BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXXXI.       SEPTEMBER, 1851.       Vol. LXX.

CONTENTS.

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BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXXXI.       SEPTEMBER, 1851.       Vol. LXX.

A CAMPAIGN IN TAKA.

Feldzug von Sennaar nach Taka, Basa, und Beni-Amer, mit besonderem Hinblick auf die Völker von Bellad-Sudan.—[Campaign from Sennaar to Taka, Basa, and Beni-Amer; with a particular Glance at the Nations of Bellad-Sudan.]—Von Ferdinand Werne. Stuttgart: Königl. Hofbuchdruckerei. London: Williams and Norgate. 1851.

Africa, the least explored division of the globe's surface, and the best field for travellers of bold and enterprising character, has been the scene of three of the most remarkable books of their class that have appeared within the last ten years. We refer to Major Harris's narrative of his Ethiopian expedition—to the marvellous adventures of that modern Nimrod, Mr Gordon Cumming—to Mr Ferdinand Werne's strange and exciting account of his voyage up the White Nile. In our review of the last-named interesting and valuable work,[1] we mentioned that Mr Werne, previously to his expedition up the Nile, had been for several months in the Taka country, a region previously untrodden by Europeans, with an army commanded by Achmet Bascha, governor-general of the Egyptian province of Bellad-Sudan, who was operating against refractory tributaries. He has just published an account of this campaign, which afforded him, however, little opportunity of expatiating on well-contested battles, signal victories, or feats of heroic valour. On the other hand, his narrative abounds in striking incidents, in curious details of tribes and localities that have never before been described, and in perils and hardships not the less real and painful that they proceeded from no efforts of a resolute and formidable foe, but from the effects of a pernicious climate, and the caprice and negligence of a wilful and indolent commander.

It was early in 1840, and Mr Werne and his youngest brother Joseph had been resident for a whole year at Chartum, chief town of the province of Sudan, in the country of Sennaar. Chartum, it will be remembered by the readers of the "Expedition for the Discovery of the Sources of the White Nile," is situated at the confluence of the White and Blue streams, which, there uniting, flow northwards through Nubia and Egypt Proper to Cairo and the Mediterranean; and at Chartum it was that the two Wernes had beheld, in the previous November, the departure of the first expedition up Nile, which they were forbidden to join, and which met with little success. The elder Werne,[252] whose portrait—that of a very determined-looking man, bearded, and in Oriental costume—is appended to the present volume, appears to have been adventurous and a rambler from his youth upwards. In 1822 he had served in Greece, and had now been for many years in Eastern lands. Joseph Werne, his youngest and favourite brother, had come to Egypt at his instigation, after taking at Berlin his degree as Doctor of Medicine, to study, before commencing practice, some of the extraordinary diseases indigenous in that noxious climate. Unfortunately, as recorded in Mr Werne's former work, this promising young man, who seems to have possessed in no small degree the enterprise, perseverance, and fortitude so remarkable in his brother, ultimately fell a victim to one of those fatal maladies whose investigation was the principal motive of his visit to Africa. The first meeting in Egypt of the two brothers was at Cairo; and of it a characteristic account is given by the elder, an impetuous, we might almost say a pugnacious man, tolerably prompt to take offence, and upon whom, as he himself says at page 67, the Egyptian climate had a violently irritating effect.

"Our meeting, at Guerra's tavern in Cairo, was so far remarkable, that my brother knew me immediately, whilst I took him for some impertinent Frenchman, disposed to make game of me, inasmuch as he, in the petulance of his joy, fixed his eyes upon me, measuring me from top to toe, and then laughed at the fury with which I rushed upon him, to call him to an account, and, if necessary, to have him out. We had not seen each other for eight years, during which he had grown into a man, and, moreover, his countenance had undergone a change, for, by a terrible cut, received in a duel, the muscle of risibility had been divided on one side, and the poor fellow could laugh only with half his face. In the first overpowering joy of our meeting in this distant quarter of the globe, we could not get the wine over our tongues, often as my Swiss friend De Salis (over whose cheeks the tears were chasing each other) and other acquaintances struck their glasses against ours, encouraging us to drink.... I now abandoned the hamlet of Tura—situated in the desert, but near the Nile, about three leagues above Cairo, and whither I had retreated to do penance and to work at my travels—as well as my good friend Dr Schledehaus of Osnabruck, (then holding an appointment at the military school, now director of the marine hospital of Alexandria,) with whom my brother had studied at Bonn, and I hired a little house in the Esbekie Square in Cairo. After half an hour's examination, Joseph was appointed surgeon-major, with the rank of a Sakulagassi or captain, in the central hospital of Kasr-el-Ain, with a thousand piastres a month, and rations for a horse and four servants. Our views constantly directed to the interior of Africa, we suffered a few months to glide by in the old city of the Khalifs, dwelling together in delightful brotherly harmony. But our thirst for travelling was unslaked; to it I had sacrificed my appointment as chancellor of the Prussian Consulate at Alexandria; Joseph received his nomination as regimental surgeon to the 1st regiment in Sennaar, including that of physician to the central hospital at Chartum. Our friends were concerned for us on account of the dangerous climate, but, nevertheless, we sailed with good courage up the Nile, happy to escape from the noise of the city, and to be on our way to new scenes."

A stroke of the sun, received near the cataract of Ariman in Upper Nubia, and followed by ten days' delirium, soon convinced the younger Werne that his friends' anxiety on his behalf was not groundless. During the whole of their twelvemonth's stay at Chartum, they were mercilessly persecuted by intermittent fever, there most malignant, and under whose torturing and lowering attacks their sole consolation was that, as they never chanced both to be ill together, they were able alternately to nurse each other. At last, fearing that body or mind would succumb to these reiterated fever-fits, and the first expedition up the White Nile having, to their great disgust and disappointment, sailed[253] without them, they made up their minds to quit for ever the pestiferous Chartum and the burning steppes of Bellad-Sudan. Whilst preparing for departure, they received a visit from the chief Cadi, who told them, over a glass of cardinal—administered by Dr Werne as medicine, to evade his Mahomedan scruples—that Effendina (Excellency) Achmet Bascha was well pleased with the brotherly love they manifested, taking care of each other in sickness, and that they would do well to pay their respects occasionally at the Divan. This communication was almost immediately followed by the arrival at Chartum of Dr Gand, physician to Abbas Bascha. This gentleman had been a comrade of Ferdinand Werne's in Greece, and he recommended the two brothers to Achmet, with whom he was intimate, in true Oriental style, as men of universal genius and perfect integrity, to whom he might intrust both his body and his soul. The consequence of this liberal encomium was, that Achmet fixed his eyes upon them to accompany him, in the capacity of confidential advisers, upon a projected campaign. Informed of this plan and of the advantages it included, the Wernes joyfully abandoned their proposed departure. Joseph was to be made house-physician to Achmet and his harem, as well as medical inspector of the whole province, in place of Soliman Effendi, (the renegade Baron di Pasquali of Palermo,) a notorious poisoner, in whose hands the Bascha did not consider himself safe. Ferdinand Werne, who had held the rank of captain in Greece, was made bimbaschi or major, and was attached, as engineer, to Achmet's person, with good pay and many privileges. "At a later period he would have made me bey, if I—not on his account, for he was an enlightened Circassian, but on that of the Turkish jackasses—would have turned Mussulman. I laughed at this, and he said no more about it." Delighted to have secured the services of the two Germans, Achmet ordered it to be reported to his father-in-law, Mehemet Ali, for his approval, and took counsel with his new officers concerning the approaching campaign. Turk-like, he proposed commencing it in the rainy season. Mr Werne opposed this as likely to cost him half his army, the soldiers being exceedingly susceptible to rain, and advised the erection of blockhouses at certain points along the line of march where springs were to be found, to secure water for the troops. The Bascha thought this rather a roundabout mode of proceeding, held his men's lives very cheap, and boasted of his seven hundred dromedaries, every one of which, in case of need, could carry three soldiers. His counsellors were dismissed, with injunctions to secresy, and on their return home they found at their door, as a present from the Bascha, two beautiful dromedaries, tall, powerful, ready saddled for a march, and particularly adapted for a campaign, inasmuch as they started not when muskets were fired between their ears. A few days later, Mr Werne was sent for by Achmet, who, when the customary coffee had been taken, dismissed his attendants by a sign, and informed him, with a gloomy countenance, that the people of Taka refused to pay their tulba, or tribute. His predecessor, Churdschid Bascha, having marched into that country, had been totally defeated in a chaaba, or tract of forest. Since that time, Achmet mournfully declared, the tribes had not paid a single piastre, and he found himself grievously in want of money. So, instead of marching south-westward to Darfour, as he had intended, he would move north-eastward to Taka, chastise the stubborn insolvents, and replenish the coffers of the state. "Come with me," said he, to Mr Werne; "upon the march we shall all recover our health," (he also suffered from frequent and violent attacks of fever;) "yonder are water and forests, as in Germany and Circassia, and very high mountains." It mattered little to so restless and rambling a spirit as Mr Ferdinand Werne whether his route lay inland towards the Mountains of the Moon, or coastwards to the Red Sea. His brother was again sick, and spoke of leaving the country; but Mr Werne cheered him up, pointed out to him upon the map an imaginary duchy which he was to conquer in the approaching war, and revived an old plan of going to settle[254] at Bagdad, there to practise as physician and apothecary. "We resolved, therefore, to take our passports with us, so that, if we chose, we might embark on the Red Sea. By this time I had seen through the Bascha, and I resolved to communicate to him an idea which I often, in the interest of these oppressed tribes, had revolved in my mind, namely, that he should place himself at their head, and renounce obedience to the Egyptian vampire. I did subsequently speak to him of the plan, and it might have been well and permanently carried out, had he not, instead of striving to win the confidence of the chiefs, tyrannised over them in every possible manner. Gold and regiments! was his motto."

Meanwhile the influential Dr Gand had fallen seriously ill, and was so afflicted with the irritability already referred to as a consequence of the climate, that no one could go near him but the two Wernes. He neglected Joseph's good advice to quit Chartum at once, put it off till it was too late, and died on his journey northwards. His body lay buried for a whole year in the sand of the desert; then his family, who were going to France, dug it up to take with them. Always a very thin man, little more than skin and bone, the burning sand had preserved him like a mummy. There was no change in his appearance; not a hair gone from his mustaches. Strange is the confusion and alternation of life and death in that ardent and unwholesome land of Nubia. To-day in full health, to-morrow prostrate with fever, from which you recover only to be again attacked. Dead, in twenty-four hours or less corruption is busy on the corpse; bury it promptly in the sand, and in twelve months you may disinter it, perfect as if embalmed. At Chartum, the very focus of disease, death, it might be thought, is sufficiently supplied by fever to need no other purveyors. Nevertheless poisoning seems a pretty common practice there. Life in Chartum is altogether, by Mr Werne's account, a most curious thing. During the preparations for the campaign, a Wurtemberg prince, Duke Paul William of Mergentheim, arrived in the place, and was received with much pomp. "For the first time I saw the Bascha sit upon a chair; he was in full uniform, a red jacket adorned with gold, a great diamond crescent, and three brilliant stars upon his left breast, his sabre by his side." The prince, a fat good-humoured German, was considerably impressed by the state displayed, and left the presence with many obeisances. The next day he dined with the Bascha, whom he and the Wernes hoped to see squatted on the ground, and feeding with his fingers. They were disappointed; the table was arranged in European fashion; wine of various kinds was there, especially champagne, (which the servants, notwithstanding Werne's remonstrances, insisted on shaking before opening, and which consequently flew about the room in foaming fountains;) bumper-toasts were drunk; and the whole party, Franks and Turks, seem to have gradually risen into a glorious state of intoxication, during which they vowed eternal friendship to each other in all imaginable tongues; and the German prince declared he would make the campaign to Taka with the Bascha, draw out the plan, and overwhelm the enemy. This jovial meeting was followed by a quieter entertainment given by the Wernes to the prince, who declared he was travelling as a private gentleman, and wished to be treated accordingly; and then Soliman Effendi, the Sicilian renegade, made a respectful application for permission to invite the "Altezza Tedesca," for whom he had conceived a great liking. A passage from Mr Werne is here worth quoting, as showing the state of society at Chartum. "I communicated the invitation, with the remark that the Sicilian was notorious for his poisonings, but that I had less fear on his highness' account than on that of my brother, who was already designated to replace him in his post. The prince did not heed the danger; moreover, I had put myself on a peculiar footing with Soliman Effendi, and now told him plainly that he had better keep his vindictive manœuvres for others than us, for that my brother and I should go to dinner with loaded pistols in our pockets, and would[255] shoot him through the head (brucciare il cervello) if one of us three felt as much as a belly-ache at his table. The dinner was served in the German fashion; all the guests came, except Vaissière (formerly a French captain, now a slave-dealer, with the cross of the legion of honour.) He would not trust Soliman, who was believed to have poisoned a favourite female-slave of his after a dispute they had about money matters. The dinner went off merrily and well. The duke changed his mind about going to Taka, but promised to join in the campaign on his return from Fàszogl, and bade me promise the Bascha in his name a crocodile-rifle and a hundred bottles of champagne."

Long and costly were the preparations for the march; the more so that Mr Werne and his brother, who saw gleaming in the distance the golden cupolas of Bagdad, desired to take all their baggage with them, and also sufficient stores for the campaign—not implicitly trusting to the Bascha's promise that his kitchen and table should be always at their service. Ten camels were needed to carry the brothers' baggage. One of their greatest troubles was to know how to dispose of their collection of beasts and birds. "The young maneless lion, our greatest joy, was dead—Soliman Effendi, who was afraid of him, having dared to poison him, as I learned, after the renegade's death, from one of our own people." But of birds there were a host; eagles, vultures, king-cranes, (grus pavonina, Linn.;) a snake-killing secretary, with his beautiful eagle head, long tail, and heron legs; strange varieties of water-fowl, many of which had been shot, but had had the pellets extracted and the wounds healed by the skill of Dr Werne; and last, but most beloved, "a pet black horn-bird, (buceros abyss. L.,) who hopped up to us when we called out 'Jack!'—who picked up with his long curved beak the pieces of meat that were thrown to him, tossed them into the air and caught them again, (whereat the Prince of Wurtemberg laughed till he held his sides,) because nature has provided him with too short a tongue; but who did not despise frogs and lizards, and who called us at daybreak with his persevering 'Hum, hum,' until we roused ourselves and answered 'Jack.'" Their anxiety on account of their aviary was relieved by the Bascha's wife, who condescendingly offered to take charge of it during their absence. Mehemet Ali's daughter suffered dreadfully from ennui in dull, unwholesome Chartum, and reckoned on the birds and beasts as pastime and diversion. Thus, little by little, difficulties were overcome, and all was made ready for the march. A Bolognese doctor of medicine, named Bellotti, and Dumont, a French apothecary, arrived at Chartum. They belonged to an Egyptian regiment, and must accompany it on the chasua.[2] Troops assembled in and around Chartum, the greater part of whose garrison, destined also to share in the campaign, were boated over to the right bank of the Blue Nile. Thence they were to march northwards to Damer—once a town, now a village amidst ruins—situated about three leagues above the place where the Atbara, a river that rises in Abyssinia, and flows north-westward through Sennaar, falls into the Nile. There the line of march changed its direction to the right, and took a tolerably straight route, but inclining a little to the south, in the direction of the Red Sea. The Bascha went by water down the Nile the greater part of the way to Damer, and was of course attended by his physician. Mr Werne, finding himself unwell, followed his example, sending their twelve camels by land, and accompanied by Bellotti, Dumont, and a Savoyard merchant from Chartum, Bruno Rollet by name. There was great difficulty in getting a vessel, all having been taken for the transport of provisions and military[256] stores; but at last one was discovered, sunk by its owner to save it from the commissariat, and after eleven days of sickness, suffering, and peril—during which Mr Werne, when burning with fever, had been compelled to jump overboard to push the heavy laden boat off the reef on which the stupid Rëis had run it—the party rejoined headquarters. There Mr Werne was kindly received by Achmet, and most joyfully by his brother. Long and dolorous was the tale Dr Joseph had to tell of his sufferings with the wild-riding Bascha. Three days before reaching Damer, that impatient chieftain left his ship and ordered out the dromedaries. The Berlin doctor of medicine felt his heart sink within him; he had never yet ascended a dromedary's saddle, and the desperate riding of the Bascha made his own Turkish retinue fear to follow him. His forebodings were well-founded. Two hours' rough trot shook up his interior to such an extent, and so stripped his exterior of skin, that he was compelled to dismount and lie down upon some brushwood near the Nile, exposed to the burning sun, and with a compassionate Bedouin for sole attendant, until the servants and baggage came up. Headache, vomiting, terrible heat and parching thirst—for he had no drinking vessel, and the Bedouin would not leave him—were his portion the whole day, followed by fever and delirium during the night. At two o'clock the next day (the hottest time) the Bascha was again in the saddle, as if desirous to try to the utmost his own endurance and that of his suite. By this time the doctor had come up with him, (having felt himself better in the morning,) after a six hours' ride, and terrible loss of leather, the blood running down into his stockings. Partly on his dromedary, partly on foot, he managed to follow his leader through this second day's march, at the cost of another night's fever, but in the morning he was so weak that he was obliged to take boat and complete his journey to Damer by water. Of more slender frame and delicate complexion than his brother, the poor doctor was evidently ill-adapted for roughing it in African deserts, although his pluck and fortitude went far towards supplying his physical deficiencies. Most painful are the accounts of his constantly recurring sufferings during that arduous expedition; and one cannot but admire and wonder at the zeal for science, or ardent thirst for novelty, that supported him, and induced him to persevere in the teeth of such hardship and ill-health. At Damer he purchased a small dromedary of easy paces, and left the Bascha's rough-trotting gift for his brother's riding.

At three in the afternoon of the 20th March, a cannon-shot gave the signal for departure. The Wernes' water-skins were already filled and their baggage packed; in an instant their tents were struck and camels loaded; with baggage and servants they took their place at the head of the column and rode up to the Bascha, who was halted to the east of Damer, with his beautiful horses and dromedaries standing saddled behind him. He complained of the great disorder in the camp, but consoled himself with the reflection that things would go better by-and-by. "It was truly a motley scene," says Mr Werne. "The Turkish cavalry in their national costume of many colours, with yellow and green banners and small kettle-drums; the Schaïgië and Mograbin horsemen; Bedouins on horseback, on camels, and on foot; the Schechs and Moluks (little king) with their armour-bearers behind them on the dromedaries, carrying pikes and lances, straight swords and leather shields; the countless donkeys and camels—the former led by a great portion of the infantry, to ride in turn—drums and an ear-splitting band of music, The Chabir (caravan-leader) was seen in the distance mounted on his dromedary, and armed with a lance and round shield; the Bascha bestrode his horse, and we accompanied him in that direction, whilst gradually, and in picturesque disorder, the detachments emerged from the monstrous confusion and followed us. The artillery consisted of two field-pieces, drawn by camels, which the Bascha had had broken to the work, that in the desert they might relieve the customary team of mules.

"Abd-el-Kader, the jovial Topschi[257] Baschi, (chief of the artillery,) commanded them, and rode a mule. The Turks, (that is to say, chiefly Circassians, Kurds, and Arnauts or Albanians,) who shortly before could hardly put one leg before the other, seemed transformed into new men, as they once more found themselves at home in their saddles. They galloped round the Bascha like madmen, riding their horses as mercilessly as if they had been drunk with opium. This was a sort of honorary demonstration, intended to indicate to their chief their untameable valour. The road led through the desert, and was tolerably well beaten. Towards evening the Bascha rode forwards with the Chabir. We did not follow, for I felt myself unwell. It was dark night when we reached the left bank of the Atbara, where we threw ourselves down amongst the bushes, and went to sleep, without taking supper."

The campaign might now be said to be beginning; at least the army was close upon tribes whose disposition, if not avowedly hostile, was very equivocal, and the Bascha placed a picket of forty men at the only ford over the Atbara, a clear stream of tolerable depth, and with lofty banks, covered with rich grass, with mimosas and lofty fruit-laden palm-trees. The next day's march was a severe one—ten hours without a halt—and was attended, after nightfall, with some danger, arising partly from the route lying through trees with barbed thorns, strong enough to tear the clothes off men's bodies and the eyes out of their heads, and partly from the crowding and pressure in the disorderly column during its progress amongst holes and chasms occasioned by the overflowing of the river. Upon halting, at midnight, a fire was lighted for the Bascha, and one of his attendants brought coffee to Mr Werne; but he, sick and weary, rejected it, and would have preferred, he says, so thoroughly exhausted did he feel, a nap under a bush to a supper upon a roasted angel. They were still ascending the bank of the Atbara, a winding stream, with wildly beautiful tree-fringed banks, containing few fish, but giving shelter, in its deep places, to the crocodile and hippopotamus. From the clefts of its sandstone bed, then partially exposed by the decline of the waters, sprang a lovely species of willow, with beautiful green foliage and white umbelliferous flowers, having a perfume surpassing that of jasmine. The Wernes would gladly, have explored the neighbourhood; but the tremendous heat, and a warm wind which played round their temples with a sickening effect, drove them into camp. Gunfire was at noon upon that day; but it was Mr Werne's turn to be on the sick-list. Suddenly he felt himself so ill, that it was with a sort of despairing horror he saw the tent struck from over him, loaded upon a camel, and driven off. In vain he endeavoured to rise; the sun seemed to dart coals of fire upon his head. His brother and servant carried him into the shadow of a neighbouring palm-tree, and he sank half-dead upon the glowing sand. It would suffice to abide there during the heat of the day, as they thought, but instead of that, they were compelled to remain till next morning, Werne suffering terribly from dysentery. "Never in my life," he says, "did I more ardently long for the setting of the sun than on that day; even its last rays exercised the same painful power on my hair, which seemed to be in a sort of electric connection with just as many sunbeams, and to bristle up upon my head. And no sooner had the luminary which inspired me with such horror sunk below the horizon, than I felt myself better, and was able to get on my legs and crawl slowly about. Some good-natured Arab shepherd-lads approached our fire, pitied me, and brought me milk and durra-bread. It was a lovely evening; the full moon was reflected in the Atbara, as were also the dark crowns of the palm-trees, wild geese shrieked around us; otherwise the stillness was unbroken, save at intervals by the cooing of doves. There is something beautiful in sleeping in the open air, when weather and climate are suitable. We awoke before sunrise, comforted, and got upon our dromedaries; but after a couple of hours' ride we mistrusted the sun, and halted with some wandering Arabs belonging to the Kabyle of the Kammarabs. We[258] were hospitably received, and regaled with milk and bread."[3]

When our two Germans rejoined headquarters, after four days' absence, they found Achmet Bascha seated in the shade upon the ground in front of his tent, much burned by the sun, and looking fagged and suffering—as well he might be after the heat and exposure he had voluntarily undergone. Nothing could cure him, however, at least as yet, of his fancy for marching in the heat of the day. Although obstinate and despotic, the Bascha was evidently a dashing sort of fellow, well calculated to win the respect and admiration of his wild and heterogeneous army. Weary as were the two Wernes, (they reached the camp at noon,) at two o'clock they had to be again in the saddle. "A number of gazelles were started; the Bascha seized a gun and dashed after them upon his Arabian stallion, almost the whole of the cavalry scouring after him like a wild mob, and we ourselves riding a sharp trot to witness the chase. We thought he had fallen from his horse, so suddenly did he swing himself from saddle to ground, killing three gazelles with three shots, of which animals we consumed a considerable portion roasted for that night's supper." The river here widened, and crocodiles showed themselves upon the opposite shore. The day was terribly warm; the poor medico was ill again, suffering grievously from his head, and complaining of his hair being so hot; and as the Salamander Bascha persisted in marching under a sun which, through the canvass of the tents, heated sabres and musket-barrels till it was scarcely possible to grasp them, the brothers again lingered behind and followed in the cool of the evening, Joseph being mounted upon an easy-going mule lent him by Topschi Baschi, the good-humoured but dissolute captain of the guns. They were now divided but by the river's breadth from the hostile tribe of the Haddenda, and might at any moment be assailed; so two hours after sunset a halt was called and numerous camp-fires were lighted, producing a most picturesque effect amongst the trees, and by their illumination of the diversified costumes of the soldiery, and attracting a whole regiment of scorpions, "some of them remarkably fine specimens," says Mr Werne, who looks upon these unpleasant fireside companions with a scientific eye, "a finger and a half long, of a light colour, half of the tail of a brown black and covered with hair." It is a thousand pities that the adventurous Mrs Ida Pfeiffer did not accompany Mr Werne upon this expedition. She would have had the finest possible opportunities of curing herself of the prejudice which it will be remembered she was so weak as to entertain against the scorpion tribe. These pleasant reptiles were as plentiful all along Mr Werne's line of march as are cockchafers on a summer evening in an English oak-copse. Their visitations were pleasantly varied by those of snakes of all sizes, and of various degrees of venom. "At last," says Mr Werne, "one gets somewhat indifferent about scorpions and other wild animals." He had greater difficulty in accustoming himself to the sociable habits of the snakes, who used to glide about amongst tents and baggage, and by whom, in the course of the expedition, a great number of persons were bitten. On the 12th April "Mohammed Ladham sent us a remarkable scorpion—pity that it is so much injured—almost two fingers long, black-brown, tail and feet covered with prickly hair, claws as large as those of a small crab.... We had laid us down under a green tree beside a cotton plantation, whilst our servants unloaded the camels and pitched the tents, when a snake, six[259] feet long, darted from under our carpet, passed over my leg, and close before my brother's face. But we were so exhausted that we lay still, and some time afterwards the snake was brought to us, one of Schech Defalla's people having killed it." About noon next day a similar snake sprang out of the said Defalla's own tent; it was killed also, and found to measure six feet two inches. The soldiers perceiving that the German physician and his brother were curious in the matter of reptiles, brought them masses of serpents; but they had got a notion that the flesh was the part coveted (not the skin) to make medicine, and most of the specimens were so defaced as to be valueless. Early in May "some soldiers assured us they had seen in the thicket a serpent twenty feet long, and as thick as a man's leg; probably a species of boa—a pity that they could not kill it. The great number of serpents with dangerous bites makes our bivouac very unsafe, and we cannot encamp with any feeling of security near bushes or amongst brushwood; the prick of a blade of straw, the sting of the smallest insect, causes a hasty movement, for one immediately fancies it is a snake or scorpion; and when out shooting, one's second glance is for the game, one's first on the ground at his feet, for fear of trampling and irritating some venomous reptile." As we proceed through the volume we shall come to other accounts of beasts and reptiles, so remarkable as really almost to reconcile us to the possibility of some of the zoological marvels narrated by the Yankee Doctor Mayo in his rhapsody of Kaloolah.[4] For the present we must revert to the business of this curiously-conducted campaign. As the army advanced, various chiefs presented themselves, with retinues more or less numerous. The first of these was the Grand-Shech Mohammed Defalla, already named, who came up, with a great following, on the 28th March. He was a man of herculean frame; and assuredly such was very necessary to enable him to endure in that climate the weight of his defensive arms. He wore a double shirt of mail over a quilted doublet, arm-plates and beautifully wrought steel gauntlets; his casque fitted like a shell to the upper part of his head, and had in front, in lieu of a visor, an iron bar coming down over the nose—behind, for the protection of the nape, a fringe composed of small rings. His straight-bladed sword had a golden hilt. The whole equipment, which seems to correspond very closely with that of some of the Sikhs or other warlike Indian tribes, proceeded from India, and Defalla had forty or fifty such suits of arms. About the same time with him, arrived two Schechs from the refractory land of Taka, tall handsome men; whilst, from the environs of the neighbouring town of Gos-Rajeb, a number of people rode out on dromedaries to meet the Bascha, their hair quite white with camel-fat, which melted in the sun and streamed over their backs. Gos-Rajeb, situated at about a quarter of a mile from the left bank of the Atbara, consists of some two hundred tokul (huts) and clay-built houses, and in those parts is considered an important commercial depot, Indian goods being transported thither on camels from the port of Souakim, on the Red Sea. The inhabitants are of various tribes, more of them red than black or brown; but few were visible, many having fled at the approach of Achmet's army, which passed the town in imposing array—the infantry in double column in the centre, the Turkish cavalry on the right, the Schaïgiës and Mograbins on the left, the artillery, with kettledrums, cymbals, and other music, in the van—marched through the Atbara, there very shallow, and encamped on the right bank, in a stony and almost treeless plain, at the foot of two rocky hills. The Bascha ordered the Shech of Gos-Rajeb to act as guide to the Wernes in their examination of the vicinity, and to afford them all the information in his power. The most remarkable spot to which he conducted them was to the site of an ancient city, which once, according to tradition, had been as large as Cairo, and[260] inhabited by Christians. The date of its existence must be very remote, for the ground was smooth, and the sole trace of buildings consisted in a few heaps of broken bricks. There were indications of a terrible conflagration, the bricks in one place being melted together into a black glazed mass. Mr Werne could trace nothing satisfactory with respect to former Christian occupants, and seems disposed to think that Burckhardt, who speaks of Christian monuments at that spot, (in the neighbourhood of the hill of Herrerem,) may have been misled by certain peculiarly formed rocks.

The most renowned chief of the mutinous tribes of Taka, the conqueror of the Turks under Churdschid Bascha, was Mohammed Din, Grand-Schech of the Haddenda. This personage, awed by the approach of Achmet's formidable force, sent his son to the advancing Bascha, as a hostage for his loyalty and submission. Achmet sent the young man back to his father as bearer of his commands. The next day the army crossed the frontier of Taka, which is not very exactly defined, left the Atbara in their rear, and, moving still eastwards, beheld before them, in the far distance, the blue mountains of Abyssinia. The Bascha's suite was now swelled by the arrival of numerous Schechs, great and small, with their esquires and attendants. The route lay through a thick forest, interwoven with creeping plants and underwood, and with thorny mimosas, which grew to a great height. The path was narrow, the confusion of the march inconceivably great and perilous, and if the enemy had made a vigorous attack with their javelins, which they are skilled in throwing, the army must have endured great loss, with scarcely a possibility of inflicting any. At last the scattered column reached an open space, covered with grass, and intersected with deep narrow rills of water. The Bascha, who had outstripped his troops, was comfortably encamped, heedless of their fate, whilst they continued for a long time to emerge in broken parties from the wood. Mr Werne's good opinion of his generalship had been already much impaired, and this example of true Turkish indolence, and of the absence of any sort of military dispositions under such critical circumstances, completely destroyed it. The next day there was some appearance of establishing camp-guards, and of taking due precautions against the fierce and numerous foe, who on former occasions had thrice defeated Turkish armies, and from whom an attack might at any moment be expected. In the afternoon an alarm was given; the Bascha, a good soldier, although a bad general, was in the saddle in an instant, and gallopping to the spot, followed by all his cavalry, whilst the infantry rushed confusedly in the same direction. The uproar had arisen, however, not from Arab assailants, but from some soldiers who had discovered extensive corn magazines—silos, as they are called in Algeria—holes in the ground, filled with grain, and carefully covered over. By the Bascha's permission, the soldiers helped themselves from these abundant granaries, and thus the army found itself provided with corn for the next two months. In the course of the disorderly distribution, or rather scramble, occurred a little fight between the Schaïgië, a quarrelsome set of irregulars, and some of the Turks. Nothing could be worse than the discipline of Achmet's host. The Schaïgiës were active and daring horsemen, and were the first to draw blood in the campaign, in a skirmish upon the following day with some ambushed Arabs. The neighbouring woods swarmed with these javelin-bearing gentry, although they lay close, and rarely showed themselves, save when they could inflict injury at small risk. Mr Werne began to doubt the possibility of any extensive or effectual operations against these wild and wandering tribes, who, on the approach of the army, loaded their goods on camels, and fled into the Chaaba, or forest district, whither it was impossible to follow them. Where was the Bascha to find money and food for the support of his numerous army?—where was he to quarter it during the dangerous Chariff, or rainy season? He was very reserved as to his plans; probably, according to Mr Werne,[261] because he had none. The Schechs who had joined and marched with him could hardly be depended upon, when it was borne in mind that they, formerly the independent rulers of a free people, had been despoiled of their power and privileges, and were now the ill-used vassals of the haughty and stupid Turks, who overwhelmed them with imposts, treated them contemptuously, and even subjected them to the bastinado. "Mohammed Din, seeing the hard lot of these gentlemen, seems disposed to preserve his freedom as long as possible, or to sell it as dearly as may be. Should it come to a war, there is, upon our side, a total want of efficient leaders, at any rate if we except the Bascha. Abdin Aga, chief of the Turkish cavalry, a bloated Arnaut; Sorop Effendi, a model of stupidity and covetousness; Hassan Effendi Bimbaschi, a quiet sot; Soliman Aga, greedy, and without the slightest education of any kind; Hassan Effendi of Sennaar, a Turk in the true sense of the word (these four are infantry commanders); Mohammed Ladjam, a good-natured but inexperienced fellow, chief of the Mograbin cavalry: amongst all these officers, the only difference is, that each is more ignorant than his neighbour. With such leaders, what can be expected from an army that, for the most part, knows no discipline—the Schaïgiës, for instance, doing just what they please, and being in a fair way to corrupt all the rest—and that is encumbered with an endless train of dangerous rabble, idlers, slaves, and women of pleasure, serving as a burthen and hindrance? Let us console ourselves with the Allah kerim! (God is merciful.)" Mr Werne had not long to wait for a specimen of Turkish military skill. On the night of the 7th April he was watching in his tent beside his grievously sick brother, when there suddenly arose an uproar in the camp, followed by firing. "I remained by our tent, for my brother was scarcely able to stir, and the infantry also remained quiet, trusting to their mounted comrades. But when I saw Bimbaschi Hassan Effendi lead a company past us, and madly begin to fire over the powder-waggons, as if these were meant to serve as barricades against the hostile lances, I ran up to him with my sabre drawn, and threatened him with the Bascha, as well as with the weapon, whereupon he came to his senses, and begged me not to betray him. The whole proved to be mere noise, but the harassed Bascha was again up and active. He seemed to make no use of his aides-de-camp, and only his own presence could inspire his troops with courage. Some of the enemy were killed, and there were many tracks of blood leading into the wood, although the firing had been at random in the darkness. As a specimen of the tactics of our Napoleon-worshipping Bascha, he allowed the wells, which were at two hundred yards from camp, to remain unguarded at night, so that they might easily have been filled up by the enemy. Truly fortunate was it that there were no great stones in the neighbourhood to choke them up, for we were totally without implements wherewith to have cleared them out again." Luckily for this most careless general and helpless army, the Arabs neglected to profit by their shortcomings, and on the 14th April, after many negotiations, the renowned Mohammed Din himself, awed, we must suppose, by the numerical strength of Achmet's troops, and over-estimating their real value, committed the fatal blunder of presenting himself in the Turkish camp. Great was the curiosity to see this redoubted chief, who alighted at Schech Defalla's tent, into which the soldiers impudently crowded, to get a view of the man before whom many of them had formerly trembled and fled. "Mohammed Din is of middle stature, and of a black-brown colour, like all his people; his countenance at first says little, but, on longer inspection, its expression is one of great cunning; his bald head is bare; his dress Arabian, with drawers of a fiery red colour. His retinue consists, without exception, of most ill-looking fellows, on whose countenances Nature seems to have done her best to express the faithless character attributed to the Haddenda. They are all above the middle height, and armed with shields and lances, or swords." Next morning Mr Werne[262] saw the Bascha seated on his angarèb, (a sort of bedstead, composed of plaited strips of camel-hide, which, upon the march, served as a throne,) with a number of Shechs squatted upon the ground on either side of him, amongst them Mohammed Din, looking humbled, and as if half-repentant of his rash step. The Bascha appeared disposed to let him feel that he was now no better than a caged lion, whose claws the captor can cut at will. He showed him, however, marks of favour, gave him a red shawl for a turban, and a purple mantle with gold tassels, but no sabre, which Mr Werne thought a bad omen. The Schech was suffered to go to and fro between the camp and his own people, but under certain control—now with an escort of Schaïgiës, then leaving his son as hostage. He sent in some cattle and sheep as a present, and promised to bring the tribute due; this he failed to do, and a time was fixed to him and the other Shechs within which to pay up arrears. Notwithstanding the subjection of their chief, the Arabs continued their predatory practices, stealing camels from the camp, or taking them by force from the grooms who drove them out to pasture.

Mr Werne's book is a journal, written daily during the campaign but, owing to the long interval between its writing and publication, he has found it necessary to make frequent parenthetical additions, corrective or explanatory. Towards the end of April, during great sickness in camp, he writes as follows:—"My brother's medical observations and experiments begin to excite in me a strong interest. He has promised me that he will keep a medical journal; but he must first get into better health, for now it is always with sickening disgust that he returns from visiting his patients; he complains of the insupportable effluvia from these people, sinks upon his angarèb with depression depicted in his features, and falls asleep with open eyes, so that I often feel quite uneasy." Then comes the parenthesis of ten years' later date. "Subsequently, when I had joined the expedition for the navigation of the White Nile, he wrote to me from the camp of Kàssela-el-Lus to Chartum, that, with great diligence and industry, he had written some valuable papers on African diseases, and was inconsolable at having lost them. He had been for ten days dangerously ill, had missed me sadly, and, in a fit of delirium, when his servant asked him for paper to light the fire, had handed him his manuscript, which the stupid fellow had forthwith burned. At the same time, he lamented that, during his illness, our little menagerie had been starved to death. The Bascha had been to see him, and by his order Topschi Baschi had taken charge of his money, that he might not be robbed, giving the servants what was needful for their keep, and for the purchase of flesh for the animals. The servants had drunk the money intended for the beasts' food. When my brother recovered his health, he had the fagged, (a sort of lynx,) which had held out longest, and was only just dead, cut open, and so convinced himself that it had died of hunger. The annoyance one has to endure from these people is beyond conception, and the very mildest-tempered man—as, for instance, my late brother—is compelled at times to make use of the whip."

Whilst Mohammed Din and the other Shechs, accompanied by detachments of Turkish troops, intended partly to support them in their demands, and partly to reconnoitre the country, endeavoured to get together the stipulated tribute, the army remained stationary. But repose did not entail monotony; strange incidents were of daily occurrence in this singular camp. The Wernes, always anxious for the increase of their cabinet of stuffed birds and beasts, sent their huntsman Abdallah with one of the detachments, remaining themselves, for the present at least, at headquarters, to collect whatever might come in their way. The commander of the Mograbins sent them an antelope as big as a donkey, having legs like a cow, and black twisted horns. From the natives little was to be obtained. They were very shy and ill-disposed, and could not be prevailed upon, even by tenfold payment, to supply the things most abundant with them, as for instance milk and honey. In hopes of alluring and[263] conciliating them, the Bascha ordered those traders who had accompanied the army to establish a bazaar outside the fence enclosing the camp. The little mirrors that were there sold proved a great attraction. The Arabs would sit for whole days looking in them, and pulling faces. But no amount of reflection could render them amicable or honest: they continued to steal camels and asses whenever they could, and one of them caught a Schaigie's horse, led him up to the camp, and stabbed him to death. So great was the hatred of these tribes to their oppressors—a hatred which would have shown itself by graver aggressions, but for Achmet's large force, and above all, for their dread of firearms. Within the camp there was wild work enough at times. The good-hearted, hot-headed Werne was horribly scandalised by the ill-treatment of the slaves. Dumont, the French apothecary, had a poor lad named Amber, a mere boy, willing and industrious, whom he continually beat and kicked, until at last Mr Werne challenged him to a duel with sabres, and threatened to take away the slave, which he, as a Frenchman, had no legal right to possess. But this was nothing compared to the cruelties practised by other Europeans, and especially at Chartum by one Vigoureux, (a French corporal who had served under Napoleon, and was now adjutant of an Egyptian battalion,) and his wife, upon a poor black girl, only ten years of age, whom they first barbarously flogged, and then tied to a post, with her bleeding back exposed to the broiling sun. Informed of this atrocity by his brother, who had witnessed it, Mr Werne sprang from his sickbed, and flew to the rescue, armed with his sabre, and with a well-known iron stick, ten pounds in weight, which had earned him the nickname of Abu-Nabut, or Father of the Stick. A distant view of his incensed countenance sufficed, and the Frenchman, cowardly as cruel, hastened to release his victim, and to humble himself before her humane champion. Concerning this corporal and his dame, whom he had been to France to fetch, and who was brought to bed on camel-back, under a burning sun, in the midst of the desert, some curious reminiscences are set down in the Feldzug, as are also some diverting details of the improprieties of the dissipated gunner Topschi Baschi, who, on the 1st May, brought dancing-girls into the hut occupied by the two Germans, and assembled a mob round it by the indecorous nature of his proceedings. Regulations for the internal order and security of the camp were unheard of. After a time, tents were pitched over the ammunition; a ditch was dug around it, and strict orders were given to light no fire in its vicinity. All fires, too, by command of the Bascha, were to be extinguished when the evening gun was fired. For a short time the orders were obeyed; then they were forgotten; fires were seen blazing late at night, and within fifteen paces of the powder. Nothing but the bastinado could give memory to these reckless fatalists. "I have often met ships upon the Nile, so laden with straw that there was scarcely room for the sailors to work the vessel. No matter for that; in the midst of the straw a mighty kitchen-fire was merrily blazing."

On the 6th of May, the two Wernes mounted their dromedaries and set off, attended by one servant, and with a guide provided by Mohammed Defalla, for the village of El Soffra, at a distance of two and a half leagues, where they expected to find Mohammed Din and a large assemblage of his tribe. It was rather a daring thing to advance thus unescorted into the land of the treacherous Haddendas, and the Bascha gave his consent unwillingly; but Mussa, (Moses,) the Din's only son, was hostage in the camp, and they deemed themselves safer alone than with the half company of soldiers Achmet wanted to send with them. Their route lay due east, at first through fields of durra, (a sort of grain,) afterwards through forests of saplings. The natives they met greeted them courteously, and they reached El Soffra without molestation, but there learned, to their considerable annoyance, that Mohammed Din had gone two leagues and a half farther, to the camp of his nephew Shech Mussa, at Mitkenàb. So, after a short pause, they again mounted their camels, and rode off, loaded with[264] maledictions by the Arabs, because they would not remain and supply them with medicine, although the same Arabs refused to requite the drugs with so much as a cup of milk. They rode for more than half an hour before emerging from the straggling village, which was composed of wretched huts made of palm-mats, having an earthen cooking-vessel, a leathern water-bottle, and two stones for bruising corn, for sole furniture. The scanty dress of the people—some of the men had nothing but a leathern apron round their hips, and a sheep-skin, with the wool inwards, over their shoulders—their long hair and wild countenances, gave them the appearance of thorough savages. In the middle of every village was an open place, where the children played stark naked in the burning sun, their colour and their extraordinarily nimble movements combining, says Mr Werne, to give them the appearance of a troop of young imps. Infants, which in Europe would lie helpless in the cradle, are there seen rolling in the sand, with none to mind them, and playing with the young goats and other domestic animals. In that torrid climate, the development of the human frame is wonderfully rapid. Those women of whom the travellers caught a sight in this large village, which consisted of upwards of two thousand huts and tents, were nearly all old and ugly. The young ones, when they by chance encountered the strangers, covered their faces, and ran away. On the road to Mitkenàb, however, some young and rather handsome girls showed themselves. "They all looked at us with great wonder," says Mr Werne, "and took us for Turks, for we are the first Franks who have come into this country."

Mitkenàb, pleasantly situated amongst lofty trees, seemed to invite the wanderers to cool shelter from the mid-day sun. They were parched with thirst when they entered it, but not one of the inquisitive Arabs who crowded around them would attend to their request for a draught of milk or water. Here, however, was Mohammed Din, and with him a party of Schaïgiës under Melek Mahmud, whom they found encamped under a great old tree, with his fifty horsemen around him. After they had taken some refreshment, the Din came to pay them a visit. He refused to take the place offered him on an angarèb, but sat down upon the ground, giving them to understand, with a sneering smile, that that was now the proper place for him. "We had excellent opportunity to examine the physiognomy of this Schech, who is venerated like a demigod by all the Arabs between the Atbara and the Red Sea. 'He is a brave man,' they say, 'full of courage; there is no other like him!' His face is fat and round, with small grey-brown, piercing, treacherous-looking eyes, expressing both the cunning and the obstinacy of his character; his nose is well-proportioned and slightly flattened; his small mouth constantly wears a satirical scornful smile. But for this expression and his thievish glance, his bald crown and well-fed middle-sized person would become a monk's hood. He goes with his head bare, wears a white cotton shirt and ferda, and sandals on his feet.... We told him that he was well known to the Franks as a great hero; he shook his head and said that on the salt lake, at Souakim, he had seen great ships with cannon, but that he did not wish the help of the Inglèb (English;) then he said something else, which was not translated to us. I incautiously asked him, how numerous his nation was. 'Count the trees,' he replied, glancing ironically around him; (a poll-tax constituted a portion of the tribute.) Conversation through an interpreter was so wearisome that we soon took our leave." At Mitkenàb they were upon the borders of the great forest (Chaaba) that extends from the banks of the Atbara to the shores of the Red Sea. It contains comparatively few lofty trees—most of these getting uprooted by hurricanes, when the rainy season has softened the ground round their roots—but a vast deal of thicket and dense brushwood, affording shelter to legions of wild beasts; innumerable herds of elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, tigers, giraffes, various inferior beasts, and multitudes of serpents of the most venomous description. For fear of these unpleasant neighbours, no Arab[265] at Mitkenàb quits his dwelling after nightfall. "When we returned to the wells, a little before sundown, we found all the Schaïgiës on the move, to take up their quarters in an enclosure outside the village, partly on account of the beasts of prey, especially the lions, which come down to drink of a night, partly for safety from the unfriendly Arabs. We went with them and encamped with Mammud in the middle of the enclosure. We slept soundly the night through, only once aroused by the hoarse cries of the hyenas, which were sneaking about the village, setting all the dogs barking. To insure our safety, Mohammed Din himself slept at our door—so well-disposed were his people towards us." A rumour had gained credit amongst the Arabs, that the two mysterious strangers were, sent by Achmet to reconnoitre the country for the Bascha's own advance; and so incensed were they at this, that, although their beloved chief's son was a hostage in the Turkish camp, it was only by taking bypaths, under guidance of a young relative of Schech Mussa's, that the Wernes were able to regain their camp in safety. A few days after their return they were both attacked by bad fever, which for some time prevented them from writing. They lost their reckoning, and thenceforward the journal is continued without dates.

The Bascha grew weary of life in camp, and pined after action. In vain did the Schaïgiës toss the djereed, and go through irregular tournaments and sham fights for his diversion; in vain did he rattle the dice with Topschi Baschi; vain were the blandishments of an Abyssinian beauty whom he had quartered in a hut surrounded with a high fence, and for whose amusement he not unfrequently had nocturnal serenades performed by the band of the 8th regiment; to which brassy and inharmonious challenge the six thousand donkeys assembled in camp never failed to respond by an ear-splitting bray, whilst the numerous camels bellowed a bass: despite all these amusements, the Bascha suffered from ennui. He was furious when he saw how slowly and scantily came in the tribute for which he had made this long halt. Some three hundred cows were all that had yet been delivered; a ridiculously small number contrasted with the vast herds possessed by those tribes. Achmet foamed with rage at this ungrateful return for his patience and consideration. He reproached the Schechs who were with him, and sent for Mohammed Din, Shech Mussa, and the two Shechs of Mitkenàb. Although their people, foreboding evil, endeavoured to dissuade them from obedience, they all four came and were forthwith put in irons and chained together. With all his cunning Mohammed Din had fallen into the snare. His plan had been, so Mr Werne believes, to cajole and detain the Turks by fair words and promises until the rainy season, when hunger and sickness would have proved his best allies. The Bascha had been beforehand with him, and the old marauder might now repent at leisure that he had not trusted to his impenetrable forests and to the javelins of his people, rather than to the word of a Turk. On the day of his arrest the usual evening gun was loaded with canister, and fired into the woods in the direction of the Haddendas, the sound of cannon inspiring the Arab and negro tribes with a panic fear. Firearms—to them incomprehensible weapons—have served more than anything else to daunt their courage. "When the Turks attacked a large and populous mountain near Faszogl, the blacks sent out spies to see how strong was the foe, and how armed. The spies came back laughing, and reported that there was no great number of men; that their sole arms were shining sticks upon their shoulders, and that they had neither swords, lances, nor shields. The poor fellows soon found how terrible an effect had the sticks they deemed so harmless. As they could not understand how it was that small pieces of lead should wound and kill, a belief got abroad amongst them, that the Afrite, Scheitàn, (the devil or evil spirit,) dwelt in the musket-barrels. With this conviction, a negro, grasping a soldier's musket, put his hand over the mouth of the barrel, that the afrite might not get out. The soldier pulled the trigger, and the leaden devil pierced the poor[266] black's hand and breast. After an action, a negro collected the muskets of six or seven slain soldiers, and joyfully carried them home, there to forge them into lances in the presence of a party of his friends. But it happened that some of them were loaded, and soon getting heated in the fire, they went off, scattering death and destruction around them." Most of the people in Taka run from the mere report of a musket, but the Arabs of Hedjàs, a mountainous district near the Red Sea, possess firearms, and are slow but very good shots.

