naturally,  the  hopes  and  fears 
on  which  Sebastian's  character  was 
founded  would  never  have  had  exist- 
ence. His  story  might  have  remained 
as  silent  and  unnoticed  as  any  pebble 
on  the  beach  at  the  foot  of  that  sandy 
little  lane  where  he  was  born. 

But  the  church  which  stood  at  the 
top  of  that  same  lane  was  poor  in  all 
but  antiquity,  legends,  and  beautiful 
surroundings. 

In  these  things  it  was  as  rich  as  a 
little  old  English  church  could  be. 

Unblemished  by  improvements,  all 
in  its  cold  Norman  simplicity,  it  stood, 
reflecting  flashes  of  sea  on  its  small 
southern  windows,  and  on  those  look- 
ing westward  waving  foliage. 

Time  had  been  so  generous  and 
tender  in  his  usage,  one  might  imagine 
this  to  be  his  own  parish  church,  and 
that  he  had  a  special  regard  for  it  on 
that  account.  For  every  thing  that  he 
defaced  he  brought  ample  compensa- 
tion in  the  form  of  emerald  masses 
and  treasures  that  could  only  be  from 
his  hand. 

The  little  churchyard,  sloping  down 
seaward,  teemed  with  this  same 
patron's  favours,  and,  when  once 
inside  the  tiny  gate,  one  felt  it  must 
take  hours  to  see  half  the  rich  and 
curious  things  with  which  he  had 
stored  it.  Even  the  white  fan-tail 
pigeons  that  haunted  it  for  the  seed  of 
sundry  trees,  added  to  its  air  of  age 
and  quaintness,  for  they  seemed  to 
have  retained  the  dazzling  purity  of 
primeval  snows.  One  could  half  fancy 
they  had  trailed  those  white  feathers 
on  the  velvet  turf  of  Eden,  had  fed 
from  the  first  woman's  hand  when  it 
was  spotless  as  themselves,  and  that 
at  the  fall  they  had  taken  too  distant 
a  flight  heavenwards  to  come  under 
the  ban  of  sin  and  death. 

The  peaceful  little  nook  was  shaded 


Sebastian. 


273 


airily  by  groups  of  the  trees  peculiar 
to  that  part  of  the  coast. 

Though  no  veterans  of  the  forest 
could  have  a  more  aged  and  venerable 
appearance  than  the  trunks  and  lower 
branches  of  these  old  oaks  and  elms, 
they  are  so  small  that  at  first  they 
look  like  young  trees.  It  is  the  little 
boughs  that  rise  from  them  like  chil- 
dren upborne  on  shoulders  bent  with 
years  that  have  the  wonderful  fresh- 
ness and  delicacy  of  foliage,  which  is 
the  great  charm  of  Monksdean. 

It  canopies  the  village  street  which 
lies  up  round  the  church  corner. 
Smithy,  thatched  houses,  the  general 
shop  on  one  side,  and  trim  pond  and 
Mr.  Dowdes  well's  park  railings  on  the 
other,  all  lie  under  this  dainty  green 
veil.  About  the  rectory  the  wood  is 
a  little  more  dense,  though  the  house 
is  lower  down  the  sea  lane  than  the 
church,  and  on  the  opposite  side. 

It  is  built  simply,  of  limestone, 
and  stands  very  quaintly  on  its  little 
shelf  on  the  woody  hill-side.  Rude 
steps  in  the  cliff  lead  up  to  it.  The 
four  acres  of  glebe-land  lie  behind  it. 

"Without  this,  which  he  managed  by 
the  aid  of  one  stout  Hampshire  man, 
little  Amos  would  have  been  at  his 
wits'  end  to  provide  for  the  five  little 
mouths  that,  after  the  first  seven  years 
of  his  marriage,  expected  filling  with 
jmorseless  regularity. 

At  the  time  of  their  starting  together 
in  life,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gould  had  al- 
ready passed  through  such  experiences 
as  made  them  decide  to  look  forward 
to  nothing  in  the  future  but  what 
might  be  calmly  and  reasonably  ex- 
pected. 

Both  felt  there  was  one  sorrow  to 
be  dreaded  by  them  beyond  all  other 
sorrows,  and  that  was  disappointment. 
Hope,  therefore,  was  to  be  the  for- 
bidden fruit  in  their  cold  Eden  of 
resignation. 

Two  years  passed  without  any 
tempter  appearing  to  try  the  strength 
of  their  resolve. 

In  that  time  a  strong  little  girl — 
a  muscular  Christian,  like  her  mother 
— was  born  at  Monksdean  rectory. 

No.  220. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


But  in  the  third  year  came  the  little 
Sebastian. 

Then  it  was  that  the  mother,  in  her 
weakness,  and  in  her  joy  at  having  a 
little  man  on  her  arm,  allowed  herself 
to  taste  of  the  forbidden  tree,  hope, 
"  and  gave  also  unto  her  husband  with 
her,  and  he  did  eat." 

Her  temptation  came  in  this  manner. 
On  the  third  day  after  her  boy's  birth 
she  lay  thinking  of  her  broken- off 
household  duties,  and  planning  econo- 
mies to  atone  for  extra  expenses 
involved  by  the  new  arrival. 

The  May  afternoon  was  warm  and 
still.  Boughs  of  the  China  rose-tree 
waved  about  the  half-curtained  window 
with  clusters  of  green  buds  that  seemed 
peering  in  curiously  for  a  glimpse  of 
their  human  brother-bud,  wrapped  in 
flannel  on  Mrs.  Gould's  large  arm. 

The  weather-vane  of  the  church 
caught  the  sunlight,  and  glittered 
through  the  pale  leaves.  The  bleating 
of  lambs  in  fields  close  by,  the  chirp- 
ing of  callow  birds  in  the  old  garden 
trees,  blending  with  countless  other 
sounds,  made  Sebastian  the  richest  of 
afternoon  lullabies.  Altogether  those 
sounds  made  such  an  anthem  as  that 
with  which  the  Divine  infant  might 
have  been  greeted  in  his  first  spring 
on  earth  by  the  young  things  claiming 
kindred  with  Him  through  His  infancy 
and  helplessness. 

The  mother  of  Sebastian  being  weak, 
found  her  careful  household  schemes 
grow  confused,  and  her  mind  resting 
dreamily  in  the  sweet  sights  and 
sounds  of  the  May  afternoon. 

It  was  then  that  there  came  to  her 
suddenly,  and  by  no  process  of  thought 
that  she  could  remember,  a  thrill  of 
hope  as  to  a  new  future  to  be  made 
for  her  by  this  little  child. 

The  suddenness,  the  intensity,  and 
the  new  and  exquisite  delight  of  the 
feeling  so  moved  her  that  she  became 
shaken  by  sobs,  and  her  eyes  over- 
flowed. 

She  heard  at  that  moment  a  step 
plodding  up  the  stairs,  and  tried  hard 
to  calm  herself  before  it  reached  her 
door. 


274 


Sebastian. 


But  the  door  opened  on  all  her 
weakness,  and  the  grave  eyes  of  little 
Amos  grew  graver  as  they  beheld  her. 
The  broad  form  came  with  unwonted 
haste  across  the  room. 

"  My  dear  Helen,  are  you  not  so 
well » " 

It  was  quite  useless  trying  now  to 
hide  from  him  the  cause  of  her  emo- 
tion. She  had  not  the  strength  to 
dissemble. 

Taking  Sebastian's  fist  (about  the 
size  and  tint  of  a  newly-hatched 
pigeon),  she  laid  it  with  a  great  deal 
of  strange  significance,  which  he 
utterly  failed  to  understand,  in  the 
hand  of  Amos,  and  spoke  to  him  with  a 
fresh  rush  of  tears  and  an  almost  child- 
like appeal  for  credence  in  her  voice.  • 

"My  dear,"  she  said,  "this  little 
man  is  to  alter  everything  for  us.  I 
have  really,  Amos,  had  a  sort  of  re- 
velation about  him.  Yes,  he  is  to 
be  a  great  blessing  to  us,  and  to 
change  everything  for  us  some  day. 
I  know  it.  I  am  sure  of  it." 

Had  such  a  statement  come  from 
any  other  creature  in  the  world,  Amos 
would  have  smiled  in  his  own  quiet 
way  and  passed  it  by  as  one  of  those 
pleasant  delusions  with  which  he  had 
determined  to  have  nothing  to  do. 

From  Helen  Gould,  out  of  whose 
lips  he  had  been  used  to  hear  nothing 
but  purest  truisms,  it  came  at  least 
startlingly. 

He  looked  at  her  in  much  bewilder- 
ment. Tears  were  strange  to  Helen's 
eyes,  and  these  joyful  smiles  stranger 
still  to  her  lips.  Little  Amos  found 
her  emotion  contagious. 

He  had  much  greater  faith  in  her 
intellect  and  strength  of  mind  than 
his  own,  and  felt  quite  sure  that  what 
she  said,  however  surprising,  must 
have  some  sound  meaning  in  it. 

Since,  too,  there  was  such  deep 
mystery  in  the  relationship  of  this 
mother  and  this  small  new  creature  at 
her  side,  who  could  presume  to  say, 
Amos  asked  himself,  just  where  such 
mystery  ended  ?  Why  should  she  not 
have  been  given  some  insight  as  to  its 
destiny  ? 


He  stood  looking  down  on  the  poor 
face  lit  by  the  one  solitary  ray  of 
hope  he  had  ever  seen  there.  It 
seemed  to  him  cruel  to  shut  his  heart 
and  mind  against  her  one  prophecy. 
Why  should  he  ] 

So  he  did  not  shut  his  heart,  but, 
like  Jacob  at  the  sight  of  the  waggons 
from  the  land  of  Goshen,  opened  it  to 
the  dream  of  precious  promise,  and, 
like  Jacob's,  his  spirit  revived. 

Amos  stooped  and  kissed  Sebastian's 
mother  with  a  look  of  belief  more 
solemn  and  glad  than  he  was  aware. 

When  thoroughly  matter-of-fact,  un- 
imaginative, people  once  admit  such 
an  idea  into  their  minds  as  this  with 
which  the  parents  of  Sebastian  had 
become  possessed,  it  is  hardly  a  matter 
of  wonder  that  it  should  become  like 
a  reality  to  them,  so  used  to  admit 
nothing  but  realities. 

If  an  actual  and  visible  messenger 
from  Heaven  had  come  with  an  account 
of  Sebastian's  mission  upon  earth,  it 
could  scarcely  have  been  regarded  as  a 
stronger  certainty  than  it  was  from 
that  hour. 

The  two  bent  over  the  child,  smiling 
to  see  him  grasp  his  father's  finger  as 
tenaciously  as  if  he  wished  to  express 
his  readiness  to  hold  fast  whatever 
charge  might  be  placed  in  his  hands. 

At  that  moment  they  little  knew 
that  of  all  the  sharp  arrows  fate  had 
in  store  for  the  bosom  of  the  baby 
Sebastian,  this  supposed  foresight  con- 
cerning him  was  to  prove  cruellest, 
and  pierce  deepest. 


CHAPTER  III. 
SEBASTIAN'S  MODEL. 

THERE  hung  over  Mrs.  Gould's  mantel- 
piece a  portrait  of  a  certain  church 
dignitary  of  commanding  and  august 
countenance.  For  the  orginal  of  this 
picture,  Mrs.  Gould  had  an  esteem 
and  admiration  that  rose  as  nearly 
to  enthusiasm  as  her  nature  could 
approach. 

As  it  was  believed,  by   most  who 
knew  him,  that   the   great  man  had 


Sebastian. 


275 


reached  his  present  position  by  his 
own  powerful  exertions,  and  as  Mrs. 
Gould  knew  he  had  come  into  the 
world  as  poor  as  Sebastian  himself, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  con- 
templation of  the  picture  had  had 
some  share  in  bringing  about  her  pro- 
phetic inspiration  concerning  her  boy's 
future. 

Though  she  had  herself  no  idea  of 
this,  but  firmly  believed  her  sudden 
hopefulness  to  have  been  a  superhuman 
foresight,  the  determination  to  make 
Sebastian  follow  as  nearly  as  possible 
in  the  great  man's  footsteps,  was  in 
her  mind  and  heart  from  the  moment 
of  her  dream.  It  therefore  seemed  to 
her,  as  she  informed  Amos,  that  she 
had  been  divinely  instructed  to  make 
their  dear  and  honoured  friend,  Pre- 
bendary Jellicoe,  Sebastian's  model. 

But  Amos  had  his  own  opinion  on 
this  point.  Perhaps  his  imagination, 
never  very  elastic,  had  been  stretched 
to  its  utmost  to  take  in  the  idea  of  his 
wife's  prophecy  in  its  first  stage.  He 
could  not  quite  bring  himself  to  believe 
that  the  huge  gouty  limbs  and  port 
wine-tinted  face  of  the  prebendary 
played  any  part  in  that  sweet  and 
solemn  moment  when  his  wife  poured 
her  words  of  hope  with  tears 
and  trembling,  as  if  a  mighty  tender 
roice  had  just  breathed  them  in  her 
ear. 

Amos,  therefore,  though  he  said 
nothing,  did  not  believe  the  prebendary 
to  have  been  specially  intended  by 
Providence  as  Sebastian's  exemplar 
and  guide.  Perhaps  his  admiration 
for  the  great  man  was  not  so  profound 
as  his  wife's.  However,  he  could  not 
be  blind  as  to  his  success,  and  know- 
ing Mrs.  Gould  would  not  abandon 
her  idea  without  losing  her  hope  as  to 
Sebastian's  future,  he  fell  into  her 
plans,  casting  away  his  own  misgivings, 
and  trying  to  see  things  as  she,  with 
her  superior  judgment,  saw  them. 

Her  little  girl  being  so  tall  and 
strong  for  her  age  made  her  confident 
that  Sebastian  would  be  of  stature  as 
colossal  and  constitution  as  sound  as 
the  prebendary. 


He  was  to  have  a  hardy  training, 
and  to  be  made  feel  his  responsibilities 
as  the  future  backbone  of  the  family 
at  as  early  an  age  as  possible. 

Amos  had  his  doubts  as  to  whether 
the  child  was  nearly  so  large  and 
strong  as  his  sister  had  been  at  his 
age  ;  but  his  wife  declared  she  saw  in 
him  every  sign  of  a  fine  constitution. 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to 
write  and  request  the  honour  of  the 
prebendary  becoming  godfather  to  the 
child,  who  already  bore  his  Christian 
name  by  anticipation. 

In  two  days  came  a  gracious  con- 
sent, which  was  received  by  Mrs. 
Gould  with  unbounded  pride  and  plea- 
sure. 

There  was,  however,  one  drawback 
to  the  pleasure  with  which  it  was  re- 
ceived at  the  rectory.  The  prebendary 
had  just  consented  to  a  similar  entreaty 
from  the  parents  of  a  little  newborn 
cousin  of  Sebastian's,  so  there  would 
be  two  Sebastian  Goulds  in  the  family. 
At  first  this  was  felt  to  be  annoy- 
ing; but  Mrs.  Gould  soon  assured 
herself,  and  then  Amos,  that  the  other 
Sebastian  would  be  a  mere  nobody ; 
and  that  it  was  unreasonable  to  grudge 
him  the  honour  of  bearing  the  name  of 
such  a  cousin  as  her  own  Sebastian. 

"  Even  if  I  had  not  this  feeling  about 
the  child,"  she  said,  "I  really  don't 
see  how  he  could  fail  to  make  his  way 
with  such  a  friend  as  the  dear  bishop." 
"  Bishop  Jellicoe  "  was  the  title  by 
which  the  prebendary  was  most  com- 
monly designated,  partly  because  the 
stall  to  which  he  had  been  appointed 
had  once — when  it  was  not  quite  with- 
out provender — been  held  by  a  bishop ; 
and  partly  because  he  claimed  the 
right,  as  senior  clergyman  in  the 
diocese,  to  propose  the  bishop's  health 
at  visitation  dinners,  when  he  invari- 
ably took  occasion  to  deliver  his  own 
" charge"  to  the  clergy.  But  apart 
from  all  these  smaller  facts,  Pre- 
bendary Jellicoe  was  declared  by  his 
admirers  to  be  "  every  inch  a  bishop," 
in  person,  mind,  and  manners ;  and, 
to  all  gifted  with  powers  to  appre- 
ciate him  "  Bishop  "  he  was,  from  the 

T  2 


276 


Sebastian. 


moment  he  became  prebendary,  to  the 
day  of  his  lamented  death. 

"Don't  you  see,  yourself,"  asked 
Mrs.  Gould,  rather  impatient  at  her 
husband's  silence,  "that  there  could 
scarcely  be  a  better  chance  for  any 
young  man  than  Sebastian  will  have  if 
he  makes  himself  cared  for,  as  he  ought 
and  must,  by  his  godfather  ?  " 

"Well,  my  dear,"  answered  Amos, 
"practically,  I  suppose,  that  really  is 
all  the  solid  ground  we  have  for  these 
little  feet  to  stand  on.  I  suppose  the 
bishop  really  will  put  something  in 
his  way  at  the  right  time — when  that 
comes." 

And  Amos  could  not  withhold  a 
patient  little  sigh  .at  the  thought  of 
how  many  years  lay  between  this 
small  Joseph  and  his  prospective  land 
of  Goshen. 

"He  looks  a  perfect  little  clergy- 
man already,"  declared  Mrs.  Gould,  as 
if  in  reproach  at  the  sigh. 

"  Rather  uncanonical  in, the  style  of 
hair,  isn't  he  ? '  asked  Amos,  smiling 
at  Sebastian's  bare  pink  head,  turning 
its  back  energetically  on  all  the  world 
but  that  one  thing  in  it  which  alone 
was  of  any  importance  to  him  just 
then — his  mother. 

'  I  do  believe  he  has  the  bishop's 
own  magnificent  brow,"  she  exclaimed, 
looking  from  Sebastian's  forehead, 
crimped  like  a  new  chestnut  leaf,  to 
the  portrait  hanging  over  the  mantel- 
piece. 

The  picture,  of  which  the  steel 
engraving  in  Mrs.  Gould's  room  was  a 
copy,  was  an  oil-painting,  representing 
a  head  and  shoulders,  very  consider- 
ably larger  than  ordinary  life-size. 
Yet  it  was  generally  acknowledged 
that  the  artist  could  not  be  said  to 
have  really  departed  from  nature  in 
this  matter.  The  original  of  the  por- 
trait was  so  great  a  man  physically,  so 
much  greater  morally,  and  more  great 
than  all  socially,  that  apparent  exag- 
geration was  perhaps  the  only  means  by 
which  justice  could  be  done  in  such  a 
case. 

The  brow  to  which  Mrs.  Gould 
fancied  her  Sebastian's  bore  some 


resemblance,  pi'ojected  much  in  several 
places,  as  if  the  great  brain  had  needed 
more  room  than  nature  originally 
allowed  it.  The  nose  was  decidedly 
Roman.  Sebastian,  at  four  years  old, 
was  irreverent  enough  to  compare  it 
with  Mr.  Punch's,  for  which  his 
mother  debarred  him  a  whole  week 
from  contemplation  of  his  model.  If 
such  an  idea  could  possibly  occur  to 
the  child,  one  would  have  thought  that 
the  severe  dignity  of  the  expression  of 
the  lips  would  have  prevented  utter- 
ance of  it.  Those  lips,  too,  were 
large  and  full. 

The  eyes  alone  were  small ;  but 
their  look  of  profound  absorption 
made  them  like  no  other  eyes.  Close, 
perhaps  irreverent,  observers,  among 
whom  Sebastian,  at  certain  frivolous 
moments  of  his  life,  must  be  num- 
bered, hinted  that,  in  spite  of  their 
apparent  absorption,  the  eyes  were 
really  watching  very  keenly  for  the 
slightest  sign  of  disrespect]  in  the  be- 
holder's face.  At  least,  such  was  the 
expression  they  said  the  artist  had 
caught. 

Amos  failed  to  see  the  slightest 
likeness  between  the  bishop  and 
Sebastian;  and  he  had  an  absurdly 
unreasonable  sort  of  foreboding  won- 
der whether  there  might  not  be  as 
great  a  difference  in  their  characters 
and  lives  as  in  their  faces. 

Sebastian's  education  was,  of  course, 
to  be  undertaken  by  his  father,  till  he 
should  be  ready  to  go  to  college ;  for 
the  expenses  of  which  every  penny 
that  could  be  saved  from  the  house- 
keeping allowance,  was  to  be  stored 
up  thenceforth. 

Amos  was  naturally  somewhat 
nervous  about  his  task ;  and  the  cor- 
respondence between  Mrs.  Gould  and 
the  prebendary,  upon  the  subject,  did 
not  tend  to  make  his  mind  easier. 

He  was  considerably  dismayed, 
when,  in  answer  to  Mrs.  Gould's  en- 
treaties for  advice,  their  learned  friend 
sent  particulars  of  his  own  early  pro- 
gress. 

He  had  lisped  Ijatin  quite  as  soon 
as  he  lisped  English.  At  three  years 


Sebastian. 


277 


old  he  could  read  some  words  in 
Caesar,  and  at  five  he  could  read  the 
text  throughout  better  than  that  of  an 
English  lesson-book.  He  began  Latin 
grammar  at  the  same  time  as  the 
English,  a  plan  that  he  decidedly 
advised  to  be  adopted  with  regard  to 
Sebastian,  leaving  its  more  abstruse 
rules  to  be  mastered  afterwards 
through  translation.  At  eight  years 
of  age  he  had  finished  Csesar  and  com- 
menced Ovid.  Then  Greek  was  un- 
dertaken, first  the  grammar,  and  then 
Xenophon's  Anabasis;  from  which 
point  the  prebendary's  progress  was 
marvellously  rapid. 

But  it  was  enough  for  Amos  to 
realise  what  he  had  to  undertake  for 
Sebastian  in  his  earlier  .years  without 
looking  beyond.  He  had  been  habit- 
uated by  his  wife  to  believe  almost 
anything  as  to  the  prebendary's  mental 
powers ;  but  when  he  glanced  from 
the  prodigious  slippers  kept  in  the 
corner  of  the  dining-room,  in  readiness 
for  the  visits,  "  few  and  far  between," 
of  the  great  man,  he  could  not  help 
asking  himself  was  it  possible  those 
tiny  feet,  now  in  the  wool  shoes  of 
pink  and  white,  could  ever  follow  in 
the  prebendary's  huge  educational 
strides  ? 

But  any  doubts  and  fears  that  may 
have  existed  were  only  like  slight 
specks  in  the  sky  of  the  future,  which 
the  coming  of  Sebastian's  little  pink 
face  had  made  all  rosy. 

Even  the  thought  of  his  great  task 
soon  began  to  give  Amos  pleasure  as 
well  as  anxiety,  and  a  sense  of  self- 
importance  that  enriched  his  dull  life 
wonderfully. 

His  night's  rest  after  his  toilsome 
day  was  usually  deep  and  dreamless. 
Now  the  remembrance  of  his  respon- 
sibilities often  kept  him  wakeful  till 
chanticleer's  voice  startled  and  set 
screaming  the  little  hero  of  the  house. 

CHAPTER  IY. 
THE  PREBENDARY'S  LETTER. 

A  YEAR  passed,  and  showed  Sebastian's 
first  failure  in  treading   in   his- god- 


father's footsteps ;  for  not  only  was 
it  impossible  to  make  him  lisp  in 
Latin,  but  he  would  not  lisp  at  all. 

At  two  years  old  he  began  to  con- 
verse with  much  fluency  and  self- 
satisfaction,  but  in  an  entirely  new 
and  unknown  tongue ;  declining  to 
repeat  any  words  in  which  it  was 
attempted  to  instruct  him,  either  Latin 
or  English. 

The  only  way  in  which  he  showed 
any  intelligence  was  the  energy  with 
which  he  tried  to  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  every  living  thing  that  came 
in  his  way.  Every  fresh  face  appeared 
to  excite  his  interest  and  pleasure ; 
and  he  would  smile  and  crow  at  it  as 
if  it  gave  him.  surprise  and  delight  to 
find  the  world  so  full  of  people.  His 
face  would  look  deplorably  stupid  and 
miserable  when  his  father  or  mother 
tried  patiently  to  make  him  repeat 
some  simple  word,  such  as  dog  or  cat. 
But  if  either  of  these  animals  entered 
the  room  during  the  lesson,  his  little 
hands  were  outstretched  towards  it, 
and  he  would  address  it  with  a  flood 
of  eloquence  incomprehensible  but  for 
the  love  that  lit  his  face. 

It  seemed  to  Amos  that  there  was 
something  approaching  to  obstinacy  in 
the  way  Sebastian,  even  in  his  baby- 
hood, opposed  their  plans,  and  appeared 
to  maintain  that  to  make  himself  at 
home  in  the  world  was  quite  enough 
for  him  to  do  as  yet. 

At  three  years  old  the  only  advance 
he  could  be  said  to  have  made  in  his 
education  was  simplifying  the  alphabet 
for  his  own  study  by  calling  every 
letter  A  or  B.  And  to  this  he  kept 
with  a  patient  and  serene  obstinacy 
that  neither  coaxing  nor  slapping  could 
conquer. 

At  five,  Csesar  was  still  on  the  shelf 
unthumbed,  Sebastian  being  only  able 
by  deep  study,  and  by  the  aid  of  highly- 
coloured  prints,  to  spell  out  the  tragedy 
of  Cock  Robin. 

At  six,  not  only  was  he  a  dunce,  but 
so  weak  and  small  and  soft  of  frame 
that  his  stalwart  baby-sister,  born 
three  years  after  him,  had  merely  to 
run  at  him  to  lay  Sebastian  helpless 


278 


Sebastian. 


on  the  ground.  His  backbone  was  not 
particularly  strong  even  for  its  own 
natural  wear  and  tear,  but  was  most 
unsatisfactory  when  considered  as  the 
family  support. 

His  mother  tried  her  best  to  render 
his  appearance  less  infantine.  Never 
were  limbs  so  babyish  encased  in  gar- 
ments so  manly,  or  fresh,  flaxen  curls 
so  severely  sheared. 

But  it  was  all  labour  in  vain.  The 
shearing  left  a  soft  yellow  down  that 
made  Sebastian  look  like  a  tender,  un- 
feathered  fledgling  turned  prematurely 
out  of  its  nest. 

Fortunately  for  himself  the  child 
was  blessed  with  a  meek  and  quiet 
spirit,  and  never  had  a  thought  of 
murmuring  at  the  severity  with  which 
he  was  treated. 

He  did  not  even  know  his  life  was 
a  peculiarly  hard  one.  Seeing  his 
sisters  allowed  time  to  play  and  enjoy 
leisure  and  amusements  denied  to  him- 
self, he  did  once  ask  his  mother  why 
such  a  difference  was  made  between 
them.  When  she  told  him  sharply 
that  it  was  because  he  was  a  boy — a 
little  man — and  that  men  must  take 
great  responsibilities  on  themselves, 
and  learn  to  work  very  hard  indeed, 
Sebastian  murmured  no  more,  but  did 
his  best  in  his  own  small  way  to  act 
his  part  manfully. 

His  best,  it  is  true,  was  very  dis- 
appointing. Every  one  in  the  house 
knew  that  the  rector  spent  more  time 
'over  Sebastian's  lessons  than  he  gave 
to  all  his  other  children,  but  how  much 
more  still  he  devoted  to  the  little 
dunce  was  known  only  to  the  teacher 
and  pupil.  They  took  long  walks  to- 
gether, but  of  what  had  passed  during 
those  walks  only  a  little  book  bulging 
Sebastian's  pocket,  and  a  look  of  graver 
perplexity  on  his  father's  face,  gave 
any  sign. 

Sebastian  bore  the  troubles  and  dif- 
ficulties of  his  education  with  much 
fortitude.  Sometimes  he  referred  to 
them  with  a  quaint,  half-sad  humour 
that  made  Amos  smile  in  spite  of  him- 
self. Once,  when  they  were  returning 
together  from  the  village,  they  saw  a 


donkey  tied  by  a  rope  that  was  fast- 
ened round  a  rock.  Sebastian  looked 
from  it  up  to  his  father's  face  with  a 
queer  twinkle  in  his  eye. 

"  Well,"  observed  the  rector,  "  What 
now  ? " 

"  He  thinks  if  he  keeps  pulling  he 
can  move  the  rock,"  said  Sebastian ; 
"  and  I  think  if  I  keep  on  trying  I  can 
learn  Latin.  I  wonder  which  of  us 
will  do  what  we  want  first !  " 

This  dismayed  Amos  considerably, 
for  in  spite  of  the  boy's  inability  to 
learn,  he  had  some  almost  unconscious 
faith  in  his  being  wiser  than  he  seemed, 
and  it  alarmed  him  to  think  Sebastian 
really  felt  his  efforts  to  be  as  hopeless 
as  the  donkey's. 

Sometimes  his  father,  loth  to  keep 
the  child  in  so  many  hours  in  the 
bright  summer  time,  sent  him  out  with 
his  book  to  study  it  down  at  the  end 
of  the  sandy  lane.  But  here  a  crowd 
of  fancies  came  into  his  mind  bearing 
it  far  away  from  the  little  book  in  his 
hand.  His  thoughts,  like  little  boats 
with  "  youth  at  the  helm  and  pleasure 
at  the  prow,"  went  sailing  idly  on  over 
the  great  grey  sea.  Vainly  he  tried 
to  call  them  back.  Away  and  away 
they  swam,  dancing,  drifting,  dreaming. 

The  sandy  lane  itself  was  the  spot 
that  Sebastian  all  through  his  life 
loved  more  than  any  place  in  the 
world.  As  a  child  he  used  to  think 
to  himself  that  the  break  in  the  cliff 
here,  whenever  it  happened,  must  have 
been  welcome  to  both  sea  and  country, 
for  they  seemed  mutually  brightened 
and  benefited  by  each  other's  ac- 
quaintance. 

At  high  tide  the  waves  came  crowd- 
ing and  leaping  up  the  lane  like 
children  let  out  of  a  big  school  into 
a  tiny  playground.  The  trees,  like 
children  too,  Sebastian  thought,  had 
met  them  as  nearly  as  they  might,  but 
stcod  with  arms  stretched  landwards 
as  if  ready  for  flight  should  the  wild 
waves  come  too  close. 

Here,  too,  he  often  met  with  another 
hindrance  than  the  sea  and  sandy  lane, 
— one  with  whom  Ames  could  not  be 
very  wrath.  It  was  the  child  of  Mr. 


Sebastian. 


279 


Frank  Dowdeswell,  of  Coombe  Park, 
where  the  white  pigeons  that  haunted 
the  churchyard  had  their  abiding-place. 

Three  years  after  his  own  marriage 
Amos  had  had  to  stand  within  the  altar 
rails  and  join  the  little  hand  that  had 
clung  to  his  at  that  parting  at  the  coach 
to  Dowdeswell' s.  Two  more  years  and 
he  had  said  over  it,  "  earth  to  earth, 
ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust,"  none 
guessing  that  in  saying  it  of  Lillian 
he  said  it  also  of  his  life's  romance. 

He  had  known  that  in  dying  she 
had  given  birth  to  a  daughter,  but 
had  heard  and  thought  little  of  her 
till  there  began  to  molest  Sebastian 
in  his  beach  solitude  a  brilliant  little 
beauty  of  three  years  old.  She  seemed 
more  like  a  little  woman  to  Amos  than 
a  child,  a  sort  of  infant  Cleopatra, 
possessing  the  love  and  joy  of  a  cherub 
and  the  imperiousness  of  a  queen,  the 
fascination  and  tyranny  of  a  consci- 
ously beautiful  woman. 

Sebastian  was  ever  the  object  of 
Miss  Dora  Dowdeswell's  search  when 
her  nurse  brought  her  out,  the  object 
of  her  intense  admiration,  tyranny, 
and  love.  Her  mind  seemed  as  large, 
bold  and  strong  as  her  person.  Indeed 
her  dauntless  truthfulness  on  certain 
occasions  proved  embarrassing  to  Sebas- 
tian, whose  timidity  had  taught  him 
to  temporise  slightly,  especially  with 
regard  to  his  mother,  of  whom  he  stood 
in  much  awe. 

Mrs.  Gould  having  her  young  chil- 
dren to  manage  with  one  maid-of- all- 
work,  could  spare  but  little  time  over 
her  boy.  It  is  doubtful,  however, 
whether  she  would  have  done  any 
more  good  than  Amos,  as  what  small 
powers  of  learning  Sebastian  had 
seemed  lost  or  bewildered  under  his 
mother's  tuition.  Her  temper,  too, 
was  naturally  hasty,  but,  like  every 
other  fault  she  had,  was  kept  in 
admirable  subjection.  If  one  person 
tried  it  more  than  another  it  was  cer- 
tainly Sebastian.  For  no  one  could 
deny  that  she  was  an  admirable  mother 
and  wife,  a  very  pattern  (as  Amos  had 
prophesied  in  the  soup-kitchen)  cf  a 
clergyman's  wife. 


She  enjoyed  good  health  and  equable 
spirits,  and  her  management  of  her 
home  was  almost  faultless.  No  mean- 
ness of  dress  or  occupation  could  make 
her  appear  otherwise  than  perfectly 
ladylike  and  self-possessed.  Yet  she 
was  often  much  tried  in  both  these 
respects. 

Her  good  taste  was  apparent  through- 
out the  house,  though  perhaps  it  might 
be  said  to  be  a  little  hard  and  cold, 
being  due  entirely  to  cultivation  and 
not  to  instinct. 

Her  sketches  in  water-colours  that 
decorated  the  little  drawing-room  had 
been  much  admired.  She  did  her  best 
to  impart  all  her  accomplishments  to 
her  children,  putting  a  decided  stop 
to  any  tendency  to  what  she  called 
extremes,  by  which  she  meant  going 
further  in  any  direction  than  she  had 
been  led  by  her  own  masters. 

She  was  fond  of  music  as  a  science, 
and  wa,s  a  most  correct  pianist.  No- 
thing ever  jarred  all  she  had  in  the 
way  of  nerves  so  much  as  when  her 
little  Sebastian,  to  his  own  deep  rap- 
ture, his  ignorant  fingers  guided  only 
by  his  tender  little  ear,  first  fumbled 
out  the  air  of  "  Home,  sweet  home  !  " 

Up  to  a  certain  time  the  prebendary 
was  kept  in  ignorance  of  his  godson's 
backwardness,  but  at  last  Mrs.  Gould 
insisted  on  telling  him,  and  asking  his 
advice. 

Sebastian  himself  took  in  the  great 
blue  letter  that  came  in  answer  to  his 
mother's,  little  knowing  what  hints 
for  his  own  welfare  it  contained. 

He  noticed,  however,  that  his  mother 
after  reading  it  handed  it  to  his  father, 
with  an  approving  and  emphatic  nod. 

Sebastian,  while  appearing  to  be 
absorbed  in  blowing  his  spoonful  of 
hot  bread  and  milk,  watched  his  father 
attentively. 

First,  he  saw  his  eyes  grow  very 
bright  and  surprised-looking.  When 
he  had  read  the  letter  he  gave  it  back 
to  Mrs.  Gould,  making  no  comment, 
and  avoiding  to  meet  her  eye,  by 
which  Sebastian  felt  sure  the  contents 
of  the  letter  were  not  at  all  pleasing 
to  him. 


280 


Sebastian. 


It  was  from  no  vulgar  curiosity 
that  Sebastian  longed  so  all  that 
morning  to  know  what  was  in  his 
godfather's  letter.  Far  more  on  his 
father's  account  than  his  own  was  he 
anxious  about  it,  for  it  had  evidently 
left  Amos  in  a  mood  of  unusual 
thoughtfulness  and  grave  perplexity. 
As  the  day  was  a  holiday,  all  the 
young  folks  but  Sebastian  went  off 
to  the  beach  directly  after  breakfast. 
He  was  shut  in  the  dining-room  with 
three  days'  unlearned  lessons,  making 
good-humoured  grimaces  at  his  sisters, 
who  laughed  at  him  as  they  went  by 
the  window. 

He  had  not  been  alone  long  before 
his  eye,  roving  everywhere  but  on 
his  books,  detected  the  prebendary's 
letter. 

Sebastian  could  scarcely  read  writing 
at  that  time,  but  he  had  so  frequently 
been  set  by  his  mother  to  study  and 
try  to  imitate  his  godfather's  striking 
hand,  that  he  had  the  provoking 
knowledge  of  being  able  to  pick  out 
a  few  words  had  the  letter  lain  near 
him — had  it  been  on  the  table  instead 
of  the  mantelpiece. 

Sebastian  tried  to  take  his  thoughts 
off  it,  and  to  set  to  work  at  his 
lessons. 

Suddenly,  however,  he  discovered  his 
slate-pencil  wanted  a  finer  point,  and 
knowing  there  was  a  penknife  on  the 
mantelpiece,  nothing  could  be  more 
natural  than  that  he  should  go  and 
get  it.  Nor,  when  standing  on  the 
fender  to  reach  it,  with  one  hand 
holding  the  shelf,  was  it  less  natural 
that  his  eyes  should  glance  admiringly 
over  the  bold  characters  he  had  been 
urged  to  imitate. 

He  was  surprised  to  find  how  easily 
he  could  spell  out  the  address  and 
date — 

"THE  RECTORY, 

"  STOWEY-CCM-PETHERTON, 

"JfaylS." 
And  then — 

"MY  VERY  DEAR   FRIEND." 

The  next  word  he  spelt  out,  in  the 
middle  of  the  page,  and  surrounded 
by  Latin  quotations,  was  "  him." 


''That's  me,"  said  Sebastian,  with 
his  usual  disregard  for  grammar. 
"Now,  if  I  could  only  see  what 
about  'him.'" 

Sebastian  fixed  his  attention  on 
the  three  or  four  words  preceding  the 
one  he  had  mastered,  and  which  was 
the  end  of  a  sentence. 

It  would  have  done  Mrs.  Gould 
good  to  see  the  intelligence  that  lit 
Sebastian's  face  as  the  meaning  of  the 
sentence  dawned  upon  him. 

But  it  might  not  have  been  good 
either  for  her  or  Sebastian  had  she 
seen  him  spring  from  the  fender  to 
the  middle  of  the  hearth-rug,  and 
stand  there  like  a  fierce  little  gladiator, 
with  clenched  fists,  actually  sparring 
at  the  portrait  of  his  reverend  god- 
father. 

"  A  good  whipping  is  evidently  the 
only  thing  that  will  stir  him,"  wrote 
the  prebendary ;  and  had  he  seen  how 
even  the  mention  of  it  did  stir  Sebas- 
tian, he  would  not  have  been  likely  to 
regret  the  advice  he  had  given. 

But  Sebastian  did  not  remain  long 
in  an  attitude  of  rage. 

Calling  to  mind  the  manner  in 
which  this  letter  had  been  received 
by  his  mother  soon  changed  his 
passion  to  piteous  grief. 

In  spite  of  all  her  attempts  at 
hardening  him,  Sebastian  still  in  his 
little  heart  silently  clung  to  her  with 
the  trust  and  fond  dependence  of  a 
year-old  baby. 

As  he  sat  down  now  on  the  stool 
near  him,  with  his  face  full  of  shocked 
surprise,  he  looked  less  like  a  boy  of 
six  years  than  an  infant  whose  hands 
had  just  been  roughly  beaten  from 
their  hold  round  the  mother's  neck. 
A  nestling  tumbled  from  its  nest  and 
huddled  on  the  grass  in  the  cold 
morning  dew  was  not  more  piteous  a 
sight. 

When  Sebastian's  half-stunned  little 
brain  began  to  revive  and  think,  the 
recollection  of  his  father's  evident 
displeasure  at  the  prebendary's  letter 
came  to  him. 

Immediately  his  head  rose,  his  face 
brightened,  his  eyes  twinkled  through 


Sebastian. 


281 


their  tears  with  tender  humour  and 
pity. 

"  Poor  papa  !  "  he  said  ;  "  he 
would  have  to  do  it.  Poor  little 
papa  !  " 

How  Sebastian  came  to  apply  the 
same  epithet  to  Amos  that  was  ap- 
plied to  him  by  nearly  all  who  knew 
him,  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but  this 
was  not  the  first  time  he  had  done  so. 

When  in  church  Amos  was  hot  and 
nervous,  or  oppressed  with  the  dul- 
ness  of  his  own  sermon,  Sebastian 
would  whisper  to  his  sisters,  "  Poor 
little  papa ! "  with  the  same  queer 
twinkle  in  his  loving  eyes,  while  the 
rest  of  his  face  retained  its  ordinary 
church  solemnity.  Even  when  Amos 
felt  the  tide  of  his  eloquence  flowing 
more  strongly  than  usual  (as  he  did  on 
certain  rare  occasions),  and  perhaps 
showed  that  he  felt  it,  Sebastian's  eye, 
full  of  some  suppressed  inexplicable 
kind  of  humour  that  was  as  impossible 
to  understand  as  it  was  to  resist, 
turned  to  one  of  his  sisters,  and  set 
her  mouth  twitching  even  before  the 
half -comical,  half -serious  "  Poor  little 
papa  !  "  was  whispered. 

Amos,  though  he  found  Sebastian's 
manner  to  him  always  full  of  demure 
respect  and  childish  humility,  had  a 
certain  sense  of  being  understood  by 
this  little  dunce  better  than  by  the 
wisest  man  he  knew.  It  gave  him  a 
curious  sort  of  vexation  sometimes 
when  he  had  an  annoyance  which  he 
thought  was  unknown  to  any  but 
himself  to  meet  the  boy's  babyish 
eyes  with  their  look  of  half-furtive, 
sympathetic  insight.  But  there  were 
times  when  Amos  took  some  solace 
from  those  looks  almost  unknowingly ; 
times  also  when  he  talked  to  Sebastian 
as  he  talked  to  no  one  else.  There 
existed,  in  fact,  between  these  two  a 
certain  confidence  and  companionship 
which  seemed  strange  enough  con- 
sidering the  trouble  they  gave  each 
other  as  teacher  and  pupil. 

Sebastian,  as  he  remembered  how 
his  father  had  read  the  terrible  letter 
with  repugnance  and  almost  anger, 
wondered  lovingly  as  well  as  trem- 


blingly how  he  would  act  in  the 
matter. 

Though  he  went  back  to  his  lessons, 
they  were  more  than  ever  vague  and 
incomprehensible  to  him.  "What  will 
poor  papa  do  ?  "  was  the  question 
that  filled  all  his  mind. 

He  could  do  nothing  but  wonder 
and  wait  for  the  time  when  Amos 
would  come  to  hear  him  his  lessons. 

When  he  did  hear  the  well-known 
step  crossing  the  stone-paved  hall, 
Sebastian's  heart  thumped  very  hard, 
and  his  cheeks  grew  hot  as  he  bent 
low  over  his  book. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Amos,  looking 
suspiciously  at  the  reddening  cheeks, 
"  I  hope  you  have  made  some  use  of 
your  time  this  morning." 

Sebastian,  only  too  well  aware  that 
he  was  no  better  acquainted  with  the 
lesson  set  him  than  he  had  been  three 
days  ago,  mechanically  handed  one  of 
his  books  to  his  father,  and  placed 
himself  before  him  in  his  usual  atti- 
tude of  torture — his  hands  behind  him, 
and  his  eyes  directed  to  a  corner  of 
the  ceiling. 

Then  followed  the  old,  old  story  : 
Amos  patiently  questioning,  Sebastian 
utterly  helpless,  and  growing  more  be- 
wildered and  stupefied  every  minute. 

At  last  Amos  threw  down  on  the 
table  the  book  he  held. 

The  little  shock  of  this  action 
brought  the  tears  to  Sebastian's  eyes ; 
and  when  his  father  rose  and  left  the 
room  without  speaking,  he  let  the 
drops  patter  down  on  his  broad  collar, 
and  made  no  effort  to  stop  them. 

At  dinner  nobody  spoke  to  him. 
He  fancied  his  father  and  mother 
were  strange  and  reserved  with  each 
other  (so  shrewd  an  eye  had  the  little 
dunce),  and  he  felt  sure  he  was  the 
cause. 

His  sisters,  fair,  brown,  and 
freckled,  had  come  in  from  the  beach 
with  the  appetites  and  spirits  of 
successful  hunters.  They  were  not 
particularly  well  favoured  as  to  per- 
sonal appearance,  but  each  freckled 
brow  wore  the  crown  of  happy  care- 
lessness, by  which  one  sees  when  a 


282 


Sebastian. 


child  is  really  allowed  to  be  sovereign 
in  the  bright  empire  of  its  childhood. 

From  the  little  one  who  sat  with 
his  broad  linen  collar  blistered  with 
tear  marks  that  crown  had  been  taken. 
His  little  kingdom  was  as  bright  as 
any,  but  he  might  not  enjoy  it :  as  full 
of  treasures  as  any,  but  his  hands 
were  bound  so  that  he  could  hardly 
touch  them.  Yet  even  crownless  and 
chained  he  loved  it,  and  longed  for  its 
forbidden  joys. 

Just  now,  however,  Sebastian  was 
thinking  less  of  his  own  troubles  than 
of  his  father's.  He  saw  his  mother  so 
silent  and  stern  to  him,  and  could  well 
understand  what  it  must  be  if  his 
father  meant  to  go  against  the  pre- 
bendary's advice. 

After  dinner  Amos  rose  to  set  out  on 
a  visit  to  a  sick  parishioner  at  some 
distance.  Sebastian  was  to  have  gone 
with  him,  and  he  watched  wistfully  for 
a  look  signifying  he  might  go.  But 
Amos  went  without  a  glance  towards 
him. 

"Now,  Sebastian,"  said  Mrs.  Gould 
as  sharply  as  her  well  cultivated  voice 
allowed  her  to  speak,  "  no  idling 
because  your  father's  away  ;  and  I  hope 
I  shall  hear  a  better  account  of  this 
afternoon  than  I  have  of  this  morning. 
If  I  don't 

She  finished  the  sentence  with  a  look 
which  Sebastian,  after  what  he  had 
read  in  the  prebendary's  letter,  had  no 
difficulty  in  understanding. 

When  Amos  returned  from  his  long 
walk,  which  had  been  more  wearying 
than  usual,  perhaps  through  the 
absence  of  his  little  companion, 
Sebastian  was  sitting  at  the  dining- 
room  table,  his  arms  clasped  round  his 
little  heap  of  books,  his  head  laid  on 
them. 

He  was  asleep,  and  Mrs.  Gould  stood 
by,  sternly  drawing  his  father's  atten- 
tion to  the  dreadful  fact. 

Amos  understood  from  her  manner 
that  she  thought  the  right  occasion  for 
following  the  prebendary's  advice  had 
come. 

He  stood  looking  at  the  little  culprit 
hesitatingly,  when  Sebastian  woke  vip 


suddenly,  and  was  down  on  his  feet  in 
a  moment,  meekly  proffering  his  little 
book  for  his  father  to  hear  him  say  his 
lesson  as  usual. 

Amos  took  the  book,  and  laid  it  on 
the  table. 

"  Go  in  the  garden,  Sebastian,"  he 
said  ;  "  I  can't  attend  to  you  now." 

Sebastian  was  glad  to  escape  his 
afternoon  ordeal  for  once.  As  he 
passed  by  the  dining-room  window  he 
heard  his  mother  talking  in  that 
peculiar  tone  which  Sebastian  had 
noticed  always  left  his  father's  face  very 
grave  for  hours ;  sometimes  for  days. 

He  knew  the  conversation  was  about 
himself  and  the  prebendary ;  and  he 
felt  as  guilty  as  if  he  had  committed 
some  dreadful  crime. 

He  had  strolled  drearily  about  for 
half  an  hour  when  his  mother  called 
him.  There  was  a  sort  of  firm  tran- 
quillity in  her  voice  that  made 
Sebastian's  little  legs  tremble  as  he 
walked  toward' s  the  house. 

"  Your  papa  wants  you  in  the 
dining-room,"  she  said,  taking  his  hand 
and  helping  him  to  cross  the  hall 
swiftly. 

As  soon  as  Sebastian  found  the  door 
closed  behind  him  he  noticed  a  little 
cane  lying  on  the  table.  All  his 
courage  forsook  him  at  once,  and  he 
began  such  a  cry  as  deceived  his  mother, 
who,  listening  in  the  hall,  put  her  hand 
to  her  heart,  and  bit  her  lip,  fearing 
Amos  was  dealing  too  severely  with 
him. 

It  was  quite  a  little  tragedy  in  the 
house,  for  Sebastian  was  so  loved  that 
his  screams  went  sharply  to  all  hearts 
there.  His  sisters  clung  to  each  other 
and  held  their  breath.  The  servant- 
girl  expressed  her  indignation  in  tones 
nearly  as  loud  as  Sebastian's. 

There  was  dead  silence  when  Amos 
carried  the  little  martyr  up  stairs  to  put 
him  to  bed.  When  he  came  down  he 
gave  orders  that  no  one  was  to  go 
near  him. 

Amos  had  his  own  reasons  for  this. 
The  fact  was  the  flogging  had  not  been 
so  terrible  as  it  seemed  outside  the 
door,  and  he  wished  to  surround  it  with 


Sebastian. 


283 


as  much  solemnity  as  possible.  He 
preferred  that  Mrs.  Gould  should  not 
immediately  see  the  extent  of  the 
injuries  Sebastian's  tender  flesh  might 
be  supposed  to  have  sustained  from  the 
severity  of  his  punishment.  By  the 
next  morning  all  signs  of  it  would 
reasonably  be  expected  to  have  dis- 
appeared. 

Sebastian,  when  he  heard  the  com- 
mand given,  was  much  relieved  by  it, 
for  he,  too,  dreaded  his  mother  coming 
up  and  discovering  that  he  had  really 
made  as  slight  an  acquaintance  with 
the  cane  as  he  had  with  his  lessons. 

He  was  trembling,  pale,  and  sobbing, 
it  is  true,  from  the  shock  of  seeing  the 
cane,  and  from  the  successive  shocks  of 
the  blows  Amos  gave  the  cushion  of  the 
chair  with  the  cane,  apparently  to  try 
its  mettle,  for  each  time  Sebastian 
thought  the  next  blow  would  be  upon 
his  own  back ;  and  as  expectation  is 
said  to  be  often  worse  than  reality,  his 
cries  of  terror  were  not  in  any  way 
fictitious. 

When  his  father  said,  "  There,  sir, 
that's  what  you  will  get  if  you  don't 
mind,"  and  he  found  himself  being 
carried  up  stairs  uninjured,  his  relief 
was  almost  too  much  for  him,  and  he 
turned  so  pale  that  Amos  thought  he 
would  have  fainted. 

Amos  shut  himself  in  his  study  all 
the  evening,  leading  Mrs.  Gould  to 
infer  that  his  exertion  in  the  dining- 
room  had  upset  his  nerves  and  temper. 
The  truth  was  he  felt  too  guilty  to 
endure  her  sympathy.  He  doubted  if 
she  would  ever  forgive  him  if  she  knew 
what  he  had  done,  or  rather  what  he 
had  not  done.  A  woman  who  thought 
any  extravagance  of  emotion  almost 
a  sin  had  had  her  heart  wrung — by 
what?  Blows  on  a  horsehair  chair- 
cushion  ! 

No  wonder  Amos  withdrew  himself 
from  his  family  that  evening ;  and 
no  wonder  Sebastian  lying  up  stairs 
should,  when  he  recovered  from  his 
fright,  whisper  into  his  pillow  with 
tender  mirth  : — 

"  Poor  little  papa  !  Poor,  dear, 
little  papa  !  " 


But  Amos  had  more  to  think  of  in 
his  solitude  than  what  had  passed  that 
afternoon.  What  was  to  be  done  with 
Sebastian  ?  Amos  had  some  dim  idea 
that  it  would  be  far  better  to  leave  the 
child  to  his  childishness  a  little  longer. 
It  did  seem  to  him  that  forcing  open 
the  folded  mind  so  early  was  like 
pulling  apart  the  petals  of  a  bud  in  a 
way  that  must  ruin  the  flower. 

Yet  what  could  he  do  when  two 
such  high-minded  and  altogether  such 
superior  persons  as  his  wife  and 
Prebendary  Jellicoe  set  their  strong 
opinions  against  his  opinion,  which 
was,  he  was  obliged  to  own,  but  vague 
and  doubtful  ? 

He  knew  that  after  the  event  of 
that  day  Sebastian's  heart  would  be 
bound  to  him  by  a  new  tie,  and  that 
the  child  would  try  to  the  very  utmost 
of  his  strength  to  please  him. 

In  this  he  was  right  enough,  for 
Sebastian  did  indeed  strain  all  his 
small  powers  after  that  day.  Another 
year,  however,  showed  his  efforts  in 
vain,  or  very  nearly  so.  He  was  cer- 
tainly the  most  backward  child  Amos 
himself  had  ever  known. 

Mrs.  Gould  was  obliged  to  confess 
that  even  the  carrying  out  of  the 
prebendary's  advice  had  not  done  any 
good. 

One  day  Mrs.  Gould  came  to  Amos 
as  he  was  at  work  in  the  garden. 

Amos  dropped  his  eyes  as  soon  as 
he  saw  her,  for  she  carried  one  of  the 
well  known  big  heraldic  decorated 
letters.  Her  eyes  were  bright  and 
triumphant. 

"  Our  difficulty  is  now  over,  Amos," 
she  said.  "  The  prebendary  has 
offered  to  take  Sebastian  for  two  years, 
and  teach  him  himself." 

She  did  not  know  Sebastian  was 
behind  the  pea-sticks  close  by  till  she 
caught  sight  of  a  pair  of  panic-stricken 
blue  eyes  staring  at  her  through  the 
blossoms. 

Amos  was  scarcely  less  dismayed  at 
this  news  than  Sebastian.  He  felt, 
too,  that  after  his  own  failure  as  the 
boy's  tutor,  he  could  say  but  little 
against  a  plan  that  would  give  his 


284 


Sebastian. 


wife  such  confidence  and  pleasure. 
But  he  suffered  more  than  she  had 
any  idea  of  in  his  passiveness  as  the 
preparations  were  made  for  Sebastian's 
speedy  departure.  He  could  not  help 
wondering  if  the  boy  thought  him 
weak,  or  untrue  to  their  friendship 
in  allowing  this  bitter  parting  to  take 
place.  And  yet  again  it  really  ap- 
peared to  him  that  Sebastian  under- 
stood his  position,  and  pitied  him.  He 
never  once  appealed  to  him  to  save  him 
from  the  dreaded  visit.  He  seemed 
to  watch  him,  and  to  understand  it 
would  increase  his  trouble. 

Sebastian  did  try  to  put  up  one 
frantic  little  prayer  to  his  mother, 
but  it  was  met  half-way  by  so  stern 
a  word  and  look,  he  had  to  swallow 
back  the  chief  part  of  it  though  it 
nearly  choked  him. 

He  tried  no  more  to  avert  his  doom, 
but  awaited  it  with  Spartan  patience. 

When  the  day  of  separation  dawned 
Sebastian  had  two  important  duties  to 
perform  before  it  was  time  for  his 
father  and  mother  to  rise.  One  was 
the  burial  of  a  broken-legged  wooden 
horse,  for  which  he  still  had  too  great 
an  affection  to  leave  it  to  be  treated 
according  to  its  personal  defects.  The 
other  was  the  destruction  of  a  little 
strip  of  garden  which  his  mother  had 
informed  him  would  not  be  his  when 
he  returned,  as  he  would  then  be  too 
much  of  a  man  for  such  nonsense,  and 
would  be  able  to  assist  his  father  with 
the  garden  and  farm. 

These  two  terrible  acts  performed, 
he  felt  as  if  his  childhood  was  annihi- 
lated, and  he  was  almost  a  man. 

How  the  hours,  usually  so  slow  at 
Monksdean,  seemed  to  fly  that 
morning  ! 

The  little  grave  in  the  sands  was 
scarcely  covered  with  the  flowers  torn 
from  the  garden  spot  which  had  given 
Sebastian  the  first  pleasures  of  landed 
proprietorship,  when  he  was  called  to 
breakfast. 

His  father  and  mother  were  to  walk 
with  him  up  to  the  top  of  the  village 
where  the  coach  passed  at  nine  o'clock 
every  Wednesday  morning. 


When  Mrs.  Gould  went  up  stairs  to 
put  on  her  bonnet,  Sebastian,  who,  pale 
with  excitement  and  his  exertions  in 
the  garden,  sat  by  the  window,  felt 
his  father's  hand  on  his  shoulder  and 
heard  his  voice,  the  only  voice  in  the 
world  that  gave  his  bewildered  little 
soul  any  confidence  and  hope, 
saying  : — 

"  Sebastian,  one  word,  my  boy, 
before  we  part.  Don't  think  I  am 
sending  you  away  to  save  myself 
trouble.  I  shall  have  more  trouble 
about  you  than  if  I  had  you  here.  I 
shall  come  and  see  you,  and  if  I  find 
that  being  with  your  godfather  is 
not  for  your  good  I  shall  bring  you 
home.  You  need  think  of  nothing 
but  trying  to  learn.  Now  do  you 
understand,  it's  not  such  a  terrible 
thing  after  all  1 " 

Sebastian  stood  up,  and  brushed  a 
speck  of  dust  from  his  cap,  and  with- 
out looking  at  his  father,  answered, — 

"  Very  well,  papa,  I  can  bear  it 
now." 

And  in  his  voice  was  such  a  reve- 
lation of  tha  despair  that  had  filled 
him  before  his  father's  little  speech, 
Amos  was  almost  startled  into  further 
and  more  binding  promises.  Mrs. 
Gould,  however,  came  down  in  time 
to  save  them  from  the  dangerous 
comfort  of  more  parting  words;  and 
when  each  of  his  sisters  had  taken 
leave  of  him  under  the  restraining 
looks  of  Mrs.  Gould,  Sebastian  passed 
from  under  the  paternal  roof  with 
very  vague  ideas  as  to  how  and  when 
he  should  return. 

When  he  had  passed  the  pond  Amos 
saw  him  cast  a  half-comical  farewell 
glance  at  the  little  garden-gate  of  the 
park.  Here  an  unexpected  relief  to 
the  solemnity  of  the  walk  awaited 
them.  Dora,  having  somehow  got 
tidings  of  Sebastian's  departure,  had 
been  inconsolable  till  her  father  be- 
thought him  of  buying  her  a  present 
to  give  Sebastian  on  his  way  to  the 
coach.  As  they  reached  the  gate,  it 
was  suddenly  opened,  giving  Sebastian 
one  more  glimpse  of  the  beloved 
pigeons  and  cedars  in  the  background, 


Sebastian. 


285 


and  of  their  lovely  little  mistress 
holding  her  father's  fingers  in  one 
hand,  while  the  other  held  out  a 
pocket-knife,  whose  beauties  and  capa- 
city no  mortal  boy  could  possibly  gaze 
on  ungladdened. 

Dora's  eyes  were  brilliant  and  her 
cheeks  glowing  with  anticipation  of 
Sebastian's  delight  at  such  a  gift,  and 
as  though  she  feared  he  could  scarcely 
realize  his  good  fortune,  she  accom- 
panied her  presentation  with  assuring 
sentences  and  emphatic  nods. 

"It's  a  present  for  you.  It's  a 
knife.  You  may  keep  it.  It  has  a 
VEEY  big  blade  and  a  very  little  one, 
and  another  one,  and  a  file,  and  some- 
thing else,  and  it's  all  for  you ;  so  you 
don't  mind  going  away  now,  do  you?  " 

Dowdeswell,  on  pretence  of  putting 
the  knife  safely  into  Sebastian's  pocket, 
left  something  else  there  no  less  useful 
to  one  preparing  to  face  the  outer 
world  for  the  first  time. 

"  I  have  friends  at  Petherton,  and 
may  be  running  over  soon.  If  so,  I'll 
come  and  look  you  up,"  he  said,  pull- 
ing back  Dora  who  was  lavishing  on 
Sebastian  as  many  kisses  as  they 
allowed  her  time  for.  Then  the  gate 
was  closed  on  her,  and  Amos  and  his 
little  party  hastened  to  meet  the  coach. 

The  bitter  moment  came  and  passed, 
Sebastian  had  been  handed  up  and  put 
in  his  place  among  the  big  men,  and 
was  carried  off  with  them.1 


"  It  will  be  a  grand  chance  for  him," 
observed  Mrs.  Gould,  thoughtfully. 

Amos  cleared  his  throat,  but  could 
not  speak  while  the  coach-wheels  were 
within  hearing.  Till  they  were  no 
more  to  be  heard,  the  wrench  he  had 
sustained  seemed  not  quite  over. 

He  let  Mrs.  Gould  go  alone  down 
the  lane  to  the  Rectory.  He  felt  he 
could  not  go  in  and  talk  over  Sebas- 
tian's grand  chance. 

He  had  an  instinct  that  his  little 
dunce  would  pay  dearly  in  some  way 
for  whatever  knowledge  he  might  gain. 
It  seemed  to  him  he  should  never  have 
him  back  the  same. 

When  he  came  upon  the  little  gar- 
den laid  waste,  he  felt  the  child  himself 
must  have  shared  his  thought.  His 
little  crop  of  childish  pleasures  was 
cut  down,  and  he  would  find  them  no 
more.  Amos  knew  that  the  preben- 
dary would  not  be  content  to  have 
power  over  him  for  two  years  only. 
Having  once  gone  into  the  matter  he 
would  certainly  require  authority  as 
to  Sebastian's  training  till  he  was 
ready  for  college. 

All  this  made  Amos  feel  the  parting 
deeply;  and  for  some  time  the  sight 
of  Sebastian's  little  iron  bedstead, 
folded  up  against  the  wall,  and  of  his 
empty  place  in  church,  made  it  seem 
as  if  the  boy  had  been  driven  right 
out  of  the  world,  instead  of  into  it, 
on  the  coach  full  of  men. 


To   be  continued. 


286 


A  MONTH  WITH  THE  TURKISH  ARMY  IN  THE  BALKANS. 


BY    AN    ARTILLERY    OFFICER. 


CERTAIN  circumstances  personal  to 
myself  rendered  it  desirable  that  I 
should  occupy  my  thoughts  with  the 
exciting  struggle  in  progress  in 
the  passes  of  the  Balkans.  Two  of 
my  brother  officers  accompanied  me, 
and  we  started  at  a  day's  notice  on 
the  25th  of  October.  The  outfit  for 
our  short  campaign  was  quickly  pro- 
vided. It  consisted  of  a  few  warm 
clothes,  a  cork  mattress,  a  waterproof 
sheet,  and  a  saddle  for  each. 

Our  first  experience  began  when 
we  found  ourselves  at  anchor  in  the 
Dardanelles.  In  front,  in  rear,  and  on 
both  sides  of  the  ship,  on  a  level  with 
the  water,  were  numerous  earth  bat- 
teries, out  of  which  peered  the  muzzles 
of  the  heaviest  ordnance.  All  seemed 
so  quiet,  it  was  hard  to  realise  that 
we  had  already  reached  a  country  de- 
vastated by  a  fierce  war.  But  a  slight 
incident,  even  on  board  ship,  reminded 
us  that  we  were  in  Turkey.  An  officer 
of  Bashi-Bazouks  came  on  board,  and 
demeaned  himself  with  that  reckless- 
ness which  has  obtained  for  these  irre- 
gular troops  such  an  unenviable  noto- 
riety. This  officer  refused  to  pay  the 
fare,  and,  drawing  his  sword,  threat- 
ened to  cut  down  the  first  person  who 
touched  him  ;  but  two  sailors  promptly 
hit  the  gallant  warrior  just  below  the 
knees  with  a  plank  of  wood,  and  pro- 
strated him  on  his  back.  He  was  imme- 
diately seized,  carried  off  the  ship,  and 
put  into  a  boat,  from  which  he  poured 
a  foul  stream  of  language.  His  anger 
was  so  great  that  it  was  not  deemed 
prudent  to  trust  him  with  his  sword 
till  the  ship  was  under  way,  when  it 
was  lowered  by  a  piece  of  string. 

During  the  two  days  we  remained 
in  Constantinople,  rain  fell  in  torrents, 
and,  as  parts  of  the  railway  had  been 


washed  away,  we  were  recommended 
not  to  go  up  the  country.  However, 
our  leave  was  short,  and  we  started, 
having  first  obtained  from  the  Porte  a 
teskierate,  or  written  permission  to 
travel,  which,  however,  we  never  had 
occasion  to  use,  for,  as  English  officers, 
we  were  allowed  to  go  everywhere,  and 
were  always  received,  from  the  highest 
official  down  to  the  private  soldier, 
with  the  greatest  civility  and  hospi- 
tality. In  spite  of  all  that  is  said  to  the 
contrary,  there  still  exists  amongst  all 
classes  of  Turks  the  utmost  goodwill 
and  kindly  feeling  for  the  English. 

On  arriving  at  Adrianople  we  were 
received  by  the  governor,  Achmed 
Vefik  Pacha,  with  much  cordiality. 
He  invited  us  to  dinner,  and  made 
himself  the  most  agreeable  of  hosts. 
Although  he  has  never  been  in  Eng- 
land, he  is  singularly  conversant  with 
English  habits ;  and  his  knowledge 
of  the  politics  and  the  social  condition 
of  our  country  is  quite  remarkable. 
Dining  at  the  same  table  were  the 
male  members  of  his  family,  and, 
among  others,  his  eldest  son,  who, 
although  educated  at  the  Ecole  Poly- 
technique  in  Paris,  had  commenced 
his  career  as  a  private  in  the  Turkish 
army,  and  had  now  risen  to  the  rank 
of  sergeant-major.  With  our  views  of 
Turkish  pride  and  indolence,  it  cer- 
tainly seemed  extraordinary  that  the 
son  of  a  great  pacha,  who  is  not  un- 
likely to  be  the  next  Grand  Vizier, 
should  drill  in  his  father's  palace  as 
a  private,  and  go  through  the  rough 
experiences  of  the  Turkish  rank  and 
file. 

On  visiting  the  military  hospital  of 
this  town,  in  which  there  were  2,000 
patients,  we  began  to  realise  the  hor- 
rors of  war.  Here,  at  all  events,  the 


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287 


wounded  were  well  cared  for,  and 
seemed  cheerful  and  happy.  The 
great  number  of  wounds  in  the  left 
hand  is  most  noticeable.  This  arises 
from  fighting  behind  earthworks 
(where  the  hand  holding  the  barrel  of 
the  gun  is  the  most  exposed),  though 
no  doubt  also  from  the  more  cowardly 
soldiers  maiming  themselves  in  order 
to  escape  further  service.  This  prac- 
tice must  soon  cease,  as  the  generals 
have  determined  to  shoot  the  men  who 
maim  themselves ;  and  there  is  no 
difficulty  in  identifying  them,  as  the 
powder  remains  in  the  wounds.  There 
are  cowards  and  malingerers  in  all 
armies,  though  in  the  Turkish  there 
are  but  few.  Our  admiration  of  the 
common  soldier  increased  daily  as  we 
became  more  intimate  with  him.  He 
is  by  nature  a  gentleman,  always 
polite,  cheerful,  and  brave.  We  saw 
regiments  under  all  conditions.  Even 
where  the  men  came  in  weary,  foot- 
sore, and  fasting,  we  have  seen  them 
ordered  on  to  fight,  and  they  have 
gone  without  a  murmur.  "We  have 
met  them  in  the  clouds  among  the 
snow  at  Schipka,  where  they  had  been 
for  weeks  ;  we  have  been  with  them 
in  victory  and  also  in  defeat ;  but  they 
are  always  the  same  uncomplaining, 
faithful  men,  honest  and  good-natured. 
Constantly  one  sees  a  wounded  man 
helping  another  along ;  and  it  is  a 
common  thing,  after  a  fight,  to  see  a 
wounded  soldier  carrying  two  rifles, 
so  as  to  ease  his  comrade,  who  may 
be  weaker  than  himself ;  for  the  Turk 
is  very  proud  of  his  arms,  and  would 
almost  as  soon  lose  his  life  as  the 
weapon  intrusted  to  him. 

The  Bashi-Bazouks  and  the  Circas- 
sians are  quite  of  a  different  stamp 
from  the  regular  soldiery.  They  are 
armed,  but  receive  no  pay,  and  live  by 
plunder.  The  Circassians  are  perhaps 
the  most  bloodthirsty  of  the  two. 
Dressed  in  long  homespun  coats  (some- 
thing like  ulsters)  they  have  a  soldier- 
like appearance  ;  they  are  upright  in 
their  carriage,  and  have  fierce  aristo- 
cratic looks.  They  are  excellent  horse- 
men, and  as  a  rule  are  brave,  though 


perhaps  better  in  a  hand-to-hand  fight 
than  under  fire  ;  but  many  of  them 
are  thieving,  villanous  brutes  of  the 
worst  kind,  and  acknowledge  no  rule 
or  discipline.  Nevertheless,  there 
lingers  among  them  a  certain  sense 
of  honour,  although  it  is  the  pro- 
verbial honour  of  thieves.  For  in- 
stance, if  a  person  start  on  an  expedi- 
tion with  them,  as  long  as  it  lasts  his 
property  is  perfectly  safe ;  but  imme- 
diately it  is  over,  they  feel  no  longer 
under  any  moral  obligation ;  and  the 
next  day,  if  they  have  the  chance,  will 
rob  him  •-  of  all  he  has  got.  One  day, 
on  a  reconnoitering  expedition,  I  was 
alone  with  about  fifty  Circassians,  and 
lent  my  field-glasses  and  telescope 
to  some  near  me,  to  look  at  a  force  of 
Russian  cavalry.  The  glasses  were 
passed  round  from  one  to  tha  other, 
till  we  had  to  advance,  when  they  dis- 
appeared, and  I  never  expscted  to  get 
them  back ;  but  at  the  next  halt  they 
were  returned  to  me.  The  Bashi- 
Bazouk  is  simply  a  volunteer,  who 
serves  without  pay  for  the  chance  of 
loot ;  and,  as  a  rule,  is  as  bad  as  the 
conditions  of  his  service  make  him. 
His  conduct  has  undoubtedly  done 
much  to  embitter  the  war,  and  to 
bring  unpopularity  on  the  Turkish 
government.  There  are  some  organ- 
ised regiments  of  Bashi-Bazouks,  but 
they  are  mostly  employed  as  feelers  for 
the  army.  They  do  not  like  going 
under  fire,  and  are  not  to  be  relied 
on ;  but  they  are  often  very  useful  for 
sneaking  along  under  cover,  and  find- 
ing out  the  position  of  the  enemy.  It 
is  they  who  plunder  and  murder  the 
wounded  on  the  battle-field.  The 
regular  Turkish  soldier  is  never  blood- 
thirsty, except  perhaps  during  the  ex- 
citement of  battle,  when  both  Russians 
and  -Turks  are  equally  ferocious.  We 
were  present  in  six  engagements  and 
two  retreats,  and  had  every  opportu- 
nity of  seeing  any  acts  of  violence 
committed  by  the  Turkish  soldiery, 
but  did  not  observe  a  single  instance 
even  of  pillaging  on  the  part  of  the 
regulars.  In  fact  their  conduct  was 
always  beyond  praise,  while  their 


288 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


kindness,  affection,  and  unselfishness 
for  one  another  and  for  their  officers 
is  very  touching.  Even  to  strangers 
like  ourselves,  when  they  saw  that  we 
shared  the  hardships  and  dangers  of 
the  campaign,  their  kindness  was  most 
pleasing.  They  were  gratified  to  do 
us  small  services,  and  pained  if  we 
attempted  to  pay  for  any  of  the  nume- 
rous civilities  which  they  so  constantly 
rendered. 

After  this  digression  on  the  qualities 
of  the  Turkish  soldier  I  return  to  our 
tour.  From  Adrianople  we  took  the 
rail  to  Philipopolis,  which  is  a  pretty 
city  built  on  three  rocks,  standingpin  the 
centre  of  a  large  plain.  The  bazaar  in 
this  town  was  decorated  by  numerous 
gallows  projecting  above  the  shop  doors. 
The  hangman  makes  a  good  trade  by 
this  arrangement,  for  when  a  number 
of  men  are  about  to  be  hanged  in  the 
morning  (a  by  no  means  uncommon  oc- 
currence) he  goes  the  night  before  and 
bargains  with  the  shopkeepers,  who  of 
course  vie  with  one  another  not  to  have 
an  execution  over  their  shops.  The 
only  inn  here  is  the  Hotel  d' Angleterre, 
kept  by  an  excellent  Frenchman  named 
Baptiste,  and  although  the  accommoda- 
tion was  scanty  in  the  extreme,  yet 
the  landlord  was  most  kind,  and  assisted 
us  to  buy  horses.  On  its  being  known 
that  we  wanted  a  stud  the  yard  was 
soon  filled  by  a  miscellaneous  lot,  out 
of  which  we  bought  six  for  the  sum  of 
twenty-four  Turkish  liras  (a  lira  being 
worth  about  eighteen  English  shillings). 
The  method  of  closing  a  deal  was  pecu- 
liar :  after  much  haggling  and  noise 
the  price  was  finally  settled,  and  there 
followed  a  hand-shaking  all  round. 
Half  the  money  for  the  horse  was  de- 
posited, and  the  vendor  went  to  the 
magistrate  for  a  paper  which  purported 
to  certify  that  the  horse  was  bond  fide 
property  and  not  stolen,  then  on  re- 
ceipt of  this  and  a  bunch  of  hair  pulled 
from  the  animal's  tail,  the  remainder  of 
the  money  was  paid.  The  horses  were 
not  much  to  look  at,  but  were  hardy, 
useful  little  animals,  admirably  suited 
for  the  rough  work  and  hardships  they 
had  to  undergo. 


The  next  morning  we  started  for 
Schipka,  distant  two  days'  journey. 
In  Turkey,  as  in  Germany,  distances- 
are  not  reckoned  by  miles  but  by 
hours;  one  hour  represents  about 
three  English  miles.  We  spent  the 
first  night  in  a  village  where  we  found 
a  house  with  an  empty  room ;  in  this 
we  stretched  out  our  mattresses  and 
crawled  into  sheepskin  bags,  which  we 
had  made  in  Constantinople,  and  found 
most  useful  during  many  cold  nights. 
Rising  at  daylight,  we  crossed  the 
Lower  Balkans  in  a  hard  frost,  but 
even  the  intense  cold  did  not  prevent 
us  from  admiring  the  magnificent  view 
of  the  sunrise  on  the  snow-topped 
peaks.  As  there  was  not  a  cloud  in 
the  air  the  colours  on  the  hills  sur- 
passed all  description.  Towards  the 
middle  of  the  day,  from  the  summit  of 
a  hill,  we  saw  below  a  lovely  village, 
bordered  by  orchards  and  fruit-trees. 
On  the  opposite  slope  of  the  hill  lead- 
ing from  it  was  a  church,  and  below 
its  terrace  a  sparkling  rivulet  that 
wound  among  the  houses.  The  scene 
was  exquisite,  and  the  beauty  was  en- 
hanced by  silence  —  the  silence  of 
desolation,  for  the  villagers  had  been 
burnt  out  and  pillaged  early  in  the 
summer.  The  only  living  creature  in 
the  place  was  a  little  black  dog  that 
came  to  greet  us.  These  deserted 
houses  were  the  remains  of  the  once 
beautiful  and  flourishing  town  of 
Kalofer,  on  which  war  had  left  so  fell 
a,  mark.  Continuing  our  journey  we 
passed  numerous  long  bullock-trains 
of  provisions  destined  for  the  army, 
each  araba  being  drawn  by  a  pair  of 
oxen,  which  plodded  slowly  along 
under  the  charge  of  a  sulky,  boorish- 
looking  Bulgarian,  who,  with  his  cattle, 
had  probably  been  pressed  into  this 
service.  Towards  four  o'clock  we  had 
already  journeyed  forty  miles,  and  had 
still  a  good  many  more  to  go,  but  my 
horse  turned  dead  lame.  The  difficulty 
was  got  over  as  some  Bashi-Bazouks 
happened  to  pass,  who  took  him  in  ex- 
change for  one  of  theirs  in  considera- 
tion of  five  liras.  Our  baggage  horses 
being  dead-beat,  they  were  left  to  spend 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans 


289 


the  night  in  a  small  village,  and  some 
hours  after  dark  we  arrived  at  Shikerli, 
a  burnt  village  about  a  mile  from  the 
camp  at  Schipka.  Here  the  English 
doctors  had  their  head-quarters,  and 
from  them  we  received  much  kindness 
and  hospitality.  They  had  established 
themselves  in  some  forsaken  houses, 
over  which  they  hoisted  the 'white  flag 
with  the  red  crescent  and  the  English 
ensign,  to  show  their  proprietorship, 
and  formed  a  happy  and  comfortable 
community. 

The  following  morning  we  went  to 
pay  our  respects  to  his  Excellency 
Reouf  Pacha,  who  was  in  command. 
He  was  living  in  a  small  wooden  hut 
with  only  one  room,  furnished  with  a 
few  stools.  I  have  seen  remarks  in 
the  English  papers  about  the  comforts 
carried  about  by  the  Turkish  com- 
manders in  the  field.  Such  accounts 
have  evidently  been  written  by  people 
who  had  no  personal  experience,  for 
during  our  travels  we  saw  many  com- 
manders, and  they  were  all  living  in 
the  simplest  and  rudest  manner.  As 
an  instance  of  the  discomfort  they 
undergo,  I  may  mention  that  Red  jib 
Pacha,  who  commanded  the  right 
Turkish  position  at  Schipka,  had  been 
living  for  upwards  of  three  months 
at  a  height  of  about  five  thousand  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  sea,  exposed  to 
rain,  cold,  and  snow,  in  a  small  hut 
not  seven  feet  square,  and  had  only 
descended  into  the  plain  twice  during 
that  time.  He  is  noted  as  one  of  the 
most  dashing  cavalry  officers  in  Turkey, 
so  that  being  cooped  up  on  the  top  of 
a  mountain  must  be  very  irksome  to 
him,  yet  he  has  never  shrunk  from  it. 
His  cheerful  manner  amidst  his  priva- 
tions keeps  up  the  spirits  of  his 
soldiers,  who  are  comparatively  com- 
fortably housed  in  thatched  mud-huts, 
in  the  centre  of  which  burns  a  large 
wood  fire.  They  are  well  fed,  and  all 
appear  in  excellent  health  and  spirits. 

Reouf  Pacha  received  us  very 
courteously,  and  while  discussing  the 
usual  cigarettes  and  coffee,  spoke 
frankly  about  the  position  of  Turkish 
affairs,  but  did  not  conceal  his  view 

No.  220. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


that  his  country  had  been  badly  treated 
by  England.  He  is  a  tall,  handsome 
man,  a  Circassian  by  birth,  but  has  a 
sad  look,  as  if  he  had  met  with  some 
great  disappointment  in  life.  He  is  a 
good  soldier,  and,  unlike  most  Turks 
of  the  present  generation,  is  an  enthu- 
siastic sportsman,  being  devoted  to  fish- 
ing and  shooting.  On  our  taking 
leave  he  gave  us  permission  to  visit 
the  positions  and  to  pass  at  any  time 
and  to  any  place  under  his  command. 

The  Turkish  camp  at  Schipka  is 
situated  about  a  mile  from  the  foot  of 
the  hills  ;  at  the  base  of  which  stretch 
the  wonderful  rose-gardens  of  Rou- 
melia,  now  quite  uncared  for.  Across- 
these  gardens  we  galloped  on  our  way 
to  the  pass,  which  is  not,  as  many  sup- 
pose, a  mere  defile,  but  a  fair  broad 
road  over  the  mountains.  The  Turks 
have  three  positions — the  left,  centre, 
and  right.  The  centre  position  is  on. 
a  mountain  over  which  the  road  passes, 
and  is  crowned  by  Fort  St.  Nicholas. 
On  each  side  is  a  valley,  that  to  the 
left  being  bounded  by  a  wooded  hill, 
on  which  the  Turks  have  a  camp  at  a 
height  of  4,500  feet  above  the  level 
of  the  sea.  It  is  supplied  with  three 
gun-batteries  and  one  mortar-battery, 
which  fire  on  the  rear  of  Fort  St. 
Nicholas  and  also  sweep  the  Gabrova 
road,  thus  obliging  the  Russians  to 
bring  up  all  their  provisions  and  rein- 
forcements during  the  night.  This 
hill  has  suffered  much  from  the  shells 
of  the  enemy ;  the  tops  of  all  the  trees 
being  truncated,  and  the  branches  lopped 
off  by  their  fragments.  The  ascent  to 
this  position  takes  upwards  of  two 
hours,  as  the  road  for  a  great  part  of 
the  way  is  up  the  bed  of  a  dried  moun- 
tain stream,  so  the  difficulty  of  getting 
guns  and  provisions  to  the  top  may  be 
imagined.  The  right  Turkish  position 
is  at  the  highest  altitude  of  all,  and 
commands  the  Russian  positions  around 
the  fort,  which  is  about  a  mile  distant. 
The  Turks  have  got  the  range  to  a 
yard,  so  that  every  shot  from  their 
seven-gun  battery  situated  on  the 
crest  of  the  hill  tells  with  terrible 
effect.  The  ascent  to  this  point  also 


290 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


takes  about  two  hours,  but  it  is  along 
a  good  road  lying  on  the  reverse  side 
of  the  hill,  and  thus  is  protected  from 
the  enemy's  fire. 

The  centre  position  is,  however,  the 
most  interesting,  though  at  the  same 
time  the  most  dangerous  to  visit.  It  is 
on  the  hill  crowned  by  Fort  St.  Nicholas, 
at  a  height  of  4,700  feet  above  the  sea, 
while  below  this  Fort  the  ground  dips, 
forming  a  small  valley  of  about  two 
hundred  yards  in  breadth.  On  the 
opposite  side,  in  the  direction  of  the 
Turkish  lines,  is  the  famous  rock  on 
which  the  Turks  held  a  footing  for 
hours  during  their  courageous  night 
assault.  This  rock  is  now  honey- 
combed with  rifle-pits,  from  which  the 
Russians  keep  up  an  incessant  fire 
on  the  Turkish  positions  below,  the 
nearest  of  which  are  at  a  distance  of 
about  three  hundred  yards  from  the 
rock. 

When  Suleiman  Pacha  saw  his 
troops  upon  that  rock  during  the 
assault  he  thought  Fort  St.  Nicholas 
was  won,  and  he  telegraphed  to  that  ef- 
fect. But  the  rock  is  the  mere  outwork, 
and  the  Turks  made  no  impression  on 
the  strong  works  which  they  found 
hid  behind  it.  The  Turkish  attack 
here  consists  of  advanced  rifle-pits, 
with  a  trench  of  about  four  feet  wide 
and  three  deep  behind  them,  the  earth 
being  thrown  up  into  a  parapet,  with 
sand-bag  loopholes  for  musketry. 
When  a  man  is  wounded  in  the  ad- 
vanced rifle-pits  there  he  must  lie  for 
hours,  for  no  aid  can  be  sent  to  him 
during  daylight.  Even  in  the  trench 
behind  the  parapet  safety  can  only  be 
secured  by  constant  watchfulness,  for 
if  a  soldier  retire  a  few  feet  from  the 
parapet  or  stand  erect  only  for  an  in- 
stant the  Russians,  ever  on  the  alert 
with  their  almost  vertical  fire  from  the 
rock,  can  send  a  messenger  of  death  with 
every  bullet.  While  visiting  this 
position  we  saw  one  poor  Turk  expose 
himself  in  a  moment  of  f orgetfulness, 
and  he  was  instantly  shot  dead,  no 
less  than  three  bullets  having  struck 
him.  Getting  into  these  trenches 
during  the  day  was  hazardous,  for 


reliefs  are  always  carried  on  at  night. 
We  had  to  cross  the  "  open "  for  a 
short  space,  though  the  sight  of  the 
soldiers  in  the  trenches  was  ample 
reward  for  the  risk  incurred.  Here 
lay  the  Turks  in  readiness  for  an  as- 
sault which  might  come  at  any  moment, 
knowing  well  that  they  could  not  be  re- 
lieved during  daylight.  They  were 
obliged  to  crouch  amongst  the  mud  and 
slush,  never  being  able  to  stand  up 
erect  except  when  it  came  to  their 
turn  to  take  post  at  a  loophole. 
Some  who  had  brought  sticks  with 
them  were  squatted  round  little  fires, 
others  were  lying  down  trying  to 
sleep,  while  above  them  was  to  be 
heard  the  whistling  of  the  Russian 
bullets,  which  every  now  and  then 
sent  showers  of  earth  into  the  trench 
as  they  struck  the  parapet ;  but  in  the 
midst  of  all  this  discomfort  the  Turks 
seemed  cheerful  and  contented.  The 
men  watching  through  the  loopholes 
were  ever  on  the  alert,  and  every  man's 
rifle,  ready  loaded,  with  bayonet  fixed, 
stood  propped  against  the  parapet  close 
alongside  of  him  in  immediate  readi- 
ness for  action.  Through  the  loopholes 
we  could  see  distinctly  the  Russian 
rifle-pits  in  the  face  of  the  rock,  marked 
out  by  the  puffs  of  smoke  which  poured 
from  them  continuously  ;  but  the  men 
were  all  so  carefully  hid  that  no  trace 
of  them  could  be  seen  except  at  distant 
intervals.  When  some  unwary  Russian 
head  appeared  it  became  immediately 
the  mark  for  numerous  shots  from  the 
Turkish  side.  The  Turks  certainly  did 
not  waste  their  ammunition,  though 
the  Russians  kept  up  a  constant  fire 
on  the  chance  of  hitting  somebody 
through  the  loopholes  or  in  the  rear 
of  the  trenches.  Since  in  ordinary  war 
it  is  very  unusual  for  men  in  advanced 
posts  to  fire  on  each  other,  this  inces- 
sant endeavour  to  kill  on  both  sides 
shows  with  what  ferocity  this  un- 
happy struggle  is  carried  on. 

The  Turkish  staff-oflicer,  who  had, 
I  think,  very  unwillingly  accompanied 
us  into  the  trenches,  wanted  us  not  to 
descend  till  dusk;  but  we  preferred 
the  chance  of  a  shot  to  the  discomfort 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


291 


of  remaining  doing  nothing,  so  we 
again  crossed  the  "  open  "  to  the  place 
where  we  had  left  our  horses  under 
cover.  Close  behind  these  advanced 
trenches  the  Turks  have  a  strong 
mortar  battery,  and,  lower  down  the 
hill,  two  gun  batteries.  This  position 
could  easily  be  taken  at  any  time  by 
the  Russians,  if  they  made  an  assault 
in  force ;  but  the  latter  know  that 
they  could  not  hold  it,  as  it  is  com- 
pletely commanded  by  the  Turkish 
right.  About  half  way  down,  for  the 
space  of  half  a  mile,  the  road  is  swept 
by  the  guns  from  Fort  St.  Nicholas  ; 
but,  as  they  rarely  fire  at  pack 
animals,  we  took  advantage  of  this  in 
our  ascent,  and  walked  on  the  off- 
side of  a  pack  train.  On  our  return, 
as  the  road  was  good,  we,  greatly  to 
the  disgust  of  our  Turkish  friend,  who 
wished  us  to  go  one  at  a  time,  de- 
termined to  have  the  fun  of  a  gallop 
in  a  body.  This,  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances, would  have  drawn  the 
Russian  fire,  as  they  have  their  guns 
ready  laid  on  this  open  place;  but, 
luckily  for  us,  an  opportune  cloud 
passed  over  the  fort,  and  probably  hid 
us  from  their  view. 

Before  leaving  the  central  position, 
which  I  have  just  described,  I  may 
mention,  for  those  who  believe  in 
dreams,  a  narrative  related  to  me  by 
a  Scotch  officer  in  the  Turkish  service, 
who  greatly  distinguished  himself  in 
the  assault  on  Fort  St.  Nicholas.  He 
assured  me  that  before  the  fulfilment 
of  the  dream  he  sent  an  account  of  it 
to  his  relations  in  Scotland.  Some 
weeks  previous  to  the  assault  he 
dreamt  that,  during  a  fight,  a  hand- 
some young  Turk  spoke  earnestly  to 
him,  and,  whilst  doing  so,  some 
soldiers,  dressed  in  a  uniform  he  had 
never  seen,  charged  over  a  parapet  in 
front.  The  young  Turk  was  shot  in 
the  side,  and  died  in  agony.  This 
officer  volunteered  for  the  night  assault 
on  Fort  St.  Nicholas,  and,  while  lead- 
ing the  troops  under  a  heavy  fire,  a 
soldier  came  forward  and  kissed  him 
on  the  forehead.  As  he  did  so  the 
Russians,  dressed  in  the  garb  of  his 


vision,  rose  over  the  entrenchment, 
and  the  bullet,  which  would  probably 
have  ended  the  career  of  my  friend, 
struck  the  young  Turk,  who  fell,  mort- 
ally wounded.  Though  this  officer 
comes  from  the  land  where  second 
sight  is  almost  a  subject  of  faith,  yet 
he  had  been  an  entire  sceptic  in  regard 
to  it,  and  I  leave  it  to  philosophers'  to 
reconcile  the  imaginative  and  real 
phenomena  in  this  case. 

All  the  positions  of  the  Turks  have 
been  constructed  with  great  skill  and 
care,  and  the  advantages  of  the  ground 
have  been  made  use  of.  The  men, 
living  on  the  highest  elevations,  are 
housed  in  good  huts,  formed  by  twining 
branches  of  trees  together,  and  then 
erecting  mud  walls  round  this  frame- 
work. When  practicable,  these  huts 
are  placed  on  the  slopes  of  the  hills, 
protected  from  the  cold  north  wind. 
There  is  of  course  abundance  of  fire- 
wood, and  the  soldiers  are  supplied 
with  excellent  rations,  including  a 
liberal  amount  of  meat,  which  is 
brought  up  by  large  relays  of  pack- 
horses.  All  the  sentries  are  supplied 
with  warm  sheepskin  great-coats  and 
gloves,  with  the  wool  inside;  they 
not  only  keep  out  the  cold,  but  also 
the  rain,  as  the  skin  is  almost  water- 
proof. The  batteries  are  well  con- 
structed, the  embrasures  and  parapets 
being  carefully  lined  with  fascines  and 
gabions,  and  their  guns  protected  by 
covers  from  the  weather.  There  is  an 
abundant  supply  of  ammunition,  which 
the  Turks  do  not  waste  by  reckless 
firing,  as  they  know  the  trouble  it  is 
to  bring  it  up ;  but  their  magazines 
are  very  carelessly  constructed  and 
placed.  I  saw  a  large  one  filled  with 
many  barrels  of  powder,  situated  just 
behind  a  battery,  and  having  for  a 
roof  only  planks,  covered  with  a  tar- 
paulin. This  can  afford  no  protection 
from  a  shell,  and  the  consequence  will 
be  that  the  first  which  strikes  it  must 
cause  an  explosion  and  destroy  every- 
thing around.  There  is  also  an  entire 
absence  of  all  attempt  at  sanitary  ar- 
rangements in  these  camps  on  the 
hills,  and  the  result  is  to  render  their 


292 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


neighbourhood   both    unpleasant   and 
unhealthy. 

Hearing  that  there  was  going  to  be 
an    attempt    to    relieve    Plevna,    we 
started  for   Orchanie,  where   the   re- 
lieving force  was  assembling.      Reouf 
Pacha  was  kind  enough  to  give  us  an 
escort   of    six    cavalry    soldiers,   but 
recommended   us  not  to  go  the  way 
we  intended,  along  the  foot  of  the  Bal- 
kans to  Sladitza,  as  there  was  danger 
of  our  being  cut  off  by  the  Russians. 
However,   in   spite   of   his   warnings, 
we     started,    our     party    being    in- 
creased   by   two    other    Englishmen. 
Our  method  of  travelling  was  to  send 
the  baggage-horses  in  front,  so  that 
they  could  not  be  lost ;  and  at  nights 
we  slept  in  an  empty  room   of  some 
house,  put  at  our  disposal  by  the  head 
of  the  village  in   which  we  stopped. 
In   some   instances   we   were  treated 
most  hospitably,  especially  at  Karlofa, 
where  our  host  insisted  on  treating  us 
to   an   excellent  dinner.     In  another 
village,  a  Turk  turned  out  the  ladies 
of    his     establishment,     so    that    we 
slept  luxuriously  on  the  rugs  of  his 
harem;  but  the  ladies,  in  spite  of  their 
ejection,    presented    us    with   a   good 
repast.      On    the    fourth    day    after 
leaving     Schipka     we     crossed     the 
Balkans   from    Sladitza    to    Etropol. 
This  pass  is  extremely  bad,  and  unfit 
for  vehicles,  and  it  takes  about   five 
hours  to  cross.     The  descent  into  Bul- 
garia is  through  a  lovely  wooded  glen, 
down  which  rolls  a  sparkling  brook, 
reminding  us  of  many  of  our  burns  at 
home  in  the  hills  of  Scotland.    Notice 
had  been  carried   to   Etropol   of  the 
coming   of   some   Europeans,  and  we 
were  met  at  the  entrance  of  the  town 
by  Mustafa  Pacha,  the  commandant, 
on  a  strong  and  powerful  horse.     He 
was    surrounded    by    his   staff,   and, 
though  civil,  evidently  eyed  us  with 
suspicion.      It  was  incomprehensible 
to  him  that  anybody  could  be  so  fool- 
ish as  to  travel   about  in  these  hard 
times  for  mere  pleasure,  and  we  after- 
wards heard   that    he   telegraphed  to 
Chakir       Pacha,      his     superior,      at 
Orchanie,  as  to  what  was  to  be  done 


with  us.  Lying  in  the  street,  just  in 
front  of  the  governor's  house,  was  the 
head  of  a  young  Russian,  which  had 
been  cut  off  in  an  engagement,  and 
brought  as  a  trophy  into  the  town ; 
but  the  authorities  were  evidently 
ashamed  of  this,  as,  immediately  after 
our  arrival  it  was  buried. 

We  were  given  a  billet  to  a  clean, 
picturesque  Bulgarian  house,  the 
owner  of  which  was  one  among 
several  political  prisoners,  though  his 
family  were  left  in  undisturbed  pos- 
session of  their  house  and  goods.  The 
Turks  had  found  out  that  many  of  the 
inhabitants  of  this  town  had  been 
giving  information  to  the  Russians,  so 
they  promptly  imprisoned  those  whom 
they  suspected.  They  were  no  doubt 
right  in  their  surmises,  as  we  our- 
selves, during  the  fighting  at  Etropol, 
saw  many  Bulgarians  leading  the 
enemy's  troops  through  the  mountain 
and  woodland  tracks.  Our  hostess 
was  kind  and  hospitable.  At  our  first 
meal  she  bade  us  welcome  with  cor- 
dial grace  ;  she  brought  in  a  charge 
of  wine,  and  made  her  son  hand  each 
of  us  in  turn  the  loving  cup,  which 
she  herself  filled,  and  as  he  passed  it 
round,  he  kissed  our  hands,  to  show 
the  friendship  and  goodwill  of  the 
house.  The  welcome  was  so  sincere 
that  we  felt  they  did  not  look  on  us 
as  intruders. 

A  room,  covered  with  Bulgarian 
rugs,  was  put  at  our  disposal,  and, 
stretching  ourselves  on  these,  we  pre- 
pared to  pass  a  few  hours  of  well- 
earned  rest.  This  was  a  vain  hope, 
as  we  were  objects  of  great  curiosity. 
First  came  the  Colonel  on  the  Staff, 
Omer  Bey,  then  the  commander  of 
the  cavalry,  and  these  were  followed 
by  several  minor  officials,  who  all  tried 
to  find  out  what  we  wanted  in  the 
place.  All  seemed  equally  fond  of  the 
whisky  bottle  which  we  presented  to 
them ;  but  at  last  they  took  their 
departure,  and  we  managed  to  go  to 
rest.  However,  early  in  the  morning 
our  visitors  came  dropping  in  again 
and  remained,  not  in  tlie  least  abashed 
by  the  open  manner  in  which  we 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


293 


performed  our  ablutions,  which  were 
made  the  more  interesting  to  them 
from  the  fact  of  there  being  a  small 
Turkish  bath  in  the  corner  of  the 
room,  heated  by  means  of  a  fire  in  the 
kitchen,  and  which  we  alternately  made 
good  use  of.  Before  leaving  the  colonel 
invited  us  to  accompany  him  on  a  re- 
connaissance at  midday,  and  we  ac- 
cepted this  invitation  with  pleasure. 
Our  reconnoitering  party  was  composed 
of  some  regular  cavalry  and  about 
eighty  Circassians.  Soon  after  start- 
ing, accustomed  as  we  are  to  the  great 
respect  always  shown  by  English 
officers  towards  one  another  on  parade, 
we  were  much  astonished  to  hear 
Omer  Bey  order  an  officer  who  was  in 
charge  of  a  picquet  to  receive  thirty 
blows.  The  officer,  however,  seemed 
to  think  this  nothing  unusual,  as,  on 
hearing  the  order,  he  rushed  into  his 
tent,  and  came  out  again  with  a  great- 
coat on,  the  ample  folds  of  which, 
when  he  stooped  down,  received  the 
blows  administered  by  the  colonel's 
aide-de-camp,  with  a  branch  of  a  tree 
cut  off  for  the  purpose. 

After  this  episode  we  proceeded 
through  a  wood,  in  which  was  the 
body  of  a  dead  Russian;  we  halted, 
but  as  there  was  neither  time  nor 
means  to  bury  it,  the  Circassians 
covered  the  corpse  with  branches  of 
trees  and  dead  leaves.  On  ascending 
a  hill,  a  few  miles  further  along  the 
Plevna  road,  we  saw  a  large  force  of 
Russian  cavalry  encamped,  and  many 
infantry  marching  in  the  distance. 
It  was  evident  that  these  troops  were 
being  brought  up  for  an  attack,  so,  on 
the  way  back,  the  Circassians  spread 
out  in  all  directions,  and  soon  every 
house  that  could  afford  shelter  to  the 
enemy  was  lighting  the  evening  shades 
with  a  lurid  glow. 

The  following  day  the  Russians 
began  the  attack  about  one  o'clock, 
this  hour  apparently  being  the  usual 
time  for  them  to  commence  operations. 
They  were  commanded  by  General 
Gourko,  who  operated  with  great 
skill,  both  tactically  and  strategically. 
Within  a  quarter  of  an  hour  after  the 


first  shot  was  fired,  on  a  mountain 
above  Etropol,  firing  was  heard  along 
the  whole  line,  which  extended  be- 
yond Orchanie,  a  distance  in  all  of 
upwards  of  sixteen  miles.  This  simul- 
taneous attack  was  so  well  timed  and 
carried  out  that  the  Turks  were  taken 
by  surprise,  and  lost  the  Orchanie 
pass  on  the  Plevna  road,  while  the 
Russians  also  gained  the  heights  to 
the  north  and  east  of  Etropol  without 
much  trouble.  We  particularly  ad- 
mired the  bold  manner  in  which, 
early  in  the  afternoon,  they  advanced 
along  the  open  plain,  and  the  alacrity 
with  which  they  entrenched  them- 
selves, under  cover  of  their  guns, 
which  made  most  excellent  practice, 
and  found  the  range  in  very  few 
shots. 

On  awakening  the  following  morn- 
ing, November  23rd,  we  found  that, 
during  the  night,   the  Russians   had 
erected  earthworks  overlooking  Etro- 
pol,   while   the   Turks    had    actually 
abandoned  some   almost   impregnable 
advanced  positions,  in  which  we  had 
left  them  the  evening  before  in  perfect 
security.     We  at  once  concluded  that 
the   place   was   doomed,   as   its   com- 
mander   seemed    quite    destitute     of 
military  capacity  as  well  as  energy. 
Instead  of  encouraging  his  troops  by 
his  presence,  he  sat  in  his  house  most 
of  the   day  smoking  cigarettes.     We 
therefore  sent  our  baggage   early  in 
the  morning  by  a  back  road  across 
the  Balkans  to   Orchanie,  and,  after 
seeing   it    safely   started    under    the 
charge  of  our  escort,  we  accompanied 
Omer  Bey,  the  chief  of  the  staff,  who 
told  us,  with  great  confidence,  that  he 
was  going  to  drive  the  Russians  from 
the  positions  they  had  gained.  Instead 
of    performing   this   feat   he   allowed 
them  to  gain  ground  rapidly,  whilst 
he  kept  back  many  of  his  own  men, 
who  might  have  been  employed  with 
the    greatest    advantage.     The    chief 
redoubt    defending   the   position   was 
situated  in  the  middle  of  the  valley, 
which  was  surrounded  on  all  sides  by 
high  hills,  having  at  one  end  the  town 
of    Etropol,   and    at    the   other    the 


294 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


road  to  Plevna.   About  two  o'clock  the 
guns  were   firing   very  rapidly  from 
this   redoubt;    so,  thinking  that  the 
Russians  must  be  attacking  the  main 
position,   we    hurried    to    it.     There 
Mustafa    Pacha,    surrounded    by   his 
staff,   was    watching,    with    apparent 
satisfaction,  the  fire  of  guns  so  badly 
placed  that  they  did  not  even  sweep, 
for  any  distance,  the  road  they  were 
intended    to    protect,    owing    to   the 
spur  of  a  hill  which  intervened.     It 
was  no  use  for  the  officers  around  him 
to  point  out  that  if   the  guns  were 
moved   to   another  place,  a  little  on 
the  right,  they  would  effectually  pre- 
vent   any    Russian    advance.      It    is 
almost    incredible    that,    instead     of 
utilising   them   in   this    manner,   the 
Pacha  caused  holes  to  be  dug  in  the 
ground  for  their  trails,  so  that  they 
might  be  given  greater  elevation.  They 
were  then  placidly  fired  into  the  air, 
the   shot  passing  over   the   hill-tops, 
and  falling  harmlessly  into  the  plains 
beyond.     After  each  shot  the  soldiers 
in  the  redoubt,  apparently  to  keep  up 
the  impression  that  their  shot  told, 
were  made  to  shout  "  Allah  !  Allah  ! ' ' 
and  this  inspiring  cry  was  re-echoed 
by   the   soldiery   on    the   hills.     The 
reason    of    this    utter  and   senseless 
waste  of  ammunition  was  a  mystery; 
but  our  impression  was  that  the  guns 
were  fired  in  order  to  make  a  noise, 
and  not  with  a  view  to  do  execution. 

Painfully  impressed  with  this  scene, 
we  again  returned  to  the  advanced 
positions,  feeling  deeply  for  the  poor 
men  who  were  losing  their  lives  to  no 
purpose.  Here  the  Turks  were  fight- 
ing with  their  usual  valour,  and  dis- 
puting every  inch  of  ground.  Towards 
five  o'clock  (the  Russians  having 
gained  possession  of  the  shortest  road 
to  Orchanie  early  in  the  day)  we  saw 
three  regiments  marching  across  the 
mountains,  evidently  with  the  inten- 
tion of  cutting  off  the  back  road, 
which  crosses  the  Balkans  in  a  cir- 
cuitous direction  for  twenty- four  miles. 
No  time  was  now  to  be  lost,  unless 
we  allowed  ourselves  to  be  taken  pri- 
soners; so  we  decided  that  we  must 


start  at  once,  and   retired   behind  a 
sheltered  hill  to  feed  our  horses,  and 
to  eat  what  food  we  had  with  us,  for, 
with  the  likelihood  of  being  captured, 
it  was  well  to  have   a  meal    to    the 
good.     We   did   not   rest  long,  as  it 
was  a  race  between  the  Russians  and 
ourselves  who  should  reach  the  pass 
first.     Indeed  we  feared  that  the  Cos- 
sacks had  already  advanced  and  got 
possession,  so  we  hurried  on,  passing 
sorrowfully  through  the  lovely  little 
town  in  which,  but  two  days  before, 
all  had  been  peaceful,  and  which  was 
doomed    by   the    utter   incapacity   of 
the  governor.     Soon   the    road   began 
to   ascend   the    mountains ;    darkness 
gradually   set   in,    and,  as  it   finally 
closed,    we    entered    a    dense    beech 
forest.     Far  below  we  could  hear  the 
roar  of  cannon  and  the  rattle  of  mus- 
ketry, telling  us  that  the  fight  still 
raged  fiercely ;  but  we  had  no  time  to 
linger,  as  it  was  a  race  for  freedom. 
The  track  was  knee-deep  in  a  mixture 
of  snow  and  mud,  through  which  our 
horses,  already  tired   with   the   long 
day's  work,   could  hardly  get  along. 
Towards  eight  o'clock  we  found  our- 
selves   in   the   clouds,   the    darkness 
being  almost  unbearable,  for  even  the 
trees  were  invisible.  Still  we  managed 
to  creep  along  the  track,  in  spite  of 
the  mist  and  clouds,  and  gladly  found 
in    time    that   we    had    reached  the 
summit,   though   our   only  means  of 
knowing  this  was  the  altered  position 
of  our  horses,  which  told  us  that  the 
descent  of  the  hill  had  at  last  begun. 
After  many  weary  hours  one  of  our 
party  called  out  that  he  saw  a  star, 
and     five     minutes      afterwards     we 
found  ourselves  out  of  the  clouds  in 
the  clear  frosty  night.     Far  below  we 
could  see  the  twinkling  of  camp-fires, 
and  towards  these  we  made  our  way. 
Of  course  there  was  a  period  of  great 
anxiety  to  know  whether  the  Russians 
or    we    had   won    the    race,   but,    on 
cautiously  approaching,  we  found,  to 
our  delight,  that  the  lights  were  the 
fires  of  a  Turkish  camp,  and  that  it 
was  the  position  of   Kamarli  (which 
has  since  become  so   famous).     Here 


A  Month  vrith  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


295 


we  rested  for  a  few  hours  in  an  old 
ruined  house,  having  been  all  night 
doing  a  sort  of  tortoise  race,  for,  as 
the  crow  flies,  the  distance  passed 
over  was  not  more  than  eight  miles. 

At  daybreak  we  started  for  Orchanie, 
passing  down  the  main  road  which 
runs  from  Sophia  to  that  place ;  it  is 
a  good  road,  and  in  this  part  runs 
through  a  defile  with  high  hills  on 
each  side.  On  arriving  we  saw  the 
General  Chakir  Pacha  only  for  a  few 
moments,  as  a  council  of  war  was 
going  on,  news  having  arrived  of  the 
fall  of  Etropol ;  but,  notwithstanding 
all  these  troubles,  on  hearing  from 
our  servants  of  our  probable  arrival, 
he  had  been  kind  enough  to  send  his 
aide-de-camp  to  the  village  of  Wrat- 
schesch,  below  his  camp,  to  find  out  and 
order  a  house  to  be  put  at  our  dis- 
posal. Having  visited  this,  and  seen 
that  our  baggage  was  safe,  we  rode 
into  Orchanie  to  inspect  the  fortifica- 
tions. On  our  way  we  met  many 
trains  of  ammunition  being  brought 
out  of  the  town,  and,  on  arriving, 
found  that  it  had  been  sacked  the 
night  before  by  the  Circassians.  This 
in  itself  was  a  sign  that  the  Turks 
were  about  to  abandon  it;  for  the 
Circassians  generally  get  the  first 
information  of  a  movement  of  this 
sort  as  a  way  of  remunerating  them 
for  their  gratuitous  services.  On 
arriving  at  the  entrenchments,  which 
were  full  of  men,  there  were  unmis- 
takable signs  that  they  were  going  to 
be  evacuated,  for  the  men  were  in 
marching  order,  the  limbers  were  close 
to  the  guns,  and  all  the  tents,  which 
were  out  of  sight,  had  been  struck 
and  carried  away,  only  those  in 
full  view  of  the  Russians  being  left 
standing,  so  that  they  might  be  de- 
ceived. 

We  returned  to  Wratschesch,  and 
there  remained  the  night,  but  were 
aroused  early  in  the  morning  to  hear 
the  news  that  the  Russians  were  in 
Orchanie,  distant  only  one  mile,  and 
that  it  was  officially  notified  that 
Etropol  was  taken.  Now  as  Etropol 
was  the  key  to  the  Orchanie  Pass, 
we  were  not  surprised  to  find  that  the 


Turkish  army  was  in  full  retreat ;  in 
fact,  the  greater  part  of  it  had  already 
gone  during  the  night.  We  at  once 
packed  up  our  baggage  and  sent  it  off, 
with  orders  to  go  at  once  to  Sophia, 
while  we  ourselves  rode  out  towards 
Orchanie  to  reconnoitre.  After  ex- 
amining the  village  closely  with  our 
glasses,  we  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  there  was  nobody  there,  so  ad- 
vanced cautiously  and  entered.  It 
was  indeed  a  curious  sight  to  see  this 
village,  which,  but  the  day  before,  was 
full  of  life,  now  utterly  desolate — 
not  a  human  creature  being  there. 
A  few  wandering  cattle,  dogs,  and 
poultry,  which  had  escaped  the  loot 
of  the  Circassians,  were  the  only 
living  things  to  disturb  the  silence  of 
the  place,  and  they  seemed  bewildered 
and  lost.  The  houses  had  been  robbed 
of  everything  of  value,  but  many  of 
them  were  full  of  grain,  and  in  some 
the  fires  were  still  smouldering.  It 
was  sad  to  see  the  magnificent  earth- 
works, which  the  Turks  had  erected 
with  so  much  care  and  toil,  abandoned 
without  a  shot  fired  in  their  defence ; 
but  it  was  a  wise  step,  as  now  that 
Etropol  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Russians,  these  works  might  be  taken 
in  rear  at  any  moment. 

We  had  not  much  time  to  contem- 
plate them,  as  the  Cossacks  were  dis- 
cernible coming  across  the  plain;  so 
we  left  the  village  and  trotted  back 
to  the  head  of  the  pass.  One  of 
our  party  imprudently  galloped  on 
ahead  to  look  at  a  Turkish  gun  which 
had  broken  down  some  distance  from 
the  road,  and  he  was  immediately 
taken  prisoner.  It  was  in  vain  that 
he  tried  to  explain  who  he  was ;  he 
was  seen  coming  from  the  direction  of 
Orchanie,  and,  in  addition  to  this,  had 
a  fur  cap  on,  which  in  itself  was  con- 
sidered sufficient  proof  that  he  was  a 
Cossack ;  so  he  was  marched  into 
camp  under  fixed  bayonets,  but,  as  we 
were  acquainted  with  the  staff,  we 
had  not  much  trouble  in  getting  him 
released.  Already  the  troops  that 
were  to  remain  behind  to  cover'  the 
retreat  were  in  position  in  the  en- 
trenchments on  the  mountain  sides, 


296 


A  Month  with  tlie  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


so  we  started  to  follow  the  main  body 
of  the  army.     About  half  a  mile  along 
the  road  we  met  a  train  of  several 
thousand     fugitive     Bulgarians,    who 
had  crowded  in  from  the  neighbouring 
villages.     Such    a    motley    group    as 
they  presented  is  seldom  seen ;   they 
were  mostly  in   family   parties,  each 
with  an  araba  drawn  by  oxen,  con- 
taining all  their  worldly  goods.  Women 
were  there  with  children  slung  behind 
their  backs,  their  little  legs  dangling 
helplessly,  while  their  bodies  were  com- 
pletely hidden.     Little  children  toiled 
along  with  enormous  bundles,  running 
beside   small   ponies    almost   entirely 
covered    with    their    burdens,    while 
cows,   calves,  goats,  and   sheep  were 
hopelessly  mixed  up  with  the  crowd. 
The  shouts  of  the  men,   the  wailing 
of   the  women,  the  bellowing  of   the 
cattle,   and   occasionally   the    distant 
roar  of  cannon,  produced  a  scene  of 
confusion  almost  passing  imagination. 
There  was  no  time  for  sympathy,  so 
we  were  obliged  to  get  on  and  ride  up 
the  pass  as  quickly  as  we  could,  over- 
taking  on   the   way  the  various   im- 
pedimenta   of    the   army,    which   had 
already  made  an  excellent  and  well- 
ordered    retreat.     Arriving  at   Arab 
Konak,  or,  as   it   is  more  commonly 
called,  Kamarli,  at  the  top  of  the  hill, 
we  met  Mehemet  Ali,   who   told   us 
that  he  was  going  to  make  a  stand  at 
the  junction  of  the  road  from  Etropol 
and  that  from   Orchanie   to   Sophia; 
but    he    recommended   us    to   go    to 
Tasscheshan,  a  village  three  miles  off, 
where  more  comfortable  quarters  were 
available.  Here  we  lived  in  a  wretched 
room  about  fifteen  feet  long  and  seven 
broad,  with  a  mud  floor  and  no  fire- 
place.     In    this    no    less    than    nine 
of    us    slept,   packed    like    sardines, 
for  many  days,  the  other  occupants, 
in    addition    to  the    military   party, 
being  some  English  doctors.     Luckily 
we   still   had   our  sheepskin  bags   to 
sleep   in,  else  we  should   have   been 
frozen,   as   the    ground   was    covered 
with    snow.      Outside    there    was    a 
horse-trough,    and   each   morning   we 
used  to  have  our  baths  in  this,  even 
when   it  was    snowing   hard,   to  the 


great   astonishment    of    the    natives, 
who,  I  believe,  thought  us  mad. 

On  the  28th  of  November  the  first 
day's   fighting   occurred   at  Kamarli, 
for  there  the  Russians  attacked,  and, 
after  severe  fighting,  took  possession  of 
the  heights  commanding  the  inouth  of 
the  pass.   During  our  whole  stay  Mehe- 
met Ali  was  most  kind  and  courteous. 
On  this  occasion  we  accompanied  him 
throughout  the  day,  and  although  the 
Turks  were  defeated,  his  polite   and 
considerate    manner    never    changed. 
The  sufferings  of  the  wounded  on  this 
day  were  frightful,  for  the  battle  was 
in  the  mountains  covered  with  snow. 
The   descent   from   the   principal    re- 
doubt (situated  at  a  height  of  5,000 
feet  above  the  sea)  to  the  camp  below 
takes  about  two  hours,  while  the  path 
was  so  slippery  that   neither    horses 
nor  men  could  keep  their  feet,  except 
with   the   greatest   difficulty.      Down 
this  path  the  wounded  had  to  find  their 
own  way,  and  those  who  were  so  badly 
hurt  as  not  to  be   able  to  walk  had 
either  to  remain  and  die  on  the  frozen 
heights,   or  be   carried  down  on  the 
backs  of  their  comrades,  or,  worse  still, 
to   ride   down   on  horses  which  were 
continually   falling.      There    was    no 
organised  system  of  transport  for  the 
wounded,  such  as  stretchers,  &c.,  nor 
were  there  any  doctors   to   attend  to 
them    till    they    reached    the    camp. 
Many  a    poor,  man,   who    was   being 
carried    down    on    horseback,    rolled 
over,  horse  and  all,  several    times  in 
succession,  till  he  would  entreat  to  be 
left   to   die   without   further   torture. 
There  was  indeed  one  doctor,  a  good, 
kind  Englishman,  Dr.  Gyll,  whom  we 
met,  as  it  was  getting  dark,  cheerily 
toiling  up  through  all  the  cold,  and 
snow,  and  ice,  to  spend  the  night  in 
the  clouds,  and  help  the  sufferers.    If 
all  the  English  doctors  with  the  Turks 
were  like  Dr.  Gyll,  our  country  might 
well   be   proud.      During    this   day's 
fighting  the  great  mistake  of  having  an 
army  armed  with  two  different  kinds  of 
weapons  was  shown.  While  the  Turks, 
to  all  appearance,  were  gaining  ground 
and   driving  back  the  Russians,  they 
suddenly  ceased  to  fire,    and  shortly 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


297 


afterwards  retreated  panic  -  stricken. 
The  cause  of  the  panic  was,  that  the 
reserve  ammunition  of  two  regiments, 
armed  differently,  one  with  the  Snider, 
the  other  with  the  Peabody-Martini, 
got  mixed ;  and  when  their  first  supply 
became  exhausted,  and  they  called  up 
the  reserve,  the  supply  for  the  Peabody- 
Martini  went  to  the  regiment  armed 
with  the  Snider,  and  vice  versa.  The  re- 
sult followed  that  the  men  found  they 
could  not  fire,  and  although  when 
ordered  by  their  officers  they  advanced 
for  some  distance  with  bayonets  fixed, 
they  became  demoralised  and  fled,  the 
consequence  being  the  loss  of  the  day 
for  the  Turks.  The  Turkish  method 
of  carrying  reserve  ammunition  is 
excellent,  and  might  well  be  adopted 
by  our  service.  To  each  regiment  is 
attached  about  thirty  packhorses,  or 
rather  ponies,  each  carrying  two  boxes 
of  small-arm  ammunition.  The  ponies 
are  active,  and  can  go  wherever  the 
regiment  goes ;  and  being  small,  are 
easily  concealed  beneath  a  parapet.  On 
the  march,  the  ponies,  in  addition  to 
the  ammunition,  carry  their  own  for- 
age for  several  days.  The  men  who 
have  charge  of  them  are  trained  to 
serve  out  ammunition,  and  this  they 
do,  under  the  most  galling  fire,  with 
marvellous  rapidity  and  coolness,  going 
along  the  line  and  giving  to  each  man 
the  number  of  cartridges  he  may  re- 
quire. The  cartridges  are  carried  by 
the  private  soldiers  in  an  original  and 
excellent  way.  They  are  placed  in 
rows,  sown  in  different  parts  of  their 
dress,  each  cartridge  having  a  separate 
place  for  itself,  so  that  the  weight  is 
distributed  all  over  the  body,  instead 
of  in  one  particular  place,  as  it  is  when 
they  are  carried  in  a  pouch,  while,  as  an 
additional  advantage,  a  large  number  of 
cartridges  can  be  carried  by  one  man. 
On  the  29th  of  November,  as  we 
were  sitting  in  a  tent  in  the  camp  at 
Kamarli  for  protection  from  the  snow, 
which  was  falling  fast,  we  heard  the 
bugles  sound  the  alarm,  and  going  out 
we  saw  the  Russians  advancing  towards 
us  in  three  dense  columns,  as  steadily  as 
if  they  were  on  parade.  It  was  indeed 
a  magnificent  sight  to  see  these  gallant- 


troops  coming  across  the  snow  to 
almost  certain  defeat.  Presently  guns 
from  all  sides  poured  into  them,  but 
they  never  wavered.  From  the  camp 
to  the  topmost  redoubt  there  is  a  chain 
of  five  other  redoubts ;  but  these  were 
hid  in  the  clouds,  and  their  defenders 
could  not  see  the  danger  which  me- 
naced them,  though  the  telegraph  soon 
gave  the  necessary  warning.  In  the 
meanwhile  the  Eussian  columns 
marched  onwards,  and  no  one  knew 
what  their  destination  was.  In  the 
redoubt  in  which  we  had  placed  our- 
selves the  attack  was  chiefly  expected, 
and  it  was  wonderful  to  see  the  coolness 
with  which  the  Turks  awaited  it,  smok- 
ing their  cigarettes  and  chatting  as 
quietly  as  if  they  had  no  idea  that 
they  were  in  any  danger.  Suddenly 
the  attacking  columns  turned  to  the 
left,  and  began  to  ascend  the  hill, 
where  they  gradually  disappeared  in 
the  clouds,  and  we  knew  that  they  in- 
tended to  attack  the  great  redoubt. 
Its  fate  now  became  a  subject  of  intense 
anxiety  to  us,  for  its  capture  would  not 
only  have  entailed  the  loss  of  the 
whole  position  at  Kamarli,  but  would 
have  opened  the  road  to  Adrianople. 
Reinforcements  were  therefore  hurried 
up,  but  there  was  not  much  chance 
of  their  arriving  in  time  to  be  of  any 
assistance.  The  mist  obscured  both 
Russians  and  Turks  from  our  view, 
and  we  could  only  listen  in  silence. 
Minutes  passed  like  hours,  for  the 
troops  in  the  lower  redoubts  were 
powerless  to  join  in  the  impending 
struggle.  Suddenly,  far  away  appa- 
rently, almost  in  the  skies,  arose  the 
din  of  battle  ;  the  roar  of  cannon  and 
the  continuous  roll  of  musketry  told 
the  anxious  listeners  below  that  the 
terrible  death-struggle  was  proceeding. 
The  firing,  however,  did  not  last  long, 
and  ceased  almost  as  suddenly  as 
it  began.  Again  there  was  complete 
silence,  though  only  for  a  few  moments ; 
and  the  triumphant  shouts  of  "  Allah  ! 
Allah !  Allah  !  "  from  the  regions 
above,  told  us  that  the  Turks  were 
victorious  and  the  place  was  saved. 

We  waited  to  congratulate  Mehemet 
Ali   on  his  victory,  and  his  pleasant 


298 


A  Month  with  the  Turkish  Army  in  the  Balkans. 


face  was  bright  and  joyful.  VV^e  heard 
him  give  an  order  to  the  chief  of  his 
staff  that  sentries  were  to  be  placed 
round  the  field  where  the  dead  Russians 
lay  to  prevent  their  bodies  from  being 
plundered,  and  that  any  trinkets  or 
crosses  belonging  to  them  which  might 
be  found  in  possession  of  the  Turkish 
soldiers  should  be  collected  and  sent 
to  Prince  Reuss  at  Constantinople,  in 
order  that  they  might  be  returned  to 
the  Russian  authorities.  This  kind 
and  thoughtful  order  was  quite  con- 
sistent with  the  whole  character  of  the 
man. 

Then  with  regret  we  bade  adieu  to 
our  Turkish  friends,  who  all  said  they 
hoped  they  should  see  us  with  our 
troops  in  the  spring,  and  the  follow- 
ing morning  we  left  our  wretched  hovel 
at  Tasscheshan,  with  its  putrid  well, 
and  rode  into  Sophia,  where  we  were 
beset  by  many  newspaper  correspond- 
ents anxious  to  learn  the  news.  We 
now  sold  our  horses  and  saddlery  for 
the  small  sum  of  twenty-three  liras, 
and  four  days  afterwards  arrived  in 
Constantinople,  having  spent  exactly 
one  month  up  the  country,  during 
which  time  we  had  seen  much  to  ad- 
mire in  the  Turk,  and  nothing  (with  the 
one  exception  at  Etropol)  to  despise. 

The  Turkish  soldier  was  seen  by  us 
under  all  circumstances — in  comfort, 
in  misery,  after  victory,  after  defeat ; 
but  he  retained  always  the  same  quiet 
manner,  showing  neither  elation  nor 
despondency.  His  valour  is  matched 
by  his  marvellous  patience  under  suf- 
fering, and  we  have  sometimes  wondered 
whether  the  Turks  feel  as  much  pain 
as  other  races.  If  they  do  not,  it  may 
perhaps  be  accounted  for  by  their 
great  abstemiousness  both  in  animal 
food  and  strong  drinks,  and  this  pro- 
bably lessens  the  tendency  to  the  in- 
flammation of  wounds.  Their  power  of 
abstension  from  meat  is  most  important 
in  a  military  point  of  view,  as  it  greatly 
lessens  the  work  of  the  commissariat 
and  transport,  which  are  generally  in- 
effective. They  are  entirely  worked 
by  arabas  drawn  by  oxen,  whose  aver- 
age rate  of  progress  is  never  more  than 


two  miles  an  hour.  Turkish  soldiers 
will  thrive  well  on  biscuit  for  days 
even  under  the  most  severe  exposure. 
They  are  thus  enabled  to  carry  rations 
sufficient  for  several  days,  and  in  this 
manner  perform  marches  regardless  of 
the  commissariat  department. 

We  had  many  opportunities  of  find- 
ing out  the  true  feeling  of  Bulgarians 
and  Turks  towards  one  another,  and 
although  there  is  no  doubt  that  a 
mutual  and  now  deadly  hatred  exists, 
it  is  equally  true  that  before  the  former 
were  incited  to  rebellion  by  Russian 
intrigue  they  led  a  happy  and  peaceful 
life.  They  had  a  certain  local  govern- 
ment of  their  own  communities,  were 
furnished  with  good  schools,  enjoyed 
religious  toleration,  and  were  in  pos- 
session of  the  most  fertile  lands  of 
Europe,  giving  them  the  comfort  and 
riches  which  they  chiefly  desired. 
Discontent  of  some  kind  no  doubt  exr 
isted,  otherwise  Russian  intrigue  could 
not  have  incited  them  to  rebel.  Un- 
questionably also  the  Turks  crushed 
the  revolt  with  an  iron  hand,  and 
massacres  were  perpetrated  with  equal 
ferocity  by  both  sides.  All  this  is  a 
matter  of  history.  When  these  deeds 
of  passion  are  denounced,  our  historical 
conscience  should  not  be  blinded  to 
the  good  qualities  of  the  Turkish 
soldier.  Since  the  days  of  Othman  or 
Mahomet  II.  no  greater  valour  has 
been  shown  on  the  field  of  battle  than 
in  the  present  campaign.  The  ruling 
pachas,  corrupted  by  the  curses  of 
polygamy  and  domestic  slavery,  have 
lost  many  qualities  of  a  governing 
caste ;  but  the  Turkish  people  still  re- 
main simple  and  uncorrupted.  It  will 
be  a  cruel  and  unjust  judgment  of 
Europe  if  the  Turks  as  a"race  be  sacri- 
ficed because  their  governors  have 
failed  in  the  duties  of  civil  government. 
When  a  whole  race  still  shows  truth, 
honour,  courage,  and  sobriety  as  the 
special  attributes  of  their  character, 
there  exists  ample  foundation  for  re- 
form, and  the  political  extinction  of 
such  a  people  would  be  a  crime  against 
humanity. 

G.  J.  PLAYFAIB. 


299 


DE.  WILLIAM  STOKES  OF  DUBLIN  : 

A  PERSONAL   SKETCH. 


WHEN  I  first  came  to  know  William 
Stokes,  in  1858,  his  house  had  been 
for   years   the   resort   of   all   the   in- 
tellect, of  all  the  wit,  and  of  all  the 
learning,    which    Ireland     possessed. 
His  fame  brought  all  foreign  visitors 
of    literary    note    with    introductions 
to    see   him.     He    kept   open    house, 
and,  in   addition  to  his  large  family, 
some  learned  foreigner,  or  some  stray 
country   wit,    could    be    met    almost 
daily  at  his  simple  but  most  hospitable 
table.    He  became  acquainted  with  me 
accidentally,  through  one  of  his  sons ; 
but  as  soon  as  he  saw  that  I  was  a 
very  lonely  student  in  Trinity  College, 
with  no  relations  and  very  few  friends 
in  Dublin,  his  kindness  prompted  him 
to  ask  me  constantly  to  his  charming 
country  house  by  the  sea-side.     So  I 
came  to  know  him  and  talk  with  him, 
and  learn  from  him  perhaps  more  than 
many  of  the  students  in  his  hospital. 
We  would  constantly  walk  together 
over  the  heather  and  through  the  woods 
on  the  beautiful  hill  of  Howth;  and 
as  he  was  urging  me  to  study  medicine, 
he  used  to  stimulate  my  curiosity  in 
that  direction  by  conversations  upon 
the  treatment   of    fever,    of   nervous 
disorders,     of    chest    complaints,    in 
which  all   the   large   and   interesting 
points  were  brought  out,  and  all  the 
unpleasant    details    skilfully   omitted 
or  subdued.    These  serious  topics  were 
often  aptly  illustrated  by  wonderful 
anecdotes  of  his  practice  among  the 
wild   gentry  of  the  west  before  the 
famine    times,    when    the     romantic 
accessories   of  the   story  would   lead 
him   to  wander   from   medicine    into 
pictures  of  old  Irish  life,   which   he 
painted  with  the  power  and  truth  of  a 
Walter  Scott. 

He  never  hurried  himself  in  walk- 
ing or  talking,  and  often,  in  the  midst 


of  a  summer  tempest  of  rain,  would 
stop  deliberately,  take  out  his  snuff- 
box, enjoy  a  large  pinch  of  snuff,  and 
then  proceed  to  the  point  of  his  story, 
while  the   rain  was   streaming   from 
our  hats;    for   he   never   carried    an 
umbrella,  and  used  even  to  laugh  at 
the  genus  of  the  umbrelliferce,  as  he 
called    them.     At    dinner    he   would 
not   sit   at  the  head  of   the  table  or 
carve   any   dish,   but   devote   himself 
wholly  to  conversation,  seconded  by  a 
very  brilliant  and  witty  family  circle. 
If  his  guests  were  particularly  sober, 
and    prim,  he    would   often   astonish 
and    mystify    them    with    the    most 
outlandish  and  violent  theories ;    his 
children  would  act  their  part  perfectly 
in  seriously  supporting  him,  until  the 
stranger  would  set  himself  to  refute 
or  correct  him.     Then  he  would  put 
forth  all  his  marvellous  subtlety  and 
learning,  and  invent  the  most  wonder- 
ful arguments  in  support  of  his  extra- 
vagant paradox.     In  the   evening  he 
would    either   hear  music — especially 
national   Irish   music — of    which    he 
was    passionately    fond,    though     he 
understood  but  little  about  it,  or  on 
gala  nights  he  would  act  in  charades, 
when  his  curious  solemn  face,  and  his 
wonderful  wit,  would  elicit  roars  of 
laughter.     He  was  particularly  fond 
of  acting  the  part  of  an  old  woman  of 
the  lower  classes,  though  I  have  seen 
him  appear  even  as  a  young  lady  in 
fashionable  attire.  Perhaps  the  reader 
will  think  these  things  unworthy  of 
notice;    but  if  this  sketch   is   worth 
anything,    it    must    attempt    a    true 
picture  of  the  man  as  the  writer  knew 
him,   and   he   knew   him   not   in   his 
work,  but  in  his  leisure. 

In  his  consulting-room  in  Dublin 
he  was  a  very  different  being — grave 
and  solemn ;  nay,  even  so  gloomy  that 


300 


Dr.  'William  Stokes  of  Dullin. 


many  patients  read  in  his  face  their 
coming  doom,  while  he  may  have  been 
thinking  of  something  far  removed 
from  the  case  before  him.  He  had  a 
habit  of  making  long  pauses  before  he 
answered,  and  then  making  a  remark 
wholly  irrelevant  to  the  question;  and 
this  he  often  did  intentionally,  in 
order  to  baffle  indiscreet  inquiry. 
Those  who  knew  him  got  accustomed 
to  this  trait,  but  to  strangers  it  often 
appeared  somewhat  absurd  ;  yet,  while 
he  seemed  least  occupied  and  least 
attentive,  he  was  probably  making 
some  careful  and  practical  observation 
on  the  case  or  the  character  before 
him.  Sometimes  he  was  studying  the 
comical  side  of  the  matter ;  and  when 
a  friend  would  come  in  upon  him,  and 
interrupt  his  solemn  work,  he  would 
burst  into  great  fits  of  laughter  at  the 
scene  in  which  he  had  been  acting  a 
grave  and  doleful  part.  Yet  he  was 
naturally  inclined  to  melancholy  when 
brought  in  contact  with  pain  and 
suffering,  and  had  so  low  an  estimate 
of  what  medicine  could  do,  and  so 
deep  an  experience  of  the  possibilities 
of  disease,  that  he  was  wont  to  take  a 
gloomy  view  of  his  cases,  and  appre- 
hend serious  consequences  with  more 
clearness  than  those  whose  vision  was 
less  acute. 

Probably  he  would  not  have  sus- 
tained his  enormous  work  for  nearly 
fifty  years,  had  he  not  obtained  com- 
plete rest  and  relaxation  by  that  de- 
light in  drollery,  that  intermittent 
exuberance  of  almost  childish  spirits, 
which  marked  him  when  associating 
with  his  intimates.  At  his  retreat  on 
Howth  he  would  organise  a  pig  hunt 
or  a  tournament  on  donkeys,  and  per- 
form as  warden  of  the  course  on  a 
hobby-horse.  In  fact,  as  Cicero  ven- 
tures to  confess  of  the  great  Scipio  and 
his  friends — "Non  audeo  dicere  de 
talibus  viris,  sed  tamen  ita  solet 
narrare  Scsevola,  conchas  eos  et  umbi- 
licos  ad  Caietam  et  ad  Laurentum 
legere  consuesse,  et  ad  omnem  animi 
remissionem  ludumque  descendere." 

But  even  in  his  wildest  relaxation 
one  could  see  how  his  habits  of  accu- 


rate and  careful  observation  never  left 
him.  He  was  always  studying  the 
characters  of  his  dogs,  and  speaking  of 
them  with  the  greatest  seriousness  as 
his  personal  friends ;  and  it  was  re- 
markable how  even  the  dogs  of  his 
friends  felt  his  sympathy,  and  liked 
him  better  than  they  liked  the  in- 
mates of  their  own  houses.  In  his 
very  last  days,  when  he  could  only 
move  about  in  a  chair,  he  had  a  flock 
of  pigeons  so  tamed  about  him,  that 
they  were  constantly  under  his  eye, 
and  he  was  noting  minutely  their 
habits  and  ways. 

This  quality  must  have  been  what 
chiefly  raised  him  above  his  fellows  in 
the  medical  profession.  He  seemed 
from  his  own  recollections  to  have 
received  very  little  education.  He 
was  indeed  the  son  of  a  very  able 
but  eccentric  man,  who  was  greatly 
esteemed  by  the  leading  Irishmen  of 
his  day — Lord  Plunket,  for  example, 
calling  him  "  the  very  best  man  he 
had  ever  met."  But  though  Stokes 
was  the  son  of  a  very  remarkable 
father,  who  must  of  course  have  in- 
fluenced him  in  many  ways,  his 
schooling  was  neglected  and  im- 
perfect, for  he  frequently  spoke  of 
having  walked  away  from  school,  on 
his  very  first  day,  never  to  return, 
after  having  drawn  blood  by  sending 
a  slate  at  his  master's  head.  The 
sight  of  the  blood  trickling  down 
the  man's  face  (who  had  struck  him 
without  cause)  made  a  strong  and 
undying  impression  upon  him,  and 
I  have  often  heard  him  describe  it, 
with  graphic  detail,  to  a  delighted 
audience  of  boys.  His  next  school, 
he  used  to  tell  us,  was  lying  in  the 
fields  reading  his  Latin  grammar,  with 
his  head  pillowed  on  the  neck  of  a  red 
cow.  He  never  received  a  university 
education,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life 
produced  the  impression  of  being  a  self- 
taught  man.  He  always  spoke  with 
the  greatest  affection  and  respect  of 
Dr.  Alison  of  Edinburgh,  to  whom  he 
was  sent  to  study  medicine  ;  and  this 
was  the  only  serious  and  suggestive 
teaching  he  seems  to  have  received. 


Dr.  William  Stokes  of  Dublin. 


301 


But  as  soon  as  lie  returned  to 
Dublin,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three, 
and  was  appointed  (I  suppose  by  his 
father's  influence)  physician  to  the 
Meath  Hospital,  his  genius  and  his 
ardour  for  knowledge  raised  him  above 
all  his  rivals.  His  talent  for  diag- 
nosis made  him  celebrated,  and  from 
that  day,  until  his  faculties  faded  from 
him,  and  he  became  the  mere  wreck  of 
his  great  self,  he  occupied  the  first 
position  not  only  as  a  physician,  but 
as  a  literary  man.  He  did  not  indeed 
•write  very  correctly  or  elegantly,  for 
he  had  received  no  special  literary 
training ;  but  everything  which  he 
wrote,  even  outside  the  field  of  medi- 
cine, bore  the  impress  of  a  powerful 
and  original  mind.  His  life  of  Petrie 
showed  very  remarkable  literary  ca- 
pacities, and  is  far  more  interest- 
ing and  better  conceived  than  most 
biographies  written  by  professed 
authors.  -His  opening  addresses  at 
the  Meath  Hospital,  all  of  them  on 
large  topics,  and  most1  of  them  on  the 
advantages  of  that  general  education 
which  he  had  neglected  in  his  youth, 
are  full  of  fruitful  suggestions,  and 
very  striking  for  their  broad  views 
and  generous  spirit.  To  his  pupils  his 
influence  was  stimulating  beyond  de- 
scription, and  this  virtue  in  him  was 
shown  in  his  family,  all  of  whom  he 
contrived  to  urge  to  perpetual  diligence 
and  self-culture,  while  he  was  ever 
recommending  holydays,  and  extolling 
recreation.  The  same  may  be  said  of 
the  young  friends  whom  he  loved  to 
see  about  him,  many  of  whom  date 
their  first  inspiration  for  work,  and 
disgust  for  idleness,  to  the  influence 
of  his  refined  and  literary  home. 
There  are  those  too  who  have  con- 
fessed that  his  spirit  turned  them 
from  the  vices  and  follies  of  youth, 
and  led  them  to  a  serious  and 
honourable  view  of  their  duties  amid 
the  temptations  of  a  college  career. 
And  yet  he  never  preached  sermons, 
or  gave  any  formal  moral  advice.  He 
was  far  too  subtle  and  original  a 
teacher  to  follow  so  well-beaten  and 
idle  a  track.  Nor  was  this  stimulating 


influence  confined  to  the  young.  On 
the  topics  which  he  touched,  he  made 
all  those  around  him  rise  above 
themselves,  and  do  greater  and  better 
work.  Thus  the  remarkable  researches 
of  George  Petrie  both  on  the  antiqui- 
ties and  the  music  of  Ireland  would 
never  have  seen  the  light  but  for  the 
constant  pressure  and  encouragement 
of  William  Stokes,  who,  though  he 
was  neither  a  musician  nor  an  artist, 
felt  the  beauty  of  artistic  work 
with  a  keenness  and  a  tenderness 
beyond  the  depth  of  ordinary  men. 
In  this  way  he  was  a  great  school- 
master to  all  those  about  him — a  man 
who  might  have  been  a  great  scholastic 
head,  just  as  his  powers  of  observation 
might  have  made  him  one  of  the  first 
naturalists  of  his  time.  But  though  he 
was  full  of  sympathy  for  talent,  totally 
void  of  jealousy,  and  generous  to  a 
fault,  he  had  a  singular  hatred  for 
stupidity,  and  above  all  for  that  pre- 
tentious stupidity  which  consists  in 
gathering  and  repeating  useless  de- 
tails. I  remember  sitting  beside  him 
at  dinner,  when  a  scientific  man  of 
this  kind  was  boring  us  with  his 
talk.  He  turned  to  me,  and  said  with 
emphasis  :  "  There  is  one  golden  rule 
of  conversation — know  nothing  accu- 
rately." And  this  rule  he  always 
observed  himself,  except  where  the- 
interest  actually  lay  in  minute  and 
careful  description  ;  then  nothing  could 
exceed  the  life-like  picturesqueness  of 
his  language. 

There  are  men  whose  works  speak 
their  whole  genius,  and  whom  it  is 
disenchanting  to  meet,  for  they  have 
little  personality  outside  their  writings, 
which  seem  to  absorb  all  that  is  great 
and  good  in  them.  But  there  are- 
others  whose  published  thoughts  are 
as  nothing  compared  with  the  influence 
they  exercise  upon  those  around  them, 
and  whose  books  are  very  unsatisfying 
to  those  who  have  the  privilege  of 
their  personal  friendship.  This  is 
exceptionally  true  of  William  Stokes, 
who  was  indeed  the  greatest  physician 
in  Ireland,  whose  books  on  the  chest 
and  heart  have  been  for  a  generation 


502 


Dr.  William  Stokes  of  Dublin. 


standard  books  all  over  the  world,1 
but  who  was  a  far  greater  man  than 
all  these  things  signify,  and  whom 
strangers  will  never  know  and  esti- 
mate at  his  true  value.  He  was 
the  very  highest  and  best  type  of  an 
Irishman,  with  the  earnestness  and  the 
carelessness,  the  melancholy  and  the 
fun,  the  shrewdness  and  the  romance, 
the  diligence  and  the  want  of  thrift 
of  that  unstable  race,  all  combined 
and  conflicting  in  his  nature.  He 
represented  moreover  another  combi- 
nation which  nowadays  might  be 
thought  a  contradiction,  but  which 
was  the  leading  feature  in  the  very 
remarkable  society  about  him ;  I  mean 
the  society  led  by  Graves,  Todd,  Fer- 
guson, Petrie,  Wilde,  and  Reeves. 
These  men  were  thorough  patriots, 
who  spent  all  their  leisure  studying 
their  country  and  promoting  her  in- 
terests, while  at  the  same  time  they 
were  the  most  loyal  subjects,  and  had 
no  sympathy,  or  rather  had  a  profound 
contempt  for  the  noisy  policy  of  ex- 
hibiting a  love  of  Ireland  by  railing 
against  England.  This  was  the  more 
remarkable  in  Stokes  because  he  had 
a  curious  contempt  for  the  Saxons,  as 
he  called  them,  from  a  social  point  of 
view.  I  mean  of  course  the  Saxons 
collectively,  for  no  man  had  better  or 
more  revered  friends  in  England.  But 
if  a  plum-pudding  were  put  on  the 
table,  he  would  call  it  a  low  Saxon 
importation.  If  a  charming  English  girl 
married  a  vulgar,  forward  Irishman  (a 
frequent  occurrence)  and  we  wondered 
at  it,  he  would  say  :  "  My  dear  fellow, 
you  are  stumbling  upon  a  great  truth. 
The  Saxon  IMS  no  power  of  diagnosis." 
And  still  more  frequently,  when  he 
came  in  contact  with  pig-headed  Eng- 
lish rulers  in  Ireland,  who  thought  to 
understand  the  people  in  six  months, 
and  then  govern  them  by  blue-book 

1  I  have  heard  a  Califorman  doctor,  fresh 
from  the  West,  beg  to  be  introduced  to  him 
as  the  Bacon  of  modern  medicine.  I  have 
heard  a  Greek  doctor,  in  the  wilds  of  Arcadia, 
and  who  did  not  know  how  to  pronounce  his 
name,  say  that  all  his  knowledge  was  derived 
from  the  works  of  Stokes. 


and  red-tape,  he  would  sum  up  his 
account  of  a  long  interview  with  a  sigh, 
a  pinch  of  snuff,  and  the  remark : 
"  The  poor  Saxon  beast,  he  has  no 
light !"  So"  it  happened,  that  though 
Stokes  was  all  his  life  a  staunch  Tory, 
even  the  men  of  '48  —  Davis  and 
Mangan  and  their  comrades — all  knew 
him  and  loved  him,  and  felt  that  they 
had  in  some  respects  his  sincere  sym- 
pathy. There  were  indeed  few  people 
who  were  not  attracted  by  the  large- 
ness of  his  heart  and  the  quick  response 
of  his  overflowing  sympathy.  He  knew 
every  one  in  Ireland  who  was  worth 
knowing;  he  had  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  many  of  them  in  those  hours 
of  distress  which  bring  men  close 
together  in  a  few  hours,  and  make 
them  form  ties  which  years  will  not 
dissolve.  Thus  he  had  a  knowledge 
of  Irish  life  and  habits  which  he  was 
always  bringing  out  in  strange  anec- 
dotes and  wonderful  records  of  family 
histories.  The  mine  of  this  sort  of 
experience  which  has  died  with  him  is 
really  inestimable. 

It  is  perhaps  well  that  he  never  took 
an  active  part  in  politics,  for  he  was 
too  fond  of  his  friends,  and  perhaps 
the  greatest  weakness  in  him  was  his 
over  partiality  for  those  whom  he 
loved.  He  seldom,  as  I  have  said, 
could  tolerate  a  goose,  but  if  he  did, 
it  was  only  by  making  it  a  swan. 
His  great  influence  was  therefore  in 
danger  of  being  exercised  in  favour  of 
men  who  might  be  unworthy  of  it, 
and  it  was  well  known  that  he  would 
strain  a  point  in  favour  of  a  friend. 
He  used  even  to  boast  that  the  chief 
use  of  having  influence  was  to  obtain 
good  things  for  the  ''poor  devils" 
who  could  not  get  on  by  themselves. 
So  also  his  dislikes,  though  gene- 
rally based  on  some  acute  observations 
which  escaped  the  notice  of  others, 
seemed  very  strong,  and  were  often 
expressed  in  picturesquely  vehement 
language;  nor  would  he  tolerate  any 
defence  of  the  men  whom  he  reviled 
with  comic  exaggeration.  Thus  I  have 
heard  him  finish  a  portrait  with  these 
words  :  "  God  Almighty  had  originally 


Dr.  William  MtoJces  of  Dublin. 


303 


intended  him  to  be  disgusting,  but  he 
has  outdone  Him."  Yet  all  this  vehe- 
mence expended  itself  in  confessions 
to  his  friends.  He  never  quarrelled 
with  any  one,  and  though  he  may  have 
avoided  or  treated  with  indifference 
those  whom  he  disliked,  he  had  not, 
so  far  as  I  know,  a  single  personal 
enemy. 

