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^H 

1 

1 

ALPHEUSRLCyiSTOfiOLLIBemi 

BEQUEATHED                                             '. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN         ' 

HON.     ALPHEUS     FBL.CH. 

1 

^1 

i 


THE 


ECLECTIC  MAGAZINE 


ov 


FOREIGN  LITERATURE,  SCIENCE,  AND  ART. 


SEPTEMBER  TO  DECEMBER,  1853. 


W.  H.  BIDWELL,  EDITORAND  PROPRIETOR. 


NEW-YORK: 

PUBLISHED  AT-120  NASSAU  STREET. 

1868. 


•« 


1 1 

I 


EDWABD  O.   JENKINS,   PRINTER| 

114  Naasaa  Street. 


INDEX. 


EBCBELLIBHMEinB. 

1.  Oaulio  nr  pBisoir,  engraved  by  Sartainu 

2.  Portrait  of  Hsnst  Hallax,  author  of  the  Hittoiy 

of  the  Middle  Agei^  eDgraved  by  Sartain. 

8.  Portrait  of  Cbasubs  EnfosLsr,  author  of  Alton 
Locke,  ioCf  engrayed  by  Sartain. 

4k  Portrait  of  Wiluam  Makxpbaoi  Thackxrat,  en- 
grayed  by  Sartain. 


A. 


Ampere   in   PhiladelpU .:- -iZdviM  du  Deux 

Mondes,  .        .                ....  52 

Anatoeracy  of  Pnuria^ 90 

Do.        in  Washington,  ....  239 

Azago  and  Angnate  St.Hilaire — Athetumimf  666 

B. 

Balzae  and  his  Writingi — Wettmintter  JU- 

vieWf 20 

Boearm^  Tragedy,  The-'^SharpeU  MagaHne^  88 

Biot  and  Laplaee, 106 

Barke,  Edmund — HoggU  Irutruetar,      •        .  201 
Byron,  an  Event  in  the  Life  ot—Colbum*»  J^ew 

Monthly, 410 


a 


Charlea  L,  Danghtera  of, 
Chloroform — BeniUt^B  Miieellany, 
Court  of  PnuBia,    .... 
Commou^  Houee  of,  from  the  Stranger' 

Ury—TaitU  MoffaHne,   . 
Cotmtea  Hahn-hahn,     . 
Cnrtia,    George    William*— a»/6iim*« 

MofUhiy,  .... 
Clarion,  MlleL — FroMi'e  Magazine, 
Camille  DeemouUnfl — Chttmbeti^    Edinburgh 

Journal^ 


Gal- 


Nme 


71 
84 
90 

282 
265 

844 
872 

662 


E. 


Education,  Popular,  In  United  States— J^iiV 
burgh  JtevieWf 

Evening,  An,  with  Jaemin, 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  and  the  Earl  of  Eesez — 
Edinburgh  Review,      .... 

Early  ChriBtiaa  Literature  in  Syria,  . 

P. 

Fl^chier,  the  French  Pulpit  Orator— j^ee^te 
Review, 


G. 


Gillray's  Garicaturea— i2e<ro«p€ehv0  Review, 
Gossip  about  Laureate^     ,       ,       ,       , 

H. 

Hindoos  and  Mussulman^ 

Hahn-Halm,  Countess  of— i>u6/in  Univernty 

Magaxine, 

History  of  a  Contributor,  .        .        . 
Hypatia — BrUieh  Quarterly  Review, 
Haydon,  B.  R. — Biographical  Magaxine,   . 
Holy  Places,  The — Quarterly  Review, 
House  of  Brunswick  in  Germany  and  Eng^ 

land, — Eraeer'e  Magagine,  .        • 


I,  J,  K. 


D. 


Daughters  of  Charles  L — OentlemanU  Magah 

£tne,        .......  If 

Dope's  Dilemma,  The-^Blackwood'e  Maganne,  897 

Dauphin,  The, 488 

Dr.  Abemethj — Elvta  Coolie  Jou/med, .        .  567 
Duchess  of  l^wcastle  and  her  Works— JSeiro- 

ipective  Review, 528 


109 
272 

2S9 
808 


548 


129 
888 


219 

266 
276 
816 

882 
494 

518 


Iniquity,  Cost  ot^Chamben^  Journal,  127 

India  and  ito  People— Tat^'x  Magaxwe,  .  219 
Jasmin,  An  Evening  with— CAafii6«f«V<mma/,  272 
Kingsley,  Estimate  o(  .  816 

Knox,  John —  Weetmineter  Review,    .  I 


Life  of  John  Knoz, 1 

Laplace  and  Biot — SbagU  Inetructor,  106 

Lady  Novelists — OentlemanU  Magaxine,    .  134 

Laureates,  Gossip  tibou^Bentlej^e  Mtecellany,  888 

Life  of  Haydon, 882 

JjovMXVU.'-Quarterly  Review,       .        .  488 

Landor,  Walter  Savage— iTo^^s  Initruetor,  468 

Literary  Miscellanies,         .                141,  286,  429 

M. 