In the way of tribute, nothing was gained by the imprisonment of Mahommed Din and his companions. No more contributions came in, and not an Arab showed himself upon the market-place outside the camp. Mohammed Din asked why his captors did not kill rather than confine him; he preferred death to captivity, and keeping him prisoner would lead, he said, to no result. The Arab chiefs in camp did not conceal their disgust at the Bascha's treatment of their Grand-Shech, and taxed Achmet with having broken his word, since he had given him the Amàhn—promise of pardon. Any possibility of conciliating the Arabs was destroyed by the step that had been taken. At night they swarmed round the camp, shrieking their war-cry. The utmost vigilance was necessary; a third of the infantry was under arms all night, the consequent fatigue increasing the amount of sickness. The general aspect of things was anything but cheering. The Wernes had their private causes of annoyance. Six of their camels, including the two excellent dromedaries given to them by the Bascha before quitting Chartum, were stolen whilst their camel-driver slept, and could not be recovered. They were compelled to buy others, and Mr Werne complains bitterly of the heavy expenses of the campaign—expenses greatly augmented by the sloth and dishonesty of their servants. The camel-driver, fearing to face his justly-incensed employers, disappeared and was no more heard of. Upon this and other occasions, Mr Werne was struck by the extraordinary skill of the Turks in tracing animals and men by their footsteps. In this manner his servants tracked his camels to an Arab village, although the road had been trampled by hundreds of beasts of the same sort. "If these people have once seen the footprint of a man, camel, horse, or ass, they are sure to recognise it amongst thousands of such impressions, and will follow the trail any distance, so long as the ground is tolerably favourable, and wind or rain has not obliterated the marks. In cases of loss, people send for a man who makes this kind of search his profession; they show him a footprint of the lost animal, and immediately, without asking any other indication, he follows the track through the streets of a town, daily trodden by thousands, and seldom falls to hunt out the game. He does not proceed slowly, or stoop to examine the ground, but his sharp eye follows the trail at a run. We ourselves saw the footstep of a runaway slave shown to one of these men, who caught the fugitive at the distance of three days' journey from that spot. My brother once went out of the Bascha's house at Chartum, to visit a patient who lived far off in the town. He had been gone an hour when the Bascha desired to see him, and the tschansch (orderly) traced him at once by his footmarks on the unpaved streets in which crowds had left similar signs. When, in consequence of my sickness, we lingered for some days on the Atbara, and then marched to overtake the army, the Schaïgiës who escorted us detected, amidst the hoof-marks of the seven or eight thousand donkeys accompanying the troops, those of a particular jackass belonging to one of their friends, and the event proved that they were right." Mr Werne fills his journal, during his long sojourn in camp, with a great deal of curious information concerning the habits and peculiarities of both Turks and Arabs, as well as with the interesting results of his observations on the brute creation. The soldiers continued to bring to him and his brother all manner of animals and reptiles—frogs, whole coils of snakes, and chameleons, which there abound, but whose changes of colour Mr Werne found to be much less numerous than is commonly believed.[267] For two months he watched the variations of hue of these curious lizards, and found them limited to different shades of grey and green, with yellow stripes and spots. He made a great pet of a young wild cat, which was perfectly tame, and extraordinarily handsome. Its colour was grey, beautifully spotted with black, like a panther; its head was smaller and more pointed than that of European cats; its ears, of unusual size, were black, with white stripes. Many of the people in camp took it to be a young tiger, but the natives called it a fagged, and said it was a sort of cat, in which Mr Werne agreed with them. "Its companion and playfellow is a rat, about the size of a squirrel, with a long silvery tail, which, when angry, it swells out, and sets up over its back. This poor little beast was brought to us with two broken legs, and we gave it to the cat, thinking it was near death. But the cat, not recognising her natural prey—and moreover feeling the want of a companion—and the rat, tamed by pain and cured by splints, became inseparable friends, ate together, and slept arm in arm. The rat, which was not ugly like our house rats, but was rather to be considered handsome, by reason of its long frizzled tail, never made use of its liberty to escape." Notwithstanding the numerous devices put in practice by the Wernes to pass their time, it at last began to hang heavy, and their pipes were almost their sole resource and consolation. Smoking is little customary in Egypt, except amongst the Turks and Arabs. The Mograbins prefer chewing. The blacks of the Gesira make a concentrated infusion of this weed, which they call bucca; take a mouthful of it, and roll the savoury liquor round their teeth for a quarter of an hour before ejecting it. They are so addicted to this practice, that they invite their friends to "bucca" as Europeans do to dinner. The vessel containing the tobacco juice makes the round of the party, and a profound silence ensues, broken only by the harmonious gurgle of the delectable fluid. Conversation is carried on by signs.

"We shall march to-morrow," had long been the daily assurance of those wiseacres, to be found in every army, who always know what the general means to do better than the general himself. At last the much-desired order was issued—of course when everybody least expected it—and, after a night of bustle and confusion, the army got into motion, in its usual disorderly array. Its destination was a mountain called Kassela-el-Lus, in the heart of the Taka country, whither the Bascha had sent stores of grain, and where he proposed passing the rainy season and founding a new town. The distance was about fourteen hours' march. The route led south-eastwards, at first through a level country, covered with boundless fields of tall durra. At the horizon, like a great blue cloud, rose the mountain of Kassela, a blessed sight to eyes that had long been weary of the monotonous level country. After a while the army got out of the durra-fields, and proceeded over a large plain scantily overgrown with grass, observing a certain degree of military order and discipline, in anticipation of an attempt, on the part of the angry Arabs, to rescue Mohammed Din and his companions in captivity. Numerous hares and jackals were started and ridden down. Even gazelles, swift as they are, were sometimes overtaken by the excellent Turkish horses. Presently the grass grew thicker and tall enough to conceal a small donkey, and they came to wooded tracts and jungles, and upon marks of elephants and other wild beasts. The foot-prints of the elephants, in places where the ground had been slightly softened by the rain, were often a foot deep, and from a foot and a half to two feet in length and breadth. Mr Werne regrets not obtaining a view of one of these giant brutes. The two-horned rhinoceros is also common in that region, and is said to be of extraordinary ferocity in its attacks upon men and beasts, and not unfrequently to come off conqueror in single combat with the elephant. "Suddenly the little Schaïgiës cavalry set up a great shouting, and every one handled his arms, anticipating an attack from the Arabs. But soon the cry of 'Asset! Asset!' (lion) was heard, and we gazed eagerly on every side, curious for the lion's[268] appearance. The Bascha had already warned his chase-loving cavalry, under penalty of a thousand blows, not to quit their ranks on the appearance of wild beasts, for in that broken ground he feared disorder in the army and an attack from the enemy. I and my brother were at that moment with Melek Mahmud at the outward extremity of the left wing; suddenly a tolerably large lioness trotted out of a thicket beside us, not a hundred paces off. She seemed quite fearless, for she did not quicken her pace at sight of the army. The next minute a monstrous lion showed himself at the same spot, roaring frightfully, and apparently in great fury; his motions were still slower than those of his female; now and then he stood still to look at us, and after coming to within sixty or seventy paces—we all standing with our guns cocked, ready to receive him—he gave us a parting scowl, and darted away, with great bounds, in the track of his wife. In a moment both had disappeared." Soon after this encounter, which startled and delighted Dr Werne, and made his brother's little dromedary dance with alarm, they reached the banks of the great gohr, (the bed of a river, filled only in the rainy season,) known as El Gasch, which intersects the countries of Taka and Basa. With very little daring and still less risk, the Haddendas, who are said to muster eighty thousand fighting men, might have annihilated the Bascha's army, as it wound its toilsome way for nearly a league along the dry water-course, (whose high banks were crowned with trees and thick bushes,) the camels stumbling and occasionally breaking their legs in the deep holes left by the feet of the elephants, where the cavalry could not have acted, and where every javelin must have told upon the disorderly groups of weary infantry. The Arabs either feared the firearms, or dreaded lest their attack should be the signal for the instant slaughter of their Grand-Shech, who rode, in the midst of the infantry, upon a donkey, which had been given him out of consideration for his age, whilst the three other prisoners were cruelly forced to perform the whole march on foot, with heavy chains on their necks and feet, and exposed to the jibes of the pitiless soldiery. On quitting the Gohr, the march was through trees and brushwood, and then through a sort of labyrinthine swamp, where horses and camels stumbled at every step, and where the Arabs again had a glorious opportunity, which they again neglected, of giving Achmet such a lesson as they had given to his predecessor in the Baschalik. The army now entered the country of the Hallengas, and a six days' halt succeeded to their long and painful march.

It would be of very little interest to trace the military operations of Achmet Bascha, which were altogether of the most contemptible description—consisting in the chasuas, or razzias already noticed, sudden and secret expeditions of bodies of armed men against defenceless tribes, whom they despoiled of their cattle and women. From his camp at the foot of Kassela-el-Lus, the Bascha directed many of these marauding parties, remaining himself safely in a large hut, which Mr Werne had had constructed for him, and usually cheating the men and officers, who had borne the fatigue and run the risk, out of their promised share of the booty. Sometimes the unfortunate natives, driven to the wall and rendered desperate by the cruelties of their oppressors, found courage for a stout resistance.

"An expedition took place to the mountains of Basa, and the troops brought back a large number of prisoners of both sexes. The men were almost all wounded, and showed great fortitude under the painful operation of extracting the balls. Even the Turks confessed that these mountaineers had made a gallant defence with lances and stones. Of our soldiers several had musket-shot wounds, inflicted by their comrades' disorderly fire. The Turks asserted that the Mograbins and Schaïgiës sometimes fired intentionally at the soldiers, to drive them from their booty. It was a piteous sight to see the prisoners—especially the women and children—brought into camp bound upon camels, and with despair in their countenances. Before they[269] were sold or allotted, they were taken near the tent of Topschi Baschi, where a fire was kept burning, and were all, even to the smallest children, branded on the shoulder with a red-hot iron in the form of a star. When their moans and lamentations reached our hut, we took our guns and hastened away out shooting with three servants. These, notwithstanding our exhortations, would ramble from us, and we had got exceedingly angry with them for so doing, when suddenly we heard three shots, and proceeded in that direction, thinking it was they who had fired. Instead of them, we found three soldiers, lying upon the ground, bathed in their blood and terribly torn. Two were already dead, and the third, whose whole belly was ripped up, told us they had been attacked by a lion. The three shots brought up our servants, whom we made carry the survivor into camp, although my brother entertained slight hopes of saving him. The Bascha no sooner heard of the incident than he got on horseback with Soliman Kaschef and his people, to hunt the lion, and I accompanied him with my huntsman Sale, a bold fellow, who afterwards went with me up the White Nile. On reaching the spot where the lion had been, the Turks galloped off to seek him, and I and Sale alone remained behind. Suddenly I heard a heavy trampling, and a crashing amongst the bushes, and I saw close beside me an elephant with its calf. Sale, who was at some distance, and had just shot a parrot, called out to know if he should fire at the elephant, which I loudly forbade him to do. The beast broke its way through the brushwood just at hand. I saw its high back, and took up a safe position amongst several palm-trees, which all grew from one root, and were so close together that the elephant could not get at me. Sale was already up a tree, and told me the elephant had turned round, and was going back into the chaaba. The brute seemed angry or anxious about its young one, for we found the ground dug up for a long distance by its tusk as by a plough. Some shots were fired, and we thought the Bascha and his horsemen were on the track of the lion, but they had seen the elephant, and formed a circle round it. A messenger galloped into camp, and in a twinkling the Arnaut Abdin Bey came up with part of his people. The elephant, assailed on all sides by a rain of bullets, charged first one horseman, then another; they delivered their fire and galloped off. The eyes were the point chiefly aimed at, and it soon was evident that he was blinded by the bullets, for when pursuing his foes he ran against the trees, the shock of his unwieldy mass shaking the fruit from the palms. The horsemen dismounted and formed a smaller circle around him. He must already have received some hundred bullets, and the ground over which he staggered was dyed red, when the Bascha crept quite near him, knelt down and sent a shot into his left eye, whereupon the colossus sank down upon his hinder end and died. Nothing was to be seen of the calf or of the lion, but a few days later a large male lion was killed by Soliman Kaschef's men, close to camp, where we often in the night-time heard the roaring of those brutes."

Just about this time bad news reached the Wernes. Their huntsman Abdallah, to whom they were much attached by reason of his gallantry and fidelity, had gone a long time before to the country of the Beni-Amers, eastward from Taka, in company of a Schaïgië chief, mounted on one of their best camels, armed with a double-barrelled gun, and provided with a considerable sum of money for the purchase of giraffes. On his way back to his employers, with a valuable collection of stuffed birds and other curiosities, he was barbarously murdered, when travelling, unescorted, through the Hallenga country, and plundered of all his baggage. Sale, who went to identify his friend's mutilated corpse, attributed the crime to the Hallengas. Mr Werne was disposed to suspect Mohammed Ehle, a great villain, whom the Bascha at times employed as a secret stabber and assassin. This Ehle had been appointed Schech of the Hallengas by the Divan, in lieu of the rightful Schech, who had refused submission to the Turks. Three nephews of Mohammed Din (one of[270] them the same youth who had escorted the Wernes safely back to camp when they were in peril of their lives in the Haddenda country) came to visit their unfortunate relative, who was still a prisoner, cruelly treated, lying upon the damp earth, chained to two posts, and awaiting with fortitude the cruel death by impalement with which the Bascha threatened him. Achmet received the young men very coldly, and towards evening they set out, greatly depressed by their uncle's sad condition, upon their return homewards. Early next morning the Wernes, when out shooting, found the dead bodies of their three friends. They had been set upon and slain after a gallant defence, as was testified by their bloody lances, and by other signs of a severe struggle. The birds of prey had already picked out their eyes, and their corpses presented a frightful spectacle. The Wernes, convinced that this assassination had taken place by the Bascha's order, loaded the bodies on a camel, took them to Achmet, and preferred an accusation against the Hallengas for this shameful breach of hospitality. The Bascha's indifference confirmed their suspicions. He testified no indignation, but there was great excitement amongst his officers; and when they left the Divan, Mr Werne violently reproached Mohammed Ehle, whom he was well assured was the murderer, and who endured his anger in silence. "The Albanian Abdin Bey was so enraged that he was only withheld by the united persuasions of the other officers from mounting his horse and charging Mohammed Ehle with his wild Albanians, the consequence of which would inevitably have been a general mutiny against the Bascha, for the soldiers had long been murmuring at their bad food and ill treatment." The last hundred pages of Mr Werne's very closely printed and compendious volume abound in instances of the Bascha's treachery and cruelty, and of the retaliation exercised by the Arabs. On one occasion a party of fifty Turkish cavalry were murdered by the Haddendas, who had invited them to a feast. The town of Gos-Rajeb was burned, twenty of the merchants there resident were killed, and the corn, stored there for the use of the army on its homeward march, was plundered. The Bascha had a long-cherished plan of cutting off the supply of water from the country of the Haddendas. This was to be done by damming up the Gohr-el-Gasch, and diverting the abundant stream which, in the rainy season, rushed along its deep gully, overflowing the tall banks and fertilising fields and forests. As the Bascha's engineer and confidential adviser, Mr Werne was compelled to direct this work. By the labour of thousands of men, extensive embankments were made, and the Haddendas began to feel the want of water, which had come down from the Abyssinian mountains, and already stood eight feet deep in the Gohr. Mr Werne repented his share in the cruel work, and purposely abstained from pressing the formation of a canal which was to carry off the superfluous water to the Atbara, there about three leagues distant from the Gohr. And one morning he was awakened by a great uproar in the camp, and by the shouts of the Bascha, who was on horseback before his hut, and he found that a party of Haddendas had thrashed a picket and made an opening in the dykes, which was the deathblow to Achmet's magnificent project of extracting an exorbitant tribute from Mohammed Din's tribe as the price of the supply of water essential to their very existence. The sole results of the cruel attempt were a fever to the Bascha, who had got wet, and the sickness of half the army, who had been compelled to work like galley-slaves under a burning sun and upon bad rations. The vicinity of Kassela is rich in curious birds and beasts. The mountain itself swarms with apes, and Mr Werne frequently saw groups of two or three hundred of them seated upon the cliffs. They are about the size of a large dog, with dark brown hair and hideous countenances. Awful was the screaming and howling they set up of a night, when they received the unwelcome visit of some hungry leopard or prowling panther. Once the Wernes went out with their guns for a day's sport amongst the monkeys, but were soon glad to beat a retreat under a tremendous shower of stones.[271] Hassan, a Turk, who purveyed the brothers with hares, gazelles, and other savoury morsels, and who was a very good shot, promised to bring in—of course for good payment—not only a male and female monkey, but a whole camel-load if desired. He started off with this object, but did not again show himself for some days, and tried to sneak out of the Wernes' way when they at last met him in the bazaar. He had a hole in his head, and his shoulder badly hurt, and declared he would have nothing more to say to those transformed men upon the mountain. Mr Werne was very desirous to catch a monkey alive, but was unsuccessful, and Mohammed Ehle refused to sell a tame one which he owned, and which usually sat upon his hut. Mr Werne thinks them a variety of the Chimpanzee. They fight amongst themselves with sticks, and defend themselves fiercely with stones against the attacks of men. Upon the whole the Wernes were highly fortunate in collecting zoological and ornithological specimens, of which they subsequently sent a large number, stuffed, to the Berlin museum. They also secured several birds and animals alive; amongst these a young lion and a civet cat. Regarding reptiles they were very curious, and nothing of that kind was too long or too large for them. As Ferdinand Werne was sitting one day upon his dromedary, in company with the Bascha, on the left bank of the Gasch, the animals shied at a large serpent which suddenly darted by. The Bascha ordered the men who were working at the dykes to capture it, which they at once proceeded to do, as unconcernedly as an English haymaker would assail a hedge snake. "Pursued by several men, the serpent plunged into the water, out of which it then boldly reared its head, and confronted an Arab who had jumped in after it, armed with a hassaie. With extraordinary skill and daring the Arab approached it, his club uplifted, and struck it over the head, so that the serpent fell down stunned and writhing mightily; whereupon another Arab came up with a cord; the club-bearer, without further ceremony, griped the reptile by the throat, just below the head; the noose was made fast, and the pair of them dragged their prize on shore. There it lay for a moment motionless, and we contemplated the terribly beautiful creature, which was more than eleven feet long and half-a-foot in diameter. But when they began to drag it away, by which the skin would of course be completely spoiled, orders were given to carry it to camp. A jacket was tied over its head, and three men set to work to get it upon their shoulders; but the serpent made such violent convulsive movements that all three fell to the ground with it, and the same thing occurred again when several others had gone to their assistance. I accompanied them into camp, drove a big nail into the foremost great beam of our recuba, (hut,) and had the monster suspended from it. He hung down quite limp, as did also several other snakes, which were still alive, and which our servants had suspended inside our hut, intending to skin them the next morning, as it was now nearly dark. In the night I felt a most uncomfortable sensation. One of the snakes, which was hung up at the head of my bed, had smeared his cold tail over my face. But I sprang to my feet in real alarm, and thought I had been struck over the shin with a club, when the big serpent, now in the death agony, gave me a wipe with its tail through the open door, in front of which our servants were squatted, telling each other ghost stories of snake-kings and the like.... They called this serpent assala, which, however, is a name they give to all large serpents. Soon afterwards we caught another, as thick, but only nine feet long, and with a short tail, like the Vipera cerastes; and this was said to be of that breed of short, thick snakes which can devour a man." In the mountains of Basa, two days' journey from the Gohr-el-Gasch, and on the road thither, snakes are said to exist, of no great length, but as thick as a crocodile, and which can conveniently swallow a man; and instances were related to Mr Werne of these monsters having swallowed persons when they lay sleeping on their angarèbs. Sometimes the victims had been rescued when only half gorged! Of course travellers hear[272] strange stories, and some of those related by Mr Werne are tolerably astounding; but these are derived from his Turkish, Egyptian, or Arabian acquaintances, and there is no appearance of exaggeration or romancing in anything which he narrates as having occurred to or been witnessed by himself. A wild tradition was told him of a country called Bellad-el-Kelb, which signifies the Country of Dogs, where the women were in all respects human, but where the men had faces like dogs, claws on their feet, and tails like monkeys. They could not speak, but carried on conversation by wagging their tails. This ludicrous account appeared explicable by the fact, that the men of Bellad-el-Kelb are great robbers, living by plunder, and, like fierce and hungry dogs, never relinquishing their prey.

The Hallengas, amongst whom the expedition now found itself, were far more frank and friendly, and much less wild, than the Haddendas and some other tribes, and they might probably have been converted into useful allies by a less cruel and capricious invader than the Bascha. But conciliation was no part of his scheme; if he one day caressed a tribe or a chief, it was only to betray them the next. Mr Werne was on good terms with some of the Hallenga sheiks, and went to visit the village of Hauathi, about three miles from camp, to see the birds of paradise which abounded there. On his road he saw from afar a great tree covered with those beautiful birds, and which glistened in the sunshine with all the colours of the rainbow. Some days later he and his brother went to drink merissa, a slightly intoxicating liquor, with one of the Fakis or priests of the country. The two Germans got very jovial, drinking to each other, student-fashion; and the faki, attempting to keep pace with them, got crying-drunk, and disclosed a well-matured plan for blowing up their powder-magazine. The ammunition had been stored in the village of Kadmin, which was a holy village, entirely inhabited by fakis. The Bascha had made sure that none of the natives would risk blowing up these holy men, even for the sake of destroying his ammunition, and he was unwilling to keep so large a quantity of powder amidst his numerous camp-fires and reckless soldiery. But the fakis had made their arrangements. On a certain night they were to depart, carrying away all their property into the great caverns of Mount Kassela, and fire was to be applied to the house that held the powder. Had the plot succeeded, the whole army was lost, isolated as it was in the midst of unfriendly tribes, embittered by its excesses, and by the aggressions and treachery of its chief, and who, stimulated by their priests, would in all probability have exterminated it to the last man, when it no longer had cartridges for its defence. The drunken faki's indiscretion saved Achmet and his troops; the village was forthwith surrounded, and the next day the ammunition was transferred to camp. Not to rouse the whole population against him, the Bascha abstained for the moment from punishing the conspirators, but he was not the man to let them escape altogether; and some time afterwards, Mr Werne, who had returned to Chartum, received a letter from his brother, informing him that nine fakis had been hung on palm-trees just outside the camp, and that the magnanimous Achmet proposed treating forty more in the same way.

A mighty liar was Effendina Achmet Bascha, as ever ensnared a foe or broke faith with a friend. Greedy and cruel was he also, as only a Turkish despot can be. One of his most active and unscrupulous agents was a bloodsucker named Hassan Effendi, whom he sent to the country of the Beni-Amers to collect three thousand five hundred cows and thirteen hundred camels, the complement of their tribute. Although this tribe had upon the whole behaved very peaceably, Hassan's first act was to shoot down a couple of hundred of them like wild beasts. Then he seized a large number of camels belonging to the Haddendas, although the tribe was at that very time in friendly negotiation with the Bascha. The Haddendas revenged themselves by burning Gos-Rajeb. In proof of their valour, Hassan's men cut off the ears of the murdered Beni-Amers, and took them to Achmet, who gave them[273] money for the trophies. "They had forced a slave to cut off the ears; yonder now lies the man—raving mad, and bound with cords. Camel-thieves, too—no matter to what tribe they belong—if caught in flagranti, lose their ears, for which the Bascha gives a reward. That many a man who never dreamed of committing a theft loses his ears in this way, is easy to understand, for the operation is performed on the spot." Dawson Borrer, in his Campaign in the Kabylie, mentions a very similar practice as prevailing in Marshal Bugeaud's camp, where ten francs was the fixed price for the head of a horse-stealer, it being left to the soldiers who severed the heads and received the money to discriminate between horse-stealers and honest men. Whether Bugeaud took a hint from the Bascha, or the Bascha was an admiring imitator of Bugeaud, remains a matter of doubt. "Besides many handsome women and children, Hassan Effendi brought in two thousand nine hundred cows, and seven thousand sheep." He might have been a French prince returning from a razzia. "For himself he kept eighty camels, which he said he had bought." A droll dog, this Hassan Effendi, but withal rather covetous—given to sell his soldier's rations, and to starve his servants, a single piastre—about twopence halfpenny—being his whole daily outlay for meat for his entire household, who lived for the most part upon durra and water. If his servants asked for wages, they received the bastinado. "The Bascha had given the poor camel-drivers sixteen cows. The vampire (Hassan) took upon himself to appropriate thirteen of them." Mr Werne reported this robbery to the Bascha, but Achmet merely replied "malluch"—signifying, "it matters not." When inferior officers received horses as their share of booty, Hassan bought them of them, but always forgot to pay, and the poor subalterns feared to complain to the Bascha, who favoured the rogue, and recommended him to the authorities at Cairo for promotion to the rank of Bey, because, as he told Mr Werne with an ironical smile, Hassan was getting very old and infirm, and when he died the Divan would bring charges against him, and inherit his wealth. Thus are things managed in Egypt. No wonder that, where such injustice and rascality prevail, many are found to rejoice at the prospect of a change of rulers. "News from Souakim (on the Red Sea) of the probable landing of the English, excite great interest in camp; from all sides they come to ask questions of us, thinking that we, as Franks, must know the intentions of the invaders. Upon the whole, they would not be displeased at such a change of government, particularly when we tell them of the good pay and treatment customary amongst the English; and that with them no officer has to endure indignities from his superiors in rank."

"I have now," says Mr Werne, (page 256,) "been more than half a year away from Chartum, continually in the field, and not once have I enjoyed the great comfort of reposing, undressed, between clean white sheets, but have invariably slept in my clothes, on the ground, or on the short but practical angarèb. All clean linen disappears, for the constant perspiration and chalky dust burns everything; and the servants do not understand washing, inasmuch as, contrasted with their black hides, everything appears white to them, and for the last three months no soap has been obtainable. And in the midst of this dirty existence, which drags itself along like a slow fever, suddenly 'Julla!' is the word, and one hangs for four or five days, eighty or a hundred leagues, upon the camel's back, every bone bruised by the rough motion,—the broiling sun, thirst, hunger, and cold, for constant companions. Man can endure much: I have gone through far more than I ever thought I could,—vomiting and in a raging fever on the back of a dromedary, under a midday sun, more dead than alive, held upon my saddle by others, and yet I recovered. To have remained behind would have been to encounter certain death from the enemy, or from wild beasts. We have seen what a man can bear, under the pressure of necessity; in my present uniform and monotonous life I compare myself to the camels tied before my tent, which sometimes stand up, sometimes slowly stretch themselves[274] on the ground, careless whether crows or ravens walk over their backs, constantly moving their jaws, looking up at the sun, and then, by way of a change, taking a mouthful of grass, but giving no signs of joy or curiosity."

From this state of languid indifference Mr Werne was suddenly and pleasurably roused by intelligence that a second expedition was fitting out for the White Nile. He and his brother immediately petitioned the Bascha for leave to accompany it. The desired permission was granted to him, but refused to his brother. There was too much sickness in the camp, the Bascha said; he could not spare his doctor, and lacked confidence in the Italian, Bellotti. The fondly-attached brothers were thus placed in a painful dilemma: they had hoped to pursue their wanderings hand in hand, and to pass their lives together, and loth indeed were they to sunder in those sickly and perilous regions. At last they made up their minds to the parting. It has been already recorded in Mr Werne's former work, how, within ten days of their next meeting, his beloved brother's eyes were closed in death.

In various respects, Mr Werne's Feldzug is one of the most curious books of travel and adventure that, for a very long time, has appeared. It has three points of particular attraction and originality. In the first place, the author wanders in a region previously unexplored by Christian and educated travellers, and amongst tribes whose bare names have reached the ears of but few Europeans. Secondly, he campaigns as officer in such an army as we can hardly realise in these days of high civilisation and strict military discipline,—so wild, motley, and grotesque are its customs, composition, and equipment,—an army whose savage warriors, strange practices, and barbarous cruelties, make us fancy ourselves in presence of some fierce Moslem horde of the middle ages, marching to the assault of Italy or Hungary. Thirdly, during his long sojourn in camp he had opportunities such as few ordinary travellers enjoy, and of which he diligently profited, to study and note down the characteristics and social habits of many of the races of men that make up the heterogeneous population of the Ottoman empire. Some of the physiological and medical details with which he favours us, would certainly have been more in their place in his brother's professional journal, than in a book intended for the public at large; and passages are not wanting at which the squeamish will be apt to lay down the volume in disgust. For such persons Mr Werne does not write; and his occasional indelicacy and too crude details are compensated, to our thinking, by his manly honest tone, and by the extraordinary amount of useful and curious information he has managed to pack into two hundred and seventy pages. As a whole, the Expedition to the White Nile, which contains a vast deal of dry meteorological and geographical detail, is decidedly far less attractive than the present book, which is as amusing as any romance. We have read it with absorbing interest, well pleased with the hint its author throws out at its close, that the records of his African wanderings are not yet all exhausted.

[275]

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

BOOK VII.—INITIAL CHAPTER.

"What is courage?" said my uncle Roland, rousing himself from a reverie into which he had fallen after the Sixth Book in this history had been read to our family circle.

"What is courage?" he repeated more earnestly. "Is it insensibility to fear? That may be the mere accident of constitution; and, if so, there is no more merit in being courageous than in being this table."

"I am very glad to hear you speak thus," observed Mr Caxton, "for I should not like to consider myself a coward; yet I am very sensible to fear in all dangers, bodily and moral."

"La, Austin, how can you say so?" cried my mother, firing up; "was it not only last week that you faced the great bull that was rushing after Blanche and the children?"

Blanche at that recollection stole to my father's chair, and, hanging over his shoulder, kissed his forehead.

Mr Caxton, (sublimely unmoved by these flatteries.)—"I don't deny that I faced the bull, but I assert that I was horribly frightened."

Roland.—"The sense of honour which conquers fear is the true courage of chivalry: you could not run away when others were looking on—no gentleman could."

Mr Caxton.—"Fiddledee! It was not on my gentility that I stood, Captain. I should have run fast enough, if it had done any good. I stood upon my understanding. As the bull could run faster than I could, the only chance of escape was to make the brute as frightened as myself."

Blanche.—"Ah, you did not think of that; your only thought was to save me and the children."

Mr Caxton.—"Possibly, my dear—very possibly I might have been afraid for you too;—but I was very much afraid for myself. However, luckily I had the umbrella, and I sprang it up and spread it forth in the animal's stupid eyes, hurling at him simultaneously the biggest lines I could think of in the First Chorus of the 'Seven against Thebes.' I began with Eledemnas pedioploktupos; and when I came to the grand howl of Ἰὼ, ἰὼ, ἰὼ, ἰὼ—the beast stood appalled as at the roar of a lion. I shall never forget his amazed snort at the Greek. Then he kicked up his hind legs, and went bolt through the gap in the hedge. Thus, armed with Æschylus and the umbrella, I remained master of the field; but (continued Mr Caxton, ingenuously,) I should not like to go through that half minute again."

"No man would," said the Captain kindly. "I should be very sorry to face a bull myself, even with a bigger umbrella than yours, and even though I had Æschylus, and Homer to boot, at my fingers' ends."

Mr Caxton.—"You would not have minded if it had been a Frenchman with a sword in his hand?"

Captain.—"Of course not. Rather liked it than otherwise," he added grimly.

Mr Caxton.—"Yet many a Spanish matador, who doesn't care a button for a bull, would take to his heels at the first lunge en carte from a Frenchman. Therefore, in fact, if courage be a matter of constitution, it is also a matter of custom. We face calmly the dangers we are habituated to, and recoil from those of which we have no familiar experience. I doubt if Marshal Turenne himself would have been quite at his ease on the tight-rope; and a rope-dancer, who seems disposed to scale the heavens with Titanic temerity, might possibly object to charge on a cannon."

Captain Roland.—"Still, either this is not the courage I mean, or there is another kind of it. I mean by courage that which is the especial force and dignity of the human character, without which there is no reliance on principle, no constancy in virtue—a something," continued my uncle gallantly, and with a half bow towards my mother, "which your[276] sex shares with our own. When the lover, for instance, clasps the hand of his betrothed, and says, 'Wilt thou be true to me, in spite of absence and time, in spite of hazard and fortune, though my foes malign me, though thy friends may dissuade thee, and our lot in life may be rough and rude?' and when the betrothed answers, 'I will be true,' does not the lover trust to her courage as well as her love?"

"Admirably put, Roland," said my father. "But apropos of what do you puzzle us with these queries on courage?"

Captain Roland, (with a slight blush.)—"I was led to the inquiry (though, perhaps, it may be frivolous to take so much thought of what, no doubt, costs Pisistratus so little) by the last chapters in my nephew's story. I see this poor boy, Leonard, alone with his fallen hopes, (though very irrational they were,) and his sense of shame. And I read his heart, I dare say, better than Pisistratus does, for I could feel like that boy if I had been in the same position; and, conjecturing what he and thousands like him must go through, I asked myself, 'What can save him and them?' I answered, as a soldier would answer, 'Courage!' Very well. But pray, Austin, what is courage?"

Mr Caxton, (prudently backing out of a reply.)—"Papæ! Brother, since you have just complimented the ladies on that quality, you had better address your question to them."

Blanche here leant both hands on my father's chair, and said, looking down at first bashfully, but afterwards warming with the subject, "Do you not think, sir, that little Helen has already suggested, if not what is courage, what at least is the real essence of all courage that endures and conquers, that ennobles, and hallows, and redeems? Is it not Patience, father?—and that is why we women have a courage of our own. Patience does not affect to be superior to fear, but at least it never admits despair."

Pisistratus.—"Kiss me, my Blanche, for you have come near to the truth which perplexed the soldier and puzzled the sage."

Mr Caxton, (tartly.)—"If you mean me by the sage, I was not puzzled at all. Heaven knows you do right to inculcate patience—it is a virtue very much required in your readers. Nevertheless," added my father, softening with the enjoyment of his joke—"nevertheless Blanche and Helen are quite right. Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue, par excellence, of Man against Destiny—of the One against the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is the courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a social view—its importance to races and institutions—cannot be too earnestly inculcated. What is it that distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from all other branches of the human family, peoples deserts with his children, and consigns to them the heritage of rising worlds? What but his faculty to brave, to suffer, to endure—the patience that resists firmly, and innovates slowly. Compare him with the Frenchman. The Frenchman has plenty of valour—that there is no denying; but as for fortitude, he has not enough to cover the point of a pin. He is ready to rush out of the world if he is bit by a flea."

Captain Roland.—"There was a case in the papers the other day, Austin, of a Frenchman who actually did destroy himself because he was so teased by the little creatures you speak of. He left a paper on his table, saying that 'life was not worth having at the price of such torments.'"[5]

Mr Caxton, (solemnly.)—"Sir, their whole political history, since the great meeting of the Tiers Etat, has been the history of men who would rather go to the devil than be bit by a[277] flea. It is the record of human impatience, that seeks to force time, and expects to grow forests from the spawn of a mushroom. Wherefore, running through all extremes of constitutional experiment, when they are nearest to democracy they are next door to a despot; and all they have really done is to destroy whatever constitutes the foundation of every tolerable government. A constitutional monarchy cannot exist without aristocracy, nor a healthful republic endure with corruption of manners. The cry of Equality is incompatible with Civilisation, which, of necessity, contrasts poverty with wealth—and, in short, whether it be an emperor or a mob that is to rule, Force is the sole hope of order, and the government is but an army.

"Impress, O Pisistratus! impress the value of patience as regards man and men. You touch there on the kernel of the social system—the secret that fortifies the individual and disciplines the million. I care not, for my part, if you are tedious so long as you are earnest. Be minute and detailed. Let the real human life, in its war with Circumstance, stand out. Never mind if one can read you but slowly—better chance of being less quickly forgotten. Patience, patience! By the soul of Epictetus, your readers shall set you an example!"

CHAPTER II.

Leonard had written twice to Mrs Fairfield, twice to Riccabocca, and once to Mr Dale; and the poor proud boy could not bear to betray his humiliation. He wrote as with cheerful spirits—as if perfectly satisfied with his prospects. He said that he was well employed, in the midst of books, and that he had found kind friends. Then he turned from himself to write about those whom he addressed, and the affairs and interests of the quiet world wherein they lived. He did not give his own address, nor that of Mr Prickett. He dated his letters from a small coffeehouse near the bookseller, to which he occasionally went for his simple meals. He had a motive in this. He did not desire to be found out. Mr Dale replied for himself and for Mrs Fairfield, to the epistles addressed to these two. Riccabocca wrote also. Nothing could be more kind than the replies of both. They came to Leonard in a very dark period in his life, and they strengthened him in the noiseless battle with despair.

If there be a good in the world that we do without knowing it, without conjecturing the effect it may have upon a human soul, it is when we show kindness to the young in the first barren footpath up the mountain of life.

Leonard's face resumed its serenity in his intercourse with his employer; but he did not recover his boyish ingenuous frankness. The under-currents flowed again pure from the turbid soil and the splintered fragments uptorn from the deep; but they were still too strong and too rapid to allow transparency to the surface. And now he stood in the sublime world of books, still and earnest as a seer who invokes the dead. And thus, face to face with knowledge, hourly he discovered how little he knew. Mr Prickett lent him such works as he selected and asked to take home with him. He spent whole nights in reading; and no longer desultorily. He read no more poetry, no more Lives of Poets. He read what poets must read if they desire to be great—Sapere principium et fons—strict reasonings on the human mind; the relations between motive and conduct, thought and action; the grave and solemn truths of the past world; antiquities, history, philosophy. He was taken out of himself. He was carried along the ocean of the universe. In that ocean, O seeker, study the law of the tides; and seeing Chance nowhere—Thought presiding over all—Fate, that dread phantom, shall vanish from creation, and Providence alone be visible in heaven and on earth!

CHAPTER III.

There was to be a considerable book-sale at a country house one day's journey from London. Mr Prickett meant to have attended it on his own[278] behalf, and that of several gentlemen who had given him commissions for purchase; but, on the morning fixed for his departure, he was seized with a severe return of his old foe the rheumatism. He requested Leonard to attend instead of himself. Leonard went, and was absent for the three days during which the sale lasted. He returned late in the evening, and went at once to Mr Prickett's house. The shop was closed; he knocked at the private entrance; a strange person opened the door to him, and, in reply to his question if Mr Prickett was at home, said with a long and funereal face—"Young man, Mr Prickett senior is gone to his long home, but Mr Richard Prickett will see you."

At this moment a very grave-looking man, with lank hair, looked forth from the side-door communicating between the shop and the passage, land then, stepped forward—"Come in, sir; you are my late uncle's assistant, Mr Fairfield, I suppose?"

"Your late uncle! Heavens, sir, do I understand aright—can Mr Prickett be dead since I left London?"

"Died, sir, suddenly last night. It was an affection of the heart; the Doctor thinks the rheumatism attacked that organ. He had small time to provide for his departure, and his account-books seem in sad disorder: I am his nephew and executor."

Leonard had now followed the nephew into the shop. There, still burned the gas-lamp. The place seemed more dingy and cavernous than before. Death always makes its presence felt in the house it visits.

Leonard was greatly affected—and yet more, perhaps, by the utter want of feeling which the nephew exhibited. In fact, the deceased had not been on friendly terms with this person, his nearest relative and heir-at-law, who was also a bookseller.

"You were engaged but by the week I find, young man, on reference to my late uncle's papers. He gave you £1 a week—a monstrous sum! I shall not require your services any further. I shall move these books to my own house. You will be good enough to send me a list of those you bought at the sale, and your account of travelling-expenses, &c. What may be due to you shall be sent to your address. Good evening."

Leonard went home, shocked and saddened at the sudden death of his kind employer. He did not think much of himself that night; but, when he rose the next day, he suddenly felt that the world of London lay before him, without a friend, without a calling, without an occupation for bread.

This time it was no fancied sorrow, no poetic dream disappointed. Before him, gaunt and palpable, stood Famine.

Escape!—yes. Back to the village; his mother's cottage; the exile's garden; the radishes and the fount. Why could he not escape? Ask why civilisation cannot escape its ills, and fly back to the wild and the wigwam?

Leonard could not have returned to the cottage, even if the Famine that faced had already seized him with her skeleton hand. London releases not so readily her fated stepsons.

CHAPTER IV.

One day three persons were standing before an old book-stall in a passage leading from Oxford Street into Tottenham Court Road. Two were gentlemen; the third, of the class and appearance of those who more habitually halt at old book-stalls.

"Look," said one of the gentlemen to the other, "I have discovered here what I have searched for in vain the last ten years—the Horace of 1580, the Horace of the Forty Commentators—a perfect treasury of learning, and marked only fourteen shillings!"

"Hush, Norreys," said the other, "and observe what is yet more worth your study;" and he pointed to the third bystander, whose face, sharp and attenuated, was bent with an absorbed, and, as it were, with a hungering attention over an old worm-eaten volume.

"What is the book, my lord?" whispered Mr Norreys.

His companion smiled, and replied by another question, "What is the man who reads the book?"

Mr Norreys moved a few paces,[279] and looked over the student's shoulder "Preston's translation of Boethius, The Consolations of Philosophy," he said, coming back to his friend.

"He looks as if he wanted all the consolations Philosophy can give him, poor boy."

At this moment a fourth passenger paused at the book-stall, and, recognising the pale student, placed his hand on his shoulder and said, "Aha, young sir, we meet again. So poor Prickett is dead. But you are still haunted by associations. Books—books—magnets to which all iron minds move insensibly. What is this? Boethius! Ah, a book written in prison, but a little time before the advent of the only philosopher who solves to the simplest understanding every mystery of life—"

"And that philosopher?"

"Is Death!" said Mr Burley. "How can you be dull enough to ask? Poor Boethius, rich, nobly born, a consul, his sons consuls—the world one smile to the Last Philosopher of Rome. Then suddenly, against this type of the old world's departing WISDOM, stands frowning the new world's grim genius, FORCE—Theodoric the Ostrogoth condemning Boethius the Schoolman; and Boethius, in his Pavian dungeon, holding a dialogue with the shade of Athenian Philosophy. It is the finest picture upon which lingers the glimmering of the Western golden day, before night rushes over time."

"And," said Mr Norreys abruptly, "Boethius comes back to us with the faint gleam of returning light, translated by Alfred the Great. And, again, as the sun of knowledge bursts forth in all its splendour, by Queen Elizabeth. Boethius influences us as we stand in this passage; and that is the best of all the Consolations of Philosophy—eh, Mr Burley?"

Mr Burley turned and bowed.

The two men looked at each other; you could not see a greater contrast. Mr Burley, his gay green dress already shabby and soiled, with a rent in the skirts, and his face speaking of habitual night-cups. Mr Norreys, neat and somewhat precise in dress, with firm lean figure, and quiet, collected, vigorous energy in his eye and aspect.

"If," replied Mr Burley, "a poor devil like me may argue with a gentleman who may command his own price with the booksellers, I should say it is no consolation at all, Mr Norreys. And I should like to see any man of sense accept the condition of Boethius in his prison, with some strangler or headsman waiting behind the door, upon the promised proviso that he should be translated, centuries afterwards, by Kings and Queens, and help indirectly to influence the minds of Northern barbarians, babbling about him in an alley, jostled by passers-by who never heard the name of Boethius, and who don't care a fig for philosophy. Your servant, sir—young man, come and talk."

Burley hooked his arm within Leonard's, and led the boy passively away.

"That is a clever man," said Harley L'Estrange. "But I am sorry to see yon young student, with his bright earnest eyes, and his lip that has the quiver of passion and enthusiasm, leaning on the arm of a guide who seems disenchanted of all that gives purpose to learning and links philosophy with use to the world. Who, and what is this clever man whom you call Burley?"

"A man who might have been famous, if he had condescended to be respectable! The boy listening to us both so attentively interested me too—I should like to have the making of him. But I must buy this Horace."

The shopman, lurking within his hole like a spider for flies, was now called out. And when Mr Norreys had bought the Horace, and given an address where to send it, Harley asked the shopman if he knew the young man who had been reading Boethius.

"Only by sight. He has come here every day the last week, and spends hours at the stall. When once he fastens on a book, he reads it through."

"And never buys?" said Mr Norreys.

"Sir," said the shopman with a good-natured smile, "they who buy seldom read. The poor boy pays me twopence a-day to read as long as he pleases. I would not take it, but he is proud."

"I have known men amass great[280] learning in that way," said Mr Norreys. "Yes, I should like to have that boy in my hands. And now, my lord, I am at your service, and we will go to the studio of your artist."

The two gentlemen walked on towards one of the streets out of Fitzroy Square.

In a few minutes more Harley L'Estrange was in his element, seated carelessly on a deal table, smoking his cigar, and discussing art with the gusto of a man who honestly loved, and the taste of a man who thoroughly understood it. The young artist, in his dressing robe, adding slow touch upon touch, paused often to listen the better. And Henry Norreys, enjoying the brief respite from a life of great labour, was gladly reminded of idle hours under rosy skies; for these three men had formed their friendship in Italy, where the bands of friendship are woven by the hands of the Graces.

CHAPTER V.

Leonard and Mr Burley walked on into the suburbs round the north road from London, and Mr Burley offered to find literary employment for Leonard—an offer eagerly accepted.

Then they went into a public house by the wayside. Burley demanded a private room, called for pen, ink, and paper; and, placing these implements before Leonard, said, "Write what you please in prose, five sheets of letter paper, twenty-two lines to a page—neither more nor less."

"I cannot write so."

"Tut, 'tis for bread."

The boy's face crimsoned.

"I must forget that," said he.

"There is an arbour in the garden under a weeping ash," returned Burley. "Go there, and fancy yourself in Arcadia."

Leonard was too pleased to obey. He found out the little arbour at one end of a deserted bowling-green. All was still—the hedgerow shut out the sight of the inn. The sun lay warm on the grass, and glinted pleasantly through the leaves of the ash. And Leonard there wrote the first essay from his hand as Author by profession. What was it that he wrote? His dreamy impressions of London? an anathema on its streets, and its hearts of stone? murmurs against poverty? dark elegies on fate?

Oh, no! little knowest thou true genius, if thou askest such questions, or thinkest that there, under the weeping ash, the taskwork for bread was remembered; or that the sunbeam glinted but over the practical world, which, vulgar and sordid, lay around. Leonard wrote a fairy tale—one of the loveliest you can conceive, with a delicate touch of playful humour—in a style all flowered over with happy fancies. He smiled as he wrote the last word—he was happy. In rather more than an hour Mr Burley came to him, and found him with that smile on his lips.

Mr Burley had a glass of brandy and water in his hand; it was his third. He too smiled—he too looked happy. He read the paper aloud, and well. He was very complimentary. "You will do!" said he, clapping Leonard on the back. "Perhaps some day you will catch my one-eyed perch." Then he folded up the MS., scribbled off a note, put the whole in one envelope—and they returned to London.

Mr Burley disappeared within a dingy office near Fleet Street, on which was inscribed—"Office of the Beehive," and soon came forth with a golden sovereign in his hand—Leonard's first-fruits. Leonard thought Peru lay before him. He accompanied Mr Burley to that gentleman's lodging in Maida Hill. The walk had been very long; Leonard was not fatigued. He listened with a livelier attention than before to Burley's talk. And when they reached the apartments of the latter, and Mr Burley sent to the cookshop, and their joint supper was taken out of the golden sovereign, Leonard felt proud, and for the first time for weeks he laughed the heart's laugh. The two writers grew more and more intimate and cordial. And there was a vast deal in Burley by which any[281] young man might be made the wiser. There was no apparent evidence of poverty in the apartments—clean, new, well furnished; but all things in the most horrible litter—all speaking of the huge literary sloven.

For several days Leonard almost lived in those rooms. He wrote continuously—save when Burley's conversation fascinated him into idleness. Nay, it was not idleness—his knowledge grew larger as he listened; but the cynicism of the talker began slowly to work its way. That cynicism in which there was no faith, no hope, no vivifying breath from Glory—from Religion. The cynicism of the Epicurean, more degraded in his stye than ever was Diogenes in his tub; and yet presented with such ease and such eloquence—with such art and such mirth—so adorned with illustration and anecdote, so unconscious of debasement.

Strange and dread philosophy—that made it a maxim to squander the gifts of mind on the mere care for matter, and fit the soul to live but as from day to day, with its scornful cry, "A fig for immortality and laurels!" An author for bread! Oh, miserable calling! was there something grand and holy, after all, even in Chatterton's despair!

CHAPTER VI.

The villanous Beehive! Bread was worked out of it, certainly; but fame, but hope for the future—certainly not. Milton's Paradise Lost would have perished without a sound, had it appeared in the Beehive.

Fine things were there in a fragmentary crude state, composed by Burley himself. At the end of a week they were dead and forgotten—never read by one man of education and taste; taken simultaneously and indifferently with shallow politics and wretched essays, yet selling, perhaps, twenty or thirty thousand copies—an immense sale;—and nothing got out of them but bread and brandy!

"What more would you have?" cried John Burley. "Did not stern old Sam Johnson say he could never write but from want?"

"He might say it," answered Leonard; "but he never meant posterity to believe him. And he would have died of want, I suspect, rather than have written Rasselas for the Beehive! Want is a grand thing," continued the boy, thoughtfully. "A parent of grand things. Necessity is strong, and should give us its own strength; but Want should shatter asunder, with its very writhings, the walls of our prison-house, and not sit contented with the allowance the jail gives us in exchange for our work."

"There is no prison-house to a man who calls upon Bacchus—stay—I will translate to you Schiller's Dithyramb. 'Then see I Bacchus—then up come Cupid and Phœbus, and all the Celestials are filling my dwelling.'"

Breaking into impromptu careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but spirited translation of that divine lyric.

"O materialist!" cried the boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take him to their heaven with him; and you would debase the gods to a gin palace."

"Ho, ho!" cried Burley, with his giant laugh. "Drink, and you will understand the Dithyramb."

CHAPTER VII.

Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sate with Barley, a fashionable cabriolet, with a very handsome horse, stopped at the door—a loud knock—a quick step on the stairs, and Randal Leslie entered. Leonard recognised him, and started. Randal glanced at him in surprise, and then, with a tact that showed he had already learned to profit by London life, after shaking hands with Burley, approached, and said with some successful attempt at ease, "Unless I am not mistaken, sir, we have met before.[282] If you remember me, I hope all boyish quarrels are forgotten?"

Leonard bowed, and his heart was still good enough to be softened.

"Where could you two ever have met?" asked Burley.

"In a village green, and in single combat," answered Randal, smiling; and he told the story of the Battle of the Stocks, with a well-bred jest on himself. Burley laughed at the story. "But," said he, when this laugh was over, "my young friend had better have remained guardian of the village stocks, than come to London in search of such fortune as lies at the bottom of an inkhorn."

"Ah," said Randal, with the secret contempt which men elaborately cultivated are apt to feel for those who seek to educate themselves—"ah, you make literature your calling, sir? At what school did you conceive a taste for letters?—not very common at our great public schools."

"I am at school now for the first time," answered Leonard, drily.

"Experience is the best schoolmistress," said Burley; "and that was the maxim of Goethe, who had book-learning enough, in all conscience."

Randal slightly shrugged his shoulders, and, without wasting another thought on Leonard, peasant-born and self-taught, took his seat, and began to talk to Burley upon a political question, which made then the war-cry between the two great Parliamentary parties. It was a subject in which Burley showed much general knowledge; and Randal, seeming to differ from him, drew forth alike his information and his argumentative powers. The conversation lasted more than an hour.

"I can't quite agree with you," said Randal, taking his leave; "but you must allow me to call again—will the same hour to-morrow suit you?"

"Yes," said Burley.

Away went the young man in his cabriolet. Leonard watched him from the window.

For five days, consecutively, did Randal call and discuss the question in all its bearings; and Burley, after the second day, got interested in the matter, looked up his authorities—refreshed his memory—and even spent an hour or two in the Library of the British Museum.

By the fifth day, Burley had really exhausted all that could well be said on his side of the question.

Leonard, during these colloquies, had sate apart, seemingly absorbed in reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption of his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's rise above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman of Burley's. But the self-taught are keen and quick observers. And Leonard had remarked, that Randal seemed more as one playing a part for some private purpose, than arguing in earnest; and that, when he rose and said, "Mr Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck, meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener, with Burley's power of generalisation, and the wide surface over which his information extended, that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly purposeless man, and said aloud—"True; knowledge is not power."

"Certainly not," said Burley, drily—"the weakest thing, in the world."

"Knowledge is power," muttered Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his lip, he drove from the door.

Not many days after this last interview there appeared a short pamphlet; anonymous, but one which made a great impression on the town. It was on the subject discussed between Randal and Burley. It was quoted at great length in the newspapers. And Burley started to his feet one morning, and exclaimed, "My own thoughts! my very words! Who the devil is this pamphleteer?"

Leonard took the newspaper from Burley's hand. The most flattering encomiums preceded the extracts, and the extracts were as stereotypes of Burley's talk.

"Can you doubt the author?" cried Leonard, in deep disgust and ingenuous scorn. "The young man[283] who came to steal your brains, and turn your knowledge—"

"Into power," interrupted Burley, with a laugh, but it was a laugh of pain. "Well, this was very mean; I shall tell him so when he comes."

"He will come no more," said Leonard. Nor did Randal come again. But he sent Mr Burley a copy of the pamphlet with a polite note, saying, with candid but careless acknowledgment, that "he had profited much by Mr Burley's hints and remarks."

And now it was in all the papers, that the pamphlet which had made so great a noise was by a very young man, Mr Audley Egerton's relation. And high hopes were expressed of the future career of Mr Randal Leslie.

Burley still attempted to laugh, and still his pain was visible. Leonard most cordially despised and hated Randal Leslie, and his heart moved to Burley with noble but perilous compassion. In his desire to soothe and comfort the man whom he deemed cheated out of fame, he forgot the caution he had hitherto imposed on himself, and yielded more and more to the charm of that wasted intellect. He accompanied Burley now where he went to spent his evenings, and more and more—though gradually, and with many a recoil and self-rebuke—there crept over him the cynic's contempt for glory, and miserable philosophy of debased content.

Randal had risen into grave repute upon the strength of Burley's knowledge. But, had Burley written the pamphlet, would the same repute have attended him? Certainly not. Randal Leslie brought to that knowledge qualities all his own—a style simple, strong, and logical; a certain tone of good society, and allusions to men and to parties that showed his connection with a cabinet minister, and proved that he had profited no less by Egerton's talk than Burley's.

Had Burley written the pamphlet, it would have showed more genius, it would have had humour and wit, but have been so full of whims and quips, sins against taste, and defects in earnestness, that it would have failed to create any serious sensation. Here, then, there was something else besides knowledge, by which knowledge became power. Knowledge must not smell of the brandy bottle.

Randal Leslie might be mean in his plagiarism, but he turned the useless into use. And so far he was original.

But one's admiration, after all, rests where Leonard's rested—with the poor, shabby, riotous, lawless, big fallen man.

Burley took himself off to the Brent, and fished again for the one-eyed perch. Leonard accompanied him. His feelings were indeed different from what they had been when he had reclined under the old tree, and talked with Helen of the future. But it was almost pathetic to see how Burley's nature seemed to alter, as he strayed along the banks of the rivulet, and talked of his own boyhood. The man then seemed restored to something of the innocence of the child. He cared, in truth, little for the perch, which continued intractable, but he enjoyed the air and the sky, the rustling grass and the murmuring waters. These excursions to the haunts of youth seemed to rebaptise him, and then his eloquence took a pastoral character, and Isaac Walton himself would have loved to hear him. But as he got back into the smoke of the metropolis, and the gas lamps made him forget the ruddy sunset, and the soft evening star, the gross habits reassumed their sway; and on he went with his swaggering reckless step to the orgies in which his abused intellect flamed forth, and then sank into the socket quenched and rayless.

CHAPTER VIII.

Helen was seized with profound and anxious sadness. Leonard had been three or four times to see her, and each time she saw a change in him that excited all her fears. He seemed, it is true, more shrewd, more worldly-wise, more fitted, it might be, for coarse daily life; but, on[284] the other hand, the freshness and glory of his youth were waning slowly. His aspirings drooped earthward. He had not mastered the Practical, and moulded its uses with the strong hand of the Spiritual Architect, of the Ideal Builder: the Practical was overpowering himself. She grew pale when he talked of Burley, and shuddered, poor little Helen! when she found he was daily and almost nightly in a companionship which, with her native honest prudence, she saw so unsuited to strengthen him in his struggles, and aid him against temptation. She almost groaned when, pressing him as to his pecuniary means, she found his old terror of debt seemed fading away, and the solid healthful principles he had taken from his village were loosening fast. Under all, it is true, there was what a wiser and older person than Helen would have hailed as the redeeming promise. But that something was grief—a sublime grief in his own sense of falling—in his own impotence against the Fate he had provoked and coveted. The sublimity of that grief Helen could not detect: she saw only that it was grief, and she grieved with it, letting it excuse every fault—making her more anxious to comfort, in order that she might save. Even from the first, when Leonard had exclaimed, "Ah, Helen, why did you ever leave me?" she had revolved the idea of return to him; and when in the boy's last visit he told her that Burley, persecuted by duns, was about to fly from his present lodgings, and take his abode with Leonard in the room she had left vacant, all doubt was over. She resolved to sacrifice the safety and shelter of the home assured her. She resolved to come back and share Leonard's penury and struggles, and save the old room, wherein she had prayed for him, from the tempter's dangerous presence. Should she burden him? No; she had assisted her father by many little female arts in needle and fancy work. She had improved herself in these during her sojourn with Miss Starke. She could bring her share to the common stock. Possessed with this idea, she determined to realise it before the day on which Leonard had told her Burley was to move his quarters. Accordingly she rose very early one morning; she wrote a pretty and grateful note to Miss Starke, who was fast asleep, left it on the table, and, before any one was astir, stole from the house, her little bundle on her arm. She lingered an instant at the garden-gate, with a remorseful sentiment—a feeling that she had ill-repaid the cold and prim protection that Miss Starke had shown her. But sisterly love carried all before it. She closed the gate with a sigh, and went on.

She arrived at the lodging-house before Leonard was up, took possession of her old chamber, and, presenting herself to Leonard as he was about to go forth, said, (story-teller that she was,)—"I am sent away, brother, and I have, come to you to take care of me. Do not let us part again. But you must be very cheerful and very happy, or I shall think that I am sadly in your way."

Leonard at first did look cheerful, and even happy; but then he thought of Burley, and then of his own means of supporting her, and was embarrassed, and began questioning Helen as to the possibility of reconciliation with Miss Starke. And Helen said gravely, "Impossible—do not ask it, and do not go near her."

Then Leonard thought she had been humbled and insulted, and remembered that she was a gentleman's child, and felt for her wounded pride—he was so proud himself. Yet still he was embarrassed.

"Shall I keep the purse again, Leonard?" said Helen coaxingly.

"Alas!" replied Leonard, "the purse is empty."

"That is very naughty in the purse," said Helen, "since you put so much into it."

"I?"

"Did not you say that you made, at least, a guinea a-week?"

"Yes; but Burley takes the money; and then, poor fellow! as I owe all to him, I have not the heart to prevent his spending it as he likes."

"Please, I wish you could settle the month's rent," said the landlady, suddenly showing herself. She said it civilly, but with firmness.

Leonard coloured. "It shall be paid to-day."

Then he pressed his hat on his[285] head, and, putting Helen gently aside, went forth.

"Speak to me in future, kind Mrs Smedley," said Helen with the air of a housewife. "He is always in study, and must not be disturbed."

The landlady—a good woman, though she liked her rent—smiled benignly. She was fond of Helen, whom she had known of old.

"I am so glad you are come back; and perhaps now the young man will not keep such late hours. I meant to give him warning, but—"

"But he will be a great man one of these days, and you must bear with him now." And Helen kissed Mrs Smedley, and sent her away half inclined to cry.

Then Helen busied herself in the rooms. She found her father's box, which had been duly forwarded. She re-examined its contents, and wept as she touched each humble and pious relic. But her father's memory itself thus seemed to give this home a sanction which the former had not; and she rose quietly and began mechanically to put things in order, sighing as she, saw all so neglected, till she came to the rose-tree, and that alone showed heed and care. "Dear Leonard!" she murmured, and the smile resettled on her lips.

CHAPTER IX.

Nothing, perhaps, could have severed Leonard from Burley but Helen's return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been another room in the house vacant, (which there was not,) to install this noisy riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random, and smelling of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent, delicate, timid, female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone all the twenty-four hours. She restored a home to him, and imposed its duties. He therefore told Mr Burley that in future he should write and study in his own room, and hinted with many a blush, and as delicately as he could, that it seemed to him that whatever he obtained from his pen ought to be halved with Burley, to whose interest he owed the employment, and from whose books or whose knowledge he took what helped to maintain it; but that the other half, if his, he could no longer afford to spend upon feasts or libations. He had another to provide for.

Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earning, with much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's sober appropriation of the other half; and, though a good-natured warm-hearted man, felt extremely indignant against the sudden interposition of poor Helen. However, Leonard was firm; and then Burley grew sullen, and so they parted. But the rent was still to be paid. How? Leonard for the first time thought of the pawnbroker. He had clothes to spare, and Riccabocca's watch. No; that last he shrank from applying to such base uses.

He went home at noon, and met Helen at the street door. She too had been out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and the sense of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which Leonard had taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's. She had now gone out and bought wools and implements for work; and meanwhile she had paid the rent.

Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he knew about the rent, and was very angry. He payed back to her that night what she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride, and wept more when she saw the next day a woeful hiatus in his wardrobe.

But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sate by his side, working too; so that next day, and the next, slipped peacefully away, and in the evening of the second he asked her to walk out in the fields. She sprang up joyously at the invitation, when bang went the door, and in reeled John Burley—drunk:—And so drunk!

[286]

CHAPTER X.

And with Burley there reeled in another man—a friend of his—a man who had been a wealthy trader and once well to do, but who, unluckily, had literary tastes, and was fond of hearing Burley talk. So, since he had known the wit, his business had fallen from him, and he had passed through the Bankrupt Court. A very shabby-looking dog he was, indeed, and his nose was redder than Burley's.

John made a drunken dash at poor Helen. "So you are the Pentheus in petticoats who defies Bacchus," cried he; and therewith he roared out a verse from Euripides. Helen ran away, and Leonard interposed.

"For shame, Burley!"

"He's drunk," said Mr Douce the bankrupt trader—"very drunk—don't mind—him. I say, sir, I hope we don't intrude. Sit still, Burley, sit still, and talk, do—that's a good man. You should hear him—ta—ta—talk, sir."

Leonard meanwhile had got Helen out of the room, into her own, and begged her not to be alarmed, and keep the door locked. He then returned to Burley, who had seated himself on the bed, trying wondrous hard to keep himself upright; while Mr Douce was striving to light a short pipe that he carried in his buttonhole—without having filled it—and, naturally failing in that attempt, was now beginning to weep.

Leonard was deeply shocked and revolted for Helen's sake; but it was hopeless to make Burley listen to reason. And how could the boy turn out of his room the man to whom he was under obligations?

Meanwhile there smote upon Helen's shrinking, ears loud jarring talk and maudlin laughter, and cracked attempts at jovial songs. Then she heard Mrs Smedley in Leonard's room, remonstrating, and Burley's laugh was louder than before, and Mrs Smedley, who was a meek woman, evidently got frightened, and was heard in precipitate retreat. Long and loud talk recommenced, Burley's great voice predominant, Mr Douce chiming in with hiccupy broken treble. Hour after hour this lasted, for want of the drink that would have brought it to a premature close. And Burley gradually began to talk himself somewhat sober. Then Mr Douce was heard descending the stairs, and silence followed. At dawn, Leonard knocked at Helen's door. She opened it at once, for she had not gone to bed.

"Helen," said he very sadly, "you cannot continue here. I must find out some proper home for you. This man has served me when all London was friendless, and he tells me that he has nowhere else to go—that the bailiffs are after him. He has now fallen asleep. I will go and find you some lodging close at hand—for I cannot expel him who has protected me; and yet you cannot be under the same roof with him. My own good angel, I must lose you."

He did not wait for her answer, but hurried down the stairs.

The morning looked through the shutterless panes in Leonard's garret, and the birds began to chirp from the elm-tree, when Burley rose and shook himself, and stared round. He could not quite make out where he was. He got hold of the water-jug which he emptied at three draughts, and felt greatly refreshed. He then began to reconnoitre the chamber—looked at Leonard's MSS.—peeped into the drawers—wondered where the devil Leonard himself had gone to—and finally amused himself by throwing down the fire-irons, ringing the bell, and making all the noise he could, in the hopes of attracting the attention of somebody or other, and procuring himself his morning dram.

In the midst of this charivari the door opened softly, but as if with a resolute hand, and the small quiet form of Helen stood before the threshold. Burley turned round, and the two looked at each other for some moments with silent scrutiny.

Burley, (composing his features into their most friendly expression.)—"Come hither, my dear. So you are the little girl whom I saw with Leonard on the banks of the Brent, and you have come back to live with him—and I have come to live with him too. You[287] shall be our little housekeeper, and I will tell you the story of Prince Prettyman, and a great many others not to be found in Mother Goose. Meanwhile, my dear little girl, here's sixpence—just run out and change this for its worth in rum."

Helen, (coming slowly up to Mr Burley, and still gazing earnestly into his face.)—"Ah, sir, Leonard says you have a kind heart, and that you have served him—he cannot ask you to leave the house; and so I, who have never served him, am to go hence and live alone."

Burley, (moved.)—"You go, my little lady?—and why? Can we not all live together?"

Helen.—"No, sir. I left everything to come to Leonard, for we had met first at my father's grave. But you rob me of him, and I have no other friend on earth."

Burley, (discomposed.)—"Explain yourself. Why must you leave him because I come?"

Helen looks at Mr Burley again, long and wistfully, but makes no answer.

Burley, (with a gulp.)—"Is it because he thinks I am not fit company for you?"

Helen bowed her head.

Burley winced, and after a moment's pause said,—"He is right."

Helen, (obeying the impulse at her heart, springs forward and takes Burley's hand.)—"Ah, sir," she cried, "before he knew you he was so different—then he was cheerful—then, even when his first disappointment came, I grieved and wept; but I felt he would conquer still—for his heart was so good and pure. Oh, sir, don't think I reproach you; but what is to become of him if—if—No, it is not for myself I speak. I know that if I was here, that if he had me to care for, he would come home early—and work patiently—and—and—that I might save him. But now when I am gone, and you with him—you to whom he is grateful, you whom he would follow against his own conscience, (you must see that, sir)—what is to become of him?"

Helen's voice died in sobs.

Burley took three or four long strides through the room—he was greatly agitated. "I am a demon," he murmured. "I never saw it before—but it is true—I should be this boy's ruin." Tears stood in his eyes, he paused abruptly, made a clutch at his hat, and turned to the door.

Helen stopped the way, and, taking him gently by the arm, said,—"Oh, sir, forgive me—I have pained you;" and looked up at him with a compassionate expression, that indeed made the child's sweet face as that of an angel.

Burley bent down as if to kiss her, and then drew back—perhaps with a sentiment that his lips were not worthy to touch that innocent brow.

"If I had had a sister—a child like you, little one," he muttered, "perhaps I too might have been saved in time. Now—"

"Ah, now you may stay, sir; I don't fear you any more."

"No, no; you would fear me again ere night-time, and I might not be always in the right mood to listen to a voice like yours, child. Your Leonard has a noble heart and rare gifts. He should rise yet, and he shall. I will not drag him into the mire. Good-bye—you will see me no more." He broke from Helen, cleared the stairs with a bound, and was out of the house.

When Leonard returned he was surprised to hear his unwelcome guest was gone—but Helen did not venture to tell him of her interposition. She knew instinctively how such officiousness would mortify and offend the pride of man—but she never again spoke harshly of poor Burley. Leonard supposed that he should either see or hear of the humourist in the course of the day. Finding he did not, he went in search of him at his old haunts; but no trace. He inquired at the Beehive if they knew there of his new address, but no tidings of Burley could be obtained.

As he came home disappointed and anxious, for he felt uneasy as to the disappearance of his wild friend, Mrs Smedley met him at the door.

"Please, sir, suit yourself with another lodging," said she. "I can have no such singings and shoutings going on at night in my house. And that poor little girl, too!—you should be ashamed of yourself."

Leonard frowned, and passed by.

[288]

CHAPTER XI.

Meanwhile, on leaving Helen, Burley strode on; and, as if by some better instinct, for he was unconscious of his own steps, he took the way towards the still green haunts of his youth. When he paused at length, he was already before the door of a rural cottage, standing alone in the midst of fields, with a little farm-yard at the back; and far through the trees in front was caught a glimpse of the winding Brent.

With this cottage Burley was familiar; it was inhabited by a good old couple who had known him from a boy. There he habitually left his rods and fishing-tackle; there, for intervals in his turbid riotous life, he had sojourned for two or three days together—fancying the first day that the country was a heaven, and convinced before the third that it was a purgatory.

An old woman, of neat and tidy exterior, came forth to greet him.

"Ah, Master John," said she clasping his nerveless hand—"well, the fields be pleasant now—I hope you are come to stay a bit? Do; it will freshen you: you lose all the fine colour you had once, in Lunnon town."

"I will stay with you, my kind friend," said Burley with unusual meekness—"I can have the old room, then?"

"Oh yes, come and look at it. I never let it now to any one but you—never have let it since the dear beautiful lady with the angel's face went away. Poor thing, what could have become of her?"

Thus speaking, while Burley listened not, the old woman drew him within the cottage, and led him up the stairs into a room that might have well become a better house, for it was furnished with taste, and even elegance. A small cabinet pianoforte stood opposite the fireplace, and the window looked upon pleasant meads and tangled hedgerows, and the narrow windings of the blue rivulet. Burley sank down exhausted, and gazed wistfully from the casement.

"You have not breakfasted?" said the hostess anxiously.

"No."

"Well, the eggs are fresh laid, and you would like a rasher of bacon, Master John? And if you will have brandy in your tea, I have some that you left long ago in your own bottle."

Burley shook his head. "No brandy, Mrs Goodyer; only fresh milk. I will see whether I can yet coax Nature."

Mrs Goodyer did not know what was meant by coaxing Nature, but she said, "Pray do, Master John," and vanished.

That day Burley went out with his rod, and he fished hard for the one-eyed perch: but in vain. Then he roved along the stream with his hands in his pockets, whistling. He returned to the cottage at sunset, partook of the fare provided for him, abstained from the brandy, and felt dreadfully low. He called for pen, ink, and paper, and sought to write, but could not achieve two lines. He summoned Mrs Goodyer, "Tell your husband to come and sit and talk."

Up came old Jacob Goodyer, and the great wit bade him tell him all the news of the village. Jacob obeyed willingly, and Burley at last fell asleep. The next day it was much the same, only at dinner he had up the brandy bottle, and finished it; and he did not have up Jacob, but he contrived to write.

The third day it rained incessantly. "Have you no books, Mrs Goodyer?" asked poor John Burley.

"Oh, yes, some that the dear lady left behind her; and perhaps you would like to look at some papers in her own writing?"

"No, not the papers—all women scribble, and all scribble the same things. Get me the books."

The books were brought up—poetry and essays—John knew them by heart. He looked out on the rain, and at evening the rain had ceased. He rushed to his hat and fled.

"Nature, Nature!" he exclaimed when he was out in the air and hurrying by the dripping hedgerows, "you are not to be coaxed by me! I have jilted you shamefully, I own it; you are a female and unforgiving.[289] I don't complain. You may be very pretty, but you are the stupidest and most tiresome companion that ever I met with. Thank heaven, I am not married to you!"

Thus John Burley made his way into town, and paused at the first public house. Out of that house he came with a jovial air, and on he strode towards the heart of London. Now he is in Leicester Square, and he gazes on the foreigners who stalk that region, and hums a tune; and now from yonder alley two forms emerge, and dog his careless footsteps; now through the maze of passages towards St Martin's he threads his path, and, anticipating an orgy as he nears his favourite haunts, jingles the silver in his pockets; and now the two forms are at his heels.

"Hail to thee, O Freedom!" muttered John Burley, "thy dwelling is in cities, and thy palace is the tavern."

"In the king's name," quoth a gruff voice; and John Burley feels the horrid and familiar tap on the shoulder.

The two bailiffs who dogged have seized their prey.

"At whose suit?" asked John Burley falteringly.

"Mr Cox, the wine-merchant."

"Cox! A man to whom I gave a cheque on my bankers, not three months ago!"

"But it warn't cashed."

"What does that signify?—the intention was the same. A good heart takes the will for the deed. Cox is a monster of ingratitude; and I withdraw my custom."

"Sarve him right. Would your honour like a jarvey?"

"I would rather spend the money on something else," said John Burley. "Give me your arm, I am not proud. After all, thank heaven, I shall not sleep in the country."

And John Burley made a night of it in the Fleet.

CHAPTER XII.

Miss Starke was one of those ladies who pass their lives in the direst of all civil strife—war with their servants. She looked upon the members of that class as the unrelenting and sleepless enemies of the unfortunate householders condemned to employ them. She thought they ate and drank to their villanous utmost, in order to ruin their benefactors—that they lived in one constant conspiracy with one another and the tradesmen, the object of which was to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke was a miserable woman. As she had no relations or friends who cared enough for her to share her solitary struggle against her domestic foes; and her income, though easy, was an annuity that died with herself, thereby reducing various nephews, nieces, or cousins, to the strict bounds of a natural affection—that did not exist; and as she felt the want of some friendly face amidst this world of distrust and hate, so she had tried the resource of venal companions. But the venal companions had never staid long—either they disliked Miss Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them. Therefore the poor woman had resolved upon bringing up some little girl whose heart, as she said to herself, would be fresh and uncorrupted, and from whom she might expect gratitude. She had been contented, on the whole, with Helen, and had meant to keep that child in her house as long as she (Miss Starke) remained upon the earth—perhaps some thirty years longer; and then, having carefully secluded her from marriage, and other friendship, to leave her nothing but the regret of having lost so kind a benefactress. Agreeably with this notion, and in order to secure the affections of the child, Miss Starke had relaxed the frigid austerity natural to her manner and mode of thought, and been kind to Helen in an iron way. She had neither slapped nor pinched her, neither had she starved. She had allowed her to see Leonard, according to the agreement made with Dr Morgan, and had laid out tenpence on cakes, besides contributing fruit from her garden for the first interview—a hospitality she did not think it fit to renew on subsequent occasions. In return for this,[290] she conceived she had purchased the right to Helen bodily and spiritually, and nothing could exceed her indignation when she rose one morning and found the child had gone. As it never had occurred to her to ask Leonard's address, though she suspected Helen had gone to him, she was at a loss what to do, and remained for twenty-four hours in a state of inane depression. But then she began to miss the child so much that her energies woke, and she persuaded herself that she was actuated by the purest benevolence in trying to reclaim this poor creature from the world into which Helen had thus rashly plunged.

Accordingly, she put an advertisement into the Times, to the following effect, liberally imitated from one by which, in former years, she had recovered a favourite Blenheim.

TWO GUINEAS REWARD.

Strayed, from Ivy Cottage, Highgate, a Little Girl, answers to the name of Helen; with blue eyes and brown hair; white muslin frock, and straw hat with blue ribbons. Whoever will bring the same to Ivy Cottage, shall receive the above Reward.

N.B.—Nothing more will be offered.

Now, it so happened that Mrs Smedley had put an advertisement in the Times on her own account, relative to a niece of hers who was coming from the country, and for whom she desired to find a situation. So, contrary to her usual habit, she sent for the newspaper, and, close by her own advertisement, she saw Miss Starke's.

It was impossible that she could mistake the description of Helen; and, as this advertisement caught her eye the very day after the whole house had been disturbed and scandalised by Burley's noisy visit, and on which she had resolved to get rid of a lodger who received such visitors, the goodhearted woman was delighted to think that she could restore Helen to some safe home. While thus thinking, Helen herself entered the kitchen where Mrs Smedley sate, and the landlady had the imprudence to point out the advertisement, and talk, as she called it, "seriously" to the little girl.

Helen in vain and with tears entreated her to take no step in reply to the advertisement. Mrs Smedley felt it was an affair of duty, and was obdurate, and shortly afterwards put on her bonnet and left the house. Helen conjectured that she was on her way to Miss Starke's, and her whole soul was bent on flight. Leonard had gone to the office of the Beehive with his MSS.; but she packed up all their joint effects, and, just as she had done so, he returned. She communicated the news of the advertisement, and said she should be so miserable if compelled to go back to Miss Starke's, and implored him so pathetically to save her from such sorrow that he at once assented to her proposal of flight. Luckily, little was owing to the landlady—that little was left with the maid-servant; and, profiting by Mrs Smedley's absence, they escaped without scene or conflict. Their effects were taken by Leonard to a stand of hackney vehicles, and then left at a coach-office, while they went in search of lodgings. It was wise to choose an entirely new and remote district; and before night they were settled in an attic in Lambeth.

CHAPTER XIII.

As the reader will expect, no trace of Burley could Leonard find: the humourist had ceased to communicate with the Beehive. But Leonard grieved for Burley's sake; and indeed, he missed the intercourse of the large wrong mind. But he settled down by degrees to the simple loving society of his child companion, and in that presence grew more tranquil. The hours in the daytime that he did not pass at work he spent as before, picking up knowledge at bookstalls; and at dusk he and Helen would stroll out—sometimes striving to escape from the long suburb into fresh rural air; more often wandering to and fro the bridge that led to glorious Westminster—London's classic land—and watching the vague[291] lamps reflected on the river. This haunt suited the musing melancholy boy. He would stand long and with wistful silence by the balustrade—seating Helen thereon, that she too might look along the dark mournful waters which, dark though they be, still have their charm of mysterious repose.

As the river flowed between the world of roofs, and the roar of human passions on either side, so in those two hearts flowed Thought—and all they knew of London was its shadow.

CHAPTER XIV.

There appeared in the Beehive certain very truculent political papers—papers very like the tracts in the Tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the Beehive than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the Beehive, and all its papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard, unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not new to his ear was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations against "tyrans." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognised in the orator Mr Sprott the Tinker.

The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr Sprott prudently vanished. Leonard learned then what had befallen, and again saw himself without employment and the means of bread.

Slowly he walked back. "O, knowledge, knowledge!—powerless indeed!" he murmured.

As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall—"Wanted, a few smart young men for India."

A crimp accosted him—"You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on.

"It has come back, then, to this. Brute physical force after all! O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again."

He entered his attic noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sate at work, straining her eyes by the open window—with tender and deep compassion. She had not heard him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sate, and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet, one thought that proclaimed the Egotist.

He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder—"Helen, put on your shawl and bonnet, and walk out—I have much to say."

In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their favourite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses or nooks, Leonard then began,—"Helen, we must part."

"Part?—Oh, brother!"

"Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me; nothing remains but the labour of thews and sinews. I cannot go back to my village and say to all, 'My hopes were self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!' I cannot. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I might be born to that drudgery, but my mind has, it may be unhappily, raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet—serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone; I have a home no more. But there is a home for you, Helen, a very humble one, (for you, too, so well born,) but very safe—the roof of—of—my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and—and—"

Helen clung to him trembling, and[292] sobbed out, "Anything, anything you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard. I do, indeed, make money—you do not know how much—but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part."

"And I—a man, and born to labour, to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me."

She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head submissively, and murmured, "Pardon."

"Ah," said Helen, after a pause, "if now we could but find my poor father's friend! I never so much cared for it before."

"Yes, he would surely provide for you."

"For me!" repeated Helen, in a tone of soft deep reproach, and she turned away her head to conceal her tears.

"You are sure you would remember him, if we met him by chance?"

"Oh yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog whom he called Nero—I could not forget that."

"But his dog may not be always with him."

"But the bright clear eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours seem to dream like his."

Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven.

Both were silent long; the crowd passed them by unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamplights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current, and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked deathlike in their stillness.

Leonard looked down, and the thought of Chatterton's grim suicide came back to his soul, and a pale scornful face with luminous haunting eyes seemed to look up from the stream, and murmur from livid lips,—"Struggle no more against the tides on the surface—all is calm and rest within the deep."

Starting in terror from the gloom of his reverie, the boy began to talk fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her with descriptions of the lowly home which he had offered.

He spoke of the light cares which she would participate with his mother—for by that name he still called the widow—and dwelt, with an eloquence that the contrast round him made sincere and strong, on the happy rural life, the shadowy woodlands, the rippling cornfields, the solemn lone church-spire soaring from the tranquil landscape. Flatteringly he painted the flowery terraces of the Italian exile, and the playful fountain that, even as he spoke, was flinging up its spray to the stars, through serene air untroubled by the smoke of cities, and untainted by the sinful sighs of men. He promised her the love and protection of natures akin to the happy scene: the simple affectionate mother—the gentle pastor—the exile wise and kind—Violante, with dark eyes full of the mystic thoughts that solitude calls from childhood,—Violante should be her companion.

"And oh!" cried Helen, "if life be thus happy there, return with me, return—return!"

"Alas!" murmured the boy, "if the hammer once strike the spark from the anvil, the spark must fly upward; it cannot fall back to earth until light has left it. Upward still, Helen—let me go upward still!"

CHAPTER XV.

The next morning Helen was very ill—so ill that, shortly after rising, she was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame shivered—her eyes were heavy—her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have caught cold on the bridge—perhaps her emotions had proved too[293] much for her frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called on the nearest apothecary. The apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon declared itself—Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this state, between life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose.

Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she recovered sense at last—immediate peril was over. But she was very weak and reduced—her ultimate recovery doubtful—convalescence, at best, likely to be very slow.

But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth—"Give me my work; I am strong enough for that now—it would amuse me."

Leonard burst into tears.

Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away; the apothecary was not like good Dr Morgan: the medicines were to be paid for, and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had pawned Riccabocca's watch; and when the last shilling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen? Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and assured her that he had employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He turned into his own neigbouring garret, and, leaning his face on his hands, collected all his thoughts.

He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr Dale for money—Mr Dale, too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a stranger—it seemed to add a new dishonour to his mother's memory for the child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen, there on that bed—Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries! Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud bitter soul he conquered, you would have said—"This which he thinks is degradation—this is heroism. Oh strange human heart!—no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves." Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!"—he could not endure the thought that she should pity him, and despise. The Avenels! No—thrice No. He drew towards him hastily ink and paper, and wrote rapid lines, that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of life.

But the hour for the post had passed—the letter must wait till the next day; and three days at least would elapse before he could receive an answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went forth. He crossed the bridge—he passed on mechanically—and was borne along by a crowd pressing towards the doors of Parliament. A debate that excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders collected in the street to see the members pass to and fro, or hear what speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for the gallery.

He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with them, but looking over their heads abstractedly towards the tall Funeral Abbey—Imperial Golgotha of Poets, and Chiefs, and Kings.

Suddenly his attention was diverted to those around by the sound of a name—displeasingly known to him. "How are you, Randal Leslie? coming to hear the debate?" said a member who was passing through the street.

"Yes; Mr Egerton promised to get me under the gallery. He is to speak himself to-night, and I have never heard him. As you are going into the House, will you remind him?"

"I can't now, for he is speaking already—and well too. I hurried from the Athenæum, where I was dining, on purpose to be in time, as I heard[294] that his speech was making a great effect."

"This is very unlucky," said Randal. "I had no idea he would speak so early."

"M—— brought him up by a direct personal attack. But follow me; perhaps I can get you into the House; and a man like you, Leslie, of whom we expect great things some day, I can tell you, should not miss any such opportunity of knowing what this House of ours is on a field night. Come on!"

The member hurried towards the door; and as Randal followed him, a bystander cried—"That is the young man who wrote the famous pamphlet—Egerton's relation."

"Oh, indeed!" said another. "Clever man, Egerton—I am waiting for him."

"So am I."

"Why, you are not a constituent, as I am."

"No; but he has been very kind to my nephew, and I must thank him. You are a constituent—he is an honour to your town."

"So he is: Enlightened man!"

"And so generous!"

"Brings forward really good measures," quoth the politician.

"And clever young men," said the uncle.

Therewith one or two others joined in the praise of Audley Egerton, and many anecdotes of his liberality were told.

Leonard listened at first listlessly, at last with thoughtful attention. He had heard Burley, too, speak highly of this generous statesman, who, without pretending to genius himself, appreciated it in others. He suddenly remembered, too, that Egerton was half-brother to the Squire. Vague notions of some appeal to this eminent person, not for charity, but employ to his mind, gleamed across him—inexperienced boy that he yet was! And, while thus meditating, the door of the House opened, and out came Audley Egerton himself. A partial cheering, followed by a general murmur, apprised Leonard of the presence of the popular statesman. Egerton was caught hold of by some five or six persons in succession; a shake of the hand, a nod, a brief whispered word or two, sufficed the practised member for graceful escape; and soon, free from the crowd, his tall erect figure passed on, and turned towards the bridge. He paused at the angle and took out his watch, looking at it by the lamp-light.

"Harley will be here soon," he muttered—"he is always punctual; and now that I have spoken, I can give him an hour or so. That is well."

As he replaced his watch in his pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over his firm broad chest, he lifted his eyes, and saw a young man standing before him.

"Do you want me?" asked the statesman, with the direct brevity of his practical character.

"Mr Egerton," said the young man, with a voice that slightly trembled, and yet was manly amidst emotion, "you have a great name, and great power—I stand here in these streets of London without a friend, and without employ. I believe that I have it in me to do some nobler work than that of bodily labour, had I but one friend—one opening for my thoughts. And now I have said this, I scarcely know how, or why, but from despair, and the sudden impulse which that despair took from the praise that follows your success, I have nothing more to add."

Audley Egerton was silent for a moment, struck by the tone and address of the stranger; but the consummate and wary man of the world, accustomed to all manner of strange applications, and all varieties of imposture, quickly recovered from a passing and slight effect.

"Are you a native of ——?" (naming the town he represented as member.)

"No, sir."

"Well, young man, I am very sorry for you; but the good sense you must possess (for I judge of that by the education you have evidently received) must tell you that a public man, whatever be his patronage, has it too fully absorbed by claimants who have a right to demand it, to be able to listen to strangers."

He paused a moment, and, as Leonard stood silent, added, with more kindness than most public men so accosted would have showed—

[295]

"You say you are friendless—poor fellow. In early life that happens to many of us, who find friends enough before the close. Be honest, and well-conducted; lean on yourself, not on strangers; work with the body if you can't with the mind; and, believe me, that advice is all I can give you, unless this trifle,"—and the minister held out a crown piece.

Leonard bowed, shook his head sadly, and walked away. Egerton looked after him with a slight pang.

"Pooh!" said he to himself, "there must be thousands in the same state in these streets of London. I cannot redress the necessities of civilisation. Well educated! It is not from ignorance henceforth that society will suffer—it is from over-educating the hungry thousands who, thus unfitted for manual toil, and with no career for mental, will some day or other stand like that boy in our streets, and puzzle wiser ministers than I am."

As Egerton thus mused, and passed on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand. A drag-coach with superb blood-horses rattled over the causeway, and in the driver Egerton recognised his nephew—Frank Hazeldean.

The young Guardsman was returning, with a lively party of men, from dining at Greenwich; and the careless laughter of these children of pleasure floated far over the still river.

It vexed the ear of the careworn statesman—sad, perhaps, with all his greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd of friends. It reminded him, perhaps, of his own youth, when such parties and companionships were familiar to him, though through them all he bore an ambitious aspiring soul—"Le jeu, vaut-il la chandelle?" said he, shrugging his shoulders.

The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard, as he stood leaning against the corner of the bridge, and the mire of the kennel splashed over him from the hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter smote on his ear more discordantly than on the minister's, but it begot no envy.

"Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast.

And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear;—as under the social key-stone wails and rolls on for ever the mystery of Human Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'Tis the river that founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were progress—what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! where ever the stream over which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets the arch that supports thee;—never dream that, by destroying the bridge, thou canst silence the moan of the wave!

[296]

DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE BOROUGHS.

TO WALTER BINKIE, ESQ., PROVOST OF DREEPDAILY.

My dear Provost,—In the course of your communings with nature on the uplands of Dreepdaily, you must doubtless have observed that the advent of a storm is usually preceded by the appearance of a flight of seamaws, who, by their discordant screams, give notice of the approaching change of weather. For some time past it has been the opinion of those who are in the habit of watching the political horizon, that we should do well to prepare ourselves for a squall, and already the premonitory symptoms are distinctly audible. The Liberal press, headed by the Times, is clamorous for some sweeping change in the method of Parliamentary representation; and Lord John Russell, as you are well aware, proposes in the course of next Session to take up the subject. This is no mere brutum fulmen, or dodge to secure a little temporary popularity—it is a distinct party move for a very intelligible purpose; and is fraught, I think, with much danger and injustice to many of the constituencies which are now intrusted with the right of franchise. As you, my dear Provost, are a Liberal both by principle and profession, and moreover chief magistrate of a very old Scottish burgh, your opinion upon this matter must have great weight in determining the judgment of others; and, therefore, you will not, I trust, consider it too great a liberty, if, at this dull season of the year, I call your attention to one or two points which appear well worthy of consideration.

In the first place, I think you will admit that extensive organic changes in the Constitution ought never to be attempted except in cases of strong necessity. The real interests of the country are never promoted by internal political agitation, which unsettles men's minds, is injurious to regular industry, and too often leaves behind it the seeds of jealousy and discord between different classes of the community, ready on some future occasion to burst into noxious existence. You would not, I think, wish to see annually renewed that sort of strife which characterised the era of the Reform Bill. I venture to pass no opinion whatever on the abstract merits of that measure. I accept it as a fact, just as I accept other changes in the Constitution of this country which took place before I was born; and I hope I shall ever comport myself as a loyal and independent elector. But I am sure you have far too lively a recollection of the ferment which that event created, to wish to see it renewed, without at least some urgent cause. You were consistently anxious for the suppression of rotten boroughs, and for the enlargement of the constituency upon a broad and popular basis; and you considered that the advantages to be gained by the adoption of the new system, justified the social risks which were incurred in the endeavour to supersede the old one. I do not say that you were wrong in this. The agitation for Parliamentary Reform had been going on for a great number of years; the voice of the majority of the country was undeniably in your favour, and you finally carried your point. Still, in consequence of that struggle, years elapsed before the heart-burnings and jealousies which were occasioned by it were allayed. Even now it is not uncommon to hear the reminiscences of the Reform Bill appealed to on the hustings by candidates who have little else to say for themselves by way of personal recommendation. A most ludicrous instance of this occurred very lately in the case of a young gentleman, who, being desirous of Parliamentary honours, actually requested the support of the electors on the ground that his father or grandfather—I forget which—had voted for the Reform Bill; a ceremony which he could not very well have performed in his own person, as at that time he had not been released from the bondage of swaddling-clothes! I need hardly add that he was rejected;[297] but the anecdote is curious and instructive.

In a country such as this, changes must be looked for in the course of years. One system dies out, or becomes unpopular, and is replaced by a new one. But I cannot charge my memory with any historical instance where a great change was attempted without some powerful or cogent reason. Still less can I recollect any great change being proposed, unless a large and powerful section of the community had unequivocally declared in its favour. The reason of this is quite obvious. The middle classes of Great Britain, however liberal they may be in their sentiments, have a just horror of revolutions. They know very well that organic changes are never effected without enormous loss and individual deprivation, and they will not move unless they are assured that the value of the object to be gained is commensurate with the extent of the sacrifice. In defence of their liberties, when these are attacked, the British people are ever ready to stand forward; but I mistake them much, if they will at any time allow themselves to be made the tools of a faction. The attempt to get up organic changes for the sole purpose of perpetuating the existence of a particular Ministry, or of maintaining the supremacy of a particular party, is a new feature in our history. It is an experiment which the nation ought not to tolerate for a single moment; and which I am satisfied it will not tolerate, when the schemes of its authors are laid bare.

I believe, Provost, I am right in assuming that there has been no decided movement in favour of a New Parliamentary Reform Bill, either in Dreepdaily or in any of the other burghs with which you are connected. The electors are well satisfied with the operation of the ten-pound clause, which excludes from the franchise no man of decent ability and industry, whilst it secures property from those direct inroads which would be the inevitable result of a system of universal suffrage. Also, I suppose, you are reasonably indifferent on the subjects of Vote by Ballot and Triennial Parliaments, and that you view the idea of annual ones with undisguised reprobation. Difference of opinion undoubtedly may exist on some of these points: an eight-pound qualification may have its advocates, and the right of secret voting may be convenient for members of the clique; but, on the whole, you are satisfied with matters as they are; and, certainly, I do not see that you have any grievance to complain of. If I were a member of the Liberal party, I should be very sorry to see any change of the representation made in Scotland. Just observe how the matter stands. At the commencement of the present year the whole representation of the Scottish burghs was in the hands of the Liberal party. Since then, it is true, Falkirk has changed sides; but you are still remarkably well off; and I think that out of thirty county members, eighteen may be set down as supporters of the Free-trade policy. Remember, I do not guarantee the continuance of these proportions: I wish you simply to observe how you stand at present, under the working of your own Reform Bill; and really it appears to me that nothing could be more satisfactory. The Liberal who wishes to have more men of his own kidney from Scotland must indeed be an unconscionable glutton; and if, in the face of these facts, he asks for a reform in the representation, I cannot set him down as other than a consummate ass. He must needs admit that the system has worked well. Scotland sends to the support of the Whig Ministry, and the maintenance of progressive opinions, a brilliant phalanx of senators; amongst whom we point, with justifiable pride, to the distinguished names of Anderson, Bouverie, Ewart, Hume, Smith, M'Taggart, and M'Gregor. Are these gentlemen not liberal enough for the wants of the present age? Why, unless I am most egregiously mistaken—and not I only, but the whole of the Liberal press in Scotland—they are generally regarded as decidedly ahead even of my Lord John Russell. Why, then, should your representation be reformed, while it bears such admirable fruit? With such a growth of golden pippins on its boughs, would it not be madness to cut down the tree, on the mere[298] chance of another arising from the stump, more especially when you cannot hope to gather from it a more abundant harvest? I am quite sure, Provost, that you agree with me in this. You have nothing to gain, but possibly a good deal to lose, by any alteration which may be made; and therefore it is, I presume, that in this part of the world not the slightest wish has been manifested for a radical change of the system. That very conceited and shallow individual, Sir Joshua Walmsley, made not long ago a kind of agitating tour through Scotland, for the purpose of getting up the steam; but except from a few unhappy Chartists, whose sentiments on the subject of property are identically the same with those professed by the gentlemen who plundered the Glasgow tradesmen's shops in 1848, he met with no manner of encouragement. The electors laughed in the face of this ridiculous caricature of Peter the Hermit, and advised him, instead of exposing his ignorance in the north, to go back to Bolton and occupy himself with his own affairs.

This much I have said touching the necessity or call for a new Reform Bill, which is likely enough to involve us, for a considerable period at least, in unfortunate political strife. I have put it to you as a Liberal, but at the same time as a man of common sense and honesty, whether there are any circumstances, under your knowledge, which can justify such an attempt; and in the absence of these, you cannot but admit that such an experiment is eminently dangerous at the present time, and ought to be strongly discountenanced by all men, whatever may be their kind of political opinions. I speak now without any reference whatever to the details. It may certainly be possible to discover a better system of representation than that which at present exists. I never regarded Lord John Russell as the living incarnation of Minerva, nor can I consider any measure originated by him as conveying an assurance that the highest amount of human wisdom has been exhausted in its preparation. But what I do say is this, that in the absence of anything like general demand, and failing the allegation of any marked grievance to be redressed, no Ministry is entitled to propose an extensive or organic change in the representation of the country; and the men who shall venture upon such a step must render themselves liable to the imputation of being actuated by other motives than regard to the public welfare.

You will, however, be slow to believe that Lord John Russell is moving in this matter without some special reason. In this you are perfectly right. He has a reason, and a very cogent one, but not such a reason as you, if you are truly a Liberal, and not a mere partisan, can accept. I presume it is the wish of the Liberal party—at least it used to be their watchword—that public opinion in this country is not to be slighted or suppressed. With the view of giving full effect to that public opinion, not of securing the supremacy of this or that political alliance, the Reform Act was framed; it being the declared object and intention of its founders that a full, fair, and free representation should be secured to the people of this country. The property qualification was fixed at a low rate; the balance of power as between counties and boroughs was carefully adjusted; and every precaution was taken—at least so we were told at the time—that no one great interest of the State should be allowed unduly to predominate over another. Many, however, were of opinion at the time, and have since seen no reason to alter it, that the adjustment then made, as between counties and boroughs, was by no means equitable, and that an undue share in the representation was given to the latter, more especially in England. That, you will observe, was a Conservative, not a Liberal objection; and it was over-ruled. Well, then, did the Representation, as fixed by the Reform Bill, fulfil its primary condition? You thought so; and so did my Lord John Russell, until some twelve months ago, when a new light dawned upon him. That light has since increased in intensity, and he now sees his way, clearly enough, to a new organic measure. Why is this? Simply, my dear Provost, because the English boroughs will no[299] longer support him in his bungling legislation, or countenance his unnational policy!

Public opinion, as represented through the operation of the Reform Act, is no longer favourable to Lord John Russell. The result of recent elections, in places which were formerly considered as the strongholds of Whiggery, have demonstrated to him that the Free-trade policy, to which he is irretrievably pledged, has become obnoxious to the bulk of the electors, and that they will no longer accord their support to any Ministry which is bent upon depressing British labour and sapping the foundations of national prosperity. So Lord John Russell, finding himself in this position, that he must either get rid of public opinion or resign his place, sets about the concoction of a new Reform Bill, by means of which he hopes to swamp the present electoral body! This is Whig liberty in its pure and original form. It implies, of course, that the Reform Bill did not give a full, fair, and free representation to the country, else there can be no excuse for altering its provisions. If we really have a fair representation; and if, notwithstanding, the majority of the electors are convinced that Free Trade is not for their benefit, it does appear to me a most monstrous thing that they are to be coerced into receiving it by the infusion of a new element into the Constitution, or a forcible change in the distribution of the electoral power, to suit the commercial views which are in favour with the Whig party. It is, in short, a most circuitous method of exercising despotic power; and I, for one, having the interests of the country at heart, would much prefer the institution at once of a pure despotism, and submit to be ruled and taxed henceforward at the sweet will of the scion of the house of Russell.

I do not know what your individual sentiments may be on the subject of Free Trade; but whether you are for it or against it, my argument remains the same. It is essentially a question for the solution of the electoral body; and if the Whigs are right in their averment that its operation hitherto has been attended with marked success, and has even transcended the expectation of its promoters, you may rely upon it that there is no power in the British Empire which can overthrow it. No Protectionist ravings can damage a system which has been productive of real advantage to the great bulk of the people. But if, on the contrary, it is a bad system, is it to be endured that any man or body of men shall attempt to perpetuate it against the will of the majority of the electors, by a change in the representation of the country? I ask you this as a Liberal. Without having any undue diffidence in the soundness of your own judgment, I presume you do not, like his Holiness the Pope, consider yourself infallible, or entitled to coerce others who may differ from you in opinion. Yet this is precisely what Lord John Russell is now attempting to do; and I warn you and others who are similarly situated, to be wise in time, and to take care lest, under the operation of this new Reform Bill, you are not stripped of that political power and those political privileges which at present you enjoy.