His  later  years  were  clouded  with 
great  sorrows,  which  dimmed  the  bright- 
ness of  his  wit  and  saddened  his  once 
brilliant  spirits.  He  was  indeed  all 
through  life  subject  to  fits  of  deep 
depression,  for  his  sympathies  were 
far  too  keen,  and  his  nature  far  too 
sensitive,  to  admit  of  the  equable 
cheeriness  of  vulgar  minds.  But 
these  periods  of  depression  increased 
as  one  member  of  his  family  after 
another  was  taken  from  him,  and  as 
he  felt  that  the  acuteness  of  his  per- 
ceptive faculties — the  source  of  his 
masterly  diagnosis — was  on  the  wane. 
At  last  a  fall  trom  a  car,  as  he  was 
hurrying  on  an  errand  of  charity,  laid 
the  seeds  of  the  fatal  complaint  which 
gradually  stole  from  him  the  use  of 
his  limbs,  and  reduced  him  to  his 
chair  and  his  fireside.  Even  then, 
when  his  intellect  was  failing,  and  his 
wit  had  well-nigh  departed,  he  still 
retained  that  wonderful  tenderness 
which  made  all  the  little  children 
of  the  neighbourhood  gather  round 
"  Grandpapa  Stokes,"  and  solace  with 


their  love  and  their  cheerfulness  the 
weary  days  which  passed  while  he  was 
consciously  waiting  for  his  end.  But  his 
vigorous  constitution  cost  him  a  fierce 
struggle  for  life  at  the  close,  and 
made  his  death  a  relief  from  hopeless 
misery. 

His  books  have  perpetuated  his 
labour.  His  talents  are  still  repre- 
sented by  his  children,  more  than  one 
of  whom  had  already  shown  flashes  of 
hereditary  fire.  His  very  form — his 
massive  brow,  his  thoughtful,  kindly 
face — is  preserved,  not  only  in  an  ad- 
mirable earlier  portrait  by  Burton,  but 
in  Foley's  later  statue,  perhaps  the 
most  perfect  of  all  the  works  of  that 
great  artist.  His  lifelong  teaching  and 
example  have  their  permanent  effect 
upon  the  general  culture  and  social 
position  of  his  profession  in  Ireland. 
Yet,  to  those  who  knew  and  loved 
him  in  byegone  days,  all  these  large 
legacies  seem  but  a  small  remnant  of 
the  wealth  of  the  man.1 

J.  P.  MAHAFFY. 

1 1  have  avoided  in  this  sketch  all  such 
details  as  may  be  gathered  from  a  professed 
memoir,  and  which  may  be  found  in  a  trust- 
worthy paper  which  appeared  in  the  Dublin 
University  Magazhie  some  three  years  ago. 
But  the  dates  of  a  man's  birth  and  death,  the 
catalogue  of  his  distinctions,  and  the  names 
of  his  ancestors,  are  after  all  of  little  interest, 
and  of  less  importance,  in  a  case  like  the 
present. 


304 


THE  REFORM  PERIOD  IN  RUSSIA. 

(Continued  from  p.  170.) 


A  VERY  interesting  account  might  be 
written  of  the  various  bodies  of  emi- 
grants who  for  political  reasons  have 
left  their  native  land,  sometimes  to 
have  nothing  more  to  do  with  it,  like 
the  settlers  in  Virginia  and  the  Scotch- 
men who,  after  1715  and  1745,  took 
service  in  Russia,  Prussia,  and  Poland ; 
sometimes  to  conspire  against  it,  like 
the  followers  of  Prince  Charles  and 
the  emigres  of  the  French  revolutionary 
period;  sometimes  to  conspire  in  its 
favour,  like  the  Irish  of  the  Irish 
Legions  in  France  and  the  Poles  who 
came  to  London  and  to  Paris  in  such 
numbers  after  the  insurrection  of  1830, 
and  again  after  the  lesser  rising  of 
1863.  Then  there  is  the  Russian 
emigration,  the  latest,  by  far  the  least 
numerous,  but  not  the  least  powerful 
of  them  all.  No  other  emigrant  ever 
exercised  so  much  influence  in  the 
country  he  had  quitted  as  Mr.  Herzen 
exercised  in  Russia  from  the  beginning 
of  the  reform  agitation  by  which  the 
first  announcements  on  the  subject  of 
serf-emancipation  were  speedily  fol- 
lowed, to  the  collapse  produced  by  the 
Polish  insurrection  of  1863,  which, 
enjoying  as  it  did  the  worse  than  use- 
less favour  of  European  diplomacy, 
drove  Russians  of  all  classes  and 
creeds  to  give  unconditional  support  to 
their  own  government.  It  can  be  seen, 
too,  from  the  official  reports  of  the 
State  trial,  now  taking  place  at  St. 
Petersburg,  that,  since  Herzen' s 
death,  Bakounin,  a  far  less  powerful 
writer,  but  a  more  determined  con- 
spirator, has,  living  in  Switzerland, 
been  the  moving  spirit  of  the  revolu- 
tionary organisations  with  which  the 
surface  of  all  Russia  seems  to  have  been 
covered.  There  were  emigrants  and 
literary  emigrants  from  Russia  before 
Herzen' s  time.  But  the  books  they  pub- 


lished on  Russia  and  Russian  affairs  were 
written  chiefly  for  foreigners  ;  and  in 
Nicholas's  time  it  would  have  been  both 
difficult  and  useless  to  introduce  into 
Russia  works  aiming  at  the  subversion 
of  the  existing  state  of  things.  Owing 
to  the  enormous  cost  of  foreign  pass- 
ports, and  the  rarity  with  which  they 
were  granted,  the  number  of  Russians 
visiting  foreign  parts  was  very  small. 
Nor  were  foreigners  encouraged  to 
visit  Russia.  Nor  were  the  communi- 
cations between  Russia  and  Western 
Europe  by  any  means  so  easy,  in  a 
material  sense,  as  they  have  since 
become.  Nor,  above  all,  was  Russian 
soil  ready  to  receive  such  seed  as  Mr. 
Herzen  was  prepared  to  sow,  and  which 
he  sowed  with  effect  when  the  rigidity 
of  the  Nicholas  system  at  last  came  to 
an  end. 

Before  any  change  had  been  effected 
in  the  written  laws  of  the  Empire, 
when  the  peasants  were  still  in  a  con- 
dition of  serfdom,  when  the  old 
judicial  system  was  still  in  force,  and 
when  no  announcement  had,  as  yet, 
been  made  on  the  subject  of  the  local 
assemblies  afterwards  to  be  formed,  it 
could  already  be  seen,  from  various 
external  signs,  that  affairs  in  Russia 
were  no  longer  the  same  as  in 
Nicholas's  time,  or  in  the  period  im- 
mediately following  the  accession  of 
Alexander  II.  More  newspapers  were 
about,  and  in  1861  journals  of  all 
kinds  were  on  sale  at  the  railway 
stations,  which  had  not  been  the  case 
in  1857.  In  1856  and  1857  a  soldier, 
meeting  an  officer  in  the  street,  halted, 
took  off  his  cap,  and  remained  un- 
covered (sometimes,  it  would  seem,  at 
the  risk  of  catching  a  violent  cold), 
until  the  officer  had  passed.  In  1861 
soldiers  saluted  officers  as  in  other 
countries,  without  halting  and  without 


Tlie  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


305 


uncovering.  In  1857  a  gentleman  pay- 
ing a  morning  or  afternoon  visit  to 
a  lady,  was  expected,  under  pain  of 
passing  for  an  ill-bred  and  grossly 
familiar  person,  to  appear  in  evening 
clothes,  In  1861  he  could  dress  on 
such  occasions  as  in  other  countries. 
In  1857  it  was  absolutely  necessary  to 
put  on  evening  clothes  in  order  to  be 
admitted  into  the  picture  gallery  of 
the  Hermitage,  for  was  not  the 
Hermitage  a  palace?  In  1861  this 
rule  was  no  longer  in  force.  In  1857 
smoking  in  the  streets  of  St.  Peters- 
burg was  forbidden.  In  1861  it  was 
permitted,  or  at  least  tolerated.  In 
1857,  at  Moscow,  if  not  at  the 
more  cosmopolitan  St.  Petersburg, 
only  the  lowest  of  the  low 
would  ride  in  an  omnibus  :  Russian 
omnibuses  at  that  period  were 
indeed  of  primitive  and  slightly 
facetious  construction.  In  1861 
Russian  omnibuses  were  no  longer 
open  vehicles,  consisting  of  two  long 
benches  placed  back  to  back,  and 
separated  by  a  high  partition  :  they 
were  of  ordinary  make,  and  it  was 
no  longer  a  disgrace  (at  least  not 
at  St.  Petersburg)  to  be  seen  in 
one.  In  the  passport  offices  the 
clerks  of  the  year  1857  used  to  take 
bribes  quite  openly,  in  the  form  of 
paper-money,  conveniently  folded  in 
the  document  to  which  their  signa- 
ture was  required.  In  1861  I  learned 
that  it  was  neither  necessary  nor 
desirable,  nor  even,  in  some  cases, 
polite  to  offer  bribes  at  random.  In 
1857  the  post-office  clerks  at  Moscow 
used  to  lend  their  friends  the  English 
illustrated  papers  before  sending  them 
out  to  be  delivered  to  the  persons  who 
had  subscribed  for  them.  In  1861 
this  curious  but  not  unamiable  prac- 
tice had  been  abandoned.  In  1857 
officers  travelling  by  the  St.  Peters- 
burg-Moscow railway  did  not  pay 
for  their  tickets,  or  rather  dispensed 
altogether  with  them  ;  and  many 
civilians,  after  travelling  the  whole 
distance,  bought  tickets  only  at  the 
last  station  for  presentation  at  the 
terminus.  Others  with  a  third-class 
No.  220. — VOL.  xxxvn. 


ticket  travelled  first  class.  Every 
one  cheated  the  railway,  which  be- 
longed at  that  time  to  the  govern- 
ment ;  and  every  one  gave  the  guard 
a  rouble  or  so,  according  to  the 
extent  of  the  fraud  connived  at. 
The  guards  were  honest  men  in  the 
style  of  those  moderately  severe  Rus- 
sian officials  who,  in  the  words  of 
Gogol,  do  not  "  steal  too  much  for 
their  place."  Thus  a  guard  who  had 
been  properly  bribed,  always  men- 
tioned the  fact  to  the  guard  who  re- 
placed him  at  a  certain  point  in  the 
journey  ;  upon  which  this  other  guard, 
in  the  fairest  manner,  did  not  expect 
to  be  bribed  again.  In  1861  the 
St.  Petersburg-Moscow  railway  having 
now  passed  into  the  hands  of  a  com- 
pany, every  traveller  paid  the  ap- 
pointed price  for  his  place,  according 
to  the  class  in  which  he  proposed  to 
travel.  The  guards  apparently  re- 
ceived a  salary,  but  they  could  no 
longer  make  a  fortune  as  their  prede- 
cessors were  reported  to  have  done. 

There  was  less  rigidity  then  in 
some  things,  and  there  was  less 
laxity  in  others.  Visiting  Russia  a 
third  time  in  1864,  I  found  mat- 
ters the  same  externally  in  that  year 
as  in  1861  and  1862.  But  the  change 
even  in  the  outward  aspect  of  things 
between  the  years  1857  and  1861  was 
very  remarkable  and  very  significant. 
The  insurrectionary  movement  in 
Poland,  which,  eighteen  months  later, 
was  to  put  an  end  to  the  reform 
movement  in  Russia,  had  not  as  yet 
caused  the  Russians  any  anxiety.  The 
Russians,  indeed,  hoped  to  profit  by 
it  ;  for,  with  a  view  of  allaying  the 
agitation,  concessions  were  being  made 
to  Poland,  which,  it  was  felt,  must 
sooner  or  later  be  extended  to  Russia. 
For  this  reason  the  Russian  Liberals 
would  have  been  glad  to  see  the  consti- 
tution of  1815  restored  to  Poland.  No 
one  in  Russia  thought  at  that  time 
that  the  Poles  would  actually  rise  ; 
and  many,  finding  that  Poland  was 
to  have  a  separate  Council  of  State, 
and  that  the  University  of  Warsaw 
was  to  be  restored,  and  that  certain 

x 


306 


The,  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


elective  assemblies  were  to  be  formed, 
flattered  themselves  that  the  end  of 
it  would  be  the  introduction  of  a  con- 
stitutional system  first  into  Poland, 
and  afterwards  into  Russia  generally. 

Thus,  after  passing  several  months 
in  various  parts  of  Poland,  I  found,  on 
arriving  at  St.  Petersburg,  no  trace  of 
bitterness  against  the  Poles,  except, 
indeed,  among  a  few  of  the  severer 
kind  of  officers,  who  objected  to 
anarchy  in  all  forms  and  under  all 
conditions.  Mr.  Katkoff,  editor  of  the 
Russian  Messenger  and  of  the  Moscow 
Gazette,  who  attacked  the  Poles  so  bit- 
terly when  the  insurrection  had  broken 
out  and  was  being  supported  by  West- 
ern diplomacy,  wrote  nothing  against 
them  as  long  as  they  only  asked  for 
concessions  of  which  the  last  word  was 
known  to  be  the  constitution  of  1815. 
Mr.  Aksakoff,  whose  name  has  since 
become  so  well  known  in  connection 
with  the  Slavonic  Committee  of 
Moscow,  denied,  like  all  Russians, 
the  right  of  the  Poles  to  Lithuania 
and  the  other  provinces  of  ancient 
Poland  annexed  by  Russia,  in  which 
the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  are 
not  of  Polish  descent;  but,  like  the 
moderate-liberal  Russian  Messenger  and 
the  extreme-liberal  Contemporary,  he 
was  in  favour  of  granting  the  fullest 
liberty  to  the  Poles  of  the  kingdom  of 
Poland,  even  to  the  extent  of  abandon- 
ing the  country  to  them  altogether. 
Then,  as  now,  the  Akasakoffs  attached 
great  importance  to  the  principle  of 
nationality  and  supreme  importance  to 
the  principle  of  Slavonian  unity.  They 
also,  in  their  Slavonian  organ  the  Day, 
regarded  all  questions  from  what  they 
considered  a  high  moral  point  of  view. 
The  Polish  claims  to  Kieff  and  Smo- 
lensk were  described  as  "mad,"  and 
not  only  "  quite  mad,  but  immoral  in 
the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  being 
based  upon  possession  gained  by  force 
and  directed  against  the  freedom  of 
the  people."  But  "judging  with  all 
severity  the  Polish  claims  to  Kieff  and 
Smolensk,  we  should  sin  against  logical 
sense  were  we  to  deny  the  legitimacy 
of  their  patriotism  in  regard  to  Posen, 


Cracow,  and  Warsaw.  If  the  Austrians 
and  Prussians  have  not  had  conscien- 
tiousness vouchsafed  to  them  suffi- 
ciently acute  to  enable  them  to 
understand  in  what  relation  they 
stand  to  the  Polish  people,  loe  can 
boast  of  the  special  mercy  of  God  in 
that  respect,  so  that  we  are  made  to 
feel  every  falling-off  from  the  moral 
law  ;  to  feel  every,  even  the  smallest, 
departure  from  rectitude,  and,  accord- 
ingly, that  much  of  it  which  our 
historical  lot  has  assigned  to  us  in 
connection  with  Poland 

"  As  for  the  annexation  of  the  king- 
dom of  Poland,  Russia  granted  it  a 
constitution;  and  Polish  nationality, 
by  the  way,  owes  its  very  existence  to 
that  incapacity  of  ours  which,  as  we 
have  said,  forms  our  moral  merit  in 
history.  If  any  fault  can  be  charged 
against  us,  it  is  to  be  found  in  our 
having  supported  the  ambitious  claims 
of  our  neighbours,  and  having  con- 
sented to  the  subjection  of  a  free 
Slavonian  race  to  foreigners.  But,  on 
the  whole,  Russia  was  less  in  fault 
than  either  of  the  other  Powers  as 
regards  the  destruction  and  partition 
of  Poland,  though,  as  a  moral  country, 
she  feels  more  deeply  than  either  of 
them  whatever  injustice  there  was  in 
the  affair.  From  this  it  is  clear, 
that  for  the  peace  of  our  national  con- 
science it  is  absolutely  necessary  to 
give  freedom  and  power  to  the  moral 
principle,  and  to  manage  to  get  to  the 
truth  as  to  our  relations  towards  the 
Poles.  .  .  .  We  will  allow  ourselves  a 
supposition.  Supposing  we  were  to  step 
out  of  Poland  and  take  our  stand  on 
our  own  Russian  boundaries  ?  Firmly 
protecting  the  latter,  we  could  then 
be  patient  and  impartial  witnesses  of 
the  internal  struggles  and  labours  of 
Poland.  Undoubtedly  that  would  be- 
not  only  morally  pure,  but  even  gene- 
rous on  our  part.  Continuing  our 
supposition,  let  us  ask,  would  the 
Poles  have  enough  strength  to  create 
anything  good  and  lasting,  and  woulc 
their  neighbourhood  be  injurious 
us?  .... 

"  If  the  Poles,  carried  away  by  their 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


307 


political  ambition,  should  overstep 
their  boundaries  and  invade  us,  they 
would  meet  not  only  unremitting  re- 
sistance from  the  people,  but  would 
give  us  a  full  moral  right  to  punish 
their  unlawfulness  and  destroy  the 
cause  of  wrongful  bloodshed.  But  if 
the  Poles  are  capable  of  being  re-born, 
of  repenting  of  their  historical  mis- 
takes, and  will  take  their  stand  as  a 
peaceful  Slavonian  people,  then,  cer- 
tainly, the  Russian  people  would  be 
glad  to  see  in  them  kind,  friendly 
neighbours.  However  we  think  that, 
in  any  case,  Poland  herself,  after  some 
years,  would  try  to  re-unite  itself — 
this  time  willingly  and  sincerely — to 
Russia.  The  wound  in  our  body,  so 
long  and  so  painfully  sore,  would 
then,  at  last,  be  healed.  Our  social 
conscience  would  no  longer  be  troubled 
by  doubt,  and  the  moral  principle 
would  fully  triumph.  Is  it  possible 
that  this  end  cannot  be  attained  by  a 
peaceful  and  reasonable  path  ?  Can  it 
be  that  the  Poles,  having  forgotten 
the  rule — Respice  finem — is  it  possible 
that  they  can  only  be  brought  to 
reason  by  incidents,  and  that  no  other 
proofs  can  reach  them  ?  "We  are  con- 
vinced that,  early  or  late,  there  will 
be  the  closest,  fullest,  and  most 
sincere  union  of  Slavonian  Poland 
with  Slavonian  Russia.  The  course 
of  history  leads  undeniably  thereto. 
And  would  it  not  be  better,  in  the 
sight  of  such  an  unavoidable  histori- 
cal conclusion,  to  look  forward  and 
remove  all  causes  of  animosity  and 
misfortune,  and,  willingly  confessing 
and  repenting  mutually  of  our  histo- 
rical sins,  join  together  in  a  brotherly 
and  intimate  union  against  our  general 
enemies — ours  and  of  all  Slavonians." 
The  Dyen  (Day}  was  ultimately 
suppressed.  Not  that  the  Aksakoffs 
and  their  Slavophil  followers  enter- 
tained then,  any  more  than  now, 
direct  revolutionary  tendencies.  But 
their  independent  spirit  might  in 
itself  be  regarded  as  a  danger;  and 
the  principle  of  nationality  so  con- 
stantly and  so  energetically  affirmed 
by  them  had  much  affinity  with  the 


better  understood  principle  of  demo- 
cracy. The  Slavophils  are  anti-German, 
anti-bureaucratic,  and,  in  their  tho- 
roughly Slavonian  Russia  of  the  future, 
would  found  everything  on  the  com- 
munal institutions  of  the  peasantry, 
who  alone  in  Russia  are  held  to 
have  maintained  in  perfect  purity  the 
sacred  traditions  of  Slavonian  life. 
Seeing  in  Russia  the  hope  of  all  other 
Slavonian  countries,  the  Aksakoffs 
would,  for  that  reason  alone,  have  been 
opposed  to  everything  that  threatened 
the  existence  and  prosperity  of  Russia 
as  a  state.  They  could  have  no  sym- 
pathy, then,  with  Mr.  Herzen's  views. 
Herzen  was  delighted,  nevertheless, 
with  the  Day,  and  saluted  its  editors 
as  ncs  amis  les  ennemis. 

With  all  its  strength  the  Russian 
colossus  has  many  points  of  weakness  : 
and  the  Russian  emigrants  in  London, 
who  aimed  at  nothing  less  than  the 
complete  destruction  of  the  state,  saw 
allies  in  the  Slavophils,  with  their  strong 
feeling  of  nationality,  in  the  religious 
dissidents  (whose  supposed  interests 
were  at  one  time  looked  after  in  Lon- 
don by  Mr.  Kelsieff),  in  the  peasantry 
who,  it  was  hoped,  would  show  them- 
selves dissatisfied  with  the  results  of 
the  Law  of  Emancipation,  and  in  the 
Poles.  An  insurrection  of  peasants 
did,  in  fact,  take  place  in  the  govern- 
ment of  Kazan  soon  after  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Law  of  February,  1861, 
headed  by  an  impostor  named  Anton 
Petroff,  who  called  himself  the  Em- 
peror, and  assured  the  peasants  that 
the  land  which  the  Law  required 
them  to  redeem  had  been  made  over 
to  them  unconditionally.  But  Petroff 
was  shot,  and  the  peasants  generally 
showed  more  intelligence  and  more 
moderation  than  their  pretended 
friends  had  credited  them  with. 

Towards  the  end  of  1861  the  revo- 
lutionary party  found — or  perhaps 
created — a  new  support  in  a  sudden 
passion  for  establishing  popular  schools, 
which  seized  upon  officers,  professors, 
students,  and  the  educated  classes 
generally  in  St.  Petersburg.  There 
was  much  that  was  admirable  in  this 


308 


The  Eeform  Period  in  Russia, 


movement,  and  it  was  not  every  one 
who,  in  undertaking  to  teach  soldiers 
and  workmen  to  read  and  write,  did 
so  with  the  sole  motive  of  instructing 
them  in  the  principles  of  revolution.  In 
the  autumn  of  1861  an  officer  to  whom 
I  was  speaking  of  the  change  which, 
having  just  arrived  at  St.  Petersburg, 
I  had  noticed  in  the  appearance  and 
demeanour  of  the  Russian  soldier,  told 
me  that  more  important  changes  were 
taking  place  than  those  which  I  might 
have  observed  in  the  attitude,  no 
longer  slavish,  of  the  soldier  in  pre- 
sence of  his  chiefs.  "  Come  to  the 
Military  School,"  he  said,  "next 
Sunday,  and  you  will  see  something 
that  will  perhaps  surprise  you." 

At  the    Military  School,  as  at  the 
School  of  Artillery,  and  several  other 
military  establishments  and  barracks — 
almost  everywhere,  in  fact,  where  sol- 
diers were  quartered — Sunday  classes 
had  been  formed.     The  officers  acted  as 
teachers,  and  the  soldiers  under  their 
guidance     learned    reading,    writing, 
arithmetic,  and  in  some  cases  geome- 
trical drawing.     The  rooms  were  hung 
round  with  maps  and  plans ;  and  the  sol- 
diers, writing  at  their  desks  or  grouped 
round  instructors,  seemed  industrious 
and  attentive.     I  was  told  that  they 
had  a  great  desire  to  leam,  and  learned 
very  quickly.     I  visited  three  of  these 
schools  at   which   officers   had  trans- 
formed themselves  into  Sunday-school 
teachers ;  and  I  was  intimate  enough 
with  some  of  the  teachers  to  be  able 
to  ask  them  the  true  meaning  of  this 
rage  on  the  part  of  officers  for  improv- 
ing the  mental  and  moral  condition  of 
their  men.     After   several   conversa- 
tions  on  the  subject,  I  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  officers  who  taught 
in  the  Sunday-schools  were  animated 
by   a   sincere    desire   to    benefit    the 
soldiers.     They  did  not  forget,  how- 
ever, that  the  cordial  relations  they 
were   establishing   with    them  would 
secure  for  them  an  influence  of  a  new 
kind.      The      Russian     soldier     was 
formerly    in    mortal    terror    of     his 
officer.     He   obeyed   him ;    but  there 
could  be  no  question  of  entering  into 


his  ideas  and  sharing  his  views.  The 
officers  who  taught  in  the  Sunday- 
schools  wished  to  gain  the  intelligent 
sympathy  of  their  men ;  and  not  per- 
haps with  a  view  to  the  requirements 
of  the  service  alone.  They  were  all 
liberals,  and  often  of  a  very  "  ad- 
vanced" type.  But  who  in  Russia 
was  not  a  liberal  during  the  years 
1861  and  1862,  from  the  publication, 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  emancipation 
edict,  with  the  ideas  of  social  and 
political  regeneration  which  it  called 
forth  (and  with  the  hopes  of  a  general 
subversion  of  the  political  structure 
which  to  some  minds  it  also  suggested) 
until  the  violent  reaction  suddenly 
brought  about  by  the  Polish  insurrec- 
tion? 

The  liberalism  of  the  military  Sun- 
day-school teachers  was  thought,  in 
any  case,  to  be  of  too  practical  a 
kind  ;  and  the  schools,  after  being  for 
a  time  looked  upon  by  the  superior 
authorities  with  a  certain  favour,  were 
in  the  end  closed.  The  Governor- 
General  of  St.  Petersburg  and  the 
principal  police  officials  had  dis- 
approved of  them  from  the  first. 

While  the  military  Sunday-schools 
of  St.  Petersburg  were  still  in  exist- 
ence, a  well-known  professor  of  the 
Moscow  University  assured  me  that 
they  were  "  hot-beds  of  revolution." 
No  proofs  on  the  subject  were  ever 
publicly  produced  ;  and  some  said  that 
it  was  from  suspicion  of  the  teachers, 
others  that  it  was  from  discoveries 
made  as  to  the  character  of  the  books 
used  that  the  determination  to  close 
the  Sunday-schools  proceeded. 

Censors  in  despotic  states  have  often 
been  ridiculed  for  seeking,  and  even 
discovering  revolutionary  ideas  in  the 
most  harmless  publications.  But  revo- 
lutionary writers  have  shown  equal  in- 
genuity in  introducing  their  ideas  into 
the  most  unlikely  works,  such  as  spell- 
ing-books, primers,  picture-books,  and 
the  like.  I  was  assured  in  1861,  by  a 
person  who  ought  to  have  been  well 
informed  on  such  points,  that  a  Rus- 
sian revolutionary  cookery-book  had 
been  brought  out,  in  which  directions 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


309 


for  preparing   dishes  were  varied   by 
reflections   on    liberty.      School-books 
and  manuals  on  ordinary  subjects  pass 
the  censorship  in  ordinary  times  easily 
enough ;   and  once   marked  with   the 
official  stamp  of  approbation,  they  can 
be     sold    without     danger,    however 
doubtful  their  contents.     Many  of  the 
revolutionary   picture-books   had    not 
passed  the  censorship  at  all.     In  these 
cases,   the   revolutionary  matter    had 
been  put  into  an  attractive  snd  seem- 
ingly innocent  form,  with  the  view  of 
getting  it  swallowed  by  the  peasantry. 
In   ordinary  reading   circles,  every 
author  seemed  at  that  time  to  be  tested 
by  the  degree  of    "liberalism"    con- 
tained in  his  writings.     A  young  Rus- 
sian  officer   who    had    been   reading 
Kinglake's  History  of  the  Crimean  War 
told  me  that  what  he  chiefly  admired 
in  that  work  (admirable  for  so  many 
reasons)   was  the  "  daring  manner  in 
which  the  author  spoke  of  the  Emperor 
Nicholas."     I  heard  Macaulay  praised 
by  Russians  on  the  ground  of  his  emi- 
nent merit  as  a  "liberal"   writer.     A 
Russian  young  lady,  whom  I  recom- 
mended    to    read    Christie    Johnstone, 
wanted    to   know    whether     in    that 
charming    tale    the  author  expressed 
"  liberal  opinions."     Liberalism  found 
its  way  even  into  the  pictures  of  the 
period  ;  and  in  the  Exhibition  of  1861 
the   patience  of   the  poor  was  freely 
contrasted  with  the  overbearing  nature 
of  the  rich,  while  the  subject  of   one 
painting,  which  gained  for  its  author 
a  gold  medal,  was  the  death  of  a  Polish 
exile  on  his  way  to  Siberia. 

The  public  was  sometimes  more 
ingenious  than  the  censorship  itself  in 
perceiving  hidden  meanings.  The 
censorship,  on  the  other  hand,  found, 
now  and  then,  the  most  curious  mare's- 
nests  ;  and  I  was  myself  deprived  in 
1862,  by  the  Moscow  censorship  for 
books  introduced  from  abroad  of  a 
legendary  work  on  the  subject  of 
Twardowski,  the  Polish  Faust,  because 
it  pleased  the  too  ingenious  censors  to 
believe  that  Twardowski  was  an  im- 
personation of  Poland  and  Mephis- 
topheles  an  impersonation  of  Russia. 


Just  when'the  passion  for  teaching  at 
Sunday-schools  had  reached  its  height 
some  disturbances  of  a  significant  kind 
broke   out   at  the  University   of    St. 
Petersburg.     The   effect   of    lowering 
the  fees  and  of  removing  the  limita- 
tion on  the  number  of  students  had 
been  to  draw  hundreds  of  young  men 
to  the  universities  who  were  just  able, 
and,  in  some  cases,  not  quite  able  to 
support  themselves.    Exhibitions  were 
founded  in  the  interest  of  these  latter ; 
and  it  became  the  custom  to  deliver 
lectures   and   to   get  up   concerts,  at 
which   the    principal    singers    in    St. 
Petersburg  were  expected  to  give  their 
services  gratuitously,  for   the   benefit 
of  poor  students.     The  students  main- 
tained a  fund  among  themselves  and 
themselves  administered  it.  Now  it  had 
occurred  to  a  newly- appointed  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction,  Count  Putiatin, 
an  admiral  just  arrived  from   Japan, 
that  the  fees  at  the  universities  ought 
to   be   raised   and   the   fund   for   the 
benefit  of  the  poor  students  suppressed. 
Count  Putiatin  was  declared  by  some 
of  his  friends  to  be  a  great  admirer  of 
English  institutions,  and  it  had  per- 
haps struck   him   that    Russian  uni- 
versities ought  to  be  in  some  measure 
assimilated  to  English  universities.  It 
certainly,  however,  had   appeared   to 
the  Government  that  there  was  some 
danger  in  giving  a  superior  education 
to   a  number  of  young  men  who  had 
no  means  of  their  own  and  who,  if  they 
failed   to   make  a  career,  would  find 
themselves   altogether    "unclassed;" 
too   pi'oud  to  return  to  their  original 
position,  incapable    of   making  a  new 
position  for  themselves.     As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  secret  societies  of  the  last 
few  years  have  been  largely  recruited 
from  among  university  students,  espe- 
cially such  as  had  no  particular  future 
before  them.     It  does  not  thence  fol- 
low that  in  Russia,  where  the  educated 
class   is    so    small    compared   to   the 
entire  population,  great   facilities  for 
education  should  not  be  offered ;  and 
in  any  case    the   new  regulations    in- 
troduced   by    Count   Putiatin   caused 
great   dissatisfaction   on  the   part   of 


310 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


the  students  as  a  body,  followed  by 
meetings,  the  sending  of  deputations, 
and  at  last  by  demonstrations  of  a 
public  character,  with  active  repres- 
sion on  the  part  of  the  troops,  nume- 
rous arrests,  and  the  closing  of  the 
university. 

What  had  happened  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  St.  Petersburg  happened  soon 
afterwards  at  that  of  Moscow,  and 
indeed  at  all  the  universities  of  the 
empire.  Thus  every  university  in 
Russia  was  for  a  time  shut  up. 

After  the  closing  of  the  universities, 
the  university  professors  (at  least  in 
St.  Petersburg)  gave  gratuitous  lec- 
tures at  a  hall  selected  for  the  pur- 
pose ;  and  these  were  largely  attended 
by  students  and  others,  who  in  every 
lecture  found  some  pretext  for  a  poli- 
tical demonstration.  Several  profes- 
sors, instead  of  lectures,  delivered 
exciting  speeches.  But  even  those 
who  kept  strictly  to  the  subject  they 
had  engaged  to  treat  found  them- 
selves exposed  to  applause  which 
some  of  them  would  gladly  have  dis- 
pensed with.  A  professor  who  had 
been  lecturing,  not  on  a  political,  but 
on  a  politico-economical  subject,  was 
listened  to  in  silence  until,  speaking 
of  state  finance,  he  happened  to  say 
that,  among  the  various  qualifications 
for  a  finance-minister,  that  of  honesty 
must  of  course  be  included.  The 
remark  was  not  and  could  not  be 
intended  to  carry  with  it  any  per- 
sonal allusion.  But  the  students 
fancied  that  an  attack  was  meant  on 
an  important  official  personage,  and 
the  professor  was  loudly  cheered  in 
consequence.  The  involuntary  object 
of  this  homage  told  me  that  all  the 
lectures  were  listened  to  chiefly  with 
a  view  to  the  political  allusions  and 
the  expressions  of  "  liberalism  "  which 
it  was  hoped  they  would  contain ;  and 
after  a  time  the  gratuitous  lectures 
by  university  professors,  like  the 
universities  and  the  Sunday-schools, 
were  closed  by  superior  order.  One 
of  the  lecturers,  Professor  Pavloff,  was 
sent  to  Siberia. 

Signs  of  the  newly-awakened  spirit 


next  manifested  themselves  in  the 
Assemblies  of  the  Nobility,  which 
were  held,  early  in  1862  at  Moscow, 
St.  Petersburg,  Toula,  Tver  Smolensk, 
and  in  all  the  large  provincial  towns 
(chief  towns  of  "  governments  "), 
throughout  Kussia.  At  that  time  it 
could  scarcely  have  been  known  in  the 
west  of  Europe — probably  many  per- 
sons are  unaware  of  it  even  now — that 
an  organisation  already  existed  in 
Russia  by  which  large  bodies  of 
landowners  could  communicate  their 
views  in  a  direct  manner  to  the  Crown. 
Such  an  organisation,  however,  had  ex- 
isted since  the  days  of  Catherine.  It 
is  true  that  but  little  advantage  was 
taken  of  it.  Under  the  Emperor 
Nicholas,  as  in  preceding  reigns,  the 
Russian  nobles  went  quietly  enough 
to  Siberia  when  they  were  sent  there, 
often  without  trial,  sometimes  without 
formal  accusation.  Nor  was  any  at- 
tempt made  to  procure  the  replace- 
ment of  mere  arbitrary  rule  by  a  sys- 
tem of  legality,  except,  indeed,  from 
time  to  time  through  the  medium 
of  a  conspiracy.  For  the  most  part 
the  attitude  of  the  Russian  nobles  was 
that  of  courtiers,  content  if  now  and 
then  they  received  from  their  sovereign 
a  decoration  or  a  smile.  They  consoled 
themselves,  perhaps,  with  the  reflec- 
tion that  if  they  belonged  to  the 
Emperor,  their  serfs  belonged  to  them 
— much  as  the  serfs  were  said  to  revel 
in  the  idea  that  if  they  were  their 
master's  property,  the  land  they  cul- 
tivated was  their  own. 

Under  the  Emperor  Nicholas,  the 
nobles  used  to  meet  in  their  assemblies 
once  every  three  years  to  elect  judges 
(a  bad  system,  which  the  judicial  re- 
forms introduced  in  1864  did  away 
with)  and  "marshals,"  whose  duty  it 
was  to  represent  the  wants  of  their 
fellow  nobles  to  the  sovereign.  It  is 
said  that  in  practice  the  marshals  of 
the  nobility  were  only  expected  to  give 
good  entertainments. 

With  the  emancipation  of  the  pea- 
santry, the  nobles  or  landed  pro- 
prietors found  themselves  placed  in  a 
new  position,  which  was  thus  expressed 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


311 


at  the  time  :— "  A  new  class  of  free 
peasants,  possessing  a  perfect  system 
of  self-government  in  the  village  com- 
munes, was  being  formed  beneath 
them ;  a  class  numbering  23,000,000, 
in  presence  of  which  the  nobility,  with 
its  merely  nominal  privileges,  must  in 
time  lose  all  prestige,  unless  endowed 
with  a  sufficient  amount  of  political 
power  to  enable  it  to  keep  its  natural 
place  at  the  head  of  society."  It  had 
to  choose,  moreover,  between  retaining 
certain  exemptions,  of  no  real  import- 
ance, but  calculated  to  excite  the  envy 
of  other  classes,  and  resigning  these 
privileges  while  demanding  rights  for 
the  nation  in  general. 

When  the  time  had  arrived  for  the 
assemblies  to  be  held,  Mr.  Valouieff, 
the  Minister  of  the  Interior,  to  prevent 
them  from  going  too  far  in  their  de- 
mands, and  also  by  way  of  paying  them 
&  certain  amount  of  respect,  gave  them 
five  questions  to  consider,  and  while 
asking  for  replies  to  these  particular 
inquiries,  begged  them  not  to  send  any 
formal  address  to  the  Emperor.  The 
Assemblies,  however,  of  Moscow,  St. 
Petersburg,  Tver,  Toula  and  Smolensk, 
all  voted  addresses,  in  which  the  for- 
mation of  a  national  representative 
legislative  assembly  was  expressly  de- 
manded ;  not  with  the  view  of  limiting 
the  Tsar's  power,  but  on  the  ground 
that  under  the  existing  system  the  true 
wants  of  the  country  were  not  known 
and  could  not  be  ascertained. 

"In  every  rank  of  society,"  said 
the  address  voted  by  the  Moscow 
nobility,  "there  is  some  sort  of  de- 
parture from  law,  and,  in  their  true 
meaning,  the  laws  are  not  observed. 
Neither  persons  nor  property  have 
any  protection  against  the  will  of  the 
administration.  Classes  have  risen 
one  against  another,  and  the  enmity 
between  them  grows  greater  and 
greater  in  consequence  of  individual 
discontent,  together  with  a  general 
fear  of  a  pecuniary  catastrophe  from 
a  government  financial  crisis,  indicated 
already  by  the  instability  of  the  unit 
of  reckoning,  an  utter  absence  of 
credit,  and,  finally,  by  a  multiplicity 


of  false  rumours  which  convulse  the 
public  mind.  Such,  in  a  few  words, 
is  the  present  state  of  things,  and  the 
Moscow  nobility  thinks  it  its  duty  to 
address  the  Emperor  on  the  subject. 
The  corner-stone  on  which  all  these 
evils  rested — the  right  of  holding 
serfs — has  been  taken  away  and  de- 
stroyed, but  much  has  yet  to  be  done 
in  order  to  reset  the  shaken  edifice  of 
the  state  on  substantial  foundations. 
To  eradicate  the  bad,  and  to  march  in 
front,  after  its  Emperor,  in  the  path 
of  peaceful  reforms,  such  as  shall 
satisfy  the  existing  wants  of  society, 
restore  a  full  measure  of  order,  and 
avert,  even  in  the  future,  all  possible 
disturbances — this  is  the  desire  of  the 
Moscow  nobility ;  and  it  addresses  its 
Emperor  in  all  confidence,  and  sub- 
mits to  his  gracious  inspection  the 
following  measures  as  calculated  to 
rescue  the  country  from  its  present 
difficult  position : — 

"1.  A  greater  extension  to  appoint- 
ment by  election  in  the  government 
service,  and  also  to  local  self-govern- 
ment. At  the  same  time,  there  must 
be  a  more  strict  fulfilment  of  the  law, 
not  only  by  the  subordinates,  but  also 
by  the  superior  officials,  with  strict 
responsibility  before  the  law  for  every 
one  in  the  government  service,  each 
one  being  held  accountable  for  his 
own  actions. 

"  2.  Protection  for  the  rights  of 
person  and  property  of  all  the  citizens 
of  the  Empire,  through  the  introduc- 
tion of  oral  evidence  in  judicial  pro- 
ceedings and  of  trial  by  jury. 

"  3.  The  termination  of  the  present 
antagonistic  attitude  between  nobles 
and  peasants,  through  the  compulsory 
and  immediate  apportionment  of  the 
land. 

"  4.  The  publication  of  the  govern- 
ment debt  and  of  the  government 
revenue  and  expenditure,  so  that  the 
public  mind  may  be  quieted  as  to  the 
prospect  of  a  financial  crisis. 

"5.  The  freest  discussion  in  print 
concerning  reforms  of  all  kinds,  in  con- 
nection with  the  forthcoming  econo- 
mical and  administrative  reforms." 


312 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


In  an  address  voted  unanimously 
by  the  nobles  of  the  district  assembly 
of  Zvenigorod,  in  the  Moscow  govern- 
ment, the  following  passage  occurred : — 

"The  only  advice  the  nobles  can 
offer  to  the  government  at  the  present 
juncture  is  that  it  should  resort  to 
the  measure  which  has  always  been 
adopted  in  Russia  in  extreme  cases 
both  by  the  people  and  the  Crown — 
namely,  the  formation  at  Moscow,  the 
natural  centre  of  the  country,  of  a 
National  Representative  Assembly, 
chosen  from  all  classes  and  from  all 
parts  of  the  Empire." 

The  addresses  in  favour  of  a  consti- 
tution were  left  without  notice ;  but 
the  "five  questions,"  as  to  judicial 
reforms,  publication  of  the  budget, 
increased  liberty  of  the  press,  and  the 
promotion  of  local  assemblies,  having 
elicited  the  answers  which  had,  no 
doubt,  been  anticipated,  these  answers 
were,  it  might  be  said,  taken  into  ac- 
count in  the  laws  on  the  mooted  sub- 
jects which  were  already  in  prepara- 
tion, and  which  were  soon  afterwards 
published. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  war  against 
Turkey  will  the  reform  agitation, 
and  especially  the  agitation  in  favour 
of  a  constitution  maintained  with 
so  much  activity  in  1861  and  1862, 
be  revived  1  In  connexion  with  the 
Alexander  centenary,  celebrated  a 
few  weeks  since  at  St.  Petersburg,  a 
Russian  paper  pointed  out  that  the 
sovereign  whose  memory  was  being 
honoured  had,  among  other  great  feats, 
freed  Europe  from  the  tyranny  of  Na- 
poleon and  replaced  in  France  the  rule 
of  a  despot  by  a  constitutional  system 
of  government.  Perhaps  the  journalist 
wished  his  readers  to  infer  that  what 
was  such  a  good  thing  for  France 
would  not  be  altogether  a  bad  thing 
for  Russia.  That,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
was  what  many  officers  of  Alexander's 
army  thought  on  their  return  from 
France ;  and  the  military  conspiracy 
which,  at  the  end  of  1825,  took  the 
form  of  open  insurrection,  was  the 
natural  consequence  of  Alexander's 


victorious  march  from  Moscow  to 
Paris.  The  defeats  in  the  Crimea 
led  to  much  more  important  changes 
than  any  that  were  caused  by  the 
success  of  the  Russian  armies  in 
Germany  and  France.  But  these  were 
changes  introduced  from  above  and 
originating  in  a  conviction  on  the  part 
of  the  Government  that  the  country 
was  weak  and  must  have  its  resources 
developed  in  every  direction.  The 
most  important  reforms,  moreover,  of 
the  present  reign  were  the  natural  con- 
sequence of  serf-emancipation  which, 
under  Alexander  I.,  when  serfdom 
still  existed  without  any  immediate 
prospect  of  being  abolished  in  Galicia, 
Hungary,  and  various  parts  of  Ger- 
many, was  not  likely  to  be  viewed  as 
a  measure  of  indispensable  necessity 
for  Piussia.  Failure  in  war  has  so 
often  been  followed  by  beneficial 
changes  at  home  that  some  Russians, 
more  liberal  than  patriotic,  are  said  to 
have  desired  the  defeat  of  the  Russian 
armies  in  Turkey  so  that,  in  presence 
of  popular  discontent,  and  its  own 
proved  incapacity  to  conduct  the 
affairs  of  the  nation,  the  Government 
might  feel  itself  called  upon  to  go 
through  the  well-known  form  of 
"granting  a  constitution."  Success 
in  war  proves,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
the  Government  has  at  least  been  able 
to  manage  one  important  matter  satis- 
factorily ;  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
general  joy  of  having  vanquished  an 
enemy  the  victorious  nation  may  forget 
that  in  its  own  country  there  are  a 
few  things  which  it  would  do  well  to 
conquer. 

It  is  scarcely  possible,  however, 
that  the  officers  of  the  Russian  army 
in  European  Turkey  can  return  home 
without  bringing  back  recollections 
of  the  superior  advantages  enjoyed  by 
the  Roumanians  and  Servians  as  com- 
pared with  themselves.  Tributary 
states  as  Roumania  and  Servia  are,  or 
hitherto  have  been,  they  are  at  the  same 
time  constitutional  states  governed  by 
laws  which  have  been  made  by  their 
own  national  representatives  in  Par- 
liament assembled.  Much  has  been 


The  Reform  Period  in  Russia. 


313 


said  of  late  about  the  comfortable 
position  of  the  Bulgarian  peasantry, 
who  are  described  as  possessing  ma- 
terial advantages  which  the  Russians 
themselves  are  without.  If  the  Bul- 
garians are  placed  in  a  similar  position 
to  that  which,  until  the  war  broke  out, 
belonged  to  Servia  and  Roumania,  they 
will  already,  in  a  political  point  of 
view,  be  better  off  than  the  Russians, 
who  not  only  do  not  make  their  own 
laws,  which,  practically,  would  matter 
very  little  if  their  laws  were  just,  but 
are  liable  to  be  condemned  under  very 
unjust  laws,  and  indeed  without  any 
law  at  all.  It  will  certainly  strike 
the  Russians  returning  from  the  south 
as  somewhat  odd  that  the  countries 
which  they  have  done  so  much  to 
liberate  should  be  free  with  a  freedom 
denied  to  their  liberators.  In  Rou- 
mania and  Servia  the  Chief  of  the 
State  can  take  no  important  step  with- 
out consulting  the  Chamber.  In  Russia 
the  Chief  of  the  State  need  not  con- 
sult any  one,  and  we  have  been  re- 
cently told  of  an  address  voted  to  the 
Emperor  Alexander  by  the  Council  of 
State,  which  was  to  have  begun  with 
the  words :  "  Having  learned,  Sire, 
from  the  newspapers  that  Russia  is 
at  war,"  &c. 

In  Eoumania  and  Servia  the  annual 
budget  is  presented  to  the  Chamber  for 
discussion  and  approval.  In  Russia 
the  budget  is  published  —  for  Russia 
learned  some  fifteen  years  ago  what 
Turkey  had  learned  a  few  years 
earlier,  that  not  to  publish  a  budget 
is  to  lose  all  chance  of  contracting  a 
foreign  loan ;  but  the  budget  can- 
not, in  Russia,  for  obvious  reasons, 
be  subjected  to  the  examination  and 
control  which  it  would  meet  with  at 
the  hands  of  a  legislative  chamber. 
Jfor  is  there  any  possibility  in  Russia 
of  criticising  the  acts  of  ministers  and 
officials,  such  as  exists  in  the  minor 
states  which,  as  some  say,  have  been 
dragged  by  Russia,  but  which,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  followed  Russia  very 
readily  into  the  war  against  the  Turks. 
Finally,  the  giant  state  Russia  differs 
from  the  little  states  which  she  has 


taken  under  her  protection  in  that 
every  Russian  is  liable  by  a  simple 
administrative  order — by  a  mere  de- 
cree— to  be  arrested,  imprisoned,  con- 
fined to  a  particular  spot,  or  sent  to 
Siberia,  without  trial,  accusation,  or 
explanation  of  any  kind ;  whereas  in 
Servia  and  Roumania,  as  in  other 
civilised  states,  people  are  neither  ac- 
cused nor  punished  without  being 
brought  to  trial. 

It  is  scarcely  probable  that  after  a 
war  of  liberation,  engaged  in  under 
great  difficulties,  pursued  at  great 
sacrifices,  the  liberators  will  have 
the  sad  courage  to  go  quietly  home 
to  remain  in  a  state  of  political 
slavery,  thanking  Heaven  that  their 
proteges  on  the  Danube  are  enjoying 
political  freedom.  It  is  rather  to  be 
expected  that  they  will  return  in  the 
mood  of  those  Russian  officers  who  had 
made  the  campaign  of  France,  and  of 
whom  a  reactionary  diplomatist  wrote, 
when  a  number  of  them  had  taken  ship 
for  the  Baltic,  that,  in  the  interest  of 
Russia,  it  could  now  only  be  hoped 
that  they  would  all  go  to  the 
bottom.  Liberty  in  France  was  not, 
after  all,  a  Russian  invention.  But 
liberty  in  Roumania  and  Servia  is 
mainly,  if  not  entirely,  due  to  Russia. 
If  Russia  had  never  moved  since  1815 
in  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  there  is 
every  reason  for  supposing  that  both 
Servians  and  Roumanians  would  at 
this  moment  be  directly  under  the 
power  of  the  Turks. 

It  was  a  much  easier  thing,  however, 
to  establish  constitutionalism  in  Servia 
and  Roumania — it  would  be  much 
easier  now  to  establish  constitution- 
alism in  Bulgaria — than  it  would  be  to 
introduce  anything  of  the  kind  into 
Russia.  In  these  new  little  states  the 
crown  is  accepted  with  conditions 
known  and  stipulated  for  beforehand. 
In  Russia,  power  actually  rests  with 
the  reigning  sovereign,  and  it  remains 
with  him  to  say  whether  or  not  he 
will  divest  himself  of  a  portion  of  it 
to  intrust  it  to  an  assembly.  Even  if 
such  an  assembly  existed,  the  Emperor 
might,  if  he  thought  fit,  disregard  its 


314 


Before  the  Snoiv. 


decisions ;  so  difficult  is  it  to  establish 
limited  monarchy  in  countries  where 
no  means  exist  for  keeping  the 
monarch's  power  within  bounds. 

If  an  Emperor  of  Russia  granted 
to  his  subjects  the  most  perfect  con- 
stitution ever  devised,  it  would  be 
open  to  him  at  any  time  to  take  it 
back,  or,  leaving  it  still  in  existence,  to 
set  it  absolutely  at  naught.  Never- 
theless, a  constitution,  liable  now  and 
then  to  be  violated,  is  better  than  no 
constitution  at  all;  and  a  despotic 
sovereign,  who  accustoms  himself, 
little  by  little,  to  share  his  responsi- 
bility with  an  assembly,  may  end  by 
acquiring  the  habit  permanently.  He 
may  find  it  convenient,  and  even  safe, 
to  refer  questions  to  a  representative 
foody,  through  which  the  views  and 
feelings  of  his  subjects  generally  can 
be  arrived  at. 

The  mere  formation  of  a  representa- 
tive debating  society  would  not  in  it- 
self be  any  guarantee  for  individual 
freedom  in  Russia  ;  for  such  an  insti- 
tution might  exist  side  by  side  with 


the  secret  political  police  and  the 
system  of  arbitary  arrests.  But  go- 
vernments, like  individuals,  have  often 
a  conscience  ;  and  the  right  to  criticise 
government  acts — without  which  the 
existence  of  an  assembly  would  be 
meaningless — would  be  a  concession 
of  real  value.  Many  doubt  as  to 
whether  the  introduction  of  constitu- 
tional government  into  Russia  would 
be  of  much  benefit  to  the  empire. 
There  can  be  no  question,  however, 
as  to  whether  it  would  be  of  advantage 
to  Europe.  Those  energetic  men  who, 
during  the  last  few  years,  have  been 
cultivating  disaffection  and  directing 
revolts  in  Turkey,  or  planning  the  de- 
struction of  Austria  through  a  general 
Slavonian  uprising,  would,  under  a 
parliamentary  system,  have  seats  in 
the  chamber,  when,  instead  of  direct- 
ing their  energies  against  the  foreigner 
in  the  interest  of  Russian  dominion, 
they  would  tear  one  another  to  pieces 
with  a  view  to  office. 

H.  SUTHERLAND  EDWARDS. 


BEFORE    THE    SNOW. 

After  Albert  Glatigny. 

WINTER  is  on  us,  but  not  yet  the  snow ! 

The  hills  are  etched  on  the  horizon,  bare, 

The  skies  are  iron  grey,  a  bitter  air, 
With  meagre  clouds  that  shudder  as  they  go; 
One  yellow  leaf  the  listless  wind  doth  blow 

Like  some  new  butterfly,  unclassed  and  rare; 

Your  footsteps  ring  in  frozen  alleys,  where 
The  black  trees  seem  to  shiver  as  you  go. 

Beyond  lie  church  and  steeple,  and  their  old 
And  rusty  vanes  that  rattle  as  they  veer — 

A  sharper  gust  would  shock  them  from  their  hold ! 
Yet  up  that  path,  in  Maytime  of  the  year, 

And  past  that  dreary  ruined  tower  we  strolled 
To  pluck  wild  strawberries  with  summer  cheer ! 


A.  LANG. 


ON  NAVAL  EDUCATION. 


BY   A   NAVAL   NOBODY. 


ON  naval  education  ?  Well !  let  the 
word  pass,  although  it  is  on  some 
branches  of  naval  ignorance  of  which 
I  am  going  to  speak  a  few  words  here. 

Let  me  see  :  what  is  our  reputation 
as  sailors  ?  Of  being  good  seamen,  of 
prompt  perception  and  action,  of  ready 
resource  in  unforeseen  emergencies,  of 
possessing  a  rare  "common-sense,"  of 
dash  and  pluck  in  battle,  of  an  open 
and  hearty  manner.  A  good  list, 
truly !  born  of  our  physical  edu- 
cation, of  our  manner  of  life  on  the 
sea,  of  the  traditions  of  our  gallant 
forefathers. 

The  world  grants  us  this  freely,  and 
if  the  first  of  these  qualities  has  lately 
somewhat  suffered  in  public  estimation, 
if  the  papers  have  seemed  to  enjoy  the 
sensational  reporting  of  "  another  iron- 
clad on  shore,"  if  sarcastic  individuals 
have  joked  grimly  over  "England's 
submarine  fleet,"  this  is  due  to  shore- 
people's  ignorance  of  the  changed  con- 
ditions of  service  afloat — the  change 
from  "  wooden- walls  "  to  "  coffer-dam- 
sided"  ironclads,  from  harmless  "cut- 
waters "  to  vicious  "rams,"  from  the 
pure  breeze  bellying  a  cloud  of  canvas 
overhead  to  the  grease-laden  breath 
from  the  engine-room  below, — and 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that, 
although  with  some  ironclads  the 
ocean  has  been  their  grave,  the  decks 
of  others  will  not  be  "  fields  of  fame  " 
as  gloriously  as  were  ever  those  of  the 
wooden  walls  of  the  olden  days. 

But  it  is  not  of  these  physical 
qualities  which  I  would  speak  now, 
but  of  the  mental  education  of  our 
young  naval  officers  ;  not  the  practical 
education  appertaining  to  their  pro- 
fession in  life,  but  that  broader  edu- 
cation which  is  due  to  the  spirit  of  the 
age ;  not  the  science  of  seamanship  or 
of  warfare,  but  the  sciences  of  peace- 


ful   knowledge — of    geology,    botany, 
natural  history,  and  physics. 

What  is  our  reputation  as  regards 
these  ?  What  have  we  done  to  help 
them  ?  The  answer  is — nothing  ! 

The  Navy  is  always  called  a  "  noble 
profession."  And  so  it  is,  great  and 
noble  even  to  us  who  are  its  valets. 
To  prepare  ourselves,  our  sailors,  our 
ships  to  defend  England's  first  inter- 
ests, to  form  our  country's  first  line 
of  defence  is  a  noble  work  in  the  ideal 
and  in  the  real.  But  there  is  a  but ! 
Is  it  a  noble  life  to  prepare,  to  edu- 
cate, ourselves  for  nothing  but  this, 
for  this  action,  this  (let  us  hope)  suc- 
cessful crowning  of  our  life's  work, 
which  may,  however,  never  come  ? 
And  en  attendant  ? 

In  the  meantime  what  is  our  life  ? 
I  know  what  naval  life  is,  I  know  that 
it  is  one  weary  round  of  cut-and-dried 
routine  and  of  drill ;  of  "  scrub  ham- 
mocks," of  "wash  decks,"  of  "clean 
wood-  and  brass-work,"  of  "  sweep 
decks,"  &c.  ;  of  one  dead,  level  round 
of  necessary  discipline,  varied  by  sleep- 
ing, eating,  drinking,  and  smoking. 
And  of  reading,  you  ask  ?  Well !  no ; 
we  do  not  read  much. 

I  am  not  speaking  of  exceptional 
cases.  I  am  speaking  of  myself,  of 
the  general  "  ruck "  of  the  Navy's 
youth,  and  I  know  that  our  life  is  not 
an  ennobling  one,  that  it  does  not 
raise  us  above  the  generally  low  level, 
and  that  in  all  matters  of  general 
culture  and  interest  we  are  astound- 
ingly  ignorant. 

If  we  were  the  butterflies  of  our 
country,  if  we  had  nothing  on  earth 
to  do  but  to  drive  in  T-carts,  to  dance 
the  insipid  old  dances  night  after 
night,  to  shoot  pheasants  and  grouse 
periodically,  this  would  not  be  astonish- 
ing. If  we  are,  generally  speaking, 


316 


On  Naval  Education. 


more  intelligent  than  they,  it  is  be- 
cause we  have  been  knocked  about  in 
a  rough  school ;  because  from  boyhood 
we  have  been  forced  out  of  their 
narrow  life ;  because  the  whole  world 
is  to  us  what  Europe  only  is  to  them — 
oui*  playground ;  because  to  contrast 
men  and  manners  is  the  natural  out- 
come of  our  peculiar  life.  And  this  we 
owe  to  ourselves,  not  to  those  who  are 
intrusted  with  our  education. 

Comparisons  are  odious.  I  call  the 
butterflies — always  generally  speaking 
— part  and  parcel  of  the  general  low 
level  of  intelligence.  I  do  not  wish 
to  compare  ourselves  with  them.  They 
are  the  drones  and  we  the  workers. 
They  have  their  pockets  lined,  and  we 
have  them  empty.  They  have  their 
brains  quite  empty,  and  we — we  ought 
to  have  them  full.  They  have  an  excuse, 
and  we  have  not.  For  the  opportuni- 
ties we  have  of  storing  our  minds 
with  knowledge,  knowledge  outside  of 
our  profession,  are  endless,  daily  and 
hourly,  if  but  you,  our  pastors  and 
masters,  would  give  us  the  impulse  of 
inquiry  in  our  youth. 

Let  us  glance  at  some  subjects. 
Take,  first,  geology,  and  natural  history. 

A  man-of-war  visits  an  unknown 
country,  say  New  Guinea.  And  what 
information  do  we  bring  back  ?  Can 
we  describe  what  the  special  char- 
acteristics of  the  country  are,  what 
the  botany,  what  the  geology,  what 
the  fauna1?  Scarce  one  scientifically 
intelligible  word :  a  tree  is  a  tree,  a 
palm  a  palm,  a  bird  a  bird,  an  insect 
an  insect !  We  pick  up  a  bone  :  what 
did  it  belong  to — man,  bird,  beast,  or 
fish  ?  We  have  not  the  faintest  notion  ! 
And  what  was  the  geology — volcanic, 
or  otherwise  ?  Oh,  we  forgot  to  take 
notice  !  And  so  on,  and  so  on.  There- 
fore, what  has  to  be  done  when 
scientific  information  is  wanted  ?  Can 
we  depend  on  the  officers  to  tell  us  ? 
No  !  send  a  naturalist.  Not  that  any 
Very  special  and  profound  knowledge 
is  requisite ;  it  is  only  that  geological 
and  botanical  specimens  have  to  be 
collected,  that  certain  fish  or  plants, 
for  which  Drs.  Giinther  and  Hooker 


would  give  their  ears,  should  not  be 
eaten  or  passed  by  if  found.  That 
is  all ! 

But  why  should  not  we  do  this  ? 
"It  is  not  our  work !  "  Bah,  go  to, 
my  friend  !  Go,  see  the  deck  swept ; 
do  housemaid's  work,  since  your  mind 
cannot  rise  above  that  lowly  grade.  To 
us  others,  though,  why  should  not  some 
elementary  geology  and  natural  history 
be  taught,  why  should  we  not  be  able, 
why  should  we  not  be  encouraged,  to 
return  from  our  visit  on  shore  knowing 
what  ai%e  its  characteristic  features, 
able,  too,  to  write  out  a  brief  report 
thereon,  if  required,  for  any  scientific 
society  at  home  ? 

You  laugh  ?  And  so  does  my  com- 
manding officer — in  a  different  way. 
What  has  a  youngster  got  to  do  with 
lumps  of  rock,  with  botanical  speci- 
mens, with  natural  history  curiosities  ? 
"  Throw  that  filth  overboard,  sir ! 
you  dirty  my  decks ;  you  make  my 
ship  smell ;  and  go  on  deck,  sir  !  and 
keep  four  hours  extra  watch  as  a  re- 
minder not  to  do  so  again."  My 
laughing  friend !  I  put  your  intelli- 
gence and  that  of  my  commanding 
officer's  on  a  par.  You  are  scarcely 
worth  arguing  with,  for  it  is  as  useless, 
I'm  sure,  as  it  would  be — Midshipman- 
Easy-like — to  argue  with  him. 

However,  surely  in  this  scientific 
age,  every  sailor  who,  by  the  very 
nature  of  his  profession,  sees  more 
lands  outside  of  his  own  than  most 
other  men,  surely  he  might  be  justly 
expected  to  add  his  mite  to  the  ever- 
growing mountain  of  scientific  in- 
formation. But,  as  it  is,  we,  who 
see  nature  in  all  her  varied  moods,  we, 
who  roam  the  whole  world  over  from 
the  "  palceocrystic  "  Arctic  Sea  to  the 
great  Antarctic  Continent,  we,  who 
girdle  the  globe  several  times  in  our 
lives,  we  return  with  our  minds  almost 
a  blank,  only  vaguely  impressed  with 
what  we  have  seen ;  unable  a  few 
years  afterwards  to  remember  all  that 
which  with  knowledge  and  under- 
standing would  have  been  photo- 
graphed in  our  brain  to  our  dying 
day,  to  the  immense  advantage  of 


On  Naval  Education. 


317 


ourselves,  and  of  all  with  whom   we 
converse. 

Who,  that  has  some  love  of  natural 
history,  has  not  read  Darwin's  Voyage 
of  a  Naturalist,  in  the  Beagle  ?  Was 
ever  written  voyage  more  interesting, 
more  readable — although  "scientific" 
from  beginning  to  end  1  We  cannot 
all  be  Darwins,  but  we  might,  some  of 
us,  be  humble  imitators  of  the  Darwin 
of  that  day.  We  all  have  seen  what 
he  saw — with  our  eyes.  But  having 
eyes,  we  understand  not.  And  I  say 
that  we  should  be  vastly  more  inter- 
esting specimens  of  the  genus  homo  to 
ourselves  and  to  others,  if  we  were 
taught  and  encouraged  to  understand 
in  our  youth. 

On  this  subject,  I  need  but  mention 
what  occurred  the  other  day,  to  illus- 
trate the  extraordinary  indifference  of 
naval  officers  to  enlighten  a  knotty, 
ancient,  and  scientific  problem. 

One  of  Her  Majesty's  ships,  steam- 
ing ten  knots  in  a  certain  direction, 
meets,  if  you  please,  one  fine  morning, 
the  great  sea-serpent  swimming  and 
steering  in  the  opposite  direction,  and 
also  going  at  the  rate  of  ten  knots. 
And  what  does  Her  Majesty's  ship? 
Stop,  and  try  to  make  a  closer  acquaint- 
ance with  this  oft-mentioned,  myste- 
rious and  most  singular  phenomenon  ? 
No !  She,  like  the  great  sea-serpent, 
is  "in  a  hurry;"  she  cannot  wait; 
and  they  pass  each  other,  the  great 
sea-serpent  and  Her  Majesty's  ship, 
not  even  exchanging  "  colours,"  at  the 
rate  of  twenty-five  miles  an  hour. 
And  the  result  is  some  laughably, 
miserably  meagre  details,  which  might 
apply  to  a. well-known  fish  ! 

Surely,  indifference  to  the  science  of 
natural  history  can  no  further  go 
than  this  ! 

Let  us  glance  at  another  subject  on 
which  we  are  also  profoundly  ignorant, 
— foreign  languages. 

Latin  and  Greek  are  supposed  to  be 
indispensable  for  the  education  of  an 
English  gentleman.  I  do  not  quarrel 
with  anybody  that  on  entering  the 
Navy  we  are  made  to  drop  these  dead 
languages.  I  maintain  an  affectionate 


remembrance  of  Horace  and  Ovid,  of 
the  Cyclops,  of  bibulous  songs,  and  as 
I  pace  the  deck  in  my  morning  watch, 
the  "rosy-fingered  Aurora"  comes 
back  to  my  mind,  and  I  think  how 
often  since  those  school-days  have  I 
seen  it,  and  of  how  now  I  would  be 
much  rather  in  my  hammock  dream- 
ing of  something  else.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  find  that  I  am  not  much 
"adrift  "  in  knowing  nothing  of  Latin 
and  Greek,  in  spite  of  Dr.  Schliemann 
and  Mr.  Gladstone.  The  one  living 
branch  of  Latin  which  enables 
scientific  men  of  all  nations  to  have 
one  common  name  for  natural  history 
objects  does  not  come  under  the  head 
of  a  "dead"  language.  This  I  can 
learn  like  a  parrot. 

But  what  I  do  quarrel  about  is,  that 
I  am  not  taught  any  living  language 
to  replace  the  memory  of  the  dead 
ones;  that  when  I  am  ordered  on 
board  a  foreign  man-of-war,  I  am 
ordered  at  the  same  time  to  go  and 
show  off  my  insular  ignorance.  How 
often  have  I  seen  two  naval  officers  of 
different  nationalities  bowing  and 
grinning  to  each  other  idiotically, 
comprehending  each  other  less  than 
two  monkeys  would,  unable  to  ex- 
change a  word,  unable  even  to  rub 
their  naked  stomachs  by  way  of  some- 
thing to  do  with  their  hands,  and  as 
outward  signs  of  mutual  amity  and 
peace,  as  do  the  New  Guinea  savages  ! 
And  why  ?  Because  the  British  officer 
knows  no  language  but  his  own ;  be- 
cause it  is  never  expected  of  him  to 
learn ;  because  from  the  highest  to  the 
lowest  "nobody  cares." 

True:  lately  the  title  of  "inter- 
preter" has  been  offered  as  a  blazon 
on  our  escutcheon.  It  means  a  hard 
examination,  a  few  pounds  extra  pay, 
and  your  life  henceforward  an  extra 
burden.  For  what  was  demanded  of 
you  before  as  a  favour  (if  you  do  know 
a  foreign  language)  is  now  demanded 
of  you  as  a  right,  and  we  are  not  quite 
so  far  gone  in  poverty  yet  that  most 
of  us  would  not  prefer  the  exquisitely 
rare  and  sweet  pleasure  of  being  asked 
a  favour  by  our  superiors,  than  to  be 


318 


On  Naval  Education. 


ordered  about  on  this   matter  as  on 
everything  else. 

And  it  must  be  confessed,  too,  that 
we  are  stupid  and  indifferent  to  know- 
ledge sometimes,  which  it  is  no  one's 
fault  but  our  own  that  we  do  not  pick 
up.     We  have  all  met  young  men  here 
and  there   round  the   world   "  globe- 
trotting."    They  rush  round  our  little 
globe  in  three  or  four  months,  visiting 
the  chief   towns,   flitting   about  from 
billiard-room  to    billiard-room,    from 
"sight"  to  "sight,"  to  be  able  to  say 
they  have  "done"  them.     And  then 
they  return,  having  done  wonders,  of 
course,  seen  everything,  and  yet  seen 
nothing ;  for  of  any  real  insight  into 
the  countries  they  visit  they  as  a  rule 
gain  none — of  the  manners  and  customs 
of   their  people,  of  their  laws,  their 
governments,    their    industries,   their 
comparative  place  among  the  nations. 
All  this  goes  forj  nothing  with  them. 
Their  recollections  of  what  they  have 
seen  are  as  confused  as  the  colours  at 
the  end  of  a  kaleidoscope,  and  their 
ideas  fall  about  as  remarkably  as  do 
the  bits  of  glass  in  that  instrument  when 
you  give  it  a  turn.  And  we  are  almost 
as    bad  as    they — not   quite,  because 
we  have  more  enforced  leisure  infused 
into  our  wanderings,  because  to  travel 
is  to  us  a  matter  of  course  and  nothing 
to  brag  about,  because  to  shake  hands 
with  an  Esquimaux  one  day  and  with 
a    Terra-del-Fuegian   the    next,   with 
the   Mikado   one   day   and    with   the 
Emperor  of  Brazil  the  next,  with  the 
King  of   Fiji  one  day  and  with  the 
trunk  of   Siam's   white   elephant   the 
next,  with  a  New  Guinea  savage  one 
day  and    with  you,   my   reader,   the 
next,  would  all  come  as  naturally  to 
us  as  it  would  to  them  meeting  and 
shaking  hands  with  a  half-a-dozen  of 
their  friends  during  the  course  of  a 
stroll  in  Pall  Mall. 

What  is  mere  distance  to  us  ?  We 
never  think  about  it.  We  have  our 
duty  from  day  to  day;  we  vegetate, 
growling  occasionally,  and  we  wake 
up  one  fine  morning  to  find  ourselves 
at  China,  for  instance.  We  are  not 
out  of  breath,  in  no  frenzy  of  excite- 


ment ;  our  life  goes  on  the  same  as 
ever,  only  that  instead  of  walking 
among  our  countrymen  we  are  elbowed 
by  pig-tailed  yellow  men.  Can't  you 
understand  this  feeling  of — what  the 
Yankees  would  call  —  "Why!  sut- 
tenly,"  wherever  we  sailors  may  find 
ourselves  1  I  suppose  you  can't,  but  it 
exists,  and  it  may  be  the  reason  why 
we  resemble  the  rushing,  scratch- 
surface,  yet  think-they-know-all-about- 
it  "globe-trotters."  By  which  I  mean 
that  we  do  not  inquire  into  the  inner  life 
of  the  countries  we  visit ;  that  we  make 
the  world  too  much  our  playground 
merely,  and  not  a  study — if  general 
information  so  easy  to  pick  up  may  be 
dignified  by  that  name ;  that,  in  short, 
in  this  matter,  as  in  others,  our  ship 
is  too  much  our  prison,  both  mentally 
and  physically. 

And,  returning  again  to  what  should 
be  compulsory  education,  what  shall  I 
say  of  the  physical  sciences — of  che- 
mistry, electricity,  &c. — of  which  we 
are  taught  literally — nothing  ? 

No  !  you  hammer  only  these  subjects 
into  our  heads  which  no  sooner  are  we 
free  to  drop  than  we  do  so  like  a  hot 
potato.  What  then  becomes  of  your 
x,  Y,  z's,  the  hunt  after  which  has 
ended  at  last?  They  have  run  to 
earth ;  there  let  them  stay,  for  it 
will  not  be  we  who  will  dig  them  up. 
What  becomes  of  your  hydrostatics, 
which  appear  not  to  have  taught  us 
the  simplest  principles  of  the  science, 
for  when  we  come  to  apply  them  we 
cannot  calculate,  though  all  the  data 
be  given,  at  what  angle  our  ship  will, 
or  will  not,  "turn  turtle"?  What 
becomes  of  your  mode  of  teaching 
geometry — Euclid,  &c.,  &c.  ? 

I  tell  you  that  almost  everything 
you  teach  us  is  dropped  in  after-life 
from  sheer  weariness,  and  the  subjects 
which  we  do  continue  to  follow  up  by 
ourselves  must  be  approached  and  learnt 
all  over  again  in  a  different  manner. 
Do  not  misunderstand  me.  Our  youth- 
ful brains  must  be  wrought,  developed, 
I  know.  The  Jioio  is  here  the  question. 
I  complain  not  of  what  you  teach  us — 
in  itself.  That  we  should  be  well 


On  Naval  Education. 


319- 


grounded  in  mathematics,  for  instance, 
is  the  qa  va  sans  dire  of  education — no 
matter  what  the  profession.    But  what 
I  do  complain  of  is  that  you  teach  us 
nothing    but    these    (and    these    but 
crudely) ;    that    you    mix   no   leaven 
with   our    daily    bread,    bread   which 
is  as   heavy   as    stones,    which   sinks 
and   leaves  no  sign,  no  lasting  sign, 
as   might    be   expected,    that    it    has 
nourished  our  mental  condition.    Give 
those   of   us,    I  say,  who   wish  it,  a 
chance  of  lifting  ourselves  out  of  the 
beaten  rut  of  routine,  the  routine  of 
our  cut-and- dried  system  of  education, 
the  petty  routine  of  our  daily  life  on 
board  ship.     Let  us  be  able  to  talk 
with     some     authority     about     other 
matters   than   the    "shop" — a   noble 
business,  if  you  will — of  our  profession 
in  life ;  and  able  to  talk  about  what 
we  have  seen  without  the  apologetic 
and  introductory  remark  of  "  I  don't 
know   anything   about   it."      Depend 
upon  it,  we   shall  not  be  the  worse 
sailors   for   this.      Surely   our   minds 
are   capable   of  taking   in   something 
more  than  the  business  of  our  special 
profession ;  surely,  not  being  the  out- 
casts of  society,  not  being  the  silly 
disciples  of  the  theory  "  What's  in  a 
name  ? "  not  being  merely  the  blood 
and  iron  which  girdles  our  land,  we 
should  endeavour  to  bracket  our  names 
with  those  of  the  searchers  of  science, 
to  hold   our  own — in  all   modesty — 
with  the  cultivated  men  of  the  day, 
and  not  be  only  one  of  the  numerous 
tribe  of   the    "  Oh  !-he-lcnows-nothing  " 
young  men  ? 

I,  for  one — and  I  am  sure  there  are 
many  like  me — I  wish  to  be  something 
more  than  the  rough-and-ready  tar, 
who  can  spin  a  good  yarn,  who  can 
tie  clever  knots,  and  who  is,  after  all, 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  worthy  of 
being  credited  with  those  physical 
qualities  with  which  I  have  commenced 
this  growl  on  his  education. 

Are  not  they  going  to  build  a  naval 
college  at  Dartmouth  ?  Then  let  there 
be  within  it  an  elementary  museum  of 
botany,  natural  history,  and  geology. 
Teach  the  young  idea  the  rudiments 


of  science.  Give  them  a  laboratory,, 
teach  them  the  principles  of  chemistry, 
of  electricity,  of  light,  and  of  heat. 
Start  their  interest,  awake  their  intel- 
ligence ;  having  eyes  and  ears,  help 
them  to  use  them.  The  seed  may  not 
fall  always  on  fruitful  soil,  but  when 
it  does  it  will  grow  and  grow,  making 
life  doubly  pleasant,  and  interesting, 
moreover,  to  those  whose  ideas  can 
travel  beyond  the  narrow  domains  of 
their  peculiar  profession.  Vary  the 
dull  round  of  x,  Y,  and  z,  of  Euclid,  of 
dry  mathematics,  with  the  knowledge 
of  nature  and  of  her  laws.  Plant  the 
seed,  I  say,  give  it  a  chance  to  grow  ; 
give  us  a  chance  of  doing  away  with 
that  reproach  that  no  general  scientific 
information  is  to  be  expected  from 
sailors,  that — 

"  A  primrose  on  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  is  to  him, 
And  it  is  nothing  more." 

And  now  while,  sailor-like,  growling, 
let  me  have  it  out,  once  for  all.  Only 
a  few  words  more. 

As  far  as  I  am  concerned,  I  a  naval 
nobody,  I  call  the  whole  system  of  our 
education  utterly  faulty ;  not  only  that 
education  which  does  not  bear  directly 
on  our  profession,  but  to  that  also 
which  does  do  so.  I  say  that  we,  the 
navy's  youth,  are  in  some  professional 
matters  most  deplorably  ignorant,  and 
the  day  will  come  when  we,  and  Eng- 
land, will  wake  up  to  the  fact  with  a 
start.  It  sounds  impossible,  inconceiv- 
able, that  it  is  only  a  privileged  few  who 
are  allowed  to  make  a  study  of  gunnery, 
practically  and  theoretically ;  only  a 
privileged  few  who  are  initiated  into 
the  mysteries  of  torpedoes ;  only  a 
privileged  few  who  are  taught 
thoroughly  the  all-important  know- 
ledge to  a  sailor  of  surveying  and 
navigation  ;  not  even  a  privileged  few 
who  are  taught — with  any  practical 
result — that  science  which  has  dis- 
placed the  science  of  utilising  the 
winds — the  science  of  steam  ;  and  yet 
all  this  is  so  ! 

Of  the  remedy  for  this  I  myself 
have  no  doubt.  It  will  be  found  in 


320 


On  Naval  Education. 


keeping  us  longer  studying  on  shore, 
at  a  bond  fide  college,  and  not  at  a  farce 
as  is  the  naval  college  at  Greenwich. 
For  that  that  college  is  a  farce  no  one 
who  has  studied  there  will  deny.  It 
is  eminently  so  for  those  who  are  made 
to  study  there,  and  pre-eminently  so 
for  those  who  go  there  voluntarily  to 
study.  The  programme  of  the  "  course" 
for  the  latter  sounds  well  enough,  but 
the  superficial  manner  in  which  it  is 
carried  out  is  quite  undeniable.  And 
you  hamper  us  there,  young  men  of 
twenty  to  thirty,  and  more,  years  of 
age,  with  a  discipline  fit  only  for  boys 
and  ship-board  life.  Your  "  harassing 
legislation"  worries  and  sickens  us. 
We  gladly  escape  from  your  misnamed 
college,  letting  pass  the  honours  which 
we  might  there  gain,  the  knowledge 
which  we  might  there  acquire,  never 
thinking  of  it  in  the  future  as  an 
Alma  Mater,  but  as  a  place  where 
your  paltry  naval  discipline  in  all  its 
minutiae  has  vexed  and  perplexed  us, 
curbed  our  good  intentions  of  learning, 
driven  us  back,  if  back  we  could  go, 
into  the  small  circle  from  which  we 
fain  would  have  stepped. 

Yes  !  Comparisons  are  odious,  and 
particularly  so  when  they  tell  against 
us.  But  that  the  American  officers, 
who  do  not  go  to  sea  (for  good)  until 
five  years  after  the  age  at  which  we 
do,  those  years  being  occupied  in  study 
on  shore,  are  infinitely  better  educated 
than  we  are  in  some  professional 
matters,  I'm  sure.  That  they  are 
worse  sailors  than  we  are,  I  doubt  very 
strongly.  Anyway  (and  why  should 
not  I  say  it1?)  they  cannot  be  worse 
than  are  some  of  our  captains  whom 
I  have  heard  of  on  board  iron-clads, 
who  when  the  fleet  were  manreu- 
vring,  and  the  signal  flew  to  change 
from  one  formation  to  another,  have 
had  to  turn  round  to  their  officer  of 
the  watch,  or  to  the  signal-mate — in 
both  cases  sub-lieutenants  —  and  ask 
them  (the  signal  being  interpreted) 
what  was  meant  by  that  ?  How  was 
his  ship  to  turn — to  starboard  or  to 
port  ?  And  where  the  dickens  would 
she  be  then,  and  would  she  be  right  ? 
Nor  worse  than  the  young  lieutenant, 


become  so  with  a  bound  because  he 
passed  a  brilliant  examination  in  x,  y, 
and  z,  who  has  never  kept  a  watch  in 
his  life  before,  and  who  is  suddenly 
placed  in  the  most  responsible  position 
of  officer  of  the  watch  in  the  flag-ship 
of  a  squadron,  being  totally  unfit  as 
a  sailor  to  be  there.  Giving  doubtful 
orders  with  a  trembling  voice,  while 
his  men  are  laughing  at  him,  and  his 
sub-lieutenants  too ;  for  while  he  was 
grinding  away  at  x,  Y,  and  z  between 
decks  of  a  large  ship,  they  were  per- 
haps keeping  their  regular  watch 
on  board  of  a  smaller  vessel,  and  are 
now  therefore  comparatively  experi- 
enced seamen.  But  what  to  a  sailor 
is  seamanship  compared  to  mathe- 
matics 1  What  the  safety  of  H.M. 
ship,  what  the  knowledge  of  torpedoes, 
of  steam,  of  gunnery,  of  surveying ; 
what  to  us  the  honour  and  glory  of 
our  flag,  what  the  knowledge  in  every 
practical  way  of  how  to  keep  that 
ensign  floating,  compared  to  the  en- 
nobling occupation  of  superintending 
decks  being  scrubbed  and  swept,  wood- 
and  brass-work  polished,  &c. — work 
which  should  all  be  left  to  the  "petty" 
officers  of  the  fleet  1 

Let  us  grant,  however,  for  a  moment 
that  to  go  to  sea  for  good  when  very 
young  is  a  good  thing.  But  that  is 
no  reason  why  we  should  not  do  our 
work  at  college — and  real  work,  last- 
ing two  years  at  least — after  we  have 
been  at  sea,  say  for  seven  years,  or, 
in  other  words,  when  we  are  promoted 
to  the  rank  of  lieutenant.  Under  any 
circumstances  we  are  on  shore  for 
months  after  this  long-expected  event, 
and  it  is  that  time  in  part  which 
should  be  utilised  by  a  compulsory 
course  of  practical  and  theoretical 
professional  knowledge.  As  things 
are  now  the  going  to  college  is  volun- 
tary, and  one  finds  it  a  farce,  as  I 
have  said,  when  one  gets  there.  But 
that  every  officer  attaining  to  the  rank 
of  lieutenant  should  have  a  thoroiigh 
knowledge  of  gunnery,  surveying, 
torpedo  warfare,  and  of  navigation, 
before  he  sets  foot  again  on  board 
a  ship  in  a  responsible  position,  would 
appear  to  our  "common  sense"  to  be 


On  Naval  Education. 


321 


the  sine  qua,  non  of  his  being  there. 
And  we  know,  too,  that  many  of  them 
never  do  attain  to  even  a  superficial 
knowledge  of  these,  one  would  think, 
all-necessary  qualifications. 

Looking  back  on  my  service  afloat 
as  a  "mid,"  I  can  think  of  no  single 
advantage  that  I  have  gained  therein, 
no  advantage  whatever  which  I  could 
not  have  equally  gained  by  serving 
that  time  (or  a  great  part  of  it)  on 
shore  at  a  college,  going  to  sea  occa- 
sionally for  a  sailoring  cruise  in  some 
small  craft  in  the  Channel.  With  the 
question  of  how  it  was  in  the  good  old 
days,  when  seamanship  and  a  mild 
form  of  gunnery  were  all  that  were 
asked  of  the  naval  officer,  I  am  not 
concerned  here ;  but  in  the  present 
day,  when  infinitely  more  is  required 
of  him,  the  supposition  that  by  going 
to  sea  very  young  we  become  so  much 
the  sooner  seamen,  is  wrong.  Suffi- 
cient proof  is  found  in  the  fact  that 
the  great  majority  of  midshipmen  pass 
their  final  examination  in  seamanship 
badly.  But  putting  aside  the  false 
standard  of  oral  examination,  the  true 
standard  is  easily  found  by  the  only 
too  natural  distrust  of  captains  to 
trust  their  ships  to  the  holders  of 
brand-new  "commissions,"  despite  the 
fact  there  stated  that  the  owners 
thereof  are  fit  to  take  charge  of  any 
of  H.M.  ships.  And  this  after  five 
or  six  years  presumed  apprenticeship 
in  seamanship ! 

Confidence  in  one's  self  and  respon- 
sibility thrown  on  one's  shoulders — 
these  are  the  only  methods  of  learn- 
ing seamanship,  or  indeed  anything 
else ;  we  get  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  with  the  inevitable  result ;  and 
this  chiefly  because  we  juniors  are  in 
such  numbers  on  board  as  to  be  a 
nuisance  to  our  superiors,  and  a 
serious  drawback  to  our  thinking  our- 
selves engaged  in  a  "noble"  profes- 
sion. Instead  of  seeing  in  ourselves 
the  germs  of  men  whose  whole  life  is 
to  be  given  to  maintain  their  country's 
honour  and  glory,  whose  whole  educa- 
tion from  first  to  last  should  be  to 
attain  that  end,  we  youngsters  find 
GUI-  time  wasted,  our  higher  education 

No.  220.— VOL.  xxxvii. 


neglected,  our  services  a  drug  in  the 
market,  to  bo  employed  somehow, 
anyhow,  although  often  most  palpably 
uselessly,  both  to  ourselves  and  the 
service. 

I  shall  be  told  perhaps  that  little 
boys  do  not  enter  the  navy  for  honour 
and  glory,  but  in  the  adventurous  hope 
of  a  rollicking,  jovial  kind  of  a  life, 
with  a  thrilling  wreck  thrown  in  here 
and  there,  and  old-style  naval  actions, 
and  scuffles  with  savages,  and  dissolv- 
ing views  of  beautiful  tropical  scenery, 
of  strange  peoples,  of  Arctic  adventure 
maybe,  of  blue  skies,  and  of  purple  seas 
over  which  a  phantom  ship  goes  mer- 
rily sailing.  Well,  well !  the  vision 
passes,  we  are  soon  undeceived ;  but 
give  us  in  its  stead  a  sense  of  our  high 
calling,  of  our  stern  duty ;  something 
to  work  for,  heart  and  soul,  an  aim  to 
reach,  not  merely  an  existence  to  drag 
out — then  die,  "  unwept,  unhonoured, 
and  unsung." 

Oh,  dear  me  !  it  makes  me  savage 
to  think  of  the  many  hours — hours? 
they  form  years ! — of  my  life  that  I 
have  spent  pacing  the  deck,  haunted 
by  the  sole  and  ennobling  thought 
that  at  any  moment  up  may  hop  my 
"first  lieutenant,"  steer  straight  for 
a  coil  of  rope,  lift  one  ring  of  it  up 
with  his  toe,  find  under  it  a  speck  of 
dust :  "  Here  you,  sir  !  why  don't  you 
keep  your  eyes  open — what's  the  good 
of  you?"  (What  indeed!)  ,"Pipe 
sweepers,  and  see  the  deck  swept 
clean."  What  was  I  dreaming  of — 
honour  and  glory  ?  And  down  head- 
long I  tumble  from  the  sublime  to  the 
ridiculous,  my  whole  mind  bent  hence- 
forth on  observing  the  aim  and  direc- 
tion of  a  common  hair-broom  ! 

And  the  custom — one  of  the  ruts 
dug  deep  by  centuries  of  routine — of 
making  us  boys  keep  night-watch,  is, 
I  stoutly  maintain,  a  pure  and  simple 
act  of  barbarism.  It  does,  and  cannot 
but,  stunt  our  growth  mentally  and 
physically,  tiring  us  out,  both  body 
and  mind,  for  our  study-work  on  the 
morrow.  But  if  it  be  considered 
essential  to  our  education  as  sailors 
that  we  should  learn  how  to  sweep  a 
floor  clean,  we  could  do  so  at  Green- 

Y 


322 


On  Naval  Education. 


wich  as  well  as  on  board.  The  neces- 
sary housemaids,  and  brooms,  and 
admirals  to  superintend,  could  all  be 
discovered,  I'm  sure.  So,  too,  if  it  be 
for  the  interests  of  our  glorious  ser-* 
vice,  we  could  pace  nightly  a  paved 
court  at  college.  I  would  hardly  dare 
swear  that  this  brilliant  idea  has  not 
crossed  the  minds  of  its  presidents 
there  more  than  once  !  Visitors  might 
be  admitted,  and  thus  give  the  British 
public — profoundly  ignorant  as  they 
are  on  all  naval  matters — a  chance  of 
discovering  the  occupations,  manners, 
and  customs,  in  part,  of  the  popular 
"middy"  when  sailing  on  the  seas, 
and  of  the  way  in  which  he  prepares 
himself  to  be  their  country's  future 
"gallant  defender." 

So,  then,  I  repeat  that  I  believe  the 
first  few  years  of  our  professional  life 
to  be  most  carelessly  wasted,  not 
through  our  own  fault — for  we  are 
but  boys,  after  all — but  through  the 
fault  of  the  system,  firstly,  and 
through  the  fault,  secondly,  of  our 
commanding  officers.  How  little  sea- 
manship, comparatively  speaking,  we 
learn  in  all  these  years  I  have  shown ; 
how  little  mathematical  knowledge  we 
acquire,  ask  the  examiners  in  college 
and  the  crammers  outside  it.  This 
fact  alone,  that  the  majority  of  us 
need  the  services  of  a  crammer  to  pass 
with  any  success,  condemns  the  man- 
ner in  which  our  instruction  is  carried 
out  in  our  youth.  And  it  is  not  by 
hearing  a  few  lectures  at  a  Go-or-stay- 
as-you-please  naval  college  that  these 
lost  years  will  be  ever  retrieved. 

New  modes  of  warfare,  new  forms 
of  seamanship ;  ships  and  guns,  in  the 
old  sense  of  the  words,  revolutionised 
— steam  moving,  steering,  pointing 
them ;  the  engineer  superseding  the 
seaman  and  the  gunner ;  naval  science 
keeping  pace  with  the  giant  strides 
of  numerous  sisters ;  the  old  order 
changing — changed  in  all  except  the 
old  idea  on  education  !  When  will  the 
ghost  of  this  old  idea  be  laid,  I 
wonder  ?  Are  we  naval  men  the 
leading  spirits  in  naval  science  ?  Are 
we  not  too  often  the  drag  on  its 
wheels,  which  other  nations  will  keep 


rolling  unhindered,  partly  because 
they  neglect  not  the  root  of  the  tree, 
and  partly  because  they  are  not  tied 
to  old  and  traditional  notions  ? 

Ay !  build  impregnable  ironclads, 
one-hundred-ton  guns,  torpedoes  that 
can  "  do  everything  but  speak " ! 
spend  millions  lavishly  on  materiel, 
and  all  the  outward  show  of  over- 
whelming strength  !  but  as  soon  forbid 
the  use  of  coals,  gunpowder,  and  all 
that  can  make  this  pomp  effective,  as 
neglect  the  personnel,  as  deny  us  honest 
scientific  instruction,  technical  and 
theoretical;  an  education  fitting  us 
worthily  to  employ  the  splendid  means 
at  hand ;  an  education  which,  when 
tested,  may  justify  England's  expecta- 
tion of  her  sailors  !  For  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  we  are  trading,  so  to 
speak,  on  the  well-earned  reputation 
of  a  bygone  day,  of  a  bygone  system 
of  warfare.  We  are  armed  with 
deadlier  weapons  than  had  our  fore- 
fathers, and  that  we  will  use  them  as 
valorously  as  they  did  theirs,  who  can 
doubt  ?  But  the  events  of  recent  years 
on  the  battle-fields  of  Europe  have  not 
proved  that  mere  bravery  wins  the 
day.  We  have  the  bravery  right 
enough  in  the  blood ;  what  I  ask  for 
is  the  scientific  instruction  to  make  it 
prevail.  We  have  the  time  and  the 
inclination,  were  not  the  one  wasted 
and  the  other  half  snubbed. 

Personally,  I  believe  the  American 
system  to  be  better  than  ours,  as  ours 
is  carried  out  now.  But  wei'e  the  idea 
introduced  into  the  English  system  of 
an  after-course  of  real  professional 
study  in  all  its  branches — except,  of 
course,  seamanship,  but  that  we  have 
learnt,  more  or  less,  already  at  sea — 
at  a  naval  college  on  shore,  a  naval 
college  as  worthy  in  its  education  of 
our  fame  as  sailors  as  is  already  the 
college  at  Greenwich  worthy  of  our 
fame  in  its  buildings  and  traditions, 
then,  and  not  till  then,  will  I  believe 
that  we  have  any  chance  of  holding  by 
right  the  proud  boast  and  title  of 
being  the  "first"  among  the  educated 
sailors  of  our  time. 

BAY. 


323 


MILITARY  STAFF-SYSTEMS  ABROAD  AND  IN"  ENGLAND.1 

BY  A  STAFF  OFFICER. 


To  thoroughly  understand  any  par- 
ticular period  of  history,  it  is  said,  we 
should  especially  study  its  literature  ; 
that  to  compare  one  era  with  another, 
we  should  begin  by  instituting  a  com- 
parison between  the  literary  works  of 
each,  not  only  as  to  their  intrinsic 
excellence,  but  as  to  the  subjects  most 
commonly  treated  on.  If  we  go  back 
a  quarter  of  a  century,  we  find  there 
was  scarcely  a  work  on  military  art 
or  science  of  that  time  in  the  English 
language.  Napier  had  completed  his 
classical  History  of  the  Peninsular 
war  some  years  before,  a  work  which, 
although  a  mine  of  military  lessons 
for  the  statesman  and  the  general,  is 
too  advanced  to  be  of  use  in  teaching 
young  regimental  officers  the  ABC 
of  their  profession.  There  was  th«n, 
in  the  absence  of  all  simple  works  on 
military  art,  a  plausible  excuse  for  the 
professional  ignorance  of  our  officers  ; 
there  were  no  camps  where  practical 
instruction  could  be  obtained,  and 
there  were  no  good  English  military 
books  by  private  individuals,  or  pub- 
lished by  authority,  from  which 
theoretical  knowledge  could  be  de- 
rived. The  English  officer  who  aspired 
to  be  something  better  than  the  drill- 
sergeant  could  only  learn  his  lessons 
in  the  few  contemporary  essays  on 
military  subjects  that  had  appeared  in 
French  or  German  ;  and  unfortunately 
in  those  days  most  of  us  were  so 
ignorant  of  foreign  languages  that  we 
might  just  as  well  have  been  told  to 
study  the  military  arts  of  the  Assyrians 
in  the  cuneiform  character. 

The  historical  student  some  cen- 
turies hence  cannot  fail  to  notice,  that 
whereas  the  first  quarter  of  the  nine- 

1  The  Duties  of  the  General  Staff.  By  Major- 
Gen.  Bronsart  von  Schellendorf,  Chief  of  the 
General  Staff  of  the  Guard  Corps.  Translated 
from  the  German  by  AV.  A.  H.  Hare,  Lieu- 
tenant, Royal  Engineers. 


teenth  century  was  prolific  in  works 
on  military  subjects — when  the  ex- 
tent of  contemporary  literature  upon 
general  history,  science,  &c.,  is  con- 
sidered— its  second  quarter  added  very 
little  to  the  soldier's  library  in  any 
country,  and  it  might  be  said,  almost 
nothing  whatever  to  the  British  officer's 
bookshelves.  Public  attention  in 
England  had  not  yet  been  directed 
to  the  necessity  of  our  officers  being 
professionally  educated,  and  even  in 
the  army  itself  those  who  knew  the 
Queen's  Regulations,  and  the  Field- 
Exercise  Book  thoroughly,  were  re- 
garded as  possessing  all  necessary 
military  knowledge.  We  had  several 
little  Colonial  and  Indian  wars,  from 
the  results  of  which  our  rulers  ought 
to  have  learnt  the  danger  of  con- 
fiding high  military  positions  to  the 
first-comers,  simply  because  they  had 
become  seniors  of  their  regiments, 
or  their  names  had  reached  a  high 
position  in  the  list  of  general  officers 
through  the  art  of  living  long,  by  a 
certain  expenditure  of  money,  and 
perhaps  by  private  interest.  The 
Russians  alone  had  carried  on  any 
serious  war  in  the  epoch  referred  to  ; 
the  French  had  some  interesting  fight- 
ing in  Algeria,  but  as  a  rule  the  armies 
of  Europe  had  little  work  to  do  of  a 
nobler  kind  than  stamping  out  revo- 
lution, either  in  their  own  or  in  their 
neighbour's  dominions,  and  in  crushing 
the  liberties  of  Poland  and  the  na- 
tional aspirations  of  young  Italy.  No 
great  war  except  that  in  Turkey,  no 
life-and- death  struggle  between  nation- 
alities had  however  disturbed  the 
world.  It  was  an  age  of  peace,  of 
peaceful  ideas,  and  of  belief  in  their 
continuance,  and  the  literature  of  the 
time  reflected  that  condition  of  things. 
If  no  other  proof  were  forthcoming 
of  the  perturbed  condition  of  the 
world  in  the  third  quarter  of  this 

Y  2 


324 


Mttitary  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


century  than  the  large  quantity  of  mili- 
tary books  published  in  it,  such  alone 
would,  I  think,  be  sufficient  to  con- 
vince the  future  student  of  history 
that  great  stirring  events  had  then 
occurred.  England  and  France  had 
fought  as  allies  against  the  great 
northern  oppressor  of  liberty,  the 
symbol  of  European  despotism,  "to 
save  Europe  from  the  preponderance 
of  a  power  which  had  violated  the 
faith  of  treaties."  "We  had  a  hard 
struggle  for  our  empire  in  India, 
and  many  small  wars  in  various  parts 
of  the  world.  France  had  struck 
Austria  a  blow  so  severe  that  she 
was  still  reeling  from  it  when  forced 
by  Prussia  to  fight  for  her  existence 
in  1866 ;  and  the  world  is  still  so 
dazed  by  the  victories  of  Germany  in 
1870,  that  national  self-confidence  is 
lost,  and  proud  kings,  and  still  prouder 
peoples,  hang  back,  not  only  afraid  to 
maintain  "the  right,"  but  their  own 
rights  as  guaranteed  by  solemn 
treaties,  until  they  have  learnt  how 
these  matters  are  regarded  at  Berlin. 

Of  late  years  a  large  number  of 
English  works  on  the  art  of  war  and 
military  subjects  have  been  published, 
which  compare  very  favourably  with 
the  best  and  ablest  text-books  in 
foreign  languages.  The  latter  have 
also,  to  a  very  great  extent,  been 
translated  by  our  officers,  and  can 
therefore  now  be  read  in  English  by 
all  anxious  to  master  their  profession 
— a  very  large  class  at  present  in  our 
army,  I  am  glad  to  say.  Amongst 
these  numerous  translations,  The  Duties 
of  the  General  Staff,  by  General  von 
Schellendorf,  Chief  of  the  Staff  to  the 
Prussian  Guard  Corps,  is  well  worth 
perusal.  It  is  in  two  volumes,  of 
which  the  first  has  been  well  and 
clearly  rendered  into  English  by 
Lieut.  Hare  of  the  Royal  Engineers. 
It  is  very  much  to  be  regretted  that 
only  one  volume  has  as  yet  been  pub- 
lished here,  although  it  is  well  known 
that  both  have  been  translated  by  that 
officer.  This  is  especially  unfortunate 
to  the  public,  and  it  may  be  supposed 
to  the  publisher  also,  for  the  second 


volume  is  far  more  interesting  and  in- 
structive to  the  military  student  than 
the  first ;  the  latter  deals  only  with 
the  staff  and  its  duties  during  peace, 
and   especially  with  those   duties   as 
performed    under    the   German    staff 
system,    which    is    entirely   different 
from  ours  ;  whereas  the  second  volume 
treats  of  those  subjects  applied  to  war. 
It  may,  I  think,  be  assumed  that  the 
second   volume  has  not  appeared  be- 
cause  the   publishers   found  the  first 
did  not  pay.     A  considerable  number 
of  translations  from  foreign  military 
books  have  been  recently  brought  out 
by  the  same  firm ;  whether  they  have 
paid  or  not  I  cannot  tell,  but  I  think 
I  am  correct  in  saying  that  the  officers 
who  made  the  translation  shave  gained 
nothing.     To  them  the  work  has  been 
apparently  a  labour  of  love,  and  they 
are    content   with  feeling   they  have 
conferred  a  great  boon  upon  the  army 
they   belong  to.      Although  a   large 
number  of  our   officers  are   constant 
students  of  their  profession,  still  the 
sale  of  military  works  is  very  limited. 
This  is  easily  explained  ;  the  price  of 
such  books  in  England  is  extremely 
high,  and  our    officers  as  a  body  are 
poor,  especially  as  it  would  seem  those 
who  are  the  greatest  readers.     I  am 
not  acquainted  with  the  mysteries  of 
publishing,  so  I  cannot  explain  why  it 
is  that  these  translations,  for  the  brain- 
work  of  which  nothing  is  paid,  should 
be  charged  for  at  such  high  rates  as  to 
place  them  beyond  the  means  of  most 
officers.     This  is  very  different  abroad, 
where   military  works,  being  sold  at 
low  prices,  find  numerous  buyers.  The 
book   now    under    consideration   was 
originally  published  in  two  volumes, 
at  Berlin,  for  9,?.  3(7.;  it  was  translated 
into  French,  and  is  now  sold  in  Paris  for 
eight  francs— 6s.  Sd. ;  yet  for  the  first 
volume,  which  as  yet  has  alone  been 
published  here,  the  charge  is  15s.     I 
think  it  may  be  assumed  that  every 
English   military  student    now   reads 
French  with  ease  ;  how  can  a  London 
publisher  hope  therefore  to  sell  him 
one  volume  of  a  work  for  15s.,  both 
volumes  of  which  he  can  buy  here  in 


Military  Staff  Sy items  Abroad  and  in  England. 


325 


French  for  6s.  Sd.1  All  this  is  so  unsatis- 
factory  that  our  War-Office   authori- 
ties should  take  the  matter  into  their 
own  hands  with  a  view  to  the  publica- 
tion of  military  works.     This  question 
has   been    mooted   before   more   than 
once,    but    it     has    been    put    aside 
through   a  dread   of  appearing  to  in- 
terfere with  "the  trade."     Surely  it 
could  in  no  way  injure  the  publisher 
if   these  military  translations,  which 
we   hear  on   all   sides  secure  so   few 
purchasers,  were  brought  out  by  the 
Intelligence  Department,  in  the  same 
way  that  the  English   version  of  the 
German  staff  account  of  the  1866  war, 
and   the  translation  of   several  other 
works,  have  already  appeared.  Although 
the  prices  of  the  works  printed  for  the 
War  Office  by  Her  Majesty's  Stationery 
Office  are  lower  than  those  charged  for 
similar  military   books    published  by 
the  trade,  still  they  are  far  too  high. 
Every  practical  encouragement  should 
be  held  out  to  our  officers  to   study 
their  profession,  and  the  first  step  in 
that  direction  is  to  issue  good  standard 
military  works  to  be  kept  in  the  ante- 
room of  every  mess,  and  handed  over 
by  the  outgoing  to  the  incoming  regi- 
ment.    The  object  is  one  of  such  great 
importance,   that    our    War  Minister 
should  not  hesitate    to   spend   a  few 
hundreds  a  year  in  promoting  it.     By 
study  alone    can   our  officers,   during 
peace,  fit  themselves  for  the  real  work 
of  war,  and  the  publication  of  all  the 
most  important  foreign  current  mili- 
tary essays  at  low   prices    would   be 
a  great  encouragement  towards  study. 
In  France  there  is  a  society  called  the 
"Reunion    des    Officiers,"    under    the 
auspices   of  which  original  works  on 
military  subjects   and  translations  of 
all  important  and   remarkable  books 
by  foreign  authors  are  published.     It 
receives  from  Government  an  annual 
subsidy  of  400/,  "  pour  favoriser  son 
extension,  et  atteinclre,  par  les  moyens 
qu'elle  juge  convenables,  le  but  qu'elle 
fie  propose."      Its  total  income,  chiefly 
derived  from   subscriptions,  is   about 
2000J.   a  year.     If  our  War  Office  will 
not  help  in  this  matter,   it  is  to  be 


hoped  that  the  subject  may  be  taken  up 
and  considered  by  the  Council  of  the 
Royal  United  Service  Institution. 

General  von  Schellendorf  begins  his 
interesting  work  by  a  general  outline 
of  the  staff  systems  in  the  armies  of 
all  the  great  military  powers  and  of 
England,     His  sketch  is  instructive  to 
those  who  wish  to  draw  comparisons  ; 
to  the  English  reader  it  proves  that, 
even  in  the  army  which  we   are  in- 
clined   to    invest    with    infallibility, 
because  it  is  the  fashion  of  the   day 
such  high  officials  as  von  Schellendorf 
even  can  make  mistakes.    His  descrip- 
tion of  the  English  staif  is  not  only 
incomplete,  but   very  inaccurate.     Of 
late  years  we  have  been  so  accustomed 
to  hear  the  Prussian  army  system  in 
all  its  branches  extolled  as  perfection, 
to  be  told  that  what  corresponds  in 
Berlin  with   our  intelligence    depart- 
ment    knows    everything     connected 
with  all  foreign  armies,  that  there  is 
a  certain  sense    of  positive  relief,  of 
pleasure,  to  find  that  the  chief  of  the 
staff  of  the  Prussian  Guard  is  so  im- 
perfectly informed  regarding  our  sys- 
tem of  staff  and  civil  administration, 
and  could  be  capable  of  making  the 
mistakes  he  has  done  on  the  subject. 
As  an  illustration   of  how  wrong  he 
can  be,  I  think  the  list  he  gives  of  the 
staff  that  did  duty  with  the  troops  in 
the  expedition  to  Abyssinia  will  amuse 
most  English   officers.      However,   it 
must  be  allowed  that  our  staff  system 
is  so  complicated,  is  such  a  patchwork 
arrangement,    that    a    foreigner    may 
indeed  be  well  excused  for  failing  to 
understand  it. 

Except  men  who  have  themselves 
had  staff  experience,  there  are  not 
many  of  our  regimental  officers  who 
could  supply  even  as  good  an  account 
of  our  staff  system  as  that  given  in 
the  work  now  under  consideration.  In 
the  English  army  there  is  such  a  very 
generally  confused  notion  as  to  the 
difference Jbetween  executive,  staff,  and 
administrative  duties,  that  the  term 
"staff  officer"  is  improperly  applied 
by  us  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men.  This  mistake  is  most  glaring  in 


326 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


India,  where  regimental  officers  em- 
ployed away  from  their  corps  on  any 
duty,  civil  or  military,  are  vaguely 
supposed  to  be  "  on  staff  employ."  As 
a  climax  to  this  curious  misapplication 
of  military  terms,  an  "Indian  Staff 
Corps  "  has  recently  been  invented,  in 
which  the  great  bulk  of  the  officers  are 
exclusively  employed  at  regimental 
work,  some  even  in  civil  occupations, 
only  an  infinitesimal  proportion  being 
engaged  on  purely  staff  duties. 

A  staff  officer  is  nothing  but  a  repre- 
sentative of  his  general,  in  whose  name 
he   speaks   and    issues    orders.      The 
mighty  work  of  moving  armies,  and 
even  the  minor  difficulties  of  moving 
divisions,  require  the  greatest  nicety 
of  calculation  and  the    most   minute 
care.      To   feed   and   provide   for  the 
wants  of  troops  in  the  field  is  a  very 
difficult    operation    nowadays.     Were 
a  commander  to  attempt  these  serious 
duties  himself  he  would  have  no  time 
for  the  higher  functions  of  his  office  ; 
no  one  but  a  madman  would  attempt 
it.      He  has  therefore  to  intrust  them 
to  agents  called  staff  officers.      In  the 
same   way,    when   engaged   with    the 
enemy,  the  commander    cannot  be  in 
every  part  of  the  field,  and  yet  it  is 
essential  he  should  know  what  is  going 
on   at  all   points.      This   he   does  by 
means  of  his  staff  officers,  who  may  be 
styled  the  eyes,  ears,  and  ready  writers 
of  the  general  they  represent.     "When 
they  speak,  express  an  opinion,  or  give 
orders  to  commanding  officers  subordi- 
nate to  their  general,  they  speak  as 
from   him  ;  what  they  say  is  only  en- 
titled to  attention  as  emanating  from 
him,  for  of  themselves  they  have  no 
authority.      From  constant  and   inti- 
mate intercourse  with  his  general,  the 
superior  staff  officer  knows  his  views, 
plans,   and  intentions ;  he  thoroughly 
understands  the  objects  of  all  projected 
operations  ;  so  that  even  when  distant 
from  him  he  can   give   effect  to  the 
commander's  intentions  and  issue  the 
necessary  orders  and  instructions. 

Von  Schellendorf  says,  "  The  gene- 
ral staff  forms  an  essential  part  of 
modern  army  organisation."  Unless 


it   is   composed   of    first-rate   officers, 
thoroughly  efficient,  not    only  in    the 
theory,   but  in   the  practice  of  their 
duties,  the  army  they  belong  to  in  the 
field  will  certainly  fail ;  the  men  will 
be  badly  fed  and  overworked,  columns 
will   go  astray,  there  will  be  useless 
marching   and   counter-marching,  the 
enemy's   movements   will  be   effected 
without   your    knowledge,   and   when 
the  shock  of  battle  takes  place,  with 
men  worn   out   and    officers  confused 
by  a  multiplicity  of   badly-conceived 
orders,   nothing   but   failure   need  be 
expected.   Although  the  supply  of  food 
is  not  a  staff  duty,  still  it  is  very  im- 
portant that  the  staff  generally  should 
by  constant  inquiries   ascertain   that 
the  men  and  horses  are  well  and  regu- 
larly fed  by  the   commissariat.      By 
means  of  his  staff,  the  general  is  able 
to  solve  the  puzzle  of  being  in  many 
places   at   the   same  moment,  and  in 
that  manner  of  assuiing  himself  that 
every  one  is  in  his  right  place   and 
doing  his  work  well ;  all  irregularities, 
whether  on  the  part  of  the  troops,  or 
of   the  civil  or  military  departments 
responsible  for   supplying  them  with 
ammunition,  food,  medicines,  <tc.,  tic., 
must  be  at  once  checked,  on  the  autho- 
rity of  the  commander,  by  the  staff 
officer  under  whose  notice  they  come, 
and  duly  reported  to  the  general  com- 
manding.    If  a  regiment  is  not  pro- 
perly furnished  with  all  it  needs,  the 
circumstance  is   reported — not  to  the 
department  responsible  for  the  supplies 
in  question — but   to  the  staff,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  see  to  it  immediately,  and 
bring  the  conduct  of  those  who  are  to 
blame  before  the  notice  of  the  general. 
The  staff  is  thus  a  great  check  upon 
all  departments  of  supply.     It  is  the 
primary  duty  of  the  staff  to  watch  over 
the  fighting  efficiency   of   the  troops, 
and  it   can  only  be  accomplished  by 
taking  care  that  their  physical  wants 
and  comforts  are  duly  and  properly 
provided  for. 

As  pointed  out  by  vcn  Schellendorf, 
the  staff  of  all  military  units,  bri- 
gades, divisions,  army  corps,  &c.,  in 
all  Continental  armies,  is  under  one 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


327 


head.  Not  so  in  England,  where 
there  is  a  system  of  duality  pregnant 
with  mischief.  In  our  army  we  still 
maintain  the  antiquated  system  of 
having  two  co-equal  officers  at  the 
head  of  every  staff  organisation  above 
that  for  a  brigade — to  which  but  one 
staff  officer,  a  brigade  major,  is  at- 
tached, who  performs  for  it  the  duties 
of  both  adjutant  and  quarter-master 
general.  This  Japanese  arrangement 
of  our  staff  gives  rise  to  jealousies  and 
friction  that  hinder  the  satisfactory 
working  of  the  military  machine  on 
service.  The  adjutant-general  and  the 
quartermaster  general  being  inde- 
pendent of  one  another,  and  their 
representatives  in  every  division  and 
army  corps  holding  the  same  relative 
positions  in  their  smaller  sphere  of 
action,  the  general  commanding  the 
army  or  the  division  has  no  principal 
staff  officer  to  whom  he  can  look,  and 
whom  he  can  hold  responsible  for  the 
due  conduct  of  the  staff  duties  essential 
to  efficiency.  Although  theoretically 
the  adjutant-general  and  the  quarter- 
master general  have  equal  rank  and 
authority,  yet  practically,  during  peace, 
the  former  is  the  more  important 
functionary  of  the  two,  whilst  during 
war  the  latter  has  always  been  most 
regarded,  because  on  him  then  de- 
volves the  duties  upon  which  the 
safety,  welfare,  and  success  of  the  army 
depend.  We  have  thus  two  systems, 
one  for  peace  and  one  for  war,  than 
which  nothing  can  be  more  dangerous. 
In  all  foreign  countries  there  is  a 
chief  of  the  staff  to  the  army,  and  a 
chief  or  principal  staff  officer  to  every 
division  and  army  corps,  who  is 
directly  responsible  for  the  distribution 
of  duties  amongst  his  subordinates. 
With  us,  if  the  quarter-master  gene- 
ral requires  men  to  make  a  road,  or 
for  any  other  necessary  duty,  he  can 
only  obtain  them  by  asking  the  adju- 
tant general  to  detail  them ;  he  draws 
up  the  scheme  for  moving  the  army,  but 
the  orders  on  the  subject  have  to  be 
issued  by  the  adjutant-general.  Their 
duties  and  responsibilities  clash  hourly 
and  daily  during  a  campaign,  and  it  is 


only  by  the  mutual  exercise  of  tact 
and  cordial  good  sense  that  the  cum- 
brous staff  machinery  is  kept  going. 
It  is  said  by  some,  the  general  should 
be  his  own  chief  of  the  staff.  Our 
author  says  on  this  point:  "The 
general  commanding  a  large  body  of 
troops  cannot — at  least  in  war — en- 
cumber himself  with  details,  though 
their  consideration  and  proper  order 
may  be  often  of  the  highest  import- 
ance. Besides  the  fact  that  the  mental 
and  physical  powers  of  one  man  are 
not  up  to  such  a  task,  the  general 
supervision  of  all  the  fighting  forces 
under  the  general's  command  would  be 
lost  sight  of." 

With  us  there  is  a  considerable 
haziness  as  to  the  difference  between 
executive  and  staff  duties,  as  well 
as  to  the  curious  allotment  of  work 
between  the  two  branches  into  which 
our  staff  is  unfortunately  divided. 
This  is  not  difficult  to  account  for. 
Like  the  British  Constitution,  the 
British  army  has  its  foundations  more 
in  custom  and  tradition  than  in  written 
laws  or  regulations.  Those  upon 
which  our  military  system  rests  are, 
however,  modern,  few  of  them  dating 
back  beyond  Wellington's  time.  Sir 
John  Moore  and  the  great  Duke,  in 
fact,  converted  the  military  forces  of 
the  Crown  into  the  army  which  carried 
the  Union  Jack  from  Lisbon  through 
Portugal  and  Spain  into  France ;  but 
the  regulations  they  had  framed  in  the 
field  for  the  conduct  of  business  by 
the  staff,  and  for  the  general  ad- 
ministration of  the  troops,  fell  into 
abeyance,  in  fact  ceased  to  exist, 
when  the  armies  they  had  been  made 
for  were  broken  up.  No  military  code 
was  framed,  no  book  of  regulations  for 
an  army  in  the  field  was  drawn  up, 
based  upon  the  experience  gained 
in  the  Peninsula,  Belgium,  and 
France.  After  the  great  war,  our 
military  forces  were  either  scattered 
about  unmethodically  in  the  colonies, 
or  hidden  away  by  battalions  in 
country  quarters  at  home,  occupying 
a  nondescript  position  in  the  country, 
for  they  were  organised  neither  as  a 


328 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


purely  military  body,  nor  as  a  police 
force,  but  on  principles  partaking  a 
little  of  the  duties  of  both. 

What  is  now  known  as  "  the  regi- 
mental  system "    then   assumed    and 
acquired  its   great   prominence.      All 
that  is  good  in  it  was  traditional  from 
our  wars,  especially  from  those  against 
Napoleon ;    the    drawbacks    and    the 
errors,  and  what  is  radically  bad  in 
it,  which  recent  reforms  have  not  yet 
been  able  to  remove,  had  their  origin 
later  on,  when  our  small  military  units 
were  kept  apart,  performing  no  public 
functions  beyond  that  of  being  a  sort 
of  quasi- support  to  the  civil  police  of 
the   country.      The    possibility    of   a 
foreign  war  seems  never  to  have  been 
dreamt   of    by   our   people ;    and   the 
military  advisers  of  the  Crown  appear 
to    have     shrunk    from    establishing 
during  peace  a  military  system,  or  a 
code  of  regulations  for  the  organisa- 
tion  of  an   active  army  and  for   its 
administration  during  war,  lest  atten- 
tion should  have  been  drawn  to  army 
matters.     For  many  years  after  peace 
was  signed  at  Vienna,  England  pos- 
sessed   skilled    military    commanders 
in  the  Duke  of   Wellington   and  the 
generals  he  had  educated.     In   those 
days,    before  railways,   steam- vessels, 
and  the  electric  telegraph  had  altered 
the  conditions  upon  which  war  must 
be  conducted,  and  had  rendered  the 
power  of  rapid  mobilisation  of  primary 
importance,  our  insular  position  would 
have    secured    us   time   for   sweeping 
together  our  scattered  regiments,  and 
for  forming   them  into   brigades  and 
divisions  under  those  experienced  and 
practical  leaders.     They  knew  how  to 
command  and  to  provide  for  the  ad- 
ministration of  troops,  and  therefore 
as    long    as    they    were    young    and 
physically  fit  for  work,  they  could  at 
any  time   have  built  up  an  army  fit 
for  war  with  the  bricks  which,  in  the 
form  of  regiments  and  batteries,  lay 
scattered  about  through   the   various 
garrison  towns  and  country  quarters 
of  the  United   Kingdom.      They   re- 
quired   no    written    prescription    for 
making  the  mortar  that  was  to  give 


cohesion  to  their  units ;  they  were 
themselves  experienced  masons,  and 
there  was  always  the  great  master- 
mason  at  hand  to  advise  and  to  super- 
intend their  work. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  this  fact 
may  have  been  one,  if  not  the  chief, 
reason,  why  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
never  reduced  to  writing  or  formu- 
lated in  a  code  of  regulations  the 
military  system  he  had  built  up  and 
brought  to  such  a  high  state  of  perfec- 
tion when  commanding  the  army  with 
which  he  invaded  France  in  1814.  It 
was  not  thought  desirable  to  attract 
public  attention  to  the  army  by  the 
publication  of  rules  for  the  establish- 
ment of  a  military  system  which  he 
and  his  experienced  subordinates  could 
give  life  to  when  necessary.  But  as  time 
wore  on  these  men  died,  or  were  re- 
moved by  physical  infirmities  from  the 
sphere  of  usefulness,  and  with  them 
disappeared  all  practical  knowledge  of 
war  and  of  staff  and  administrative 
duties  in  connection  with  it.  So  much 
was  this  the  case,  that  when  war  was 
forced  upon  us  in  1854,  the  army  was 
not  only  unfit  for  war  in  tactical  in- 
struction, but  no  rules  even  existed 
for  its  formation  into  brigades  and 
divisions  :  the  traditions  of  the  "  Pen- 
insula" still  clung  to  a  few  Horse 
Guards  officials  who  could  recall  the 
condition  of  military  establishments 
when  they,  in  subordinate  positions 
as  young  men,  had  taken  part  in  the 
glorious  events  our  army  had  achieved 
there.  Upon  these  memories  the 
army  despatched  to  Turkey  was 
formed.  Nothing  was  ready,  nothing 
had  been  prepared  beforehand,  and 
there  was  no  written,  or  even  well- 
understood,  system  or  organization 
for  the  field  upon  which  the  army, 
hastily  called  together,  should  be 
formed.  The  officers  appointed  to  it 
for  staff  duties  were,  with  a  very  few 
exceptions,  most  inefficient ;  brave  gen- 
tlemen of  good  connections,  but  with- 
out either  practical  or  theoretical 
knowledge  of  staff  duties,  or  even  of 
what  those  duties  consisted  in.  To- 
wards the  end  of  the  Crimean  War 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


329 


there  was  a  great  and  marked  im- 
provement in  this  respect,  and  the 
staff  of  the  quartermaster  general  in 
the  field,  under  the  able  direction  of 
a  scientifically-instructed  staff- officer 
— Sir  Richard,  now  Lord  Airey — had 
become  a  credit  to  the  country.  Prac- 
tically he  was  Chief  of  the  Staff  dur- 
ing the  later  period  of  the  war  until 
he  was  unfortunately  recalled  to  Eng- 
land to  give  evidence  before  the  silly 
commission  assembled  at  Chelsea  for 
the  purpose  of  throwing  upon  soldiers 
in  the  field — the  blame  of  failures  for 
which  the  Government  were  primarily 
responsible.  Had  he  been  left  in  office, 
and  the  war  continued,  it  is  most  prob- 
able that  he  would  have  established  a 
staff  system  in  consonance  with  the 
wants  of  an  army  under  the  altered 
conditions  upon  which  war  is  now 
carried  on  when  compared  with  those 
which  existed  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century. 

When  peace  was  made  in  1856,  no 
advantage  was  taken  of  the  staff  ex- 
perience we  had  gained  during  the 
war  to  formulate  a  code  of  instructions 
for  the  guidance  of  staff  officers,  and 
although  the  necessity  for  a  consolida- 
tion of  the  staff  had  been  recognised 
towards  the  end  of  the  war  by  the 
creation  of  a  Chief  of  the  Staff,  and 
by  laying  down  the  rule  that  all 
junior  officers  who  might  be  subse- 
quently appointed  to  the  staff  should 
be  available  for  work  either  under  the 
adjutant  or  quartermaster  general, 
no  attempt  was  made  to  mould  our 
staff  at  home  or  elsewhere  upon  that 
plan.  The  Queen's  Regulations  at- 
tempted to  fix  lines  of  demarcation 
between  the  duties  devolving  upon 
tie  officers  employed  as  military  or  as 
assistant  military  secretaries,  and  those 
of  the  adjutant  and  of  the  quarter- 
master general's  departments,  but  the 
rules  were  so  complicated  and  involved, 
that  few  clearly  understood  them,  ex- 
cept those  of  considerable  staff  experi- 
ence. So  much  was  this  the  case,  that 
letters  are  still  frequently  sent  to  the 
wrong  departments  ;  for  certain  speci- 
fied articles  of  the  soldier's  equipment 


the  adjutant- general's  officers  are  held 
responsible,  whilst  others  can  only  be 
obtained  through  the  instrumentality 
of  the  quartermaster  general.  In  the 
field  all  this  occasions  delay,  and  gives 
rise  to  friction  between  the  staff  officers 
concerned.  Indeed,  as  our  regulations 
on  these  points  exist  at  the  present 
moment,  it  would  almost  seem  as  if 
they  were  devised  on  the  principle  of 
a  Chinese  puzzle,  not  to  facilitate  busi- 
ness, but  rather  as  an  illustration  of 
how  complicated  what  might  be  a 
simple  process  can  be  made.  Any 
system,  no  matter  how  bad,  indeed — 
to  trench  upon  an  Irishism — no  system, 
can  be  made  effective  if  worked  by 
able  men  too  sensible  and  earnest  to 
fall  out.  It  is  therefore  no  proof  that 
our  existing  staff  system  is  good  be- 
cause it  works  at  present,  or  even  has 
worked  in  any  specified  war ;  it  only 
proves  how  well  selected  have  been 
the  officers  deputed  to  work  it.  I 
would  appeal  to  those  who  have  had 
much  staff  experience  in  war,  or  even 
at  our  most  excellent  war  school, 
Aldershot,  to  corroborate  what  I  have 
said  as  to  the  unsoundness  of  our 
present  staff  system.  Such  great  and 
radical  improvements  have  been  of 
late  years  introduced  into  our  army 
by  his  Royal  Highness  Commanding 
in  Chief,  he  has  done  so  much  to  con- 
vert it  into  an  effective  instrument  for 
war  purposes,  that  it  is  a  matter  of 
astonishment  to  a  large  number  why 
he  has  not  reformed  our  staff  and 
brought  it  into  consonance  with  the 
military  requirements  of  the  age.  The 
practice  in  many  of  our  recent  wars 
has  been  to  have  a  Chief  of  the 
Staff;  we  had  one  latterly  in  the 
Crimea,  as  I  have  already  said ;  we 
had  one  throughout  the  Indian  Mutiny  ; 
in  the  army  as  organised  by  Lord 
Clyde  in  1860  for  the  China  War 
there  was  a  Chief  of  the  Staff;  one 
was  sent  to  Canada  in  1861,  when 
affairs  looked  warlike  there ;  and 
there  was  one  in  the  Ashanti  War. 
There  is  no  maxim  truer  than  that 
which  says  an  army  should  be  com- 
manded and  administered  in  peace  and 


330 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


in  war  upon  one  and  the  same  plan. 
Past  experience  tells  us  there  should 
be  a  Chief  of  the  Staff  in  war,  and  we 
recognise  that  necessity  by  having  one 
then,  but  we  still  postpone — for  it  can 
only  be  a  postponement — creating  that 
post  in  time  of  peace. 

I  have  laid  great  stress  upon  having 
a  Chief  of  the  Staff,  but  it  is  only  as 
a  means  to  an  end,  the  end  being  the 
final  and  complete  amalgamation  of 
our  staff  into  one  body.  It  is  not  be- 
cause many  other  nations  have  long 
since  adopted  this  plan  that  I  recom- 
mend it :  I  have  no  wish  monkey-like 
to  copy  others,  being  convinced  there 
are  many  points  upon  which  they 
might,  with  great  advantage  to  them- 
selves, copy  us.  It  is  no  sound  and 
convincing  reason  that  because  other 
nations  have  an  amalgamated  staff  we 
should  have  one  too,  but  it  is  a  good 
reason  for  seriously  considering  the 
subject.  To  do  so  well,  the  evidence 
of  those  who  have  had  great  staff  ex- 
perience should  be  taken  by  a  com- 
mittee of  well-selected  men,  who  have 
themselves  served  long  on  the  staff, 
especially  during  war.  That  our  pre- 
sent staff  system  is  not  good  or  suited 
for  war  is  acknowledged  by  our  mili- 
tary authorities  in  the  appointment  of 
a  Chief  of  the  Staff  when  a  force  has 
to  be  prepared  for  active  service ;  let 
us  know  therefore,  by  the  collection 
of  evidence,  and  by  the  report  of 
a  committee,  why  it  is  that,  in  con- 
travention of  the  most  generally  re- 
cognised military  rule,  we  should  have 
one  staff  system  for  war  and  one  for 
peace,  and  why  it  is  that  our  peace 
system  is  radically  different  from  that 
of  all  other  nations.  If  the  few,  the 
very  few,  who  advocate  the  present 
expensive  organisation  have  a  strong 
case,  they  should  not  shrink  from 
having  the  matter  examined  by  a  com- 
mittee, and  from  having  the  reasons 
stated  why  this  apparently  illogical 
difference  between  our  staff  arrange- 
ments for  peace  and  for  war  should 
be  continued. 

The  second  chapter  of  the  volume 
of  von  Schellendorf,  so  clearly  trans- 


lated by  Lieutenant  Hare,  contains  a 
very  interesting  description  of  the 
Prussian  staff  and  of  its  history. 
From  the  detail  given  of  it  as  it 
existed  in  1657,  it  will  be  found  that 
it  was  then  very  much  what  ours  is 
now.  Indeed,  if  we  go  back  still 
further,  we  find  that  in  the  British 
army,  during  the  civil  wars  of  King 
Charles  I.'s  reign,  the  staff  duties  were 
performed  by  officers  styled,  as  at 
present,  adjutant  and  quartermaster 
generals.  In  our  army  we  have 
clung  to  those  titles,  as  we  still,  in 
an  unreasoning  manner,  cling  to 
pipeclay. 

The  staff  organisation  of  other 
armies  in  days  gone  by  very  much 
resembled  that  of  ours  now.  The  ex- 
perience other  nations  have  gained  by 
great  wars  has  caused  them  to  modify 
theirs  into  agreement  with  the  altered 
conditions  under  which  regular  armies 
fight  in  these  days.  Let  us  trust  that 
those  in  authority  at  the  Horse  Guards, 
whom  all  know  to  have  the  interests 
of  the  army  and  of  the  nation  most 
sincerely  at  heart,  may  soon  awake  to 
the  necessity  for  a  reform  of  our  staff, 
if  it  is  to  be  made  worthy  of  the  army 
in  which  it  will  always  have,  in  war, 
to  play  such  a  very  high  and  respon- 
sible rdle. 

The  duties  which  properly  devolve 
upon  the  staff  are  very  differently 
understood  in  Germany  from  what 
they  are  with  us  or  in  France. 
Nearly  all  the  routine  duties  carried 
out  during  war  by  our  adjutant 
general's  officers  are  not  regarded 
as  staff  duties  in  the  German  army ; 
they  are  performed  by  adjutants 
who  have  not  been  educated  to 
the  important  functions  appertain- 
ing to  staff  officers,  and  who  are 
always  in  subordination  to  the  staff 
officer  over  them,  from  whom  they 
generally  receive  their  instructions. 
Von  Schellendorf,  in  his  opening 
chapter,  defines  the  duties  of  the 
general  staff  in  war  as  follows  : — 

1.  Working  out  all  arrangements 
for  the  quartering,  security,  marching, 
and  fighting  of  troops,  according  to 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


531 


the  varying  conditions  of  the  military 
situation. 

2.  Communicating     the     necessary 
orders,  either  verbally  or  in  writing, 
at  the   right   time   and   in   sufficient 
detail. 

3.  Obtaining,  collecting,  and  work- 
ing out  in  order  all  materials  which 
concern  the  nature  and  the  military 
features  of  the  theatre  of  war.     Pro- 
curing maps. 

4.  Collecting    and    estimating    the 
value    of    information   received    con- 
cerning the   enemy's   forces,  and   re- 
porting  on   the   same  to  the   higher 
military  authorities. 

5.  Keeping   up    the    fighting    con- 
dition of   the  troops,  and  being  con- 
stantly informed  of  their  condition  in 
every  respect. 

6.  Charge  of  day-books,  publishing 
reports  on  engagements,  and  collecting 
important  materials  to  form  a  subse- 
quent history  of  the  war. 

7.  Special    duties — viz.,    reconnais- 
sances. 

It  is  only  the  duties  detailed  in 
paragraphs  2  and  5  which  with  us 
can  be  said  to  devolve  upon  the  ad- 
jutant general's  officers,  all  the  others 
essentially  belonging  to  the  quarter- 
master-general's officers.  In  fact,  the 
duties  for  which  the  staff  of  the 
German  army  is  especially  designed 
correspond  very  nearly  with  those 
which  constitute  the  higher  functions 
of  the  quartermaster  general's  officers 
with  us,  the  other  duties  which  we 
recognise  as  also  devolving  upon  the 
staff  being  carried  out  by  subordinate 
officers,  who  act  directly  under  the 
officers  of  the  general  staff,  but  in  no 
way  belong  themselves  to  that  staff. 
Their  view  of  purely  staff  duties  is 
far  more  restricted  than  ours — a  great 
defect,  in  my  opinion,  as  their  staff 
officers  cannot,  therefore,  be  trained 
for  the  command  of  divisions,  &c.,  as 
effectively  as  under  our  system.  In 
all  armies  the  staff  has  always  been, 
and  must  always  be,  the  best  school 
for  the  education  of  generals.  Indeed, 
as  has  been  most  truly  remarked  in 
The  Soldier's  Pocket  Book—"  When  an 


officer  who  has  never  done  any  but 
regimental  duty  all  his  life  becomes  a 
general,  he  finds  himself  in  a  difficult 
position,  which  a  little  staff  experi- 
ence in  war  would  have  rendered 
him  familiar  with."  I  think  that  the 
German  staff  is  too  much  cut  off  from 
matters  connected  with  discipline  and 
with  the  administration  of  military 
law,  subjects  in  which  our  staff  officers 
are  well  grounded  at  the  Staff  College, 
and  upon  which  they  have  ample 
opportunities  afterwards  for  acquiring 
practical  experience. 

The  duties  of  a  staff  officer,  even  in 
the  most  restricted  sense  in  which 
they  can  be  regarded,  are  so  varied 
that  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  specify 
them,  and  it  is  only  by  a  thorough 
acquaintance  and  familiarity  with  all 
the  arts  and  sciences  directly  bear- 
ing upon  the  conduct  and  management 
of  armies  that  any  one  can  become  a 
thoroughly  efficient  staff  officer.  To 
quote  our  author's  words,  "  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  science  of  the 
general  staff,  as  imagined  by  some 
people.  Such  a  science  does  not  exist. 
It  is,  of  course,  understood  that  the 
duties  that  fall  to  the  lot  of  the 
general  staff  officer  comprise  a  know- 
ledge of  all  the  military  sciences,  and 
the  spirit  acquired  by  this  knowledge 
should  pervade  every  act  and  the  per- 
formance of  every  kind  of  duty  and 
calling."  And  again,  he  says  in  his 
preface,  "An  intimate  acquaintance 
with  the  rules  laid  down  and  customs 
generally  observed  in  the  army  to 
which  he  belongs  is,  consequently,  in- 
dispensable to  the  staff  officer,  though 
a  general  military  scientific  training 
may  have  of  itself  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  them ;  but  he  who  does  not 
possess  the  latter  will  not  find  him- 
self in  a  position  to  be  of  practical 
use,  even  by  a  blind  adherence  to 
prescribed  forms." 

That  most  admirable  of  our  military 
institutions,  the  Staff  College,  is 
destined  by  and  by  to  work  a  great 
change  in  our  army  generally.  The 
training  received  in  it  cannot  fail  to 
improve  every  officer  who  passes 


332 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


through   it,  and  to   make   him   more 
efficient  as  a  soldier.     There  are,  how- 
ever, two  great  faults  in    its   consti- 
tution : — 1st,  officers  can  enter  it  only 
by  a   competitive   examination ;    and, 
2nd,  the   number   of   students  is  far 
too    few.     The   last   defect   is   easily 
remedied,  little  more  than   the   pro- 
vision of  additional  accommodation  for 
more  officers  being  required ;  but  the 
former  defect  is  a  radical  one,  which  no 
expenditure  iipon  building   materials 
can  remove.   We  get  some  remarkably 
able    officers    by    that    system,    but, 
without    doubt,     by    no    means   the 
greater  proportion  of  the  men  it  turns 
out  are  fit  to  be  intrusted  with  staff 
duties  of  a  high  order.     In  fact,  those 
who  go  to  it  are  by  no  means  always  the 
best  officers  in  the  army.    The  natural 
qualities   required   to   fit   a   man   for 
staff  work  cannot  possibly  be  gauged 
by  examinations.     Amongst  a  number 
of  men  carefully  selected  as  possessing 
those  advantages  it  is  quite  possible 
you  may  be  able  to  determine  which 
are  the  most  talented  by  a  competitivg 
examination ;  but  I  assert  in  the  most 
positive    manner,    and    without    any 
dread  of  being  contradicted  by  those 
who  have  had  war  experience  on  the 
staff,    that   competitive   examinations 
alone   will   never  give   you  the  best 
men   as  staff   officers.     Temper,  tem- 
perament, manner,  tact,  and  physical 
power  enter  so  largely  into  the  quali- 
fications  required   to   make   a   really 
first-rate    staff   officer   that  it  is   im- 
possible  to   hope  to   secure  the  best 
men   by   our   present   system.     Very 
short-sighted   men  are  of  very  little 
value  in  the  field  as  staff  officers,  and 
those   who    do    not    ride   boldly   are 
utterly  useless ;    and   yet   men   with 
these  defects  have  passed,  with  flying 
colours,  through  the  Staff  College.     A 
man  may  be  first-rate  at  differential 
calculus,  but  if  he  has  a  rough,  forbid- 
ding manner,  or  be  of  a  quarrelsome 
nature,  unskilful  in  the  management 
of  men,  or  unmethodical  in  the  trans- 
action of  business,  he  is  not  fit  for  the 
delicate    duties    which    devolve   upon 
the  staff.     He  may  be  the  best  pos- 


sible linguist,  most  highly  instructed 
in  all  military  sciences,  a  first  rate 
draughtsman,  and  yet  wanting  in 
practical  knowledge  of  men  and 
soldiers,  and  in  the  ways,  customs, 
habits,  regulations,  and  regimental 
system  of  our  army ;  wants  and 
defects  which  no  amount  of  mathe- 
matical or  scientific  lore  can  ever 
compensate  for.  Von  Schellendorf 
says,  "The  first  condition  for  this" 
(to  be  efficient  as  a  staff  officer) 
"is  a  most  accurate  and  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  organisation  of  his 
own  army,  especially  of  its  war  for- 
mations.1' 

In  all  phases  of  public  life  we  have 
ridden  the  hobby  of  competitive  ex- 
aminations to  death.  It  would  be 
very  difficult  indeed  to  devise  a  really 
good  and  effective  substitute  for  that 
system  in  seeking  to  obtain  from  civil 
life  the  best  men  for  the  public  ser- 
vice ;  but  in  most  professions,  espe- 
cially in  the  army,  it  is  comparatively 
easy  to  ascertain  who  are  the  best 
men.  Public  opinion  tells  us  who 
are  the  ablest  surgeons  and  phy- 
sicians, and  tells  our  ministers  who 
are  the  best  lawyers  for  the  bench. 
If  you  polled  the  legal  profession,  you 
could  easily  ascertain  who  are  the 
ablest  men  at  the  bar ;  and  in  the 
same  way,  the  names  of  our  best 
soldiers  are  well  known  in  the  army. 
There  is  a  public  opinion  in  the  army, 
even  in  regiments,  as  there  is  in  all 
other  phases  of  society,  and  those  who 
would  make  the  best  leaders  of  men 
in  any  corps  are  well  known  to  their 
comrades.  If  the  three  or  four  seniors 
of  each  battalion  were  asked  to  name 
the  officer  they  considered  would  make 
the  best  staff  officer,  in  every  instance, 
I  believe,  with  few  exceptions,  all 
would  name  the  same  individual. 
Why,  therefore,  resort  to  competi- 
tive examinations,  which  never  can 
test  more  than  the  book-learning  a 
man  may  have  crammed  into  his  head  1 
Surely  most  men  will  admit  that  the 
following  plan  would  insure  us  having 
the  best  officers  for  the  staff  : — The 
three  senior  officers  in  each  regiment  of 


Military  Staj)  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


333 


cavalry,  battalion  of  infantry,  brigade  of 
artillery,  and  engineer  command,  to  re- 
port individually   once  a  year  to  the 
general  commanding  the  district  or  sta- 
tion the  name  of  the  officer  in  their  corps 
who,  in  their  opinion,  would  make  the 
best  staff  officer.     In  many,  if  not  in 
most  cases,  the  general,  in  forwarding 
these  reports  to  army  head-quarters, 
would  be  able  to  express  an  opinion 
upon  the  qualifications  of  each  officer 
named.      From     these     returns     the 
Commander-in-Chief    would   have   no 
difficulty  in  selecting  the  number  re- 
quired annually  for  the  Staff  College 
from  each  branch  of  service.     Before 
joining,  all  those  selected  should  pass 
a  high  standard  of  qualifying  exami- 
nation   in     science,  and    in    modern 
languages,  Hindustani  included.     Un- 
der this  system  we  should  still  obtain 
all  the  good  men  we  now  get  from  the 
Staff   College,   and   should  be  spared 
the  bad  ones,  who,  although  they  have 
graduated   there,  candour  obliges   us 
to    admit    are  not,  and   never    could 
be  converted   into,  good  staff  officers. 
Many  of   those  who  have  graduated 
at  the   Staff   College  would   compare 
in     evfiry     respect    most    favourably 
with    the    best   staff  officers    in   any 
other  army ;  but  I  contend  that  the 
Staff  College,  on  the  competitive  ex- 
amination principles,  does  not  do  for 
our  army  all  that  it  might  or  ought 
to  do;    that,  as  a  fact,  all  who  pass 
through  it  are  not  the  best  men  in 
the  army  for  the  difficult  position  of 
a  staff  officer,  and  that  many  of  them 
are,  from  various  causes   or  personal 
defects,  quite  unfitted   for  its  duties. 
As  a  young  officer  the  best  prepara- 
tion for  the  staff  is  the  performance 
of    a    regimental    adjutant's   duties ; 
and    under   the  system    of    selection 
above  recommended   a  large   number 
of    men    who    had,  as    I    may    say. 
graduated  in  those  duties,  would  find 
their  way  to  the  Staff  College. 

"Whilst  upon  this  part  of  the  sub- 
ject it  may  be  well  to  refer  to  a  matter 
requiring  correction  in  our  army.  In 
accordance  with  regulations,  adjutants 
hold  their  appointments  as  long  as 


they  remain  subalterns,  although  five 
years  is  the  limit  for  which  an  officer 
can  hold  any  army  staff  place.     The 
only  reason  for  this  is  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  officers  commanding  regi- 
ments dislike  changing  their  adjutants, 
because    such    changes    entail    extra 
trouble  upon  them.     Their  argument 
is — "  Why   change,  when  you  have  a 
good  man  who  is  thoroughly  efficient, 
having  learnt  his  work  well  ?  "     They 
may  perhaps  have  been   put  to  con- 
siderable trouble  in  teaching  him,  and 
they   do   not  care  to   begin   teaching 
another  as  long  as  they  can  avoid  it. 
They  are  prone  to   view  the   subject 
as  one  affecting   their    own    personal 
convenience.     Now    as   a    regimental 
adjutancy    is    a    position    which    is 
peculiarly  suited  for  affording  young 
officers  opportunities   for  obtaining  a 
thorough   knowledge   in  the   ground- 
work  of   their  profession,  it   is  most 
desirable  that  no  one  should  hold  it 
for  more  than  three  years,  or  five  at 
furthest.     The    more    young    officers 
there   are   in    a   regiment    who  have 
been  adjutants,  the  better  educated, 
and  therefore  the  more  efficient,  will 
be  its  officers  as  a  body.     In  some  of 
the  very  best  managed  infantry  corps 
this   system   of   restricting  the  adju- 
tant's tenure  of  office  to  a  few  years 
has  been  followed  with  the  greatest 
possible    advantage    to   their   officers 
and  to  the  service  generally. 

Of  all  the  regulations  ever  intro- 
duced into  our  army,  the  one  fixing 
five  years  as  the  term  for  which  com- 
mands and  staff  appointments  can  be 
held  has  conferred  the  greatest  benefit 
upon  the  service,  and  has  conduced 
most  to  its  efficiency.  That  term 
might  with  great  advantage  be  re- 
duced to  three  years  for  the  inferior 
posts  of  brigade  major  and  aide-de- 
camp, both  of  which  ought  to  be 
regarded  very  much  as  affording  op- 
portunities for  officers  to  acquire  staff 
experience  with  a  view  to  fitting 
them  for  higher  duties.  At  present 
officers  graduating  at  the  Staff  Col- 
lege are  generally  made  majors  of 
brigade  as  vacancies  occur;  in  the 


334 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


performance  of  which  duties  their 
value  as  staff  officers  and  their  fitness 
for  staff  employment  is  tested ;  if, 
however,  as  often  occurs,  they  prove 
to  be  failures,  the  brigades  to  which 
they  are  posted  cannot  get  rid  of  them 
for  five  years.  As  a  rule,  general 
officers  select  relatives  or  personal 
friends  for  their  aides-de-camp.  This 
is  very  natural,  as  for  the  most  part 
the  care  and  management  of  the 
general's  establishment  are  included 
in  their  duties  ;  and  who  so  likely  to 
do  this  economically  as  a  son  or  a 
nephew  ?  In  the  case,  however,  of 
those  who  are  allowed  to  have  more 
than  one  aide  de -camp,  it  would  be  an 
advantage  gained  if  the  regulations 
obliged  generals  to  select  all  but  one 
of  their  aides-de-camp  from  the  list 
of  those  who  had  passed  the  Staff 
College  course.  We  have  already  a 
goodly  number  of  young  Staff  College 
officers,  and  as  the  number  is  steadily 
on  the  increase,  this  is  not  claiming 
any  great  boon  for  men  who  have 
worked  so  industriously  to  qualify 
themselves  for  staff  employment.  The 
examination  which  aides-de-camp  are 
now  obliged  to  pass  is  little  better 
than  a  force. 

With  us  the  military  or  assistant- 
military  secretary  is  supposed,  as  well 
as  the  aide-de-camp,  to  belong  to  the 
personal  staff.  In  the  field  he  keeps 
copies  of  his  general's  despatches,  and 
is  the  custodian  of  his  correspondence, 
especially  all  of  a  private  nature  with 
the  Government,  or  with  the  military 
authorities  at  home.  The  time  has 
now  come  when  all  such  officers  should 
be  selected  from  the  Staff  College  list. 
The  same  thing  refers  in  a  still  higher 
degree  to  our  military  attaches  at 
foreign  courts,  who,  unless  they  are 
men  of  high  military  attainments,  are 
practically  useless  for  the  purposes  for 
which  they  are  intended. 