Melville^  Herman— ObZ6t«rft's  Ifew  Monthly,  46 


INDEX. 


Moore,  Thotxuu,  Memoin  ot^Quarterly  lUview,  145 
Maris  Thereaa  and  her  Son — Edinburgh  Revimo,  1 86 
Modem  British  Oratory    .  .  201 

Macgilliyraj,  the  Natundut— ^tm  CooV$  Jawr- 

nal, 218 

Marie  Antoinette — Eliza  Oool^a  Jaumal,  ,  2b0 
Milton,  life  and  Poetryof— JTo^^f /fu^m^or,  864 
Moore's  Opinions  of  hiE  Contemporaries — New 

Quarterly  Beview,  .  .  .  .  412 
Moore  and  Russell, — Hog^t  InHruetor^  .  481 
Moaurt,  W.  A.Sliza  CoohU  Journal,  488 

MisooaLANxocs. — Children  of  Great  Poets, 
87;  Remarkable  Trial  in  Greeoe,  46;  The 
Greek  a  living  Langaage,76;  French  Litera- 
tore,  120;  Mr.  Gladstone,  186;  Tomb  of  Pope's 
Nurse,  218;  De  Qoincej,  264;  Milton's  Rib- 
bone,  284;  An  Awkward  Stage,  848;  The 
Lottery,  480. 

N. 

N^ovelistSk  Lady, 184 

Kash,  Satires  of  .....        224 

Neo-Platonism — British  Quarterly  Heview,  316 
Napier,  CharleBJame^'^JBiographiceU  Magazine,  469 

0. 

Ooenpied  Proyinoes^  The— Sharpie  Magaxine,  860 
Original  Anecdotes--^en//«yf  MUeellany,  •  424 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes — New  Monthly  Mag- 

oxine, 682 

P. 

Philadelphia,  by  Ampj^re^            ...      62 
Preacher^s  Daughter,  The— i^Tao  Monthly  Mag- 
aune, 68 


Prassian  Court  and  Aristooraoy — Fra9er'$ 
Magazine, 90 

Popular  Education  in  the  United  States      .    109 

Political  Satires  under  Greorge  IIL — Jtetroepee- 
iive  Review, 181 

Partner,  The-^Ohamben^  Journal,  .    611 


Russell,  Lord  John,  and  Moore — Hogget  Inr 
9truetar, 481 

& 

Satire^  Political,  under  George  in,  .   .        •    121 
Satires  and  Declamations  of  lliomas  Nash, — 

Retronpeetive  Review^  ....  224 
Self-oonyicted,  The— Co/6«rfi*f  New  Monthly,  264 
Syria,  Early  Christian  Literature  ot— North 

BrUieh  Review, 808 

State  Trials  and  John  Home  Tooke,     .        .    866 

T. 

Tragedy  of  Bocarm^, 28 

Trappista,  Traits  of  the — Oentleman*»  Mag- 
azine,       100 

Talfourd,  Sir  Thomas  Noon—New  Monthly 
Magtuine, 811 

Took,  John  H^me,  and  State  Trials— 2rat<'« 

Magazine, *     866 

Thackeray's  Lectures  on  the  English  Humor- 
ists—(7o/Mim'«  i^T^w  JTon^A/y,  •    687 

XT.  V,  W. 

Writings  of  Bslcac^ 29 

tTnited  States^  Popular  Education  in,     .        .    109 
Wainwright^  the  Murderer — Froneie'  Annual,  126 
Wife  of  the  Great  Condi^Ohatnberz*  IStUn- 
burgh  Journal, 668 


ECLECTIC  MAGAZINE 


FOREIGN  LITERATURE,  SCIEiJCE,  AND  ART. 


SEPTEMBER,   1858. 