Don't suppose that I am speaking rashly or without consideration. All I know touching this new Reform Bill, is derived from the arguments and proposals which have been advanced and made by the Liberal press in consequence of the late indications of public feeling, as manifested by the result of recent elections. It is rather remarkable that we heard few or no proposals for an alteration in the electoral system, until it became apparent that the voice of the boroughs could no longer be depended on for the maintenance of the present commercial policy. You may recollect that the earliest of the victories which were achieved by the Protectionists, with respect to vacant seats in the House of Commons, were treated lightly by their opponents as mere casualties; but when borough after borough deliberately renounced its adherence to the cause of the League, and, not unfrequently under circumstances of very marked significance, declared openly in favour of Protection, the matter became serious. It was then, and then only, that we heard the necessity for some new and sweeping change in the representation of this country broadly asserted; and,[300] singularly enough, the advocates of that change do not attempt to disguise their motives. They do not venture to say that the intelligence of the country is not adequately represented at present—what they complain of is, that the intelligence of the country is becoming every day more hostile to their commercial theories. In short, they want to get rid of that intelligence, and must get rid of it speedily, unless their system is to crumble to pieces. Such is their aim and declared object; and if you entertain any doubts on the matter, I beg leave to refer you to the recorded sentiments of the leading Ministerial and Free-trade organ—the Times. It is always instructive to notice the hints of the Thunderer. The writers in that journal are fully alive to the nature of the coming crisis. They have been long aware of the reaction which has taken place throughout the country on the subject of Free Trade, and they recognise distinctly the peril in which their favourite principle is placed, if some violent means are not used to counteract the conviction of the electoral body. They see that, in the event of a general election, the constituencies of the Empire are not likely to return a verdict hostile to the domestic interests of the country. They have watched with careful and anxious eyes the turning tide of opinion; and they can devise no means of arresting it, without having recourse to that peculiar mode of manipulation, which is dignified by the name of Burking. Let us hear what they say so late as the 21st of July last.

"With such a prospect before us, with unknown struggles and unprecedented collisions within the bounds of possibility, there is only one resource, and we must say that Her Majesty's present advisers will be answerable for the consequences if they do not adopt it. They must lay the foundation of an appeal to the people with a large and liberal measure of Parliamentary reform. It is high time that this great country should cease to quake and to quail at the decisions of stupid and corrupt little constituencies, of whom, as in the case before us, it would take thirty to make one metropolitan borough. The great question always before the nation in one shape or another is—whether the people are as happy as laws can make them? To what sort of constituencies shall we appeal for the answer to this question? To Harwich with its population of 3370; to St Albans with its population of 6246; to Scarborough with its population of 9953; to Knaresborough with its population of 5382; and to a score other places still more insignificant? Or shall we insist on the appeal being made to much larger bodies? The average population of boroughs and counties is more than 60,000. Is it not high time to require that no single borough shall fall below half or a third of that number?"

The meaning of this is clear enough. It points, if not to the absolute annihilation, most certainly to the concretion of the smaller boroughs throughout England—to an entire remarshalling of the electoral ranks—and, above all, to an enormous increase in the representation of the larger cities. In this way, you see, local interests will be made almost entirely to disappear; and London alone will secure almost as many representatives in Parliament as are at the present time returned for the whole kingdom of Scotland. Now, I confess to you, Provost, that I do not feel greatly exhilarated at the prospect of any such change. I believe that the prosperity of Great Britain depends upon the maintenance of many interests, and I cannot see how that can be secured if we are to deliver over the whole political power to the masses congregated within the towns. Moreover, I would very humbly remark, that past experience is little calculated to increase the measure of our faith in the wisdom or judgment of large constituencies. I may be wrong in my estimate of the talent and abilities of the several honourable members who at present sit for London and the adjacent districts; but, if so, I am only one out of many who labour under a similar delusion. We are told by the Times to look to Marylebone as an example of a large and enlightened constituency. I obey the mandate; and on referring to the Parliamentary Companion, I find that Marylebone is represented by Lord Dudley Stuart and Sir Benjamin Hall. That fact does not, in my humble opinion, furnish a conclusive argument in favour of large constituencies. As I[301] wish to avoid the Jew question, I shall say nothing about Baron Rothschild; but passing over to the Tower Hamlets, I find them in possession of Thomson and Clay; Lambeth rejoicing in d'Eyncourt and Williams; and Southwark in Humphrey and Molesworth. Capable senators though these may be, I should not like to see a Parliament composed entirely of men of their kidney; nor do I think that they afford undoubted materials for the construction of a new Cabinet.

But perhaps I am undervaluing the abilities of these gentlemen; perhaps I am doing injustice to the discretion and wisdom of the metropolitan constituencies. Anxious to avoid any such imputation, I shall again invoke the assistance of the Times, whom I now cite as a witness, and a very powerful one, upon my side of the question. Let us hear the Thunderer on the subject of these same metropolitan constituencies, just twelve months ago, before Scarborough and Knaresborough had disgraced themselves by returning Protectionists to Parliament. I quote from a leader in the Times of 8th August 1850, referring to the Lambeth election, when Mr Williams was returned.

"When it was proposed some twenty years ago to extend the franchise to the metropolitan boroughs, the presumption was, that the quality of the representatives would bear something like a proportion to the importance of the constituencies called into play. In other words, if the political axioms from which the principle of an extended representation is deduced have any foundation in reality, it should follow that the most numerous and most intelligent bodies of electors would return to Parliament members of the highest mark for character and capacity. Now, looking at the condition of the metropolitan representation as it stands at present, or as it has stood any time since the passing of the Reform Bill, has this expectation been fulfilled? Lord John Russell, the First Minister of the Crown, sits, indeed, as member for the city of London, and so far it is well. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the noble lord's capacity for government, or whatever may be the views of this or that political party, it is beyond all dispute that, in such a case as this, there is dignity and fitness in the relation between the member and the constituency. But, setting aside this one solitary instance, with what metropolitan borough is the name of any very eminent Englishman associated at the present time? It is of course as contrary to our inclination as it would be unnecessary for the purposes of the argument, to quote this or that man's name as an actual illustration of the failure of a system, or of the decadence of a constituency. We would, however, without any invidious or offensive personality, invite attention to the present list of metropolitan members, and ask what name is to be found among them, with the single exception we have named, which is borne by a man with a shadow of a pretension to be reckoned as among the leading Englishmen of the age?"

You see, Provost, I am by no means singular in my estimate of the quality of the metropolitan representatives. The Times is with me, or was with me twelve months ago; and I suppose it will hardly be averred that, since that time, any enormous increase of wisdom or of ability has been manifested by the gentlemen referred to. But there is rather more than this. In the article from which I am quoting, the writer does not confine his strictures simply to the metropolitan boroughs. He goes a great deal further, for he attacks large constituencies in the mass, and points out very well and forcibly the evils which must inevitably follow should these obtain an accession to their power. Read, mark, and perpend the following paragraphs, and then reconcile their tenor—if you can—with the later proposals from the same quarter for the general suppression of small constituencies, and the establishment of larger tribunals of public opinion.

"Lambeth, then, on the occasion of the present election, is likely to become another illustration of the downward tendencies of the metropolitan constituencies. We use the word 'tendency' advisedly, for matters are worse than they have been, and we can perceive no symptom of a turning tide. Let us leave the names of individuals aside, and simply consider the metropolitan members as a body, and what is their main employment in the House of Commons? Is it not mainly to represent the selfish interests and blind prejudices of the less patriotic or less enlightened portion of their constituents whenever any change is proposed manifestly for the public benefit? Looking at their votes, one would suppose a metropolitan member[302] to be rather a Parliamentary agent of the drovers, and sextons, and undertakers, than a representative of one of the most important constituencies in the kingdom. Is this downward progress of the metropolitan representation to remain unchanged? Will it be extended to other constituencies as soon as they shall be brought under conditions analogous to those under which the metropolitan electors exercise the franchise? The question is of no small interest. Whether the fault be with the electors, or with those who should have the nerve to come forward and demand their suffrages, matters not for the purposes of the argument. The fact remains unaltered. Supposing England throughout its area were represented as the various boroughs of the metropolis are represented at the present time, what would be the effect? That is the point for consideration. It may well be that men of higher character, and of more distinguished intellectual qualifications, would readily attract the sympathies and secure the votes of these constituencies; but what does their absence prove? Simply that the same feeling of unwillingness to face large electoral bodies, which is said to prevail in the United States, is gradually rising up in this country. On the other side of the Atlantic, we are told by all who know the country best, that the most distinguished citizens shrink from stepping forward on the arena of public life, lest they be made the mark for calumny and abuse. It would require more space than we can devote to the subject to point out the correlative shortcomings of the constituencies and the candidates; but, leaving these aside, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that there is something in the constitution of these great electoral masses which renders a peaceful majority little better than a passive instrument in the hands of a turbulent minority, and affords an explanation of the fact that such a person as Mr Williams should aspire to represent the borough of Lambeth."

What do you think of that, Provost, by way of an argument in favour of large constituencies? I agree with every word of it. I believe, in common with the eloquent writer, that matters are growing worse instead of better, and that there is something radically wrong in the constitution of these great electoral masses. I believe that they do not represent the real intelligence of the electors, and that they are liable to all those objections which are here so well and forcibly urged. It is not necessary to travel quite so far as London for an illustration. Look at Glasgow. Have the twelve thousand and odd electors of that great commercial and manufacturing city covered themselves with undying glory by their choice of their present representatives? Is the intelligence of the first commercial city in Scotland really embodied in the person of Mr M'Gregor? I should be very loth to think so. Far be it from me to impugn the propriety of any particular choice, or to speculate upon coming events; but I cannot help wondering whether, in the event of the suppression of some of the smaller burghs, and the transference of their power to the larger cities, it may come to pass that the city of St Mungo shall be represented by the wisdom of six M'Gregors? I repeat, that I wish to say nothing in disparagement of large urban constituencies, or of their choice in any one particular case—I simply desire to draw your attention to the fact, that we are not indebted to such constituencies for returning the men who, by common consent, are admitted to be the most valuable members, in point of talent, ability, and business habits, in the House of Commons. How far we should improve the character of our legislative assembly, by disfranchising smaller constituencies, and transferring their privileges to the larger ones,—open to such serious objections as have been urged against them by the Times, a journal not likely to err on the side of undervaluing popular opinion—appears to me a question decidedly open to discussion; and I hope that it will be discussed, pretty broadly and extensively, before any active steps are taken for suppressing boroughs which are not open to the charge of rank venality and corruption.

The Times, you observe, talks in its more recent article, in which totally opposite views are advocated, of "stupid and corrupt little constituencies." This is a clever way of mixing up two distinct and separate matters. We all know what is meant by corruption, and I hope none of us are in favour of it. It means the purchase, either by money or promises, of the suffrages of those who[303] are intrusted with the electoral franchise; and I am quite ready to join with the Times in the most hearty denunciation of such villanous practices, whether used by Jew or Gentile. It may be, and probably is, impossible to prevent bribery altogether, for there are scoundrels in all constituencies; and if a candidate with a long purse is so lax in his morals as to hint at the purchase of votes, he is tolerably certain to find a market in which these commodities are sold. But if, in any case, general corruption can be proved against a borough, it ought to be forthwith disfranchised, and declared unworthy of exercising so important a public privilege. But of the "stupidity" of constituencies, who are to be the judges? Not, I hope, the Areopagites of the Times, else we may expect to see every constituency which does not pronounce in favour of Free Trade, placed under the general extinguisher! Scarborough, with some seven or eight hundred electors—a good many more, by the way, than are on the roll for the Dreepdaily burghs—has, in the opinion of the Times, stultified itself for ever by returning Mr George F. Young to Parliament, instead of a Whig lordling, who possessed great local influence. Therefore Scarborough is put down in the black list, not because it is "corrupt," but because it is "stupid," in having elected a gentleman of the highest political celebrity, who is at the same time one of the most extensive shipowners of Great Britain! I put it to you, Provost, whether this is not as cool an instance of audacity as you ever heard of. What would you think if it were openly proposed, upon our side, to disfranchise Greenwich, because the tea-and-shrimp population of that virtuous town has committed the stupid act of returning a Jew to Parliament? If stupidity is to go for anything in the way of cancelling privileges, I think I could name to you some half-dozen places on this side of the border which are in evident danger, at least if we are to accept the attainments of the representatives as any test of the mental acquirements of the electors; but perhaps it is better to avoid particulars in a matter so personal and delicate.

I am not in the least degree surprised to find the Free-Traders turning round against the boroughs. Four years ago, you would certainly have laughed in the face of any one who might have prophesied such a result; but since then, times have altered. The grand experiment upon native industry has been made, and allowed to go on without check or impediment. The Free-Traders have had it all their own way; and if there had been one iota of truth in their statements, or if their calculations had been based upon secure and rational data, they must long ago have achieved a complete moral triumph. Pray, remember what they told us. They said that Free Trade in corn and in cattle would not permanently lower the value of agricultural produce in Britain—it would only steady prices, and prevent extreme fluctuations. Then, again, we were assured that large imports from any part of the world could not by possibility be obtained; and those consummate blockheads, the statists, offered to prove by figures, that a deluge of foreign grain was as impossible as an overflow of the Mediterranean. I need not tell you that the results have entirely falsified such predictions, and that the agricultural interest has ever since been suffering under the effects of unexampled depression. No man denies that. The stiffest stickler for the cheap loaf does not venture now to assert that agriculture is a profitable profession in Britain; all he can do is to recommend economy, and to utter a hypocritical prayer, that the prosperity which he assumes to exist in other quarters may, at no distant date, and through some mysterious process which he cannot specify, extend itself to the suffering millions who depend for their subsistence on the produce of the soil of Britain, and who pay by far the largest share of the taxes and burdens of the kingdom.

Now, it is perfectly obvious that agricultural distress, by which I mean the continuance of a range of unremunerative prices, cannot long prevail in any district, without affecting the traffic of the towns. You, who are[304] an extensive retail merchant in Dreepdaily, know well that the business of your own trade depends in a great degree upon the state of the produce markets. So long as the farmer is thriving, he buys from you and your neighbours liberally, and you find him, I have no doubt, your best and steadiest customer. But if you reverse his circumstances, you must look for a corresponding change in his dealings. He cannot afford to purchase silks for his wife and daughters, as formerly; he grows penurious in his own personal expenditure, and denies himself every unnecessary luxury; he does nothing for the good of trade, and is impassable to all the temptations which you endeavour to throw in his way. To post your ledger is now no very difficult task. You find last year's stock remaining steadily on your hands; and when the season for the annual visit of the bagmen comes round, you dismiss them from your premises without gratifying their avidity by an order. This is a faithful picture of what has been going on for two years, at least, in the smaller inland boroughs. No doubt you are getting your bread cheap; but those whose importations have brought about that cheapness, never were, and never can be, customers of yours. Even supposing that they were to take goods in exchange for their imported grain, no profit or custom could accrue to the retail shopkeeper, who must necessarily look to the people around him for the consumption of his wares. In this way trade has been made to stagnate, and profits have of course declined, until the tradesmen, weary of awaiting the advent of a prosperity which never arrives, have come to the conclusion, that they will best consult their interest by giving their support to a policy the reverse of that which has crippled the great body of their customers.

Watering-places, and towns of fashionable resort, have suffered in a like degree. The gentry, whose rents have been most seriously affected by the unnatural diminution of prices, are compelled to curtail their expenditure, and to deny themselves many things which formerly would have been esteemed legitimate indulgences. Economy is the order Of the day: equipages are given up, servants dismissed, and old furniture made to last beyond its appointed time. These things, I most freely admit, are no great hardships to the gentry; nor do I intend to awaken your compassion in behalf of the squire, who, by reason of his contracted rent-roll, has been compelled to part with his carriage and a couple of footmen, and to refuse his wife and daughters the pleasure of a trip to Cheltenham. The hardship lies elsewhere. I pity the footmen, the coach-builder, the upholsterer, the house proprietor in Cheltenham, and all the other people to whom the surplus of the squire's revenue found its way, much more than the old gentleman himself. I daresay he is quite as happy at home—perhaps far happier—than if he were compelled to racket elsewhere; and sure I am that he will not consume his dinner with less appetite because he lacks the attendance of a couple of knaves, with heads like full-blown cauliflowers. But is it consistent with the workings of human nature to expect that the people to whom he formerly gave employment and custom, let us say to the extent of a couple of thousand pounds, can be gratified by the cessation of that expenditure?—or is it possible to suppose that they will remain enamoured of a system which has caused them so heavy a loss? View the subject in this light, and you can have no difficulty in understanding why this formidable reaction has taken place in the English boroughs. It is simply a question of the pocket; and the electors now see, that unless the boroughs are to be left to rapid decay, something must be done to protect and foster that industry upon which they all depend. Such facts, which are open and patent to every man's experience, and tell upon his income and expenditure, are worth whole cargoes of theory. What reason has the trader, whose stock is remaining unsold upon his hands, to plume himself, because he is assured by Mr Porter, or some other similar authority, that some hundred thousand additional yards of flimsy calico have been shipped from the British shores in the course of the last twelve months? So far as the shopkeeper is concerned,[305] the author of the Progress of the Nation might as well have been reporting upon the traffic-tables of Tyre and Sidon. He is not even assured that all this export has been accompanied with a profit to the manufacturer. If he reads the Economist, he will find that exhilarating print filled with complaints of general distress and want of demand; he will be startled from time to time by the announcement that in some places, such as Dundee, trade has experienced a most decided check; or that in others, such as Nottingham and Leicester, the operatives are applying by hundreds for admission to the workhouse! Comfortable intelligence this, alongside of increasing exports! But he has been taught, to borrow a phrase from the writings of the late John Galt, to look upon your political arithmetician as "a mystery shrouded by a halo;" and he supposes that, somehow or other, somebody must be the gainer by all these exports, though it seems clearly impossible to specify the fortunate individual. However, this he knows, to his cost any time these three years back, that he has not been the gainer; and, as he opines very justly that charity begins at home, and that the man who neglects the interest of his own family is rather worse than a heathen, he has made up his mind to support such candidates only as will stand by British industry, and protect him by means of protecting others. As for the men of the maritime boroughs—a large and influential class—I need not touch upon their feelings or sentiments with regard to Free Trade. I observe that the Liberal press, with peculiar taste and felicity of expression, designates them by the generic term of "crimps," just as it used to compliment the whole agriculturists of Britain by the comprehensive appellation of "chawbacons." I trust they feel the compliment so delicately conveyed; but, after all, it matters little. Hard words break no bones; and, in the mean time at least, the vote of a "crimp" is quite as good as that of the concocter of a paragraph.

Perhaps now you understand why the Free-Traders are so wroth against the boroughs. They expected to play off the latter against the county constituencies; and, being disappointed in that, they want to swamp them altogether. This, I must own, strikes me as particularly unfair. Let it be granted that a large number of the smaller boroughs did, at the last general election, manifest a decided wish that the Free Trade experiment, then begun, should be allowed a fair trial; are they to be held so pledged to that commercial system, that, however disastrous may have been its results, they are not entitled to alter their minds? Are all the representations, promises, and prophecies of the leading advocates of Free Trade, to be set aside as if these were never uttered or written? Who were the cozeners in this case? Clearly the men who boasted of the enormous advantages which were immediately to arise from their policy—advantages whereof, up to the present moment, not a single glimpse has been vouchsafed. Free Trade, we were distinctly told, was to benefit the boroughs. Free Trade has done nothing of the kind; on the contrary, it has reduced their business and lowered their importance. And now, when this effect has become so plain and undeniable that the very men who subscribed to the funds of the League, and who were foremost in defending the conduct of the late Sir Robert Peel, are sending Protectionists to Parliament, it is calmly proposed to neutralise their conversion by depriving them of political power!

Under the circumstances, I do not know that the Free-Traders could have hit upon a happier scheme. The grand tendency of their system is centralisation. They want to drive everything—paupers alone excepted, if they could by possibility compass that fortunate immunity—into the larger towns, which are the seats of export manufacture, and to leave the rest of the population to take care of themselves. You see how they have succeeded in Ireland, by the reports of the last census. They are doing the same thing in Scotland, as we shall ere long discover to our cost; and, indeed, the process is going on slowly, but surely, throughout the whole of the British islands. I chanced the other day to light upon a passage in a very[306] dreary article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review, which seems to me to embody the chief economical doctrines of the gentlemen to whom we are indebted for the present posture of affairs. It is as follows:—

"The common watchword, or cuckoo-note of the advocates of restriction in affairs of trade is, 'Protection to Native Industry.' In the principle fairly involved in this motto we cordially agree. We are as anxious as the most vehement advocate for high import duties on foreign products can be, that the industry of our fellow-countrymen should be protected(!) We only differ as to the means. Their theory of protection is to guard against competition those branches of industry which, without such extraneous help, could never be successfully pursued: ours, is that of enlarging, to the uttermost, those other branches for the prosecution of which our countrymen possess the greatest aptitude, and of thereby securing for their skill and capital the greatest return. This protection is best afforded by governments when they leave, without interference, the productive industry of the country to find its true level; for we may be certain that the interest of individuals will always lead them to prefer those pursuits which they find most gainful. There is, in fact, no mode of interference with entire freedom of action which must not be, in some degree, hurtful; but the mischief which follows upon legislation in affairs of trade, in any given country, is then most noxious when it tends to foster branches of industry for which other countries have a greater aptitude."

You will, I think, find some difficulty in discovering the protective principle enunciated by this sagacious scribe, who, like many others of his limited calibre, is fain to take refuge in nonsense when he cannot extricate his meaning. You may also, very reasonably, entertain doubts whether the protective theory, which our friend of the Blue and Yellow puts into the mouth of his opponents, was ever entertained or promulgated by any rational being, at least in the broad sense which he wishes to imply. The true protective theory has reference to the State burdens, which, in so far as they are exacted from the produce of native industry, or, in other words, from labour, we wish to see counterbalanced by a fair import-duty, which shall reduce the foreign and the native producer to an equality in the home market. When the reviewer talks of the non-interference of Government with regard to the productive industry of the country, he altogether omits mention of that most stringent interference which is the direct result of taxation. If the farmer were allowed to till the ground, to sow the seed, and to reap the harvest, without any interference from Government, then I admit at once that a demand for protection would be preposterous. But when Government requires him to pay income-tax, assessed taxes, church and poor-rates, besides other direct burdens, out of the fruit of his industry—when it prevents him from growing on his own land several kinds of crop, in order that the customs revenue may be maintained—when it taxes indirectly his tea, coffee, wines, spirits, tobacco, soap, and spiceries—then I say that Government does interfere, and that most unmercifully, with the productive industry of the country. Just suppose that, by recurring to a primitive method of taxation, the Government should lay claim to one-third of the proceeds of every crop, and instruct its emissaries to remove it from the ground before another acre should be reaped—would that not constitute interference in the eyes of the sapient reviewer? Well, then, since all taxes must ultimately be paid out of produce, what difference does the mere method of levying the burden make with regard to the burden itself? I call your attention to this point, because the Free-Traders invariably, but I fear wilfully, omit all mention of artificial taxation when they talk of artificial restrictions. They want you to believe that we, who maintain the opposite view, seek to establish an entire monopoly in Great Britain of all kinds of possible produce; and they are in the habit of putting asinine queries as to the propriety of raising the duties on foreign wine, so as to encourage the establishment of vineyards in Kent and Sussex, and also as to the proper protective duty which should be levied on pine-apples, in order that a due stimulus may be given to the cultivation of that luscious fruit. But these funny fellows take especial care never to hint to you that protection is and was demanded simply on account of the enormous[307] nature of our imposts, which have the effect of raising the rates of labour. It is in this way, and no other, that agriculture, deprived of protection, but still subjected to taxation, has become an unremunerative branch of industry; and you observe how calmly the disciple of Ricardo condemns it to destruction. "The mischief," quoth he, "which follows upon legislation in affairs of trade, in any given country, is then most noxious when it tends to foster branches of industry for which other countries have a greater aptitude." So, then, having taxed agriculture to that point when it can no longer bear the burden, we are, for the future, to draw our supplies from "other countries which have a greater aptitude" for growing corn; that aptitude consisting in their comparative immunity from taxation, and in the degraded moral and social condition of the serfs who constitute the tillers of the soil! We are to give up cultivation, and apply ourselves to the task "of enlarging to the uttermost those other branches, for the prosecution of which our countrymen possess the greatest aptitude"—by which, I presume, is meant the manufacture of cotton-twist!

Now, then, consider for a moment what is the natural, nay, the inevitable effect of this narrowing of the range of employment. I shall not start the important point whether the concentration of labour does not tend to lower wages—I shall merely assume, what is indeed already abundantly established by facts, that the depression of agriculture in any district leads almost immediately to a large increase in the population of the greater towns. Places like Dreepdaily may remain stationary, but they do not receive any material increment to their population. You have, I believe, no export trade, at least very little, beyond the manufacture of an ingenious description of snuff-box, justly prized by those who are in the habit of stimulating their nostrils. The displaced stream of labour passes through you, but does not tarry with you—it rolls on towards Paisley and Glasgow, where it is absorbed in the living ocean. Year after year the same process is carried on. The older people, probably because it is not worth while at their years to attempt a change, tarry in their little villages and cots, and gradually acquire that appearance of utter apathy, which is perhaps the saddest aspect of humanity. The younger people, finding no employment at home, repair to the towns, marry or do worse, and propagate children for the service of the factories which are dedicated to the export trade. Of education they receive little or nothing; for they must be in attendance on their gaunt iron master during the whole of their waking hours; and religion seeks after them in vain. What wonder, then, if the condition of our operatives should be such as to suggest to thinking minds very serious doubts whether our boasted civilisation can be regarded in the light of a blessing? Certain it is that the bulk of these classes are neither better nor happier than their forefathers. Nay, if there be any truth in evidence—any reality in the appalling accounts which reach us from the heart of the towns, there exists an amount of crime, misery, drunkenness, and profligacy, which is unknown even among savages and heathen nations. Were we to recall from the four ends of the earth all the missionaries who have been despatched from the various churches, they would find more than sufficient work ready for them at home. Well-meaning men project sanitary improvements, as if these could avail to counteract the moral poison. New churches are built; new schools are founded; public baths are subscribed for, and public washing-houses are opened; the old rookeries are pulled down, and light and air admitted to the heart of the cities—but the heart of the people is not changed; and neither air nor water, nor religious warning, has the effect of checking crime, eradicating intemperance, or teaching man the duty which he owes to himself, his brethren, and his God! This is an awful picture, but it is a true one; and it well becomes us to consider why these things should be. There is no lukewarmness on the subject exhibited in any quarter. The evil is universally acknowledged, and every one would be ready to contribute to alleviate it, could a proper remedy be suggested. It is not my[308] province to suggest remedies; but it does appear to me that the original fault is to be found in the system which has caused this unnatural pressure of our population into the towns. I am aware that in saying this, I am impugning the leading doctrines of modern political economy. I am aware that I am uttering what will be considered by many as a rank political heresy; still, not having the fear of fire and fagot before my eyes, I shall use the liberty of speech. It appears to me that the system which has been more or less adopted since the days of Mr Huskisson, of suppressing small trades for the encouragement of foreign importation, and of stimulating export manufactures to the uttermost, has proved very pernicious to the morals and the social condition of the people. The termination of the war found us with a large population, and with an enormous debt. If, on the one hand, it was for the advantage of the country that commerce should progress with rapid strides, and that our foreign trade should be augmented, it was, on the other, no less necessary that due regard should be had for the former occupations of the people, and that no great and violent displacements of labour should be occasioned, by fiscal relaxations which might have the effect of supplanting home industry by foreign produce in the British market. The mistake of the political economists lies in their obstinate determination to enforce a principle, which in the abstract is not only unobjectionable but unchallenged, without any regard whatever to the peculiar and pecuniary circumstances of the country. They will not look at what has gone before, in order to determine their line of conduct in any particular case. They admit of no exceptions. They start with their axiom that trade ought to be free, and they will not listen to any argument founded upon special circumstances in opposition to that doctrine. Now, this is not the way in which men have been, or ever can be, governed. They must be dealt with as rational beings, not regarded as mere senseless machinery, which may be treated as lumber, and cast aside to make way for some new improvement. Look at the case of our own Highlanders. We know very well that, from the commencement of the American war, it was considered by the British Government an important object to maintain the population of the Highlands, as the source from which they drew their hardiest and most serviceable recruits. So long as the manufacture of kelp existed, and the breeding of cattle was profitable, there was little difficulty in doing this; now, under this new commercial system, we are told that the population is infinitely too large for the natural resources of the country; we are shocked by accounts of periodical famine, and of deaths occurring from starvation; and our economists declare that there is no remedy except a general emigration of the inhabitants. This is the extreme case in Great Britain; but extreme cases often furnish us with the best tests of the operation of a particular system. Here you have a population fostered for an especial purpose, and abandoned so soon as that special purpose has been served. Without maintaining that the Gael is the most industrious of mankind, it strikes me forcibly that it would be a better national policy to give every reasonable encouragement to the development of the natural resources of that portion of the British islands, than to pursue the opposite system, and to reduce the Highlands to a wilderness. Not so think the political economists. They can derive their supplies cheaper from elsewhere, at the hands of strangers who contribute no share whatever to the national revenue; and for the sake of that cheapness they are content to reduce thousands of their countrymen to beggary. But emigration cannot, and will not, be carried out to an extent at all equal to the necessity which is engendered by the cessation of employment. The towns become the great centre-points and recipients of the displaced population; and so centralisation goes on, and, as a matter of course, pauperism and crime increase.

To render this system perpetual, without any regard to ultimate consequences, is the leading object of the Free-Traders. Not converted, but[309] on the contrary rendered more inveterate by the failure of their schemes, they are determined to allow no consideration whatever to stand in the way of their purpose; and of this you have a splendid instance in their late denunciation of the boroughs. They think—whether rightfully or wrongfully, it is not now necessary to inquire—that, by altering the proportions of Parliamentary power as established by the Reform Act—by taking away from the smaller boroughs, and by adding to the urban constituencies, they will still be able to command a majority in the House of Commons. In the present temper of the nation, and so long as its voice is expressed as heretofore, they know, feel, and admit that their policy is not secure. And why is it not secure? Simply because it has undergone the test of experience—because it has had a fair trial in the sight of the nation—and because it has not succeeded in realising the expectations of its founders.

I have ventured to throw together these few crude remarks for your consideration during the recess, being quite satisfied that you will not feel indifferent upon any subject which touches the dignity, status, or privileges of the boroughs. Whether Lord John Russell agrees with the Times as to the mode of effecting the threatened Parliamentary change, or whether he has some separate scheme of his own, is a question which I cannot solve. Possibly he has not yet made up his mind as to the course which it may be most advisable to pursue; for, in the absence of anything like general excitement or agitation, it is not easy to predict in what manner the proposal for any sweeping or organic change may be received by the constituencies of the Empire. There is far too much truth in the observations which I have already quoted from the great leading journal, relative to the dangers which must attend an increase of constituencies already too large, or a further extension of their power, to permit of our considering this as a light and unimportant matter. I view it as a very serious one indeed; and I cannot help thinking that Lord John Russell has committed an act of gross and unjustifiable rashness, in pledging himself, at the present time, to undertake a remodelment of the constitution. But whatever he does, I hope, for his own sake, and for the credit of the Liberal party, that he will be able to assign some better and more constitutional reason for the change, than the refusal of the English boroughs to bear arms in the crusade which is directed against the interests of Native Industry.

[310]

PARIS IN 1851.—(Continued.)

The Opera.—In the evening I went to the French Opera, which is still one of the lions of Paris. It was once in the Rue Richelieu; but the atrocious assassination of the Duc de Berri, who was stabbed in its porch, threw a kind of horror over the spot: the theatre was closed, and the performance moved to its present site in the Rue Lepelletier, a street diverging from the Boulevard.

Fond as the French are of decoration, the architecture of this building possesses no peculiar beauty, and would answer equally well for a substantial public hospital, a workhouse, or a barrack, if the latter were not the more readily suggested by the gendarmerie loitering about the doors, and the mounted dragoons at either end of the street.

The passages of the interior are of the same character—spacious and substantial; but the door of the salle opens, and the stranger, at a single step, enters from those murky passages into all the magic of a crowded theatre. The French have, within these few years, borrowed from us the art of lighting theatres. I recollect the French theatre lighted only by a few lamps scattered round the house, or a chandelier in the middle, which might have figured in the crypt of a cathedral. This they excused, as giving greater effect to the stage; but it threw the audience into utter gloom. They have now made the audience a part of the picture, and an indispensable part. The opera-house now shows the audience; and if not very dressy, or rather as dowdy, odd, and dishevelled a crowd as I ever recollect to have seen within theatrical walls, yet they are evidently human beings, which is much more picturesque than masses of spectres, seen only by an occasional flash from the stage.

The French architects certainly have not made this national edifice grand; but they have made it a much better thing,—lively, showy, and rich. Neither majestic and monotonous, nor grand and Gothic, they have made it riant and racy, like a place where men and women come to be happy, where beautiful dancers are to be seen, and where sweet songs are to be heard, and where the mind is for three or four hours to forget all its cares, and to carry away pleasant recollections for the time being. From pit to ceiling it is covered with paintings—all sorts of cupids, nymphs, and flower-garlands, and Greek urns—none of them wonders of the pencil, but all exhibiting that showy mediocrity of which every Frenchman is capable, and with which every Frenchman is in raptures. All looks rich, warm, and operatic.

One characteristic change has struck me everywhere in Paris—the men dress better, and the women worse. When I was last here, the men dressed half bandit and half Hottentot. The revolutionary mystery was at work, and the hatred of the Bourbons was emblematised in a conical hat, a loose neckcloth, tremendous trousers, and the scowl of a stage conspirator. The Parisian men have since learned the decencies of dress.

As I entered the house before the rising of the curtain, I had leisure to look about me, and I found even in the audience a strong contrast to those of London. By that kind of contradiction to everything rational and English which governs the Parisian, the women seem to choose dishabille for the Opera.

As the house was crowded, and the boxes are let high, and the performance of the night was popular, I might presume that some of the élite were present, yet I never saw so many ill-dressed women under one roof. Bonnets, shawls, muffles of all kinds, were the costume. How different from the finish, the splendour, and the fashion of the English opera-box. I saw hundreds of women who appeared, by their dress, scarcely above the rank of shopkeepers, yet, who probably were among the Parisian leaders of fashion, if in republican Paris there are any leaders of fashion.

But I came to be interested, to enjoy, to indulge in a feast of music and[311] acting; with no fastidiousness of criticism, and with every inclination to be gratified. In the opera itself I was utterly disappointed. The Opera was Zerline, or, The Basket of Oranges. The composer was the first living musician of France, Auber; the writer was the most popular dramatist of his day, Scribe; the Prima Donna was Alboni, to whom the manager of the Opera in London had not thought it too much to give £4000 for a single season. I never paid my francs with more willing expectation: and I never saw a performance of which I so soon got weary.

The plot is singularly trifling. Zerline, an orange-girl of Palermo, has had a daughter by Boccanera, a man of rank, who afterwards becomes Viceroy of Sicily. Zerline is captured by pirates, and carried to Algiers. The opera opens with her return to Palermo, after so many years that her daughter is grown up to womanhood; and Boccanera is emerged into public life, and has gradually became an officer of state.

The commencing scene has all the animation of the French picturesque. The Port of Palermo is before the spectator; the location is the Fruit Market. Masses of fruits, with smart peasantry to take care of them, cover the front of the stage. The background is filled up with Lazzaroni lying on the ground, sleeping, or eating macaroni. The Prince Boccanera comes from the palace; the crowd observe 'Son air sombre;' the Prince sings—

After this matrimonial confession, which extends to details, the prime minister tells us of his love still existing for Zerline, whose daughter he has educated under the name of niece, and who is now the Princess Gemma, and about to be married to a court noble.

A ship approaches the harbour; Boccanera disappears; the Lazzaroni hasten to discharge the cargo. Zerline lands from the vessel, and sings a cavatina in praise of Palermo:—

Zerline is a dealer in oranges, and she lands her cargo, placing it in the market. The original tenants of the place dispute her right to come among them, and are about to expel her by force, when a marine officer, Rodolf, takes her part, and, drawing his sword, puts the whole crowd to flight. Zerline, moved by this instance of heroism, tells him her story, that she was coming "un beau matin" to the city to sell oranges, when a pitiless corsair captured her, and carried her to Africa, separating her from her child, whom she had not seen for fifteen years; that she escaped to Malta, laid in a stock of oranges there;—and thus the events of the day occurred. Rodolf, this young hero, is costumed in a tie-wig with powder, stiff skirts, and the dress of a century ago. What tempted the author to put not merely his hero, but all his court characters, into the costume of Queen Anne, is not easily conceivable, as there is nothing in the story which limits it in point of time.

Zerline looks after him with sudden sympathy, says that she heard him sigh, that he must be unhappy, and that, if her daughter lives, he is just the husband for her,—Zerline not having been particular as to marriage herself. She then rambles about the streets, singing,

After this "hommage aux oranges!" to the discredit of Paradise, on which turns the plot of the play, a succession of maids of honour appear, clad in the same unfortunate livery of fardingales, enormous flat hats, powdered wigs, and stomachers. The Princess follows them, apparently armed by her costume against all the assaults of Cupid. But she, too, has an "affaire du cœur" upon her hands. In fact, from the Orangewoman up to the Throne, Cupid is the Lord of Palermo, with its "beau ciel, plaine fertile." The object of the Princess's love is the Marquis de Buttura, the suitor of her husband's supposed niece. Here is a complication! The enamoured wife receives a billet-doux from the suitor, proposing a meeting on his return from hunting. She tears[312] the billet for the purpose of concealment, and in her emotion drops the fragments on the floor. That billet performs all important part in the end. The enamoured lady buys an orange, and gives a gold piece for it. Zerline, not accustomed to be so well paid for her fruit, begins to suspect this outrageous liberality; and having had experience in these matters, picks up the fragments of the letter, and gets into the whole secret.

The plot proceeds: the daughter of the orangewoman now appears. She is clad in the same preposterous habiliments. As the niece of the minister, she is created a princess, (those things are cheap in Italy,) and she, too, is in love with the officer in the tie-wig. She recognises the song of Zerline, "Achetez mes belles oranges," and sings the half of it. On this, the mother and daughter now recognise each other. It is impossible to go further in such a denouement. If Italian operas are proverbially silly, we are to recollect that this is not an Italian, but a French one; and that it is by the most popular comic writer of France.

The marriage of Gemma and Rodolf is forbidden by the pride of the King's sister, the wife of Boccanera, but Zerline interposes, reminds her of the orange affair, threatens her with the discovery of the billet-doux, and finally makes her give her consent: and thus the curtain drops. I grew tired of all this insipidity, and left the theatre before the catastrophe. The music seemed to me fitting for the plot—neither better nor worse; and I made my escape with right good-will from the clamour and crash of the orchestra, and from the loves and faux pas of the belles of Palermo.

The Obelisk.—I strayed into the Place de la Concorde, beyond comparison the finest space in Paris. I cannot call it a square, nor does it equal in animation the Boulevard; but in the profusion of noble architecture it has no rival in Paris, nor in Europe. Vive la Despotisme! every inch of it is owing to Monarchy. Republics build nothing, if we except prisons and workhouses. They are proverbially squalid, bitter, and beggarly. What has America, with all her boasting, ever built, but a warehouse or a conventicle? The Roman Republic, after seven hundred years' existence, remained a collection hovels till an Emperor faced them with marble. If Athens exhibited her universal talents in the splendour of her architecture, we must recollect that Pericles was her master through life—as substantially despotic, by the aid of the populace, as an Asiatic king by his guards; and recollect, also, that an action of damages was brought against him for "wasting the public money on the Parthenon," the glory of Athens in every succeeding age. Louis Quatorze, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe—two openly, and the third secretly, as despotic as the Sultan—were the true builders of Paris.

As I stood in the centre of this vast enclosure, I was fully struck with the effect of scene. The sun was sinking into a bed of gold and crimson clouds, that threw their hue over the long line of the Champs Elysées. Before me were the two great fountains, and the Obelisk of Luxor. The fountains had ceased to play, from the lateness of the hour, but still looked massive and gigantic; the obelisk looked shapely and superb. The gardens of the Tuilleries were on my left—deep dense masses of foliage, surmounted in the distance by the tall roofs of the old Palace; on my right, the verdure of the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de l'Etoile rising above it, at the end of its long and noble avenue; in my front the Palace of the Legislature, a chaste and elegant structure; and behind me, glowing in the sunbeams, the Madeleine, the noblest church—I think the noblest edifice, in Paris, and perhaps not surpassed in beauty and grandeur, for its size, by any place of worship in Europe. The air cool and sweet from the foliage, the vast place almost solitary, and undisturbed by the cries which are incessant in this babel during the day, yet with that gentle confusion of sounds which makes the murmur and the music of a great city. All was calm, noble, and soothing.

The obelisk of Luxor which stands in the centre of the "Place," is one of two Monoliths, or pillars of a single stone, which, with Cleopatra's[313] Needle, were given by Mehemet Ali to the French, at the time when, by their alliance, he expected to have made himself independent. All the dates of Egyptian antiquities are uncertain—notwithstanding Young and his imitator Champollion—but the date assigned to this pillar is 1550 years before the Christian era. The two obelisks stood in front of the great temple of Thebes, now named Luxor, and the hieroglyphics which cover this one, from top to bottom, are supposed to relate the exploits and incidents of the reign of Sesostris.

It is of red Syenite; but, from time and weather, it is almost the colour of limestone. It has an original flaw up a third of its height, for which the Egyptian masons provided a remedy by wedges, and the summit is slightly broken. The height of the monolith is seventy-two feet three inches, which would look insignificant, fixed as it is in the centre of lofty buildings, but for its being raised on a plinth of granite, and that again raised on a pedestal of immense blocks of granite—the height of the plinth and the pedestal together being twenty-seven feet, making the entire height nearly one hundred. The weight of the monolith is five hundred thousand pounds; the weight of the pedestal is half that amount, and the weight of the blocks probably makes the whole amount to nine hundred thousand, which is the weight of the obelisk at Rome. It was erected in 1836, by drawing it up an inclined plane of masonry, and then raising it by cables and capstans to the perpendicular. The operation was tedious, difficult, and expensive; but it was worth the labour; and the monolith now forms a remarkable monument of the zeal of the king, and of the liberality of his government.

There is, I understand, an obelisk remaining in Egypt, which was given by the Turkish government to the British army, on the expulsion of the French from Egypt, but which has been unclaimed, from the difficulty of carrying it to England.

That difficulty, it must be acknowledged, is considerable. In transporting and erecting the obelisk of Luxor six years were employed. I have not heard the expense, but it must have been large. A vessel was especially constructed at Toulon, for its conveyance down the Nile. A long road was to be made from the Nile to the Temple. Then the obelisk required to be protected from the accidents of carriage, which was done by enclosing it in a wooden case. It was then drawn by manual force to the river—and this employed three months. Then came the trouble of embarking it, for which the vessel had to be nearly sawn through; then came the crossing of the bar at Rosetta—a most difficult operation at the season of the year; then the voyage down the Mediterranean, the vessel being towed by a steamer; then the landing at Cherbourg, in 1833; and, lastly, the passage up the Seine, which occupied nearly four months, reaching Paris in December; thenceforth its finishing and erection, which was completed only in three years after.

This detail may have some interest, as we have a similar project before us. But the whole question is, whether the transport of the obelisk which remains in Egypt for us is worth the expense. We, without hesitation, say that it is. The French have shown that it is practicable, and it is a matter of rational desire to show that we are not behind the French either in power, in ability, or in zeal, to adorn our cities. The obelisk transported to England would be a proud monument, without being an offensive one, of a great achievement of our armies; it would present to our eyes, and those of our children, a relic of the most civilised kingdom of the early ages; it would sustain the recollections of the scholar by its record, and might kindle the energy of the people by the sight of what had been accomplished by the prowess of Englishmen.

If it be replied that such views are Utopian, may we not ask, what is the use of all antiquity, since we can eat and drink as well without it? But we cannot feel as loftily without it; many a lesson of vigour, liberality, and virtue would be lost to us without it; we should lose the noblest examples of the arts, some of the finest displays of human genius in architecture, a large portion of the teaching of[314] the public mind in all things great, and an equally large portion of the incentives to public virtue in all things self-denying. The labour, it is true, of conveying the obelisk would be serious, the expense considerable, and we might not see it erected before the gate of Buckingham Palace these ten years. But it would be erected at last. It would be a trophy—it would be an abiding memorial of the extraordinary country from which civilisation spread to the whole world.

But the two grand fountains ought especially to stimulate our emulation. Those we can have without a voyage from Alexandria to Portsmouth, or a six years' delay.

The fountains of the Place de la Concorde would deserve praise if it were only for their beauty. At a distance sufficient for the picturesque, and with the sun shining on them, they actually look like domes and cataracts of molten silver; and a nearer view does not diminish their right to admiration. They are both lofty, perhaps, fifty feet high, both consisting of three basins, lessening in size in proportion to their height, and all pouring out sheets of water from the trumpets of Tritons, from the mouths of dolphins, and from allegorical figures. One of those fountains is in honour of Maritime Navigation, and the other of the Navigation of Rivers. In the former the figures represent the Ocean and the Mediterranean, with the Genii of the fisheries; and in the upper basin are Commerce, Astronomy, Navigation, &c., all capital bronzes, and all spouting out floods of water. The fountain of River Navigation is not behind its rival in bronze or water. It exhibits the Rhine and the Rhone, with the Genii of fruits and flowers, of the vintage and the harvest, with the usual attendance of Tritons. Why the artist had no room for the Seine and the Garonne, while he introduced the Rhine, which is not a French river in any part of its course, must be left for his explanation; but the whole constitutes a beautiful and magnificent object, and, with the sister fountain, perhaps forms the finest display of the kind in Europe. I did not venture, while looking at those stately monuments of French art, to turn my thoughts to our own unhappy performances in Trafalgar Square—the rival of a soda-water bottle, yet the work of a people of boundless wealth, and the first machinists in the world.

The Jardin des Plantes.—I found this fine establishment crowded with the lower orders—fathers and mothers, nurses, old women, and soldiers. As it includes the popular attractions of a zoological garden, as well as a botanical, every day sees its visitants, and every holiday its crowds. The plants are for science, and for that I had no time, even had I possessed other qualifications; but the zoological collection were for curiosity, and of that the spectators had abundance. Yet the animals of pasture appeared to be languid, possibly tired of the perpetual bustle round them—for all animals love quiet at certain times, and escape from the eye of man, when escape is in their power. Possibly the heat of the weather, for the day was remarkably sultry, might have contributed to their exhaustion. But if they have memory—and why should they not?—they must have strangely felt the contrast of their free pastures, shady woods, and fresh streams, with the little patch of ground, the parched soil, and the clamour of ten thousand tongues round them. I could imagine the antelope's intelligent eye, as he lay panting before us on his brown patch of soil, comparing it with the ravines of the Cape, or the eternal forests clothing the hills of his native Abyssinia.

But the object of all popular interest was the pit of the bears; there the crowd was incessant and delighted. But the bears, three or four huge brown beasts, by no means reciprocated the popular feeling. They sat quietly on their hind-quarters, gazing grimly at the groups which lined their rails, and tossed cakes and apples to them from above. They had probably been saturated with sweets, for they scarcely noticed anything but by a growl. They were insensible to apples—even oranges could not make them move, and cakes they seemed to treat with scorn. It was difficult to conceive that those heavy and unwieldy-looking animals could be ferocious; but the Alpine[315] hunter knows that they are as fierce as the tiger, and nearly as quick and dangerous in their spring.

The carnivorous beasts were few, and, except in the instance of one lion, of no remarkable size or beauty. As they naturally doze during the day, their languor was no proof of their weariness; but I have never seen an exhibition of this kind without some degree of regret. The plea of the promotion of science is nothing. Even if it were important to science to be acquainted with the habits of the lion and tiger, which it is not, their native habits are not to be learned from the animal shut up in a cage. The chief exertion of their sagacity and their strength in the native state is in the pursuit of prey; yet what of these can be learned from the condition in which the animal dines as regularly as his keeper, and divides his time between feeding and sleep? Half-a-dozen lions let loose in the Bois de Boulogne would let the naturalist into more knowledge of their nature than a menagerie for fifty years.

The present system is merely cruel; and the animals, without exercise, without air, without the common excitement of free motion, which all animals enjoy so highly—perhaps much more highly than the human race—fall into disease and die, no doubt miserably, though they cannot draw up a rationale of their sufferings. I have been told that the lions in confinement die chiefly of consumption—a singularly sentimental disease for this proud ravager of the desert. But the whole purpose of display would be answered as effectually by exhibiting half-a-dozen lions' skins stuffed, in the different attitudes of seizing their prey, or ranging the forest, or feeding. At present nothing is seen but a great beast asleep, or restlessly moving in a space of half-a-dozen square feet, and pining away in his confinement. An eagle on his perch and with a chain on his leg, in a menagerie, always appears to me like a dethroned monarch; and I have never seen him thus cast down from his "high estate" without longing to break his chain, and let him spread his wing, and delight his splendid eye with the full view of his kingdom of the Air.

The Jardin dates its origin as far back as Louis XIII., when the king's physician recommended its foundation for science. The French are fond of gardening, and are good gardeners; and the climate is peculiarly favourable to flowers, as is evident from the market held every morning in summer by the side of the Madeleine, where the greatest abundance of the richest flowers I ever saw is laid out for the luxury of the Parisians.