It  is  most  desirable  to  encourage 
the  best  men  to  qualify  at  the  Staff 
College,  and  the  surest  method  for 
doing  so  is  to  adhere  strictly  to  the 
rule  that  none  but  those  who  have 
graduated  there,  or  distinguished 


themselves  on  active  service  as  staff 
officers,  should  be  given  staff  appoint- 
ments. If  men  imagine  that  family 
or  political  interest  can  ensure  staff 
employment  to  those  who  are  fortu- 
nate enough  to  possess  either,  the  best 
men  in  the  army  will  not  come  for- 
ward to  undergo  a  trying  education  at 
Sandhurst. 

As  a  further  encouragement  to  our 
officers  to  undergo  the  severe  course 
of  study  which  is  obligatory  at  the 
Staff  College,  it  is  very  desirable 
that  a  certain  proportion  of  regi- 
mental promotion  should  be  annually 
allotted  to  those  educated  there, 
who  have  proved  their  military 
worth  during  a  five-years'  tenure  of 
office  on  the  staff.  As  already  said, 
the  staff  is  above  all  others  the  best 
school  to  prepare  men  for  command 
and  responsible  positions,  and  fortu- 
nate indeed  is  a  regiment  in  the 
field  if  its  lieutenant-colonel  and  many 
of  its  officers  have  had  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  a  Staff  College  training.  In 
this  as  in  all  other  matters  connected 
with  the  army,  the  privileges,  what 
are  commonly  known  as  the  rights 
and  claims  of  individual  officers  to 
promotion  by  seniority,  must  be 
ignored  in  favour  of  the  general  good 
of  the  service ;  and  in  its  interests 
the  great  aim  of  those  intrusted  with 
our  military  patronage  should  be  to 
push  on  young  men  of  known  ability 
into  its  highest  positions.  It  is  full 
time  that  youth  should  no  longer  be 
deemed  a  disqualification  for  command 
and  important  posts  on  the  staff  :  the 
country  pays  liberally,  and  is  jus- 
tified in  demanding  that  .none  but 
those  who  have  proved  their  ability 
at  the  Staff  College  or  before  the 
enemy  should  be  entrusted  with  com- 
mand or  with  important  and  respon- 
sible positions  on  the  staff.  As  an  ex- 
ceptional circumstance,  a  man  of  von 
Moltke's  transcendent  military  genius 
may  be  able  at  his  great  age  to  direct 
from  an  office  the  higher  strategical 
combinations  of  an  army,  and  to  in- 
dicate the  general  direction  of  the 
forces  to  be  employed,  but  as  a  broad, 


Military  Staff  Systems  Abroad  and  in  England. 


335 


incontrovertible  rule,  youth  is  essential 
to  efficiency  both  in  the  commander  and 
in  his  stafl  officer. 

A  frequent  interchange  of  duties 
between  staff  and  regimental  officers 
is  very  desirable  in  the  interests  of 
both  and  of  the  service  generally. 
To  dissociate  a  staff  officer  from  the 
feelings  and  common  current  of 
thought  in  the  army,  by  keeping 
him  in  any  position  that  removes  him 
for  a  long  period  from  regimental 
influences,  is  injurious  to  his  efficiency. 
It  is  necessary  that  the  utmost  sym- 
pathy and  community  of  sentiment 
should  always  exist  between  the  two 
classes  of  officers,  and  if  they  are  kept 
apart  we  shall  see  that  distrust, 
jealousy,  and  dislike  arise  between 
them  which  we  know  existed  in  the 
French  army  in  1870.  A  staff  officer 
requires  a  turn  of  regimental  duty 
from  time  to  time  to  revive  and  keep 
alive  his  feelings  of  comradeship, 
whilst  the  regiment  derives  great 
benefit  by  his  presence ;  young  officers 
are  encouraged  to  follow  his  example 
and  to  study  their  profession.  Indeed 
it  is  a  great  pity  that  there  should  be 
a  single  coi-ps  in  the  army  without  two 
or  three  men  who  had  qualified  at  the 
Staff  College.  In  peace  they  are  of 
the  greatest  use  to  the  commanding 
officer,  who  is  anxious  that  his  officers 
should  become  scientific  soldiers ;  and 
in  the  field  before  an  enemy  their 
knowledge  of  tactics,  &c.,  is  incalcul- 
able. The  English  army  still  suffers 
from  old-fashioned  colonels,  who  pooh- 
pooh  book-learning,  and  can  see  no 
use  in  teaching  more  than  drill, 
military  law,  and  our  system  of  regi- 
mental interior  economy.  It  is  a 
well-known  fact,  that  many  of  these 
commanding  officers  throw  every  diffi- 
culty in  the  way  of  their  subordi- 
nates who  are  anxious  to  attend  the 
garrison-instructor's  classes.  They 
had  never  in  their  youth  been  re- 
quired to  study  surveying,  tactics,  &c., 
and  they  cannot  see  the  use  of  such 
studies  to  others.  Hitherto  the  time  of 
our  regimental  officers  during  peace  has 
been  frittered  away  in  the  perform- 
ance of  petty  duties — I  might  almost 


term  them  silly — which  were  invented 
to  provide  them  with  some  occupation. 
Now,  when  there  is  ample  scope  for  em- 
ploying them  either  in  learning  their 
profession  themselves  or  in  teaching 
it  to  others,  these  trifling  duties  should 
be  discontinued.  The  old-fashioned 
regimental  officer  however  does  not 
concur  in  this  opinion  :  he  has  been 
so  long  accustomed  to  their  perform- 
ance, and  to  set  such  store  upon  their 
being  carried  out  accurately  and 
promptly,  that  he  has  come  to  regard 
them  as  essential  to  military  efficiency. 
A  young  officer  cannot  go  through 
these  soulless  duties  and  at  the  same 
time  spend  many  hours  a  day  in 
listening  to  lectures  on  military  sub- 
jects, so  the  colonel  embued  with 
these  antiquated  notions  reports  that 
he  has  no  officers  to  spare  for  instruc- 
tion classes,  that  all  are  busy,  their 
time  being  fully  occupied  by  "regi- 
mental duties  "  !  The  presence  of  a 
few  professionally  educated  officers  in 
a  regiment  soon  opens  the  eyes  of  all 
ranks  to  the  folly  of  these  antiquated 
opinions.  In  the  interests  of  the  army 
it  is  to  be  devoutly  wished  that  those 
holding  them  may  soon  cease  to  com- 
mand regiments,  and  that  their  places 
may,  to  a  large  extent,  be  filled  by 
men  who  have  graduated  at  the  Staff 
College. 

It  is  difficult  to  institute  any  satis- 
factory comparison  between  the  pro- 
portion of  staff  officers  to  troops 
in  the  English  and  in  the  German 
armies,  owing  to  the  very  dissimilar 
manner  in  which  staff  and  administra- 
tive duties  are  distributed  in  them. 
However,  remembering  that  the  duties 
done  by  our  aides-de-camp  are  mostly 
performed  in  Germany  by  "  gallopers,' ' 
i.e.  hard-riding  young  officers — taken 
or  borrowed  from  regiments,  the  num- 
ber of  staff  officers  with  the  several 
military  units  is  about  the  same  in 
both  armies.  To  those  who  wish  for 
information  regarding  the  number 
of  officers  employed  upon  the  German 
staff  and  the  regulations  bearing  upon 
their  duties,  I  can  strongly  recommend 
the  perusal  of  von  Schellendorf's 
admirable  work. 


336 


IN  PALL  MALL. 


WHAT  do  I  see1? — that  face  so  fair, 
My  friend  of  years  too  bright  to  last, 

Living  again  in  beauty  rare, 
As  yonder  omnibus  went  past. 

Amid  surroundings   rude  and  low, 
Stood  out  the  gem-like  profile  clear; 

The  mouth  carved  like  a  perfect  bow, 
The  auburn  curls  that  were  so  dear. 

Can  there  be  two  with  such  a  face  1 
The  other,  which  I  thought  unique, 

Lies  'neath  the  ivy's  sheltering  grace, 
Since  many  a  year  and  month  and  week. 

Say,  shall  I  follow?     Shall  I  try 
To  leave  my  death-in-life  and  live? 

The  picture  lost,  alas !   I  cry — 

Some  joy  may  not  the  copy  give  1 

Nay,  while  so  much  of  good  and  great 
Is  round  thy  path  and  at  thy  side, 

Force  not  the  hands  of   wiser  fate 
To  give  the  joy  supreme  denied. 

Yet  am  I  thankful  for  the  glance 
Vouchsafed  me   at  thy  face  divine; 

That  for  one  moment  sweet  of  trance, 
I  lived  the  life  that  once  was  mine. 

Adieu — thou  fadest  as  a  dream ; 

The  work- day   world  is  back  once  more  : 
Gone  is  that  sudden  rosy  gleam, 

And,  here's  the  Athenaeum  door. 


337 


CONSTANTINOPLE, 


THERE  are  four  cities  in  the  world 
that  belong  to  the  whole  world  rather 
than  to  any  one  nation,  cities  that 
have  influenced  the  whole  world,  or 
round  which  its  history  has  at  one 
time  or  another  revolved,  cities  in 
which  students  and  philosophers  from 
every  country  are  equally  interested. 
These  four  are  Jerusalem,  Athens, 
Rome,  Constantinople.  The  first  has 
given  to  civilised  mankind  their 
religion ;  the  second  has  been  our 
great  instructress  in  literature  and 
art ;  the  third  has  spread  her  laws, 
her  language,  her  political  and  eccle- 
siastical institutions  over  half  the 
globe.  And  though  Constantinople 
can  lay  no  claim  to  the  moral  or  in- 
tellectual glories  of  these  other  three, 
though  her  name  does  not  command 
our  veneration  like  Jerusalem,  nor  our 
admiring  gratitude  like  Athens,  nor 
our  awe  like  Rome,  she  has  preserved, 
and  seems  destined  to  retain,  an  in- 
fluence and  importance  which  they 
have  in  great  measure  lost.  They 
belong  mainly  to  the  past :  she  is  still 
a  power  in  the  present,  and  may  be 
a  mighty  factor  in  the  future.  For 
fifteen  hundred  years  she  has  been  a 
seat  of  empire,  and  for  an  even  longer 
period  the  emporium  of  a  commerce, 
to  which  the  events  of  our  own  time 
seem  destined  to  give  a  growing  mag- 
nitude. To  set  before  you  anything 
like  an  adequate  account  of  a  city 
interesting  in  so  many  different  ways, 
physically,  historically,  architecturally, 
socially,  politically,  would  require  not 
one  lecture,  but  a  big  book — so  you 
will  understand  that  I  cannot  attempt 
more  to-night  than  to  touch  on  a  few 
points  which  may  help  you  to  realise 
a  little  better  what  Constantinople 
is  really  like,  what  is  the  sort  of  im- 
pi'ession  it  makes  on  a  traveller,  what 
are  the  feelings  with  which  he  treads 

1   A    lecture    delivered    in    Aberdeen    on 
January  3rd,  1878,  with  some  additions. 
No.  220. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


its  streets  pondering  over  the  past 
and  speculating  on  the  future.  Any- 
thing that  helps  to  give  substance  and 
vitality  to  the  vague  conception  one 
forms  of  a  place  which  one  has  been 
reading  and  hearing  about  all  his  life 
may  be  of  some  use,  especially  at  this 
moment,  when  we  are  told  that  we 
ought  to  fight  for  Constantinople,  and 
may  any  morning  be  informed  that 
our  own  fleet  has  gone  to  anchor  under 
its  walls.  Before  I  speak  of  its  his- 
tory, or  attempt  to  describe  its  present 
aspect  and  characterise  the  men  that 
inhabit  it,  let  me  try  to  give  you  some 
notion  of  its  geographical  situation, 
and  of  the  wonderful  advantages  for 
strategical  and  commercial  purposes 
which  that  situation  confers  upon  it. 

If  you  look  at  the  map  you  will  see 
what  a  remarkable,  and  indeed  unique, 
position  Constantinople  occupies.  It 
is  on  the  great  highway  which  con^ 
nects  the  Black  Sea  with  the  Mediter- 
ranean, and  separates  Europe  from 
Asia.  Thus  it  commands  at  once  two 
seas  and  two  continents.  All  the 
marine  trade,  both  export  and  import, 
of  the  vast  territories  which  are 
drained  by  the  Danube  and  the  great 
rivers  of  Southern  Russia,  as  well  as 
that  of  the  'north  coast  of  Asia  Minor, 
and  of  those  rich  Eastern  lands  that 
lie  round  the  Caspian,  must  pass  un- 
der its  walls.  When  the  neighbouring 
countries  are  opened  up  by  railways 
it  will  be  the  centre  from  which  lines 
will  radiate  over  European  Turkey 
and  Asia  Minor.  With  a  foot,  so  to 
speak,  on  each  continent,  the  power 
that  possesses  it  can  transfer  troops 
or  merchandise  at  will  from  the  one  to 
the  other,  and  can  prevent  any  one 
else  from  doing  so.  Then  consider 
how  strong  it  is  against  attack.  It  is 
guarded  on  both  sides  by  a  long  and 
narrow  strait — to  the  N.E.  the  Bos- 
phorus,  and  to  the  S.W.  the  Darda- 
nelles— each  of  which  can,  by  the 

z 


338 


Constantinople. 


erection  of  batteries,  possibly  by  the 
laying  down   of   torpedoes,  be   easily 
rendered    impregnable    to    a    naval 
attack.     For   the   Bosphorus,  as  you 
probably  know,  is  fifteen  miles  long, 
with  bold  rocky  hills  on  either  side,  and 
a  channel  which  is  not  only  winding 
but  is  nowhere  over  two  miles  and  in 
some  places  scarcely  half  a  mile  wide. 
And  it  possesses  a  splendid  harbour, 
land-locked,  tideless,  and  with  water 
deep  enough  to  float  the  largest  ves- 
sels.    On  the  land  side  it  is  scarcely 
less   defensible,  being  covered  by   an 
almost  continuous  line  of  hills,  lakes, 
and   marshes,  with    a    comparatively 
narrow  passage  through  them,  which 
offers  great  advantages  for  the  erection 
of  fortifications.  There  is  no  other  such 
site  in  the  world  for  an  imperial  city. 
In  other  respects  it  is  equally  fortu- 
nate.    Of  its  beauty  I  shall  say  some- 
thing presently.  Although  the  climate 
is  very  hot  in  summer,  and  pretty  keen 
in  winter,  it  is  agreeable,  for  the  air 
is  kept  deliciously  fresh   by  the  sel- 
dom failing  breezes  that   blow  down 
from    the    Euxine    or  up    from    the 
u3£gean   sea,  and  the  sea  itself   is   a 
great   purifier.     Though   there   is   no 
tide  there  is  a  swift  surface  curient 
sweeping  down  into  the  sea  of  Mar- 
mora and  the  Mediterranean,  a  current 
at  one  point  so  strong  that  boats  have 
to  be  towed  up  along  the  shore,  which 
carries   off  whatever  is   thrown   into 
the   water.     So,  though  it  is  one  of 
the  dirtiest  towns  in  the  East,  I  fancy 
it  is  one  of  the  most  healthy. 

You  may  easily  believe  that  such 
an  attractive  site  was  not  left  long 
unoccupied.  In  the  year  667  B.C., 
not  a  hundred  years  after  the  founda- 
tion of  Rome,  and  about  the  time 
when  King  Esarhaddon  was  attacking 
Manasfceh,  son  of  Hezekiah,  at  Jeru- 
salem, some  Greeks  from  Megara,  a 
little  city  between  Athens  and  Corinth, 
came  sailing  up  into  these  scarcely 
explored  seas,  and  settled  on  this 
tempting  point  of  land,  where  they 
built  a  city,  which  they  called  Byzan- 
tium, and  surrounded  it  with  walls  to 
keep  off  the  wild  tribes  of  the  Thracian 
mainland.  They  were  not,  however, 


the  first  settlers  in  the  neighbourhood, 
for  seventeen  years  before  another 
band  of  Greeks,  also  from  Megara, 
had  established  themselves  on  a  pro- 
montory opposite,  on  the  Asiatic  side 
of  the  strait,  and  founded  the  town  of 
Chalcedon,  which  still  remains  there, 
and  is  now  called  Kadikeui.  It  was  a 
standing  joke  among  the  ancients  that 
the  people  who  took  the  site  of  Chal- 
cedon when  they  might  have  taken 
that  of  Byzantium  must  have  been 
blind  :  so  the  story  went,  that  when 
the  Megarians  asked  the  oracle  of 
Apollo  at  Delphi  where  they  should 
send  a  colony  to,  the  oracle  bid  them 
fix  themselves  opposite  the  blind  men ; 
when  therefore,  on  sailing  up  this 
way,  they  saw  a  town  planted  opposite 
this  so  far  superior  spot,  they  con- 
cluded that  its  inhabitants  must  be 
the  blind  men  whom  Apollo  meant, 
and  established  themselves  here  ac- 
cordingly. 

The  city  soon  grew  and  throve,  not 
only  because  it  was  well  placed  for 
trade,  but  on  account  of  the  shoals  of 
fish- — a  fish  called  pelamys,  which  has 
been  conjectured  to  be  a  kind  of 
tunny — that  used  to  come  down  from 
the  Black  Sea,  and  which  were 
attracted  into  the  harbour  by  the 
stream  of  fine  fresh  water  which  flowed 
into  the  upper  end  of  it.  Whether  the 
fresh  water  brought  down  insects  or 
other  tiny  creatures  on  which  the  fish 
fed,  or  whether  it  caused  the  growth  of 
beds  of  sea- weed  which  served  as  pas- 
ture, is  not  clear,  but  at  any  rate  it  was 
the  stream  that  lured  in  the  fish,  and 
the  fish  that  made  the  fortune  of  the 
place.  For  the  Byzantines  drove  a 
roaring  trade  in  these  fish — the  name 
of  Golden  Horn,  which  the  harbour 
still  bears,  is  said  to  be  derived  from 
the  wealth  they  drew  from  this  source. 
They  also  raised  a  large  revenue  by 
levying  a  tax  on  the  corn  ships  that 
passed  out  through  the  Straits  from 
Southern  Russia  ;  for  that  region,  then 
called  Scythia,  had  already  become,  as 
it  is  now,  one  of  the  greatest  grain- 
producing  countries  in  the  world. 
With  this  command  of  a  main  artery 
of  trade,  Byzantium  had  grown  by 


Constantinople. 


339 


the  time  of  Herodotus  to  be  a  con- 
siderable place,  whose  possession  or 
alliance  was  thenceforward  very  valu- 
able to  the  great  powers  that  disputed 
the  control  of  these  countries.  Having 
submitted,  like  other  Greek  cities  of 
that  region,  to  the  Persians,  it  re- 
covered its  independence  after  the  de- 
feat of  Xerxes,  and  became  a  member  of 
the  Athenian  confederacy,  till  the  Athe- 
nian power  was  in  its  turn  overthrown. 
In  the  days  of  Philip  of  Macedon,  it 
was  again  an  ally  of  Athens,  and  stood 
a  famous  siege  from  that  prince,  a 
siege  whose  happy  issue  was  due  to 
the  energy  with  which  Demosthenes 
pressed  the  Athenians  to  send  succour 
to  it  when  it  was  on  the  point  of  yield- 
ing. It  is  related  that  during  this 
siege  a  bright  light  in  the  form  of  a 
crescent  was  seen  in  the  sky,  and 
accepted  by  the  Byzantines  as  a  sign 
of  deliverance ;  and  that  after  Philip's 
repulse,  they  took  the  Crescent  to  be 
the  device  of  the  city,  which  it  con- 
tinued to  be  till  the  Turkish  con- 
quest. Some  hold  that  this  is  the  origin 
of  the  Crescent  as  the  Ottoman  badge.1 
Many  another  attack  it  had  to  resist, 
both  before  and  after  it  submitted  to 
the  dominion  of  Rome.  But  whatever 
misfortune  might  befall  it  at  the  hands 
of  enemies,  it  always  recovered  its 
wealth  and  consequence.  The  inhabit- 
ants are  described  as  a  race  of  well- 
to-do,  luxurious  people,  much  given 
to  good  eating  and  drinking,  since 
they  had  abundance  of  fish,  and  the 
neighbouring  country  produced  excel- 
lent wine.  It  was  a  story  against 
them  that  when  a  Byzantine  officer 
ought  fco  be  at  his  post  on  the  walls, 
he  was  generally  to  be  found  in  a 
cook  shop  or  tavern.  In  A.D.  330, 
Constantino  the  Great,  who  had  then 
become  sole  emperor  at  Rome,  deter- 
mined to  found  a  new  capital,  which 
would  be  a  better  centre  of  defence 
for  the  part  of  his  empire  which 
seemed  most  threatened  by  the  bar- 
barians of  the  north,  and  made  choice 

1  There  is,  however,  some  evidence  that  the 
Seljukian  Turks  had  used  the  Crescent  long 
before  ;  and  it  has  been  suggested  that  they 
borrowed  it  from  the  Chinese. 


of  Constantinople  as  the  spot.  His 
practised  military  eye  saw  its  wonder- 
ful strength,  which  had  enabled  it  to 
resist  him  for  some  time  in  his  great 
war  with  the  Emperor  Licinius,  and 
every  traveller  had  long  admired  its 
advantages  for  commerce.  Besides, 
he  had  just  embraced  Christianity, 
and  as  Rome  was  full  of  the  majestic 
monuments  of  paganism,  he  thought 
that  the  new  religion  would  rise  faster 
and  nourish  more  freely  in  a  clear 
field,  where  it  would  not  be  confronted 
or  corrupted  by  the  passions  and  pre- 
judices of  the  past.  He  called  it  New 
Rome,  but  his  court  and  people  called 
it  the  City  of  Constantino;  and  the 
name  of  Constantinople  at  once  super- 
seded that  of  Byzantium. 

Under  his  hands  it  sprung  at  once 
into  greatness.  The  old  Greek  colony 
had  occupied  only  the  extreme  point 
of  the  peninsula  between  the  port  and 
the  Sea  of  Marmora  :  the  new  city  filled 
the  whole  of  it,  covering  almost  the 
same  area  as  Stamboul1  does  now ;  and 
was  probably  built  a  good  deal  more 
densely,  since  a  considerable  part  of 
that  area  is  now  wasted  in  gardens  or 
ruins.  He  brought  some  distinguished 
families  from  Rome,  and  allured  set- 
tlers from  all  quarters  by  the  offer 
of  privileges  and  exemptions  :  as  the 
seat  of  government  it  attracted  many 
more,  so  that  the  population  had  risen 
in  a  century  from  his  time  to  more 
than  two  hundred  thousand.  Immense 
sums  were  spent  in  the  erection  of 
palaces,  law-courts,  churches,  and  other 
public  buildings ;  and  the  cities  of  the 
^Egean  were  ransacked  to  furnish 
masterpieces  of  Grecian  art  to  enable 
its  market-places  and  porticoes  to  rival 
those  of  Italian  Rome.  One  such  work 
of  art  has  survived  till  our  own  day, 
and  may  still  be  seen  in  what  was 
the  hippodrome  or  race-course  of  the 
city.  It  is  a  brazen  column,  consisting 
of  three  twisted  serpents,  which  was 

1  Stamboul  (said  to  be  a  corruption  of  tls 
T\\V  ir6\iv)  though  often  used  as  a  name  for 
Constantinople  generally,  denotes  properly 
the  old  city  between  the  inlet  called  the 
Golden  Horn  and  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  as 
opposed  to  Galata  and  Pera. 

z  2 


340 


Constantinople. 


brought  from  Delphi,  where  it  sup- 
ported the  tripod  which  the  victorious 
Greeks  dedicated  to  Apollo  after  the 
great  Persian  War.  The  tripod  has 
long  since  vanished,  and  the  serpents 
have  suffered  much — one  of  them  had 
its  lower  jaw  smitten  off  by  the  mace 
of  Mohammed  II.,  and  all  have  lost 
their  heads,  but  the  venerable  relic — 
probably  the  most  remarkable  relic 
that  the  world  possesses — still  keeps 
its  place,  and  may  perhaps  witness  as 
many  vicissitudes  of  fortune  in  the 
future  as  it  has  done  in  the  three  and 
twenty  centuries  that  have  passed  since 
it  was  set  up  in  the  Pythian  shrine. 

From  A.D.  330  to  A.D.  1453,  Con- 
stantinople was  the  capital  of  the 
Roman  Empire  of  the  East ;  and  its 
history  may  almost  be  called  the 
history  of  that  Empire,  It  had  many 
a  siege  to  stand,  sometimes  in  civil 
wars,  sometimes  from  barbarian  ene- 
mies like  the  Persians,  who  encamped 
for  three  years  over  against  it  at 
Scutari,  or  the  Arabs  in  their  first 
flush  of  conquering  energy,  or  the 
Russians,  who  came  across  the  Black 
Sea  in  huge  flotillas.  All  these  foes 
it  repelled,  only  to  fall  at  last  before 
those  who  -ought  to  have  proved  its 
friends,  the  French  and  Venetian  Cru- 
saders, who  in  A.D.  1204  turned  aside 
hither  from  their  expedition  to  Pales- 
tine to  attack  it.  They  drove  out  the 
Eastern  Emperor,  and  set  up  a  Frank 
in  his  place.  They  sacked  the  city, 
and  wrought  more  ruin  in  a  few  days 
than  all  previous  enemies  had  done  in 
as  many  centuries.  The  Eastern 
Empire  never  recovered  this  cruel 
blow,  and  though  after  a  while  these 
Franks  were  expelled,  and  a  native 
prince  again  (1261  A.D.)  sat  on  the 
throne  of  Constantino,  his  territory 
was  now  too  small,  and  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  state  too  much  shattered  to 
enable  any  effective  resistance  to  be 
offered  to  the  progress  of  the  terrible 
foe  who  advanced  first  from  Asia 
Minor,  then  on  the  side  of  Europe 
also.  In  A.D.  1453  the  Turks  took 
Constantinople,  and  extinguished  the 
Eastern  Empire.  At  that  time  Constan- 
tinople was  sadly  shorn  of  its  glories. 


The  public  buildings  had  fallen  to  de- 
cay ;  war  and  poverty  had  reduced 
the  population  to  about  one  hundred 
thousand,  and  these  inhabitants  had 
so  little  martial  spirit  that  the  defence 
of  the  city  had  to  be  intrusted  to 
Western  mercenaries.  Of  this  scanty 
population  the  majority  were  slain 
or  led  captives  by  ths  conquerors, 
so  that  Mohammed  II.  found  it  neces- 
sary to  repeople  his  prize  by  gathering 
immigrants  from  all  quarters,  just  as 
Constantino  had  done  eleven  hundred 
years  before.  Small  indeed  can  there- 
fore be  the  strain  of  old  Byzantine 
blood  that  runs  in  the  veins  of  the 
modern  people  of  Constantinople.  Mo- 
hammed transferred  his  government 
hither  from  Adrianople,  and  since  his 
day  this  has  been  the  centre  of  Otto- 
man dominion  and  a  sacred  city,  hardly 
less  sacred  than  Jerusalem  or  even 
Mecca,  to  the  Mohammedan  world. 

One  word,  before  we  part  from  old 
Constantinople,  on  the  mission  which 
was  intrusted  to  her  during  the  long 
ages  that  lay  between  Constantino  the 
Great,  her  founder,  and  Constantino 
Palaeologus  XVI.,  her  last  Christian 
sovereign.  While  the  rest  of  Europe 
was  plunged  in  barbarism  and  ignor- 
ance, she  preserved,  like  an  ark  amid 
the  far-spreading  waters,  the  treasures 
of  ancient  thought  and  learning.  Most 
of  the  Greek  manuscripts  we  now  pos- 
sess, and  some  of  the  most  valuable 
Latin  ones,  were  stored  up  in  her  libra- 
ries, and  ultimately  scattered  from  her 
over  the  western  countries.  A  succes- 
sion of  writers  maintained,  though  no 
doubt  in  a  lifeless  way,  the  traditions 
of  Greek  style,  and  composed  chronicles 
which  are  almost  our  only  source  of 
knowledge  for  the  history  of  these 
borderlands  of  Europe  and  Asia.  And 
the  light  which  still  burned  within 
her  walls  was  diffused  over  the  Slavonic 
peoples  of  the  Danube  and  the  Dnieper 
valleys.  She  was  the  instructress  of 
the  Slavs,  just  as  Italy  was  the  in- 
structress of  the  Teutons  and  the  Celts, 
sending  out  missionaries,  giving  them 
their  alphabets,  and,  in  the  intervals 
of  the  struggle  she  had  to  maintain 
against  them,  imparting  to  them  some 


Constantinople. 


341 


rudiments  of  civilisation.  And  the 
services  she  rendered  in  this  way 
have  been  too  much  forgotten  by  those 
who  have  been  struck,  as  every  student 
must  be  struck,  between  the  theological 
and  political  stagnation  of  her  people, 
and  the  powerful  intellectual  life 
which  even  in  the  Dark  Ages  had 
begun  to  stir  among  the  new  nations 
of  Western  and  Northern  Europe. 

What  remained  of  literature,  art, 
and  thought  expired,  it  need  hardly 
be  said,  with  the  Turkish  conquest. 
From  then,  till  now,  the  history  of 
Constantinople  is  a  tedious  record  of 
palace  assassinations  and  intrigues. 
Not  even  a  gleam  of  the  literary  ra- 
diance which  surrounds  the  Moham- 
medan Courts  of  Bagdad,  Cordova, 
and  Delhi  ever  fell  upon  the  Seraglio 
of  Constantinople.  Some  of  the  Turk- 
ish Sultans,  such  as  Mohammed  II.  and 
Suleiman  the  Magnificent,  were  un- 
doubtedly great  men ;  but  their  great- 
ness seldom  expanded  itself  in  any  of 
the  arts  of  peace,  and  in  the  city  there 
is  nothing  to  remember  them  by  ex- 
cept their  tombs  and  the  mosques  that 
bear  their  names. 

Let  me  now  attempt — having  tried 
to  show  you  how  the  city  has  grown, 
and  what  are  the  different  national  in- 
fluences, Greek,  Roman,  and  Asiatic, 
that  have  acted  on  it  and  played  their 
part  in  giving  it  its  strangely  mingled 
character — to  present  to  you  some  no- 
tion of  its  structure  and  aspect.  It 
consists  of  three  main  divisions.  First 
there  is  the  old  city,  the  City  of  Con- 
stantine,  which  the  Turks  now  call 
Stamboul,  lying  between  the  Golden 
Horn  and  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  and  nar- 
rowing down  to  a  point  of  land,  the  point 
which  was  the  site  of  the  first  Megarian 
colony,  and  which  marks  the  entrance 
from  the  sea  into  the  long  strait  of 
the  Bosphorus.  Secondly,  over  against 
Stamboul,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Golden  Horn,  is  Galata — called  pro- 
bably from  the  Galatse  or  Gauls 
(Galatians)  who  had  occupied  neigh- 
bouring regions  of  Asia  Minor  not 
long  after  the  time  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  and  some  of  whom  had  appar- 
ently settled  here — a  long,  low,  dirty 


district  running  along  the  water's 
edge,  and  full  of  Greek  sailors  and 
bad  smells.  It  was  a  mere  suburb  in 
Roman  times,  and  bore  the  name  of 
Sycse  (the  Fig-trees).  In  the  middle 
ages  it  became  the  seat  of  a  fortress 
colony  of  the  Genoese,  who  carried  on 
a  great  trade  in  these  seas,  and  had 
their  forts  and  trading  factories  all 
round  the  Euxine.  Here  they  built  a 
majestic  tower  nearly  half  way  up  the 
slope  of  the  hill,  from  whose  top  one 
of  the  finest  panoramic  views  of  the 
city  may  be  enjoyed.  Behind  and  above 
Galata,  rising  up  the  steep  hill,  is  the 
quarter  called  Pera,  where  Europeans 
of  the  better  sort  live,  and  all  the 
European  shops  are  to  be  found.  Here, 
on  the  hill  top,  stand  the  palaces  of 
the  Ambassadors,  among  which,  appro- 
priately enough,  our  own  and  that  of 
the  German  envoy  are  the  most  con- 
spicuous, tall  piles  that  look  big  enough 
to  hold  an  army.  Both  these  quarters 
are  in  Europe,  and  from  them  a  long 
suburb  meanders  along  the  European 
shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  forming  a 
line  of  villages  with  villas  and  gar- 
dens between,  that  sti etches  some 
eight  or  nine  miles  to  Therapia.  The 
third  and  last  division  is  in  Asia,  on 
the  further  side  of  the  Bosphorus, 
opposite  both  Stamboul  and  Galata; 
it  consists  of  a  series  of  towns,  the 
chief  of  which  is  Scutari,  forming  an 
almost  continuous  mass  of  houses  along 
the  shore,  and  virtually  a  part  of 
the  great  city,  though  separated  by 
more  than  a  mile  of  water,  water 
which  is  sometimes  so  rough  that  the 
steamers  cannot  cross. 

You  may  judge  from  looking  at  the 
map  what  a  singular  city  this  must  be 
with  the  sea  running  through  it  in  all 
directions,  not  merely  in  canals  like 
those  of  Venice  or  Rotterdam,  but 
forming  great  broad  inlets  whose  water 
is  intensely  bright  and  clear,  as  well 
as  deep  to  the  very  edge.  It  is  as  if 
you  had  a  city  built  on  both  sides  of 
the  Kyles  of  Bute,  at  the  point  where 
one  of  the  long  sea  lochs  (Loch  Riddon 
or  Loch  Striven)  comes  down  into  the 
main  channel.  Stockholm  and  New 
York  are  the  only  other  great  cities 


342 


Consta  ntinople. 


that  can  be  compared  with  it  in  this  re- 
spect, but  Stockholm,  though  beautiful 
in  its  way,  is  on  a  comparatively  small 
scale,  while  in   New  York  man  has 
done  his  utmost  to  spoil  nature,  and 
nature  herself  has  done  infinitely  less 
than  at  Constantinople.      Let  me  try 
to   tell   you    what    nature   has    done 
for   Constantinople.      She   has   given 
it  the   bluest   and   clearest    sea  that 
can  be  imagined,  and  vaulted  over  it 
the  most  exquisitely  bright  yet  tender 
sky,  full  of  a  delicious  light  that  would 
be  dazzling  if  it  were  not  so  soft.    She 
Jaas  drawn  the  contour  of  the  shores 
and  hills  as  if  with  an  artist's  hand,  the 
sweeping  reaches  of  the  Bosphorus,  the 
graceful   curve  of    the  Golden  Horn, 
the  soft  slope  of  the  olive -clad  heights 
behind  Scutari,  the  sharp,  bold  outline 
of  the  rocky  isles  that  rise  from  the 
surface  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora ;  and 
far  away  on  the  south-eastern  horizon 
she  has  raised  into  heaven  the  noble 
summit  of  the  Mysian  Olympus,  whose 
snows  blush  rose  red  under  the  morn- 
ing  sun.     The  sea  seems  to  pervade 
•everything  :  turn  which  way  you  will 
it  meets   you,   till   you  get   confused 
Among  its  winding  arms.      Its  glitter- 
ing bosom  is  covered  with  vessels  of 
every  size  and   style,  from  the   long 
dark   ugly  ironclads,  which  the   late 
Sultan   bought   from   the   Clyde   and 
Tyne     shipbuilders     with     borrowed 
money,     to     the     sprightly    feluccas 
and    other    odd    little    craft,   rigged 
in   a   fashion    our   language    has    no 
names  for.    During  the  day  its  surface 
is  seldom  calm,  for  there  is  usually 
a  breeze  blowing,  and  when  this  breeze 
comes  up  from  the  S.  W.  and  meets  the 
strong  current  running  down  from  the 
Black  Sea,  it  raises  in  a  moment  short 
sharp  waves,  a  kind  of  chopping  sea 
that   makes   the   small  boats  vanish. 
The  nights,  however,   are  often   still 
and^erene,  and  then  under  the  brilliant 
moon  the  city  seems  to  lie  engirt  by  a 
flood  of  molten  silver. 

From  the  shore,  lined  with  masts, 
the  hills  rise  almost  everywhere 
steeply,  bearing  on  their  side  and  tops 
the  town,  or  rather  these  three  towns, 
looking  across  at  one  another,  which 


I  have  endeavoured  to  describe.     The 
houses  are  mostly  of  glittering  white, 
densely  packed    together,   but   inter- 
rupted every  here   and    there   by   a 
grove   of  tall    dark -green    cypresses. 
Such  an  ancient  grove  almost  covers 
one    side   of   the    hill   of  Pera,   over- 
shadowing a  large  cemetery  called  the 
Field  of    the  Dead.     The   Turks  say 
that  the  smell  of  the  cypress  and  the 
resin  it  exudes  destroy  the  miasma  of 
a  graveyard.  At  any  rate  their  sombre 
hue  and  stiff  outline  harmonise  well 
with  the  ruinous  tombs  that  lie  scat- 
tered   round     their    trunks ;    for    in 
Turkey  the   graves  are  not  inclosed, 
and  the   stone   once   stuck    into  the 
ground  is  left  neglected  to  totter  or 
fall.     Out  of  the  mass  of  white  walls 
and  red  roofs  rise  the  vast  domes  of 
the  mosques,  and  beside  or  round  each 
mosque,    two    or    four,    or    even    six 
slender     minarets,    tall      needle-like 
towers  of  marble,  with  a  small  open 
gallery   running  round    the    outside, 
whence,  four  times  a  day,  the  shrill 
cry  of  the  man  who  calls  the  faithful 
to  prayer  is  heard  over  the  hum   of 
the    crowd    below.      The    houses    in 
Stamboul  itself  are  seldom  over  two 
or    three   stories   high,  and   often   of 
wood,   sometimes  whitewashed,  some- 
times   painted    red    or    yellow,    and 
generally   rickety  and  flimsy-looking. 
In   Pera  and   the  suburbs  one  finds 
substantial  mansions  and  villas,  but 
these     mostly    belong    to    well-to-do 
Christian  merchants.     There  are  few 
public  buildings  besides  the  mosques 
to  be  seen,  for  the  old  palaces  have 
been    burned  —  Constantinople    is    a 
terrible  place  for  fires — and  as  for  the 
new  ones,  of   which  there  are   more 
than  enough,  they  are  mostly  long  low 
structures  in   the  modern  French  or 
Italian  style,  upon   the  edge   of    the 
Bosphorus.     Sultan  Abdul  Aziz  spent 
millions  upon  these  erections ;  in  fact, 
the  loans  made  since  the  Crimean  war 
were   nearly   entirely   sunk    in  these 
and  in  his  men-of-war.     They  tell  a 
story  of  one  of  the  prettiest  of  them, 
that  he  built  it  at  an  enormous  cost 
as  a  place  to  go  to  for  coffee  in  the 
afternoon.     When  it  was  finished  he 


Constantinople. 


went,  and  finding  himself  with  a  head- 
ache next  morning,  took  a  disgust  to 
it,  and  never  entered  it  afterwards. 
This  is  what  personal  government 
conies  to  in  the  East.  As  for  the 
ordinary  ornaments  of  European 
capitals  —  museums,  picture-galleries, 
theatres,  libraries,  universities,  and 
so  forth — they  don't  exist  at  all.  The 
administration  cares  for  none  of  such 
things,  and  has  hardly  even  supplied 
itself  with  respectable  public  offices 
(except  the  Ministry  of  War,  which  is 
a  large  placs  with  the  air  of  a  bar- 
rack, deforming  the  finest  site  in 
Stamboul) ;  and  private  enterprise 
has  produced  nothing  more  than  two 
or  '  three  wretched  little  places  of 
amusement  for  the  Franks  and 
Greeks  of  Pera.  Nowhere  is  there 
a  church  to  be  discovered.  Half  the 
inhabitants  are  Christians ;  and  most 
of  them  devout  Christians  according 
to  their  lights  ;  but  ths  Muslim  popu- 
lation, who  are  the  object  of  our 
protecting  care,  are  still  intolerant 
enough  to  be  irritated  by  the  sight  of 
a  place  of  Christian  worship.  So  the 
churches  are  all  (except  the  English 
church  in  Pera)  comparatively  small 
and  obscure,  hidden  away  in  corners 
where  they  don't  catch  the  eye.  The 
ancient  churches  have  been  nearly  all 
turned  into  mosques  or  suffered  to  fall 
to  ruin,  so  that  little  material  remains 
for  the  student  of  mediaeval  architec- 
ture. In  fact,  one  may  get  a  better 
notion  of  Byzantine  art  at  Ravenna 
alone  than  in  the  whole  territories  of 
the  later  Eastern  Empire. 

People  are  always  saying  that  the 
inside  of  Constantinople  dispels  the 
illusions  which  the  view  of  it  from 
the  sea  or  the  neighbouring  hills  has 
produced.  But  those  who  say  so,  if 
they  are  not  merely  repeating  the 
commonplaces  of  their  guide-book,  can 
have  no  eye  for  the  picturesque.  I 
grant  that  the  interior  is  very  dirty 
and  irregular  and  tumble-down,  that 
smells  offend  the  nose,  and  loud  harsh 
cries  the  ear.  But  then,  it  is  so  won- 
derfully strange  and  curious  and  com- 
plex, full  of  such  bits  of  colour,  such 
varieties  of  human  life,  such  far-reach- 


ing associations  from  the  past,  that 
whatever  an  inhabitant  may  desire,  a 
visitor  at  least  would  not  willingly  see 
anything  improved  or  cleared  away. 
The  streets  are  crooked  and  narrow, 
climbing  up  steep  hills,  or  winding 
along  the  bays  of  the  shore,  sometimes 
lined  with  open  booths,  in  which  stolid 
old  Turks  sit  cross-legged  sleepily 
smoking,  sometimes  among  piles  of 
gorgeous  fruit,  which  even  to  behold 
is  a  feast,  while  sometimes  they  are 
hemmed  in  by  high  windowless  walls 
and  crossed  by  heavy  arches,  places 
where  you  think  robbers  must  be  lurk- 
ing. Then,  again,  you  emerge  from 
one  of  these  gloomy  cavities  upon  an 
open  space — there  are  no  squares,  but 
irregular  open  spices — and  see  such  a 
group  of  gaily  painted  houses,  with 
walnut  or  plane-trees  growing  round 
them,  as  one  finds  on  the  Bay  of  Naples. 
Or  you  come  to  a  side  street,  and, 
looking  down  the  vista,  catch  a  glimpse 
of  a  garden  full  of  luxuriant  vines 
and  rosy  pomegranates,  and  beyond  it 
the  bright  blue  waves  dancing  in  the 
sunlight.  Now  and  then  one  finds 
some  grand  old  piece  of  Roman  ruin — 
an  arch  or  a  cistern,  or  the  foundations 
of  some  forgotten  church,  whose 
solidity  mocks  the  flimsy  modern 
houses  that  surround  it  —  and  is 
carried  back  in  thought  a  thousand 
years,  to  the  time  when  those  courses 
of  fine  masonry  were  laid  by  the  best 
architects  of  Europe.  Not  that  there 
are  many  considerable  ruins,  for  in 
this  respect  Constantinople  contrasts 
markedly  with  her  Italian  rival.  The 
reason  of  this  is  doubtless  to  be  sought 
not  merely  in  the  superior  grandeur 
of  Roman  buildings,  but  also  in  the 
fact  that  while  in  Rome  the  old  city 
on  and  around  the  Palatine,  Aventine 
and  Coelian  hills  was  deserted  in  the 
Middle  Ages  for  the  flats  of  the 
Campus  Martius,  the  site  of  ^the 
ancient  city  has  here  been  continu- 
ously inhabited,  each  age  constructing 
its  dwellings  out  of  the  materials 
which  former  ages  had  left.  In 
another  point,  too,  one  is  struck  by 
the  contrast  between  these  ruins  and 
those  of  Rome.  Constantinople  has 


344 


Constantinople. 


absolutely  nothing  to  show  from  pagan 
times.  Though  Byzantium  was  nearly 
as  old  as  Rome,  the  city  of  Constan- 
tino is  the  true  creation  of  the  first 
Christian  emperor,  and  possesses  not 
a  relic  of  paganism,  except  the  twisted 
serpents  from  Delphi  and  an  Egyp- 
tian obelisk  planted  near  them  in  the 
hippodrome. 

There  are  no  shops  in  the  streets  of 
Stamboul  proper,  for  nearly  everything, 
except  food,  is  sold  in  the  bazaar, 
which  is  an  enormous  square  build- 
ing, consisting  of  a  labyrinth  of  long 
covered  arcades,  in  which  the  dealers 
sit  in  their  stalls  with  their  wares 
piled  up  round  them.  It  is  all  locked 
up  at  sunset.  You  may  buy  most 
things  in  it,  but  the  visitor  is  chiefly 
attracted  by  the  rugs  and  carpets 
from  Persia,  Anatolia,  and  Kurdistan, 
the  silks  of  Broussa,  and  the  stores  of 
old  armour  (real  and  false)  from 
everywhere.  Purchasing  is  no  easy 
matter,  for  a  stranger  is  asked  thrice 
the  value  of  the  goods,  and  unless  he  is 
content  to  be  cheated  both  by  the  dealer 
and  his  own  cicerone  interpreter  (who 
of  course  receives  a  secret  commission 
from  the  vendor),  he  must  spend 
hours  and  hours  in  bargaining.  Busi- 
ness is  slack  on  Friday  (the  Mus- 
sulman Sabbath)  and  on  Saturday 
(since  many  of  the  dealers  are  Jews), 
as  well  as  on  Sunday.  It  is  conducted 
under  another  difficulty,  which  drives 
the  visitor  almost  wild — that  of  a  mul- 
tiplicity of  "circulating  mediums." 
There  is  a  Turkish  metallic  currency, 
and  a  paper  currency,  greatly  depre- 
ciated, besides  all  sorts  of  coins  of 
other  nations  constantly  turning  up, 
among  which  the  Indian  rupee  is  one 
of  the  commonest ;  and  you  have  to 
make  a  separate  bargain  as  to  the 
value  at  which  the  coins  you  happen 
to  have  in  your  pocket  will  be  taken. 
Hotel  lodging,,  and  indeed  almost 
everything,  is  very  dear  :  for  Western 
books  you  pay  half  as  much  again  as 
in  London  or  Paris.  There  is  little 
sign  of  a  police  in  the  streets,  and 
nothing  done  either  to  pave  or  clean 
them.  Few  are  passable  for  carriages, 
and  the  Turks  leave  everything  to 


time  and  chance.  The  only  scavengers 
are  the  vultures,  which  may  sometimes 
be  seen  hovering  about  in  the  clear 
sky,  and  the  dogs,  of  which  there  is 
a  vast  multitude  in  the  city.  Though 
you  must  have  often  heard  of  these 
dogs,  the  tradition  which  obliges  every 
one  who  talks  about  Constantinople  to 
mention  them  is  too  well  established 
to  be  disregarded.  Nobody  owns  them 
or  feeds  them,  though  each  dog  mostly 
inhabits  the  same  quarter  or  street; 
and,  in  fact,  is  chased  away  or  slain  if 
he  ventures  into  the  territory  of  his 
neighbours.  They  are  ill-favoured 
brutes,  mostly  of  a  brown  or  yellowish 
hue,  and  are  very  much  in  the  way 
as  one  walks  about.  At  night  they 
are  a  serious  difficulty,  for  the  streets 
are  not  lighted,  and  you  not  only 
stumble  over  them,  but  are  sometimes, 
when  you  fall  into  one  of  the  holes  in 
the  roadway,  tumbled  head  foremost 
into  a  nest  of  them,  whereupon  a  terrible 
snapping  and  barking  ensues.  How- 
ever, they  don't  molest  you  unless  you 
first  attack  them ;  and  as  canine  mad- 
ness is  unknown,  or  nearly  so  among 
them,  nobody  need  fear  hydrophobia. 

I  have  talked  about  streets  from 
force  of  habit,  but  the  truth  is  that 
there  are  very  few  streets,  in  our 
sense  of  the  word,  in  any  quarter  of 
the  city.  It  is  a  congeries  of  houses  : 
some  of  them  built,  in  proper  Eastern 
style,  round  courtyards,  some  with 
doors  and  windows  looking  towards 
the  public  way,  but  very  few  arranged 
in  regular  lines.  It  has  the  air  of 
having  been  built  all  anyhow,  the 
houses  stuck  down  as  it  might  happen, 
and  the  people  afterwards  left  to  find 
their  way  through  them.  Even  the 
so-called  "Grande  Rue"  of  Pera, 
which  has  some  very  handsome  French 
shops,  is  in  some  places  as  steep  as 
the  side  of  Lochnagar,  and  in  others 
as  narrow  as  an  Edinburgh  wynd.  It 
is  a  capital  place  to  lose  yourself  in, 
for  you  never  can  see  more  than  a 
few  yards  ahead,  and  the  landmarks 
you  resolve  to  find  your  way  back  by 
— a  ruined  house,  for  instance,  or  a 
plane-tree  standing  in  the  middle  of 
the  road — turn  out  to  be  as  common 


Constan  tinopie. 


345 


as  pillar  letter-boxes  in  our  own 
streets,  so  that  you,  in  trusting  to 
them,  are  more  bewildered  than  ever. 
The  Russians,  one  would  think,  must 
feel  themselves  sadly  at  sea  in  such  a 
town,  for  in  St.  Petersburg  nearly 
every  street  is  straight,  and  some  of 
the  great  streets  run  so  far  without 
the  slightest  curve  (three  miles  at  the 
least),  that  one  literally  cannot  see 
to  the  end  of  them. 

Perhaps  the  strangest  thing  of  all  is 
to  have  trains  and  tram-cars  running 
through  this  wonderful  old  eastern 
mass  of  mosques,  bazaars,  graveyards, 
gardens,  and  ruins.  There  is  now  a 
line  of  railway,  which,  starting  from 
the  centre  of  the  port,  goes  right 
round  the  outside  of  the  city,  follow- 
ing the  windings  of  the  shore,  away 
into  the  country.  It  does  a  large 
"omnibus  traffic,"  stopping  every 
three  or  four  minutes  like  the  Metro- 
politan Railway  in  London,  and  I 
should  fancy  is  the  only  thing  in  Con- 
stantinople that  pays  its  way ;  while 
a  tramway,  beginning  near  the  same 
point,  passes  along  the  principal  line 
of  streets — indeed,  almost  the  only 
line  level  enough  for  the  purpose — as 
far  as  the  north-western  gate.  The 
cars  are  much  like  ours,  built,  I  be- 
lieve, in  America;  but  they  have  the 
odd  trick  of  always  running  several 
close  one  after  another,  so  that  you 
may  wait  an  hour  for  one  to  overtake 
you,  and  then  find  three  or  four  come 
up,  going  in  the  same  direction,  in 
ive  minutes'  time. 

Of  the  countless  sights  of  Constanti- 
lople   I   shall   mention  to  you  three 
snly,  the  walls,  the   Seraglio  Palace, 
id  the  famous  church — now  a  mosque 
-of  St.   Sophia.     The  walls  may  be 
raced   all   round    the    sea   front   as 
/ell   as   the  land   side  of    the    city, 
Jut     they     are     naturally     strongest 
id  highest  on  the  land  side,  where 
they  run  across  the  neck  of  the  penin- 
sula from  the  Sea  of  Marmora  to  the 
Slolden    Horn.      And    here   they  are 
indeed   splendid — a   double    (in   some 
places  triple)  line  of  ramparts  with  a 
ieep  moat  outside,  built  of  alternate 
Durses  of  stone  and  brick,  and  guarded 


by  grand  old  towers,  the  finest  group 
of  which  (called  the  Seven  Towers) 
stands  at  the  sea  end,  and  was  long 
used  as  a  state  prison.  In  several 
places  they  are  ruinous,  and  there 
the  ivy  and  other  climbing  plants 
have  half-filled  the  gaps,  and  clothed 
the  glowing  red  with  a  mantleof  delicate 
green.  Many  are  the  marks  on  them  of 
the  sieges  they  have  stood,  of  strokes 
from  stones  hurled  by  the  catapult,  and 
blows  delivered  by  battering-rams, 
long  before  gunpowder  was  heard  of. 
The  effect  of  their  noble  proportions 
is  increased  by  the  perfect  bareness 
and  desolation  of  the  country  out- 
side, where  there  is  nothing  like  a 
suburb,  in  fact  no  houses  whatsoever, 
but  merely  fields,  or  open  ground,  or 
groves  of  dismal  cypresses.  These 
ramparts  were  first  built  by  Theodosius 
(for  the  line  of  Constantino's  walls  was 
further  in),  and  repaired  again  and 
again  since  his  time  down  to  the  fatal 
year  1453,  when  the  Turks,  under 
Mohammed  II.,  took  the  city.  Since 
then  little  has  been  done,  except  that 
the  Turks  have  walled  up  a  small  gate, 
still  shown  to  visitors,  because  there  is 
a  prophecy  that  through  it  a  Christian 
army  will  one  day  re-enter  and  drive 
them  back  into  Asia.  The  stranger 
probably  agrees  with  the  Turk  that 
the  event  predicted  will  happen,  but 
doubts  how  far  this  simple  device  of 
theirs  will  delay  it.  It  is  a  curious 
instance  of  their  sluggish  fatalism 
that  they  have  not  only  allowed  these 
walls  to  decay,  which  after  all  could 
be  of  little  use  against  modern 
artillery,  but  that,  when  the  present 
war  began,  they  had  done  nothing  to 
provide  other  defences,  outlying  forts 
and  lines  of  earthworks,  for  the  city 
on  this  its  most  exposed  side.  In- 
deed one  is  told  that  Sultan  Abdul 
Medjid  actually  gave  the  walls  as  a 
present  to  his  mother,  that  she  might 
make  something  out  of  the  sale  of  the 
materials ;  and  they  would  soon  have 
perished,  had  not  the  British  ambas- 
sador interfered  in  the  interests  of  the 
picturesque. 

The  Seraglio  Point  is  the  extreme 
end  of  the  peninsula  of  Stamboul  (i.e. 


346 


Constantinople. 


the  old  city  proper,  as  opposed  to 
Galata  and  Pera)  where  it  meets  the 
waves  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  looking 
down  that  sea  to  the  west,  and  north- 
east up  the  Bosphorus  towards  the 
Euxine.  Here  a  wall  running  across 
the  peninsula  severs  this  point  from 
the  rest  of  the  town,  and  probably 
marks  pretty  nearly  the  site  of  the 
oldest  Greek  settlement.  When  Con- 
stantino founded  his  city  he  selected 
this  district  as  the  fittest  for  the 
imperial  residence,  since  it  was  the 
most  secluded  and  defensible,  sur- 
rounded on  three  sides  by  the  sea,  and 
on  it  there  was  built  a  large,  ram- 
bling fortress  palace,  where  the  em- 
perors dwelt,  shrouding  in  its  obscurity 
their  indolence  or  their  vices  from  the 
popular  eye.  After  their  fall  it  passed 
to  the  Turkish  sultans,  who  kept  their 
harem  here,  and  from  its  walls  the  dis- 
graced favourite  was  flung,  sewn  up, 
according  to  the  approved  fashion,  in 
a  sack,  into  the  deep  waters,  whose 
current  soon  swept  him  or  her  away 
down  to  the  open  sea.  No  palace 
offers  so  great  a  temptation  to  crime, 
for  in  none  could  it  be  so  well  concealed 
and  its  victims  so  easily  got  rid  of. 
Great  part  was  consumed  by  fire  more 
than  thirty  years  ago,  and  has  never 
been  rebuilt ;  so  most  of  this  large 
area,  which  is  still  divided  from  the  rest 
of  the  city  by  a  high  wall,  remains  a 
waste  of  ruins,  heaps  of  rubbish  with 
here  a  piece  of  solid  old  masonry,  there 
a  gaunt  yellowish  wall  standing  erect, 
while  in  the  midst  are  groups  of  stone 
pines  and  tall,  stiff,  sombre  cypresses, 
that  seem  as  if  mourning  over  this  scene 
of  silence  and  decay. 

It  is  no  inapt  type  of  the  modern 
Turkish  empire,  where  no  losses  are  re- 
paired and  forebodings  of  death  gather 
thick  around.  And  the  spectator  is 
reminded  of  the  Persian  poet's  lines 
which  Mohammed  II.  is  said  to  have 
repeated  when,  on  the  day  of  his  con- 
quest, he  entered  the  deserted  palace 
of  the  emperors — 

"  The  spider  weaves  her  web  in  the  palace  of 

the  kings, 

The  owl  hath  sung  her  watch  song  from  the 
towers  of  Afrasiab." 


A  part  of  the  palace  escaped  the  fire, 
and  is  still  used,  though  not  by  the 
Sultan  himself ;  and  in  what  is  called 
the  outer  seraglio,  close  to  the  wall 
which  divides  it  from  the  city,  and 
immediately  behind  St.  Sophia,  there 
are  two  buildings  of  some  interest. 
One  is  the  Museum  of  Antiquities, 
a  bare  room,  half  open  to  a  court- 
yard, in  which  there  lie,  heaped  up 
over  the  floor,  the  monuments  of 
Greek  art  which  have  been  sent  hither 
from  the  Greek  isles  and  Asia  Minor. 
Statues  and  fragments  of  statues, 
stones  bearing  inscriptions,  pieces  of 
pottery  and  glass,  and  a  variety  of 
other  similar  relics,  have  been  thrown 
together  here  like  so  many  skeletons 
in  a  burial-  pit,  uncleaned,  uncatalogued, 
uncared  for,  sometimes  without  a  mark 
to  indicate  whence  they  came.  No 
government  in  Europe  has  had  such 
opportunities  for  forming  a  collec- 
tion of  Greek  art  treasures,  and 
this  is  the  result.  What  it  has  cared 
for  is  seen  when  you  take  a  few 
steps  from  this  charnel-house  of  art 
and  enter  St.  Irene,  the  church  of 
the  Holy  Peace,  a  beautiful  bit  of 
work  in  the  best  style  of  Byzantine 
architecture,  which  the  Turks  have 
turned  into  an  armoury.  All  down 
the  nave  and  all  along  the  walls  rifles 
are  stacked,  swords  and  lances  hung, 
while  field  cannon  stand  in  the  midst. 
The  sanctuary  of  the  Divina  Peace 
teems  with  the  weapons  of  war. 

From  whatever  point  you  gaze  upon 
the  landscape  of  Constantinople  this 
seraglio  promontory,  with  its  grove  of 
lofty  cypresses,  seizes  and  holds  the 
eye.  It  is  the  central  point  of  the 
city,  as  it  is  also  the  centre  of  the 
city's  history.  Dynasties  of  tyrants 
have  reigned  in  it  for  fifteen  centuries, 
and  wrought  in  it  more  deeds  of  cruelty 
and  lust  than  any  other  spot  on  earth 
has  seen. 

St.  Sophia,  the  third  of  the  sights  I 
have  named,  is  one  of  the  wonders  of 
the  world.  It  is  the  only  great 
Christian  church  which  has  been  pre- 
served from  very  early  times ;  for 
the  basilicas  of  St.  John  Lateran  and 
St.  Mary  the  Greater  at  Rome  have 


Constantinople. 


347 


been  considerably  altered.  And  in 
itself  it  is  a  prodigy  of  architectural 
skill  as  well  as  architectural  beauty. 
Its  enormous  area  is  surmounted  by  a 
dome  so  flat,  pitched  at  so  low  an 
angle,  that  it  seems  to  hang  in  air,  and 
one  cannot  understand  how  it  retains 
its  cohesion.  The  story  is  that  Anthe- 
mius,  the  architect,  built  it  of  exces- 
sively light  bricks  of  Rhodian  clay. 
All  round  it,  dividing  the  recesses  from 
the  great  central  area,  are  rows  of 
majestic  columns,  brought  hither  by 
Justinian,  who  was  thirty  years  in 
building  it  (A.D.  538-568),  from  the 
most  famous  heathen  shrines  of  the 
East,  among  others  from  Diana's  temple 
at  Ephesus,  and  that  of  the  Sun  at 
Baalbec.  The  roof  and  walls  were 
adorned  with  superb  mosaics,  but 
the  Mohammedans,  who  condemn  any 
representation  of  a  living  creature, 
lest  it  should  tend  to  idolatry,  have 
covered  over  all  these  figures,  though 
in  some  places  you  can  just  discern 
their  outlines  through  the  coat  of 
plaster  or  whitewash.  In  place  of 
them  they  have  decorated  the  building 
with  texts  from  the  Koran,  written  in 
gigantic  characters  round  the  dome 
(one  letter  Alif  is  said  to  be  thirty 
feet  long),  or  on  enormous  boards  sus- 
pended from  the  roof,  and  in  four  flat 
spaces  below  the  dome  they  have 
suffered  to  be  painted  the  four  arch- 
angels whom  they  recognise,  each 
represented  by  six  great  wings,  with- 
out face  or  other  limbs. 

One  of  the  most  highly  cultivated 
and  widely  travelled  ecclesiastics 
whom  Russia  possesses  (they  are, 
unhappily,  few  enough)  told  me  that 
after  seeing  nearly  all  the  great 
cathedrals  of  Latin  Europe  he  felt 
when  he  entered  St.  Sophia  that  it 
far  transcended  them  all,  that  now  for 
the  first  time  his  religious  instincts 
had  been  satisfied  by  a  human  work. 
Mr.  Fergusson,  in  his  Histyry  of  Archi- 
tecture, says  somethirg  to  a  similar 
effect.  This  will  hardly  be  the  feeling 
of  those  whose  taste  has  been  formed 
on  Western,  or  what  we  call  Gothic, 
models,  with  their  mystery,  their  com- 
plexity, their  beauty  of  varied  detail. 


But  St.  Sophia  certainly  gives  one  an 
impression  of  measureless  space,  of 
dignity,  of  majestic  unity,  which  no 
other  church  (unless  perhaps  the 
Cathedral  of  Seville)  can  rival.  You 
are  more  awed  by  it,  more  lost  in  it 
than  in  St.  Peter's  itself. 

The  Mohammedan  worship  in  this 
mosque,  which  they  account  very  holy, 
is  a  striking  sight.  At  the  end  of  it 
next  Mecca  there  is  a  sort  of  niche  or 
recess,  where  they  keep  the  Koran, 
called  the  Mihrab.  Well,  in  front  of 
the  Mihrab,  just  like  the  Greek  priest 
before  his  altar,  stands  the  mollah  or 
priest  who  is  leading  the  devotions  of 
the  congregation,  while  the  worship- 
pers themselves  stand  ranged  down 
the  body  of  the  building  in  long 
parallel  rows  running  across  it,  with 
an  interval  of  several  yards  between 
each  row.  As  the  mollah  recites  the 
prayers  in  a  loud,  clear,  harsh  voice, 
the  people  follow,  repeating  the  prayers 
aloud,  and  follow  also  every  movement 
of  his  body,  sometimes  bending  for- 
ward, then  rising,  then  flinging  them- 
selves suddenly  flat  on  the  floor  and 
knocking  their  foreheads  repeatedly 
against  it,  then  springing  again  to 
their  feet,  these  evolutions  being  exe- 
cuted with  a  speed  and  precision  like 
that  of  a  company  of  soldiers.  Occa- 
sionally the  reading  of  a  passage  in 
the  Koran  is  interposed,  but  there  is 
no  singing,  and  this  is  fortunate,  for 
the  music  of  the  East  is  painfully 
monotonous  and  discordant.  Women 
are  of  course  not  present  at  the 
public  service ;  for  that  would  shock 
Mohammedan  ideas,  and  in  some 
Mohammedan  countries,  women,  like 
dogs,  are  rigidly  excluded  from  the 
house  of  prayer,  and  may  occasionally 
be'  seen  performing  their  devotions 
outside.  Here,  in  Stamboul,  however, 
I  repeatedly  noticed  groups  of  half- 
veiled  women  seated  on  the  floor  of  a 
mosque  when  worship  was  not  proceed- 
ing, sometimes  gathered  into  a  group 
which  was  listening  to  a  mollah 
haranguing  them.  On  one  of  these 
occasions  I  asked  the  cicerone  who 
accompanied  us  what  the  mollah  was 
saying.  He  listened  for  a  moment, 


Constantinople. 


and  replied,  "  Oh,  just  what  our  priests 
say,  to  mind  their  own  business  and 
not  to  get  into  scrapes  "  (pas  faire  des 
betises),  which  seems  to  imply  that  the 
exhortations  of  the  clergy  of  all  de- 
nominations are,  in  Constantinople,  of 
a  more  definitely  practical  chai'acter 
than  one  was  prepared  to  expect. 
Islam  has  been  so  hard  upon  women, 
that  it  is  something  to  find  them 
preached  to  at  all.  I  may  say  in 
passing  that,  although  St.  Sophia  is 
by  far  the  most  beautiful  of  the 
mosques,  some  of  the  others,  built  in 
imitation  of  its  general  design,  are 
very  grand,  their  towering  cupolas 
supported  by  stupendous  columns,  and 
the  broad  expanse  of  the  floor  almost 
unbroken  by  the  petty  erections  and 
bits  of  furniture  and  chairs  which 
so  often  mar  the  effect  of  Latin  and 
Eastern  churches. 

Few  buildings  in  the  world  inspire 
more  solemn  or  thrilling  thoughts  than 
this  church  of  Justinian.  It  witnessed 
the  coronations  of  the  Byzantine 
Emperors  for  nearly  a  thousand  years  ; 
it  witnessed  the  solemn  mass  by  which 
the  Cardinal  Legate  of  the  Pope  cele- 
brated the  union,  so  long  striven  for, 
and  so  soon  dissolved,  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  Churches ;  and  it  witnessed 
the  terrible  death-scene  of  the  Byzan- 
tine Empire.  On  the  29th  of  May, 
1453,  the  Sultan  Mohammed  II.  mar- 
shalled his  hosts  for  the  last  assault 
upon  besieged  Constantinople.  The 
thunder  of  his  cannon  was  heard  over 
the  doomed  city,  striking  terror  into 
its  people,  and,  while  the  battle  raged 
upon  the  walls,  a  vast  crowd  of  priests, 
women,  children,  and  old  men  gathered 
in  St.  Sophia,  hoping  that  the  sanctity 
of  the  place  would  be  some  protection 
if  the  worst  befell,  and  praying  the 
help  of  God  and  the  saints  in  this 
awful  hour.  Before  noon  the  walls 
were  stormed.  The  Emperor,  who  had 
fought  like  a  true  successor  of  Con- 
stantino, fell  under  a  heap  of 
slain,  and  the  Turkish  warriors 
burst  into  the  city,  and  dashed  like  a 
roaring  wave  along  the  streets,  driv- 
ing the  fugitive  Greeks  before  them. 
Making  straight  for  St.  Sophia,  they 


flung  themselves  upon  the  unresisting 
crowd  ;  men  were  slaughtered — others, 
and  with  them  the  women  and  chil- 
dren, were  bound  with  cords,  and 
driven  off  in  long  files  into  captivity ; 
the  altars  were  despoiled,  the  pictures 
torn  down,  and  before  night  fell  every 
trace  of  Christianity  that  could  be 
reached  had  been  destroyed.  They 
still  show  on  one  of  the  columns  a 
mark  which  is  said  to  have  been  made 
by  the  Sultan's  blood-smeared  hand  as 
he  smote  it  in  sign  of  possession,  and 
shouted  aloud,  with  a  voice  heard  above 
the  din,  "  There  is  no  God  but  God,  and 
Mohammed  is  his  prophet."  Looking 
round  this  noble  monument  of  Chris- 
tian art,  and  thinking  of  that  awful 
scene,  it  was  impossible  not  to  wish 
for  the  speedy  advent  of  a  day  when 
the  fierce  faith  of  Arabia  shall  be 
driven  out,  and  the  voice  of  Christian 
worship  be  heard  once  more  beneath 
this  sounding  dome. 

Now,  let  me  pass  from  the  city  to 
the  people  that  dwell  in  it,  and  try  to 
give  you  some  notion  of  its  vast  and 
strangely  mingled  population.  One  of 
the  most  striking  points  about  it  is  the 
sense  of  a  teeming  population  which 
it  gives.  Standing  on  the  top  of  the 
hill  of  Pera,  you  look  down  over  a  sea 
and  port  covered  with  vessels  and  boats, 
and  see  upon  the  amphitheatre  of  hills 
that  rises  from  this  blue  mirror  three 
huge  masses  of  houses,  straggling  away 
along  the  shores  in  interminable 
suburbs,  while  the  throng  that  streams 
across  the  bridge  of  boats  (reminding 
one  of  the  Vision  of  Mirza)  is  scarcely 
less  than  that  which  fills  the  gi^eat 
thoroughfares  of  London.  Pass  beyond 
the  walls,  or  climb  the  hill  that  hangs 
over  Scutari,  and  the  contrast  is  extra- 
ordinary. You  look  over  a  veritable 
wilderness,  great  stretches  of  open 
land,  sometimes  bare,  sometimes 
covered  with  brushwood  (for  the  big 
trees  have  been  mostly  cut  down  by 
the  improvident  people)  with  hardly  a 
village  or  even  a  house  to  break  the 
melancholy  of  the  landscape.  Much 
of  this  land  is  fertile,  and  was  once 
covered  with  thriving  homesteads,  with 
olive-yards  and  vineyards,  and  happy 


Constantinople. 


349 


autumn  fields ;  but  the  blight  of 
Turkish  rule  has  passed  over  it  like 
a  scorching  wind. 

Constantinople  is  a  city  not  of  one 
nation  but  of  many,  and  hardly  more 
of  one  than  of  another.     You  cannot 
talk  of  Constantinopolitans  as  you  talk 
of  Londoners  or  Aberdonians,  for  there 
are  none — that  is  to  say,  there  is  no 
people  who  can  be  described  as  being 
par  excellence  the  people  of  the  city, 
with  a  common  character  or  habits  or 
language.     Nobody  knows  either  the 
number  of  the  population  or  the  pro- 
portion which  its  various  elements  bear 
to  one   another  ;    but  one  may  guess 
roughly  that  the  inhabitants  are  not 
less  than  800,000  or  900,000,  and  that 
of  these  about  a  half,  some  say  rather 
over  a  half,  are  Mohammedans.     This 
half  lives  mostly  in  Stamboul  proper 
and  in  Scutari,  while  Pera,  Galata,  and 
Kadikeui  (Chalcedon)  are  left  to  the 
Christians.     Except  the  Pashas,  who 
have  enriched  themselves  by  extortion 
and  corruption,  and  various  officials  or 
hangers-on  upon  the  Government,  they 
are  mostly  poor  people,  many  of  them 
very  poor,  and  also  very  lazy.     A  man 
need  work  but  little  in  this  climate, 
where   one   can    get  on  without   fire 
nearly  all  the  year,  with  very  little 
food  and  clothing,  and  even  without  a 
house,  for  you  see  a  good  many  figures 
lying  about  at  night  in  the  open  air, 
coiled   up  under   an   arch   or   in  the 
corner   of    a    courtyard.      Plenty   of 
them   are   ecclesiastics   of   some  kind 
or  other,  and   get  their   lodging   and 
a  little  food  at  the  mosques  ;    plenty 
are  mere  beggars.     The  great  bulk  are, 
of  course,  ignorant  and  fanatical,  dan- 
gerous when  roused  by  their  priests, 
though  honest  enough  fellows  when  left 
alone,  and  in  some  ways  more  likeable 
than  the  Christians.    But  the  so-called 
upper  class  are  extremely  corrupt. 

These  richer  folk  have  mostly  dropped 
the  picturesque  old  Turkish  dress,  and 
taken  to  French  fashions.  They  wear 
cloth  coats  and  trousers,  retaining  only 
the  red  fez,  which  is  infinitely  less 
becoming  than  a  turban ;  smoke  ciga- 
rettes, instead  of  pipes,  and  show  a 
surprising  aptitude  for  adding  Wes- 


tern vices  to  their  own  stock,  which 

is  pretty  large,  of  Eastern  ones.     It  is 

they  that  are  the  curse  of  the  country. 

They  have  not  even  that  virtue  which 

the    humbler    Mussulmans    have,    of 

sobriety.     With   all   their   faults,  the 

poor  Turks,  and  especially  the  country 

people,  are   faithful   observers  of   the 

precepts  of   the  Koran,  and  you  will 

see  less  drunkenness  in  the  streets  of 

Stamboul  in  a  year  than  in  Glasgow 

upon   New    Year's   Day.     Indeed,   if 

you  do  see  a  drunken  man  at  all,  he 

is   pretty  sure   to  be  a  British  or  a 

Russian    sailor.     When    I   speak    of 

Turks,  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that 

these  Mohammedans  of  Stamboul  have 

any  Turkish  (that  is  Turkman)  blood 

in  them,  for  they  have  probably  about 

as  much  as  there  is  of  Norman  blood 

in  the  population  of  London.     They 

are  as  mongrel  a  race  as  can  be  found 

in  the  world — a  mixture  of  all  sorts 

of  European  and  Asiatic  peoples  who 

have   been   converted   to   Islam,  and 

recruited  (down  till  recent  times)  by 

the  constant  kidnapping  of  Christian 

children  and  the  import  of  slaves  from 

all  quarters.     Their  religion,  however, 

gives  them  a  unity  which,  so  far  as 

repulsion   from    their  fellow-subjects 

goes,  is  a  far  stronger  bond  than  any 

community  of  origin. 

Nearly  equal  in  numbers  to  the 
Mohammedans  are  the  Turkish  Chris- 
tians, Greeks,  Armenians,  and  Bul- 
garians. Though  I  speak  of  them 
together,  they  have  really  little  in 
common,  for  each  cherishes  its  own 
form  of  faith,  and  they  hate  one 
another  nearly  as  cordially  as  they  all 
hate  the  Turk's.  The  Armenians  seem 
to  be  the  most  numerous  (they  are 
said  to  be  200,000),  and  many  of  the 
wealthy  merchants  belong  to  this 
nation  :  the  Bulgarians,  however,  are, 
according  to  the  report  of  the  Ameri- 
can missionaries,  who  are  perhaps  the 
best  authorities,  really  the  most  teach- 
able and  progressive.  The  Americans 
have  got  an  excellent  college  on  the 
Bosphorus,  where  they  receive  Chris- 
tian children  belonging  to  all  the 
nationalities.  Then,  besides  all  these 
natives,  one  finds  a  motley  crowd  of 


350 


Constantinople. 


strangers  from  the  rest  of  Europe — 
Italians,  Germans,  Hungarians,  Rus- 
sians, Poles,  Frenchmen,  English. 
Thus  there  are  altogether  at  least 
eight  or  nine  nations  moving  about 
the  streets  of  this  wonderful  city, 
eight  or  nine  languages  which  you 
may  constantly  hear  spoken  by  the 
people  you  pass,  and  five  or  six  which 
appear  on  the  shop  fronts.  Turkish, 
Greek,  Armenian,  French,  and  Eng- 
lish are  perhaps  the  commonest. 
Italian  used  to  be  the  chief  medium 
of  intercourse  between  West  Euro- 
peans and  natives,  but  since  the 
Crimean  war  it  has  been  largely 
superseded  by  French.  Indeed  the 
varnish  of  civilization  which  the  in- 
flux of  Europeans  has  spread  over  so 
many  parts  of  the  East  everywhere  is, 
or  pretends  to  be,  French.  So  here 
the  music-halls  and  coffee-gardens  of 
Pera,  which  are  of  a  sufficiently  sordid 
description,  have  a  sort  of  third-rate 
Parisian  air  about  them  which  is 
highly  appreciated  by  the  repulsive 
crowd  that  frequents  them. 

The  best  place  to  realise  this 
strange  mixture  of  nationalities  is 
on  the  lower  bridge  of  boats 
which  connects  Stamboul  with 
Galata,  and  from  which  the  little 
steamers  run  up  and  down  the  Bos- 
phorus.  There  are  two  such  bridges 
crossing  the  Golden  Horn,  both  some- 
what rickety.  The  pontoons  to  form 
a  new  one  have  been  made  for  some 
years,  and  are  now  floating  beside  the 
lower  one,  in  the  waters  of  the  har- 
bour, but,  owing  to  a  dispute  between 
the  government  and  the  Frank  con- 
tractors, they  have  never  been  put 
together,  and  may  probably  lie  rotting 
there  for  years  to  come,  perhaps  till 
some  new  government  is  established 
in  Stamboul.  It  is  a  delightfully 
Turkish  way  of  doing  things.  This 
lower  bridge  is  also  the  wharf  whence 
start  the  little  steamers  that  run  up 
the  Bosphorus  and  across  to  Scutari 
and  Chalcedon,  on  the  Asiatic  shore. 
Stalls  for  the  sale  of  food  and 
trinkets  almost  block  up  its  ends, 
and  little  Turkish  newspapers,  hardly 
bigger  than  a  four-page  tract,  are 


sold  upon  it,  containing  such  news 
as  the  Porte  thinks  proper  to 
issue.  Take  your  stand  upon  it,  and 
you  see  streaming  over  it  an  endless 
crowd  of  every  dress,  tongue,  and  re- 
ligion ;  fat  old  Turkish  pashas  lolling 
in  their  carnages,  keen-faced  wily 
Greeks,  swarthy  Armenians,  easily 
distinguished  by  their  large  noses, 
Albanians  with  prodigious  sashes  of 
purple  silk  tied  round  their  waists, 
and  glittering  daggers  and  pistols  stuck 
all  over  them,  Italian  sailors,  wild- 
eyed  soldiers  from  the  mountains  of 
Asia  Minor,  Circassian  beauties  peep- 
ing out  of  their  carriages  from  behind 
their  veils,  and  swarms  of  priests  with 
red,  white,  or  green  turbans,  the  green 
distinguishing  those  who  claim  descent 
from  the  Prophet.  All  these  races 
have  nothing  to  unite  them ;  no  rela- 
tions except  those  of  trade,  with  one 
another,  no  inter-marriage,  no  common 
civic  feeling,  no  common  patriotism. 
In  Constantinople  there  is  neither 
municipal  government  nor  public 
opinion.  Nobody  knows  what  the 
Sultan's  ministers  are  doing,  or  what 
is  happening  at  the  scene  of  war. 
Everybody  lives  in  a  perpetual  vague 
dread  of  everybody  else.  The  Turks 
believe  that  the  Christians  are  con- 
spiring with  Russia  to  drive  them  out 
of  Europe.  The  Christians  believe 
that  the  Turks  are  only  waiting  for  a 
signal  to  set  upon  and  massacre  them 
all.  I  thought  these  fears  exagge- 
rated; and  though  my  friend  and  I 
were  warned  not  to  venture  alone  into. 
St.  Sophia,  or  through  the  Turkish 
quarters,  we  did  both,  and  no  man 
meddled  with  us.  Indeed  I  wandered 
alone  in  the  streets  of  Stamboul  at 
night,  and  met  no  worse  enemies  than 
the  sleeping  dogs.  But  the  alarms 
are  quite  real  if  the  dangers  are  not ; 
and  one  must  never  forget  that  in 
these  counti-ies  a  slight  incident 
may  provoke  a  massacre  like  that 
of  Salonika.  Imagine,  if  you  can — 
you  who  live  in  a  country  where  an 
occasional  burglar  is  the  worst  that 
ever  need  be  feared — a  city  where  one- 
half  of  the  inhabitants  are  hourly  ex- 
pecting to  be  murdered  by  the  other 


Constantinople. 


351 


half,  where  the  Christian  native  tells 
you  in  a  whisper  that  every  Turk 
carries  a  dagger  ready  for  use.  It  is 
this  equipoise  of  races,  this  mutual 
jealousy  and  suspicion  of  the  balanced 
elements,  that  makes  it  so  difficult  to 
frame  a  plan  for  the  future  disposal 
and  government  of  the  city.  When, 
at  some  not  very  distant  day,  the 
Turk,  or,  as  I  should  rather  say,  the 
Sultan,  disappears  from  Constanti- 
nople, who  is  there  to  put  in  his 
place  1  We  are  all,  whatever  our  poli- 
tical sympathies,  agreed  in  desiring 
that  it  should  not  fall  into  the  hands 
of  any  great  military  or  naval  state. 
And,  what  is  more  to  the  purpose,  the 
Powers  of  Europe  are  so  well  agreed  in 
their  resolve  to  forbid  that  issue,  that 
the  danger  of  a  permanent  Russian 
occupation  may  be  dismissed  as  chime- 
rical. But  who,  then,  is  to  have  this 
incomparable  prize,  this  arbitress  of 
war  and  commerce?  Neither  Greeks, 
nor  Armenians,  nor  Bulgarians,  are 
numerous  enough  to  be  accepted  as 
rulers  by  the  other  two  races.  The 
elements  out  of  which  municipal 
institutions  ought  to  be  formed  are 
wanting ;  and  though  each  of  these 
three  peoples  is  no  doubt  more 
hopeful  and  progressive  than  their 
Mohammedan  neighbours,  none  of 
them  has  yet  given  indications  of 
such  a  capacity  for  self-government 
as  could  entitle  it  to  be  intrusted 
with  the  difficult  task  of  reorganising 
the  administration  of  a  bankrupt 
country,  of  developing  its  resources, 
and  maintaining  order  and  justice. 
Looking  at  the  present  state  of 
the  inhabitants  of  Constantinople, 
and  their  want  of  moral  and  social 
cohesion,  one  is  disposed  to  think 
that  organisation,  order,  reform,  must 
in  the  first  instance  come  from  with- 
out, and  that  some  kind  of  active  in- 
tervention by  the  representatives  of 
the  European  Powers  will  be  needed 
to  set  a  going  any  local  government, 
and  to  watch  over  it  during  the  years 
of  its  childhood.  And  there  is 
another  reflection  of  some  political 
consequence  which  forces  itself 
strongly  upon  one  who  gazes  over 


the  majestic  avenue  of  the  Bosphorus, 
with  the  steamers  and  caiques  plying 
across  it.  It  is  this.  The  two  sides 
of  this  avenue  must  obey  the  same 
government.  The  notion  of  treating 
these  two  shores  differently,  because 
we  call  one  of  them  Europe  and 
the  other  Asia,  is  idle  and  imprac- 
ticable. A  strait  so  narrow  as  this  is 
really,  what  Homer  calls  the  Helles- 
pont, a  river ;  and  rivers,  so  far  from 
being,  like  mountain  ranges,  natural 
boundaries,  link  peoples  together,  and 
form  the  most  powerful  ties  of  social 
and  commercial  intercourse.  You 
might  as  well  have  Liverpool  in  the 
hands  of  one  sovereign  and  Birken- 
head  of  another,  as  give  Constanti- 
nople to  a  Greek  or  Armenian  govern- 
ment, while  leaving  Scutari  and  Chal- 
cedon  to  the  Sultan.  Fancy  custom- 
houses erected  all  along  both  shores, 
and  every  vessel  visited,  every  passen- 
ger examined  when  he  landed  !  Fancy 
a  state  of  war,  and  hostile  batteries 
firing  across  this  mile  or  so  of  water, 
and  destroying  both  cities  at  once  1 

Constantinople  is  not  only  a  city 
that  belongs  to  the  world ;  it  is 
in  a  way  itself  a  miniature  of  the 
world.  It  is  not  so  much  a  city 
as  an  immense  caravanserai,  which 
belongs  to  nobody,  but  within  whose 
walls  everybody  encamps,  drawn  by 
business  or  by  pleasure,  but  forming 
no  permanent  ties,  and  not  calling 
himself  a  citizen.  It  has  three  dis- 
tinct histories — Greek,  Roman,  and 
Turkish.  It  is  the  product  of  a  host 
of  converging  influences — influences 
some  of  which  are  still  at  work, 
making  it  different  every  year  from 
what  it  was  before.  Religion,  and 
all  those  customs  which  issue  from 
religion,  come  to  it  from  Arabia; 
civilisation  from  Rome  and  the 
West;  both  are  mingled  in  the 
dress  of  the  people  and  the  buildings 
where  they  live  and  worship.  Races, 
manners,  languages,  even  coins,  from 
every  part  of  the  East  and  of  Europe 
here  cross  one  another  and  interweave 
themselves  like  the  many-coloured 
threads  in  the  gorgeous  fabric  of  an 
Eastern  loom. 


352 


Constantinople. 


Seeing   the   misery   which   Turkish 
rule  has  brought  upon  these  countries, 
it  is  impossible   not   to  wish   for  its 
speedy   extinction.      Indeed   I   never 
met  any  Frank  in  the  East  who  did 
not    take   the    darkest   view   of    the 
Turks   as   a    governing    caste.     Even 
the  fire-eating  advocates  of  "  British 
interests  "  owned  this.     They  insisted 
that  the  maintenance  of  the  independ- 
ence   and    integrity   of   the  Ottoman 
Empire  was  so  essential  to  ourselves 
that  we   must  fight   for  the  Sultan's 
government   at  whatever  cost    to  his 
unhappy  subjects.     But  they  frankly 
confessed    that    it    was    not    only   a 
bad    government,   but   an    rrreclaim- 
able  government,  which  could  only  be 
improved  by  being  practically  super- 
seded.    Premising  all  this,  I  am  bound 
in  turn  to  admit  that  the  dominance 
of  Mohammedanism  adds  infinitely  to 
the  rich  variety  and  imaginative  in- 
terest of  the  capital.     Rome  without 
the  Pope  is  a  sad  falling  off  from  the 
Rome  of  twenty  years  ago,  and  Con- 
stantinople without  the  Sultan  and  all 
that  the  Sultan  implies  will  be  a  very 
different   and   a   far   less   picturesque 
place,  for  it  will  want  many  of  those 
contrasts  which  now  strike  so  power- 
fully on  the  historical  sense  as  well  as 
on   the   outward  eye.     He,  therefore, 
who  wishes  to  draw  the  full  enjoyment 
from  this  wpnderful  spot  ought  to  go 
to  it  soon,  before  changes  already  in 
progress   have   had  time  to  complete 
their     vulgarizing     work.       Already 
chimney-stacks   pollute    the   air,   and 
the  whistle  of  locomotives  is  heard  ; 
already  the  flowing  robes  of  the  East 
are  vanishing  before  the  monotony  of 
Western    broadcloth.      Before    many 
years  mollahs  and    softas    and    der- 
vishes may  have  slunk  away  ;  there 
may     be     local     rates     and     Boards 
of    Works,    running     long,    straight 
streets  through  the  labyrinth  of  lanes; 
a  tubular  bridge  may  span  the  Golden 
Horn,  and  lines  of  warehouses  cover 
the  melancholy  wilds  of  Seraglio  Point. 
Even  the  Turks  have,  of   late  years, 
destroyed  much   that    can    never  be 
replaced  ;  and  any  new  master  is  sure 
to  destroy  or  "restore"  (which  is  the 


worst  kind    of   destruction)   most    of 
what  remains. 

The  rarest  and  most  subtle  charm 
of  a  city,   as  of  a  landscape  or  of  a 
human  face,  is  its  idiosyncrasy,  or  (to 
speak  somewhat  fancifully)  its  expres- 
sion, the  indefinable  effect  it  produces 
on  you  which  makes  you  feel  it  to  be 
different  from  all  other  cities  you  have 
seen  before.     The  peculiarity  of  Con- 
stantinople is  that,  while  no  city  has 
so  marked  a  physical  character,  none 
has  so  strangely  confusing  and  inde- 
terminate a  social  one.     It  is  nothing, 
because  it  is  everything  at  once  ;  be- 
cause it  mirrors,  like  the  waters  of  its 
Golden  Horn,  the  manners  and  faces 
of  all  the  peoples  who  pass  in  and  out 
of  it.     Such  a  city  is  a  glorious  posses- 
sion, and  no  one  can  recall  its  associa- 
tions or  meditate  on  its  future  as  he 
gazes  upon  it  lying  spread  before  him 
in  matchless  beauty  without  a  thrill  of 
solemn  emotion.     And  this  emotion  is 
heightened,  not  only  by  the  sense  of 
the  contrast,   here  of   all   the   world 
most  striking,  between  Mohammedan- 
ism  and  Christianity,  and   the  recol- 
lection  of    the   terrible   strife  which 
enthroned  Islam  in  the  metropolis  of 
the  Eastern  Church,  but  also  by  the 
knowledge  that  that  strife  is  still  being 
waged,  and  that  the  shores  which  lie 
beneath  your  eye  are  likely  to  witness 
struggles  and  changes   in  the  future 
not  less  momentous  than  those  of  the 
past.     It  is  this,  after  all,  that  gives 
their    especial    amplitude    and    gran- 
deur to   the  associations  of    Constan- 
tinople.    It  combines  that  interest  of 
the  future  which  fires  the  traveller's 
imagination    in    America,   with    that 
interest  of  the  past  which  touches  him 
in    Italy.     Other   famous    cities  have 
played    their   part,   and   the    curtain 
has  dropped  upon  them  ;  empire,  and 
commerce,  religion,   and   letters,   and 
art,  have  sought  new  seats.     But  the 
city  of  two   continents   must  remain 
prosperous  and  great  when  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Berlin  may  have  become  even 
as  Augsburg  or  Toledo,  and  imperial 
Rome  herself  have  shrunk  to  a  museum 
of  antiquities. 

JAMES  BBYCE. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE 


MAECH,  1878. 


SEBASTIAN. 


CHAPTER  V. 
THEEE  CONSPIRATORS. 

AT  the  end  of  two  months  Amos  went 
to  see  his  son.  He  was  not,  however, 
able  to  form  any  idea  of  his  true  state 
as  Sebastian  was  in  bed  with  a  cold. 
The  boy  spoke  cheerfully,  and  the 
prebendary's  sister,  Miss  Jellicoe, 
seemed  nursing  him  kindly.  He  was 
prevented  from  going  again  for  four 
months,  and  then  as  Dowdeswell  was 
about  visiting  his  friends  at  Petherton, 
and  as  Amos  could  at  that  time  ill 
spare  the  means  for  his  journey,  he 
thought  Dowdeswell's  visit  must  suffice 
for  the  present. 

On  his  return,  after  spending  a  week 
there,  Dowdeswell  called  at  the  Rec- 
tory, and  gave  a  very  good  account 
of  Sebastian,  declaring  that  the  pre- 
bendary was  the  very  man  to  make 
something  of  him.  He  called  late  at 
night,  so  that  Amos  did  not  like  to 
detain  him  by  asking  many  questions. 
When  he  had  gone,  and  Mrs.  Gould 
was  expressing  her  thankfulness  for 
such  a  godfather  for  Sebastian,  Amos 
could  not  help  observing  he  wished 
Dowdeswell's  report  had  been  from, 
seeing  Sebastian  instead  of  being 
founded,  as  it  appeared  to  be,  on  the 
prebendary's  discourse  on  the  edu- 
cation and  management  of  youth  in 
general. 

The  next  morning,  however,  he  was 

No.  221. — VOL.  xxxvu. 


to  have  more  minute  information  on 
the  subject  from  Dora. 

Mrs.  Gould  and  her  daughters  were 
out  on  parish  visits,  and  Amos  was 
sitting  alone  in  the  dining-room  over 
the  school  accounts,  when  he  heard 
the  gate  open  and  swung  to,  and  a 
patter  of  small  sturdy  footsteps  he 
thought  he  ought  to  know  coming  up 
the  garden  walk.  The  next  moment 
the  handle  of  the  door  was  turned  in 
that  peculiar  manner  which  seemed 
to  denote  the  vigorous  efforts  of  two 
small  and  very  determined  hands,  and 
the  oddest  little  figure  appeared  before 
him.  It  was  Dora's  face  certainly, 
but  there  was  something  so  unusual 
and  grotesque  in  her  appearance,  par- 
ticularly in  the  set  of  her  tiny  fur 
jacket,  Amos  could  not  help  smiling 
as  he  inquired — 

"  Why,  Dora,  what  is  the  matter  ?  " 

The  little  lady  turned  and  carefully 

shut   the   door.      Then   she   came  to 

Amos,   and   looking  up   at  him  with 

her  eyes  flashing  and  filling,  and  her 

fat   hands   thrown  open   before   him, 

said,  with  tremulous  emphasis, — 

"  I've  come  to  tell  you  !  " 

"  To  tell  me  ?    What  about,  Dora  1 " 

"  Why,  about  Mm.     They  wouldn't 

let  papa  see  him  and  they  wouldn't 

let  me  see  him  ;   but  /  would  see  him. 

When  they  were  talking  I  came  out 

and  went  all  up  the  stairs,  and  called 

him ;    and  I  found  him  in  his  room, 

and  he's  so   miserable :    he's  hungry, 

A  A 


354 


Sebastian. 


and  can't  do  his  books,  and  he  mustn't 
have  anything  to  eat  till  he  does  do 
them,  and  he  can't,  and  you  must 
fetch  him  away." 

Then,  with  emphasis  still  moi'e  tremu- 
lous, she  'said,  as  she  threw  out  her 
hands  with  childish  passion, 

"There!     I  came  to  tell  you  !" 

Amos  took  her  on  his  knee  and 
dried  with  his  handkerchief  the  drops 
rolling  off  her  crimson  cheeks,  saying 
soothingly, 

"  Well,  well ;   I'll  go  and  see  him." 

When  Dora  recovered  breath,  she 
seemed  suddenly  struck  with  admira- 
tion at  her  own  boldness. 

"  I  came  and  told  you,"  she  said, 
"  didn't  I  ?  Nobody  knew ;  I  dressed 
myself.  I  went  and  got  my  things 
when  nurse  was  down  stairs,  and  put 
them  on  myself,  and  here  I  am  !  " 

"Yes,  Dora,  so  I  see,"  answered 
Amos;  "but  look  here,  isn't  there 
something  odd? — something  not  ex- 
actly right.  What's  this?" 

As  he  asked  the  question  he  took 
hold  of  the  collar  of  her  jacket,  hang- 
ing down  just  below  Dora's  waist,  and 
added, — 

"  Why,  it's  upside  down." 

It  took  Dora  some  moments  of  in- 
credulous scrutiny  round  herself  as 
far  as  she  could  see,  before  she  could 
be  convinced  of  her  mistake.  When 
she  could  no  longer  doubt  the  truth 
of  the  discovery  she  broke  into  peals 
of  laughter,  though  her  eyes  were  still 
wet  for  Sebastian's  troubles. 

Amos  put  her  to  rights  and,  after 
looking  at  her  with  a  critical  eye, 
took  her  home,  feeling  rather  proud 
of  his  attempt  as  lady's  maid. 

It  soon  appeared  that  the  little 
truant  had  not  been  missed,  and  there 
need  not  have  been  anything  known 
of  her  escapade  if  she  had  not  boasted 
of  it  all  over  the  house,  and  to  every 
one  she  met  all  day.  She  had  been 
cunning  enough  to  keep  her  views  of 
Sebastian  and  her  intention  from  her 
father  for  fear  he  would  frustrate  her 
firm  resolution  of  revealing  his  state 
to  the  rector. 

Dora's   rather   indistinct  communi- 


cation made  Amos  decide  to  tell  his 
wife  that  Dowdeswell's  not  having 
seen  the  boy  necessitated  his  keeping 
to  his  first  intention  of  paying  a  visit 
at  once  to  the  prebendary.  Mrs.  Gould 
had  a  secret  foreboding  when  she  saw 
him  off  the  next  day.  She  begged 
him  to  be  very  careful  and  remember 
how  sensitive  the  prebendary  was,  and 
how  the  least  word  might  endanger 
all  their  hopes.  She  warned  him  also 
of  taking  too  much  notice  of  what 
Sebastian  might  say,  adding  she  had 
noticed  a  slight  tendency  to  untruth- 
fulness  growing  in  him. 

But  she  was  not  greatly  surprised 
when,  in  spite  of  all  her  warnings, 
Amos  appeared  at  night,  accompanied 
by  a  small  figure  wrapt  in  the  rector's 
great  muffler,  from  the  folds  of  which 
issued  a  rattling  cough  rthat  sounded 
in  the  hall  as  though  a  mail-clad  war- 
riar  had  just  entered,  and  was  shaking 
off  his  armour. 

Mrs.  Gould  went  out,  secretly  full 
of  anger  at  such  a  return  being  possi- 
ble without  her  consent,  and  with  fears 
that  the  prebendary  had  been  defied  as 
well  as  herself.  But  she  wished  not  to  be 
an  unjust  judge,  and  so  waited  till  Amos 
should  explain  his  conduct.  She,  too, 
controlled  her  feelings  so  far  as  to  be 
able  to  assist  in  unwinding  the  muffler, 
and  to  present  her  cheek  to  the  cold 
little  lips  uplifted  for  a  mother's  kiss. 

They  went  into  the  parlour,  and  as 
she  saw  the  thin  cheeks,  sharp  shoul- 
ders, and  the  loosely  hanging  clothes, 
the  great  blue  eyes  feverishly  bright, 
and  with  black  shadows  under  them, 
her  heart  hardened  against  the  little 
culprit,  for  she  felt  these  things  would 
be  blamed  to  the  prebendary,  while 
she  thought  they  must  really  be  due 
to  Sebastian's  obstinate  and  rebellio 
conduct. 

"How  is  this,  papa?"  she  asked. 
"  I  thought  we  were  to  have  no  holi- 
days till  the  prebendary  could  give  us 
better  accounts  than  he  has  been  able 
to  do  yet." 

"  My  dear,  I  will  tell  you  all  about 
it  after  supper,"  answered  Amos,  rather 
sharply,  for  he  saw  the  yearning  eyes 


Sebastian. 


355 


already  brimming    over    at   so  icy  a 
welcome. 

What  could  be  coming  Mrs.  Gould 
wondered — something  serious  surely  ; 
or  why  should  Amos  be  so  unlike  him- 
self, so  silent,  preoccupied  and  reso- 
lute-looking ?  And  why  should  Sebas- 
tian, when  he  thought  he  was  unob- 
served, turn  upon  his  father  such  a 
glance  of  almost  adoring  reverence 
and  gratitude  ? 

"  Well,"  she  observed,  as  soon  as 
the  children  were  gone,  "  I  should  like 
to  know  the  meaning  of  this,  Amos  ;  I 
do  trust  no  slight  or  disrespect  of  any 
kind  has  been  offered  to  the  prebendary. 
It  should,  I  think,  be  remembered  that 
his  interest  in  your  son  was  entirely 
generous,  and  could  bring  him  nothing 
but  trouble  and  labour,  and  I'm  afraid 
I  must  add  disappointment.1 

Mrs.  Gould  did  not  make  this  speech 
aimlessly,  or  from  ill  temper.  She 
had  not  unfrequently  known  Amos 
change  his  purpose  after  being  in  like 
manner  advised  of  her  views  on  a  sub- 
ject on  which  he  had  decided  to  act 
independently. 

At  first  she  thought  her  precaution 
must  succeed  in  the  present  instance, 
as  it  had  done  in  so  many  previous 
ones. 

Amos  rose,  and  looked  thoughtfully 
down  at  his  slippers,  generally  a  sign 
of  vacillation  with  him,  Mrs.  Gould 
had  observed. 

"If,"  she  continued,  meaning  to 
give  greater  force  to  what  she  had 
already  said — "  if  I  had  not  such  faith 
in  the  prebendary,  I  could  easily  be 
deceived,  as  I  fear  you  have  been,  by 
Sebastian's  appearance,  into  thinking 
he  has  not  been  well  cared  for,  or  has 
been  harshly  treated  ;  but  the  pool- 
child's  obstinacy,  which  I  always  saw 
and  dreaded  is,  I  feel  convinced,  at  the 
root  of  it.  But  no  doubt  when  you  tell 
me  why  you  have  considered  it  neces- 
sary to  make  this  sudden  and  most  un- 
expected change  in  our  arrangements, 
I  shall  be  able  to  understand  what  is 
now  a  perfect  mystery  to  me." 

It  was  not  Mrs.  Gould's  habit  to 
get  easily  excited,  but  in  this  case  her 


voice  rose  unusually,  her  cheeks  be- 
came hot,  and  her  eyes  somewhat 
feverishly  bright,  as  they  glanced  at 
those  of  Amos  looking  at  his  slippers. 
When,  the  next  moment  they  looked 
up  from  the  slippers,  and  at  her,  she 
almost  forgot  her  own  anger  in  sur- 
prise at  their  expression. 

"  Helen  !  "  said  Amos,  in  round 
measured  tones,  such  as  she  had  never 
heard  from  him  before,  except  in 
church,  "  your  friend  may  be  a  very  ex- 
cellent man,  an  exemplary  clergyman ; 
he  may  have  generous  motives  in 
undertaking  the  charge  of  Sebastian, 
but  as  to  his  treatment  of  the  boy, 
I  put  my  feelings  in  very  mild  terms 
when  I  say  he  has  been  a  bungler  !  " 

"  The  prebendary  !  "  cried  Mrs. 
Gould. 

"  An  egregious  bungler  !  " 

"  Amos,  this  to  me  ?  " 

"And  a  very  cruel  bungler,"  an- 
swered little  Amos,  with  increased 
obstinacy ;  "  and  I  should  be  as  bad, 
or  worse,  if  ever  I  send  the  child  back 
to  him." 

"Oh!  then  all  is  settled?"  said 
Mrs.  Gould  ;  "  and  I  am  to  be  taken 
into  confidence  after  the  die  is  cagt." 

"  There  was  no  time  for  confidence," 
answered  Amos.  "  I  saw  the  boy  was 
perishing,  and  I  told  Jellicoe  what  I 
thought,  and  brought  him  away.  May 
God  help  me,  Helen ;  but,  unfit  as  I 
am  for  such  a  task,  I  trust  to  do  better 
for  him  than  that.  And  now,  say  no 
more  about  it.  I  am  quite  knocked 
up." 

Mrs.  Gould  did  not  sleep  all  night. 
She  was  as  nearly  in  a  passion  as  she 
could  be.  It  was  bitter  to  her  that 
she  felt  so  much  resentment  as  to  be 
unable  to  go  to  Sebastian's  little  bed, 
and  weep  out  her  real  grief  over  his 
pale,  dear  face.  Dear,  indeed,  it 
was  to  her ;  had  it  not  been  so,  she 
would  have  felt  less  anger  against 
Amos  for  the  opposition  that  brought 
her  pride  between  her  and  her  only 
boy. 

It  was,  however,  a  great  relief  the 
next  morning  when  she  found  that  in 
the  various  arrangements  to  be  made, 
A  A  2 


356 


Sebastian. 


Amos  not  only  showed  as  much  defer- 
ence to  her  as  usual,  but  decidedly 
more.  She  had  feared  having  once 
changed  his  mood  so  completely, 
he  might  never  again  return  to  his 
former  humility.  This  discovery 
so  far  softened  her,  as  to  make  her 
draw  from  a  certain  very  small  private 
fund  kept  by  her  for  the  most  special 
of  special  emergencies — to  get  nourish- 
ing things  for  the  little  skeleton,  as 
his  sisters  called  him. 

Under  her  care  he  so  soon  recovered 
flesh  and  strength,  that  Amos  felt  all 
his  old  admiration  for  her  revive. 

He  would  not  let  the  boy  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  lessons  for  some 
months,  though  Sebastian  was  almost 
painfully  anxious  to  show  his  grati- 
tude to  his  father  by  strenuous  efforts. 
But  it  was  just  these  sort  of  efforts 
that  had  kept  him  backward  so  long, 
Amos  felt.  He  let  him  read  and 
amuse  himself,  and  gradually  began 
teaching  him  almost  without  his 
knowing  it. 

At  last,  with  returning  health  and 
confidence,  the  stricken  mind,  like  a 
reviving  plant,  began  to  lift  itself  up 
in  natural  need  for  the  sun  of  know- 
ledge that  had  been  made  to  burn  down 
upon  it  in  its  weak  seedling  state  so 
injuriously.  Progress  began — at  first 
slowly,  then  to  increase,  to  the  ex- 
ceeding, but  silent  thankfulness  of  the 
patient  tutor. 

Heedless  of  all  opinion,  strong  in 
his  resolution  to  keep  him  to  himself, 
Amos  went  patiently  on  with  his  task, 
and  after  a  year  or  two  began  to  have 
a  calm  confidence  in  its  ultimate  suc- 
cess. Perhaps  their  faith  in  each  other 
was  the  best  earthly  help  these  two 
had  in  all  their  years  of  striving  to- 
gether. And  yet  sometimes  it  seemed 
to  Amos  that  the  boy  frequently  had 
not  faith  enough  in  him  to  ask  ques- 
tions that  might  save  him  much  diffi- 
culty. He  had  contracted  a  habit  of 
fear  at  the  prebendary's,  which  it 
seemed  taking  years  to  remove,  and 
which  made  him  often  silent  when  he 
should  have  been  communicative,  and 
profuse  in  explanations  as  to  some  act 


when  none  were  necessary.  Amos  had 
no  doubt  this  might  have  been  easily 
removed,  but  for  his  mother's  manner 
towards  him,  a  manner  in  which 
Sebastian  could  but  read  a  ceaseless 
reproach  for  his  failure  at  the  pre- 
bendary's, thus  keeping  that  dismal 
epoch  of  his  life  always  before  him. 

Sometimes  Amos  had  a  dread  as  to 
whether  this  injury  would  ever  be  re- 
moved. He  wished  he  was  half  as 
sure  it  would  be,  as  he  was  that  the 
difficulty  of  learning  was  altogether 
disappearing. 

Mrs.  Gould  looked  on  in  a  sort  of 
dignified  sarcasm,  or  rather  she  seemed 
to  gently  ignore  that  education  in  hei- 
idea  of  the  word  was  going  on  at  all. 

Her  keenest  satire  was  aroused  one 
cold  morning,  during  the  week  before 
Easter,  by  a  certain  weakness  by 
which  both  tutor  and  pupil  were  in- 
advertently overtaken.  It  happened 
when  Sebastian  was  about  fourteen. 
In  that  particular  week  Amos  had 
too  much  to  do  to  spare  any  time  to 
Sebastian's  studies,  except  an  hour 
before  breakfast.  As  he  was  suffering 
from  a  cold,  and  such  a  thing  as  a  fire 
was  an  undreamed  of  luxury  so  early, 
he  was  obliged  to  let  Sebastian  bring 
his  lesson  in  mathematics,  to  which 
he  was  then  keeping  him,  to  his  bed- 
side. One  morning  was  so  very  cold 
that  Amos,  having  carefully  given 
Sebastian  his  lesson,  ventured  to  put 
his  hands  into  bed  again,  ..while  he 
watched  the  boy  at  his  work.  He 
had  a  stiff  neck,  and  a  throbbing 
head,  too,  and  suffered  himself  to  just 
lean  back  a  little.  It  was  a  thing 
he  had  not  allowed  himself  to  do  be- 
fore in  these  bedside  lessons,  and  the 
result  was  humiliating. 

Mrs.  Gould  woke  and  found  both 
tutor  and  pupil  fast  asleep  with  the  page 
of  angles  and  triangles  between  them. 

The  event  for  which  little  Amos  had 
secretly  worked  had  at  length  come  to 
pass.  Sebastian  had  matriculated  at 
Dublin  University,  in  his  eighteenth 
year.  Amos  could  only  send  him  for  the 
days  of  the  examination,  or,  in  college 


Sebastian. 


357 


phrase,  as  a  "term  trotter."  In  his 
nineteenth  year,  to  the  surprise  of 
Mrs.  Gould  and  the  prebendary,  he 
passed  his  first  examination. 

When  the  news  came,  Amos  hardly 
dared  raise  his  eyes  to  his  wife's  face, 
feeling  ashamed  of  the  joyful  triumph 
that  filled  him.  He  supposed,  though, 
that  she  guessed  something  of  it,  for 
she  said — • 

"  That  is,  indeed,  a  comfort ;  but 
then,  of  course  it's  next  year  that  the 
real  test  will  be." 

"  Certainly,  .my  dear,"  answered 
Amos ;  "  but  without  a  first  there 
can't  be  a  next." 

All  this  year  the  work  lay  in  the 
sunshine  of  hope.  Amos  was  so  de- 
termined to  strain  every  means  he 
had,  to  get  Sebastian  through  this  cri- 
tical ordeal,  that  he  let  him  go  to 
Dublin  two  months  before  the  Trinity 
Term,  and  place  himself  under  a  tutor. 
The  time  came  and  passed.  Again 
Sebastian's  letter,  containing  the  re- 
sult of  his  examination,  was  in  his 
father's  hands. 

Mrs.  Gould  watched  the  usually 
steady  plump  fingers  of  little  Amos 
tremble  as  they  tore  the  letter  open. 
She  watched  him  read,  and  then  re- 
fold it. 

"  Come,  papa,  don't  keep  us  in  this 
suspense,"  she  said ;  "  has  he 
passed  1 " 

Amos  had  to  cough  before  he  could 
get  a  word  out. 
"  No,"  he  said. 

"  What  has  he  failed  in  ] "  inquired 
Mrs.  JGould,  as  though  that  was  the 
only  thing  of  interest  to  her — the  fact 
of  the  failure  being  fully  anticipated. 
"In  science,"  answered  Amos. 
"  I  thought  so,"  remarked  his  wife, 
in  a  provokingly  sympathizing  tone, 
that  brought  up  exasperatingly  to  his 
mind  the  cold  Lenten  morning  when 
she  had  found  them  both  asleep  over 
Sebastian's  mathematics. 

"  When  is  he  to  come  home  ?  " 
"  Not  for  some  weeks  ;  he  has  found 
two  or  three  pupils,   and  is  going  to 
stay  till  he  can  pay  me  back  all  his 
expenses  for  this  term." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

DORA. 

IT  happened  that  by  the  same  post 
one  of  Sebastian's  sisters  had  received 
a  letter  from  Dora,  full  of  her  tri- 
umphs at  a  school  party.  Every 
girl's  brother  was,  according  to  the 
young  lady's  insinuation,  more  or 
less  smitten  by  her;  but  she  added 
she  would  be  home  in  less  than  a 
monthnow,and  tell  them  "everything," 
which  word  was  underlined  from  the 
middle  to  the  end  of  the  page.  In  a 
postscript  was  added — 

"How  is  your  brother  1  How  cool 
he  must  have  thought  papa  for  not 
thanking  him  for  seeing  us  off  to  the 
coach  so  kindly.  Two  years  ago  !  can 
you  believe  it." 

There  seemed  little  enough  in  this 
postscript  to  any  one  but  Amos,  but 
hearing  it  just  then  was  not  pleasant 
to  him.     It  was  just  one  of  those  dis- 
coveries he  was  sometimes  making  of 
Sebastian's  silence  on  subjects  on  which 
he  would  have  expected  him  to  speak 
— and  somehow  this  discovery  added 
oddly    to    the    disappointment   Amos 
felt   in    his    failure.      Sebastian    had 
known   that    Dowdeswell  hinted,  the 
day    before    he    took    Dora    away  to 
Germany,  that  her  childish  familiarity 
with   him   should    cease.     Amos  had 
talked   with   Sebastian  about  it,  and 
he  had  agreed  unreservedly,  and  as  a 
matter  that  but  little  concerned  him. 
And  now  two  years  afterwards,  Amos 
discovered    he   had,    without    saying 
a    word    to    him,    accompanied    Dora 
and    her    father    to    the   coach.      It 
seemed  to  him  he  would  have  looked 
forward  to  meeting  him  in  his  failure 
with  greater  cheerfulness  if  this  had 
not  come  before  him. 

It  was  as  much  a  sense  of  uneasi- 
ness to  Amos  as  to  Dowdeswell,  that 
Sebastian  should  be  coming  home  just 
at  Dora's  holidays.  The  very  fact  of 
their  being  expected  in  the  same 
week  made  people  mention  their 
names  together,  which  of  itself  was 


358 


Sebastian. 


irritating  to  Dowdeswell,  though    he 
did  the  same  himself. 

"When  Amos  met  him  up  at  the  park 
gates,  and  congratulated  him  on  the 
prospect  of  so  soon  having  Dora  back 
again,  Dowdeswell,  in  common  civil- 
ity, could  but  make  some  allusion  to 
Sebastian's  return. 

One  day,  in  the  very  same  month 
that  Lillian,  more  than  twenty  years 
before,  had  given  him  the  roses,  in  the 
same  room  too,  Amos  sat  waiting  to 
see  his. son  and  Lillian's  child  meet. 

Sebastian  was  at  the  window, 
writing,  when  his  sisters  brought 
Dora  in.  It  was  two  years  since  any 
of  them  had  seen  her,  and  Amos  had 
a  strange  dread  that  these  years, 
which  brought  her  to  nearly  the  age 
he  had  known  her  mother,  should 
have  brought  also  that  indescribable 
sweetness  which  in  Lillian  had  so 
overcome  poor  Amos  from  the  first 
moment  he  met  her. 

He  was  relieved  when  Dora  came 
in  to  see  at  first  nothing  but  what  he 
considered  a  brilliant  boarding-school 
belle,  happy  in  her  return,  and  agree- 
ably conscious  that  others  were  happy 
in  it  too.     She  was  rather  slight  now, 
having  lost  all  the  sturdy  largeness  of 
her  childhood  at  eight  years  old,  when 
she   had   grown   too   rapidly   for  her 
strength.  But  she  was  now  in  brilliant 
health,  and   had   much   of  her  early 
robustness  in  spite  of  the  dainty  ele- 
gance  of  her  figure  and   movements. 
There  was  the  same  downright  plain 
truth-speaking   by    word    and    look. 
Her  very  step  was  more  decided  than 
that  of  ordinary  girls.     She  was  not 
so   very   unlike  Lillian,   however,   as 
Aisfos  saw  in  a  second    glance.     She 
had  the  same  brown  hair,  but  drawn 
back  and  arranged  so  as  to  set  off  to 
the  best  advantage  the  pretty 'profile, 
instead  of    veiling    it    like    Lillian's. 
Nor    had    she   a   touch    of    Lillian's 
shrinking,    half    prophetic    doubt   of 
life,   as    if    she  had   felt   an   angel's 
hand  on  her  shoulder,  and  was  warned 
she  might  advance  no  further  than  the 
threshold  of  her  womanhood. 

Dora  had  in  every  took  and  gesture 


the  air  of  one  advancing  brightly  to- 
wards bright  prospects.  The  light  of 
looked-for  joys,  as  well  as  present 
pleasure,  danced  in  her  dark  eyes. 

She  knew  all  in  the  little  Rectory 
were  glad  to  see  her,  and  showed  how 
heartily  she  enjoyed  the  knowledge  by 
sweet  smiles  and  warm  greetings.  She 
seemed  to  be  especially  assured  as  to 
Sebastian's  pleasure  at  her  arrival, 
and  was,  Amos  noticed,  surprised  that 
he  met  her  almost  coldly.  She  stole 
a  puzzled  glance  at  him  occasionally, 
and  his  air  of  preoccupation  appeared 
to  make  her  grow  quite  serious. 

A  walk  was  proposed  and  agreed 
to. 

"Come,  Sebastian,  are  you  ready?" 
called  his  sister,  as  the  little  party 
came  down  stairs. 

"  No,  thank  you,  I  have  something 
to  finish  by  the  evening,"  answered 
Sebastian. 

Amos  thought  this  wise,  but  he 
would  have  thought  better  of  it  still  if 
Dora's  brows  had  not  arched  with  such 
a  look  of  surprise  as  she  turned  away, 
and  fell  into  a  sudden  fit  of  carpet 
contemplation. 

He  would  have  been  better  pleased 
too  if  Sebastian  had  not  followed  with 
so  gloomy  a  gaze  the  form  passing 
down  the  garden  between  his  sisters  ; 
the  form  that,  in  its  girlish  grace  and 
summer  attire,  was  as  fresh  and 
ethereal-looking  as  a  spray  of  pink 
azalea.  The  parasol,  butterfly  like, 
fluttering  over  it,  was  raised  a  little 
in  passing  the  window.  Sebastian's 
gaze,  which  was  perhaps  admiring  as 
well  as  gloomy,  was  answered  by  a 
smile  all  beaming  and  assured,  and 
seeming  to  express  what  Dora,  as  a 
child,  had  so  often  said  to  him,  after 
tormenting  and  hindering  him  at  his 
lessons,  "  I  knoiv  you're  not  really 
angry  with  me." 

The  little  party  came  home  tired  in 
the  evening,  and  laden  with  wild 
flowers  from  the  Downslip.  Amos 
met  them,  at  the  gate,  and  gravely 
asked  Dora  if  her  father  would  not  be 
anxious  about  her. 

"Oh,  no,"    answered   Dora,   "he's 


Sebastian. 


359 


away  for  two  days,  and  I'm  to  do  just 
as  I  like." 

After  tea,  Dora  sang  all  her  new 
songs,  astonishing  and  charming  every- 
body, and  being  herself  perhaps  the 
most  charmed  of  all  in  doing  so. 
Sometimes  she  would  spin  round  on 
the  music  stool,  and  pour  upon  them  a 
torrent  of  school  gossip,  making  Amos 
and  Mrs.  Gould  smile  at  the  confidence 
she  had  in  thinking  all  her  school  com- 
panions and  their  histories  must  be 
as  interesting  to  them  as  to  herself. 

Amos  saw  she  could  not  remain  long 
without  a  glance  in  the  direction  of 
Sebastian,  who,  though  thawing  a  little 
under  her  brightness,  was  still  un- 
usually reserved  and  cold.  Once,  after 
having  been  from  the  room  a  few 
minutes,  Amos  returned  ;  he  found  all 
arranged  for  Sebastian  and  the  girls  to 
walk  home  with  Dora.  Amos  pro- 
posed to  accompany  them ;  but  Dora, 
with  what  he  could  not  help  thinking 
was  saucy  self-will  as  well  as  regard 
for  Mrs.  Gould's  loneliness,  would  not 
consent  to  his  coming.  The  young 
lady  had  her  reasons  for  this,  for  no 
sooner  were  they  out  of  the  garden 
gate,  than  she  gave  imperative  com- 
mands for  a  walk  on  the  Downslip. 
She  had  told  them  at  school  that  she 
should  take  moonlight  walks  here,  and 
though  she  knew  papa  would  not  take 
her,  moonlight  walks  she  meant  to 
have,  and  before  breakfast  walks  too. 
She  might  have  added  she  had  also 
made  some  boast  of  a  poor  student 
who  would  be  in  a  state  of  helpless 
idolatry  during  her  stay  at  Monks- 
dean  ;  but  that,  as  to  her  prophecy 
being  fulfilled,  she  was,  up  to  the 
present  moment,  extremely  doubtful. 
When  he  did  make  any  response  to 
her  chattering,  it  was  of  a  half-sar- 
castic nature;  but  Dora  liked  that 
better  than  his  silence,  and  would 
smile  at  his  sisters  in  gleeful  triumph 
at  having  won  even  so  much  from 
him. 

But  the  walk  had  its  charm  for 
Sebastian.  The  cool  night  air,  the 
pleasant  voice,  so  familiar  and  yet  so 
fresh  to  him,  the  joyous  heart  that 


would  make  known  all  its  treasures  of 
hopes  and  joys,  and  hunt  up  its  fond 
memories,  from  which  he  was  so  in- 
separable, altogether  touched  him  with 
both  pleasure  and  pain.  With  the 
sea  on  one  side  of  them  and  the  dark 
wall  of  downs  on  the  other — the  deep 
wood  between  them  and  the  sea  send- 
ing up  the  scent  of  its  wild  honey- 
suckle on  every  soft  breeze — they 
found  the  way  so  tempting  they  felt 
that  they  could  walk  all  night. 

When  Dora  had  been  seen  home, 
and  Sebastian  and  his  sisters  returned 
to  the  Rectory,  their  talk  of  her  fell  in 
with  Amos  Gould's  own  private 
opinion — that  she  was.  a  bright,  good- 
natured,  sentimental  girl,  and  nothing 
more. 

Amos  had  yet  to  learn  there  might 
be  a  danger  in  eyes  always  seeking 
each  other,  no  less  than  he  had  known 
in  eyes  that  dared  not  meet ;  that  Dora, 
in  her  girlish  innocence,  inviting 
Sebastian  to  fall  in  love  with  her, 
might  be  as  irresistible  as  Lillian, 
with  her  sad  refusal  in  her  face.  He 
had  to  learn  that  if  Sebastian  was 
cold  at  first,  so  cold  that  Dora,  with  a 
sense  of  childish  injury,  refrained 
from  noticing  him,  he  had  to  atone 
for  his  coldness  by  letting  her  see 
him  pale,  discontented,  and  unlike 
himself.  Then  it  would  be  her  turn 
to  offer  dangerous  comfort  by  some 
visit,  sudden  and  unexpected,  in  which 
she  managed  to  say  to  Amos,  or  some 
of  his  family,  such  things  as  they 
might  think  commonplace  enough  ;  but 
that,  in  Sebastian's  ears,  had,  she 
knew,  their  own  significance. 

Dowdeswell,  it  appeared,  was  far 
more  apprehensive  of  the  danger  of 
Dora's  intimacy  with  the  failing 
penniless  student.  Pity  might  be  all 
very  well,  he  thought,  if  it  ended  in 
itself  ;  he  would  wish  Dora  to  pity 
so  sad  a  case  as  Sebastian's.  His  very 
appearance  would  naturally  awaken 
such  a  feeling.  He  had  never  quite 
lost  the  cough  that  had  settled  on  him 
at  the  prebendary's,  and  the  constant 
strain  of  it  had  made  him  lean  in  the 
slightest  perceptible  way  to  one  side, 


360 


Sebastian. 


so  that  when  he  was  out  one  might 
know  his  figure  at  any  distance  011  the 
Downs,  not  only  by  its  tallness,  but 
by  one  shoulder  being  slightly  more 
forward  than  the  other.  Yet  Dowdes- 
well  felt,  with  some  annoyance,  that 
even  this  did  not  deprive  it  of  a 
manly  grace,  that  had  as  much  to 
do  as  its  one  defect  in  making  it 
stand  out  to  the  eye  from  all  other 
forms.  In  those  days,  when  he  had 
spent  so  much  time  in  study  under 
old-fashioned  little  Amos,  his  language 
being  tinged  by  the  books  he  laboured 
over,  had  a  scholarly  quaintness  which 
Dowdeswell  thought  might  well  make 
Dora  smile.  But  then,  unfortunately, 
the  rich  deep  voice,  as  well  as  the 
originality  of  the  thoughts  expressed, 
could  but  make  her  listen  with  plea- 
sure and  earnestness,  as  well  as  with 
smiles.  As  for  the  true  humility  of 
Sebastian's  look  and  manner  since 
his  failure  that  was  only  befitting 
him,  Dowdeswell  owned ;  but  then 
again  what  was  the  use  of  it  on 
such  a  face,  with  its  perfect  shape, 
brown  ruddiness,  and  eyes  of  blue, 
with  pupils  black  as  jet  ? 

Dowdes well's  anxiety  was  not  les- 
sened by  the  prospect  of  Dora  being 
at  home  all  the  winter,  a  change  in 
her  school  management  making  him 
decide  not  to  send  her  there  again. 

It  was  not,  however,  till  the  spring 
that  he  really  felt  sure  of  there  being 
anything  more  than  the  long-standing 
friendliness  between  them. 

-One  May  evening,  he  accompanied 
Amos  up  the  hill  at  the  back  of  the 
little  Rectory,  to  see  the  progress  of 
his  kitchen  garden.  From  it  they 
wandered  down  the  orchard  walk  in 
an  all-absorbing  discussion  as  to  the 
safest  time  for  potatoes  to  show  them- 
selves above  ground.  It  was  a  narrow 
little  orchard,  and  there  was  a  walk 
on  the  other  side,  and  on  that  walk, 
before  they  had  gone  many  yards,  they 
both  espied  through  the  apple  blossoms, 
Sebastian  and  Dora. 

They  were  going  in  the  same  direc- 
tion as  Amos  and  Dowdeswell,  who 
could  see  them  all  the  way  along  the 


orchard.  The  evening  was  the  first 
fine  one  after  a  long  succession  of 
wet  days,  and  the  sun  shone  on  the 
fresh  growth  that  had  sprung  up  in 
the  rainy  season  like  a  smile  on  a 
young  face  chastened  and  beautified 
by  tears.  The  sky,  still  leaden- 
looking  in  places,  had  here  and  there 
great  patches  of  faint  pink,  of  which 
the  masses  of  apple  blossoms  below 
seemed  a  tender  reflection.  Yet  the 
two  going  slowly  along  might  have 
been  blind  to  all  the  freshened 
orchard  beauty  that  it  might  be  sup- 
posed they  had  come  purposely  to  see. 
Dora's  eyes  were  on  the  grass-grown 
walk,  Sebastian's  on  Dora's  face, 
which  was  turned  slightly  from  him 
towards  the  apple-trees,  in  the  mystery 
of  its  tearful  looks,  tenderness,  and 
doubt.  It  seemed  so  natural  to  see 
such  a  couple  in  such  a  place,  that 
Dowdeswell  felt  half  ashamed  of  his 
anger,  and  Amos  of  his  anxiety.  Yet, 
for  all  that,  Dowdeswell  was  very 
angry,  and  Amos  very  anxious,  when 
they  got  to  the  end  of  the  orchard 
and  saw  the  two  coming  dreamily 
along,  hand  in  hand.  There  was  evi- 
dently no  thought  of  worldly  impedi- 
ments present  to  either,  nothing  but 
love's  own  doubts  and  difficulties 
troubling  them ;  they  were  simply 
like  Shakespere's 

"  Lover  and  his  lass 
That  thro'  a  country  lane  did  pass 
In  the  spring-time." 

And  when  Sebastian's  hand  stole 
round  Dora's  shoulders,  and  she  shook 
it  off  impetuously,  it  was  certainly 
from  no  prudent  remembrance  of  their 
different  circumstances  that  she  did 
so,  but  simply  because  the  progress 
their  love  had  made  was  already 
enough  to  engross  and  frighten  her 
girlish  heart.  She  had  let  Sebastian 
tell  her  of  his  love  and  hold  her  hand, 
and  that  was  sufficient  to  dream  over 
for  months  to  come.  But  Sebastian 
took  her  repulse  seriously. 

As  she  leaned  against  the  gate, 
where  the  rosy  orchard  opened  on  the 
golden  meadow,  he  stood  with  his  hand 


Sebastian. 


361 


on  the  gate,  and  his  foot  on  the  lower 
bar,  and  the  two,  silent  and  solemn  as 
stone  statues,  watching  them,  heard 
him  say — 

"  Why  do  you  play  with  me,  Dora  1 
You  say  you  love  me,  and  yet  some- 
times behave  as  if  you  hated  me." 

"  Well,  perhaps  I  oughtn't  to  have 
eaid  it,"  answered  Dora. 

Sebastian  took  his  foot  off  the  bar 
of  the  gate  impatiently. 

"You  should  be  serious,  Dora,"  he 
said. 

"  I  am.  very  serious,"  replied  Dora ; 
"and  I  shall  be  very  sorry  for  what 
I  have  said  if  yoxi  frighten  me.  You 
asked  if  I  thought  I  could  love  you, 
and  I  said  I  was  beginning  to  love 
you  ;  but  it's  only  the  beginning,  and 
I  don't  want  to  be  frightened  into 
anything  solemn." 

"Which  means,"  observed  Sebas- 
tian, with  some  bitterness,  "that  I 
may  hope  and  work  without  one  word 
of  promise  from  you  to  assure  me  my 
hoping  and  working  will  not  all  end 
in  my  usual  reward — disappointment." 

"  I  tell  you  the  simple  truth,  Sebas- 
tian," said  Dora.  "  I  like  being  with 
you.  I  think  a  great  deal  about  you — 
more  than  anybody  else  ;  but  if  being 
unable  to  promise  you  more  than  this 
yet  shows  that  what  I  feel  isn't  love — 
well,  then,  it  isn't,  that's  all — and  I 
can't  help  it.  Perhaps  I  oughtn't  to 
have  told  you  so  much,  as  I  couldn't 
tell  you  more." 

Dowdeswell  cared  to  hear  no  more. 
What  he  had  just  seen  and  heard 
agitated  him  deeply,  yet  he  controlled 
his  feelings  and  impulses  so  far  as  to 
fill  Amos  with  astonishment.  The  last 
words  he  had  overheard  from  Dora 
enabled  him  on  the  moment  to  conceal 
his  real  irritation  and  concern ;  and 
he  turned  back  with  Amos  towards 
the  house,  conversing  as  before  on  the 
most  trifling  topics. 

It  was  a  relief  to  Amos  to  say  "  Good 
evening,"  and  to  get  home  to  his  own 
reflections.  These  were  of  a  strangely 
mingled  character.  He  thought  of  his 
own  feelings  towards  Dora's  mother, 
in  days  gone  by,  and  these  made  him 


judge  tenderly  of  Sebastian.  Yet  he 
could  not  approve  of  his  son's  con- 
duct. He  remembered  how  carefully 
he  had  himself  taken  account  of  Lil- 
lian's circumstances  and  his  own,  and 
how  very  differently  Sebastian  pro- 
ceeded, without  either  a  profession  or 
a  prospect  in  life.  33ut  then,  Amos 
again  reflected,  who  can  weigh  out- 
ward circumstances  in  life's  mysterious 
balance  against  the  pure  joy  of  an 
ingenuous  mutual  affection  \ 

Amos  was  unconsciously  lapsing  into 
a  strain  of  reverie  that  must  have  ab- 
sorbed him  in  his  own  past  rather  than 
in  Sebastian's  future.  However,  he 
roused  himself  from  it  under  a  strong 
sense  of  the  necessity  that  was  so 
clearly  laid  on  him  to  discourage  any 
engagement  between  Sebastian  and 
Dora. 

Dowdeswell,  for  his  part,  was  de- 
termined by  some  means  or  other  to 
fix  a  very  wide  gulf  between  them. 
And  with  this  firm  purpose  in  his 
mind  he  went  over  to  the  prebendary 
at  Stowey-cum-Petherton  the  very  next 
day.  Without  at  all  referring  to  Dora, 
Dowdeswell  gave  the  prebendary  to 
understand  that  his  regard  for  Mr. 
Gould  had  led  him  to  think  seriously 
of  Sebastian's  present  aimless  life  at 
Monksdean;  and  that  if  the  pre- 
bendary could  suggest  any  way  in 
which  an  end  might  be  put  to  it  at 
once  he  would  be  happy  to  supply  the 
needful  means. 

Dowdeswell's  earnestness  carried 
him  farther  than  he  had  intended  to 
go  in  the  first  instance.  He  spoke  of 
a  business  life  in  London  as  possible 
for  Sebastian,  and  still  more  strongly 
of  some  suitable  opening  for  him  in 
the  Colonies.  The  prebendary  was 
an  attentive  listener  till  Dowdeswell 
paused  at  his  own  mention  of  the 
Colonies,  with  some  misgiving  that  he 
was  showing  his  hand  too  soon  or  too 
clearly. 

The  prebendary,  however,  had  no 
other  idea  of  his  visitor's  purpose  than 
that  which  he  had  himself  stated ;  and 
at  the  mention  of  the  Colonies  it  flashed 
across  his  memory  that  he  had  a  few 


Sebastian. 


days  previously  consigned  a  printed 
form  to  the  waste-paper  basket  that 
might  just  meet  all  the  conditions  of 
the  case. 

It  was  now  his  turn  to  speak,  and 
he  did  so  in  his  grandest  manner,  first 
of  all  expressing  his  great  admiration 
of  Dowdeswell's  generous  intentions, 
and  then  informing  him  of  what  he 
considered  an  excellent  opportunity 
for  giving  them  full  effect.  He  had, 
he  said,  been  asked  by  the  commissary 
of  a  colonial  bishop  to  recommend  a 
suitable  young  man  for  the  position  of 
lay  assistant  with  prospect  of  ordina- 
tion, and  he  had  at  once  thought  of 
Sebastian,  whose  cousin  and  namesake 
had  been  similarly  recommended  by 
him  in  the  same  quarter,  and  was 
now  in  a  fair  way  of  becoming  a 
colonial  clergyman.  But  the  com- 
missary had  also  asked  for  contri- 
butions towards  the  passage  and  outfit 
of  the  selected  candidate.  The  pre- 
bendary then  pointed  out  that  if  he 
could  supply  both  the  man  and  the 
money  a  distinguished  service  would 
be  rendered  to  the  Colonial  Church ; 
and  as  the  missionary  with  whom  it 
was  hoped  the  lay  assistant  would 
proceed  outwards  was  waiting  for  the 
result  of  the  commissary's  appeal,  no- 
thing could  well  be  more  timely  than 
Dowdeswell's  help. 

Dowdeswell  regarded  the  prebendary 
as  he  would  an  angel  of  deliverance, 
and  readily  endorsed  his  opinion  of 
the  plan  he  had  propounded.  He 
begged  the  prebendary  to  have  the 
matter  concluded  as  soon  as  possible, 
lest  the  chance  might  pass  away  from 
Sebastian ;  but  he  also  particularly 
requested  that  the  Gould  family  might 
have  no  knowledge  whatever  of  his 
part  in  the  transaction. 

The  prebendary  promised  him  to 
manage  matters  in  this  way ;  but  he 
emphatically  added  that  so  generous 
an  act  to  the  Colonial  Church  must  be 
made  known  to  the  commissary,  and 
through  him  to  the  bishop. 

The  sequel  of  Dowdeswell's  inter- 
view with  the  prebendary  was,  that 
within  a  fortnight  Sebastian  was  on 


his  way  to  Markland,  New  Zealand, 
as  lay  assistant  to  the  newly-appointed 
missionary  at  that  station. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

OCTOBER. 

RATHER  more  than  four  years  after 
his  departure  the  long-expected  news 
of  Sebastian's  ordination  reached 
Monksdean. 

It  was  received  with  all  the  quiet 
gratitude  that  those  who  had  learnt  to 
relinquish  everything  but  one  small 
portion  of  a  great  hope  could  feel  at 
finding  that  portion  realised. 

When  the  little  house  was  still,  and 
Amos  and  his  wife  sat  alone  thinking 
over  Sebastian's  letter,  they  did  not 
feel  able  to  congratulate  each  other  in 
words  or  even  in  looks.  Each  knew 
the  disappointments  which  had  been 
necessary  so  to  humble  and  chasten 
their  hopes  too  well  to  venture  on 
expressions  of  gratitude. 

It  might  be,  too,  that  with  the  night 
hours  came  ghosts  of  other  hopes  that 
had  been  stifled  and  buried. 

The  house  door  was  open,  and  the 
two,  on  their  way  up  to  rest,  stood 
there  a  few  moments. 

The  October  night  was  chilly,  but 
lit  by  the  clear  hunters'  moon  over  the 
sea.  The  trees  clustered  about  the 
church  had  their  foliage  as  much 
thinned  as  these  two  had  had  their 
hopes.  The  corn-fields  lay  bare — the 
sea  cold. 

Little  Amos,  almost  without  look- 
ing at  his  wife,  knew  that  her  eyes 
were  slowly  filling  as  she  thought  how 
that  warm,  teeming  May  afternoon 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  had  toned 
down  to  the  cold  bareness  of  this 
night. 

He  did  not  like  to  take  heed  of  it, 
for  he  knew  she  preferred  to  conquer 
alone  any  little  emotion  that  disturbed 
her  usually  placid  heart.  And  he  knew, 
too,  she  had  a  sure  and  prompt  way  of 
overcoming  it. 

She  was  wonderfully  little  changed 
by  the  many  years  that  had  passed, 
and  so  was  Amos.  Not  that  either 


Sebastian. 


363 


had  any  of  those  sunny  lights  and 
flushes  that  seem  to  show  a  deathless 
youth  in  some  time-worn  faces.  There 
was  rather  a  look  of  hard  preservation 
aboiit  them,  the  dull,  monotonous 
tenor  of  their  lives  appeared  to  have 
acted  as  a  sort  of  preserving  balm. 

Mrs.  Gould's  hair  was  still  red, 
though  faded  and  dull,  and  smoothed 
down  more  rigidly,  perhaps  to  hide 
the  mixture  of  white  that  caused  the 
general  dulness,  but  was  imperceptible 
in  any  other  way.  Her  light-coloured 
brown  eyes  were  still  shrewd  and 
clear,  though  she  wore  glasses  for 
reading  and  needlework.  Her  cheek- 
bones stood  out  more  highly ;  but  her 
mouth  was  not  sunken,  her  rather 
prominent  teeth  being  still  strong  and 
showing  age  only  in  being  worn  down 
and  yellowed.  Her  form  was  thinner, 
but  perfectly  erect.  Her  hands  had 
lost  their  delicacy,  but  only  looked 
colourless  and  muscular  rather  than 
aged. 

Little  Amos  was  stouter  and  puffier, 
and  his  hair  retained  but  little  of  its 
former  raven  blackness.  His  face 
showed  him  more  than  ever  sure  that 
religion  meant  calm  and  amiable  re- 
signation to  hard,  plodding  work,  and 
joylessness  without  sadness. 

For  him,  however,  as  for  his  wife, 
time  might  have  felt  sympathy,  and 
caught  their  way  of  waiting  for 
Sebastian. 

As  they  stood  looking  at  that  silvery 
way  under  the  moon  that  seems  always 
to  suggest  the  idea  of  a  path  for  the 
return  of  the  absent,  little  Amos  was 
surprised  to  hear  a  sharp  sigh  from 
his  wife. 

"You're  not  well,  Helen,"  he  said, 
in  his  dry  but  not  unkind  way. 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  "but  it's 
hard  I  can't  see  my  boy  for  so  long." 

Amos  was  troubled,  but  he  could 
offer  no  comfort ;  for  he  knew  what 
Sebastian  had  said  in  his  letter  to  be 
probably  true — that  he  would  be  ex- 
pected to  work  three  years  at  Mark- 
land  before  returning  and  seeking 
duty  in  England.  Amos  could  not 
help  sighing  himself  as  he  shut  and 


bolted  the  door.  But  his  wife's  un- 
wonted fit  of  despondency  and  yearn- 
ing inspired  him  to  say,  as  he  followed 
her  up  stairs — 

"  Oh,  we  can't  tell  what  may  happen. 
It  may  not  be  so  long." 

In  little  more  than  a  year  Amos  was 
astonished  to  find  himself  a  true  pro- 
phet. A  letter  arrived  from  Pre- 
bendary Jellicoe  informing  them  he 
was  so  pleased  at  the  news  he  had 
received  from  Sebastian  that  he  had 
written  to  try  and  make  arrangements 
for  him  to  come  as  his  curate  as  soon 
as  possible,  hinting  that  there  would 
be  little  doubt  of  his  wish  being  com- 
plied with. 

Amos  had,  as  usual,  his  own  private 
thoughts  about  the  prebendary's  mag- 
nanimity towards  Sebastian.  He  was 
not  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  it  had 
been  a  difficult  matter  to  get  a  curate 
to  remain  for  any  time  at  Stowey-cum- 
Petherton.  The  prebendary,  however, 
made  it  appear  he  was  intending  to 
put  Sebastian  in  the  way  of  prefer- 
ment, and  also  to  act  generously  to 
him  at  once  in  the  matter  of  stipend. 

Amos  thought,  too,  that  the  diffi- 
culty of  which  he  reminded  them — of 
a  colonially-ordained  clergyman  find- 
ing duty  in  England — was  quite  true. 
Sebastian's  last  letter  had  also  con- 
tained the  news  of  his  cousin's  death  ; 
after  which  Amos  felt  Markland  would 
be  a  very  different  place  to  him. 

Then  the  idea  of  having  him  back 
was  sunshine  warm  enough  to  dispel 
any  clouds  of  doubt  that  did  some- 
times arise  in  Amos  Gould's  mind,  as 
to  the  advisability  of  the  proposed 
arrangement. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

HOMEWARD    BOUND. 

SEBASTIAN  had  seen  enough  of  the 
curate's  life  at  Petherton  to  make 
him  take  his  godfather's  promises 
for  what  they  were  worth.  But  the 
temptation  to  return  to  England  was 
too  strong  to  be  resisted,  though  he 
had  not  a  doubt  of  obtaining  at  Mark- 
land  very  early  and  good  preferment. 


364 


Sebastian. 


But  on  the  line  March  morning 
when  he  sailed  from  Melbourne,  after 
a  stormy  and  wearisome  journey  from 
New  Zealand,  all  regrets  were  ba- 
nished, and  he  looked  forward  to 
home  and  home-work  with  a  zest  that 
made  him  feel  as  though  this  was  to 
be  his  first  true  start  in  life. 

Sebastian,  however,  was  not  to  be 
free  from  clerical  duties  and  respon- 
sibilities even  during  his  journey  from 
the  arduous  "station"  at  New  Zea- 
land to  the  by  no  means  easy  parish 
of  Stowey-cum-Petherton.  He  had  not 
been  many  days  on  board  the  Tas- 
mania when  there  was  placed  in  his 
hands  a  charge  that  was  not  only  to 
occupy  his  mind  during  the  voyage, 
but  to  influence  his  whole  life  and  the 
lives  dearest  to  him. 

He  was  talking  one  evening  to  the 
captain,  an  inveterate  gossip,  when  he 
heard  for  the  first  time  there  was  on 
board  an  invalid,  not  likely  to  live 
over  the  voyage. 

"It's  a  Mr.  Ballarityne,"  said  the 
captain.  "  I  have  promised  the  poor 
old  gentleman's  daughter,  sir,  that 
you  would,  I  was  sure,  go  down  and 
see  him  if  they  should  wish  it,  in  case 
of  him  getting  worse." 

"Certainly,"  said  Sebastian;  "call 
me  at  any  time  I  may  be  wanted  ;  but 
we'll  hope  he's  not  so  bad  as  you  think. 
Odd  enough,  there's  a  man  on  board 
now  whose  supposed  death-bed  I  was 
called  to  more  than  a  year  ago,  and 
as  I'm  not  a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  I 
may  warn  you  that  from  the  things  he 
told  me  about  himself  you  had  better 
be  careful  of  him.  There  he  is,  the 
smart  gray-haired  juvenile  in  brown 
velveteen  and  sealskin  cap." 

"  Ah,  I  have  my  eye  on  that  gentle- 
man already,  answered  Captain  Msk. 
"  Caught  him  setting  the  men  gambling. 
I'll  let  him  know  you  recognise  him ; 
it  may  make  him  careful." 

While  they  were  walking  up  the 
deck  they  met  the  man,  and  Sebastian 
stopped  and  faced  him.  Putting  his 
finger  on  a  dirty  card  sticking  out  of 
the  velvet  coat  pocket,  he  said — 
"  What's  this,  Crawley  ?  I  thought 


you  vowed  you'd  never  touch  one  of 
these  things  again  if  your  life  was 
spared  that  night." 

Crawley  seemed  dismayed  and  sulky 
at  the  accident  of  the  protruding  card. 
Thrusting  it  further  into  the  pocket, 
he  forced  a  laugh,  looked  defiantly  at 
Sebastian,  and,  winking  at  the  captain, 
said 

"  Oh,  ah — to  be  sure.  But  you  know 
the  old  saying,  'When  Someone  was 
sick,'  and  cetrer,  and  cetrer.  But  I 
have  almost  given  it  up,  sir,  except  for 
pure  amusement — pure  amusement." 

There  was  something  so  repelling  in 
the  expression  of  the  man's  face,  and 
his  winks  and  sneering  tone,  Sebastian, 
remembering  his  abject  terror  in  his 
illness,  could  not  stay  near  him.  When 
he  had  walked  on,  Crawley  said  to  the 
captain — 

"What  say  to  a  quiet  game  this 
evening,  captain,  for  'pure  amusement,' 
eh?" 

"  You  had  better  be  careful  with 
your  quiet  games,  my  friend,"  said 
Fisk,  rather  coolly.  "You  see  the 
parson  knows  you." 

"  Parson  !  Humbug  !  Scripture- 
reader — that's  what  he  is.  No  more 
a  parson  than  I  am,"  declared  Crawley. 
And  he  seemed  so  heavily  oppressed 
by  contempt  for  Sebastian,  and  sullen 
rage  at  the  efiect  his  words  had  had 
on  the  captain,  that  he  turned  his  back 
on  the  ship  and  leaned  over  the  sea, 
yet  frowning,  and  spitting  into  it  as 
though  to  show  he  had  as  much  con- 
tempt for  it  as  for  the  rest  of  the 
creation. 

The  captain  was  rather  disappointed 
at  his  sudden  silence,  for  he  was  an 
impartial  sort  of  man,  and  would  have 
enjoyed  a  gossip  with  Crawley  about 
Sebastian  as  much  as  one  with  Sebas- 
tian about  Crawley.  However,  he 
thought  plenty  of  other  opportunities 
would  be  sure  to  offer  themselves,  and 
meantime  he  hurried  down  below  to 
inquire  after  the  invalid. 