JOHN  KNOX.* 


The  Scotch  Rerarmalion  in  tbe  aliteenth  [ 
ceotury  is  remarkable  for  an  almost  complete 
absence  of  ihe  dubious  and  quesliunable 
features  by  which  violeot  revolulioiu  are  bo 
often  disfigured.  Less  happy  thso  the  Eng- 
lish, tbe  Protestants  of  Scotland  had  no 
altemalive  between  an  armed  resistance  to 
the  Government,  and  tbe  destruction  of  them- 
•eWea  sod  tbeir  religion ;  and  no  body  of 
people  who  have  been  driven  to  such  resist- 
ance, were  ever  more  temperate  in  the  con- 
duct of  it,  or  more  moderate  in  their  use  of 
victorf.  Tbe  problem  which  they  had  to 
•oWe  was  h  simple  one :  it  was  to  deliver 
themselves  of  a  systeia  which,  when  judged 
hj  the  fruits  of  it,  was  evil  throughout,  and 
withwhicb  no  good  man  was  found  any  more 
to  sympathize. 

Elsewhere  ta  Europe  there  was  some  life 
left  in  Cathdicism ;  it  was  a  real  faith,  by 
irhicli  sincere  and  earnest  men  were  able  to 
direct  themselves,  and  whose  consciences  it 
was  painful  or  perilous  to  wound  by  over- 
aweeping   measures.     In  Scotland,  it  was 


VOL.  zxz.  ^a  L 


dead  to  the  root,  a  mass  of  falsehood  and 
corruption;  and,  having  been  endured  to  the 
last  extremity,  the  one  thing  to  be  done  with 
it,  when  endurance  was  no  longer  possible, 
was  to  take  it  utterly  away. 

So  great  a  work  was  never  executed  with 
slighter  loss  of  human  life,  or  smaller  injury 
to  a  country.  It  was  achieved  by  the  will 
of  one  man,  who  was  the  represents tive  of 
whatever  was  best  and  noblest  in  the  people 
to  whom  he  belonged  ;  and  as  in  itself  it  was 
simple  and  straightforward,  so  of  all  great 
men  in  history  there  is  not  one  whose  charac- 
ter is  more  simple  and  intelligible  than  that 
of  John  Knoi.  A  plain  but  maasive  under- 
standing, a  courage  which  nothing  could 
shake,  a  warm,  honest  heart,  and  an  intense 
hatred  and  scorn  of  sin  ;  these  are  the  qnali- 
ties  which  appear  in  bim ;  these,  and  only 
these.  There  may  have  been  others,  but 
the  occasion  did  not  require  them,  they  were 
not  called  into  play.  The  evil  which  was  to 
he  overcome  had  no  strong  intellectual  de- 
fences ;  it  was  a  tyrannical  falsehood,  upheld 
by  force  ;  and  force  of  character,  ratlier  than 
breadth  or  subtlety  of  thought,  was  needed 
to  cope  wiib  it. 


JOHN  KNOX. 


[Sept, 


The  struggle,  therefore,  was  an  illustration, 
on  a  large  scule,  of  the  ordinary  difficulties 
of  common  men ;  and  we  might  have  expected, 
in  consequence,  to  have  found  Knox  better 
understood,  and  better  appreciated,  than  al- 
most any  man  who  has  played  so  large  a 
part  in  history.   There  are  no  moral  blemishes 
which  we  have  to  forgive,  no  difficulties  of 
position  to  allow  for.     His  conduct  through- 
out was  single,  consistent,  and  direct;  his 
character  transparent  to  the  most  ordinary 
eye ;  and  it  is  a  curious  satire  upon  modem 
historians,  that  ill  as  great  men  usually  fare 
in  their  hands,  Knox  Has  fared  the  worst  of 
all.     A  disturber  of  the  peace,  a  bigot,  a 
fanatic — these  are   the  names  which   have 
been  heaped  upon  him,  with  what  ludicrous 
impropriety  some  one  man  in  a  million  who 
had  looked   into  the   subject  was   perhaps 
aware,  but  the  voices  of  these  units,  until 
very  recent  times,  had  little  chance  of  being 
heard  in  remonstrance.     The  million,  divided 
into  Whig  and   Tory,  could  not  a6ford  to 
recognize  the  merit  of  a  man  who  had  out- 
raged both  traditions.     The  Tories  hated  him 
because  he  was  disobedient  to  constituted 
authorities:  the  Whigs  hated  him  because 
he  was  their  bete  noire,  an  intolerant  Protest- 
ant ;  and  the  historians,  ambitious  of  popu- 
larity, have  been  contented  to  be  the  expo- 
nents of  popular  opinion.     There  are  symp- 
toms, however,   at   the   present  time,  of  a 
general  change  for  the  better  in  such  matters. 
In  the  collapse  of  the  old  political  parties, 
and  the  increasing  childishness  of  the  eccle- 
siastical, the  prejudices  of  the  two  last  cen- 
turies are  melting  out  from  us,  and  we  are 
falling  everywhere  back  upon  our  common 
sense.     The   last  fifty  years  have  not  past 
over  our  heads  without  leaving  a  lesson  be- 
hind them  ;  and  we,  too,  in  our  way,  are 
throwing  oflF  **  the   bondage  of   tradition,'' 
for  better  ascertained  truths  of  fact.     In  con- 
trast with   the   tradition,   Mr.   Carlyle   has 
placed  Knox  by  th^  side  of  Luther  as  the 
Hero  Priest;  and,  more  recently,  (which  is 
also  no  inconsiderable  indication  of  the  state 
of  public  feeling,)  a  cheap  edition  of  Dr. 
M'Critt's   excellent   life    of   him   has    been 
brought  out  by  Mr.  Bohn,*  in  the  belief  that 
there  is  now  sufficient  interest  in  the  subject 
to  justify  the  risk.    Let  us  hope  that  these 
are  real  signs  of  the  growth  of  a  more  whole- 
some temper,  and  that  before  any  very  long 
time  has  elapsed,  some  judgment  will  have 