The Jardin, patronised by kings and nobles, flourished through successive reigns; but the appointment of Buffon, about the middle of the eighteenth century, suddenly raised it to the pinnacle of European celebrity. The most eloquent writer of his time, (in the style which the French call eloquence,) a man of family, and a man of opulence, he made Natural History the fashion, and in France that word is magic. It accomplishes everything—it includes everything. All France was frantic with the study of plants, animals, poultry-yards, and projects for driving tigers in cabriolets, and harnessing lions à la Cybele.

But Buffon mixed good sense with his inevitable charlatanrie—he selected the ablest men whom he could find for his professors; and in France there is an extraordinary quantity of "ordinary" cleverness—they gave amusing lectures, and they won the hearts of the nation.

But the Revolution came, and crushed all institutions alike. Buffon, fortunate in every way, had died in the year before, in 1788, and was thus spared the sight of the general ruin. The Jardin escaped, through some plea of its being national property; but the professors had fled, and were starving, or starved.

The Consulate, and still more the Empire, restored the establishment. Napoleon was ambitious of the character of a man of science, he was a member of the Institute, he knew the French character, and he flattered the national vanity, by indulging it with the prospect of being at the head of human knowledge.

The institution had by this time been so long regarded as a public show that it was beginning to be regarded as nothing else. Gratuitous[316] lectures, which are always good for nothing, and to which all kinds of people crowd with corresponding profit, were gradually reducing the character of the Jardin; when Cuvier, a man of talent, was appointed to one of the departments of the institution, and he instantly revived its popularity; and, what was of more importance, its public use.

Cuvier devoted himself to comparative anatomy and geology. The former was a study within human means, of which he had the materials round him, and which, being intended for the instruction of man, is evidently intended for his investigation. The latter, in attempting to fix the age of the world, to decide on the process of creation, and to contradict Scripture by the ignorance of man, is merely an instance of the presumption of Sciolism. Cuvier exhibited remarkable dexterity in discovering the species of the fossil fishes, reptiles, and animals. The science was not new, but he threw it into a new form—he made it interesting, and he made it probable. If a large proportion of his supposed discoveries were merely ingenious guesses, they were at least guesses which there was nobody to refute, and they were ingenious—that was enough. Fame followed him, and the lectures of the ingenious theorist were a popular novelty. The "Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy" in the Jardin is the monument of his diligence, and it does honour to the sagacity of his investigation.

One remark, however, must be made. On a former visit to the Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy, among the collection of skeletons, I was surprised and disgusted with the sight of the skeleton of the Arab who killed General Kleber in Egypt. The Arab was impaled, and the iron spike was shown still sticking in the spine! I do not know whether this hideous object is still to be seen, for I have not lately visited the apartment; but, if existing still, it ought to remain no longer in a museum of science. Of course, the assassin deserved death; but, in all probability, the murder which made him guilty, was of the same order as that which made Charlotte Corday famous. How many of his countrymen had died by the soldiery of France! In the eye of Christianity, this is no palliation; though in the eye of Mahometanism it might constitute a patriot and a hero. At all events, so frightful a spectacle ought not to meet the public eye.

Hôtel des Invalides.—The depository of all that remains of Napoleon, the monument of almost two hundred years of war, and the burial-place of a whole host of celebrated names, is well worth the visit of strangers; and I entered the esplanade of the famous hôtel with due veneration, and some slight curiosity to see the changes of time. I had visited this noble pile immediately after the fall of Napoleon, and while it still retained the honours of an imperial edifice. Its courts now appeared to me comparatively desolate; this, however, may be accounted for by the cessation of those wars which peopled them with military mutilation. The establishment was calculated to provide for five thousand men; and, at that period, probably, it was always full. At present, scarcely more than half the number are under its roof; and, as even the Algerine war is reduced to skirmishes with the mountaineers of the Atlas, that number must be further diminishing from year to year.

The Cupola then shone with gilding. This was the work of Napoleon, who had a stately eye for the ornament of his imperial city. The cupola of the Invalides thus glittered above all the roofs of Paris, and was seen glittering to an immense distance. It might be taken for the dedication of the French capital to the genius of War. This gilding is now worn off practically, as well as metaphorically, and the prestige is lost.

The celebrated Edmund Burke, all whose ideas were grand, is said to have proposed gilding the cupola of St Paul's, which certainly would have been a splendid sight, and would have thrown a look of stateliness over that city to which the ends of the earth turn their eyes. But the civic spirit was not equal to the idea, and it has since gone on lavishing ten times the money on the embellishment of lanes.

The Chapel of the Invalides looked gloomy, and even neglected; the great[317] Magician was gone. Some service was performing, as it is in the Romish chapels at most hours of the day: some poor people were kneeling in different parts of the area; and some strangers were, like myself, wandering along the nave, looking at the monuments to the fallen military names of France. On the pillars in the nave are inscriptions to the memory of Jourdan, Lobau, and Oudinot. There is a bronze tablet to the memory of Marshal Mortier, who was killed by Fieschi's infernal machine, beside Louis Philippe; and to Damremont, who fell in Algiers.

But the chapel is destined to exhibit a more superb instance of national recollection—the tomb of Napoleon, which is to be finished in 1852. A large circular crypt, dug in the centre of the second chapel (which is to be united with the first,) is the site of the sarcophagus in which the remains of Napoleon lie. Coryatides, columns, and bas-reliefs, commemorative of his battles, are to surround the sarcophagus. The coryatides are to represent War, Legislation, Art, and Science; and in front is to be raised an altar of black marble. The architect is Visconti, and the best statuaries in Paris are to contribute the decorations. The expense will be enormous. In the time of Louis Philippe it had already amounted to nearly four millions of francs. About three millions more are now demanded for the completion, including an equestrian statue. On the whole, the expense will be not much less than seven millions of francs!

The original folly of the nation, and of Napoleon, in plundering the Continent of statues and pictures, inevitably led to retribution, on the first reverse of fortune. The plunder of money, or of arms, or of anything consumable, would have been exempt from this mortification; but pictures and statues are permanent things, and always capable of being re-demanded. Their plunder was an extension of the law of spoil unknown in European hostilities, or in history, except perhaps in the old Roman ravage of Greece. Napoleon, in adopting the practice of heathenism for his model, and the French nation—in their assumed love of the arts violating the sanctities of art, by removing the noblest works from the edifices for which they were created, and from the lights and positions for which the great artists of Italy designed them—fully deserved the vexation of seeing them thus carried back to their original cities. The moral will, it is to be presumed, be learned from this signal example, that the works of genius are naturally exempt from the sweep of plunder; that even the violences of war must not be extended beyond the necessities of conquest; and that an act of injustice is sure to bring down its punishment in the most painful form of retribution.

The Artesian Well.—Near the Hôtel des Invalides is the celebrated well which has given the name to all the modern experiments of boring to great depths for water. The name of Artesian is said to be taken from the province of Artois, in which the practice has been long known. The want of water in Paris induced a M. Mulot to commence the work in 1834.

The history of the process is instructive. For six years there was no prospect of success; yet M. Mulot gallantly persevered. All was inexorable chalk; the boring instrument had broken several times, and the difficulty thus occasioned may be imagined from its requiring a length of thirteen hundred feet! even in an early period of the operation. However, early in 1841 the chalk gave signs of change, and a greenish sand was drawn up. On the 26th of February this was followed by a slight effusion of water, and before night the stream burst up to the mouth of the excavation, which was now eighteen hundred feet in depth. Yet the water rapidly rose to a height of one hundred and twelve feet above the mouth of the well by a pipe, which is now supported by scaffolding, giving about six hundred gallons of water a minute.

Even the memorable experiment confutes, so far as it goes, the geological notion of strata laid under each other in their proportions of gravity. The section of the boring shows chalk, sand, gravel, shells, &c., and this order sometimes reversed, in the most casual manner, down to a depth five times the height of the cupola of the Invalides.

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The heat of the water was 83° of Fahrenheit. In the theories with which the philosophers of the Continent have to feed their imaginations is that of a central fire, which is felt through all the strata, and which warms everything in proportion to its nearness to the centre. Thus, it was proposed to dig an Artesian well of three thousand feet, for the supply of hot water to the Jardin des Plantes and the neighbouring hospitals. It was supposed that, at this depth, the heat would range to upwards of 100° of Fahrenheit. But nothing has been done. Even the Well of Grenelle has rather disappointed the public expectation; of late the supply has been less constant, and the boring is to be renewed to a depth of two thousand feet.

The Napoleon Column.—This is the grand feature of the Place de Vendôme, once the site of the Hôtel Vendôme, built by the son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées; afterwards pulled down by Louis XIV., afterwards abandoned to the citizens, and afterwards surrounded, as it is at this day, with the formal and heavy architecture of Mansard. The "Place" has, like everything in Paris, changed its name from time to time. It was once the "Place des Conquêtes;" then it changed to "Louis le Grand;" and then it returned to the name of its original proprietor. An old figure of the "Great King," in all the glories of wig and feathers, stood in the centre, till justice and the rabble of the Revolution broke it down, in the first "energies" of Republicanism. But the German campaign of 1805 put all the nation in good humour, and the Napoleon Column was raised on the site of the dilapidated monarch.

The design of the column is not original, for it is taken from the Trajan Column at Rome; but it is enlarged, and makes a very handsome object. When I first saw it, its decorations were in peril; for the Austrian soldiery were loud for its demolition, or at least for stripping off its bronze bas-reliefs, they representing their successive defeats in that ignominious campaign which, in three months from Boulogne, finished by the capture of Vienna. The Austrian troops, however, stoutly retrieved their disasters, and, as the proof, were then masters of Paris. It was possibly this effective feeling that prevailed at last to spare the column, which the practice of the French armies would have entitled them to strip without mercy.

In the first instance, a statue of Napoleon, as emperor, stood on the summit of the pillar. This statue had its revolutions too, for it was melted down at the restoration of the Bourbons, to make a part of the equestrian statue of Henry IV. erected on the Pont Neuf. A fleur-de-lis and flagstaff then took its place. The Revolution of 1830, which elevated Louis Philippe to a temporary throne, raised the statue of Napoleon to an elevation perhaps as temporary.

It was the shortsighted policy of the new monarch to mingle royal power with "republican institutions." He thus introduced the tricolor once more, sent for Napoleon's remains to St Helena by permission of England, and erected his statue in the old "chapeau et redingote gris," the characteristics of his soldiership. The statue was inaugurated on one of the "three glorious days," in July 1833, in all the pomp of royalty,—princes, ministers, and troops. So much for the consistency of a brother of the Bourbon. The pageant passed away, and the sacrifice to popularity was made without obtaining the fruits. Louis Philippe disappeared from the scene before the fall of the curtain; and, as if to render his catastrophe more complete, he not merely left a republic behind him, but he lived to see the "prisoner of Ham" the president of that republic.

How does it happen that an Englishman in France cannot stir a single step, hear a single word, or see a single face, without the conviction that he has landed among a people as far from him in all their feelings, habits, and nature, as if they were engendered in the moon? The feelings with which the Briton looks on the statue of Buonaparte may be mixed enough: he may acknowledge him for a great soldier, as well as a great knave—a great monarch, as well as a little intriguer—a mighty ruler of men, who would have made an adroit[319] waiter at a table d'hôte in the Palais Royal. But he never would have imagined him into a sentimentalist, a shepherd, a Corydon, to be hung round with pastoral garlands; an opera hero, to delight in the sixpenny tribute of bouquets from the galleries.

Yet I found the image of this man of terror and mystery—this ravager of Europe—this stern, fierce, and subtle master of havoc, decorated like a milliner's shop, or the tombs of the citizen shopkeepers in the cemeteries, with garlands of all sizes!—the large to express copious sorrow, the smaller to express diminished anguish, and the smallest, like a visiting card, for simply leaving their compliments; and all this in the face of the people who once feared to look in his face, and followed his car as if it bore the Thunder!

To this spot came the people to offer up their sixpenny homage—to this spot came processions of all kinds, to declare their republican love for the darkest despot of European memory, to sing a stave, to walk heroically round the railing, hang up their garlands, and then, having done their duty in the presence of their own grisettes, in the face of Paris, and to the admiration of Europe, march home, and ponder upon the glories of the day!

As a work of imperial magnificence, the column is worthy of its founder, and of the only redeeming point of his character—his zeal for the ornament of Paris. It is a monument to the military successes of the Empire; a trophy one hundred and thirty-five feet high, covered with the representations of French victory over the Austrians and Russians in the campaign of 1805. The bas-reliefs are in bronze, rising in a continued spiral round the column. Yet this is an unfortunate sacrifice to the imitation of the Roman column. The spiral, a few feet above the head of the spectator, offers nothing to the eye but a roll of rough bronze; the figures are wholly and necessarily undistinguishable. The only portion of those castings which directly meets the eye is unfortunately given up to the mere uniforms, caps, and arms of the combatants. This is the pedestal, and it would make a showy decoration for a tailor's window. It is a clever work of the furnace, but a miserable one of invention.

The bronze is said to have been the captured cannon of the enemy. On the massive bronze door is the inscription in Latin:—"Napoleon, Emperor, Augustus, dedicated to the glory of the Grand Army this memorial of the German War, finished in three months, in the year 1805, under his command."

On the summit stands the statue of Napoleon, to which, and its changes, I have adverted already. But the question has arisen, whether there is not an error in taste in placing the statue of an individual at a height which precludes the view of his features. This has been made an objection to the handsome Nelson Pillar in Trafalgar Square. But the obvious answer in both instances is, that the object is not merely the sight of the features, but the perfection of the memorial; that the pillar is the true monument, and the statue only an accessory, though the most suitable accessory. But even then the statue is not altogether inexpressive. We can see the figure and the costume of Napoleon nearly as well as they could be seen from the balcony of the Tuilleries, where all Paris assembled in the Carousel to worship him on Sundays, at the parade of "La Garde." In the spirited statue of Nelson we can recognise the figure as well as if we were gazing at him within a hundred yards in any other direction. It is true that pillars are not painters' easels, nor is Trafalgar Square a sculptor's yard; but the real question turns on the effect of the whole. If the pillar makes the monument, we will not quarrel with the sculptor for its not making a miniature. It answers its purpose—it is a noble one; it gives a national record of great events, and it realises, invigorates, and consecrates them by the images of the men by whom they were achieved.

Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile.—It is no small adventure, in a burning day of a French summer, to walk the length of the Champs Elysées, even to see the arch of the Star, (Napoleon's Star,) and climb to its summit. Yet[320] this labour I accomplished with the fervour and the fatigue of a pilgrimage.

Why should the name of Republic be ever heard in the mouth of a Frenchman? All the objects of his glory in the Capital of which he glories, everything that he can show to the stranger—everything that he recounts, standing on tip-toe, and looking down on the whole world besides—is the work of monarchy! The grand Republic left nothing behind but the guillotine. The Bourbons and Buonapartes were the creators of all to which he points, with an exaltation that throws earth into the shade from the Alps to the Andes. The Louvre, the Madeleine, the Tuilleries, the Hôtel de Ville, (now magnified and renovated into the most stately of town-houses,) the Hôtel des Invalides, Nôtre Dame, &c. &c. are all the work of Kings. If Napoleon had lived half a century longer, he would have made Paris a second Babylon. If the very clever President, who has hitherto managed France so dexterously, and whose name so curiously combines the monarchy and the despotism,—if Louis Napoleon (a name which an old Roman would have pronounced an omen) should manage it into a Monarchy, we shall probably see Paris crowded with superb public edifices.

The kings of France were peculiarly magnificent in the decoration of the entrances to their city. As no power on earth can prevent the French from crowding into hovels, from living ten families in one house, and from appending to their cities the most miserable, ragged, and forlorn-looking suburbs on the globe, the monarchs wisely let the national habits alone; and resolved, if the suburbs must be abandoned to the popular fondness for the wigwam, to impress strangers with the stateliness of their gates. The Arc de St Denis, once conducting from the most dismal of suburbs, is one of the finest portals in Paris, or in any European city; it is worthy of the Boulevard, and that is panegyric at once. Every one knows that it was erected in honour of the short-lived inroad of Louis XIV. into Holland in 1672, and the taking of whole muster-rolls of forts and villages, left at his mercy, ungarrisoned and unprovisioned, by the Republican parsimony of the Dutch, till a princely defender arose, and the young Stadtholder sent back the coxcomb monarch faster than he came. But the Arc is a noble work, and its architecture might well set a redeeming example to the London improvers. Why not erect an arch in Southwark? Why not at all the great avenues to the capital? Why not, instead of leaving this task to the caprices, or even to the bad taste of the railway companies, make it a branch of the operations of the Woods and Forests, and ennoble all the entrances of the mightiest capital of earthly empire?

The Arch of St Denis is now shining in all the novelty of reparation, for it was restored so lately as last year. In this quarter, which has been always of a stormy temperature, the insurrection of 1848 raged with especial fury; and if the spirits of the great ever hover about their monuments, Louis XIV. may have seen from its summit a more desperate conflict than ever figured on its bas-reliefs.

On the Arch of the Porte St Martin is a minor monument to minor triumphs, but a handsome one. Louis XIV. is still the hero. The "Grand Monarque" is exhibited as Hercules with his club; but as even a monarch in those days was nothing without his wig, Hercules exhibits a huge mass of curls of the most courtly dimensions—he might pass for the presiding deity of perruquiers.

The Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, erected in honour of the German campaign in 1805, is a costly performance, yet poor-looking, from its position in the centre of lofty buildings. What effect can an isolated arch, of but five-and-forty feet high, have in the immediate vicinity of masses of building, perhaps a hundred feet high? Its aspect is consequently meagre; and its being placed in the centre of a court makes it look useless, and, of course, ridiculous. On the summit is a figure of War, or Victory, in a chariot, with four bronze horses—the horses modelled from the four Constantinopolitan horses brought by the French from Venice, as part[321] of the plunder of that luckless city, but sent back to Venice by the Allies in 1815. The design of the arch was from that of Severus, in Rome: this secured, at least, elegance in its construction; but the position is fatal to dignity.

The Arc de l'Etoile is the finest work of the kind in Paris. It has the advantage of being built on an elevation, from which it overlooks the whole city, with no building of any magnitude in its vicinity; and is seen from a considerable distance on all the roads leading to the capital. Its cost was excessive for a work of mere ornament, and is said to have amounted to nearly half a million sterling!

As I stood glancing over the groups on the friezes and faces of this great monument, which exhibit war in every form of conflict, havoc, and victory, the homely thought of "cui bono?" struck me irresistibly. Who was the better for all this havoc?—Napoleon, whom it sent to a dungeon! or the miserable thousands and tens of thousands whom it crushed in the field?—or the perhaps more unfortunate hundreds of thousands whom it sent to the hospital, to die the slow death of exhaustion and pain, or to live the protracted life of mutilation? I have no affectation of sentiment at the sight of the soldier's grave; he has but taken his share of the common lot, with perhaps the advantage, which so few men possess, of having "done the state some service." But, to see this vast monument covered with the emblems of hostilities, continued through almost a quarter of a century, (for the groups commence with 1792;) to think of the devastation of the fairest countries of Europe, of which these hostilities were the cause; and to know the utter fruitlessness and failure of the result, the short-lived nature of the triumph, and the frightful depth of the defeat—-Napoleon in ignominious bondage and hopeless banishment—Napoleon, after having lorded it over Europe, sent to linger out life on a rock in the centre of the ocean—the leader of military millions kept under the eye of a British sentinel, and no more suffered to stray beyond his bounds than a caged tiger—I felt as if the object before me was less a trophy than a tomb, less a monument of glory than of retribution, less the record of national triumph than of national frenzy.

I had full liberty for reflection, for there was scarcely a human being to interrupt me. The bustle of the capital did not reach so far, the promenaders in the Champs Elysées did not venture here; the showy equipages of the Parisian "nouveaux riches" remained where the crowd was to be seen; and except a few peasants going on their avocations, and a bench full of soldiers, sleeping or smoking away the weariness of the hour, the Arc de Triomphe, which had cost so much treasure, and was the record of so much blood, seemed to be totally forgotten. I question, if there had been a decree of the Legislature to sell the stones, whether it would have occasioned more than a paragraph in the Journal des Debats.

The ascent to the summit is by a long succession of dark and winding steps, for which a lamp is lighted by the porter; but the view from the parapet repays the trouble of the ascent. The whole basin in which Paris lies is spread out before the eye. The city is seen in the centre of a valley, surrounded on every side by a circle of low hills, sheeted with dark masses of wood. It was probably once the bed of a lake, in which the site of the city was an island. All the suburb villages came within the view, with the fortifications, which to a more scientific eye might appear formidable, but which to mine appeared mere dots in the vast landscape.

This parapet is unhappily sometimes used for other purposes than the indulgence of the spectacle. A short time since, a determined suicide sprang from it, after making a speech to the soldiery below, assigning his reason for this tremendous act—if reason has anything to do in such a desperate determination to defy common sense. He acted with the quietest appearance of deliberation: let himself down on the coping of the battlement, from this made his speech, as if he had been in the tribune; and, having finished it, flung himself down a height of ninety feet, and was in an instant a crushed and lifeless heap on the pavement below.

It is remarkable that, even in these crimes, there exists the distinction which seems to divide France from[322] England in every better thing. In England, a wretch undone by poverty, broken down by incurable pain, afflicted by the stings of a conscience which she neither knows how to heal nor cares how to cure, woman, helpless, wretched, and desolate, takes her walk under cover of night by the nearest river, and, without a witness, plunges in. But, in France, the last dreadful scene is imperfect without its publicity; the suicide must exhibit before the people. There must be the valete et plaudite. The curtain must fall with dramatic effect, and the actor must make his exit with the cries of the audience, in admiration or terror, ringing in the ear.

In other cases, however varied, the passion for publicity is still the same. No man can bear to perish in silence. If the atheist resolves on self-destruction, he writes a treatise for his publisher, or a letter to the journals. If he is a man of science, he takes his laudanum after supper, and, pen in hand, notes the gradual effects of the poison for the benefit of science; or he prepares a fire of charcoal, quietly inhales the vapour, and from his sofa continues to scribble the symptoms of dissolution, until the pen grows unsteady, the brain wanders, and half-a-dozen blots close the scene; the writing, however, being dedicated to posterity, and circulated next day in every journal of Paris, till it finally permeates through the provinces, and from thence through the European world.

The number of suicides in Paris annually, of late years, has been about three hundred,—out of a population of a million, notwithstanding the suppression of the gaming-houses, which unquestionably had a large share in the temptation to this horrible and unatonable crime.

The sculptures on the Arc are in the best style. They form a history of the Consulate and of the Empire. Napoleon, of course, is a prominent figure; but in the fine bas-relief which is peculiarly devoted to himself, in which he stands of colossal size, with Fame flying over his head, History writing the record of his exploits, and Victory crowning him, the artist has left his work liable to the sly sarcasm of a spectator of a similar design for the statue of Louis XIV. Victory was there holding the laurel at a slight distance from his head. An Englishman asked "whether she was putting it on or taking it off?" But another of the sculptures is still more unfortunate, for it has the unintentional effect of commemorating the Allied conquest of France in 1814. A young Frenchman is seen defending his family; and a soldier behind him is seen falling from his horse, and the Genius of the future flutters over them all. We know what that future was.

The building of this noble memorial occupied, at intervals, no less than thirty years, beginning in 1806, when Napoleon issued a decree for its erection. The invasion in 1814 put a stop to everything in France, and the building was suspended. The fruitless and foolish campaign of the Duc d'Angoulême, in Spain, was regarded by the Bourbons as a title to national glories, and the building was resumed as a trophy to the renown of the Duc. It was again interrupted by the expulsion of the Bourbons in 1830; but was resumed under Louis Philippe, and finished in 1836. It is altogether a very stately and very handsome tribute to the French armies.

But, without affecting unnecessary severity of remark, may not the wisdom of such a tribute be justly doubted? The Romans, though the principle of their power was conquest, and though their security was almost incompatible with peace, yet are said to have never repaired a triumphal arch. It is true that they built those arches (in the latter period of the Empire) so solidly as to want no repairs. But we have no triumphal monuments of the Republic surviving. Why should it be the constant policy of Continental governments to pamper their people with the food of that most dangerous and diseased of all vanities, the passion for war? And this is not said in the declamatory spirit of the "Peace Congress," which seems to be nothing more than a pretext for a Continental ramble, an expedient for a little vulgar notoriety among foreigners, and an opportunity of getting rid of the greatest quantity of common-place in the shortest time. But, why should not France learn[323] common sense from the experience of England? It is calculated that, of the last five hundred years of French history, two hundred and fifty have been spent in hostilities. In consequence, France has been invaded, trampled, and impoverished by war; while England, during the last three hundred years, has never seen the foot of a foreign invader.

Let the people of France abolish the Conscription, and they will have made one advance to liberty. Till cabinets are deprived of that material of aggressive war, they will leave war at the caprice of a weak monarch, an ambitious minister, or a vainglorious people. It is remarkable that, among all the attempts at reforming the constitution of France, her reformers have never touched upon the ulcer of the land, the Conscription, the legacy of a frantic Republic, taking the children of the country from their industry, to plunge them into the vices of idleness or the havoc of war, and at all times to furnish the means, as well as afford the temptation, to aggressive war. There is not at this hour a soldier of England who has been forced into the service! Let the French, let all the Continental nations, abolish the Conscription, thus depriving their governments of the means of making war upon each other; and what an infinite security would not this illustrious abolition give to the whole of Europe!—what an infinite saving in the taxes which are now wrung from nations by the fear of each other!—and what an infinite triumph to the spirit of peace, industry, and mutual good-will!

The Theatres.—In the evening I wandered along the Boulevard, the great centre of the theatres, and was surprised at the crowds which, in a hot summer night, could venture to be stewed alive, amid the smell of lamps, the effluvia of orange-peel, the glare of lights, and the breathing of hundreds or thousands of human beings. I preferred the fresh air, the lively movement of the Boulevard, the glitter of the Cafés, and the glow, then tempered, of the declining sun—one of the prettiest moving panoramas of Paris.

The French Government take a great interest in the popularity of the theatres, and exert that species of superintendence which is implied in a considerable supply of the theatrical expenditure. The French Opera receives annually from the National Treasury no less than 750,000 francs, besides 130,000 for retiring pensions. To the Théâtre Français, the allowance from the Treasury is 240,000 francs a-year. To the Italian Opera the sum granted was formerly 70,000, but is now 50,000. Allowances are made to the Opera Comique, a most amusing theatre, to the Odeon, and perhaps to some others—the whole demanding of the budget a sum of more than a million of francs.

It is curious that the drama in France began with the clergy. In the time of Charles VI., a company, named "Confrères de la Passion," performed plays founded on the events of Scripture, though grossly disfigured by the traditions of Monachism. The originals were probably the "Mysteries," or plays in the Convents, a species of absurd and fantastic representation common in all Popish countries. At length the life of Manners was added to the life of Superstition, and singers and grimacers were added to the "Confrères."

In the sixteenth century an Italian company appeared in Paris, and brought with them their opera, the invention of the Florentines fifty years before. The cessation of the civil wars allowed France for a while to cultivate the arts of peace; and Richelieu, a man who, if it could be said of any statesman that he formed the mind of the nation, impressed his image and superscription upon his country, gave the highest encouragement to the drama by making it the fashion. He even wrote, or assisted in writing, popular dramas. Corneille now began to flourish, and French Tragedy was established.

Mazarin, when minister, and, like Richelieu, master of the nation, invited or admitted the Italian Opera once more into France; and Molière, at the head of a new company, obtained leave to perform before Louis XIV., who thenceforth patronised the great comic writer, and gave his company a theatre. The Tragedy, Comedy, and Opera of France now led the way in Europe.

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In France, the Great Revolution, while it multiplied the theatres with the natural extravagance of the time, yet, by a consequence equally inevitable, degraded the taste of the nation. For a long period the legitimate drama was almost extinguished: it was unexciting to a people trained day by day to revolutionary convulsion; the pageants on the stage were tame to the processions in the streets; and the struggles of kings and nobles were ridiculous to the men who had been employed in destroying a dynasty.

Napoleon at once perceived the evil, and adopted the only remedy. He found no less than thirty theatres in Paris. He was not a man to pause where he saw his way clearly before him; he closed twenty-two of those theatres, leaving but eight, and those chiefly of the old establishments, making a species of compensation to the closed houses.

On the return of the Bourbons the civil list, as in the old times, assisted in the support of the theatres. On the accession of Louis Philippe, the popular triumph infused its extravagance even into the system of the drama. The number of the theatres increased, and a succession of writers of the "New School" filled the theatres with abomination. Gallantry became the spirit of the drama—everything before the scene was intrigue; married life was the perpetual burlesque. Wives were the habitual heroines of the intrigue, and husbands the habitual dupes! To keep faith with a husband was a standing jest on the stage, to keep it with a seducer was the height of human character. The former was always described as brutal, gross, dull, and born to be duped; the latter was captivating, generous, and irresistible by any matron alive. In fact, wives and widows were made for nothing else but to give way to the fascinations of this class of professors of the arts of "good society." The captivator was substantially described as a scoundrel, a gambler, and a vagabond of the basest kind, but withal so honourable, so tender, and so susceptible, that his atrocities disappeared, or rather were transmuted into virtues, by the brilliancy of his qualifications for seducing the wife of his friend. Perjury, profligacy, and the betrayal of confidence in the most essential tie of human nature, were supreme in popularity in the Novel and on the Stage.

The direct consequence is, that the crime of adultery is lightly considered in France; even the pure speak of it without the abhorrence which, for every reason, it deserves. Its notoriety is rather thought of as an anecdote of the day, or the gossiping of the soirée; and the most acknowledged licentiousness does not exclude a man of a certain rank from general reception in good society.

One thing may be observed on the most casual intercourse with Frenchmen—that the vices which, in our country, create disgust and offence in grave society, and laughter and levity in the more careless, seldom produce either the one or the other in France. The topic is alluded to with neither a frown nor a smile; it is treated, in general, as a matter of course, either too natural to deserve censure, or too common to excite ridicule. It is seldom peculiarly alluded to, for the general conversation of "Good Society" is decorous; but to denounce it would be unmannered. The result is an extent of illegitimacy enough to corrupt the whole rising population. By the registers of 1848, of 30,000 children born in Paris in that year, there were 10,000 illegitimate, of which but 1700 were acknowledged by their parents!

The theatrical profession forms an important element in the population. The actors and actresses amount to about 5000. In England they are probably not as many hundreds. And though the French population is 35,000,000, while Great Britain has little more than twenty, yet the disproportion is enormous, and forms a characteristic difference of the two countries. The persons occupied in the "working" of the theatrical system amount perhaps to 10,000, and the families dependent on the whole form a very large and very influential class among the general orders of society.

But if the Treasury assists in their general support, it compels them to pay eight per cent of their receipts as a contribution to the hospitals.[325] This sum averages annually a million of francs, or £40,000 sterling.

In England we might learn something from the theatrical regulations of France. The trampling of our crowds at the doors of theatres, the occasional losses of life and limb, and the general inconvenience and confusion of the entrance on crowded nights, might be avoided by the were adoption of French order.

But why should not higher objects be held in view? The drama is a public necessity; the people will have it, whether good or bad. Why should not Government offer prizes to the best drama, tragic or comic? Why should the most distinguished work of poetic genius find no encouragement from the Government of a nation boasting of its love of letters? Why shall that encouragement be left to the caprice of managers, to the finances of struggling establishments, or to the tastes of theatres, forced by their poverty to pander to the rabble. Why should not the mischievous performances of those theatres be put down, and dramas, founded on the higher principles of our nature, be the instruments of putting them down? Why should not heroism, honour, and patriotism, be taught on the national stage, as well as the triumphs of the highroad, laxity among the higher ranks, and vice among all? The drama has been charged with corruption. Is that corruption essential? It has been charged with being a nucleus of the loose principles, as its places of representation have been haunted by the loose characters, of society. But what are these but excrescences, generated by the carelessness of society, by the indolence of magistracy, and by the general misconception of the real purposes and possible power of the stage? That power is magnificent. It takes human nature in her most impressible form, in the time of the glowing heart and the ready tear, of the senses animated by scenery, melted by music, and spelled by the living realities of representation. Why should not impressions be made in that hour which the man would carry with him through all the contingencies of life, and which would throw a light on every period of his being?

The conditions of recompense to authors in France make some advance to justice. The author of a Drama is entitled to a profit on its performance in every theatre of France during his life, with a continuance for ten years after to his heirs. For a piece of three or five acts, the remuneration is one twelfth part of the gross receipts, and for a piece in one act, one twenty-fourth. A similar compensation has been adopted in the English theatre, but seems to have become completely nugatory, from the managers' purchasing the author's rights—the transaction here being made a private one, and the remuneration being at the mercy of the manager. But in France it is a public matter, an affair of law, and looked to by an agent in Paris, who registers the performance of the piece at all the theatres in the city, and in the provinces.

Still, this is injustice. Why should the labour of the intellect be less permanent than the labour of the hands? Why should not the author be entitled to make his full demand instead of this pittance? If his play is worth acting, why is it not worth paying for?—and why should he be prohibited from having the fruit of his brain as an inheritance to his family, as well as the fruit of any other toll?

If, instead of being a man of genius, delighting and elevating the mind of a nation, he were a blacksmith, he might leave his tools and his trade to his children without any limit; or if, with the produce of his play, he purchased a cow, or a cabin, no man could lay a claim upon either. But he must be taxed for being a man of talent; and men of no talent must be entitled, by an absurd law and a palpable injustice, to tear the fruit of his intellectual supremacy from his children after ten short years of possession.

No man leaves Paris without regret, and without a wish for the liberty and peace of its people.

[326]

MR RUSKIN'S WORKS.

Modern Painters, vol. i. Second edition.——Modern Painters, vol. ii.——The Seven Lamps of Architecture.——The Stones of Venice.——Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. By John Ruskin, M.A.

On the publication of the first volume of Mr Ruskin's work on Modern Painters, a notice appeared of it in this Magazine. Since that time a second volume has been published of the same work, with two other works on architecture. It is the second volume of his Modern Painters which will at present chiefly engage our attention. His architectural works can only receive a slight and casual notice; on some future occasion they may tempt us into a fuller examination.

Although the second volume of the Modern Painters will be the immediate subject of our review, we must permit ourselves to glance back upon the first, in order to connect together the topics treated by the two, and to prevent our paper from wearing quite the aspect of a metaphysical essay; for it is the nature of the sentiment of the beautiful, and its sources in the human mind, which is the main subject of this second volume. In the first, he had entered at once into the arena of criticism, elevating the modern artists, and one amongst them in particular, at the expense of the old masters, who, with some few exceptions, find themselves very rudely handled.

As we have already intimated, we do not hold Mr Ruskin to be a safe guide in matters of art, and the present volume demonstrates that he is no safe guide in matters of philosophy. He is a man of undoubted power and vigour of mind; he feels strongly, and he thinks independently: but he is hasty and impetuous; can very rarely, on any subject, deliver a calm and temperate judgment; and, when he enters on the discussion of general principles, shows an utter inability to seize on, or to appreciate, the wide generalisations of philosophy. He is not, therefore, one of those men who can ever become an authority to be appealed to by the less instructed in any of the fine arts, or on any topic whatever; and this we say with the utmost confidence, because, although we may be unable in many cases to dispute his judgment—as where he speaks of paintings we have not seen, or technicalities of art we do not affect to understand—yet he so frequently stands forth on the broad arena where general and familiar principles are discussed, that it is utterly impossible to be mistaken in the man. On all these occasions he displays a very marked and rather peculiar combination of power and weakness—of power, the result of natural strength of mind; of weakness, the inevitable consequence of a passionate haste, and an overweening confidence. When we hear a person of this intellectual character throwing all but unmitigated abuse upon works which men have long consented to admire, and lavishing upon some other works encomiums which no conceivable perfection of human art could justify, it is utterly impossible to attach any weight to his opinion, on the ground that he has made an especial study of any one branch of art. Such a man we cannot trust out of our sight a moment; we cannot give him one inch of ground more than his reasoning covers, or our own experience would grant to him.

We shall not here revive the controversy on the comparative merits of the ancient and modern landscape-painters, nor on the later productions of Mr Turner, whether they are the eccentricities of genius or its fullest development; we have said enough on these subjects before. It is Mr Ruskin's book, and not the pictures of Claude or Turner, that we have to criticise; it is his style, and his manner of thinking, that we have to pass judgment on.

In all Mr Ruskin's works, and in almost every page of them, whether on painting, or architecture, or philosophy, or ecclesiastical controversy, two characteristics invariably prevail:[327] an extreme dogmatism, and a passion for singularity. Every man who thinks earnestly would convert all the world to his own opinions; but while Mr Ruskin would convert all the world to his own tastes as well as opinions, he manifests the greatest repugnance to think for a moment like any one else. He has a mortal aversion to mingle with a crowd. It is quite enough for an opinion to be commonplace to insure it his contempt: if it has passed out of fashion, he may revive it; but to think with the existing multitude would be impossible. Yet that multitude are to think with him. He is as bent on unity in matters of taste as others are on unity in matters of religion; and he sets the example by diverging, wherever he can, from the tastes of others.

Between these two characteristics there is no real contradiction; or rather the contradiction is quite familiar. The man who most affects singularity is generally the most dogmatic: he is the very man who expresses most surprise that others should differ from him. No one is so impatient of contradiction as he who is perpetually contradicting others; and on the gravest matters of religion those are often found to be most zealous for unity of belief who have some pet heresy of their own, for which they are battling all their lives. The same overweening confidence lies, in fact, at the basis of both these characteristics. In Mr Ruskin they are both seen in great force. No matter what the subject he discusses,—taste or ecclesiastical government—we always find the same combination of singularity, with a dogmatism approaching to intolerance. Thus, the Ionic pillar is universally admired. Mr Ruskin finds that the fluted shaft gives an appearance of weakness. No one ever felt this, so long as the fluted column is manifestly of sufficient diameter to sustain the weight imposed on it. But this objection of apparent insecurity has been very commonly made to the spiral or twisted column. Here, therefore, Mr Ruskin abruptly dismisses the objection. He was at liberty to defend the spiral column: we should say here, also, that if the weight imposed was evidently not too great for even a spiral column to support, this objection has no place; but why cast the same objection, (which perhaps in all cases was a mere after-thought) against the Ionic shaft, when it had never been felt at all? It has been a general remark, that, amongst other results of the railway, it has given a new field to the architect, as well as to the engineer. Therefore Mr Ruskin resolves that our railroad stations ought to have no architecture at all. Of course, if he limited his objections to inappropriate ornament, he would be agreeing with all the world: he decides there should be no architecture whatever; merely buildings more or less spacious, to protect men and goods from the weather. He has never been so unfortunate, we suppose, as to come an hour too soon, or the unlucky five minutes too late, to a railway station, or he would have been glad enough to find himself in something better than the large shed he proposes. On the grave subject of ecclesiastical government he has stepped forward into controversy; and here he shows both his usual propensities in high relief. He has some quite peculiar projects of his own; the appointment of some hundreds of bishops—we know not what—and a Church discipline to be carried out by trial by jury. Desirable or not, they are manifestly as impracticable as the revival of chivalry. But let that pass. Let every man think and propose his best. But his dogmatism amounts to a disease, when, turning from his own novelties, he can speak in the flippant intolerant manner that he does of the national and now time-honoured Church of Scotland.

It will be worth while to make, in passing, a single quotation from this pamphlet, Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. He tells us, in one place, that in the New Testament the ministers of the Church "are called, and call themselves, with absolute indifference, Deacons, Bishops, Elders, Evangelists, according to what they are doing at the time of speaking." With such a writer one might, at all events, have hoped to live in peace. But no. He discovers, nevertheless, that Episcopacy is the Scriptural form[328] of Church government; and, having satisfied his own mind of this, no opposition or diversity of opinion is for a moment to be tolerated.

"But how," he says, "unite the two great sects of paralysed Protestants? By keeping simply to Scripture. The members of the Scottish Church have not a shadow of excuse for refusing Episcopacy: it has indeed been abused among them, grievously abused; but it is in the Bible, and that is all they have a right to ask.

"They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to employ a written form of prayer. It may not be to their taste—it may not be the way in which they like to pray; but it is no question, at present, of likes or dislikes, but of duties; and the acceptance of such a form on their part would go half way to reconcile them with their brethren. Let them allege such objections as they can reasonably advance against the English form, and let these be carefully and humbly weighed by the pastors of both Churches: some of them ought to be at once forestalled. For the English Church, on the other hand, must," &c.

Into Mr Ruskin's own religious tenets, further than he has chosen to reveal them in his works, we have no wish to pry. But he must cease to be Mr Ruskin if they do not exhibit some salient peculiarity, coupled with a confidence, unusual even amongst zealots, that his peculiar views will speedily triumph. If he can be presumed to belong to any sect, it must be the last and smallest one amongst us—some sect as exclusive as German mysticism, with pretensions as great as those of the Church of Rome.

One word on the style of Mr Ruskin: it will save the trouble of alluding to it on particular occasions. It is very unequal. In both his architectural works he writes generally with great ease, spirit, and clearness. There is a racy vigour in the page. But when he would be very eloquent, as he is disposed to be in the Modern Painters, he becomes very verbose, tedious, obscure, extravagant. There is no discipline in his style, no moderation, no repose. Those qualities which he has known how to praise in art he has not aimed at in his own writing. A rank luxuriance of a semi-poetical diction lies about, perfectly unrestrained; metaphorical language comes before us in every species of disorder; and hyperbolical expressions are used till they become commonplace. Verbal criticism, he would probably look upon a very puerile business: he need fear nothing of the kind from us; we should as soon think of criticising or pruning a jungle. To add to the confusion, he appears at times to have proposed to himself the imitation of some of our older writers: pages are written in the rhythm of Jeremy Taylor; sometimes it is the venerable Hooker who seems to be his type; and he has even succeeded in combining whatever is most tedious and prolix in both these great writers. If the reader wishes a specimen of this sort of modern antique, he may turn to the fifteenth chapter of the second volume of the Modern Painters.

Coupled with this matter of style, and almost inseparable from it, is the violence of his manner on subjects which cannot possibly justify so vehement a zeal. We like a generous enthusiasm on any art—we delight in it; but who can travel in sympathy with a writer who exhausts on so much paint and canvass every term of rapture that the Alps themselves could have called forth? One need not be a utilitarian philosopher—or what Mr Ruskin describes as such—to smile at the lofty position on which he puts the landscape-painter, and the egregious and impossible demands he makes upon the art itself. And the condemnation and opprobrium with which he overwhelms the luckless artist who has offended him is quite as violent. The bough of a tree, "in the left hand upper corner" of a landscape of Poussin's, calls forth this terrible denunciation:—

"This latter is a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch—the talons of an eagle—the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage—a piece of work so barbarous in every way that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape-painters.... I will say here at once, that such[329] drawing as this is as ugly as it is childish, and as painful as it is false; and that the man who could tolerate, much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his canvass, had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute or excellence of God's works. He might have drawn the other stem in excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to improve upon nature, but this is conclusive and unpardonable."—(P. 382.)

The great redeeming quality of Mr Ruskin—and we wish to give it conspicuous and honourable mention—is his love of nature. Here lies the charm of his works; to this may be traced whatever virtue is in them, or whatever utility they may possess. They will send the painter more than ever to the study of nature, and perhaps they will have a still more beneficial effect on the art, by sending the critic of painting to the same school. It would be almost an insult to the landscape-painter to suppose that he needed this lesson; the very love of his art must lead him perpetually, one would think, to his great and delightful study amongst the fields, under the open skies, before the rivers and the hills. But the critic of the picture-gallery is often one who goes from picture to picture, and very little from nature to the painting. Consequently, where an artist succeeds in imitating some effect in nature which had not been before represented on the canvass, such a critic is more likely to be displeased than gratified; and the artist, having to paint for a conventional taste, is in danger of sacrificing to it his own higher aspirations. Now it is most true that no man should pretend to be a critic upon pictures unless he understands the art itself of painting; he ought, we suspect, to have handled the pencil or the brush himself; at all events, he ought in some way to have been initiated into the mysteries of the pallet and the easel. Otherwise, not knowing the difficulties to be overcome, nor the means at hand for encountering them, he cannot possibly estimate the degree of merit due to the artist for the production of this or that effect. He may be loud in applause where nothing has been displayed but the old traditions of the art. But still this is only one-half the knowledge he ought to possess. He ought to have studied nature, and to have loved the study, or he can never estimate, and never feel, that truth of effect which is the great aim of the artist. Mr Ruskin's works will help to shame out of the field all such half-informed and conventional criticism, the mere connoisseurship of the picture gallery. On the other hand, they will train men who have always been delighted spectators of nature to be also attentive observers. Our critics will learn how to admire, and mere admirers will learn how to criticise. Thus a public will be educated; and here, if anywhere, we may confidently assert that the art will prosper in proportion as there is an intelligent public to reward it.

We like that bold enterprise of Mr Ruskin's which distinguishes the first volume, that daring enumeration of the great palpable facts of nature—the sky, the sea, the earth, the foliage—which the painter has to represent. His descriptions are often made indistinct by a multitude of words; but there is light in the haze—there is a genuine love of nature felt through them. This is almost the only point of sympathy we feel with Mr Ruskin; it is the only hold his volumes have had over us whilst perusing them; we may be, therefore, excused if we present here to our readers a specimen or two of his happier descriptions of nature. We will give them the Cloud and the Torrent. They will confess that, after reading Mr Ruskin's description of the clouds, their first feeling will be an irresistible impulse to throw open the window, and look upon them again as they roll through the sky. The torrent may not be so near at hand, to make renewed acquaintance with. We must premise that he has been enforcing his favourite precept, the minute, and faithful, and perpetual study of nature. He very justly scouts the absurd idea that trees and rocks and clouds are, under any circumstances, to be generalised—so that a tree is not to stand for an oak or a poplar, a birch or an elm, but for a general tree. If a tree is at so great a distance that you cannot distinguish what it is, as you cannot paint more than you see, you must paint it indistinctly. But to make a purposed indistinctness where the kind of tree[330] would be very plainly seen is a manifest absurdity. So, too, the forms of clouds should be studied, and as much as possible taken from nature, and not certain general clouds substituted at the artist's pleasure.

"But it is not the outline only which is thus systematically false. The drawing of the solid form is worse still; for it is to be remembered that, although clouds of course arrange themselves more or less into broad masses, with a light side and a dark side, both their light and shade are invariably composed of a series of divided masses, each of which has in its outline as much variety and character as the great outline of the cloud; presenting, therefore, a thousand times repeated, all that I have described as the general form. Nor are these multitudinous divisions a truth of slight importance in the character of sky, for they are dependent on, and illustrative of, a quality which is usually in a great degree overlooked—the enormous retiring spaces of solid clouds. Between the illumined edge of a heaped cloud and that part of its body which turns into shadow, there will generally be a clear distance of several miles—more or less, of course, according to the general size of the cloud; but in such large masses as Poussin and others of the old masters, which occupy the fourth or fifth of the visible sky, the clear illumined breadth of vapour, from the edge to the shadow, involves at least a distance of five or six miles. We are little apt, in watching the changes of a mountainous range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapour which compose it are linger and higher than any mountain-range of the earth; and the distances between mass and mass are not yards of air, traversed in an instant by the flying form, but valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over; that the slow motion of ascending curves, which we can scarcely trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapour rushing into the heaven a thousand feet in a minute; and that the topling angle, whose sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitudinous forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms, three thousand feet from base to summit. It is not until we have actually compared the forms of the sky with the hill-ranges of the earth, and seen the soaring alp overtopped and buried in one surge of the sky, that we begin to conceive or appreciate the colossal scale of the phenomena of the latter. But of this there can be no doubt in the mind of any one accustomed to trace the forms of cloud among hill-ranges—as it is there a demonstrable and evident fact—that the space of vapour visibly extended over an ordinarily clouded sky is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the horizon, than twenty leagues; that the size of every mass of separate form, if it be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of miles; and that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky is an enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height, six or seven miles over in illuminated surface, furrowed by a thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks and promontories, and changing its features with the majestic velocity of a volcano."—(Vol. i. p. 228.)

The forms of clouds, it seems, are worth studying: after reading this, no landscape-painter will be disposed, with hasty slight invention, to sketch in these "mountains" of the sky. Here is his description, or part of it, first of falling, then of running water. With the incidental criticism upon painters we are not at present concerned:—

"A little crumbling white or lightly-rubbed paper will soon give the effect of indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more than foam—she shows beneath it, and through it, a peculiar character of exquisitely studied form, bestowed on every wave and line of fall; and it is this variety of definite character which Turner always aims at, rejecting as much as possible everything that conceals or overwhelms it. Thus, in the Upper Fall of the Tees, though the whole basin of the fall is blue, and dim with the rising vapour, yet the attention of the spectator is chiefly directed to the concentric zones and delicate curves of the falling water itself; and it is impossible to express with what exquisite accuracy these are given. They are the characteristic of a powerful stream descending without impediment or break, but from a narrow channel, so as to expand as it falls. They are the constant form which such a stream assumes as it descends; and yet I think it would be difficult to point to another instance of their being rendered in art. You will find nothing in the waterfalls, even of our best painters, but springing lines of parabolic descent, and splashing and shapeless foam; and, in consequence, though they may make you understand the swiftness of the water, they never let you feel the weight of it: the stream, in their hands, looks active, not supine, as if it leaped, not as if it fell. Now, water will leap a little way—it will leap down a weir or over a stone—but it tumbles over a high fall like this; and it is when[331] we have lost the parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary—when we have lost the spring of the fall, and arrived at the plunge of it—that we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. Where water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool and collected, and uninteresting and mathematical; but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it begins to writhe and twist, and sweep out, zone after zone, in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides sounding for the bottom. And it is this prostration, the hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the air, which is always peculiarly expressed by Turner....