The  results  of  his  inquiries  were 
such  as  to  make  him  seek  Sebastian 
and  beg  him  tr>  hold  himself  in  readi- 
ness to  go  to  him. 


Sebastian. 


365 


"  He  is  not  able  to  speak  just  now, 
but  is  out  of  pain,  and  the  doctor 
thinks  if  he  can  doze  off  for  half  an 
hour  or  so  he  would  be  able  to  talk 
with  you,  which  he  seems  anxious 
to  do." 

Sebastian's  summons  to  the  sick-bed 
did  not  come  till  near  midnight.  He 
was  sitting  up  in  consequence  of  what 
Fisk  had  said,  and,  taking  his  little 
bag  containing  his  Bible  and  prayer- 
book  and  pocket  sacrament  service, 
went  immediately. 

The  door  of  the  cabin  to  which  he 
was  guided  was  opened  by  the  doctor, 
who,  in  passing  out,  detained  and  whis- 
pered to  Sebastian — 

"  Nearly  over.  Don't  be  deceived  by 
his  excitement.  Quiet  him  if  you  can." 
The  warning  was  not  unnecessary, 
for  Sebastian  would  certainly  have 
thought  life  was  triumphing  over 
death  in  the  eyes  that  scanned  him 
with  searching  eagerness  and  anxiety 
as  he  approached  the  bed. 

The  eyes  were  set  under  an  im- 
mense forehead,  and  in  a  face  that  was 
an  ideal  of  an  ancient  patriarch's. 
But  to  Sebastian  it  seemed  to  show  a 
wonderfully  mixed  character — a  tumult 
of  different  and  conflicting  passions. 
He  read  there  of  baffled  energy, 
moroseness,  suspicion,  doubt,  yet 
dogged  courage,  gleams  of  vivid  hope, 
gleams  even  of  triumph. 

His  scrutiny  of  Sebastian  seemed  to 
fill  him  with  satisfaction — almost, 
Sebastian  thought — if  he  might  believe 
it — with  pleasure.  As  he  stood  with 
his  hand  laid  gently  on  the  sick  man's, 
the  gaze  of  the  searching  eyes  grew 
more  and  more  full  of  trust  and 
liking. 

"  Thank  you  for  coming,"  he  said. 
"  You  are  one  such  as  I  much  wished 
to  see  just  now.  Tell  me  to  what 
disciple  was  it  our  Lord  said,  'Son, 
behold  thy  mother '  ?  " 

"John,"  answered  Sebastian,  won- 
dering if  his  mind  was  rambling. 

"  Ah,  yes.  Well,  what  Christ  must 
have  seen  in  him  I  see  in  you — and 
feel  I  may  say  to  you  before  I  go, 
Brother,  behold  thy  sister  !  " 


Startled    by    the    suddenness    and 
solemnity  of  such  a  charge,  Sebastian 
looked  quickly    in    the    direction    in 
which   the    trembling  finger   pointed, 
and  saw  the  most  angelic  face  he  had 
ever  beheld.      Angelic  was  what  she 
simply  seemed  to  him  in  her  beauty 
and  in  the  tender  love  her  face  ex- 
pressed.    Yet  the  grief  it  wore  was  all 
human  enough.     Her  face  was  large 
like  her  father's,  but  pure  in  its  pallor 
as  a  white  camellia.     She  was  in  deep 
mourning,  and  the  only  colour  about 
her  was  in  her  wonderful  blue  eyes. 
When  Sebastian  had  in  a  few  seconds 
recovered   from  his  first  surprise,  he 
could  but  rise   and  extend  his  hand. 
This  action  was  responded  to,  but  not, 
he  instinctively  felt,  with  any  of  the 
father's   solemnity  or  trust.     It   was 
rather  with  a  gentle  submission,  not 
unmixed,  Sebastian  thought,  with  de- 
precation, as  though  she  would  have 
him  understand  that,  while  sparing  her 
father   opposition,  she  would  not    on 
her  part  wish  Sebastian  to  feel  bound 
by  any  promises  he  might  be  called 
upon  to  make  concerning  her.     This 
seemed   to   him   to    be   very   plainly 
expressed  in  the  mere  glance  of  the 
large  blue  eyes  and  touch  of  the  hand, 
yet     with    extreme    gentleness     and 
courtesy,  and  without  a  shade  of  pride 
or  repellingness. 

She  placed  a  chair  for  him  at  the 
bed-side. 

"  Cicely,"  said  her  father,  "  have  / 
the  papers?" 

She  put  her  hand  under  his  pillow 
and  drew  from  it  an  envelope,  which 
she  placed  in  his  hand.  As  she  did 
so  she  bent  down  over  him,  and  Sebas- 
tian heard  her  whisper — 

"Why  trouble  more?  Why  not 
trust  me  and  leave  all  to  me  ?  " 

The  long  pale  fingers  crept  round 
the  golden  head,  drawing  it  fondly 
down. 

"  My  darling,"  answered  her  father, 
"  you  have  a  long  journey,  and  a  pre- 
cious charge  besides  yourself.  You 
must  let  me  have  my  way  in  making 
both  as  safe  as  I  can." 

"Then   I    may   go   out  while   you 


366 


Sebastian. 


talk,  and  come  back  presently  ?  "  she 
asked. 

"As  you  like;  but  don't  be  long, 
my  darling." 

As  Sebastian  opened  the  door  for 
her  he  met  her  eyes  glancing  at  him 
with  the  half  fearing,  searching  look 
of  one  who  is  to  be  judged  by  a  stranger 
—  herself  conscious  of  her  own  in- 
tegrity, but  knowing  nothing  of  him 
or  of  his  judgment. 

He  returned  the  look  as  gently 
and  assuringly  as  the  respect  she  had  > 
already  inspired  him  with  enabled  him 
to  do ;  and  even  the  next  instant,  as 
he  had  a  last  glimpse  of  her  before 
closing  the  door,  there  seemed  to  him 
a  placidity  and  confidence  on  her  face 
as  if  their  minds  had  been  lain  open 
to  each  other  in  that  brief  look. 

As  soon  as  she  was  gone  her  father 
drew  a  slip  of  newspaper  from  an 
envelope  and  gave  it  to  Sebastian, 
saying — 

"  Will  you  please  read  that,  and 
tell  me  if  you  understand  ? " 

Sebastian  read  the  little  paragraph, 
Avhich  he  found  to  be  a  brief  account 
of  a  divorce  case  of  which  he  remem- 
bered to  have  heard.  He  was  looking 
over  it  a  second  time  when,  in  a  voice 
that  seemed  to  vibrate  through  the 
shattered  frame  before  him,  Ballan- 
tyne  said — 

"And  now,  sir,  will  you  read  this  ?  " 

Sebastian  took  from  him  the  letter 
he  held  out,  and  found  in  it  a  full 
denial  by  the  only  two  witnesses 
against  the  divorced  wife  of  the  evi- 
dence they  had  given. 

"But  this  lady,"  said  Sebastian,  "is 
not  surely " 

"The  one  you  have  just  seen,  sir — 
my  daughter— and  all  I  ask  you  now 
to  do  is  to  see  this  letter  put  into  her 
husband's  hands." 

"Yes,"  said  Sebastian,  hesitatingly, 
and  hardly  able  yet  to  realize  the 
position  ;  "  but  would  it  not  be  safer 
to — to  consult  your  solicitor — I  mean 
to  place  this  where  you  are  sure  of 
having  justice  done  to  her  ?  " 

The  tremblinglhand  was  outstretched 
a  little  impatiently. 


"  No,  no,"  answered  Ballantyne, 
hurriedly ;  "  there's  more  justice  in 
that  man  than  in  all  the  law  courts  in 
England.  Don't  mistake ;  all  I  want 
is  that  he  shall  get  it." 

"And  that  they  shall  be  recon- 
ciled ? "  asked  Sebastian. 

Ballantyne's  eyes  turned  on  him 
with  a  look  of  perfect  confidence. 

"Let  him  get  that,"  he  said,  "and 
he  will  give  her  no  choice." 

His  eyes  drooped  and  his  face 
whitened,  which  change  was  the  first 
reminder  Sebastian  had  of  his  state, 
for  until  now  his  feverish  energy  had 
seemed  like  increasing  strength. 

His  voice  was  more  faint  when  he 
said,  looking  up  again  with  apparent 
difficulty — 

"You  are  very  young.  I  should 
not  ask  you — so  young,  and  a  clergy- 
man, to  interest  yourself  in  a  divorced 
wife,  if  all  her  misery  was  not  over, 
and  nothing  left — nothing  that  need 
be  mentioned  between  you  but  the 
reconciling  of  two  of  the  best,  the 
most  truly  devoted  hearts  that  ever 
beat." 

"A  task  that  any  one  might  be 
proud  to  undertake,"  Sebastian  said. 
"  But  what  a  miracle  it  seems  that 
human  justice  could  be  wrung  from 
anything  so  diabolical  as  the  minds 
that  planned  and  carried  out  such  vile 
work." 

Ballantyne's  wan  eyes  grew  almost 
brilliant  with  triumph,  but  as  sud- 
denly dimmed  and  filled,  and  there 
was  the  pathetic  humility  of  death  in 
life's  last  glow  of  pride  as  he  said — 

"  It  was  the  one  thing  I've  done  for 
her  in  all  her  life — the  one  thing ;  but 
who  else  would  have  done  it?  Who 
would  have  folloAved  them  here  and 
hunted  them  down — and  wrung  justice 
from  them  as  I  have  done  ?  " 

Sebastian  was  beginning  to  realize 
and  feel  a  deep  interest  in  the  appa- 
rently easy  charge  with  which  he  was 
entrusted.  Remembering,  however, 
the  doctor's  warning,  and  seeing,  too, 
sudden  looks  of  deathliness  on  the 
restless  face,  he  dared  not  say  much 
on  so  exciting  a  subject.  He  there- 


Sebastian. 


367 


fore  gently  reminded  Ballantyne  of 
tho  thoughts  due  to  him  with  whom 
lay  the  glory  of  his  triumph. 

Ballantyne  listened  meekly,  with 
the  restlessness  of  one  whose  mind 
was  still  busy  with  other  thoughts. 

"Stop,"  he  said,  faintly.  "I  wish 
you  to  read  and  pray  with  me  ;  but  I 
think  first  it  may  be  better  to  tell 
you  while  I've  strength  the  facts  as 
they  really  were.  It  will  save  your 
mind  dwelling  on  it ;  it  will  save  one 
word  being  necessary  between  you  and 
her." 

He  then  gave  a  very  brief  account 
of  the  case ;  but  the  only  fact  of 
interest  to  Sebastian  was  that,  as  he 
expected  from  the  beauty  of  Cicely, 
the  misery  caused  her  had  been  the 
work  of  a  lover  whom  she  had  rejected 
before  her  marriage — a  man  of  such  a 
nature  as  made  him  feel  relieved  to 
hear  he  was  not  an  Englishman. 

Ballantyne,  in  his  pursuit  of  him  to 
Australia,  where  the  wretch  had  gone 
after  the  success  of  his  own  and  his 
witnesses'  perjury,  had  been  compelled 
to  take  his  daughter  with  him,  because 
he  dared  not  leave  her  near  the  scene 
of  her  frightful  suffering. 

The  story  over,  Ballantyne  asked 
Sebastian  to  call  his  daughter. 

He  found  her  close  to  the  door, 
sitting  en  tho  cabin  stairs,  her  face 
buried  in  her  hands. 

When  she  came  in  Sebastian  with- 
drew a  little  from  the  bed  to  leave 
them  together ;  but  as  he  did  so,  the 
worn  and  wounded  spirit  looking 
through  the  wild  dying  eyes  sum- 
moned him  back. 

As  he  took  the  fingers  feebly  sig- 
nalling to  him,  and  looked  with  com- 
forting response  into  his  face,  the 
fire  died  under  the  stagnant  tears. 
There  was  nothing  left  but  tender 
anticipation  of  his  child's  happiness. 

"I  trust  you — to  see  her  back  to 
him,"  he  whispered. 

"  I  will  do  my  best,"  said  Sebastian, 
turning  inquiringly  to  the  kneeling 
figure. 

Her  only  answer  was  to  cling  closer 
to  her  father ;  but  lie  seemed  to  take 


it  as  the  answer  he  wished  from  her, 
and  looked  up  with  more  peace  to 
Sebastian  as  he  repeated — 

"I  trust  you." 

"  You  may  trust  that  I  will  take  it 
as  a  sacred  charge  to  do  the  best  I 
can  in  the  matter,"  Sebastian  said. 

He  was  then  quiet  while  Sebastian 
read  to  him  the  words  that,  uttered 
by  his  rich  and  feeling  voice,  had 
comforted  so  many  a  wild  and  fearful 
spirit  on  the  same  mysterious  journey. 

The  poor  weary  traveller  now  pre- 
paring for  it  fell  into  an  apparently 
peaceful  state.  When  the  doctor  came 
in  he  shook  his  head  at  Sebastian,  as 
if  hinting  he  would  speak  no  more ; 
and  it  would  have  been  less  painful 
had  it  so  happened,  for  a  little  scene, 
extremely  embarrassing  to  Sebastian, 
was  the  result  of  his  next  words.  It 
seemed  that  he  had  signed  to  Cicely 
to  prepare  to  have  the  sacrament  ad- 
ministered, and  she  had  called  in  the 
doctor  and  her  old  nurse,  that  there 
might  be  enough  persons  present.  All 
was  ready  before  Sebastian  had  noticed 
what  she  was  doing.  When  he  saw 
her  anxiety  he  bent  over  Ballantyne, 
saying  a  few  earnest  words  to  him. 
On  his  asking  him  if  he  was  "in 
charity  with  all  men,"  he  gazed  at 
Sebastian,  and  answered,  scarcely 
above  a  whisper — 

"All  but  one." 

"  But  you  must  forgive  him,  too,  or 
I  cannot  do  what  your  daughter 
wishes,"  said  Sebastian. 

"  Never  !  "  answered  Ballantyne, 
with  a  smile  of  what  seemed  almost 
childish  wonder  at  the  idea. 

His  daughter  had  not  heard  him, 
and  Sebastian  could  not  bear  to  pain 
her  by  telling  her,  but  he  felt  it  im- 
possible to  proceed  with  the  service. 
He  tried  to  make  her  think  the  im- 
pediment was  in  his  own  mind — and, 
turning  to  her,  told  her  gently,  but 
decidedly,  he  was  not  prepared  to  do 
what  she  wished. 

To  his  extreme  pain  she  entreated 
him  to  grant  her  request,  and  Ballan- 
tyne signed  by  a  sort  of  feeble  frenzy 
to  him  to  do  so. 


"  I  think,  sir,"  said  tho  doctor,  "  in 
such  a  case  it's  cruel  to  refuse." 

Sebastian  remained  firm,  and  only 
spoke  such  words  as  he  might  to  Bal- 
lantyne  without  discussing  his  request, 
dwelling  on  his  own  need  and  sureness 
of  forgiveness  if  he  freely  forgave. 

Soon,  however,  all  remembrance  of 
the  matter  seemed  to  pass  from  him. 
He  raised  his  head  slightly  and  looked 
at  Cicely.  The  head  was  like  a 
wounded  tiger's  just  then,  lighted  up 
at  the  point  of  death  to  take  a  last 
look  at  its  young,  and  at  once  scowling 
at  the  world  in  anticipation  of  injury 
to  it,  yet  piteously  entreating  its 
protection  and  succour. 

But  he  said  nothing,  and  fell  back 
in  final  unconsciousness. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
CICELY. 

SEBASTIAN'S  refusal  to  administer  the 
sacrament  to  poor  Ballantyne  was 
mentioned  in  strong  terms  by  the 
doctor  to  Captain  Fisk,  and  being 
repeated  in  all  directions  by  the  com- 
municative captain,  caused  throughout 
the  Tasmania  a  murmur  of  indigna- 
tion against  Sebastian,  of  which  he 
was  quite  unaware. 

So,  too,  did  his  delay  in  seeking  to 
offer  such  comfort — as  was  expected 
of  the  only  clergyman  on  board — to 
the  poor  mourner.  In  this  matter 
Sebastian  felt  much  difficulty,  and  it 
was  quite  a  week  after  her  father's 
bui-ial  that  he  made  up  his  mind  to 
speak  to  her.  Even  then  they  only 
exchanged  a  few  words  when  passing 
each  other  on  deck.  It  was  this  way 
for  several  days  more,  but  each  time 
her  look  was  calmer,  her  voice  more 
natural. 

These  glimpses  of  her  gave  Sebas- 
tian less  heroic,  but  far  more  pleasing 
and  satisfactory  opinions  of  his  charge. 
Instead  of  such  a  romance  as  he  had 
heard,  seeming  to  belong  to  her — it 
appeared  cruelly  incongruous  —  she 
seemed  one  of  those  fair,  gentle  Eng- 
lish idols  of  the  house  whose  joys  and 


troubles  were  naturally  cast  in  her 
own  home  boundaries.  Her  tender 
blue  eyes  were  never  meant  to  stare 
above  the  tragic  mask,  he  felt,  but  to 
rest  serenely  on  loved  faces  and  scenes, 
brightening,  softening,  and  purifying 
all  hearts  that  lived  in  their  sweet 
light. 

The  more  Sebastian  saw  of  her 
the  less  embarrassment  he  felt  in  the 
prospect  of  having  to  give  her  a 
brother's  help  and  protection,  so  far 
as  she  would  let  him.  There  was  a 
timidity  in  her  manner  which  made 
him  feel  that  he  should  be  the  first  to 
speak  of  her  father's  wishes,  and  make 
it  easy  for  her  to  open  her  mind  to 
him  on  the  subject. 

One  morning  he  saw  her  sitting 
with  her  needlework  on  deck,  half 
reclining  on  the  cushions  her  careful 
old  servant  had  brought  up.  Sebas- 
tian thought  this  might  be  an  oppor- 
tunity for  speaking  to  her;  yet  he 
passed  near  her  several  times  reluc- 
tant to  disturb  her  thoughts,  which 
were  evidently  very  pleasant  just 
then.  As  she  leant  back  on  the 
cushions — her  head  on  her  hand  and 
her  elbow  on  the  bulwark — she  looked 
down  at  the  sea  with  eyes  that  might 
have  found  each  wave  enrolling  some 
joyful  promise.  She  was  as  great  a 
contrast  to  what  he  had  seen  her 
before  as  the  softest  morning  in 
April  is  to  the  wildest  night  in 
March. 

He  had  noticed  she  wore  black  on 
the  night  he  first  saw  her,  and  now, 
instead  of  appearing  in  deeper  mourn- 
ing, the  richer  dress,  and  the  neat- 
ness that  had  then  baen  wanting, 
made  her  attire  far  less  gloomy  than 
it  had  been  before  her  father's  death. 

Her  face  was  too  peculiar  for  Sebas- 
tian to  have  forgotten  it :  very  defec- 
tive, yet  very  rich  in  those  things 
that  make  a  face  pleasant,  to  the  eye, 
and  which  many  perfect  faces  are 
without. 

It  was  a  large  face,  very  faulty  in 
outline,  but  it  had  in  its  soft  curves 
and  milky  paleness  a  wonderful  purity. 
In  such  a  face  one  expected  to  see 


Sebastian. 


369 


large,  languid  eyes  and  lips,  and  an 
indolent  lack-lustre  sort  of  expression, 
while  red  hair  must,  it  would  be 
thought,  accompany  such  a  com- 
plexion. But  here  in  this  large  face, 
with  its  double  chin,  appeared  eyes 
and  mouth  of  almost  infantile  fresh- 
ness and  delicacy,  a  little  Grecian 
nose,  and  brows  which,  though  low, 
were  delicately  shaped,  and  wore  the 
light  as  well  as  the  wear  and  tear 
of  unevaded  thought.  They  were 
crowned  by  hair  of  light  brown,  with 
a  glitter  of  gold  in  it.  The  same  con- 
trast as  there  was  between  the  shape 
of  the  face  and  in  the  centre  features 
appeared  in  the  thick  neck  and  the 
tiny,  exquisitely-finished  ears — in  the 
large  arm  and  small  tapering  hand, 
the  somewhat  full  form  and  light  foot. 
Altogether,  Sebastian's  charge  gave 
him  the  impression  of  an  unfinished 
marble  sculpture,  inspired  with  human 
and  spiritual  life,  while  in  its  state  of 
incompleteness. 

"  I  am  so  glad,"  said  Sebastian, 
when  he  at  last  stood  still  beside  her, 
"  to  see  you  out,  and  looking  so  much 
better." 

Her  face  saddened  a  little,  but  not 
painfully,  so  that  Sebastian  saw  her 
nappy  thoughts,  whatever  they  might 
have  been,  had  not  come  by  wronging 
her  grief.  She  did  not  start  or  change 
as  having  forgotten  it,  but  saddened 
slightly  at  finding  the  memory  of  it 
grow  more  vivid  at  the  sound  of  the 
voice  that  had  pleaded  with  and  for 
her  lost  one  at  the  gates  of  death. 

She  smiled  and  held  out  her  hand, 
and  then  a  great  pallor  and  gravity 
came  over  her. 

Sebastian  appeared  not  to  notice  it, 
and  spoke  of  his  own  return,  and  of 
the  scenes  he  had  left,  in  a  way  to 
take  her  thoughts  from  herself. 

She  listened  with  very  real  interest, 
and  the  little  talk  over  New  Zealand 
mission-life  led  to  the  discovery  that 
they  liked  and  trusted  each  other 
without  having  made  the  least  effort 
to  do  so. 

The  next  day,  when  they  were  again 
together,  Sebastian  felt  it  best  no 

No.  221. — VOL.  xxxvu. 


longer  to  delay  in  breaking  silenc?  on 
that  subject  which  must  sooner  or 
later  on  their  voyage  be  talked  of. 
The  first  words  he  spoke  showed  him 
she  was  relieved,  and  glad  to  have 
removed  the  restraint  there  had  as 
yet  been  between  them  on  the  matter 
so  much  in  both  their  minds. 

"  I  am  quite  impatient,"  he  said, 
turning  to  her  suddenly,  "  to  sea  your 
husband.  To  be  spoken  of  so  by  your 
poor  father,  who  I  thought  could  con- 
sider no  one  worthy  of  you,  he  must 
indeed  be  worth  knowing." 

The  blue  eyes  were  raised  to  Sebas- 
tian's with  a  gratitude  bright,  deep, 
and  undisguised  as  a  child's.  But  after 
one  look,  full  and  frank,  they  drooped 
and  filled,  and  the  cheeks  were  over- 
spread with  a  tint  no  deeper  than  the 
reflection  of  a  red  flower  on  a  white 
one. 

"I  believe,"  she  said,  "I  can  say 
truly  that  I  am  the  only  human  being 
I  know  who  has  discovered  any  serious 
fault  in  him,  and  that  in  knowing  him 
deeply  enough  to  have  found  that 
fault,  I  have  seen  greater  goodness 
than  any  one  else  will  ever  know  is 
in  him." 

"  I  hope  I  shall  not  offend  you," 
said  Sebastian,  "  in  saying  there  is 
one  question  I  should  like  to  ask ; 
but  don't  be  alarmed,  for  it  concerns 
no  earlier  time  than  the  night  I  first 
met  you." 

"  What  is  it  1 "  asked  Cicely. 

"  I  cannot  help  wondering  why 
your  father  showed — almost  to  the 
very  last — such  anxiety  about  your 
using  the  proofs  he  has  obtained  for 
you.  He  surely  could  not  think  you 
would  hesitate  about  doing  so  ?  " 

Cicely  looked  far  out  over  the  sea, 
and  her  thoughts  appeared  to  have 
as  far  to  wander  as  her  eyes  in  her 
search  for  an  answer  to  Sebastian's 
simple  question. 

After  all  she  did  not  answer  it,  but 
turning  to  him  with  that  assurance  of 
being  understood  which  one  can  feel 
with  so  few,  but  which  was  the 
peculiar  charm  of  her  acquaintance 
with  Sebastian,  she  said — 

B  B 


370 


Sebastian. 


"  I  know  I  shall  tell  you  what  you 
ask  me  before  our  paths  divide,  but  I 
don't  feel  that  I  can  do  so  now." 

"  There  may  be  no  need  for  you 
doing  so  at  all,"  said  Sebastian.  "  It 
is  only  in  case  of  all  not  being  well 
that  my  promise  to  your  father  would 
make  me  anxious  to  be  taken  into 
your  confidence  that  I  might  be  of 
any  help  I  could.  But  should  all  be 
well,  as  I  can't  doubt  it  will  be,  I 
shall  be  more  than  contented  only  to 
hear  of  your  happiness." 

No  more  was  said  on  the  subject  of 
Mr.  Ballantyne's  doubt  as  to  Cicely's 
use  of  his  papers  till  two  days  before 
the  Tasmania  was  due  at  the  West 
India  docks. 

It  was  not  that  any  want  of  con- 
fidence on  either  side  had  prevented 
the  subject  being  referred  to ;  for 
during  their  long  voyage,  a  friend- 
ship, all  cheering  and  unselfish,  had 
deepened  between  them.  Cicely  had 
as  vivid  a  picture  of  the  little  church 
and  village  of  Monksdean  in  her  mind 
as  if  she  had  sat  in  the  high-backed 
seat  and  played  in  the  sandy  lane 
with  Sebastian  and  his  sisters.  She 
could  wince  at  the  idea  of  the  preben- 
dary in  a  rage  as  if  she  had  herself 
known,  like  Sebastian,  what  it  was  to 
tread  on  his  gouty  toe,  or  tumble  over 
his  crimson-velvet  leg-rest. 

Sebastian  also  might  have  known 
poor  impetuous,  ever  sanguine,  ever 
failing  Peter  Ballantyne  for  years 
instead  of  only  a  few  hours,  and  so 
tenderly  did  Cicely  touch  on  all  his 
errors  that  they  appeared  but  as 
misfortunes  to  make  one  pity  him. 
Yet  it  was  terrible  to  think  of  the 
poor  old  man's  awakening  when  he 
began  to  see  his  delusions  and  what 
they  had  cost  him.  What  a  sweet 
and  precious  life  in  the  good  wife  and 
mother,  ever  conscious  of  his  mis- 
takes, and  yet  so  weakly  patient  with 
them  !  What  waste  of  fine  qualities 
in  his  neglected  children  kept  from 
their  own  efforts  by  his  predictions 
of  a  brilliant  future !  Then,  too, 
though  Cicely  dwelt  upon  this  with 
such  humility,  how  well  Sebastian 
could  understand  the  old  man's  cling- 


ing to  the  one  real  and  substantial 
pride  of  his  life — her  marriage  with 
the  son  of  a  man  who  had  ever  been 
Ballantyne's  ideal,  both  in  character 
and  worldly  position. 

"  I  wish  you  could  realise  the  kind 
of  family,"  Cicely  had  said.  "Patri- 
archal in  fineness  of  health  and  strength 
and  simplicity  of  living,  yet  in  refine- 
ment and  intellectual  culture  keeping 
pace  with  the  most  advanced  minds. 
Imagine  every  one  of  the  sons  with 
some  fine  quality  of  mind  a  little  in 
excess — some  good  carried  beyond  its 
most  useful  end  a  little.  Then  ima- 
gine one  avoiding  such  extremes,  yet 
taking  the  cream  of  each  example — 
shunning  extravagance  in  every  way  ; 
dreading  ambition,  perhaps  a  little  too 
much ;  loving  peace,  perhaps  also  a 
little  too  much ;  gifted  with  a  peculiar 
power  of  turning  all  life's  good  things, 
prosperity,  health,  art — to  a  sort  of 
essence  of  home  happiness — my  hus- 
band was  all  this." 

Another  time,  talking  on  the  same 
subject,  Cicely  said : 

"  Of  course,  though  he  was  consi- 
dered the  least  gifted  of  all  the  family 
— by  the  family— it  was  a  great  disap- 
pointment to  them  when  he  married 
Cicely  Ballantyne.  I  daresay  you 
think,  Mr.  Gould,  that  I,  thinking 
of  him  as  I  do,  felt  that  he  ought  to 
have  made  a  better  marriage.  But  to 
tell  you  the  truth,  and  running  the 
great  risk  of  you  thinking  me  vain, 
I  must  confess  I  did  not,  and  do  not, 
feel  he  was  so  very  humble  or  unwise 
in  choosing  me.  Was  it  not  natural 
and  to  his  own  interest  he  should 
fancy  that  one  who  had  always  been 
poor  like  myself  would  most  appre- 
ciate his  quiet  prosperity ;  that  a 
great  wanderer  would  most  care  for 
what  he  thinks  so  much  of — home ;  a 
very  weary  one  be  most  grateful  for 
rest.  No,  Mr.  Gould,  I  don't  think 
he  made  any  great  sacrifice  in  marry- 
ing me.  I  trembled  more  for  myself 
than  for  him.  .  And  I  think  it  was 
unmentioned  but  persistent  sensitive- 
ness about  myself  and  my  own  poor 
family  always  in  trouble  that  made 
him  begin  to  misunderstand  me.  Then 


Sebastian. 


371 


when  need  for  perfect  trust  came,  when 
I  fell  under  suspicion  and  calumny, 
when  all  his  family  were  urging  him 
to  a  separation,  he  saw  me  with  their 
eyes,  and  judged  me  with  their  judg- 
ment." 

Sebastian  could  now  well  understand 
poor  old  Ballantyne's  triumph  in  his 
last  moments  at  the  success  of  the 
one  solitary  thing  he  had  ever  taken 
in  hand  with  true  energy  and  de- 
termination, the  vindication  of  his 
daughter's  honour. 

"There  has  been  one  thought  to 
keep  me  from  sinking  quite,"  said 
Cicely.  "  The  thought  that  I  should 
never  have  known  what  there  really 
was  in  my  father,  but  for  this  trouble ; 
for  never  have  I  heard  of  such  almost 
supernatural  conquering  of  difficulties 
and  penetration  of  what  seemed  hope- 
less mystery.  What  exertions  and 
self-denials  he  has  gone  through  none 
but  I  can  ever  know." 

Yet  in  spite  of  placing  so  much 
confidence  in  him  Cicely  did  not  allude 
to  that  question  of  Sebastian's,  as  to  the 
reason  of  her  father's  doubt,  till  the 
Tasmania  sighted  the  English  coast. 

They  began  to  talk  then  of  their 
parting,  and  how  Sebastian  was  to  call 
on  Cicely  at  the  house  of  her  aunt. 

Sebastian  told  her  he  was  not  going 
to  his  curacy  for  some  days,  having 
to  wait  in  London  to  see  his  bishop 
who  was  to  sign  his  testimonial  from 
the  Markland  clergy.  He  gave  her 
the  address  of  the  private  hotel  where 
he  would  stay  till  his  affairs  were 
settled. 

In  all  these  explanations  he  waited 
for  Cicely  to  give  him  some  idea  as  to 
how  she  wished  him  to  proceed  with 
regard  to  her  father's  charge  to  him  of 
"  seeing "  the  letter  given  into  her 
husband's  hands.  Yet  she  said  not  a 
word  on  the  matter. 

The  only  way  he  could  allude  to  it 
was  by  earnestly  expressing  a  wish 
that  he  might  before  his  departure  be 
summoned  by  her  to  be  introduced  to 
her  husband,  and  to  go  to  his  work 
feeling  his  promise  to  her  father  had 
been  performed. 


To  his  surprise,  no  sooner  had  he 
spoken  those  words  than  he  saw,  for  the 
first  time  since  the  night  of  her  father's 
death,  her  eyes  clouded  with  tears. 

"  Mr.  Gould,"  she  said,  "you  cannot 
at  all  know  what  a  strange  and  diffi- 
cult position  mine  still  is,  or  you  would 
not  talk  of  everything  being  settled  so 
easily.      Like  poor   papa,    you  think 
there  is  only  to  prove  to  my  husband 
his  mistake  and  be   received   home  ; 
and  that  all  could  be  as  it  was  before. 
It  is  odd  to  me  that  it  never  occurs  to 
you  my  trust  may  have  been  shaken  a 
little.    He  has  been  persuaded,  and  by 
those  whose  judgment  is  certainly  as 
true  and  pure  as  human  judgment  can 
be — that  he   must   separate   from  me 
utterly — that  he   must  put  the   very 
idea  of  ever  caring  for  me  again  from 
him  as  if  I  were  dead.    Remember  it 
is  two  years  since  we  parted.     What 
may  not  have  happened  in  that  time  ? 
You  will  say  why  torture  myself  with 
conjectures.     That  is  just  what  I  am 
trying   not  to    do,  but  still  I  cannot 
promise  you  any  more  than  I  could  my 
father  to  compel  my  husband,  by  giving 
these  proofs,  to  take  me  back  under  any 
circumstances.    Of  course  my  showing 
them  does   compel  him ;  and  I   know 
his  people  would  be  just  as  eager  in  my 
cause   now  as   they  were   against  me 
before.     So  that  if  they  should  have 
used  all  their  power  and  influence  to 
change  him,  and  have  succeeded,  what 
a  cruel  position  for  him,  what  a  false 
one  for   me — for  us   both.     No,    Mr. 
Gould,  it  may  be  all  well,  but  I  must 
see  before  I  act  in  any  way." 

Sebastian  did  what  he  could  in 
urging  upon  her  the  sacredness  of  her 
father's  charge  to  himself,  but  it  was 
certainly  an  error,  and  a  very  grave 
one,  that  he  could  not  do  more.  No 
doubt  his  early  experiences  of  the 
strength  of  feminine  self-will,  as  illus- 
trated by  Mrs.  Gould,  had  something 
to  do  with  his  too  easy  surrender  to 
Cicely  of  the  right  her  father  had 
given  him.  He  had  the  excuse  of 
feeling  certain  that  all  would  be  well 
with  her,  and  that  her  father  had  only 
needed  a  protector  for  her  on  her 
B  B  2 


372 


Sebastian. 


journey  and  some  one  to  make  known 
her  story  in  case  of  anything  happen- 
ing to  prevent  her  reaching  England 
alive,  or  well  enough  to  act  for 
herself.  Had  he  not  believed  so 
firmly  in  the  happy  and  easy 
issue  of  his  task,  he  would  not 
have  promised,  at  her  earnest  en- 
treaties, never  to  act  in  the  matter 
one  step  without  her  consent.  But  he 
did  give  such  a  promise,  little  dream- 
ing that  a  time  would  come  when  he 
would  hate  himself  for  having  done  so. 

The  Tasmania  reached  Blackwall 
one  chilly  drizzling  Saturday  evening 
at  the  end  of  May. 

About  five  passengers  besides  Cicely 
landed  here.  Sebastian  went  with 
her  and  her  servant  to  see  them  into 
the  train  which  was  waiting.  Fisk 
had  told  him  he  would  have  plenty  of 
time  to  see  the  train  off.  So  when 
Cicely  had  taken  her  seat  he  stood  at 
the  open  carriage  door  with  his  foot 
on  the  step. 

He  wished  to  say  something  more 
than  merely  good-bye,  but  felt  strangely 
tongue-tied. 

At  that  instant  he  remembered  he 
had  not  given  her  some  ferns  he  had 
placed  for  her  between  the  leaves  of  an 
old  guide-book.  He  took  the  book  now 
from  his  pocket  and  a  pencil  and  wrote 
something  which  in  his  gallant  alle- 
giance to  a  good  woman's  cause  did 
not  seem  to  him  extravagant. 

He  gave  the  book  to  Cicely  just  as 
the  engine  coming  up  sent  the  train 
backward  with  a  jolt. 

Cicely  read  on  the  yellow  cover  the 
little  verse  from  King  Lemuel's  picture 
of  the  noble  wife  : 

"Strength  and  honour  are  her  clothing  ; 
and  she  shall  rejoice  in  time  to  come." 

Then  the  train  moved  forward,  and 
she  looked  up  only  just  in  time  to  see 
Sebastian,  bare-headed  in  the  rain, 
waiting  to  take  leave  of  her  as  if  she 
were  a  queen. 

Sebastian  having  called  at  the 
London  address  of  his  late  diocesan, 
was  informed  that  since  his  arrival 


in  England  the  bishop  had  resigned 
his  Colonial  See,  and  was  then  on  the 
Continent  on  a  confirmation  circuit. 
These  circumstances  rendered  it  im- 
possible for  Sebastian  to  obtain  his 
counter  signature  immediately  ;  and 
in  his  difficulty  he  was  referred  to  the 
newly-nominated  bishop.  This  latter, 
however,  explained  to  Sebastian  that 
being  only  the  "  bishop  designate,"  he 
could  not  properly  act  in  any  episcopal 
capacity,  and  that  Sebastian's  best, 
indeed  his  only,  course  was  to  wait  for 
his  late  bishop's  return  from  the 
Continent,  which  would  in  any  case 
happen  before  his  own  consecration. 

It  was  a  dismal  prospect  for  Sebas- 
tian, with  his  very  slender  means,  to 
be  kept  waiting  about  in  London  for 
perhaps  weeks.  He  wrote  to  the  pre- 
bendary to  learn  whether  he  would 
wish  him  to  go  down  to  him  and 
return  again  to  London,  but  his  god- 
father wrote  back  in  some  alarm  saying 
it  was  most  important  for  a  colonially 
ordained  clergyman  to  have  such  a 
testimonial  as  Sebastian's,  and  he 
would  on  no  account  wish  him  to 
leave  town  till  he  had  it  settled. 

Sebastian's  state  of  mind  was  not 
improved  by  his  receiving  three  days 
after  he  had  parted  from  Cicely,  the 
following  letter  : — 

"June  1st,  18 — . 

"DEAR  MR.  GOULD, — I  find  my 
worst  fears  realised.  There  is  no 
possibility  of  reconciliation.  Spare 
me  the  misery  of  explaining.  My 
aunt  has  left  the  house  the  address 
of  which  I  gave  you.  I  will  not  give 
you  any  other  by  which  to  find  me,  as 
remonstrances  against  the  course  I  now 
take  would  be  inexpressibly  painful. 
But  do  not  fear  for  me.  I  had,  as  you 
know,  half  prepared  myself  for  the 
worst.  God  will  help  me,  for  I  am 
now  truly  one  of  St.  Paul's  '  widows 
indeed.' 

"  Dear  Mr.  Gould,  you  will  make  your 
name  known  yet,  and  I  shall  hear  of 
it  with  pleasure  and  gratitude,  though 
you  will  in  all  probability  never  again 
hear  of  CICELY ." 


To  be  continued.  ' 


373 


"IL  RE  GALANTUOMO." 


THE  combination  of  mortal  diseases 
by  which  King  Victor  Emanuel  was 
struck  down  in  the  fifty- seventh  year 
of  his  age,  and  twenty-seventh  of  his 
reign,  found  perhaps  no  man  in  his 
dominions  more  prepared  for  the  event 
than  himself.  I  do  not  mean,  in  mak- 
ing this  statement,  to  refer  merely  to 
the  fact  that  for  a  short  time  before 
his  decease  the  king  had  not  been  in 
the  enjoyment  of  his  usual  health.  I 
allude  rather  to  a  much  more  singular 
occurrence, — that  for  at  least  the  full 
term  of  a  year  he  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  broaching  in  his  intercourse 
with  those  most  nearly  attached  to  his 
person,  a  topic  which  they  certainly 
would  never  have  dared  to  introduce, 
and  of  expressing  his  belief  that  the 
part  which  he  was  best  qualified  to 
perform  in  the  great  national  drama, 
had  been  almost  achieved ;  that  it 
would  perhaps  be  well  if  other  actors 
appeared  upon  the  stage,  and  that  if 
it  pleased  Providence  to  remove  him, 
his  sole  feeling  would  be  that  of  grati- 
tude for  having  been  permitted  to  do 
so  much.  He  held  this  language  at  a 
time  when  his  robust  frame  and  iron 
constitution  seemed  as  able  to  defy  or 
overcome  the  most  serious  attacks  of 
llness  as  in  his  two  previous  ill- 
lesses,  separated  by  intervals  of  about 

3n  years,  and  no  sinister  indication  of 
kind  gave  warning  to  his  family, 
statesmen,  and  his  people,  of  the 
svil  which  would  so  soon  befall  them. 

What  King  Victor  Emanuel  himself 
felt  and  expressed  will  be  not  indeed 
the  first  or  second  thought  of  those 
whom  the  intelligence  of  his  sud- 
den death  has  shocked,  and  almost 
stunned.  Their  first  thoughts  will  be 

lose  of  deep  sympathy  with  his 
children  and  his  people,  of  apprehen- 
sion as  to  the  effects  which  his  death 

lay  produce  on  the  fortunes  of  the 


new  European  state  which  he  chiefly 
contributed  to  found,  of  anxiety  as 
to  the  fitness  of  his  successor  to  con- 
tinue in  the  same  spirit  his  father's 
work,  of  doubt  whether  the  complica- 
tions of  the  Papal  and  Eastern  ques- 
tions may  not  be  increased  by  the 
substitution  of  a  new  personal  element, 
with  a  character  as  yet  unknown,  for 
another  with  which  European  states- 
manship has  been  long  familiar.  Such, 
I  repeat,  must  be  naturally  and  neces- 
sarily the  first  thoughts  of  all  on 
learning  the  sad  news.  But  to  those 
whose  inclination  and  duties  have  led 
them  to  devote  a  more  special  and  un- 
broken attention  to  the  story  of  King 
Victor  Emanuel' s  career  from  the  day 
when  he  received  the  crown  from  his 
father,  Charles  Albert,  after  the  rout 
of  Novara,  to  the  day  when  he  breathed 
his  last  on  his  little  iron  camp-bed 
in  the  ground-floor  of  the  Quirinal 
Palace,  to  those  who  during  that  period 
of  almost  twenty-nine  years  have 
most  closely  studied  his  character, 
and  followed  his  career,  his  reign  pre- 
sents itself  as  a  marvellously  harmo- 
nious and  completed  epic.  And  the 
key  to  the  whole  poem  is  to  be  found 
in  the  title  which  the  instinctive  dis- 
cernment and  love  of  his  people  so 
early  gave  him,  "II  Re  Galantuomo," 
"  King  Honestman."  Honesty  of 
purpose :  that  was  what  Italy  most 
wanted  in  the  young  sovereign  who 
received  from  his  father's  hand  a 
sceptre  under  circumstances  which 
would  have  made  the  stoutest  heart  to 
quail.  The  little  kingdom  of  Sardinia 
had  been  wont  to  look  on  the  army 
as  its  backbone.  At  Novara  it  found 
itself  betrayed  by  a  general,  and  its 
different  divisions  more  intent  on 
firing  upon  each  other  than  upon  the 
enemy ;  Sardinians  firing  during  the 
engagement  upon  Genoese,  and  then 


174 


"II  Rl  Galantuomo." 


sacking     the   shops   of   Novara   as    a 
worthy  pendant  to  the  last  feat,  and 
the  old  troops  of  Savoy  deliberately 
turning  their  backs  on  their  comrades, 
and    marching    off    the    field.      This 
frightful  disorganization    of   an  army 
was  only  the  too  faithful  reflection  of 
the  discord  and  dissension  between  the 
various  political  parties  in  the  State. 
Piedmontese  cursing    Lombards,  and 
declaring  that  the  Royalists  of  Pied- 
mont had  been  sacrificed  to  the  Repub- 
licans   of     Milan,    the    population   of 
Genoa    denouncing    that     of     Turin, 
rising    in   open  revolt,    and   only  re- 
duced to  silence  by  the  stern  action  of 
an  armed  force.     The  cannons  of  the 
Austrian  conqueror  frowning  from  the 
bastions  of  Alexandria,  whilst  in  every 
town     and    village     throughout     the 
country  reactionary  priests,  doing  the 
work  of  Rome,  were  pointing  the  moral 
that  all  these  national  calamities  were 
but  the  just  penalty  paid  by  a  people 
for    disobeying    the    Roman    pontiff. 
Such  was    the   kingdom   of    Sardinia 
in  the  first  months  of  the  new  king's 
reign.     He  summoned  a  parliament  to 
help  him   in   his   fearful   task.      The 
members  of  his  first  parliament  only 
brought  to,    and   reproduced    in,  the 
chambers  of  Turin,  the  political  and 
moral   anarchy  of    which   the   whole 
country    was    the    scene.      The   king 
made  a  second  appeal  to  his  people, 
spoke  to  them  in  the  famous  procla- 
mation of  Moncalieri,  in  terms  of  re- 
proach, of  exhortation,  of  warning,  such 
as  has  seldom  fallen  to  the  lot  of  a 
constitutional  king  to  use  :  "  I  have 
done    my   duty ;    why   have  you  not 
done  yours  1"     To  the  honour  of  the 
Sardinian  people,  be  it  said,  the  strong 
outspoken  appeal  went  straight  to,  and 
sank  deeply  in,  their  hearts. 

King  Victor  Emanuel's  second  par- 
liament furnished  him  at  length  with 
the  fitting  instruments  by  which  the 
work  of  constitutional  government 
was  to  be  carried  on,  and  since  the 
meeting  of  that  second  parliament,  the 
like  instruments  have  never  yet  been 
wanting,  and  the  regular  functions 
of  constitutional  government  have  not 


been  even  for  a  single  day  interrupted 
or  delayed. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  overrate 
the  services  rendered  by  King  Victor 
Emanuel  during  the  long  struggle  for 
constitutional  freedom  and  national 
independence,  and  when  we  now  look 
back  upon  all  that  he  was  and  did,  it 
is- difficult  to  repress  the  feeling  that 
much  even  of  what  was  deemed  his 
personal  eccentricity,  contributed  to 
the  result.  Forty  years  ago  Vinet 
wrote  some  admirable  papers  to  prove 
that  marked  individuality  of  charac- 
ter was  the  thing  most  wanted  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  Mr.  John  Stuart 
Mill  has  written  a  good  deal  to  the 
same  effect,  and  the  readers  of  Lord 
Macaulay'sLife  will  doubtless  recollect 
the  criticism  to  which  these  opinions 
of  Mr.  Mill  gave  rise. 

If  a  strongly-marked  individuality, 
if  a  total  absence  of  conventionalism, 
are  things  as  greatly  to  be  desired  in 
domestic    and  social  life  as  freedom, 
unity,   and    independence  are  in  the 
life  of  states,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
deny   that   the   life   of    King   Victor 
Emanuel    must    often    have    proved 
quite  as  suggestive  to  his  subjects  in 
its    private    as  in   its   public   phases. 
The  two  sides  were  in   truth   closely 
connected.      He   inherited    from   the 
example  given,  and  the  sacrifices  made 
by,   his    father,   the   task  of    freeing 
his  country  from  every  foreign  yoke. 
He  equally  derived   from   the  whole 
experience  of  his  youth  and  early  man- 
hood, the  conviction  that  by  nothing 
in  the  performance  of    his  task  could 
he  be  so  fettered  and  restrained  as  by 
the  vast  and  strong  network  of  court 
usages    and  court  etiquette,  with   all 
the  crouching  and  fawning  creatures 
of  sycophancy  and  espionage,  its  eaves- 
dropping chamberlains,  its  wily,  oily 
chaplains,  its  eternal  contrast  to  plain 
dealing,  and  truth,  and  nature.     The 
resolve  to  free  Italy  from  the  foreigner 
became  with  him  an  idea  so  absorbing 
and  so   engrossing,  that  it  never  let 
him  go  for  a  single  moment ;  and  not 
even  the  hold  which  philanthropy  had 
on  Howard's  mind,  was  stronger  than 


"II  Rb  Galantuomo." 


375 


that  which  patriotism  had  on  the 
mind  of  Charles  Albert's  son.  In  an 
almost  equal  degree,  and  for  a  kindred 
reason,  the  feeling  of  King  Victor 
Emanuel  towards  an  ordinary  court- 
life  was  not  one  of  mere  dislike  or 
repugnance,  it  was  that  of  detestation, 
of  abhorrence. 

Superficial    observers,   ignorant    of 
the  king's  true  character,  were  quite 
unable  to  reconcile  the  contradictory 
facts    that,  whilst  his  usual  mode  of 
life    might   be   termed   almost  rough 
and   coarse,   he   perfectly   understood 
and    even    rigidly    exacted    on   state 
occasions  the  most    minute  forms   of 
court  ceremonial.      There   really  was 
no  contradiction  whatever.     The  court 
ceremonial  relates  to  the  royal  office, 
and    ought  therefore  not  only  to  be 
done,  but  to  be  done  with  care,  and 
neither  the    high   dignitaries   of    his 
own  state,  nor  the  ministers  of  foreign 
states   accredited  to  his  government, 
ought  ever  to  be  furnished  with  the 
slightest    excuse    for    neglecting    the 
signs  which  reflected  more  important 
realities.      Every   Italian   knew  that 
King  Victor  Emanuel  infinitely  pre- 
ferred chamois  hunting  on  the  moun- 
tains of  Piedmont,  or  wild  boar  hunt- 
ing amidst  the  juniper  thickets  of  San 
Jlossore,  to  receptions  of  other  royal 
personages, whom,  in  many  cases,  he  had 
never  seen  before,  and  would  perhaps 
never  see  again.     But  however  great 
the  attractions  of  the  chase,  they  never 
prevented  the  King  from  abandoning 
at   a  moment's    notice   his    favourite 
sport,  and  hurrying  to  his  capital  to 
do  the  honours  of  his  kingdom  if  so 
required.     Next  to  the  chase  his  chief 
delight    was    in   farming,   and   those 
who  only   saw  him   at   La   Mandria, 
might,  if  familiar  with  the  traditions 
of   English    history,    have    imagined 
that  they  were  beholding  a  counter- 
part of  George  III.  at  Windsor.    The 
resemblance  was  somewhat  treacher- 
ous,   for  our  Farmer  George,    in   the 
intervals  of;  his  agricultural  pursuits, 
saw  many  fair  provinces  torn  from  his 
empire,  whilst  Farmer  Victor's    care 
for  his  flocks  and  herds  did  not  divert 


him  from  the  task  of  building  a  new 
empire  up.  The  real  fact  was  that 
whether  in  contact  with  or  at  a  dis- 
tance from  his  ministers,  whether 
farming  or  hunting,  his  mind  was 
always  occupied  with  the  same  idea. 
It  formed  not  the  sole,  but  the  chief, 
subject  of  his  reading,  and  he  rarely 
went  to  bed  without  reading  an  hour 
or  more  in  the  royal  logbook,  con- 
structed according  to  his  own  direc- 
tion, and  for  his  own  special  use.  He 
had  in  his  cabinet  two  secretaries, 
whose  sole  duty  was  to  read  during 
the  day  all  the  more  striking  passages 
in  the  journals  of  Europe  that  bore 
on  the  acts  of  his  government,  or  on 
the  relations  between  Italy  and 
Europe.  If  written  in  French  or 
Italian,  the  scissors  did  the  necessary 
work,  and  the  extracts  were  pasted 
down.  If  in  German,  English,  or  any 
other  European  language,  of  which 
the  King  was  ignorant,  one  of  the 
secretaries,  a  Venetian  polyglot,  ren- 
dered the  foreign  notice  or  commentary 
into  Italian  for  the  Sovereign's  use. 
That  formed  King  Victor  Emanuel's 
nightly  reading. 

He  exacted  with  unsparing  rigour 
from  his  secretaries  that,  in  the  per- 
formance of   their  task,  they  should 
always  give    the    preference  to   dis- 
sentient    or     hostile    criticism.      He 
possessed,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  all    the  statesmen   who  had  most 
intercourse  with  him,  whether  Cavour 
or  Ricasoli,  La  Marmora  or  Minghetti, 
great  natural  talent,  an  extraordinary 
power  of  taking  in  the  bearings  of  a 
political  situation  at  a  single  glance, 
a   shrewd  estimate  of  character,  and 
that  peculiar  development  of  memory 
in  reference  to  all  the  persons  he  had 
ever  seen  or  spoken  to,  which  appears 
to  be  as  inherent  in  royal  personages 
as  the  power  of   a  shepherd  to   dis- 
tinguish the  faces  of    his  sheep.     Tc 
these  natural  gifts  he  united,  after  the 
fashion  just   described,   a   continuous 
course    of    reading    on    the    subject 
which  after  all  it  was  most  important 
for  him  to  know.     Foreign  statesmen, 
when   conversing  with     him    for  the 


376 


"II  Rt  Galantuomo" 


first  time,  were  often  surprised  at  his 
knowledge  of  the  views  held  by  the 
politicians  of  other  countries.  When 
one  knows  how  constant  and  familiar 
was  his  mental  intercourse  with  the 
first  publicists  of  the  Continent,  there 
was  nothing  surprising  in  the  matter. 
And  it  may  fairly  be  questioned 
whether,  for  the  special  task  which 
he  had  set  before  him,  this  very 
peculiar  discipline,  these  lonely  read- 
ings under  the  Alpine  tent,  the 
Tuscan  shooting-box,  or  the  Roman 
villa,  were  not  more  useful  and  sug- 
gestive than  the  eternal  recurrence 
of  the  same  court-conventionalisms 
from  which  he  could  scarcely  have 
disentangled  himself  had  he  lived  in 
the  usual  court  fashion.  His  reading 
was  not,  however,  confined  to  this 
daily  chronicle  of  Italian  and 
European  politics;  he  delighted  in 
books  of  voyages  and  travels,  and 
sometimes  at  the  close  of  a  day's 
Alpine  sport  would  get  his  huntsmen 
to  sit  on  the  grass  around  him,  while 
he  read  aloud  for  their  amusement 
something  by  which  he  had  been  more 
especially  interested  when  reading  the 
night  before. 

Even  this  slight  insight  into  the 
private  life  and  personal  character  of 
the  king  may  suggest  the  conclusion 
that  King  Victor  EmanuePs  decided 
individuality  was  of  a  kind  not  in- 
harmonious with  his  great  patriotic 
task.  The  man — the  honest  man — 
took  precedence  of  the  king,  and  the 
title  of  Re  Galantuomo  was  but  the 
national  expression  of  that  belief.  As 
in  the  case  of  the  founder  of  the 
Bourbon  dynasty  in  France,  his  deep, 
broad,  strong  humanity  was  the  foun- 
dation of  Victor  Emanuel's  influence. 
In  contrasting  the  character  of  Henri 
IV.  with  the  last  false  and  sanguinary 
rulers  of  the  House  of  Valois,  we 
think  not  so  much  of  the  valour  in 
arms  or  the  skill  in  diplomacy  which 
the  first  Bourbon  king  displayed,  as 
of  the  kindliness  and  geniality  and 
generosity  which  endeared  him  to  all 
classes  of  his  subjects,  and  of  the 
thousand  traits  of  good  humour  by 


which,  in  the  most  common  occur- 
rences of  life,  the  intercourse  of  the 
man  with  his  fellow-men  was  marked. 
Doubtless  the  Bourbon  was  of  a 
higher  and  a  more  varied  intel- 
lectual type.  No  future  Nodier  or 
Ampere  of  Italian  letters  will  ever 
point,  in  the  columns  of  the  Pasyuino 
or  the  Fischietto,  to  such  exquisite 
morsels  of  fun  and  satire  as  the 
editors  of  the  Satire  Menipee  ascribed 
to  the  pen  of  the  royal  leader  of  the 
Huguenots.  Yet  Victor  Emanuel  will 
leave  his  own  stamp,  and  it  will 
remain  as  long  as  the  name  of  Italy 
and  the  story  of  her  struggles  shall  en- 
dure on  that  field  of  letters  in  which 
he  most  loved  to  toil.  Each  of  his 
royal  speeches,  from  1849  to  1878, 
marks  an  epoch  in  the  history  of 
Italian  regeneration,  and  in  each  of 
those  speeches  the  most  forcible  and 
spirit-stirring  passages,  such  as  the 
famous  "I  am  not  insensible  to  the 
cry  of  pain  which  comes  to  me  from 
all  parts  of  Italy,"  are  from  the  king's 
own  pen. 

How  far  Victor  Emanuel  merited 
the  title  of  "  King  Honestman,"  by 
his  bearing  during  the  long  national 
movement,  may  be  best  estimated  by 
a  rapid  review  of  the  successive  in- 
fluences employed  to  divert  him  from 
his  straightforward  path.  "Get  rid 
of  the  constitution ' '  was  the  language 
addressed  to  him  by  Marshal  Eadetzki 
just  after  his  accession  to  the  throne  ; 
"all  will  then  be  well.  You  will 
find  in  Austria  your  warmest  friend, 
and  she  will  help  you  to  the  posses- 
sion of  Modena  and  Parma."  And  the 
simple  answer  was,  "  I  cannot ;  I  must 
keep  my  oath  to  my  people."  "Abolish 
the  constitution,"  was  urged  in  blind 
good  faith  by  a  large  section  of  the 
old  Piedmontese  aristocracy,  and  the 
chief  military  men ;  and  the  counsel 
was  echoed,  in  more  affectionate  and 
imploring  tones,  by  an  Austrian 
mother  and  an  Austrian  wife.  He 
stood  firm.  Then  came  the  Sicardi 
laws,  placing  priest  and  layman  on 
the  same  level  of  civil  equality ;  and 
the  storm  rose  higher  and  howled 


"II  Rb  Galantuomo" 


377 


louder.  To  the  Councils  preceding  the 
passing  of  the  law  he  showed  greater 
boldness  and  more  true  political 
sagacity  than  his  own  ministers.  "  If 
you  deal  with  priests  at  all,  don't 
merely  tease  and  worry  them ;  do 
enough  to  render  them  innocuous." 
Such  was  the  language  held  by  him 
to  his  cabinet.  The  two  chambers 
voted  the  law,  but  the  royal  assent 
was  not  yet  given.  Might  it  not  at 
the  last  moment  be  withheld  ?  His 
old  tutor,  Bishop  Charvaz,  implored 
him  to  withhold  his  signature.  His 
mother  threw  herself  on  her  knees 
at  his  feet ;  but  the  maternal  in- 
fluence which  turned  back  a  Corio- 
lanus  from  his  march  against  Repub- 
lican, did  not  deter  Victor  Emanuel 
from  his  onward  course  against  Papal, 
Rome.  Then,  as  if  to  mark  the 
wrath  of  Heaven  against  the  impious 
foe,  wife  and  mother  and  brother 
were  all  struck  down  by  the  hand  of 
death,  almost  at  the  same  time.  "It 
is  too  much — it  is  far  too  much  to 
bear,"  he  exclaimed,  in  an  agony  of 
grief.  "Wife,  mother,  brother,  all 
taken  away,  and  the  priests  yelling 
in  my  ears  that  it  is  the  just 
punishment  of  my  sins,  and  that  I 
shall  never  enter  Paradise,  But  my 
road  to  Paradise  shall  be  the  happi- 
ness of  my  people. — (La  mia  Via  del 
Paradiso  sard,  la  felicitd,  del  mio 
popolo.)"  Great  and  patriotic  minis- 
ters stood  by  his  side,  but  even  those 
ministers  were  not  always  agreed 
amongst  themselves.  The  chivalrous, 
high-minded,  but  too  morbidly  sensi- 
tive and  fastidious  Massimo  d'Azeglio 
took  fright  at  the  violent  language  of 
the  Turin  press,  and  was  willing  to 
have  trenched  on  the  freedom  of  that 
press  at  the  suggestion  of  foreign 
powers.  Count  Cavour  held  a  bolder 
tone.  Yictor  Emanuel  sided  with 
Count  Cavour,  made  him  his  premier, 
and  had  to  witness  before  long  a 
Turin  mob  brought  together  by  joint 
clerical  and  protectionist  influences, 
attacking  the  premier's  dwelling,  and 
shouting  beneath  the  windows  of  the 
royal  palace,  "We  want  bread,  not 


laws."  Again,  Victor  Emanuel  stood 
firm  by  free  trade,  as  he  had  stood 
firm  against  Jesuit  assaults. 

Then  came  the  Crimean  war,  in 
which  the  participation  of  Sardinia, 
chiefly  through  the  king's  cordial 
concurrence,  was  openly  denounced 
in  Parliament  as  a  piece  of  Quixotic 
folly.  King  Victor  Emanuel  had  then 
to  bear  up  against,  first  the  rebuffs  of 
the  French  and  English  Governments, 
which  did  not  receive  his  offers  of 
alliance  with  much  cordiality,  and 
next,  against  the,  for  a  time,  dissen- 
tient views  of  his  own  minister  of  war, 
La  Marmora,  and  the,  to  the  very  last, 
most  honest  opposition  of  his  own 
minister  of  foreign  affairs,  Dabormida. 
How  the  negotiations  at  the  Paris 
conference  of  1856  prepared  the  way 
for  the  memorable  events  of  1859  is 
known  to  all  the  world,  but  those 
only  who  lived  in  Italy  during  that 
period  and  saw  a  little  of  what  was 
then  passing  behind  the  scenes  can 
estimate  the  difficulties  by  which  the 
king  and  his  great  minister  were  sur- 
rounded in  their  task.  If  at  Paris 
the  old  traditions  of  French  diplomacy 
and  an  infinite  variety  of  court  in- 
fluences were  brought  to  bear  upon 
Napoleon  III.,  at  Turin  the  jealousy 
of  rival  statesmen  was  as  constantly 
seeking  to  undermine  Count  Cavour. 
Successful  as  the  war  of  1859  was, 
its  abrupt  termination  by  the  Villa- 
franca  armistice  called  into  existence 
a  host  of  political  and  diplomatic 
embarrassments  more  threatening  at 
the  time  to  the  Italian  cause  than  the 
cannons  of  the  still  unoccupied  Quad- 
rilateral. And  here  at  this  precise 
moment  the  true  strength  of  King 
Victor  Emanuel's  character  made  itself 
felt.  Cavour  had  withdrawn  dismayed 
and  to  all  appearance  broken-hearted 
to  Switzerland.  His  successor,  Rat- 
tazzi,  was  writing  to  the  provisional 
governors  of  the  revolted  provinces 
desirous  of  annexation  to  Sardinia, 
and  to  the  Sardinian  ministers  at 
foreign  courts,  telling  them  not 
to  indulge  in  delusive  hopes,  as 
there  was  no  chance  of  obtaining 


:>7S 


"//  Ee  Galantuomo." 


better  conditions.  The  king,  on  the 
contrary,  hoped  bravely  on,  and  told 
Tuscans  and  Romans  to  share  his 
hopes.  As  the  national  prospects 
brightened  there  came  another  cloud, 
nothing  less  dark  and  ominous  than 
the  menace  of  a  religious  war.  And 
when  all  these  difficulties  were  over- 
come, and  the  successes  of  Garibaldi 
in  the  following  year  had  placed 
nine  millions  of  Neapolitans  under 
the  Sardinian  dominion,  it  almost 
appeared  as  if  the  fresh  difficulties, 
the  democratic  hopes,  and  provincial 
rivalries  called  into  being  by  the 
Garibaldian  movement  would  neu- 
tralise the  advantages  which  it  had 
procured.  Then  followed  the  death  of 
Count  Cavour,  and  in  every  corner  of 
the  civilised  world  might  be  heard  the 
mournful  prediction  that  the  hopes  of 
Italy  were  buried  in  the  tomb  of  her 
greatest  statesman.  But  seventeen 
years  have  elapsed  since  Count  Cavour 
was  laid  in  that  tomb,  and  the  onward 
march  has  never  been  arrested ;  and 
foremost  in  the  van  was  still  to  be 
seen  the  figure  of  King  Honestman, 
trusted  by  Venetians  and  Romans 
whilst  they  were  still  held  down 
beneath  the  Austrian  and  Papal  yoke, 
and  permitted  by  Providence  to  justify 
their  trust  by  the  final  liberation  of 
Venice  and  of  Rome. 

A  portrait  to  be  true  must  have  its 
shades  equally  with  its  lights  ;  but  the 
writer  who  pens  a  notice  of  the  late 
King  of  Italy  with  a  whole  nation 
around  him  weeping  for  the  monarch's 
loss,  may  be  pardoned  if  at  such  a 
moment  he  refrains  from  adding  these 
shades  in  the  presence  of  the  darker 
and  more  solemn  shadows  which  have 
sunk  down  on  the  Palace  of  the 
Quirinal.  In  speaking  of  the  late 
king  I  have  mentioned  in  connection 
with  his  name  that  of  Henry  IV.  of 
France.  The  people  to  whom  the  first 
Bourbon  king  gave  peace  and  order 
were  willing  to  overlook,  in  their 
gratitude  for  such  boons,  the  faults 
which  they  could  not  ignore;  and  revert- 
ing to  that  large-souled  humanity  which 
was  common  to  both  princes,  I  believe 


that  the  memory  of  King  Victor 
Emanuel  will  become  associated  in  the 
mind  of  posterity  with  the  thousand 
little  traits  of  good  temper  and  good 
humour,  of  personal  tact  and  keen 
sagacity,  with  which  it  was  associated 
in  the  minds  of  his  own  contemporaries. 
Of  the  anecdotes  illustrating  his  ready 
tact  one  cr  two  known  as  quite  au- 
thentic may  be  given.  When  the 
conflict  between  Church  and  State  in 
Piedmont  was  at  its  height  a  deputa- 
tion of  noble  ladies  from  Chambery 
waited  on  the  king,  imploring  him  to 
revoke  the  decree  by  which  the  Nuns 
of  the  Sacred  Heart  were  expelled  from 
their  city.  They  saw  no  prospect, 
such  was  the  declaration  made  by 
them  to  the  king,  of  having  their 
daughters  properly  educated  if  the 
pious  sisterhood  should  be  removed. 
The  king  heard  them  very  attentively, 
and  at  the  close  of  their  appeal  most 
courteously  replied:  "I  believe  you 
are  mistaken.  I  know  that  there  are 
at  this  moment  in  the  town  of  Cham- 
bery many  ladies  much  better  qualified 
to  educate  your  children  than  the 
Sisters  of  the  Sacred  Heart."  The  ladies 
looked  surprised,  exchanged  inquiring 
glances  with  each  other,  until  at  last 
one  of  them,  addressing  the  king, 
begged  him  to  point  out  the  pious 
teachers  of  whose  existence  they  were 
ignorant.  "  The  pious  teachers,"  replied 
the  king,  bowing  more  courteously 
than  before,  "  are  yourselves ;  your 
daughters  can  have  no  persons  better 
qualified  to  superintend  their  educa- 
tion than  their  own  mothers."  The 
ladies  of  Chambery  offered  no  further 
remarks,  but  left  the  royal  presence- 
chamber  in  silence. 

An  equally  characteristic  trait  was 
furnished  when,  after  the  annexation 
of  Tuscany,  he  visited  Pisa  for  the  first 
time.  On  driving  to  the  cathedral, 
where  an  immense  crowd  had  gathered 
to  welcome  him,  he  found  the  great 
gates  closed  by  order  of  the  reactionary 
archbishop,  Cardinal  Corsi.  After  a 
delay  of  one  or  two  minutes  it  was 
found  that  a  small  side  entrance  had 
been  left  open,  and  the  king  proceeded 


"II  Rk  Galantuomo." 


379 


towards  this  door.  But  the  crowd  of 
Pisans  resenting  the  insult  offered  to 
the  king  broke  out  into  indignant  and 
even  'menacing  cries  against  the  car- 
dinal-archbishop. Victor  Emanuel, 
waving  his  hand  from  the  top  of  the 
steps,  told  them  to  be  calm,  exclaiming 
at  the  same  time  in  a  good-humoured 
tone — "  It's  all  right.  His  Eminence 
is  only  teaching  us  by  a  practical 
instance  the  great  truth  that  it  is  by 
the  narrow  gate  we  have  a  chance  of 
getting  to  heaven." 

Beloved  as  he  was  by  all  classes  of 
his  subjects  he  seems  to  have  inspired 
an  unusual  degree  of  affection  amongst 
the  humble  classes  with  whom  he  came 
most  in  contact,  and  of  all  the  tributes 
to  his  kind-heartedness  spontaneously 
paid  in  the  Italian  capital  during  the 
last  hours  of  his  life  none  perhaps 
was  much  more  touching  than  the 
token  of  sorrow  offered  by  the  groups 
of  peasants  and  farm  labourers  who 
came  in  from  the  estates  of  Castel 
Porziano,  Belladonna,  Porta  Salara, 
&c.,  and  remained  in  the  garden  of  the 
Quirinal  Palace,  asking  the  news  every 
five  minutes,  and  not  leaving  until  all 
was  over.  Immense  as  is  the  shock 
which  his  unexpected  death  has  given 

ROME,  Feb.  10,  187?. 


to  his  own  family,  to  all  who  knew  and 
loved  him,  and  to  the  entire  Italian 
people,  the  calamity  has  not  been 
without  its  compensations  and  conso- 
lations. It  has  bound  together  by  the 
sentiment  of  a  common  loss  the  various 
members  of  the  great  national  family. 
It  has  made  them  once  more  pass  in 
review  with  the  mind's  eye  the  various 
forms  of  degradation  and  suffering 
which  they  not  long  ago  endured,  and 
has  rekindled  the  feeling  of  joy  and 
gratitude  for  their  deliverance.  It  has 
taught  them  that  in  the  battle  of  life, 
which  in  one  form  or  another,  for 
one  cause  or  another,  all  men,  either 
as  individuals  or  as  classes,  must  be 
prepared  to  fight — the  best  sword  is 
simple  honesty,  the  best  buckler  is  un- 
wavering faith.  It  was  by  the  use  of 
such  weapons  that  King  Honestman 
came  forth  triumphant  in  the  successive 
campaigns  of  the  long  national  war- 
fare, and  no  better  prayer  can  be 
breathed  at  the  dawn  of  a  new  reign 
than  that  in  these  matters  of  single- 
ness of  heart  and  honesty  of  purpose 
the  son  and  successor  of  King  Honest- 
man may  tread  in  his  father's  steps. 

JAMES  MONTGOMERY  STUART. 


330 


LOED  SHELBUEXE.1 


SEVERELY  as  he  was  judged  by  certain 
contemporaries,  the  lapse  of  time  has 
rendered  it  no  longer  necessary  for  a 
biographer  to  rehabilitate  or  whitewash 
Lord  Shelburne.  It  cannot  indeed  be  said 
that  his  contemporaries  generally  con- 
demned him  at  all ;  and  as  the  events  of 
his  time  have  receded  into  the  perspective 
of  history,  his  figure  and  attitude  have 
steadily  attracted  more  and  more  respect 
and  admiration.  Shelburne  was  one 
of  those  who  are  in  their  own  time  much 
talked  of  and  little  understood  ;  but  the 
mass  of  Englishmen  in  his  time  certainly 
both  admired  and  respected  him.  The 
sole  basis  of  such  power  as  he  possessed 
was  his  personal  popularity  and  repu- 
tation ;  and  it  is  certain  that  these  went 
on  steadily  increasing  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  his  career.  Unusual 
popularity  is  always  attended  by  de- 
traction, and  Shelburne's  influence  may 
be  measured  by  the  increasing  enmity 
which  he  excited  among  his  rivals. 
Johnson  and  Walpole  merely  repeat  the 
cant  saying  of  rival  politicians  when 
they  say  that  his  reputation  had  no  solid 
foundation  in  the  popular  opinion,  and 
that  he  recommended  himself  to  the 
King  only  by  his  unbounded  flattery 
and  servility.  Shelburne's  manners  were 
habitually  popular  :  but  this  allegation 
could  be  nothing  better  than  an  ill- 
natured  surmise.  George  certainly 
chose  him  as  premier  mainly  on  account 
of  his  popular  qualities  ;  and  those  very 
qualities  made  him  additionally  odious 
in  the  eyes  of  his  Whig  rivals.  He  was 
essentially  a  popular  minister.  Had 
Shelburne  continued  in  office  he  would 
certainly  have  carried  through  that 
reform  of  the  representation  which 
Chatham  had  contemplated,  and  which 

1  The  Life  of  William  Earl  of  Shelburne. 
By  Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice.  Vols.  II.  and 
III.  Macmillan  &  Co. 

(Continued  from  Macmillan  s  Magazine  for 
June,  1875.) 


the  younger  Pitt  attempted  in  vain. 
He  would  have  made  more  sweeping 
onslaughts  on  the  restraints  upon  trade 
than  lay  in  the  younger  Pitt's  power. 
In  all  this  the  King  and  the  people 
would  have  supported  him,  and  he 
would  probably  thus  have  cut  away 
Whiggism  at  its  foundations  half  a 
century  before  the  appointed  time. 
Never  was  there  a  fairer  prospect  of 
Eeform  than  when  Shelburne  became 
minister  in  1782.  That  prospect  was 
blasted  by  the  Whigs.  They  boasted 
that  they  had  "  destroyed"  the  popular 
statesman  :  but  the  blood  of  the  martyrs 
has  always  been  the  seed  of  the  Church. 
Shelburne's  detractors  are  all  com- 
prehended in  one  name — his  political 
rivals.  By  the  practice  of  the  time  it 
was  the  duty  of  every  political  aspirant 
to  attach  himself  to  some  established 
faction,  and  to  display  such  qualifications 
as  he  might  possess  for  becoming  one 
of  its  wirepullers.  With  the  first  party 
which  Shelburne  joined  he  soon  found 
it  quite  impossible  to  act  with  any 
public  credit  or  self-respect.  He  was  yet 
a  young  man  when  he  committed  an 
offence  which  exiled  him  from  that 
sorry  camp,  and  opened  a  source  of  per- 
petual detraction.  Again,  when  the 
King  invited  the  two  strongest  of  the 
Whig  factions  to  unite  and  carry  on  the 
government  in  1763,  Shelburne  served 
this  coalition,  though  they  had  not  a 
single  statesman  among  them.  It  was 
natural  enough  that  they  should  look 
askance  upon  him.  Shelburne  had 
taken  part  with  an  upstart  faction, 
formed  for  the  purpose  of  abolishing 
the  Bedfords  and  Grenvilles  altogether. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  Whigs  those  who 
had  composed  this  faction  were  vaga- 
bonds and  outlaws ;  but  Shelburne  had 
disgusted  the  virtue  of  the  Eigbys  and 
Jenkinsons  by  his  startling  disregard 
of  the  great  principle  of  honour  among 
thieves.  Shelburne,  in  a  paroxysm  of 


Lord  Slielburne. 


381 


public  virtue,  had  committed  that  sin 
which  public  jobbers  never  forgave. 
He  had  sinned  against  the  chief  wire- 
puller of  his  party ;  and  this  crime 
rendered  him  as  odious  to  the  Bedfords 
and  the  Temples  as  to  Lord  Holland 
himself.  In  after  years  they  made 
Shelburne's  dismissal  from  office  the 
price  of  their  adhesion ;  and  thence- 
forward he  passed  into  the  ranks  of 
those  who  opposed  the  royal  policy. 
His  opponents  triumphed  :  but  who 
would  not  rather  have  the  feelings  of 
Shelburne  throughout  that  long  and 
noble  opposition  than  of  those  venal 
Whigs  who  went  over  in  a  body  to 
assume  the  royal  livery  ? 

But  there  were  still  among  the 
Whigs  a  handful  who  were  found  faith- 
ful to  their  traditions.  When  Grenville 
resigned,  the  King  proposed  to  his  uncle 
to  form  a  ministry;  and  the  Duke  placed 
at  its  head  Charles,  Marquis  of  Eocking- 
ham,  a  young  nobleman  who  personally 
stood  well  with  the  King,  and  though 
boasting  of  no  great  abilities,  had  great 
temper,' prudence,  and  judgment.  Eock- 
ingham did  his  best  to  form  a  strong 
ministry.  Could  he  have  persuaded 
Pitt  to  join  him,  the  government  might 
to  some  extent  have  recovered  the 
strength  of  the  coalition  of  1757. 
Pitt,  not  without  reason,  refused  to  play 
second  fiddle  to  this  youthful  lord 
of  the  bedchamber.  If  Eockingham 
failed,  as  fail  he  must,  Pitt  would  be, 
politically  speaking,  his  residuary  le- 
gatee. Pitt  knew  that  by  holding  out 
a  little  longer  he  was  safe  to  command 
the  market.  He,  at  last,  would  have 
no  difficulty  in  forming  a  ministry  on 
as  broad  a  basis  as  he  pleased.  Pitt's 
influence  was  steadily  advancing ;  the 
people  were  for  him  almost  to  a  man ; 
Temple  was  his  sworn  ally,  and  if 
Temple  should  prove  restive,  the 
Bedfords  were  only  too  ready  to  supply 
Ms  place.  Half  the  Eockinghams,  he 
anticipated,  in  spite  of  their  profession 
of  party  fidelity,  would  serve  under 
him  as  readily  as  under  their  legitimate 
leader;  and  the  event  justified  the 
forecast.  Shelburne  had  already  cast 
in  his  lot  with  Pitt,  and  Pitt  had 


shown  a  disposition  to  prefer  him  be- 
fore all  the  rest  of  his  adherents  as 
his  chief  lieutenant.  No  wonder,  then, 
that  Shelburne  also  declined  Eocking- 
ham's  advances. 

This  estrangement  of  Pitt  from  the 
Eockingham  party  was  fraught  with 
heavy  misfortune  to  England.  With  Pitt 
and  Shelburne  at  the  head  of  that  party, 
and  the  followers  of  Lord  Eockingham 
and  Lord  Temple  as  its  main  support, 
England  would  have  been  spared  the 
miserable  consequences  of  the  policy 
adopted  by  Grenville,  and  Townshend, 
and  North,  and  obstinately  carried 
out  at  the  instance  of  the  King.  But 
the  Eockingham  party  could  put  for- 
ward, not  without  reason,  another  view 
of  the  case.  And  here  we  come  to 
that  which  perhaps  has  most  damaged 
Shelburne  personally  with  posterity. 
Shelburne,  by  refusing  to  forsake  Pitt 
and  join  the  Eockinghams,  and  by  con- 
sistently keeping  outside  their  pale,  laid 
himself  open  to  the  jealousy  and  hatred 
of  the  most  respectable  political  con- 
nexion of  the  time.  The  party  of 
Burke  and  Fox  was  by  no  means 
above  common  human  jealousies;  and 
bitterly  indeed  did  they  avenge  them- 
selves on  the  independence  of  Shel- 
burne. They  never  acted  gracefully 
in  office  with  him,  though  he  yielded 
them  the  lion's  share  of  the  patronage. 
When  at  length  Eockingham  died  in 
office,  and  Shelburne  accepted  his  place 
without  consulting  them,  the  climax 
was  reached.  They  never  afterwards 
ceased  to  heap  reproaches  on  his  name  : 
and  it  is  the  deliberate  condemnation  of 
these  patriotic  men  that  has  affixed  the 
most  serious  stigma  on  Shelburne's  good 
name. 

We  see  now  clearly  enough  why 
Shelburne  was  so  odious  to  the  profes- 
sional politicians  of  his  time.  He  was, 
in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  an  inde- 
pendent statesman.  Here  were  three  or 
four  sets  of  professed  intriguers,  neither 
of  which  was  collectively  respected 
or  trusted  by  the  nation.  They  disliked 
each  other,  no  doubt ;  but  they  must  have 
detested  one  who  gave  himself  the  airs 
of  a  patriot,  and  did  not  conceal  his  own 


382 


Lord  Shelburne. 


contempt  for  them  all,  though  he  could 
not  be  sure  of  ten  votes  in  either  House 
of  Parliament.  This  was  "bad  Whiggism ; 
and  the  Whigs  reviled  Shelburne  ac- 
cordingly. Nor  was  he  better  adapted 
to  please  the  Tories.  The  Tories  of 
that  time  had  no  opinions  or  policy  in 
particular ;  but  they  had  strong  hatreds, 
particularly  for  the  "Whiggish  arts  of 
popularity-hunting.  Now  these  arts 
were  practised  by  Shelburne  with  the 
highest  success.  Shelburne  was  a 
kind,  good-natured  man  :  of  simple  and 
earnest  address :  very  much  what  is 
called  a  "  taking  "  man.  "  II  est  simple, 
naturel,"  a  French  lady1  writes  of  him ; 
"il  a  de  1'ame,  de  la  force ;  il  n'a  de 
gout  et  d'attrait  que  pour  ce  que  lui 
ressemble.  31  a  d'esprit,  de  la  chaleur, 
de  1'elevation.  II  me  rappeloit  un  peu 
les  deux  hommes  du  monde  que  j'ai 
aimes,  et  pour  qui  je  voudrois  vivre  ou 
mourir."  Dr.  Johnson,  who  was  in- 
debted to  Shelburne  for  much  per- 
sonal kindness,  never  thoroughly  re- 
spected him  on  account  of  the  fami- 
liarity of  his  manners.  A  nobleman, 
in  Johnson's  idea,  should  always  be  on 
the  high  horse.  Dignity  of  manner 
without  insolence  was  best ;  but  the 
cruellest  insolence  was  better  than 
want  of  dignity.  Johnson  apparently 
preferred  the  dignified  heartlessness 
of  Chesterfield  to  the  easy  geniality  of 
Shelburne;  and  respected  the  former 
more  for  keeping  him  day  after  day 
shivering  in  his  anteroom,  than  the  latter 
for  entertaining  him  week  after  week  in 
the  best  intellectual  society  of  the  day 
in  the  family  mansion  at  Wycombe. 

The  highest  praise  Johnson  is  known 
to  have  given  to  Shelburne  is  that  he 
was  the  sort  of  man  to  be  at  the  head  of 
a  club.  He  added,  to  save  misappre- 
hension, "  I  don't  say  our  club."  What 
he  implied  was  that  Lord  Shelburne, 
the  friend  of  Franklin  and  Morellet,  of 
Garrick  and  Sir  William  Jones,  of 
Priestley  and  Turgot,  the  chosen  pupil 
of  Chatham,  the  second  best  debater  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  and  the  shrewdest 
thinker  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament, 

1  Madame  de  1'Espinasse.  Quoted  by  Lord 
E.  Eitzmamice,  vol.  ii.  p.  227. 


was  not  by  any  means  a  man  to  set  at 
the  head  of  a  meeting  of  intelligent  and 
cultivated  people.  He  was  only  fit  to 
preside  at  those  vulgar  social  gatherings 
which  in  those  days  were  the  chief 
instruments  of  social  and  political  in- 
fluence, in  all  grades  of  society,  and 
where  the  chief  pursuits  were  drinking, 
gaming,  and  buffoonery.  "Was  he 
not,"  asked  Boswell,  with  the  obvious 
intention  of  "drawing"  Johnson,  "a 
factious  man  ?  "  "0  yes,  sir ;  as  fac- 
tious a  fellow  as  could  be  found.  One 
who  was  for  sinking  us  all  into  the 
mob."  Boswell,  who  knew  the  obli- 
gations of  Johnson  to  Shelburne,  was 
naturally  surprised  at  all  this.  He  tells 
us  that  he  inwardly  hoped  that  Johnson 
really  appreciated  Shelburne's  great 
character  better.  Beyond  a  doubt 
Johnson  did  so.  But  how  monstrous 
must  have  been  the  prejudice  which 
could  thus  distort,  to  a  friendly  eye, 
a  character  so  truly  noble  as  that  of 
Shelburne ;  and  how  gross  the  general 
injustice  of  which  Johnson's  contempt 
was  but  a  reflection  ! 

The  judgment  of  students  of  history 
has  scarcely  hesitated  between  the  ran- 
corous detraction  of  Shelburne's  rivals 
and  the  popular  estimation  which  ranked 
him  with  Chatham  as  an  able  and  judi- 
cious statesman.  The  people  were  in 
the  right ;  and  since  the  heats  of  that 
generation  have  passed  away,  Whig  and 
Tory  opinions  have  united  to  do  Lord 
Shelburne  justice.  The  way  for  this 
was  no  doubt  prepared  by  the  consistent 
and  farsighted  liberality  of  his  general 
opinions :  but  we  do  not  know  of  one 
of  his  specially  political  acts  which  will 
not  bear  the  test  of  a  dispassionate 
examination.  But  these  political  acts 
were  few,  and  they  bore  but  little  fruit. 
His  general  opinions,  on  the  other  hand, 
faithfully  reflect  that  mighty  sunrise 
of  liberal  thought  which  from  one  end 
of  Europe  to  the  other  slowly  and 
steadily  advanced  all  through  the  latter 
half  of  the  last  century,  and  was  only 
shrouded  for  a  time  by  those  sombre 
and  threatening  clouds  which  accom- 
panied the  heart-shaking  convulsions  of 
the  French  Revolution. 


Lord  Shelburne. 


383 


We  have  already  noticed  in  these  pages 
the  first  volume  of  Lord  Edmond  Fitz- 
maurice's  work.  That  volume  brings 
the  reader  to  the  middle  of  the  year 
1766,  when  Shelburne,  then  in  his 
thirtieth  year,  accepted  from  Chatham 
the  office  of  Secretary  of  State  for  the 
Southern  Department,  which  he  held 
for  two  years  and  a  quarter.  During 
that  short  time  the  hopes  with  which 
the  Chatham  ministry  had  set  out  were 
rapidly  being  dissipated.  Chatham  him- 
self, shorn  of  his  old  popularity,  had 
fallen  into  a  condition  of  irritable 
lethargy.  His  old  statesmanlike  faculties 
seemed  to  have  deserted  him.  While 
he  refused  even  to  aid  in  shaping  the 
policy  of  his  colleagues,  he  behaved  to 
them  individually  with  insupportable 
haughtiness.  The  most  valuable  of 
Chatham's  servants  were  unquestionably 
those  whom  the  patriotic  moderation  of 
Lord  Rockingham  had  suffered  to  remain 
in  office  when  their  leader  quitted  it. 
Chatham  knew  this,  and  he  hated  them 
for  it.  Unable  to  sustain  their  position 
with  honour,  Saunders  and  Keppel 
quitted  the  Admiralty,  the  Duke  of 
Portland  resigned  the  post  of  Lord 
Chamberlain,  and  Lord  Bessborough 
that  of  Postmaster-General.  Conway 
was  with  difficulty  prevented  from  fol- 
lowing them  ;  and  by  doing  so  he  would 
have  consulted  his  future  reputation. 
He  became  utterly  powerless  and  insigni- 
ficant in  the  midst  of  the  alien  element 
which  was  now  infused  into  the  adminis- 
tration. It  was  the  same  with  Grafton, 
who  was  only  a  premier  in  name.  An 
alliance  with  the  Bedford  Whigs  was 
the  only  thing  left  to  Grafton,  after 
the  death  of  his  brilliant  and  popular 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  ;  and  this 
meant  a  total  abjuration  of  the  principles 
with  which  the  name  of  Chatham  was 
associated.  These  principles  Shelburne 
unflinchingly  asserted.  But  Shelburne 
by  this  time  stood  absolutely  alone.  In 
vain  he  appealed  to  Chatham  against 
his  colleagues.  Having  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  them,  odious  to  the  King,  and 
left  by  his  chief  to  shift  for  himself, 
it  was  impossible  for  him  to  hold  his 
ground,  and  his  dismissal  or  resignation 


became  imminent  from  the  day  of  the 
compact  with  the  Bedfords. 

The  first  among  the  public  questions 
of  that  day  was  that  of  the  pacification  of 
America.  Shelburne,  following  Chatham, 
and  taking  a  bolder  and  more  liberal 
line  than  that  of  Eockingham,  held 
American  taxation  to  be  illegal  and  un- 
constitutional. Had  he  been  continued 
in  office,  he  would  have  proved  it  to  be 
unnecessary.  The  grounds  of  his 
intended  policy  are  well  summed  up  by 
Lord  Edmond: — 

"The  chief  expenditure  of  the  mother- 
country  on  behalf  of  the  colonies  was  incurred 
for  military  purposes.  The  total  amount  was 
estimated  at  400,0002.  annually.  The  ques- 
tion was  whether  that  expenditure  was  neces- 
sary. If  it  were  not,  there  was  every  prob- 
ability that  the  ordinary  revenue  of  the  Crown, 
if  carefully  tended,  and  the  grants  of  the 
Colonial  Assemblies,  would  be  sufficient  for 
securing  and  defending  America,  and  that 
there  would  consequently  be  no  necessity  for 
raising  the  difficult  question  of  the  right  of 
the  mother-country  to  tax.  This  was  the 
opinion  of  Shelburne.  He  believed  the  road 
out  of  the  difficulty  to  lie  in  increasing  the 
land  revenue,  in  reducing  the  military  forces 
in  the  towns,  where  they  could  not  be  wanted 
except  for  overawing  the  colonists,  and  in  only 
keeping  up  the  force  necessary  to  check  the 
incursions  of  the  Indians." — Vol.  ii.  p.  32. 

That  this  was  the  true  policy  of 
England  towards  America  is  beyond 
dispute.  Arguments,  however,  were  not 
wanting  on  the  other  side.  France  and 
Spain,  smarting  under  the  humiliations 
inflicted  on  them  by  Pitt,  were  scheming 
to  retrieve  their  losses  \  and  they  were 
encouraged  by  the  weakness  and  division 
of  the  English  ministry,  which  it  was 
impossible  to  conceal.  A  great  military 
force  must  be  forthwith  organised  in 
America  as  a  demonstration  against  the 
Bourbon  powers.  Townshend,  always 
disliked  and  slighted  by  Chatham,  and 
bitterly  jealous  of  Shelburne's  abilities 
and  popularity,  was  the  chief  advocate 
of  this  view.  He  easily  obtained  his 
own  way  both  in  Parliament  and  in  the 
cabinet.  Conway  stood  alone  among 
the  professed  Whigs  in  resisting  him ; 
for  even  Camden,  Shelburne's  only  col- 
league who  was  a  personal  adherent  of 
Chatham,  forgot  the  principles  of  his 


384 


Lord  Shellurne. 


leader.  Coercion  was  resolved  on,  and 
Townshend  carried  in  the  cabinet  his 
scheme  of  the  fatal  Five  Duties.  Soon 
after  this  Shelburne  ceased  to  attend  the 
cabinet  councils,  and  applied  himself 
to  doing  what  he  could  in  his  office  of 
Secretary  of  State,  to  prevent  the  per- 
nicious policy  of  his  colleagues  from 
producing  its  full  crop  of  disasters.  In 
this  he  doubtless  did  his  duty  as  an 
Englishman,  but  he  rendered  his  position 
as  a  minister  untenable. 

Townshend  died  suddenly,  and  the 
administration  fell,  as  we  have  seen,  into 
the  hands  of  the  Bedfords.  The  isolation 
of  Shelburne  now  became  more  con- 
spicuous than  ever,  and  the  Duke  of 
Bedford  was  not  long  in  taking  active 
measures  to  remove  the  anomaly.  To 
turn  Shelburne  out  would  have  been  to 
weaken  the  slender  credit  of  the  ministry 
with  the  country,  and  he  contented  him- 
self with  compelling  Graf  ton  to  rearrange 
the  duties  of  the  secretaries.  A  new 
office,  that  of  Secretary  for  the  Colonies, 
was  created.  Shelburne  was  now  de- 
prived of  all  official  connection  with 
the  affairs  of  America,  and  Lord  Hills- 
borough,  a  tool  of  the  Duke's,  succeeded 
him.  Shelburne  submitted  to  the 
change.  He  had  held  his  post  as  long 
as  it  was  defensible,  and  he  quitted  it 
with  honour  and  dignity.  He  was  still 
a  foreign  secretary ;  and  he  made  one 
more  ineffectual  attempt  to  maintain 
the  credit  and  the  traditional  policy  of 
the  country.  We  need  not  repeat  the 
story  of  the  abandonment  by  the  British 
ministry  of  England's  old  allies,  the 
brave  islanders  of  Corsica.  Shelburne, 
who  thoroughly  understood  his  own  pro- 
vince, would  certainly  have  saved  them 
from  the  hands  of  France,  and  the  firm 
attitude  which  he  maintained  delayed 
their  fate.  The  influence  of  England 
with  the  European  powers  was  still  dear 
enough  to  the  majority  of  the  cabinet  to 
frustrate  the  avowed  Bourbon  policy  of 
the  Bedfords ;  but  on  this  one  point 
they  were  too  elated  by  their  other 
successes  to  accept  defeat.  "Weymouth 
took  care  to  assure  all  the  diplomatists 
in  London  that  Shelburne  had  lost  all  his 
authority ;  that  England  would  never  go 


America  and  the 
Wilkes  from  the 
Grafton  at  length 
demanding  Shel- 


to  war  for  Corsica ;  and  on  learning  the 
true  state  of  the  case,  the  French  Am- 
bassador flew  to  Paris.  The  attitude  of 
the  French  ministry  changed  at  once, 
and  the  fate  of  Corsica  was  sealed.  The 
island  soon  surrendered  to  a  French 
army,  and  thus  was  purchased  the 
ascendency  of  the  Bedfords  in  the  Duke 
of  Graf  ton's  cabinet. 

The  tune  had  now  come  when  Shel- 
burne must  either  resign  or  be  expelled. 
Though  quite  alone  in  the  cabinet,  he 
continued  to  oppose  the  despatch  of 
soldiers  to  overawe 
illegal  expulsion  of 
House  of  Commons, 
wrote  to  Chatham 
burne's  dismissal.  Chatham  replied  by 
declaring  his  own  resolution  to  resign 
the  Privy  Seal,  and  Shelburne  antici- 
pated his  foes  by  resigning  the  seals  of 
the  Foreign  Department.  The  influence 
on  British  policy  of  both  the  Rocking- 
ham  and  the  Chatham  parties,  including 
every  man  in  England  who  was  entitled 
to  be  called  a  statesman,  was  thus  finally 
extinguished.  There  was  not  a  single 
point  worth  mentioning  on  which  these 
two  parties  differed,  and  the  division 
between  them  is  perhaps  the  most 
calamitous  fact  in  modern  English 
history.  But  for  this  division,  there 
would  not  have  been  a  war  of  coercion 
in  America.  Twenty  years  afterwards, 
there  would  perhaps  not  have  been  a 
war  of  repression  against  the  French 
nation.  The  debt  of  England  would 
have  stood  at  less  than  half  its  present 
dimensions.  Official  reform  would  have 
been  completed,  and  parliamentary  re- 
form begun  half  a  century  earlier.  Free 
trade  to  a  limited  degree,  and  religious 
emancipation  in  its  fullest  extent  would 
have  followed,  if  Shelburne's  convictions 
had  been  allowed  to  predominate.  It  is 
hard  to  say  on  which  of  the  two  lies 
the  chief  blame  of  this  unhappy  scl 
The  balance  of  culpability  lay  soi 
times  with  one.  sometimes  with  tl 
other.  Eockingham  and  his  friends 
were  to  blame  in  not  acknowledging 
the  supremacy  of  Chatham;  Chatham 
was  to  blame  for  the  failures  of  the 
Government  which  he  nominally 


Lord  Shelburne. 


385 


headed.  Fox  and  Portland  will  never 
lose  the  odium  of  the  coalition  of  1783. 
Both  parties  united  as  cordially  as 
they  could  in  expressing  the  folly  and 
•wickedness  of  the  coercion  of  America. 
They  steadfastly  opposed  the  growing 
influence  of  tho  crown,  and  agreed  upon 
a  general  crusade  against  sinecures,  and 
an  improved  public  economy.  During 
these  years  Shelburne  was  assiduous  in 
his  attendance  in  Parliament.  On  all 
questions  of  importance  he  embraced 
the  popular  side  with  more  ardour  than 
his  rivals  in  opposition,  and  he  was  re- 
warded by  increasing  esteem  on  the  part 
of  the  nation,  and  by  increasing  and  not 
well-concealed  rancour  on  the  part  of 
the  Eockinghams. 

In  reviewing  Shelburne's  life,  we  can- 
not resist  the  conviction  that  he  was 
one  of  those  whose  powers  are  better 
developed  in  opposition  than  in  office. 
Such  men  always  remind  us  of  Sir 
William  Petty 's  famous  double-bottomed 
ship,  and  of  the  locomotive  engine 
invented  by  the  ingenious  Earl  Stan- 
hope. The  double-bottomed  ship  made 
head  famously  against  wind  and  tide ; 
but  it  sailed  badly  with  wind  and  tide 
in  its  favour.  Lord  Stanhope's  traction 
engine  rapidly  ascended  a  steep  incline ; 
but  its  pace  slackened  when  on  the 
level,  and  it  would  hardly  go  downhill 
at  all.  With  the  sole  exception  of 
Chatham,  it  was  so  with  every  inde- 
pendent statesman  during  the  century 
of  the  Whig  ascendency.  An  example 
of  this,  as  remarkable  as  Shelburne 
himself,  is  afforded  by  a  name  which  is 
closely  connected  with  his  own.  Shel- 
burne appears  only  to  have  seen  Carteret 
once,  when  he  was  quite  a  lad,  but  the 
interview  made  a  singular  impression 
upon  him.  A  year  before  he  accepted 
office  under  Chatham,  he  had  married 
Carteret's  youngest  daughter.  Lady 
Sophia  Carteret  was  then  a  girl  of 
twenty,  attractive,  though  not  beauti- 
ful, and  Shelburne  was  deeply  attached 
to  her  during  their  short  married  life. 
Her  death,  indeed,  in  a  certain  sense, 
marks  a  turning-point  in  his  career,  for 
it  led  to  his  long  visit  to  France,  to  his 
intimacy  with  Priestley  and  Morellet, 
No.  221. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


and  to  his  serious  adoption  of  the  views 
of  the  new  school  of  political  econom- 
ists Avhich  was  rising  up  in  France. 
The  parallel  of  Carteret's  career,  after 
his  resignation  of  the  Lieutenancy  of 
Ireland,  with  that  of  Shelburne  after 
his  resignation  of  the  seals  of  the 
Foreign  Department,  is  remarkable. 
Like  Shelburne,  Carteret  led  year 
after  year  a  vigorous  and  watchful 
opposition  to  his  old  political  ally. 
Like  Shelburne,  personal  jealousies 
deprived  him  of  the  fruits  of 
his  labours.  As  Pelham  and  his  ad- 
herents feared  Carteret,  and  excluded 
him  from  their  cabinet,  so  did  the 
younger  Pitt  and  his  adherents  fear 
Shelburne,  and  exclude  him  from  their 
cabinet ;  and  though  in  both  cases  the 
victory  was  mainly  won  by  the  inde- 
pendent statesman,  in  neither  case  was 
the  independent  statesman  able  to 
vindicate  his  claim  to  share  its  fruits. 
Both  statesmen  were  freely  charged  with 
subservience  to  the  royal  "wishes  ;  but 
here  the  justice  of  the  parallel  ceases. 
George  II.  cannot  have  greatly  regretted 
the  fall  of  Walpole ;  George  III.  bit- 
terly felt  the  personal  humiliation 
involved  in  that  of  North. 

The  death  of  Lady  Shelburne  in 
1771  was  the  immediate  occasion  of 
Shelburne's  visit  to  France  and  Italy 
in  company  with  Barre.  This  visit 
Shelburne  himself  marked  as  an  epoch 
in  his  life,  for  it  led  to  his  acquaintance 
with  Turgot,  Morellet,  and  many  others 
of  the  French  school  of  philosophers. 
Shelburne's  views,  both  political  and 
religious,  had  hitherto  been  very  much 
of  his  own  choosing ;  and  he  must  have 
been  surprised  and  gratified  at  finding 
how  nearly  they  approached  to  those 
who  had  the  reputation  of  being  the 
most  enlightened  thinkers  in  Europe. 
Shelburne's  opinions  and  those  of  the 
French  philosophers  were  indeed  of  a 
common  English  stock ;  but  in  both 
cases  the  end  of  the  century  gave 
them  a  new  and  more  decided  form. 
Both  in  commercial  and  religious  policy 
Shelburne  now  found  himself  diverg- 
ing more  and  more  from  the  old 
Whigs.  There  were,  indeed,  those 

c  c 


386 


Lord  Shelburne. 


among  them  who  knew  the  emptiness 
of  Protection ;  but  to  have  acted  upon 
such  a  conviction  would  have  broken 
up  the  foundations  in  the  country  on 
which  the  Whig  party  rested.  And  the 
Whigs  were  especially  conservative  in 
all  matters  relating  to  the  Church. 
Shelburne  had  by  this  time  become 
warmly  attached  to  two  celebrated 
heterodox  ministers,  Dr.  Priestley  and 
Dr.  Price,  the  former  of  whom  resided 
permanently  with  him  as  librarian 
and  tutor  to  his  boys.  On  his  return 
from  France,  Shelburne  warmly  sup- 
ported the  famous  Feathers  Tavern  peti- 
tion, which  had  the  twofold  object  of 
relieving  the  Latitudinarian  clergy,  and 
the  general  body  of  the  laity  who 
sought  university  degrees,  from  sub- 
scription to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles. 
The  Bockingham  Whigs,  with  the  sole 
exception  of  Savile,  opposed  the  Bill, 
and  it  was  rejected  by  a  large  majority. 
Shelburne  had  early  settled  his  own 
religious  opinions  on  a  plain  deistic 
basis,  and  in  this  he  never  once  seems 
to  have  faltered.  "I  consider  man," 
he  writes,  "  as  placed  in  the  midst  of 
a  beautiful  garden,  containing  fruits, 
flowers,  plants,  animals — in  short,  every- 
thing the  most  lively  imagination  can 
desire,  surrounded  with  great  and  inac- 
cessible mountains.  The  wise  part  of  man- 
kind are  content  to  remain  in  the  garden, 
and  quietly  see  that  the  door  beyond  is 
shut;  the  foolish  part  are  continually 
struggling  against  nature,  and  trying 
to  ascend.  No  man  can  observe  the 
wonderful  order  which  prevails  through 
the  world,  but  must  be  convinced  that 
there  was  a  First  Cause.  No  man 
can  reflect  upon  all  he  sees  without 
feeling  that  it  is  not  intended,  in  this 
life  at  least,  that  he  should  know  more." 
For  Shelburne,  the  duties  of  man  might 
be  summed  up  in  the  weighty  words  of 
the  Hebrew  prophet :  "  What  doth  the 
Lord  thy  God  require  of  thee,  but  to  do 
justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk 
humbly  with  thy  God  ? " ' 

Both  in  commercial  and  in  religious 
policy  Shelburne  henceforth  leaned 
strongly  to  the  modern  French  school. 
It  was  the  political  economists  whose 


society  he  chiefly  sought.  He  discovered 
the  greatness  of  Turgot :  he  saw  that 
Turgot's  policy  was  the  only  thing 
which  could  save  France  :  and  he  fore- 
saw that  a  similar  policy  would  one  day 
be  necessary  to  England.  When  Con- 
dorcet  brought  out  his  Life  of  Turgot, 
Shelburne  had  it  translated  into  English. 
He  seems  to  have  seen  but  little  per- 
sonally of  Turgot ;  he  saw  more  of 
Morellet.  He  had  not  long  returned  to 
England  when  Morellet  paid  him  a  six 
months'  visit,  of  which  Lord  Edinond 
has  extracted  an  interesting  account 
from  the  Abbess  Memoirs.  Shelburne 
took  him  to  see  the  chief  manufactures 
of  England  :  and  he  introduced  him  to 
many  men  of  eminence.  Few  things 
are  more  striking  than  the  occasional 
glimpses  of  the  intellectual  society 
assembled  at  Wycombe  and  Bowood 
which  these  volumes  afford.  Shelburne 
early  sought  contact  with  all  forms  of 
intellectual  ability.  Among  his  fre- 
quent visitors  were  Garrick,  Johnson, 
and  Franklin.  Bentham,  whom  he 
early  sought  out,  was  a  constant  inmate 
of  Bowood,  and  it  was  to  him  that  Ben- 
tham owed  that  connection  with  Dumont 
without  which  his  genius  could  never 
have  had  its  due  effect  in -the  world  of 
European  thought.  Among  the  visitors 
of  later  years  were  Mirabeau,  Romilly, 
and  Gibbon. 

The  death  of  Chatham  left  Shelburne 
the  acknowledged  head  of  his  party, 
which  was  thenceforth  known  by  the 
name  of  the  Shelburne  Party.  The 
younger  Pitt  joined  this  parky  in  1780. 
He  came  on  the  stage  at  a  fitting  time. 
Few  conjunctures  have  ever  been  better 
adapted  to  stimulate  the  aspirations  of 
a  youthful  statesman.  It  might  reason- 
ably be  supposed  that  the  name,  the 
abilities,  and  the  noted  acquirements  of 
Pitt,  supported  by  the  ardent  tempera- 
ment which  he  inherited  from  his 
father,  would  win  him  in  time  a  re- 
spectable position  in  his  party.  Little, 
however,  was  it  supposed  that  this  prim 
young  gentleman,  fresh  from  college, 
would  in  four  years'  time  form  a  minis- 
try of  his  own,  in  which  the  veteran 
politician,  to  whom  he  owed  his  intro- 


Lord  Shelburne. 


387 


duction  to  the    world,    should    vainly 
seek  a  place  ! 

The  events  which  followed  in  quick 
succession  after  the  fall  of  the  North 
ministry  in  1782  are  too  well  known  to 
need  more  than  a  bare  recapitulation. 
The  Eockingham  and  Shelburne  parties, 
still  mutually  repelled  by  an  incurable 
hostility,  though  apparently  united  for 
the  general  good  of  the  nation,  joined 
to    form    a     ministry.      Eockingham 
was    Premier ;     his    party   filled    the 
Chancellorship  of   the  Exchequer  and 
the    headships    of    the    chief    depart- 
ments.    Charles  Fox,  with  the  seals  of 
Secretary,  bore  the  chief  weight  of  the 
administration.      Shelburne    took    the 
Foreign   Office,  and    his  friends  occu- 
pied only  subordinate  positions.     The 
lion's  share  thus  fell  to  the  Eocking- 
hams.      For  three    months    the    new 
ministry  attacked  its  work  vigorously. 
Negotiations  for  peace  were  commenced, 
important  official  reforms  were  effected, 
and  more  extensive  improvements  were 
planned.      Everything    promised    well 
for  the  future,  but  the  whole  fabric  fell 
to  the  ground  by  the  sudden  removal  of 
the  keystone.     Lord  Eockingham  died, 
and  the  King,  delighted  at  the  oppor- 
tunity of  mortifying  the  Whigs,  instead 
of  sending  for  the  Duke  of  Portland, 
sent  for  Lord  Shelburne.  The  Eocking- 
ham party  refused  to  serve  except  under 
a  premier  of  their    own    section,  and 
most  of  them  resigned  at  once.      Shel- 
burne  replaced  Lord  John  Cavendish 
by  William  Pitt.     He  made  peace  with 
America  and  with  the  European  allies 
of  the  Colonists.    This  peace  secured  to 
the  States  of  America  the  rich  inherit- 
ance of  the  West,  of  which  their  French 
and  Spanish  allies  were  willing  to  see 
them   deprived.      France,   if  possible, 
would  have  confined  the  States  to  the 
boundary  of  the  Ohio,  and  taken  the 
Mississippi  for    herself.      Lord   Shel- 
burne's    negotiations    thus     mark    an 
important  turning-point    in  American 
history.1 

1  On  this  subject  Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice 
has',  received  an  interesting  communication 
from  Mr.  John  Jay,  the  well-known  American 
diplomatist,  remarking  that  the  credit  which 


The  Eockingham  Whigs  could  not 
tamely  see  the  chief  fruit  of  their 
victory  over  Lord  North  wrested  from 
them.  They  effected  a  coalition  with 
Lord  North,  and  against  so  formidable 
a  combination  Shelburne  of  course 
found  himself  unable  to  make  head. 
In  December,  1783,  he  resigned,  and 
never  afterwards  held  office.  What- 
ever may  be  the  estimate  placed  on 
Shelburne's  claims  to  succeed  Eock- 
ingham in  the  premiership,  there  can 
be  but  one  opinion  on  the  character 
of  the  coalition  which  displaced  him. 
Morally  viewed,  it  was  gross  and 
flagrant,  and  in  the  nature  of  things 
it  could  last  but  a  short  time.  It  dis- 
gusted both  the  King  and  the  country, 
and  Fox's  rash  attempt  to  defy  both 
King  and  country  in  his  East  India  Bill 
provoked  the  King  into  putting  an  end 
to  this  shameless  and  unconstitutional 
alliance.  The  best  thing  that  can  be 
said  of  the  coalition  is  that  it  was  the 
last  of  its  kind.  It  belongs  to  a  former 
period  of  history.  Those  who  per- 
petrated it  have  found  no  imitators,  and 
perhaps  never  will.  Things  were,  in 
fact,  so  bad,  that  from  this  time  they 
mended  ;  and  the  political  regeneration 
of  England  commenced  with  the 
younger  Pitt,  to  whom  the  King  in- 
trusted the  formation  of  a  ministry. 
Popular  expectation  was  fixed  upon 
Shelburne,  and  it  was  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  he  would  have  a  principal 
share  in  the  new  government.  This  ex- 
pectation was  disappointed,  and  none 
was  more  surprised  at  his  exclusion 
from  Pitt's  administration  than  Shel- 
burne himself. 

We  never  could  understand  how  Pitt's 
exclusion  of  Shelburne  from  his  ad- 
ministration came  to  be  deemed  an 

he  gives  to  Jay  and  Adams  for  the  success  of 
the  negotiations  entirely  agrees  with  some 
memoranda  on  the  subject  made  by  Lord  St. 
Helen's,  who,  as  Mr.  Fitzherbert,  treated  on 
England's  behalf  with  the  European  powers. 
Mr.  Jay  refers  also  to  a  letter  from  Mr. 
Pickering,  Washington's  Secretary  of  State, 
printed  in  the  American  State  Papers,  Class  1, 
Foreign  Relations,  vol.  i.  pp.  569-572,  which 
leads  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  the  deliber- 
ate intention  of  France  to  deprive  the  States 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  all  to  the  west  of  it. 

c  c  2 


388 


Lord  Shelburne. 


inexplicable  puzzle.  It  was  at  first  a 
surprise ;  but  it  was  a  surprise  that  was 
correctly  interpreted  as  soon  as  it  was 
known.  Pitt  had  before  him  a  perilous 
and  difficult  task  ;  and  he  had  a  better 
chance  of  executing  that  task  without 
Shelburne  than  with  him.  He  had  to 
face  the  strongest  and  bitterest  opposi- 
tion that  ever  confronted  a  minister,  and 
its  chief  cementing  principle  was  hatred 
to  the  independent  statesman  it  had 
hurled  from  his  place.  To  have  set 
hJTyi  up  again,  when  there  was  a 
chance  of  doing  without  him,  would 
have  been  a  provocation  which  Pitt  durst 
not'give.  To  omit  him  was  simply  a 
prudent  sacrifice  to  the  prejudices  of 
the  enemy.  This  sacrifice  had  the  in- 
tended effect.  Pitt  was  at  first  tole- 
rated; from  toleration  he  passed  to 
power ;  and  to  a  power  such  as  even  his 
father  had  never  wielded.  In  a  year 
or  two  the  prudence  of  his  resolve  was 
demonstrated.  The  people  scarcely  re- 
sented Shelburne's  exclusion,  and  he 
was  soon  forgotten  in  the  strong  popu- 
lar approval  which  the  new  ministry 
won.  Besides  this,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  both  Pitt  and  the  King  had  been 
overborne  by  Shelburne  when  he  was 
in  office.  They  were  still  afraid  of 
him,  and  it  occurred  to  them  to  con- 
ciliate him  by  advancing  him  a  step 
in  the  peerage.  Pitt,  by  the  King's 
command,  offered  him  a  marquisate. 
The  King,  he  said,  had  resolved  to 
reserve  the  ducal  title  for  members  of 
the  royal  family.  Shelburne  accepted, 
stipulating  that  if  ever  the  King  should 
change  his  mind  on  this  point,  he 
should  be  made  a  duke.  He  never 
believed  that  Pitt  would  be  able  to 
go  on  :  he  called  him  an  "  egregious 
dupe,"  and  he  retired  to  Bo  wood.  The 
French  Revolution,  in  which  Shelburne 
took  a  deep  interest,  drew  him  from 
his  retirement :  he  steadily  opposed  the 
war  against  France:  he  never  ceased 
to  protest,  in  his  own  memorable  words, 


against  England  being  made  the  "  cat's- 
paw  of  Europe:"  and  once,  in  1795, 
it  seemed  not  unlikely  that  he  would  be 
called  upon  to  join  Fox  in  forming 
a  ministry  which  should  replace  that 
of  Pitt.  Shelburne  had  learned  to 
admire  and  respect  France.  His  en- 
thusiasm for  the  Revolution  may  be 
estimated  by  the  fact  that  he  collected 
every  book  and  paper  published  on  the 
subject  on  both  sides  of  the  water. 
This  valuable  collection  was  unhappily 
dispersed  at  his  death.  He  wrote 
eagerly  to  Morellet  to  form  a  plan  for 
his  visiting  Paris  incognito,  to  see  with 
his  own  eyes  the  great  political  changes 
which  had  taken  place  :  but  his  health 
was  rapidly  failing,  and  the  plan  was 
never  executed.  The  declaration  of 
war  in  1803,  and  the  restoration  of 
Pitt  in  1804,  roused  him  to  some  last 
exertions  in  public  affairs  ;  and  in  the 
following  year  he  died.  We  know  but 
little  of  his  last  years,  except  that  he 
continued  to  believe  in  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  liberty  and  of  free  trade, 
and  did  what  he  could  to  disabuse 
English  public  opinion  of  its  prejudice 
against  modern  French  ideas.  As  a 
politician,  Shelburne  cannot  be  reckoned 
among  those  who  have  produced  a 
powerful  impression  on  their  age.  His 
activity  was  not  to  be  concentrated  in 
a  single  channel ;  and  he  stood  aloof 
from  the  political  organisations  of  his 
time.  He  was  mainly  a  breaker-up  of 
parties,  and  a  devoted  adherent  of  two 
or  three  abstract  principles.  He  left, 
nevertheless,  a  career  which  the  poli- 
tician may  study  with  advantage, 
though  not  without  the  consciousness 
that  he  will  imitate  it  at  his  peril  For 
the  historian,  his  career  has  a  wider 
significance  :  it  exhibits  one  of  the 
best  extant  examples  of  a  rare  type, 
the  really  independent  statesman,  who 
neither  fears  the  crown  nor  natters  the 
nation. 

E.  J.  PAYNE. 


389 


LA  GRANDE  DAME  DE  L'ANCIEN  REGIME. 


PART  II. 

THE  unbounded  influence  —  even 
arbitrary  power  —  which  the  heads 
of  a  family  possessed  over  it,  and 
which  they  had  inherited  from 
those  who  preceded  them,  had  been 
annihilated  at  the  Revolution  of  '93, 
not  to  be  restored  by  the  Restora- 
tion. The  days  were  for  ever  past 
when  parents  could  condemn  their 
younger  sons  to  the  priesthood,  or  the 
celibate  orders,  and  their  daughters  to 
the  convent,  to  enrich  the  elder  son,  or 
give  one  daughter  a  dowry  sufficient  for 
forming  a  brilliant  marriage.  Even  in 
the  years  preceding  '89,  a  great  revul- 
sion of  opinion  against  these  abuses 
had  taken  place.  I  find  in  an  unpub- 
lished memoir,  dated  1830,  this  true 
remark  : — "  Get  usage  avait  dcja  etc 
vivement  attaque  dans  le  siecle  dernier, 
mais,  comme  il  arrive  souvent,  Tabus 
avait  cess6  quand  la  plainte  a  com- 
mence. Sans  doute  on  a  encore  vu  des 
religieuses  malgr<$  elles  sacrifices  aux 
interets  de  leurs  families,  mais  ces  ex- 
emples  devenaient  de  plus  en  plus  rares; 
ils  etaient  &  peu  pres  finis  quand  la 
philosophie  a  commence  a  les  pro- 
scrire."  No  longer  could  the  young 
and  beautiful  heiress  of  the  Beauvaus, 
as  in  1770,  be  married  at  seventeen  to 
a  boy  of  fifteen,  so  small,  that  he  had  to 
be  placed  on  a  high  chair  at  the  wed- 
ding dinner  that  he  might  be  on  a 
level  with  his  bride,  the  fathers  ex- 
changing a  command  in  the  king's 
guard,  then  saleable,  for  a  large  sum 
from  the  young  bride's  fortune.  Never 
do  I  remember  hearing  of  these  forced 
marriages  in  the  society  we  lived  in. 
The  new  laws  as  to  division  of  property 
made  them  comparatively  unnecessary 
to  family  interests.  The  sound  sense 
of  the  higher  classes  caused  them  to 
take  home  to  themselves  the  truth, 
that  no  return  of  their  legitimate 
princes  could  bring  back  to  France  the 


abuses  it  had    cost   such   torrents   of 
blood  to  wash  away. 

Having  lived  much  in  France,  I  have 
seen  the  way  in  which  marriages  are 
conducted  there.  Very  false  impres- 
sions on  the  subject  prevail  amongst 
us.  It  is  true,  marriages  are  proposed 
and  arranged  by  the  parents,  but  only 
up  to  the  point  of  suitableness  of 
fortune  and  position  and  the  consent 
of  both  families  being  ascertained. 
All  this  agreed  on  (and  these  prelimi- 
naries are  never  begun  without  the 
concurrence  of  the  man)  the  young 
lady — who  is,  or  is  supposed  to  be, 
ignorant  of  the  project — is  then  con- 
sulted, the  young  people  meet,  if  they 
are  not  already  acquainted,  and  if  they 
do  not  suit  each  other,  the  thing  goes 
off.  I  have  known  many  instances  of 
this. 

After  the  Reign  of  Terror,  and  in  the 
early  years  of  this  century,  when  the 
convents  were  re-opened,  there  were 
many  of  the  noble  families  who  stayed 
away  from  France  purposely  to  avoid 
the  recognition  of  the  empire.  Their 
daughters  were  naturally  educated  in 
foreign  lands,  brought  with  them 
the  germ  of  that  freedom  of  thought 
and  opinion  which  soon  worked  its 
change  on  the  rising  generation  of  the 
old  Faubourg.  Those  however  who, 
with  true  French  dislike  of  other 
countries,  and  rooted  attachment  to 
Paris,  returned  as  soon  as  life  and 
liberty  were  safe,  hastened  to  place 
their  daughters  in  one  of  the  two  con- 
vents expressly  adopted  by  the  noblesse. 
These  were  the  "  Sacr6  Cceur,"  whose 
abbess  was  a  sister  of  the  late  Due  de 
Gramont,  and  "Les  Dames  Anglaises," 
where  were  to  be  found  many  daughters 
of  our  own  and  Irish  Roman  Catholic 
families  who,  owing  to  the  oppressive 
disabilities  imposed  on  their  Church 
in  those  days,  could  not  give  their 
children  a  liberal  education  in  their 
own  faith,  and  therefore  sent  their 


390 


La  Grande,  Dame  de  I'Ancien  Regime. 


girls  here,  while  the  sons  went  to 
Douay  and  St.  Omer.  A  relation  of 
ours,  an  Irish  girl  of  a  noble  family, 
was  sent  in  1814  to  the  "Dames 
Anglaises,"  where  she  found  herself 
the  companion  of  the  Mortemarts, 
Rohans,  Montmorencys,  and  many  of 
the  greatest  names  in  France.  From 
her  I  have  heard  the  following  details. 
So  much  prestige  was  attached  to 
these  two  aristocratic  establishments, 
that  the  great  Napoleon,  on  his  acces- 
sion to  the  throne,  saw  in  them  the 
best  chance  of  effecting  in  the  rising 
generation  the  fusion  between  his 
new  noblesse  and  the  old  one, 
which  he  found  it  so  impossible  to 
effect  in  the  existing  aristocracy. 
Although  he  succeeded  in  forcing  some 
of  them  to  accept  posts  at  court,  he 
could  never  produce  anything  but  the 
most  icy  exchange  of  necessary  civili- 
ties between  the  two  parties.  He  then 
ordered  several  of  his  marshals  to  send 
their  daughters  to  these  convents.  The 
Abbess  of  the  "  Sacr^  Cceur ' '  refused  to 
introduce  the  young  roturieres  among 
the  noble  blue  blood  confided  to  her 
care.  The  emperor  insisted,  and  as  he 
had  forced  the  mothers  to  form  part 
of  Marie  Louise's  household,  so  his  will 
prevailed  in  respect  to  their  daughters. 
A  few  girls  of  the  newly-created  dukes 
and  marshals  were  admitted,  but  never 
really  formed  part  of  the  society  of  the 
haughty  little  girls  who  clung  together 
with  all  their  mothers' obstinacy  against 
any  real  intimacy  with  the  intruders. 
Amongst  these  were,  as  my  cousin  used 
to  relate,  Aurore  Dupuis,  known  after- 
wards as  Mme.  Dudevant  and  Georges 
Sand,  a  rough  tomboy,  placed  there 
by  some  powerful  influence,  to  be 
tamed.  Without  education,  or  appa- 
rent intelligence,  she  was  placed  at 
fourteen  with  the  class  of  little  girls 
scarcely  able  to  read.  Another  was 
the  lovely  Fanny  Sebastien,  daughter 
of  the  marshal  of  that  name,  who 
became  afterwards  the  unfortunate 
Duchesse  de  Praslin.  In  some  few 
instances,  the  custom  was  still  carried 
out  of  arranging  the  girls'  marriages  at 
these  convents.  I  remember  my  cousin 


telling  us  that   when  she   first  went 
there,    one  of   her   schoolfellows,   not 

quite   sixteen,    Mdlle.  d'A n,  was 

married  at  the  convent,  sent  a  drive 
in  an  open  carriage  all  over  Paris  with 
her  husband  to  show  themselves,  and 
then  brought  back  to  the  convent  to 
take  off  her  wedding  dress  and  re- 
assume  the  uniform  of  the  pupils. 
The  bridegroom  went  back  to  some 
embassy,  where  he  was  attached, 
and,  happening  to  die  there,  she 
remained  at  the  "  Sacre  Cceur " 
in  her  widow's  weeds  until  a 
second  marriage  was  arranged.  This 
was  an  exceptional  return  to  the 
fashions  of  the  last  century.  In  general 
the  young  ladies  left  at  about  sixteen, 
but  they  often  returned  of  their  own 
free  will,  on  any  grief  or  misfortune 
entailing  a  period  of  retirement, — and 
had  generally  a  strong  affection  for  the 
good  nuns.  My  cousin  resided  with 
us  after  leaving  the  convent,  and  I 
remember  when  quite  a  child  being 
taken  by  her  to  visit  her  old  friends, 
and  their  life,  from  what  I  saw  of  it, 
was  certainly  anything  but  the  gloomy 
ascetic  one  we  English  imagine,  al- 
though its  recreations  and  pleasures 
were  simple,  almost  childish.  The . 
absence  of  all  distraction  from  the 
outer  world  during  the  years  of  educa- 
tion had  the  advantage  of  forming 
habits  of  occupation  of  a  more  solid 
character  than  is  general  with  us.  The 
prevalent  English  notion  that  even  if 
no  more  serious  blame  attaches  to  a 
Frenchwoman,  she  still  lives  only  for 
dress  and  amusement,  is  most  unjust 
and  untrue.  To  begin  with,  as  there 
is  no  dancing  in  Lent  or  Advent,  they 
have  only  six  weeks  of  carnival,  a 
few  balls  perhaps  in  November,  and 
garden  parties  in  spring.  The  Paris 
world  in  those  days  always  broke  up 
in  May,  and  they  then  went  to  the 
country  for  five  or  six  months  to 
economize  and  live  on  the  fat  of  the 
land,  left  their  smart  gowns  in  Paris, 
dressed  in  washing  gowns,  and  if  they 
had  guests  (which  was  usually  the  case) 
they  were  members  of  the  family  or  in- 
timates for  whom  no  expense  of  dress 


La  Grande  Dame  de  I'Ancien  Regime. 


391 


or  mode  of  life  was  required.  This  and 
the  absence  of  morning  visiting,  that 
"  thief  of  time,"  not  in  use  with  them, 
gave  a  woman's  mind  much  more 
chance  of  culture,  and  if  compared  with 
the  eight  months'  whirl  of  a  London 
season,  with  the  shooting  parties, 
Cowes,  Scotland,  races,  and  constant 
dissipation  of  a  fashionable  lady's  life, 
will  leave  small  ground  for  the  charge  of 
a  frivolous  life  against  our  neighbours. 

Things  are  doubtless  much  changed 
since  then,  and  in  expense,  lateness  of 
hours,  and  ceaseless  round  of  amuse- 
ment, the  Paris  of  to-day  is  beginning 
to  vie  with  London ;  but  it  was  not  so 
formerly,  nor  is  it  so  with  a  majority 
of  their  good  society  even  now. 

Their  country  houses  were  then  in 
the  rough,  although  magnificent.  I  re- 
member when  very  young  being  taken 
to  one  of  these  ancestral  mansions. l  The 
drawing-room  treasures  of  Laque,  Buhl, 
Sevres,  had  been  hidden  and  saved  by 
faithful  servants  during  the  Revolu- 
tion. The  walls  and  ceilings  were  of  ex- 
quisite whitened  Louis  Quatorze  carv- 
ing, but  the  doors  were  opened  by  large 
iron  keys,  door  handles  being  unknown. 
The  floors  of  bedrooms  and  passages 
(except  the  state  ones)  were  of  brick 
— no  carpets  ;  the  baths,  wooden  tubs 
taken  from  the  laundry.  The  furni- 
ture, which  had  been  confiscated  in  '93, 
was  even  in  the  best  rooms  replaced 
by  common  chairs,  covered  with  white 
cotton,  bound  with  red.  But  they 
were  delighted  with  the  cotton  covers 
imported  from  England,  notwithstand- 
ing the  hostess's  aversion  for  La  perfide 
Albion.  I  heard  her  say  to  my  mother, 
"Voyez-vous?  en  fait  d' Anglais  je 
n'aime  que  vous  et  les  Godfrey's  salts  " 
— just  imported  as  a  novelty. 

I  returned  to  this  same  house  in  '65, 
and  can  truly  say  that  having  seen 
most  of  our  great  ancestral  homes, 
some  even  while  doing  their  best  for  a 
royal  visit,  this  one  equalled  them,  if 
not  in  size,  at  least  in  the  union  of 
splendour  and  comfort,  in  the  recherche 
of  its  living  and  equipages,  while  it 
surpassed  them  in  the  originality  and 
lrrhe  Chateau  de  Mouchy. 


taste  of  proceeding?.  One  detail  struck 
me  as  unique.  Each  guest's  room,  all 
furnished  in  silk,  had  a  garniture  de 
chemince,  a  writing-table  and  a  little  tea 
and  coffee  service  on  the  side-table  of 
splendid  old  Sevres  china,  matching  in 
colour  with  the  hangings  of  the  room. 
Each  set  would  have  made  the  pride 
of  a  London  drawing-room. 

Time  has  wrought  much  change  in  the 
home  of  my  early  youth.  Those  who 
only  know  the  new  Paris  will  scarcely 
believe  that  at  the  top  of  the  Grande 
Rue  de  Passy,  then  out  of  the  town, 
stood  a  dilapidated  chateau,  built 
by  Louis  Quinze  on  purpose  that  the 
royal  children  might  sleep  in  fresh  air 
and  drink  country  milk.  It  com- 
manded a  magnificent  view  over  the 
hills  of  Meudon,  St.  Germain,  and 
the  Seine,  to  which  it  sloped  down 
through  a  pretty  wooded  park.  The 
proprietors  let  a  part  of  it,  and  there 
we  passed  several  summers,  leading  as 
rural  a  life  as  if  twenty  miles  off.  It 
is  now  a  quarter  of  the  town. 

It  was  a  bright  cheerful  place  the 
Paris  of  those  days.  I  know  not  whether 
it  was  the  glamour  of  youth,  but  it 
seems  now  dark  and  dull  in  comparison. 
The  houses  seem  to  have  risen  up  and 
obscured  that  bright  blue  sky  uncon- 
scious of  coal  smoke.  I  miss  those  gar- 
dens to  almost  every  considerable  house, 
their  mossy  walls,  and  the  corners  of 
the  street  where,  often  perched  on  the 
wall,  stood  a  little  summer  -  house, 
shaded  by  the  acacia  and  lilacs,  which 
showered  their  blossoms  on  the  passers- 
by.  I  miss  the  porteur  d'eau,  who,  in 
default  of  the  water-pipes  that  now 
undermine  the  few  remaining  trees, 
toiled  up  with  his  barrel  of  water.  I 
miss  the  nurse's  Cauchois  high  cap, 
the  little  procession  with  its  tink- 
ling bell,  the  kneeling  passers-by, 
and  the  followers  whom  piety  led  to 
turn  and  escort  it  to  the  door  of  the 
sick  man ;  I  miss  even  the  horns 
practising  La  Chaise  du  jeune  Henri, 
and  that  is  saying  everything,  for  the 
people  themselves  could  not  stand  the 
nuisance,  and  it  was  forbidden  by  the 
police.  I  miss  the  deep  shades  of  the 


392 


La  Grande  Dame  de  I'Ancien  Regime. 


Pare  Monreau  of  my  youth,  now  the 
fashionable  quarter  under  the  Hauss- 
man  dispensation.  There  was  a  sim- 
plicity in  it  all,  a  repose  in  the  life, 
with  its  day  undisturbed,  and  its  cheer- 
ful evening  in  the  family  salon.  There 
was  one  drawback — the  evening  visits, 
which  were  with  them  a  duty  equi- 
valent to  our  morning  rounds,  as  no 
young  woman  goes  into  society  during 
the  first  years  of  her  marriage  without 
being  chaperoned  by  her  mother  or 
mother-in-law,  and  accompanied  by 
her  husband.  Imagine  a  young  Eng- 
lishman in  his  honeymoon  letting  him- 
self be  packed  up  with  his  wife  and 
mother-in-law  to  make  a  round  of 
visits,  and  be  presented  to  his  bride's 
family,  say  a  few  stereotyped  phrases, 
and  then  start  off  after  a  few  minutes 
to  do  the  same  thing  at  another  house. 
There  is  something  very  touching 
in  the  respectful  affection  and  care 
with  which  old  age  was  (and  is  still) 
treated  in  France.  Not  only  the 
parents',  but  the  grandmother's  salon 
is  the  point  of  reunion  of  the  whole 
family,  vying  with  each  other  who 
should  best  please  and  amuse  the  old 
lady.  They  never  failed,  whatever 
their  evening  occupation  or  amuse- 
ment, to  come  in  first  and  delight 
Bonne  Maman  and  Ma  Tante  by  their 
pretty  toilettes,  and  be  rewarded  by 
the  somewhat  exaggerated  admiration 
they  elicited.  But  the  old  lady 
really  thought  her  granddaughters 
marvels  of  beauty  and  grace.  A  very 
marked  feature  of  French  old  age  is 
its  bienveillance  to  the  young,  an  im- 
possible word  to  translate,  for  it  is 
neither  good  nature,  kindness,  nor 
indulgence — rather  an  habitual  state 
of  the  mind  disposed  to  admire  and 
approve.  This  tone  of  feeling  is  but 
natural  for  children  to  their  parents; 
and  the  young  to  the  old  are  almost 
universally  dutiful  and  affectionate. 
Well  do  I  remember  how  pretty  I 
used  to  think  the  slight  inclination 
and  kiss  of  the  hand  held  out  to 
them,  which  prefaced  the  morning 
embrace  to  Bonne  Maman.  Our  own 
royal  family  •  is  the  only  one  in 


England  where  I  have  seen  this  grace- 
ful custom  prevail.  If  young  women 
and  girls  knew  how  much  charm  and 
coquetterie  there  is  in  this  manner  to 
their  elders ;  how  much  younger  they 
seem,  how  their  grace  and  softness 
gains  by  contrast  with  old  age,  they 
would  not  in  their  own  interests  in- 
dulge in  the  Get-out-of-tlie-way .-old-Dan- 
Tucker  style  which  obtains  so  much 
in  our  society  at  present.  Even  the 
young  men  were  full  of  little  atten- 
tions to  their  aged  relatives.  They 
really  loved  them  almost  as  parents. 
When  the  Prince  Consort's  Life  first 
appeared  we  all  wondered  at  the 
deep  grief  he  expressed  for  the  death 
of  his  grandmother,  a  relationship 
scarcely  taken  so  seriously  with  us. 
Adorable  et  adoree  was  the  phrase 
used  to  me  only  a  few  months  ago  by 
a  young  Frenchman  of  the  most  modern 
set  about  the  venerable  mother  of  his 
parents.  It  must  be  said  that  the 
grandchildren  were  often  brought  up 
in  her  house,  and  that  she,  being  much 
younger  than  the  same  relative  in  Eng- 
land, became  almost  a  friend  and  confi- 
dant to  these  young  men,  who  found  in 
her  that  experience  in  the  past  and 
sympathy  in  the  present  which  made 
her  society  as  charming  to  them  as  it 
was  to  those  of  her  own  age.  Not 
having  in  those  days  the  resource  of 
clubs,  the  young  men  came  in  with 
the  news  of  the  day  to  pass  the  time 
till  the  hour  for  the  balls,  thus  bring- 
ing into  these  salons  an  infusion  of 
youth  which  obviated  dullness. 

The  mothers  of  these  young  men 
and  women,  after  their  daughters 
were  married,  gave  up  going  out,  and 
subsided  into  doing  the  honours  of  their 
mother's  house.  They  were  generally 
women  under  forty,  who,  with  us. 
may  still  be  seen  in  every  ballroom 
as  fast  matrons.  They  had  married  at 
seventeen  or  eighteen,  danced  two  or 
three  years  under  the  strict  chapei-- 
onar/e  of  thsir  own  or  their  husband's 
mother,  after  which  they  were  eman- 
cipated, and  until  their  daughters  were 
brought  out  and  married,  went  into 
the  world  on  their  own  account. 


La,  Grande  Dame  de  I'Ancien  Regime. 


393 


When  accompanying  their  daughters 
into  society  they  dressed  soberly, 
avoiding  pink  or  flowers,  although  as 
a  rule  still  handsome  women  of  thirty- 
eight  or  forty.  After  her  daughter's 
marriage,  the  mother  would  only  go 
to  court,  or  to  some  great  ftte,  such 
as  those  at  the  embassies,  and  then 
mostly  as  cJiaperon  to  the  young  women. 
A  woman  with  married  children 
going  into  the  world  on  any  other 
footing  would  simply  have  made  her- 
self ridiculous.  Indeed  it  was  the 
same  still  when  I  knew  Paris  many 
years  later.  The  result  of  this  state 
of  things  was  that  these  ladies  were 
only  to  be  seen  in  their  mothers' 
or  their  own  salons,  to  which  they 
drew  a  brilliant  circle,  for  many  of 
them  were  the  most  attractive  women 
of  the  day.  There,  in  an  atmosphere 
of  repose  and  cheerfulness,  passed  their 
middle  age  ;  in  loving  tendance  on  the 
old  lady,  whose  mirthful  sallies  and 
original  anecdotes  were  the  life  and 
soul  of  the  home ;  while  her  small, 
white,  shrivelled  fingers  worked  with 
fairy-like  rapidity ;  and  she  extended 
to  all  that  ineffable  bonte  (another  un- 
translatable word),  the  crown  of  old 
age,  and  in  general  the  characteristic 
of  the  Frenchwoman  of  former  days. 

Justly  proud  as  we  are  of  the  manli- 
ness of  our  men,  the  virtue  of  our 
women,  the  sacredness  of  our  domestic 
hearths,  the  stability  of  our  institu- 
tions, the  dignity  of  our  public  life, 
might  we  not  endeavour,  more  than 
we  do,  to  put  ourselves  in  the  place 
of  a  nation  not  so  highly  favoured, 
and  judge  less  harshly,  less  sarcas- 
tically of  the  difference  between  us  ? 
We  look  with  contempt  on  their  rest- 
less politics,  their  senseless  mobs,  the 
want  of  calmness  and  dignity  in  their 
assemblies,  nay,  even  on  their  national 
character  !  We  who  do  not  know  the 
bitterness  of  foreign  invasion,  the 
crushing,  goading  effect  of  desecrated 
homes,  of  outraged  patriotic  pride,  we 
can  scarcely  realise  what  they  must 
feel  who  have  seen  twice  in  a  lifetime 

"  Pans  Lutece  fletrie 
Les  etrangers  marcher  avec  orgeuil." 


Who  that  knows  (and  who  does  not  ?) 
Beranger's  touching  2" en  souviens  tu  ; 
does  not  feel  that  its  concluding 

verse — 

"  Grave  en  ton  coeur  ce  jour  pour  le  maudire ; 
Et  quand  Beltane  enfin  aura  paru, 

Que  chef  jamais  n'ait  besoin  de  te  dire, 
Dis  moi,  Soldat,  dis  moi  t'en  souviens-tu  " — 

embodies  the  longing  for  a  day  of 
vengeance  which  is  the  underlying 
thought  of  every  Frenchman,  though 
he  often  resorts  to  bluster  to  disguise 
his  sense  of  humiliation  1  Always  in 
uncertainty  of  "perils  from  his  coun- 
trymen," of  perils  from  abroad,  what 
chance  has  he  of  maintaining  that 
calm  good  sense,  that  absence  of  ex- 
citement, that  unconscious  dignity  in 
all  public  affairs,  which  a  sense  of 
national  security  alone  can  give,  and 
for  which  the  English,  as  a  nation,  are 
conspicuous  I  The  absence  of  these 
qualities  is  at  once  a  cause  and  an 
effect  of  their  constant  national  tur- 
moil, and  to  me  this  seems  the  key  to 
much  in  their  character.  I  have  re- 
marked that  the  women,  who  are  not 
subjected  to  the  same  disturbing  in- 
fluences, have  not  the  same  faults  as 
the  men;  and  in  former  days  a  French- 
man was  noted  for  the  impassibility 
with  which  he  encountered  successes 
or  reverses,  whether  in  love,  war,  or 
fortune. 

We  do  not  understand  them — we  do 
not  wish  to  do  so.  Did  not  our  lower 
classes,  and  even  a  portion  of  our  press 
— at  least  until  the  late  war  made  a 
change  in  this  respect  —  speak  of 
Frenchmen  as  unmanly  frivolous 
beings,  whose  morals  were  universally 
profligate,  whose  religion  was  a  mum- 
mery, whose  staple  article  of  food  was 
frogs,  whose  language  was  a  jargon, 
whose  politeness  was  a  grimace  ?  Do 
we  even  yet  do  them  complete  justice  1 
In  our  judgment  of  other  nations, 
should  we  not  consider  how  little, 
through  ths  difference  of  our  habits 
and  ideas,  we  can  understand  theirs, 
and  trace  the  inner  history  of  their 
lives  1  Their  ways  are  not  our  ways. 
In  some  relations  of  domestic  life 
we  pronounce  them  wanting,  because 


394 


La  Grande  Dame  de  VAncien  Reyimc. 


custom  forbids  them  to  express  those 
feelings,  while  in  others  our  reticence 
deems  their  outward  manifestations 
exaggerated.  Take,  for  instance,  a 
a  Frenchman's  devotion  to  his  mother. 
I  once  heard  a  young  Englishman 
(whom  I  believe  to  have  been  in  his 
heart  as  much  attached  to  his  own) 
ridicule  his  French  friend  for  having 
suddenly  gone  off  to  Paris  "  in  one  of 
those  fusses  Frenchmen  keep  up  about 
their  mothers."  A  man  may  be 
awkward  in  the  hunting-field  or  at 
the  cover,  yet  behave  with  brilliant 
courage  in  a  boar  hunt  (far  more 
dangerous  than  any  of  our  sports) ; 
chase  a  chamois  on  heights  which  would 
do  credit  to  a  member  of  the  Alpine 
Club,  or  hunt  a  wolf  in  the  Ardennes 
— a  quarry,  by  the  way,  which  once 
proved  a  very  awkward  customer  to  a 
pack  of  English  foxhounds.  Their 
domestic  happiness,  so  little  believed 
in  by  us,  takes,  it  is  true,  a  different 
form  from  ours,  because  families  often 
of  necessity  live  together;  but  it  is 
none  the  less  real,  and  perhaps  more 
likely  to  endure,  as  the  daily  contact 
with  a  family  circle  tends  to  prevent 
that  sans  gene  of  manners  and  over- 
bearingness  of  the  husband,  too  fre- 
quent in  our  homes.  A  cheerful,  good- 
humoured  race  by  nature,  temper,  that 
plague-spot  in  families,  is  almost  un- 
known among  them.  There  was,  in 
most  of  those  I  knew,  the  strongest 
affection  between  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, and  more  kindness  to  even 
distant  relatives  than  is  usual  with 
us,  where  a  man,  separating  by  mar- 
riage from  his  paternal  home,  concen- 
trates his  affections  on  his  wife  and 
children.  Should  we  not  take  all  these 
things  into  account  1  balance  the  good 
with  the  evil  of  their  character,  and 
temper  our  conscious  superiority  with 
a  doubt  whether  we  might  not  in  some 
respects  take  example  from  them? 

The  French  are  beginning  to  com- 
plain as  we  do  that  society  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  word  is  at  an  end.  Poli- 
tical life,  sport,  the  clubs  and  the 
excessive  dissipation  of  Paris  life 
have  broken  it  up.  But  at  the  time 


I  speak  of  it  was  at  its  zenith,  and 
all  French  writers  of  Memuirrs  agree 
that  the  period  between  the  years 
1820  and  1830  was  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  in  the  annals  of  the  Grand 
Monde. 

The  Due  de  Berri  and  his  young 
wife,  during  their  short  union,  resided 
at  the  Elysee,  which  was  then,  I  have 
often  been  told,  one  of  the  pleasantest 
houses  in  Paris.  Devoted  to  each  other, 
and  both  fond  of  amusement,  they 
delighted  in  giving  fetes,  where  super- 
fluous etiquette  was  banished,  and 
artists,  men  of  letters,  and  foreigners 
were  welcomed  by  the  duke  himself,  a 
man  of  considerable  culture  and  love 
of  the  arts.  They  took  even  greater 
delight  in  going  off  a  la  Darby  and 
Joan  to  her  favourite  Gymnase  to 
see  Leontine  Fay,  the  actress  then  in 
vogue,  returning  to  a  petit  souper, 
where  a  Sicilian  Gigot  a  Vail  was  a 
not  unfrequent  dish.  Although  my 
recollection  of  the  Duchesse  does  not 
go  back  so  far  as  those  days,  there 
was  something  very  winning  about  her 
when  I  saw  her  years  after  at  the 
children's  balls,  which,  after  a  period 
of  retirement,  she  gave  at  the  Tuileries, 
nominally  for  her  eight  -  years  -  old 
daughter,  but  really  that  she  might 
herself  enjoy  a  dance  with  her  young 
Orleans  cousins,  as  only  young  foreign 
women  enjoy  the  animal  pleasure  of 
dancing.  The  complexion  of  lilies  and 
roses,  the  fair  long  hair  whose  tresses 
she  had  cut  off  and  thrown  into  her 
husband's  coffin — "  Ces  cheveuxque  men 
Charles  aimait  tant " — her  tiny  feet  and 
hands  and  fairy  figure  —  all  these 
charms  were  better  than  positive 
beauty.  Her  colouring  and  hair  she 
transmitted  to  her  daughter,  the 
Grand-Duchess  of  Parma,  whom  we 
have  seen  in  England.  The  Due  de 
Bordeaux  was  a  beautiful  boy,  with 
a  serious,  determined  face,  and  ws 
said  to  have  much  character.  A  story 
is  told  that  when  of  an  age  to  begin 
his  education,  he  steadily  refused  to 
learn  to  read,  although  quite  willing 
to  submit  to  a  system  of  oral  instruc- 
tion. At  last  the  Duchess,  having 


La  Grande  Dame  de  I'Ancien  Rfyimc. 


395 


been  called  in,  inquired  the  reason  of 
this  objection  to  the  usual  method  of 
learning ;  he  pointed  to  the  under-pre- 
centor  to  whom  he  had  taken  a  dislike, 
and  said,  "  Je  ne  veux  pas  apprendre  d 
lire;  parcequ'il  lit  tovjours,  et  il  devient 
tous  les  jours  plus  bfte  et  plus  ennuyeux." 

At  that  epoch  I  can  only  recall  the 
jurenile  seasons.  Numerous  enter- 
tainments were  given  at  the  Tuileries 
and  the  Palais  Royal  for  the  young 
princes,  who  were  of  all  ages  under 
seventeen  ;  and  besides  these  the  Ap- 
ponys,  the  English  Embassy,  and  other 
privileged  houses  where  there  were 
children,  gave  fetes  varying  in  cha- 
racter from  lotteries,  conjurers,  and 
theatricals,  acted  by  Leontine  Fay — 
then  twelve  years  old,  who  brought  all 
Paris  to  the  Gymnase,  and  became  in 
time  the  best  actress  of  the  day — to 
children's  daylight  balls  and  bals  de 
jeunes  personnes.  All  these  fetes  culmi- 
nated in  the  procession  of  the  Boeuf 
Gras  on  Shrove  Tuesday,  when  the  prize 
ox,  mounted  by  a  shivering  Cupid  and 
escorted  by  savages  of  both  sexes,  paid 
his  visit  to  the  Tuileries,  to  be  in- 
spected by  the  King  and  young  princes; 
then  to  the  Palais  Royal  and  Public 
Offices,  ending,  in  accordance  with  some 
old  privilege,  at  the  Hotel  Beauvau, 
where  a  youthful  assembly  awaited 
him,  and  where  the  poor  Cupid  was 
dismounted,  warmed,  and  fed. 