*  Why  does  not  Mr.  Bohn  republiBh  Kqox*8  own 
"History  of  the  Reformation'*  for  us  in  the  same 
farm? 


I  been  arrived  at,  which  will  better  bear  the 
test  of  time  than  that  which  has  hitherto 
passed  current.  As  far  as  it  goes,  M'Crie's 
book  is  thoroughly  good ;  it  is  manly,  earnest, 
and  upright ;  and,  in  the  theological  aspect 
of  the  subject,  it  Jeaves  nothing  to  be  desired, 
except,  indeed,  a  little  less  polemical  asperi- 
ty. But  a  history  written  from  a  theologi- 
cal point  of  view,  if  not  incorrect,  is  neces- 
sarily inadequate ;  and,  although  the  sound- 
ness of  Dr.  M*Crie*s  understanding  has  gone 
far  to  remedy  the  unavoidable  deficiency, 
yet  the  account  of  John  Knox  which  shall 
tell  us  fully  and  completely  what  be  was, 
and  what  place  he  fills  in  history,  remains  to 
be  written. 

He  was  bom  at  Haddington,  in  the  year 
1505.     His  family,  though  not  noble,  were 
solid  substantial  landowners,  who,  for  several 
generations,  had  held  estates  in  Renfrewshire, 
perhaps  under  the  E'trls  of  Both  well,  whose 
banner  they  followed  in  the  field.     Their  his- 
tory, like  that  of  other  families  of  the  time, 
is  obscure  and  not  important ;  and  of  the  fa- 
ther of  John,  nothing  is  known,  except  that 
he  fought  under  the  predecessor  of  the  fa- 
mous Lord  Both  well,  probably  at  Flodden, 
and  other  of  those  confused  battles,  which  an- 
swered one  high  purpose  in  hardening  and 
steeling  the  Scotch  character,  but  in  all  other 
senses  were  useless  indeed.     But  it  is  only  by 
accident  that  we  know  so  much  as  this  ;  and 
even  of  the  first  eight  and  thirty  years  of  the 
life  of  his  son,  which  be  spent  as  a  quiet,  peace- 
able private  person,  we  are  left  to  gather  up 
what  stray  hints  the  after  recollections  of  his 
friends  could   supply,  and    whic^,    indeed, 
amount  to  almost  nothing.     We  find  that  he 
was  at  school  at  Haddington  ;  that  he  after- 
wards went  to  the  University  of  Glasgow, 
where,  being  a  boy  of  a  weak  constitution,  and 
probably  hi»  own  wi>hes  inclining  in  the  same 
direction,  it  was  determined  to  bring  him  up 
to  be  a  priest.     He  distinguished  himself  in 
the  ordinary  way  ;  becoming,  among  other 
things,  an  accomplished  logic  lecturer  ;  and, 
at  the  right  age,  like  most  of  the  other  Re- 
formers, he  was  duly  ordained.     But  what 
further  befell  him  in  this  capacity  is  alto- 
gether unknown,  and  his  inward  history  must 
be  conjectured  from  what  he  was  wiien  at 
last  he  was  called  out  into  the  world.     He 
must  have  spent  many  years  in  study :  for, 
besides  his  remarkable  knowledge  of  the  Bi- 
ble, he  khew  Greek,  Latin,  and  French  well ; 
we  find  in  his  writings  a  very  sufficient  ac- 
quaintance with  history.  Pagan  and  Christian : 
be  bad  read  Aristotle  and  Plato,  as  well  as 
many  of  the  Fathers ;  in  fact,  whatever  know- 


1863.] 