"When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a pool as it goes long, it does not acquire a continuous velocity of motion. It pauses after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then goes on again; and if, in this comparatively tranquil and rational state of mind, it meets with any obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bubbling foam, and goes round: if it comes to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and then, after a little splashing at the bottom, stops again to take breath. But if its bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted by hollows, so that it cannot rest—or if its own mass be so increased by flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient for it, but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following current before it has had time to tranquillise itself—it of course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at one leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream becomes one mass of unchecked accelerating motion. Now, when water in this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it like a racehorse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it up, and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into it, and comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed, and all the lines of the water altered in their nature. The quiet stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and springy and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet curdling water, and another similar leap below. But the stream, when it has gained an impetus, takes the shape of its bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing—not foaming nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard. If it meet a rock three or four feet above the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, nor express any concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water without apparent exertion, coming down again as smoothly on the other side, the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the form of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a line of fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with this only difference, that the torrent waves always break backwards, and sea-waves forwards. Thus, then, in the water which has gained an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangement of curved lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave, following every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature can possibly produce."—(Vol. i. p. 363.)

It is the object of Mr Ruskin, in his first volume of Modern Painters, to show what the artist has to do in his imitation of nature. We have no material controversy to raise with him on this subject; but we cannot help expressing our surprise that he should have thought it necessary to combat, with so much energy, so very primitive a notion that the imitation of the artist partakes of the nature of a deception, and that the highest excellence is obtained when the representation of any object is taken for the object itself. We thought this matter had been long ago settled. In a page or two of Quatremère de Quincy's treatise on Imitation in the Fine Arts, the reader, if he has still to seek on this subject, will find it very briefly and lucidly treated. The aim of the artist is not to produce such a representation as shall be taken, even for a moment, for a real object. His aim is, by imitating certain qualities or attributes of the object, to reproduce for us those pleasing or elevating impressions which it is the nature of such[332] qualities or attributes to excite. We have stated very briefly the accepted doctrine on this subject—so generally accepted and understood that Mr Ruskin was under no necessity to avoid the use of the word imitation, as he appears to have done, under the apprehension that it was incurably infected with this notion of an attempted deception. Hardly any reader of his book, even without a word of explanation, would have attached any other meaning to it than what he himself expresses by representation of certain "truths" of nature.

With respect to the imitations of the landscape-painter, the notion of a deception cannot occur. His trees and rivers cannot be mistaken, for an instant, for real trees and rivers, and certainly not while they stand there in the gilt frame, and the gilt frame itself against the papered wall. His only chance of deception is to get rid of the frame, convert his picture into a transparency, and place it in the space which a window should occupy. In almost all cases, deception is obtained, not by painting well, but by those artifices which disguise that what we see is a painting. At the same time, we are not satisfied with an expression which several writers, we remark, have lately used, and which Mr Ruskin very explicitly adopts. The imitations of the landscape-painter are not a "language" which he uses; they are not mere "signs," analogous to those which the poet or the orator employs. There is no analogy between them. Let us analyse our impressions as we stand before the artist's landscape, not thinking of the artist, or his dexterity, but simply absorbed in the pleasure which he procures us—we do not find ourselves reverting, in imagination, to other trees or other rivers than those he has depicted. We certainly do not believe them to be real trees, but neither are they mere signs, or a language to recall such objects; but what there is of tree there we enjoy. There is the coolness and the quiet of the shaded avenue, and we feel them; there is the sunlight on that bank, and we feel its cheerfulness; we feel the serenity of his river. He has brought the spirit of the trees around us; the imagination rests in the picture. In other departments of art the effect is the same. If we stand before a head of Rembrandt or Vandyke, we do not think that it lives; but neither do we think of some other head, of which that is the type. But there is majesty, there is thought, there is calm repose, there is some phase of humanity expressed before us, and we are occupied with so much of human life, or human character, as is then and there given us.

Imitate as many qualities of the real object as you please, but always the highest, never sacrificing a truth of the mind, or the heart, for one only of the sense. Truth, as Mr Ruskin most justly says—truth always. When it is said that truth should not be always expressed, the maxim, if properly understood, resolves into this—that the higher truth is not to be sacrificed to the lower. In a landscape, the gradation of light and shade is a more important truth than the exact brilliancy (supposing it to be attainable,) of any individual object. The painter must calculate what means he has at his disposal for representing this gradation of light, and he must pitch his tone accordingly. Say he pitches it far below reality, he is still in search of truth—of contrast and degree.

Sometimes it may happen that, by rendering one detail faithfully, an artist may give a false impression, simply because he cannot render other details or facts by which it is accompanied in nature. Here, too, he would only sacrifice truth in the cause of truth. The admirers of Constable will perhaps dispute the aptness of our illustration. Nevertheless his works appear to us to afford a curious example of a scrupulous accuracy or detail producing a false impression. Constable, looking at foliage under the sunlight, and noting that the leaf, especially after a shower, will reflect so much light that the tree will seem more white than green, determined to paint all the white he saw. Constable could paint white leaves. So far so well. But then these leaves in nature are almost always in motion: they are white at one moment and green the next. We never have the impression of a white leaf; for it is seen playing with the light—its mirror, for one instant, and glancing from it the[333] next. Constable could not paint motion. He could not imitate this shower of light in the living tree. He must leave his white paint where he has once put it. Other artists before him had seen the same light, but, knowing that they could not bring the breeze into their canvass, they wisely concluded that less white paint than Constable uses would produce a more truthful impression.

But we must no longer be detained from the more immediate task before us. We must now follow Mr Ruskin to his second volume of Modern Painters, where he explains his theory of the beautiful; and although this will not be to readers in general the most attractive portion of his writings, and we ourselves have to practise some sort of self-denial in fixing our attention upon it, yet manifestly it is here that we must look for the basis or fundamental principles of all his criticisms in art. The order in which his works have been published was apparently deranged by a generous zeal, which could brook no delay, to defend Mr Turner from the censures of the undiscerning public. If the natural or systematic order had been preserved, the materials of this second volume would have formed the first preliminary treatise, determining those broad principles of taste, or that philosophical theory of the beautiful, on which the whole of the subsequent works were to be modelled. Perhaps this broken and reversed order of publication has not been unfortunate for the success of the author—perhaps it was dimly foreseen to be not altogether impolitic; for the popular ear was gained by the bold and enthusiastic defence of a great painter; and the ear of the public, once caught, may be detained by matter which, in the first instance, would have appealed to it in vain. Whether the effect of chance or design, we may certainly congratulate Mr Ruskin on the fortunate succession, and the fortunate rapidity with which his publications have struck on the public ear. The popular feeling, won by the zeal and intrepidity of the first volume of Modern Painters, was no doubt a little tried by the graver discussions of the second. It was soon, however, to be again caught, and pleased by a bold and agreeable miscellany under the magical name of "The Seven Lamps;" and these Seven Lamps could hardly fail to throw some portion of their pleasant and bewildering light over a certain rudimentary treatise upon building, which was to appear under the title of "The Stones of Venice."

We cannot, however, congratulate Mr Ruskin on the manner in which he has acquitted himself in this arena of philosophical inquiry, nor on the sort of theory of the Beautiful which he has contrived to construct. The least metaphysical of our readers is aware that there is a controversy of long standing upon this subject, between two different schools of philosophy. With the one the beautiful is described as a great "idea" of the reason, or an intellectual intuition, or a simple intuitive perception; different expressions are made use of, but all imply that it is a great primary feeling, or sentiment, or idea of the human mind, and as incapable of further analysis as the idea of space, or the simplest of our sensations. The rival school of theorists maintain, on the contrary, that no sentiment yields more readily to analysis; and that the beautiful, except in those rare cases where the whole charm lies in one sensation, as in that of colour, is a complex sentiment. They describe it as a pleasure resulting from the presence of the visible object, but of which the visible object is only in part the immediate cause. Of a great portion of the pleasure it is merely the vehicle; and they say that blended reminiscences, gathered from every sense, and every human affection, from the softness of touch of an infant's finger to the highest contemplations of a devotional spirit, have contributed, in their turn, to this delightful sentiment.

Mr Ruskin was not bound to belong to either of these schools of philosophy; he was at liberty to construct an eclectic system of his own;—and he has done so. We shall take the precaution, in so delicate a matter, of quoting Mr Ruskin's own words for the exposition of his own theory. Meanwhile, as some clue to the reader, we may venture to say that he agrees with the first of these schools in adopting a primary intuitive sentiment of the beautiful; but then this[334] primary intuition is only of a sensational or "animal" nature—a subordinate species of the beautiful, which is chiefly valuable as the necessary condition of the higher and truly beautiful; and this last he agrees with the opposite school in regarding as a derived sentiment—derived by contemplating the objects of external nature as types of the Divine attributes. This is a brief summary of the theory; for a fuller exposition we shall have recourse to his own words.

The term Æsthetic, which has been applied to this branch of philosophy, Mr Ruskin discards; he offers as a substitute Theoria, or The Theoretic Faculty, the meaning of which he thus explains:—

"I proceed, therefore, first to examine the nature of what I have called the theoretic faculty, and to justify my substitution of the term 'Theoretic' for 'Æsthetic,' which is the one commonly employed with reference to it.

"Now the term 'æsthesis' properly signifies mere sensual perception of the outward qualities and necessary effects of bodies; in which sense only, if we would arrive at any accurate conclusions on this difficult subject, it should always be used. But I wholly deny that the impressions of beauty are in any way sensual;—they are neither sensual nor intellectual, but moral; and for the faculty receiving them, whose difference from mere perception I shall immediately endeavour to explain, no terms can be more accurate or convenient than that employed by the Greeks, 'Theoretic,' which I pray permission, therefore, always to use, and to call the operation of the faculty itself, Theoria."—(P. 11.)

We are introduced to a new faculty of the human mind; let us see what new or especial sphere of operation is assigned to it. After some remarks on the superiority of the mere sensual pleasures of the eye and the ear, but particularly of the eye, to those derived from other organs of sense, he continues:—

"Herein, then, we find very sufficient ground for the higher estimation of these delights: first, in their being eternal and inexhaustible; and, secondly, in their being evidently no meaner instrument of life, but an object of life. Now, in whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infinitely and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something of divine: for God will not make anything an object of life to his creatures which does not point to, or partake of himself,"—[a bold assertion.] "And so, though we were to regard the pleasures of sight merely as the highest of sensual pleasures, and though they were of rare occurrence—and, when occurring, isolated and imperfect—there would still be supernatural character about them, owing to their self-sufficiency. But when, instead of being scattered, interrupted, or chance-distributed, they are gathered together and so arranged to enhance each other, as by chance they could not be, there is caused by them, not only a feeling of strong affection towards the object in which they exist, but a perception of purpose and adaptation of it to our desires; a perception, therefore, of the immediate operation of the Intelligence which so formed us and so feeds us.

"Out of what perception arise Joy, Admiration, and Gratitude?

"Now, the mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness I call Æsthesis; but the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it I call Theoria. For this, and this only, is the full comprehension and contemplation of the beautiful as a gift of God; a gift not necessary to our being, but adding to and elevating it, and twofold—first, of the desire; and, secondly, of the thing desired."

We find, then, that in the production of the full sentiment of the beautiful two faculties are employed, or two distinct operations denoted. First, there is the "animal pleasantness which we call Æsthesis,"—which sometimes appears confounded with the mere pleasures of sense, but which the whole current of his speculations obliges us to conclude is some separate intuition of a sensational character; and, secondly, there is "the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it, which we call Theoria," which alone is the truly beautiful, and which it is the function of the Theoretic Faculty to reveal to us. But this new Theoretic Faculty—what can it be but the old faculty of Human Reason, exercised upon the great subject of Divine beneficence?

Mr Ruskin, as we shall see, discovers that external objects are beautiful because they are types of Divine attributes; but he admits, and is solicitous to impress upon our minds, that the "meaning" of these types is "learnt." When, in a subsequent[335] part of his work, he feels himself pressed by the objection that many celebrated artists, who have shown a vivid appreciation and a great passion for the beautiful, have manifested no peculiar piety, have been rather deficient in spiritual-mindedness, he gives them over to that instinctive sense he has called Æsthesis, and says—"It will be remembered that I have, throughout the examination of typical beauty, asserted our instinctive sense of it; the moral meaning of it being only discoverable by reflection," (p. 127.) Now, there is no other conceivable manner in which the meaning of the type can be learnt than by the usual exercise of the human reason, detecting traces of the Divine power, and wisdom, and benevolence, in the external world, and then associating with the various objects of the external world the ideas we have thus acquired of the Divine wisdom and goodness. The rapid and habitual regard of certain facts or appearances in the visible world, as types of the attributes of God, can be nothing else but one great instance (or class of instances) of that law of association of ideas on which the second school of philosophy we have alluded to so largely insist. And thus, whether Mr Ruskin chooses to acquiesce in it or not, his "Theoria" resolves itself into a portion, or fragment, of that theory of association of ideas, to which he declares, and perhaps believes, himself to be violently opposed.

In a very curious manner, therefore, has Mr Ruskin selected his materials from the two rival schools of metaphysics. His Æsthesis is an intuitive perception, but of a mere sensual or animal nature—sometimes almost confounded with the mere pleasure of sense, at other times advanced into considerable importance, as where he has to explain the fact that men of very little piety have a very acute perception of beauty. His Theoria is, and can be, nothing more than the results of human reason in its highest and noblest exercise, rapidly brought before the mind by a habitual association of ideas. For the lowest element of the beautiful he runs to the school of intuitions;—they will not thank him for the compliment;—for the higher to that analytic school, and that theory of association of ideas, to which throughout he is ostensibly opposed.

This Theoria divides itself into two parts. We shall quote Mr Ruskin's own words and take care to quote from them passages where he seems most solicitous to be accurate and explanatory:—

"The first thing, then, we have to do," he says, "is accurately to discriminate and define those appearances from which we are about to reason as belonging to beauty, properly so called, and to clear the ground of all the confused ideas and erroneous theories with which the misapprehension or metaphorical use of the term has encumbered it.

"By the term Beauty, then, properly are signified two things: first, that external quality of bodies, already so often spoken of, and which, whether it occur in a stone, flower, beast, or in man, is absolutely identical—which, as I have already asserted, may be shown to be in some sort typical of the Divine attributes, and which, therefore, I shall, for distinction's sake, call Typical Beauty; and, secondarily, the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of functions in living things, more especially of the joyful and right exertion of perfect life in man—and this kind of beauty I shall call Vital Beauty."—(P. 26.)

The Vital Beauty, as well as the Typical, partakes essentially, as far as we can understand our author, of a religious character. On turning to that part of the volume where it is treated of at length, we find a universal sympathy and spirit of kindliness very properly insisted on, as one great element of the sentiment of beauty; but we are not permitted to dwell upon this element, or rest upon it a moment, without some reference to our relation to God. Even the animals themselves seem to be turned into types for us of our moral feelings or duties. We are expressly told that we cannot have this sympathy with life and enjoyment in other creatures, unless it takes the form of, or comes accompanied with, a sentiment of piety. In all cases where the beautiful is anything higher than a certain "animal pleasantness," we are to understand that it has a religious character. "In all cases," he says, summing up the functions of the Theoretic Faculty, "it is something Divine; either the[336] approving voice of God, the glorious symbol of Him, the evidence of His kind presence, or the obedience to His will by Him induced and supported,"—(p. 126.) Now it is a delicate task, when a man errs by the exaggeration of a great truth or a noble sentiment, to combat his error; and yet as much mischief may ultimately arise from an error of this description as from any other. The thoughts and feelings which Mr Ruskin has described, form the noblest part of our sentiment of the beautiful, as they form the noblest phase of the human reason. But they are not the whole of it. The visible object, to adopt his phraseology, does become a type to the contemplative and pious mind of the attribute of God, and is thus exalted to our apprehension. But it is not beautiful solely or originally on this account. To assert this, is simply to falsify our human nature.

Before, however, we enter into these types, or this typical beauty, it will be well to notice how Mr Ruskin deals with previous and opposing theories. It will be well also to remind our readers of the outline of that theory of association of ideas which is here presented to us in so very confused a manner. We shall then be better able to understand the very curious position our author has taken up in this domain of speculative philosophy.

Mr Ruskin gives us the following summary of the "errors" which he thinks it necessary in the first place to clear from his path:—

"Those erring or inconsistent positions which I would at once dismiss are, the first, that the beautiful is the true; the second, that the beautiful is the useful; the third, that it is dependent on custom; and the fourth, that it is dependent on the association of ideas."

The first of these theories, that the beautiful is the true, we leave entirely to the tender mercies of Mr Ruskin; we cannot gather from his refutation to what class of theorists he is alluding. The remaining three are, as we understand the matter, substantially one and the same theory. We believe that no one, in these days, would define beauty as solely resulting either from the apprehension of Utility, (that is, the adjustment of parts to a whole, or the application of the object to an ulterior purpose,) or to Familiarity and the affection which custom engenders; but they would regard both Utility and Familiarity as amongst the sources of those agreeable ideas or impressions, which, by the great law of association, became intimately connected with the visible object. We must listen, however, to Mr Ruskin's refutation of them:—

"That the beautiful is the useful is an assertion evidently based on that limited and false sense of the latter term which I have already deprecated. As it is the most degrading and dangerous supposition which can be advanced on the subject, so, fortunately, it is the most palpably absurd. It is to confound admiration with hunger, love with lust, and life with sensation; it is to assert that the human creature has no ideas and no feelings, except those ultimately referable to its brutal appetites. It has not a single fact, nor appearance of fact, to support it, and needs no combating—at least until its advocates have obtained the consent of the majority of mankind that the most beautiful productions of nature are seeds and roots; and of art, spades and millstones.

"Somewhat more rational grounds appear for the assertion that the sense of the beautiful arises from familiarity with the object, though even this could not long be maintained by a thinking person. For all that can be alleged in defence of such a supposition is, that familiarity deprives some objects which at first appeared ugly of much of their repulsiveness; whence it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is the cause of beauty, as it would be to argue that, because it is possible to acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of lusciousness in grapes....

"I pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of the association with them of agreeable or interesting ideas.

"Frequent has been the support and wide the acceptance of this supposition, and yet I suppose that no two consecutive sentences were ever written in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction or a confusion of terms. Thus Alison, 'There are scenes undoubtedly more beautiful than Runnymede, yet, to those who recollect the great event that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on the imagination,'—where we are wonder-struck at the bold obtuseness which would prove the power of imagination by[337] its overcoming that very other power (of inherent beauty) whose existence the arguer desires; for the only logical conclusion which can possibly be drawn from the above sentence is, that imagination is not the source of beauty—for, although no scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are scenes 'more beautiful than Runnymede.' And though instances of self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are rare, yet, if the arguments on the subject be fairly sifted from the mass of confused language with which they are always encumbered, they will be found invariably to fall into one of these two forms: either association gives pleasure, and beauty gives pleasure, therefore association is beauty; or the power of association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the power of association is the power of beauty."

Now this last sentence is sheer nonsense, and only proves that the author had never given himself the trouble to understand the theory he so flippantly discards. No one ever said that "association gives pleasure;" but very many, and Mr Ruskin amongst the rest, have said that associated thought adds its pleasure to an object pleasing in itself, and thus increases the complex sentiment of beauty. That it is a complex sentiment in all its higher forms, Mr Ruskin himself will tell us. As to the manner in which he deals with Alison, it is in the worst possible spirit of controversy. Alison was an elegant, but not a very precise writer; it was the easiest thing in the world to select an unfortunate illustration, and to convict that of absurdity. Yet he might with equal ease have selected many other illustrations from Alison, which would have done justice to the theory he expounds. A hundred such will immediately occur to the reader. If, instead of a historical recollection of this kind, which could hardly make the stream itself of Runnymede look more beautiful, Alison had confined himself to those impressions which the generality of mankind receive from river scenery, he would have had no difficulty in showing (as we believe he has elsewhere done) how, in this case, ideas gathered from different sources flow into one harmonious and apparently simple feeling. That sentiment of beauty which arises as we look upon a river will be acknowledged by most persons to be composed of many associated thoughts, combining with the object before them. Its form and colour, its bright surface and its green banks, are all that the eye immediately gives us; but with these are combined the remembered coolness of the fluent stream, and of the breeze above it, and of the pleasant shade of its banks; and beside all this—as there are few persons who have not escaped with delight from town or village, to wander by the quiet banks of some neighbouring stream, so there are few persons who do not associate with river scenery ideas of peace and serenity. Now many of these thoughts or facts are such as the eye does not take cognisance of, yet they present themselves as instantaneously as the visible form, and so blended as to seem, for the moment, to belong to it.

Why not have selected some such illustration as this, instead of the unfortunate Runnymede, from a work where so many abound as apt as they are elegantly expressed? As to Mr Ruskin's utilitarian philosopher, it is a fabulous creature—no such being exists. Nor need we detain ourselves with the quite departmental subject of Familiarity. But let us endeavour—without desiring to pledge ourselves or our readers to its final adoption—to relieve the theory of association of ideas from the obscurity our author has thrown around it. Our readers will not find that this is altogether a wasted labour.

With Mr Ruskin we are of opinion that, in a discussion of this kind, the term Beauty ought to be limited to the impression derived, mediately or immediately, from the visible object. It would be useless affectation to attempt to restrict the use of the word, in general, to this application. We can have no objection to the term Beautiful being applied to a piece of music, or to an eloquent composition, prose or verse, or even to our moral feelings and heroic actions; the word has received this general application, and there is, at basis, a great deal in common between all these and the sentiment of beauty attendant on the visible object. For music, or sweet[338] sounds, and poetry, and our moral feelings, have much to do (through the law of association) with our sentiment of the Beautiful. It is quite enough if, speaking of the subject of our analysis, we limit it to those impressions, however originated, which attend upon the visible object.

One preliminary word on this association of ideas. It is from its very nature, and the nature of human life, of all degrees of intimacy—from the casual suggestion, or the case where the two ideas are at all times felt to be distinct, to those close combinations where the two ideas have apparently coalesced into one, or require an attentive analysis to separate them. You see a mass of iron; you may be said to see its weight, the impression of its weight is so intimately combined with its form. The light of the sun, and the heat of the sun are learnt from different senses, yet we never see the one without thinking of the other, and the reflection of the sunbeam seen upon a bank immediately suggests the idea of warmth. But it is not necessary that the combination should be always so perfect as in this instance, in order to produce the effect we speak of under the name of Association of Ideas. It is hardly possible for us to abstract the glow of the sunbeam from its light; but the fertility which follows upon the presence of the sun, though a suggestion which habitually occurs to reflective minds, is an association of a far less intimate nature. It is sufficiently intimate, however, to blend with that feeling of admiration we have when we speak of the beauty of the sun. There is the golden harvest in its summer beams. Again, the contemplative spirit in all ages has formed an association between the sun and the Deity, whether as the fittest symbol of God, or as being His greatest gift to man. Here we have an association still more refined, and of a somewhat less frequent character, but one which will be found to enter, in a very subtle manner, into that impression we receive from the great luminary.

And thus it is that, in different minds, the same materials of thought may be combined in a closer or laxer relationship. This should be borne in mind by the candid inquirer. That in many instances ideas from different sources do coalesce, in the manner we have been describing, he cannot for an instant doubt. He seems to see the coolness of that river; he seems to see the warmth on that sunny bank. In many instances, however, he must make allowance for the different habitudes of life. The same illustration will not always have the same force to all men. Those who have cultivated their minds by different pursuits, or lived amongst scenery of a different character, cannot have formed exactly the same moral association with external nature.

These preliminaries being adjusted, what, we ask, is that first original charm of the visible object which serves as the foundation for this wonderful superstructure of the Beautiful, to which almost every department of feeling and of thought will be found to bring its contribution? What is it so pleasurable that the eye at once receives from the external world, that round it should have gathered all these tributary pleasures? Light—colour—form; but, in reference to our discussion, pre-eminently the exquisite pleasure derived from the sense of light, pure or coloured. Colour, from infancy to old age, is one original, universal, perpetual source of delight, the first and constant element of the Beautiful.

We are far from thinking that the eye does not at once take cognisance of form as well as colour. Some ingenious analysts have supposed that the sensation of colour is, in its origin, a mere mental affection, having no reference to space or external objects, and that it obtains this reference through the contemporaneous acquisition of the sense of touch. But there can be no more reason for supposing that the sense of touch informs us immediately of an external world than that the sense of colour does. If we do not allow to all the senses an intuitive reference to the external world, we shall get it from none of them. Dr Brown, who paid particular attention to this subject, and who was desirous to limit the first intimation of the sense of sight to an abstract sensation of unlocalised colour, failed entirely in his attempt to obtain from[339] any other source the idea of space or outness; Kant would have given him certain subjective forms of the sensitive faculty, space and time. These he did not like: he saw that, if he denied to the eye an immediate perception of the external world, he must also deny it to the touch; he therefore prayed in aid certain muscular sensations from which the idea of resistance would be obtained. But it seems to us evident that not till after we have acquired a knowledge of the external world can we connect volition with muscular movement, and that, until that connection is made, the muscular sensations stand in the same predicament as other sensations, and could give him no aid in solving his problem. We cannot go further into this matter at present.[6] The mere flash of light which follows the touch upon the optic nerve represents itself as something without; nor was colour, we imagine, ever felt, but under some form more or less distinct; although in the human being the eye seems to depend on the touch far more than in other animals, for its further instruction.

But although the eye is cognisant of form as well as colour, it is in the sensation of colour that we must seek the primitive pleasure derived from this organ. And probably the first reason why form pleases is this, that the boundaries of form are also the lines of contrast of colour. It is a general law of all sensation that, if it be continued, our susceptibility to it declines. It was necessary that the eye should be always open. Its susceptibility is sustained by the perpetual contrast of colours. Whether the contrast is sudden, or whether one hue shades gradually into another, we see here an original and primary source of pleasure. A constant variety, in some way produced, is essential to the maintenance of the pleasure derived from colour.

It is not incumbent on us to inquire how far the beauty of form may be traceable to the sensation of touch;—a very small portion of it we suspect. In the human countenance, and in sculpture, the beauty of form is almost resolvable into expression; though possibly the soft and rounded outline may in some measure be associated with the sense of smoothness to the touch. All that we are concerned to show is, that there is here in colour, diffused as it is over the whole world, and perpetually varied, a beauty at once showered upon the visible object. We hear it said, if you resolve all into association, where will you begin? You have but a circle of feelings. If moral sentiment, for instance, be not itself the beautiful, why should it become so by association. There must be something else that is the beautiful, by association with which it passes for such. We answer, that we do not resolve all into association; that we have in this one gift of colour, shed so bountifully over the whole world, an original beauty, a delight which makes the external object pleasant and beloved; for how can we fail, in some sort, to love what produces so much pleasure?

We are at a loss to understand how any one can speak with disparagement of colour as a source of the beautiful. The sculptor may, perhaps, by his peculiar education, grow comparatively indifferent to it: we know not how this may be; but let any man, of the most refined taste imaginable, think what he owes to this[340] source, when he walks out at evening, and sees the sun set amongst the hills. The same concave sky, the same scene, so far as its form is concerned, was there a few hours before, and saddened him with its gloom; one leaden hue prevailed over all; and now in a clear sky the sun is setting, and the hills are purple, and the clouds are radiant with every colour that can be extracted from the sunbeam. He can hardly believe that it is the same scene, or he the same man. Here the grown-up man and the child stand always on the same level. As to the infant, note how its eye feeds upon a brilliant colour, or the living flame. If it had wings, it would assuredly do as the moth does. And take the most untutored rustic, let him be old, and dull, and stupid, yet, as long as the eye has vitality in it, will he look up with long untiring gaze at this blue vault of the sky, traversed by its glittering clouds, and pierced by the tall green trees around him.

Is it any marvel now that round the visible object should associate tributary feelings of pleasure? How many pleasing and tender sentiments gather round the rose! Yet the rose is beautiful in itself. It was beautiful to the child by its colour, its texture, its softly-shaded leaf, and the contrast between the flower and the foliage. Love, and poetry, and the tender regrets of advanced life, have contributed a second dower of beauty. The rose is more to the youth and to the old man than it was to the child; but still to the last they both feel the pleasure of the child.

The more commonplace the illustration, the more suited it is to our purpose. If any one will reflect on the many ideas that cluster round this beautiful flower, he will not fail to see how numerous and subtle may be the association formed with the visible object. Even an idea painful in itself may, by way of contrast, serve to heighten the pleasure of others with which it is associated. Here the thought of decay and fragility, like a discord amongst harmonies, increases our sentiment of tenderness. We express, we believe, the prevailing taste when we say that there is nothing, in the shape of art, so disagreeable and repulsive as artificial flowers. The waxen flower may be an admirable imitation, but it is a detestable thing. This partly results from the nature of the imitation; a vulgar deception is often practised upon us: what is not a flower is intended to pass for one. But it is owing still more, we think, to the contradiction that is immediately afterwards felt between this preserved and imperishable waxen flower, and the transitory and perishable rose. It is the nature of the rose to bud, and blossom, and decay; it gives its beauty to the breeze and to the shower; it is mortal; it is ours; it bears our hopes, our loves, our regrets. This waxen substitute, that cannot change or decay, is a contradiction and a disgust.

Amongst objects of man's contrivance, the sail seen upon the calm waters of a lake or a river is universally felt to be beautiful. The form is graceful, and the movement gentle, and its colour contrasts well either with the shore or the water. But perhaps the chief element of our pleasure is all association with human life, with peaceful enjoyment—

Or take one of the noblest objects in nature—the mountain. There is no object except the sea and the sky that reflects to the sight colours so beautiful, and in such masses. But colour, and form, and magnitude, constitute but a part of the beauty or the sublimity of the mountain. Not only do the clouds encircle or rest upon it, but men have laid on it their grandest thoughts: we have associated with it our moral fortitude, and all we understand of greatness or elevation of mind; our phraseology seems half reflected from the mountain. Still more, we have made it holy ground. Has not God himself descended on the mountain? Are not the hills, once and for ever, "the unwalled temples of our earth?" And still there is another circumstance attendant upon mountain scenery, which adds a solemnity of its own, and is a condition of the enjoyment of other sources of the sublime—solitude. It seems to us that the feeling of solitude almost always associates itself with mountain scenery. Mrs Somerville,[341] in the description which she gives or quotes, in her Physical Geography, of the Himalayas, says—

"The loftiest peaks being bare of snow gives great variety of colour and beauty to the scenery, which in these passes is at all times magnificent. During the day, the stupendous size of the mountains, their interminable extent, the variety and the sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the tender clearness of their distant outline melting into the pale blue sky, contrasted with the deep azure above, is described as a scene of wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of the earth and snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled sublimity, and no language can describe the splendour of the sunbeams at daybreak, streaming between the high peaks, and throwing their gigantic shadows on the mountains below. There, far above the habitation of man, no living thing exists, no sound is heard; the very echo of the traveller's footsteps startles him in the awful solitude and silence that reigns in those august dwellings of everlasting snow."

No one can fail to recognise the effect of the last circumstance mentioned. Let those mountains be the scene of a gathering of any human multitude, and they would be more desecrated than if their peaks had been levelled to the ground. We have also quoted this description to show how large a share colour takes in beautifying such a scene. Colour, either in large fields of it, or in sharp contrasts, or in gradual shading—the play of light, in short, upon this world—is the first element of beauty.

Here would be the place, were we writing a formal treatise upon this subject, after showing that there is in the sense of sight itself a sufficient elementary beauty, whereto other pleasurable reminiscences may attach themselves, to point out some of these tributaries. Each sense—the touch, the ear, the smell, the taste—blend their several remembered pleasures with the object of vision. Even taste, we say, although Mr Ruskin will scorn the gross alliance. And we would allude to the fact to show the extreme subtilty of these mental processes. The fruit which you think of eating has lost its beauty from that moment—it assumes to you a quite different relation; but the reminiscence that there is sweetness in the peach or the grape, whilst it remains quite subordinate to the pleasure derived from the sense of sight, mingles with and increases that pleasure. Whilst the cluster of ripe grapes is looked at only for its beauty, the idea that they are pleasant to the taste as well steals in unobserved, and adds to the complex sentiment. If this idea grow distinct and prominent, the beauty of the grape is gone—you eat it. Here, too, would be the place to take notice of such sources of pleasure as are derived from adaptation of parts, or the adaptation of the whole to ulterior purposes; but here especially should we insist on human affections, human loves, human sympathies. Here, in the heart of man, his hopes, his regrets, his affections, do we find the great source of the beautiful—tributaries which take their name from the stream they join, but which often form the main current. On that sympathy with which nature has so wonderfully endowed us, which makes the pain and pleasure of all other living things our own pain and pleasure, which binds us not only to our fellow-men, but to every moving creature on the face of the earth, we should have much to say. How much, for instance, does its life add to the beauty of the swan!—how much more its calm and placid life! Here, and on what would follow on the still more exalted mood of pious contemplation—when all nature seems as a hymn or song of praise to the Creator—we should be happy to borrow aid from Mr Ruskin; his essay supplying admirable materials for certain chapters in a treatise on the beautiful which should embrace the whole subject.

No such treatise, however, is it our object to compose. We have said enough to show the true nature of that theory of association, as a branch of which alone is it possible to take any intelligible view of Mr Ruskin's Theoria, or "Theoretic Faculty." His flagrant error is, that he will represent a part for the whole, and will distort and confuse everything for the sake of this representation. Viewed in their proper limitation, his remarks[342] are often such as every wise and good man will approve of. Here and there too, there are shrewd intimations which the psychological student may profit by. He has pointed out several instances where the associations insisted upon by writers of the school of Alison have nothing whatever to do with the sentiment of beauty; and neither harmonise with, nor exalt it. Not all that may, in any way, interest us in an object, adds to its beauty. "Thus," as Mr Ruskin we think very justly says, "where we are told that the leaves of a plant are occupied in decomposing carbonic acid, and preparing oxygen for us, we begin to look upon it with some such indifference as upon a gasometer. It has become a machine; some of our sense of its happiness is gone; its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure." The knowledge of the anatomical structure of the limb is very interesting, but it adds nothing to the beauty of its outline. Scientific associations, however, of this kind, will have a different æsthetic effect, according to the degree or the enthusiasm with which the science has been studied.

It is not our business to advocate this theory of association of ideas, but briefly to expound it. But we may remark that those who adopt (as Mr Ruskin has done in one branch of his subject—his Æsthesis) the rival theory of an intuitive perception of the beautiful, must find a difficulty where to insert this intuitive perception. The beauty of any one object is generally composed of several qualities and accessories—to which of these are we to connect this intuition? And if to the whole assemblage of them, then, as each of these qualities has been shown by its own virtue to administer to the general effect, we shall be explaining again by this new perception what has been already explained. Select any notorious instance of the beautiful—say the swan. How many qualities and accessories immediately occur to us as intimately blended in our minds with the form and white plumage of the bird! What were its arched neck and mantling wings if it were not living? And how the calm and inoffensive, and somewhat majestic life it leads, carries away our sympathies! Added to which, the snow-white form of the swan is imaged in clear waters, and is relieved by green foliage; and if the bird makes the river more beautiful, the river, in return, reflects its serenity and peacefulness upon the bird. Now all this we seem to see as we look upon the swan. To which of these facts separately will you attach this new intuition? And if you wait till all are assembled, the bird is already beautiful.

We are all in the habit of reasoning on the beautiful, of defending our own tastes, and this just in proportion as the beauty in question is of a high order. And why do we do this? Because, just in proportion as the beauty is of an elevated character, does it depend on some moral association. Every argument of this kind will be found to consist of an analysis of the sentiment. Nor is there anything derogatory, as some have supposed, in this analysis of the sentiment; for we learn from it, at every step, that in the same degree as men become more refined, more humane, more kind, equitable, and pious, will the visible world become more richly clad with beauty. We see here an admirable arrangement, whereby the external world grows in beauty, as men grow in goodness.

We must now follow Mr Ruskin a step farther into the development of his Theoria. All beauty, he tell us, is such, in its high and only true character, because it is a type of one or more of God's attributes. This, as we have shown, is to represent one class of associated thought as absorbing and displacing all the rest. We protest against this egregious exaggeration of a great and sacred source of our emotions. With Mr Ruskin's own piety we can have no quarrel; but we enter a firm and calm protest against a falsification of our human nature, in obedience to one sentiment, however sublime. No good can come of it—no good, we mean, to religion itself. It is substantially the same error, though assuming a very different garb, which the Puritans committed. They disgusted men with religion, by introducing it into every law and custom, and detail of human life. Mr Ruskin would commit the[343] same error in the department of taste, over which he would rule so despotically: he is not content that the highest beauty shall be religious; he will permit nothing to be beautiful, except as it partakes of a religious character. But there is a vast region lying between the "animal pleasantness" of his Æsthesis and the pious contemplation of his Theoria. There is much between the human animal and the saint; there are the domestic affections and the love they spring from, and hopes, and regrets, and aspirations, and the hour of peace and the hour of repose—in short, there is human life. From all human life, as we have seen, come contributions to the sentiment of the beautiful, quite as distinctly traced as the peculiar class on which Mr Ruskin insists.

If any one descanting upon music should affirm, that, in the first place, there was a certain animal pleasantness in harmony or melody, or both, but that the real essence of music, that by which it truly becomes music, was the perception in harmony or melody of types of the Divine attributes, he would reason exactly in the same manner on music as Mr Ruskin does on beauty. Nevertheless, although sacred music is the highest, it is very plain that there is other music than the sacred, and that all songs are not hymns.

Chapter v. of the present volume bears this title—Of Typical Beauty. First, of Infinity, or the type of the Divine Incomprehensibility.—A boundless space will occur directly to the reader as a type of the infinite; perhaps it should be rather described as itself the infinite under one form. But Mr Ruskin finds the infinite in everything. That idea which he justly describes as the incomprehensible, and which is so profound and baffling a mystery to the finite being, is supposed to be thrust upon the mind on every occasion. Every instance of variety is made the type of the infinite, as well as every indication of space. We remember that, in the first volume of the Modern Painters, we were not a little startled at being told that the distinguishing character of every good artist was, that "he painted the infinite." Good or bad, we now see that he could scarcely fail to paint the infinite: it must be by some curious chance that the feat is not accomplished.

"Now, not only," writes Mr Ruskin, "is this expression of infinity in distance most precious wherever we find it, however solitary it may be, and however unassisted by other forms and kinds of beauty; but it is of such value that no such other forms will altogether recompense us for its loss; and much as I dread the enunciation of anything that may seem like a conventional rule, I have no hesitation in asserting that no work of any art, in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be perfect or supremely elevated without it; and that, in proportion to its presence, it will exalt and render impressive even the most tame and trivial themes. And I think if there be any one grand division, by which it is at all possible to set the productions of painting, so far as their mere plan or system is concerned, on our right and left hands, it is this of light and dark background, of heaven-light and of object-light.... There is a spectral etching of Rembrandt, a presentation of Christ in the Temple, where the figure of a robed priest stands glaring by its gems out of the gloom, holding a crosier. Behind it there is a subdued window-light seen in the opening, between two columns, without which the impressiveness of the whole subject would, I think, be incalculably diminished. I cannot tell whether I am at present allowing too much weight to my own fancies and predilections; but, without so much escape into the outer air and open heaven as this, I can take permanent pleasure in no picture.

"And I think I am supported in this feeling by the unanimous practice, if not the confessed opinion, of all artists. The painter of portrait is unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or beside the arm-chair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar; the landscapist dares not lose himself in forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain unless he may somewhere pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of variable blue above."—(P. 39.)

But if an open window, or "that conventional white stroke under the sleeve," is sufficient to indicate the Infinite, how few pictures there must be in which it is not indicated! and how many "a tame and trivial theme" must have been, by this indication,[344] exalted and rendered impressive! And yet it seems that some very celebrated paintings want this open-window or conventional white stroke. The Madonna della Sediola of Raphael is known over all Europe; some print of it may be seen in every village; that virgin-mother, in her antique chair, embracing her child with so sweet and maternal an embrace, has found its way to the heart of every woman, Catholic or Protestant. But unfortunately it has a dark background, and there is no open window—nothing to typify infinity. To us it seemed that there was "heaven's light" over the whole picture. Though there is the chamber wall seen behind the chair, there is nothing to intimate that the door or the window is closed. One might in charity have imagined that the light came directly through an open door or window. However, Mr Ruskin is inexorable. "Raphael," he says, "in his full, betrayed the faith he had received from his father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the Madonna del Cardellino the chamber wall of the Madonna della Sediola, and the brown wainscot of the Baldacchino."

Of other modes in which the Infinite is represented, we have an instance in "The Beauty of Curvature."

"The first of these is the curvature of lines and surfaces, wherein it at first appears futile to insist upon any resemblance or suggestion of infinity, since there is certainly, in our ordinary contemplation of it, no sensation of the kind. But I have repeated again and again that the ideas of beauty are instinctive, and that it is only upon consideration, and even then in doubtful and disputable way, that they appear in their typical character; neither do I intend at all to insist upon the particular meaning which they appear to myself to bear, but merely on their actual and demonstrable agreeableness; so that in the present case, which I assert positively, and have no fear of being able to prove—that a curve of any kind is more beautiful than a right line—I leave it to the reader to accept or not, as he pleases, that reason of its agreeableness which is the only one that I can at all trace: namely, that every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction."—(P. 63.)

Our old friend Jacob Boehmen would have been delighted with this Theoria. But we must pass on to other types. Chapter vi. treats of Unity, or the Type of the Divine Comprehensiveness.

"Of the appearances of Unity, or of Unity itself, there are several kinds, which it will be found hereafter convenient to consider separately. Thus there is the unity of different and separate things, subjected to one and the same influence, which may be called Subjectional Unity; and this is the unity of the clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they are ordered by the electric currents; this is the unity of the sea waves; this, of the bending and undulation of the forest masses; and in creatures capable of Will it is the Unity of Will, or of Impulse. And there is Unity of Origin, which we may call Original Unity, which is of things arising from one spring or source, and speaking always of this their brotherhood; and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of the beams of light; and in spiritual creatures it is their filial relation to Him from whom they have their being. And there is Unity of Sequence," &c.—

down another half page. Very little to be got here, we think. Let us advance to the next chapter. This is entitled, Of Repose, or the Type of Divine Permanence.

It will be admitted on all hands that nothing adds more frequently to the charms of the visible object than the associated feeling of repose. The hour of sunset is the hour of repose. Most beautiful things are enhanced by some reflected feeling of this kind. But surely one need not go farther than to human labour, and human restlessness, anxiety, and passion, to understand the charm of repose. Mr Ruskin carries us at once into the third heaven:—

"As opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exertion, Repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the 'I am' of the Creator, opposed to the 'I become' of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is incapable of labour, the supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures."

[345]

We must proceed. Chapter viii. treats Of Symmetry, or the Type of Divine Justice. Perhaps the nature of this chapter will be sufficiently indicated to the reader, now somewhat informed of Mr Ruskin's mode of thinking, by the title itself. At all events, we shall pass on to the next chapter, ix.—Of Purity, or the Type of Divine Energy. Here, the reader will perhaps expect to find himself somewhat more at home. One type, at all events, of Divine Purity has often been presented to his mind. Light has generally been considered as the fittest emblem or manifestation of the Divine Presence,

But if the reader has formed any such agreeable expectation he will be disappointed. Mr Ruskin travels on no beaten track. He finds some reasons, partly theological, partly gathered from his own theory of the Beautiful, for discarding this ancient association of Light with Purity. As the Divine attributes are those which the visible object typifies, and by no means the human, and as Purity, which is "sinlessness," cannot, he thinks, be predicted of the Divine nature, it follows that he cannot admit Light to be a type of Purity. We quote the passage, as it will display the working of his theory:—

"It may seem strange to many readers that I have not spoken of purity in that sense in which it is most frequently used, as a type of sinlessness. I do not deny that the frequent metaphorical use of it in Scripture may have, and ought to have, much influence on the sympathies with which we regard it; and that probably the immediate agreeableness of it to most minds arises far more from this source than from that to which I have chosen to attribute it. But, in the first place, if it be indeed in the signs of Divine and not of human attributes that beauty consists, I see not how the idea of sin can be formed with respect to the Deity; for it is the idea of a relation borne by us to Him, and not in any way to be attached to His abstract nature; while the Love, Mercifulness, and Justice of God I have supposed to be symbolised by other qualities of beauty: and I cannot trace any rational connection between them and the idea of Spotlessness in matter, nor between this idea nor any of the virtues which make up the righteousness of man, except perhaps those of truth and openness, which have been above spoken of as more expressed by the transparency than the mere purity of matter. So that I conceive the use of the terms purity, spotlessness, &c., on moral subjects, to be merely metaphorical; and that it is rather that we illustrate these virtues by the desirableness of material purity, than that we desire material purity because it is illustrative of those virtues. I repeat, then, that the only idea which I think can be legitimately connected with purity of matter is this of vital and energetic connection among its particles."

We have been compelled to quote some strange passages, of most difficult and laborious perusal; but our task is drawing to an end. The last of these types we have to mention is that Of Moderation, or the Type of Government by Law. We suspect there are many persons who have rapidly perused Mr Ruskin's works (probably skipping where the obscurity grew very thick) who would be very much surprised, if they gave a closer attention to them, at the strange conceits and absurdities which they had passed over without examination. Indeed, his very loose and declamatory style, and the habit of saying extravagant things, set all examination at defiance. But let any one pause a moment on the last title we have quoted from Mr Ruskin—let him read the chapter itself—let him reflect that he has been told in it that "what we express by the terms chasteness, refinement, and elegance," in any work of art, and more particularly "that finish" so dear to the intelligent critic, owe their attractiveness to being types of God's government by law!—we think he will confess that never in any book, ancient or modern, did he meet with an absurdity to outrival it.

We have seen why the curve in general is beautiful; we have here the reason given us why one curve is more beautiful than another:—

"And herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted respecting the subtilty and almost invisibility of natural curves and colours, and why it is that we look on those lines as least beautiful which fall into wide and far license of curvature, and as most beautiful which approach nearest (so that the curvilinear character be distinctly[346] asserted) to the government of the right line, as in the pure and severe curves of the draperies of the religious painters."

There is still the subject of "vital beauty" before us, but we shall probably be excused from entering further into the development of "Theoria." It must be quite clear by this time to our readers, that, whatever there is in it really wise and intelligible, resolves itself into one branch of that general theory of association of ideas, of which Alison and others have treated. But we are now in a condition to understand more clearly that peculiar style of language which startled us so much in the first volume of the Modern Painters. There we frequently heard of the Divine mission of the artist, of the religious office of the painter, and how Mr Turner was delivering God's message to man. What seemed an oratorical climax, much too frequently repeated, proves to be a logical sequence of his theoretical principles. All true beauty is religious; therefore all true art, which is the reproduction of the beautiful, must be religious also. Every picture gallery is a sort of temple, every great painter a sort of prophet. If Mr Ruskin is conscious that he never admires anything beautiful in nature or art, without a reference to some attribute of God, or some sentiment of piety, he may be a very exalted person, but he is no type of humanity. If he asserts this, we must be sufficiently courteous to believe him; we must not suspect that he is hardly candid with us, or with himself; but we shall certainly not accept him as a representative of the genus homo. He finds "sermons in stones," and sermons always; "books in the running brooks," and always books of divinity. Other men not deficient in reflection or piety do not find it thus. Let us hear the poet who, more than any other, has made a religion of the beauty of nature. Wordsworth, in a passage familiar to every one of his readers, runs his hand, as it were, over all the chords of the lyre. He finds other sources of the beautiful not unworthy his song, besides that high contemplative piety which he introduces as a noble and fit climax. He recalls the first ardours of his youth, when the beautiful object itself of nature seemed to him all, in all:—

Our poet sounds all the chords. He does not muffle any; he honours Nature in her own simple loveliness, and in the beauty she wins from the human heart, as well as when she is informed with that sublime spirit

Sit down, by all means, amongst the fern and the wild-flowers, and look out upon the blue hills, or near you at the flowing brook, and thank God, the giver of all this beauty. But what manner of good will you do by endeavouring to persuade yourself that these objects are only beautiful because you give thanks for them?—for to this strange logical inversion will you find yourself reduced. And surely you learned to esteem and love this benevolence itself, first as a human attribute, before you became cognisant of it as a Divine attribute. What other course can the mind take but to travel through humanity up to God?

There is much more of metaphysics in the volume before us; there is, in particular, an elaborate investigation[347] of the faculty of imagination; but we have no inducement to proceed further with Mr Ruskin in these psychological inquiries. We have given some attention to his theory of the Beautiful, because it lay at the basis of a series of critical works which, partly from their boldness, and partly from the talent of a certain kind which is manifestly displayed in them, have attained to considerable popularity. But we have not the same object for prolonging our examination into his theory of the Imaginative Faculty. "We say it advisedly," (as Mr Ruskin always adds when he is asserting anything particularly rash,) we say it advisedly, and with no rashness whatever, that though our author is a man of great natural ability, and enunciates boldly many an independent isolated truth, yet of the spirit of philosophy he is utterly destitute. The calm, patient, prolonged thinking, which Dugald Stewart somewhere describes as the one essential characteristic of the successful student of philosophy, he knows nothing of. He wastes his ingenuity in making knots where others had long since untied them. He rushes at a definition, makes a parade of classification; but for any great and wide generalisation he has no appreciation whatever. He appears to have no taste, but rather an antipathy for it; when it lies in his way he avoids it. On this subject of the Imaginative Faculty he writes and he raves, defines and poetises by turns; makes laborious distinctions where there is no essential difference; has his "Imagination Associative," and his "Imagination Penetrative;" and will not, or cannot, see those broad general principles which with most educated men have become familiar truths, or truisms. But what clear thinking can we expect of a writer who thus describes his "Imagination Penetrative?"—

"It may seem to the reader that I am incorrect in calling this penetrating possession-taking faculty Imagination. Be it so: the name is of little consequence; the Faculty itself, called by what name it will, I insist upon as the highest intellectual power of man. There is no reasoning in it; it works not by algebra, nor by integral calculus; it is a piercing Pholas-like mind's tongue, that works and tastes into the very rock-heart. No matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or spirit—all is alike divided asunder, joint and marrow, whatever utmost truth, life, principle, it has laid bare; and that which has no truth, life, nor principle, dissipated into its original smoke at a touch. The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. Vials that have lain sealed in the deep sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them Genii."—(P. 156.)