If  the  juvenile  Carnival  was  so 
brilliant,  what  was  that  of  the  elders  1 
They  may  have  had  less  excitement 
than  we  have  during  the  rest  of  the 
year,  but  they  made  up  for  it  then. 
How  they  danced  !  not  pushing  about 
languidly  in  a  quadrille  the  size  of 
a  five-shilling  piece,  but  steps  in  a 
clear  space,  surrounded  by  admiring 
but  critical  spectators.  The  society  en- 
titled to  go  to  Court  was  not  so  large 
then,  but  all  received  invitations  to 
every  fete,  of  which  it  gave  many, 
winding  up  with  the  ball  on  Mardi 
Gras,  which  lasted  till  twelve  o'clock, 
when  all  passed  into  the  chapel  for  Ash- 
Wednesday  service.  There  were  also 
the  great  fetes  at  the  Palais  Royal  and 
the  Embassies.  The  close  connection  of 


Austria  with  both  the  Napoleon  and 
.Bourbon  dynasties  made  it  une  ambas- 
sade  de  famille,  to  whose  balls  the  royal 
family  went  as  well  as  to  those  at  the 
English  Embassy.  (Prussia,  Sicily, 
and  Russia  at  that  time  had  only  Min- 
istries.) The  noblesse  gave  little  sau- 
teries  to  the  piano,  where  all  the  men 
d,  marier  came  to  take  a  look  at  the 
future  partners  of  their  lives,  but  they 
probably  kept  aloof  from  any  small 
coteries  where  the  Marshals  of  the 
Empire  were  received.  A  quarrel 
finally  arose  in  1827,  when  the 
Austrian  Embassy  determined  to  re- 
fuse acknowledging  titles  taken  from 
Austrian  provinces,  and  the  Due  de 
Dalmatie  was  announced  as  Marechal 
Soult,  the  Due  d'Istrie  as  Marechal 
Bessieres,  &c.  The  Faubourg  St. 
Germain  followed  the  example,  and 
the  severity  of  its  rules  against  the 
new  noblesse  and  against  any  inti- 
macy with  the  Palais  Royal  may 
be  inferred  from  a  passage  in  the 
Memoires  de  Madame  d'Agoidt,  who 
writes,  we  may  observe  in  passing, 
in  no  friendly  spirit  towards  that  good 
society  from  which  her  own  conduct 
caused  her  exclusion.  She  says  she 
was  obliged  to  ask  permission  of  her 
mother-in-law,  dame  d'honneur  to  the 
Dauphine,  before  accepting  an  invita- 
tion to  the  Palais  Royal ;  and  it  was 
granted  in  these  terms  • — Ce  sont  nos 
Princes,  vous  ne  pouvez  refuser,  mais — 
a  phrase  follows  which  shows  how 
hostile  a  feeling  existed  between  the 
two  camps.  The  amusements  of  the 
Carnival  were  thus  much  restricted 
for  the  young  generation  of  the 
Faubourg.  The  parents  gave  in  so 
far  as  to  go  to  the  very  mixed  balls 
of  ces  pelites  dames—  as  they  called  a 
society  then  holding  a  position  between 
the  two  camps,  and  formed  chiefly  of 
daughters  of  some  distant  branches  of 
the  great  families  who  had  married 
bankers,  noblesse  de  province,  great 
speculators  in  the  mercantile  world, 
fournisseurs,  &c.  They  were  mostly 
pretty  brilliant  young  women,  who  clung 
together,  had  good  houses,  spent  plenty 
of  money,  and  amused  themselves. 


396 


La  Grande  Dame  de  I'Ancien  Regime. 


The  claim  of  cousinship,  to  which  there 
i.s  no  limit  in  French  families,  afforded 
an  excuse  for  the  presence  of  the  heads 
of  the  clan  at  these  fetes,  conferring  an 
honour  which  was  returned  by  formal 
visits  on  such  occasions  as  a  marriage, 
a  death,  the  jour  de  Van,  or  the  name- 
day.  Then  the  old  lady  would  receive 
her  guests  kindly,  call  them  ma  petite, 
and  mon  enfant,  although  she  probably 
hardly  knew  one  from  another,  and 
there  it  ended  till  the  next  year  came 
round.  They  thawed  also  to  la  perfdi 
Albion,  in  the  persons  of  Sir  Charles 
and  Lady  Elizabeth  Stuart,  the  latter 
a  complete  type  of  their  own  Grandes 
Dames  in  their  easy  sociability.  I 
have  often  heard  the  English  Embassy 
of  that  day  quoted  as  one  of  the  most 
agreeable  houses  in  Paris  ;  all  parties 
met  and  fraternised  under  the  genial 
influence  of  its  charming  hostess.  She 
organized  fetes  unique  for  their  taste 
and  magnificence ;  amongst  others,  in 
1823,  a  series  of  tableaux  vivants,  a 
novelty  imported  from  Vienna,  in 
which  the  most  beautiful  members  of 
both  French  and  English  society  took 
part.  The  beautiful  Miss  Rumbold, 
afterwards  Madame  Delmar,  repre- 
sented the  St.  Cecilia  of  Raphael,  and 
Lady  Adelaide  Forbes  the  Titian  in 
the  Louvre  anointing  its  hair,  which 
almost  seemed  to  have  stepped  out  of 
its  frame  to  look  at  the  Paris  world. 
The  painters  Gerard  and  Sir  Thomas 
Lawrence  assisted  in  arranging  this 
novel  amusement. 

After  the  Carnival  there  were  few 
amusements.  Good  society  did  not 
frequent  the  theatres  in  Lent;  there 
were  a  few  concerts,  and  salons  resumed 
their  sway.  But  they  were  gradually 
losing  their  original  character,  as 
each  year  witnessed  the  extinction  of 
some  of  those  remaining  from  the  old 
days.  Tenir  salon — by  which  was  meant 
the  lady  of  the  house  leading  the  con- 
versation and  keeping  the  whole  com- 
pany engaged,  to  the  exclusion  of  whis- 
perings, and  of  the  duets  which  modern 
society  is  prone  to  fall  into — was  an 
art  gone  or  fast  going  by.  The  last  left 
of  the  old  style  were  in  the  reign  of 


Louis  Dixhuit ;  the  chief  being  those 
of  the  Duchesse  de  Duras,  Madame  de 
Gontaut,  Madame  de  Montcalm,  the 
Due  de  Richelieu's  sister,  who  received 
his  political  friends ;  the  Duchesse  de 
Broglie,  the  Princesse  de  la  Tremouille, 
the  beautiful  Madame  Recamier,  where 
Chateaubriand  and  his  worshippers  as- 
sembled, and  that  of  the  Comtesse  de 
Custine,  whose  husband  was  an  author, 
and  who  patronised  rising  genius. 
All  these  were  political  or  literary 
salons  with  much  influence.  The  Prin- 
cesse de  Poix  at  the  Hotel  Beauvau, 
the  hostesses  of  the  Hotel  Malignon, 
Hotel  d'Osmond,  and  a  few  more,  still 
preserved  the  old  traditions,  but  they 
were  fast  dying  away.  Their  succes- 
sors received,  but  had  not  salons.  The 
Duchesse  d'Angouleme  received  at  the 
Tuileries  every  Saturday,  and  her  re- 
unions were  said  to  be  pleasant.  The 
Palais  Royal  had  evenings  open  to 
celebrities  and  artists,  as  well  as  to 
the  best  of  the  grand  monde.  A  few 
foreigners  also  entertained,  amongst 
others,  Mme.  Graham,  a  Sicilian,  mar- 
ried to  a  Scotchman,  at  whose  small, 
but  very  agreeable  house  diplomats 
of  all  countries  met  and  conferred 
without  restraint,  and  Mme.  Crau- 
ford,  an  American,  I  believe,  whose 
daughter  had  married  the  Comte 
d'Orsay,  and  was  mother  to  the  beau- 
tiful Ida,  who  married  the  Due  de 
Gramont,  and  to  Alfred  d'Orsay,  so 
well  known  in  England.  Her  salon 
was  especially  popular  with  the  young 
world. 

Society  must  have  been  more  bril- 
liant during  those  ten  years  than  it  is 
now,  either  in  London  or  Paris,  if  we 
may  judge  from  the  visitors  to  our 
house.  Amongst  them  I  remember 
Prince  Talleyrand,  with  his  lovely 
niece,  the  Duchesse  de  Dino,  and  her 
perhaps  still  more  beautiful  sister,  the 
sovereign-Duchesse  de  Sagan ;  Chateau- 
briand ;  Old  Denon,  the  Egyptian 
traveller;  M.  de  St.  Aulaire,  after- 
wards ambassador  in  London,  and 
with  a  literary  reputation  even  then  ; 
M.  de  Barante,  also  an  esteemed 
author;  Pozzo  di  Borgo;  Lamartine, 


La  Grande  Dame  de  I'Ancicn  R&jime. 


397 


wliose  English  wife  brought  him  into 
British   society  ;     Mine,    de    Broglie, 
daughter  of  Mme.  de  Stall ;   the  Due 
de  Noailles,  then  beginning  to  make  for 
himself  the  distinguished  position  he 
has  since  held  in  politics  and  literature ; 
Victor  Hugo,  then  a  very  young  man, 
known  only  by  his  poems  and  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris  (he  is  of  noble  birth, 
son  of  a  Comte  Hugo) ;  Mme.  de  Girar- 
din  (not  the  authoress,  who  belonged  to 
the  literary  circles),  whose  charm  and 
wit   made    her    almost   equally   cele- 
brated ;    Mesdames  de  Brignole   and 
Durazzo,   the  latter  particularly  Avith 
a    European     reputation    for    beauty 
and  attraction ;   the  well-known  Due 
d'Alberg,    his    wife,   and   only  child, 
Marie,  one  of    our   playfellows,    who 
afterwards  became   Lady   Acton  and 
Countess  of  Granville.     These — "  J'en 
passe  et  des  meilleurs  "  1 — met  on  neutral 
ground  at  our  house,  although  some  held 
no  other  intercourse.     There  they  also 
found  our  English  poets  Rogers   and 
Moore ;     Canning,     with    his    lovely 
daughter,  afterwards  Lady  Clanricarde; 
Lord  Francis  Leveson,  and  other  Eng- 
lish people  of  distinction,  who  used  to 
come    to    Paris    before    the    railroad 
brought  down  the  mob  upon  them.     Of 
this  society  I  cannot  speak,  as  I  was 
only  a  child  at  the  time ;  but  I  believe 
it  combined  the  very  best  of  English 
and  French. 

In  the  beginning  of  1830,  after  a 
short  absence  in  Italy,  we  returned  to 
Paris,  when  for  the  first  time  I  entered 
society.  The  carnival  was  unusually 
brilliant.  My  young  friends,  the 
Orleans  Princes  and  their  sisters, 
like  myself,  were  emancipated  from 
the  school-room,  and  danced  at  the 
great  balls  given  in  their  honour.  The 
Duchesse  de  Berri  gave  them  nunaber- 
1  Le  Cid,  Corneille. 


less  fetes.  All  was  as  brilliant  as  a  fairy 
scene.  In  spite  of  the  darkness  lowering 
over  the  political  horizon,  how  little  did 
we  dream  that  all  this  gaiety  was  but 
the  expiring  flicker  of  the  Bourbon 
dynasty,  and  that  when  I  bid  farewell, 
on  May  30th,  to  the  home  of  my  youth, 
I  was  never  again  to  see  it  as  it 
was  in  those  happy  young  days  !  Still 
let  me  acknowledge  that  whatever 
changes  have  occurred,  I  have  found 
none  in  the  kindness  and  constant 
affection  of  the  many  friends  of  my 
youth  yet  left  me  in  France — affection 
which  I  shall  prize  and  reciprocate 
to  the  end  of  my  life. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  again  repeat 
that  what  I  have  said  only  refers  to 
Paris  and  the  French  as  they  were 
many  years  ago.  Of  the  actual  state 
of  either  at  this  moment  I  know 
nothing  but  by  hearsay. 

These  reminiscences  of  my  early 
years  have  been  developed  by  the 
light  of  reason  and  experience  from 
the  tenacious  memory  of  childhood,  as 
we  see  the  photographic  lens  develop 
unsuspected  objects  in  dark  corners. 
It  was  long  before  I  thought  of  ap- 
plying my  hoard  of  recollections  to  the 
object  for  which  this  sketch  has  been 
written.  If,  in  attempting  to  carry 
it  out,  I  may  have  seemed  to  exalt  the 
foreigner  above  my  own  countrymen, 
I  would  anxiously  disclaim  the  bare 
suspicion  of  such  an  intention.  If,  in 
speaking  of  those  amongst  whom  my 
youth  was  passed,  I  have  been  somewhat 
blinded  by  friendship  and  gratitude, 
let  it  be  so.  The  evil  there  was 
amongst  them,  alas  !  speaks  for  itself ; 
there  are  enough  eager  to  note  it. 

Most  of  those  I  have  spoken  of  are 
gone  to  their  rest — De  mortuis  nil  nisi 
uonum. 

AUGUSTA  S.  CADOGAN. 


398 


THE  WAR  CAMPAIGN  AND  THE  WAR  CORRESPONDENT.1 


WHEN,  in  the  early  summer  of  last 
year,  it  became  known  that  the  Daily 
Neivs  had  again  succeeded  in  securing 
the  services  of  Mr.  Archibald  Forbes 
as  war  correspondent,  the  public,  re- 
membering many  graphic  descriptions 
of  Franco- German  fight,  and  many 
instances  of  personal  daring,  looked 
forward  to  receiving  at  his  hands  the 
fullest  measure  of  epistolary  justice, 
for  Mr.  Forbes  had  already  placed  his 
war  correspondence  upon  a  height 
which  was  not  likely  to  be  challenged 
by  other  competitors— one  even  difficult 
for  him  to  sustain  in  his  future  efforts. 

Where  success  is  dependent  as  much 
upon  physical  qualities  as  upon  mental 
ones,  and  where  the  limit  of  daring 
and  bodily  effort  has  been  already  at- 
tained, it  is  no  easy  matter  even  to 
maintain  a  reputation  which  has  been 
won  by  a  lavish  expenditure  of  physi- 
cal and  mental  energy.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say,  however,  that  Mr.  Forbes 
has  succeeded  in  eclipsing  in  Roumania 
and  Bulgaria  all  his  previous  successes 
in  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  and  has  placed 
the  whole  fabric  of  war  correspondence 
upon  even  a  higher  pedestal  than  had 
yet  been  given  to  it. 

Almost  all  readers  of  to-day  can 
recollect  the  beginning  of  war  corre- 
spondence as  a  branch  of  journalism. 
When  the  newspaper  came  down  to  the 
million,  or  the  million  got  educated 
up  to  the  newspaper,  a  demand  arose 
for  a  new  class  of  writer — the  special 
correspondent.  A  railway  accident,  a 
mining  catastrophe,  a  royal  visit,  or  a 
trial  of  strength  between  famous  horses 
or  boats'  crews,  all  called  for  the  ser- 
vices of  the  special  correspondent — the 
ready  writer,  who  came  and  saw  and 
telegraphed,  ere  yet  the  dead  had  been 

1  The  Daily  News  Correspondence  of  the 
War  between  Russia  and  Turkey,  to  the  Pall 
of  Ears,  including  the  Letters  of  Mr.  Archibald 
Forbes,  Mr.  M'Gahan,  and  other  Special  Cor- 
respondents. Macmillan  and  Co.,  London. 


buried,  the  royal  guest  had  made  his 
last  bow,  or  the  horses  and  crews  had 
fed  and  rested.  As  time  went  on. 
however,  and  the  demand  for  newer 
news  and  fresher  "items"  became 
greater,  the  work  of  the  special  rose 
higher  and  higher  in  the  literary 
scale.  It  was  found  that  of  all  literary 
labour  his  was  the  most  difficult ;  it 
required  in  the  man  who  followed  it 
many  gifts  of  brain  and  body  which 
are  but  seldom  found  associated  in  the 
same  being.  It  is  said  that  one  of  the 
Federal  generals  in  the  American  war 
declared  to  his  soldiers,  in  an  order  of 
the  day,  that  "his  orderly  room., was 
his  saddle."  The  desk  of  the  special 
correspondent  in  war  exists  literally 
in  the  saddle ;  he  has  to  carry  his 
library  in  his  head,  and  his  life  in 
his  hand ;  he  must  be  quick  of  limb 
and  thought,  heedless  of  sleep,  be 
ready  to  eat  when  he  can  get  food, 
nor  stop  to  select  his  viands,  be  able 
to  catch  the  picturesque  or  dramatic, 
when  his  brain  is  a  blank  through  want 
of  sleep,  and  his  heart  beats  languidly 
from  want  of  food.  His  tact  must  be 
of  the  greatest,  for  he  has  to  outlive  a 
hundred  suspicions,  to  disarm  as  many 
antipathies. 

Notwithstanding  all  that  has  been 
said  and  written  about  modern  mili- 
tary liberality,  the  man  of  the  pen  is 
still  at  a  discount  among  men  of  the 
sword.  If  the  rifle  fire  is  hot,  or  the 
scream  of  the  round  shot  unusually 
loud,  or  the  shell  bursts  close  at  hand, 
many  eyes  are  turned  upon  the  news- 
paper man  to  note  how  he  takes  it  all. 
Soldiers  are  too  prone  to  forget  that 
getting  shot  is  no  business  of  the 
special  correspondent's — is  a  contin- 
gency, in  fact,  that  does  not  enter 
into  the  relationship  existing  be- 
tween him  and  the  paper  which  he 
represents. 

A  distinguished  military  writer  has 
classed  newspaper  writers  among 


The   War  Campaign  and  the  War  Correspondent. 


399 


*'•*  that  race  of  drones  who  eat  the 
rations  of  fighting  men  and  do  no 
work  at  all.' '  This  is  scarcely  fair ;  the 
ration-eating  part  may  be  true ;  but  the 
work  done  by  a  special  correspondent 
would  tax  the  energies  of  the  most 
active  and  robust  soldier  of  any  army 
in  the  world.  The  man  of  the  pen  has 
to  win  his  "  bubble  reputation  "  liter- 
ally "at  the  cannon's  mouth."  The 
day  has  long  passed  when  a  spectator 
can  see  anything  of  a  battle  without 
sharing  to  a  great  extent  in  the  danger 
of  the  spectacle.  A  modern  Eliza 
would  have  but  a  poor  chance  of  be- 
holding a  Minden  of  to-day  on  any 
wood-crowned  height  secure  from  some 
far-reaching  rifle-bullet ;  but  the  man 
who  would  attempt  the  task  of  de- 
scribing the  physical  aspect  of  bodies 
of  men  under  the  ordeal  of  modern  in- 
fantry fire  must  himself  be  near  enough 
to  the  danger  to  catch  those  minute  but 
most  essential  points  which  mark  the 
gulf  between  reality  and  imagination. 
But  the  danger  which  a  war  corre- 
spondent has  to  face  in  the  field  is 
nothing  compared  with  the  strain  put 
upon  his  mental  and  physical  qualities 
in  the  hours  succeeding  a  general  ac- 
tion. To  convey  the  first  tidings  of 
the  fight,  to  enable  his  paper  to  put 
forth  those  sensational  capital  letter 
announcements  which  catch  the  public 
eye  at  home,  is  the  chief  aim  of  the 
man  who  has  just  completed  a  long  day 
of  toil.  To  do  this  he  has  to  perform 
feats  of  endurance  which  seem  well- 
nigh  incredible,  even  if  taken  by 
themselves  ;  but  following  close  upon 
the  prolonged  tension  of  actual  expo- 
sure to  fire,  they  become  still  more  re- 
markable instances  of  what  the  human 
frame  is  capable  of  sustaining  when 
the  conditions  of  toil  consist  of  open 
air  and  movement ;  and  when  the  mind 
and  body  are  nerved  to  exertion  by  the 
incentive  of  gaining  a  march  upon  a 
rival,  or  eclipsing  some  active  compe- 
titor. Two  of  the  most  extraordinary 
instances  to  be  found  in  the  record  of 
correspondents'  enterprise  are  those  of 
the  ride  from  Plevna  on  the  night  of 
the  31st  of  July  and  that  from 


Schipka  on  the  24th  of  August.  The 
first,  from  Plevna  to  Giurgevo,  thence 
to  Bucharest  by  rail,  and  then  with- 
out rest  of  any  kind  across  the  Rou- 
manian frontier  to  the  nearest  Trans- 
sylvanian  telegraph-office,  from  whence 
a  six-column  message  was  flashed  to 
England,  appearing  in  the  Daily  News 
of  the  3rd  of  August.  One  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  by  saddle  and  waggon, 
beginning  after  ten  hours  on  horse- 
back under  fire,  would  be  enough  to 
fully  excuse  absence  of  description  or 
brilliancy  of  narrative;  and  yet,  if 
Mr.  Forbes  never  penned  a  descrip- 
tion of  a  battle-field  save  that  which 
tells  of  Schahofskoy's  repulse  from  the 
ridge  above  Radisovo,  on  the  evening 
of  the  31st  of  July,  his  reputation  as 
a  writer  of  vivid  and  powerful  narra- 
tive would  be  assured. 

Not  less  remarkable  was  the  second 
ride,  three  weeks  later,  from  the 
Schipka  Pass  to  the  Simnitza  Bridge, 
and  thence  to  Bucharest,  under  the 
fervid  sun  of  a  Bulgarian  August 
day.  This  ride  was  begun  at  the 
termination  of  some  fifteen  hours 
riding  to  and  fighting  in  the  Schipka 
Pass ;  and  again  it  resulted  in  a 
telegram  of  five  or  six  columns  in 
length,  filled  with  vivid  pictures  of 
that  desperate  struggle  in  which 
Suleiman  Pasha  wrecked  his  splendid 
army  against  the  Balkan  rocks — so 
much  for  the  actual  physical  exertion 
which  some  chance  paragraph  in  these 
letters  discloses. 

The  question  will  naturally  occur, 
Where  were  the  letters  written  ? — if 
between  the  battle  and  the  despatch  of 
the  message  the  time  was  spent  in 
covering  one  hundred  miles  on  horse- 
back. The  letters  were  penned  at  the 
moment  of  the  fighting,  under  the 
very  fire  which  they  so  clearly  put 
before  us;  they  are,  in  fact,  a  series 
of  mental  photographs  of  fight  taken 
from  the  brain  at  the  moment  they 
have  been  received  by  it ;  but,  in  ad- 
dition to  photographic  fidelity  to  truth, 
they  possess  almost  a  sense  of  sound — 
of  the  noise,  movement,  and  roar  of 
battle  which  no  picture  can  ever 


The   War  Campaign  and  the   War  Correspondent. 


realise.  But  there  is  another  feature 
in  these  letters  which  deserves  special 
remark,  and  that  is  their  general  cor- 
rectness whenever  the  writer  ventures 
into  the  difficult  regions  of  forecast  and 
prophecy.  In  such  an  uncertain  game 
as  war  it  is  no  safe  matter  to  allow 
the  opinion  to  stray  beyond  the  limits 
of  what  has  actually  been  achieved 
and  to  indulge  in  that  pleasant,  but 
most  dangerous  work  of  discounting 
the  future.  Several  times  Mr.  Forbes 
essays  this  difficult  task,  and  almost 
invariably  his  opinion  has  been  veri- 
fied by  the  after  event.  He  held,  that 
the  Schipka  was  safe  in  the  hands  of 
the  Russians,  while  yet  the  Russian 
head-quarteis  were  dubious  enough 
over  their  possession,  and  the  Turks 
were  confident  that  the  hard-fought- 
for  pass  must  still  be  theirs.  He  as- 
serted that  Plevna  could  only  be  taken 
by  regular  investment  at  a  time  when 
the  key  of  the  position  was  being 
looked  for  by  Russian  engineers  at 
half-a-dozen  spots  along  the  wide 
semicircle  of  hills  from  Gravitza  to 
Dubnik.  Nor  does  he  in  these  letters 
ever  permit  a  feeling  of  partizanship 
to  blind  him  to  the  true  state  of  the 
case,  both  as  regards  the  military  value 
to  be  attached  to  each  movement  of 
the  hostile  armies,  or  of  the  political 
questions  underlying  the  war. 

Representing  a  journal  which 
strongly  advocates  what  may  be 
called  the  anti-Turkish  side,  Mr. 
Forbes  bears  ready  testimony  to  the 
prosperity  enjoyed  by  the  Bulgarian 
peasant,  whose  lot  he  favourably  com- 
pares not  only  with  Russian  or  Ger- 
man peasants,  but  with  our  own  people 
in  these  islands  we  deem  so  happy. 
The  land,  which  only  a  year  before 
was  painted  to  us  as  ravaged  by  fire 
and  sword,  he  shows  to  us  filled  with 
all  the  products  of  peace,  teeming  with 
crops  of  waving  corn,  stocked  with 
farm-houses,  round  which  horses  and 
cattle  clustered  at  sunset,  and  where 
everything  betokened  a  degree  of 
comfort  and  prosperity  utterly  un- 
known even  across  the  Danube  in 
"  free ' '  Roumania. 


So  glaring  is  this  contrast  between 
the  prosperity  of  the  "down-trodden" 
Bulgarian  and  the  poverty  of  the  libe- 
rating Russian,  that  a  hope  is  even  ex- 
pressed that  the  picture  of  plenty  and 
possession  under  the  Turkish  rule  may 
react  upon  the  land  of  the  liberators 
in  producing  a  similar  state  of  comfort 
and  of  liberty.  Perhaps  in  this  matter 
history  may  again  repeat  itself ;  and, 
as  the  barbarians  of  the  North  and 
East  caught  in  the  fair  and  fertile 
lands  of  Lombardy  and  Spain  a  higher 
civilisation  and  a  keener  sense  of  art 
and  comfort,  so  may  the  Moujik, 
brought  in  contact  with  the  realities 
of  a  higher  state  of  social  existence, 
eventually  hide  deeper  in  his  nature 
the  rude  instincts  of  his  Russian 
blood. 

Among  the  many  fallacies  which 
grew  rankly  during  the  past  summer, 
there  was  none  more  striking  than  the 
eagerly-accepted  belief  in  the  weakness 
of  Russia  as  a  military  power.  The 
reverses  of  the  Russian  arms  at  Plevna 
and  in  -Armenia  during  the  months 
of  August  and  in  September,  the 
inability  of  the  commissariat  and 
transport  departments  to  supply  the 
armies,  even  when  engaged  in  Bul- 
garia, and  the  absence  of  that  mobile 
power  which  so  distinguished  the  Ger- 
man invasion  of  France  in  1470,  were 
all  seized  by  public  opiniA  in  this 
country  as  clear  evidence  or  the  natu- 
ral helplessness  of  Russia  as  an  aggres- 
sive power.  Hastily  jumping  from 
conclusion  to  conclusion,  the  sup- 
porters of  Russian  policy  in  the  East, 
as  well  as  those  who  held  that  Russian 
success  meant  England's  dis^ter,  were 
equally  loud  in  asserting  that  the  col- 
lapse of  Russia  as  a  military  power 
was  unmistakably  proved  by  six  weeks' 
war  in  Europe  and  Asia.  They  failed 
to  perceive  that  much,  if  not  all,  of 
the  disaster  suffered  by  the  invaders 
was  to  be  fully  accounted  for  by  the 
fact  that  for  two-and-twenty  years  the 
Russian  army  had  been  an  unused 
machine  in  any  war,  save  the  petty 
and  semi-barbarous  campaigns  against. 
Central  Asian  Khanites ;  that  it  was, 


The  War  Campaign  and  the  War  Correspondent. 


401 


in  fact,  a  giant  out  of  training — filled 
with  all  the  material  from  which  power 
in  war  is  derivable ;  but  clogged  for 
the  moment  by  those  inevitable  accre- 
tions which  result  from  peace,  and  the 
privileges  which  peace  permits  to  creep 
into  the  military  system. 

And  yet,  even  in  the  very  reverses 
sustained  by  the  armies  that  followed 
Melikoff  and  Schahofskoy,  Krudener, 
and  Schilder,  the  formidable  nature  of 
New  Russia  was  plainly  discernible. 
Had  there  been  present  as  spectators 
of  these  fights  at  Plevna  any  British 
officer  who  had  stood  through  the  hard 
day  at  Inkerman,  or  had  breasted  up 
the  long  incline  at  Alma,  surely  there 
must  have  dawned  upon  such  a  one 
the  knowledge  that  to  the  patience  and 
dogged  stolidity  of  his  old  enemy  of 
three-and-twenty  years  ago  there  had 
come  a  new  and  a  terrible  strength — 
the  strength  of  a  wild,  fierce,  and 
heroic  determination  to  carry  at  any 
cost  the  position  of  his  adversary.  It 
was  no  longer  the  serf  soldier  of  the 
Crimean  days,  who  could  not  stand  at 
Alma  or  force  our  weak  lines  at  Inker- 
man, it  was  the  Russian  peasant  gaily 
accepting  death  at  the  call  of  duty — 
playing  the  part  of  that  matchless 
infantry,  of  which  it  has  been  said  by 
an  enemy,  "  They  are  unequalled  ;  for- 
tunately they  are  so  few."  Unfortu- 
nately for  the  .  future  enemies  of 
Russia,  the  scant  numbers  of  her  in- 
fantry will  not  have  to  be  mentioned. 

But  it  is  not  alone  by  the  talent  and 
energy  of  Mr.  Forbes  that  the  Daily 
News  has  succeeded  in  producing  what 
may  be  called  a  contemporary  history 
of  the  Russo-Turkish  War.  In  the 
person  of  another  correspondent  that 
journal  has  been  equally  fortunate. 
Mr.  MacGahan  has  indeed  in  some 
points  succeeded  in  placing  before  his 
readers  a  more  highly- finished  criticism 
of  the  campaign  from  a  military  point 
of  view  than  can  be  found  in  the 
pages  of  his  fellow-correspondent, 
whose  work  we  have  heretofore  re- 
ferred to. 

Those  who  had  the  good  fortune  to 
accompany  Mr.  MacGahan  through 

No.  221. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


his  adventurous  "  Campaigning  on  the 
Oxus  and  the  Fall  of  Khiva,"  will  not 
need  to  be  told  that  the  courage  and 
determination  which  carried  him  four 
years  ago  across  the  blinding  desert  of 
the  Kizil  Kum,  and  made  him  a  sharer 
in  all  the  hardships  and  glories  of  the 
Khivan  campaign,  have  again  been 
conspicuously  manifest  in  Bulgaria 
and  Roumelia.  Nor  will  his  power  of 
description  and  keen  insight  into  the 
errors  of  Russian  generals  and  the 
corruptions  of  commissariat  officials  be 
subject  of  surprise  to  those  who  know 
how  long  and  varied  has  been  his 
experience  of  men  and  things  in 
the  great  Republic  of  the  West,  as 
well  as  in  the  great  Despotism  of  the 
East.  Indeed  his  remarks  upon 
Russian  generals  are  so  plain-spoken, 
that  one  is  forced  to  conclude  he  must 
have  enjoyed  the  protection  of  some 
one  high  in  command  in  the  Russian 
army ;  otherwise  it  is  difficult  to 
account  for  so  keen  and  trenchant  a 
pen  being  allowed  to  continue  un- 
checked its  career  of  criticism.  It  is 
this  spirit  of  candid  criticism  that 
will  give  to  this  collection  of  letters 
its  real  value  in  the  future.  We  feel 
that  here  we  are  reading  the  truth  so 
far  as  it  is  possible  to  arrive  at  that 
one  great  historical  essential. 

History,  written  after  long  lapse  of 
time,  bears  too  many  proofs  of  flagrant 
partiality  ;  but  this  history  written 
in  the  saddle,  or  in  the  dark  corner  of 
a  wayside  hut,  bears  in  its  free  and 
fearless  criticism  the  earnest  of  its 
truth. 

Everywhere  through  these  letters 
the  reader  gathers  proof*' of  the  stal- 
wart power  of  the  Russian  soldier, 
his  cheerfulness  under  great  priva- 
tions, and  his  extraordinary  marching 
capabilities.  Despite  the  defects  of 
strategy  in  the  midsummer  and  early 
autumn,  we  are  shown  many  glimpses 
of  another  class  of  Russian  general, 
the  product  evidently  of  modern 
times,  men  who  seem  to  unite  the 
daring  of  some  of  the  great  cavalry 
captains  of  Napoleon,  with  the  more 
stolid  tenacity  of  the  well-known 

D   D 


402 


The  War  Campaign  and  ike,   War  Correspondent. 


Muscovite  type, — half  Murat,  half 
Suwaroff.  Men  before  whom  moun- 
tains disappear ;  snow  becomes  sun- 
shine; at  whose  word  soldiers  dare 
the  impossible,  nor  stop  to  count  the 
odds.  There  is  something  singularly 
striking  in  this  matter-of-fact  age  of 
ours  in  the  picture  of  Skobeleff  as  we 
find  it  drawn  by  two  different  writers 
many  times  throughout  these  letters  ; 
perhaps  the  image  that  will  live  long- 
est in  memory  is  that  description  of 
Skobeleff  on  the  llth  of  September, 
when  forced  back  by  a  valour  even 
more  desperate  than  his  own  from  the 
redoubts  above  the  Plevna-Loftcha 
road,  he  stood  amid  the  wreck  of  his 
soldiers  almost  terrible  in  his  despair. 
In  a  nation  like  our  own,  where  the 
military  element  is  always  subordi- 
nated to  the  civil,  and  where  the  civil 
in  turn  takes  the  colour  of  its 
thoughts  from  the  mercantile  inter- 
ests involved  in  any  question,  it  is 
almost  impossible  for  the  public  mind 
to  realise  the  strength  of  the  military 
idea  existing  among  such  nations  as 
Russia  and  Germany. 

To  fully  understand  the  strength 
of  that  idea,  we  should  ask  ourselves 
what  would  be  the  state  of  thought 
in  this  country,  if  from  the  throne 
downwards  every  functionary  of  state 
were  a  soldier  first,  and  a  prince, 
peer,  diplomat,  head  of  a  department, 
deputy,  or  deputy-assistant  after.  Yet 
this  is  precisely  the  state  of  things  in 
Germany  and  in  Russia.  The  govern- 
ing class  is  military;  between  that 
class  and  the  peasants  there  exists  no 
middle  class  worthy  of  the  name ; 
hence  public  opinion  as  we  know  it 
here  is  unknown,  or  rather  we  should 
say  that  differences  of  public  opinion 
are  unknown ;  the  peer  and  the 
peasant  have  still  between  them  old 
feudal  links  of  land-and-soldier  service 
to  the  state;  and  the  unquestioning 
obedience  which  the  soldier  learns  as 
his  first  duty,  is  given  as  much  to  the 
policy  of  the  government  as  to  the 
orders  of  the  general. 

In  a  state  of  society  so  constituted, 
the  fame  of  such  soldiers  as  Skobeleff 


or  !Gourko  becomes  a  thing  quite 
different  from  any  hero-worship  pos- 
sible among  ourselves.  The  peasant 
is  the  true  worshipper  of  warlike- 
deeds.  Even  Beranger,  sound  repub- 
lican though  he  was,  realised  this  fact 
in  his  Les  Souvenirs  du  Peuple.  When 
a  general  officer  bid  the  18th  Royal 
Irish  Regiment  fight  at  Sebastopol 
"until  the  Irish  cabins  would  ring 
with  the  news,"  he  also  understood  it. 
Many  lowly  cots  doubtless  ring  to- 
night throughout  broad  Russia  with 
the  deeds  of  Skobeleff  and  of  Gourko ; 
and  if  the  day  should  ever  come  when 
Europe  hears,  as  it  has  heard  ere-now, 
the  tramp  of  Russian  columns  in  the 
Alps  or  on  the  Rhine ;  or  Asia  sees 
the  grim  battalions  streaming  south 
to  the  rich  plains  of  Hindostan,  the 
lessons  now  being  learnt  and  the 
stories  now  being  told  over  the  pine- 
log  fires  of  the  hut-homes  of  Russia, 
will  bear  fruit  both  sweet  and  bitter. 
As  the  campaign  north  of  the 
Balkans  centred  solely  around 
Plevna,  so  the  chief  interest  of  this 
book  lies  around  that  now  famous 
stronghold.  As  we  read  through  many 
letters  ranging  in  date  from  July  to 
November,  we  are  face  to  face  with 
that  horse-shoe  line  of  earthworks 
where,  when  history  comes  to  tell  to 
time  its  final  story  of  this  war,  the 
world  will  learn  how  well  a  gallant 
soldier  kept  the  Crescent  flying  in  the 
teeth  of  what  was  at  best  but  a 
bastard  Cross.  But  we  see  only  the 
outside ;  of  the  inner  life  behind  the 
grim  circle  of  these  trenches  we  know 
nothing.  The  Turk  needed  not  news- 
paper men  to  blazon  to  the  world  the 
matchless  valour  with  which  he  held 
these  oft-assaulted  lines ;  but  doubt- 
less there  came  moments  during  those 
long  five  months  of  death  and  danger 
when  the  pale-faced  Pasha  and  his 
hungry  soldiery  in  the  great  strong- 
hold caught  glimpses  of  a  day  ^wh 
the  name  of  the  unknown  Bulgarian 
village  would  be  a  sunset-light  resting 
throughout  all  time  upon  the  fading 
fortunes  of  his  race.  The  winning 
side  dictates  its  terms  to  history; 


The  War  Campaign  and  the   War  Correspondent. 


403 


the  world  will  probably  never  know 
more  of  Plevna  than  can  be  gathered 
from  the  Russian  sources ;  but  many 
peoples,  when  sorely  pressed  by  over- 
powering hosts,  will  remember  that  in 
every  land  there  are  innumerable 
spots  lying  in  the  tracks  which  con- 
querors must  follow,  where  the  weaker 
side,  if  resolute,  may  cast  itself  full 
in  the  face  of  a  victorious  army,  and 
delay,  if  it  cannot  finally  arrest,  a 
conqueror's  course.  It  is  something 
too  for  this  age  of  ours  to  have  been 
able  to  bury  Metz  under  the  earth- 
works of  Plevna. 

With  Plevna  fell  the  military  sys- 
tem, of  Turkey.  All  the  strength  of 
the  Sultan's  empire  was  centred  in 
these  lines,  and  the  enormous  force 
put  forth  by  Russia  to  crush  resist- 
ance at  this  one  spot  rendered  the 
campaign  south  of  the  Balkans  one 
unbroken  success  for  her  ;  the  stream 
pent  up  against  the  earthmounds  of 
Plevna  poured  forth  when  Plevna 
fell,  and  swept  before  it  Schipka  and 
Sophia.  Adrianople  disappeared  in 
the  rush,  and  within  sis  weeks  from 
the  day  of  Osman  Pasha's  surrender, 
Muscovite  soldiers,  whose  eyes  had 
never  rested  upon  sight  of  ocean,  be- 
held the  blue  ^Egean  spreading  south 
from  the  shores  of  Enos. 

Upon  this  point  all  the  prophets 
have  been  wrong.  The  experts  among 
our  own  military  men,  as  well  as  the 
correspondents  writing  from  the  scene 
of  fighting,  equally  declared  in  the 
impossibility  of  a  winter  campaign. 
So  it  has  been,  and  so  it  will  ever  be  ; 
the  doctors  and  professors  will  be  the 
first  to  draw  the  black  line  of  rule 
across  the  carte  blanche  of  the  possible. 
The  school  can  do  a  greal  deal,  but  it  can 
never  put  limits  to  what  the  genius  of  a 
leader  may  devise,  or  the  courage  and 
devotion  of  his  soldiers  may  achieve. 

On  the  vexed  question  of  rival  atro- 
cities, these  letters  do  not  throw  much 
additional  light.  To  suppose  that  war 
can  take  place,  particularly  among 
eastern  nations,  without  the  element 
of  atrocity  being  plainly  evident,  is 
to  suppose  what  never  has  been  in  the 
past,  and  probably  never  will  be  in 


the  future.  To  some  among  us  the 
Cossack  has  become  an  eminent 
civiliser ;  to  others  the  Bashi-Bazouk 
is  not  half  a  bad  fellow.  For  our  own 
part  we  believe  that  the  only  civilisa- 
tion which  the  Cossack  can  disseminate 
is  that  "civilisation  off  the  face  of  the 
earth"  which  some  other  Christian 
nations  have  long  been  adepts  at. 

One  fact  has  however  a  right  to  be 
stated  on  the  Turkish  side.  Men, 
fighting  for  their  soil,  their  faith,  their 
homes,  are  generally  more  ruthless  in 
their  vengeance  than  the  invader  who 
fights  against  them.  Nobody  denies 
that  the  Russians  bayoneted  our 
wounded  soldiers  at  Inkerman ;  nor 
can  there  be  any  doubt  of  the  horrors 
perpetrated  upon  the  French  prisoners 
during  the  retreat  from  Moscow.  It  is 
not  only  in  the  pages  of  Fezensac 
and  other  French  writers,  that  these 
horrors  are  most  fully  revealed  to  us  ; 
but  in  the  sober  narrative  of  Sir 
Robert  Wilson,  our  own  commissioner 
with  the  Russian  head- quarters.  If 
we  recollect  aright,  there  is  one  episode 
related  by  him  of  his  having  entered 
a  wood,  attracted  to  it  by  the  sound 
of  human  cries,  and  there  found 
Russian  peasant  women  dancing  round 
a  large  number  of  French  prisoners 
whom  they  had  chained  to  trees,  and 
were  roasting  to  death. 

It  is  not  improbable  that  among 
the  Russian  soldiers  now  engaged  upon 
the  civilisation  of  Turkey  there  are 
grandsons  of  some  of  these  she-devils 
who  can  have  little,  not  only  of  the 
milk  of  human  kindness,  but  of  human 
nature  in  their  veins. 

In  truth  there  has  been  too  much 
about  atrocities.  War,  especially 
when  it  is  wreaked  for  conquest,  is  a 
terrible  thing.  In  no  war  of  this 
century  or  in  the  last,  since  Frederick 
deliberately  overran  and  annexed 
Silesia,  has  Europe  witnessed  a  war  so 
thoroughly  undertaken  for  conquest  as 
this  one  which  we  are  now  beholding. 
The  invasion  of  Spain  by  Napoleon 
was  not  nearly  so  aggressive  in  its 
character.  The  Empire,  heir  to  the 
Republic,  had  some  shadow  of  excuse 
for  aiming  at  the  destruction  of  the 
D  D  2 


404 


The  War  Campaign  and  the   War  Correspondent. 


last  Bourbon  monarchy  existing  in 
Europe ;  but  the  claim  which  the 
Czar  would  put  forth  for  destroying 
the  Turkish  empire  is  not  nearly  so 
strong  as  Philip  might  have  urged  in 
defence  of  the  Armada,  or  America 
might  advance  to-morrow  for  the 
conquest  of  Ireland ;  for  it  must 
be  clearly  held  in  mind  regarding  this 
war  that  the  Turk  is  no  stranger  on 
the  soil  he  has  fought  so  hard  to  keep. 
So  far  as  the  mere  antiquity  of  his 
faith  is  concerned  it  is  older  in  Con- 
stantinople by  a  century  than  Pro- 
testantism is  in  London.  The  Turk, 
too,  as  a  power,  is  much  more  a 
European  than  the  Russian  ;  and  in 
applying  the  bag  and  baggage  princi- 
ple, it  would  be  well  to  bear  in  mind 
that  in  moving  out  the  Turks  from 
Europe  you  are  simply  moving  out 
Roumanians,  Bulgarians,  and  Thessa- 
lians  quite  as  much  as  you  would  be 
moving  Bengalees  or  Madrassees  from 
India  if  you  proposed  to  expel  beyond 
the  Affghan  frontier  the  Mohamme- 
dans of  that  empire. 

Meantime  while  we  write  the  game 
has  been  played  out  to  the  bitter  end  ; 
the  Turk  lies  prostrate,  stricken  too 
hard  ever  to  rise  again,  save  to  muti- 
lated and  aimless  existence.  It  matters 
little  whether  it  is  Greek  or  Bulgarian 
or  Servian  or  Roumanian  who  will 
step  in  to  the  vacant  dominion ;  the 
end  will  be  the  same — sooner  or  later 
the  Cossack  will  stable  his  horse  in 
Constantinople  there  to  remain.  The 
existence  of  Greece  as  an  independent 
state  will  then  be  about  as  secure  as 
that  of  Hanover  was  twenty  years  ago 
or  as  Holland  is  to-day.  Anatolia  will 
not  long  remain  when  Armenia  is 
gone,  no  longer,  than  Armenia  re- 
mained when  Georgia  had  been  taken. 
Not  a  single  argument  has  been  used 
in  Russia  or  in  England  in  favour  of 
the  war  which  cannot  be  applied 
twenty  years  hence  to  an  invasion  of 
Palestine  and  Syria.  The  "key- 
stone "  once  gone  the  arch  will  not 
long  remain.  "  But  before  these 
things  can  happen  we  shall  fight," 
we  hear  people  say.  Not  a  bit  of  it ; 
you  will  have  plenty  to  distract  your 


attention  ;  you  will  be  no  richer  then 
than  you  are  at  present,  probably 
poorer;  for  your  coal  and  iron  will 
not  cost  you  more  than  they  do  now, 
and  the  boundless  mineral  and  agri- 
cultural resources  of  America  will 
have  thrown  the  balance  of  trade  into 
her  hands.  Your  Indian  empire  will 
be  a  thorn  in  your  side,  a  thorn  driven 
deeper  by  every  mile  of  Russian  ad- 
vance in  Persia  or  in  Syria. 

"  But  Germany  will  fight  even  if  we 
should  not."  Yes,  Germany  will  fight; 
but  it  will  not  be  in  the  East.  She 
will  have  too  much  fighting  to  do  in 
the  west.  Germany  has  never  ambi- 
tioned  the  role  of  an  eastern  power : 
her  outlooks  are  towards  the  west. 
Prince  Bismarck  can  scarcely  want 
more  of  Europe  than  satisfied  Na- 
poleon on  the  raft  at  Tilsit.  The 
bones  of  Charlemagne  lie  in  Germany, 
why  should  not  his  sceptre  stretch 
again  from  the  Baltic  unto  Biscay  ? 
England  possessed  in  Europe  two 
natural  allies,  France  and  Turkey; 
the  first  was  our  natural  ally  because 
the  love  of  freedom  lay  deep  within 
the  hearts  of  both  nations ;  the  wants 
of  one  were  not  the  needs  of  the  other, 
but  a  common  civilisation  and  a 
kindred  liberty  tied  together  in  a 
single  struggle  against  despotisms 
Germanic  or  Sclavonic,  the  thoughts 
and  the  aspirations  of  both  people. 

Turkey  was  our  natural  ally  because 
since  she  ceased  to  be  a  menace  to 
western  civilisation  she  became  the 
great  check  to  a  despotism  far  more 
dangerous  to  the  human  race — the 
ever-growing  despotism  of  the  Musco- 
vite. Both  these  allies  have  been 
struck  down  ;  it  might  be  said  that 
when  one  fell  in  1870,  the  end  of  the 
other  was  not  far  off — when  Metz 
capitulated  Plevna  became  possible. 

We  have  heard  it  said  that  the 
penny  papers  had  rendered  war  on  the 
part  of  England  impossible ;  that  for 
the  first  time  in  their  lives  the  people 
of  this  country  had  been  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  realities  of  the  | 
rifle,  and  that  the  havoc  caused  by  the 
breech-loader,  as  described  by  the  wari 
correspondents,  had  caused  a  sensation  | 


The   War  Campaign  and  the   War  Correspondent. 


405 


of  horror  in  the  public  mind  sufficiently 
strong  to  prevent  us  ever  fighting  ex- 
cept in  self-defence.  It  has  yet  to  be 
shown,  however,  that  Englishmen  are 
more  readily  impressed  by  the  havoc 
of  modern  battle-fields  than  other 
nations  ;  but  one  impossibility  may  be 
allowed  in  presence  of  the  power  of 
modern  breech-loaders,  and  that  is  the 
impossibility  of  our  ever  being  able  to 
sustain  a  war  protracted  for  any  length 
of  time  on  our  present  system  of 
voluntary  enlistment.  The  rapidly- 
succeeding  waves  of  skirmish  lines 
which  are  now  found  to  be  the  only 
method  of  carrying  a  position  would 
soon  run  dry  if  fed  from  the  scanty 
resources  of  an  army  recruited  on  the 
voluntary  system. 

No.  War  on  the  Continent  to-day 
means  ballot  or  conscription ;  unless, 
indeed,  it  should  be  a  war  in  which 
the  spade  will  be  made  to  dig  the 
grave  of  British  strategy  in  some 
solitary  position  based  upon  the  sea, 
outside  the  lines  of  which  no  British 
regiment  would  ever  venture. 

As  we  have  already  said  the  spade 
forms  an  important  feature  in  the 
story  of  this  war  as  told  in  this  cor- 
respondence ;  but  in  the  increased 
power  which  the  spade  gives  to  the 
defence,  one  or  two  points  should  not 
be  lost  sight  of  by  those  who  would  seek 
from  the  example  of  this  campaign  to 
draw  lessons  for  our  future  guidance. 
To  the  Turks  the  spade  was  a  neces- 
sity. Their  deficiencies  of  transport, 
and  the  absence  of  a  perfectly  organized 
staff  in  their  army  rendered  that  army 
helpless  in  striking  power.  In  its 
different  positions  on  the  Quadri- 
lateral and  at  Plevna  it  may  be  said 
to  have  resembled  so  many  bull-dogs 
chained  in  a  field  :  very  dangerous  to 
any  force  coming  within  biting  dis- 
tance ;  but  perfectly  harmless  to  any- 
body keeping  outside  the  lengths  of 
their  respective  chains.  Unfortunately 
for  the  Russians  Plevna  was  within  bit- 
ing distance  of  their  line  of  communi- 
cations, and  Plevna  had  to  be  taken. 
The  Turks  being  immovable  then,  or 
nearly  so,  it  became  absolutely  neces- 
sary that  they  should  entrench  them- 


selves up  to  the  eyes,  and  the  spade 
was  their  first  necessity. 

But  the  spade  may  become  nearly 
as  dangerous  to  the  army  that  uses  it 
as  to  the  one  that  neglects  it ;  like 
everything  else  it  is  good  in  its  way  ; 
that  way  is  even  a  long  way,  but  its 
end  can  be  reached.  If  the  infantry 
soldier  gets  thoroughly  convinced  that 
in  the  shelter  trench  lies  his  hope  of 
safety  he  will  doubtless  be  a  hard  man 
to  drive  back  out  of  these  trenches ; 
but  it.  may  also  become  a  difficult 
matter  to  drive  him  on  from  them  to 
the  front.  Digging  may  save  a  battle 
from  being  lost,  but  it  has  never  won 
a  decisive  victory,  and  it  probably 
never  will. 

It  has  been  said  frequently  that 
this  war  has  been  a  war  of  surprises. 
As  the  summer  ran  its  quick  course 
men  caught  eagerly  at  passing  events, 
and  drew  deductions  which  seemed 
only  made  to  be  falsified.  When  the 
Danube  had  been  crossed  people  began 
to  speak  of  the  campaign  as  well  nigh 
over.  When  Plevna  rolled  back  its 
many  attacks  Adrianople  seemed  a 
long  way  off.  When  Plevna  fell  the 
necessity  of  a  second  campaign  was 
admitted  on  all  hands,  and  not  even 
the  most  sanguine  friends  of  Russia 
counted  on  the  winter  passage  of  the 
Balkans  and  the  conquest  of  Roumelia 
ere  the  Greek  year  had  closed.  And 
now,  when  the  campaign  is  over,  men 
speak  of  the  losses  of  Russia  in  this 
war  and  of  her  consequently  crippled 
condition.  Is  it  not  another  fallacy  ?  A 
short  successful  war  never  yet  crip- 
pled a  nation.  Austerlitz  did  not 
prevent  Jena;  Eylau  and  Friedland 
did  not  prevent  Wagram ;  Sadowa  did 
not  prevent  Sedan. 

Victory  even  when  dearly  purchased 
soon  restores  its  losses  by  the  increased 
sense  of  power  it  gives  the  victors,  by 
the  martial  spirit  it  produces  in  a 
nation,  and  the  confidence  it  inspires. 
When  Russia  next  enters  the  field  her 
power  will  be  none  the  less  formidable 
because  100,000  of  her  sons  live  to-day 
only  in  the  memories  of  a  great  triumph. 

W.  F.  BUTLER. 


406 


GERMAN  VIEWS  OF  OXFORD  AND  CAMBRIDGE. 


WE  English  are  apt  to  consider  our- 
selves as  living  in  a  house  of  glass, 
through  which  the  noonday  light  of 
complete  publicity  penetrates  into 
every  corner  and  cranny  of  our 
political  and  social  life.  Indeed  we 
often  complain  that  the  press,  with  its 
restless  curiosity  and  unbounded 
license,  is  too  fond  of  betraying  what 
might  well  be  kept  secret,  and  ex- 
posing the  national  weaknesses,  sins, 
and  sores  of  Britannia,  in  a  manner 
very  detrimental  to  her  good  fame, 
and  her  position  among  her  European 
sisters,  who  keep  for  the  closet  and  the 
confessional  what  we  proclaim  on  the 
housetop.  Every  fault  in  our  mili- 
tary organisation,  every  new  invention 
which  might  give  us  an  advantage,  in 
peace  or  war,  over  our  rivals  or  our 
enemies,  every  diplomatic  secret,  the 
untimely  disclosure  of  which  must 
weaken  the  hands  of  our  Government, 
is  ferreted  out  with  a  keenness  of 
scent  which  nothing  escapes,  and  a 
persistency  which  will  take  no  denial, 
and  then  forced  on  the  attention  of 
foreign  friends  and  foes,  with  no  small 
damage  to  our  national  interests.  Our 
national  tendency  to  self-depreciation, 
too,  insure?,  that  other  nations  shall 
always  know  the  worst  of  us.  They 
know,  for  instance,  on  the  very  high- 
est English  authority,  that  this  country 
is  ruled  by  a  histrionic  adventurer,  of 
purely  Semitic  sympathies,  who  is 
possessed  with  a  frantic  desire  to 
plunge  the  country  into  war  against 
an  inoffensive  people,  whose  only 
desire  is  to  sacrifice  themselves,  with- 
out hope  of  reward,  in  the  cause  of 
civilisation  and  Christianity.  They 
know,  on  equally  high  authority,  that 
our  army  is  composed  of  ignorant 
officers  and  weak  little  boys ;  that 
our  war-ships  are  constructed  on 
fatally  erroneous  principles ;  that  the 
imperial  throne  of  India  is  already 


tottering  to  its  fall,  only  requiring  a 
gentle  push  from  the  hand  of  Russia  to 
level  it  with  the  ground. 

And  yet  I  think  that  every  man 
who  has  mixed  in  foreign  society,  or 
is  conversant  with  foreign  literature, 
will  allow  that  he  has  often  heard  and 
read  accounts  of  English  life  which  go 
far  to  prove,  either  that  our  conti- 
nental neighbours  make  little  use  of 
the  assistance  we  offer  them  for  the 
interesting  study  of  ourselves,  or  that 
our  institutions,  like  our  island  itself, 
are  covered  by  a  murky  fog,  impene- 
trable to  foreign  eyes.  The  ideal  Eng- 
lish nobleman  at  the  Porte  St.  Martin 
is  still  a  stout  red- faced  farmer,  in  a 
broad- brimmed  hat  and  long  gaiters, 
with  a  thick  stick  in  his  hand,  and  a 
bull-dog  at  his  heels.  The  English 
lady,  at  the  Carnival  at  Cologne,  still 
wears  a  poke-bonnet  and  a  green  veil, 
and  is  addicted  to  port  wine  or  some- 
thing stronger.  I  was  astounded, 
on  one  occasion,  to  hear  a  German 
professor,  of  European  celebrity, 
quietly  assuming,  as  an  undoubted 
fact,  that  the  sale  of  wives  at  Smith- 
field  was,  or  had  been  at  a  recent 
period,"  a  perfectly  legal  transaction  • 
and  my  indignant  denial  was  received 
by  the  company  present  with  a  smile 
of  amusement  at  my  uncompromising 
patriotism. 

The  foregoing  remarks  have  been 
suggested  to  my  mind  by  the  perusal 
of  an  address,  delivered  before  the 
professors  and  students  of  the  Berlin 
University,  by  the  eminent  physicist, 
Professor  Helmholtz,  on  the  occa- 
sion of  his  installation  as  Rector 
Magnificus.  The  title  and  main  sub- 
ject of  his  oration  is  "  the  Academical 
Freedom  of  the  German  Universities," 
to  which,  like  almost  all  Germans,  he 
ascribes  their  pre-eminence  in  Europe. 
But  he  also  refers  to  the  academical 
systems  of  England  and  France,  and 


German  Views  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge. 


407 


dwells  at  some  length  on  the  constitu- 
tion and  general  character  of  our  two 
oldest  and  most  famous  universities, 
Oxford  and  Cambridge.  We  have 
here,  therefore,  an  address  from  the 
highest  academical  authority  in  Ger- 
many, to  the  most  select  academical 
audience  on  the  Continent  of  Europe. 
Yet  even  such  a  man,  in  such  a 
place,  draws  a  picture  of  our  uni- 
versities which  borders  very  closely 
on  caricature. 

In  speaking  of  their  present  con- 
dition, he  says — 

"  Their  large  foundations,  and  the  political 
tendency  of  Englishmen  to  conserve  every 
existing  right,  have  excluded  almost  every 
change,  even  in  those  directions  in  which  it 
seemed  urgently  desirable.  Both  universities 
still  retain,  in  the  main,  their  character  of 
schools  for  clergymen,  formerly  of  the  Romish, 
now  of  the  Anglican  Church,  whose  training, 
in  so  far  as  it  conduces  to  the  general  develop- 
ment of  the  intellect,  may  be  shared  by  lay- 
men who  are  subjected  to  the  same  supervision 
and  mode  of  life  as  was  formerly  considered 
proper  for  young  clergymen. " 

This  reads  strangely  indeed  to  those 
who  know  that  our  whole  academical 
system  was  remodelled  by  Act  of 
Parliament  in  1854  (to  say  nothing  of 
the  University  Commission  now  sitting 
with  almost  plenary  powers),  and  that 
there  is  scarcely  any  part  of  the 
ancient  constitution  of  our  univer- 
sities which  has  not  undergone  a 
radical  change  in  the  last  quarter  of 
a  century.  Nor  do  our  bishops,  I 
fear,  regard  Oxford  and  Cambridge  as 
"  essentially  schools  for  young  clergy- 
men." They  are  more  likely  to  com- 
plain of  the  very  small  number  (not 
more  than  one  in  four  at  Oxford)  of 
graduates  who  present  themselves  for 
orders.  It  is  no  longer  essential  that 
even  the  tutors  of  a  college  should 
belong  to  the  Anglican  Church,  and 
some  of  them  are  avowed  sceptics. 

Again,  the  students  of  Berlin  are 
told  (and  this  is  a  matter  of  very 
trifling  importance)  that  at  Oxford 
and  Cambridge 

"  The  different  classes  of  nobility  are  dis- 
tinguished from  one  another  by  special 
badges " 


on  their  academical  costume  ;  the  fact 
being  that  the  different  orders  of  noble- 
men were  never  distinguished  from  one 
another,  and  that  all  distinctions  of 
this  kind  have  been,  for  some  time 
past,  abolished. 

In  two  respects  only  does  Professor 
Helmholtz  consider  the  English  uni- 
versities worthy  of  imitation  by  the 
Germans  : 

"  They  develop, "  he  says,  "  in  their 
students,  side  by  side  with  a  lively  apprecia- 
tion of  the  beauty  and  youthful  freshness  of 
the  ancient  world,  a  strong  taste  for  elegance 
and  precision  of  style,  which  manifests  itself 
in  the  mastery  they  show  in  the  use  of  their 
native  language.  In  this  direction,  I  fear, 
lies  one  of  the  weakest  sides  of  the  education 
of  the  young  in  Germany." 

(This  is  the  more  remarkable,  if 
true,  because  direct  instruction  in  the 
German  language  forms  an  important 
part  of  the  school  course  even  of  the 
gymnasium  or  classical  school). 

"  In  the  second  place,"  he  continues,  "  the 
English  universities  provide  much  better  than 
we  do  for  the  physical  well-being  of  their 
students.  These  live  in  spacious  airy  build- 
ings, surrounded  by  lawns  and  avenues,  and 
seek  their  chief  amusement  in  games  which 
excite  a  passionate  rivalry  in  the  development 
of  bodily  strength  and  skill,  and  are  far  more 
effectual  for  attaining  the  desired  end  than 
our  gymnastic  and  fencing  exercises.  It 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  more  young 
men  are  debarred  from  fresh  air  and  oppor- 
tunities of  active  bodily  exercise,  the  more 
inclined  they  are  to  seek  a  factitious  excite- 
ment in  the  abuse  of  tobacco  and  intoxicating 
liquors.  We  must  also  acknowledge  that  the 
English  universities  accustom  their  students 
to  exact  and  energetic  work,  and  keep  them 
to  the  habits  of  refined  society.  As  to  the 
moral  effects  of  their  strict  supervision,  that 
is  said  to  be  rather  illusory." 

This  passage  is  valuable,  as  showing 
that  Professor  Helmholtz  errs  from 
want  of  accurate  knowledge,  and  not 
from  any  feeling  of  prejudice  or  anti- 
pathy. It  is  worth  noticing  that  the 
same  complaints  are  made,  and  the 
same  compliments  bestowed,  by  an- 
other of  the  great  lights  of  natural 
science  at  Eerlin,  Professor  Dubois- 
Eeymond,  in  a  very  interesting  article 
in  thelS  ovembcr  number  of  iheDeutsche 
Rundschau.  He  is  speaking  of  the 
"increasing  banausian  shallowness" 


408 


German   Views  of  Oxford  and  Camli-vlye. 


of  young  Germany,  the  growth  of 
"  Americanism,"  and  the  decline  of 
"Hellenism,1'  and  warns  his  medical 
students,  more  particularly,  of  the 
danger  they  incur  by  their  neglect  of 
classical  studies,  and  a  too  exclusive 
attention  to  natural  science,  which,  he 
says — 

"  Where  it  bears  undisputed  sway,  robs  the 
intellect  of  ideas,  the  fancy  of  images,  and  the 
heart  of  sentiment,  and  begets  a  narrow,  dry, 
and  hard  disposition,  deserted  by  the  Muses 
and  the  Graces."  ....  "Besides  the  lack 
of  classical  taste,"  he  goes  on,  "there  is 
another  deplorable  circumstance.  The  young 
medical  students  (who  had  come  before  Pro- 
fessor Dubois  -  Reymond  for  examination) 
spoke  and  wrote  incorrect  and  inelegant 
German.  The  uncertainty  of  German  ortho- 
graphy, word-formation,  and  syntax  renders 
instruction  in  the  mother-tongue  more  diffi- 
cult to  us  than  to  nations  with  settled  forms 
of  speech.  But  these  young  men  had  gener- 
ally no  notion  that  any  value  could  be  attached 
to  refinement  of  expression  and  pronuncia- 
tion, to  a  nice  choice  of  words,  to  brevity  and 
precision  of  style.  We  cannot  help  "being 
ashamed  of  such  barbarism  as  Germans,  when 
we  think  of  the  loving  care  which  e.g.  French- 
men and  Englishmen  bestow  on  the  cultiva- 
tion of  their  native  language,  a  breach  of  the 
rules  of  which  appears  to  them  an  act  of 
desecration.  This  neglect  of  the  mother- 
tongue  goes  hand  in  hand  with  a  surprisingly 
limited  acquaintance  with  the  German  classics. 
There  was  a  time  when  men  gave  up  quoting 
from  the  first  part  of  Goethe's  Faust  because 
every  possible  citation  was  hunted  to  death. 
Are  we  approaching  a  tune  when  we  shall  no 
longer  quote  from  it,  because  the  allusion 
•would  not  be  understood  1 " 

The  learned  Rector  also  does  full 
justice  to  the  merits  of  the  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  professors, 

"  Among  whom,"  he  says,  "  there  are  many 
highly-distinguished  men  who  have  rendered 
important  services  to  science."  But  he  adds 
that  "  in  the  choice  of  professors,  party  inter- 
ests and  personal  friendship  have  generally 
much  greater  weight  than  scientific  merit ;  in 
these  respects  the  English  universities  have 
retained  all  the  intolerance  of  those  of  the 
middle  ages." 

No  doubt,  as  long  as  men  are  men, 
they  will  in  England,  as  they  most  cer- 
tainly do  in  Germany,  cetcris  paribus, 
give  the  preference  to  a  friend  or  a  man 
of  sound  (i.e.  their  own)  opinions  on 
politics  and  religion,  and  will  not 
help  an  opponent  or  a  stranger,  who 


entertains  false  and  injurious  (i.e. 
other  than  their  own)  views  on  vital 
questions,  into  a  position  of  power  or 
influence.  But  Englishmen  are  not 
generally  supposed  to  be  exceptionally 
imfair  or  w^scrupulous,  and  probably 
not  one  in  five  of  elections  at  Oxford 
or  Cambridge  are  made  from  party 
motives.  The  offer  of  a  professorship 
in  the  latter  university,  which  was 
made  some  years  ago  to  Professor 
Helmholtz  himself,  is  a  striking  proof 
that  party  and  even  national  prejudices 
have  less  weight  than  the  desire  to 
procure  the  services  of  the  ablest 
teachers. 

"The  different  colleges,"  says  the  learned 
professor  in  another  place,  "  exist  in  absolute 
separation  from  one  another,  and  only  the 
holding  of  examinations,  the  conferring  of 
degrees,  and  the  election  of  professors,  are  the 
concern  of  the  university  as  a  whole." 

*~.  The  time  was  when  there  would  have 
been  a  considerable  amount  of  truth 
in  this  statement,  but  any  one  who  is 
competent  to  give  an  account  of  the 
present  state  of  our  universities  would 
know,  that  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
and  beneficial  changes  which  have 
taken  place  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
is  the  growth  of  an  extensive  system 
of  inter-collegiate  teaching  (not  to 
mention  other  kinds  of  connection), 
which  binds  the  colleges  together  ;  and 
that  it  is  now  by  no  means  true  that 
"they  exist  in  absolute  separation, 
from  one  another." 

"The  English  universities,"  continues  Pro- 
fessor Helmholtz,  "  perform  in  many  respects 
important  services.  They  make  educated 
gentlemen  of  their  scholars,  but  gentlemen 
who  must  not  transgress  the  bounds  of  the 
political  and  religious  party  to  which  they 
belong,  nor  do  they  in  fact  transgress  these 
bounds.  Oxford  belongs  more  especially  to 
the  Tories,  Cambridge  to  the  Whigs." 

This  passage  will  be  read  with  somt 
astonishment  at  Oxford,  particularly 
just  afterthe  now  historical  pro- Russian 
meeting  of  young  Palmerstonians  in 
that  university,  which  will  no  doubt 
have  opened  the  eyes  of  the  professor 
to  the  amazing  mistake  which  he  has 
made.  So  far  is  it,  moreover,  from 
being  the  fact  that  university  men  are 


German   Vuios  of  Oxford  and  Camlridtjc. 


409 


kept  strictly  within  the  bounds  of  their 
religious  and  political  parties,  that 
there  is  probably  no  period  of  life 
in  which  more  changes  of  opinion  in 
religion  and  politics  take  place  than  in 
the  years  passed  at  college. 

Perhaps  the  most  astounding  state- 
ment in  the  whole  address,  and  that 
which  betrays  the  greatest  amount  of 
ignorance  of  the  actual  state  of  things 
at  our  universities,  is  this,  that 

"  The  college  tutors  may  not  deviate  one 
hairsbreadth  from  the  dogmatic  teaching  of 
the  English  Churcb,  without  exposing  them- 
selves to  the  censure  of  their  archbishops,  and 
losing  their  pupils." 

If  the  archbishops  have  this  power, 
the  present  most  reverend  prelates 
are  very  remiss  in  its  exercise. 
We  should  have  to  go  far  back,  I 
think,  in  our  history  to  arrive  at  a 
period  when  the  bishops  had  any  con- 
trol over  the  teaching  at  the  univer- 
sities, and  it  ought  to  be  well-known 
to  any  one  who  undertakes  to  give  an 
account  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  that 
all  tests  have  been  swept  away  by  Act 
of  Parliament. 

It  appeared  to  me  so  very  undesir- 
able that  so  distorted  a  sketch  should 
circulate  in  Germany  under  such  high 
sanction  as  the  faithful  portrait  of  our 
greatest  universities,  that  I  ventured 
to  send  an  article  on  the  subject  to  the 
Deutsche  Rundschau  at  Berlin,  one  of 
the  most  ably  conducted  periodicals  in 
Germany,  which  well  deserves  to  be 
more  extensively  read  in  this  country. 
The  accomplished  editor,  Dr.  Roden- 
berg,  sent  my  strictures  in  MS.  to 
Professor  Helmholtz,  and  they  ap- 
peared, with  his  answer  appended  to 
them,  in  the  February  number  of  the 
Rundschau.  His  reply  may  account 
for  one  or  two  of  the  many  errors  into 
which  he  has  fallen,  though  it  hardly 
seems  to  justify  him  in  speaking  so 
authoritatively  on  a  subject  on  which 
he  had  so  little  recent  or  trustworthy 
information.  He  evidently  writes 
under  the  influence  of  impressions 
made  on  him  long  ago  during  a  visit 
to  Oxford. 

"  When  I  spoke,"  he  says,  "  of  the  censure 
of  the  archbihhopa,  1  did  not  mean  to  attri- 


bute to  them  an  official  right  of  interference, 
but  referred  to  the  influence  which  the  voice 
of  the  higher  clergy  exercised  on  those  classes 
of  society  to  which,  formerly  at  least,  the 
majority  of  students  belonged.  I  was  in 
England  when  the  storm  of  anathemas 
against  Professor  Jowett  passed  through  the 
English  press,  from  very  influential  quarters. 
1  was  not  a  little  surprised  to  see  how  small 
an  amount  of  heterodoxy  sufficed  to  raise  this 
storm." 

Again,  he  says  : — 

"  It  is  difficult  to  form  an  opinion  as  to  the 
extent  of  the  effect  produced  by  reforms,  or 
even  to  learn  from  time  to  time  which  of  the 
many  proposed  alterations  have  been  defini- 
tively adopted  and  carried  into  execution.  A 
connected  account  of  these  changes  by  a  com- 
petent authority  would  be  a  very  valuable 
boon  to  the  German  reader.  I  must  confess 
that  my  own  sketch  refers  to  a  state  of  things 
existing  ten  or  even  twenty  years  ago.  My 
information,  derived  partly  from  books,  and 
partly  from  oral  sources,  dates  as  far  back  as 
that.  But  it  was  not  gathered  from  Dissen- 
ters alone,  or  other  opponents,  but  also  from 
working  members  of  the  universities  them- 
selves. In  the  address  referred  to  by  Mr. 
Perry,  my  object  was  to  lay  before  my  hearers 
a  brief  account  of  the  results  of  the  ancient 
constitution  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  upheld 
for  a  period  of  300  years.  The  recent  reforms 
in  those  institutions  have  certainly  been  in- 
fluenced by  the  example  of  the  German  uni- 
versities, and  afford  honourable  testimony  to 
the  practical  good  sense  of  the  English ;  but 
they  do  not  materially  affect  our  judgment 
of  the  consequences  of  the  ancient  system.  I 
am  sorry  if  I  have  painted  even  the  older 
state  of  things  in  too  dark  a  colour.  Where 
one  depends  on  oral  communication,  there  is 
no  doubt  a  danger  lest  our  authority  may 
have  seen  through  the  coloured  medium  of 
his  own  isolated  experiences.  But  the  merits 
and  deficiencies  of  a  system  which  differs  from 
the  ideas  and  customs  of  his  own  home 
naturally  make  a  deeper  impression  on  a 
stranger  than  those  to  which  he  has  been 
long  accustomed  in  his  own  country.  At  all 
events  it  is  very  satisfactory  to  learn  from 
one  who  is  acquainted  with  both  German  and 
English  universities,  and  who  has  shown  in  a 
recent  article  on  the  German  Universities  in 
Macmillaris  Magazine  (December,  1877),  that 
he  measures  by  the  same  ideal  standard  as 
ourselves  that  the  development  of  the  English 
universities  has  taken  a  better  direction  than 
it  seemed  to  the  friends  of  scientific  progress 
to  have  done  at  no  very  distant  date." 

The  errors  into  which  Professor 
Helmholtz  has  fallen,  and  even  the 
way  in  which  he  accounts  for  them, 
make  us  feel  very  forcibly  how  far  we 
are  still  removed  from  those  who,  in- 
tellectually, ought  to  be  our  nearest 


410 


German   Views  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge. 


neighbours.  Yet,  after  all,  the  fault  is 
not  perhaps  altogether  on  their  side. 
There  is  something  very  difficult  to 
understand  in  English  life  and  insti- 
tutions, and  our  history  explains  the 
difficulty.  Neither  our  highways  nor 
our  political  constitution  have  been 
made  by  Napoleons  with  a  tabula  rasa 
before  them.  In  travelling  along  the 
former  you  cannot  proceed  for  hours, 
as  in  France,  in  the  same  direction 
along  a  straight  high-road;  you  are 
perpetually  turned  out  of  your  way  by 
this  man's  field  or  that  man's  garden. 
And  in  trying  to  understand  the  latter 
you  are  continually  coming  across 
some  antiquated  form,  some  ancient 
privilege  or  custom,  some  vested  right, 
which  throws  you  out  of  the  course 
which  political  science  has  laid  down. 
We  have  a  civil  polity  which  includes, 
in  theory  at  least,  almost  every  form 
of  government  which  has  ever  existed 
in  the  world.  Absolute  monarchy, 
limited  monarchy,  aristocracy,  oli- 
garchy, timocracy,  and  democracy, 
existing  side  by  side,  and  agreeing  or 
jostling  one  another  as  they  may.  We 
have  a  powerful  and  wealthy  Estab- 
lished Church,  with  unbounded  reli- 
gious freedom.  Our  jurisprudence  is  a 
jungle  of  usages,  precedents,  royal  enact- 
ments, judgments,  and  statute  law — a 
jungle  through  which  only  a  well- 
trained,  thick-skinned  legal  trapper  can 
make  his  way.  Our  social  system,  our 
distinctions  of  rank,  the  titles  of  our 
aristocracy,  are  equally  hard  to  un- 
derstand. The  average  Englishman 
does  not  understand  them,  much  less 
the  intelligent  foreigner.  The  latter 
has  read,  perhaps,  that  no  nobleman 
can  be  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  then  reads  the  names 
of  Marquises,  Earls,  and  Viscounts  in 
every  division-list.  On  further  inquiry 
he  is  told  that  they  are  not  Lords  at  all, 
but  Commoners.  Again,  accustomed  at 
home  to  look  on  the  noblesse  as  a  dis- 
tinct class  or  caste,  he  is  amazed  on 
being  introduced  to  the  grandson  of  a 
duke  who  bears  the  same  title  as  his 
butler.  He  finds  that  he  may  call  a 
man  Mr.  to  his  face,  but  that  the 


same  person  is  insulted  if  he  addresses 
a  letter  to  him  in  the  same  way.  The 
consequence  is  that  the  intelligent 
but  puzzled  foreigner  makes  assurance 
doubly  sure  by  addressing  you  as  "  Sir, 
Mr.,  Dr. ,  Esquire." 

Nor  do  our  two  ancient  universities 
present  fewer  anomalies  to  the  foreign 
inquirer  than  our  other  institutions. 
The  changes  which  they  have  severally 
undergone,  have  not  been  made  simul- 
taneously, nor  have  they  been  gene- 
rally made  known  to  the  public  at 
large.  The  character  of  the  teaching, 
and  even  the  subjects  of  study,  are  not 
always  the  same  in  the  different  col- 
leges, and  the  spirit  in  which  they  are 
ruled  is  often  essentially  different. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  an  average 
Oxford  or  Cambridge  man  could  give 
off-hand  a  clear  account  of  the  consti- 
tution of  his  university,  or  even  of  the 
particular  college  to  which  he  belongs. 

There  prevails,  moreover,  a  very 
remarkable  reticence,  the  result  of 
both  pride  and  modesty,  among  the 
members  of  our  most  ancient  schools 
and  universities.  You  will  rarely  find 
an  Oxford,  or  Cambridge,  or  Eton 
man  writing  panegyrics  on  his  college, 
or  enlarging  in  conversation  on  the 
learning  of  its  tutors,  or  the  wonderful 
performances  and  high  honours  of  its 
students.  Our  scholars  have  an  in- 
vincible repugnance  s'afficher  before 
the  world  at  large,  and  their  reputa- 
tion suffers  accordingly  in  this  modern 
world  of  enormous  "  posters." 

On  the  whole,  then,  we  must  not  be 
greatly  surprised  that  foreigners  often 
utterly  mistake  what  we  ourselves  im- 
perfectly understand,  but  must  do  our 
best  to  enlighten  them.  It  is,  after 
all,  worth  while  to  be  understood  and 
appreciated  by  men  of  such  eminence 
as  Professor  Helmholtz,  and  corpora- 
tions like  the  Berlin  University ;  and, 
in  conclusion,  I  can  but  echo  the  Pro- 
fessor's wish,  that  some  competent 
person  would  publish  a  full  and  clear 
account  of  the  recent  changes  and 
present  constitution  of  our  two  great 
universities. 

WALTER  C.  PERRY. 


411 


THE  ENGLISH  LAW  OF  BUEIAL.1 


"  The  English  Law  of  Burial  permits 
the  performance  of  other  than  the  rites  of 
the  Church  of  England  in  the  churchyards 
and  cemeteries  of  the  National  Church" 
This  proposition  is  not  new — it  has  been 
frequently  stated  by  myself — it  has  been 
stated  with  the  utmost  force  of  argu- 
ment by  a  distinguished  dignitary  of 
the  Church  residing  in  the  precincts  of 
the  Temple,  and  adding  to  his  eccle- 
siastical learning  the  legal  acumen 
which  pervades  those  venerable  pre- 
cincts— who  has  twice  written  to  the 
Times  newspaper,  and  who,  on  the 
last  occasion,  the  4th  of  September, 
1877,  received  an  entire  endorsement 
of  his  view  from  a  powerful  leading 
article  in  that  journal.  To  his  argu- 
ments, and  to  the  arguments  of  the 
Times,  although  many  letters  were 
written  in  connection  with  the  general 
subject  of  burials  immediately  after- 
wards, no  answer  whatever  has  been 
given.  It  is  therefore  worth  while  to 
ask  whether  in  point  of  fact  the  argu- 
ments have  been  left  unanswered 
because  they  are  unanswerable. 

I.  The  position  is  this — the  law  of 
burials  as  it  now  stands  in  England 
satisfies  all  the  demands  of  Noncon- 
formists, and  renders  futile  all  the 
objections  which  Churchmen  have 
raised  to  these  demands.  First,  it 
permits  the  burial  in  our  national 
churchyards  of  the  corpses  of  those 
who  die  within  the  parish,  whether 
Nonconformists  or  Churchmen,  whet  her 
baptised  or  unbaptised.  Secondly,  it 
permits  the  use  of  other  services  over 
them  than  that  prescribed  in  the  burial 
office  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
Thirdly,  it  will  not  enforce  the  in- 
tervention of  the  clergyman  of  the 
parish  to  prevent  the  use  of  such  ser- 
vices if  conducted  without  brawling 
or  disorder.  Fourthly,  all  that  is 
prescribed  by  the  law  is  the  office 

1  Eead  at  a  meeting  of  clergy  and  laymen, 
Feb.  7,  1878. 


which  the  clergyman  is  to  use,  and 
the  class  of  persons  over  whom  it 
is  and  is  not  to  be  used.  All  that  is 
secured  by  the  deed  or  by  the  tradi- 
tions of  consecration  is  that  the 
ground  shall  be  set  apart  as  "a 
cemetery  or  burial-ground."  2  The 
foriit  of  a  consecration  service,  whe- 
ther for  church  or  churchyard,  has 
no  legal  validity,  and  depends  on  the 
will  or  fancy  of  each  individual  bishop ; 
but  even  if  it  had  any  legal  force, 
there  is  nothing  in  that  for  churches 
which  confines  it  to  the  .Church  of 
England,  and  in  that  for  burial 
grounds  there  is  nothing  which  con- 
fines it  even  to  the  Christian  religion, 
I  shall  proceed  to  state  the  grounds 
for  these  several  positions. 

(1)  First,  there  is  no  law  which 
debars  those  who  die  in  the  parish  of 
their  natural  right  to  be  interred  in 
the  parish  churchyard ;  and  to  this 
right,  difference  of  creed,  or  conduct, 
raises  no  bar. 

The  bodies  of  unbaptised  children 
have  constantly,  and  by  a  usage  which 
has  by  this  time  acquired  a  prescrip- 
tion which  no  law  would  reverse,  been 
buried  within  our  churchyards.  An 
Act  of  48th  George  IV.,  chapter  75, 
expressly  provides  for  the  interment 
in  churchyards  of  dead  human  bodies, 
even  although  not  of  the  parish,  thrown 
up  on  the  shore,  without  regard  to 
creed  or  race.  A  statute  of  4th 
George  IV.,  chapter  52,  provides  also 
for  the  interment  of  those  who  by  a 
coroner's  inquest  have  been  declared 

2  The  usual  deed  of  consecration  tor  a 
church  asserts  that  the  church  "is  set  apart 
from  all  profane  and  common  uses,  and  to 
the  service  of  Almighty  God,  and  for  the 
performance  of  divine  worship,  according  to 
the  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  Church  of 
England."  Even  in  the  case  of  a  church,  there 
is  no  exclusion  of  other  rites.  The  deed  does 
not  say,  "And  none  other."  But  in  the  deed 
for  the  consecration  of  cemeteries  and  church- 
yards  this  limitation  does  not  usually  occur,  and 
they  are  simply  set  apart  as  "  burial-grounds." 


412 


The  English  Law  of  Burial. 


to  be  felo  de  se.  It  is  needless  to 
argue  this  point  further.  There  is 
probably  no  one  who  would  contest 
it.  And  yet  in  every  one  of  these 
cases,  the  "  desecration "  (as  it  is 
strangely  called)  of  our  churchyards 
by  the  bodies  of  those  who  do  not 
belong  to  the  Church  of  England,  or 
who  would  fall  under  one  of  the  three 
excluded  classes  mentioned  in  the  first 
rubric  of  the  burial  service  (of  which 
I  will  speak  presently),  has  occurred 
already.  "God's  Acre"  has  already  re- 
ceived within  its  limits  the  dust  of  the 
very  persons  whose  burial  there  is  so 
vehemently  deprecated.  In  all  these 
cases  it  is  the  Nonconformists  who  are 
within  the  law — it  is  the  protesting 
clergy  who  are  against  the  law.  The 
interment  of  Nonconformists,  at  least 
in  silence,  is  legal.  The  acknowledg- 
ment of  this  right  is  the  concession  of 
the  key  of  the  whole  position.  The 
"  freehold  "  of  the  soil  is  invaded  by 
the  persons  whom  the  clergy  wish  to 
exclude,  and  the  invasion  is  guaranteed 
by  law. 

(2)  Secondly,  there  is  no  law  for- 
bidding at  such  interment  the  use  of 
prayers,  hymns,  or  addresses  to  be 
spoken  or  read  by  the  friends  of  the 
deceased.  The  only  law  which  specifies 
anything  for  the  religious  ceremony 
of  interment  is  that  contained  in  the 
two  introductory  rubrics  of  the  Burial 
Service.  It  is  worth  observing  that 
the  first  rubric  was  not  introduced  into 
the  Prayer-book  till  1662,  and  that, 
therefore,  during  the  whole  period 
between  the  Reformation  and  the 
Restoration,  from  1549  to  1662,  the 
service  of  the  Prayer-book  might 
be  used  over  the  classes  now  excluded 
from  the  benefit  of  the  Burial  Service.1 

I  will  not  now  detain  you  with  this 
prohibition.  Late  as  it  is,  and  belong- 
ing to  the  most  vindictive  period  of  the 

1  "No  prohibition  of  the  Burial  Service  for 
uubaptised  persons  or  indeed  for  any  class  of 
persons  is  to  be  found  in  the  Liturgies  of 
Edward  and  Elizabeth  .  .  .  and  the  C8th 
Canon  inforcing  this  statutory  right  only  ex- 
cepted  persons  excommunicate  and  impeni- 
tent." (Judgment  of  the  Court  of  Arches  in 
Escott  v.  Mastin,  Broderick  and  Fremantle's 
Collection,  p.  16). 


English  Church,  it  yet  has  by  the  legis- 
lation of  1662  become  statute  law.   But 
it  does  not,  as  we  have  seen,  exclude  the 
interment  of  those  three  classes.      All 
that  it  does  is  to  prevent  the  clergyman 
from  reading  in  its  entirety  over  their 
graves  the  Burial  Office ;  and  by  the 
second    rubric     it    is     ordered     that 
the   Burial  Oifice  in  the  Prayer  book 
shall    be     used     by    the     clergyman. 
But    there    is    not    a    word    said   to 
prohibit  the   use   either    of   parts    of 
the    Burial    Service    over    these    ex- 
cepted  cases  or  of  any  other  form  of 
service,  by  the  friends  of  the  deceased. 
The  law  is  a  restraint  upon  the  clergy- 
man.    It  is  no  restraint  on  any  one 
except  the  clergyman.     And  what  the 
law  allows  has  frequently  taken  place. 
Even   in  the  case    of    funerals   per- 
formed   not  only  within  churchyards 
but  within  churches,  other  forms  than 
those  prescribed  in  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon  Prayer    have    been    constantly 
used.     Hymns  which  have  no  place  in 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  are  again 
and  again  sung  at  funerals.  Addresses 
to  the  bystanders,  or  if  not  addresses 
words  of  consolation,  even  more  effec- 
tive than  addresses,  have  been  spoken. 
Orations    till    the    beginning   of   the 
last  century  were  not  uncommon  at  the 
grave  of  the  dead,  or  as  part  of  the 
funeral  service.    For  a  long  continuity 
of  years  the  words  which  have  formed 
the   close    of    the    funeral   of    every 
illustrious   person   interred   in  "West- 
minster Abbey  are  not  taken  from  the 
Burial  Office,  but  are  the  words  of  an 
anthem  written  by  a  Lutheran  com- 
poser and  first  sung  over  the  grave  of 
a  Lutheran  queen  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century.     All  these  practices,  no 
doubt,  if  the  words  of  the  second  rubric 
are  construed  with  absolute  rigidity,  are 
against  the   strict  letter  of  the    law. 
But  there   are   other   usages   of   this 
kind,  in  our  churchyards,  which  are 
not  against  the  letter  of  the  law,  on 
which  the  law  is  totally  silent,   and 
which    long    custom    has    vindicated 
beyond  all  question.     In  many  church 
yards   there   have    been    funerals    in 
which      Freemasons,     Odd     Fellows, 
Druids,    and     all     manner    of     such 


The  English  Law  of  Burial. 


413 


societies  have  used  in  the  presence, 
but  without  the  interference  of  the 
clergyman,  their  peculiar  ceremonies. 
Not  only  so — but  Nonconformists 
have  interred  their  dead  in  our 
churchyards  with  their  own  services, 
and  addresses  have  been  delivered  by 
persons  not  belonging  to  the  Church 
of  England  over  the  graves  of  the 
departed  at  the  time  of  the  funeral, 
to  which  no  exception  whatever  has 
been  taken  by  ecclesiastical  or  by 
civil  authority.  It  has  been  stated 
publicly  by  the  Rector  of  St.  Helier's 
in  the  island  of  Jersey,  that  now  for 
many  years  Nonconformists  and  Roman 
Catholics  have,  in  the  churchyard  of 
that  parish,  without  the  slightest  dis- 
order or  the  slightest  objection,  used 
their  own  ceremonies  in  the  interment 
of  their  own  dead.  Within  the  last 
two  years  a  highly  respected  Russian 
priest  was  interred  in  the  consecrated 
portion  of  the  cemetery  of  Kensal 
Green  with  a  service  partly  consist- 
ing of  our  own  Liturgy l  and  partly 
of  prayers  from  the  Greek  Office, 
offered  up  by  the  distinguished  Archi- 
mandrite who  now  officiates  in  the 
Greek  Church  at  London  Wall.  In 
the  consecrated  part  of  the  cemetery 
of  West  Brompton,2  at  the  funeral  of 
the  late  Mr.  Odger,  addresses  were 
delivered  at  the  grave  immediately 
after  the  conclusion  of  the  service  by 
the  well-known  Comtist,  Professor 
Beesley,  by  the  celebrated  Radical, 
Professor  Fawcett,  and  by  the  Rev. 

1  "  The  chapel  service  in  cases  of  Greek  and 
Russian    funerals    is    omitted.     The  English 
committal  to  the   grave  occurs.     The  Greek 
and  Russian   service  follows."     (Chaplain  of 
the  Kensal  Green  Cemetery). 

2  According  to  the  Act  for  the  establish- 
ment of  this  cemetery  (West  of  London  Ceme- 
tery) 1  Viet  c.  130,  §3,  the  part  where  Mr. 
Odger  was  buried  is  "set  apart  for  the  inter- 
ment of  the  dead  according    to  the   rights 
(query,    rites  ?)    and    usages  of  the    United 
Church  of  England  and  Ireland  ....  and 
when    consecrated   shall   be    set   apart    and 
be   used    and     applied    exclusively    for    the 
purposes   of   Christian  Burial."    This    last 
expression,  which  is  the  only  one  used  with 
an  exclusive  sense,  is   equally  employed  in 
the    next    clause    (§4),    for     the    part    set 
apart  for  the  interment  of  persons  not  being 
members  of  the  Established  Church. 


Mr.  Murphy,  a  Nonconformist  minister, 
without  the  slightest  interference  on 
the  part  either  of  the  clergyman, 
the  proprietors,  or  magistrate.  Again, 
in  the  Preamble  of  the  Act  of  5  King 
George  IV.,  chap.  25,  an  Act  applying 
to  Ireland,  it  is  recited  that  this 
"  easement  of  burial,  according  to  the 
rites  of  the  several  religions  professed 
by  all  classes  of  His  Majesty's  sub- 
jects," has  been  long  enjoyed  "in  the 
churchyards  of  Protestant  churches 
— and  this  apparently  without  any 
complaint  or  disorder  arising  even  in 
that  highly  excitable  country.  Again, 
in  the  churchyard  of  Old  St.  Pancras, 
down  to  1819,  were  buried  Roman 
Catholics  and  Nonconformists,  and 
also,  it  is  believed,  other  foreigners ; 
and  as  late  as  1811  the  Turkish  Am- 
bassador was  thus  interred  with  the 
ceremonies  of  the  Mohammedan  re- 
ligion, without  remonstrance  from  the 
bishop  or  clergy.1 

These  instances,  combined  with  the 
absence  of  any  legal  prohibition,  show 
that  the  defilement  or  "  besmirchment " 
of  our  churchyards  (to  use  an  offensive 
word  employed  at  the  late  Church 
Congress)  by  services  other  than 
those  prescribed  in  the  Liturgy,  has 
already  taken  place  to  such  an  extent 
that  it  is  too  late  to  protest  against  it 
as  a  novelty  now  to  be  introduced  for 

1  "Monday  morning  (1811)  about  nine 
o'clock,  the  remains  of  the  late  Turkish  Am- 
bassador to  this  country  were  interred  in  the 
burial  ground  of  St.  Pancras.  The  procession 
consisted  of  a  hearse  containing  the  body, 
covered  with  white  satin,  which  was  followed 
by  his  excellency's  private  carriage,  and  two 
mourning  coaches,  in  which  were  the  late 
ambassador's  attendants.  On  arriving  at  the 
ground,  the  body  was  taken  out  of  a  white 
deal  shell  which  contained  it,  and  according 
to  the  Mohammedan  custom,  was  wrapped  in 
rich  robes  and  thrown  into  the  grave,  and  im- 
mediately after  a  large  stone,  with  a  Moham- 
medan inscription  on  it,  nearly  the  size  of  the 
body,  was  laid  upon  it  ;  and,  after  some  other 
Mohammedan  ceremonies  had  been  gone 
through,  the  attendants  left  the  ground.  The 
procession,  on  its  way  to  the  churchyard, 
galloped  nearly  all  the  way.  The  grave  was 
dug  in  an  obscure  part  of  the  burial  ground. '' — 
From  the  History  of  St.  Pancras  by  Samuel 
Palmer,  1870.  Page  255.-  The  name  of  the 
Turkish)  Ambassador  (Mehemet  Edfik  Effendi) 
appears  in  the  Register  of  St.  Pancras. 


414 


The  English  Law  of  Burial. 


the  first  time.  The  only  argument 
that  has  been  used  against  the 
legality  of  the  permission  of  such 
services  is  the  one  which,  when 
challenged  to  produce  any  such  argu- 
ment, was  employed  by  the  present 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  and  by  the  present 
Attorney-General  when  asked  a  ques- 
tion upon  the  subject  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  It  was  to  this  effect : — That 
such  liberty  was  prohibited  by  a  sec- 
tion of  the  Public  Worship  Regula- 
tion Act.  It  is  sufficient  to  reply, 
with  the  distinguished  "  London 
clergyman "  to  whom  I  have  before 
referred,  \"  The  Act  in  question  made 
nothing  lawful  or  unlawful  which 
was  not  so  previously.  It  was  an  Act 
for  regulating  proceedure  and  nothing 
more.  It  merely  said  :  '  If  the  in- 
cumbent shall  use,  or  permit  to  be 
used,  in  any  church  or  churchyard, 
any  service  not  authorised  by  the 
Prayer-book,  certain  methods  of 
bringing  him  to  account  are  hereby 
established.'  It  said  not  one  word 
of  new  liabilities  or  new  disabilities. 
It  left  the  law  as  it  found  it.  Were  it 
true  that  the  Public  Worship  Act 
made  Nonconformist  burials  in  church- 
yards illegal,  or  added  one  iota  to  the 
facilities  of  preventing  or  punishing 
them,  we  know  full  well  that  the  Bill 
would  never  have  been  suffered  to  be- 
come law,  or  that  its  repeal  would  in- 
stantly be  demanded  by  the  imperious 
clamour  of  public  opinion."  If  this  be 
the  only  argument  (and  it  is  the  only 
argument x  which  has  been  adduced), 
all  that  the  Dissenters  need  demand  is 
the  repeal  of  that  one  Section  of  the 
Public  Worship  Regulation  Act ;  and 
all  that  the  15,000  protesting  clergy 
have  to  rely  upon  against  the  intru- 
sions which  they  so  much  deprecate,  is 
that  very  Public  Worship  Regulation 
Act  which  so  large  a  portion  of  them 
have  for  the  last  two  years  been  condemn- 
ing with  a  vehemence  which  would  lead 
one  to  suppose  that  its  repeal  would 
be  the  greatest  benefit  that  could 
possibly  be  conferred  upon  them. 

(3)  But,   thirdly,  there  arises    the 
question     whether     the       permission 
1  See  Postscript  to  this  article. 


could  be  refused.  It  may  be  said 
that  while  these  cases  would  prove 
that  the  use  of  hymns,  anthems, 
services,  and  addresses,  other  than 
those  prescribed  in  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon Prayer,  is  admissible  with  the 
permission  of  the  clergyman ;  and 
although  it  be  conceded  that  such  per- 
mission, on  the  part  of  the  clergyman, 
would  be  lawful,  yet  that  the  law 
would  justify  him  in  refusal,  and  that 
his  refusal  would  in  that  case  render 
them  illegal. 

This,  however,  resolves  itself  simply 
into  a  case  of  trespass.  It  may  be, 
as  was  argued  in  the  instance  of  the 
erection  of  a  well-known  tombstone, 
that  the  clergyman,  as  trustee  of  the 
churchyard,  might  wish  to  reserve 
the  whole  of  the  ground  for  the  pur- 
pose of  feeding  his  sheep ;  but  these 
considerations  would  not  apply  in 
the  consecrated  portions  of  our  city 
cemeteries  ;  they  do  not  belong  to  the 
general  law  of  the  Church ;  they 
would  arise  at  most  from  a  complex 
and  difficult  question  of  the  right  of 
property,  a  right  no  doubt  which 
ought  not  to  be  disparaged,  but  which 
still  cannot  be  said  to  enter  into  the 
graver  courts  of  conscience  or  of  re- 
ligion. But  even  if  we  grant  this  pro- 
prietary right,  which  has  been  already 
broken  through  and  through  by  the 
acknowledged  claim  to  interment,  with 
or  without  the  incumbent's  consent, — 
even  if,  after  having  been  compelled 
to  concede  the  sacred  soil  for  the  in- 
terment of  a  saintly  Quaker  like 
Elizabeth  Fry,  the  clergyman  still 
claims  the  privilge  of  forbidding 
a  word  over  her  grave,  we  still  ask 
who  is  to  interfere,  and  how  ?  Let 
us  take  a  few  instances.  The  grave 
has  been  dug  for  the  body  of  an  inno- 
cent unbaptised  child,  of  whom  our 
Saviour  said,  "  Of  such  is  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven."  To  cause  such  a 
grave  to  be  dug  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  undoubted  right  of  its  parents. 
The  father  or  the  mother  utter  a  cry  of 
anguish  by  the  side  of  the  little  coffin. 
That,  as  we  have  saen,  is  an  acknow- 
ledged custom.  If  the  clergyman  calls 
in  the  police,  is  there  any  law  to  sustain 


The,  English  Law  of  Burial. 


415 


him  in  this  refusal  ?  Or  a  Welsh 
miner,  of  the  Baptist  persuasion,  is 
borne,  after  some  great  catastrophe, 
to  his  last  resting-place  by  his  mourn- 
ing co-religionists,  singing  perhaps  a 
hymn  of  Wesley  or  of  Doddridge.  Is 
there,  or  is  there  not  any  statute  law,  is 
there,  or  is  there  not  any  ecclesiastical 
canon,  which  will  justify  the  clergyman 
in  forbidding  the  utterance  of  one  of 
those  sweet  Psalmists  of  Israel  ?  Is 
there,  or  is  there  not  any  law  in  these 
realms,  so  absurd,  (I  venture  to  use  the 
words  of  the  Primate)  so  "inhuman," 
as  to  enforce  this  prohibition  ?  If  there 
be,  let  it  be  pointed  out.  "  No  mere 
dictum  will  suffice  of  some  ecclesias- 
tical judge  "  (I  quote  again  from  "  the 
London  Clergyman  "),  "in  some  unde- 
fended suit,  in  some  remote  part  of  the 
country,  denouncing  a  Dissenting  inter- 
ment as  an  unwarrantable  intrusion. 
What  we  ask  is,  how  will  such  a 
dictum  fare  in  'the  refiner's  fire'  of 
a  Court  of  Final  Appeal,  when  all  the 
legislation  of  the  last  half  century, 
and  every  altered  circumstance  of  the 
present  will  be  taken  into  view?"1 


1  Such  a  case  is  the  judgment  of  Dr. 
Lushiugtou  stated  in  the  6th  vol.  of  the 
Jurist,  New  Series,  280,  Feb.  8,  1860  : — 

"  This  was  a  case  in  the  Court  of  Arches  of 
office  promoted  by  the  secretary  of  the  Bishop 
of  Chichester  against  the  father  and  another, 
for  having  buried  or  assisted  to  bury  the  corpse 
of  an  unbaptised  child  in  the  churchyard  of 
Patcham,  and  having  publicly  read  or  per- 
formed '  a  burial  service  '  over  the  corpse. 

"The  parties  submitted  and  acknowledged 
their  offence,  and  were  admonished  and  dis- 
missed on  payment  of  costs. 

"  Dr.  Lushington  observed,  '  I  cannot 
doubt  as  to  the  law.  It  is  clearly  illegal  to 
collect  an  assemblage  of  persons  in  a  church- 
yard for  the  purpose  of  forcibly  burying  the 
corpse  of  an  unbaptised  person,  or  to  read  a 
service  over  such  corpse.  By  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal law,  no  person,  unless  duly  authorised,  can 
be  permitted  to  perform  service  on  consecrated 
ground.' " 

But  this  was  an  undefended  suit,  and  it 
may  be  observed  that  the  first  part  of  the 
judgment  ("It  is  clearly  illegal  to  collect  an 
assemblage  of  persons  in  a  churchyard  for  the 
purpose  of  forcibly  burying  the  corpse  of  an 
unbaptised  person  ")  runs  counter  to  the  prin- 
ciple, now  universally  conceded,  that  every 
one  dying  in  the  parish  has  an  undisputed 
right  to  interment.  And  the  second  part,  on 
whatever  ground  it  rests,  does  not  prevent  the 


And  what  we  further  ask  is,  "  Show 
us  the  statute  or  canon,  chapter  and 
verse,  which,  after  the  acknowledged 
right  of  interment,  after  the  acknow- 
ledged right  of  the  clergyman  to  per- 
mit the  use  of  Nonconformist  cere- 
monies, would  justify  a  clergyman  in 
forcibly  preventing  either  the  inter- 
ment or  the  ceremony  ? ' ' 

(4)  There  is  one  right  no  doubt 
which  the  law  of  the  land  and  the  law 
of  the  Church  insure  to  the  clergyman 
and  the  churchwardens,  and  not  only 
as  ecclesiastical  officers,  but  as  citizens. 
It  is  a  right  also  which  all  Noncon- 
formists and  even  all  Secularists  would 
gladly  concede  for  their  own  credit, 
as  well  as  for  the  sake  of  the  church- 
yard and  the  clergyman,  namely,  the 
right  to  call  in  the  police  to  interfere 
with  brawling  or  disorderly  conduct. 

Every  legislative  proposal  which  has 
been  made  on  this  subject  has  been 
accompanied  by  clauses  or  by  wishes 
which  have  only  not  been  expressed 
in  legal  provisions  because  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  finding  proper  legal  terms  to 
prevent  any  infringement  of  decorum 
or  respect  on  these  occasions.  But  the 
existing  law  enables  clergymen,  church- 
wardens, proprietors  of  cemeteries,  or 
any  other  body,  to  check  disorderly 
proceedings  on  which  not  only  Church- 
men, but  Nonconformists,  and  Non- 
conformists even  more  than  Church- 
men, would  be  grateful  for  restraints. 

The  practices  excluded  (down  to 
recent  times)  were  precisely  named  in 
the  88th  Canon  and  in  the  5th  and  6th 
of  Edward  VI.  c.  4. 

They  are  not  prayers  or  hymns  or 
addresses  by  whomsoever  uttered.  All 
these  were  by  implication  permitted. 
The  practices  which  the  clergymen 
may  repress  are  plays,  feasts,  suppers, 
Church  ales,  drinkings,  temporal 
courts'  leets,  lay-juries/musters,  or  any 
other  profane  usage ;  brawling,  fray- 
ing, fighting,  smiting,  chiding,  draw- 
ing with  the  weapon.-  With  the  power 

clergyman  from  duly  authorising  a  service 
other  than  the  prescribed  Burial  Office. 

2  By  23  and  24  Victoria, 'c.  32,  §  2,  the  eccle- 
siastical penalties  were  abolished,  and  civil 
penalties  substituted,  and  the  offence  confined 


416 


TJie  English  Law  of  Burial. 


of  suppressing  these,  the  churchyards 
and  the  consecrated  portions  of 
our  cemeteries  would  be  sufficiently 
guarded  ;  and,  at  any  rate,  it  is  the 
only  guard  which  the  law  allows  under 
existing  circumstances.  A  brawl,  even 
a  riot,  may  take  place,  even  although 
the  form  used  be  that  of  our  own 
solemn  burial  service  ;  and  worse  could 
not  occur  were  the  Methodist  to  use 
his  hymns  or  even  the  Secularist  to 
make  his  address.  It  may  occur,  we 
grieve  to  say,  by  the  misconduct  of  a 
single  drunken  clergyman,  or  by  the 
folly  of  a  rabble  of  mourners,  who 
have  been  the  followers  of  a  funeral 
of  the  Church  of  England. 

II.  These  then  are  the  liberties 
which  the  law  of  England  allows ;  these 
are  the  liberties  which  those  who  wish 
to  maintain  the  law  of  our  Church 
unaltered  are  pledged  to  defend  ; 
these  are  the  liberties  which  the  Non- 
conformists, in  ignorance  of  their  own 
existing  rights,  have,  during  the  last 
few  years,  been  seeking  so  vehemently 
to  obtain. 

It  may  be  said  with  a  smile  of 
incredulity — Is  it  possible  that  such 
a  secret  can  have  been  so  long  un- 
known ?  Is  it  possible  that  my  friend 
Mr.  Osborne  Morgan  has  been  for  so 
many  years  kicking  at  an  open  door, 
and  that  my  friend  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln  has  so  long  been  invoking  all 
the  powers  of  Heaven  and  earth 
against  a  sacrilege  which  he  has  been 
for  years  permitting,  and  in  which 
he  at  this  moment  acquiesces  ? 

It  would  be  astonishing,  if  it  were 
not  that  English  law,  and  especially 
ecclesiastical  law,  is  constantly  liable 
to  these  surprises.  Every  one  was 
astonished  when  within  this  century 
some  one  demanded  to  fight  the 
plaintiff  by  wager  of  battle.  Many 
would  be  astonished  at  hearing  for 
the  first  time  that  there  is  no  such 

to  the  act  of  any  one  "who  shall  molest,  let, 
disturb,  vex  or  trouble,  or  by  any  other  un- 
lawful means  disquiet  or  misuse  any  preacher 
duly  authorised  to  preach  therein,  or  any 
clergyman  in  holy  orders  in  any  churchyard." 
It  is  probable  that  this  Act  would  guard  the 
preacher  of  a  Nonconformist  community,  as 
well  as  the  clergyman  himself. 


thing  as  a  law  of  primogeniture  in 
England.  Many  would  be  startled  at 
the  discovery  that  in  the  old  Catholic 
Church  the  sacraments  of  baptism, 
marriage,  and  absolution  could  be 
performed  without  a  priest,  and  the 
sacrament  of  confirmation  without  a 
bishop.  Every  one  was  astonished 
when  it  was  found  that  a  great 
suit  under  the  Public  Worship  Eegu- 
lation  Act  fell  to  pieces  because  the 
judge  sat  in  Lambeth  and  not  at 
Westminster.  Many  persons  were 
astonished  when  distinguished  Noncon- 
formists found  that  they  could  legally 
deliver  addresses  on  the  subject  of 
Christian  missions  within  the  walls 
of  Westminster  Abbey.  Eleven  thou- 
sand1 clergy  in  1864  were  terrified 
beyond  measure  by  finding  that  the 
doctrines  of  verbal  inspiration,  and 
the  endless  duration  of  hell  torments, 
were  not  parts  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Perhaps  even  a 
larger  number  in  1850  were  exas- 
perated almost  to  frenzy  by  finding 
that  the  absolute  unconditional  regene- 
ration of  infants  in  baptism  might  be 
freely  questioned  within  the  pale  of 
the  Church.  Yet  in  each  case  not 
only  are  these  doctrines  now  acknow- 
ledged to  be  lawful,  but  dignitaries  of 
the  Church  are  freely  suffered  to  preach 
openly  truths  which  formerly  could 
hardly  be  spoken  of  except  with  bated 
breath ;  and  in  one  case,  that  of  bap- 
tismal regeneration,  the  late  respected 
Regius  Professor  of  Divinity  in  Ox- 
ford wrote  an  elaborate  work  to  prove 
that  the  decision  of  the  Privy  Council 
which  affirmed  the  Gorham  judgment 
was  the  only  one  which  could  be  held 
compatible  with  patristic  orthodoxy. 

1  Probably  11,000  in  1864  would  be  nearly, 
in  proportion,  the  same  as  15,000  at  the  pre- 
sent time.  But  of  those  11,000  would  twenty 
sign  the  same  declaration  now  ?  And  is  the 
value  of  the  15,000  signatures  more  than  those 
of  the  11,000  of  which  Bishop  Thirl  wall  said 
at  the  time,  "I  cannot  consider  them  in  the 
light  of  so  many  ciphers,  which  add  to  the 
value  of  the  figures  which  they  follow  ;  but  I 
consider  them  in  the  light  of  a  row  of  figures 
preceded  by  a  decimal  point,  so  that  however 
far  the  series  may  be  prolonged  it  can  never 
rise  to  the  value  of  a  single  unit"  (Guardian, 
April  27,.  1864). 


TJie  English  Law  of  Burial. 


417 


In  this  very  case  of  burials  many 
in  Scotland  would  150  years  ago  have 
been  astonished  to  find  that  an  Epis- 
copalian minister,  or  a  Roman  Catholic 
priest,  could  with  all  the  paraphernalia 
of  his  Church,  read  the  funeral  service 
over  the  departed  in  churchyards  of 
the  Presbyterian  Church  of  Scotland. 
And  most  Englishmen  probably  will 
be  startled  to  know  that  the  practice 
which  they  so  vehemently  deprecate  in 
England,  has  existed  continuously  and 
constantly  for  centuries  without  incon- 
venience in  Ireland.  The  fact  is  that 
in  subjects  so  complex,  in  laws  framed 
without  special  regard  to  the  new  state 
of  things  which  has  sprung  up  around 
us,  it  is  almost  inevitable  but  that 
many  practices  will  be  found  within 
the  liberties  of  the  Church  that  have 
before  been  treated  as  impossible. 
The  fact  of  a  liberty  not  having  been 
discovered  is  no  proof  against  its 
existence. 

III.  Now  if  this  be  so,  let  me  briefly 
point  out  some  of  the  advantages 
which  would  flow  from  the  frank  and 
full  recognition  that  this  long-vexed 
question  is  thus  settled.  To  those 
eager  partisans  to  whom  nothing  is  so 
dear  as  a  grievance  I  have  nothing  to 
say.  I  pity  those  members  of  the  Libera- 
tion Society  to  whom  this  agitation  has 
been  the  very  meat  and  drink  of  the 
last  few  years.  I  pity  those  confident 
Conservatives  and  timid  Churchmen 
who  have  been  threatening  disestab- 
lishment and  fearing  sacrilege,  which 
they  now  will  find  has  been  part  and 
parcel  of  the  Established  Church  for 
centuries.  But  it  is  not  to  them  that 
these  remarks  are  addressed.  There 
must  be  many  amongst  statesmen,  on 
both  sides  of  politics,  there  must  be 
many  reasonable  Nonconformists,  there 
must  be  many  charitable  Churchmen, 
who  would  be  glad  to  escape  easily,  and 
without  a  struggle,  from  a  combat  in 
which  every  victory  gained  on  either 
side  is  a  loss  to  charity  and  to  truth. 
Even  should  I  have  been  able  to 
prove  no  more  than  that  Dissenters 
may  use  their  own  services  with  the 
permission  of  the  clergyman,  I  should 
hope  that  there  would  be  hundreds 

No.  221. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


and  thousands  of  our  brethren  who 
would  rise  to  the  elevation  of  their 
newly-found  liberty,  and  give  every 
facility  for  the  performance  of  rites 
which  are  as  natural  to  demand  as 
they  are  painful  to  resist ;  and  I  should 
hope,  also,  that  among  Nonconformists 
there  might  be  many  who  would  feel 
that,  in  asking  for  this  permission, 
they  were  doing  nothing  derogatory  to 
their  position — they  would,  in  fact, 
only  be  placing  themselves  on  the 
same  level  as  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  who  cannot,  by  the  exist- 
ing law,  read  even  our  own  Burial 
Service  without  the  permission  of  the 
clergyman  in  whose  churchyard  it  is 
to  be  performed.  But  should  there 
be  amongst  our  number  any  who, 
from  wilfulness  or  from  conscientious 
objections  refuse  to  avail  themselves 
of  this  liberty,  then  and  then  only, 
but  then  without  doubt,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  ascertain,  perhaps  by 
a  single  law-suit,  whether  the  rights 
of  property,  which  cannot  exclude 
the  interment  of  the  Nonconform- 
ing  dead,  are  sufficient  to  exclude  the 
liberties  of  Nonconformist  services 
allowed  by  the  general  law  of  the 
Church.  If,  as  I  hope,  it  should  be 
found  that  these  technical  objections 
do  not  rise  to  the  level  of  legal 
obstructions,  then  the  experience  of 
Scotland  and  Ireland,  and  those 
numerous  instances  which  I  before 
cited  in  England,  justify  us  in  be- 
lieving that,  even  in  the  case  of  the 
most  scrupulous  of  the  clergy,  the 
alarm  will  in  a  few  years  subside  into 
a  tranquil  satisfaction  that  they  are 
"  fortunate  beyond  their  own  know- 
ledge," and  that  that  which  I  am  as- 
sured has  occurred  in  the  case  of  the 
St.  Helier's  churchyard  will  occur 
throughout  the  country,  namely,  "  that 
the  Nonconformists  will  seldom  take 
advantage  of  the  concession  made  to 
them,  the  concession  itself  making  it 
the  more  conciliatory,  and  leading 
them  more  and  more  to  a  favourable 
interpretation  of  our  own  beautiful 
Burial  Service."  Let  Nonconformists 
be  assured  that  half  the  bitterness  of 
the  contest  on  the  side  of  Churchmen 
E  E 


418 


The  English  Law  of  Buried. 


is  occasioned  by  the  belief  that  they 
are  asked  to  surrender  a  right  which 
they  have  had  for  centuries.  Let 
Churchmen  be  assured  that  half  the 
bitterness  on  the  part  of  Noncon- 
formists is  occasioned  by  the  belief 
that  they  have  a  natural  right  from 
which  they  are  excluded  by  an  unjust 
law.  If  it  can  be  made  clear  to  the 
clergy  that  they  have  never  had  any 
such  right  to  exclude,  and  to  the 
Nonconformists  that  the  existing  law 
guarantees  to  them  a  right  which  they 
have  always  had,  surely  the  winds  and 
waves  will  cease,  and  perchance  there 
will  be  a  great  calm.  It  cannot  he 
deemed  an  unreasonable  wish  of  Dis- 
senters to  be  buried  by  the  side  of 
their  ancestors  in  our  national  church- 
yards, and  that  from  time  to  time  the 
survivors  should  have  the  consolation 
of  hearing  the  prayers  or  hymns  with 
which  they  themselves  are  familial*. 
It  cannot  be  deemed  a  foolish  instinct 
for  Churchmen  to  desire  that  grounds 
set  apart,  not  "  by  what  we  call  the 
ceremony  of  consecration,"  but  by  the 
far  deeper  consecration  of  the  holy 
dead  and  the  memories  enshrined  for 
ever  in  the  lines  of  Gray's  Elegy,  shall 
not  be  exposed  to  disorder  and  tumult, 
still  more  that  these  sacred  grounds 
should  not  from  polemical  purposes  be 
closed.  But  funerals  are  not  the  times 
for  the  worst,  but  for  the  best,  feelings 
of  our  common  human  nature  to  be 
uppermost. 

"  Sunt  laciymse  rerum,  et  mentem  mortalia 
tangunt." 

Nonconformists,  by  desiring  to  bury 
their  dead  with  those  from  whom  they 
have  been  divided  in  life,  renounce 
for  the  time  their  position  as  separa- 
tists. They  recognise  that  at  least  in 
the  case  of  churchyards  there  is  a 
national  religion,  a  State  Church, 
which  they  do  not  think  unlawful, 
and  in  whose  most  valued  endowment 
they  have  no  struggle  in  claiming  a 
concurrent  share.  And  doubly  strong, 
doubly  blessed,  will  be  the  national 
religion  and  the  national  Church  when 
we  find  that  it  never  has  parted  asun- 
der in  the  grave  those  whom  God,  by 


our  common  English  lineage,  and  our 
common  human  nature,  has  joined 
together. 

A.  P.  STANLEY. 

P.S. — Since  the  composition  and  the 
delivery  of  this  essay,  there  have  been 
two  discussions  on  the  Burial  Ques- 
tion. The  first  was  on  the  morning  of 
the  15th  of  February,  in  the  Lower 
House  of  the  Convocation  of  the 
Southern  Province ;  the  second  was 
in  the  evening  of  the  same  day  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  In  the  Convoca- 
tion, the  facts  stated  in  the  foregoing 
pages  were  set  forth ;  but  received 
neither  elucidation  nor  contradiction, 
and  a  resolution  1  was  passed  by  fifty- 
nine  to  nine  which,  if  it  became  law, 
would  curtail  by  a  hitherto  unpre- 
cedented encroachment  the  existing 
liberties  of  the  Church,  by  prohibit- 
ing (whether  intentionally  or  uninten- 
tionally) not  merely  the  use  of  such 
Nonconforming  services  as  those 
already  mentioned,  but  the  use  of 
hymns,  anthems,  or  the  like,  now  so 
common  in  important  funerals  con- 
ducted in  other  respects  according  to 
the  form  prescribed  in  the  Prayer- 
book.  To  this  resolution  was  appended 
a  rider  encouraging  the  clergy  and 
churchwardens,  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  excluding  dissenters,  to  dissever 
the  sacred  connexion  between  the 
parishioners  and  the  churchyard  by 
' '  providing  cemeteries. ' ' 

In  the  House  of  Commons  the  de- 
bate took  a  wider  range,  and  was  dis- 
tinguished by  the  superior  knowledge, 
moderation,  and  ability  displayed  by 
almost  all  the  speakers,  and,  with  the 

1  "That  this  House  is  of  opinion  that  the 
Church  cannot,  without  detriment  to  her 
spiritual  character  and  without  hreach  01 
trust,  consent  to  admit  within  her  consecrated 
burial  grounds  rites  other  than  her  own,  and 
that  by  the  relaxation  of  the  existing  ritual 
already  adopted  by  this  House,  pennittting  an 
alternative  service  or  burial  without  service, 
and  the  facilities  that  have  been  given  for  the 
provision  of  cemeteries,  the  grievances  ot 
Nonconformists  may  most  properly  be  met." 
It  is  obvious  that  any  modern  law,  incorpo- 
rating these  proposals,  would  definitively 
exclude  all  variations  from  the  existing  burial 
service  .except  the  meagre  and  uniform 
alternative  service  indicated. 


TJie  Eitf]lisli  Law  of  Burial. 


419 


exception  of  a  few  passages,  remarkably 
free  from  any  display  of  party  spirit. 
The  lucid  speech  of  the  mover  of  the 
resolution,  which  was  only  lost  by  a 
majority  of  242  to  227,  substantially 
confirmed  the  main  positions  laid  down 
in  the  foregoing  essay,  and  he  asserted 
positively  "that  the  common  law  of 
England,  which  vested  the  freehold  of 
the  parish  in  the  clergyman  and  the 
churchwardens,  gave  to  every  parish- 
ioner— indeed  to   every  person  dying 
in  the  parish — the  right  to  be  interred 
in  the  churchyard   quite   irrespective 
of  his  religious  opinions  or  of  the  con- 
sent of  the  incumbent,  and  to  baptised 
persons  not  labouring  under  any  social 
or  religious  ban  the  right  to  be  in- 
terred  with  a   religious   service — the 
service  of  the  Church — that  being  the 
only  one  known  at  the  time  the  custom 
arose."     That  this  was  the  law  there 
could    be    no   doubt.     Lord    Stowell, 
perhaps     the     greatest     ecclesiastical 
lawyer  who  had  ever  sat  on  the  Eng- 
lish bench,  laid  it  down  that  "every 
parishioner  had  a  right  to  be  buried 
in  the   churchyard  without   leave   of 
the    incumbent."      Further,    "Until 
very  recent  times  there  was  no  law 
whatever  to  prevent  a  clergyman,  if 
he  chose,  from  allowing  Nonconformists 
to  perform  any  service  they  liked  in 
the      churchyard.       In     1824,     Lord 
Plunket,  one  of  the  greatest  lawyers 
— it  might  be  added  one  of  the  greatest 
men  that  had  ever  adorned  the  House, 
said  : l — "  Suppose  that  the  Protestant 
parson  (that  is,  the  Church  of  England 
clergyman)  performs  the  rites  of  the 
Protestant  Church  (i.e.  the  Church  of 
England),  or  that  he  waives  their  per- 
formance, there  is  no  law  in  existence 
which   in    either    case    prohibits   the 
performance  of  Dissenting  rites  in  a 
Protestant  (i.e.,  a  Church  of  England) 
churchyard."     Mr.    Osborne    Morgan 
proceeded  to  add  that  this  state  of  the 
law  continued  down  to  1875,  when  the 

1  Hansard,  vol.  x,,  2nd  Series,  p.  1457, 
March  22,  1824.  In  Irish  parlance  "  Pro- 
testant "  means  a  Churchman  as  distinct 
from  a  Eoman  Catholic  or  Presbyterian,  and 
"Parson"  means  the  "Incumbent,"  as  dis- 
tinct from  "  Parish  Priest,"  which  means  a 
Roman  Catholic  Pastor. 


Public  Worship  Regulation  Act  was 
passed,  and  he  then  cited  the  opinion 
of     the     Attorney-General,      already 
quoted  in  the  foregoing  Essay,  to  the 
effect  that  this  Act  (and  as  it  appears 
from  the  above   statement,  this  Act 
alone)  restrains  a  clergyman  from  the 
liberty  of  permitting  the  use  of  Non- 
conformist services  in  the  churchyard. 
That   Mr.   Morgan,  with   the   strong 
personal  and  political  interest  which 
he  naturally  has  in  keeping  the  ques- 
tion open,  or  at  least  in  obtaining  a 
distinct  law  on  the  subject,  and  that 
the  Attorney-General,    in   support  of 
the  view  taken  by  the  majority  of  his 
party    in    the    House    of    Commons, 
should  make  the  most  of  this  solitary 
and  doubtful  restriction  on  the  liberties 
of  the  clergy  and  the  Nonconformists, 
is  perhaps  no  more  than  might  have 
been  expected.     But  that,  with  those 
strong  inducements  to  magnify,  from 
opposite  points  of  view,  the  legal  diffi- 
culties of  the  case,  they  should  have 
been  able  to  find  but  this  one  recent 
enactment  in  support  of  their  view  is 
decisive  as   to   the  fact   that,  in  the 
ancient  ecclesiastical  and  statute  law 
of  England  down  to  1875,  there  was 
no    obstacle    to    the    performance   of 
Dissenting  or  other  like   services  in 
the  churchyards  or  consecrated  ceme- 
teries.     Mr.  Morgan  glanced  at  the 
possibility  that  the  Nonconformists  who 
used  the  churchyard  for  this  purpcse 
might  render  themselves  liable  to  a 
civil    action    for  trespass.     But  this 
again    does    not    affect    the    general 
question ;    it   only  arises   out  of  the 
complex   law   of   freehold,  which,    as 
regards  the  interment  of  the  dead  in 
the  consecrated  soil,  has  been  univer- 
sally  conceded,   and,  in   the   case   of 
consecrated  cemeteries,  affects  not  the 
clergyman,  but  the  joint- stock  company. 
'  These  facts,  as  thus  laid  down  by 
Mr.  Osborne  Morgan,  were  not  con- 
tradicted   in   any  subsequent  part  of 
the   debate ;   indeed   by   one   speaker 
they  were  urged  against  his  resolution 
as  proving  that   it  was,  according  to 
his  own   showing,   not  needed.     The 
result,   therefore,  of     the     additional 
light  thrown  on  the  legal  view  of  the 
E  E  2 


420 


The  English  Law  of  Burial. 


question   by  the  debates  in  Convoca- 
tion and  in  Parliament  is  this — 

1.  That  every  one  dying  in  the  parish 
has  a  right  to  be  buried  in  the  church 
yard,  with  or  without  a  religious  ser- 
vice, with  or  without  the  permission 
of  the  incumbent. 

2.  That  there  is  no  alleged  instance 
of   a  law  to  prohibit  the   permission 
of  the  use  of  Nonconformist  services 
except  a   single  clause  of   the  Public 
Worship  Act  in  1875. 

3.  That  the  only  Act  limiting  the 
nature  of  those  services  is  that  of  23rd 
and  24th  Victoria,  c.  32,  which  is  en- 
tirely   confined    to    the   restraint   of 
riotous,   violent,    indecent,    or  turbu- 
lent behaviour  in   churchyards,  such 
as  those  who  seek  this  liberty  would 
earnestly  desire  to  see  observed. 

4.  That  the  only  remedy  which  an 
incumbent  (in  the  case  of   a  church- 
yard) or  the  proprietors  (in  the  case  of 
a  consecrated  cemetery)  would   have 
against  the  introduction  of  such  usages 
would  be  not  an  ecclesiastical  suit,  but 
a  civil  action  for  trespass — for  which 
the  chief  ground  has  been  already  cut 
away  in  the  case  of  churchyards  by  the 
acknowledged  right  of  interment. 

And  the  practical  conclusion  is  that 
the  churchyards  and  consecrated  ceme- 
teries are  therefore  open  to  the 
Nonconformists  without  any  further 
change  of  law. 

The  Public  Worship  Act,  the  only 
statute  on  which  resistance  is  founded, 
manifestly  applies  only  to  the  mode 
of  procedure  in  case  an  act  already 
unlawful  has  been  performed ;  and  it 
cannot  be  set  in  action  without  the 
concurrence  of  the  Bishop  of  the  dio- 
cese or  the  Archbishop  of  the  province, 
who  (although  in  the  single  instance  of 
the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  such  an  attempt 
was  threatened,  but  not  put  to  the 
proof)  would,  it  is  presumed,  in  no  case 
venture  to  make  use  of  the  machinery 
of  an  Act  concerning  which  every  mem- 
ber of  the  Legislature  on  or  off  the  epis- 
copal bench  repeatedly  declared  that  it 
was  not  intended  to  create,  and  could 
not  create,  new  ecclesiastical  offences. 
And  further,  if  it  were  put  in  force, 
nothing  would  be  more  easy  than  for 


the  Primate  who  brought  in  the  bill  to 
move  for  the  repeal  of  the  clause — 
nothing  more  acceptable  to  the  clergy 
whose  protests  have  been  the  most 
clamorous  against  the  admission  of 
Dissenters,  than  to  ^remove  any  part 
of  a  law  which  they  profess  to  regard 
with  at  least  equal  detestation. 

As  to  the  civil  suit  for  trespass, 
this  remedy  would,  no  doubt,  be  open 
to  the  incumbent  of  the  parish  or  the 
proprietors  of  cemeteries.  But  a  singel 
case  would  be  sufficient  to  determine  how 
far  a  right  which  has  ceased  to  apply 
to  the  soil  could  be  made  to  apply  to  the 
air  of  the  burial-ground.  And  sup- 
posing that  the  transference  of  the 
guardianship  of  churchyards  to  burial 
boards,  as  proposed  by  Mr.  Walter, 
were  effected,  the  opportunity  for  such 
suits  would  cease  entirely. 

There  are  further  two  general  points, 
which  the  debates  in  Convocation  and 
in  Parliament  suggest — 

1.  The  divergence  of  the  clergy  and 
the  laity  on  this  point.  In  the  general 
public,  15,000  out  of  20,000  clergy 
have  (under  whatever  pressure)  signed 
a  protest  against  the  permission  of 
extraneous  services ;  out  of  several 
millions  of  laity,  only  30,000.!  In 
the  Lower  House  of  Convocation,  59 
to  9  voted  against  this  permission.  In 
the  House  of  Lords,  a  majority  voted 
for  it ;  and  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
only  the  small  majority  of  15  out  of 
469  voted  against  it.  If  the  Church 
includes  the  laity  as  well  as  the  clergy, 
"the  living  voice  of  the  Church  "  has 
thus  expressed  itself  by  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority  in  favour  of  the  permission 
of  extraneous  services. 

2.  The  opportunity  suggested  by  even 
a  doubt  on  the  present  state  of  the  law 
opens  an  obvious  road  to  a  pacific  solu- 
tion of  the  question,  in  which  there 
shall  be  no  victory  on  either  side;  but 
in  which  each  will  retain  the  rights, 
and  no  more  than  the  rights,  which 
both  have  had  from  the  earliest  times 
of  the  English  Church. 

A.  P.  S. 

1  The  lay  petition  included  Dissenters  as 
well  as  Churchmen,  and  therefore  the  pro- 
portion is  that  of  the  whole  population. 


421 


A  VISIT  TO  KING  KETSHWAYO. 


SUCH  exaggerated  accounts  have  been 
sent  to  England  of  the  state  of  things 
in  Zululand,  and  particularly  of  the 
"atrocities"  which  are  said  to  have 
been  committed  by  orders  of  the  king, 
in  respect  of  numerous  native  con- 
verts, and  to  have  caused  a  sudden 
flight  of  many  of  the  missionaries 
from  the  district,  that  your  readers 
may  be  interested  in  a  narrative  of  a 
visit  which  has  just  been  made  to  the 
Zulu  king,  by  a  Natal  native,  written 
down  by  himself  in  Zulu,  and  literally 
translated  into  English. 

The  writer  is  the  manager  of  my 
printing-office,  which  is  wholly  carried 
on  by  natives.  I  have  had  him  with 
me  from  a  boy  for  more  than  twenty 
years,  and  I  am  sure  that  his  state- 
ments are  thoroughly  to  be  relied  on, 
as  accurate  reports  of  what  he  has  seen 
and  heard  in  Zululand,  and  of  what 
he  believes  with  reference  to  the  con- 
dition of  that  country,  and  the  inten- 
tions and  wishes  of  its  present  rulers. 
I  have  added  a  few  notes  of  my  own, 
explanatory  of  native  words,  &c. 

J.  W.  NATAL. 
BISHOPSTOWE,  NATAL, 
Oct.  29,  1877. 

June  1 0. — I  left  Ekukanyeni  [  Bishop- 
stowe]  accompanied  by  my  brother 
Ndokweni,  Mboza,  and  Mbungumbu. 
I  went  to  Mr.  John  (Shepstone),1  and 
asked  for  a  pass,  telling  him  that  I 
wished  to  visit  some  friends  of  mine 
living  in  Zululand,  and  also  to  see  the 
King  Ketshwayo.  Mr.  John  wrote  a 
pass  for  me,  and  I  went  and  slept  at 
Sikimyana's,  and  the  next  day  I  slept 
at  Edendale,  as  I  wished  to  see  Mazwi, 
son  of  Langalibalele,  who  was  ill.  The 
next  day  I  went  on  and  slept  at  my 
brother  Sifile's,  and  the  next  I  went 
to  Hemuhemu,  our  chief  by  birth.  He 
1  Acting  Secretary  for  Native  Affairs. 


had  a  goat  killed  for  me,  and  on  the 
morrow  I  returned  to  Sifile.  Hemu- 
hemu was  very  glad  to  hear  that  I  was 
going  to  Zululand  ;  he  encouraged  me 
too  by  his  words,  though  many  of  nay 
friends  said  that  I  should  be  killed  in 
Zululand,  since  Ketshwayo  was  kill- 
ing right  and  left.  I  went  on  from 
Sifile's  and  slept  at  my  brother  Ntun- 
gunono's,  and  stayed  with  him  about 
three  days,  and  then  started  and 
made  straight  for  my  father's  kraal 
at  the  Umzinyati 2  I  slept  at 
Ngcazi's,  and  next  day  I  slept  at  one 
of  Pakade's  kraals,  where  I  found  a 
great  dearth  of  food,  and  the  chief's 
wives,  who  were  there,  complaining 
bitterly  about  it ;  so  we  lay  down 
without  eating,  and  rose  early  in  the 
morning,  and  went  to  sleep  at  William 
Ngidi's  across  the  Tugela.  We  slept 
there  two  nights,  and  I  went  to 
Gwalagwala3  to  ask  for  a  pass  to 
cross  at  the  drift.  He  gave  me  a 
pass,  and  I  went  on  and  reached  my 
father's  kraal,  where  I  stayed  three 
days. 

Well !  on  the  day  when  we  left  my 
father's  kraal,  we  went  and  crossed 
the  Buffalo  into  Zululand,  and  went  on 
to  Njuba's,  which  we  reached  at  mid- 
day, and  we  got  to  Esigedhleni,  a  kraal 
of  Matshana's,  in  the  evening.  I  sent 
a  man  to  report  me  to  Matshana,  and 
was  given  a  hut  for  myself  and  party  ; 
and  shortly  there  arrived  a  leg  of  beef 
uncooked,  which  we  grilled  and  ate, 
and  slept.  In  the  morning  Matshana 
sent  for  me,  and  I  went  to  him,  into  a 
hut  of  his  isigodhlo.4  I  asked  him 
about  the  killing  of  people,  saying 
"I  am  very  much  surprised  to  hear 
the  stories  about  killing  in  Zululand. 

2  Buffalo  River. 

3  Resident  Magistrate  at  Umsinga  on  the 
Zulu  Border. 

4  Private  apartment. 


422 


A  Visit  to  Kinrj  Kdsliwayo. 


But  I  should  very  much  wish  to  hear 
clearly  from  you,  sir,  if  it  is  really 
true  that  I  too  shall  be  likely  to  be 
killed;  since  then  I  will  go  back  at 
once.  All  my  friends  are  afraid  that 
I  shall  be  killed  in  Zululand."  Said 
Matshana,  "  I  know  nothing  about 
any  such  matter  here  in  Zululand. 
No  one  is  killed,  if  he  has  not  done 
wrong."  Said  I,  "I  hear  what  you 
say,  sir;  but  can  all  that  which  is 
spoken  be  false,  then?"  He  said 
"  Yes." 

Well !  we  passed  on  towards  the 
king,  and  slept  at  Pakatwayo's,  who, 
however,  was  not  at  home,  but  his 
sons  treated  us  well,  and  procured 
food  for  us,  while  their  sister  cooked. 
We  arose  very  early  in  the  morning, 
and  passed  through  a  beautiful  [burial] 
grove  of  a  former  chief  of  the  ^  ama- 
Cunu,  uLembede,  son  of  Ndima,  where 
he  was  buried ;  there  the  soil  of  the 
valley  is  red. 

As    to    that    Chief    Lembede,   the 
people  of  that  place  still  take  great 
care   of    that   grove,  as  those  of   the 
Zulu  kings  are  always  guarded  so  that 
no  fire  may  touch  the  grass  of  those 
places.  There  is  Senzangakona's  grove, 
and     Mageba's     and     Jama's ;     but 
Tshaka's  is  farther  south,  on  the  Natal 
side    of    the    river    [Tugela].     Those 
people  of   Lembede,  though  they  are 
now  under  Zulu  rule,  reverence  always 
that  grove  of  their  former  chief  ;  they 
never  burn  wood  from  that  grove,  be- 
cause they  would  be  burning  a  man  of 
their  own  tribe.     It  is  said  that  once 
upon  a  time  some  of  their  people  went 
and  chopped  some  of  Lembede' s  wood, 
and  he  found  fault  with  them  in  the 
form   of  a  snake,   according  to   that 
belief    of    theirs.      uLembede,    then, 
was  very  angry  and  went  to  the  kraal 
which  had  chopped  that  wood,  until  a 
number  of  cattle  were  turned  out  and 
eaten  to  make^atonement,  and  then  that 
snake  returned  to  his  grove.     It  is  said 
also  that  when  those  people  at  Lem- 
bede's   thank  their  idklo~e  (ancestral 
spirit)  they  go  first  to  that  grove  and 
thank  Lembede,  and  slaughter  an  ox, 
and  then  slaughter  others  at  their  kraal. 


I  have  seen  his  kraals  and  passed 
through  them.  That  grove,  it  is  said, 
was  there  before  the  time  of  Tshaka  ; 
and  Tshaka  himself  is  reported  to  have 
gone  there  once  to  look  at  it,  because 
it  was  so  beautiful. 

We  went  on  to  the  kraal  of  Xkisi- 
mane  ;  but  he  was  not  there,  but  at 
another  kraal  of  his  lower  down  at  the 
TJngoye  hills.     Well !  when  we  got  to 
Nkisimane's,  his  son  was  glad  to  see  us, 
though  he  did  not  know  us  before,  and 
sent  his  sister  to  cook  for  us,  for  we 
were  exceedingly  hungry.     When  we 
had  eaten,  he  told  me  that  I  had  better 
go  to  Mfunzi's,  where  I  should  find 
plenty  of  hospitality.1     In  the  after- 
noon we  went  on   and   slept   at   the 
kraal    of     Nxaba,    son    of    Mbeswa. 
Well !  we  arose  in  the   morning   and 
went  on,  and  about  10  A.M.  we  saw 
Mfunzi's    kraal.      Ah !    and   Mfunzi 
saw  snie    a    long     way    off,    and    I 
saw   him  a  long  way  off,  and  he  ran 
and  came,  and  I  too  got  down  from 
my  horse  and  went  to  him,  and  we 
greeted  each  other.     He  took  us  into 
a  hut,  and  said,  "  O !  and  I  was  act- 
ually dreaming  of  you  !     Look  you,  I 
have  just  been  sitting  talking  with  my 
people,  and  telling  them  how  I  dreamt 
I  was  speaking  with  the   young  lady 
[Miss  Colenso]  and  the  Inkas'  Sobantu 
[the  Bishop].      Now  I  see  that  these 
dreams   of   mine   will   make  me   run 
away  another  day  if  I  should  dream  of 
being  killed."     He  procured  food  for 
us,  and  took  a  fine  calf,  and  slew  it, 
and  we  ate.     On  the  morrow  food  of 
all  kinds  was  brought  from  his  kraals, 
for   he   is  an  umnumzana  [head-man] 
with  kraals  under  him. 

The  next  day  I  and  my  brother  went 
up  to  visit  the  missionary,  Mzimela 
[Rev.  R.  Robertson].  When  we  got 
there,  he  was  glad  to  see  me,  and, 
it  being  Saturday,  he  wished  me  to 
stay  till  Monday. 

I  asked  Mr.  Robertson  for  writing- 
paper,  that  I  might  write  letters  home 
[to  Bishopstowe]  ;  he  gave  me  some 

1  Mfuuzi  and  Nkisimane  were  Magema's 
friends,  Zulu  Indunas,  who  had  been  re- 
peatedly at  Bishopstowe. 


A  Visit  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


423 


note-paper  and  envelopes,  and  I  wrote 
two  letters.  He  gave  nie  snuff,  and 
lie  gave  my  brother  a  pair  of  trousers, 
and  he  gave  us  baer  to-  drink,  and 
beans. 

He  then  took  me  and  my  brother, 
and  showed  us  a  very  pretty  chapel 
and  its  beautiful  decorations ;  he 
open3d  the  harmonium  and  played 
it,  and  I  too  played  it.1  He  took 
us  also  to  sea  his  school,  and  then 
we  went  again  into  his  house.  I 
asked  him,  saying,  "All  this  beauti- 
ful labour  of  yours,  which  cost  a  deal 
of  money — will  you  abandon  itl" 
Said  he,  "  Oh  yes,  but  I  don't  care 
so  much  about  the  house  and  other 
things ;  I  care  most  about  these  papers 
of  mine.  But  I  intend  to  put  them  in 
my  hole,  and  go.  For  truly  now  I 
shall  ba  left  behind  alone,  and  my 
people  will  go  away.  However,  I 
shall  not  go  away  immediately;  I 
shall  wait  till  the  proper  time  has 
come  for  it."  I  was  much  grieved  to 
see  such  beautiful  work,  which  would 
be  left  behind  upon  the  ground  and 
be  destroyed.  We  then  said  good-bye 
to  him  and  returned  to  Mfunzi. 

In  a  few  days  we  started,  Muenzi 
accompanying  us,  and  made  straight 
for  the  king's  kraal,  Mfunzi  having 
sent  a  messenger  to  Nkisimane  to  say 
that  I  had  arrived.  We  laft  Mfunzi's, 
and  slept  at  a  small  kraal  of  the  king, 
called  Ekudumeni.  There  we  had  a 
little  difficulty ;  for  a  young  man  of 
that  kraal,  Nondhla  by  name,  wanted 
to  turn  us  out  of  his  hut,  and  at  last 
we  went  and  slept  at  another  kraal 
(Tshukii's)  hard  by.  But  the  next 
day  he  atoned  for  his  act  with  a 
[present  of  a]  goat.  Well !  we  went  on, 
and  slept  at  a  kraal  (JSTomkwayimba) 
on  this  side  of  the  White  Imfolozi 
(river).  We  took  a  calf  from  some 
cattle  of  the  king's  which  were  there, 
which  Mfunzi  told  us  to  slay  and  eat, 
and  not  go  hungry. 

In  the  morning  we  arose  and  went 
to  the  Inhlungwanzi  (river),  where  the 
king  was  living.  We  arrived  early, 

1  Magema  can  play  the   chants,   &c.,  for 


while  it  was  yet  morning.  And  when 
we  had  entered  within  the  kraal 
Ezinhlendhleni,  Mfunzi  took  us,  my- 
self and  Mboza,  to  the  hut  of  the 
Chief  Induna  [Prime  Minister],  and 
we  went  and  saluted  him.  He  was 
glad  to  see  us,  having  already  heard 
that  we  should  arrive  by  the  mes- 
senger who  had  been  sent  by  Mfunzi 
while  we  were  at  his  kraal.  He  asked 
for  what  purpose  I  had  come,  and  I 
told  him  that  I  desired  to  see  the 
king  and  speak  with  him.  He  asked 
if  Sobantu  was  well ;  I  said  "  Yes." 
And  presently  we  left  the_  hut  and 
went  outside. 

When  we  had  gone  outside  the  hut 
I  saw  two  converts,  young  men. 

Well !  we  two  sat  down  with  those 
two  converts  under  the  shade  of  a  tree 
outside  the  kraal,  and  I  began  to  ask 
about  the  evil  things  I  had  heard  as  to 
the  killing  of  converts.  They  told  me 
that  two  converts  had  been  killed,  and 
this  is  the  account  which  they  gave 
me : — 

"  There  was  a  man  of  Gaozi's  who 
had   been   a   convert   for    two   years. 
When  Gaozi  first  heard  that  his  man 
wished  to  become  a  convert  he  tried  to 
prevent  it,  and  collected  his  council  to 
inquire  closely  about  the  conversion  of 
that  man.     But  as  the  man  would  not 
abandon  his   conversion,    the   Induna 
Gaozi  let  him  alone,  to  be  a  convert 
if  he  pleased  ;  but  ha  ordered  that  the 
king   should   not   be   told  about  that 
matter.     So  things  remained   until  a 
whole   year   had   passed.     But   after- 
wards,   when    the    second    year  was 
nearly    at    an    end,    the    missionary 
Mondi  (Mr.  Oftebro)   went  and  told 
the  king  about  that  man's  conversion, 
Gaozi  not   having  told  him  what  he 
should    say   to   the   king,   and   being 
moreover  absent   from   home   at    the 
time.     When  the  missionary  told  that 
matter  to  the  king,  he  was  astonished 
to  hear  that  it  had  been  hidden  from 
him  by  Gaozi,  and  sent  a  man  to  hear 
the  truth  about  it  from  Gaozi.     When 
Gaozi   heard   that,    he   was    alarmed, 
thinking  that  the  missionary  had  gone 
to   inform   against   him  to  the  king, 


424 


A  Visit  to  King  Kelskwayo. 


because  he  had  concealed  that  matter 
from  him ;  and  he  sent  an  impi l 
to  kill  the  man  at  once,  before 
Ketshwayo  had  sent  a  word  of 
reply  to  him.  So  the  impi  went  to 
kill  him ;  and  when  it  came  to  him, 
the  convert,  whose  name  was  Maqam- 
sela,  asked  them  where  they  were 
going.  They  said  that  -  they  had 
come  to  kill  him.  Whereupon  Maqam- 
sela  bravely  told  them  that  he  would 
not  run  away,  but  he  begged  that 
they  would  allow  him  time  to  say  a 
few  words  of  prayer.  They  consented, 
and  he  knelt  down  and  prayed,  and, 
when  he  rose  up,  he  told  them  that  he 
was  ready  now  to  die.  Those  who 
were  sent,  however,  were  all  afraid  to 
kill  a  man  who  was  guilty  of  no  fault 
at  all,  and  they  just  stood  and  looked 
at  him.  Then  some  young  fellow  came 
forward  and  fired  at  him  with  a  gun, 
and  so  died  Maqamsela." 