JOHN  KNOX. 


ledge  was  to  be  obtaiDed  oat  of  books  con- 
cerning men  and  baman  things,  he  had  not 
failed  to  gather  together.  But  his  chief  know- 
ledge, and  that  which  made  him  what  he  was, 
was  the  knowledge  not  of  books,  but  of  the 
world  in  which  he  lived,  and  the  condition  of 
which  must  have  gradually  unfolded  itself  to 
him  as  he  grew  to  manhood. 

The  national  traditions  of  Scotland,  which 
for  some  centuries  held  it  together  in  some 
sort  of  coherence,  in  spite  of  the  general  tur- 
bulence, were  broken  at  the  battle  of  Flodden ; 
the  organic  life  of  it  as  a  separate  indepen- 
dent nation  died  there ;  and  the  anarchy  which 
foHowed,  daring  the  long  minority  of  James 
y.,  resulted  in  the  general  moral  disintegra- 
tion of  the  entire  people.  The  animosity 
against  England  threw  them  into  a  closer  and 
closer  alliance  with  France,  one  consequence 
of  which  was,  that  most  of  the  noblemen  and 
gentlemen,  after  a  semi-barbarous  boyhood 
in  their  fathers'  castles,  spent  a  few  years  in 
Paris  to  complete  their  education,  and  the 
pseudo  cultivation  of  the  most  profligate  court 
in  the  world,  laid  on  like  varnish  over  so  un- 
couth a  preparation,  produced,  as  might  have 
been  anticipated,  as  undesirable  specimens  of 
human  nature  as  could  easily  be  met  with. 

The  high  ecclesiastics,  the-bishops  and  arch- 
bbhops,  being,  in  almost  all  cases,  the  young- 
er sons,  or  else  the  illegitimate  sons,  of  the 
great  nobles,  were  brought  up  in  the  same 
way,  and  presented  the  same  features  of 
character,  except  that  a  certain  smoothness 
and  cunning  were  added  to  the  compound, 
which  overlaid  the  fierce  sensuality  below  the 
surface.     Profligate  they  were  to  a  man  ;  liv- 
ing themselves  like  feudal  chiefs,  their  mis- 
tresses were  either  scattered  at  the  houses  of 
their   retainers,  or  openly  maintained    with 
themselves  ;  and  so  little  shame  was  attached 
to  suchalife,  that  they  brought  up  their  chil- 
dren, acknowledging  them  as  their  own,  and 
commonly  had  them  declared  legitimate  by 
act  of  parliament.    So  high  an  example  was 
naturally  not  unfollowed  by  the  inferior  cler- 
gy.    Concubinage  was  all  but  universal  among 
them,  and,  by  general  custom,  the  son  of  the 
parish  priest  succeeded  to  his  father's  bene- 
fice.    Enormously  wealthy,  for  half  the  land 
of  Scotland,  in  one  way  or  another,  belonged 
to  them,  of  duty  as  attaching  to  their  posi- 
tion they  appear  to  have  had  no  idea  what- 
soever ;  further  than  that  the  Masses,  for  the 
sins  of  themselves  and  the  lay  lords,  were 
carefully  said  and  paid  for.     Teaching  or 
preaching  there  was  none ;  and  the  more  ar- 
duous obligations  of  repentance  and  practi- 
cal amendment  of  life  were  dispensed  with  by 


the  convenient  distribution  of  pardons  and 
absolutions. 