With such a wonder-working faculty man ought to do much. Indeed, unless it has been asleep all this time, it is difficult to understand why there should remain anything for him to do.

Surveying Mr Ruskin's works on art, with the knowledge we have here acquired of his intellectual character and philosophical theory, we are at no loss to comprehend that mixture of shrewd and penetrating remark, of bold and well-placed censure, and of utter nonsense in the shape of general principles, with which they abound. In his Seven Lamps of Architecture, which is a very entertaining book, and in his Stones of Venice, the reader will find many single observations which will delight him, as well by their justice, as by the zeal and vigour with which they are expressed. But from neither work will he derive any satisfaction if he wishes to carry away with him broad general views on architecture.

There is no subject Mr Ruskin has treated more largely than that of architectural ornament; there is none on which he has said more good things, or delivered juster criticisms; and there is none on which he has uttered more indisputable nonsense. Every reader of taste will be grateful to Mr Ruskin if he can pull down from St Paul's Cathedral, or wherever else they are to be found, those wreaths or festoons of carved flowers—"that mass of all manner of fruit and flowers tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the middle, and pinned up by both ends against a dead wall." Urns with pocket-handkerchiefs upon them, or a sturdy thick flame for ever issuing from the top, he will receive our thanks for utterly demolishing. But when Mr Ruskin expounds his principles—and he always[348] has principles to expound—when he lays down rules for the government of our taste in this matter, he soon involves us in hopeless bewilderment. Our ornaments, he tells us, are to be taken from the works of nature, not of man; and, from some passages of his writings, we should infer that Mr Ruskin would cover the walls of our public buildings with representations botanical and geological. But in this we must be mistaken. At all events, nothing is to be admitted that is taken from the works of man.

"I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all ornament is base which takes for its subject human work; that it is utterly base—painful to every rightly toned mind, without, perhaps, immediate sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we do think of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our wretched doings, when we might have been looking at God's doings."

After this, can we venture to admire the building itself, which is, of necessity, man's own "wretched doing?"

Perplexed by his own rules, he will sometimes break loose from the entanglement in some such strange manner as this:—"I believe the right question to ask, with respect to all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment—was the carver happy while he was about it?" Happy art! where the workman is sure to give happiness if he is but happy at his work. Would that the same could be said of literature!

How far colour should be introduced into architecture is a question with men of taste, and a question which of late has been more than usually discussed. Mr Ruskin leans to the introduction of colour. His taste may be correct; but the fanciful reasoning which he brings to bear upon the subject will assist no one else in forming his own taste. Because there is no connection "between the spots of an animal's skin and its anatomical system," he lays it down as the first great principle which is to guide us in the use of colour in architecture—

"That it be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always cross it. Never give separate mouldings separate colours," &c. "In certain places," he continues, "you may run your two systems closer, and here and there let them be parallel for a note or two, but see that the colours and the forms coincide only as two orders of mouldings do; the same for an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members may sometimes have single colours; as a bird's head is sometimes of one colour, and its shoulders another, you may make your capital one colour, and your shaft another; but, in general, the best place for colour is on broad surfaces, not on the points of interest in form. An animal is mottled on its breast and back, and rarely on its paws and about its eyes; so put your variegation boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it on the capital and moulding."—(Lamps of Architecture, p. 127.)

We do not quite see what we have to do at all with the "anatomical system" of the animal, which is kept out of sight; but, in general, we apprehend there is, both in the animal and vegetable kingdom, considerable harmony betwixt colour and external form. Such fantastic reasoning as this, it is evident, will do little towards establishing that one standard of taste, or that "one school of architecture," which Mr Ruskin so strenuously insists upon. All architects are to resign their individual tastes and predilections, and enrol themselves in one school, which shall adopt one style. We need not say that the very first question—what that style should be, Greek or Gothic—would never be decided. Mr Ruskin decides it in favour of the "earliest English decorated Gothic;" but seems, in this case, to suspect that his decision will not carry us far towards unanimity. The scheme is utterly impossible; but he does his duty, he tells us, by proposing the impossibility.

As a climax to his inconsistency and his abnormal ways of thinking, he concludes his Seven Lamps of Architecture with a most ominous paragraph, implying that the time is at hand when no architecture of any kind will be wanted: man and his works will be both swept away from the face of the earth. How, with this impression on his mind, could he have the heart to tell us to build for posterity? Will it be a commentary on the Apocalypse that we shall next receive from the pen of Mr Ruskin?

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PORTUGUESE POLITICS.

The dramatic and singular revolution of which Portugal has recently been the theatre, the strange fluctuations and ultimate success of Marshal Saldanha's insurrection, the narrow escape of Donna Maria from at least a temporary expulsion from her dominions, have attracted in this country more attention than is usually bestowed upon the oft-recurring convulsions of the Peninsula. Busy as the present year has been, and abounding in events of exciting interest nearer home, the English public has yet found time to deplore the anarchy to which Portugal is a prey, and to marvel once more, as it many times before has marvelled, at the tardy realisation of those brilliant promises of order, prosperity, and good government, so long held out to the two Peninsular nations by the promoters of the Quadruple Alliance. The statesmen who, for nearly a score of years, have assiduously guided Portugal and Spain in the seductive paths of modern Liberalism, can hardly feel much gratification at the results of their well-intended but most unprosperous endeavours. It is difficult to imagine them contemplating with pride and exultation, or even without a certain degree of self-reproach, the fruits of their officious exertions. Repudiating partisan views of Peninsular politics, putting persons entirely out of the question, declaring our absolute indifference as to who occupies the thrones of Spain and Portugal, so long as those countries are well-governed, casting no imputations upon the motives of those foreign governments and statesmen who were chiefly instrumental in bringing about the present state of things south of the Pyrenees, we would look only to facts, and crave an honest answer to a plain question. The question is this: After the lapse of seventeen years, what is the condition of the two nations upon which have been conferred, at grievous expense of blood and treasure, the much vaunted blessings of rulers nominally Liberal, and professedly patriotic? For the present we will confine this inquiry to Portugal, for the reason that the War of Succession terminated in that country when it was but beginning in the neighbouring kingdom, since which time the vanquished party, unlike the Carlists in Spain, have uniformly abstained—with the single exception of the rising in 1846-7—from armed aggression, and have observed a patient and peaceful policy. So that the Portuguese Liberals have had seventeen years' fair trial of their governing capacity, and cannot allege that their efforts for their country's welfare have been impeded or retarded by the acts of that party whom they denounced as incapable of achieving it,—however they may have been neutralised by dissensions and anarchy in their own ranks.

At this particular juncture of Portuguese affairs, and as no inappropriate preface to the only reply that can veraciously be given to the question we have proposed, it will not be amiss to take a brief retrospective glance at some of the events that preceded and led to the reign of Donna Maria. It will be remembered that from the year 1828 to 1834, the Liberals in both houses of the British Parliament, supported by an overwhelming majority of the British press, fiercely and pertinaciously assailed the government and person of Don Miguel, then de facto King of Portugal, king de jure in the eyes of the Portuguese Legitimists and by the vote of the Legitimate Cortes of 1828, and recognised (in 1829) by Spain, by the United States, and by various inferior powers. Twenty years ago political passions ran high in this country: public men were, perhaps, less guarded in their language; newspapers were certainly far more intemperate in theirs; and we may safely say, that upon no foreign prince, potentate, or politician, has virulent abuse—proceeding from such respectable sources—ever since been showered in England, in one half the quantity in which it then descended upon the head of the unlucky Miguel. Unquestionably Don Miguel had acted, in many respects, neither well nor wisely: his early[350] education had been ill-adapted to the high position he was one day to fill—at a later period of his life he was destined to take lessons of wisdom and moderation in the stern but wholesome school of adversity. But it is also beyond a doubt, now that time has cleared up much which then was purposely garbled and distorted, that the object of all this invective was by no means so black as he was painted, and that his character suffered in England from the malicious calumnies of Pedroite refugees, and from the exaggerated and easily-accepted statements of the Portuguese correspondents of English newspapers. The Portuguese nation, removed from such influence, formed its own opinions from what it saw and observed; and the respect and affection testified, even at the present day, to their dethroned sovereign, by a large number of its most distinguished and respectable members, are the best refutation of the more odious of the charges so abundantly brought against him, and so lightly credited in those days of rampant revolution. It is unnecessary, therefore, to argue that point, even were personal vindication or attack the objects of this article, instead of being entirely without its scope. Against the insupportable oppression exercised by the monster in human form, as which Don Miguel was then commonly depicted in England and France, innumerable engines were directed by the governments and press of those two countries. Insurrections were stirred up in Portugal, volunteers were recruited abroad, irregular military expeditions were encouraged, loans were fomented; money-lenders and stock-jobbers were all agog for Pedro, patriotism, and profit. Orators and newspapers foretold, in glowing speeches and enthusiastic paragraphs, unbounded prosperity to Portugal as the sure consequence of the triumph of the revolutionary party. Rapid progress of civilisation, impartial and economical administration, increase of commerce, development of the country's resources, a perfect avalanche of social and political blessings, were to descend, like manna from heaven, upon the fortunate nation, so soon as the Liberals obtained the sway of its destinies. It were beside our purpose here to investigate how it was that, with such alluring prospects held out to them, the people of Portugal were so blind to their interests as to supply Don Miguel with men and money, wherewith to defend himself for five years against the assaults and intrigues of foreign and domestic enemies. Deprived of support and encouragement from without, he still held his ground; and the formation of a quadruple alliance, including the two most powerful countries in Europe, the enlistment of foreign mercenaries of a dozen different nations, the entrance of a numerous Spanish army, were requisite finally to dispossess him of his crown. The anomaly of the abhorred persecutor and tyrant receiving so much support from his ill-used subjects, even then struck certain men in this country whose names stand pretty high upon the list of clear-headed and experienced politicians, and the Duke of Wellington, Lord Aberdeen, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Lyndhurst, and others, defended Miguel; but their arguments, however cogent, were of little avail against the fierce tide of popular prejudice, unremittingly stimulated by the declamations of the press. To be brief, in 1834 Don Miguel was driven from Portugal; and his enemies, put in possession of the kingdom and all its resources, were at full liberty to realise the salutary reforms they had announced and promised, and for which they had professed to fight. On taking the reins of government, they had everything in their favour; their position was advantageous and brilliant in the highest degree. They enjoyed the prestige of a triumph, undisputed authority, powerful foreign protection and influence. At their disposal was an immense mass of property taken from the church, as well as the produce of large foreign loans. Their credit, too, was then unlimited. Lastly—and this was far from the least of their advantages—they had in their favour the great discouragement and discontent engendered amongst the partisans of the Miguelite government, by the numerous and gross blunders which that government had committed—blunders which contributed even more to its[351] downfall than did the attacks of its foes, or the effects of foreign hostility. In short, the Liberals were complete and undisputed masters of the situation. But, notwithstanding all the facilities and advantages they enjoyed, what has been the condition of Portugal since they assumed the reins? What is its condition at the present day? We need not go far to ascertain it. The wretched plight of that once prosperous little kingdom is deposed to by every traveller who visits it, and by every English journal that has a correspondent there; it is to be traced in the columns of every Portuguese newspaper, and is admitted and deplored by thousands who once were strenuous and influential supporters of the party who promised so much, and who have performed so little that is good. The reign of that party whose battle-cry is, or was, Donna Maria and the Constitution, has been an unbroken series of revolutions, illegalities, peculations, corruptions, and dilapidations. The immense amount of misnamed "national property" (the Infantado and church estates,) which was part of their capital on their accession to power, has disappeared without benefit either to the country or to its creditors. The treasury is empty; the public revenues are eaten up by anticipation; civil and military officers, the court itself, are all in constant and considerable arrears of salaries and pay. The discipline of the troops is destroyed, the soldiers being demoralised by the bad example of their chiefs, including that of Marshal Saldanha himself; for it is one of the great misfortunes of the Peninsula, that there most officers of a certain rank consider their political predilections before their military duty. The "Liberal" party, divided and subdivided, and split into fractions, whose numbers fluctuate at the dictates of interest or caprice, presents a lamentable spectacle of anarchy and inconsistency; whilst the Queen herself, whose good intentions we by no means impugn, has completely forfeited, as a necessary consequence of the misconduct of her counsellors, and of the sufferings the country has endured under her reign, whatever amount of respect, affection, and influence the Portuguese nation may once have been disposed to accord her. Such is the sad picture now presented by Portugal; and none whose acquaintance with facts renders them competent to judge, will say that it is overcharged or highly coloured.

The party in Portugal who advocate a return to the ancient constitution,[7] under which the country flourished—which fell into abeyance towards the close of the seventeenth century, but which it is now proposed to revive, as preferable to, and practically more liberal than, the present system—and who adopt as a banner, and couple with this scheme, the name of Don Miguel de Bragança, have not unnaturally derived great accession of strength, both moral and numerical, from the faults and dissensions of their adversaries. At the present day there are few things which the European public, and especially that of this country, sooner becomes indifferent to, and loses sight of, than the person and pretensions of a dethroned king; and owing to the lapse of years, to his unobtrusive manner of life, and to the storm of accusations amidst which he made his exit from power, Don Miguel would probably be considered, by those persons in this country who remember his existence, as the least likely member of the royal triumvirate, now assembled in Germany, to exchange his exile for a crown. But if we would take a fair and impartial view of the condition of Portugal, and calculate, as far as is possible in the case of either of the[352] two Peninsular nations, the probabilities and chances of the future, we must not suffer ourselves to be run away with by preconceived prejudices, or to be influenced by the popular odium attached to a name. After beholding the most insignificant and unpromising of modern pretenders suddenly elevated to the virtual sovereignty—however transitory it may prove—of one of the most powerful and civilised of European nations, it were rash to denounce as impossible any restoration or enthronement. And it were especially rash so to do when with the person of the aspirant to the throne a nation is able to connect a reasonable hope of improvement in its condition. Of the principle of legitimacy we here say nothing, for it were vain to deny that in Europe it is daily less regarded, whilst it sinks into insignificance when put in competition with the rights and wellbeing of the people.

As far back as the period of its emigration, the Pedroite or Liberal party split into two fractions. One of these believed in the possible realisation of those ultra-liberal theories so abundantly promulgated in the proclamations, manifestoes, preambles of laws, &c., which Don Pedro issued from the Brazils, from England and France, and afterwards from Terceira and Oporto. The other fraction of the party had sanctioned the promulgation of these utopian theories as a means of delusion, and as leading to their own triumph; but they deemed their realisation impossible, and were quite decided, when the revolutionary tide should have borne them into power, to oppose to the unruly flood the barrier of a gradual but steady reaction. At a later period these divisions of the Liberal party became more distinctly defined, and resulted, in 1836, in their nominal classification as Septembrists and Chartists—the latter of whom (numerically very weak, but comprising Costa Cabral, and other men of talent and energy) may be compared to the Moderados of Spain—the former to the Progresistas, but with tendencies more decidedly republican. It is the ambitious pretensions, the struggles for power and constant dissensions of these two sets of men, and of the minor fractions into which they have subdivided themselves, that have kept Portugal for seventeen years in a state of anarchy, and have ended by reducing her to her present pitiable condition. So numerous are the divisions, so violent the quarrels of the two parties, that their utter dissolution appears inevitable; and it is in view of this that the National party, as it styles itself, which inscribes upon its flag the name of Don Miguel—not as an absolute sovereign, but with powers limited by legitimate constitutional forms, to whose strict observance they bind him as a condition of their support, and of his continuance upon the throne upon which they hope to place him—uplifts its head, reorganises its hosts, and more clearly defines its political principles. Whilst Chartists and Septembrists tear each other to pieces, the Miguelites not only maintain their numerical importance, but, closing their ranks and acting in strict unity, they give constant proofs of adhesion to Don Miguel as personifying a national principle, and at the same time give evidence of political vitality by the activity and progress of their ideas, which are adapting themselves to the Liberal sentiments and theories of the times.[8] And it were flying in the face of facts to deny that this party comprehends a very important portion of the intelligence and respectability of the nation. It ascribes to itself an overwhelming majority in the country, and asserts that five-sixths of the population of Portugal would joyfully hail its advent to power. This of course must be viewed as an ex-parte statement, difficult for foreigners to verify or refute. But of late there have been no lack of proofs that a large proportion of the higher orders of Portuguese are steadfast[353] in their aversion to the government of the "Liberals," and in their adherence to him whom they still, after his seventeen years' dethronement, persist in calling their king, and whom they have supported, during his long exile, by their willing contributions. It is fresh in every one's memory that, only the other day, twenty five peers, or successors of peers, who had been excluded by Don Pedro from the peerage for having sworn allegiance to his brother, having been reinstated and invited to take their seats in the Chamber, signed and published a document utterly rejecting the boon. Some hundreds of officers of the old army of Don Miguel, who are living for the most part in penury and privation, were invited to demand from Saldanha the restitution of their grades, which would have entitled them to the corresponding pay. To a man they refused, and protested their devotion to their former sovereign. A new law of elections, with a very extended franchise—nearly amounting, it is said, to universal suffrage—having been the other day arbitrarily decreed by the Saldanha cabinet (certainly a most unconstitutional proceeding,) and the government having expressed a wish that all parties in the kingdom should exercise the electoral right, and give their votes for representatives in the new parliament, a numerous and highly respectable meeting of the Miguelites was convened at Lisbon. This meeting voted, with but two dissentient voices, a resolution of abstaining from all share in the elections, declaring their determination not to sanction, by coming forward either as voters or candidates, a system and an order of things which they utterly repudiated as illegal, oppressive, and forced upon the nation by foreign interference. The same resolution was adopted by large assemblages in every province of the kingdom. At various periods, during the last seventeen years, the Portuguese government has endeavoured to inveigle the Miguelites into the representative assembly, doubtless hoping that upon its benches they would be more accessible to seduction, or easier to intimidate. It is a remarkable and significant circumstance, that only in one instance (in the year 1842) have their efforts been successful, and that the person who was then induced so to deviate from the policy of his party, speedily gave unmistakable signs of shame and regret. Bearing in mind the undoubted and easily proved fact that the Miguelites, whether their numerical strength be or be not as great as they assert, comprise a large majority of the clergy, of the old nobility, and of the most highly educated classes of the nation, their steady and consistent refusal to sanction the present order of things, by their presence in its legislative assembly, shows a unity of purpose and action, and a staunch and dogged conviction, which cannot but be disquieting to their adversaries, and over which it is impossible lightly to pass in an impartial review of the condition and prospects of Portugal.

We have already declared our determination here to attach importance to the persons of none of the four princes and princesses who claim or occupy the thrones of Spain and Portugal, except in so far as they may respectively unite the greatest amount of the national suffrage and adhesion. As regards Don Miguel, we are far from exaggerating his personal claims—the question of legitimacy being here waived. His prestige out of Portugal is of the smallest, and certainly he has never given proofs of great talents, although he is not altogether without kingly qualities, nor wanting in resolution and energy; whilst his friends assert, and it is fair to admit as probable, that he has long since repented and abjured the follies and errors of his youth. But we cannot be blind to the fact of the strong sympathy and regard entertained for him by a very large number of Portuguese. His presence in London during some weeks of the present summer was the signal for a pilgrimage of Portuguese noblemen and gentlemen of the best and most influential families in the country, many of whom openly declared the sole object of their journey to be to pay their respects to their exiled sovereign; whilst others, the chief motive of whose visit was the attraction of the Industrial Exhibition, gladly seized the opportunity to[354] reiterate the assurances of their fidelity and allegiance. Strangely enough, the person who opened the procession was a nephew of Marshal Saldanha, Don Antonio C. de Seabra, a staunch and intelligent royalist, whose visit to London coincided, as nearly as might be, with his uncle's flight into Galicia, and with his triumphant return to Oporto after the victory gained for him as he was decamping. Senhor Seabra was followed by two of the Freires, nephew and grand-nephew of the Freire who was minister-plenipotentiary in London some thirty years ago; by the Marquis and Marchioness of Vianna, and the Countess of Lapa—all of the first nobility of Portugal; by the Marquis of Abrantes, a relative of the royal family of Portugal; by a host of gentlemen of the first families in the provinces of Beira, Minho, Tras-os-Montes, &c.—Albuquerques, Mellos, Taveiras, Pachecos, Albergarias, Cunhas, Correa-de-Sas, Beduidos, San Martinhos, Pereiras, and scores of other names, which persons acquainted with Portugal will recognise as comprehending much of the best blood and highest intelligence in the country. Such demonstrations are not to be overlooked, or regarded as trivial and unimportant. Men like the Marquis of Abrantes, for instance, not less distinguished for mental accomplishment and elevation of character than for illustrious descent,[9] men of large possessions and extensive influence, cannot be assumed to represent only their individual opinions. The remarkable step lately taken by a number of Portuguese of this class, must be regarded as an indication of the state of feeling of a large portion of the nation; as an indication, too, of something grievously faulty in the conduct or constitution of a government which, after seventeen years' sway, has been unable to rally, reconcile, or even to appease the animosity of any portion of its original opponents.

Between the state of Portugal and that of Spain there are, at the present moment, points of strong contrast, and others of striking similarity. The similarity is in the actual condition of the two countries—in their sufferings, misgovernment, and degradation; the contrast is in the state and prospects of the political parties they contain. What we have said of the wretched plight of Portugal applies, with few and unimportant differences, to the condition of Spain. If there has lately been somewhat less of open anarchy in the latter country than in the dominions of Donna Maria, there has not been one iota less of tyrannical government and scandalous malversation. The public revenue is still squandered and robbed, the heavy taxes extorted from the millions still flow into the pockets of a few thousand corrupt officials, ministers are still stock-jobbers, the liberty of the press is still a farce,[10] and the national representation an obscene comedy. A change of ministry in Spain is undoubtedly a most interesting event to those who go out and those who come in—far more so in Spain than in any other country, since in no other country does the possession of office enable a beggar so speedily to transform himself into a millionaire. In Portugal the will is not wanting, but the means are less ample. More may be safely pilfered out of a sack of corn than out of a sieveful, and poor little Portugal's revenue does not afford such scope to the itching palms of Liberal statesmen as does the more ample one of Spain, which of late years has materially increased—without, however, the tax-payer and public creditor experiencing one crumb of the benefit they might fairly expect in the shape of reduced imposts and augmented dividends. But, however interesting to the governing fraction, a change of administration in Spain is contemplated by the governed masses with supreme apathy and indifference. They used once to be excited by such changes; but they have long ago got over that weakness, and suffer their pockets to be picked[355] and their bodies to be trampled with a placidity bordering on the sublime. As long as things do not get worse, they remain quiet; they have little hope of their getting better. Here, again, in this fertile and beautiful and once rich and powerful country of Spain, a most gratifying picture is presented to the instigators of the Quadruple Alliance, to the upholders of the virtuous Christina and the innocent Isabel! Pity that it is painted with so ensanguined a brush, and that strife and discord should be the main features of the composition! Upon the first panel is exhibited a civil war of seven years' duration, vying, for cold-blooded barbarity and gratuitous slaughter, with the fiercest and most fanatical contests that modern Times have witnessed. Terminated by a strange act of treachery, even yet imperfectly understood, the war was succeeded by a brief period of well-meaning but inefficient government. By the daring and unscrupulous manœuvres of Louis Philippe and Christina this was upset—by means so extraordinary and so disgraceful to all concerned that scandalised Europe stood aghast, and almost refused to credit the proofs (which history will record) of the social degradation of Spaniards. For a moment Spain again stood divided and in arms, and on the brink of civil war. This danger over, the blood that had not been shed in the field flowed upon the scaffold: an iron hand and a pampered army crushed and silenced the disaffection and murmurs of the great body of the nation; and thus commenced a system of despotic and unscrupulous misrule and corruption, which still endures without symptom of improvement. As for the observance of the constitution, it is a mockery to speak of it, and has been so any time these eight years. In June 1850, Lord Palmerston, in the course of his celebrated defence of his foreign policy, declared himself happy to state that the government of Spain was at that time carried on more in accordance with the constitution than it had been two years previously. As ear-witnesses upon the occasion, we can do his lordship the justice to say that the assurance was less confidently and unhesitatingly spoken than were most other parts of his eloquent oration. It was duly cheered, however, by the Commons House—or at least by those Hispanophilists and philanthropists upon its benches who accepted the Foreign Secretary's assurance in lieu of any positive knowledge of their own. The grounds for applause and gratulation were really of the slenderest. In 1848, the un-constitutional period referred to by Lord Palmerston, the Narvaez and Christina government were in the full vigour of their repressive measures, shooting the disaffected by the dozen, and exporting hundreds to the Philippines or immuring them in dungeons. This, of course, could not go on for ever; the power was theirs, the malcontents were compelled to succumb; the paternal and constitutional government made a desert, and called it peace. Short time was necessary, when such violent means were employed, to crush Spain into obedience, and in 1850 she lay supine, still bleeding from many an inward wound, at her tyrants' feet. This morbid tranquillity might possibly be mistaken for an indication of an improved mode of government. As for any other sign of constitutional rule, we are utterly unable to discern it in either the past or the present year. The admirable observance of the constitution was certainly in process of proof, at the very time of Lord Palmerston's speech, by the almost daily violation of the liberty of the press, by the seizure of journals whose offending articles the authorities rarely condescended to designate, and whose incriminated editors were seldom allowed opportunity of exculpation before a fair tribunal. It was further testified to, less than four months later, by a general election, at which such effectual use was made of those means of intimidation and corruption which are manifold in Spain, that, when the popular Chamber assembled, the government was actually alarmed at the smallness of the opposition—limited, as it was, to about a dozen stray Progresistas, who, like the sleeping beauty in the fairy tale, rubbed their eyes in wonderment at finding themselves there. Nor were the ministerial forebodings groundless in the case of the unscrupulous[356] and tyrannical Narvaez, who, within a few months, when seemingly more puissant than ever, and with an overwhelming majority in the Chamber obedient to his nod, was cast down by the wily hand that had set him up, and driven to seek safety in France from the vengeance of his innumerable enemies. The causes of this sudden and singular downfall are still a puzzle and a mystery to the world; but persons there are, claiming to see further than their neighbours into political millstones, who pretend that a distinguished diplomatist, of no very long standing at Madrid, had more to do than was patent to the world with the disgrace of the Spanish dictator, whom the wags of the Puerta del Sol declare to have exclaimed, as his carriage whirled him northwards through the gates of Madrid, "Comme Henri Bulwer!"

Passing from the misgovernment and sufferings of Spain to its political state, we experience some difficulty in clearly defining and exhibiting this, inasmuch as the various parties that have hitherto acted under distinct names are gradually blending and disappearing like the figures in dissolving views. In Portugal, as we have already shown, whilst Chartists and Septembrists distract the country, and damage themselves by constant quarrels and collisions, a third party, unanimous and determined in its opposition to those two, grows in strength, influence, and prestige. In Spain, no party shows signs of healthy condition. In all three—Moderados, Progresistas, and Carlists—symptoms of dissolution are manifest. In the two countries, Chartists and Septembrists, Moderados and Progresistas, have alike split into two or more factions hostile to each other; but whilst, in Portugal, the Miguelites improve their position, in Spain the Carlist party is reduced to a mere shadow of its former self. Without recognised chiefs or able leaders, without political theory of government, it bases its pretensions solely upon the hereditary right of its head. For whilst Don Miguel, on several occasions,[11] has declared his adhesion to the liberal programme advocated by his party for the security of the national liberties, the Count de Montemolin, either from indecision of character, or influenced by evil counsels, has hitherto made no precise, public, and satisfactory declaration of his views in this particular,[12] and by such injudicious reserve has lost the suffrages of many whom a distinct pledge would have gathered round his banner. Thus has he partially neutralised the object of his father's abdication in his favour. Don Carlos was too completely identified with the old absolutist party, composed of intolerant bigots both in temporal and spiritual matters, ever to have reconciled himself with the progressive spirit of the century, or to have become acceptable to the present generation of Spaniards. Discerning or advised of this, he transferred his claims to his son, thus placing in his hands an excellent card, which the young prince has not known how to play. If, instead of encouraging a sullen and unprofitable emigration, fomenting useless insurrections, draining his adherents' purses, and squandering their blood, he had husbanded the resources of the party, clearly and publicly defined his plan of government—if ever seated upon the throne he claims—and awaited in dignified retirement the progress of events, he would not have supplied the present rulers of Spain with pretexts, eagerly taken advantage of, for shameful tyranny and persecution; and he would have spared himself the mortification of seeing his party[357] dwindle, and his oldest and most trusted friends and adherents, with few exceptions, accept pardon and place from the enemies against whom they had long and bravely contended. But vacillation, incapacity, and treachery presided at his counsels. He had none to point out to him—or if any did, they were unheeded or overruled—the fact, of which experience and repeated disappointments have probably at last convinced him, that it is not by the armed hand alone—not by the sword of Cabrera, or by Catalonian guerilla risings—that he can reasonably hope ever to reach Madrid, but by aid of the moral force of public opinion, as a result of the misgovernment of Spain's present rulers, of an increasing confidence in his own merits and good intentions, and perhaps of such possible contingencies as a Bourbon restoration in France, or the triumph of the Miguelites in Portugal. This last-named event will very likely be considered, by that numerous class of persons who base their opinions of foreign politics upon hearsay and general impressions rather than upon accurate knowledge and investigation of facts, as one of the most improbable of possibilities. A careful and dispassionate examination of the present state of the Peninsula does not enable us to regard it as a case of such utter improbability. But for the intimate and intricate connection between the Spanish and Portuguese questions, it would by no means surprise us—bearing in mind all that Portugal has suffered and still suffers under her present rulers—to see the Miguelite party openly assume the preponderance in the country. England would not allow it, will be the reply. Let us try the exact value of this assertion. England has two reasons for hostility to Don Miguel—one founded on certain considerations connected with his conduct when formerly on the throne of Portugal, the other on the dynastic alliance between the two countries. The government of Donna Maria may reckon upon the sympathy, advice, and even upon the direct naval assistance of England—up to a certain point. That is to say, that the English government will do what it conveniently and suitably can, in favour of the Portuguese queen and her husband; but there is room for a strong doubt that it would seriously compromise itself to maintain them upon the throne. Setting aside Donna Maria's matrimonial connection, Don Miguel, as a constitutional king, and with certain mercantile and financial arrangements, would suit English interests every bit as well. But the case is very different as regards Spain. The restoration of Don Miguel would be a terrible if not a fatal shock to the throne of Isabella II. and to the Moderado party, to whom the revival of the legitimist principle in Portugal would be so much the more dangerous if experience proved it to be compatible with the interests created by the Revolution. For the Spanish government, therefore, intervention against Don Miguel is an absolute necessity—we might perhaps say a condition of its existence; and thus is Spain the great stumbling-block in the way of his restoration, whereas England's objections might be found less invincible. So, in the civil war in Portugal, this country only co-operated indirectly against Don Miguel, and it is by no means certain he would have been overcome, but for the entrance of Rodil's Spaniards, which was the decisive blow to his cause. And so, the other day, the English government was seen patiently looking on at the progress of events, when it is well known that the question of immediate intervention was warmly debated in the Madrid cabinet, and might possibly have been carried, but for the moderating influence of English counsels.

If we consider the critical and hazardous position of Marshal Saldanha, wavering as he is between Chartists and Septembrists—threatened to-day with a Cabralist insurrection, to-morrow with a Septembrist pronunciamiento—it is easy to foresee that the Miguelite party may soon find tempting opportunities of an active demonstration in the field. Such a movement, however, would be decidedly premature. Their game manifestly is to await with patience the development of the ultimate consequences of Saldanha's insurrection. It requires no great amount of judgment[358] and experience in political matters judgment to foresee that he will be the victim of his own ill-considered movement, and that no long period will elapse before some new event—be it a Cabralist reaction or a Septembrist revolt—will prove the instability of the present order of things. With this certainty in view, the Miguelites are playing upon velvet. They have only to hold themselves in readiness to profit by the struggle between the two great divisions of the Liberal party. From this struggle they are not unlikely to derive an important accession of strength, if, as is by no means improbable, the Chartists should be routed and the Septembrists remain temporary masters of the field. To understand the possible coalition of a portion of the Chartists with the adherents of Don Miguel, it suffices to bear in mind that the former are supporters of constitutional monarchy, which principle would be endangered by the triumph of the Septembrists, whose republican tendencies are notorious, as is also—notwithstanding the momentary truce they have made with her—their hatred to Donna Maria.

The first consequences of a Septembrist pronunciamiento would probably be the deposition of the Queen and the scattering of the Chartists; and in this case it is easy to conceive the latter beholding in an alliance with the Miguelite party their sole chance of escape from democracy, and from a destruction of the numerous interests they have acquired during their many years of power. It is no unfair inference that Costa Cabral, when he caused himself, shortly after his arrival in London, to be presented to Don Miguel in a particularly public place, anticipated the probability of some such events as we have just sketched, and thus indicated, to his friends and enemies, the new service to which he might one day be disposed to devote his political talents.

The intricate and suggestive complications of Peninsular politics offer a wide field for speculation; but of this we are not at present disposed further to avail ourselves, our object being to elucidate facts rather than to theorise or indulge in predictions with respect to two countries by whose political eccentricities more competent prophets than ourselves have, upon so many occasions during the last twenty years, been puzzled and led astray. We sincerely wish that the governments of Spain and Portugal were now in the hands of men capable of conciliating all parties, and of averting future convulsions—of men sufficiently able and patriotic to conceive and carry out measures adapted to the character, temper, and wants of the two nations. If, by what we should be compelled to look upon almost as a miracle, such a state of things came about in the Peninsula, we should be far indeed from desiring to see it disturbed, and discord again introduced into the land, for the vindication of the principle of legitimacy, respectable though we hold that to be. But if Spain and Portugal are to continue a byword among the nations, the focus of administrative abuses and oligarchical tyranny; if the lower classes of society in those countries, by nature brave and generous, are to remain degraded into the playthings of egotistical adventurers, whilst the more respectable and intelligent portion of the higher orders stands aloof in disgust from the orgies of misgovernment; if this state of things is to endure, without prospect of amendment, until the masses throw themselves into the arms of the apostles of democracy—who, it were vain to deny, gain ground in the Peninsula—then, we ask, before it comes to that, would it not be well to give a chance to parties and to men whose character and principles at least unite some elements of stability, and who, whatever reliance may be placed on their promises for the future, candidly admit their past faults and errors? Assuredly those nations incur a heavy responsibility, and but poorly prove their attachment to the cause of constitutional freedom, who avail themselves of superior force to detain feeble allies beneath the yoke of intolerable abuses.

[359]

THE CONGRESS AND THE AGAPEDOME.

A TALE OF PEACE AND LOVE.

CHAPTER I.

If I were to commence my story by stating, in the manner of the military biographers, that Jack Wilkinson was as brave a man as ever pushed a bayonet into the brisket of a Frenchman, I should be telling a confounded lie, seeing that, to the best of my knowledge, Jack never had the opportunity of attempting practical phlebotomy. I shall content myself with describing him as one of the finest and best-hearted fellows that ever held her Majesty's commission; and no one who is acquainted with the general character of the officers of the British army, will require a higher eulogium.

Jack and I were early cronies at school; but we soon separated, having been born under the influence of different planets. Mars, who had the charge of Jack, of course devoted him to the army; Jupiter, who was bound to look after my interests, could find nothing better for me than a situation in the Woods and Forests, with a faint chance of becoming in time a subordinate Commissioner—that is, provided the wrongs of Ann Hicks do not precipitate the abolition of the whole department. Ten years elapsed before we met; and I regret to say that, during that interval, neither of us had ascended many rounds of the ladder of promotion. As was most natural, I considered my own case as peculiarly hard, and yet Jack's was perhaps harder. He had visited with his regiment, in the course of duty, the Cape, the Ionian Islands, Gibraltar, and the West Indies. He had caught an ague in Canada, and had been transplanted to the north of Ireland by way of a cure; and yet he had not gained a higher rank in the service than that of Lieutenant. The fact is, that Jack was poor, and his brother officers as tough as though they had been made of caoutchouc. Despite the varieties of climate to which they were exposed, not one of them would give up the ghost; even the old colonel, who had been twice despaired of, recovered from the yellow fever, and within a week after was lapping his claret at the mess-table as jollily as if nothing had happened. The regiment had a bad name in the service: they called it, I believe, "the Immortals."

Jack Wilkinson, as I have said, was poor, but he had an uncle who was enormously rich. This uncle, Mr Peter Pettigrew by name, was an old bachelor and retired merchant, not likely, according to the ordinary calculation of chances, to marry; and as he had no other near relative save Jack, to whom, moreover, he was sincerely attached, my friend was generally regarded in the light of a prospective proprietor, and might doubtless, had he been so inclined, have negotiated a loan, at or under seventy per cent, with one of those respectable gentlemen who are making such violent efforts to abolish Christian legislation. But Pettigrew also was tough as one of "the Immortals," and Jack was too prudent a fellow to intrust himself to hands so eminently accomplished in the art of wringing the last drop of moisture from a sponge. His uncle, he said, had always behaved handsomely to him, and he would see the whole tribe of Issachar drowned in the Dardanelles rather than abuse his kindness by raising money on a post-obit. Pettigrew, indeed, had paid for his commission, and, moreover, given him a fair allowance whilst he was quartered abroad—circumstances which rendered it extremely probable that he would come forward to assist his nephew so soon as the latter had any prospect of purchasing his company.

Happening by accident to be in Hull, where the regiment was quartered, I encountered Wilkinson, whom I found not a whit altered for the worse, either in mind or body, since the days when we were at school together; and at his instance I agreed to prolong my stay, and partake of the[360] hospitality of the Immortals. A merry set they were! The major told a capital story, the senior captain sung like Incledon, the cuisine was beyond reproach, and the liquor only too alluring. But all things must have an end. It is wise to quit even the most delightful society before it palls upon you, and before it is accurately ascertained that you, clever fellow as you are, can be, on occasion, quite as prosy and ridiculous as your neighbours; therefore on the third day I declined a renewal of the ambrosial banquet, and succeeded in persuading Wilkinson to take a quiet dinner with me at my own hotel. He assented—the more readily, perhaps, that he appeared slightly depressed in spirits, a phenomenon not altogether unknown under similar circumstances.

After the cloth was removed, we began to discourse upon our respective fortunes, not omitting the usual complimentary remarks which, in such moments of confidence, are applied to one's superiors, who may be very thankful that they do not possess a preternatural power of hearing. Jack informed me that at length a vacancy had occurred in his regiment, and that he had now an opportunity, could he deposit the money, of getting his captaincy. But there was evidently a screw loose somewhere.

"I must own," said Jack, "that it is hard, after having waited so long, to lose a chance which may not occur again for years; but what can I do? You see I haven't got the money; so I suppose I must just bend to my luck, and wait in patience for my company until my head is as bare as a billiard-ball!"

"But, Jack," said I, "excuse me for making the remark—but won't your uncle, Mr Pettigrew, assist you?"

"Not the slightest chance of it."

"You surprise me," said I; "I am very sorry to hear you say so. I always understood that you were a prime favourite of his."

"So I was; and so, perhaps, I am," replied Wilkinson; "but that don't alter the matter."

"Why, surely," said I, "if he is inclined to help you at all, he will not be backward at a time like this. I am afraid, Jack, you allow your modesty to wrong you."

"I shall permit my modesty," said Jack, "to take no such impertinent liberty. But I see you don't know my uncle Peter."

"I have not that pleasure, certainly; but he bears the character of a good honest fellow, and everybody believes that you are to be his heir."

"That may be, or may not, according to circumstances," said Wilkinson. "You are quite right as to his character, which I would advise no one to challenge in my presence; for, though I should never get another stiver from him, or see a farthing of his property, I am bound to acknowledge that he has acted towards me in the most generous manner. But I repeat that you don't understand my uncle."

"Nor ever shall," said I, "unless you condescend to enlighten me."

"Well, then, listen. Old Peter would be a regular trump, but for one besetting foible. He cannot resist a crotchet. The more palpably absurd and idiotical any scheme may be, the more eagerly he adopts it; nay, unless it is absurd and idiotical, such as no man of common sense would listen to for a moment, he will have nothing to say to it. He is quite shrewd enough with regard to commercial matters. During the railway mania, he is supposed to have doubled his capital. Never having had any faith in the stability of the system, he sold out just at the right moment, alleging that it was full time to do so, when Sir Robert Peel introduced a bill giving the Government the right of purchasing any line when its dividends amounted to ten per cent. The result proved that he was correct."

"It did, undoubtedly. But surely that is no evidence of his extreme tendency to be led astray by crotchets?"

"Quite the reverse: the scheme was not sufficiently absurd for him. Besides, I must tell you, that in pure commercial matters it would be very difficult to overreach or deceive my uncle. He has a clear eye for pounds, shillings, and pence—principal and interest—and can look very well after himself when his purse is directly[361] assailed. His real weakness lies in sentiment."

"Not, I trust, towards the feminine gender? That might be awkward for you in a gentleman of his years!"

"Not precisely—though I would not like to trust him in the hands of a designing female. His besetting weakness turns on the point of the regeneration of mankind. Forty or fifty years ago he would have been a follower of Johanna Southcote. He subscribed liberally to Owen's schemes, and was within an ace of turning out with Thom of Canterbury. Incredible as it may appear, he actually was for a time a regular and accepted Mormonite."

"You don't mean to say so?"

"Fact, I assure you, upon my honour! But for a swindle that Joe Smith tried to perpetrate about the discounting of a bill, Peter Pettigrew might at this moment have been a leading saint in the temple of Nauvoo, or whatever else they call the capital of that polygamous and promiscuous persuasion."

"You amaze me. How any man of common sense—"

"That's just the point. Where common sense ends, Uncle Pettigrew begins. Give him a mere thread of practicability, and he will arrive at a sound conclusion. Envelope him in the mist of theory, and he will walk headlong over a precipice."

"Why, Jack," said I, "you seem to have improved in your figures of speech since you joined the army. That last sentence was worth preservation. But I don't clearly understand you yet. What is his present phase, which seems to stand in the way of your prospects?"

"Can't you guess? What is the most absurd feature of the present time?"

"That," said I, "is a very difficult question. There's Free Trade, and the proposed Exhibition—both of them absurd enough, if you look to their ultimate tendency. Then there are Sir Charles Wood's Budget, and the new Reform Bill, and the Encumbered Estates Act, and the whole rubbish of the Cabinet, which they have neither sense to suppress nor courage to carry through. Upon my word, Jack, it would be impossible for me to answer your question satisfactorily."

"What do you think of the Peace Congress?" asked Wilkinson.

"As Palmerston does," said I; "remarkably meanly. But why do you put that point? Surely Mr Pettigrew has not become a disciple of the blatant blacksmith?"

"Read that, and judge for yourself," said Wilkinson, handing me over a letter.

I read as follows:—

"My dear Nephew,—I have your letter of the 15th, apprising me of your wish to obtain what you term a step in the service. I am aware that I am not entitled to blame you for a misguided and lamentably mistaken zeal, which, to my shame be it said, I was the means of originally kindling; still, you must excuse me if, with the new lights which have been vouchsafed to me, I decline to assist your progress towards wholesale homicide, or lend any farther countenance to a profession which is subversive of that universal brotherhood and entire fraternity which ought to prevail among the nations. The fact is, Jack, that, up to the present time, I have entertained ideas which were totally false regarding the greatness of my country. I used to think that England was quite as glorious from her renown in arms as from her skill in arts—that she had reason to plume herself upon her ancient and modern victories, and that patriotism was a virtue which it was incumbent upon freemen to view with respect and veneration. Led astray by these wretched prejudices, I gave my consent to your enrolling yourself in the ranks of the British army, little thinking that, by such a step, I was doing a material injury to the cause of general pacification, and, in fact, retarding the advent of that millennium which will commence so soon as the military profession is entirely suppressed throughout Europe. I am now also painfully aware that, towards you individually, I have failed in performing my duty. I have been the means of inoculating you with a thirst for human blood, and of depriving you of that opportunity of adding to the resources of your country, which you might have enjoyed[362] had I placed you early in one of those establishments which, by sending exports to the uttermost parts of the earth, have contributed so magnificently to the diffusion of British patterns, and the growth of American cotton under a mild system of servitude, which none, save the minions of royalty, dare denominate as actual slavery.

"In short, Jack, I have wronged you; but I should wrong you still more were I to furnish you with the means of advancing one other step in your bloody and inhuman profession. It is full time that we should discard all national recollections. We have already given a glorious example to Europe and the world, by throwing open our ports to their produce without requiring the assurance of reciprocity—let us take another step in the same direction, and, by a complete disarmament, convince them that for the future we rely upon moral reason, instead of physical force, as the means of deciding differences. I shall be glad, my dear boy, to repair the injury which I have unfortunately done you, by contributing a sum, equal to three times the amount required for the purchase of a company, towards your establishment as a partner in an exporting house, if you can hear of an eligible offer. Pray keep an eye on the advertising columns of the Economist. That journal is in every way trustworthy, except, perhaps, when it deals in quotation. I must now conclude, as I have to attend a meeting for the purpose of denouncing the policy of Russia, and of warning the misguided capitalists of London against the perils of an Austrian loan. You cannot, I am sure, doubt my affection, but you must not expect me to advance my money towards keeping up a herd of locusts, without which there would be a general conversion of swords and bayonets into machinery—ploughshares, spades, and pruning-hooks being, for the present, rather at a discount.—I remain always your affectionate uncle,

"Peter Pettigrew.

"P. S.—Address to me at Hesse Homberg, whither I am going as a delegate to the Peace Congress."

"Well, what do you think of that?" said Wilkinson, when I had finished this comfortable epistle. "I presume you agree with me, that I have no chance whatever of receiving assistance from that quarter."

"Why, not much I should say, unless you can succeed in convincing Mr Pettigrew of the error of his ways. It seems to me a regular case of monomania."

"Would you not suppose, after reading that letter, that I was a sort of sucking tiger, or at best an ogre, who never could sleep comfortably unless he had finished off the evening with a cup of gore?" said Wilkinson. "I like that coming from old Uncle Peter, who used to sing Rule Britannia till he was hoarse, and always dedicated his second glass of port to the health of the Duke of Wellington!"

"But what do you intend to do?" said I. "Will you accept his offer, and become a fabricator of calicoes?"

"I'd as soon become a field preacher, and hold forth on an inverted tub! But the matter is really very serious. In his present mood of mind, Uncle Peter will disinherit me to a certainty if I remain in the army."

"Does he usually adhere long to any particular crotchet?" said I.

"Why, no; and therein lies my hope. Judging from past experience, I should say that this fit is not likely to last above a month or two; still you see there may be danger in treating the matter too lightly: besides, there is no saying when such another opportunity of getting a step may occur. What would you advise under the circumstances?"

"If I were in your place," said I, "I think I should go over to Hesse Homberg at once. You need not identify yourself entirely with the Peace gentry; you will be near your uncle, and ready to act as circumstances may suggest."

"That is just my own notion; and I think I can obtain leave of absence. I say—could you not manage to go along with me? It would be a real act of friendship; for, to say the truth, I don't think I could trust any of our fellows in the company of the Quakers."

"Well—I believe they can spare me for a little longer from my official[363] duties; and as the weather is fine, I don't mind if I go."

"That's a good fellow! I shall make my arrangements this evening; for the sooner we are off the better."

Two days afterwards we were steaming up the Rhine, a river which, I trust, may persevere in its attempt to redeem its ancient character. In 1848, when I visited Germany last, you might just as well have navigated the Phlegethon in so far as pleasure was concerned. Those were the days of barricades and of Frankfort murders—of the obscene German Parliament, as the junta of rogues, fanatics, and imbeciles, who were assembled in St Paul's Church, denominated themselves; and of every phase and form of political quackery and insurrection. Now, however, matters were somewhat mended. The star of Gagern had waned. The popularity of the Archduke John had exhaled like the fume of a farthing candle. Hecker and Struve were hanged, shot, or expatriated; and the peaceably disposed traveller could once more retire to rest in his hotel, without being haunted by a horrid suspicion that ere morning some truculent waiter might experiment upon the toughness of his larynx. I was glad to observe that the Frankforters appeared a good deal humbled. They were always a pestilent set; but during the revolutionary year their insolence rose to such a pitch that it was hardly safe for a man of warm temperament to enter a shop, lest he should be provoked by the airs and impertinence of the owner to commit an assault upon Freedom in the person of her democratic votary. I suspect the Frankforters are now tolerably aware that revolutions are the reverse of profitable. They escaped sack and pillage by a sheer miracle, and probably they will not again exert themselves, at least for a considerable number of years, to hasten the approach of a similar crisis.