Such  were  the  words  spoken  by  those 
two  converts  to  me  and  my  brother. 
I  particularly  inquired  of  them  if  it 
was  Ketshwayo  who  had  sent  to  order 
that  man  to-  be  killed.  The  converts 
denied  that  utterly,  and  insisted  that 
Ketshwayo  was  not  at  all  to  blame  for 
that  shedding  of  blood.  Ketshwayo, 
in  fact,  is  grieved  to  see  the  mis- 
sionaries leaving  him,  when  he  had 
done  nothing  to  them.  However, 
before  I  went  to  Zulu  land  I  heard 
that  certain  converts  from  Zululand 
had  come  to  report  to  Mr.  John 
[Shepstone]  that  Ketshwayo  was  kill- 
ing the  converts,  and  that  he  had 
killed  a,ninncekuz  of  his,  because  he  did 
not  come  to  the  king  at  his  order, 
now  that  he  was  become  a  convert. 
Perhaps  that  innceku  was  Maqamsela. 
Besides,  of  the  two  converts  with 
whom  I  spoke  at  Ezinhlendhleni,  one 
was  a  Zulu,  and  they  had  been  sent 
by  the  missionary  Mondi  to  inquire  of 
the  king  why  the  missionaries  and 
their  converts  were  obliged  to  run 
away  from  Zululand  And  Ketshwayo, 
who  knew  nothing  about  their  going 
away,  replied  to  those  converts  that 

1  Force  of  arrned  men. 

2  Servant,  here  officer  of  the  household. 


Mondi  might  go  away  if  he  liked,  or 
might  stay  if  he  did  not  wish  to  go. 

Those  converts  also  told  me  the 
story  of  the  death  of  another  convert 
who  was  killed  by  Sintwangu's  people 
down  below.  They  said  :  "  That  con- 
vert came  upon  an  ox  which  had  died 
of  disease,  and  sat  down  with  the 
people,  and  all  of  them  ate  the  flesh 
of  it.  After  a  while  the  convert  went 
away  to  his  own  kraal.  When  he  had 
gone  away,  there  came  other  people  of 
the  neighbouring  kraals  to  ask  for 
some  flesh  of  that  dead  beast,  and, 
after  eating  it,  many  of  the  people 
became  ill.  Thereupon  Sintwangu's 
people  said  that  this  was  caused  by 
that  convert's  having  put  poison  in  the 
meat,  and  they  went  to  his  kraal  in  a 
body  and  killed  him.  That  matter 
was  just  like  the  case  of  Sigatiya, 
Matshana's  man,  who  was  said  to 
have  killed  Ntwetive  with  poison, 
whereupon  Ntwetive's  people  arose 
and  bound  Sigatiya  with  cords  and 
kicked  him  with  their  feet,  laying 
their  grief  to  his  account  [a  well- 
known  case  in  Natal  some  years  ago]. 
Evidently  that  convert  was  killed, 
though  perfectly  innocent  of  any  fault, 
just  like  Maqamsela,  who  died  through 
the  error  of  Gaozi  and  Mondi,  though 
I  don't  know  why  those  two  agreed  to 
conceal  that  matter  from  the  king. 
And  so  with  that  convert  who  was 
killed  by  Sintwangu's  people,  his  death 
happened  through  a  matter  which  was 
not  clearly  apparent  to  the  people. 
But  the  Zulus  affirm  that  the  poison 
which  killed  those  people  was  like  that 
which  is  placed  in  meat  to  kill  hya?nas 
and  leopards  [strychnine,  or  ?  arsenic]. 
It  is  said  that  all  who  were  saved  were 
made  to  drink  milk,  or  vomited,  and 
so  were  saved. 

Well,  we  arrived  in  the  morning  to 
the  king,  at  his  kraal  Ezinhlendhleni, 
near  his  grand  kraal  of  Maizekanye,3 
which  name  was  given  to  it  by  way  of 
threatening  the  Boers,  meaning  that 
if  they  came  they  would  find  him 
ready  to  fight  with  them.  But  at 
that  particular  time  the  king  could 

3  Lit.,   "  Let  the  whole  force  come  on  !  " 


A  Visit,  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


425 


not  show  himself  even  to  his  own 
people,  in  accordance  with  certain 
customs  of  the  Zulus,  as  he  had  just 
been  under  treatment  with  a  view  to 
having  progeny.  For  in  Zululand  the 
king  has  certain  times  of  abstinence, 
and  the  people  too  in  like  manner. 
The  chief  time  of  abstinence  is  that 
of  the  new  moon,  on  which  day  no 
person  does  any  work.  Another  is  on 
a  day  when  hail  falls,  or  when  a  great 
wind  blows,  or  when  lightning  strikes 
anything,  or  when  a  neighbour  dies, 
on  which  day  they  go  not  out  of  the 
kraal,  nor  do  any  work. 

Well !  when  we  had  been  sitting 
some  little  time  inside  the  kraal,  lo  ! 
there  was  Nkisimane  coming  with  his 
attendant.  Mfunzi  sent  an  innceku, 
Siwunguza,  to  go  and  tell  the  king 
that  I  had  arrived.  And  I  told 
Siwunguza  that  I  desired  to  see  the 
king,  and  that  I  wished  to  tell  him 
about  Langalibalele,  and  about  other 
matters.  The  innceku  returned  and 
asked,  "Where  is  Langalibalele?"  I 
said,  "  He  is  at  Capetown,  he  is  well 
in  health."  He  carried  off  those  words 
to  the  king,  and  came  back  bringing 
meat,  and  we  went  to  sleep  at  Maize- 
kanye. 

Now  I  will  copy  the  words  which 
I  wrote  while  we  were  staying  at 
Maizekanye. 

July  23. — Since  I  have  reached  this 
kraal,  I  have  not  seen  the  king  till 
this  day.  This  morning  at  8  A.M.  we  x 
went  in  to  the  Chief  Induna  Mnya- 
mana,  I  and  Mfunzi,  and  Nkisimane, 
and  Mboza,  and  he  gave  us  some  beer. 
As  we  came  out  from  the  Chief  Induna, 
we  saw  the  king  standing  at  the  top 
of  the  kraal  speaking  with  his  people, 
who  were  seated  in  great  numbers ; 2 
he  was  standing  at  the  entrance  of 
the  cattle  kraal.3  On  seeing  him  we 
went  up  to  pay  our  respects. 
Ketshwago  is  a  black  ikehla  [head- 
ringed  man],  resembling  his  father 

1  Magema  carries  a  watch. 

-  The  Zulu  etiquette  being  that  no  one  may 
stand  upright  in  the  presence  of  his  superior. 

3  Which  is  in  the  centre  of  the  whole 
kraal. 


[the  late  Mpande  or  Panda],  and 
firm  in  flesh.  He  is  large,  but  his 
body  is  firm,  not  flabby,  like  the 
bodies  of  other  large  men  among  the 
Zulus.  His  face  does  not  look  so  well 
as  it  did  formerly.4  He  had  on  to- 
day a  spotted  blanket.  After  paying 
our  respects,  we  went  down  to  the 
bottom  of  the  kraal.  When  the 
people  went  away  from  before  him, 
the  king  sent  to  call  us,  he  still 
standing  at  the  same  place.  We  came 
to  him  and  sat  down,  and  I  spoke  with 
him  as  follows  : — 

Magema.  Ndabezita,5  I  have  come 
here  with  the  desire  to  see  you.  I 
wish  also  to  tell  you  that  a  [hole  for 
lamentation]  door  of  intercession  for 
Langalibalele  has  been  opened  to-day 
by  the  Governor  (of  Natal).  Mr. 
John  (Shepstone)  says  that  it  would 
be  well  that  all  who  lament  for  him 
should  come  forward.  I  left  the  black 
chiefs  in  Natal  going  there  to  the 
governor,  together  with  the  amalubi 
from  Basutoland.  Also  I  wish  to  know 
about  that  which  is  said  by  people, 
viz.  that  you  are  killing  people  con- 
tinually, without  having  tried  their 
cause,  and  although  the  man  may  not 
be  worthy  of  death.  For  you  see,  sir, 
those  reports  last  year  very  much 
grieved  Sobantu,  till  at  last  he  sent 
to  you,  and  wrote  letters  to  go  to  the 
chiefs  over  the  sea  on  the  words  which 
were  spoken  in  your  name  by  Mfunzi 
and  Nkisimane.  Those  words  plainly 
showed  that  these  reports  were  false, 
and  so  they  were  silenced  who  spread 
those  evil  reports  about  you.  And 
now  it  will  be  a  joyful  thing  for  me 
to  hear  from  my  lord,  the  King 
Gumede,6  that  truly  such  is  the 
case ;  then  I  shall  know  from  whom 
Mfunzi  and  Nkisimane  received  those 
words  of  denial.  Further,  I  would 
inform  you,  Ngumede,  that  the  son  of 
Sobantu  has  arrived,  by  name  Gebuza, 
who  has  come  here  to  take  in  hand  (in 

4  I.e.,  when  Magema   saw  him  seventeen 
years  ago. 

5  A  title  of  high  respect,  probably  meaning 
"  breaker-in -pieces  of  enemies." 

6  Title  of  respect. 


426 


A  Visit  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


the  law-courts)  all  matters  concerning 
natives. 

The  king  was  glad  to  hear  that 
matter  of  Gebuza's  arrival. 

Ketshwayo.  "Well !  I  am  glad  to 
hear  what  you  say.  You  see  Sobantu 
there  is  a  father  to  me,  he  is  not  like 
other  white  men  ;  his  words  are  differ- 
ent from  theirs,  they  are  pleasant. 
And  yet  I  do  not  know  why  he  cares 
for  me  ;  he  has  not  seen  me  from  the 
time  when  he  saw  me  quite  a  boy,  on 
his  way  to  the  king  (Mpande),  when 
he  was  given  the  land  Kwa'Magwaza. 
I  hope  that  Sobantu  will  always  have 
a  care  for  me,  for  those  white  men  are 
talking — talking — talking,  and  they 
want  to  come  down  with  might  upon 
nie.  But  for  my  part,  as  I  have  done 
no  wrong,  I  will  not  run  away.  And 
yet  through  that  I  know  the  ruin  of 
the  land  will  come.  For  this  land 
and  these  people  whom  I  rule  are 
Senzangakona's,  I  have  not  konza'd l 
for  them  to  any  one  whatsoever ; 
it  is  only  myself  in  person  that 
have  konza'd  to  the  English ;  I  have 
not  kynza'd  for  these  people  of 
ours.  As  for  me,  look  you,  I  don't 
approve  of  killing  a  man.  But  the 
Zulu  people  are  bad ;  it  is  they  who 
wish  to  kill  one  another,  whereas  I 
do  not  allow  it.  Here,  you  see,  are 
Mfunzi  and  Nkisimane  still  alive, 
whom  people  have  been  after  con- 
tinually, seeking  that  they  should  be 
killed.  Well !  how  is  it  that  they  are 
still  alive  ?  And  in  the  time  to  come 
you  will  find  them  still  here. 

Hagema.  Ndabezita,  I  should  wish 
much  to  hear  also  about  those  stories 
of  converts  whom  it  is  said  you  are 
killing.  For,  when  I  was  there  at 
home,  it  was  reported  that  three  con- 
verts had  come  to  inform  Mr.  John 
(Shepstone)  about  them.  And,  more- 
over, this  very  day,  I  find  the  mission- 
aries and  converts  already  gone, 
running  away  from  you.  I  wish  to 
know  the  meaning  of  this. 

Ketshwayo.  Au !  they  are  liars  ! 
Do  you  hear  what  he  says?  I  too 
don't  understand  the  meaning  of  that; 
1  Done  homage. 


I  only  see  that  all  the  missionaries 
have  gone  away,  without  my  knowing 
why  they  are  gone  away,  without  their 
having  said  a  word  to  me,  whereas  I 
had  treated  them  very  kindly.  There- 
fore, since  they  h'tvegone  away  secretly 
from  me,  they  had  better  go  away  for 
good,  and  not  come  back  any  more. 
For  truly  I  don't  know  any  good  at 
all  that  they  have  ever  done  for  me ; 
all  they  did  was  to  say  that  all  the 
people  ought  to  be  converted,  together 
with  all  my  soldiers,  and  Mzimela 
(Mr.  Robertson)  himself  is  continually 
saying  so  to  me.  But  I  had  him.  there, 
for  I  answered  him  that  we  don't 
know  anything  about  that ;  he  had 
better  go  and  make  converts  of  the 
soldiers  of  his  own  people  first,  and 
after  that  these  people  of  ours  may  be 
converted.  On  my  word  I  don't  know 
what  wrong  I  have  done  to  those  white 
men  who  have  gone  away  from  me. 

Magema.  King  of  kings !  That  is  good. 
Gumede  !  And  I  tod  say,  sir,  that  the 
soldiers  of  the  king  and  the  whole  Zulu 
people  should  ba  converted.  For  what 
means  that  being  converted  ?  Is  it  not 
a  good  thing  to  be  converted  ?  To  be 
converted,  sir,  it  is  to  practise  what 
is  right  and  good  before  men  and  in 
one's  own  heart,  to  carry  a  white 
heart  through  reverencing  Him  who 
made  all  men.  That  is  not  being  con- 
verted, Gumede,  when  people  cast  off 
the  power  which  is  appointed  to  rule 
over  them,  and  despise  their  king,  and 
go  and  live  with  the  missionaries. 

Ketshwayo.  A  !  Well  then,  if  that 
were  the  case,  it  would  be  all  right, 
since  that  is  quite  proper. 

Magema.  Ndabezita,  that's  true 
conversion,  and  that  is  what  Sobantu 
wishes,  that  people  should  be  con- 
verted, respecting  their  chiefs,  and 
living  in  their  own  kraals. 

Ketshwayo.  0 !  well  then  1  is 
Sobantu  a  white  man,  eh  ?  Why 
Sobantu  is  quite  an  umcentu  (native) 
like  myself ;  he  desires  what  is  right 
and  good. 

Magema.  Ndabezita,  it  ought  to 
be  known  by  all  men  that  Unkulun- 
kulu  (the  Great-Great-One)  does]  not 


A  Visit  to  King  Ketsliwayo. 


427 


live  in  the  houses  of  the  missionaries, 
that  He  is  in  all  places.  It  is  right 
that  the  people,  being  converted, 
should  live  in  their  own  kraals,  and 
pay  respect  to  their  king,  and  keep  a 
clean  heart,  and  worship  Unkulun- 
kulu. 

Ketshwayo.  Those  words  which  you 
speak  are  good ;  they  are  quite  a  differ- 
ent thing ;  the  missionaries  don't  do 
that.  And,  now  that  they  have  quite 
gone  away,  I  don't  know  what  they 
ever  did  for  me ;  for,  when  I  was  in 
trouble  about  Langalibalele,  they 
refused  to  help  me ;  I  was  helped  by 
Sobantu  alone ;  they  had  better  go 
away,  and  not  come  back  any  more. 
They  ought  at  all  events  to  have  bid 
me  good-bye,  if  they  went  away  of 
their  own  accord,  and  then,  when  they 
wished  to  return,  they  might  have 
'  done  so ;  I  should  not  have  said  any- 
thing to  that. 

Magtma.  Thou  of  the  Great  House  ! 
I  should  like  to  know  who  it  is  that 
takes  from  here  all  the  stories  con- 
cerning Zululand,  and  carries  them  to 
the  white  people  ? 

Ketshwayo.  It  is  the  Zulus  here, 
themselves,  and  the  white  men  here, 
and  travellers. 

Magema.  Gumede !  Nkosi  (Sire)  ! 
I  don't  at  all  understand  'that  going 
away  of  the  missionaries  without  your 
knowledge,  when  you  had  not  harmed 
them.  And  for  my  part  I  commend 
that  word  of  the  king's  that  they  had 
better  not  come  back,  since  they  have 
made  a  fool  of  the  king ;  for  he  had 
given  them  land  out  of  kindness,  with- 
out their  paying  anything  for  it.  And 
now  they  have  gone  away  without 
saying  good-bye  to  their  king.  I  say 
the  king  had  better  stick  to  that. 

Ketshwayo.  Down  there  at  Sint- 
wangu's,  a  convert  chanced  to  get  hold 
of  some  meat  of  a  diseased  ox,  and 
handled  it,  and  some  people  became 
ill  []  died]  from  eating  it ;  thereupon 
those  who  mourned  laid  their  mourn- 
ing to  the  charge  of  that  convert,  and 
killed  him.  That  matter  was  re- 
ported to  me  after  the  convert  had 
been  killed.  I  was  startled  at  that 


when  I  heard  it,  and  blamed  Sint- 
wangu's  people  very  much  for  killing 
a  man  without  my  orders.  But  they 
assured  me  positively  that  h3  did  that. 
I  said  that  they  ought  to  have  brought 
him  bound  to  me  that  I  might  hear 
the  charge  against  him.  But  that  con- 
vert did,  no  doubt,  a  very  bad  deed. 

The  other  convert  [who  was  ill-used] 
did  not  belong  to  *  the  missionaries.  He 
was  a  man  of  ours,  who,  having  be- 
come a  convert,  was  killed  by  our  people 
without  my  orders.  For  this  is  the 
sort  of  thing  the  converts  do.  There 
was  one  of  Mondi's  converts  who  took 
a  girl  of  the  (isigodhlo)  royal  harem, 
whom  I  meant  to  give  to  another  man, 
her  (intended)  bridegroom  having 
died.  Wh3n  that  girl  had  been 
married  to  that  convert,  there  went 
an  impi  without  my  orders,  set  on  by 
the  induna,  and  ate  up  that  con- 
vert's cattle.  When  I  heard  of  that, 
I  sent  a  messenger  with  an  order  that 
they  should  restore  all  the  property. 
But,  for  all  that,  I  see  that  I  am  now 
in  disfavour  with  the  missionaries, 
though  I  don't  know  what  harm  I 
have  done  to  them. 

Magema.  Baba,  I  for  my  part  am 
rejoiced  to  speak  with  the  king  to-day. 
For  I  wish  to  hear  all  those  words 
which  are  brought  to  us  from  time  to 
time  by  these  two  men,  fathers  to  me 
[Mfunzi  and  ISTkisimane],  your  dogs, 
your  feet,  whom  in  particular  I  desired 
to  bring  me  here  into  your  presence, 
without  whom  I  could  not  have  come 
into  your  presence  this  day,  whom  I 
have  brought  in  order  to  produce  their 
words  before  you,  that  I  might  hear 
plainly  whether  they  were  speaking 
out  of  their  own  hearts  or  not.  And 
there  are  many  words  of  mine  which  I 
spoke  to  them  when  far  away  there  at 
home,  and  I  wish  to  hear  whether  they 
brought  them  to  the  king. 

Ketshwayo.  Quite  right !  But, 
look  you,  we  are  talking  standing  : 
and  I  shall  like  (some  other  day)  to 
talk  indoors,  sitting  down  at  our  ease. 
Now,  go  down  for  a  while  below. 

Thereupon  we  saluted  respectfully 
1  I.e.,  was  not  living  with. 


428 


A  Visit  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


and  went  away,  and  the  king  entered 
a  hut  in  the  isigodhlo. 

Well !  those  are  the  words  of  my 
talk  with  the  king  of  the  Zulus  on  the 
day  when  we  began  to  see  one  another. 
There  is  the  sad  story  of  the  death  of 
that  convert,  who  died  without  the 
king's  knowledge.  One  who  knows 
the  story  of  the  ruin  of  Matshana  will 
see  plainly  how  matters  stand  with 
black  people,  and  how  the  black  chiefs 
are  attacked  with  accusations.  More- 
over, one  who  knows  well  the  story  of 
the  ruin  of  Langalibalele  and  the 
charge  brought  against  him  by  Mtshit- 
shizelwa,  and  how  he  was  blamed  for 
the  guns  which  were  brought  for  his 
young  men  by  their  white  masters  at 
the  Diamond  Fields,  will  see  plainly 
that  the  death  of  that  convert  did  not 
occur  by  the  order  of  Ketshwayo,  but 
through  silly  practices x  that  convert 
was  killed.  The  king's  word  availed 
not,  his  silly  people  did  accord- 
ing to  their  silliness,  just  as  that 
man  of  Matshana' s  was  killed,  who 
was  said  by  the  izanusi  (wizards) 
to  have  killed  Ktwetwe  by  evil  prac- 
tices. Well,  and  the  end  of  Sigatiya' s 
affair,  what  was  it?  Why,  Matshana 
was  completely  ruined  through  it ;  it 
was  said  that  it  was  he  who  sent  his 
people  to  kill  that  Sigatiya  ;  and  that 
talk,  in  fact,  drove  Matshana  away 
from  Natal,  and  he  fled  away  to  Zulu- 
land.  After  many  years  the  truth 
was  brought  to  light  through  the 
trial  of  Langalibalele,  that  Matshana 
never  sent  men  to  kill  Sigatiya  ;  and 
so  Matshana  was  ruined  for  nothing 
at  all,  and  his  people  were  killed  for 
nothing  at  all.  Will  it  be  the  same,  I 
wonder,  in  the  case  of  Ketshwayo  ?  It 
ought  to  be  thoroughly  known  that 
Ketshwayo  is  wholly  blameless  in 
respect  of  the  death  of  the  convert. 

As  for  the  other  sad  story  of  the 
death  of  a  convert  in  Zululand,  which 
I  was  told  by  Ketshwayo.  I  was  told 
it  also  by  the  two  converts  of  Mondi's. 
Ketshwayo' s  words  confirm  those  of 
the  two  converts,  and  their  words  con- 
firm those  of  Ketshwayo. 
1  "Smelling  out." 


It  is  right  that  all  people  should 
know  that  Ketshwayo  loves  his  people; 
he  does  not  at  all  wish  that  they 
should  kill  one  another,  or  that  he 
himself  should  kill  them.  He  has 
altogether  abandoned  the  policy  of 
Tshaka  and  Dingane,  and  carries  on 
that  of  the  English  in  earnest.  He 
does  not  wish  to  hear  with  one  ear 
only.  If  one  man  has  gone  to  inform 
against  another  he  summons  him  who 
has  been  informed  against,  that  he 
may  hear  and  decide  the  case  properly. 
If  a  man  has  committed  a  great  crime 
he  makes  him  pay  a  fine  with  cattle. 
During  all  the  time  I  stayed  in  Zulu- 
land  I  saw  Ketshwayo  sitting  in  his 
seat,  judging  the  causes  of  his  people, 
and  his  judgment  was  excellent  and 
satisfactory. 

July  27. — The  king  called  me,  de- 
siring to  speak  with  me  words  of  fare- 
well. I  went  into  the  isigodhlo,  to- 
gether with  Mfunzi  and  Nkisimane 
and  Mboza.  When  we  had  entered  we 
sat  down  and  saluted  respectfully.  We 
said — "  Bayete ! "  2  Whereupon  the  king 
said — "Au !  why  do  you  sit  so  far  away, 
Nkisimane  ?  Come  near,  and  then  we 
shall  hear  one  another."  And  so  we  went 
near,  for  in  fact  it  was  I  who  was  in  front 
of  the  others,  and  I  was  afraid  to  ap- 
proach very  near.  But  the  king  called 
me  and  bade  me  approach  close  to 
him,  until  at  last  we  were  so  near  that 
one  of  us  might  have  stretched  out  his 
arm  and  touched  the  other.  I  pulled 
out  my  papers  from  the  pocket  of  my 
jacket  and  began  to  write  a  few  words, 
watching,  too,  for  the  king's  reply  that 
I  might  write  it  down  also.  I  then 
uttered  my  words  about  the  rule  in 
Zululand,  as  follows  : — 

"  Gumede  !  thou  of  the  source  of  the 
Great  House  !  I  am  rejoiced  to  speak 
with  you  to-day.  Moreover,  I  am 
astonished  that  you,  being  so  great 
a  king  of  the  whole  country,  should 
have  the  heart  to  speak  with  me, 
who  am  a  mere  nothing,  a  mere  boy,  a 
dog  of  a  dog,  the  merest  dust  here 
upon  the  ground.  But  I  know  that 
the  king  is  exceedingly  wise  above 
2  The  royal  salutation. 


A  Visit  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


429 


many  people.  And  now  there  is  one 
point  which  I  especially  admire  in  the 
government  of  the  Zulus  this  day.  For 
I  see  nothing  whatever  of  what  I  was 
told  of  before  I  came  hither,  viz.,  that 
here  in  Zululand  people  are  killed  for 
nothing  at  all,  innocent  people,  and 
that  the  king  has  no  concern  for  his 
people.  On  that  account,  Silo  [Leopard], 
all  my  friends  warned  me  not  to  come 
here,  till  at  last  I  went  and  inquired 
of  the  Inkos'  Mr.  John  [Shepstone], 
who  said  that  there  was  nothing  of 
the  kind. 

Ketshwayo.  0  !  Mr.  John  spoke  the 
truth  ;  he  is  not  a  baby. 

Magema.  Well,  but — Nkos' — ever 
since  I  arrive  here  I  have  not  heard  of 
anything  evil,  I  have  not  seen  any 
man  killed;  all  I  have  seen  is  the 
king  judging  the  cause  of  the  people, 
just  as  they  do  at  home  in  Maritzburg. 
But,  Gumede,  there  is  one  matter 
which  I  do  not  like,  and  which  I  wish 
to  lay  before  you.  When  Tshaka  and 
Dingane  forbade  that  there  should  be 
wizards  (izanusi),  they  came  to  an 
end,  whereas  I  find  the  land  go- 
verned by  witchcraft.1  But  I  know 
that  you  are  wiser  than  other 
men ;  I  thought  also  that  wisdom 
advances  continually  day  by  day,  so 
that  we  of  the  generation  of  to-day 
are  wiser  than  the  generations  that 
are  past.  I  do  not  approve  of  that 
matter  of  the  izanusi,  it  is  bad,  they 
are  madmen  ;  the  rule  of  the  king  will 
not  come  clearly  into  the  light,  if  he 
allows  his  people  to  be  governed  by 
such  processes.  Why  in  Zululand  then 
the  king  is — the  izanusi!  and  the 
Indunas  are — the  izanusi  too  !  for  there 
is  not  a  case  that  is  heard  in  which  a 
person  has  not  been  smelt  out  to  be- 
gin with  by  izanusi.  To  my  mind, 
Gumede,  this  seems  utterly  bad,  and 
I  do  not  wish  to  conceal  from  the 
king  an  evil  practice. 

Ketshivayo.  Yes,  indeed,  you  have 
spoken  truly.  We  know  that  Tshaka 
put  a  stop  to  that;  he  killed  the 
izanusi  because  they  told  lies  about 
people  ;  he  chose  out  izanusi  who  could 
1  Ukulula,  "divination." 


be  depended  on  for  truth.  But  nowa- 
days everybody  says  that  he  is  an 
izanusi,  though  they  are  only  seeking 
to  deceive  with  evil  practices.  At  this 
time,  for  instance,  there  is  a  great  deal 
of  sickness  among  women  who  have 
been  doctored  [with  philtres]  by  [black] 
doctors,  fetched  by  the  young  men 
from  among  the  white  folk  in  Natal. 
And  the  one  thing  is  connected  with 
the  other.  So  I,  too,  complain  very 
much  about  the  izanusi. 

Magema.  Ndabezita,  I  wish  to  hear 
about  that  girl  of  the  isigodhlo  (royal 
harem),  who  was  taken  to  wife  by  the 
convert ;  what  became  of  her  ? 

Ketshwayo.  That  girl,  the  daughter 
of  Mlomowedhlozi — that's  her  father's 
name — is  among  the  white  people  (in 
Natal),  and  that  convert  ran  away 
with  her  to  the  white  people.  When 
they  ran  away  I  let  them  alone,  and 
the  cattle  too,  which  that  convert  had 
to  pay  as  fine.2  I  returned  them  to  the 
missionary  (Mondi). 

Magema.  Yes,  sir,  that  was  very 
right. 

During  all  this  time  while  we  were 
sitting  with  the  king  the  girls  of  the 
royal  house  were  wondering  very  much 
at  seeing  me  write  all  the  words  that 
were  spoken  by  the  king,  and  expressed 
their  astonishment  loudly. 

Ketshwayo.  Ah  !  I  for  my  part  am 
greatly  pleased  with  Sobantu  for  the 
pains  he  has  taken  about  Langaliba- 
lele.  Why !  it  seemed  as  if  he  were 
actually  fighting  for  myself  on  behalf 
of  Langalibalele.  I  was  hoping  that, 
if  he  was  allowed  by  the  authorities, 
he  would  place  him  here  in  my  hands, 
and  I  would  take  him  and  place  him  in 
his  old  land  at  Engcuba. 

Here  the  king,  while  speaking  thus, 
stretched  out  both  his  hands. 

Magema.  Baba,  when  I  set  out  from 
home,  I  went  to  take  leave  of  Mr. 
John,  and  he  said  that  I  was  to  salute 
very  much  for  him  the  king  and 
Matshana.  For,  sir,  we  are  living 
pleasantly,  and  all  is  quiet,  and  the 
business  of  bringing  back  Langali- 
balele is  being  considered. 
2  For  carrying  her  off. 


430 


A  Visit  to  Kinf)  Ketsliwayo. 


Ketshwayo.  And  do  you  too  hear 
the  story  about  Somtseu  (Sir  T.  S.), 
that  he  is  coming  here  to  make  us 
pay  hut- taxes  1 

Magema.  No,  Ndabezita,  I  have  not 
heard  it. 

Ketshwayo.  Do  you  say  that  ycu 
hear  nothing — not  a  word — to  the 
effect  that  we  are  to  be  made  to  pay 
taxes  ? 

Magema.  No,  Gumede,  I  know 
nothing  about  that ;  I  can't  repeat 
the  talk  of  people  which  is  like  mere 
wind. 

Ketshwayo.  We  don't  know  truly 
what  to  make  of  it.  But  if  Somtseu 
should  come  here  to  us,  we  shall  just 
inquire  of  him,  begging  him  to  restrain 
his  arms  a  little  while  at  first,  until 
he  has  told  us,  and  we  perhaps  let  him 
alone,  and  agree  to  what  he  says ;  for 
truly  we  will  not  run  away,  since  we 
have  done  no  wrong  whatever  towards 
the  government ;  we  shall  just  stand, 
and  see  what  he  will  do  to  us. 

Magema,  Ndabezita,  it  would  be 
very  good  that  you  should  allow  that 
black  men  who  have  been  taught 
should  settle  in  your  land,  and  carry 
on  the  work  of  teaching,  and  enlighten 
thoroughly  your  land. 

Ketshwayo.  I  too  should  like  that 
exceedingly.  But  as  to  the  mis- 
sionaries, I  don't  want  them  any 
more,  since  they  have  broken  off 
(hlubuka1)  from  me  without  saying  a 
word  of  farewell  to  me. 

Magema.  And  I  too,  Ndabezita, 
would  not  say  anything  about  white 
men  (settling  here) ;  I  speak  only 
about  black  men. 

Ketshwayo.  You  see,  this  killing  of 
people,  we  know  nothing  of  it  here  ; 
it  is  news  to  us.  But  on  the  day 
when  Somtseu  was  here  we  told 
him  that  we  should  kill  an  umtagati,2 
and  also  any  one  who  should  de- 
file the  royal  harem.  And  Somtseu 
agreed  to  that,  and  said  that 

1  Thus  the  missionaries  hhibiilca'd,  that  is, 
they  separated  from  Ketshwayo.     This  is  the 
word  which  in  Langalibalele's  case  was  always 
translated  in  official  documents  "rebelled." 

2  Evil-doer,  murderer. 


among  his  own  people  tco  a  man 
who  does  those  things  is  killed. 

Magema.  Yes,  Gumede,  that  is  right, 
provided  that  you  have  heard  the  cause 
of  such  an  one,  and  have  seen  certainly 
that  he  has  done  the  evil.  The  white 
people  are  not  speaking  of  this  sort 
of  thing  when  they  say  that  you  are 
killing  people. 

Ketshwayo.  Look  you, — you  will  go 
with  Mfunzi  and  Nkisimane,  who  go 
to  make  my  lament  for  Langalibalele 
to  Mr.  John,  and  will  then  go  on  to 
my  father  Sobantu.  By  which  road 
will  you  go  ? 

Nkisimane.  Baba,  we  shall  go  by 
the  lower  road,  and  cross  the  drift  at 
Emakabeleni. 

Magema.  But  I  shall  go  on  to 
Matshana,  and  cross  the  drift  at  my 
father's  place. 

Ketshwayo.  Not  so;  it's  not  good 
that  you  should  separate  from  one 
another.  "Won't  Magema  be  in  want 
of  food  ?  You  must  go  with  him,  and 
go  on  to  Etaleni,  and  go  there  to 
Makelekehlana,  and  get  from  him  for 
Magema  a  calf  [yearling]  from  among 
those  black  ones  of  mine ;  and  then 
go  to  Gwadi,  and  get  for  him  two  good 
fat  wethers.  And  tell  Makeleke- 
hlana that  he  must  not  do  as  he  is 
continually  doing  to  me  ;  2  tell 
him  that  this  man  is  my  mouth, 
who  speaks  for  me  even  when  I  am 
not  there  in  person ;  so  that  every 
man  at  whose  kraal  you  sleep  shall 
give  you  out  of  the  king's  cattle,  that 
he  may  not  want  food. 

We  all  thanked  the  king.  After- 
wards the  king  bade  us  go  into  the 
great  house  into  the  isigodhlo  and  have 
some  beer  given  to  us.  We  thanked 
the  king,  and  bade  farewell,  and  went 
out.  We  were  admitted  into  the 
isigodhlo,  and  were  given  beer,  and 
drank,  and  went  out,  and  went  to  bid 
farewell  to  the  Indunas  in  the  hut 
of  Mnyamana  (Chief  Induna),  where 
were  the  Indunas  Mnyamana  and 
Vumandaba. 

3  Play  me  his  usual  trick  (saying  that  he 
has  not  got  the  animal  which  the  king 
orders). 


A  Visit  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


431 


Magema.  Gentlemen,  I  have  now 
come  to  bid  you  farewell. 

Mnyamana.  I  should  like  Ntshirig- 
wayo  to  be  called,  and  to  come  here. 

So  Ntshingwayo  was  called,  and 
entered  the  hut,  and  a  large  isikamba 
[pot]  of  beer  was  brought  that  we 
might  wet  our  lips. 

Mnyamana.  Ee  so  good  as  to  tell 
us,  and  let  us  hear,  what  you  have 
said  to  the  king. 

Magema.  Well,  then,  Buteleri,1  I 
for  my  part  have  enjoyed  myself  with 
the  king.  But  I  wish  to  tell  you  that 
the  izanmi  are  doing  what  is  not  right ; 
and  whereas  Tshaka  and  Dingane  con- 
demned them,  you,  the  king's  Indunas, 
allow  them  to  be  here.  That  seems 
to  me  bad — very  bad.  I  wish  to  tell 
you  that  all  the  Zulus  across  the 
Tugela  (refugees  in  Natal)  wish  to 
return  here  to-day,  being  oppressed 
with  trouble  coming  from  the  white 
men,  through  having  to  pay  much 
money  to  the  government  and  to  the 
white  landowners.  But  I  assure  you 
that  there  is  not  one  who  will  come 
back  to  be  killed,  for  truly  you  are 
people  ruled  by  izanusi,  who  tell  you 
that  this  or  that  person  is  an  evil- 
doer. I  don't  believe  for  a  moment 
that  those  persons  are  evil-doers,  and 
I  blame  very  much  your  doings  in  this 
respect.  Why,  don't  you  know  that 
you  have  now  joined  yourselves  en- 
tirely with  the  laws  of  the  Queen  ? 
I  don't  see  what  good  you  are  doing 
by  allowing  these  izanmi.  Further  I 
wish  to  tell  you  that  it  would  be  good 
that  all  the  children  of  Zululand 
should  be  instructed,  and  get  power 
to  be  wise  like  white  men.  Your 
sons  ought  to  speak  with  the  white 
chiefs,  and  to  go  across  the  sea,  and 
speak  with  the  great  Queen  of  the 
English,  who  is  kind  and  gracious  in 
all  she  does ;  you  ought  to  know  that. 
Now  I  can  venture  to  speak  with  you 
thus  freely,  for  I  admire — I  admire 
the  government  of  Zululand  as  it  is 
carried  on  by  you.  I  should  say 
confidently  that  among  the  Zulus  the 

1  The  name   of  an  ancient   ancestor  here 
used  as  surname  for  Mnyamana. 


country  is  quiet,  and  life  is  pleasant 
here ;  nay,  I  find  here  what  is  most 
excellent,  the  king  judging  the  causes 
of  his  people.  I  had  been  told  that 
many  people  were  being  killed ;  and 
you  know  that  Sobantu  and  all  good 
white  men  are  grieved  to  hear  that, 
and  it  grieves  all  native  people  too 
like  myself.  Now  I  bid  you  farewell. 
But  I  wish  to  tell  you  that  to  my 
mind  Ketshwayo's  doings  which  I 
have  seen  are  excellent.  There  ought 
to  be  here  some  instructed  black 
men  to  instruct  your  children.  Also 
I  ought  to  tell  you  that  I  have  spoken 
with  Sobantu,  and  told  him  that  I 
wish  to  go  to  Capetown  some  time  or 
other,  and  see  the  living  and  ruling 
and  doing  of  the  white  men. 

All  this  they  agreed  to,  saying  that 
my  words  were  excellent.  All  three 
also  gladly  assented  to  the  teaching 
of  the  children.  They  parted  pleasantly 
from  us,  and  begged  to  be  very  much 
remembered  to  the  Inkos'  Sobantu. 
We  went  off,  and  went  to  sleep  at 
Ensindeni. 

Now  let  me  give  some  account  of 
the  peaceful  state  of  Zululand.  Well, 
in  Zululand  there  is  no  war ;  there  is 
no  mustering  of  people  for  evil  work  ; 
there  is  no  calling  together  an  impi. 
A  little  while  ago  Somtseu  (Sir  T.  S.), 
son  of  Sonzica,  sent  a  messenger  to 
Ketshwayo  to  say  that  he  was  going 
to  set  the  Boers  to  rights,  and  Ketsh- 
wayo must  collect  an  armed  force  to 
assist  him,  in  case  anything  should 
happen  from  the  Boers  fighting  with 
him.  So  Ketshwayo  mustered  the 
whole  tribe  of  the  aba  Qulusi,  which 
lives  to  the  north,  and  said  that 
they  were  to  stay  assembled  at 
Somtseu's  word,  and  to  attend  to 
Somtseu' s  word,  and,  in  case  the 
Boers  should  fight  with  him,  then 
the  aba  Qulusi  were  to  render  help, 
and  go  at  once  to  assist  Somtsext. 
Ketshwayo  did  all  that,  wishing  to 
obey  the  commands  of  the  Queen, 
though  he  did  not  want  to  do  it, 
since  no  occasion  had  yet  arisen  for 
his  fighting  with  the  Boers,  as  they 
had  not  attacked- him ;  but,  from  what 


432 


A    Visit  to  King  Ketshwayo. 


I  saw  at  Ma'izekauye,  he  is  well  pre- 
pared with  ammunition,  &c.,  in  case 
any  one  should  attack  him.  Well,  so 
the  aba  Qulusi  stayed  on  in  full  force 
until  Kaitshana  came,  sent  by  Somtseu, 
to  say  that  all  was  right,  there  was 
no  fighting  among  the  Boers r.  and 
then  the  aba  Qulusi  dispersed  to  their 
homes. 

The  next  day  we  arose  at  Ensin- 
deni,  and  said  farewell  to  Gaozi,  and 
went  on  our  way.  .  .  . 

When  we  reached  Ekukanyeni 
(Bishopstowe),  all  our  own  people 
rejoiced,  and  all  our  friends,  to  see 
that  we  were  not  killed.  The  two 
Indunas  went  with  me  to  Mr.  John ; 
we  waited  several  days  while  the 
Inkos'  was  occupied  with  his  duties, 
and  at  last  we  saw  him. 

Well  I  on  another  day  Mr.  John 
called  us.  And  when  I  entered  there 
with  Mfunzi  and  Nkisimane,  there 
were  in  the  room  Manyonyo  and 
Mqundane,  and  Manyosi,  Indunas,  to 
listen  to  the  matter  that  was  to  be 
talked  about  by  the  Indunas  of  Ketsh- 
wayo. Mr.  John  asked  the  names  of 
the  Indunas  and  wrote  them  down, 
and  then  bade  them  speak.  They 
spoke  all  the  words  of  their  message, 
and  Ketshwayo' s  lament  for  Langali- 
balele,  who  was  kept  a  prisoner,  and 
his  prayer  that  the  governor  would,  it 
may  be,  allow  him  to  be  brought  back 
to  Natal.  The  Inkos'  was  much 

EKUKAXYEKI,  Oct.  29, 1877. 


pleased,  and  told  the  Zulus  that  on 
the  morrow  he  was  about  to  stai't  on  a 
journey  with  the  governor,  and  they 
must  come  back  again  on  his  return, 
when  he  would  reply  to  those  words,  and 
would  tell  the  authorities  here  that  the 
Zulus  had  brought  that  message.  After- 
wards I  produced  my  words  before 
the  Inkos'  about  the  government  in 
Zululand,  and  told  him  that  not  a  man 
is  killed  by  the  king's  orders  in  Zulu- 
land  nowadays  without  his  cause  being 
heard,  and  that  I  only  found  fault 
with  one  thing,  viz.  that  Ketshwayo 
allowed  izanusi  to  be  there.  The 
Inkos'  was  very  glad  to  hear  my 
words,  and  agreed  with  me  about  that 
matter  of  the  izanusi,  and  said  that 
they  ought  not  to  be  there.  I  told  the 
Inkos'  also  about  the  killing  of  the 
converts,  that  it  was  not  Ketshwayo 
who  killed  them.  The  Inkos'  was 
glad  to  hear  that,  and  said  that  he 
too  did  not  understand  "  ukukolwa " 
(conversion)  to  be  merely  wearing 
white  men's  clothes;  he  said  that 
"  ukukolwa"  was  uprightness,  doing 
what  is  good,  and  respecting  also  the 
authorities  of  the  land. 

The  Inkos'  gave  Mfunzi  and  Nkisi- 
mane  beautiful  spotted  blankets  and 
their  supplies  of  meat  daily.  And  he 
told  them  to  come  back  when  he 
should  have  returned  from  his  journey, 
at  which  we  rejoiced. 

MAGEMA  MAGWAZA. 


NOTE. 

WITH  reference  to  the  remarks  on  translations  of  foreign  military  books,  in  the  paper  by  a 
"  Staff  Officer,"  in  Macmillan  for  February  (page  325),  we  are  informed  that  for  the  last  year 
and  a  half  the  Council  of  the  Royal  United  Service  Institution  have  been  endeavouring  to  fill 
up  the  hiatus  in  military  literature  referred  to  by  our  contributor.  A  portion  of  each  number 
of  the  Journal  of  the  Institution  is  devoted  either  to  translations  of  foreign  professional  works 
or  to  original  articles  on  the  mode  in  which  foreign  nations  deal  with  naval  and  military  matters, 
such  as  tactics,  organisation,  &c. 

EDITOR. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


APRIL,  1878. 


SEBASTIAN. 


CHAPTER  X. 
THE  PREBENDARY'S  GARDEN  PARTY. 

THE  family  at  Monksdean  Rectory 
were  all  agreed  on  one  thing,  that 
Sebastian  must  be  met  at  Petherton 
Junction  on  his  way  to  the  preben- 
dary's. At  first  only  Amos  was  to  go ; 
then  Mrs.  Gould  found  she  could  not 
well  bear  the  thoughts  of  her  son 
being  so  near  without  seeing  him,  if 
only  for  a  few  moments.  Then  the 
girls,  three  of  whom  were  still  unmar- 
ried and  at  home,  begged  to  be  allowed 
to  use  their  little  savings  towards 
going  with  their  father  and  mother 
"  to  see  Seb,"  if  only  for  an  instant. 

Sebastian  reached  the  junction  one 
hot  Saturday  afternoon  in  June,  having 
at  length  obtained  his  bishop's  counter- 
signature  to  his  testimonial  from 
Markland. 

He  had  written   home   to  tell   the 
time  he  would  be  at  Petherton  Junc- 
tion, and  more  than  half  expected  his 
father  in  some  way  would  contrive  to 
meet  him  there,  as  he  could  not  himself 
run  down  to  Monksdean  before  Sunday. 
Sebastian,  therefore,  was  not  greatly 
surprised  to  see  the  stout  little  form 
waiting,  and  the  grave  dark  eyes — not 
quite  so  calm  as  usual — watching  for 
him  as  his  train  drew  into  the  station. 
But   he   was  not  prepared  for   the 
little  group  that  stood  with  his  father  : 
and   after  all  the  various  fashions  of 
.No.  222. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


women  he  had  seen  on  his  travels 
and  during  his  stay  at  London,  no 
more  pleasant  a  picture  had  his  eyes 
beheld  than  that  same  little  group, 

His  mother  seemed  to  him  so  little 
changed  that  he  half  felt  the  years 
past  since  he  was  a  boy  must  be  a 
dream.  His  sisters'  faces,  which  were 
not  particularly  pretty,  were  so  frank 
and  sweet  he  thought  their  clear  health 
and  summer  freckles  better  than 
beauty.  Their  modest,  coarse  straw 
hats  trimmed  with  white  scarves,  their 
sober-hued  dresses,  and  white  cotton 
gloves,  had  a  fresher,  purer  look  than 
any  of  the  costumes  which  had 
astonished  his  eyes  that  day. 

Between  delight  at  seeing  Sebastian, 
and  dismay  at  the  rougher  usage  time 
had  given  him  than  any  of  their  home 
circle,  the  girls  found  it  impossible  to 
keep  their  lips  quite  steady  and  their 
kind  eyes  dry.  Mrs.  Gould,  shocked  at 
the  evident  want  of  strength  in  that 
otherwise  manly  and  well  built  form, 
leaned  upon  it  more  than  she  would 
have  wished  as  the  little  party  moved 
to  the  waiting-room. 

Amos  preserved  an  almost  perfect 
outward  calmness,  for  his  sense  of 
change  was  slow,  and  would  be  coming 
over  him  days  afterwards  when  remem- 
bering this  meeting. 

Sebastian  felt  it  hard  to  have  to 
leave  such  a  group  so  soon,  but  he  had, 
he  thought,  need  to  be  as  early  as 
possible  at  the  prebendary's  to  become 

F  F 


434 


Sebastian. 


acquainted  with  his  next  day's  duties 
which  were  rather  dreaded  by  him. 
As  he  made  this  known  he  was  pushed 
by  loving,  though  reluctant  hands  into 
the  train  of  two  carriages,  and  in 
which  he  was  the  only  passenger  to 
Petherton. 

One  bit  of  news  his  youngest  sister 
had  found  opportunity  to  impart  to 
him  with  a  gleam  of  mischief  in  her 
wet  eyes.  And  when  the  train  had 
borne  him  off  out  of  view  of  them  this 
news  kept  Sebastian's  eyes  brightening 
with  excitement,  and  yet  glancing  in 
dismay  at  his  clothes  which,  though 
his  best,  were  far  from  new.  In 
London  he  had  been  so  perplexed  to 
know  how  to  render  himself  fit  for 
the  prebendary's  inspection  in  his 
travelling  suit,  that  he  had  decided  to 
don  his  best ;  but  he  was  reluctant  to 
do  so,  since,  though  more  suiting  the 
occasion  of  his  first  introduction  of 
himself  as  his  god-father's  curate, 
they  were  of  an  earlier  fashion,  and 
had  in  fact  been  kept  for  best  too  long 
already. 

The  prebendary,  with  what  his 
friends  when  he  told  them  of  it, 
called  his  "  usual  charming  fore- 
thought," had  sent  to  tell  Sebastian 
he  need  be  under  no  anxiety  as  to 
expenses,  as  on  reaching  the  hotel  in 
London  at  which  he  was  to  stay,  he 
would  find  a  letter.  Sebastian,  how- 
ever, had  not  found  the  letter  there, 
and  as  the  promise  of  it  had  made  him 
more  extravagant  with  his  own  supply 
than  he  would  otherwise  have  been,  he 
was  sorely  inconvenienced.  The  truth 
was,  the  prebendary  had  been  so  much 
engaged  in  relating  to  his  friends  the 
comfortable  arrangements  he  was  mak- 
ing for  his  new  curate,  that  the  Little 
matter  of  posting  the  letter  had  slipped 
his  memory. 

Sebastian  felt  sure  there  had  been 
some  accident  in  the  post  to  cause 
delay,  for  nothing  could  be  kinder 
than  the  prebendary's  letters  had  been, 
and  it  was  only  after  his  sister's  news 
that  he  felt  intense  annoyance  at  the 
omission. 

The  news  was  neither  more  nor  less 


than  that  a  certain  family  not  unknown 
to  Sebastian  were  away  on  a  visit  at 
Stowey-cum-Petherton,  and  were  stay- 
ing with  an  intimate  friend  of  the 
prebendary's. 

Sebastian  comforted  himself  with 
the  thought  that  some  time  might 
elapse  before  he  would  meet  them  and 
that  in  that  time  his  wardrobe  might, 
be  replenished. 

Yet  he  found  it  very  hard  to  have 
the  two  opposing  wishes  troubling  him 
at  once,  for  without  doubt  he  longed 
for  a  sight  of  her  he  was  hoping  to 
avoid. 

He  had  a  walk  of  two  miles  after- 
leaving  little  Petherton  Station.  He 
was  congratulating  himself  upon 
having  arrived  in  plenty  of  time  to 
talk  over  his  duties  with  the  preben- 
dary, when,  as  he  entered  the  well- 
known  street,  he  saw  one  carriage 
just  leaving  the  rectory  door,  and 
another  approaching  it,  while  another 
whirled  past  him,  very  narrowly 
escaping  knocking  him  down. 

From  these  signs,  and  from  sounds 
of  many  voices  from  over  the  garden 
wall,  Sebastian  made  the  unwelcome 
discovery  that  he  had  arrived  on  the 
day  of  his  god-father's  annual  garden 
party. 

There  was  only  one  entrance  to  the 
house  except  a  little  door  a  long  way 
round,  and  used  only  by  servants.  In 
old  times  the  prebendary  had  so  strictly 
forbidden  Sebastian's  use  of  it  that 
he  felt  an  overpowering  repugnance  to 
avail  himself  of  it  now.  Besides  this, 
with  only  an  odd  shilling  or  two  in  his 
pocket,  he  did  not  feel  inclined  to  pass 
himself  in  through  the  servants. 

There  was  nothing  for  him,  there- 
fore, but  to  enter  by  the  same  way 
as  the  visitors  who  were  rapidly 
arriving. 

This  was  through  a  long,  low  con- 
servatory, decorated  rather  sparingly 
with  plants  that  were  neither  very 
rare  nor  luxuriant. 

In  the  hall  beyond,  Sebastian  as  he 
entered,  recognised  Miss  Jellicoe  the 
prebendary's  sister,  receiving  her 
company  and  dispensing  cups  of  tea. 


Sebastian. 


435 


She  was  of  height  almost  as  majestic 
as  her  brother,  but  somewhat  gaunt 
and  thin. 

Sebastian  remembered  this  lady 
only  by  her  height  and  her  perpetual 
smile.  But  he  remembered  how 
severe  she  had  been  on  points  of 
etiquette,  and  felt  uncomfortably 
conscious  of  his  dusty  boots  and  little 
black  bag,  which  latter  was  all  he  had 
brought  of  his  luggage  from  Petherton 
Station. 

He  slipped  in,  concealing  himself 
as  much  as  he  could  behind  a  portly 
old  lady,  and  remained  behind  her  till 
she  had  shaken  hands  with  Miss 
Jellicoe,  received  a  cup  of  tea,  and 
turned  away  disclosing  the  dusty 
arrival.  He  had  just  caught  sight 
of  the  prebendary's  huge  form  in  the 
garden  to  the  left,  standing  towering 
above  his  guests  in  his  shovel  hat,  and 
long  coat  reaching  to  his  prodigious 
gaiters. 

Miss  Jellicoe's  smile  for  a  moment 
vanished  at  the  apparition  of  Sebas- 
tian, and  only  came  back  very  faintly 
indeed  after  his  brief  and  apologetic 
introduction  of  himself.  Her  reply 
was  by  no  means  reassuring  or  re- 
lieving to  his  embarrassment. 

"We  had  no  idea,  Mr.  Gould,  you 
would  reach  us  so  early.  We  ex- 
pected it  would  be  quite  late  in  the 
evening  before  you  could  possibly 
arrive."  And  then  the  usual  gentle, 
subdued  laugh  began  again,  as  she 
added — 

"  Will  you  take  a  cup  of  tea  ?  or 
do  you  prefer  coffee  ? " 

Sebastian  begged  to  be  allowed  to 
go  to  his  room,  and,  on  receiving  Miss 
Jellicoe's  assenting  smile,  hurriedly 
gave  way  to  some  new  arrivals. 

He  looked  about  in  hopes  of  seeing 
some  of  the  old  servants,  but  feeling 
very  doubtful  as  to  whether  he  should 
remember  them. 

There  was  only  a  smart  maid  at 
the  foot  of  the  stairs,  and  a  butler 
carrying  a  tray  of  glasses  towards  the 
garden. 

Sebastian  stopped,  told  him  who  he 
was,  and  inquired  what  room  he  was 


to  occupy.  The  butler  told  him  of 
one,  and  Sebastian  found  it  to  be  the 
same  he  had  used  before,  and  hastened 
thankfully  towards  it.  But  he  had 
no  sooner  opened  the  door  than  he 
started  back  and  hurried  .away,  for 
two  ladies  were  there  adjusting  their 
hair  and  shawls. 

In  despair  he  went  to  what  used  to 
be  the  prebendary's  dressing-room, 
but  found  it  turned  into  a  study. 
Here  he  waited,  glad  of  a  rest,  though 
very  hungry,  and  by  no  means  en- 
chanted by  his  reception. 

In  a  few  minutes  the  butler  came  to 
find  him.  He  said  the  prebendary 
desired  him  to  express  his  great  regret 
that  his  responsibilities  in  the  garden 
prevented  him  from  coming  imme- 
diately to  welcome  him,  and  that  Mr. 
Gould  was  to  do  just  as  he  pleased 
about  joining  them  there  after  he  had 
refreshed  himself.  At  the  same  time 
a  maid  came  from  Miss  Jellicoe  to  beg 
him  to  come  down  and  take  a  cup  of 
tea,  as  she  was  sure  he  must  need 
some  refreshment  after  such  a  journey. 

Sebastian  felt  inclined  to  take  his 
bag  and  follow  the  little  party  now 
returning  to  Monksdean.  But  his  life 
had  been  such  as  to  leave  him  rich  in 
patience,  and,  after  having  been  shown 
to  the  prebendary's  bedroom,  he  de- 
scended into  the  hall,  where,  utterly 
weary,  he  threw  himself  into  the  chair 
in  a  corner  pointed  out  to  him,  and 
received  from  Miss  Jellicoe's  fair 
hands  a  cup  of  weak  and  almost  cold 
tea. 

"  I  am  sure  you  must  want  it,"  she 
observed,  with  affected  sweetness. 

Sebastian  was  not  at  all  sure,  but 
sipped  it  as  amiably  as  he  could. 

"  Do  you  take  sugar  and  cream  1 " 
she  inquired ;  but  when  Sebastian 
replied  affirmatively,  she  only  smiled, 
and,  without  taking  any  more  notice 
of  him,  turned  to  receive  other  visitors, 
leaving  him  to  draw  back  his  extended 
cup,  still  sugarless  and  creamless. 

He  was  just  meditating  in  his  des- 
peration, clearing  at  one  sweep    the 
plate   of    wafer  slices   of   bread    and 
butter  near  him,  when  the  voices  of 
F  F  2 


436 


Sebastian. 


the  new  arrivals  struck  him,  and 
caused  him  to  look  towards  them. 

They  were  three  persons ;  but  at 
first  Sebastian  noticed  only  the  two 
foremost.  One  of  them  was  a  gentle- 
man of  about  forty-five  years,  with  a 
light  complexion  and  a  dark  scowl,  a 
small,  insignificant  figure,  and  a  con- 
sequential step  and  manner.  The 
young  lady  on  his  arm  had  also  a 
light  complexion,  but  dark  hair  and 
brown  eyes,  and  a  mouth  that,  in  its 
repose,  had  more  pleasantness  and 
sign  of  inward  joyousness  than  many 
people's  brightest  smiles. 

She  would  have  been  pretty,  what- 
ever might  be  her  lot  in  life  or  the 
turn  of  her  mind,  but  with  all  the 
evidences  about  her  of  a  soft,  careless 
life,  and  of  a  bright,  freshly-seeing, 
truth-loving  mind,  she  was  one  of  the 
most  lovable  and  winning  of  human 
beings. 

Sebastian  would  certainly  have  now 
looked  upon  her  with  exceeding 
wonder  and  delight,  but  that  a  sense 
of  depression  and  humiliation,  quite 
incomprehensible  to  him,  had  stricken 
him  at  the  sight  of  her. 

What  affected  him  so  strangely  now 
Sebastian  hardly  knew.  He  was  cer- 
tain it  was  not  mere  admiration  of  a 
softly  brilliant  and  sweet  face ;  not 
pleasure  at  the  meeting  with  an  old 
friend ;  not  mortification  at  the  con- 
trast of  their  fortunes ;  not  jealousy 
of  the  handsome  young  man  who  fol- 
lowed behind  her,  looking  upon  her 
with  just  such  a  calm  satisfaction  as 
an  accepted  suitor  might  look.  No; 
Sebastian  felt  sure  it  was  not  one  of 
these  things  that  caused  that  sudden 
passion  of  pity  for  himself  and  his 
hard  life,  that  coldness  through  his 
frame,  that  sickness  of  the  world ;  it 
was  not  one  of  them,  but — was  it  all  1 

Dora  stood  a  few  moments  talking 
to  Miss  Jellicoe,  though  she  declined 
taking  tea.  Her  face  was  turned 
towards  Sebastian's  corner,  though  she 
did  not  see  him  ;  but  he  watched  every 
expression  of  her  face  those  few 
moments  closely  enough  to  feel  sure 
that  all  that  had  been  brightest  and 


sweetest  in  her  character  as  a  child 
and  in  her  early  girlhood  had  de- 
veloped more  in  her  than  those  faults 
that  had  sometimes  repelled  him. 

The  keen  sense  of  the  absurd  that 
had  always  been  part  of  her  was  now 
still  there,  but  with  all  kindliness  and 
sunny  mirth  rather  than  satire.  The 
twinkle  in  her  eyes,  as  they  caught 
sight  of  the  prebendary  in  the  garden, 
was  worth  seeing. 

Two  enthusiastic  admirers  of  his 
arrived  in  the  persons  of  two  young 
ladies,  who  overpowered  Miss  Jellicoe 
with  tender  inquiries  concerning  him. 
While  they  were  doing  so  the  eyes  of 
one  fell  on  the  huge  slipper  in  which 
the  prebendary  was  obliged  occa- 
sionally to  rest  his  swollen  foot. 

"  Oh,  there's  his  darling  slipper  !  " 
she  cried,  and,  seizing  the  huge  shape- 
less thing,  touched  or  pretended  to 
touch,  it  with  an  impassioned  kiss. 

Nothing  could  be  more  demure  than 
Dora's  face  as  she  watched  this  scene, 
or  more  rich  than  the  fun  which  swam 
in  her  eyes. 

At  last,  in  their  amused  progress 
round  the  hall,  they  fell  on  Sebastian. 

Sebastian  was  not  surprised,  or 
nattered,  or  consoled  in  any  way  at 
seeing  Dora's  brows  arch,  and  her  eyes 
grow  serious,  and  her  lips  part.  He 
had  seen  her  look  just  so  as  a  baby, 
at  some  cottager's  child  crying  in  the 
road,  or  at  the  sight  of  a  maimed  bird 
or  dog,  or  anything  showing  signs  of 
trouble,  and  was  well  aware  so  weary 
and  faint  a  traveller  as  himself  would 
be  sure  to  awaken  her  pity. 

After  saying  something  quickly  to 
her  father,  Dowdeswell  turned  and 
scowled  hard  at  Sebastian,  and  then 
both  came  towards  him. 

Sebastian  put  down  his  tea-cup,  and 
rose  to  meet  them. 

"  How  do  you  do,  sir  ?  "  said  Dow- 
deswell. "  I  should  not  have  known 
you,  but  for  my  daughter's  reminding 
me  who  you  were.  1  am  delighted  to 
meet  a  native  of  my  native  village, 
particularly  the  son  of  my  rector." 

Sebastian,  as  he  received  Dora's 
kind  hand  and  kinder  glance,  was  so 


Sebastian. 


437 


eager  to  withdraw  what  he  feared 
he  had  shown  of  pain  before,  that  he 
perhaps  threw  too  much  earnestness 
in  his  greeting  and  expressions  of 
pleasure  at  meeting  her.  Judging  by 
Doras  deep  and  lingering  blush,  and* 
Dowdeswell's  scowl,  and  a  certain 
restlessness  on  the  part  of  the  gentle- 
man who  had  entered  with  them, 
Sebastian  had  a  strange  suspicion  he 
had  erred  in  this  matter. 

Being  plainly  shown  his  company 
was  not  desired  by  Dowdeswell's 
party,,  he  returned  to  his  chair,  and 
his  cold  tea. 

A  young  man  who  had  been  stand- 
ing near,  waiting  for  a  cup  of  coffee 
which  Miss  Jellicoe  had  insisted  on 
his  having,  and  had  then  forgotten  all 
about,  said  to  Sebastian — 

"Oh,  Dowdeswell's  here,  is  he? 
We  shall  have  enough  of  the  posses- 
sive pronoun,  then,  this  evening.  We 
call  him  '  my '  Dowdeswell  of  my 
park,  myshire.  We  shall  have 
enough  of  '  my  opinion,'  '  my  daugh- 
ter,' 'my  yacht,'  and  'my  every- 
thing.' "  " 

When  Sebastian  went  out  in  the 
garden,  he  found  it  little  altered  since 
he  used  to  wander  about  there,  feel- 
ing the  most  hopeless  little  dunce  the 
world  contained.  There  was  the  fine 
old  church  with  its  square  tower, 
divided  from  the  garden  only  by  the 
low  laurustinus  hedge  and  pretty  gate. 
The  rustic  roofs  of  farm  buildings 
appeared  quaintly  over  the  high  garden 
wall. 

Sebastian  waited  till  the  Dowdes- 
wells  had  been  received  by  the  pre- 
bendary, and  then  presented  himself. 

His  god-father  met  him  with  an 
air  of  affable  familiarity,  rather  than 
hearty  welcome. 

"Well,  Sebastian,"  he  said,  in  a 
voice  that  might  be  heard  nearly  all 
over  the  garden ;  "  here  already. 
Why,  instead  of  having  prayed  for 
the  wings  of  a  dove  that  you  might 
fly  away  and  be  at  rest,  you  must 
have  prayed  for  the  pinions  of  a 
carrier  pigeon,  that  you  might  be  here 
and  at  your  work." 


And  the  prebendary  broke  out  into 
his  deep  ha  !  ha !  ha !  which  was 
echoed  softly  by  a  bevy  of  his  fair 
admirers. 

"And  I  hope  you  have  been  enjoy- 
ing a  substantial  repast  after  your 
journey,"  said  the  prebendary,  loudly 
enough  for  every  one  to  hear  of  his 
thoughtful  consideration  for  the  new 
curate. 

Sebastian,  in  his  anxiety  to  cease 
being  the  object  of  general  attention, 
bowed.  But  the  prebendary  would 
not  let  him  escape  without  further 
inquiring  in  the  hearing  of  all 
present — 

"And  feel,  I  suppose,  like  a  giant 
refreshed,  eh  t  " 

Seeing  Dora's  eyes  glancing  at  the 
prebendary  with  some  keen,  dainty 
satire,  gave  Sebastian  encouragement 
to  answer  with  better  grace  than  he 
might  otherwise  have  done.  Meeting 
the  prebendary's  eyes,  Dora  stooped 
over  a  rose-tree  by  which  she  stood, 
that  he  might  not  see  the  smile  she 
could  not  control. 

"  I  see,  Miss  Dowdeswell,"  said  he, 
"  you  are  admiring  that  rose.  We  do 
rather  pride  ourselves  on  our  roses." 

"  Roses !  "  echoed  Dowdeswell,  turn- 
ing back  to  Sebastian  as  his  daughter 
walked  on  with  the  prebendary.  "  I 
should  like  these  people  to  see  my 
roses,"  and  he  scowled  at  his  host's 
blossoms  almost  vindictively. 

"  I  recollect  them  being  wonder- 
fully fine  at  the  Combe,"  observed 
Sebastian. 

"  Nothing  like  them,  sir,  anywhere 
in  the  country,"  declared  Dowdeswell. 
"  My  gardener  has  got  the  first  prize 
for  three  years.  When  you  are  my 
way,  I  should  like  you  to  see  my 
Marshal  Neils  and  Duke  of  Welling- 
tons. What !  do  they  call  those 
strawberries  ?  I  wish  I  had  a  plate- 
ful of  my  British  Queens  here  to 
show  them." 

The  prebendary  was  leading  the 
way  to  what  he  called  the  fernery — a 
little  musty  house  where  stood  on 
shelves,  some  depressed-looking  plants 
that  appeared  utterly  crushed  by  the 


438 


Sebastian. 


grandeur  of  their  own  names,  which 
were  written  in  large  letters  on  each, 
and  which,  like  certain  families,  they 
left  to  speak  for  them  without  giving 
themselves  the  trouble  to  assert  their 
qualities  in  any  other  way. 

"  Ferns,"  averred  Miss  Jellicoe, 
with  a  softly  confidential  tone,  turn- 
ing, as  she  followed  the  prebendary's 
party  into  the  little  door  ;  "  ferns  are 
my  brother's  weakness." 

"  She  may  well  say  that,"  muttered 
Dowdeswell  to  Sebastian.  "  I  wouldn't 
allow  such  things  as  these  in  the  wild- 
est part  of  my  park.  I  should  like 
these  people  to  see  my  semi-tropical 
house  just  now,  my  tropical,  and  my 
purely  English !  No  experiments 
there,  sir ;  no  chance  things.  When 
/  want  a  good  thing  I  pay  a  good 
price ;  that's  the  principle  1  go 
upon." 

At  that  moment  it  happened  that 
Sebastian's  and  Dora's  eyea  met  as 
the  prebendary  was  trying  to  teach 
her  to  pronounce  the  name  of  some 
shrivelled-looking  thing  in  the  centre 
of  the  fernery,  and  a  smile,  neither 
could  help,  was  exchanged  between 
them.  Dowdeswell  noticed  it,  and 
his  habitual  scowl  darkened  as  he 
scrutinized  his  companion  sharply. 

"You've  not  been  home  yet  since 
your  return  from  New  Zealand,  I 
think,"  he  remarked,  after  scowling 
uninterruptedly  at  Sebastian  for  some 
time. 

"  No,  not  yet,"  replied  Sebastian, 
still  spellbound  by  the  soft  archness 
of  Dora's  face,  as  she  listened  to  the 
prebendary. 

"  Then  you've  not  seen  my  altera- 
tions at  the  Combe,"  continued  Dow- 
deswell. "  I  am  having  a  pathway 
cut  through  my  little  wood,  facing  my 
gates,  you  know,  that  I  may  have  a 
direct  way  to  the  church.  It  will  be 
so  much  more  convenient  for  my 
daughter's  marriage,  than  if  we  had 
to  go  round  the  usual  way.  Perhaps 
you  may  be  home  at  the  time — it's  to 
be  in  two  months  from  now — and  can 
assist  your  father.  He  is  to  marry 
them.  Of  course  many  clergymen  in 


high  positions,  among  my  acquaint- 
ances, take  it  rather  hard  I  don't  ask 
them  ;  but  I  am  one  who  always  like 
to  stand  up  for  my  own  place,  so  I 
prefer  my  daughter  being  married  in 
my  own  church,  by  my  own  rector." 

They  had  followed  the  prebendary 
at  some  little  distance  after  quitting 
the  fernery,  and  were  now  standing 
with  his  party  on  the  brow  of  the 
hill,  from  which  was  the  pet  view  of 
the  place.  The  prebendary  and  his 
sister  were  pointing  out  the  chief 
things  of  interest :  the  cathedral 
towers,  the  curves  of  the  river,  the 
great  Tor,  and  the  different  park  lands, 
invariably  following  up  their  observa- 
tions with  the  usual  duet  of  bass  and 
treble  laughter. 

Sebastian  had  listened  to  Dowdes- 
well's  news  without  surprise.  His 
words  had  been  only  an  utterance 
and  verifying  of  Sebastian's  own 
thoughts  of  Dora,  and  the  man  who 
had  entered  with  her,  and  who  now 
stood  near  her. 

He  was  a  man  Sebastian  could  not 
look  at  without  thinking  of  the  best 
and  sunniest  aspect  of  country  life, 
its  healthiest  activities  and  purest 
repose.  There  was  something  of  the 
hunter  without  a  touch  of  the  jockey, 
something  of  the  student  without  any 
of  the  painful  reserve  or  self -absorp- 
tion of  the  recluse.  He  was  not 
conspicuous  for  personal  comeliness, 
yet  was  really  handsomer  than  many 
a  conspicuously  handsome  man.  There 
was  the  quietness  that  really  perfect 
features  give  to  a  face.  He  was 
slightly  under  middle  height,  but  had 
the  dignity  and  easy  strength  of  a 
military  man.  His  face  had  a  sun- 
burnt blandness,  and  seemed  to 
Sebastian's  keen  eye  to  show  signs 
of  every  good  gift  of  mind  and 
heart  but  one.  The  absence  of  this 
one  made  Sebastian  wonder  more  than 
the  absence  of  any  other  would  have 
done.  For  a  man  with  the  sure  pros- 
pect of  merging  his  life  in  Dora's  to 
show  all  utter  absence  of  happiness 
was  so  incomprehensible  to  Sebastian 
that  he  could  not  keep  his  surprise 


Sebastian. 


439 


from  showing  itself  in  his  look 
whenever  he  turned  it  towards  Dora's 
companion. 

Dowdeswell  saw  and  noticed  Sebas- 
tian's evident  interest  in  his  friend. 

"  My  future  son-in-law,"  he  whis- 
pered, "  most  superior  man  !  He  has 
had  a  great  domestic  affliction.  I 
dare  say  you  did  not  hear  of  the  case 
over  at  New  Zealand.  It  was  kept  as 
quiet  as  it  could  be  here  after  the 
trial,  on  account  of  the  great  respect 
felt  for  him  and  his  family.  Let 
me  introduce  you  —  he  knows  your 
father." 

It  happened  that  the  prebendary 
had  just  engaged  Dora  and  the  per- 
son of  whom  Dowdeswell  was  speaking 
in  the  study  of  a  tree,  for  the  crooked- 
ness of  which  he  was  giving  some 
elaborately  scientific  explanation. 

Twice  Dowdeswell  had  spoken.  The 
second  time  he  did  so,  still  without 
attracting  his  attention,  Sebastian 
said  hastily — 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  what  name 
did  you  say  ? " 

"  Rudall,"  answered  Dowdeswell. 

"Not,  of  course,"  said  Sebastian, 
smiling  at  himself  for  such  an  idea 
occurring  to  him — "not,  of  course, 
one  of  the  parties  in  the  divorce 
case  1 " 

"Yes,"  replied  Dowdeswell,  "this 
is  the  man,  and  all  the  world  respects 
him  the  more  for  his  great  misfor- 
tune ;  if  not  he  would  not  be  about  to 
make  such  a  marriage." 

The  smile  passed  very  suddenly 
from  Sebastian's  face,  and  he  gazed 
at  Dowdeswell  with  wonder,  and  with 
concern  deepening  to  disgust. 

He  had  not  noticed  Dora  had 
turned  and  was  introducing  Rudall 
to  him — by  his  request — till  he  heard 
mention  of  his  name. 

Sebastian  fell  back  a  step  or  two 
in  uncontrollable  repugnance  from  the 
man  who  stood  before  him  saying 
something  kind  as  to  his  knowledge 
of  his  father,  and  holding  out  his 
hand  with  unaffected  cordiality.  With 
difficulty  Sebastian  recovered  himself 
sufficiently  to  acknowledge  the  intro- 


duction in  the  briefest,  sternest  man- 
ner, and  to  walk  on  quickly  as  if  he 
had  just  seen  some  one  he  wished  to 
overtake. 

Dowdeswell's  scowl  deepened  as  he 
looked  after  him,  but  gave  place  to 
a  smile,  and  turning  to  Rudall,  who 
was  gi*eatly  surprised,  he  said — 

"  You  mustn't  expect  much  at  first 
from  a  disappointed  rival.  He  was 
in  love  with  Dora  at  eleven  years 
old." 

As  the  prebendary  and  Miss 
Jellicoe  had  been  witnesses  of  Sebas- 
tian's rudeness,  they  hastened  now 
to  make  the  most  of  Dowdes well's 
explanation  by  subdued  but  prolonged 
laughter  at  Sebastian's  expense. 

But  a  moment  or  two  afterwards 
the  prebendary  found  opportunity  to 
say  to  his  sister,  with  an  angry  look 
in  the  direction  of  Sebastian's  retiring 
figure  — 

"  Most  unseemly  conduct !  " 

"  Very  indeed,"  answered  Miss 
Jellicoe. 

"  Will  not  do  here  at  all,"  declared 
the  prebendary. 

"  So  presumptuous  !  "  murmured  his 
sister,  before  looking  round  to  smile 
on  some  approaching  friends. 

Supper  was  announced  at  nine 
o'clock,  but  only  half  of  the  preben- 
dary's guests  managed  to  find -places 
at  his  table.  Sebastian  was  not  one 
of  them,  nor  did  he  much  covet  the 
honour.  His  hunger  had  left  him, 
and  in  its  stead  had  come  a  feverish 
restlessness  and  excitability  that  made 
him  regard  the  discovery  he  had  just 
made  with  increasing  concern  and 
abhorrence. 

Dora  to  be  married  to  Cicely's  hus- 
band! He  could  scarcely  believe  he 
was  not  in  some  strange,  unhealthy 
dream,  as  he  repeated  the  words  over 
and  over  to  himself  while  wandering 
in  the  almost  deserted  garden.  At 
one  moment  he  would  shun  seeing 
them,  at  another  find  it  impossible  to 
keep  his  eyes  from  watching  them. 

When  he  looked  on  Rudall  he  could 
hardly  believe  Cicely  had  not  shown 
him  her  husband's  portrait,  so  exactly 


440 


Sebastian. 


did  he  fulfil  the  idea  she  had  given  of 
him ;  and  after  all  it  was  not  Rudall 
who  most  inspired  him  with  indig- 
nation, or  even  Dowdeswell.  The 
person  who  appeared  to  him  most 
unnatural  and  most  untrue  to  her 
character  and  best  instincts  was 
Dora. 

Several  times  that  evening  she 
coloured  or  grew  pale  as  she  became 
aware  of  Sebastian's  eyes  regarding 
her  with  cold,  stern,  and  half-pitying 
astonishment.  Yet  sometimes  she 
took  courage  to  return  his  look  with 
one  of  proud  denial  of  the  inward 
wrong  of  which  he  seemed  to  be  silently 
accusing  her.  She  supposed  him  to 
be  possessed  of  a  narrow-minded  pre- 
judice against  the  idea  of  her  marriage 
with  a  man  who  had  suffered  so  great 
a  humiliation  as  Rudall,  and  such  a 
prejudice  appeared  to  her  quite  un- 
worthy of  Sebastian,  and  quite  calmed 
the  little  agitation  which  the  revival 
of  old  times,  at  the  sight  of  his  face, 
had  caused  her.  She  thought  his 
apparent  readiness  to  condemn  came 
with  his  newly-acquired  dignity  as  a 
clergyman,  and  tried  to  smile  at, 
instead  of  being  pained  by,  it.  But 
she  could  not  conceal  from  herself,  and 
could  scarcely  conceal  from  Sebastian, 
that  she  was  pained,  and  very  deeply,  j 
Rudall  had  evidently  taken  the  view 
of  Sebastian's  behaviour  suggested  by 
Dowdeswell,  and  showed  a  slight 
uneasiness  that  was  either  a  very 
well-controlled  or  very  mild  form  of 
jealousy. 

Sebastian  felt  that  if  he  had  not 
received  the  confidence  of  Cicely  in 
strict  secrecy,  and  given  his  word  to 
her  to  make  no  disclosures  to  Eudall 
without  her  consent,  and  been  still 
more  solemnly  intreated  to  keep 
silence  in  that  last  sad  letter  of  hers, 
he  could  not  have  refrained  from 
calling  aside  this  man  and  telling  him 
the  whole  truth.  But  he  was  doubly 
bound  to  silence,  and  knew  not  where 
to  seek  Cicely  and  demand  a  release 
from  his  pi'omise. 

But  he  began  to  ask  himself,  though 
pledged  to  keep  Cicely's  position  from 


her  husband,  was  he  bound  to  keep  it 
from  others  1  He  certainly  was  not 
so  bound  by  words,  but  did  Cicely 
consider  him  pledged  in  honour  to 
do  sol 

Would  not  interference  on  his  part 
be  even  cruel,  he  thought,  and  un- 
natural ?  If  he  put  the  truth  of 
Cicely's  case  before  Rudall  now,  it 
was  more  than  probable  that  she 
would  refuse  to  receive  her  husband, 
though  he  should  go  to  her,  ever  so 
eager  for  a  reconciliation.  Sebastian 
knew  there  was  more  strength  in  her 
quiet  firmness  than  in  the  strongest 
passions  of  most  women.  She  had 
secretly  watched  him,  and  had  as- 
sured herself  his  love  had  passed  to 
another,  and  had  told  Sebastian  that 
nothing  could  make  her  return  to  him 
as  his  wife — that  so  strong  was  this 
resolve,  she  would  rather  remain  un- 
justified before  the  world  than  give 
him  those  proofs  of  her  innocence 
that  would,  perhaps,  in  spite  of  her- 
self, make  him  feel  himself  bound  to 
claim  her. 

After  all  they  were  divorced.  Cicely 
had  been  as  dead  to  Rudall  for 
two  years,  and  after  her  return  to 
England  and  her  discovery  of  his  new 
attachment,  she  had  said  he  was  as 
dead  to  her,  that  nothing  would  make 
her  even  see  him  again  willingly. 
In  this  case,  then,  Sebastian  asked 
himself,  was  he  at  all  justified  in 
hindering  or  rendering  unhappy  a 
marriage  that  had  every  prospect  of 
being  harmonious  and  peaceful  at 
least. 

Cicely  had  already  had  time  in  which 
to  recover  partly  from  the  shock  of 
her  hearing  of  it,  and  had  probably 
settled  down  to  some  gentle  and  use- 
ful plan  of  life,  benefiting  rather  than 
hurting  others  by  her  sorrow.  In 
Sebastian's  eyes  she  was  one  of  those, 
who,  "going  through  the  vale  of 
misery,  use  it  for  a  well,"  and  "  go 
from  strength  to  strength." 

Why,  then,  since  the  revelation  of 
the  truth  might  bring  Cicely  such 
doubtful  good,  should  Dora's  young 
life  be  darkened,  as  it  would  be,  if 


Sebastian. 


441 


she  loved  this  man  with  all  the 
strength  of  her  good  heart,  and  this 
truth  were  now  made  known  to  her  1 

It  is  true  that  doubts  were  in 
Sebastian's  mind  as  to  whether  she 
did  so  love  him.  These  doubts,  and 
perhaps  something  else  filled  his  eyes, 
and  could  be  partly  read  by  Dora  as 
she  wished  him  good-night.  Whatever 
she  read  there,  certainly  startled  her. 


CHAPTER  XI. 
A  SUNDAY  "INSTITUTION." 

THE  prebendary's  affability  disap- 
peared with  his  guests,  and  the  time 
Sebastian  passed  in  his  presence,  after- 
wards, was  gloomy  indeed. 

It  was  easy  to  see  that  his  friendship 
for  Dowdeswell  had  brought  him  into 
a  position  he  did  not  at  all  like,  how- 
ever amiably  he  bore  himself  in  it. 

Even  in  the  short  time  he  passed 
with  Sebastian  when  his  visitors  had 
gone,  and  the  drawing-room  shutters 
were  closed  on  the  moon-lit  and  dew- 
pearled  lawn,  the  prebendary  took 
care  to  explain  to  his  curate  how  it 
was  simple  charity,  and  by  no  means 
choice,  that  had  led  him  to  counte- 
nance Dora's  engagement  with  Rudall. 

Perhaps,  however,  had  the  pre- 
bendary told  the  whole  truth  to  his 
god-son  he  would  have  owned  that  he 
had  been  taken  by  surprise  in  the 
matter,  and  led  by  the  force  of  circum- 
stances, even  more  than  by  charity, 
into  a  predicament  peculiarly  distaste- 
ful to  him. 

When  Dowdeswell  had  first  come 
down  upon  him  to  entreat,  in  his  own 
overbearing,  impetuous  manner,  his 
assistance  in  overcoming  the  repug- 
nance to  the  marriage  already  shown 
by  several  clergymen  of  position  having 
refused  to  perform  the  ceremony,  and 
by  the  coldness  of  Dora's  best  friends, 
the  prebendary  had  thrown  up  his 
hands  in  horror,  and  declared  he 
should  regard  the  affair  as  "  a  moral 
bigamy." 

But  Dowdeswell  had  some  strong 
points  to  urge  as  reasons  for  the  pre- 


bendary changing  his  opinion  on  the 
matter.  He  reminded  him  that  he 
himself  had  first  introduced  Dora  to 
the  house  where  she  met  Rudall 's 
father  and  mother,  and  other  members 
of  his  family.  The  prebendary  did 
remember  it,  and  groaned  over  the  re- 
collection. He  protested  that  he  had 
then  no  idea  the  St.  Georges  were  re- 
lated to  the  Rudalls,  or  even  acquainted 
with  them. 

"Just  so,"  Dowdeswell  said,  stand- 
ing before  the  nervous  prebendary, 
his  frown  darkening  over  him  like  a 
thunder-cloud.  "  Of  course,  if  we 
could  any  of  us  have  foreseen  the 
danger  of  this  we  should  have  acted 
very  differently.  As  it  ^s,  I  see  no 
use  in  blaming  any  one ;  and  I  think 
it  very  hard  there  should  be  blame  at 
all,  except  to  the  wretched  creature 
who  has  left  poor  Rudall  in  the  cruel 
position  of  being  neither  married  nor 
single.  But  owning  it  is  an  unfortu- 
nate business  —  that  we  would  have 
done  anything  to  prevent — the  question 
is,  as  it  couldn't  be  prevented,  what's 
toube  done  now  ?  Dora  meets  at  the 
house  of  your  friend  this  man's  rela- 
tions whom  she  afterwards  visits,  and 
finds  them  people  such  as  she  says 
she  had  never  met  before.  She  must 
change  everything  when  she  comes 
home.  She  never  knew  what  religion 
was,  or  education,  or  intellect,  or  good- 
ness, or  anything  worth  knowing,  till 
she  knew  these  people  —  confound 
them  ! — though  I  do  believe  in  their 
superiority — that  I  must  own.  It 
does  one  good,  sir,  to  see  the  old  boy, 
the  father  of  all  those  middle-aged 
and  elderly  sons,  complete  lord  and 
master  still,  with  his  patriarchal  beard 
on  his  cheque-book  whenever  there's 
an  extra  need  among  them.  When  I 
saw  him,  and  the  mother  whom  they 
all  look  up  to  as  a  queen,  I  must  tell 
you,  Mr.  Prebendary,  I  couldn't  won- 
der such  a  girl  as  Dora,  who  has  never 
known  a  mother,  brother,  or  sister, 
should  fall  in  love  with  their  family 
life,  which  is,  I  believe,  all  the  real 
falling  in  love  there's  been  on  her 
side." 


442 


Sebastian. 


The  prebendary  observed  that  if 
they  were  gifted  with  so  high  a  sense 
of  honour,  it  was  a  pity  they  should 
have  encouraged  an  innocent  girl  to 
become  involved  with  so  unfortunate  a 
person  as  Rudall. 

"  They  did  not  encourage  anything 
of  the  kind,"  declared  Dowdeswell, 
"  though  such  a  marriage  was  what 
they  most  longed  for  for  him ;  for  with 
them  marriage  is  looked  on  as  the 
greatest  object  in  life.  But  of  course 
they  couldn't  help  her  hearing  of  his 
sad  position,  or  of  what  he  was  thought 
of  by  all  who  knew  him.  The  poor 
people  all  about  had  tales  to  tell  her 
of  his  charity  and  goodness.  She 
knew  the  longing  of  the  whole  family 
was  to  see  the  shadow  driven  away 
from  his  path  by  a  really  good  mar- 
riage. Then,  when  she  sees  him,  and 
he  takes  comfort  in  her  society — and 
I  must  say  two  never  met  who  seemed 
more  plainly  made  for. -each  other — 
what  is  more  natural  than  that  Dora 
with  the  new  high-flown  notions  she's 
picked  up  from  them  as  to  a  motive 
or  a  mission,  or  whatever  they  call  it, 
in  life ; — Dora,  with  her  own  little 
first  whisper  of  a  love  story  hushed  by 
the  sea  between  her  and  a  certain  per- 
son we  know  of — eh,  Prebendary  ? — 
what's  more  natural  than  that  she 
should  open  her  good,  warm,  little 
heart  as  a  hospital  for  a  wounded 
spirit,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing  ? 
Dora  has,  in  fact,  her  father's  practical 
common-sense,  and  she  doesn't  care  to 
spoil  what  may  be  a  very  happy  life 
by  moping  over  a  love-dream  that  a 
"missionary's  assistant"  beyond  the 
seas  is  the  hero  of  ;  or  to  waste  the 
good  things  of  life  her  grandfather, 
till  his  old  age,  and  her  father,  in  his 
young  days,  slaved  to  provide.  Yet 
she  has,  too,  her  mother's  generous, 
romantic  nature,  and  must  do  some- 
thing out  of  the  way — even  in  the 
resolve  to  make  the  most  of  her  life 
and  fortune." 

At  first  the  prebendary  was  reso- 
lutely and  gloomily  against  the  very 
idea  of  the  marriage.  But  there  was 
something  flattering  in  the  faith  Dow- 


deswell had — that  Prebendary  Jellicoe 
had  power,  and  he  alone,  to  banish 
the  frown  of  Society,  and  make  that 
which  was  now  inevitable  all  bright 
by  his  approving  countenance. 

Dowdeswell  paid  him  several  visits, 
and  worried  and  perplexed  him  with 
alternate  fits  of  passionate  vindication 
of  Rudall,  and  of  deep  depression. 
The  end  of  it  was  that  the  prebendary 
extended  a  gracious  hand  to  Dowdes- 
well, and  declared  that,  if  necessary, 
he  would  marry  the  misguided  pair 
himself.  After  that  Dowdeswell  looked 
for  the  world  to  smile  on  them,  and  he 
proudly  resented  any  hesitation  on  its 
part  to  do  so. 

Sebastian  retired  at  last  to  his  room 
with  a  feeling  of  deep  irritation  as 
well  as  despondency,  and  with  the 
sense  of  having  bitterly  blundered  in 
leaving  his  post  at  New  Zealand  on 
the  strength  of  his  god-father's  fair- 
promises. 

.  .The  next  morning,  the  prebendary, 
feeling  ill  from  the  effects  of  his  ex- 
ertions of  the  previous  day,  informed 
Sebastian  he  would  have  to  undertake 
the  chief  part  of  the  service.  Sebastian 
prepared  himself  for  his  duties  with 
very  different  feelings  from  those  with 
which  he  had  always  anticipated  his 
first  Sunday  work  in  England. 

But,  from  that  morning,  Sebastian's 
"  day  of  small  things"  was  at  an  end. 
The  results  of  his  patience,  his  toil, 
his  bitter  experiences,  and  tender 
cherishing  of  faint  hope,  showed  them- 
selves now  as  he  little  expected. 
Never  had  he  thought  less  of  himself, 
or  of  shining  in  any  way,  than  on  the 
morning  when  he  walked  sadly  across 
the  prebendary's  velvet  lawn,  his 
nearest  way  to  the  church. 

He  had  taken  his  sermon  from  a 
parcel  of  the  very  earliest  he  had 
written  for  the  clergyman  to  whom 
he  had  been  lay-assistant,  and  who 
had  delivered  it  in  his  usual  mechani- 
cal cold  manner,  so  that  its  worth 
had  been  hidden  from  Sebastian  him- 
self. But  scarcely  had  he  read  the 
first  few  sentences  in  the  prebendary's 


Sebastian. 


443 


pulpit,  than  his  hearers  became  aware 
of  something  holding  their  attention, 
as  it  had  never  been  held  before.  In 
Petherton  Church,  the  heavy  respect- 
ability of  the  prebendary's  discourse 
had  been  borne  with  so  many  years 
as  to  make  it  the  only  thing  expected 
there,  and  it  was  no  wonder  that  the 
congregation  should  be  as  if  electrified 
to  find  suddenly  a  fresh  fountain  of 
eloquence  breaking  over  them,  to  see 
standing  forth  one,  who,  by  his  face, 
worn  with  trouble,  yet  beautified  by 
a  joy  unknown  to  any  there,  by  his 
form,  worn,  yet  "ennobled,  by  its  pil- 
grimages and  fatigues  in  the  service  of 
others,  and  who,  by  these  signs,  might 
have  been  but  just  left  behind  at  his 
work  by  the  band  of  apostles  who 
walked  with  their  Master  in  the  flesh. 
The  best  feelings  of  his  hearers  were 
touched  before  they  had  time  to  think 
of  guarding  them,  their  hearts  filled 
with  holy  desires  before  they  had 
warning  to  close  them. 

Dora  listened  with  the  surprise  and 
reverence  with  which  one  finds  an 
early  and  almost  forgotten  ideal 
realised  far  beyond  expectation.  She 
had  always  believed  there  was  more 
strength  in  Sebastian's  character 
than  the  world  gave  him  credit  for ; 
but  had  little  thought  ever  to  see  so 
fully  and  wonderfully  developed  those 
powers  she  had  admired  in  his  student 
days  of  failure  and  humility.  But 
the  higher  Sebastian  rose  in  her 
estimation,  the  more  keenly  she  felt 
his  coldness  to  herself ;  the  more 
serious  his  evident  repugnance  to  her 
marriage  with  Rudall.  She  did  not 
take  her  father's  view  of  Sebastian's 
conduct  towards  Rudall ;  she  was  not 
vain  enough  to  think  jealousy  or  envy 
the  cause  of  it.  Before  she  had  heard 
Sebastian  preach,  she  had  felt  vexed 
at  his  displeasure  as  being  caused  by 
a  too  hasty  judgment  and  ignorance 
of  the  true  worth  and  true  story  of 
the  man  to  whom  she  was  betrothed. 
But  when  she  thus  saw  his  mind  in 
its  ripe  manhood  and  clearsightedness, 
she  began  to  tremblingly  wonder  if 
indeed  he  might  not  have  power  to 


see  deeper  into  this  matter  than  her- 
self, or  Rudall,  or  her  father. 

Dowdeswell,  in  his  usual  blunt 
worship  of  success  in  any  form,  and 
the  success  particularly  of  one  over 
whom  he  could  claim  any  kind  of 
patronage,  talked,  when  service  was 
over,  exactly  as  if  he  had  been  the 
only  one  who  had  ever  had  an  idea  of 
Sebastian's  distinguishing  himself  at 
all. 

He  had  suddenly  an  apparently  in- 
exhaustible fund  of  anecdote,  relative 
to  Sebastian's  early  life.  He  told  how 
his  father,  little  Amos,  used  to  lament 
over  Sebastian's  stupidity,  and  how  he 
himself  had  often  said  to  him,  "  Don't 
despair,  he'll  turn  out  better  than  you 
expect.  Why,  7  was  almost  as  much 
of  a  dunce  myself  at  his  age."  He 
even  told  with  pride  how  many  times 
Dora  had  got  into  trouble  by  running 
out  with  her  little  lessons  to  get  assist- 
ance from  the  dunce,  and  how  angry 
she  used  to  be  at  hearing  her  gratuitous 
tutor  called  by  that  name,  as  she  had 
an  idea  he  was  a  marvel  of  learnedness. 

It  was  an  institution  of  long-stand- 
ing for  several  of  the  prebendary's 
neighbours  to  go  through  the  rectory 
garden  on  their  way  home,  as  it  saved 
them  a  roundabout  walk  through  the 
village.  In  fine  weather  they  fre- 
quently lingered  to  hear  the  preben- 
dary's expositions  of  his  own  sermon, 
or  to  praise  his  flowers,  so  that  usually, 
between  one  and  two  p.m.  on  Sunday, 
the  terrace  in  front  of  the  house  was 
quite  a  gay  little  parade. 

On  this  Sunday  the  prebendary  was 
not  particularly  anxious  for  the  cus- 
tomary promenade.  His  foot  was 
somewhat  tender,  and  the  conversa- 
tion, being  solely  about  his  new  curate, 
was  utterly  uninteresting  to  him. 

Yet  never  had  the  "institution" 
been  in  greater  force.  It  was  all  very 
well  for  people  to  excuse  themselves 
for  lingering  on  the  plea  that  it  was 
such  a  delightful  morning,  and  the 
garden  was  looking  so  charmingly 
bright.  The  prebendary  had  his  own 
idea  as  to  thetrue  cause  of  the  unusually 
large  assembly  of  his  fair  parishioners. 


444 


Sebastian. 


For  some  time  lie  walked  with  Dora, 
partly  because  he  always  had  a  notion 
he  looked  to  the  greatest  advantage  by 
the  side  of  the  prettiest  and  best- 
dressed  lady  present,  partly  because  he 
liked  her  society,  but  most  because  she 
was  the  only  person  he  had  spoken  to 
that  morning  who  had  not  talked  of 
Sebastian  Gould. 

Dowdeswell  had  with  him  the  friend 
with  whom  he  was  on  a  visit,  and  who 
was  enthusiastic  in  his  appreciation  of 
Sebastian's  powers.  This  gentleman 
gave  Sebastian  a  very  cordial  invita- 
tion to  Stillinghurst ;  and  when  he  had 
gone,  Dowdeswell  remarked  to  Sebas- 
tian, with  some  seriousness  in  his 
jocularity — 

"  There's  your  chance  now,  if  you 
don't  happen  to  get  on  with  our  friend 
Jellicoe.  This  St.  George  is  the  patron 
of  the  Stillinghurst  living." 

"What  is  the  Stillinghurst  living 
to  a  poor  curate  from  the  colonies?  " 
said  Sebastian ;  "  you  might  as  well 
say  there's  a  bishopric  vacant." 

"Not  at  all,"  replied  Dowdeswell, 
with  energy.  "Stillinghurst  is  in- 
tended for  St.  George's  nephew,  a  boy 
at  school,  whose  life  is  no  more  certain 
than  other  lives,  and  whose  taste  for 
the  Church  is,  according  to  report, 
very  uncertain  indeed.  Meantime,  an 
old  numskull  has  charge  of  the 
parish,  and  my  friend  St.  George  is 
seriously  concerned  at  the  character  of 
the  Church  deteriorating,  which  used  to 
draw  half  the  country.  He's  deter- 
mined to  go  in  for  what  he  calls  pulpit 
power.  He  asked  me,  the  instant  we 
came  out  of  church,  who  you  were,  and 
seemed  quite  cut  up  on  hearing  the 
prebendary  looks  on  you  as  a  fixture 
here.  But,  as  I  tell  St.  George,  unfore- 
seen changes  will  arise  sometimes, 
eh  ?  "  and  Dowdeswell  looked  search- 
ingly  under  his  scowl  at  Sebastian. 

Sebastian  answered  that  he  hardly 
thought  the  prebendary  would  be 
thinking  of  a  change  very  soon,  after 
sending  to  the  antipodes  for  him.  Yet 
he  felt  no  little  interest  in  all  Dowdes- 
well had  to  tell  him  in  connection  with 
Stillinghurst. 


Once,  while  passing  them,  the  pre- 
bendary chanced  to  hear  the  name 
Stillinghurst,  and  immediately  became 
anxious  to  appeal  to  Dowdeswell  on 
some  subject  he  and  Dora  had  been 
discussing.  Dowdeswell  while  answer- 
ing walked  on  with  the  prebendary, 
leaving  Sebastian  behind  with  Dora. 

The  first  thing  both  thought  of  was 
the  last  occasion  on  which  they  had 
walked  side  by  side.  That  had  been 
in  the  orchard  at  Monksdean.  Sebas- 
tian had  said  some  words  which  Dora 
had  remembered  all  these  years  so  well 
that  now,  as  he  walked  beside  her  in 
the  prebendary's  garden,  her  heart  beat 
as  fast  as  if  he  had  but  just  said  them. 
But  that,  perhaps,  was  because  she  was 
angry  with  herself  for  remembering 
them  so  well. 

"Do  you  often  go  to  Stillinghurst 
church  1 "  asked  Sebastian,  for  the 
sake  of  saying  something  that  should 
be  as  nearly  nothing  as  possible. 

"  No,"  answered  Dora.  "  I  nearly 
always  go  to  our  own  church.  I  like 
hearing  the  voice  I  have  been  used  to 
hear  almost  every  Sunday  of  my  life." 

"  I  am  rather  surprised  at  that," 
said  Sebastian. 

"And  why?" 

"  I  should  have  thought  my  father's 
old-fashioned  idea  of  things  would 
hardly  have  suited  you  now." 

"  I  must  ask  why  again,"  said  Dora, 
chilled  by  his  cold  manner,  and  sus- 
picious as  to  the  meaning  of  his  words. 

"  I  know  he  is  apt  to  abide  some- 
what obstinately  by  old  beliefs  and 
laws,  one  of  which  especially  might 
have  interfered  with  your  friendship." 

"  You  need  not  hesitate  to  tell  me 
what  that  is,"  said  Dora  proudly;  "  but 
I  will  not  trouble  you,  for  I  can  guess 
very  well  what  you  mean  ;  yet  I  do 
think  it  is  unlike  you,  Sebastian,  to 
judge  me,  and  judge  me  so  severely,  so 
cruelly,  before  you  know  even  as  much 
as  my  merest  acquaintance  knows  ;  for 
how  should  you,  stranger  as  you  are 
here  ?  I  understood  you  yesterday  too 
well.  I  saw  you  took  the  most  super- 
ficial and  unkind  view  possible  of  my 
engagement  to  Mr.  Budall." 


Sebastian. 


445 


"  Less  superficial  than  you  think, 
Dora,"  answered  Sebastian  very  gently, 
touched  by  her  calling  him  by  the 
old  name — the  only  one  she  had  ever 
called  him  by  till  their  meeting  yester- 
day. The  pleasure  of  hearing  it 
seemed  so  much  more  real  than  the  fact 
of  her  engagement  to  Rudall  that  for 
the  time  it  occupied  all  Sebastian's 
mind. 

Dowdeswell,  though  in  energetic 
conversation  with  the  prebendary  on 
some  topic  of  evident  importance  to 
him,  had  glanced  back  uncomfortably 
several  times  at  Sebastian  and  Dora. 
He  came  up  to  them  while  Dora's  face 
still  wore  its  proud,  pained  look.  He 
glanced  suspiciously  at  Sebastian,  who, 
while  shaking  hands  with  him  and 
Dora,  let  his  eyes  rest  searchingly  and 
sadly  on  her  face. 

Sebastian,  preoccupied  as  he  was, 
could  not  fail  to  perceive  something  of 
Dowdeswell's  uneasiness  ;  and  when  at 
the  gate,  he  turned  back  and  said,  in 
a  low,  confidential  tone, 

"  Don't  put  Stillinghurst  out  of  your 
head  quite  yet.  Nothing  like  having 
two  irons  in  the  fire — secret  of  my 
success — "  Sebastian  very  plainly  read 
Dowdeswell's  desire  to  give  him  some- 
thing to  think  of  of  more  importance 
to  him  than  the  approaching  marriage. 

With  the  exception  of  the  church 
duties  falling  to  him,  Sebastian  felt  for 
the  rest  of  that  Sunday  as  if  he  had 
slipped  back  to  the  dreariest  part  of 
his  boyhood.  Things  were  exactly  the 
same  in  the  dull  old  house. 

At  nine  in  the  evening  the  same  old 
dinner  stand  and  tray  were  placed  in 
the  same  old  corner  with  the  cold  leg 
of  mutton  and  Indian  pickles,  con- 
cerning which  the  prebendary  made  -the 
same  little  old,  old  joke,  about  Miss 
Jellicoe  having  once  made  herself  ill 
with  them. 

All  day  they  had  shown  a  certain 
coldness  and  reserve  towards  Sebastian, 
having  evidently  agreed  between  them- 
selves that  he  was  assuming  a  position 
in'  the  house  and  before  the  preben- 
dary's parishioners  very  different  from 


that  which  they  had  intended  him  to 
take.  Perhaps  it  was  for  the  purpose 
of  reminding  him  of  this  that  they 
conversed  after  supper  on  subjects  on 
which  he  could  have  little  or  no 
interest,  on  account  of  his  long  absence 
from  England. 

But  as  he  sat  turning  over  the 
leaves  of  a  book  he  had  been  sick  and 
tired  of  years  ago,  when  he  was  ten 
years  old,  Dora's  marriage  was  alluded 
to,  and  suddenly  Sebastian's  sense  of 
hearing  became  almost  painfully  acute. 
Miss  Jellicoe  talked  of  how  great  a 
millionaire  Rudall  would  become  if 
such  an  immense  sum  as  Dowdeswell 
had  proposed  was  really  invested  in 
the  business. 

"  But  he  does  not  seem  to  me  at  all 
the  sort  of  man  for  managing  so  large 
an  affair,"  she  observed. 

The  prebendary  said  he  believed  it 
was  ultimately  to  become  a  company, 
and  that  Rudall  would  have  very  little 
trouble  in  connection  with  it.  Rudall 
was  not  at  all  in  love  with  the  idea  ;  he 
had  been  content  to  keep  it  as  it  was— 
a  fairly  substantial  business  —  but 
Dowdeswell  chose  that  way  and  no 
other  of  investing  the  thirty  thousand 
pounds  he  was  to  give  with  Dora. 

"  They  are  to  reside  in  Wales,  are 
they  not  ?  so  Dora  told  me  a  few  days 
ago,"  said  the  prebendary's  sister, 
leaning  back  in  her  easy  chair,  and 
stroking  the  tortoiseshell  cat  on  each 
elbow  of  it. 

"  Well,  there  appears  to  be  some 
difficulty  with  regard  to  that  matter," 
answered  the  prebendary.  "  Dowdes- 
well is  exceedingly  perturbed  about  it." 
"  Indeed  !  "  Miss  Jellicoe  said  with 
kindling  curiosity.  "  I  thought  it  rather 
strange  Mr.  Rudall  did  not  join  us  in 
the  garden  after  church.  And  does 
he  oppose  Mr.  Dowdeswell's  plans  as 
to  Dora's  place  of  residence  1  I  should 
have  thought  their  wishes  would  be 
law  to  him.  Thirty  thousand  pounds 
and  a  wife  who  is  sole  heiress  to  a 
wealthy  man  like  Dowdeswell  are 
surely  such  a  chance  as  a  person  of 
Mr.  Rudall's  position  and  family  mis- 
fortunes could  never  have  dreamed  of." 


446 


Sebastian. 


"  It  is  rather  a  complicated  matter," 
answered  the  prebendary,  with  the  air 
of  one  possessed  of  a  vast  amount  of 
private  information.  "  Dowdeswell, 
it  appears,  has  ever  since  the  beginning 
of  the  engagement  been  thinking  much 
of  a  little  property  in  North  Wales 
left  some  time  ago  to  Rudall.  It  is 
almost  a  ruin,  but  has  historical 
associations,  which  I  suppose  our 
friend  Dowdeswell  thinks  will  give 
some  distinction  (besides  those  she 
already  possesses  of  wealth  and 
beauty)  to  the  future  Mrs.  Rudall. 
He  is  prepared  to  spend  a  handsome 
sum  for  its  restoration  and  enlarge- 
ment, which,  by  all  accounts,  are  neces- 
sary. He  says  the  world  will  ask  Who 
is  this  Rudall  your  daughter  is  married 
to  ?  Rudall  of  where  ?  or  what  1  And 
Dowdeswell  says  that  for  him  to 
answer  '  Rudall  of  Plas  Llewellyn ' 
will  be  a  very  different  thing  to  having 
to  confess  his  son-in-law  is  Rudall  of 
the  firm  of  Rudall  and  Co.,  and 
plaintiff  in  a  divorce  case." 

"A  most  natural  and  proper  wish 
of  Mr.  Dowdeswell,"  declared  Miss 
Jellicoe,  "  very  indeed  !  Don't  you 
think  so,  Mr.  Gould  ? "  she  added, 
condescending  to  consider  it  time  to 
show  the  silent  curate  his  existence 
was  remembered. 

Sebastian  was  so  commonplace  as  to 
say  he  should  for  his  own  part  feel 
more  satisfaction  in  being  connected 
with  a  comfortable  business  than  a 
tumble-down  residence ;  a  remark 
which  made  Miss  Jellicoe  refrain  from 
addressing  him  again  for  some  time. 

"  But  what  difficulty  is  it  you  speak 
of  1 "  she  inquired.  "  Surely  Mr. 
Rudall  cannot  possibly  presume  to 
object  to  such  a  very  sensible  plan  ?  " 

"  The  truth  is,"  answered  the  pre- 
bendary, "  our  friend  Dowdeswell  has 
been  reckoning  without  his  host.  He 
has  thought  and  planned  out  all  this — 
has  sent  down  and  had  photographs 
taken  of  the  place ;  has  employed 
some  young  literary  friend  of  his  who 
has  written  a  tragedy  of  a  high  order, 
— too  classical  though,  I  believe,  to 
suit  the  present  degraded  state  of  the 


English  stage.  There's  no  doubt  the 
young  man  has  real  ability,  for  Dow- 
deswell tells  me  he  is  charmed  with 
my  "  Converted  Costermonger,"  which 
has  made  a  deep  impression  on  him. 
Well,  Dowdeswell  has  employed  this 
young  man  to  search  for  local  evidences 
of  Plas  Llewellyn  being  the  true 
birthplace  of  the  famous  prince  of 
that  name.  However,  Dowdeswell 
has  only  quite  lately  opened  his  mind 
to  Rudall  on  the  matter,  and  to  his 
great  vexation  Rudall  informs  him 
that  unfortunately  Plas  Llewellyn  was 
part  of  the  property  settled  on  his 
former  wife  at  their  marriage." 

"  But  did  not  everything  revert  to 
him  again  at  the  divorce '{  "  inquired 
Miss  Jellicoe,  indignantly. 

"  Such  is  usually  the  case,"  replied 
her  brother,  "  but  it  wTas  not  so  in  this 
instance.  This  person  was  penniless 
when  Rudall  married  her,  and  he,  on 
obtaining  a  divorce,  in  order,  I  suppose, 
that  she  should  not  further  disgrace 
him  by  the  want  of  common  means  of 
subsistence,  arranged  that  she  should 
keep  what  had  been  settled  on  her — 
this  Plas  Llewellyn  being  part  of  the 
settlement." 

"  I  wonder  she  had  not  more  pride 
than  to  consent  to  retain  anything 
from  the  man  who  had  divorced  her," 
said  Miss  Jellicoe. 

"But  you  must  remember,"  ex- 
plained the  prebendary ;  "  that  she 
asserted  her  innocence  to  the  last,  and 
said  that  so  far  from  refusing  what 
Mr.  Rudall.  so  generously  arranged 
for  her  she  felt  herself  bound  to  ac- 
cept it  in  order  to  live  in  a  manner 
becoming  to  his  wife,  which  she 
should  always  morally  consider  her- 
self." 

"  What  an  abandoned  creature  !  " 
murmured  Miss  Jellicoe,  fondly  strok- 
ing her  cats.  "  But  can't  they  buy  the 
place  back  for  Dora  if  her  father  is  so 
extremely  anxious  about  it  1  I  should 
think  that  poor  creature  would  be  glad 
of  the  money." 

"  The  difficulty  is,"  answered  the 
predendary,  "  that  Rudall  is  greatly 
averse  to  entering  into  any  negotia- 


Sebastian. 


447 


tions  with  his  former  wife,  even 
through  lawyers.  However,  he  has, 
out  of  consideration  for  Dowdeswell's 
wishes,  made  inquiries,  and  now,  find- 
ing that  the  former  Mrs.  Rudall  is 
residing  at  Plas  Llewellyn,  declines 
positively  to  take  any  further  steps  in 
the  matter.  Dowdeswell  and  he  had 
words  about  it  last  night  after  leaving 
us,  and  there  is  really  no  telling  how 
it  will  all  end." 

While  Sebastian  was  thinking  how 
he  could  ask  in  what  part  of  North 
Wales  Plas  Llewellyn  was  situated, 
the  old  bell-wire  in  the  conservatory 
began  to  give  spasmodic  jerks,  and 
finally  the  bell  rang  loudly. 

The  late  and  unexpected  visitor  was 
Dowdeswell,  who,  when  shown  into  the 
room,  appeared  to  be  suffering  from 
some  great  annoyance.  His  lips  had 
a  sullen  obstinate  set,  and  his  scowl 
was  very  decided.  Yet  he  laughed  as 
he  entered,  pushing  his  light  thin  hair 
and  adjusting  it  with  the  tips  of  his 
fingers,  a  habit  that  was  very  frequent 
with  him.  He  spoke  in  a  tone  he 
meant  to  be  careless,  but  was  thick 
with  subdued  excitement. 

"  My  dear  prebendary,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "  I  deserve  to  forfeit  your 
friendship  for  coming  upon  you  like 
this ! " 

"  No,  no,  no,"  cried  the  prebendary 
in  his  most  affable  tones,  as  he  rose 
on  one  leg  and  turned  the  other  round 
on  the  leg-rest  so  as  to  confront  Dow- 
deswell. At  the  same  time  he  ex- 
tended a  hand  every  one  knew  must 
not  be  grasped,  his  enemy — gout — 
having  already  done  that,  and  being 
extremely  jealous  of  a  like  civility 
from  others. 

Dowdeswell  placed  the  tips  of  his 
fingers  gently  under  it,  and  said — 

"  I  come  to  you  to-night  as  a  friend; 
indeed,  we  were  returning  to  Monks- 
dean,  on  account  of  the  illness  of  my 
aunt,  and  lost  the  train.  There's  no 
other  to-night,  and  as  you  are  so  much 
nearer  than  St.  George,  I  have  come 
to  beg  shelter  till  the  morning.  But 
if  it  will  inconvenience  you  or  Miss 
Jellicoe  in  the  least " 


The  prebendary  and  his  sister  in- 
terrupted him  with  assurances  that 
they  were  "  charmed." 

"  But  where  is  Dora — here  ?  "  asked 
Miss  Jellicoe,  rising  from  between  the 
cats,  with  an  air  of  great  delight. 

"Yes,"  replied  Dowdeswell,  "here 
she  is,  bag  and  baggage,  in  the  cab  at 
your  gate.  She  protests  against  such 
an  invasion,  and,  indeed,  for  my  own 
part,  but  for  circumstances  which  I'll 
explain  to  you  presently,  even  the  poor 
old  lady's  illness  would  not  make  me  so 
presume  on  your  great  kindness." 

Miss  Jellicoe  declared  that  to  her- 
self unexpected  pleasures  were  ever 
the  sweetest,  and  she  did  so  with  the 
impressiveness  and  inspiration  of  man- 
ner with  which  she  usually  uttered 
such  hackneyed  sayings,  as  if  she  had 
invented  them. 

She  then  rang  the  bell  to  order  the 
boxes  to  be  carried  in,  and  went  her- 
self into  the  conservatory  to  meet 
Dora. 

Sebastian  then  saw  very  plainly 
that  his  presence  put  a  restraint  on 
Dowdeswell  for  a  moment  or  two. 
But  after  a  gracious  nod  towards  him 
he  seemed  in  his  impatience  to  open 
his  mind  to  the  prebendary  again,  un- 
conscious of  his  existence.  Seizing  his 
host's  hand,  forgetful  of  gout,  and 
oblivious  of  the  prebendary's  grimaces, 
he  said  rapidly — 

"My  dear  friend,  I  shall  never 
forget  this  kindness.  I  am  in  an 
awkward  strait,  most  awkward.  It's 
more  than  illness  compels  me  to  leave 
so  suddenly.  The  truth  is,  I  don't 
want  to  be  at  St.  George's  to-morrow 
when  Rudall  calls.  I  hate  Scenes, 
and  things  are  now  becoming  serious, 
indeed  I  fear " 

Here  Dowdeswell,  warned  probably 
by  the  prebendary's  expressive  eye 
that  there  was  a  third  person  in  the 
room,  became  suddenly  cautious. 

Miss  Jellicoe  now  entered  with  Dora, 
whom  she  affectionately  placed  in  her 
own  chair  between  the  two  cats,  and 
immediately  Sebastian  discovered  a 
grace  in  tortoiseshells  he  had  never 
seen  before. 


448 


Sebastian. 


She  began  at  once  to  reply  to  the 
prebendary's  expressions  of  pleasure 
at  the  accident  which  had  brought  her 
under  his  roof,  'with  a  merry  de- 
scription of  how  the  train  went  off  just 
as  they  reached  the  station. 

Sebastian  at  first  thought  there  was 
more  excitement  through  the  sudden- 
ness of  her  father's  movements  than 
sadness  or  anger  at  Rudall's  conduct. 
Her  colour  was  brighter  than  usual, 
and  her  eyes  had  the  restlessness  of 
one  afraid  of  her  own  thoughts,  and 
keeping  up  a  show  of  interest  in  out- 
ward things,  lest  a  moment  of  repose 
might  reveal  her  true  feeling.  She  did 
not  speak  to  Sebastian  till  Miss  Jellicoe 
went  out  of  the  room  to  make  arrange- 
ments for  her  unexpected  visitors. 

Then  she  turned  and  asked  him  if 
he  had  any  messages  to  send  home,  as 
she  should  go  and  see  them  at  the  rec- 
tory in  a  day  or  two. 

As  Dowdeswell  and  the  prebendary 
were  deeply  engaged  over  some  letters 
the  former  had  just  produced  from  his 
pocket,  Sebastian  could  answer  her  with- 
out notice.  He  begged  she  would  tell  his 
people  he  felt  too  much  a  stranger  yet 
in  his  new  life  to  be  able  to  give  a 
very  clear  account  of  it,  and  that  from 
certain  hints  from  the  prebendary  he 
feared  he  was  to  be  too  fully  engaged 
to  hope  for  a  run  down  to  Monksdean 
for  some  weeks. 

"  How  strange  it  will  seem  to  have 
you  taking  duty  in  the  old  church," 
she  said,  with  a  curious  kindling  of 
her  eyes,  as  if  the  idea  came  to  her  for 
the  first  time,  and  with  it  a  host  of 
childish  memories. 

"  I  used  to  look  forward  to  it  as  one 
of  the  most  desirable  events,"  observed 
Sebastian ;  "  but  it's  wonderful  how 
these  wished-for  things  lose  their 
charm  when  you  are  close  to  them,  like 
glow-worms  by  daylight.". 

"  Why  should  the  charm  be  gone  in 
this  particular  instance  though,  I 
wonder1?"  asked  Dora,  with  her  old 
quick  penetrating  glance  and  hearty 
naturalness  of  manner  that  some  of 
her  fair  rivals  called  boldness. 

How  easy  it  was   for  Sebastian  to 


fall  into  a  like  frankness  for  a  moment, 
and  to  answer  her  sweet  look  of 
friendly  interest  with  eyes  too  full  of 
hopes  he  had  hardly  owned  even  to 
himself,  as  he  said — 

"  I  have  been  away  a  long  time,  Dora, 
and  I  find  things  much  changed." 

"Yes,"  Dora  said,  softly,  and  a 
a  little  confusedly.  Then  she  sat  very 
quiet,  looking  down  at  the  tigerskin 
rug,  and  Miss  Jellicoe's  entrance  made 
it  unnecessary  for  them  to  say  more  to 
each  other  till  they  had  to  say  "  Good- 
night." 

That  was  soon;  for  Dora  complained 
of  feeling  tired,  and  went  early  to  the 
room  Miss  Jellicoe  had  prepared  for 
her.  But  her  weariness  did  not  pre- 
vent her  walking  up  and  down  her 
room  for  half  an  hour,  though  no  one 
but  Sebastian  heard  her  soft  monoto- 
nous little  march. 

As  the  conversation  (now  little 
guarded)  between  the  prebendary  and 
Dowdeswell  revealed  to  him  Rudall's 
real  position  concerning  Plas  Llew- 
ellyn, Sebastian  did  not  wonder  Dora 
should  be  unable  to  rest  that  night. 

Rudall,  it  appeared,  had  made 
another  attempt  to  meet  Dowdes- 
well's  wish,  or  rather  his  demand.  He 
had  written  to  his  lawyer  authorizing 
him  to  propose  to  the  present  owner  of 
Plas  Llewellyn,  in  the  most  delicate 
manner  possible,  the  transfer  of  the 
estate  to  himself  for  a  price  far  beyond 
its  value.  An  answer  to  this  proposal 
only  reached  Rudall  on  the  Sunday 
afternoon,  it  having  arrived  at  his 
office  by  the  morning  post  and  been 
sent  on  to  him  at  Petherton.  This 
communication  was  to  the  effect  that 
the  owner  of  Plas  Llewellyn  was  re- 
luctant to  part  with  the  property, 
which  she  had  improved  as  much  as 
her  means  allowed ;  that  she  would  J| 
not  entertain  Mr.  Rudall's  proposal, 
but  would  give  back  the  estate  to  him 
on  his  making  the  request  of  herself 
personally  ;  there  being  certain  mat- 
ter to  arrange  in  connection  with  such 
a  transfer,  which  she  must  decline  to 
enter  into  in  any  other  way  than  by  a 
personal  interview  with  Mr.  Rudall. 


Sebastian. 


449 


This  letter  Rudall  had  shown  to 
Dowdeswell,  saying  he  had  of  course, 
as  Dowdeswell  would  see,  no  power  to 
go  further  in  trying  to  meet  his  wishes. 
Dowdeswell,  however,  most  vehe- 
mently declared,  on  the  contrary,  that 
the  way  was  made  easy  for  him,  and  if 
Rudall  had  not  courage  and  reliance 
enough  in  his  affection  for  Dora  to  go 
through  a  mere  matter  of  form  with  a 
woman  who  ought  to  be  no  more  than 
dust  and  ashes  to  him,  he  was  not  a 
fit  husband  for  his  child,  and  their  en- 
gagement had  better  be  considered  as 
broken  off. 

They  had  parted  in  deep  irritation 
and  apparently  obstinate  firmness  on 
both  sides  ;  Dowdeswell  dreading 
Rudall's  influence  with  Dora,  so  as  to 
induce  her  to  take  his  view  of  the 
matter. 

This  was  what  caused  him  to  decide 
on  leaving  Petherton  so  suddenly, 
and  made  him  choose  rather  to  come 
to  the  prebendary  on  losing  the  train 
than  to  return  to  the  house  of  Mr.  St. 
George. 

When  Dowdeswell  had  told  Dora  of 
Rudall's  obstinacy,  there  had,  he  in- 
formed the  prebendary,  been  "  a 
scene."  She  had  wept  bitterly,  and 
said  repeatedly,  "  Unless  I  thought  his 
life's  happiness  depended  on  me  I 
would  not  have  this  marriage  for  the 
world ;  and  if  he  still  cares  for  her 
and  dares  not  face  her — let  him  go  : 
he  does  not  care  for  me." 

The  last  words  said  on  the  subject 
that  night  in  Sebastian's  hearing  were 
said  by  the  prebendary. 

"My  dear  friend,  don't  hasten  or 
precipitate  conclusions.  Depend  upon 
it  you  have  not  heard  more  yet  from 
Mr.  Rudall  than  his  first  natural  dis- 
taste to  meet  a  woman  who  has  so 
disgraced  him.  Wait  a  bit ;  it  is 
more  than  probable  his  second  thoughts 
will  guide  him  to  a  more  wise  and 
natural  decision." 

Sebastian  had  perhaps  less  sleep 
that  night  than  the  two,  or  rather  the 
three,  most  deeply  concerned  in  the 
quarrel.  But  with  him  the  whole 
thing  formed  itself  into  one  torment- 
No.  222. — VOL.  xxxvu. 


ing  question  that  haunted  him  till 
morning ;  and  that  was — "  If  these 
two,  whom  they  wish  to  drive  to 
meet  each  other,  really  do  meet  face 
to  face,  will  Rudall  ever  return  as 
Dora's  lover  1  Would  Cicely  have  the 
strength  or  the  folly  to  let  Rudall  go 
off  to  his  second  marriage  still  in 
ignorance  of  the  result  of  her  father's 
fatal  yet  successful  journey  ? "  Sebas- 
tian could  hardly  believe  it  possible 
for  any  woman  to  persevere  in  so  un- 
natural a  course. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

A    DANGEROUS    TEST. 

THE  next  morning,  as  the  prebendary, 
with  Dora's  assistance,  was  moving 
himself  and  his  leg-rest  from  the 
breakfast-table  to  his  favourite  sofa 
in  the  bay  window,  the  servant  came 
in  with  a  card,  and  said — 

"  The  gentleman  who  brought  it 
begged  to  see  the  prebendary  a  few 
moments." 

Glancing  at  Dora,  Sebastian  saw  she 
bent  her  face  lower  over  the  leg-rest 
she  was  arranging  at  the  window ;  and 
he  fancied  it  was  to  hide  the  glow  of 
triumph  that  came  to  her  cheek  at  the 
news  of  the  arrival. 

The  prebendary  gave  directions  for 
the  gentleman  to  be  shown  into  the 
drawing-room,  and  turning  aside  to 
Dowdeswell,  said — 

"  It  is  Mr.  Rudall.     Of  course  h 
knows  you  are  here,  and  will  ask  to 
see  you.     What  shall  I  say  ?  " 

"  I  must  see  him,  of  course,"  an- 
swered Dowdeswell,  scowling  more 
than  ever.  "  I  would  not  for  the 
world  have  any  unpleasantness  in 
your  house.  I'll  go  in  with  you, 
shall  I?" 

The  prebendary  was  only  too  glad, 
as  he  was  requiring  the  support  of  an 
arm. 

Miss  Jellicce  was  not  in  the  room, 
so  Sebastian  found  himself  alone  with 
Dora  and  j^ris  torturing  sense  of  in- 
justice to  her  and  to  Rudall  in  con- 
cealing the  true  position  of  Cicely. 

But  while  the    struggle  was  going 

G   G 


450 


Sebastian. 


on  'between  his  intense  desire  to 
speak,  and  his  dread  of  possibly 
ruining  Dora's  whole  life,  the  pre- 
bendary returned. 

"  My  dear  child,"  he  said,  going  to 
Dora,  and  patting  her  shoulder  with 
his  stiff  fingers,  "  Mr.  Rudall  earnestly 
begs  for  an  interview  with  you,  and  I 
have  told  your  father  I  certainly  think 
he  should  allow  you  to  comply  with  his 
request — as,"  he  added,  with  affection- 
ate, but  strong  emphasis,  "  I  am  sure 
he  may  rely  on  your  being  firm  and 
loyal  with  regard  to  your  father's 
wishes." 

Gently  and  almost  tremblingly  as 
Dora  rose  and  put  down  her  book, 
Sebastian  saw  in  the  least  possible 
lifting  of  her  eyebrows  and  dainty 
chin,  a  supreme  contempt  for  the  pre- 
bendary's pompous  warning. 

A  moment  or  two  after  she  had  left 
the  room,  Sebastian  caught  sight  of 
Dowdeswell  in  the  garden,  dabbing 
his  head  with  his  pocket  handker- 
chief. Since  the  prebendary  had  re- 
turned from  seeing  Dora  into  the 
drawing-room,  he  had  put  on  his 
spectacles,  and  sat  down  to  study  a 
little  photograph.  Soon  he  looked 
up,  and  said  to  Sebastian — 

"  This  is  the  subject  of  the  present 
contention.  Really  it  appears  to  me 
it  should  indeed  possess  remarkable 
associations  to  be  worth  so  much  per- 
turbation." 

He  threw  the  little  card  across  the 
table  to  his  godson,  having  no  idea 
of  the  deep  interest  with  which  it 
was  taken  up. 

It  was  a  photograph  of  the  dreari- 
est of  little  Welsh  buildings,  on  the 
dreariest  and  most  sombre  of  Welsh 
mountains — a  rude  little  tower  with 
a  heap  of  stones  on  one  side  of  it, 
and  a  bramble-bordered  ravine  and 
waterfall  on  the  other.  Under  it  was 
written — ' '  Plas  Llewellyn. ' ' 

While  Sebastian  was  looking  at  the 
little  picture  of  the  subject  of  so 
much  trouble,  Dora  was  rapidly,  as 
she  thought,  turning  the  victory  on 
her  father's  side. 

The  prebendary  had  closed  the  door 


upon  her,  and  she  found  herself  alone 
with  Rudall  in  the  old-fashioned 
drawing-room,  which  was  a  perfect 
bazaar  of  Miss  Jellicoe's  Berlin  wool 
work,  from  the  window  valances  to 
the  hearthrug. 

Rudall  was  standing  at  the  window 
that  opened  on  the  lawn.  The  strong 
light  of  the  summer  morning  was  on 
his  face,  and  Dora  could  not  help 
seeing  by  the  worn  look  about  his 
finely-cut  eyelids,  and  the  half  sad 
resignation  in  the  set  of  his  lips,  that 
he  had  undergone  no  slight  suffering 
since  they  last  met. 

"  Good  morning,  Clarence,"  she  said, 
coldly. 

Rudall's  manner  was  even  more 
gently  affectionate  than  usual  as  he 
met  her. 

"  I  have  been  so  grieved,  Dora,"  he 
said,  "  to  think  of  our  miserable  part- 
ing last  night — so  grieved  that  God 
knows  how  life  would  be  endurable  at 
all  to  me,  if  all  may  not  be  as  it  was 
between  us." 

Dora  was  silent,  struggling  against 
the  pity  that  the  true  ring  of  regret 
and  signs  of  hours  of  suffering  in 
Rudall's  voice  moved  in  her.  For 
the  moment  she  longed  to  say  all 
should  be  as  it  was,  without  further 
trial  of  his  love  and  patience.  But  she 
knew  this  would  only  let  loose  a  fresh 
tide  of  difficulty  in  her  father's  anger. 

"This  is  the  first  real  cloud  that 
has  come  over  our  engagement,  Dora," 
said  Rudall. 

"Yes,"  Dora  answered,  a  little 
absently  and  coldly,  for  she  noticed 
that  he  avoided  the  word  she  thought 
would  have  been  more  natural  than 
"  engagement." 

"  I  wonder  if  you  have  felt  it  half 
as  oppressive  and  dismal  as  I  have," 
said  Rudall. 

Some  moisture  must  have  been  in 
Dora's  eyes  to  make  them  so  bright  as 
she  gazed  out  on  the  prebendary's 
geraniums  fixedly,  and  answered — 

"I  only  know  that  I  have  felt  I 
would  have  faced  the  greatest  difficulty 
I  can  imagine  to  have  prevented  it." 

Rudall  could  not  help  understanding 


Sebastian. 


451 


by  this,  however  gently  said,  that  she 
thought  his  opposition  to  her  father's 
wishes  unnatural,  and  implying  weak- 
ness in  his  love  for  her. 

He  rose  and  went  to  the  window, 
and  Dora  knew  by  his  hard,  but  sub- 
dued sigh,  the  struggle  that  was  going 
on  in  him. 

After  some  moments  he  came  back, 
holding  out  both  his  hands  to  her. 

"  My  darling,"  he  said,  "  before  you 
trust  your  bright  life  to  such  a  storm- 
beaten  ship,  you  should  at  least  have 
full  command  over  it.  You  know  what 
I  have  to  face ;  you  can  guess  something 
of  what  it  will  cost  me  ;  but  you,  and 
nothing  else,  not  even  my  own  judg- 
ment, shall  command  me  in  this 
matter.  Dora,  if  you  have  anxiety 
enough  to  keep  us  together,  to  say 
to  me  now,  '  Go  through  this  for  my 
sake,'  I  will  do  it." 

Dora,  with  her  hands  trembling  in 
Rudall's,  even  then  longed  to  be  as 
generous  as  himself ;  and  to'say,  "  You 
have  all  my  love,  and  shall  have  all  my 
trust,  without  passing  such  an  ordeal." 
But  even  if  she  could  truthfully  say 
it,  that  would  not  save  the  breaking 
of  the  sunny  peace  she  loved  so  well, 
for  there  would  be  her  father's  obsti- 
nacy still  to  face.  She  had  seen  too 
well  what  that  was  by  his  movements 
on  the  previous  day. 

Then,  too,  there  was  a  certain  crav- 
ing in  Dora's  heart  to  learn  something 
of  the  real  strength  ^of  Rudall's  affec- 
tion for  her.  He  had  told  her  long 
ago  that  he  could  never  love  any 
woman  as  he  had  loved  his  wife. 
But  since  then  (nearly  two  years  ago) 
Dora  flattered  herself  he  had  disproved 
that  assertion,  and  that  his  love  for 
herself  equalled  or  excelled  his  former 
love  for  his  unfortunate  wife.  The 
thought  of  this  being  so  was  very 
pleasant  to  her,  because  she  trusted 
it  might  atone  for  the  absence  from 
her  own  heart  of  those  things  which 
she  had  read  and  heard  should  belong 
to  a  true  and  deep  love. 

Rudall's  declaration  to  her  father 
that  he  would  rather  break  off  his 
engagement  with  her  than  see  this 


woman,  who  had  been  his  wife,  had 
stirred  in  Dora  much  doubt  —  sus- 
picion, and  some  indignation.  Her 
pride  required  of  her  to  let  him  be 
submitted  to  the  test  he  so  shrank 
from.  Of  course,  reluctance  to  see 
the  woman  was,  she  thought,  natural 
enough ;  but  to  prefer  to  lose  Dora 
and  the  bright  peaceful  life  they  had 
planned,  to  looking  on  the  face  that, 
as  Dowdeswell  had  said,  "should  be 
as  dust  and  ashes  to  him," — this  she 
could  not  understand,  or  reconcile  with 
the  idea  of  such  love  as  alone  she  cared 
for.  It  was  really  no  arrogance  or  love 
of  power,  or  shrewish  jealousy,  but 
a  tender  yearning  to  prove  there  was 
more  love  between  herself  and  Rudall 
than  there  seemed  to  be  that  made 
Dora  throw  all  her  persuasiveness 
into  her  voice  and  eyes,  as  she  gave 
her  hands  to  Rudall,  and  said — 

"  Yes,  then,  Clarence ;  I  do  ask  you, 
for  my  sake,  do  it." 

It  was  so  easy  to  take  any  emotion 
in  such  lovely  eyes  as  Dora's  for  love 
itself  that  Rudall  felt  he  ought  to  be 
a  happy  man,  as  he  kissed  their  tears 
away,  and  gave  the  required  promise. 

Dora,  too,  was  much  happier,  as  she 
went  out  into  the  garden  with  Rudall 
to  meet  her  father. 

All  the  delightful  business  of  pre- 
paring for  an  early  marriage  had  as 
great  a  charm  for  her  as  for  most 
girls,  and  her  heart  made  a  joyful 
rebound  now  that  she  felt  the  brief 
but  cruel  suspense  was  over. 

""We  need  not  hurry  in,"  said 
Dowdeswell,  rwith  an  amiable  scowl 
in  the  direction  of  the  dining-room 
window.  "  The  postman  has  just 
been,  and  I  fancy  our  friends  are 
engrossed.  I  caught  sight,  uninten- 
tionally," he  added,  smiling  and 
bending  towards  Dora,  "  of  our  young 
Saint  Sebastian,  entranced  over  a  volu- 
minous epistle  in  too  dainty  a  hand- 
writing to  be  from  his  bishop,  I  fancy." 
And  Dowdeswell  laughed  so  loudly 
over  his  own  wit,  that  the  prebendary 
came  limping  to  the  window,  and  de- 
clared that  joke,  whatever  it  was,  must 
be  told  over  again. 

G  a  2 


452 


Sebastian, 


Accordingly  it  was  repeated  with 
embellishments ;  and  while  passing  the 
window  again,  all,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  glanced  smilingly  in  at  Sebas- 
tian. As  Dora  looked,  she  met  his 
eyes  fixed  on  her  with  an  expression 
that  not  only  startled  her,  but  that 
made  her  feel  certain  he  had  some 
very  strong  feeling  with  regard  to  her 
reconciliation  with  Rudall.  She  with- 
drew her  smiling  look  rather  haughtily, 
and  the  group  passed  on. 

"When  they  returned  Sebastian  had 
gone  from  the  room.  He  had  retired 
to  his  own  bare,  damp,  half-furnished 
parlour  that  had  been  described  to  him 
before  he  left  New  Zealand  as  a  private 
study  commanding  the  view.  Here  he 
read  again  with  increasing  perplexity 
the  letter  over  which  Dowdeswell  had 
seen  him  so  engrossed. 

It  was  in  a  handwriting  which 
Sebastian  had  almost  forgotten  till 
he  saw  the  address  at  the  top  of  the 
page. 

"  PLAS  LLEWELLYN, 

"ARRAN  BACH,  N.  WALES, 
"Friday. 

"  DEAR  MR.  GOULD, — I  am  in  much 
need  of  what  kindness  I  may  hope  to 
still  deserve  from  you,  if  indeed  I  do 
still  deserve  any.  As  I  know  nothing 
of  your  whereabouts,  I  shall  venture 
to  send  this  to  your  father  at  Monks- 
dean  Rectory,  begging  him  to  forward 
it  to  you  without  delay. 

"  My  dear  friend,  I  am  punished 
now  for  my  self-will  by  being  placed 
in  the  most  unnatural  and  cruel  posi- 
tion imaginable.  The  last  insult  I 
could  have  conceived  is  now  offered 
me.  This  poor  home,  uninhabitable 
till  I  came  here,  is  now  requested 
from  me  as  part  of  the  settlement 
for  the  lady  Mr.  Rudall  is  about  to 
marry.  At  first  I  showed  what  my 
feeling  was  about  it  by  declining  to 
go  into  the  matter  at  all.  Her  family 
have,  it  seems,  pressed  upon  him  so 
urgently  that  I  now  receive  another 
appeal,  this  time  in  his  own  writing. 
Will  you  think  me  mad  when  I  tell 
you  I  have  replied  that  I  will  only 


give  up  what  he  requires  if  he  will 
ask  me  personally.  If  he  can  do  this, 
I  feel  I  shall  have  afterwards  the 
peace  that  utter  contempt  ought  to 
give  me. 

"  Besides  this,  I  confess  to  you  I 
have  a  wish  that  is  strong  as  the  wish 
of  the  dying  (though  I  am  in  health) 
to  see  him  once  more— I  mean  before 
it  will  be  sin  to  do  so.  Yet  my  heart 
is  torn  so  terribly  by  this  wish,  and 
the  hope  that  he  may  not  have  such 
cruel  indifference  for  me  as  to  be  able 
to  meet  me  and  ask  this  thing  to  my 
face. 

"  You  may,  perhaps,  understand  all 
this  better  when  I  tell  you  that  now 
it  is  too  late  for  there  to  be  any 
question  which  way  his  duty  lies, 
since  he  is  now,  I  hear,  within  a  few 
weeks  of  his  marriage.  I  have  deter- 
mined that,  unless  you  advise  me  not, 
I  will  give  him  the  letters  you  know 
of  when  we  part.  I  will  not  try  him 
so  far  as  letting  him  see  me  after  he 
knows  all.  His  being  able  to  come 
and  ask  me  this  is  proof  enough  surely 
of  his  unalterable  purpose  to  marry 
her  at  any  cost.  As  for  her,  since 
she  is  so  eager  for  my  poor  home,  she 
and  the  world  shall  know  it  had  not 
been  sullied  by  so  mean  a  tenant  as 
she  thinks.  Am  I  cruel  or  unnatural  ? 
Then  tell  me  so,  and  save  me  in  time. 
Will  you  come  to  see  me,  and  be 
present  at  the  interview  between 
Mr.  Rudall  and  myself?  I  have 
suggested  next  Tuesday,  and  I  know 
that  he  is  not  likely  to  fail.  Do  you 
think  that  I  should  not  see  him,  and 
the  truth  be  made  known  some  other 
way?  If  so,  act  for  me.  /  leave  all 
in  your  hands,  as  I  should  have  done 
at  first  but  for  my  great  horror  of  him 
considering  himself  bound  to  me  after 
his  love  had  perhaps  utterly  ceased. 

"If  I  seem  to  you  weak  when  I 
should  be  strong,  as  I  was  strong 
when  I  should  have  yielded,  remem- 
ber the  desolation  I  have  borne,  and 
the  cruel  insult  that  now  distracts 
me  and  almost  breaks  my  heart. 
"  Yours  truly, 

"  CICELY ." 


Sebastian. 


453 


Sebastian  had  not  much  time  for 
consideration  of  his  difficult  task. 
Scarcely  ten  minutes  had  passed 
since  he  came  up  stairs  before  some 
one  knocked  at  his  door,  and  Dowdes- 
well, opening  it  with  respectful  hesi- 
tation, said  : — 

"  Gould,  the  heat  has  driven  us  in, 
and  we  have  been  told  you  would 
allow  us  to  smoke  a  cigar  here.  I 
think,"  he  added,  looking  back  at  the 
person  who  accompanied  him,  "  there 
lias  been  such  a  thing  done  since  last 
year,  eh,  Mr.  Gould?" 

Sebastian  said  he  could  not  deny  it, 
and  forgetting,  in  his  desire  to  be  hos- 
pitable to  the  best  of  his  small  ability, 
that  Cicely's  letter  lay  open  on  the 
table,  got  up  to  invite  them  in. 

"  I  must  say  like  the  Irishman, 
there's  only  one  chair,  but  you're 
both  welcome  to  that." 

Dowdeswell  laughed,  and  took-  it ; 
and  while  Sebastian  and  Rudall  were 
looking  about  to  see  how  to  dispose  of 
themselves,  Rudall 's  eyes  fell  on  the 
open  letter.  The  habitual  repose  of 
his  face  became  immediately  disturbed 
by  surprise  and  some  deeper  feeling, 
and  he  looked  from  the  letter  search- 
ingly  into  Sebastian's  face.  That  look 
seemed  to  Sebastian  to  verify  a  sus- 
picion that  had  been  floating  in  his 
mind  from  the  first  moment  he  had 
seen  Rudall.  How  different  it  was 
from  the  glance  of  gentle  jealousy 
with  which  he  had  followed  Dora  when 
she  had  been  speaking  to  Sebastian  ! 
What  a  depth  of  passionate  suspicion 
was  in  it !  What  kindling  curiosity  ! 

Sebastian,  in  his  great  perplexity, 
was  glad  of  some  insight  into  one, 
even  though  only  one,  of  the  three 
whose  destinies  he  seemed  called  upon 
to  decide.  He  was  determined  to  try 
and  see  more  still  as  to  Rudall' s  true 
state  of  feeling  before  he  resolved  on 
how  to  answer  Cicely. 

As  though  to  make  room  for  Rudall 
and  himself  to  seat  themselves  on  the 
little  table,  he  took  up  the  letter, 
folded  it,  and  put  it  in  his  pocket. 
Even  this  made  Rudall' s  eyes  wince 
as  if  he  had  received  some  insult  he 
could  not  openly  resent. 


"  We  seem  doomed  to  interrupt  your 
correspondence  this  morning,  Gould," 
said  Dowdeswell,  smiling.  "  Don't 
let  us  prevent  you  finishing  your 
letter,  for,  I  suppose,  the  twentieth 
time,  eh  1 " 

"Not  quite,"  answered  Sebastian; 
"  but  I  have  certainly  been  a  little 
perplexed  over  it.  I'm  afraid  the 
prebendary  is  not  well  enough  for 
me  to  leave,  and  I  am  asked  suddenly 
to  run  down  to  Wales." 

Rudall  was  leaning  against  the  side 
of  the  meagrely-furnished  bookcase. 
Apparently  even  this  possession  of 
Sebastian's  was  repugnant  to  him  as 
a  support  after  such  a  declaration,  for 
he  withdrew  an  inch  or  two  from  it, 
and  stood  holding  his  cigar  and  look- 
ing out  as  if  something  particular  in 
the  prospect  had  just  attracted  his 
attention. 

"  Wales  !  That's  odd  enough.  Why 
Rudall's  off  there  in  a  day  or  two  I 
suppose,"  observed  Dowdeswell.  "Oh, 
oh  !  it's  a  Welsh  lady,  is  it,  Gould, 
that  all  the  pretty  girls  at  Petherton 
and  Monksdean  are  to  be  disappointed 
for?  That's  too  bad." 

"  My  correspondent  is  a  married 
lady,"  answered  Sebastian.  "  She 
needs  my  advice  on  certain  matters 
her  father  when  dying  left  in  my 
hands." 

Rudall  had  withdrawn  his  gaze  from 
the  distant  object  on  which  it  had  been 
resting,  and  brought  it  to  the  table 
between  himself  and  Sebastian. 

Sebastian  was  ready  to  encounter 
his  look  when  it  should  come  to  his 
face,  and  to  attempt  no  further  con- 
cealment, there  at  all  events,  as  to  his 
knowledge  of  more  than  Rudall  him- 
self knew.  He  felt  sure  it  was  doubt 
as  to  whether  he  could  bear  before 
Dowdeswell  any  more  significant  allu- 
sions to  Cicely  that  kept  him  from 
demanding  explanations. 

Sebastian,  before  reading  Cicely's 
letter,  had  felt  very  doubtful  as  to 
whether  the  knowledge  of  the  true 
state  of  things  would  be  likely  to 
make  any  of  the  persons  concerned 
happier.  But  when  he  knew  by  that 
letter  the  real  unquietness  of  Cicely's 


454 


Sebastian. 


mind,  and  saw  Rudall's  agitation  as 
his  eyes  fell  on  it,  Sebastian  had 
suddenly  a  strong  personal  disgust 
at  the  thought  of  his  marriage  with 
Dora.  So  high  was  his  idea  of  the 
love  due  to  her,  that  he  had  felt  it 
profanation  to  marry  her  to  a  man 
who  could  not  offer  her  his  first  as 
well  as  his  last  love.  But  since  the 
last  few  minutes,  when  he  had  seen 
how  far  from  being  broken  was  the 
real  marriage  tie  of  Cicely  and  Rudall, 
he  felt  it  would  be  a  cruel  and  danger- 
ous deception  even  to  be  silent  or  to 
leave  the  option  of  silence  to  Cicely. 
In  this  Sebastian,  so  far  as  he  could 
trust  his  own  judgment,  felt  utterly 
unselfish.  Indeed  he  felt  he  was 
deeply  injuring  himself  with  the 
Dowdeswells,  being  sure  that  his 
intervention  would  bring  upon  him 
the  passionate  anger  of  Dora  and  her 
father.  But  even  this  seemed  a  slight 
evil  in  comparison  with  the  self-re- 
proach and  pain  he  should  feel  if 
Dora  really  married  this  man.  He 
also  began  to  consider  he  had  been 
very  remiss  as  to  the  entreaties  of 
Cicely's  father,  and  that  he  certainly 
owed  it  to  his  memory  to  do  what 
now  remained  in  his  power  to  atone 
for  what  he  considered  his  weak  sub- 
jection to  Cicely's  wilfulness. 

Dowdeswell,  still  innocent,  ignorant 
of  anything  more  than  the  coincidence 
of  the  two  having  to  take  a  journey 
to  Wales  so  shortly,  said — 

"  Why  not  go  down  together,  so  far 
.as  your  ways  agree  ?  " 

"7am  willing,"  answered  Sebastian, 
"and  should  be  really  glad  to  have 
your  company,  Mr.  Rudall.  I  am 
going  north,  as  I  believe  you  are  1  " 

"Are  you?-"  cried  Dowdeswell  to 
Sebastian,  eagerly.  "Is  it  anywhere 
near  Arran  Bach  ?  " 

"  Very  near,"  said  Sebastian, 
quietly. 

"  Have  you  been  there  before  ?  "  de- 
manded Dowdeswell,  leaning  forward, 
and  laying  the  disengaged  fingers  of 
his  hand,  holding  his  cigar,  on  Sebas- 
tian's knee  ;  "  do  you  know  the  place  ? 
Do  you  know  the  old  ruined  castle 
there,  Plas  Llewellyn?" 


"  I  have  not  been  there  before  ;  but 
I  intend  to  see  it  if  I  go  there  now," 
replied  Sebastian,  still  watching 
Rudall. 

"  Then  would  you  take  a  sketch  of 
it  for  me — do,  there's  a  good  fellow. 
These  photographers  have  no  idea  of 
the  right  aspect.  I  want  something 
showing  more  the — the — castellated 
character  of  the  place  ;  and  get  in  the 
window  of  the  room  where  Llewellyn 
was  born  if  you  can  more  clearly.  I 
should  really  esteem  it  as  a  great 
favour  to  myself,  if  you  could,  without 
inconvenience,  do  this  for  me." 

"  I  will  do  so  with  pleasure  if  I  have 
an  opportunity,"  said  Sebastian ;  "  but 
perhaps  Mr.  Rudall  would  take  a  turn 
with  me  presently,  and  we  could  see 
whether  it  would  be  convenient  to 
arrange  our  journey  together  or  not." 

Rudall's  anger  had  been  too  long 
and  quietly  increasing  to  be  repressed 
when  once  his  eyes  met  Sebastian's, 
as  they  did  now  in  open  questioning. 

"  Excuse  me,"  he  said,  with  a  very 
evident  effort  at  steadying  an  angry 
voice  ;  "  but  I  must  decline  being  any 
party  to  your  intrusion  on  this  lady. 
Indeed,  I  must  say  I  cannot  bring 
myself  to  believe  any  business  has 
been  left  in  your  hands  of  a  nature 
to  necessitate  a  personal  interview." 

Till  this,  Dowdeswell  had  been  en- 
tirely unsuspicious  as  to  the  destina- 
tion of  Rudall  and  Sebastian  being 
the  same.  But  when  he  heard 
Rudall's  strange  and  apparently  un- 
reasonable words,  and  saw  his  face 
pale  with  passion,  and  his  blue  eyes 
quite  destitute  of  their  ordinary  gen- 
tleness and  calm,  an  indefinable  but 
strong  foreboding  of  mischief  came 
across  him. 

He  began  to  scrutinize  Sebastian, 
scowling  in  such  hard  thought  as  to 
bring  his  light  eyebrows  into  one  un- 
broken line. 

A  half-reproachful  look  from  Sebas- 
tian, in  Dowdes well's  direction,  warned 
Rudall  of  what  he  had  done  by  his 
impetuosity. 

"I  think  we  had  better  talk  the 
matter  over  by  and  by,"  suggested 
Sebastian,  with  an  attempt  at  careless- 


Sebastian. 


455 


ness.  "  Perhaps,  as  my  time  is  not 
my  own,  we  may  not  be  able  to  arrange 
for  the  same  day." 

They  continued  to  smoke  and  look 
from  the  window,  for  some  minutes 
in  silence,  only  broken  by  common- 
place remarks  from  Sebastian. 

In  these  few  minutes,  Dowdeswell's 
curiosity  as  to  what  Sebastian's  busi- 
ness at  Plas  Llewellyn  could  be,  had 
deepened  into  a  most  disquieting  and 
intense  distrust.  He  remembered 
now,  with  vividness,  Sebastian's  evi- 
dent repugnance  to  Dora's  engage- 
ment from  the  first  hour  of  his  en- 
trance into  the  prebendary's  house. 
He  recalled  his  evident  and  uncon- 
cealable  admiration  at  his  first  sight 
of  Dora ;  his  coldness,  almost,  Dow- 
deswell  thought,  rudeness  on  his  in- 
troduction to  her  future  husband. 
Thinking  of  these  things  in  connection 
with  the  present  discovery  of  his 
acquaintance  with  Rudall's  former 
wife,  and  Rudall's  evident  resentment 
at  that  acquaintance,  Dowdeswell  be- 
came too  restless  to  endure  himself 
in  silence  in  the  young  men's  com- 
pany. Rising,  he  proposed  that  they 
should  try  the  garden  again,  as  he  was 
of  opinion  Mr.  Gould's  room  was  by 
no  means  the  cooler  of  the  two. 

He  and  Rudall  went  out  together 
first,  while  Sebastian  remained  behind, 
looking  for  his  hat.  Suddenly  he  felt 
Dowdeswell's  hand  laid  rather  heavily 
on  his  shoulder,  and,  looking  up,  he 
met  his  light  grey  eyes  looking  at  him 
with  subdued,  but  vindictive  suspicion. 

"  I  tell  you  what  it  is,  Mr.  Gould," 
said  he,  letting  out  in  his  expression 
of  countenance  and  accent  some  of  the 
vulgarity  he  generally  concealed  so 
well,  "  I  don't  understand  the  way  in 
which  you  are  acting  at  all.  I  advise 
you  to  take  care  what  you  are  about, 
sir.  These  are  matters  in  which  mis- 
chief may  be  easily  done,  but  not  by 
any  means  easily  undone." 

Sebastian,  without  resenting  his  un- 
pleasant manner,  looked  at  him 
frankly,  almost  pityingly,  as  he  put 


out  one  hand  to  close  the  door,  while 
he  laid  the  other  on  Dowdeswell's 
arm. 

"  Mr.  Dowdeswell,"  he  said,  "  I  will 
not  deceive  you,  but  will  tell  you 
plainly  you  are  in  a  false  position.  I 
have  seen  it  from  the  moment  I  knew 
of  your  daughter's  engagement  to  Mr. 
Rudall,  but  was  powerless  to  tell  you 
so,  though,  as  you  may  have  seen,  in- 
deed as  you  must  have  seen,  I  have 
been  most  deeply  concerned  about  it. 
The  letter  I  have  received  this  morn- 
ing makes  it  impossible  for  me,  with- 
out danger  of  great  mischief,  to  con- 
ceal from  Mr.  Rudall  certain  facts  I 
should,  by  rights,  long  since  have  made 
known  to  him.  Believe  me,  I  shall  do 
or  say  nothing  of  myself  to  influence 
him ;  but  I  must,  in  common  truth, 
tell  you  that  this  interview  I  must  have 
with  him,  may  cause  you  disappoint- 
ment. It  may  not  do  so,  but  my  own 
impression  is  that  it  will." 

Dowdeswell  was  for  detaining  him, 
and  insisting  on  some  further  explana- 
tion ;  but  Sebastian  reminding  him  by 
a  gesture  towards  the  door  that  Rudall 
was  probably  waiting  near,  he  went 
out  gloomily,  Sebastian  following  him. 

As  they  were  passing  through  the 
hall,  Dora  called  to  her  father,  thus 
unwittingly  hastening  the  opportunity 
for  Sebastian's  conversation  with 
Rudall. 

"When  Dowdeswell  entered  the 
dining-room,  Dora  was  sitting  at  the 
table,  having  unpacked  her  little  desk, 
and  placed  it,  in  a  business-like  way, 
opposite  the  prebendary's  big  one,  about 
to  begin  a  pile  of  correspondence.  She 
wanted  her  father  to  remind  her  of 
the  address  of  one  of  his  old  Liverpool 
friends,  whose  daughters  were  eager 
to  be  her  bridesmaids.  Dowdeswell 
told  her,  and  then,  taking  the  news- 
paper handed  him  by  the  prebendary, 
who  was  also  writing  letters,  went  and 
stood  at  the  window,  looking  out  at 
the  two,  in  whose  conversation  he  was 
feeling  so  painful  an  interest. 


To  be  continued. 


456 


THOMAS    ARNOLD,  * 


FEW  men  have  left  behind  them  a 
fairer  or  more  enviable  reputation 
than  Dr.  Arnold.  He  died  at  the 
age  of  forty-seven,  and  was  Head 
Master  of  Rugby  for  only  fourteen 
years ;  yet  that  brief  life  exercised 
a  powerful  influence,  not  only  upon 
the  generation  to  which  he  belonged, 
but  still  more  upon  that  which  has 
succeeded  him  ;  and  in  those  fourteen 
years  he  achieved  a  work  of  almost 
immeasurable  usefulness  and  import- 
ance. The  sermons  preached  during 
this  crowning  epoch  of  his  life  have 
now  been  collected  in  six  volumes  by 
the  loving  care  of  his  eldest  daughter, 
Mrs.  W.  E.  Forster.  They  are  ad- 
mirably arranged  and  edited.  Those 
of  the  previously  published  sermons 
which  had  least  of  permanent  value 
and  interest  have  been  excluded  from 
the  collection,  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  in  their  present  form  they 
will  take  their  final  and  permanent 
place  in  English  literature.  The  pub- 
lication of  this  edition  is  the  greatest 
service  which  has  been  rendered  to 
the  memory  of  a  great  and  good  man 
since  the  Dean  of  Westminster  wrote 
that  admirable  Life  of  Dr.  Arnold 
which  has  served  to  perpetuate  his 
work,  and  has  been  deservedly  wel- 
comed as  perhaps  the  best  biography 
of  recent  times. 

Some  books  may  almost  be  said, 
without  a  paradox,  to  die  of  their  own 
immortality.  They  do  their  work  so 
effectually  as  to  render  themselves 
needless,  and  they  are  effaced  because 
the  thoughts  to  which  they  gave 
original  expression  have  become  the 
common  heritage  of  even  the  least 
original  minds.  The  unfamiliar  views 
of  one  decade  often  pass  into  the  com- 

1  Arnold's  Sermons.  In  Six  Volumes.  New 
Edition,  Revised  by  his  Daughter,  Mrs.  W.  E. 
Forster.  (Longmans.) 


monplaces  of  the  next,  and  the  reputed 
heresies  of  our  youth  are  sometimes 
the  accepted  orthodoxies  of  our  man- 
hood. The  remark  is  illustrated  both 
by  these  sermons  of  Dr.  Arnold  and 
by  those  of  the  eminent  contemporary 
with  whom  he  often  found  himself  in 
respectful  antagonism.  When  we 
read  the  sermons  of  Dr.  Newman,  we 
admire  the  subtlety  of  their  insight, 
the  loftiness  of  their  spirituality,  the 
curiosa  felicitas  of  a  style  which, 
while  it  often  seems  to  aim  at  an 
almost  bald  simplicity,  keeps  us  spell- 
bound with  an  unaccountable  fascina- 
tion. Yet  so  completely  have  the 
religious  thoughts,  and  even  the 
phraseology,  of  "  Mr.  Newman  of 
Oriel,"  passed  into  our  current 
homiletic  literature,  so  familiar  has 
even  his  peculiar  pronunciation  and 
method  of  delivery  become,  that  we 
can  hardly  account  for  the  fact  that 
his  sermons  were  once  regarded  with 
intense  suspicion,  and  were  believed 
by  large  sections  of  the  Church  to 
teem  with  the  subtlest  insinuations  of 
dangerous  heresy.  Different  in  all 
respects  as  were  the  sermons  of  Dr. 
Arnold,  a  similar  remark  applies  to 
them.  He  says  :  "  It  would  be  affecta- 
tion were  I  to  dissemble  my  knowledge 
that  these  volumes  will  be  received  in 
many  quarters  with  a  strong  prejudice 
against  them  "  ;  2  and  he  evidently  an- 
ticipates that  they  will  have  so  far 
diverged  from  the  accurate  intonation 
of  the  then  prevailing  shibboleths, 
that  they  will  be  charged  with  being 
"  latitudinarian."  Few  who  now  read 
them  without  traditional  bias  would 
think  of  reviving  so  obsolete  a  charge. 
When  we  read  in  the  introductions  to 
the  various  volumes,  a  plea  that 
Christians  should  get  over  their  ex- 
treme reluctance  to  admit  the  prin- 
2  Vol.  iii.  p.  v. 


Thomas  Arnold,  D.D. 


457 


ciples  of  Christianity  into  the  concerns 
of  common  life,  and  not  "  ridicule  as 
visionary  and  impracticable  "  an  ap- 
plication of  its  spirit  to  their  every- 
day practice,1  we  feel  what  a  change 
has  come  over  the  popular  views  on 
such  subjects.  In  these  days  we 
could  hardly  think  it  needful  to  argue 
that  "a  sermon  addressed  to  English- 
men in  the  nineteenth  century,  should 
be  very  different  from  one  addressed 
to  Englishmen  in  the  sixteenth,  or 
even  in  the  eighteenth  ;  "  or  that  it 
is  most  undesirable  to  reserve,  for 
the  use  of  religious  exhortation,  a 
stereotyped  and  conventional  phraseo- 
logy. The  sermon  on  "  the  Unity 
of  the  Spirit "  2  might  be  preached  in 
these  days  without  its  occurring  to 
any  critic  that  it  would  needlessly 
encourage  an  excessive  indifference 
as  to  variety  of  religious  opinions, 
and  too  low  an  estimate  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  agreement  even  in 
the  outward  forms  of  Christianity. 
The  famous  sermons  on  "  Moral 
Thoughtfulness,"  and  those  on  "  The 
Temptations  of  School  Life,"  have 
had  so  many  successors  which  are  even 
stronger  and  plainer  in  their  language, 
that,  had  they  been  preached  in  these 
days,  they  would  have  produced  no 
further  impression  than  such  as  was 
created  by  the  noble  and  commanding 
personality  of  him  who  uttered  them. 
Under  these  circumstances  it  might 
have  been  considered  needless  to  col- 
lect and  edit  the  sermons  in  any  other 
form  than  those  in  which  they  have 
been  hitherto  accessible.  Yet  we  can- 
not but  rejoice  on  many  grounds  that 
this  edition  has  been  published.  The 
sermons  deserve  preservation  in  the 
best  possible  form,  not  only  because 
they  belong  to  the  history  of  English 
social  life,  in  that  phase  of  it  which 
is  most  characteristic,  and  of  which 
we  have  most  reason  to  be  proud; — 
not  only  as  having  inaugurated  a  new 
form  of  literature,  which,  however 
humble,  may  tend  to  results  of  price- 
less value; — not  only  because  they 
throw  light  on  the  mind  and  character 
Vol.  i.  p.  viii.  *  Vol.  i.  p.  50. 


of    a   brave,   enlightened,  and  noble- 
hearted  teacher ; — but  even  from  their 
own    intrinsic    merits.      The    truths 
which  Arnold  was  the  first  to  bring 
into  prominence,  in   such   aspects   of 
them  as  bore  most  directly  upon  the 
life  of  Public  Schools,  have,  since  his 
time,  found  frequent  expression,  but 
have  never  been  expressed  in  directer 
or  manlier  language.  Even  in  style  his 
sermons  were  fresh,  forcible,  and  in  the 
highest  sense,  eloquent.      More   than 
once,   indeed,   Arnold   speaks   of   his 
style  in  a  tone  of  apology.     "  In  point 
of    style,"    he  says,   "  these   sermons 
are  wholly  devoid  of  pretension ;  for 
my  main  object  was  to  write  intelligi- 
bly, and,  if  I  have  succeeded  in  this, 
I  must  be  contented  to  be  censured  for 
much   homeliness,    and  perhaps  awk- 
wardness of  expression,  which  I  had 
not  the  skill  to  avoid."3     But   if  a 
man's  style  be  but  perfectly  sincere, 
and   perfectly  natural,   he  can  never 
alter  it  to  advantage,  nor  is  he  likely 
to   express   in   any    better    way   the 
truths  which  he  has  to  deliver.     The 
very  "  defects  "  of  his  style  may  thus 
be  "  effective,"  and  few  men  had  less 
need  than  Arnold  to  apologise  for  any 
deficiencies  in  expression.     His  style 
is   a    very    model    of     strength   and 
straightforwardness,   of  lucid  reason- 
ing and  manly  good  sense.    As  he  was 
original   in   desiring   to    apply    "  the 
language  of  common  life  to  the  cases 
of    common   life,    but    ennobled   and 
strengthened  by  those  principles  and 
feelings  which  are  found  only  in  the 
Gospel,"  so  there  are  no  better  speci- 
mens  of    this   method    of    preaching 
than  those  which   he  has  furnished. 
Arnold  wrote  his  Rugby  sermons  for 
the  most   part  between  morning  and 
afternoon  service,  and  preached  them 
before  the  ink  was  well  dry  on  the 
last  page.     It  is  to  this  very  fact  that 
much  of  their  charm  and  force  is  due. 
A  man   whose   mind   was  less  fresh, 
and  pure,  and    strong,   could  not  do 
this  ;  but  Arnold's  thoughts  were  well 
matured,  and  were  held  with  a  grasp 
unusually  firm,  and  the  rapidity  with 
3  Vol.  i.  p.  viii. 


458 


Thomas  Arnold,  D.D. 


which  they  were    thrown  into   form 
gave  them  all    the   eloquence   which 
springs  from  the  emotion  of  the  mo- 
ment, so  that  they  have  something  of 
the  fire  and  rapidity  of  the  extempore 
orator.     Arnold  was  too  sure  of  the 
truth  and  value  of  what  he  had   to 
say  to  need  any  ornament  in  its  ex- 
pression.     He  never  seeks  an    illus- 
tration ;    he  never  consciously  elabo- 
rates a  closing  paragraph.     But  when 
he  does  use  an  illustration,  it  is  often 
an  exceedingly  happy  one  ;  and  when 
his  style  rises  to  a  more  impassioned 
strain,  it  reaches  a  high  level  of  na- 
tural eloquence.     What  can  be  more 
forcible  than  the  comparison — perhaps 
the  longest  in  these  six  volumes,  and 
one  so  applicable  to  thousands  at  this 
period — of  the  condition  of  fallen  man 
to  that  of  "  men  who  are  bewildered 
in  those  endless  forests  of  reed  which 
line    some    of    the    great    American 
rivers,' ' l  in  danger  from  the  venomous 
snakes  and  the  deadly  malaria,  igno- 
rant   of    the   path,    and    "  in   doubt 
whether  the  tangled  thicket  in  which 
they  are  placed  has  any  end  at  all ; 
whether  the  whole  world  is  not  such 
a  region  of  death  as  the  spot  in  which 
they  are  actually  prisoned ;  whether 
their  fond  notions  of  a  clear  and  open 
space,  a  pure  air,  and  a  fruitful  and 
habitable  country,  are  not  altogether 
imaginary;    whether     there    remains 
anything  for  them  but  to  curse  their 
fate,  and  lie  down  and  die.' '  2     What 
again  can  be  better  than  this  1     "As 
the  vessels  in  a  harbour,  and  in  the 
open    sea    without   it,   may   be   seen 
swinging  with  the    tide  at  the  same 
moment  in   opposite  directions ;    the 
ebb  has  begun  in  the  roadstead,  while 
it  is  not  yet  high  water  in  the  harbour  ; 
so  one  or  more  nations  may  be  in  ad- 
vance of  or  behind  the  general  tend- 
ency  of    their  age,   and   from  either 
cause  may  be  moving  in  the  opposite 
direction."     And  to  take  passages  in 
which  there  is   no  illustration,  what 
boy  with  a  heart  in  him  could  have 
listened  unmoved  to  such  sermons  as 


the  two  on  "  Christian  Schools," 3  or 
to  the  noble  and  stirring  appeal,  a  rare 
example  of  glowing  emotion  expressed 
in  the  language  of  perfect  self-control, 
which  concludes  the  stern,  yet  touch- 
ing, sermon  on  "Death  and  Salva- 
tion "  1 4  Sermons  like  these  will  never 
become  obsolete.  There  is  not  one  mas- 
ter of  any  Public  School  in  England 
who  might  not  profit  from  the  study 
of  them.  There  is  not  one,  I  suppose, 
who  would  not  admit  that  as  these 
are  among  the  earliest  specimens  in 
our  literature  of  school  sermons,  so 
even  in  a  generation  which  possesses 
Bishop  Cotton's  Marlborough  sermons, 
and  Dr.  Vaughan's  Memorials  of 
Harrow  Sundays,  they  still  remain 
the  best  models  of  what  school  ser- 
mons ought  to  be.  One,  at  any  rate, 
who  once  had  the  honour  of  being  a 
head  master,  may  be  allowed  the  hum- 
ble testimony  that  he  would  have 
hailed  these  volumes  had  they  appeared 
a  year  or  two  ago  with  the  deepest 
gratitude,  and  might  have  reaped  from 
them  ^advantages  which  he  regrets 
never  to  have  possessed. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed 
that  the  majority  of  these  sermons 
would  only  be  valuable  to  school- 
masters. It  is  one  distinct  element  of 
their  merit  that  very  many  of  them 
do  not  bear  directly  upon  school 
life  at  all ;  and  that  even  when  they 
were  addressed  to  youthful  audiences, 
they  aimed  at  awakening  interests 
which  extended  far  beyond  the  narrow 
horizon  of  boyish  vision.  Three 
especially  of  these  volumes — the  third, 
fourth,  and  sixth — have  a  permanent 
theological  value,  and  the  notes 
and  introductions  to  them  might  be 
read  with  great  profit  by  many  of  our 
clergy  as  the  best  possible  antidote 
to  prevalent  errors.  The  merits  and 
influence  of  Arnold  as  a  theologian 
have,  I  think,  been  underrated.  At 
any  rate  I  can  recall  but  few  modern 
clergymen  whose  opinions  would  fur- 
nish a  more  wholesome  study.  The 
note  of  disestablishment  has  been 


1  VoL  iv.  p.  2. 


2  Vol.  iv.  p.  x.  3  Vol.  v.  pp.  49—62.          4  Vol.  v.  p.  155. 


TJwmas  Arnold,  D.D. 


459 


clearly  heard,  and  nothing  can  avert 
that  national  disaster  so  surely  and 
so  satisfactorily  as  a  timely  wisdom 
and  liberality  on  the  part  of  Church- 
men.    Already  the   increase    of   dili- 
gence and  faithfulness  and   devotion 
among  the  clergy  have  won  for  their 
entire    order    a    respect    which,    but 
for  other  circumstances,  would   have 
gone  very  far  to  disarm  all  semblance 
of  national,  and   almost   of   political, 
hostility.     But  side  by  side  with  this 
wide,  self-denying  energy  has  grown 
up  a  spirit  of  clericalism  and  sacerdo- 
talism, which,  unless  checked,  will  be 
socially  and   religiously  fatal   to   the 
existence  of  the  Established  Church. 
By  clericalism  I  mean  that  elaborate 
separation  from  the  laity  which  is  but 
too  plainly  symbolised  by  peculiarities 
of  dress,  pronunciation,  and  bearing ; 
and  which,  in  its  occasional  develop- 
ments, is   made  the    excuse  for  that 
charge  of  effeminacy  so  unjustly  brought 
against  the  clergy.  But  this  effeminacy, 
if  it  can  fairly  be  charged  at  all  against 
any  of  the  clergy  in  social  matters,  is 
less  common,  and   far  less  injurious, 
than    the    timidity   of    thought,   the 
cowardice  in  the  expression  of  opinion, 
the  dread  of  diverging  a  hairsbreadth 
from   the   current   "orthodoxy,"    the 
want    of    fearless    independence   and 
honest  forthrightness,  the  tendency  to 
run  in  well-oiled  grooves,  the  conven- 
tionality of  language  which  serves  to 
cloak  real  divergences  of  opinion,  the 
adoption  of  a  phraseology  purely  pro- 
fessional— in  one  word,    the  want  of 
perfect  reality,  naturalness,  and  manly 
independence  —  which   may  at   times 
be  noted  as  a  grave  fault  in  some  of 
our    ordinary    theological    literature. 
To  read  Arnold's  sermons,  after  read- 
ing too  many  of  those  which  are  now 
in   vogue,  is   like  passing  out  of  the 
conservatory  into    the    free   air  and 
eager  breeze  of  heaven.     And  if  the 
faults  to  which  I  have  alluded  be  what 
is  commonly  meant  by  "  clericalism," 
then  "  sacerdotalism  "  is  its  still  more 
dangerous  kinsman.    By  sacerdotalism 
I    mean    the    assumption    of    super- 
natural privileges  of  such  a  kind  as  to 


glorify  and  elevate  the  individual  and 
his  order,  to  identify  the  Church  more 
and  more  with  the  clergy,  and  to  sub- 
stitute the  word  "priest"  in  all  its 
sacrificial,  heathen,  and  mediaeval  con- 
notations for  the  word  in  its  sense  of 
"  presbyter,"  in  which  sense  alone  it 
is  recognised  by  the  New  Testament, 
and  by  the  English  Church.  To  this 
social  tendency,  and  this  religious 
corruption,  Arnold  was  a  brave  and 
uncompromising  though  a  perfectly 
courteous  and  considerate  foe.  The 
manner  of  his  controversial  essays  is 
as  commendable  as  the  matter  is 
forcible.  He  never  descends  for  one 
moment  to  that  coarse  and  bitter  rail- 
ing by  which  fanatical  ignorance 
strives  to  conceal  the  utter  absence  of 
ability  and  knowledge. 

While   directing  many  a   powerful 
blow    against    the    principles    of   the 
Oxford  School,  Arnold  always  spoke 
of     the    individual    writers    of    that 
school   not  only   with    perfect    kind- 
ness   but    even   with    sympathy   and 
respect.     Yet  all  his  principles  made 
him    the    severe    opponent   of    every 
practice  and  theory  which  tended  to 
draw    ineradicable    lines    of    distinc- 
tion between  the  clergy  and  the  laity. 
Want  of  intellectual  manliness  is  the 
very  last  charge  which  any  one  could 
ever   have    brought    against    Thomas 
Arnold,     There   was    nothing    exotic 
about  his  sentiments,  nothing  conven- 
tional about  his  language.     He  was  a 
model  for  all  clergymen  in  this  respect 
more  than  all  others,  that — like  Canon 
Kingsley — he  was  every  inch  a  man. 
And  he  had  the  faith  of  a  man  in  all 
its   vigour — the    faith    which    would 
have  scorned  any  mere  respectful  com- 
plaisance at  the  hands  of  an  opponent 
—the  faith  which   desired   the   pure 
air  of  heaven  and  the  clear  light  of 
day.     If   there  was  one  thing  which 
he  detested  more  than  another  it  was 
an   insincere   argument.     He  saw  no 
sanctity  in  pretentious  incompetence. 
Ignorance  never  appeared  to  him  any 
the  more  venerable  because  it  uttered 
its    dicta    as    from    an    oracle.     He 
earnestly  laboured    to    destroy    that 


460 


Thomas  Arnold,  D.D. 


un-christian  superstition  which,  as  a 
necessary  consequence  of  straining 
at  the  gnat,  for  ever  swallows  the 
camel.  Clearly  perceiving  that  the 
business  of  a  theologian  consists  in 
the  twofold  work  of  interpreting 
the  Scriptures  and  of  applying  them 
— of  which  the  first  requires  a  study 
of  criticism  and  philology,  and  the 
second  a  knowledge  of  our  own  and 
former  times,  together  with  the  gene- 
ral constitution  of  the  human  mind  and 
character, — he  had  but  little  respect 
for  a  large  proportion  of  what  is  called 
Divinity,  and  openly  stated  his  opinion 
that  the  writings  of  unqualified  divines 
were  in  theology  particularly  worth- 
less. Arnold  here  hit  upon  a  tempta- 
tion to  which  some  religious  teachers 
are  particularly  liable.  Accustomed  to 
teach  authoritatively,  and  to  have  their 
utterances  accepted  as  authoritative 
by  the  majority  of  those  immediately 
around  them,  they  have  been  too  apt 
in  all  ages  to  assume  for  themselves  a 
monopoly  of  orthodoxy,  and  to  attach 
a  most  extravagant  importance  to  the 
assertion  of  their  individual  opinions, 
and  that  too  on  subjects  with  which 
they  do  not  even  possess  an  elementary 
acquaintance.  We  who  are  clergymen 
should  not  resent  the  warning  that 
the  intensity  of  our  prejudices  is  no 
true  measure  of  the  value  of  our  con- 
victions, and  that  no  spectacle  is  more 
saddening  than  that  of 

"  Blind  Authority  beating  with  his  staff 
The  child  that  might  have  led  him  ; " 

or  that  of  Ignorance  taking  itself  for 
Infallibility,  and  anathematising  what 
it  does  not  understand.  Against  such 
dangers  —  increased  a  thousandfold 
in  those  who  breathe  that  intoxicat- 
ing incense  of  support  and  flattery 
which  is  weekly  burnt  for  their  ad- 
herents by  our  party  religious  news- 
papers— the  writings  of  Arnold  will 
form  an  admirable  preservative.  It  is 
impossible,  in  the  brief  space  at  my 
disposal,  to  analyse  his  remarks  on 
the  value  of  historical  study  to  all 
who  are  called  upon  to  preach;  but 
how  different  would  have  been  the 


tone  and  the  writings  of  some  of 
our  clergy  if  they  had  followed  the 
advice  given  in  the  introduction  to 
the  Sermons  on  Christian  Life  and 
Doctrine !  How  unspeakably  might 
many  of  them  have  profited  by  turn- 
ing away  from  the  perilous  employ- 
ment of  perpetually  contemplating 
narrow-mindedness  and  weakness  in 
conjunction  with  much  of  piety  and 
goodness,  by  turning  to  the  great 
springs  of  truth,  human  and  divine — 
to  the  Scriptures  to  remind  us  that 
Christianity  is  in  itself  wholly  free 
from  the  foolishness  thrown  round 
it  by  some  of  its  professors ;  to  the 
great  writers  of  human  genius,  to 
save  us  from  viewing  the  Scriptures 
themselves  through  the  medium  of 
ignorance  and  prejudice,  and  lowering 
them  by  our  perverse  interpreta- 
tions in  order  to  make  them  counte- 
nance our  errors.1 

All  of  us  might  learn  a  lesson  of 
life- long  value  if  we  would  merely 
accept  the  advice  which  Arnold  gave 
forty  years  ago — never  to  lay  aside 
the  greatest  works  of  human  genius  of 
whatever  age  or  country  ;  to  read  the 
lives  of  the  saints,  and  good  Christian 
biography  of  all  ages ;  not  to  mis- 
quote and  misinterpret  Scriptures  by 
harping  on  isolated  texts  without 
sufficiently  exercising  our  minds  to 
master  the  meaning  of  profound  and 
difficult  writers ;  and  to  acquire  com- 
prehensive views  of  large  portions  of 
the  sacred  volume  taken  together. 

It  would  carry  me  too  far  were 
I  to  speak  of  Arnold's  views — liberal 
and  enlightened  as  they  were — on  the 
true  relations  of  Church  and  State, 
and  his  condemnation  of  that  fatal 
tendency  to  which  he  does  not  hesitate 
to  apply  the  term  "the  antichrist  of 
priesthood."  He  held  that  the  main 
truth  of  the  Christian  religion  barred 
for  all  time  the  very  notion  of  a  media- 
torial or  sacrificial  priesthood.  He 
held  that  there  was  and  could  be  but 
one  priesthood — that  of  Christ ;  and 
one  mediator — the  Man  Christ  Jesus  ; 
and  that  there  was  no  point  of  the 
1  Vol.  iii.  p.  xiii.  seq. 


Thomas  Arnold,  D.D. 


461 


priestly  office  properly  so  called  in 
which  the  claim  of  the  earthly  priest 
was  not  absolutely  precluded.  There 
is  no  place  at  all  for  such  a  priest  for 
sacrifice,  since  there  is  but  one  atoning 
sacrifice  which  has  once  been  offered  ; 
nor  yet  for  intercession,  since  there  is 
One  who  ever  liveth  to  make  interces- 
sion for  us.  A  priesthood  in  the  sense 
in  which  that  term  is  used  by  some 
modern  ritualists,  Arnold  regards  as 
a  high  dishonour  to  our  true  Priest — 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

But,  leaving  this  subject,  we  must 
at  least  allude  to  the  influence  which 
Arnold  exercised  as  a  theologia'n. 
There  may  be  some  who  will  grudge 
him  any  such  title,  and  if  by  a  theolo- 
gian is  merely  to  be  meant  one  who  has 
busied  himself  with  scholastic  techni- 
calities and  transcendental  metaphysics, 
then  he  would  have  been  the  first  to 
repudiate  the  name.  But  it  will  be  a 
disastrous  day  for  theology  when  it 
comes  to  be  identified  with  a  range  of 
inquiry  so  narrow,  so  dubious,  and  so 
unpractical ;  and  if  he  is  a  theologian 
who  wisely  guides  the  religious  views 
of  churches,  then  Arnold  has  far  more 
claim  to  be  so  regarded  than  "a  hundred 
would-be' s  of  the  modern  day."  The 
clamour  with  which  his  opinions  were 
I'eceived  reminds  us  of  Milton's  lines — 

"  Men  whose  faith,  learning,  life  and  pure  in- 
tent, 
Would  have  been  held  in  high  esteem  by 

Paul, 

Must  now  be  called  and  printed  heretics 
By  shallow  Edwards  and  Scotch  What- 
d'ye-call." 

Arnold's  main  contributions  to  the- 
ology in  these  volumes  are  the  Essays 
on  the  Interpretation  of  Prophecy,  and 
on  the  Interpretation  of  Scripture.  On 
both  subjects  his  views  are  now  main- 
tained by  most  thinking  men.  As 
regards  Prophecy,  he  saw  that  pre- 
diction is  wholly  subordinate  to  moral 
teaching,  and  that  the  mere  announce- 
ment of  events  yet  future  is  the  lowest 
part  of  the  prophet's  office,  being  indeed 
rather  its  sign  than  its  substance.  The 
prophets  dealt  with  eternal  principles, 
not  with  chronological  combinations. 


To  startle  the  death-like  slumbers  of 
selfishness,  to  fan  the  dying  embers  of 
patriotism,  to  curb  the  base  oppression 
of  power,  to  startle  the  sensual  apathy 
of  unbelief,  were  the  prophets'  noblest 
functions  ;  nor  is  it  possible  to  gather 
from  these  inspired  poets  a  single  pre- 
diction in  which  some  deep  moral  pur- 
pose, some  profound  spiritual  lesson 
is  not  involved.  The  school  of  inter- 
pretation which  lays  stress  on  material 
details  met  with  no  sympathy  from 
Arnold,  because  he  saw  that  such  a 
method  of  illustration  was  often  "acci- 
dental, generally  disputable,  and  theo- 
retically false."  "It  is  a  very  mis- 
leading notion  of  prophecy  if  we  regard 
it  as  an  anticipation  of  history.  .  .  It 
is  anticipated  history,  not  in  our  com- 
mon sense  of  the  word,  but  in  another 
and  far  higher  sense.  ...  It  fixes  the 
attention  on  principles,  on  good  and 
evil,  on  truth  and  falsehood,  on  God 
and  His  enemy.  .  .  .  The  earliest 
prophecy  of  Scripture  is  the  sum  and 
substance  of  the  whole  language  of 
prophecy,  how  diversified  soever  in 
its  particular  forms."  On  these  points, 
and  on  the  ever-widening  horizons  of 
prophetic  fulfilment,  the  reader  will 
find  many  wise  remarks  in  illustration 
of  Arnold's  fundamental  principle  that 
the  prophets  did  not  in  the  first  in- 
stance cast  themselves  into  the  ocean 
of  futurity;  that  the  forms  of  their 
prophecies  belong  to  their  own  times, 
the  spirit  of  them  to  times  that  were 
to  come ;  that  their  words  have  not  only 
an  historical  sense  originating  in  con- 
temporary circumstances,  but  also  a 
spiritual  sense,  "worthily  answering 
to  the  magnificence  of  their  language, 
but  in  its  details  of  time,  place,  and 
circumstance  indistinct  to  them ;  nay 
— as  we  still  see  through  a  glass  darkly 
— indistinct,  when  it  rises  highest, 
even  to  us."  l 

Arnold's  views  of  the  Interpreta- 
tion of  Scripture  were  marked  by  the 
same  reverent  sincerity  and  masculine 
wisdom.  The  dishonouring  literalism 
which  will  defend  even  the  most  per- 
nicious custom  if  some  text  can  be 
1  Vol.  iii.  p.  335. 


462 


Thomas  Arnold,  D.D. 


quoted  in   its   apparent   favour ;    the 
ignorant  unwisdom  which  strews  the 
paths  of  social  and  moral  progress  with 
stumblingblocks  wrenched  out  of  the 
sacred   page ;  the   irreligious   religion 
which  depraves  God's  best  gift  in  support 
of  man's  worst  inventions — these  bad 
traditions  still   survive,   and   if  they 
no  longer  flourish,  they  yet  continue 
to  be  powerful  for  evil  even  in  their 
decay.     But  to  Arnold  is  due  in  no 
small  degree  the  merit  of  having  dealt 
to  them  their  death-blow  in  the  minds 
of    reasonable    men.     His    Essay   on 
this    subject    is    stamped    with    the 
same  high  characteristics  as  his  other 
writings — calmness,  courage,  clearness, 
perfect  consideration  for  the  feelings  of 
others.  He  points  out  the  impossibility 
of  rightly  comprehending  Scripture  if 
we  read  it  as  we  read  the  Koran,  as 
though  it  were  in  all  its  parts  of  equal 
authority,  all  composed  at  one  time, 
and  all  addressed  to  persons  similarly 
situated.1     He  fearlessly  exposes  the 
incompetence  of  the  majority  of  com- 
mentators, who  are  too  often  greatly 
insufficient  in  knowledge  and  still  more 
so  in  judgment, "of ten  misapprehending 
the    whole    difficulty    of   a   question, 
often   answering   it  by  repeating  the 
mere  assertions  of   others,  and    con- 
founding the  proper  provinces  of  the 
intellect  and  the  moral  sense,  so  as  to 
make  questions  of  criticism  questions 
of   religion,  and   to  brand  as  profane 
inquiries  to  which  the  character  of  pro- 
faneness  or  devotion  is  altogether  in- 
applicable."    He  laid  down  the  broad 
principles  that  commands  given  in  the 
Bible  to  one  man  or  to  one  generation 
are,  and  can  be,  binding  upon  other 
men  and   other   generations,   only  so 
far  forth  as  the  circumstances  in  which 
both  are  placed  are  similar ;  and  that 
the  revelations   of  God  to  man  were 
gradual,  and  adapted  to  his  state  at 
the  several  periods  when  they  were 
successively  made.     This  principle  of 
"accommodation"  is   liable  -  indeed  to 
grave  abuse,  but  it  is  a  principle  dis- 
tinctly recognised  by  Christ  Himself, 
and  it  will  be  always  safely  applied  by 
1  Vol.  ii.  p.  280  seq. 


strong  and  honest  natures.     Whether 
the  reader  be  always  inclined  or  not  to 
accept  the  solutions  which  throughout 
this  volume  on  Scriptural  interpretation 
are  offered  for  various  moral  and  other 
difficulties  of   Scripture,   he   will  not 
fail  to  profit  by  the  fearless  honesty 
with   which  they   were   met,   and  he 
will  see  them  treated  as  though  they 
were  neither  to   be    spoken   of    with 
bated  breath,  nor  regarded  as  in  any 
way  dangerous  to  religion.     In  point 
of  fact  Arnold  was  a  wise  interpreter 
of  Scripture,  and  a  wise  defender  of 
Christian   verity,  because   he   clearly 
apprehended   the  truth  on  which  his 
son,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  has  dwelt 
—  less    persuasively    indeed,  because 
from   an    immensely  different   stand- 
point, and  with  a  large  admixture  of 
other  elements — but  with  consummate 
literary  skill.     Even  the  Rabbis  and 
Talmudists  could  see,  and  could  state, in 
direct  opposition  to  their  own  methods 
of   exegesis,   that   The  law   speaks   in 
the  tongue   of  the  sons   of  men.     The 
meaning  of  that  maxim  is  that,  in  all 
interpretation  of  Scripture,  allowances 
must  be  made  for  the  human  element ; 
for  that  factor  of  the  divine  message 
which  is  tinged  with  the  writer's  indi- 
viduality; for  the  necessary  and   in- 
herent imperfections  of  all  earthly  ex- 
pression ;  for  the  use  of  metaphor  and 
hypallage  and  hyperbole,  and  that  im- 
passioned style  of  utterance  which  re- 
jects the  possibility  of  a  wooden  and 
soulless  letter- worship :  for  the  absur- 
dities which  arise  when  we  turn  the 
swift  syllogisms   of   natural   rhetoric 
with  all  their  impetuous  force  into  the 
hard  syllogisms  of  unemotional  logic ; 
for  the  fact,   in    short,  that   human 
language,  at  its  very  best  and  great- 
est,  is,   and   can   be,  but  an   asymp- 
tote to  thought,  and  that  this   must 
more  than  ever  be  borne  in  mind  when 
we  deal  in  finite  speech  with  conceptions 
which    are  'infinite.      Mr.    Matthew 
Arnold  calls  the  Rabbinic  maxim  which 
I   have  quoted  "the  very  foundation 
of   sane   Biblical    criticism,"   though, 
as  he  truly  adds,  "it  was  for  centuries 
a  dead  letter  to  the  whole  body  of  our 


Thomas  Arnold,  D.D. 


463 


"Western  exegesis,  and  is  a  dead 
letter  to  the  whole  body  of  our 
popular  exegesis  still."  No  man  can 
mistake  the  elements  of  a  saving  faith ; 
even  a  wayfaring  man,  though  a  fool, 
cannot  possibly  err  in  deducing  from 
the  Scriptures  all  that  is  necessary  for 
salvation.  But  when  we  pass  from 
questions  of  practical  religion  to  ques- 
tions of  Biblical  interpretation  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  every  commen- 
tator, however  learned,  must  go  egre- 
giously  astray  if  he  be  devoid  of 
literary  culture.  Exegesis  is  a  domain 
from  which  mere  ignorant  convictions, 
even  when  they  claim  to  speak  ex 
cathedrd,  must  be  remorselessly  ex- 
pelled. Mr.  Arnold  has  rendered  a 
memorable  service  by  the  incontro- 
vertible clearness  with  which  he  has 
proved  this  proposition,  and  in  dwell- 
ing upon  its  importance  he  is,  in  one 
particular  direction,  continuing  the 
theological  influence  of  his  illustrious 
father. 

I  have  dwelt  on  the  position  of  Dr. 
Arnold  as  a  Churchman  and  as  a  theo- 
logian because  in  these  spheres  his 
merits  are  but  partially  recognised, 
whereas  none  deny,  and  all  are  grateful 
for,  the  reformation  which  he  effected 
in  English  schools.  To  dwell  on 
that  reformation — its  nature,  its  ex- 
tent, its  beneficence,  the  methods  by 
which  it  was  accomplished  —  is  not 
possible  in  this  paper,  but  those  who 
are  familiar  with  school  life  will  be 
able  with  the  aid  of  these  volumes  to 
trace  it  for  themselves.  Certain  it  is 


that  English  schools  have  undergone  a 
very  marked  change  for  the  better 
during  the  fifty  years  which  have 
elapsed  since  he  was  elected  Head 
Master  of  Rugby.  Those  changes 
have  carried  with  them  a  change  also 
of  our  whole  social  life.  They  began 
to  work  from  the  very  day  when — to 
recall  the  scene  so  beautifully  de- 
scribed in  the  grateful  pages  of 
Arnold's  two  eminent  pupils,  Dean 
Stanley  and  Mr.  T.  Hughes — in  the 
then  mean  and  unsightly  chapel  of 
Rugby  School,  dimly  lighted  by  the 
two  candles  of  the  pulpit,  were  seen 
above  the  long  lines  of  youthful  faces 
the  strong  form  and  noble  face  of  the 
greatest  of  English  schoolmasters,  and 
the  voice  was  heard,  "  now  soft  as  the 
low  notes  of  a  flute,  now  clear  and 
stirring  as  the  call  of  the  light  infantry 
bugle,  of  him  who  stood  there,  Sunday 
after  Sunday,  witnessing  and  pleading 
for  his  Lord."  To  trace  the  course 
and  the  issues  of  this  social  reforma- 
tion might  be  an  interesting  task ; 
but  at  present,  as  one  of  the  least 
worthy  of  those  who  in  a  similar 
office  to  Arnold's  own  would  fain 
have  caught  something  of  his  spirit,  I 
can  but  lay  upon  the  base  of  his  statue 
a  wreath  of  respectful  gratitude. 
Few  teachers  have  arisen  since  his 
death  who  could  reach  high  enough  to 
place  that  wreath  around  his  brow. 

"  Ut  caput  in  magnis  ubi  non  est  tangere 

sign  is 
Pomtur  hie  imos  ante  corona  pedes." 

F.  W.  FAREAB. 


464 


FROM  THE  QUIRINAL  TO  THE  VATICAN. 


FBOM  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican, 
from  the  death-bed  of  the  Re-Galan- 
tuomo, the  first  King  of  United  Italy, 
to  the  death-bed  of  Pius  IX.,  the  last 
Papa-Re  of  Rome,  the  transition  has 
been  most  startling  and  most  sudden. 
In  all  the  circumstances  associated 
with  these  close  coincidences  of  royal 
and  papal  deaths,  Italy  may  well  feel 
justified  if  she  once  more  gratefully 
recognises  the  influence  of  the  benig- 
nant star  which  was  believed  to  have 
so  often  shed  its  light  on  the  fortunes 
of  the  nation.  The  Re-Galantuomo, 
so  singularly  fortunate  in  all  the 
events  of  his  life,  was  not  less  fortu- 
nate in  the  place  and  time  of  his  un- 
looked-for death.  An  interest  of  a 
very  different  character  would  have 
attended  the  close  of  his  life  had  it 
occurred  at  his  Piedmontese  villa  of 
La  Mandria.  There  would  not,  there 
could  not,  have  been  found  there,  the 
assemblage  of  domestic  political  and 
religious  associations  which  imparted 
so  varied  and,  in  some  respects,  so 
important  an  interest  to  the  last  sad 
farewell  taken,  to  the  last  solemn  bless- 
ings given,  in  the  little  chamber  on  the 
ground- floor  of  the  Quirinal ;  nor  was 
the  Re-Galantuomo  less  fortunate  in 
the  time  of  his  departure.  Had  he 
died  only  two  months  earlier,  the 
prospect  of  a  possible  embarrassment 
in  Italian  affairs  arising  from  his 
decease  might  have  lent  fresh  vigour 
to  the  Ultramontane  conspirators  who 
were  then  holding  Marshal  Macmahon 
in  their  toils.  But  his  death,  so  closely 
preceding  that  of  Pius  IX.,  furnished 
the  occasion  for  rekindling  in  the 
mind  of  the  aged  pontiff  all  the  more 
generous  feelings  towards  the  house 
of  Savoy  and  the  Italian  people,  by 
which  the  commencement  of  his  ponti- 
ficate had  been  marked,  and  paved  the 
way  for  a  better  understanding,  if  not 


for  a  complete  reconcilation,  between 
the  new  Pope  and  the  new  King. 

A  German  commentator  on  Machia- 
velli,  when  expanding  and  illustrating 
that  passage  of  the  Prince  in  which 
the  Florentine  secretary  has  set  forth 
how  completely  all  the  calculations 
of  Caesar  Borgia  were  overturned  by 
the  sudden  death  of  his  father,  Pope 
Alexander  VI.,  has  observed  that, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  one  ele- 
ment in  all  human  combinations  which 
is  most  certain  and  unavoidable — the 
element  of  mortality — is  the  one  most 
generally  overlooked.  The  remark, 
however,  did  not  hold  good  in  the  case 
of  Pius  IX.,  for  it  would  be  difficult  to 
discover  amongst  the  illustrious  and 
august  personages  of  the  nineteenth 
century  another  individual  whose 
decease,  whether  proximate  or  remote, 
has  been  made  the  theme  of  so  much 
speculation,  and  who,  before  closing 
his  eyes,  has  been  in  an  equal  degree 
a  party  to  the  discounting  of  all  the 
political  and  religious  contingencies 
which  his  end  might  bring  about.  Given 
up  again  and  again  by  his  physicians, 
it  was  his  lot  to  belie  all  their  pre- 
dictions, until  they  at  last  ceased  to 
foretell  his  approaching  death ;  and 
then,  when  they  had  all  agreed  that 
he  might  live  yet  two  or  three  years, 
he  put  their  science  and  their  art  once 
more  to  scorn,  and  died  when  every  man 
in  the  Vatican  believed  in  the  further 
prolongation  of  his  life.  The  strange 
medley  of  inconsistencies  and  contra- 
dictions by  which  his  character  and 
career  were  marked  revealed  itself 
even  in  this  last  phase  of  his  existence  ; 
and  just  as  the  most  fitful  and  capri- 
cious, the  most  spasmodic  and  impul- 
sive of  human  beings  had  favoured  the 
world  with  the  proclamation  of  his 
personal  infallibility — the  frail  mortal 
whose  uncertain  health  was  in  youth 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


465 


the  chief  cause  of  his  exchanging  the 
profession  of  arms  for  that  of  the 
Church,  lived  on  with  all  his  physical 
infirmities  to  the  age  of  eighty-five,  in 
his  constant  illnesses  and  constant  re- 
coveries almost  suggesting  the  idea  of 
the  milk-white  and  immortal  hind, 
"  still  doomed  to  death,  yet  fated  not  to 
die."  Shortly  after  the  Italian  occu- 
pation of  Rome  at  the  close  of  1870, 
when  the  animosity  between  the  re- 
presentatives of  the  Italian  govern- 
ment and  the  occupants  of  the  Vatican 
was  at  its  height,  there  appeared  in 
the  windows  of  all  the  Roman  print-sel- 
lers a  photograph  representing  Pope  Pius 
IX.  and  King  Victor  Emanuel  arm- in- 
arm, both  smiling  most  pleasantly,  and 
apparently  on  the  very  best  possible 
terms.  During  the  seven  years  that 
elapsed  from  its  first  appearance  until 
the  death  of  both  Pope  and  King,  the 
photograph  steadily  maintained  its 
place  as  one  of  the  most  popular 
and  profitable  articles  of  the  photo- 
graphic trade,  nor  did  its  sale  appear 
to  be  in  the  least  degree  affected  by 
the  violent  language  of  the  Papal 
briefs  and  speeches  denouncing  the 
Savoyard  usurper,  or  the  equally 
violent  declamations  in  the  Italian 
parliament  and  press  against  the 
clerical  foes  of  liberty.  It  seemed  as 
if  a  certain  shrewd  and  sound  instinct 
had  taught  the  people  that  in  the  midst 
of  all  this  war  of  words  much  latent 
good  feeling  existed  towards  each  other 
in  the  hearts  of  the  sovereign  and  the 
pontiff,  or  at  any  rate  that  if  no  such 
good  feeling  existed  it  ought  to  exist, 
and  that  its  existence  would  promote 
the  best  interests  of  the  Italian  State 
and  the  Catholic  Church.  The  rnuch- 
talked-of  but  never-realised  conciliation 
held  its  place  in  the  minds  of  the 
people  far  more  surely  than  it  entered 
into  the  calculations  of  the  statesmen 
or  the  churchmen ;  and  the  popular  in- 
stinct in  this  case,  as  it  is  in  so  many 
others,  was  a  better  political  guide 
than  the  hesitating  and  distrustful 
counsels  of  the  cabinet  or  the  curia. 
The  conciliation  came  at  last,  and  came 
in  a  manner  so  unexpected  and  amidst 
No.  222. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


circumstances  so  touching  that  men 
could  not  but  regard  it  as  brought 
about  by  the  interposition  of  a  higher 
power,  and  designed  to  illustrate  far 
higher  truths  than  those  bound  up 
with  the  alternate  successes  of  liberal 
and  clerical  opponents,  or  even  with 
the  triumphs  of  a  national  and  Ultra- 
montane warfare.  Pius  IX.  had  never 
ceased  during  the  whole  course  of  his 
life  to  be  an  Italian  patriot ;  during  the 
earlier  period  of  his  life  he  had  been  a 
sincere  reformer,  and  at  one  epoch  it 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say  an  Italian 
revolutionist.  If  his  revolutionary 
period  was  not  of  long  duration  it  was 
at  any  rate  so  strongly  marked  that 
the  early  friends  who  then  shared  his 
hopes  and  aspirations  would  never 
consent  to  look  upon  him  in  after  life 
in  any  other  character,  and  some  of 
them  even  set  up  a  theory  as  to  his 
relation  to  the  Church  much  akin  to 
that  once  in  favour  as  to  Sunderland's 
relations  with  our  James  II.  That 
was  simply  absurd,  and  it  would  be 
throwing  away  time  to  exhibit  the 
evident  proofs  of  its  absurdity,  and  to 
show  that  however  mistaken  in  his 
means  Pius  IX.  had  ever  during  his 
pontificate  the  same  end  in  view — the 
welfare  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
As  a  reformer  his  tendencies  were 
not  disclosed  for  the  first  time  on  his 
elevation  to  the  papal  throne.  There 
exists,  and  in  all  probability  will  soon  be 
published,  an  extensive  correspondence 
which  Cardinal  Mastai-Ferretti,  when 
Bishop  of  Imola,  held  with  the  chief 
political  authorities  in  Rome,  and  in 
which  the  future  Pope  seeks  to  impress 
on  the  leading  persons  of  the  govern- 
ment the  necessity  of  adopting  a  num- 
ber of  most  important  reforms,  of 
which  some  are  as  much  wanted  at  the 
present  day  as  when  Cardinal  Mastai- 
Ferretti  penned  the  letters  alluded  to. 
To  give  an  example,  he  implores 
the  Papal  government  to  make  such 
arrangements  with  some  foreign  state 
as  may  place  at  its  command  a  remote 
island  for  the  sole  objects  of  a  penal 
colony,  declaring  that  all  the  attempts 
to  deal  with  brigandage  and  with  the 

H  H 


466 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


like  crimes  in  the  papal  state  will 
prove  fruitless,  unless  the  criminals 
shall  for  a  term  of  years,  or  if  required, 
during  the  whole  of  their  lives,  be 
completely  separated  by  a  distant  ocean 
from  the  rest  of  the  population.  There 
is  every  reason  to  believe, — it  is  but 
justice  to  the  present  Italian  govern- 
ment to  make  the  statement — that  the 
actual  rulers  of  the  Italian  kingdom 
have  an  equal  conviction  of  the  same 
truth,  and  that  if  full  effect  has 
not  been  given  to  it  the  fault  lies 
much  more  in  the  jealousy  of  foreign 
powers  than  in  the  diplomatic  action 
of  Italy  itself.  Pius  IX.  was  a  re- 
former, both  from  the  principles  which 
made  him  desire  a  better  state  of 
things,  and  from  the  kindly  feeling 
which  made  him  desire  an  increased 
amount  of  happiness  amongst  all 
around  him.  But  it  happened  with 
him  as  with  the  Emperor  Na- 
poleon III,,  that  he  often  felt  most 
keenly,  and  in  consequence  of  this 
feeling  promoted  most  readily,  the 
happiness  of  the  individuals  with 
whom  he  was  brought  into  immediate 
contact ;  and  their  personal  gratifica- 
tion was  but  too  often  in  direct  an- 
tagonism with  the  happiness  of  the 
great  masses  of  subjects  intrusted  to 
their  rule.  The  more  honest  advisers 
of  Napoleon  III.  were  so  well  ac- 
quainted with  this  dangerous  weak- 
ness in  the  character  of  their  sovereign, 
that  when  they  proposed  to  him  any 
great  administrative  reform,  they  not 
unfrequently  made  it  a  regular  stipu- 
lation that  he  should  not  consent 
to  grant  personal  interviews  to  the 
parties  whose  interests  would  be 
wounded.  That  official  adviser  of 
Pius  IX.  whom  it  would  be  unsafe 
to  rank  amongst  the  more  honest  of 
his  class,  his  cardinal-secretary  of 
state,  Antonelli,  was  so  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  same  peculiarities 
in  the  character  of  the  pontiff,  that 
his  constant  and,  as  it  proved,  per- 
fectly successful  aim  was  to  shut  out 
Pius  IX.  as  much  as  possible  from  all 
intercourse  with  all  persons,  excepting 
those  who  were  subservient  to  the 


Cardinal's  own  aims,  whose  interests 
were  identified  with  his  own,  and 
whose  happiness  was  not  likely  to  be 
much  affected  by  any  sympathy  felt 
or  efforts  made  by  them  for  objects  of 
general  and  public  welfare.  Much 
has  been  said  during  the  last  seven 
years  of  the  imprisonment  in  the 
Vatican  of  Pius  IX.  The  matchless 
effrontery  with  which,  in  Belgium, 
France,  and  the  Ehine  Provinces, 
circulation  was  given,  with  the  full 
knowledge  and  sanction  of  the  Catholic 
hierarchy,  to  the  legend  respecting 
Pius  IX.'s  alleged  captivity,  and  the 
constant  and  public  sale  in  those 
countries  of  straws  taken  from  the 
august  prisoner's  pallet,  and  of 
photographs  representing  him  behind 
prison  bars,  throw  a  striking  light 
on  the  reckless  character  of  Ultra- 
montane ethics.  The  Ultramontane 
prelates,  who  during  their  annual 
visits  to  the  Vatican  had  the  constant 
opportunity  of  seeing  Pius  IX.  sur- 
rounded by  all  the  old  Byzantine 
splendour  of  his  court,  who  knew  that 
all  his  movements  were  as  free  as 
those  of  their  own  sovereigns,  must 
have  performed  a  very  curious  mental 
process  when  they  succeeded  in  rea- 
soning themselves  into  the  belief  that 
the  constant  and  daily  representation 
in  their  presence  of  that  enormous 
lie  was  a  matter  calling  for  no  protest 
or  no  rebuke.  It  must  be  presumed 
that  they  had  accepted  and  acted  on 
the  principle  set  forth  with  such 
clearness  by  Loyola  in  is  "Rules," 
that  if  any  object  seem  to  the  devout 
believer  white,  and  the  Church  tells 
him  it  is  black,  his  unhesitating  duty 
is  to  regard  and  pronounce  it  black, 
in  accordance  with  the  decision  of 
his  spiritual  guides.  When  the  story 
of  his  reign  shall  be  faithfully  and 
fully  written,  more  prominence  will 
be  given  to  the  involuntary  im- 
prisonment which,  during  twenty- 
eight  years,  he  endured  at  the  hands 
of  his  Cardinal-Secretary  of  State ;  or, 
what  amounts  nearly  to  the  same 
thing,  to  the  strong,  though  subtle, 
network  of  precautions  by  which  the 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


467 


Richelieu  of  the  Papacy  made  his 
Louis  XIII.  his  helpless  and  unresist- 
ing tool.  And  when  the  same  story 
shall  be  narrated  in  all  its  details, 
prominence  will  likewise  be  given  to 
the  fact  that  at  one  period  of  his 
reign  —  in  the  summer  months  of 
1860,  immediately  preceding  the  sever- 
ance of  Umbria  and  the  Marches 
from  the  Papal  dominions  —  a  con- 
stant watch  was  kept  over  all  the 
movements  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  by 
the  agents  of  the  French  police  then 
employed  in  Rome,  for  the  purpose  of 
impeding  any  attempt  which  it  was 
then  believed  he  wished  to  make  to 
escape  to  Austria  or  Spain, — an  event 
which,  had  it  occurred,  would  have 
robbed  France  of  the  right  to  exhibit 
herself  to  the  whole  Catholic  world  as 
the  guardian  of  papal  independence. 
"When  that  history  shall  be  faith- 
fully and  fitly  told,  justice  will  be 
done  to  Cardinal  Antonelli,  and  if  it 
should  prove  difficult  highly  to  extol 
his  merits,  the  amount  of  his  demerits 
will  certainly  be  lessened.  He  did 
many  mischievous  things.  But  he  held 
with  Fielding's  predatory  hero  that 
mischief  was  a  thing  much  too  precious 
to  be  wasted,  and  that  it  should  only 
be  employed  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
special  end  which  it  is  intended  to 
secure.  Cardinal  Antonelli' s  especial 
end  was  to  heap  up  wealth  in  the 
coffers,  to  concentrate  power  in  the 
hands,  and  to  place  fair  women  at  the 
disposal,  of  Cardinal  Antonelli,  and 
he  scrupulously  and  conscientiously 
abstained  from  the  commission  of  any 
evildoing  which  was  not  directly  and 
immediately  subservient  to  the  main 
purposes  of  his  life. 

The  real  difficulties  of  Cardinal 
Antonelli's  task  can  only  be  under- 
stood when  they  are  viewed  in  connec- 
tion with  the  personal  character  of  the 
Pope-king  whom  he  served.  Some 
idea  may  be  formed  of  the  trouble  in- 
volved, and  the  care  required  in  the 
management  of  Pius  IX.  from  the 
details,  not  generally  known,  of  his 
demeanour  on  the  night  when,  after 
the  assassination  of  Rossi,  he  quitted 


the  Quirinal  in  disguise  for  Gaeta. 
The  chroniclers  of  that  event  have 
mentioned  that  his  immediate  deter- 
mination was  prompted  by  the  sudden 
advice  of  a  French  ecclesiastic  which 
he  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  providen- 
tial warning.  But  these  chroniclers 
have  passed  over  in  silence  the  follow- 
ing facts.  When  all  was  ready  for 
the  departure,  the  trusted  persons  who 
had  made  the  necessary  arrangements 
brought,  as  the  chief  part  in  these 
arrangements,  the  disguise— the  lay- 
man's dress,  the  wig,  the  beard,  and 
the  green  spectacles  which  the  Pope 
was  to  put  on.  He  at  once  declared 
that  he  could  not  with  a  due  regard  to 
his  present  dignity  be  a  party  to  such 
mumming.  Point  by  point  was  then 
contested,  and  at  a  time  when  every 
moment  was  precious  he  was  brought 
only  by  degrees  to  accept  first  the 
dress,  then  the  wig,  next  the  green 
spectacles,  and  last,  after  a  hard 
struggle,  the  beard.  Then  he  was  con- 
ducted through  the  several  rooms  of  the 
Quirinal  which  were  opened  by  a 
master  key.  At  one  of  the  last  doors 
the  key  refused  to  do  its  work,  and  Pius 
IX.  at  once  declared  that  this  was  an 
intimation  from  Heaven  which  decreed 
that  he  ought  to  remain  in  the  Quirinal 
and  be  a  martyr.  The  vacillation  or 
oscillation  of  his  character  was  how- 
ever even  less  embarrassing  than  his 
personal  piques.  A  good  deal  has 
been  said  of  late  on  the  attitude  of 
the  Jesuit  father  Curci  towards  the 
Vatican,  and  of  the  harsh  treatment 
which  he  experienced  at  the  hands  of 
Pius  IX.  The  true  relation  between 
the  late  Pope  and  the  Jesuit  fathers 
will  be  better  understood  when  it 
is  known  that  Father  Curci  had 
been  strongly  urged  by  Pius  IX.  to 
write  the  history  of  his  life  and  reign, 
that  the  Jesuit  refused,  and  allowed  it 
but  too  clearly  to  be  understood  that 
the  reason  of  his  refusal  was  the  dis- 
like to  undertake  a  biographical  white  - 
"  washing  of  Giovanni  Mastai-Ferretti. 
The  Pope  never  forgave  him.  Such 
were  some  of  the  most  prominent  and 
familiar  features  in  the  character  of 
H  H  2 


468 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


the  Pope-king  whom  Cardinal  Anto- 
nelli  so  long  served — it  would  be  more 
correct  to  say  over  whom  he  so  long 
ruled — as  secretary  of  state. 

The  best  tribute  to  the  memory  of 
Cardinal  Antonelli  is  the  frightful 
state  of  anarchy  into  which  the 
Vatican  was  thrown  immediately 
after  his  death,  and  which  it  con- 
tinued to  present  until  the  moment 
of  Pius  IX. 's  decease.  The  mind  of 
the  poor  old  Pope  was  eternally  tossed 
to  and  fro  in  a  perfect  tempest  of 
accusations,  recriminations,  calumnies, 
inuendoes,  raised  up  around  him  by 
the  fury  of  rival  factions,  so  that  it 
is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  what- 
ever may  be  the  degree  of  papal  com- 
mand over  the  purgatory  of  another 
world,  it  did  not  during  the  last  fifteen 
months  of  Pius  IX. 's  sojourn  in  this 
world  exempt  him  from  the  experience 
of  something  greatly  resembling  a 
purgatory  here.  The  meeting  of  the 
Swiss  guards,  so  soon  after  the  pre- 
sent Pope's  succession,  deserves  to  be 
regarded,  not  so  much  in  the  light  of 
a  regular  Ultramontane  conspiracy 
organised  against  Leo  XIII. ,  as  in 
that  of  the  natural  crown  and  climax 
of  the  general  confusion  in  which  the 
new  Pope  found  the  whole  Vatican 
plunged  when  he  formally  took  pos- 
session of  its  halls.  It  is  probable  that 
this  state  of  matters  had  not  a  little  to 
do  with  hastening  the  decision  of  the 
Conclave,  for  the  Sacred  College  had 
to  take  into  account  not  merely  the 
importance  of  exhibiting  to  the  Catho- 
lic world  the  spectacle  of  early  and 
united  counsel,  it  had  also  to  face 
the  present  and  pressing  necessity  of 
bringing  something  like  order  into  the 
precincts  of  the  Vatican. 

The  election  of  Cardinal  Joachim 
Pecci  to  the  highest  dignity  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  was  chiefly,  if 
not  wholly,  due  to  the  reaction  pro- 
voked amongst  the  Italian  Cardinals 
against  the  violent  Ultramontane  agita- 
tion by  which  the  Catholic  world  has 
been  long  convulsed.  That  reaction 
assumed  two  widely  distinct  forms — 
one  on  the  part  of  nearly  a  half  of 


the  Sacred  College  to  let  the  relations 
between  the  Vatican  and  the  Italian 
Government  remain  for  the  moment  on 
pretty  much  the  same  footing  as  they 
have  exhibited  since  1870,  in  other 
words,  to  continue  protesting  against 
the  Italian  aggression,  but  not  to  push 
the  antagonism  much  further  than  a 
mere  protest ;  whilst  with  another 
section  of  the  Cardinals  this  modified 
hostility  would  have  been  exchanged 
for  an  open  and  direct  conciliation. 
Cardinal  Pecci  himself  belonged  to 
the  former  group,  and  may  indeed  be 
regarded  as  the  most  faithful  repre- 
sentative of  its  views.  During  his 
civil  and  ecclesiastical  career  as  go- 
vernor of  the  papal  provinces  of  Bene- 
vento  and  Perugia,  as  nuncio  at  the 
Court  of  Brussels  from  1843  to  1846, 
and  finally  as  archbishop  of  Perugia,  and 
from  the  last-named  date  until  his  ele- 
vation to  the  tiara,  he  furnished  ample 
opportunities  to  the  infinite  variety 
of  persons  with  whom  he  came  in 
contact  for  correctly  estimating  his 
character,  and  the  general  estimate 
thus  formed  is  beyond  all  question 
highly  favourable.  The  anecdotes 
which  have  been  lately  published  re- 
specting his  singular  vigour  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  Benevento  are  declared 
by  persons  then  living  in  that  pro- 
vince to  possess  a  somewhat  apocryphal 
character.  But  it  is  certain  that  he 
brought  from  the  courtof  Leopoldl. — or 
perhaps  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say 
that  he  developed  and  strengthened  at 
that  court — a  more  than  common  degree 
of  diplomatic  jimsse,  the  habit  of 
tolerating  political  and  religious  dif- 
ferences, the  talent  and  tact  by  which 
statesmen  or  churchmen  placed  by  their 
office  amongst  hostile  and  contending 
parties  contrive  to  keep  on  good  terms 
with  foes  as  well  as  friends,  and  even 
inspire  the  antagonists  whom  they 
must  combat  or  curb  with  the  belief 
that  as  regards  the  enemy  with  whom 
they  have  to  deaHhey  might  go  further 
and  fare  much  worse.  The  position 
in  1846  either  of  a  civil  governor  or 
an  archbishop  in  the  third  city  of  the 
papal  dominions  gave  to  its  holder 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


469 


the  means,  if  lie  possessed  the  tastes, 
of  not  only  exhibiting  aptness  in 
the  discharge  of  his  official  duties, 
but  also  of  indugling  in  many  social 
courtesies  and  hospitalities ;  and 
Perugia  abounds  in  pleasant  and 
grateful  memories  of  the  social  gather- 
ings and  genial  hospitality  during  the 
early  part  of  Cardinal  Pecci's  official 
and  episcopal  rule.  Of  his  alleged 
vein  for  poetry  it  might  perhaps 
be  safe  to  believe  that  his  verses 
were  probably  much  admired  by  his 
vicar-general,  chaplains,  and  secretary; 
but  there  is  no  evidence  of  his  ever 
having,  like  old  Pope  Urban  VIII., 
inflicted  his  own  sonnets  without 
mercy  on  the  persons  who  sought  an 
audience  on  matters  of  public  business. 
His  interest  in  ^  the  fine  arts  is  much 
more  positively  attested  by  his  care 
for  the  preservation  of  the  glorious 
artistic  monuments  in  which  Perugia 
abounds,  and  even  by  the  expense, 
considerable  for  his  means,  which  he 
personally  incurred  in  the  work  of 
restoring  the  cathedral,  whatever  the 
taste  may  be  with  which  those  restora- 
tions were  carried  out.  But  the  open- 
ing years  of  the  archbishop's  sway  were 
marked  by  events  of  a  far  more  excit- 
ing character  than  these. 

The  creative  genius  of  Italy  was  all 
concentrated  in  a  task  far  nobler  than 
any  efforts  of  plastic  or  pictorial  art — 
it  laboured  to  build  up  a  structure 
more  imposing  than  the  cathedral  of 
Milan,  and  towering  aloft  more  proudly 
than  St.  Peter's  dome  itself.  One  of 
the  chief  masters  in  this  national 
undertaking,  Vincenzo  Gioberti,  was 
the  personal  friend  of  Monsignor  Pecci, 
and  the  patriots  of  Perugia  felt  pleasure 
and  pride  at  the  arrival  in  their  city 
of  the  author  of  the  Primato  ;  and  the 
fact  that  during  his  stay  amongst  them 
he  was  the  honoured  guest  of  their 
bishop,  naturally  served  to  increase 
the  esteem  in  which  they  held  their 
ecclesiastical  ruler.  At  length  the 
war  of  1848  broke  out,  and  the  band 
of  patriotic  Perugians  which  left  the 
city  of  the  Apennines  for  the  plains 
of  Lombardy  included  in  its  ranks 


some  even  of  the  clerical  teachers  in 
the    episcopal    seminary.      Then    all 
Italian  patriots  learned  with  dismay 
that  the  same  pontiff  who  had  blessed 
the   first   movements    of    the   Italian 
revolution    had    just    as    openly    de- 
nounced that  revolution  when  it  as- 
sumed the  natural  and  quite  inevitable 
character  of  a  national  war.    Straight- 
way archbishops  and  bishops,  taking 
their  cue  from  the  Vatican,  discovered 
that  Italian  nationality  had  its  hetero- 
dox aspect,  and  that  Gioberti' s  Primato 
contained  certain  propositions  fit  only 
to  be  put  in  the  Index.    The  archbishop 
of  Perugia  was  not  less  susceptible  of 
enlightenment    from    on    high    than 
his    episcopal    colleagues ;    but  it   is 
only  common  justice  to  add  that  he 
did  not,   like  so  many  of  their  num- 
ber, treat  with  contempt  and  rigour 
the  Liberals  of  his  diocese,  on  whose 
patriotic    efforts    he    had    so    lately 
smiled.      The   learned    professors    of 
his  episcopal  seminary,  Adamo  Rossi 
and  Marchesi,  were  exposed,  on  their 
return  from  the  Lombard  campaign,  to 
no  annoyance  for  the  part  which  they 
had  taken  in  the  same,  and  the  arch- 
bishop, who  not  long  afterwards  was 
raised  to  the  rank  of  cardinal,  often 
did  acts  of  kindness — very  cautiously 
and  almost   secretly,  it   is  true,    but 
still  he  did   them — to  the   more  en- 
thusiastic and  uncompromising  mem- 
bers    of     the     Liberal     party,     who 
from   the   known   character    of   their 
political    opinions   were    the   especial 
objects  of  suspicion  and  vigilance  to 
the  papal  police.    The  social  life  of  the 
Umbrian  capital  soon  reflected  but  too 
faithfully  the  elements  of  political  dis- 
cord ;  and  from  the  force  of  circumstan- 
ces, much  more  than  from  any  change 
in  his  personal  tastes,  the  archbishop 
no  longer  did  the  honours  of  the  city 
as  in  the  days  when  he  first  assumed  its 
civil  and  episcopal  government,  until 
his  mode  of  life  became  at  length  one, 
if  not  altogether  of  seclusion,  certainly 
of  extreme  retirement  and  comparative 
privacy.     Of   his   occasional  visits  to 
Rome,  and  his  personal  relations  with 
the  Vatican,  people  only  heard  from 


470 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


time  to  time  that  whenever  his  official 
duties  summoned  him  to  the  papal 
capital,  the  cardinal-secretary-of-state, 
Antonelli,  exhibited  a  degree  of  un- 
easiness which  did  not  leave  the  mind 
of  his  eminence  until  the  moment  that 
Archbishop  Pecci  again  left  Rome  for 
Perugia. 

In  1859  the  character,  firmness,  and 
tact  of  Cardinal  Pecci  were  subjected 
to  a  fresh  ordeal.  As  one  of  the  first 
consequences  of  the  war  waged  by 
France  and  Italy  against  Austria,  the 
subjects  of  the  Pope  at  Perugia  rose 
in  arms  against  the  Vatican,  as  they 
had  done  in  so  many  other  cities  of 
the  papal  territory,  drove  its  repre- 
sentatives out  of  their  walls,  and 
established  a  provisional  government. 
The  inhabitants  had  fondly  hoped  that 
their  rising  would  receive  at  the  hands 
of  the  French  Emperor  the  same  con- 
nivance if  not  open  countenance,  which 
he  had  given  to  the  insurrectionary 
movement  in  the  Legations ;  but  they 
were  cruelly  undeceived  when,  un- 
opposed by  either  French  or  Italian 
troops,  the  papal  soldiers  retook  the 
city  and  signalised  the  recapture  by 
acts  of  wanton  cruelty  and  bloodshed. 
From  that  moment  the  position  of 
the  cardinal-archbishop  became  about 
as  difficult  and  delicate  as  it  is  possible 
to  conceive,  placed  as  he  was  between 
a  government  reimposed,  amidst  most 
sanguinary  scenes,  on  a  hostile  popu- 
lation, and  a  population  thirsting  f  or 
a  fresh  opportunity  to  throw  off  the 
yoke. 

That  opportunity  was  furnished  in 
the  autumn  of  the  following  year,  when, 
by  the  rout  of  Lamoriciere's  motley 
host  at  Castel-Fidardo,  the  papal  army 
was  destroyed,  and  TJmbria  and  the 
Marches,  liberated  by  the  presence  of 
Fanti's  and  Cialdini's  troops,  became, 
after  an  almost  unanimous  vote  of  the 
people,  incorporated  with  the  other 
dominions  of  King  Victor  Emanuel. 
Cardinal-archbishop  Pecci  now  reaped 
the  fruits  of  the  personal  good-feeling 
which  he  had  exhibited  towards  the 
oppressed  members  of  the  Liberal 
party  during  the  period  from  1849  to 


1860.     Men  felt  grateful  for  all  the 
good  he  had  done  without  too  closely 
calculating  its  amount,  for  they  could 
not  refrain  from  bearing  in  mind  all 
the  evil  which  it  was  in  his  power  to 
have  performed.     His  pastoral  letters 
spoke  indeed   like  other  pastoral  let- 
ters of  the  heavy  afflictions  which  had 
fallen  on    the    Church    through   the 
assaults  and  impiety  of  the  wicked ; 
but   "the   wicked,"    as   directly   and 
personally  represented  by  the  prefects 
Commendatore    Gadda    and    Marquis 
Tanari,  or  the  Mayors  Evelyn  Wad- 
dington  and  Count  Reginald  Asidei, 
always  found   that   the  views  of   the 
cardinal   as  to  the  expediency  of  re- 
moving a  troublesome   parish   priest, 
or  making  some  change  in  cathedral  or 
other  ecclesiastical  buildings,  did  not, 
after  all,  differ  widely  from  their  own. 
And  in   the  cabinet   of  the   Minister 
of  the  Interior  at  Turin  or  Florence, 
when  Signor  Peruzzi  or  Count  Cantelli 
had  occasion  to  speak  of  the  Italian 
bishops  in  their  friendly  or  hostile  re- 
lations to  the  state,  the  minister  would 
frequently  express    the    opinion  that 
if  all  prelates  acted  after  the  fashion 
of    Cardinal   Pecci    of    Perugia,   the 
collisions    between    government    and 
clergy  would  neither  be  very  frequent 
nor  very  alarming.     It  would   be   a 
great  mistake,  however,  to  infer  from 
these  or  similar  facts  that  the  train- 
ing of  the  young  ecclesiastics  in  the 
diocese  was  marked  by  a  much  more 
liberal  character  than  in  other  places  ; 
the  priests  who  received  their  train- 
ing in  the  seminary  of  Perugia  came 
forth  from  the  establishment  not  much 
more  friendly  to  civil  government,  to 
lay  independence,  and  to  Italian  unity 
than  the  great  body  of  their  colleagues, 
whilst  it  was  equally  a  matter  of  ob- 
servation  that  the   young   men  who, 
after  pursuing    their    studies    there, 
renounced  the   idea   of  taking  orders 
and  entered  the  ordinary  walks  of  civil 
life,    distinguished   themselves  by  an 
unusual  amount  of  red-hot  radicalism, 
as    if   the   natural  reaction  from  the 
tone    of   their   clerical   teaching  had 
driven  them  into  the  opposite  extreme. 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


471 


But  there  was  no  lack  of  ecclesiastical 
law,  lore,  and  controversial  acuteness 
amongst  the  clergy  more  directly  de- 
pendent on  and  associated  with  the 
bishop.  The  Vicar-General  Laurenzi 
is  a  church-lawyer  of  the  highest 
order ;  and  the  conductors  of  the  local 
organ  specially  devoted  to  the  advo- 
cacy of  Church  interests,  II  Paese,  may 
be  honourably  contrasted  with  many 
other  periodicals  of  the  same  colour 
for  the  temper,  talent,  and  tact  of  its 
controversial  writing. 

Such  were  the  chief  administrative 
and  political  antecedents  of  the  church- 
man whose  name  had,  for  some  years 
past,  been  often  in  men's  mouths  as 
that  of  a  probable  successor  of  Pius 
IX.  He  was  believed  to  be  an  object 
of  much  dislike  to  the  Jesuits.  It 
was  rumoured  that  the  knowledge 
possessed  at  Berlin  of  his  conciliatory 
character  and  habits  had  made  his 
possible  election  to  the  papacy  a 
matter  of  deep  interest  in  the  chan- 
cellery of  the  German  Empire.  It 
was  well  known  that  he  had  been  con- 
stantly kept  at  a  distance  from  Rome 
by  the  jealousy  of  Cardinal  Antonelli ; 
and  when  Pius  IX.,  just  six  months 
before  his  death,  conferred  on  him  the 
rank  of  Cardinal  Camerlengo,  the  ap- 
pointment was  regarded  not  so  much  in 
the  light  of  a  high  dignity,  spontane- 
ously bestowed  by  the  pontiff,  as  of  an 
obstacle  artfully  placed  by  Ultramon- 
tane influence  in  the  way  of  Cardinal 
Pecci's  elevation  to  the  tiara.  But  the 
duties  devolving  on  the  Cardinal  Camer- 
lengo, as  interim  Pope,  though  impart- 
ing plausibility  to  a  common  belief  that 
he  was  not  likely  to  be  elected,  never 
led  to  the  enactment  of  any  possible 
legal  disqualification,  whilst  the  oppor- 
tunities which  they  furnished  to  Cardi- 
nal Pecci  of  bringing  out  into  greater 
relief  the  personal  characteristics 
which  would  fit  him  for  the  office 
may  have,  it  is  surely  not  unreason- 
able to  assume,  contributed  in  a  con- 
siderable degree  to  his  success.  It 
would  be  the  height  of  rashness,  at  so 
early  a  stage  of  his  pontifical  career, 
to  venture  on  any  positive  and  sweep- 


ing prediction  of  what  the  course  of 
that  pontificate  is  likely  to  be.  Leo 
XIII.  has  been  chosen  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  that  large  majority  of  the 
members  of  the  sacred  college  which 
is  desirous  of  maintaining  an  attitude, 
if  not  of  direct  amity  and  conciliation, 
at  least  of  an  extremely  mild  and 
modified  antagonism,  towards  the 
Kingdom  of  Italy  and  other  civil 
governments.  But  he  has  to  deal 
with  a  minority  in  the  sacred  college, 
and  that  minority  is  of  a  restless, 
turbulent,  daring,  and  not  unfre- 
quently  unscrupulous  character.  The 
Pope  has  a  persuadable,  pliable — one 
might  even  say,  if  the  word  could  be 
fittingly  applied  to  so  august  a  per- 
sonage, that  he  has  a  squeezeable — side 
in  his  character.  It  is  not  more  cer- 
tain that  the  Tiber  flows  into  the 
Mediterranean  and  that  the  Apen- 
nine  forests  will  shed  their  leaves  in 
the  autumn,  than  that  every  form  of 
Ultramontane  and  Jesuit  pressure  will 
be  brought  to  bear  on  the  will  of 
Joachim  Pecci  to  render  him,  if  pos- 
sible, the  mere  instrument  of  an  Ultra- 
montane policy. 

The  chances  of  success  may  in  part 
be  estimated  by  the  foregoing  account 
of  the  Pontiff's  past  career.  If  I  have 
succeeded  in  faithfully  conveying  to  the 
reader  my  own  impressions  and  con- 
victions, he  will  be  prepared  to  expect 
in  the  acts  of  Pope  Leo  XIII.  an  atti- 
tude not  greatly  dissimilar  from  that 
maintained  during  thirty-two  years 
by  the  Cardinal-bishop  of  Perugia. 
The  attempt  to  stand  well  with  rival 
and  contending  parties,  the  not  un- 
natural ambition  to  make  a  great 
figure  in  the  world,  if  the  course  of 
events  shall  permit  him  to  do  so ; 
the  habit  of  maintaining  a  dignified 
reserve,  when  such  reserve  clearly 
suggests  itself  as  the  most  expedient 
line ;  in  a  word,  a  marked  unwilling- 
ness to  compromise  the  great  interests 
of  which  he  is  the  guardian  by  any 
inconsiderate  step  in  one  direction  or 
another — are  characteristics  which  he 
has  often  showed,  and  which  are  likely 
to  be  still  displayed.  The  resolu- 


472 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


tion  and  energy  revealed  in  his  first 
acts,  chiefly  in  the  clearing  away  of 
abuses  in  the  internal  arrangements 
of  the  Vatican,  must  not  be  over- 
rated, nor  accepted  as  sure  indi- 
cations that  an  equal  amount  of 
firmness  will  be  always  displayed  in 
the  general  government  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  The  position  of  the  new  Pope 
is  not  altogether  enviable.  He  is 
surrounded  on  all  sides  by  snares 
and  pitfalls ;  and  it  required  all  his 
instinctive  caution  to  avoid  the  Ultra- 
montane trap  set  for  him  in  the  pro- 
posal to  have  the  coronation  ceremony 
performed  publicly  in  St.  Peter's, 
where,  if  the  plans  of  the  intriguers 
had  proved  successful,  the  accession 
of  the  new  Pope-king  would  have 
called  forth  a  clamorous  demon- 
stration in  favour  of  Pope-kingship, 
certain,  and  intended  to  provoke,  a 
counter-demonstration  in  favour  of 
Italian  unity,  and  thus  to  furnish 
an  opportunity  of  representing  to  all 
foreign  powers  the  untenable  position 
of  the  new  Pope  in  Rome.  The  action 
of  the  pontiff  in  his  relations  with 
foreign  powers  must  of  course  be 
much  affected  and  modified  by  the 
personal  qualities  and  political  ante- 
cedents of  his  cardinal-secretary  of 
state ;  and  not  the  least  of  the  em- 
barrassments encountering  Leo  XIII. 
has  been  the  difficulty  of  finding  in  the 
sacred  college  an  individual  who  com- 
bines the  political  and  religious  at- 
tributes wanting  for  such  a  post.  One 
eminence  is  too  much  disliked,  another 
much  too  popular  in  Rome ;  one  is 
well-versed  in  the  traditions  of  the 
curia,  but  has  no  experience  of  foreign 
policy;  a  very  able  and  generally- 
esteemed  cardinal  appears  to  unite  in 
his  person  all  requisites  for  the  office, 
but  alas  !  he  is  found  to  be  deficient 
in  one, — the  power  of  communicating 
by  speech  his  ideas  with  common 
clearness,  not  to  say  ease  and  fluency  ; 
whilst  another  member  of  the  supreme 
council  of  the  Church  is  shrewd,  witty, 
almost  as  well  versed  in  the  combina- 
tions of  European  politics  as  Prince 
Gortchakoff,  but  suggests  the  doubt 


whether  the  dignity  and  decorum  of  the 
Holy  See  will  be  promoted  by  a  states- 
manship which,  if  it  should  recall  the 
finesse  of  Mazarin,  may  not  improbably 
suggest  the  morals  of  Dubois. 

It  would  appear  that  the  appoint- 
ment of  Cardinal  Franchi  to  the  post 
of  cardinal-secretary  presented  itself 
to  the  mind  of  the  pontiff  as  the  best 
means  of  bringing  to  a  close  the  many 
embarrassing  questions  connected  with 
the  choice.  The  persons  who  are  be- 
lieved to  have  the  best  opportunities 
of  estimating  Cardinal  Franchi' s  cha 
racter  from  his  past  career,  and  of 
anticipating  from  the  same  his  pro- 
bable action  as  secretary  of  state,  feel 
no  little  difficulty  in  forming  any  defi- 
nite conclusion.  It  was  not  expected 
that  he  would,  under  any  circum- 
stances, accept  the  post.  That  he 
should  have  been  a  candidate  for  the 
papacy  was  natural  enough,  and 
equally  natural  that  he  should  look 
forward  to  the  chances  of  better  suc- 
cess in  another  conclave,  for  Pope  Leo 
XIII.  is  on  the  verge  of  three  score 
and  ten,  and  Cardinal  Franchi  a  much 
younger  man.  The  post  of  cardinal- 
secretary  of  state  has  always  been 
regarded  as  disqualifying  its  holder 
for  the  office  of  f uture  pontiff  in  a  de 
gree  far  beyond  that  of  Cardinal 
Camerlengo,  so  that  Cardinal  Franchi, 
in  accepting  the  office,  may  be  held  to 
have  virtually  abandoned  all  hope 
of  ever  wearing  the  tiara.  Then 
the  post  of  prefect  of  the  Propa- 
ganda is  held  for  life,  whilst  that  of 
cardinal-secretary  is  dependent  on  the 
Pope's  pleasure.  A  large  income,  with 
immense  patronage  and  influence,  is 
attached  to  the  first,  whilst  the  second 
no  longer  possesses,  as  it  did  when  the 
papacy  was  a  temporal  power,  corre- 
sponding advantages  ;  it  seemed  there- 
fore most  unlikely  that  Cardinal 
Franchi  would  exchange  his  high 
dignity  of  prefect  of  the  Propaganda 
for  one  in  which  he  would  be  remov- 
able at  pleasure.  But  Cardinal 
Franchi,  defeated  in  the  attempt  to 
secure  the  tiara,  has  thrown  himself 
heart  and  soul  into  the  contest  for  the 


From  the  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


473 


secretaryship  of  state,  and  has  at  last 
succeeded  in  ousting  from  the  post 
Cardinal  Simeoni,  by  whom  it  had  been 
held  since  Cardinal  Antonelli's  death, 
and  whom  Leo  XIII.  appeared  for 
some  time  not  unwilling  to  retain. 
What  objects  may  Cardinal  Franchi 
be  presumed  to  have  in  view  in  this 
eager  desire  to  wield,  if  not  all  the  in- 
fluence belonging  to  a  Pope,  at  least 
all  that  of  a  cardinal  secretary  ?  The 
objects  are,  beyond  all  question,  much 
more  of  a  political  than  of  a  religi- 
ous character.  They  may  indeed  be 
assumed  to  possess  a  directly  per- 
sonal character,  in  this  sense,  that 
Cardinal  Franchi  has  ever  been  de- 
sirous of  playing  a  conspicuous  part 
on  the  great  stage  of  Roman  Catho- 
lic politics.  Cardinal  Franchi,  even 
though  holding  the  office  of  prefect 
of  the  Propaganda,  is  not  commonly 
believed  to  trouble  his  head  much 
about  the  conversion  of  the  heathen. 
It  may  fairly  be  questioned  whether  the 
elevation  of  morality  and  religion  in 
any  of  the  states  of  the  Old  or  the  New 
World  much  engrosses  his  thoughts. 
But  in  all  the  annals  of  the  Church 
it  would  perhaps  be  difficult  to  find  a 
man  who,  by  inclination,  character, 
and  habit,  has  been  more  completely 
at  home  in  the  region  of  political  in- 
trigue than  Cardinal  Franchi  has  con- 
stantly shown  himself  to  be  since  his 
first  entrance  into  public  life.  I  have 
spoken  of  his  "character,"  but  the 
real  character  of  Cardinal  Franchi 
would  be  more  difficult  to  define  and 
to  describe  than  that  of  Cardinal  An- 
tonelli.  Jonathan  Edwards  has  ob- 
served of  a  certain  class  of  men  that 
their  character  reminds  you  of  nothing 
so  much  as  of  the  successive  skins  of 
an  onion.  You  may  fancy,  if  you  have 
never  examined  it,  that  there  is  some 
tough  kernel  in  the  centre,  but  you 
peel  off  one  coat,  and  then  a  second, 
and  then  a  third,  and  so  on,  until  with 
the  last  coat  the  entire  onion  has  been 
peeled  away.  In  Cardinal  Franchi 
you  remove  the  upper  skins  of  the 
Abbe  Galant  and  Petit  Maitre,  who,  had 
he  figured  at  the  Versailles  of  the  seven- 


teenth century,  would  have  exchanged 
witty  scandal  in  the  recess  of  the  (Eil- 
de-bmuf,  and  might  even  have  furnished 
matter  for  witty  scandal  at  other 
courts ;  then  you  come  to  the  skin 
of  the  keen-witted  and  astute  diplo- 
matist, ever  ready  to  turn  the  weak- 
nesses or  wants  of  the  court  to  which 
he  is  accredited  to  the  advantage  of 
his  own  sovereign  or  himself ;  the  next 
coating  reveals  a  politician  apparently 
of  enlarged  and  liberal  views,  profess- 
ing to  understand  and  act  in  harmony 
with  the  intellectual  and  social  re- 
quirements of  his  time  ;  but  you  must 
not  trust  too  much  to  appearances,  for 
you  may  find  in  the  last  skin  that 
liberal  appearances  are  but  appearances 
after  all,  and  serve  only  to  mark  the 
aims  of  an  ambitious  churchman,  and 
the  ends  of  an  all-absorbing  and  de- 
spotic Church.  With  Cardinal  Franchi 
as  secretary  of  state,  we  may  feel 
pretty  confident  that  the  influence  of 
the  papacy  as  a  political  power,  and 
of  Italy  in  so  far  as  reflecting  or 
strengthening,  the  influence  of  the 
papacy,  will  be  brought  to  bear  not 
only  on  the  Eastern  Question,  but  on 
all  other  questions  of  international 
interest,  with  a  subtlety  and  an  energy 
which  Cardinal  Antonelli's  statesman- 
ship, even  in  its  most  vigorous  days, 
was  unable  to  exhibit.  A  man  so 
eminently  a  politician  must  beyond 
all  doubt  have  had  some  political  aim 
greatly  at  heart  in  his  intense  eager- 
ness to  secure  the  secretaryship  of 
state.  That  eagerness  reminds  one  of 
nothing  so  much  as  of  Cardinal  Anto- 
nelli's resolve  that  nothing — not  even 
death  itself — should  be  able  to  suggest 
to  the  diplomatists  accredited  to  the 
Vatican  the  imminent  danger  of  his 
power  passing  away.  Almost  the  last 
act  of  Cardinal  Antonelli's  life  was 
grimly  characteristic.  The  very  day 
before  his  death  he  was  informed  that 
Baron  Baude,  then  newly  accredited, 
desired  an  interview,  after  presenting 
his  credentials  to  the  Pope.  Cardinal 
Antonelli  was  almost  at  his  last  gasp  ; 
but  he  got  himself  dressed  with  the 
greatest  care,  and,  propped  up  on 


474 


From  tlie  Quirinal  to  the  Vatican. 


cushions,  called  for,  and  drank  off, 
about  half  a  bottle  of  brandy  before 
receiving  the  French  diplomatist.  By 
the  help  of  this  alcoholic  auxiliary,  he 
appeared  as  brilliant,  witty,  shrewd, 
and  pleasantly  sarcastic  as  he  had  ever 
been  when  in  perfect  good  health.  In 
short,  he  produced  on  Baron  Baude  the 
precise  impression  which  he  intended 
to  convey ;  for  the  French  minister, 
just  after  the  interview,  assured  a 
friend  that  the  stories  about  the 
dangerous  state  of  Antonelli's  health 
were  all  mere  nonsense. 

The  problems  with  which  the  new 
Pope  has  at  once  to  deal  are  greatly 
different  from  those  which  engaged 
the  attention  of  Pius  IX.  on  his 
elevation  to  the  papal  throne  thirty- 
two  years  ago.  The  actual  change  in 
the  relations  of  the  Vatican  to  all 
civil  governments,  and  more  espe- 
cially to  that  of  the  kingdom  of  Italy, 
is  much  less  important  than  the 
change  in  its  relations  to  public 
opinion  and  to  free  inquiry.  The 
facts  that  Italy  now  possesses  a  con- 
stitutional government,  and  that  its 
various  provinces  have  been  united 
into  a  single  state,  have  by  no  means 
so  momentous  a  bearing  on  the  pre- 
sent condition  and  future  prospects  of 
the  entire  papal  hierarchy,  as  the 
fact  that  in  every  Italian  town  and 
village  every  imaginable  question  as 
to  the  respective  duties  and  powers  of 
Church  and  State  is  the  theme  of  full 
and  free  discussion.  The  Pope  and  the 
sacred  college  must  now,  in  a  degree 
never  before  experienced  by  popes 
and  cardinals,  take  into  account  the 
daily  shifting  shades  of  political  and 
religious  opinion  as  visible,  not  merely 
in  Rome  itself,  but  in  the  other  great 
political  and  social  centres  of  the 
Italian  state.  The  same  remark  holds 
good,  though  not  to  the  same  extent, 
respecting  the  position  in  which  the 
Catholic  Church  now  finds  itself 
throughout  the  Austro  -  Hungarian 
empire  and  in  those  districts  of 
Catholic  Germany  where,  thirty-two 
years  ago,  the  press  was  not  yet  un- 
fettered. During  the  last  six  months, 


but  more  especially  during  the  last 
two  months,  the  Italian  press  has 
been  teeming  with  articles  on  the 
question  whether,  as  the  first  condi- 
tion of  real  Italian  progress,  it  is  not 
desirable  to  promote  a  general  awaken- 
ing of  religious  opinion?  What  the 
writers  of  these  articles  mean  by  a 
general  awakening  of  religious  opinion 
in  Italy  is  not  always  easy  to  under- 
stand, though  one  fact  is  clear — 
that  the  writers  in  question  have 
very  imperfectly  realised  in  their 
own  minds  the  vast  magnitude  of  all 
the  issues  involved  in  such  a  move- 
ment. They  have  not  attempted  to 
weigh  its  difficulties  in  opposition  to 
the  Church,  its  still  greater  difficul- 
ties if  originating  within  the  Church 
itself,  the  almost  total  want  of  the 
human  instruments  fitly  qualified  for 
its  direction,  and  the  utter  unpre- 
paredness,  through  previous  mental 
and  moral  training,  of  the  millions 
whom  it  is  proposed  religiously  to 
instruct  and  elevate.  These  considera- 
tions, however,  do  not  render  less 
suggestive  the  fact  that  the  want  of  a 
higher  tone  of  religious  thought  is 
becoming  every  day  more  frequently 
and  more  loudly  expressed  by  the 
chief  organs  of  Italian  public  opinion, 
and  this  more  general  expression  un- 
doubtedly reveals  more  general  feel- 
ings and  convictions.  This,  however, 
is  a  condition  of  the  public  mind  ex- 
tremely different  from  the  political 
and  patriotic  aspirations  universal  in 
1846.  In  that  year,  and  in  the  two 
years  immediately  following,  one 
heard  on  all  sides  the  assurance  that, 
if  Italy  could  only  succeed  in  attain 
ing  civil  freedom  and  national  unity, 
religious  questions  would  at  once 
be  lost  sight  of;  that  Italians,  in 
short,  felt  no  interest  in  religious 
inquiry,  and  would  be  content  with 
according,  as  their  forefathers  had 
done,  an  outward  and  conventional 
respect  to  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church, 
without  troubling  themselves  as  to 
the  deeper  phases  of  religious  life. 
Without  seeking  to  overrate  the 
amount  or  importance  of  the  change 


From  the  Quirindl  to  the  Vatican. 


475 


which  on  these  questions  has  been 
effected  in  public  opinion,  it  is  not 
the  less  necessary  to  keep  in  mind 
that  a  change  has  taken  place  which 
has  altered,  and  is  every  day  altering 
still  more,  the  relations  between  the 
Italian  clergy  and  the  Italian  people. 
The  question  so  recently  mooted  as  to 
the  expediency  of  a  legislative  change 
in  the  measure  of  the  papal  guaran- 
tees is  even  less  important  in  itself 
than  as  a  symptom  of  the  degree  in 
which  such  matters  are  assuming  a 
more  prominent  place  in  the  national 
thoughts. 

Many  amongst  the  public  writers 
who  now  discuss  the  benefits  likely  to 
accrue  from  an  awakening  of  religious 
opinion  mean  in  reality  nothing  more 
than  the  return,  under  the  altered 
conditions  of  united  Italy,  of  that  con- 
nection between  the  State  and  the 
Church  which,  in  the  system  of  the  old 
despotic  governments,  made  the  clergy 
instruments  of  state  police.  The  views 
of  such  persons  when  closely  sifted 
amount  simply  to  the  belief  that  it  is 
very  convenient  for  governments  to 
have  in  their  pay  and  at  their  disposal 
a  large  body  of  men  whose  avocations 
bring  them  into  contact  with  all  ranks 
of  society,  who  possess  special  influence 
over  the  female  mind,  and  who  can 
give  or  withhold  certain  articles — in 
this  case  religious  ceremonies — of  which 
the  presence  at  critical  moments  is 
highly  prized,  and  the  absence  keenly 
felt  and  bitterly  lamented.  No  doubt 
the  ministers  of  religion  in  every 
Catholic  country,  considered  quite 
apart  from  the  greater  or  less  amount 
of  truth  in  the  doctrines  which  they 
are  assumed  to  teach,  possess  such 
attributes,  and  are  so  far  well  fitted  to 
be  the  instruments  of  state  police. 
The  remark  would  hold  equally  good 
of  barbers  or  bakers,  taken  as  a  class. 
For  every  peasant  or  workman  who 
goes  to  mass  on  a  Sunday  or  saint's 
day  five  go  to  the  barber's  shop  to  get 
themselves  shaved ;  for  one  woman 
who  reveals  the  twinges  of  conscience 


to  a  confessor  twenty  women  confer 
with  the  hairdresser  on  their  coiffure, 
and  if  this  is  true  of  the  first  and 
second,  it  is  even  more  the  case  with 
the  third  class ;  for  saddening  as  must 
be  the  admission,  there  is  no  man  in- 
different to  the  bread  that  is  baked  in 
ovens,  whilst  comparatively  few  prize 
at  its  real  worth  the  bread  that  cometh 
down  from  Heaven.  To  what  extent 
the  priests  under  the  old  papal  regime 
were  employed  as  government  detec- 
tives became  known  when,  after  the 
overthrow  of  the  regular  government 
at  the  close  of  1848  and  the  with- 
drawal of  Pius  IX.  to  Gaeta,  the 
police  archives  were  examined  by  the 
provisional  government  then  estab- 
lished, and  were  found  to  contain  many 
thousand  secret  reports  furnished  to  the 
police  by  the  parish  priests  and  con- 
fessors of  the  various  churches.  Such 
a  revival  of  religious  influence  as 
should  be  in  effect  the  mere  commis- 
sion of  the  oldest  sins,  and  that  not 
even  in  the  newest  ways,  will  assuredly 
bring  no  good  to  Church  or  State  in 
Italy.  But  there  is,  I  repeat,  the  un- 
mistakable aspiration  in  many  quarters 
for  a  religious  awakening  of  another 
and  much  higher  kind,  and  with  the 
forms  which  this  aspiration  has  already 
taken,  and  may  be  expected  to  take, 
the  Roman  curia  will  soon  be  called 
upon  to  deal.  The  character  and 
habits  of  the  Pope  may  render  him 
not  unfit  to  assume  and  maintain  a 
becoming  position  amidst  these  new 
phases  of  national  life  ;  for  his  secre- 
tary of  state,  Cardinal  Franchi,  religious 
opinions  will  probably  be  regarded  as 
so  many  political  counters,  to  be  em- 
ployed in  the  games  of  official,  diplo- 
matic, and  international  intrigue.  The 
religious  forces  of  Europe  may  be 
expected  before  long  to  figure  once 
more  on  the  stage  of  politics  side  by 
side  with  our  old  friends,  "  The  Latin 
Races,"  and  with  all  the  purity  and 
piety  which  they  have  invariably  ex- 
hibited in  the  diplomatic  chancelleries 
of  Madrid  and  Constantinople. 


470 


DAPHNE. 

SHE  stood  upon  the  hill,  and  sigh'd 
(A  lovely  child,  untouch'd  by  care); 

"I  cannot  bear  my  life,"  she  cried; 
"  My  life  is  very  hard  to  bear ! 

"The  level  moors  around  me  lie, 
The  heather  blooms — it  always  did ; 

Why  are  the  moors  so  level  1    why 
Are  they  not  by  magnolias  hid] 

"  0  for  a  sorrow  or  a  sin ! 

A  touch  of  Nature's  real  force  ! 
O  for  a  martyr's  crown  to  win, 

Or  for  a  criminal's  remorse  !  " 

A  rosy  hue  illumin'd  skies 

That  blush' d  beneath  a  sunset  kiss; 
She  look'd  with  discontented  eyes, 

And  cried,  "  How  beautiful  it  is  ! 

"Why  are  the  foolish  heavens  bright 
When  suns  arise  and  suns  depart  1 

0  heart  of  mine,  why  art  thou  light? 
Will  nothing  ever  break  my  heart1?" 

She  stamp' d  her  foot  upon  the  ground — 
A  daisy  died  beneath  the  tread — 

Then  with  her  angry  forehead  frown'd 
At  the  calm  heaven  o'er  her  head. 

"The  lightning's  flash,  the  thunder's  crash- 
Such  things  may  be,  for  they  have  been- 

1  want  a  hurricane  to  dash 

And  crush  the  stupid,  senseless  scene  !  " 

She  tossed  her  arms  into  the  air, 
And  Youth,  in  her  undaunted  grace, 

Shone  forth  as  innocently  fair 
As  in  a  little  baby's  face. 


Daphne.  477 


A  shadow  flitted  o'er  the  grass — 
(No  shadow  falls  without  a  cause) — 

As  carelessly  she  saw  it  pass, 
As  carelessly  she  sees  it  pause. 

Why  comes  he  still  at  evening's  close, 
When  solitude  is  most  en  dear' d — 

This  f air-hair' d  man,  with  Saxon  nose, 
Blue,  cheerful  eyes  and  ruddy  beard? 

She  stands  aloof — in  beauty's  pow'r, 
Fresh  as  a  rose,  as  lily  pure ; 

She  is  the  sweetest  little  flow'r 
That  ever  glorified  a  moor. 

Love  unpossess'd  is  still  most  dear, 
Ere  use  has  put  it  to  the  proof, 

And  manly  hearts  draw  very  near, 
When  lovely  maidens  stand  aloof. 

He  spake  :  "I  leave  to-morrow  morn, 
Only  to  say  good-bye  I  come." 

She  answer'd  with  a  sort  of  scorn, 
"Men  go  away — girls  sit  at  home." 

He  scann'd  her  with  his  cheerful  glance; 

Her  maiden  charms  are  quite  complete ; 
A  little  breeze  began  to  dance 

Amid  the  grasses  at  his  feet. 

A  little  ruffle  cross' d  his  brow 

(While  idly  waved  the  feather'd  fern) ; 
He  said,  "Altho'  I  leave  you  now, 

Some  day,  perhaps,  I  may  return." 

Her  dainty  foot  disturb' d  the  grass — 
"If  /  had  wings — if  /  were  free — 

Alas  !    you  are  a  man.     Alas  ! 
I  only  am  a  girl,"  said  she. 

The  rosy  sunset  softly  lit 

Her  shining  eyes  and  smiling  lips ; 
She  look'd  so  beautiful  in  it, 

She  almost  did  its  light  eclipse. 

Laden  with  honey  from  the  moor, 
The  heather-bee  flew  slowly  o'er — 

As  sweet,  as  heavy,  as  secure  a 
He  felt  the  burthen  that  he  bore. 

And  so  he  spake  :  "  We  need  not  part 
If  thy  dear  will  should  will  it  so. 

Thy  image  reigns  within  my  heart, 
Or  if  I  come,  or  if  I  go." 


478  Daphne. 

The  maiden  blush'd.     With  staiiled  eye 
She  listen' d.     Will  she  e'er  forget 

The  tender  light  that  woo'd  the  sky? 
The  glow  of  sunshine  ere  it  set? 

By  Israel  the  offering 

Of  firstborns  meant  their  very  best; 
And  ah,  the  first  of  everything 

Is  dearer  far  than  all  the  rest. 

The  first  steps  that  her  baby's  feet 
Take  toddling  to  a  mother's  knee, 

First  cheers  triumphant  heroes  meet, 
The  sailor's  first  return  from  sea; 

The  first  review  that  praised  a  book 
(Dear  praises,  met  with  eager  faith  !) ; 

Of  love,  the  first  sweet  tone  or  look 
Are  things  remember'd  until  death. 

Daphne  may  leave  or  take  his  heart, 
But  'tis  his  hand,  and  his  alone, 

First  touch' d  the  string  that  will  impart 
Its  sweetest  music  to  her  own. 

He  said,  "Two  lives  like  thine  and  mine 
May  with  a  bright  contentment  meet. 

Let  sorrows,  cloud,  or  pleasures  shine, 
The  path  is  trod  by  willing  feet. 

"A  little  home  in  Kensington, 
A  little  wife  the  mistress  there, 

A  little  purse  to  carry  on 

Household  expense  with  modest  care. 

"A  little  brougham,  when  days  are  clear, 
A  little  page,  to  play  his  part — 

One  only  thing  not  little,  dear — 
The  love  within  each  loyal  heart !  " 

As  he  advanced,  her  hand  to  seize, 
She  raised  it  with  a  soft  command, 

And,  stepping  backwards,  murmur' d,   "Please- 
Oh,  do  not  touch  my  little  hand ! " 

With  delicate,  caressing  grace 

Her  little  hand  she  stroked  and  kiss'd, 

While  he  look'd  keenly  in  her  face, 
Seeking  for  something  that  he  miss'd. 

"  You  do  not  like  me  ? "     "  No,"  she  said ; 

"Or  not  in  such  a  way  as  this." 
And  nodded  up  and  down  her  head, 

To  mark  a  stronger  emphasis. 


Daphne.  479 


With,  careless  ease  and  gesture  frank 
She  turns  to  him ;  he  never  stirs ; 

But,  as  their  glances  meet,  his  sank 
At  the  unclouded  light  in  hers. 

She  spoke  in  a  delicious  voice, 

Like  woodland  bird  untrain'd  by  art; 

The  music  made  his  heart  rejoice, 
Altho'  the  meaning  vex'd  his  heart. 

"  I  have  not  any  fancy  for 

The  dull  delight  of  things  like  these ; 
I  mean  to  wed  a  brigand,  or 

A  bishop  among  savages." 

"You  are  a  child!"     "Ah,  no,"  she  cried; 

"  I  am  a  woman,  as  you  see ; 
But  life  must  be  as  far  and  wide 

In  action,  as  in  time,  for  me. 

"I'm  seventeen !     Life  stretches  on. 

What  should  I  do,  from  youth  to  age, 
With  little  homes  in  Kensington, 

A  little  brougham,  a  little  page? 

"I,  who  would  watch  in  brigand's  cave 
With  rapture  for  his  footsteps'  sound, 

Or  with  my  bishop,  dare  the  wave, 
While  poison 'd  arrows  flutter  round  !  " 

Her  radiant  face  has  sought  the  skies, 
As  if  the  skies  inspired  her  thought ; 

In  the  wild  beauty  of  her  eyes 
A  spirit  shines  by  man  uncaught. 

And  then  she  laugh' d  and  turn'd  to  him, 
Crying,  with  eyes  that  gleam' d  and  shone, 

"Does  not  that  little  house  look  dim1? 
That  little  house  at  Kensington?" 

His  heart  beat  with  a  faster  stir 
Than  e'er  in  court  its  pulses  drew, 

When  he,  the  well-known  barrister, 
Rescued  the  man  whose  guilt  he  knew. 

"You  are  a  child,"  he  said;    "alas! 

I  cannot  win  you.     Yet,  unwon, 
When  years  have  pass'd,  as  years  will  pass, 

May  you  not  prize  what  now  you  shun? 

"There  are  no  brigands."     Angrily 

She  cried,  "There  are — you  know  there  are- 

In  Corsica  and  Italy, 

In  Spain,  Dalmatia,  and  Navarre  !  " 


480  Daphne. 

Her  wistful  glances  sought  his  face ; 

She  seem'd  to  battle  with  his  will, 
And  almost  pleaded  for  the  grace 

Of  letting  there  be  brigands  still ! 

He  yielded  brigands.     "Well — perhaps — 
There  may  be  some;    but,  in  this  age, 

They  are  not  what  they  seem,  in  caps 
And  feathers,  on  the  gaudy  stage. 

"And  as  for  bishops "     "With  reproof 

She  stopp'd  him  sharply.     "  Have  a  care  ! 

'Neath  Westminster's  enchanted  roof, 
'Mid  cluster' d  shafts  and  pillars  fair, 

"Where  painted  sunbeams  glow  and  fade, 

And  music  thunders  as  it  list, 
I  saw  two  living  bishops  made, 

And  so  I  know  that  they  exist ! 

"And  one  went  sailing  o'er  the  seas, 
To  seek  that  clime  of  ice  and  snow, 

Where  even  tears  of  mine  would  freeze 
If  I  permitted  them  to  flow. 

"And  one  a  lovely  island  sought, 
Where  cannibals,  with  eager  feet " — 

She  glow'd  triumphant  at  the  thought — 
"  Welcome  the  man  they  hope  to  eat ! 

"And  one  went  south  and  one  went  north — 
I  longed  with  either-  to  have  gone — 

Would  not  such  life  be  ten  times  worth 
The  little  life  at  Kensington?" 

He  quail' d  her  fiery  glance  beneath ; 

She  laugh' d — he  sigh'd.     "These  men,"  he  said; 
"These  holy  men,  defying  death, 

Go  forth  alone — they  do  not  wed." 

"Who  wants  them  to?"  she  sharply  cried; 

"  Who  dares  a  single  life  condemn  ? 
Marriage  is  small,  the  world  is  wide — 

Why  should  I  want  to  marry  them  ? 

"Brigands  and  bishops,  both  unknown — 

Is  life  less  absolute  and  true? 
It,  only  It,  is  all  my  own — 

Why  should  I  give  it  up  to  you? 

"Let  those  enjoy  a  mild  estate 

Whose  cheeks  are  pale,  whose  hearts  are  faint; 
For  Me,  I  will  be  something  great — 

Either  a  Sinner  or  a  Saint ! " 


Daphne.  481 

He  started  back,  abash'd  and  vex'd, 

She  stood  erect,  serenely  bright, 
Her  childlike  glances  unperplex'd 

By  aught  that  could  profane  their  light. 

"  You  know  not  what  you  mean."     "I  do  !  " 

"  You  touch  torpedoes  in  your  play ; 
You'll  change  your  mind."     "What's  that  to  you? 

Of  course  I'll  change  it  every  day. 

"  But  one  thing  I  will  never  change, 

Through  all  the  change  that  years  reveal — 
The  wish  for  something  Great  and  Strange, 

The  wish  to  Suffer  and  to  Feel!" 

The  crimson  ball,  severely  round, 

That  might  have  been  a  miracle, 
Sank  swiftly  down  beneath  the  ground, 

And  left  a  twilight  on  the  hill. 


No.  222. — VOL.  xxxvii.  i  i 


482 


THE  GOTHIC  FRAGMENTS  OF  ULFILAS. 


THE  great  majority  of  English  readers 
are  not  aware  of  the  vast  treasury  of 
wealth  which  exists  for  all  who  love 
the  English  language  in  the  fragments 
of  Ulfilas  the  Goth ;  and  unless  they 
are  scholars  of  some  pretension  they 
are  probably  acquainted  with  little 
more  than  the  name.  We  purpose 
giving  in  this  article  a  short  sketch 
of  the  most  conspicuous  features  of 
these  remains,  and-  showing  some  of 
the  numerous  points  in  which  they 
become  a  mine  of  original  ore  for 
those  who  are  interested  in  the  earliest 
forms  of  their  own  speech,  and  can 
find  a  pleasure  in  tracking  home  some 
long-familiar  and  well-hunted  word  to 
its  secret  lair. 

It  will  be  well  to  give  at  the  outset 
some  brief  account  of  the  personal 
history  of  Ulfilas  and  of  the  singular 
fortunes  that  have  attended  his  work. 
About  the  year  258  A.D.,  in  the  reign 
of  the  Emperors  Valerian  andGallienus, 
the  Goths  laid  waste  Asia  Minor,  which 
was  then  for  the  most  part  Christian, 
and  carried  off  out  of  Cappadocia  and 
Galatia  numerous  prisoners,  among 
whom  were  some  priests.  These 
Christian  prisoners  became  the  means 
of  sowing  the  seeds  of  their  own  faith 
among  their  new  masters,  and  among 
the  Christians  thus  captured  were  the 
ancestors  of  Ulfilas.  They  had  already 
lived  sixty  years  among  the  Goths 
when  Ulfilas  was  born,  and  this  fact 
accounts  for  his  use  of  the  Gothic 
language  and  for  his  Gothic  name, 
which  is  equivalent  to  our  modern 
word  "  wolf."  His  birth  took  place 
somewhere  about  318  A.D.,  when  the 
Goths  were  in  possession  of  the  Dacian 
provinces  north  of  the  Danube.  After 
the  death  of  Constantino,  and  when  his 
son  Constantius  was  reigning  in  the 
east,  Ulfilas  at  the  age  of  thirty  was 
made  first  bishop  of  the  Mceso-  Goths. 
He  laboured  for  seven  years  in  the 


provinces  beyond  the  Danube,  when 
he  was  compelled  to  seek  refuge  with 
Constantius  about  355  A.D.  from  the 
persecution  of  the  heathen  Gothic  prince 
Athanaric.  The  bishop  and  his  fol- 
lowers had  a  dwelling-place  assigned 
them  south  of  the  Danube,  in  the 
mountains  of  the  Hsemus,  the  modern 
Balkans.  This  was  the  sphere  of  his 
labours  for  more  than  thirty  years : 
he  was  within  the  confines  of  the 
Roman  empire,  and  therefore  under 
the  protection  of  Rome,  and  he 
spent  nearly  half  his  life  there 
preaching,  studying,  and  writing.  He 
preached  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  Gothic, 
invented  the  Gothic  alphabet,  which 
was  an  adaptation  of  the  Greek,  and 
left  behind  him  many  translations, 
sermons,  and  treatises.  He  was  taken 
ill,  and  died  at  Constantinople,  whither 
he  had  gone  at  the  bidding  of  the 
emperor  on  the  affairs  of  the  Church, 
in  his  seventieth  year,  A.D.  388.  He 
translated  from  the  Greek  the  Scrip- 
tures of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
with  the  exception  of  the  books  of 
Samuel  and  Kings,  which  he  prudently 
omitted,  fearing  the  warlike  influence 
they  might  have  on  his  inflammable 
nation.  As  far  as  we  know,  the 
Gothic  language  had  never  before 
been  used  for  literary  purposes.  Nor 
is  it  probable  that  it  had.  As  late 
as  the  ninth  century  copies  of  the 
translation  of  the  Scriptures  by  Ul- 
filas were  still  in  existence ;  after 
that  we  lose  sight  of  them.  Up  to 
that  time  the  Goths  carried  with  them 
in  their  various  migrations  this  sacred 
and  national  literary  monument.  Till 
within  the  last  fifty  years  all  that 
remained  of  it  were  fragments  of  the 
four  Gospels,  preserved  in  what  is 
known  as  the  Codex  Argenteus.  This 
MS.,  now  kept  in  the  library  of  Upsala, 
in  Sweden,  was  probably  written 
about  590  or  600  A.D.,  when  the  East 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ulfilas. 


483 


Goths  were  ruling  in  Italy,  and  it 
came,  after  unknown  fortunes — perhaps 
by  the  agency  of  Charlemagne,  who 
conquered  the  Goths  in  Spain,  or  by 
other  means — into  the  possession  of 
the  Abbey  of  Werden,  near  Diisseldorf, 
where  it  was  found  by  Arnold 
Mercator  towards  the  close  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  Thence  it  found 
its  way  to  Prague,  whence  it  was 
taken  by  the  Swedes  to  Stockholm  in 
1648.  Then  it  was  brought  to  Hol- 
land, and  again  purchased  by  the 
Swedes  for  600  dollars,  bound  in 
silver,  and  given  to  the  University 
of  Upsala.  It  is  written  in  .silver 
letters,  with  gold  headings  to  the 
sections  and  to  the  Lord's  Prayer. 
Out  of  330  leaves  only  177  remain. 
In  1818  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  in 
Gothic  were  discovered  by  Mai  and 
Castiglione  in  a  monastery  of  Lom- 
bardy,  written  on  palimpsests.  "With 
the  exception  of  a  few  other  frag- 
ments of  minor  importance,  this  is 
all  that  remains  to  us  of  the  price- 
less version  of  the  Gothic  bishop ; 
but  this  has  been  the  means  of  making 
known  to  us  the  structure  and  com- 
position of  a  language  which  would 
otherwise  have  irretrievably  perished ; 
and  it  is  impossible  to  overrate  the 
importance  and  the  interest  attaching 
to  an  original  version  of  the  New 
Testament,  whether  we  regard  it 
linguistically,  historically,  or  theo- 
logically. 

We  proceed  now  to  illustrate  these 
observations  from  specimens  which  we 
shall  present  to  the  reader  in  the 
following  order  : — 1,  illustrations  of 
grammar  and  language ;  2,  additions 
found  in  the  Gothic  text  ;  3,  omis- 
sions ;  4,  peculiarities  of  translation ; 
and  5,  variations  of  reading  and  in- 
terpretation. 

1.  The  Gothic  language  is  the  oldest 
representative  of  the  Teutonic  branch 
of  the  Aryan  or  Indo-Germanic  family 
of  languages,  and  bears  a  striking 
analogy  in  the  structure  of  its  gram- 
mar and  in  its  vocabulary  to  the 
Greek  and  the  Sanskrit,  while  in  cer- 
tain points  it  has  retained  a  perfec- 


tion of  form  which  is  not  found  in 
the  Greek.  It  marks  the  neuter  in 
nouns,  adjectives,  and  pronouns.  It 
possesses  a  dual  of  personal  pronouns 
and  verbs ;  and  in  this  respect  it  is 
curious  to  notice  in  the  Gothic  version 
a  degree  of  precision  which  is  absent 
from  the  Greek.  For  example  :  In 
St.  Mark  xi.  2,  where  our  Lord  is 
giving  orders  to  His  two  disciples 
concerning  the  passover,  the  Gothic 
runs,  "  Go  ye  two  into  the  village 
over  against  you,"  and  the  dual  is 
preserved  throughout.  Again  in  St. 
John  x.  30,  the  Gothic  uses  the  dual 
for  rendering  our  Lord's  words,  "  I 
and  my  Father  are  one;"  i.e.,  we 
two  are — Gr.  kapiv.  And  again  in 
St.  John  xvii.  11,  23,  "That  they 
may  be  one  as  we  two  are  one."  So 
likewise  in  1  Cor.  xii.  21,  "The  head 
cannot  say  to  the  feet,  I  have  no  need 
of  you  two."  And  in  Eph.  vi.  22, 
when  St.  Paul  says  "  that  ye  might 
know  our  affairs,"  meaning  those  of 
himself  and  Tychicus,  he  uses  the  dual 
in  the  Gothic  version. 

The  Gothic  language  has  also  a 
passive  voice  and  a  causal  form  in 
verbs. 

In  reading  this  old  version,  one  is 
struck  by  the  homeliness  and  sim- 
plicity of  the  language  used,  and  by 
the  strange  light  that  is  thrown  upon 
some  common  English  or  German  word, 
as  though  we  suddenly  came  upon  it 
in  an  earlier  stage  of  existence.  As 
this  is  perhaps  the  point  that  will 
most  interest  the  general  reader,  we 
will  give  several  examples. 

In  St.  Matt.  v.  35,  "  Swear  not  at 
all  ....  neither  by  the  earth,  for  it 
is  His  footstool."  Gothic,  fotubaurd  ; 
i.e.,  footboard. 

The  original  of  our  word  wreak  is 
seen  in  St.  Matt.  v.  44,  "Bless  them 
that  curse  you."  Gothic,  vrikandans. 
The  word  commonly  used  for  Lord, 
Frauja,  is  still  familiar  in  the  German 
Frau  and  Fraulein. 

Few  persons  who  are  glad  to  think 

of  and  to  see  their  friends  are  aware 

that   the    word  friend    is   a   genuine 

present  participle  of  the  Gothic  verb 

I  I  2 


484 


TJie  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ulfilas. 


frijon,  to  love ;  Sanskrit,  pri ;  and 
that  in  like  manner  the  word  fiend 
is  a  present  participle  of  the  verb 
fijan,  to  hate  (Luke  xix.  27)  ;  friend 
and  fiend  therefore  being  respectively 
lover  and  hater. 

A  practical  difficulty  which  must 
always  beset  those  who  would  write 
English  phonetically  is  the  mode  of 
distinguishing  between  the  son  of  the 
family  and  the  sun  in  the  heavens. 
It  is  remarkable  that  this  is  a  difficulty 
arising  out  of  the  original  sound 
of  the  two  words,  both  being  derived 
from  the  Sanskrit  su,  to  beget.  And 
there  is  in  Sanskrit  one  word,  siinu, 
which  combines  the  two  meanings  of 
begetter  and  begotten,  or  sun  and  son. 
In  the  Gothic,  sunna  or  sunno  is  sun, 
and  sunns,  son.  (See  Matt.  v.  45.) 

In  the  modern  alms  the  etymologi- 
cal connection  with  pity  is  obscui-ed 
if  not  forgotten,  but  the  original  ten- 
der/teartedness  reappears  in  the  Gothic 
armahairtitha  even  more  plainly  than 
in  the  German  barmherzigheit. 

Two  words  in  common  use  at  the 
present  day  are  found  in  the  phrase 
"lock  thy  door" — galukans  haurdai, 
Matt.  vi.  6 — the  latter  word  probably 
containing  the  origin  of  hoarding. 
"They  think  they  shall  be  heard  for 
their  much  speaking,"  Matt.  vi.  7,  is 
in  the  Gothic  filuvaurdein,  fulness  of 
words.  Our  word  thief  is  found  in 
the  Gothic  thiubo,  while  steal  and 
sko-p-lift  are  representatives  of  stilan 
and  hlifan,  which  are  both  used  in 
Matt.  vi.  19,  20.  With  the  latter 
compare  the  Greek  »;Xe7rr?;s.  In  "  take 
no  thought  for  your  life"  we  find 
the  earliest  use  of  our  own  mourn  in 
maur  naith, and  in  "more  than  meat" 
we  see  the  origin  of  food  and  fodder 
in  the  Gothic  fodeinai.  "Consider 
the  lilies  of  the  field,"  Matt.  vi.  28,  is 
in  Gothic  "the  blooms  of  the  heath" 
— blomans  haithjos;  and  so,  in  ver. 
30,  "the  grass  of  the  field"  is  the 
hay,  havi,  and  in  John  vi.  10,  "There 
was  much  grass  in  the  place;"  while 
to-morrow  is  gistradagis,  i.e.,  yester- 
day. In  the  Gothic  we  discover  the 
original  meaning  of  the  word  believe, 


German  '  glauben,  Gothic  galaubjan  ; 
for  it  is  a  causal  form  of  liuban,  to  be 
dear  ;  galaubjan,  to  hold  dear,  to  trust. 
So  compare  gadragkeith,  giveth  to 
drink,  a  causal  of  drigkan,  to  drink, 
Matt.  x.  42.  "Enter  ye  in  at  the 
strait  gate,"  Matt.  vii.  13,  and  "I  am 
the  door,"  St.  John,  x.  9,  are  rendered 
in  the  Gothic  by  the  one  word,  daur. 
"Ye  shall  know  them  by  their  fruits," 
Matt.  vii.  16,  is  bi  akranam,  that  is,  by 
their  acorns.  So  "fruits meet  for  repent- 
ance," Luke  iii.  8, akran.  (Comp.  corn.) 
Centurion  is  in  Gothic  hundafaths, 
so  bruthfaths  is  bridegroom,  the  last 
syllable  in  both  cases  being  the  San- 
skrit pati,  lord.  The  last  syllable  of 
bridegroom,  which  always  strikes  one 
as  somewhat  harsh,  is  in  Gothic,  pre- 
served in  its  original  form  and  mean- 
ing, namely,  guma,  man.  So  the 
roughness  of  the  "r"  is  absent  from 
the  last  syllable  of  the  German  Brau- 
tigam.  In  Matt.  viii.  13  we  read, 
"and  his  servant  was  healed  in  the 
self -same  while,"  weilai. 

In  "  when  he  was  come  into  Peter's 
house,"  and  "he  arose  and  went  to 
his  house,"  the  Gothic  has  gards  and 
garda,  which  still  remain  in  our  yard 
and  garden,  and  in  Siuttgart,  &c.  So 
1  Cor.  x.  22,  "Have  ye  not  a  garden 
to  eat  and  to  drink  in  1 "  In  Matt. 
ix.  12,  ni  thaurban  hailai  lekeis : 
"  they  that  are  whole  have  no  need  of 
the  physician,"  we  find  the  words 
darben,  bediirfen,  whole  and  leech. 

In  "he  that  taketh  not  his  cross," 
Matt.  x.  38,  we  find  the  cross  in  all 
its  original  offensiveness  as  galga,  the 
gallows.  See  also  Galatians,  vi.  12, 14. 

In  Matt.  xxv.  42,  "  I  was  a  hun- 
gered," we  have  gredags,  showing 
that  the  time  was  when  the  word 
greedy  bore  less  offence  than  it  does 
now.  As  a  singular  illustration  of 
the  vicissitudes  that  befall  words  in 
the  lapse  of  ages,  we  have  in  the 
Gothic  of  Matt.  xxvi.  74,  and  the 
corresponding  passages  of  Mark  and 
John,  "  and  immediately  the  cock 
crew"  :  suns  hana  hrukida,  which 
in  its  modern  equivalents  would  be, 
soon  the  hen  croaked.  The  same  thing 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ulfilas. 


485 


is  conspicuous  in  the  two  words  queen 
and  quean,  one  of  which  has  inherited 
imperial  glory  and  the  other  reproach 
and  shame,  though  neither  originally 
meant  more  than  woman  or  wife,  being 
the  Gothic  qino  or  quens,  Matt,  xxvii. 
19,  1  Cor.  ix.  5.  Greek,  yvvrf.  So, 
in  like  manner,  when  Joseph  of  Ari- 
mathea  was  called  gabigs,  rich,  the 
modern  big  meant  somewhat  more 
than  it  does  now.  Other  curious 
changes  in  meaning  are  to  be  dis- 
covered in  the  elephant  Jiair  with  which 
John  the  Baptist  was  girded,  Mark 
i.  6,  the  camel  and  the  elephant  being 
equally  unknown,  and  the  name  of 
the  one  being  wrongly  assigned  to 
the  other ;  in  x.  25,  in  the  leathern 
girdle  which  he  had  about  his  hup 
(hips),  and  in  the  descent  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  like  a  hawk,  sve  ahak, 
Mark  i.  10.  So  the  "two  young 
pigeons"  of  Luke  ii.  24,  toos  juggons 
ahake.  It  is  strange  that  the  appella- 
tion of  a  timid  bird  like  the  dove 
should  have  passed  over  to  its  direct 
opposite  in  disposition,  the  hawk. 

We  find  the  original  of  the  common 
word  bed,  Mark  ii.  4,  in  the  Gothic 
badi. 

The  advocates  of  the  modern  prac- 
tice of  intoning  and  monotoning  may 
find  some  countenance  for  the  habit  in 
the  fact  that  there  was  a  time  when  to 
sing  out  and  to  read  out  were  one  and 
the  same  thing ;  and  so  the  Gothic  of 
Mark  ii.  25,  "have  ye  never  read" 
— is  ussa#gvuth.  (Comp.  Luke  iv.  16, 
of  our  Lord  "he  stood  up  for  to 
read.")  The  word  for  parables  is 
yokes,  Mark  iv.  2 ;  gayukom,  and 
"the  mysteries  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  iv.  11,  are  its  runes,  runa. 
The  word  for  millstone,  Mark  ix.  42, 
asiluqairnus,  is  the  relic  of  a  time 
when  the  mill  was  worked  with  asses, 
and  the  second  half  of  the  word  pro- 
bably survives  in  our  word  churn. 

"The  book  of  divorcement,"  Mark 
x.  4,  reminds  us  of  the  original 
Hebrew  term,  sefer,  book,  which  is 
rendered  in  the  A.  V.,  "  bill  of  divorce- 
ment." The  word  for  ricJies,  in  Mark 
x.  23,  reminds  us  of  a  time  when  the 


chief  wealth  of  the  nation  was  in 
cattle — faihu,  German  vieh;  and  the 
turn  in  the  context  which  is  given  to 
"  trusting  in  them  "  by  the  change  to 
"hunting  after  them"  (hunjan)  is  a  good 
practical  commentary  thereon.  We 
come  upon  the  origin  of  the  modern 
word  kiln  where  we  should  perhaps  not 
expect  it,  in  the  winefat  that  was 
digged  by  the  husbandman,  Mark 
xii.  1,  kelikn. 

Two  other  common  words  are  found 
in  strange  places  in  Mark  xiv.  :  "  say 
ye  to  the  goodman  of  the  hive " — 
heiva — and  in  xiv.  43,*,"  a  great  multi- 
tude with  swords  and  trees,"  trivam. 
The  first  origin  of  the  Hanseatic  towns 
is  discovered  in  the  Gothic  of  "they 
call  together  the  whole  band,"  Mark 
xv.  16,  hansa.  Our  Lord  is  described 
as  being  "twelve  winters  old,"  Luke 
ii.  42,  tvalib  vintruns;  and  the  epithet 
magus  (Germ,  magd),  is  applied  to  the 
"  child  Jesus  "  in  the  next  verse. 

The  original  nature  of  evil  as  a 
departure  from  good  is  beautifully 
seen  in  "to  do  good  or  ungood,"  Luke 
vi.  9,  thiuth  taujan,  thau  unthiuth 
taujan. 

In  Luke  viii.  20  we  see  the  mother 
and  brethren  of  our  Lord  yearning  to 
speak  with  Him,  gairujandona,  in  ix. 
5  ;  the  disciples  are  told  to  shake  oil 
the  mould  from  their  feet  in  going  out 
of  the  unworthy  city — mulda :  so  in 
1  Cor.  xv.  48,  "  as  is  the  mouldy;"  and 
in  v.  62  of  the  same  chapter,  that  the 
plough  was  originally  a  hoe,  hoha, 
from  which  he  who  looked  back  was 
not  fit  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
In  x.  19  the  disciples  are  told  that 
they  shall  tread  on  serpents — trudan 
ufaro  vaurme — i.e.,  tread  on  worms. 
When  the  tempters  are  asked,  xx.  24, 
"  Whose  image  hath  it?"  the  word  is 
mannleika;  and  in  v.  36,  those  who 
are  equal  to  the  angels  are  even  with 
them — ibnans. 

In  John  vi.  63  we  find  the  familiar 
it  boots  not  in  "the  flesh  projitcth 
nothing  " — boteith. 

In  John  xv.  1,  "I  am  the  true 
vine'1 — veinatrin — i.e.,  wine-tree,  is 
found;  and  in  xviii.  1,  "where  was 


486 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  lllfilas. 


a  garden  "  —  aurtigards  —  we  see  the 
original  of  the  modern  orchard. 

From  the  Epistles  we  may  take  a  few 
examples  of  interest,  e.g.,  Bom.  viii.  3  : 
"  What  the  law  could  not  do  in  that  it 
was  sick,"  siuks ;  ix.  27,  "  sand  of  the 
sea,  malma  mareins,  the  first  word  sur- 
vives in  the  German  zer»ia?men;  1  Cor. 
i.  20,  "  Where  is  the  wise  " — handugs, 
handy — recalls  a  state  of  society  in 
which  dexterity  was  regarded  as 
wisdom.  In  1  Cor.  vii.  21,  "care,  not 
for  it,"  the  Gothic  is  ni  karos.  In 
ix.  7,  milk  is  found  as  miluks.  In 
xv.  9,  St.  Paul  calls  himself  the 
smallest  of  the  apostles — smalista.  In 
2  Cor.  xi.  33,  he  speaks  of  being 
"let  down  through  an  eye  door" — 
augadauro— which  shows  that  window 
was  originally  wind-door.  In  Phil.  iii. 
5,  "  the  stock  of  Israel "  is  called  the 
Jcnot,  knodai,  and  the  "  thrones "  of 
Col.  i.  16  are  sitlos,  settles.  It  will 
:be  readily  conceived  from  these  ex- 
amples, which  are  given  only  as 
Specimens  of  many  more,  what 
a  rich  mine  there  is  in  the 
Gothic  fragments  to  reward  the  in- 
vestigation of  the  student. 

2.  There  are  a  few  additions  to  be 
noted  in  the  Gothic  text  of  the  New 
Testament.  In  Mark  iii.  32,  "  Behold 
thy  mother  and  thy  brethren  without 
.seek  for  thee."  The  Gothic  adds, 
with  some  MSS.,  and  thy  sisters, 
which,  at  all  events,  corresponds  more 
exactly  with  the  words  following  in 
the  last  verse  of  the  chapter :  "  The 
same  is  my  brother,  and  my  sister,  and 
mother."  There  is  a  note  at  the  end 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Bomans,  which 
runs,  "  It  was  written  to  the  Bomans 
from  Corinth."  In  the  account  of  the 
institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  1  Cor. 
x.  17,  there  is  the  remarkable  addition 
of  the  words  in  italics  :  "  We  are  all 
partakers  of  that  one  bread  and  of  that 
one  cup,"  which,  considering  the  anti- 
quity of  the  version,  may  be  regarded 
as  very  important  testimony  to  the 
practice  of  the  Gothic  Christians  in 
the  middle  of  the  fourth  century.  In 
the  29th  verse  of  the  same  chapter 
we  find  this  addition  :  "  Why  is  my 


liberty  judged  of  the  conscience  of  tlie 
unbeliever?"  At  the  end  of  the 
first  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  we 
have  this  note :  "  The  first  Epistle 
to  the  Corinthians  was  written  from 
Philippi,  as  some  say,  but  it  seemeth 
rather,  by  the  apostle's  own  show- 
ing, to  be  from  Asia" — with  which 
modern  writers  agree.  Comp.  xvi.  8. 
In  1  Cor.  xii.  15,  16,  the  Gothic 
adds  to  the  clause,  "If  the  foot 
should  say,  Because  I  am  not  the 
hand,  I  am  not  of  the  body,"  the 
words,  "  nor  to  the  body ; "  and  so  to 
the  words,  "If  the  ear  should  say, 
Because  I  am  not  the  eye,  I  am  not  of 
the  body,"  nor  to  t/ie  body  ;  and  in  xv. 
10,  it  reads,  "I  laboured  and  endured 
more  than  they  all."  These  are  some  of 
the  additions  which  are  to  be  observed 
in  the  Gothic  version  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Ephesians  i.  6,  instead  of  being, 
"  Wherein  he  hath  made  us  accepted 
in  the  beloved,"  runs  "  in  his  beloved 
son"  In  Phil.  ii.  28,  instead  of  St. 
Paul  saying,  "  and  that  I  may  be  the 
less  sorrowful,"  the  Gothic  makes  him 
say,  "that  I  may  be  the  more  glad, 
thinking  how  it  is  with  you." 

3.  We  pass  now  to  the  omissions,  as 
distinct  from  those  portions  which 
have  unfortunately  been  lost  to  us  from 
the  defective  condition  of  the  MS. 
The  first  is  the  omission  of  the  word 
openly,  with  the  best  MSS.,  in  Matt. 
vi.  18,  "Thy  Father  which  seeth  in 
secret  shall  reward  thee  openly." 
Again,  in  xi.  2,  "  John  sendeth  two 
of  his  disciples."  The  word  two  is 
omitted,  where  probably  Sta  was  read 
instead  of  $vo,  which  is  however  not 
without  MS.  authority.  In  the  narra- 
tive of  the  Pharisees  being  displeased 
on  account  of  the  disciples  eating  bread 
with  unwashen  hands,  Mark  vii.  2, 
the  words  almost  requisite  for  the 
sense  in  English,  they  found  fault,  are 
omitted,  as  indeed  they  are  in  the  best 
MSS. ;  and  similarly  in  the  eleventh 
verse,  there  is  in  the  Gothic  nothing 
answering  to  the  words  lie  shall  be  free, 
which  the  Authorised  Version  has  in- 
serted with  a  view  to  complete  the 
supposed  sense  of  the  Greek.  By  far 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ulfilas. 


487 


the  most  important  omission,  however, 
is  that  of  the  narrative  of  the  woman 
taken  in  adultery,  in  the  beginning  of 
the  eighth  chapter  of  St.  John  (viii. 
1 — 11),  together  with  the  last  words 
of  the  previous  chapter,  "  And  every 
man  went  unto  his  own  house."  As 
is  commonly  known,  this  is  a  much  dis- 
puted passage,  but  we  are  only  con- 
cerned now  to  record  the  fact  that  the 
Gothic  is  one  of  those  ancient  versions 
in  which  it  is  not  found.  The  other 
omission,  for  which  there  is  also  MS. 
authority,  is  that  of  the  words, 
"through  his  blood,"  in  Col.  i.  14. 

With  regard  to  the  last  twelve 
verses  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  Mark, 
we  are  unfortunately  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  determine  whether  or  not 
they  were  contained  in  the  MS.  used 
by  Ulfilas,  because  there  is  a  de- 
fect in  the  Gothic  MS.  at  that  place. 
As  however  the  hiatus  does  not  begin 
till  the  twelfth  verse,  and  the  three 
first  verses  of  the  doubtful  portion  still 
remain,  it  would  seem  to  be  well  nigh 
certain  that  the  rest  of  the  remain- 
ing verses  had  originally  formed  an  in- 
tegral part  of  the  Gothic  version  of 
St.  Mark. 

4.  The  translation  of  Ulfilas  from 
the  Greek  is  for  the  most  part  wonder- 
fully close  and  accurate.  In  a  very 
few  instances  he  has  slightly  departed 
from  the  original,  and  we  may  suppose 
had  authority  for  so  doing,  and  in  one 
or  two  cases  he  seems  to  have  endea- 
voured to  give  a  gloss;  but,  as  a  whole, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his 
version  is  highly  valuable,  even  on 
this  ground.  The  expression,  Matt.  v. 
37,  "  Whatsoever  is  more  than  these 
cometh  of  evil,"  as  well  as  the  peti- 
tion in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  "  Deliver 
us  from  evil,"  is  ambiguous,  as  it  is 
in  the  Greek,  but  in  both  cases  the 
probability  seems  to  be  that  from  the 
evil  one  is  the  meaning  of  the  Gothic. 
In  Matt.  vi.  14,  26,  "your  heavenly 
Father,"  is  "your  father  who  is  over 
heaven,"  ufar  himinam. 

Even  the  Greek  order  is  observed  in 
Matt.  viii.  10,  "  not  in  Israel  such  faith 
have  I  found,"  and  so  in  Luke  viii. 


47,  where  the  construction  is  more 
complex,  "  she  came  running,  and 
falling  down  to  him,  for  what  cause 
she  had  touched  him,  told  him  in  the 
presence  of  all  the  people,  and  how 
she  was  healed  immediately." 

In  Mark  ix.  8,  instead  of  "  save 
Jesus  only  with  themselves,"  we  find 
"  save  Jesus  only  with  himself." 

In  xii.  29,  we  find,  "  The  Lord  God 
our  Lord  is  one,"  following  what  is 
probably  the  true  meaning  of  the  Old 
Testament  Hebrew. 

In  St.  Luke  ii.  14,  we  have  the 
beautiful  reading  and  rendering  of 
Jerome  preserved,  specially  commended 
by  Keble,  and  generally  followed  by 
Roman  Catholic  interpreters  also,  in- 
defensible though  it  may  be  critically 
or  theologically,  "  on  earth  peace 
towards  men  of  goodwill." 

In  ix.  4,  47,  where  the  English  ver- 
sion has  rendered  the  same  Greek  word 
StaXoyioyioe  by  two,  "  Then  there 
arose  a  reasoning  .  .  .  and  Jesus 
perceiving  the  thought"  the  Gothic 
has  used  but  one.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  John  vii.  1,  "After  these  things, 
Jesus  walked  in  Galilee,  for  he  could 
not  walk  in  Jewry,"  where  the  Greek 
has  but  one,  the  Gothic  uses  two. 
Again,  in  Luke  xvi.  10,  where  the 
Greek  and  English  have  used  two 
dissimilar  words  to  express  opposite 
ideas,  TTIOTCC,  &?LKOC,  faithful,  unjust, 
the  Gothic  has  chosen  two  similar 
words,  triggus  and  untriggus. 

It  is  possible  that  in  Luke  xix.  42, 
we  have  an  instance  of  a  grammatical 
error,  perhaps  the  only  one  to  be  found 
throughout  the  fragments,  where  tKpvfiT), 
to  which  the  real  subject  is  ra,  is  ren- 
dered "now  it  is  hid  from  thine 
eyes." 

In  John  vii.  39,  where  the  A.  V. 
supplies  given  in  the  words  "  The 
Holy  Ghost  was  not  yet  given,  because 
that  Jesus  was  not  yet  glorified,"  the 
Gothic  has  "The  Holy  Ghost  was  not 
yet  on  them,  because,"  «tc. 

One  of  the  blemishes  of  the  existing 
English  version  is  found  also  in  the 
Gothic,  namely  John  x.  14,  15,  where 
it  renders,  "  I  am  the  good  shepherd 


488 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ulfilas. 


and  know  my  sheep,  and  am  known  of 
mine.  As  the  Father  knoweth  me, 
even  so  know  I  the  Father,  and  I  lay 
down  my  life  for  the  sheep,"  instead 
of  "I  know  my  sheep  even  as  the 
Father  knoweth  me,  and  I  know  the 
Father."  This,  however,  may  be  a 
matter  of  punctuation  in  the  printed 
copies.  In  the  next  verse,  however, 
the  still  greater  blemish  of  the  A.  Y.  in 
not  discriminating  between  flock  and 
fold  for  TTol^vT)  and  av\??  is  avoided  by 
the  one  word  being  rendered  avethi 
.and  the  other  avistri. 

In  x.  24,  "  How  long  didst  thou 
make  us  to  doubt,"  which,  in  the 
Greek,  is  lift  up  our  soul,  that  is,  hold 
it  in  suspense,  the  Gothic  is  literal  in 
its  rendering — saivala  unsara  hahis. 
In  XL  39,  Lazarus  is  said  to  have  been 
dead  four  days,  which  expresses  the 
single  Greek  word  rerapraloc,  and  is  one 
word  also  in  the  Gothic,  fidurdogs. 

It  has  been  a  matter  of  some  doubt 
whether  the  contest  with  beasts  at 
Ephesus,  to  which  St.  Paul  refers  (1 
Cor.  xv.  32),  was  metaphorical  or  not. 
In  the  Gothic,  whatever  ambiguity 
there  may  be  originally,  is  preserved 
by  the  verbal  following  of  the  Greek, 
bi  mannan  du  diuzam  vaih. 