Everybody knows Homberg. On one pretext or another—whether the mineral springs, the baths, the gaiety, or the gambling—the integral portions of that tide of voyagers which annually fluctuates through the Rheingau, find their way to that pleasant little pandemonium, and contribute, I have no doubt, very largely to the revenues of that high and puissant monarch who rules over a population not quite so large as that comprehended within the boundaries of Clackmannan. But various as its visitors always are, and diverse in language, habits, and morals, I question whether Homberg ever exhibited on any previous occasion so queer and incongruous a mixture. Doubtful counts, apocryphal barons, and chevaliers of the extremest industry, mingled with sleek Quakers, Manchester reformers, and clerical agitators of every imaginable species of dissent. Then there were women, for the most part of a middle age, who, although their complexions would certainly have been improved by a course of the medicinal waters, had evidently come to Homberg on a higher and holier mission. There was also a sprinkling of French deputies—Red Republicans by principle, who, if not the most ardent friends of pacification, are at least the loudest in their denunciation of standing armies—a fair proportion of political exiles, who found their own countries too hot to hold them in consequence of the caloric which they had been the means of evoking—and one or two of those unhappy personages, whose itch for notoriety is greater than their modicum of sense. We were not long in finding Mr Peter Pettigrew. He was solacing himself in the gardens, previous to the table-d'hôte, by listening to the exhilarating strains of the brass band which was performing a military march; and by his side was a lady attired, not in the usual costume of her sex, but in a polka jacket and wide trousers, which gave her all the appearance of a veteran duenna of a seraglio. Uncle Peter, however, beamed upon her as tenderly as though she were a Circassian captive. To this lady, by name Miss Lavinia Latchley, an American authoress of much renown, and a decided champion of the rights of woman, we were presented in due form. After the first greetings were over, Mr Pettigrew opened the trenches.

"So Jack, my boy, you have come to Homberg to see how we carry on the war, eh? No—Lord forgive me—that's[364] not what I mean. We don't intend to carry on any kind of war: we mean to put it down—clap the extinguisher upon it, you know; and have done with all kinds of cannons. Bad thing, gunpowder! I once sustained a heavy loss by sending out a cargo of it to Sierra Leone."

"I should have thought that a paying speculation," observed Jack.

"Not a whit of it! The cruisers spoiled the trade; and the missionaries—confound them for meddling with matters which they did not understand!—had patched up a peace among the chiefs of the cannibals; so that for two years there was not a slave to be had for love or money, and powder went down a hundred and seventy per cent."

"Such are the effects," remarked Miss Latchley with a sarcastic smile, which disclosed a row of teeth as yellow as the buds of the crocus—"such are the effects of an ill regulated and unphilosophical yearning after the visionary theories of an unopportune emancipation! Oh that men, instead of squandering their sympathies upon the lower grades of creation, would emancipate themselves from that network of error and prejudice which reticulates over the whole surface of society, and by acknowledging the divine mission and hereditary claims of woman, construct a new, a fairer Eden than any which was fabled to exist within the confines of the primitive Chaldæa!"

"Very true, indeed, ma'am!" replied Mr Pettigrew; "there is a great deal of sound sense and observation in what you say. But Jack—I hope you intend to become a member of Congress at once. I shall be glad to present you at our afternoon meeting in the character of a converted officer."

"You are very good, uncle, I am sure," said Wilkinson, "but I would rather wait a little. I am certain you would not wish me to take so serious a step without mature deliberation; and I hope that my attendance here, in answer to your summons, will convince you that I am at least open to conviction. In fact, I wish to hear the argument of your friends before I come to a definite decision."

"Very right, Jack; very right!" said Mr Pettigrew. "I don't like converts at a minute's notice, as I remarked to a certain M.P. when he followed in the wake of Peel. Take your time, and form your own judgment; I cannot doubt of the result, if you only listen to the arguments of the leading men of Europe."

"And do you reckon America as nothing, dear Mr Pettigrew?" said Miss Latchley. "Columbia may not be able to contribute to the task so practical and masculine an intellect as yours, yet still within many a Transatlantic bosom burns a hate of tyranny not less intense, though perhaps less corruscating, than your own."

"I know it, I know it, dear Miss Latchley!" replied the infatuated Peter. "A word from you is at any time worth a lecture, at least if I may judge from the effects which your magnificent eloquence has produced on my own mind. Jack, I suppose you have never had the privilege of listening to the lectures of Miss Latchley?"

Jack modestly acknowledged the gap which had been left in his education; stating, at the same time, his intense desire to have it filled up at the first convenient opportunity. Miss Latchley heaved a sigh.

"I hope you do not flatter me," she said, "as is too much the case with men whose thoughts have been led habitually to deviate from sincerity. The worst symptom of the present age lies in its acquiescence with axioms. Free us from that, and we are free indeed; perpetuate its thraldom, and Truth, which is the daughter of Innocence and Liberty, imps its wings in vain, and cannot emancipate itself from the pressure of that raiment which was devised to impede its glorious walk among the nations."

Jack made no reply beyond a glance at the terminations of the lady, which showed that she at all events was resolved that no extra raiment should trammel her onward progress.

As the customary hour of the table-d'hôte was approaching, we separated, Jack and I pledging ourselves to attend the afternoon meeting of the Peace Congress, for the purpose of receiving our first lesson in the mysteries of pacification.

[365]

"Well, what do you think of that?" said Jack, as Mr Pettigrew and the Latchley walked off together. "Hang me if I don't suspect that old harpy in the breeches has a design on Uncle Peter!"

"Small doubt of that," said I; "and you will find it rather a difficult job to get him out of her clutches. Your female philosopher adheres to her victim with all the tenacity of a polecat."

"Here is a pretty business!" groaned Jack. "I'll tell you what it is—I have more than half a mind to put an end to it, by telling my uncle what I think of his conduct, and then leaving him to marry this harridan, and make a further fool of himself in any way he pleases!"

"Don't be silly, Jack!" said I; "It will be time enough to do that after everything else has failed; and, for my own part, I see no reason to despair. In the mean time, if you please, let us secure places at the dinner-table."

CHAPTER II.

"Dear friends and well-beloved brothers! I wish from the bottom of my heart that there was but one universal language, so that the general sentiments of love, equality, and fraternity, which animate the bosoms of all the pacificators and detesters of tyranny throughout the world, might find a simultaneous echo in your ears, by the medium of a common speech. The diversity of dialects, which now unfortunately prevails, was originally invented under cover of the feudal system, by the minions of despotism, who thought, by such despicable means, for ever to perpetuate their power. It is part of the same system which decrees that in different countries alien to each other in speech, those unhappy persons who have sold themselves to do the bidding of tyrants shall be distinguished by different uniforms. O my brothers! see what a hellish and deep-laid system is here! English and French—scarlet against blue—different tongues invented, and different garments prescribed, to inflame the passions of mankind against each other, and to stifle their common fraternity!

"Take down, I say, from your halls and churches those wretched tatters of silk which you designate as national colours! Bring hither, from all parts of the earth, the butt of the gun and the shaft of the spear, and all combustible implements of destruction—your fascines, your scaling-ladders, and your terrible pontoons, that have made so many mothers childless! Heap them into one enormous pile—yea, heap them to the very stars—and on that blazing altar let there be thrown the Union Jack of Britain, the tricolor of France, the eagles of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the American stripes and stars, and every other banner and emblem of that accursed nationality, through which alone mankind is defrauded of his birthright. Then let all men join hands together, and as they dance around the reeking pile, let them in one common speech chaunt a simultaneous hymn in honour of their universal deliverance, and in commemoration of their cosmopolitan triumph!

"O my brothers, O my brothers! what shall I say further? Ha! I will not address myself to you whose hearts are already kindled within you by the purest of spiritual flames. I will uplift my voice, and in words of thunder exhort the debased minions of tyranny to arouse themselves ere it be too late, and to shake off those fetters which they wear for the purpose of enslaving others. Hear me, then, ye soldiers!—hear me, ye degraded serfs!—hear me, ye monsters of iniquity! Oh, if the earth could speak, what a voice would arise out of its desolate battle-fields, to testify against you and yours! Tell us not that you have fought for freedom. Was freedom ever won by the sword? Tell us not that you have defended your country's rights, for in the eye of the true philosopher there is no country save one, and that is the universal earth, to which all have an equal claim. Shelter not yourselves, night-prowling hyenas as you are, under such miserable pretexts as these! Hie ye to the charnel-houses, ye bats, ye vampires, ye ravens, ye birds of the foulest omen! Strive, if you can, in their dark recesses, to[366] hide yourselves from the glare of that light which is now permeating the world. O the dawn! O the glory! O the universal illumination! See, my brothers, how they shrink, how they flee from its cheering influence! Tremble, minions of despotism! Your race is run, your very empires are tottering around you. See—with one grasp I crush them all, as I crush this flimsy scroll!"

Here the eloquent gentleman, having made a paper ball of the last number of the Allgemeine Zeitung, sate down amidst the vociferous applause of the assembly. He was the first orator who had spoken, and I believe had been selected to lead the van on account of his platform experience, which was very great. I cannot say, however, that his arguments produced entire conviction upon my mind, or that of my companion, judging from certain muttered adjurations which fell from Wilkinson, to the effect that on the first convenient opportunity he would take means to make the crumpler-up of nations atone for his scurrilous abuse of the army. We were next favoured with addresses in Sclavonian, German, and French; and then another British orator came forward to enlighten the public. This last was a fellow of some fancy. Avoiding all stale topics about despotism, aristocracies, and standing armies, he went to the root of the matter, by asserting that in Vegetarianism alone lay the true escape from the horrors and miseries of war. Mr Belcher—for such was the name of this distinguished philanthropist—opined that without beef and mutton there never could be a battle.

"Had Napoleon," said he, "been dieted from his youth upwards upon turnips, the world would have been spared those scenes of butchery, which must ever remain a blot upon the history of the present century. One of our oldest English annalists assures us that Jack Cade, than whom, perhaps, there never breathed a more uncompromising enemy of tyranny, subsisted entirely upon spinach. This fact has been beautifully treated by Shakspeare, whose passion for onions was proverbial, in his play of Henry VI., wherein he represents Cade, immediately before his death, as engaged in the preparation of a salad. I myself," continued Mr Belcher in a slightly flatulent tone, "can assure this honourable company, that for more than six months I have cautiously abstained from using any other kind of food, except broccoli, which I find at once refreshing and laxative, light, airy, and digestible!"

Mr Belcher having ended, a bearded gentleman, who enjoyed the reputation of being the most notorious duellist in Europe, rose up for the purpose of addressing the audience; but by this time the afternoon was considerably advanced, and a large number of the Congress had silently seceded to the roulette and rouge-et-noir tables. Among these, to my great surprise, were Miss Latchley and Mr Pettigrew: it being, as I afterwards understood, the invariable practice of this gifted lady, whenever she could secure a victim, to avail herself of his pecuniary resources; so that if fortune declared against her, the gentleman stood the loss, whilst, in the opposite event, she retained possession of the spoil. I daresay some of my readers may have been witnesses to a similar arrangement.

As it was no use remaining after the departure of Mr Pettigrew, Wilkinson and I sallied forth for a stroll, not, as you may well conceive, in a high state of enthusiasm or rapture.

"I would not have believed," said Wilkinson, "unless I had seen it with my own eyes, that it was possible to collect in one room so many samples of absolute idiocy. What a pleasant companion that Belcher fellow, who eats nothing but broccoli, must be!"

"A little variety in the way of peas would probably render him perfect. But what do you say to the first orator?"

"I shall reserve the expression of my opinion," replied Jack, "until I have the satisfaction of meeting that gentleman in private. But how are we to proceed? With this woman in the way, it entirely baffles my comprehension."

"Do you know, Jack, I was thinking of that during the whole time of the meeting; and it does appear to me that there is a way open by which we may precipitate the crisis. Mind—I don't answer for the success of[367] my scheme, but it has at least the merit of simplicity."

"Out with it, my dear fellow! I am all impatience," cried Jack.

"Well, then," said I, "did you remark the queer and heterogeneous nature of the company? I don't think, if you except the Quakers, who have the generic similarity of eels, that you could have picked out any two individuals with a tolerable resemblance to each other."

"That's likely enough, for they are a most seedy set. But what of it?"

"Why, simply this: I suspect the majority of them are political refugees. No person, who is not an absurd fanatic or a designing demagogue, can have any sympathy with the nonsense which is talked against governments and standing armies. The Red Republicans, of whom I can assure you there are plenty in every state in Europe, are naturally most desirous to get rid of the latter, by whom they are held in check; and if that were once accomplished, no kind of government could stand for a single day. They are now appealing, as they call it, to public opinion, by means of these congresses and gatherings; and they have contrived, under cover of a zeal for universal peace, to induce a considerable number of weak and foolish people to join with them in a cry which is simply the forerunner of revolution."

"All that I understand; but I don't quite see your drift."

"Every one of these bearded vagabonds hates the other like poison. Talk of fraternity, indeed! They want to have revolution first; and if they could get it, you would see them flying at each other's throats like a pack of wild dogs that have pulled down a deer. Now, my plan is this: Let us have a supper-party, and invite a deputy from each nation. My life upon it, that before they have been half-an-hour together, there will be such a row among the fraternisers as will frighten your uncle Peter out of his senses, or, still better, out of his present crotchet."

"A capital idea! But how shall we get hold of the fellows?"

"That's not very difficult. They are at this moment hard at work at roulette, and they will come readily enough to the call if you promise them lots of Niersteiner."

"By George! they shall have it in bucketfuls, if that can produce the desired effect. I say—we must positively have that chap who abused the army."

"I think it would be advisable to let him alone. I would rather stick to the foreigners."

"O, by Jove, we must have him. I have a slight score to settle, for the credit of the service!"

"Well, but be cautious. Recollect the great matter is to leave our guests to themselves."

"Never fear me. I shall take care to keep within due bounds. Now let us look after Uncle Peter."

We found that respected individual in a state of high glee. His own run of luck had not been extraordinary; but the Latchley, who appeared to possess a sort of second-sight in fixing on the fortunate numbers, had contrived to accumulate a perfect mountain of dollars, to the manifest disgust of a profane Quaker opposite, who, judging from the violence of his language, had been thoroughly cleaned out. Mr Pettigrew agreed at once to the proposal for a supper-party, which Jack excused himself for making, on the ground that he had a strong wish to cultivate the personal acquaintance of the gentlemen, who, in the event of his joining the Peace Society, would become his brethren. After some pressing, Mr Pettigrew agreed to take the chair, his nephew officiating as croupier. Miss Lavinia Latchley, so soon as she learned what was in contemplation, made a strong effort to be allowed to join the party; but, notwithstanding her assertion of the unalienable rights of woman to be present on all occasions of social hilarity, Jack would not yield; and even Pettigrew seemed to think that there were times and seasons when the female countenance might be withheld with advantage. We found no difficulty whatever in furnishing the complement of the guests. There were seventeen of us in all—four Britons, two Frenchmen, a Hungarian, a Lombard, a Piedmontese, a Sicilian, a Neapolitan, a Roman, an[368] Austrian, a Prussian, a Dane, a Dutchman, and a Yankee. The majority exhibited beards of startling dimension, and few of them appeared to regard soap in the light of a justifiable luxury.

Pettigrew made an admirable chairman. Although not conversant with any language save his own, he contrived, by means of altering the terminations of his words, to carry on a very animated conversation with all his neighbours. His Italian was superb, his Danish above par, and his Sclavonic, to say the least of it, passable. The viands were good, and the wine abundant; so that, by the time pipes were produced, we were all tolerably hilarious. The conversation, which at first was general, now took a political turn; and very grievous it was to listen to the tales of the outrages which some of the company had sustained at the hands of tyrannical governments.

"I'll tell you what it is, gentlemen," said one of the Frenchmen, "republics are not a whit better than monarchies, in so far as the liberty of the people is concerned. Here am I obliged to leave France, because I was a friend of that gallant fellow, Ledru Rollin, whom I hope one day to see at the head of a real Socialist government. Ah, won't we set the guillotine once more in motion then!"

"Property is theft," remarked the Neapolitan, sententiously.

"I calculate, my fine chap, that you han't many dollars of your own, if you're of that way of thinking!" said the Yankee, considerably scandalised at this indifference to the rule of meum and tuum.

"O Roma!" sighed the gentleman from the eternal city, who was rather intoxicated.

"Peste! What is the matter with it?" asked one of the Frenchmen. "I presume it stands where it always did. Garçon—un petit verre de rhom!"

"How can Rome be what it was, when it is profaned by the foot of the stranger?" replied he of the Papal States.

"Ah, bah! You never were better off than under the rule of Oudinot."

"You are a German," said the Hungarian to the Austrian; "what think you of our brave Kossuth?"

"I consider him a pragmatical ass," replied the Austrian curtly.

"Perhaps in that case," interposed the Lombard, with a sneer that might have done credit to Mephistopheles, "the gentleman may feel inclined to palliate the conduct of that satrap of tyranny, Radetski?"

"What!—old father Radetski! the victor in a hundred fights!" cried the Austrian. "That will I; and spit in the face of any cowardly Italian who dares to breathe a word against his honour!"

The Italian clutched his knife.

"Hold there!" cried the Piedmontese, who seemed really a decent sort of fellow. "None of your stiletto work here! Had you Lombards trusted more to the bayonet and less to the knife, we might have given another account of the Austrian in that campaign, which cost Piedmont its king!"

"Carlo Alberto!" hissed the Lombard, "sceleratissimo traditore!"

The reply of the Piedmontese was a pie-dish, which prostrated the Lombard on the floor.

"Gentlemen! gentlemen! for Heaven's sake be calm!" screamed Pettigrew; "remember we are all brothers!"

"Brothers!" roared the Dane, "do ye think I would fraternise with a Prussian? Remember Schleswig Holstein!"

"I am perfectly calm," said the Prussian, with the stiff formality of his nation; "I never quarrel over the generous vintage of my fatherland. Come—let me give you a song—

"You never were more mistaken in your life, mon cher," said one of the Frenchmen, brusquely. "Before twelve months are over we shall see who has right to the Rhine!"

"Ay, that is true!" remarked the Dutchman; "confound these Germans—they wanted to annex Luxembourg."

"What says the frog?" asked the Prussian contemptuously.

The frog said nothing, but he hit the Prussian on the teeth.

I despair of giving even a feeble impression of the scene which took[369] place. No single pair of ears was sufficient to catch one fourth of the general discord. There was first an interchange of angry words; then an interchange of blows; and immediately after, the guests were rolling, in groups of twos and threes, as suited their fancy, or the adjustment of national animosities, on the ground. The Lombard rose not again; the pie-dish had quieted him for the night. But the Sicilian and Neapolitan lay locked in deadly combat, each attempting with intense animosity to bite off the other's nose. The Austrian caught the Hungarian by the throat, and held him till he was black in the face. The Dane pommelled the Prussian. One of the Frenchmen broke a bottle over the head of the subject of the Pope; whilst his friend, thirsting for the combat, attempted in vain to insult the remaining non-belligerents. The Dutchman having done all that honour required, smoked in mute tranquillity. Meanwhile the cries of Uncle Peter were heard above the din of battle, entreating a cessation of hostilities. He might as well have preached to the storm—the row grew fiercer every moment.

"This is a disgusting spectacle!" said the orator from Manchester. "These men cannot be true pacificators—they must have served in the army."

"That reminds me, old fellow!" said Jack, turning up the cuffs of his coat with a very ominous expression of countenance, "that you were pleased this morning to use some impertinent expressions with regard to the British army. Do you adhere to what you said then?"

"I do."

"Then up with your mauleys; for, by the Lord Harry! I intend to have satisfaction out of your carcase!"

And in less than a minute the Manchester apostle dropped with both his eyes bunged up, and did not come to time.

"Stranger!" said the Yankee to the Piedmontese, "are you inclined for a turn at gouging? This child feels wolfish to raise hair!" But, to his credit be it said, the Piedmontese declined the proposal with a polite bow. Meanwhile the uproar had attracted the attention of the neighbourhood. Six or seven men in uniform, whom I strongly suspect to have been members of the brass band, entered the apartment armed with bayonets, and carried off the more obstreperous of the party to the guard-house. The others immediately retired, and at last Jack and I were left alone with Mr Pettigrew.

"And this," said he, after a considerable pause, "is fraternity and peace! These are the men who intended to commence the reign of the millennium in Europe! Giver me your hand, Jack, my dear boy—you shan't leave the army—nay, if you do, rely upon it I shall cut you off with a shilling, and mortify my fortune to the Woolwich hospital. I begin to see that I am an old fool. Stop a moment. Here is a bottle of wine that has fortunately escaped the devastation—fill your glasses, and let us dedicate a full bumper to the health of the Duke of Wellington."

I need hardly say that the toast was responded to with enthusiasm. We finished not only that bottle, but another; and I had the satisfaction of hearing Mr Pettigrew announce to my friend Wilkinson that the purchase-money for his company would be forthcoming at Coutts's before he was a fortnight older.

"I won't affect to deny," said Uncle Peter, "that this is a great disappointment to me. I had hoped better things of human nature; but I now perceive that I was wrong. Good night, my dear boys! I am a good deal agitated, as you may see; and perhaps this sour wine has not altogether agreed with me—I had better have taken brandy and water. I shall seek refuge on my pillow, and I trust we may soon meet again!"

"What did the venerable Peter mean by that impressive farewell?" said I, after the excellent old man had departed, shaking his head mournfully as he went.

"O, nothing at all," said Jack; "only the Niersteiner has been rather too potent for him. Have you any sticking-plaster about you? I have damaged my knuckles a little on the os frontis of that eloquent pacificator."

[370]

Next morning I was awoke about ten o'clock by Jack, who came rushing into my room.

"He's off!" he cried.

"Who's off?" said I.

"Uncle Peter; and, what is far worse, he has taken Miss Latchley with him!"

"Impossible!"

However, it was perfectly true. On inquiry we found that the enamored pair had left at six in the morning.

CHAPTER III.

"Well, Jack," said I, "any tidings of Uncle Peter?" as Wilkinson entered my official apartment in London, six weeks after the dissolution of the Congress.

"Why, yes—and the case is rather worse than I supposed," replied Jack despondingly.

"You don't mean to say that he has married that infernal woman in pantaloons?"

"Not quite so bad as that, but very nearly. She has carried him off to her den; and what she may make of him there, it is quite impossible to predict."

"Her den? Has she actually inveigled him to America?"

"Not at all. These kind of women have stations established over the whole face of the earth."

"Where, then, is he located?"

"I shall tell you. In the course of my inquiries, which, you are aware, were rather extensive, I chanced to fall in with a Yarmouth Bloater."

"A what?"

"I beg your pardon—I meant to say a Plymouth Brother. Now, these fellows are a sort of regular kidnappers, who lie in wait to catch up any person of means and substance: they don't meddle with paupers, for, as you are aware, they share their property in common: and it occurred to me rather forcibly, that by means of my friend, who was a regular trapping missionary, I might learn something about my uncle. It cost me an immensity of brandy to elicit the information; but at last I succeeded in bringing out the fact, that my uncle is at this moment the inmate of an Agapedome in the neighbourhood of Southampton, and that the Latchley is his appointed keeper."

"An Agapedome!—what the mischief is that?"

"You may well ask," said Jack; "but I won't give it a coarser name. However, from all I can learn, it is as bad as a Mormonite institution."

"And what the deuce may they intend to do with him, now they have him in their power?"

"Fleece him out of every sixpence of property which he possesses in the world," replied Jack.

"That won't do, Jack! We must get him out by some means or other."

"I suspect it would be an easier job to scale a nunnery. So far as I can learn, they admit no one into their premises, unless they have hopes of catching him as a convert; and I am afraid that neither you nor I have the look of likely pupils. Besides, the Latchley could not fail to recognise me in a moment."

"That's true enough," said I. "I think, however, that I might escape detection by a slight alteration of attire. The lady did not honour me with much notice during the half-hour we spent in her company. I must own, however, that I should not like to go alone."

"My dear friend!" cried Jack, "if you will really be kind enough to oblige me in this matter, I know the very man to accompany you. Rogers of ours is in town just now. He is a famous follow—rather fast, perhaps, and given to larking—but as true as steel. You shall meet him to-day at dinner, and then we can arrange our plans."

I must own that I did not feel very sanguine of success this time. Your genuine rogue is the most suspicious character on the face of the earth, wide awake to a thousand little discrepancies which would escape the observation of the honest; and I felt perfectly convinced that the superintendent of the Agapedome was likely to prove a rogue of the first water. Then I did not see my way clearly to the characters which we ought to assume. Of course it was no use for me to present myself as a[371] scion of the Woods and Forests; I should be treated as a Government spy, and have the door slapped in my face. To appear as an emissary of the Jesuits would be dangerous; that body being well known for their skill in annexing property. In short, I came to the conclusion, that unless I could work upon the cupidity of the head Agapedomian, there was no chance whatever of effecting Mr Pettigrew's release. To this point, therefore, I resolved to turn my attention.

At dinner, according to agreement, I met Rogers of ours. Rogers was not gifted with any powerful inventive faculties; but he was a fine specimen of the British breed, ready to take a hand at anything which offered a prospect of fun. You would not probably have selected him as a leading conspirator; but, though no Macchiavelli, he appeared most valuable as an accomplice.

Our great difficulty was to pitch upon proper characters. After much discussion, it was resolved that Rogers of ours should appear as a young nobleman of immense wealth, but exceedingly eccentric habits, and that I should act as bear-leader, with an eye to my own interest. What we were to do when we should succeed in getting admission to the establishment, was not very clear to the perception of any of us. We resolved to be regulated entirely by circumstances, the great point being the rescue of Mr Peter Pettigrew.

Accordingly, we all started for Southampton on the following morning. On arriving there, we were informed that the Agapedome was situated some three miles from the town, and that the most extraordinary legends of the habits and pursuits of its inmates were current in the neighbourhood. Nobody seemed to know exactly what the Agapedomians were. They seemed to constitute a tolerably large society of persons, both male and female; but whether they were Christians, Turks, Jews, or Mahometans, was matter of exceeding disputation. They were known, however to be rich, and occasionally went out airing in carriages-and-four—the women all wearing pantaloons, to the infinite scandal of the peasantry. So far as we could learn, no gentleman answering to the description of Mr Pettigrew had been seen among them.

After agreeing to open communications with Jack as speedily as possible, and emptying a bottle of champagne towards the success of our expedition, Rogers and I started in a postchaise for the Agapedome. Rogers was curiously arrayed in garments of chequered plaid, a mere glance at which would have gone far to impress any spectator with a strong notion of his eccentricity; whilst, for my part, I had donned a suit of black, and assumed a massive pair of gold spectacles, and a beaver with a portentous rim.

This Agapedome was a large building surrounded by a high wall, and looked, upon the whole, like a convent. Deeming it prudent to ascertain how the land lay before introducing the eccentric Rogers, I requested that gallant individual to remain in the postchaise, whilst I solicited an interview with Mr Aaron B. Hyams, the reputed chief of the establishment. The card I sent in was inscribed with the name of Dr Hiram Smith, which appeared to me a sufficiently innocuous appellation. After some delay, I was admitted through a very strong gateway into the courtyard; and was then conducted by a servant in a handsome livery to a library, where I was received by Mr Hyams.

As the Agapedome has since been broken up, and its members dispersed, it may not be uninteresting to put on record a slight sketch of its founder. Judging from his countenance, the progenitors of Mr Aaron B. Hyams must have been educated in the Jewish persuasion. His nose and lip possessed that graceful curve which is so characteristic of the Hebrew race; and his eye, if not altogether of that kind which the poets designate as "eagle," might not unaptly be compared to that of the turkey-buzzard. In certain circles of society Mr Hyams would have been esteemed a handsome man. In the doorway of a warehouse in Holywell Street he would have committed large havoc on the hearts of the passing Leahs and Dalilahs—for he was a square-built powerful man, with broad shoulders and bandy legs, and displayed on his[372] person as much ostentatious jewellery as though he had been concerned in a new spoiling of the Egyptians. Apparently he was in a cheerful mood; for before him stood a half-emptied decanter of wine, and an odour as of recently extinguished Cubas was agreeably disseminated through the apartment.

"Dr Hiram Smith, I presume?" said he. "Well, Dr Hiram Smith, to what fortunate circumstance am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

"Simply, sir, to this," said I, "that I want to know you, and know about you. Nobody without can tell me precisely what your Agapedome is, so I have come for information to headquarters. I have formed my own conclusion. If I am wrong, there is no harm done; if I am right, we may be able to make a bargain."

"Hallo!" cried Hyams, taken rather aback by this curt style of exordium, "you are a rum customer, I reckon. So you want to deal, do ye? Well then, tell us what sort of doctor you may be? No use standing on ceremony with a chap like you. Is it M.D. or LL.D. or D.D., or a mere walking-stick title?"

"The title," said I, "is conventional; so you may attribute it to any origin you please. In brief, I want to know if I can board a pupil here?"

"That depends entirely upon circumstances," replied Hyams. "Who and what is the subject?"

"A young nobleman of the highest distinction, but of slightly eccentric habits." Here Hyams pricked up his ears. "I am not authorised to tell his name; but otherwise, you shall have the most satisfactory references."

"There is only one kind of reference I care about," interrupted Hyams, imitating at the same time the counting out of imaginary sovereigns into his palm.

"So much the better—there will be trouble saved," said I. "I perceive, Mr Hyams, you are a thorough man of business. In a word, then, my pupil has been going it too fast."

"Flying kites and post-obits?"

"And all the rest of it," said I; "black-legs innumerable, and no end of scrapes in the green-room. Things have come to such a pass that his father, the Duke, insists on his being kept out of the way at present; and, as taking him to Paris would only make matters worse, it occurred to me that I might locate him for a time in some quiet but cheerful establishment, where he could have his reasonable swing, and no questions asked."

"Dr Hiram Smith!" cried Hyams with enthusiasm, "you're a regular trump! I wish all the noblemen in England would look out for tutors like you."

"You are exceedingly complimentary, Mr Hyams. And now that you know my errand, may I ask what the Agapedome is?"

"The Home of Love," replied Hyams; "at least so I was told by the Oxford gent, to whom I gave half-a-guinea for the title."

"And your object?"

"A pleasant retreat—comfortable home—no sort of bother of ceremony—innocent attachments encouraged—and, in the general case, community of goods."

"Of which latter, I presume, Mr Hyams is the sole administrator?"

"Right again, Doctor!" said Hyams with a leer of intelligence; "no use beating about the bush with you, I perceive. A single cashier for the whole concern saves a world of unnecessary trouble. Then, you see, we have our little matrimonial arrangements. A young lady in search of an eligible domicile comes here and deposits her fortune. We provide her by-and-by with a husband of suitable tastes, so that all matters are arranged comfortably. No luxury or enjoyment is denied to the inmates of the establishment, which may be compared, in short, to a perfect aviary, in which you hear nothing from morning to evening save one continuous sound of billing and cooing."

"You draw a fascinating picture, Mr Hyams," said I: "too fascinating, in fact; for, after what you have said, I doubt whether I should be fulfilling my duty to my noble patron the Duke, were I to expose his heir to the influence of such powerful temptations."

"Don't be in the least degree[373] alarmed about that," said Hyams. "I shall take care that in this case there is no chance of marriage. Harkye, Doctor, it is rather against our rules to admit parlour boarders; but I don't mind doing it in this case, if you agree to my terms, which are one hundred and twenty guineas per month."

"On the part of the Duke," said I, "I anticipate no objection; nor shall I refuse your stamped receipts at that rate. But as I happen to be paymaster, I shall certainly not give you in exchange for each of them more than seventy guineas, which will leave you a very pretty profit over and above your expenses."

"What a screw you are, Doctor!" cried Hyams. "Would you have the conscience to pocket fifty for nothing? Come, come—make it eighty and it's a bargain."

"Seventy is my last word. Beard of Mordecai, man! do you think I am going to surrender this pigeon to your hands gratis? Have I not told you already that he has a natural turn for ecarté!"

"Ah, Doctor, Doctor! you must be one of our people—you must indeed!" said Hyams. "Well, is it a bargain?"

"Not yet," said I. "In common decency, and for the sake of appearances, I must stay for a couple of days in the house, in order that I may be able to give a satisfactory report to the Duke. By the way, I hope everything is quite orthodox here—nothing contrary to the tenets of the church?"

"O quite," replied Hyams; "it is a beautiful establishment in point of order. The bell rings every day punctually at four o'clock."

"For prayers?"

"No, sir—for hockey. We find that a little lively exercise gives a cheerful tone to the mind, and promotes those animal spirits which are the peculiar boast of the Agapedome."

"I am quite satisfied," said I. "So now, if you please, I shall introduce my pupil."

I need not dwell minutely upon the particulars of the interview which took place between Rogers of ours and the superintendent of the Agapedome. Indeed there is little to record. Rogers received the intimation that this was to be his residence for a season with the utmost nonchalance, simply remarking that he thought it would be rather slow; and then, by way of keeping up his character, filled himself a bumper of sherry. Mr Hyams regarded him as a spider might do when some unknown but rather powerful insect comes within the precincts of his net.

"Well," said Rogers, "since it seems I am to be quartered here, what sort of fun is to be had? Any racket-court, eh?"

"I am sorry to say, my Lord, ours is not built as yet. But at four o'clock we shall have hockey—"

"Hang hockey! I have no fancy for getting my shins bruised. Any body in the house except myself?"

"If your Lordship would like to visit the ladies—"

"Say no more!" cried Rogers impetuously. "I shall manage to kill time now! 'Hallo, you follow with the shoulder-knot! show me the way to the drawing-room;" and Rogers straightway disappeared.

"Doctor Hiram Smith!" said Hyams, looking rather discomposed, "this is most extraordinary conduct on the part of your pupil."

"Not at all extraordinary, I assure you," I replied; "I told you he was rather eccentric, but at present he is in a peculiarly quiet mood. Wait till you see his animal spirits up!"

"Why, he'll be the ruin of the Agapedome!" cried Hyams; "I cannot possibly permit this."

"It will rather puzzle you to stop it," said I.

Here a faint squall, followed by a sound of suppressed giggling, was heard in the passage without.

"Holy Moses!" cried the Agapedomian, starting up, "if Mrs Hyams should happen to be there!"

"You may rely upon it she will very soon become accustomed to his Lordship's eccentricities. Why, you told me you admitted of no sort of bother or ceremony."

"Yes—but a joke maybe carried too far. As I live, he is pursuing one of the ladies down stairs into the courtyard!"

"Is he?" said I; "then you may[374] be tolerably certain he will overtake her."

"Surely some of the servants will stop him!" cried Hyams, rushing to the window. "Yes—here comes one of them. Father Abraham! is it possible? He has knocked Adoniram down!"

"Nothing more likely," said I; "his Lordship had lessons from Mendoza."

"I must look to this myself," cried Hyams.

"Then I'll follow and see fair play," said I.

We rushed into the court; but by this time it was empty. The pursued and the pursuer—Daphne and Apollo—had taken flight into the garden. Thither we followed them, Hyams red with ire; but no trace was seen of the fugitives. At last in an acacia bower we heard murmurs. Hyams dashed on; I followed; and there, to my unutterable surprise, I beheld Rogers of ours kneeling at the feet of the Latchley!

"Beautiful Lavinia!" he was saying, just as we turned the corner.

"Sister Latchley!" cried Hyams, "what is the meaning of all this?"

"Rather let me ask, brother Hyams," said the Latchley in unabashed serenity, "what means this intrusion, so foreign to the time, and so subversive of the laws of our society?"

"Shall I pound him, Lavinia?" said Rogers, evidently anxious to discharge a slight modicum of the debt which he owed to the Jewish fraternity.

"I command—I beseech you, no! Speak, brother Hyams! I again require of you to state why and wherefore you have chosen to violate the fundamental rules of the Agapedome?"

"Sister Latchley, you will drive me mad! This young man has not been ten minutes in the house, and yet I find him scampering after you like a tom-cat, and knocking down Adoniram because he came in his way, and you are apparently quite pleased!"

"Is the influence of love measured by hours?" asked the Latchley in a tone of deep sentiment. "Count we electricity by time—do we mete out sympathy by the dial? Brother Hyams, were not your intellectual vision obscured by a dull and earthly film, you would know that the passage of the lightning is not more rapid than the flash of kindled love."

"That sounds all very fine," said Hyams, "but I shall allow no such doings here; and you, in particular, Sister Latchley, considering how you are situated, ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

"Aaron, my man," said Rogers of ours, "will you be good enough to explain what you mean by making such insinuations?"

"Stay, my Lord," said I; "I really must interpose. Mr Hyams is about to explain."

"May I never discount bill again," cried the Jew, "if this is not enough to make a man forswear the faith of his fathers! Look you here, Miss Latchley; you are part of the establishment, and I expect you to obey orders."

"I was not aware, sir, until this moment," said Miss Latchley, loftily, "that I was subject to the orders of any one."

"Now, don't be a fool; there's a dear!" said Hyams. "You know well enough what I mean. Haven't you enough on hand with Pettigrew, without encumbering yourself—?" and he stopped short.

"It is a pity, sir," said Miss Latchley, still more magnificently, "it is a vast pity, that since you have the meanness to invent falsehoods, you cannot at the same time command the courage to utter them. Why am I thus insulted? Who is this Pettigrew you speak of?"

"Pettigrew—Pettigrew?" remarked Rogers; "I say, Dr Smith, was not that the name of the man who is gone amissing, and for whose discovery his friends are offering a reward?"

Hyams started as if stung by an adder. "Sister Latchley," he said, "I fear I was in the wrong."

"You have made the discovery rather too late, Mr Hyams," replied the irate Lavinia. "After the insults you have heaped upon me, it is full time we should part. Perhaps these gentlemen will be kind enough to conduct an unprotected female to a temporary home."

"If you will go, you go alone, madam," said Hyams; "his Lordship intends to remain here."

[375]

"His Lordship intends to do nothing of the sort, you rascal," said Rogers. "Hockey don't agree with my constitution."

"Before I depart, Mr Hyams," said Miss Latchley, "let me remark that you are indebted to me in the sum of two thousand pounds as my share of the profits of the establishment. Will you pay it now, or would you prefer to wait till you hear from my solicitor?"

"Anything more?" asked the Agapedomian.

"Merely this," said I: "I am now fully aware that Mr Peter Pettigrew is detained within these walls. Surrender him instantly, or prepare yourself for the worst penalties of the law."

I made a fearful blunder in betraying my secret before I was clear of the premises, and the words had scarcely passed my lips before I was aware of my mistake. With the look of a detected demon Hyams confronted us.

"Ho, ho! this is a conspiracy, is it? But you have reckoned without your host. Ho, there! Jonathan—Asahel! close the doors, ring the great bell, and let no man pass on your lives! And now let's see what stuff you are made of!"

So saying, the ruffian drew a life-preserver from his pocket, and struck furiously at my head before I had time to guard myself. But quick as he was, Rogers of ours was quicker. With his left hand he caught the arm of Hyams as the blow descended, whilst with the right he dealt him a fearful blow on the temple, which made the Hebrew stagger. But Hyams, amongst his other accomplishments, had practised in the ring. He recovered himself almost immediately, and rushed upon Rogers. Several heavy hits were interchanged; and there is no saying how the combat might have terminated, but for the presence of mind of the Latchley. That gifted female, superior to the weakness of her sex, caught up the life-preserver from the ground, and applied it so effectually to the back of Hyams' skull, that he dropped like an ox in the slaughter-house.

Meanwhile the alarum bell was ringing—women were screaming at the windows, from which also several crazy-looking gentlemen were gesticulating; and three or four truculent Israelites were rushing through the courtyard. The whole Agapedome was in an uproar.

"Keep together and fear nothing!" cried Rogers. "I never stir on these kind of expeditions without my pistols. Smith—give your arm to Miss Latchley, who has behaved like the heroine of Saragossa; and now let us see if any of these scoundrels will venture to dispute our way!"

But for the firearms which Rogers carried, I suspect our egress would have been disputed. Jonathan and Asahel, red-headed ruffians both, stood ready with iron bars in their hands to oppose our exit; but a glimpse of the bright glittering barrel caused them to change their purpose. Rogers commanded them, on pain of instant death, to open the door. They obeyed; and we emerged from the Agapedome as joyfully as the Ithacans from the cave of Polyphemus. Fortunately the chaise was still in waiting: we assisted Miss Latchley in, and drove off, as fast as the horses could gallop, to Southampton.

CHAPTER IV.

"Is it possible they can have murdered him?" said Jack.

"That, I think," said I, "is highly improbable. I rather imagine that he has refused to conform to some of the rules of the association, and has been committed to the custody of Messrs Jonathan and Asahel."

"Shall I ask Lavinia?" said Rogers. "I daresay she would tell me all about it."

"Better not," said I, "in the mean time. Poor thing! her nerves must be shaken."

"Not a whit of them," replied Rogers. "I saw no symptom of nerves about her. She was as cool as a cucumber when she floored that infernal Jew; and if she should be a little agitated or so, she is calming herself at this moment with a glass of brandy and water. I mixed it for[376] her. Do you know she's a capital fellow, only 'tis a pity she's so very plain."

"I wish the police would arrive!" said Jack. "We have really not a minute to lose. Poor Uncle Peter! I devoutly trust this may be the last of his freaks."

"I hope so too, Jack, for your sake: it is no joke rummaging him out of such company. But for Rogers there, we should all of us have been as dead as pickled herrings."

"I bear a charmed life," said Rogers. "Remember I belong to 'the Immortals.' But there come the blue-coats in a couple of carriages. 'Gad, Wilkinson, I wish it were our luck to storm the Agapedome with a score of our own fellows!"

During our drive, Rogers enlightened us as to his encounter with the Latchley. It appeared that he had bestowed considerable attention to our conversation in London; and that, when he hurried to the drawing-room in the Agapedome, as already related, he thought he recognised the Latchley at once, in the midst of half-a-dozen more juvenile and blooming sisters.

"Of course, I never read a word of the woman's works," said Rogers, "and I hope I never shall; but I know that female vanity will stand any amount of butter. So I bolted into the room, without caring for the rest—though, by the way, there was one little girl with fair hair and blue eyes, who, I hope, has not left the Agapedome—threw myself at the feet of Lavinia; declared that I was a young nobleman, enamoured of her writings, who was resolved to force my way through iron bars to gain a glimpse of the bright original: and, upon the whole, I think you must allow that I managed matters rather successfully."

There could be but one opinion as to that. In fact, without Rogers, the whole scheme must have miscarried. It was Kellermann's charge, unexpected and unauthorised—but altogether triumphant.

On arriving at the Agapedome we found the door open, and three or four peasants loitering round the gateway.

"Are they here still?" cried Jack, springing from the chaise.

"Noa, measter," replied one of the bystanders; "they be gone an hour past in four carrutches, wi' all their goods and chuckles."

"Did they carry any one with them by force?"

"Noa, not by force, as I seed; but there wore one chap among them woundily raddled on the sconce."

"Hyams to wit, I suppose. Come, gentlemen; as we have a search-warrant, let us in and examine the premises thoroughly."

Short as was the interval which had elapsed between our exit and return, Messrs Jonathan, Asahel, and Co. had availed themselves of it to the utmost. Every portable article of any value had been removed. Drawers were open, and papers scattered over the floors, along with a good many pairs of bloomers rather the worse for the wear: in short, every thing seemed to indicate that the nest was finally abandoned. What curious discoveries we made during the course of our researches, as to the social habits and domestic economy of this happy family, I shall not venture to recount; we came there not to gratify either private or public curiosity, but to perform a sacred duty by emancipating Mr Peter Pettigrew.

Neither in the cellars nor the closets, nor even in the garrets, could we find any trace of the lost one. The contents of one bedroom, indeed, showed that it had been formerly tenanted by Mr Pettigrew, for there were his portmanteaus with his name engraved upon them; his razors, and his wearing apparel, all seemingly untouched: but there were no marks of any recent occupancy; the dust was gathering on the table, and the ewer perfectly dry. It was the opinion of the detective officer that at least ten days had elapsed since any one had slept in the room. Jack became greatly alarmed.

"I suppose," said he, "there is nothing for it but to proceed immediately in pursuit of Hyams: do you think you will be able to apprehend him?"

"I doubt it very much, sir," replied the detective officer. "These sort of fellows are wide awake, and are always prepared for accidents. I expect that, by this time, he is on his[377] way to France. But hush!—what was that?"

A dull sound as of the clapper of a large bell boomed overhead. There was silence for about a minute, and again it was repeated.

"Here is a clue, at all events!" cried the officer. "My life on it, there is some one in the belfry."

We hastened up the narrow stairs which led to the tower. Half way up, the passage was barred by a stout door, double locked, which the officers had some difficulty in forcing with the aid of a crow-bar. This obstacle removed, we reached the lofty room where the bell was suspended; and there, right under the clapper, on a miserable truckle bed, lay the emaciated form of Mr Pettigrew.

"My poor uncle!" said Jack, stooping tenderly to embrace his relative, "what can have brought you here?"

"Speak louder, Jack!" said Mr Pettigrew; "I can't hear you. For twelve long days that infernal bell has been tolling just above my head for hockey and other villanous purposes. I am as deaf as a doornail!"

"And so thin, dear uncle! You must have been most shamefully abused."

"Simply starved; that's all."

"What! starved? The monsters! Did they give you nothing to eat?"

"Yes—broccoli. I wish you would try it for a week: it is a rare thing to bring out the bones."

"And why did they commit this outrage upon you?"

"For two especial reasons, I suppose—first, because I would not surrender my whole property; and, secondly, because I would not marry Miss Latchley."

"My dear uncle! when I saw you last, it appeared to me that you would have had no objections to perform the latter ceremony."

"Not on compulsion, Jack—not on compulsion!" said Mr Pettigrew, with a touch of his old humour. "I won't deny that I was humbugged by her at first, but this was over long ago."

"Indeed! Pray, may I venture to ask what changed your opinion of the lady?"

"Her works, Jack—her own works!" replied Uncle Peter. "She gave me them to read as soon as I was fairly trapped into the Agapedome, and such an awful collection of impiety and presumption I never saw before. She is ten thousand times worse than the deceased Thomas Paine."

"Was she, then, party to your incarceration?"

"I won't say that. I hardly think she would have consented to let them harm me, or that she knew exactly how I was used; but that fellow Hyams is wicked enough to have been an officer under King Herod. Now, pray help me up, and lift me down stairs, for my legs are so cramped that I can't walk, and my head is as dizzy as a wheel. That confounded broccoli, too, has disagreed with my constitution, and I shall feel particularly obliged to any one who can assist me to a drop of brandy."

After having ministered to the immediate wants of Mr Pettigrew, and secured his effects, we returned to Southampton, leaving the deserted Agapedome in the charge of a couple of police. In spite of every entreaty Mr Pettigrew would not hear of entering a prosecution against Hyams.

"I feel," said he, "that I have made a thorough ass of myself; and I should not be able to stand the ridicule that must follow a disclosure of the consequences. In fact, I begin to think that I am not fit to look after my own affairs. The man who has spent twelve days, as I have, under the clapper of a bell, without any other sustenance than broccoli—is there any more brandy in the flask? I should like the merest drop—the man, I say, who has undergone these trials, has ample time for meditation upon the past. I see my weakness, and I acknowledge it. So Jack, my dear boy, as you have always behaved to me more like a son than a nephew, I intend, immediately on my return to London, to settle my whole property upon you, merely reserving an annuity. Don't say a word on the subject. My mind is made up, and nothing can alter my resolution."

On arriving at Southampton we considered it our duty to communicate immediately with Miss Latchley, for the purpose of ascertaining if we could render her any temporary assistance.[378] Perhaps it was more than she deserved; but we could not forget her sex, though she had done everything in her power to disguise it; and, besides, the lucky blow with the life-preserver, which she administered to Hyams, was a service for which we could not be otherwise than grateful. Jack Wilkinson was selected as the medium of communication. He found the strong Lavinia alone, and perfectly composed.

"I wish never more," said she, "to hear the name of Pettigrew. It is associated in my mind with weakness, fanaticism, and vacillation; and I shall ever feel humbled at the reflection that I bowed my woman's pride to gaze on the surface of so shallow and opaque a pool! And yet, why regret? The image of the sun is reflected equally from the Bœotian marsh and the mirror of the clear Ontario! Tell your uncle," continued she, after a pause, "that as he is nothing to me, so I wish to be nothing to him. Let us mutually extinguish memory. Ha, ha, ha!—so they fed him, you say, upon broccoli?

"But I have one message to give, though not to him. The youth who, in the nobility of his soul, declared his passion for my intellect—where is he? I tarry beneath this roof but for him. Do my message fairly, and say to him that if he seeks a communion of soul—no! that is the common phrase of the slaves of antiquated superstition—if he yearns for a grand amalgamation of essential passion and power, let him hasten hither, and Lavinia Latchley is ready to accompany him to the prairie or the forest, to the torrid zone, or to the confines of the arctic seas!"

"I shall deliver your message, ma'am," said Jack, "as accurately as my abilities will allow." And he did so.

Rogers of ours writhed uneasily in his seat.

"I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellows," said he, "I don't look upon this quite as a laughing matter. I am really sorry to have taken in the old woman, though I don't see how we could well have helped it; and I would far rather, Jack, that she had fixed her affections upon you than on me. I shall get infernally roasted at the mess if this story should transpire. However, I suppose there's only one answer to be given. Pray, present my most humble respects, and say how exceedingly distressed I feel that my professional engagements will not permit me to accompany her in her proposed expedition."

Jack reported the answer in due form.

"Then," said Lavinia, drawing herself up to her full height, and shrouding her visage in a black veil, "tell him that for his sake I am resolved to die a virgin!"

I presume she will keep her word; at least I have not yet heard that any one has been courageous enough to request her to change her situation. She has since returned to America, and is now, I believe, the president of a female college, the students of which may be distinguished from the rest of their sex, by their uniform adoption of bloomers.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.