The  obscure  phrase  used  by  St.  Paul 
in  2  Cor.  i.  18,  "  The  things  that  I 
purpose,  do  I  purpose  according  to  the 
flesh,  that  with  me  there  should  be 
yea  yea,  and  nay  nay  1"  which  is  inter- 
preted by  Alford  to  mean  that  there 
should  be  "both  affirmation  and  nega- 
tion concerning  the  same  thing,"  is 
thus  rendered  by  Ulfilas,  "  that  with 
me  the  yea  should  not  be  yea  and  the 
nay  nay,"  which  unquestionably  gives 
the  sense  which  the  writer  intended  to 
convey. 

Gal.  v.  16 — "I  say,  then,  walk  in 
the  spirit,  and  ye  shall  not  fulfil  the 
lust  of  the  flesh,"  is  rendered,  "  I  say 
that  ye  walk  in  the  spirit  and  fulfil 
not,"  departing  slightly  from  the 
Greek. 

Eph.  ii.  16,  "Having  slain  the 
enmity  thereby,"  that  is,  by  or  on  the 
Cross,  becomes  in  the  Gothic  "  having 
slain  the  enmity  in  himself,"  in  sis 


silbin.  Gal.  iv.  32,  follows  the  Greek 
exactly,  "  as  God  in  Christ  hath  for- 
given you." 

5.  Foremost  among  the  illustrations 
of  reading  and  interpretation  to  be 
gathered  from  the  Gothic  version,  must 
be  placed  the  celebrated  passage, 
1  Tim.  iii.  16,  where  the  authority  of 
Ulfilas  is  distinctly  in  favour  of  the 
reading  which  all  scholars  have  fcow 
adopted,  and  by  which  the  "  God  was 
manifest  in  the  flesh"  of  the  A.  V. 
is  shown  not  to  be  genuine ;  the 
Gothic  runs,  "  Great  is  the  mystery 
(runa)  of  godliness  which  was  mani- 
fest in  the  flesh,"  so  that  the  MS. 
Ulfilas  used  may  have  had  o,  or  more 
probably  oc,  but  certainly  not  Oevg. 

In  Mark  viii.  22,  "And  he  cometh 
to  Bethsaida,  and  they  bring  a  blind 
man  unto  him,"  Ulfilas  reads  "  Beth- 
any," which  is  also  supported  by  some 
MSS. 

In  Mark  ix.  40,  the  Gothic  reads, 
"He  that  is  not  against  you  is  for 
you,"  instead  of  us.  There  is  autho- 
rity for  either  reading,  but  that  which 
Ulfilas  followed  is  perhaps  to  be  pre- 
ferred. Alford  says,  "  in  the'  divided 
state  of  the  critical  evidence,  the  read- 
ing must  be  ever  doubtful." 

In  John  ix.  8,  the  A.V.  has,  "  The 
neighbours  and  they  which  before  had 
seen  him  that  he  was  blind,"  but  the 
better  reading  is  "that  he  was  a 
beggar."  The  word  is  the  same  in 
the  Greek  as  that  for  "  he  sat  and 
begged,"  or  rather  the  substantive 
cognate  to  the  verb,  but  in  the  Gothic 
two  quite  different  words  are  used  for 
the  noun  beggar  and  the  verb  begged. 

In  John  xiv.  31,  the  Gothic  reads, 
"  but  that  the  world  may  know  that  I 
love  my  Father,  and  as  the  Father 
gave  me  commandment,  even  so  I  do," 
for  which,  however,  there  seems  to  be 
no  MS.  authority. 

The  "  blindness  "  which  "  happened 
unto  Israel,"  of  Rom.  xi.  25,  is  in  the 
Gothic,  daubei,  "deafness."  The  Greek 
is  Trw'pwo-te,  which  is  ambiguous. 

In  Col.  i.  12,  13,  "Who  hath  made 
us  meet  to  be  partakers  of  the  inherit- 
ance of  the  saints  in  light,"Land  "  who 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ulfilas. 


480 


hath  delivered  us  from  the  power  of 
darkness,"  &c.  Here  the  Gothic  reads 
you  in  both  cases,  for  which  there  is 
some,  but  apparently  less,  MS.  autho- 
rity. 

In  Col.  iii.  8,  there  is  a  slight  dif- 
ference of  reading.  Instead  of  "  filthy 
communication  out  of  your  mouth," 
the  Gothic  joins  this  to  the  catalogue 
of  the  things  they  are  exhorted  to  put 
away,  and  then  inserts  "  let  it  not 
jyroceed  out  o/"your  mouth,"  for  which 
there  seems  to  be  some  authority. 

In  1  Thess.  ii.  13,  "  The  word  of 
God  which  ye  heard  of  us,"  is  rendered 
"  the  word  of  the  hearing  of  God," 
so  that  the  Trap'  iipiav  is  taken  away 
from  QKorjs  and  joined  to  TrapaXcr/Sovrtc. 
The  precept  in  v.  22,  "abstain  from 
all  appearance  of  evil,"  is  rendered 
somewhat  more  feebly,  "  keep  your 
selves  from  every  thing  of  evil." 

In  2  Tim.  iv.  10,  the  Gothic  reads 
"Crispus"  for  "Crescens,"  but  there 
is  also  a  variant  Kreskus,  which  is 
clearly  identical  with  the  ordinary 
Crescens. 

From  this  brief  and  fragmentary 
sketch  of  the  more  striking  features 
of  the  Gothic  version  it  will,  it  is 
hoped,  be  seen  how  full  it  is  of  inte- 
rest to  the  philologist,  the  critic,  and 
the  theologian.  And  yet,  except 
among  scholars,  it  is  probably  but 
little  known.  We  are  not  aware  that 
any  modern  critical  English  edition 
exists.  There  are  several  foreign 
editions,  the  best  probably  that  of 
Gablentz  and  Lobe  in  4to,  a  very 
excellent  one  in  crown  Svo  by  Mass- 
mann,  one  in  Svo  by  Gangengigl, 
which  however  is  deficient  in  accuracy, 
and  the  Swedish  edition  of  Upstrom. 
We  may  safely  affirm  that  there  is  no 
branch  of  the  Teutonic  literature  of 
deeper  interest  to  the  student  than 
these  ancient  remains  of  the  primitive 
Gothic  version  of  the  Gospels  and 
Epistles.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
there  is  not  more  of  them.  The  rav- 
ages of  time  have  been  very  cruel,  the 
early  part  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel  is 
lost  to  us;  there  is  a  terrible  gap  from 
the  end  of  the  eleventh  chapter  to  the 


thirty-eighth  verse  of  the  twenty-fifth, 
while  part  of  the  twenty-sixth,  and  the 
whole  of  the  twenty- eighth,  are  wanting. 
St.  Mark's  Gospel  is  complete,  with  the 
exception  of  the  last  eight  verses,  which 
have  been  lost.  The  eleventh,  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  chapters  of  St.  Luke 
are  missing.  There  is  a  gap  at  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth,  and  the  remainder 
of  the  Gospel  is  wanting  after  xx.  46. 
The  commencement  of  St.  John  is 
imperfect  till  we  come  to  the  middle 
of  chapter  v.,  then  it  goes  on  with  a 
few  blanks  till  xix.  13,  where  it  un- 
fortunately ends.  The  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  does  not  exist.  The  Epistle 
to  the  Romans  begins  at  the  end  of 
chapter  vi.,  and  is  fairly  perfect  till 
xv.  13,  then  there  is  a  blank  till  xvi. 
21.  The  MS.  which  the  Gothic  followed 
evidently  ended  at  xvi.  24.  The  First 
Epistle  to  Corinth  is  very  defective, 
the  second  is  complete,  and  a  note  at 
the  end  says  it  was  written  from 
Philippi  of  Macedonia.  The  Epistle 
to  the  Galatians  has  a  gap  in  chapter 
i.  and  in  chapter  iii.  The  Epistle  to 
the  Ephesians  has  a  gap  in  chapter  v. 
and  in  chapter  vi.,  and  the  rest  of  St. 
Paul's  Epistles  are  more  or  less  imper- 
fect. They  come  to  an  end  at  Phile- 
mon 23.  This  is  all  that  we  possess 
of  the  New  Testament.  There  are  a 
few  fragments  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  of  a  commentary  on  the  Gospel  of 
St.  John ;  but  this  is  all  that  has  as 
yet  been  rescued  of  the  original  Teu- 
tonic language  that  was  spoken  by 
the  Goths  in  the  third  and  fourth  cen- 
tury after  Christ. 

One  very  important  inference  fairly 
deducible  from  the  existence  of  this 
version  of  the  New  Testament  which 
dates  from  the  middle  of  the  fourth 
century  A.D.  is  the  existence  of 
a  Christian  population  among  the 
Goths  at  that  early  period.  We  see 
also  that  the  Scriptures  must  have 
been  held  in  high  esteem  as  the  trea- 
sury of  life,  for  otherwise  they  would 
not  have  been  translated.  It  is  also 
clear  that  the  best  MSS.  would  be 
chosen  for  that  purpose,  and  therefore 
the  version  of  Ulfilas  has  considerable 


490 


The  Gothic  Fragments  of  Ul/Llas. 


value  as  a  witness  to  the  reading  that 
stood  highest  in  his  day.  For  instance 
his  authority  in  such  a  case  as  1  Tim. 
iii.  16  must  be  acknowledged  to  be 
very  great.  It  is  too  early  to  suppose 
that  a  variation  so  great  as  that  be- 
tween the  revised  English  Version  and 
his  had  already  crept  into  the  text. 
It  could  then  have  had  no  existence, 
and  therefore  the  witness  of  the  Gothic 
version  must  add  very  greatly  to  the 
presumption  against  it.  In  like  man- 
ner, when  we  find  him  waiting  in 
1  Cor.  xi.  such  an  addition  as  "  we  are 
all  partakers  of  that  one  cup,"  what- 
ever may  be  the  authority  or  the 
explanation  of  the  words  added,  there 
can  be  no  question  that  they  afford 
unimpeachable  testimony  to  the  prac- 
tice of  the  Christians  of  his  day,  or  at 
least  of  those  over  whom  he  presided. 
The  denial  of  the  cup  to  the  laity  is 


indeed  not  a  point  on  which  we  stand 
in  need  of  any  such  early  testimony, 
for  it  is  one  that  was  not  mooted 
till  long  afterwards,  but  there  can  be 
no  hesitation  as  to  the  nature  and  im- 
portance of  the  testimony  being  what 
it  is.  We  may  trust,  therefore,  that 
enough  has  been  said  to  show  the  high 
interest  and  importance  of  the  remain- 
ing fragments  of  the  early  Gothic 
version  of  Ulfilas,  and  that  the  sketch 
now  presented,  which  does  not  aspire 
to  give  more  than  a  cursory  account, 
may  have  the  effect  of  awakening  a 
wider  and  more  general  interest  in  the 
study  of  a  noble  language  which  is 
one  of  the  richest  inheritances  of  the 
past,  and  is  closely  connected  with  our 
own,  both  in  structure  and  vocabulary, 
as  well  as  with  its  immediate  descend- 
ant, the  modern  German. 

STANLEY  LEATHES. 


491 


THE  RAPID   TRANSPORTATION    OF  ARMIES. 


THE  subject  of  army  transportation 
has  always  been  one  of  primary  im- 
portance in  the  conduct  of  great  cam- 
paigns, but  it  is  only  of  late  years 
that  "  a  railway  has  become  an  engine 
of  war  more  powerful  than  a  battery 
of  artillery."  The  application  of 
steam  to  transportation  has  perhaps 
as  much  modified  the  art  of  war  as  it 
has  the  pursuits  of  peace ;  and  through 
its  ability  for  more  rapid  concentra- 
tion of  troops  and  supplies  at  distant 
points,  it  gives  greater  vigour  to  a 
campaign,  and  a  vast  advantage 
to  the  side  having  superiority  in  this 
respect.  Certain  military  writers, 
both  on  the  Continent  and  in  this 
country,  have  lately  devoted  much 
attention  to  this  subject  of  steam 
transportation  as  an  auxiliary  in  war  ; 
but  while  the  struggle  between  Russia 
and  Turkey  has  given  them  frequent 
opportunities  of  making  comparative 
reference  to  the  late  Civil  "War  in 
America,  it  is  singular  that  they 
have  neglected  to  note  the  great 
fact,  that,  perhaps  never  before  nor 
since  that  time  was  witnessed  such 
rapidity  in  the  transit  of  armies  for 
long  distances,  with  their  vast  muni- 
tions and  supplies  as  during  that  me- 
morable struggle.  It  is  my  purpose, 
in  what  follows,  to  supply  this  omis- 
sion, first  briefly  mentioning,  how- 
ever, some  of  the  more  remarkable 
performances  on  the  Continent  during 
late  wars. 

During  the  concentration  of  the 
French  army  in  Northern  Italy,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  campaign  of  1859, 
says  a  German  writer,  no  fewer  than 
604,380  men,  and  129,227  horses 
were  moved  by  railway.  The  average 
time  taken  to  transport  troops  from 
Paris  to  Genoa,  was  five  days,  includ- 
ing the  passage  by  water  from  -Mar- 


seilles to  Genoa.  The  entire  distance 
did  not  exceed  650  miles.  On  one 
occasion,  a  battalion  of  troops  was 
brought  from  Lille  to  Marseilles,  a 
distance  of  about  540  miles,  in  forty 
hours.  At  the  time  when  the  great- 
est activity  was  displayed,  8,500  men 
and  500  horses  were  transported 
daily  from  Paris  to  Marseilles,  and  on 
one  particular  day  12,000  men  and 
650  horses  were  safely  carried 
through.  No  accident  of  any  sort 
occurred  during  the  whole  period, 
nor  was  the  ordinary  trafiic  of  the 
line  suspended. 

In  1866,  during  the  concentration 
of  the  Prussian  army  on  the  Austrian 
frontier,  the  whole  of  the  Eighth  Army 
Corps,  comprising  31,000  men,  8,500 
horses,  and  3,220  vehicles,  was  moved 
by  rail  in  six  days  from  the  Rhine 
into  Saxony.  In  the  same  year,  the 
three  Austrian  corps,  numbering  alto- 
gether 123,000  men,  16,631  horses, 
259  guns,  and  2,777  vehicles — which, 
after  the  victory  of  Custozza,  were 
hurried  from  the  quadrilateral  north- 
ward to  oppose  the  invader,  threaten- 
ing the  capital  of  the  empire  from 
Bohemia — were  in  ten  days  moved 
nearly  500  miles,  from  the  north  of 
Italy  to  the  Danube. 

All  these  achievements  again  were 
surpassed  by  the  work  done  by  the 
German,  and  especially  the  Prussian, 
railways  in  the  summer  of  1870.  The 
order  to  mobilise  was  telegraphed 
from  Berlin  on  the  15th  of  July,  and 
three  weeks  afterwards,  three  large 
armies,  numbering  altogether  more 
than  300,000  infantry,  45,000  cavalry, 
and  1,000  guns,  were  pouring  across 
the  French  frontier,  the  men  having, 
in  the  interval,  been  collected  und 
transported  by  rail  from  every  quarter 
of  Germany,  from  the  shores  of  the 


492 


T/ie  Eapid  Transportation  of  Armies. 


Baltic  and  the  North  Sea,  from  the 
most  eastern  territories  of  Prussia, 
from  Saxony,  Hanover,  and  Silesia. 

These  examples  show,  no  doubt,  that 
the  railways  of  the  Continent  have 
been  properly  utilised  in  the  trans- 
portation of  troops  to  the  theatre  of 
war ;  but  the  movements  mentioned 
by  no  means  equal  some  of  those 
performed  by  steam  transportation 
both  on  rail  and  on  water  in  the 
American  war.  In  no  other  strug- 
gle have  railways  especially  been 
brought  to  perform  so  important  a 
part  in  military  operations  as  they 
were  in  the  United  States  during  the 
southern  rebellion.  1,769  miles  of 
single-track  military  railways  were, 
during  that  campaign,  at  one  time 
operated  exclusively  by  the  quarter- 
master's department. 

In  the  United  States  army,  the 
quartermaster's  department  is  charged 
with  the  duty  of  providing  means  of 
transportation  by  land  and  water  for 
all  the  troops  and  all  the  materiel 
of  war.  It  furnishes  the  horses  for 
artillery  and  cavalry,  and  the  horses 
and  mules  of  the  waggon  trains ;  pro- 
vides and  supplies  tents,  camp  and 
garrison  equipage,  forage,  lumber,  and 
all  materials  for  camps,  and  for 
shelter  of  the  troops.  It  builds  bar- 
racks, hospitals,  and  storehouses,  pro- 
vides waggons,  ambulances,  and  har- 
ness— except  for  cavalry  and  artillery 
horses;  builds  or  charters  ships  or 
steamers  for  any  purposes,  constructs 
and  repairs  turnpike-roads,  railroads 
and  their  bridges,  clothes  the  army, 
and  is  charged  generally  with  the 
payment  of  all  expenses  attending 
military  operations  not  assigned  by 
law  or  regulation  to  other  depart- 
ments. The  feeding  of  the  men  be- 
longs to  the  commissary  or  subsistence 
department;  that  of  the  animals  to 
the  quartermaster's  department.  But 
in  both  cases  the  latter  must  trans- 
port the  supplies.  There  was  never 
any  good  reason  why  these  two  de- 
partments should  not  be  consolidated  ; 
and  a  bill  with  the  object  of  their  union 
under  the  more  fitting  name  of  Depart- 


ment of  Supplies  was  only  lately  in- 
troduced in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives by  Mr.  Banning,  M.C.,  from  one 
of  the  Ohio  districts. 

The  force  employed  in  the  repair, 
construction,  and  operation  of  these 
1,769  miles  of  line  numbered  at  one 
time  as  high  as  23,000  men.  This 
number,  it  must  be  noticed,  did  not 
include  some  15,000  employes  in  the 
quartermaster's  department  on  duty 
at  one  time  at  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee. So  large  a  force  at  a  single 
depot  could  well  be  used  to  advantage 
in  more  ways  than  one,  and  Major- 
General  Donaldson,  Chief  Quarter- 
master of  the  Department  of  the 
Cumberland,  early  recognised  this 
fact,  by  organising  his  employes  into  a 
military  force,  where  they  were  regu- 
larly drilled  and  taught  a  soldier's 
duty.  These  men  were  under  fire  on 
more  than  one  occasion,  lost  several 
of  their  number  in  engagements,  and 
behaved  well  in  face  of  the  enemy. 
In  November,  1864,  when  General  Hood 
advanced  on  Nashville,  no  less  than 
7,000  of  these  employes  were  engaged 
in  constructing  the  trenches  which 
surrounded  the  city.  Finally,  General 
George  H.  Thomas  assigned  the  forces 
of  the  quartermaster's  department  a 
position  in  his  line  of  battle  before 
Nashville,  December  loth  and  16th, 
1864,  and  it  took  its  place  in  the 
trenches  while  the  battle  lasted,  hold- 
ing an  important  part  of  the  works, 
and  releasing  a  like  number  of  troops 
who  would  otherwise  have  been  held 
in  reserve. 

The  part  of  the  Federal  army 
known  as  the  Army  of  the  Cumber- 
land was,  during  the  rebellion,  more 
dependent  upon  a  long  and  mountain 
railway  for  its  supplies  than  was  any 
other  part  of  the  northern  forces. 
Especially  was  this  the  case  after  it 
had  moved  south  from  Nashville. 
Two  slender  rods  of  iron,  crossing 
wide  rivers,  winding  through  moun- 
tain gorges,  plunging  under  mountain 
ranges,  passing  for  hundreds  of  miles 
through  a  hostile  country,  and  every- 
where exposed  to  the  raids  of  an 


The  Rapid  Transportation  of  Armies. 


493 


active  enemy,  favoured  by  the  thick 
forests,  which  bordered  the  line 
throughout  nearly  its  whole  extent, 
were  worked  night  and  day  in  the  dead 
of  winter,  carrying  subsistence  to  an 
army  of  100,000  men,  and  half  as 
many  animals.  At  no  time,  during 
the  march  from  Murfreesboro  to 
Chattanooga,  and  thence  to  Atlanta, 
in  Georgia,  were  the  railway  trains  five 
days  behind  the  general  commanding. 
The  reconstruction  of  the  railway 
bridges  over  the  rivers  Etowah  and 
Chattahoochie  are  unparalleled  feats 
of  military  works.  The  Etowah 
bridge,  625  feet  long,  and  75  feet 
high,  completely  destroyed  by  the 
enemy,  was  rebuilt  by  the  labour  of 
600  men  in  six  days.  The  Chatta- 
hoochie bridge,  six  miles  north  of  the 
city  of  Atlanta,  was  also  completely 
destroyed.  It  was  740  feet  long,  and 
90  feet  high.  It  was  rebuilt  by  a  de- 
tachment of  the  Construction  Corps  in 
four  and  a  half  days.  The  rapidity 
with  which  the  railways  were  recon- 
structed and  even  orginally  built,  is 
easily  accounted  for.  Trains  loaded 
with  timber,  iron,  water,  and  fuel 
for  the  engines,  preceded  the  trains 
carrying  subsistence  and  ammunition. 
The  railway  employes  followed  the 
advance  guard,  and  scarce  was  com- 
munication broken  before  it  was  again 
restored. 

Among  the  more  remarkable  of  the 
achievements  of  the  quartermaster's 
department,  during  the  American 
war,  was  the  transportation  of  the 
Twenty-third  Army  Corps  from  Clif- 
ton, on  the  Tennessee  River,  to  Wash- 
ington, District  of  Columbia,  and 
thence  to  the  coast  of  North  Carolina. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this 
is  one  of  the  greatest  examples  on  re- 
cord. Early  in  January,  1865,  General 
Grant  desired  the  presence  of  the 
Twenty-third  Corps,  then  at  Eastport, 
in  Mississippi,  before  making  his  great 
movement  about  Richmond.  He 
hesitated  ordering  it  to  move,  however, 
under  the  apprehension  that  owing  to 
the  period  of  the  year,  and  the  severe 
weather,  it  would  be  impracticable  to 


transport  so  large  an  army  that  dis- 
tance through  a  northern  climate,  and 
over  the  mountains,  in  sufficient  time 
to  answer  his  purpose,  from  forty  to 
sixty  days  being  considered  as  the 
shortest  period  in  which  the  move- 
ment could  safely  be  effected.  How- 
ever, it  was  finally  decided  to  make 
the  attempt,  and  the  necessary  orders 
were  issued  from  the  War  Department. 
Within  five  days  after  the  movement 
had  been  decided  on  in  Washington, 
the  troops  on  the  Tennessee  River, 
nearly  1,400  miles  distant,  were  em- 
barking on  transports,  specially 
chartered  for  that  purpose.  The  dis- 
tance transported  was  about  equally 
( divided  between  land  and  water.  The 
average  time  of  transportation  of  this 
corps,  with  all  its  artillery  and 
animals,  from  the  embarkation  on  the 
Tennessee  to  the  arrival  on  the  banks 
of  the  Potomac,  was  not  exceeding 
eleven  days ;  and  not  a  single  accident 
happened  causing  loss  of  life,  limb,  or 
property,  except  in  the  single  instance 
of  a  soldier  who  improperly  jumped 
from  a  railway  waggon,  under  appre- 
hension of  danger,  by  which  he  lost 
his  life ;  while,  had  he  remained  quiet, 
he  would  have  been  as  safe  as  were 
his  comrades  in  the  same  carriage. 

The  transfer  of  so  large  an  army, 
with  ample  time  and  preparation,  for 
so  great  a  distance,  even  in  summer 
weather,  would  of  itself  be  a  marked 
event ;  but  when  it  is  understood  that 
not  more  than  four  or  five  days 
elapsed  after  the  movement  was  de- 
cided upon  by  the  War  Office,  before 
the  embarkation  of  the  troops  was 
actually  commenced  nearly  1,400  miles 
away  —  that  within  an  average  of 
eleven  days  the  corps  was  encamped 
upon  the  Potomac — that  the  trans- 
fer was  made  along  rivers  obstructed 
by  fog  and  ice,  over  mountains 
during  violent  snow  storms,  and 
amid  the  unusual  severities  of  mid- 
winter in  a  northern  climate ;  at  a 
period  of  the  year,  too,  when  acci- 
dents upon  railways,  arising  from  the 
breaking  of  machinery  or  of  rails 
in  ordinary  traffic,  are  of  frequent 


494 


The  Rapid  Transportation  of  Armies. 


occurrence — when  it  is  known  that  the 
comfort  of  the  troops  had  been  so 
carefully  provided  for,  and  the  police 
of  the  different  roads  so  thoroughly 
organised,  that  during  the  whole 
movement  not  the  least  injury  of  per- 
son or  the  loss  of  property  occurred, 
with  the  exception  of  the  soldier 
already  alluded  to — the  writer  feels 
justified  in  claiming  so  complete  and 
successful  a  movement  as  without  a 
parallel  in  the  history  of  warfare.  The 
credit  of  this  achievement  is  due 
to  Colonel  L.  B.  Parsons,  a  volunteer 
officer,  who,  after  thes  war,  returned 
to  civil  pursuits,  like  many  thousands 
of  other  officers  in  the  American 
army. 

Another  example  of  quick  transfer 
was  the  transportation,  in  the  autumn 
of  1863,  of  the  Twelfth  and  Thirteenth 
Army  Corps  from  the  Potomac, 
through  Maryland  and  Virginia,  thence 
through  Ohio  and  Indiana  to  Lewis- 
ville,  Kentucky,  and  thence  to  Nash- 
ville and  to  Chattanooga,  a  distance  of 
1,200  miles,  in  eleven  days,  to  rein- 
force the  army  of  General  Thomas 
at  that  place.  A  third  great  trans- 
fer was  that  of  the  Sixteenth  Corps, 
ordered  from  Eastport,  on  the  Tennes- 
see River,  to  New  Orleans,  to  co- 
operatd  in  the  reduction  of  Mobile. 
The  embarkation  began  on  the  5th  of 
February,  1865,  and  was  completed  on 
the  8th.  The  fleet  of  forty  steam- 
boats sailed  on  the  9th,  and  the  entire 
command,  consisting  of  16,000  in- 
fantry, 5,000  cavalry,  with  their 
horses,  and  several  batteries,  arrived 
at  New  Orleans  on  February  23rd, 
having  been  moved  1,330  miles  by 
water  in  thirteen  days.  In  June, 
1863,  an  army  corps,  then  in  Kentucky, 
was  transported  by  rail  and  water  to 
Vicksburg,  on  the  Mississippi  River, 
a  distance  of  over  1,000  miles,  within 
four  days  from  the  time  of  embarkation. 
These  are  but  a  few  of  the  many  quick 
transfers  of  troops  which  took  place 
during  the  American  Civil  War.  The 
amount  of  service  performed  both  by 
rail  smd  water  wa's  enormous,  and  only 
equalled  by  the  magnitude  of  the  war 


in  all  its  aspects.  To  appreciate  the 
difficulties  of  performing  this  service, 
it  should  be  remembered  that  not 
only  were  the  railways  in  a  hostile 
country,  but  the  great  network  of 
river  navigation  was  for  a  long  period 
either  entirely  under  the  control  of 
the  enemy,  or  so  situated  that  its 
navigation  was  liable  at  any  moment 
to  be  obstructed  thereby. 

Another  important  element  of  suc- 
cess to  the  northern  army  was  its  well- 
arranged  Ocean  Transportation  Ser- 
vice. At  one  time  this  department 
employed  no  less  than  719  transport 
vessels,  representing  a  tonnage  of 
224,984  tons.  This  immense  fleet 
was  almost  constantly  employed  in 
transporting  supplies  or  moving  troops 
from  one  point  to  another.  At  one 
time,  December,  1864,  no  less  than 
300,000  men  were  entirely  dependent 
for  their  supplies  upon  water  trans- 
portation. The  winter  was  unusually 
severe  ;  storms  swept  the  ocean,  and 
ice  blocked  the  bays  and  rivers.  Yet 
only  three  vessels  were  lost  at  sea,  and 
the  loss  of  life  and  property  was  not 
great.  One  example  will  show  the 
workings  of  this  branch  of  the  ser- 
vice. In  May,  1864,  the  Twenty - 
fifth  Army  Corps,  numbering  about 
25,000  men,  and  6,000  animals,  were 
moved  from  City  Point,  Virginia,  to 
Texas ;  the  fleet  comprised  fifty-seven 
ocean  steamers,  with  an  entire  tonnage 
of  56,987  tons.  They  were  all  pro- 
vided for  a  twelve  days'  voyage,  allow- 
ing for  the  consumption  of  947  tons  of 
coal,  and  50,000  gallons  of  water  per 
day.  The  fleet  arrived  safely  at  its 
destination,  not  a  single  accident 
having  occurred  on  the  passage.  The 
expense  of  the  expedition  amounted 
to  6,937J.  14s.  per  day. 

Inasmuch  as  horses  and  mules  have 
more  or  less  to  do  with  the  transporta- 
tion department  in  all  campaigns,  it 
may  not  be  out  of  place  to  note  the 
cost  of  these  animals  during  the  war 
in  question.  One  division  of  the 
quartermaster-general's  office,  at  Wash- 
ington, was  charged  with  the  purchase, 
procurement,  and  disposition  of  horses 


The  Eapid  Transportation  of  Armies. 


495 


and  mules  for  cavalry,  artillery,  wag- 
gon, and  ambulance  trains,  and  for  all 
other  purposes  for  which  horses  and 
mules  were  needed  by  the  armies.  The 
records  show  that  the  prices  paid  for 
cavalry  horses  ranged  from  281.  16s. 
per  head  (the  lowest  contract  price), 
to  371.  per  head  (the  highest  market 
price).  The  prices  for  artillery  horses 
ranged  from  321.  4s.  to  371.  per  head. 
The  prices  paid  for  mules  ranged  from 
34£.  to  391. 

From  the  records  in  the  office  of  the 
War  Department  at  Washington,  it 
appears  that,  under  the  organisation 
prevailing  during  the  third  year  of 
the  war,  the  armies  in  the  field  re- 
quired, for  the  use  of  cavalry,  artillery, 
and  for  the  trains,  one  half  as  many 
horses  and  mules  as  they  contained 
soldiers.  The  full  ration  for  a  horse 
was  fourteen  pounds  of  hay,  and 
twelve  pounds  of  grain  daily,  twenty- 
six  pounds  in  all.  The  gross  weight 
of  a  man's  ration  of  subsistence  was 
three  pounds;  the  forage  for  an 
army  therefore  weighed,  when  full 
rations  were  supplied,  about  four  and 
a  half  times  as  much  as  the  subsist- 
ence stores.  The  supplying  of  this 
vast  amount  of  forage  was  in  itself 
a  great  undertaking.  With  armies 
marching  in  the  field,  the  forage  was 
of  course,  in  great  part,  gathered 
along  the  line  of  march ;  but  when 
the  troops  occupied  fixed  positions, 
grain  and  hay  had  to  be  brought  from 
the  north  by  rail  and  by  water  trans- 
portation. It  has  been  estimated 
that  during  the  war  there  was  a 
supply  of  forage  exceeding 


f  bushels  of  Indian 

22,816,271  <      corn     (maize), 

(      costing  . 


bushels  of  oats, 
costing  . 

tons  of  hay,  cost- 
ing .... 


78,663,799 
1,518,621 


A  total  estimated  cost  of 


£5,975,863 

£15,272,405 
£9,719,177 


£31,052,549 


After  four  years   of    experience  in 
the  field,  the    armies  of  the  United 


States  were  in  an  organised  condition 
as  remarkable  as  it  was  efficient  in  all 
other  particulars.  Especially  were 
the  trains  well  managed.  In  June, 
1864,  a  special  order  was  issued  by 
Lieut.  -  General  Grant,  then  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  in  the  field,  prescrib- 
ing the  means  of  transportation,  camp 
and  garrison  equipage,  for  the  armies 
in  the  field.  After  prescribing  for  the 
headquarters  of  the  army,  army  corps, 
divisions  and  brigades,  for  regiments 
and  for  batteries,  the  following  rule 
was  laid  down  for  arriving  at  the 
number  of  waggons  to  be  allowed  the 
artillery,  &c.  "For  the  artillery  and 
small-arm  ammunition  train,  the  num- 
ber of  12 -pounder  guns,  multiplied  by 
122,  and  divided  by  112;  the  number 
of  rifled  guns,  multiplied  by  50,  and 
divided  by  140;  the  number  of  20- 
pounder  guns,  multiplied  by  2,  and 
the  number  of  4|-inch  guns,  multiplied 
by  2J,  will  give  the  number  of  wag- 
gons allowed.  The  number  of  guns, 
in  horse  batteries,  multiplied  by  100, 
and  divided  by  140,  will  give  the 
waggons  allowed.  For  the  reserve 
artillery,  ammunition  of  twenty  rounds 
to  each  gun  in  the  armies,  the  number 
of  waggons  allowed  will  be  obtained 
as  follows  :  Multiply  the  number  of 
12-pounders  by  20,  and  divide  by  112  ; 
and  the  number  of  rifled  guns  by  20, 
and  divide  by  140." 

The  military  telegraph  was  of  course 
a  most  important  instrument  in  the 
conduct  of  these  vast  operations. 
During  the  rebellion,  about  15,000 
miles  of  military  telegraph  lines 
were  constructed  and  operated.  The 
average  cost  of  these  lines  was,  in 
1864,  no  less  than  18,700?.  The  funds 
for  their  support  were  furnished  from 
the  quartermaster's  department,  and 
were  discharged  under  the  direction  of 
the  chief  of  military  telegraphs. 

Thus  much  for  the  transportation 
service  during  the  American  Civil 
War.  A  more  recent  example  from 
that  country  was  the  moving  of  the 
Second  Regiment  of  the  Line  from 
Atlanta,  in  Georgia,  to  Lewiston, 
Idaho  territory,  by  way  of  San  Fran- 


49G 


The  Rapid  Transportation  of  Armies. 


cisco,  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  Portland, 
Oregon,  in  July,  1877.  This  most 
wonderful  example  of  quick  transit 
demonstrates  what  can  be  accom- 
plished in  the  United  States,  with  the 
aid  of  the  motive  power  of  steam  on 
land  and  water,  and  of  the  electric 
telegraph,  in  case  of  an  emergency 
requiring  the  prompt  concentration  of 
an  army  at  any  point  within  the 
borders  of  that  nation.  The  Second 
Regiment  of  Infantry,  consisting  of 
30  officers  and  344  enlisted  men, 
started  from  Atlanta,  July  13,  1877, 
under  orders  to  move  without  undue 
haste,  and  with  extraordinary  impedi- 
menta, consisting  of  forty-two  laund- 
resses, with  their  children,  and  about 
60,000  Ibs.  (27  tons),  of  luggage, 
equipage,  and  munitions  of  war.  The 
battalion  arrived  at  Lewiston  on  the 
28th  of  July,  1877,  having  consumed 
exactly  fifteen  days  in  moving  a  dis- 
tance of  4,302  miles,  being  at  the  rate  of 
286  miles  per  day.  This  movement  was 
made  without  an  accident  of  any  sort, 
or  the  loss  of  a  man  or  a  pound  of 
property.  The  movement  was  made 
for  the  purpose  of  reinforcing  Major- 
General  Howard  in  his  campaign 
against  the  Nez  Perec  Indians,  and 
when  first  ordered  was  directed  to  be 
made  with  the  utmost  despatch ;  but 
before  the  troops  started,  this  order 


was  qualified  to  permit  laundresses 
and  private  property  to  accompany  the 
regiment,  and  to  move  without  undue 
haste.  Its  rapidity  was  also  checked 
by  the  hesitation  of  one  railroad  to 
furnish  transportation,  because  the 
quartermaster's  department  at  that 
time  had  no  money  to  pay  for  it,  and 
no  authority  to  promise  to  pay,  owing 
to  the  failure  of  the  Forty-fourth  Con- 
gress to  provide  funds  for  the  support 
of  the  army  for  the  current  year. 

How  far  the  length  of  time  occu- 
pied by  the  recent  Russo-Turkish  war 
may  be  attributed  to  the  imperfect 
state  of  the  communications  available 
for  the  invading  army  cannot  at  pre- 
sent be  more  than  conjectured.  The 
forwarding  of  supplies  means  the 
furnishing  of  a  great  host  of  men, 
horses,  and  baggage  animals  with 
food  and  the  munitions  of  war.  It 
means  a  continuous  daily  supply  of 
hundreds  of  tons  of  food  for  man  and 
beasts,  and,  in  the  case  alluded  to,  all 
this  was  forwarded  for  a  long  distance 
over  one  line  of  railway,  ill  supplied 
with  rolling  stock.  Even  that  imper- 
fect communication  was,  however,  in- 
finitely superior  to  anything  at  the 
command  of  Russia  during  the 
Crimean  War. 

JAMES  H.  HAYNIE. 
Captain  U.S.  Army. 


497 


THE  CLERGY  AND  THE  THEATRE. 


A  CORRESPONDENCE  has  recently  taken 
place  between  the  Bishop  of  London 
and  the  Rev.  Stewart  Headlam  re- 
specting a  lecture  upon  "Theatres  and 
Music  Halls,"  which  the  latter  delivered 
in  the  autumn  of  last  year  at  Bethnal 
Green.  The  lecture  and  the  corre- 
spondence to  which  it  has  given  rise, 
affords  opportunity  for  saying  a  few 
words  about  the  relation  in  which,  it 
seems  to  us,  the  clergy  must  stand 
towards  the  theatre  and  all  that  is 
akin  to  it.  About  the  lecture  itself  it 
is  not  necessary  for  our  purpose  to  say 
a  single  word.  Those  who  wish  to  see 
it  can  procure  it  for  themselves  at  the 
modest  sum  of  twopence,  from  the 
Women's  Printing  Society,  216  Great 
College  Street,  Westminster.  We  may 
only  remark  that  if  Mr.  Headlam 
thought  proper  to  publish  the  lecture 
it  appears  to  us  it  would  have  been 
better  to  do  so  upon  its  own  merits 
and  without  the  addition  of  the  anony- 
mous, and,  in  many  respects,  offensive 
letter  which  prefaces  it. 

In  discussing  the  subject  there  ap- 
pear to  be  the  following  points  to  be 
kept  in  view  : — 

(1.)  That  a  cliange,  in  the  Church  of 
England  at  any  rate,  has  come  over  the 
expression  of  theology,  and  therefore  the 
relations  of  the  clergy  of  that  Church 
towards  theology  have  become  modified 
or  altogether  changed. 

(2.)  That  the  Church  of  England  is  a 
great  social,  as  distinct  from  a  great 
ecclesiastical,  institution. 

(3.)  That  the  theatre  exists,  and  in 
all  human  certainty  will  continue  to 
exist. 

(4.)  That  necessity  is  laid  upon  the 
clergy  to  have  opinions  about  such  places 
and  the  frequenting  of  them — opinions 
based  not  upon  tradition  or  upon  per- 
sonal prepossessions,  but  upon  reason 
and  knowledge — and  that  their  office 

No.  222. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


compels  them  to  speak  openly  accord- 
ing to  their  convictions  about  such 
matters  apart  from  fear  or  favour. 
Let  us  discuss  shortly  each  of  these 
points. 

(1.)  A  change,  in  t/te  Church  of  Eng- 
land at  any  rate,  /MS  come  over  the 
expression  of  tJieology,  and  therefore  tfie 
relations  of  the  clergy  of  that  Church 
towards  theology  Iiave  become  modified  or 
altoget/ier  changed. — When  we  speak 
of  the  theology  of  fifty  years  ago,  we 
allude  to  the  sermons  of  that  period. 
It  was  by  such  a  mode  that  theology 
in  those  days  expressed  itself.  Out- 
side the  Church  its  voice,  as  a  rule, 
was  not  heard.  It  did  not  bear  upon 
practical  matters.  And  the  sermon  was 
intended  to  touch  only  upon  abstract 
subjects.  It  not  unfrequently  pro- 
fessed to  set  forth  the  entire  scheme 
of  salvation.  Illustrations  of  the 
practical  kind  were  few  ;  dogmas  of 
the  abstruse  and  traditionary  sort 
were  plentiful.  Topics  of  the  day  were 
avoided.  There  was  the  believer's 
portion,  and  the  appeal  to  the  uncon- 
verted. Now  without  any  disparage- 
ment of  this  kind  of  discourse,  and  of 
this  theological  state  of  things,  I  think 
we  shall  admit  that  both  the  tendency 
of  sermons,  and  the  general  conception 
of  the  clerical  office,  for  the  last  fifteen 
years  or  so,  have  been  different,  and,  on 
the  whole,  in  the  direction  of  improve- 
ment. A  clergyman  need  now  have 
no  fear  of  being  practical.  He  can 
hardly  be  practical  enough.  Unless  he 
is  practical  no  one  will  pay  much  heed 
to  him.  Religion,  theology,  like  every- 
thing else  in  the  present  day,  has  to 
shew  its  raison  d'etre.  The  clergyman 
may  be  useful  in  helping  people  to 
regulate  their  lives,  but  he  must  have 
something  beyond  his  mere  ipse  dixit 
for  making  good  his  authority.  And  as 
he  must  be  in  the  Church  so  must  he 

K  i: 


498 


The  Clergy  and  the  Theatre. 


be  out  of  it.     He  must,  if  he  is  to  make 
his  mark  in  his  parish,  have  as  wide 
an  experience  as  possible  of  all  that 
interests    and    influences   his    people. 
He  must  be  as  well  read  as  the  average 
of  them.     He  must  be  on  a  level  with 
the   topics   of  the  day.     He  must  be 
able  to  deliver -a  lecture  upon  a  popu- 
lar subject.     He  must  show  an  intelli- 
gent interest  in  what  is  stirring  the 
mind  of  the  country  at  any  given  time. 
In   short   the   clerical   profession  has 
become  merely  one  among  others,  and 
the   clergyman    has    in  many  things 
become  just  as  the  layman.     And  of 
course  those  clergymen  who  aspire  to 
make  their  influence  felt    conform  to 
this  altered  state  of  things.     They  find 
that  the  clergyman  is  not  the  less,  but 
the  more,  respected  who  is  as  capable 
of  a  political  opinion  as  any  one  in  his 
congregation  ;  who  is,  to  give  an  ex- 
ample, a  keen   judge,  and   perhaps  a 
performer,  of  music;    who  is,  as   his 
time  allows  him,  as  careful  a  reader  of 
new  books  and  pamphlets  as  are  any 
of    those   persons   who   are    prepared 
to   admire  or  disagree  with  his   last 
Sunday's  sermon.     It  is  felt  that  the 
clergyman    is  not,  according   to   the 
opinion    of    the    fox-hunting   squire, 
"only  wanted  for  Sunday," — but  that 
he  has  a  work  for  the  Monday  and  the 
rest  of  the  six  days  also,  and  that  it  is 
only  his  experience  of  the  previous  six 
days — his    political,    his     social,    his 
literary,   his    parochial    experience  — 
which  gives  him  the  right  and  ensures 
him  the  certainty  of  being  listened  to 
with  fairness  on  the  Sunday.     Now,  of 
course,  if  this  feeling  be  strongly  felt 
and   vigorously  acted  upon,   we   may 
expect  the  amusements  of  the  people, 
just  as  much  as  their  morals,  to  be  a 
general  consideration    of   the   clergy- 
man and  a  topic  of  his  sermons.     In- 
deed it  seems  hardly  possible  to  judge 
of  people's  morals  without  first  judg- 
ing of    their   amusements.     And   the 
clergy  do   judge — often   unfairly  and 
indiscriminately.     They  speak  without 
knowledge;  they  speak  of  those  things 
of  which  not  unfrequently  they  have 
no  experience  and  of  which  they  are 


not  therefore  competent  to  form   an 
opinion.     It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  not  one  in  twenty  of  the  clergy 
who   take  exception,   for  example,  to 
the  theatre  and  to  the  members  of  the 
theatrical  and  musical  profession,  are 
in  the  habit  of  attending  the  theatre. 
We  are  not  at  this  moment  saying  it  is 
their  duty  to  do  so.    All  we  say  is  that 
to  give  advice  with  respect  to  amuse- 
ments may  fall  within  the  province  of 
the  clergyman ;  that  he  can  claim  no 
right  to  speak  of  that  of  which  he  has 
no  knowledge  by  personal  experience ; 
and  that  if    he  feels  it  his  business 
to  speak  on  such  subjects  he  can  hardly 
avoid  coming  to  the  conclusion   that 
it  is   his  duty  to   know   what   he   is 
talking    about.      "  Never,"    said    the 
present  Dean   of    Westminster    in  a 
sermon     preached      when     he      was 
severing      his     professorial      connec- 
tion with  Oxford,  "  never  take  excep- 
tion to  a  book — certainly  never  con- 
demn   it — without    having   read   it." 
And    the   maxim   applies    all    round. 
If  a  clergyman    claims    to  guide  his 
flock  it  seems  suitable  that  he  should 
have  a  full  personal  knowledge  of  all 
that  is  likely  to  influence  them.     If  he 
speaks  from  hearsay  evidence  or  from 
his  own  prepossessions,  he  is  onlytspeak- 
ing  in  a  way  which  will  make  one  half 
of  his  audience  laugh  at  him  and  the 
other  half  despise  him.     It  appears  to 
us,  then,  from  these  considerations,  that 
if  a  clergyman  is  to  be  of  use  in  the 
present  day  he  will  necessarily  regard 
theology  from  a  different  point  of  view 
from  his  clerical  forefathers,  and  that 
if  he  does  so  the  world  must  not  blame 
him  for  doing  many  things  from  which 
they  abstained. 

(2.)  Perhaps  the  matter  becomes 
clearer  when  we  examine  the  next 
point  proposed,  that  t/ie  Church  of  Eng- 
land is  a  great  social,  as  distinct  from, 
a  great  ecclesiastical,  institution.  In  fact 
we  might  say  that  the  present  ecclesi- 
astical position  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land is  determined  by  its  social  posi- 
tion. It  has  a  great  religious  work  to 
carry  on,  but  that  work  must  be  carried 
on,  and,  as  it  seems  to  us,  may  be 


The  Clergy  and  the  Theatre. 


499 


carried  on,  in  every  way  with  greater 
advantage  by  remembering  and  making 
use  of  the  social  position  which  it  oc- 
cupies. The  clergy  of  the  Church  of 
England  are  a  married  clergy.  The 
intercourse  between  them  and  the 
laity  is  in  every  way  encouraged ;  not 
only  as  regards  matters  of  business 
but  as  regards  also  the  hospitalities 
and  amenities  of  daily  life.  The  pre- 
sence of  a  curate  at  a  lawn-tennis 
party  is  as  much  a  witness  to  the 
intermingling  of  clergy  and  laity  as 
is  a  mixed  gathering  of  bishops  and 
country  gentlemen  at  a  diocesan  meet- 
ing. The  clergy  of  the  Church 
of  England  are  thus  enabled,  or 
should  be  so,  to  deal  much  more 
directly  with  the  needs  of  the  people 
— speaking  and  acting  as  they  can  do 
from  a  free  personal  experience — than 
are,  for  example,  the  clergy  of  the 
Church  of  Rome,  whose  knowledge  of 
life  is  in  many  cases  only  gained  from 
the  confessional.  The  Anglican  clergy- 
man reads  the  novels  that  lie  upon 
your  table,  he  can  sing  the  last  new 
song,  he  knows  about  the  University 
Boat-race,  or  the  Eton  and  Harrow 
match — you  can  talk  as  freely  to  him 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  as  you  can  to 
any  layman.  Whatever  it  may  be  as 
regards  the  hierarchy,  of  the  Church 
of  Rome,  and  those  among  her  clergy 
who  may  have  special  missions  en- 
trusted to  them,  this  is  not  the  case 
as  far  as  the  rank  and  file  of  her  clergy 
are  concerned.  The  latter  see  little 
of  their  flocks  except  in  church  or  in 
times  of  sickness.  As  to  knowing 
anything  of  cricket-matches,  or  novels, 
or  general  politics,  they  know  about  as 
well  whether  they  have  relations  per- 
manently settled  in  the  moon. 

Doubtless  to  those  of  them  who  are 
keen  to  turn  it  to  account,  there  is  a 
decided  advantage  in  this  respect  on 
the  side  of  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of 
England.  And  it  is  difficult  to  see 
where,  in  this  social  aspect  of  things, 
you  can  draw  the  line — to  determine, 
with  regard  to  amusements,  which 
may  be  engaged  in  by  the  clergy,  and 
which  must  be  debarred  to  them.  In 


his  Bishopric  of  Souls,  Archdeacon 
Evans  points  out  the  contempt  into 
which  the  clergy  may  bring  their 
office,  and  how  much  mischief  they 
may  be  the  authors  of  to  their  flocks, 
by  attending  archery  meetings.  As 
to  balls  and  theatres,  these,  of  course — 
as  in  his  day  they  were  tabooed  by 
many  even  of  the  non-Puritan  laity — 
he  does  not  discuss.  Probably  he 
would  have  thought  any  clergyman 
as  deserving,  at  the  least,  suspension 
who  meditated  taking  part  in  such 
amusements.  He  seems  to  have  ap- 
proved of  fishing,  which  he  describes 
as  a  "  quiet,  meditative  pursuit,  and 
which,  therefore,"  he  adds,  "  may 
without  impropriety  be  enjoyed  by 
the  clergyman."  But  time  and  theo- 
logy have  alike  changed  since  the 
vicar  of  Heversham  wrote  his  once 
celebrated  volume.  Indeed  it  seems 
hard  to  say  now  what  a  clergyman 
may  not  do,  that  is,  consistently 
with  proper  attention  to  his  own 
special  work.  As  regards  the  theatre, 
at  any  rate,  it  is  difficult  to  understand 
why,  if  he  may  be  present  at  a  re- 
presentation of  a  play  in  a  private 
house,  or  during  a  "  reading "  given 
by  an  eminent  actor,  a  clergyman 
should  not  see  the  same  play  more 
adequately  performed  in  public  by 
professionals,  than  it  can  be  in 
private  by  amateurs,  or  witness  one 
of  the  great  impersonations  of  the 
eminent  actor's.  There  appear  only 
two  arguments  which  can  be  brought 
forward  in  defence  of  such  a  pro- 
position. One  is,  that  it  is  not  the 
representation  of  a  play  which  is 
so  objectionable,  but  the  adjuncts  of 
the  theatre,  and  the  support  which 
the  attendance  of  respectable  people 
at  the  theatre  gives  to  those  whose 
moral  character  is  unworthy  of  it. 
The  other  is,  that  a  clergyman  should 
have  no  time  for  such  amusements ; 
that  the  indulging  in  them  tends  to 
unfit  him  for  his  work ;  that  such 
amusements  are  often  in  their  effect 
contrary  to  the  results  at  which  he 
should  ever  be  aiming.  The  former  of 
these  arguments  will  be  better  dealt 

K   K   2 


500 


The  Clergy  and  the  Theatre. 


with  by  and  by.  But  the  latter  seems 
to  prove  too  much.  Carried  out  to  its 
logical  results,  it  would  assert  that  a 
clergyman  should  not  engage  in  amuse- 
ment at  all ;  for  there  seems  to  be  no 
reason  why  a  play  should  unfit  the 
clergyman,  who  likes  seeing  one,  for 
his  work,  any  more  than  a  visit  to  the 
Royal  Academy,  which  is  always  held  to 
be  quite  admissible,  should  hinder  the 
labours  of  him  who  is  fond  of  pictures. 
No  doubt  there  is  a  party  in  the  Church 
of  England  who  would  like  to  see  the 
clergy  withdrawn  from  amusement 
altogether  —  who  would  prefer  that 
their  life  should  be  taken  up  with 
saying  offices  and  so  forth.  All  that 
need  be  said  in  reply  to  that  is,  that 
as  it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a  world, 
so  it  takes  all  kinds  of  clergy  to  make 
a  Church  of  England.  There  is  no 
objection  to  those  who  prefer  saying 
offices  to  any  other  mode  of  spending 
their  leisure  time,  so  passing  it ;  but 
they  must  not  try  to  make  their  way 
of  carrying  out  their  ordination  vows 
the  rule  for  everybody.  If  the  Church 
of  England  is  a  social  institution — 
if  the  clergy  accordingly  have  to 
mix  with  the  laity,  it  must  surely 
be  left  to  public  opinion  and  the 
general  good  sense  of  the  clergy  them- 
selves— a  good  sense  which  we  may 
confidently  hope  intercourse  with  the 
laity  will  in  every  way  deepen,  even 
if  it  does  not  create  it, — to  prevent 
either  an  exaggerated  importance 
being  attached  to  amusements  in 
general,  or  to  particular  forms  of 
amusement  being  indulged  to  the 
detriment  of  the  ministry  or  to  the 
scandal  of  congregations. 

(3.)  Our  third  point  is  that  the 
iJieatre  exists,  and,  in  all  human  cer- 
tainty, will  continue  to  exist.  Those 
who  object  to  the  theatre  will  hardly 
bring  forward  any  argument  to  show 
that  the  desire  for  witnessing  his- 
trionic performances,  or  the  faculty 
for  producing  them,  belongs  neces- 
sarily to  a  depraved  state  of  society, 
or  to  a  low  ebb  of  moral  sensibility. 
Such  desires  and  such  faculties,  how- 
ever they  may  be  abused  and  mis- 


employed, have  been  shown  over  and* 
over  again  to  be  inherent  in  human 
nature.  The  argument  which  is  usu- 
ally brought  against  the  theatre  is  the 
one  which  we  hinted  at  above,  viz., 
that  its  adjuncts  are  objectionable, 
and  that  it  directly  tends  to  foster, 
immorality.  "We  may  grant,"  ob- 
jectors say,  "  that  a  good  play  well 
performed  is  not  merely  a  pleasurable, 
but  a  useful  thing ;  but  of  how  many 
plays  now  being  performed  in  London 
could  you  affirm  this  character  ?  And 
your  actors  and  actresses,  what  kind 
of  people  are  they  ?  what  sort  of  lives 
do  they  lead  ?  what  is  there  to  en- 
courage them  to  take  a  worthy  view 
of  their  profession,  or  of  life  in  general  ? 
Will  you  assert  that  the  morals  of 
the  most  of  them  will  bear  looking 
into?  Even  if  the  plays,  some  of 
them,  may  be  pronounced  harmless — 
even  if  those  who  perform  them  do 
not  offend  decency  and  outrage  mo- 
rality before  the  curtain,  what  takes 
place  behind  it,  in  the  green-room  1 ''' 
This  statement  contains  two  argu- 
ments which  are  worth  a  little  exami- 
nation— the  one  that  actors  are  a  great 
deal  worse  away  from,  than  in  the 
presence  of,  the  public  ;  the  other 
that,  whatever  the  theatre  is  capable 
of  becoming,  in  London,  at  any  rate, 
the  stage  is  in  a  degraded  condition. 

With  regard  to  the  former  argument, 
we  may  reply  that  people  are  too  ready 
tacitly  to  assume  that  an  actor  or  a 
singer  belongs  to  the  rag-tag-and-bob- 
tail  of  society.  People,  in  speaking  of 
such  persons,  do  not  always  speak  that 
which  they  know  ;  or,  if  they  do  know 
that  which  is  to  the  detriment  of  cer- 
tain actors,  they  do  not  take  the  trouble 
to  distinguish  between  individuals,  but 
take  for  granted  that  ex  uno  disce 
omnes.  For  example,  we  have  heard 
some  people  speak  exactly  in  the  same 
terms  of  such  eminent  artists  and  such 
worthy  members  of  society  as  Herr 
•Joachim  and  Mr.  Irving,  as  we  have 
heard  others  speak  of  those  public 
performers  whose  morals  would  per- 
haps not  bear  a  close  inspection.  As 
a  rule,  we  may  assume  that  persons 


The  Clergy  and  the  Theatre. 


501 


who  speak  in  this  sweeping  and  indis- 
criminating  way,  do  not  know  what 
they  are  talking  about.  But  if  they 
did,  their  objections  would  prove  too 
much.  If  they  say  that  it  is  not  what 
takes  place  on  the  stage,  but  what 
takes  place  behind  it,  which  makes 
them  shrink  from  encouraging  the 
theatre,  we  have  a  right  to  reply  that 
they  have  no  right  to  single  out  the 
theatre  for  attack,  and  exempt  from 
their  diatribe  not  merely  the  other 
artistic  professions,  but  social  life  in 
general.  If  it  is  not  what  a  man  is 
as  you  know  him,  but  what  he  is  when 
you,  as  it  were,  don't  know  him — • 
when  he  is  behind  your  back — which 
is  to  influence  you  in  applauding  him 
or  in  denouncing  him,  then  where 
consistently  can  you  draw  the  line  'I 
When  you  visit  the  Royal  Academy, 
you  should,  if  you  have  the  courage  of 
your  convictions,  look  into  the  private 
life  of  every  one  of  the  artists  whose 
productions  decorate  its  walls,  lest  un- 
wittingly you  be  encouraging  by  your 
presence  and  approval  a  man  whose 
personal  life  you  would  feel  bound  to 
condemn ;  nay,  further,  in  society,  you 
should,  in  all  fairness,  before  you  de- 
scend from  the  drawing-room  to  the 
dining-room,  inquire  into  the  previous 
history  of  each  one  of  your  neighbours, 
in  order  to  avoid  sitting  down  with, 
and  thereby  recognising,  some  out- 
rager  of  morality !  The  fact  is,  that 
we  are  bound  to  say  of  actors  and 
actresses,  as  we  say  of  our  neighbours, 
that  life  is  too  short  for  rigorous  ex- 
aminations into  the  past  doings  of 
those'  we  casually  meet ;  that  so  long 
as  we  know  nothing,  we  have  no  right 
to  assume  anything ;  that  if  people  are 
civil  and  agreeable,  it  is  our  duty  to 
meet  them  in  a  like  spirit,  and  to  think 
the  best  of  them.  And  further :  if  we 
are  to  judge  by  hearsay  of  actors  and 
actresses,  it  is  only  a  foregone  conclu- 
sion which  can  make  us  decide  against 
them ;  for  if  we  hear  one  man  de- 
nounce an  actor,  another  is  sure  to 
tell  us  that  he  met  the  reprobated 
individual  abroad,  at  St.  Moritz  or  at 


Miirren,  and  found  him  a  most  agree- 
able well-informed  person. 

There  is  more  to  be  said  for  the 
other  argument,  i.e.,  that  the  London 
stage  is  in  a  degraded  condition.  That, 
we  fear,  is  an  incontrovertible  fact, 
Well,  admit  that  it  is;  admit  that 
low  and  vulgar  are  mild  terms  to 
apply  to  many  of  the  entertainments 
which  are  at  present  popular ;  admit 
that  the  current  tendency  of  the  stage, 
as  far  as  the  public  is  concerned,  is  to 
make  immorality  familiar,  and,  as  far 
as  the  theatre  itself  is  concerned,  to 
make,  in  contradistinction  to  what 
has  been  said  above,  the  institution  as 
it  exists  in  practice — the  world  of 
employes,  of  ballet-girls  and  supers — a 
perfect  sink  of  iniquity ;  admit,  with 
Cardinal  Manning,  that  every  place  of 
theatrical  representation,  from  the 
opera  house  to  the  penny  gaff,  is  a 
link  in  the  vast  chain  of  vice  with 
which  the  world  is  compassed — and 
what  follows1?  Surely  this — that  we 
are  in  the  presence  of  a  mass  of  evil 
towards  which  it  behoves  us  to  bear 
something  else  than  a  mere  indifferent 
attitude.  Surely  we  should  either  try 
to  accomplish  the  impossible  by  sup- 
pressing the  theatre  altogether,  or 
attempt — what  is  more  likely  to  be 
successful — the  reformation  of  it  and 
its  surroundings.  But  reform  can  be 
promoted  in  only  one  way,  and  that 
is  by  the  agency  of  public  opinion.  It 
can  do  for  the  stage  what  it  has  done 
for  the  gaol  and  the  workhouse.  It 
can  influence  the  theatre  as  it  has 
influenced  the  drinking  customs  of 
the  upper  classes  of  society.  Public 
opinion,  it  is  true,  will  not  affect 
details;  and  the  stage  requires  par- 
ticular as  well  as  general  improve- 
ment. But  let  public  opinion  give  the 
impulse,  and  specific  reforms  will 
follow  as  a  matter  of  course.  In 
London  there  may  still  be  found,  we 
will  say,  three  or  four  theatres  where 
the  plays  are  unobjectionable.  It  will 
be,  we  think,  by  the  public  who  care 
for  the  theatre  giving  an  honest 
support  to  those  establishments  that 
something  towards  the  resuscitation 


502 


The  Clergy  and  the  Theatre. 


of  the  stage  and  of  the  actor's  pro- 
fession may  be  effected.  It  will  be 
by  patronising  those  houses  where 
the  art — if  it  is  not  of  the  best, 
has  at  any  rate  a  tendency  to 
become  good — it  will  be  by  shunning 
those  houses  where  the  staple  of  the 
entertainment  consists  in  appeals  either 
to  the  passions  or  to  the  vulgarity  of 
the  audience ;  it  will  be  by  extending 
the  right  hand  of  fellowship  to  those 
actors  and  actresses  who  are  truly  en- 
deavouring to  dignify  and  elevate  their 
profession,  by  endeavouring  to  lead  all 
actors  and  actresses  whatsoever  to 
consider  that  art  consists  in  something 
else  than  in  the  ability  to  dance  a 
cancan  or  to  sing  a  topical  song ;  it 
will  be  by  these  remedies,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  many  others  upon  which  in 
this  paper  we  are  not  called  upon  to 
touch,  that  we  shall  help  to  place 
on  a  proper  footing  that  which  must 
exist,  and  which  must  either  become 
better  and  better,  higher  and  higher ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  worse  and 
worse,  lower  and  lower.  And  with 
this  principle  in  view  there  seems  to 
us  to  be  no  reason  why  clergymen 
should  not  attend  the  theatre.  If 
they  would  not  merely  speak  of  the 
stage  as  the  Bishop  of  Manchester  has 
done,  but  take  a  step  which  he,  appa- 
rently, has  some  reason  for  not  taking 
— i.e.,  witness  in  person  the  plays  they 
recommend — they  might,  it  seems  to 
us,  do  much  not  merely  to  elevate  and 
extend  the  influence  of  the  stage  in 
this  country,  but  do  much  to  purify 
public  morality,  and  to  put  to  the 
blush  all  that  offends  against  it. 

(4.)  For,  to  come  to  our  last  point, 
necessity  is  laid  upon  the  clergy  to 
have  opinions  about  such  places  and 
the  frequenting  of  them. — We  remem- 
ber once  hearing  the  story  of  how  an 
excellent  clergyman,  a  High  Church 
man,  a  member  of  the  council  of  the 
English  Church  Union,  was  enabled  to 
introduce  a  reform  into  a  circus  which 
he  had  visited  with  his  children.  He 
was  shocked  with  the  profanity  of  one 
of  the  jokes  made  by  the  clown ;  and 
after  the  performance  he  wrote  to  the 


manager  stating  what  he  objected  to, 
and  pointing  out  to  him  how  much  ex- 
ception was  taken,  owing  to  practices 
of  this  sort,  by  excellent  people  to  the 
theatre  in  general.  The  manager  in 
reply  thanked  him  cordially  for  his 
note,  assured  him  that  he  had  taken 
care  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  what 
had  been  complained  of,  and  ended  by 
saying  how  much  he  wished  that 
respectable  people  would  visit  the 
theatre  and  promote  the  welfare  of 
such  establishments  by  their  com- 
ments and  suggestions.  It  seems  to 
us  that  this  story  shows  clearly  how 
useful  it  is  for  the  clergy  to  have  an 
opinion  upon  the  theatre,  based  upon 
personal  knowledge,  for  the  sake  both 
of  those  who  perform  in  it  and  of 
those  who  frequent  it.  There  is  no 
saying  how  much  impropriety  they 
might  be  able  to  check — how  high  a 
standard  they  might  be  able  to  insist 
on ;  they  cannot  tell  how  far  they 
might  be  able  to  strengthen  and  to 
assist  the  weaker  consciences  of  their 
flock,  by  being  able  to  speak  from 
experience  on  such  matters, — by  let- 
ting it  be  seen  that  men,  whose  calling 
is  the  most  solemn,  who  have  to 
engage  on  work  the  most  important 
and  serious  which  can  occupy  human 
beings,  can  give  their  attention  to 
that  which  might  at  first  sight  appear 
to  be  trivial  and  beneath  their  notice, 
but  which,  after  all,  has  perhaps  the 
most  important  influence  upon  public 
morality.  We  remember  the  present 
Master  of  the  Temple  being  severely 
taken  to  task  in  the  Guardian  for 
sending  his  Sunday-school  children  to 
a  circus  which  happened  to  be  visiting 
Doncaster  on  the  occasion  of  their 
annual  treat.  He  was  able,  of  course, 
to  take  very  good  care  of  himself; 
but  not  the  least  important  of  his 
remarks,  and  the  one  which  bears 
upon  our  present  subject,  was  this  : 
"  That  it  behoved  clergymen,  with 
regard  to  amusements,  to  be  as  dili- 
gent in  commending  what  was  good 
as  they  were  in  reprobating  what  was 
bad."  He  seemed,  in  other  words,  to 
have  said  what  we  are  urging  here, 


The  Clergy  and  the  Theatre. 


503 


that  it  behoves  the  clergy  to  know 
what  they  are  talking  about.  It  is 
because  their  experience  in  such 
matters  is  so  slender  that  the  clergy 
have  so  little  influence  with  their 
flocks  in  respect  of  the  real  difficulties 
of  life.  They  may  be  great  in  theologi- 
cal subtlety;  they  can  preach  a  sermon 
upon  faith,  they  can  distinguish  be- 
tween justification  and  sanctitication ; 
they  can  discourse  eloquently  upon 
matters  which,  as  a  rule,  trouble 
nobody;  but  with  regard  to  practical 
matters — the  thousand  and  one  things 
concerning  which  people  would  be 
truly  grateful  for  a  word  of  sober, 
sensible  advice — they  have,  in  general, 
nothing  to  say  worth  listening  to,  and 
this  for  the  best  of  all  reasons — be- 
cause they  know  nothing.  Young 
people  look  back  upon  their  confirma- 
tions; they  say  "they  were  taught 
nothing  then  which  made  an  impres- 
sion upon  them ;  that  the  view  of  life 
which  was  set  before  them  was  an 
unreal  view ;  that  the  clergyman  who 
prepared  them  seemed  to  have  no  sort 
of  sympathy  with  them."  Farmer's 
lads  in  a  village  say  "  they  don't  take 
to  the  parson;  he  don't  seem  to  un- 
derstand poor  folk ;  he  don't  seem  to 
hold  with  what  they  want."  No  one 
can  deny  that  these  charges  are  made, 
and  few  of  us  can  consistently  deny 
the  force  of  them.  As  long  as  the 
duties  of  the  clergy  are  not  confined 


to  the  pulpit — as  long  as  they  are  ex- 
pected to  know  something  of,  and  to 
enter  into,  the  social  life  of  the  people, 
the  latter  will  be  the  real  test  by 
which  they  will  be  judged.  As  we 
have  said  before — if  a  clergyman  can 
show  that  he  takes  an  interest  in,  or 
has  an  opinion  about,  that  which 
moves  and  influences  his  people  upon 
the  six  days  of  the  week,  depend  upon 
it  he  will  never  want  an  audience 
upon  the  first.  If  he  makes  it  clear 
that  the  less  practical  side  of  life 
alone  absorbs  his  attention,  or  that 
his  attention  is  never  bestowed  upon 
those  things  which  invest  that  which 
has  a  tendency  to  become  unreal  with 
a  permanent  and  practical  aspect,  he 
has  no  right  to  complain  that  his 
congregation  is  composed  chiefly  of 
women; — young  and  old;  sentimental, 
nervous,  and  conservative. 

"We,  of  course,  have  not  touched  on 
many  aspects  of  the  question  which 
this  paper  has  dealt  with;  we  have 
merely  called  attention  to  the  subject. 
Our  object  will  have  been  more  than 
gained  if  we  have,  in  however  small 
a  degree,  helped  people  to  feel  the 
unreal  relation,  upon  which  there  is  a 
tendency  to  insist,  between  the  clergy 
and  the  laity,  and  that  all  honest 
attempts  to  rectify  such  a  state  of 
things  should  be  recognised  and 
encouraged. 

A.  T.  DAVIDSON. 


504 


TWO    SONNETS. 

HER    LAUREATE. 

I  AM,  indeed,  no  theme  with  you  for  song — 
A  poet  you,  yet  not  for  me  your  praise — 
You  crowned  another  woman  with  your  bays, 

Lifting  your  voice  to  Heaven,  triumphant,  strong, 

And  fear  by  future  rhymes  to  do  her  wrong : 
If  I  should  walk  beside  you  in  your  ways 
An  echo  would  pursue  us  from  old  days, 

And  men  would  say,  "  He  loved  once,  and  for  long  ! 

So  now  without  great  love  he  is  content, 

Since  she  is  dead  for  whom  he  used  to  sing, 

And  daily  needs  demand  their  aliment." 

Thus  some  poor  bird  who.  strives  with   broken  wing 

To  soar,  then  stoops,  strength  gone  and  glad  life  spent, 
To  any  hand  that  his  scant  food  will  bring. 


HEREAFTER. 

IN   after  years  a  twilight  ghost  shall  fill 
With  shadowy   presence  all  thy  waiting  room — 
From  lips  of  air  thou  canst  not  kiss  the  bloom, 

Yet  at  old  kisses  will  thy  pulses  thrill, 

And  the  old  longing  that  thou  couldst  not  kill, 
Feeling  her  presence  in  the  gathering  gloom, 
Will  mock  thee  with  the  hopelessness  of  doom, 

While  she  stands  there  and  smiles,  serene  and  still. 

Thou  canst   not  vex  her  then  with  passion's  pain  ; 
Call,  and  the  silence  will  thy  call  repeat, 
But  she  will  smile  there  with  cold  lips  and  sweet, 

Forgetful  of  old  tortures,  and  the  chain 

That  once  she  wore — the  tears  she  wept  in  vain 
At   passing  from  her  threshold  of  thy  feet. 

LOUISE  CHANDLER  MOULTON. 


505 


AN  "ANGLICAN"  VIEW  OF  THE  BURIAL  LAWS. 


ALTHOUGH  the  intricacies  and  "  glori- 
ous uncertainties "    of    the    law    are 
proverbial,  no  one  surely  could  have 
been  prepared'  for  the  brilliant  legal 
paradox    which     has     recently     been 
sprung  upon  the  ecclesiastical  world 
in   the   pages   of  this  magazine.     Its 
authors  are  indeed  no  less  important 
and  estimable  persons  than  the  Mas- 
ter  of  the  Temple  and  the  Dean  of 
Westminster ;     and    their    enterprise 
has  assuredly  been  prompted  by  that 
characteristic  desire  to  promote  peace 
among  Christians  and  goodwill  among 
all    men  for  which   their  names  are 
held  in  universal  honour.     And  yet 
it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  their 
amiable  effort  is  destined  to  be  crowned 
with  success.      Like   other   attempts 
at  premature  conciliation,  it  is  far  less 
likely  to  heal  than  to  embitter  with  new 
acrimony    the  miserable  strife  which 
has   of    late   years  been  forced  upon 
the  Church  of  England.      Dissenters 
will  be  buoyed  up  with  fresh  hopes  of 
obtaining,    through  the   aid  of   these 
powerful  allies,  a  conclusive  and  crush- 
ing  victory  for    the  one   idea  which 
now  possesses  them — Disestablishment ; 
while  the  clergy  will  stand  aghast  at 
finding  notions  about   "  desecration  " 
attributed  to  them  on  so  high  an  au- 
thority, which  never  once  entered  their 
imagination,  and  at  seeing  the  opinions 
of  almost  the  whole  profession,  on  a 
plain  and   practical  question,  treated 
as  a   practical   joke.     Dean   Stanley, 
they  will  say — the  most  loving  of  men 
— should  know  better  than  to  echo  the 
bitter  taunts  of  hostile    newspapers. 
He  might   easily   learn,  if  he   would 
inquire,  that  no  clergyman  considers 
his  graveyard    "defiled"   by   the  in- 
terment    of     poor    little    unbaptized 
infants     or     shipwrecked    sailors    or 


Christian  Nonconformists,1  nor  yet 
feels  his  freehold  "  invaded  "  by  the 
approach  of  any  persons  whatever  who 
have  a  legal  right  of  burial  there. 
It  is  the  threatened  strife  of  tongues 
and  religions  and  rituals  among  those 
peaceful  graves  that  the  clergy  so 
vehemently  deprecate  as  "defilement : " 
it  is  the  invasion  of  the  secular  power, 
standing  where  it  should  not  and 
meddling  with  what  it  ought  not — 
first  in  the  churchyard  and  afterwards, 
it  is  feared,  in  the  church — that  they 
regard  as  an  emblem  of  coming  deso- 
lation. Were  the  churchyards  not  so 
closely  connected  with  the  churches  as 
they  are,  little  or  no  objection  would 
be  raised  to  their  transfer  under 
state  control.  Nay,  such  transfer 
would  probably,  in  many  cases,  be 
heartily  welcomed.  Else,  why  the 
present  clerical  demand  for  rural 
cemeteries  where  all  denominations 
would  be  buried  side  by  side,  each 
with  their  own  rites,  under  the  gua- 
rantee and  guardianship  of  the  civil 
power  1 

But  this  is  by  no  means  all  that 
has  to  be  said.  The  "  discovery,"  to 
which  public  attention  and  criticism  has 
now  been  invited,  purports  to  be  a  legal 
discovery.  It  must  therefore  be  dis- 
cussed on  legal  grounds ;  and  its  argu- 
ments must  be  confronted  with  the 
well-known  and  established  maxims 


1  The  present  writer  has  been  in  Holy  Orders 
for  thirty  years  ;  and  he  has  never  once  heard, 
from  any  clergyman  in  any  part  of  the  country, 
the  expression  of  any  feelings  about  "defile- 
ment" of  churchyards  by  Nonconformist 
burials  there.  He  has  also  consulted  many 
clergymen  of  larger  and  wider  experience 
than  his  own,  and  he  has  invariably  found 
that  they  indignantly  repudiated,  for  them- 
selves and  for  all  their  acquaintance,  this 
unworthy  imputation. 


506 


An  "Anglican"  View  of  the  Burial  Laws. 


of  English  law.  Will  it  bear  the. 
light  which  such  an  investigation 
would  throw  upon  it1?  It  is  here 
maintained  that  it  would  not.  But  to 
answer  the  question  fairly,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  examine  veiy  closely  what  it 
is  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  "  dis- 
covered." And  on  careful  scrutiny 
the  discovery  appears  to  amount  to 
this  :  that  every  sort  of  heterogeneous 
funeral  rite  is,  at  the  present  moment 
and  under  the  existing  law,  permissible 
in  the  churchyards  of  this  country, 
because  everything  is  lawful  to  be  done 
in  England  which  is  not  expressly  for- 
bidden to  be  done  by  a  Statute  of  the 
Realm.  It  seems  indeed  hardly  credible 
that  a  legal  maxim  should  be  announced 
as  a  "  discovery,"  which  would  virtu- 
ally involve  the  abolition  of  the  whole 
Common  law  system  of  jurisprudence 
in  this  land.  Yet  it  is  capable  of 
proof  that  such  is  the  unsound  legal 
basis  upon  which  the  present  paradox 
has  been  constructed.  The  premiss 
is  repeatedly  laid  down  :  "  There  is  no 
LAW  expressly  stating  that  you  shall 
not  do  this  or  that ;  "  and  then  the 
inference  is  triumphantly  drawn, 
"  therefore  you  are  perfectly  at  liberty 
to  do  it."  "  Show  us,"  it  is  said,  "  the 
statute  or  canon,  chapter  and  verse, 
which  would  justify  the  clergyman  in 
preventing  the  interment  or  the  cere- 
mony." It  is  demanded,  "  Is  there  or 
is  there  not  any  statute  law  ?  If  there 
be,  let  it  be  pointed  out.  No  mere 
dictum  will  suffice  of  some  ecclesiasti- 
cal judge,  denouncing  a  Dissenting  in- 
terment as  an  unwarrantable  intrusion 
[unwarranted,  that  is,  by  the  established 
customs  of  this  Church  and  Realm]. 
What  we  ask  is,  How  will  such  a 
dictum  fare  in  the  refiner's  fire  of  a 
Court  of  Final  Appeal,  when  all  the 
legislation  of  the  last  half  century  will 
be  taken  into  view  1  " 

We  Anglicans  think  it  will  fare 
very  well.  We  do  not  conceive  of 
English  law  as  consisting  wholly,  or 
mainly,  of  Statutes.  In  our  view, 
"  law "  is  no  artificial  production, 
made  by  the  motu  projrrio  of  Parlia- 
ment or  Sovereign.  We  regard  it 


rather  as  the  great  silent  current  of 
the  nation's  habitual  life,  which  ac- 
quires expression  and  utterance  from 
time  to  time,  as  occasion  demands, 
in  "  statutes  of  the  realm."  It  is  by 
the  great  stream  of  their  common 
customs  that  nations  live,  and  their 
"statutes"  are  but  variable  patches 
of  such  custom,  fixed  and  made  per- 
manent for  a  season — as  patches  of 
floating  ice  are  nothing  more  than 
solid  portions  of  the  stream  on  which 
they  float.  For  the  correctness  of 
this  view  we  have  so  high  an  autho- 
rity as  that  of  Lord  Mackenzie,  who 
says  that  "  customs  founded  on  general 
consent  are  the  first  rudiments  of 
jurisprudence ;  and,  when  legislation 
is  resorted  to,  it  is  generally  to  con- 
firm, add  to,  or  modify,  rather  than  to 
supersede,  these  primitive  usages." x 
Any  other  view  of  Law  than  this,  we 
take  it,  belongs  to  a  despotic  rather 
than  to  a  free  constitution.  Accord- 
ingly, the  Final  Court  of  Appeal — if 
we  may  base  an  opinion  upon  its 
recent  decisions — lays  the  very  greatest 
stress  upon  custom.  It  has  even  gone 
so  far  as  to  throw  over  a  plain  statute, 
quoted  on  the  front  page  of  every 
Prayer-book  in  the  kingdom,  because 
it  had  been  melted  away  (so  to  speak) 
by  a  long-standing  custom  to  the 
contrary.  The  clergy,  therefore,  need 
not  be  in  the  least  afraid  of  the  Final 
Court  of  Appeal  on  this  burial  ques- 
tion. They  may  rest  assured  it  will 
always  judge,  as  English  judges  should, 
by  "statute"  where  statute  exists, 
and  by  long-established  "custom" — 
not  by  the  rule  of  promiscuous  licence 
or  chaotic  laissez  faire  —  wherever 
statute  does  not  exist ;  and  they  may 
feel  secure  that  their  sacred  trust 
(their  "freehold,"  as  it  is  invidiously 
called)  will  not  be  wrenched  from 
them  by  any  unkind  surprise,  until  at 
least  their  Lordships  shall  have  been 
persuaded  that  four  negatives  ("no 
law  exists  ")  are  as  good  as  one  posi- 
tive legal  enactment ;  in  short  (as  the 
saying  is),  that  "  four  white  rabbits 
are  equivalent  to  one  white  horse." 
1  Studies  in  Eoman  Law,  p.  4. 


An  "Anglican"  View  of  the  Burial  Laws. 


507 


But  stay  1  We  may  have  gone  too 
fast.  It  would  seem  that  a  certain 
amount  of  "  custom ' '  really  is  pleaded 
in  the  paper  before  us.  It  behoves 
us,  therefore,  to  look  very  carefully 
into  the  matter.  We  must  watch 
with  keen  attention  this  newly-found 
stream  of  English  habitudes ;  we  must 
trace  up  to  its  source  this  important 
element  discovered  among  the  paro- 
chial customs  of  the  country,  which  is 
to  establish  by  law,  and  to  assert  as 
our  heritage  for  ever,  the  happy  reign 
of  chaos  and  of  "every  man  in  his 
humour"  beneath  the  eaves  of  our 
grand  old  parish  churches.  Strangely 
enough,  however,  we  begin  with  a 
gap.  The  customary  parish  life  of 
the  last  generation  or  two  must 
surely  be  well  known  to  the  15,000 
clergymen  and  30,000  laymen  who 
have  recently  petitioned  against  their 
alteration.  Well,  we  will  go  back  a 
century  farther.  But  there  we  find 
the  clearest  evidence — in  Calamy's 
Nonconformists'  Memorial,  and  in  the 
solitary  gravestones  of  Puritans  and 
others,  who  preferred  to  lie  in  fields 
and  gardens  rather  than  come  under 
the  restrictions  of  the  parish  church- 
yard— that  no  such  licence  was  known, 
at  least  in  their  day.  We  ascend, 
then,  higher  still.  But  the  customs 
of  the  Reformation  period  are  per- 
fectly clear,  not  only  from  the  general 
history  and  legislation  of  those  times, 
but  notably  from  a  curious  law  of 
1606  (3  James  I.,  cap.  5),  which  ex- 
pressly forbade  all  '•  recusants" — too 
unconscious,  it  would  seem,  of  the 
splendid  liberty  now  discovered  for 
them — to  evade  the  parish  church- 
yard, with  its  unwelcome  but  estab- 
lished and  inevitable  ritual.  Passing 
on  to  the  Middle  Ages,  we  find  in  the 
Sarum  Manual,  in  Lyndwood's  Pro- 
vinciale,  and  in  Wilkins's  Concilia, 
abundant  evidence  of  our  English 
burial  customs  at  that  time.  But  we 
find  even  more.  We  light  upon  a 
positive  legal  maxim  to  this  effect 
(35  Edw.  I.,  cap.  4): — "Forasmuch 
as  a  churchyard  is  the  soil  of  a  church, 
and  what  is  planted  therein  belongeth 


to  the  soil,  it  must  needs  follow,"  &c. 
Perhaps  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  back 
to  yet  earlier  times,  when  the  National 
Church  was  committed  to  a  stricter 
obedience  to  the  foreign  maxims  of 
the  Roman  law.  But  if  we  do,  we 
shall  find  ourselves  still  haunted  by 
similar  evidence  of  the  fixed  and  estab- 
lished customs  of  Christendom.  We 
shall  read  in  the  Theodosian  Code  a 
law  about  "asylum,"  on  which  Van 
Espen  comments  as  follows  : — "  Hoc 
totum  spatium  [i.e.,  the  '  septum  eccle- 
sise,'  the  fore- court  of  the  church], 
subjaciens  adjaciens  Templo,  haud 
aliter  quam  ipsum  Templum,  asylo 
cedere  vult"  (V.  E.,  iv.,  Part  2,  p.  68). 
And  now,  in  the  face  of  all  this 
overwhelming  evidence  of  a  well- 
established  custom  to  the  contrary, 
what — we  ask  with  profound  curiosity 
— has  been  advanced  in  the  learned 
paper  before  us,  to  prove  so  rooted  a 
custom  in  England  of  unrestricted 
ritual  freedom  in  her  parish  grave- 
yards, that  nothing  more  need  be 
done  to  legalise  it  ?  Will  it  be  be- 
lieved that  the  only  fragments  of 
evidence  offered  us  are  the  follow- 
ing: —  (1)  That  no  clergyman  custom- 
arily raises  any  objection  to  the  silent 
interment  of  unbaptized  infants,  nor 
yet  to  the  silent  interment  of  suicides 
there.  The  paper,  by  some  oversight, 
also  refers  to  the  interment  of  un- 
known corpses  cast  up  by  the  sea ; 
forgetting  that,  by  express  statute 
(48  Geo.  III.,  cap.  75,  §  2),  it  is  pro- 
vided that,  in  all  such  cases,  "  the 
minister,  clerk,  &c.,  shall  perform 
their  several  and  respective  duties  as 
is  customary  at  other  funerals."  Yet 
these  cases  are  adduced  to  help  out  the 
proof  that  vocal  heterogeneous  ritual 
is  allowed  by  the  Burial  Law  of  Eng- 
land. (2)  The  second  piece  of  evid- 
ence offered  is  this  :  That  hymns  have 
frequently  been  permitted  at  church 
funerals ;  and  that  in  cemeteries, 
where,  of  course,  the  clergyman's  in- 
terest and  power  in  keeping  order  are 
at  their  minimum,  even  addresses 
have  been  delivered  ;  as,  for  instance, 
over  Mr.  Odger's  grave  in  New 


508 


An  "Anglican"   View  of  the  Burial  Laics. 


Brompton  cemetery.  (3)  The  third 
piece  of  evidence  is  far  more  bold  and 
trenchant.  It  plainly  affirms  at  last 
the  existence  of  a  custom  which,  if 
well  established  and  widely  known, 
should  terminate  the  whole  contro- 
versy. It  maintains  that  "  Noncon- 
formists have  interred  their  dead  in 
our  churchyards  with  their  own 
services."  Here  then  we  have  the 
proof,  which  has  hitherto  been  so 
conspicuously  absent.  It  is  clear  that, 
if  this  be  of  frequent  occurrence 
throughout  the  country,  the  15,000 
parish  clergy  have  all  been  mistaken 
about  their  parish  customs ;  and  that, 
without  knowing  it,  England  now 
stands  committed  by  her  common  law 
to  unrestricted  funeral  independency. 
Let  the  30,000  laymen  look  to  it,  for 
they  stand  liable  to  be  condemned, 
with  heavy  costs,  if  they  presume  to 
support  an  action  against  any  sort  of 
ritual  intrusion — Romanist  or  Secu- 
larist, Heathen  or  Christian,  Budd- 
hist, Parsee,  or  Confucian — in  the  quiet 
precincts  of  their  parish  churchyard. 
But  what  is  our  surprise,  on  casting 
one  more  despairing  glance  at  the 
paper  in  our  hands,  to  find  that  the 
alleged  burial  customs  of  England 
are  evidenced  in  this  paper  in  the 
following  curious  manner :  "It  has 
been  publicly  stated  by  the  Rector  of 
St.  Heller's,  Jersey,  that  now  for 
many  years  Nonconformists  and 
Romanists  have  used  their  own  cere- 
monies in  the  interment  of  their  own 
dead."  Well,  but  Jersey  is  not 
England.  It  is  the  very  island  of 
which  Blackstone  takes  pains  to  warn 
us  :  "  They  are  governed  by  their  own 
laws,  which  are  for  the  most  part  the 
ducal  customs  of  Normandy."1  Why 
then  take  us  there,  unless  under 
serious  distress  for  proof  more  to  the 
purpose  ?  But  we  look  again  :  "  Lord 
Plunket  said  :  there  is  no  law  in  exist- 
ence (in  Ireland)  which  prohibits  the 
performance  of  Dissenting  rites  in  a 
Protestant  churchyard."  The  ques- 
tion, however,  is  not  about  law  in 
Ireland,  but  about  custom  in  England. 
1  Warren's  Extracts,  p.  50. 


We  are  next  taken  to  Kensal  Green 
cemetery,  where  one  day,  it  appears, 
"a  highly-respected  Russian  priest 
was  interred  in  the  consecrated  por- 
tion with  a  service  partly  consisting 
of  our  own  Liturgy  and  partly  of 
prayers  from  the  Greek  office."  No 
"benevolent  connivance"  could  be 
more  innocent  or  more  natural !  But 
what  bearing  it  has  upon  the  estab- 
lished burial  customs  in  English 
churchyards  it  is  indeed  hard  to  make 
out.  One  more  crowning  evidence, 
however,  is  in  reserve.  "  On  Monday 
morning  (1811),  about  nine  o'clock, 
the  remains  of  the  late  Turkish  Am- 
bassador were  interred  in  the  burial- 
ground  of  St.  Pancras.  The  proces- 
sion consisted  of  a  hearse,  containing 
the  body,  covered  with  white  satin, 
&c.  On  arriving  at  the  ground,  the 
body  was  taken  out  of  a  white  deal 
shell,  and,  according  to  Mahometan 
custom,  was  wrapped  in  rich  robes  and 
thrown  into  the  grave.  After  some 
other  Mahometan  ceremonies,  the 
attendants  left  the  ground.  The  pro- 
cession, on  its  way  to  the  churchyard, 
galloped  nearly  all  the  way."  Such, 
then,  are  the  burial  customs  of  Eng- 
land. Such  are  the  "  discoveries  "  by 
which  we  are  to  be  induced  to  believe 
that,  by  English  law  and  English 
custom,  our  beautiful  and  tranquil 
churchyards,  in  every  town  and 
country  parish  throughout  the  land, 
are  open  at  any  moment  to  the  in- 
troduction of  alien  rites,  and  to  the 
performance  of  any  heathenish  and 
unheard-of  ceremonies  that  it  may 
please  a  romantic  mourner  to  suggest, 
or  an  imaginative  undertaker  to 
invent. 

When  will  Englishmen  come  to  see 
that,  not  in  defence  of  their  own 
rights,  not  in  uncharitable  or  unchris- 
tian bigotry,  not  with  any  sidelong 
view  to  their  own  dignity  or  their  own 
purse,  have  almost  the  whole  clerical 
profession  in  this  realm  protested 
(with  a  unanimity,  in  these  days, 
quite  unexampled)  against  the  miser- 
able confusion  of  all  things  sacred  and 
profane,  which  the  legislature  is  now 


An  "Anglican"   View  of  the  Burial  Laws. 


509 


invited  to  sanction  under  the  very 
eaves  and  windows  of  the  parish 
churches  1  The  clergy  are  not  averse 
to  any  reasonable  concession.  They 
ai'e  not  in  the  least  afraid  of  any  con- 
tact with  Christian  Dissenters,  living 
or  dead.  On  the  contrary,  they  urge, 
with  increasing  persistency  and  una- 
nimity, the  extension  of  the  cemetery 
system,  which  involves  such  contact. 
Many  of  them  are  beginning  to  suggest 
entire  disuse  of  "  Consecration "  in 
such  places, — or  at  least  that  separate 
graves,  not  areas,  should  be  thus 
placed  under  the  benediction  of  the 
Church ;  while  the  State  is  entrusted 
with  the  general  guardianship  of  the 
whole  cemetery.  And  some  have  cor- 
dially acceded  to  the  proposal  that  one 
chapel,  and  not  two,  should  hence- 
forth be  constructed  in  all  such  burial- 
grounds  ;  no  objection  whatever  being 
felt  to  the  common  use  of  such  a 
covered-place,  when  no  principle  would 
be  trampled  upon  and  no  foothold  be 
gained  for  acknowledged1  projects  of 
farther  hostile  invasion. 

1  See  The  Liberator,  June,  1875  (Mr.  Griffith) : 
"  They  should  not  only  claim  the  churchyard, 
but  the  use  of  the  church  also  in  the  next 
Bill."  The  Fortnightly  Review,  March,  1876 
(Mr.  Dale):  "The  Liberationists  are  compelled 
to  give  great  prominence  to  the  national  cha- 
racter of  the  Church,  and  to  the  right  of  the 
nation  to  appropriate  Church  property  to  other 
than  ecclesiastical  uses."  The  Nonconformist, 
January  23,  1878  (Mr.  Williams):  "The 
Burial  Question  could  only  be  settled  by  the 


Surely  it  cannot  be  beyond  the  wis- 
dom of  our  statesmen,  in  Convocation 
and  in  Parliament,  to  take  advantage 
of  the  present  favourable  turn  of 
public  feeling,  and — by  some  bold 
measure — to  challenge  the  munificence 
and  moral  courage  of  the  laity  to 
divert  the  danger  that  is  now  threat- 
ening their  Church.  That  danger  is 
plain  ;  and  it  is  imminent.  It  is  this, 
that  the  very  catastrophe  which  men 
like  Lord  Harrowby,  the  Dean  of 
"Westminster,  and  the  Master  of  the 
Temple,  are  the  foremost  to  deprecate, 
should  be  actually  brought  to  pass  by 
the  recklessness  of  their  ecclesiastical 
policy  ;  that  the  15,000  clergy  should, 
in  indignant  despair  at  their  abandon- 
ment and  betrayal,  be  converted  into 
an  irresistible  band  of  Liberationists  ; 
and  so  that  the  engineer  should  finally 
be  "  hoist  with  his  own  petard,"  the 
fatal  horse  be  dragged  within  the 
walls  by  Trojan  hands,  and  "  Plevna  " 
unrelieved  and  left  to  its  fate,  turn 
out,  after  all,  to  have  been  the  last 
bulwark  of  a  ruined  cause. 

G.  H.  CURTEIS. 

clearest  acknowledgment  of  the  right  of 
Englishmen  to  bury  their  dead  in  the  parish 
churchyard.  If  that  was  so,  what  could  they 
say  but  that  the  parish  church  was  also  their 
place  of  worship  ?  .  .  .  All  the  parish  Churches 
existing  before  1811  should  be  handed  over 
to  a  body  chosen  by  the  ratepayers,  to  be 
disposed  of  as  that  body  of  ratepayers  should 
choose." 


510 


ANCIENT  TIMES  AND  ANCIENT  MEN.1 


ON  the  last  occasion  on  which.  I  had 
the  pleasure  of  addressing  this  society, 
I  alluded  to  the  surprising  discoveries 
which  Dr.  Schliemann  was  just  at 
that  moment  making  at  Mykenae. 
I  can  to-day  lay  before  you  a  few 
photographs  which  will  enable  you 
to  form  a  clearer  idea  of  the  exca- 
vations carried  on  by  that  indefati- 
gable treasure-hunter.  I  have  unfor- 
tunately no  picture  to  show  what  the 
hillside  of  Mykense  was  like  before  a 
German  spade  disturbed  the  rubbish 
which  had  accumulated  there  during 
more  than  two  thousand  years;  but  you 
can  from  one  of  the  photographs  form 
a  tolerable  idea  of  the  amount  of  soil 
that  had  to  be  removed  before  we 
could  again  stand  on  the  same  rocky 
ground  on  which  the  kings  of  Mykenae, 
the  ill-fated  Pelopidae  and  Atridae, 
had  once  wandered. 

These  excavations  on  the  hill  of 
Mykense  appear  to  me  to  be  of  far 
greater  importance  to  archaeologists 
and  to  all  who  try  to  decipher  the  earli- 
est pages  in  the  history  of  humanity 
than  the  happy  discovery  made  by 
Dr.  Schliemann  a  few  years  since  at 
Hissarlik.  We  do  not  know,  we  can 
only  guess,  the  historical  significance 
of  the  different  strata  of  houses  at 
Hissarlik ;  and  even  if  we  choose  to 
call  one  of  these  strata  Troy,  we  must 
first  carefully  ascertain  what  we  mean 
by  Troy.  There  is  the  Troy  of  Greek 
tradition,  quite  independent  of  the 
Homeric  poems ;  there  is,  or  there  may 
have  been,  a  real  Troy,  that  formed 
the  centre  of  many  floating  myths ; 
there  is  the  Troy,  as  conceived  and 
localised  in  the  Iliad;  and  there  is, 
lastly,  the  Troy  fixed  upon  by  later 

1  This  address  was  delivered  at  the  meeting 
of  a  literary  society  in  Dresden,  in  the  house 
of  the  Russian  Minister,  Herr  von  Kotzebue, 
on  March  20,  1877. 


antiquaries,  from  the  time  of  Alexander 
to  the  present  day.  According  to  Dr. 
Schliemann,  the  poet  of  the  Iliad  was 
separated  by  2000  years  from  the  real 
Troy,  that  forms  the  second  stratum 
at  Hissarlik,  and  fills  the  soil  from 
twenty-three  to  thirty-three  feet  be- 
low the  surface.  This  gives  an  ample 
allowance  for  the  growth  of  legends, 
and  would  seem  to  make  it  difiicult 
indeed  to  identify  that  subterraneous 
Troy  with  the  poetic  Troy  of  Homer. 

In  Mykenae  the  case  is  different. 
The  ruins  which  we  see  there  are  the 
ruins  of  the  stronghold  which  was 
destroyed  not  later  than  468  B.C., 
and  all  that  Dr.  Schliemann  has 
brought  to  light  from  these  ruins 
gives  to  the  period  before  500  B.C.  on 
Grecian  territory  an  historical  and 
tangible  character  which  it  never  had 
before,  and  which  no  criticism  can 
ever  again  destroy. 

This  discovery  in  Mykense,  then, 
is  true  treasure-trove.  But  you  must 
not  imagine  that  Dr.  Schliemann 
possesses  an  archaeological  divining- 
rod.  That  he  has  been  most  fortunate, 
he  would  himself  allow.  But  he  has 
also  been  a  virfortis  et  tenax  propositi, 
who  deserves,  and  one  does  not  grudge 
it  him,  that  the  goddess  of  fortune 
should  be  propitious  to  his  labours. 
He  did  not  simply  go  to  Mykenae  and 
begin  to  dig  in  any  spot  he  fancied, 
and  so  with  more  good  luck  than  wit 
stumble  on  the  old  royal  graves  of  the 
Pelopidse.  No;  he  had  first  made  it 
clear  to  himself,  from  Pausanias  and 
other  sources,  which  were  the  locali- 
ties in  Greece  where,  at  the  time  of 
Pausanias,  therefore  in  the  second 
century  after  the  birth  of  Christ, 
there  were  traditions  of  the  existence 
of  ancient  graves.  The  old  Greek 
traveller  2  did  not  see  in  the  ruins  of 
2  Pausanias  ii.  16,  4. 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


511 


My  kerne  much  more  than  later  travel- 
lers have  seen.  He  saw  remains  of  the 
walls  which  surrounded  the  Akropolis 
(-epi{3o\og) ,  the  Gate  and  the  Lions, 
such  as  we  see  them  here  in  Dresden, 
in  an  exact  copy.  But  besides  these, 
he  speaks  of  the  spring  Perseia,  which 
rose  in  the  ruins  of  Mykense,  and  of 
the  subterraneous  buildings  of  Atreus 
and  his  children,  in  which  they  kept 
their  treasures ;  of  a  grave  of  Atreus, 
and  of  the  graves  of  those  whom 
jEgisthos  murdered  together  with 
Agamemnon,  at  the  feast,  on  their 
return  from  Ilion.  According  to 
Pausanias,  Agamemnon  had  a  separate 
grave,  as  had  also  his  charioteer,  Eury- 
medon,  whilst  in  another  Teledamos 
and  Pelops  were  buried ;  and  then, 
again,  as  it  appears,  in  a  separate  grave, 
Elektra,  whom  Orestes  is  supposed  to 
have  given  in  marriage  to  his  friend 
Pylades.  Already  at  that  time  there 
were  different  stories  as  to  the  grave 
of  Kassandra.  Whilst  the  twin  sons, 
whom  tradition  says  she  bore  to 
Agamemnon,  Teledamos  and  Pelops, 
and  who  were  murdered  at  a  very 
tender  age  by  ^Egisthos,  were  buried 
in  the  Akropolis  at  Mykense,  it  was 
uncertain  whether  the  grave  of  their 
Trojan  mother  was  to  be  found  at 
Mykense  or  at  Amyklse.  Pausanias 
also  mentions  that  Klytemnestra  and 
^Egisthos  were  buried  at  some  dis- 
tance from  the  circle  of  the  walls, 
because  probably  they  were  not  con- 
sidered worthy  to  lie  nearer  to  those 
whom  they  had  murdered. 

It  was  therefore  clear  that  at  the 
time  of  Pausanias,  there  were  not  only 
graves,  but  treasure-houses  on  the 
Akropolis  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
encircling  walls,  and  that  tradition 
ascribed  these  to  the  race  of  Atreus. 

This  was  the  first  settled  point. 
The  second  was  the  historical  fact, 
that  the  old  town  of  Mykense  was 
finally  destroyed  by  the  Argives  twelve 
years  after  the  battle  of  Thermopylae, 
that  is,  in  the  year  468  B.C.  Argos, 
we  are  told,  would  not  follow  the 
lead  of  Sparta,  and  had  not  therefore 
sent  any  troops  tc  Thermopylae. 


Mykense  is  said  to  have  sent  eighty 
men  to  Thermopylse  and  four  hundred 
to  Platsese,  together  with  the  Tiryn- 
thians.  For  this,  or  for  some 
other  reason,  a  jealousy  is  supposed 
to  have  arisen  between  Argos  and  the 
once  famous  Mykense,  which  twelve 
years  later  led  to  a  war  between  the 
neighbouring  cities,  and  ended  in  the 
reduction  of  Mykense,  chiefly  by 
famine,  and  its  final  destruction. 

These  were  the  two  settled  points 
on  which  Schliemann  built  his  calcu- 
lations. 

Between  468  B.C.  and  150  A.D.  no- 
thing of  any  importance  happened  at 
Mykense.  The  antiquities,  therefore, 
which  are  found  under  the  rubbish  on 
the  hill  must,  if  they  are  of  any  age  at 
all,  be  older  than  about  500  B.C.,  that 
is,  they  must  belong  to  a  period  during 
which,  as  yet,  we  know  but  little  con- 
cerning true  Greek  history  and  art. 
By  the  expression,  "  if  they  are  of  any 
age  at  all,"  I  do  not  intend  any  would- 
be  learned  doubt.  I  only  wish  to  point 
out  that  Dr.  Schliemann  must  have 
been  prepared,  either  to  find  no  graves 
at  all,  or  to  find  nothing  in  the  graves, 
or  lastly,  and  this  had  been  also  main- 
tained, to  find  that  the  old  graves  had 
been  plundered,  and  used  again  in  the 
old  Byzantine  epoch  for  new  inter- 
ments. So  far  as  the  facts  are  yet 
brought  to  light,  a  really  scientific 
denial  of  the  great  age  of  the  treasures 
found  in  the  graves  seems  to  me  very 
difficult,  however  ready  I  am  to  allow 
that  in  such  matters  one  cannot  be 
sceptical — i.e.,  conscientious  enough. 
As  yet  nothing  has  been  found  in  the 
lower  strata  that  could  be  ascribed  to 
a  later  date  than  468  B.C.  The  only 
Greek  inscription  which  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann found  and  sent  over,  must,  as  far 
as  we  can  judge  from  some  of  its  cha- 
racters, the  chet  instead  of  the  spiritus 
asper,  the  o  for  w,  the  e  for  rj,  be  earlier 
than  that  date.  It  was  found, — so 
Dr.  Schliemann  informed  me  in  a 
letter,  dated  20th  October,  1876— in 
the  upper  Macedonian  stratum. 

As  the  fortress  of  Mykense  was  built 
on  the  rock,  the  first  question  was  how 


512 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


deep  one  had  to  dig  before  arriving  at 
the  hard  historical  rock,  and  then  at  the 
graves  mentioned  by  Pausanias.  I  have 
letters  from  Dr.  Schliemann,  written 
as  early  as!874,  when  he  quietly  visited 
Mykense,  and  sunk  thirty-four  wells 
to  see  what  layers  of  soil  had  accumu- 
lated, what  pottery  and  other  antiqui- 
ties they  contained,  and  what  amount 
of  labour  would  be  needed  to  bring 
again  to  the  light  of  day,  the  royal 
dwelling  and  royal  graves  of  the 
descendants  of  Tantalos. 

I  mention  all  this  to  show  that  Dr. 
Schliemann,  against  whose  Homeric 
hypotheses  no  one  can  have  protested 
more  strongly  than  I  have  done,  de- 
serves our  gratitude  and  admiration  in 
a  far  higher  degree  than  he  has  yet  re- 
ceived them.  Dr.  Schliemann  knew  what 
he  was  looking  for,  he  found  what  he 
sought,  and  even  more ;  and  every 
honest  student,  whatever  soil  he  may 
be  exploring,  be  it  dust  of  the.  body, 
or  dust  of  the  mind,  will  know  how 
often  in  seeking  for  his  father's  asses 
he  has  found  a  crown. 

Whether  the  graves  which  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann has  opened  on  the  Akropolis,  in 
the  rock,  contain  the  bones  and  trea- 
sures of  Agamemnon,  of  Eurymedon, 
of  Elektra,  of  Kassandra,  and  her 
twins,  whether  in  other  parts  nearer 
the  walls  the  graves  of  Klytemnestra 
and  ^Egisthos  will  be  found,  are 
questions  which  can  never  be  decided, 
till  they  are  more  sharply  defined. 

The  tombstones,  which  lie  on  the 
graves,  but  which,  from  the  appearance 
of  the  fragments,  may  have  been  parts 
of  a  larger  monument,  are  certainly 
older  than  468  B.C.  They  are  still 
half  oriental,  and  recall  Assyrian  art ; 
they  are  perhaps  of  Lydian  origin, 
though  here  and  there  in  the  orna- 
mentation we  trace  the  Greek  ideal  of 
beauty  and  harmony  in  the  entwining 
of  the  lines.  On  one  of  the  tomb- 
stones, the  symbol  floating  in  the  air 
recalls  the  figurative  representation  of 
Ahuramazda  on  the  later  Persian 
monuments. 

Without  appealing  to  the  giant 
skeleton  of  Orestes  (Herod,  i.  67),  we 


can  hardly  doubt  that  the  colossal  skele- 
tons found  in  the  graves  at  Mykenie 
belong  to  a  royal  family,  partly  be- 
cause of  the  locality,  partly  because 
of  the  rich  treasure  buried  with  them. 
The  skeletons  were  covered  with  large 
plates  of  thin  gold,  and  on  the  skulls 
lay  golden  masks  which  seemed  to 
bear  more  or  less  of  a  portrait  cha- 
racter. If  the  work  of  many  of  these 
ornaments  is  superficial,  and  the  mate- 
rial not  very  massive,  we  must  re- 
member that  they  would  only  be  made 
in  haste  for  the  funeral  pageant,  as  is 
the  case  in  other  royal  graves. 

Old,  therefore,  the  graves  certainly 
are,  and  royal  most  likely.  That  Dr. 
Schliemann  should  recognise  in  one 
of  the  masks  the  features  of  avai" 
avSp&v  'Aya/ze/zi'wj',  who  can  wonder  I 
Who  would  have  had  enough  self- 
control  in  a  similar  position  not 
to  express  such  a  conjecture1?  The 
objection  raised  by  a  German  savant, 
that  the  skull  was  not  fractured  by 
a  two-edged  axe,  and  that  therefore 
it  could  not  be  the  skull  of  Aga- 
memnon, could  hardly  have  been 
meant  in  earnest,  any  more  than 
the  argument  I  once  myself  used  in  a 
scientific  society  in  London,  when  I 
was  plied  on  all  sides  with  reasons, 
which  were  no  reasons,  to  induce  me 
to  acknowledge  that  the  gold  treasure 
of  Hissarlik  contained  the  regalia  of 
Priam  and  Hekuba.  I  then  quoted 
the  verses  from  Homer,  where  Hektor 
says  that  formerly  the  city  of  Priam 
had  been  rightly  called  rich  in  gold  and 
copper,  but  that  now  the  lovely  trea- 
sures had  vanished  from  the  houses  to 
be  sold  in  Phrygia  and  Maionia.1  If, 
therefore,  we  were  to  take  every  word 
of  Homer  literally,  as  many  in  that 
assembly  of  archteologists,  and  especi- 
ally their  president,  Lord  Stanhope, 
seemed  inclined  to  do,  I  said,  in 
self-defence,  that  a  treasure  of  such 


irplv  (j.tv  •)  ap  Tlptduoio  ird\iv  j 


&V&PIOTTOI 


v\jv  St  Srj  e|a7rj\&!\6  So'/itov  Kfi/j.rf\ta  /caXd' 
ira\\a  Sf  Srj  $pV}iiiv  Kal  Mrjovt-nv  fpareivrjv 
irtpvdfJ.tv'   "Kft,  eire!  (Ueyos   aiSJcra 
Ztvs. 

11.  xviii.  288. 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


513 


value  as  Dr.  Schliemann  had  found 
in  Hissarlik  could  not  possibly  be 
the  treasure  of  Priam,  and  the  place 
where  it  was  found  could  not  possibly 
be  Ilion,  unless  Hektor — had  told  a  lie. 
No,  we  must  not  deal  with  ancient 
poetry  and  ancient  legends  after  this 
fashion.  How  seldom  can  history 
authenticate  the  assassination  of  a 
king  or  of  a  sultan,  let  alone  tradition  ! 
Nothing  is  more  unfettered  than 
tradition.  Homer  does  not  tell  us 
that  Agamemnon  was  entangled  in  his 
bath  in  a  net  and  murdered  by  Kly- 
temnestra  by  three  stabs.  According 
to  Homer,  Agamemnon  was  driven  by 
the  storm  to  Malea,  the  abode  of 
^Egisthos,  hospitably  entertained  by 
./Egisthos,  and  then  murdered  whilst 
feasting,  like  an  ox  by  the  manger  (Od. 
iv.  514,  537  ;  xi.  411 ;  fiovv  ivl  ^drvrj.) 
None  of  the  companions  of  Agamem- 
non, none  of  the  followers  of  .^Egisthos 
were  left  alive.  It  does  not  follow 
necessarily  from  Homer's  words  that 
Klytemnestra  was  present  at  the 
feast  (Od.  xi.  410),  and  though  it  is 
said  that  she  killed  Kassandra,  there  is 
nothing  in  them  to  show  that  she  her- 
self murdered  Agamemnon. 

Legend  is  legend,  and  not  history, 
and  nothing  would  be  more  unhistori- 
cal  and  uncritical  than  to  try  to  re- 
move the  contradictions  of  which  every 
legend  is  full ;  and  whilst  adopting 
one  poet,  such  as  Homer,  as  the  high- 
est authority,  to  declare,  as  so  many 
people  do,  that  all  that  contradicts 
him  must  be  more  recent  or  mere 
poetic  invention.  Pindar  certainly 
knew  his  Homer  as  well  as  we  do, 
and  yet  he  does  not  scruple  to  let 
Kassandra  be  killed  at  Amyklae  in 
Lakonia.1  At  the  time  of  Pausanias,2 
too,  it  was  said  that  the  grave  of 
Kassandra  was  at  Amyklse,  not  at 
Mykenae,  and  Pausanias  himself  saw 
there  a  sanctuary  and  statue  of  Kas- 
sandra, who  was  called  Alexandra,  as 
well  as  monuments  of  Klytemnestra 
and  Agamemnon.  In  ^Eschylos  the 
name  of  Mykense  is  never  mentioned. 

No,    in    spite     of     the     uninjured 

1  Pyth.  ii.  32.          a  Pausanias,  iii.  19,  5. 

No.  222. — VOL.  xxxvii. 


skull,  the  king  buried  on  the  Akro- 
polis  of  Mykense  may  well  be  the 
Agamemnon  of  whom  people  told 
Pausanias  that  he  lay  buried  above 
in  the  citadel,  the  same  of  whom 
^Eschylos  wrote,  the  same  of  whom 
the  Homeric  poets  sang.  But,  in  spite 
of  Homer,  in  spite  of  ^Eschlyos,  in 
spite  of  Pausanias,  we  know  no  more 
of  a  real  Agamemnon  than  we  should 
know  of  Attila,  if  we  heard  of  him 
only  in  the  Nibelunge ;  or  of  Charles 
the  Great  and  young  Roland,  if  we 
had  to  form  our  idea  of  them  from  the 
popular  tales  in  Germany,  and  the  old 
Erench  Epos  of  the  Karlowingian 
Cycle  ;  or  even  if,  as  in  the  case  of 
Roland,  we  possessed  a  tombstone  with 
the  name  of  Hrutlandus. 

What  we  have  gained  from  the  dis- 
coveries at  Mykense,  for  the  historical 
treatment  of  Greek  antiquity  is  this  : 
that  we  can,  with  greater  probability, 
relegate  the  myth  of  the  fates  of  the 
rulers  of  Mykense,  to  that  class  of  tra- 
ditions which  have  wound  themselves 
like  ivy  round  the  mouldering  stem  of 
real  historic  facts,  and  no  longer  to  those 
which  have  arisen  from  the  mere  de- 
cay of  old  conceptions.  Mykense  seems 
to  have  been  the  theatre  of  real  trage- 
dies, however  much  these  have  been 
overgrown  with  fables  of  gods  and 
heroes.  No  one,  for  instance,  even  if 
a  skeleton  of  a  swan  had  been  found 
in  the  graves  of  the  old  Akropolis, 
would  have  explained  it  as  the  father- 
in-law  of  Agamemnon,  though  the 
great  antiquity  of  the  legend  of  the 
swan,  may  be  indicated,  in  spite  of 
Homer's  silence  on  the  subject,  by  the 
drawings  on  some  of  the  oldest  pottery 
found  at  Mykense.  The  legend  is  a 
pure  myth,  and  just  as  mythical  is  the 
original  legend  of  the  four  children 
of  Tyndaros,  Kastor,  Pollux,  Helena, 
and  Klytemnestra. 

The  old  legends,  however,  seem  to 
have  been  amalgamated  later  with  the 
semi-historical  traditions  of  the  princes 
of  Mykenae  and  Lakedsemon,  much  in 
the  same  way  as  the  Nibelunge  myths 
were  intertwined  with  the  historical 
legends  of  Burgundy,  Verona,  and  the 

L  L 


514 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


land  of  the  Huns.  Who  now  doubts 
that  Helena,  the  sister  of  Klytein- 
nestra,  was  an  old  goddess,  a  real 
daughter  of  Zeus,  just  as  Kastor  and 
Pollux  were  Dioskuroi,i.e.  sons  of  Zeus? 
From  a  goddess  she  changed  into  a 
heroine,  from  a  heroine  into  a  true 
princess,  not  vice  versd.  There  were 
temples  to  Helena,  and  festivals  in  her 
honour,  and  she  was  worshipped,  with 
Menelaos,  as  a  goddess.  As  everything 
was  pardoned  in  Zeus  and  in  Aphro- 
dite, so  also  in  Helena,  in  her  original 
character  as  a  goddess.  Although  she 
had  been  carried  off  by  Theseus,  yet  she 
became  the  wife  of  Menelaos.  Though 
she  allowed  herself  to  be  tempted  away 
by  Paris,  and  afterwards  married 
Deiphobos ;  yet  Menelaos,  when  he  at 
length  recovered  her,  held  her  in  high 
honour.  Lastly,  she  passed  for  the 
wife  of  Achilles,  and,  in  spite  of  all 
this,  Stesichoros  was  smitten  with 
blindness,  because  he  had  spoken  dis- 
respectfully of  her.  This  is  intelli- 
gible, if  Helena  was  originally  a  god- 
dess, and  the  lot  of  the  immortal  was 
af terwards  attributed  to  the  mortal  by 
popular  tradition.  Areal  youngprincess, 
of  whom  traditions  related  such  things 
as  are  told  of  Helena,  would  never 
have  been  treated  with  such  honour 
and  admiration  by  Homer,  the  singer 
of  conjugal  fidelity,  or,  however  great 
her  beauty,  have  been  raised  in  the 
old  Greek  popular  thought  to  the  rank 
of  a  goddess. 

It  is  easily  intelligible  that  in  later 
times  the  old  legends  of  the  gods  and 
heroes  were  looked  on  as  historical, 
and  localised  in  various  places  in 
Greece ;  and  we  can  hardly  now  doubt 
that  the  Akropolis  of  Mykense  was 
such  a  spot  in  the  old  history  of 
Greece,  which  attracted  to  itself  from 
all  quarters,  like  clouds,  the  misty 
forms  of  the  myths,  till  hill  and  clouds 
mingled  together,  and  it  was  no  longer 
possible  to  distinguish  the  nebulous 
forms  of  legend  from  the  men  who  had 
really  lived  on  the  hillside  of  Mykense. 
To  express  myself  in  Kantian  phrase, 
I  consider  the  antiquities  which  Dr. 
Schliemann  has  discovered  in  the 


graves  of  Mykenae  as  the  Ding  an  sich 
of  the  legend  of  the  Atridie.  But 
legend  has  its  mythological  intuitions 
(Anscfiauungen),  perhaps  even  its  own 
categories,  which  we  must  master  in 
order  rightly  to  understand  the 
phenomena  as  they  appear  in  Homer, 
Pindar,  or  ^Eschylos. 

And  now  I  have  arrived  at  the 
point  where  I  can  explain  to  you  why, 
amidst  my  studies  on  the  Science  of 
Language,  of  Myth,  and  of  Religion, 
I  have  taken  so  keen  an  interest  in 
Dr.  Schliemann's  excavations  in  Troy 
and  Mykense.  The  graves  of  Mykense 
give  us  the  uttermost  limits  to  which 
we  can  trace  back  the  real  and  pal- 
pable history  of  the  Greeks.  Whether 
the  half-burnt  bones  in  those  graves 
belonged  to  Agamemnon  or  not, 
they  are  the  remains  of  a  kingly  race 
who  really  reigned  in  Mykense,  who 
really  used  the  weapons,  the  jewelry, 
the  sceptres,  which  we  now  see.  At  a 
period  which  we  as  yet  know  by  tradi- 
tion only,  we  now  for  the  first  time 
see  real  men  on  real  soil.  This  is 
to  me  the  true  attraction  in  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann's discoveries. 

Every  one  must  make  his  plan  of 
life ;  each  student  must  belong  to  an 
army,  and  carry  a  plan  of  battle  in 
his  head,  which  determines  and  guides 
him  through  life  in  the  choice  of  his 
line  of  march.  I  belong  to  those  who 
say  with  Pope, 

"  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man ; " 

and  when  I  asked  myself  what  would 
be  the  right,  or  at  least  the  most 
fruitful,  method  of  the  study  of  man- 
kind, I  soon  convinced  myself  that,  in 
order  to  know  what  man  is,  we  must 
first,  before  everything  else,  observe 
and  establish  what  man  has  been,  and 
how  he  became  what  he  is.  We  must 
learn  to  know  ancient  man  in  order  to 
understand  modern  man. 

Many  are  the  roads  which  lead  to 
this. 

The  most  favoured  way  now  is  to 
begin  with  a  little  mass  of  protoplasm, 
which  of  itself,  or  by  the  influence 
of  its  so  called  surroundings,  through 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


515 


a  thousand  genei'ations,  and  during 
millions  of  years,  has  developed  at  last 
into  what  we  call  man.  This  province 
belongs  to  naturalists;  and  though 
they  have  not  yet  solved  the  two  old 
problems — how  the  organic  can  arise 
from  the  inorganic,  and  how  the  irra- 
tional can  develop  into  the  rational 
— they  have  nevertheless  made  dis- 
coveries of  high  value  on  the  way, 
which  have  thrown  a  perfectly  new 
light  on  the  development  of  the 
150,000  species  of  animals  now  living. 

A  second  line,  which  has  been  fol- 
lowed latterly  by  anthropologists  with 
great  eagerness,  and  good  results,  con- 
sists in  the  careful  study  of  so-called 
savage  nations.  These  studies  begin 
with  the  oldest  traces  of  the  glacial 
period,  go  on  from  the  cave  dwellers 
to  the  inhabitants  of  the  lacustrine 
dwellings,  and  then  turn  to  those 
races  of  the  globe  still  living  almost 
as  brute  beasts,  in  order  to  draw  from 
the  facts  which  we  can  still  ascertain 
of  their  physical  and  spiritual  life, 
conclusions  of  general  application  to 
the  origin  of  human  culture. 

These  studies,  too,  have  brought  to 
light  most  valuable  results ;  but  they 
suffer  from  two  almost  insuperable 
difficulties :  first,  that  nothing,  or 
almost  nothing,  is  left  to  us  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  cave  and  lacustrine 
dwellings,  but  remains  serving  for  the 
supply  of  their  simplest  physical  neces- 
sities ;  and,  secondly,  that  in  the  case 
of  most  of  the  savage  races  now  living, 
we  know  nothing  of  the  historical  an- 
tecedents of  their  present  condition, 
whether  they  are  really  in  the  first 
stage  of  civilisation,  or  in  the  last 
stage  of  savagery.  Considering  how 
we  hesitate  before  we  venture  to  make 
a  positive  statement  as  to  the  religious 
opinions  or  moral  principles  of  Greeks 
and  Romans,  who  would  dare  to 
speak  positively  of  fetishism,  zoolatry, 
or  physiolatry  among  Veddahs  or 
Papuahs  ? 

Agriology,  if  I  may  give  such  a 
name  to  a  really  scientific  study  of 
savage  nations,  generally  considers 
wild  races,  like  the  Papuahs,  or  even 


the  Hottentots  and  Kaffirs,  as  just 
working  their  way  out  of  the  slough 
of  a  still  half-animal  barbarism.  The 
students  of  Comparative  Philology,  on 
the  contrary,  as  well  as  of  Mythology, 
and  the  Science  of  Religion,  find  it 
very  difficult  to  reconcile  such  a  view 
with  existing  facts,  since  they  find 
in  the  languages  of  these  people 
remains  which  are  highly  artificial, 
and  even  in  their  religion  fragments 
which  might  have  formed  part 
of  the  most  glorious  temples  of 
humanity.  At  all  events,  these 
savage  races  do  not  present  us  with 
a  phase  in  the  mental  development  of 
the  human  race  which  can  supply  the 
lost  background  in  the  history  of  the 
civilised  nations  of  the  world.  We 
cannot  picture  to  ourselves  the  heroes 
who  lived  before  Agamemnon  as 
Papuahs ;  and  the  old  singers  men- 
tioned by  the  poets  of  the  Rig 
Veda,  cannot  well  have  been  black 
cannibals.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
savages  in  the  world,  which  M. 
Guizot,  in  his  History  of  Civilisation, 
did  not  sufficiently  bear  in  mind : 
savages  who  can  develop  into  some- 
thing, such  as  the  old  Germans  de- 
scribed by  Tacitus,  and  savages  who 
cannot  develop  into  anything,  as  the 
Red  Indians.  If  the  Agriologists 
believe  that  they  can  supply  the  pages 
which  are  missing  in  the  beginning  of 
the  annals  of  still  developing  races 
from  the  life  and  practices  of  degraded 
Hottentots,  they  may  find  that,  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race,  they  have 
sometimes  placed  the  corrigenda  where 
the  preface  should  have  been. 

There  remains  a  third  way — cer- 
tainly the  most  difficult  of  all,  and 
which,  in  spite  of  its  difficulties,  leads 
tis  only  a  short  distance  into  the 
ancient  history  of  the  human  race 
— I  mean  the  study  of  the  oldest 
and  most  authentic  literature,  the 
religions,  the  mythologies,  and  the 
languages  of  those  nations  who  have 
played  the  chief  parts  in  the  drama  of 
the  world's  history.  Whilst  the  two 
other  methods  of  research  advance 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  are 
L  L  2 


516 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


generally  lost  in  an  abyss  which  can 
never  be  bridged,  this  last,  which 
leads  us  back  from  the  end  to  the  begin- 
ning, also  breaks  off  at  ijie  foot  of  a 
high  rampart,  which  indeed  allows  us  to 
imagine  a  something  beyond,  but  has 
as  yet  never  been  scaled  by  the  boldest 
explorers. 

Now  on  this  last  road,  the  thing  of 
greatest  importance  for  us  is  to  collect 
all  the  material  which  a  propitious 
fate  has  preserved  for  us.  The  amount 
is  small,  and  yet  greater  than  we  had 
any  right  to  expect.  For  if  literature 
first  begins  where  the  literce,  the 
written  letters,  were  used  for  literary 
purposes,  there  is  really  no  written 
literature  much  earlier  than  the  fifth 
century  B.C.  I  see  that  our  hon- 
oured president  shakes  his  head,  but 
I  believe  we  shall,  as  usual,  find  that 
we  agree. 

I  do  not,  of  course,  speak  of  his  own 
domain,  China,  for  Chinese  writing  is 
not  alphabetical.  I  do  not  speak  of 
Egypt,  for  there,  too,  the  writing 
is  not  yet  alphabetical.  On  the  same 
grounds  I  exclude  the  whole  literature 
in  the  cuneiform  character,  except  the 
Persian. 

But  when  we  speak  of  a  real  old 
literature  in  Greece,  Persia  and  India, 
I  doubt  very  much  whether  we  can 
anywhere  prove  the  existence  of  a 
written  literature  much  before  500 
B.C.  Even  though  the  Phrenician 
alphabet  may  have  spread  somewhat 
earlier  to  the  west  and  east,  it  is  a 
great  step  in  the  history  of  civilisation 
from  the  use  of  alphabetic  writing  for 
monumental,  even  for  mercantile  pur- 
poses, to  the  employment  of  it  for 
art,  for  pleasure,  for  literature.  And 
here,  to  return  to  Mykense,  I  may  as 
well  at  once  mention  that  no  trace  of 
writing  ought  to  be,  or  has  been, 
found  within  the  graves,  although  the 
chief  object  there  was  to  honour  and 
preserve  the  memory  of  the  dead.  In 
the  antiquities  lately  found  at  Pales- 
trina,  said  to  be  of  the  fifth  or  sixth 
century,  the  inscriptions  are  still 
simply  Phffinician,  not  Etruscan,  not 
Greek,  still  less  Latin. 


Our  retrospect,  then,  into  the  anti- 
quity of  the  human  race  would  be 
very  imperfect,  our  hope  to  discover 
what  man  is,  from  what  he  once  was, 
but  very  slight,  if  all  that  lies  on  the 
other  side  of  500  B.C.  were  really 
buried  in  "tearless  night."  But  it  is 
not  so.  Man  possessed,  before  writing 
was  discovered,  pen,  ink,  and  paper 
in  his  memory,  and  a  power  of  trans- 
mitting metrical  compositions  with  a 
precision  and  accuracy  of  which  we 
can  now  hardly  form  any  idea.  You 
know  with  what  contempt  even  Plato 
still  speaks  of  the  knowledge  gathered 
from  books,  and  in  India  you  might 
hear  the  same  expressions  at  the  pre- 
sent day.  In  India  there  still  exist 
scholars  of  the  old  school,  who  carry 
about  in  their  memory  books  larger 
than  Homer,  and  not  only  metrical, 
but  even  prose  works.  They  are  tlwm- 
selves  the  books,  and  it  is,  or  it  was  till 
lately,  their  duty  to  teach  these  books, 
i.e.,  themselves  and  their  knowledge  to 
their  pupils,  after  a  strict  mnemonic 
method.  As  far  back  as  we  can  follow 
Indian  literature  we  find  the  same 
plan,  and  even  in  the  Upaniskads, 
which  still  belong  to  the  Yedic  period, 
we  read  of  youths  who,  from  their 
twelfth  to  their  twenty-fourth  year, 
were  under  tuition,  in  order  during 
this  period  to  learn  the  Vedas  by 
heart,  word  for  word,  syllable  for 
syllable,  letter  for  letter,  accent  for 
accent. 

These  facts  are  well  authenticated, 
every  one  who  lives  in  India  can 
ascertain  them  for  himself,  and  so 
perfect  is  the  accuracy  of  the  verbal 
tradition,  when  exercised  as  a  school 
discipline,  and  according  to  strict 
rules,  that  in  any  doubtful  reading  of 
the  Rig  Veda,  I  should  rely  more  on 
the  verbal  information  of  a  Shrotriya, 
i.e.,  of  an  Indian  theologian,  than  on 
the  authority  of  a  MS. 

There  was,  therefore,  among  the 
Aryan  nations  a  literature,  or  more 
properly  a  tradition,  which  reaches 
back  far  beyond  500  B.C.,  and  the 
oldest  and  most  remarkable  monu- 
ment of  this  unwritten  literature  of 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


517 


the  Aryan  family,  is  the  Veda,  which 
means  the  knowledge. 

Of  this  Veda  much  has  been  related 
and  fabled,  and  the  first  time  I  saw 
iny  old  friend  JBunsen,  he  told  me  that, 
as  a  young  man,  he  had  actually  started 
for  India,  to  find  out  if  the  Veda  really 
still  existed.  Now,  we  possess  it,  and 
when  I  tell  you  that  I  have  devoted 
my  whole  life  to  the  edition  of  the 
Rig  Veda,  that  in  order  to  obtain  the 
MSS.  and  the  material  aid  necessary 
for  reconstructing  so  large  and  expen- 
sive a  work,  I  have  exiled  myself  for 
half  my  life,  you  will  naturally  ask, 
Was  the  Veda  worth  such  a  sacrifice  ? 
Does  it  really  give  us  an  insight  into  a 
period  in  the  development  of  human 
nature  which  was  before  unknown  to 
us,  which  reaches  beyond  Homer  and 
the  kings  of  Mykense,  beyond  Cyrus 
and  the  books  of  Zoroaster,  beyond 
Buddha,  Laotse,  and  the  other  spiritual 
heroes  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.?  Have 
we  in  the  Veda  the  old  bridge  between 
the  civilised  and  the  wild  races  of  the 
world  ?  Do  we  find  again  in  the  Veda 
the  thread  of  Ariadne,  which  fell  out 
of  the  hands  of  anthropologists  in  the 
lacustrine  dwellings  and  glacial  caves  1 

I  answer  "  Yes,"  and  "  No."  There 
can  be  no  idea  in  the  Veda  of  any  con- 
nection with  historic  or  prehistoric 
savages.  The  language,  the  religion, 
the  established  manners  and  customs 
of  the  Veda  presuppose  ages  upon 
ages  before  it  would  have  been  pos- 
sible to  think  and  say  what  we  find 
thought  and  said  in  the  Veda.  But 
the  Veda  gives  us  an  insight  into  the 
youth  of  man,  and  especially  into  the 
youth  of  that  mighty  branch  of  man- 
kind to  which  we  ourselves  belong, 
more  than  any  other  book  in  the  world. 
And  it  was  this  which  drew  me  to  the 
Veda.  As  the  childish  recollections  of 
a  man  contain  the  key  of  most  of  the 
secrets  of  his  later  life,  I  consider  that 
the  key  to  our  own  being  is  hidden  in 
the  childish  recollections  of  the  human 
race.  Considered  from  this  point  of 
view,  the  study  of  antiquity  is  a  glance 
back  into  our  own  youth,  and  thus 
gains  an  attraction  which  none  of  the 


other  sciences  can  claim,  not  even  the 
science  which  teaches  us  what  we  were 
before  we  were  men. 

To  me  the  old  poets  of  the  Veda, 
who  finished  their  work  on  earth  more 
than  three  thousand  years  ago,  are  as 
old  friends  and  acquaintances.  I  can 
think  myself  back  into  their  thoughts. 
I  become  young  again  with  them,  and 
even  when  they  are  childish,  I  say  to 
myself,  Humani  nihil  a  me  alienum 
puto. 

Many  of  the  Yedic  hymns  are  the 
simplest  childlike  prayers.  They 
pray  for  the  playthings  of  life,  for 
house  and  home,  for  cows  and  horses, 
and  they  plainly  tell  the  gods  that  if 
they  will  only  be  kind  and  gracious, 
they  will  receive  rich  offerings  in  re- 
turn. Do  we  do  much  otherwise  ? 

Only  a  few  days  ago,  I  saw  in  a 
book  by  a  Protestant  clergyman,  an 
account  of  a  miraculous  cure.  A  young 
girl  suffered  from  toothache,  and  she 
prayed  to  Jesus,  "  If  I  were  Thou,  and 
Thou  me,  and  Thou  hadst  such  a  tooth- 
ache as  I  have  now,  I  would  long  ago 
have  cured  Thee."  The  toothache,  so 
writes  the  clergyman,  ceased  imme- 
diately. I  could  not  but  remember  a 
hymn  of  the  Rig  Veda,  where  an  old 
poet  says,  "If  I  were  Indra,  and 
Thou  wert  my  worshipper,  I  would 
long  ago  have  granted  thy  petition." 

But  we  find  also  heartfelt  prayers. 
The  old  fathers  of  our  race  prayed  the 
gods  for  children,  particularly  sons, 
who  formed  the  strength  of  the  family, 
and  could  defend  the  old  and  weak 
against  neighbours  and  enemies.  And 
that  children  were  not  only  desired, 
but  also  valued  and  loved,  we  see  from 
such  verses  as  : 

"Let  us  all  die  in  order  that  the  old  weep 
not  over  the  young." 

Hopes  of  meeting  again  are  clearly 
expressed.  Rig  Veda,  i.  24,  1  : — 

"Of  whom,  of  which  God  among  the  ira 

mortals, 

Shall  we  now  praise  the  glorious  name  ? 
Who  will  give  us  back  to  the  great  Aditi 

(infinitude), 
That  I  may  see  father  and  mother  I " 


518 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Jifcn. 


And   in   another  hymn,  Rig   Veda, 
ix.  113  :— 

"  Where  the  imperishable  light  is, 
That  world  in  which  heaven  is  placed, 
In  that  immortal  and 'eternal  world, 
Place  me,  oh  Soma ! 

"  Where  Vaivasvata  is  king, 
Where  there  is  the  stronghold  of  heaven, 
Where  those  great  waters  are, 
There  make  me  immortal ! 

"  Where  life  is  free, 
In  the  third  heaven  of  heavens, 
Where  all  places  are  full  of  splendour, 
There  make  me  immortal !  " 

But  most  of  the  hymns  are,  as  I  have 
already  said,  much  simpler.  They 
refer  to  the  every-day  appearances  of 
nature,  in  which  the  poets  trace  the 
rule  and  work  of  Divine  beings,  and 
from  which  they  often  gather  incite- 
ments to  a  holy  life,  and  a  thankful 
recognition  of  higher  powers.  For  in- 
stance, Rig  Veda,  vii.  63  : — 

"  The  sun  rises,  the  bliss-bestowing, 
All  seeing,  the  same  for  all  men, 
The  eye  of  Mitra  and  Varuna, 
The  god  who  rolled  up  darkness  like  a  skin. 

"  The  life-giver  of  man  rises, — 
The  great  waving  light  of  the  sun, — 
Wishing  to  turn  round  the  same  wheel 
Which  the  white  horse  draws,  yoked  to  the 
shafts. 

"  Shining  forth  from  the  lap  of  the  Dawns, 
He  rises,  praised  by  singers, 
He  seems  to  me  the  God  Savitri, 
Who  never  oversteps  the  same  track. 

"  The  brilliant  sun  rises  from  the  sky,  wide 

gleaming, 
Going  forth  to  his  distant  work,   full  of 

light; 

Now  may  men  also,  enlivened  by  the  sun, 
Go  to  their  places  and  to  their  work. 

"  Where  the  immortals  made  a  road  for  him 
He  follows  the  path,  rising  like  a  hawk, 
At  the  rising  of  the  sun  let  us  worship  you, 
Mitra  and  Varuna,  with  praises  and  with 
offerings." 

Rig  Veda,  vii.  61 : — 

"  The  sun  rises,  opening  your  gracious  eye, 
Oh  !  gods,  Mitra  and  Varuna  : 
The  sun  who  looks  at  all  the  world, 
Who  also  knows  the  thoughts  of  men. 

"  The  pious  singer,  whose  prayers  you  accept, 
Oh !  powerful  gods, 

So  that  you  fill  his  years  with  strength, 
He  raises  for  you  praises,  sounding  far  and 
wide. 


"  Oh !   beneficent  gods,  Mitra  and  Varuna, 

you  place  spies 
Over  the  wide  world,  and  over  the  wide 

bright  heaven, 

Who  go  far  through  fields  and  villages, 
Oh  !  ye  gods,  who  watch  without  sleeping. 

"  Praise  the  power  of  Mitra  and  Varuna, 
Their  strength  has  firmly  fixed  heaven  and 

earth. 
May  the  life   of  the  wicked   pass  away 

childless, 
And  may  the  pious  sacrificer  extend  his 

homestead." 

Still  more  valuable  are  the  hymns 
in  which  some  of  the  old  Vedic  poets 
give  utterance  to  the  consciousness  of 
their  guilt,  and  speak  of  their  offences 
not  only  as  a  transgression  against 
human  laws,  but  as  displeasing  to  the 
gods  and  contrary  to  the  divine  com- 
mands. Rig  Veda,  vii.  89  : — • 

"  Let  me  not  yet,  0  Varuna,  enter  into  the 

house  of  earth, 
Have  mercy,  Almighty,  have  mercy  ! 

"  If  I  move  along  trembling,  like  a  cloud 

blown  by  the  wind, 
Have  mercy,  Almighty,  have  mercy ! 

"  Through  want  of  strength,  thou  strong  and 

bright  god,  have  I  gone  astray, 
Have  mercy,  Almighty,  have  mercy ! 

"  Thirst  came  upon  thy  worshippers,  though 

standing  in  the  midst  of  water, 
Have  mercy,  Almighty,  have  mercy  ! 

"  Whenever  we  men,  0  Vanina, 
Commit  an  offence  before  the  heavenly  host, 
Whenever    we    break    thy   law    through 

thoughtlessness, 
Punish  us  not,  0  God,  for  that  offence  ! " 

Rig  Veda,  ii.  28  :— 

"  This  J world)   belongs   to  the  wise  king, 

Aditya, 

May  he  overcome  all  beings  by  his  strength  ! 
I  look  for  a  hymn  of  praise  for  the  rich 

Varuna, 
The  god  who  is  gracious  to  every  sacrifice. 

"  When  we,  mindful  of  this,  have  praised  thee, 

0  Varuna, 

Let  us  be  blessed  in  thy  service  ; 
We  who,  at  the  approach  of  the  rich  dawn, 
Greet  thee  day  by  day,  like  the  fires  on  the 

altar. 

"  Let  us,  0  Varuna,  our  guide,  dwell  under 

thy  protection, 
Thou  who  art  rich  in  heroes,  and  rulest  far 

and  wide  ; 

And  you,  unconquered  sons  of  Aditi, 
Accept  us,  gods,  as  your  companions  ! 


Ancient  Times  and  Ancient  Men. 


519 


"  Aditya,  the  ruler,  lias  sent  them  off, 
The  rivers  follow  the  command  of  Varuna, 
They  never  tire,  they  never  rest, 
Quick,  like  birds,  they   fly   through  the 
world. 

"  Loosen  my  sin  from  me,  like  a  fetter, 
Then  shall  we  increase  the  source  of  thy  law, 

0  Varuna  ! 
Let  not  the  thread  be  cut,  while  I  weave  my 

prayer, 
Let  not  the  frame  of  my  work  perish  before 

its  time. 

"  Drive  away  terror  from  me,  0  Varuna, 
Be  gracious  to  me,  righteous  king  ; 
Undo  my  sin,  like  the  rope  of  a  calf, 
For  away  from  thee  I  am  not  master  of  a 
twinkling  of  the  eye. 

"  Do  not  hurt  us   with    thy   weapons,    0 

Varuna, 
Which,  when  thou  wishest  it,  wound  the 

evil  doer, 

May  we  not  go  into  exile  from  light, 
Destroy  the  enemies  well,  that  we  may 

live ! 

"  We  shall  offer  praise  to  thee,  0  high-born 

god, 

As  formerly,  so  now  and  for  ever  ! 
For  on   thee,   0  unconquerable  god,  are 

founded, 
As  on  a  rock,  the  unchangeable  laws. 

"  Send  away  from  me  my  own  sins, 
And  may  I  not  suffer  for  what  others  have 

done! 

Many  dawns  have  not  yet  dawned  for  us, 
Do  let  us  live  in  them  also,  0  Varuna  ? 

"  He  who  while  I  was  trembling  in  sleep, 

wished  me  evil, 

Be  he  a  companion  or  a  friend,  0  king, 
The  thief  also  who  wishes  to  injure  us,  or 
,     the  wolf, 
Protect  us  Varuna,  from  all  these  ! " 

In  order  to  estimate  these  hymns 
rightly,  we  must,  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, forget  what  from  childhood  we 
have  read  and  learnt  in  our  own  hymn- 
books.  Many  of  these  thoughts  and 
feelings  have,  by  thousand-fold  repeti- 
tion, become  indifferent,  almost  mean- 
ingless to  us.  But  in  these  old  poets 
we  still  see  the  agony  of  the  soul, 
striving  for  utterance.  They  wished 
to  say  something,  only  they  knew  not 
how.  They  had  no  time  for  poetic 
ornamentation,  and  mere  splendour  of 
words.  Their  poetry  is  a  real  shaping 
and  transforming  of  mist-like  thought 
into  clear  and  transparent  words. 
Each  expression  is  to  them  as  the  egg 


of  Columbus;  each  hymn,  however 
simple  it  may  be,  as  an  heroic  feat,  as 
a  true  sacrifice.  This  forms  the  charm 
of  ancient  poetry,  ancient  religion, 
ancient  language. 

Everything  is  simple,  fresh,  and 
thoroughly  true.  The  words  still  have 
weight ;  they  are  full  and  pregnant, 
so  to  speak,  and  for  this  very  reason 
they  almost  defy  translation. 

And  yet  their  world  of  thought  is 
not  so  far  removed  from  our  own. 
The  questions  which  perplex  us 
already  puzzled  those  old  poets  of 
the  Veda. 

11  How  can  man  reach  God  ? "  asks 
the  old  poet.  We  say :  "  How  can  the 
finite  comprehend  the  infinite  ?  " 

Another  poet  says  :  "  When  thou 
thunderest,  Indra,  we  believe  in  thee." 
We  say  :  "  Danger  brings  men  to  their 
knees." 

When  an  Indian  seer  has  merely  ex- 
pressed the  simple  truths  of  life,  he 
says  that  a  god  has  enlightened  him, 
that  a  god  has  moulded  his  song. 
What  do  we  ?  We  torment  ourselves 
with  theories  about  divine  revelation 
and  inspiration,  and  see  at  last  what 
the  old  sages  saw,  that  truth  makes 
inspiration,  not  inspiration  truth. 

Thus  I  could  continue  quoting  many 
things  out  of  the  Veda,  to  show  you 
that  3,000  or  4,000  years  ago,  men 
were  not  savages,  but  that  the  same 
cares  which  torment  us,  the  great 
questions  of  life,  TO.  /ueyiora,  were  even 
then  the  objects  of  earnest  thought 
and  expression. 

Four  thousand  years  ago,  our  Aryan 
forefathers  in  India  wished  to  know 
out  of  what  wood  the  earth  was  made ; 
we  should  say  of  what  matter — whether 
molecules  or  atoms,  whether  dynamids, 
or  centres  of  force ;  nay,  they  spoke 
in  the  Veda  of  a  time  when  there  was 
neither  being  nor  not  being  : 

"Na  sad  asin  no'asad  asit  tadanim." 

Even  crude  materialistic  ideas  were 
not  wanting,  and  many  of  our  ma- 
terialistic friends  would  rejoice  to 
see  the  following  passage  in  the  old 
.ffAandogya  Upanishad : 


520 


Ancient,  Times  and  Andcnt  Men. 


"  The  finer  part  of  the  curds,  when 
it  is  shaken,  rises  and  becomes  butter. 
Just  so,  my  child,  the  finer  part  of 
food  rises,  when  it  is  eaten,  and  be- 
comes mind." 

May  I,  in  conclusion,  say  one  word 
on  the  practical  value  of  the  study  of 
mankind,  particularly  of  the  religions 
of  mankind  ? 

Macaulay,  when  he  was  once  pressed, 
after  his  return  from  India,  to  give 
his  views  on  some  one  of  the  thousand 
theological  questions  which  play  so 
great  a  part  even  in  parliamentary 
elections,  answered  :  "  Gentlemen, 
when  a  man  has  spent  years  in  a 
country  where  men  worship  the  cow, 
it  is  difficult  to  take  an  interest  in 
such  trifles." 

He  was  very  much  blamed  for  this, 
as  it  seemed  a  proof  of  his  indifference 
to  religion.  But  it  was  not  so  at  all. 
It  is  most  useful  to  ascertain  for  one- 


self that  in  every  religion  there  are 
things  essential,  and  things  non- 
essential,  and  nothing  teaches  this 
better  than  a  comparative  study  of 
the  religions  of  mankind.  There  is 
no  faith  free  from  superstition,  as 
there  is  no  light  without  shadow.  To 
recognise  the  light,  the  true  light,  in 
all  shades  and  colours,  is  the  highest 
aim  of  our  studies. 

It  has  been  said  of  the  study  of 
languages,  that  with  each  language  a 
man  learns  he  becomes  a  new  man. 
I  think  we  might  say  of  the  study 
of  religions,  that  with  each  new  re- 
ligion that  we  learn  truly  to  under- 
stand, we  become  more  truly  religious. 
And  if  Goethe  (for  his  name  is  never 
tq  be  absent  in  any  of  our  addresses), 
says  of  languages,  "He  who  knows 
but  one,  knows  none;"  the  same  is 
true,  I  think,  of  religions  :  "  He  who 
knows  none  but  his  own,  knows  none." 

MAX    MtiLLER. 


AP  Macmillan ' s  magazine 

M2 
v.37 


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