.  For  the  poor,  besides  these  letters  of  par- 
don, the  bishops  it  appears  provided  letters 
of  cursing,  which  might  or  might  not  be  of 
material  benefit  to  them.  "  Father,"  said  a 
village  farmer  to  Friar  Airth,  one  of  the  ear- 
liest reforming  preachers,  *'  can  you  resolve  a 
doubt  which  has  risen  am  ong  us :  What  ser- 
vant will  serve  a  man  best  on  least  expense  V* 
— "  The  good  angel,"  answered  the  friar, 
"  who  makes  great  service  without  expense." 
— "  Tush,"  said  the  •  gossip,*'  we  mean  no 
such  great  matters.  What  honest  man  will 
do  greatest  service  for  least  expense  ?"  and 
while  the  friar  was  musing,  "  I  see,  father," 
he  said,"  the  greatest  clerks  are  not  the  wi- 
sest men.  Know  ye  not  how  the  bishops 
serve  us  husbandmen  ?  will  they  not  give  us 
a  letter  of  cursing  for  a  plack,  to  curse  all 
that  look  over  our  dyke?  and  that  keeps  our 
com  better  nor  the  sleepin'  boy  that  will 
have  three  shillin'  of  fee,  a  sark,  and  a  pair 
of  shoon  in  the  year  ?" 

Such  were  the  duties  of  ministers  of  reli- 
gion in  Scotland  in  the  first  half  of  the  six- 
teenth century;  and  such  was  the  spiritual 
atmosphere  into  which  Knox,>  by  his  ordina- 
tion, was  introduced.  If  ever  system  could 
be  called  the  mother  of  ungodliness,  this  de« 
served  the  title.  What  poor  innocent  peo- 
ple there  may  have  been  in  the  distant  High- 
land  glens,  who  still,  under  the  old  forms, 
really  believed  in  a  just  and  holy  God,  only 
He  knows ;  none  such  appear  upon  the  sur- 
face of  history ;  nothing  but  evil — evil  pure 
and  unadulterated.  Nowhere  in  Europe  was 
the  Catholic  Church  as  it  was  in  Scotland. 
Lying  off  remote  from  all  eyes,  the  abuses 
which  elsewhere  were  incipient,  were  there 
full  blown,  with  all  their  poison  fruits  ripen- 
ed upon  them.  "  The  Church,  the  Church," 
said  Dean  Annan  to  Knox, "  ye  leave  us  no 
Church." — "  Yes,"  answered  he,  "  I  have 
read  in  David  pf  the  church  of  the  malig- 
nants.  Odi  eccUsiam  fnalignaniium;  if  this 
church  ye  will  be,  I  cannot  hinder  you." 

But  as  long  as  it  continued,  it  answered  too 
well  the  purposes  of  those  who  profited  by 
it,  to  permit  them  to  let  it  be  assailed  with 
impunity;  and  when  we  say,  "  profited  by 
it,  we  do  not  mean  in  the  gross  and  worldly 
sense  of  profit,  but  we  speak  rather  of  the 
inward  comfort  and  satisfaction  of  mind 
which  they  derived  from  it.  It  is  a  mistake 
to  suppose  that  such  a  religion  was  a  piece 
of  conscious  hypocrisy.  These  priests  and 
bishops,  we  have  no  doubt,  did  really  believe 
that  there  were  such  places  as  Heaven  and 


JOHfiT  KKOX 


Hell,  and  their  religion  was  the  more  dear  to 
them  in  proportion  to  their  sinfulness,  be- 
cause it  promised  them  a  sure  and  easy  es- 
cape from  the  penalties  of  it.  By  a  singu- 
lar process  of  thought,  which  is  not  uncom- 
mon among  ourselves,  they  imagined  the 
▼alue  of  the  Mass^to  be  dependent  on  the 
world's  belief  in  it ;  and  the  Reformers  who 
called  it  an  idol,  were  not  so  much  supposed 
to  be  denying  an  eternal  truth,  as  to  be  spoil- 
ing the  virtue  of  a  convenient  talisman.  No 
wonder,  therefore,  that  they  were  angry  with 
them;  no  wonder  that  they  thougiit  any 
means  justifiable  to  trample  out  such  perni- 
cious enemies  of  their  peace.  For  a  time, 
the  Protestant  preachers  only  made  way 
among  the  common  people,  and  escaped  no- 
tice by  their  obscurity.  As  the  profligacy  of 
the  higher  clergy  increased,  however,  they 
attracted  more  influential  listeners;  and  at 
last,  when  one  of  the  Hamiltons  came  back 
from  Germany,  where  he  had  seen  Luther, 
and  began  himself  to  preach,  the  matter  grew 
serious.  The  Archbishop  of  Glasgow  deter- 
mined to  strike  a  decisive  blow,  and,  arrest- 
ing this  young  nobleman,  he  burnt  him  in  the 
Glasgow  market-place,  on  the  last  of  Febru- 
ary, 1527.  He^had  hoped  that  one  example 
would  be  sufficient,  but  the  event  little  an- 
swered his  expectations.  ^  The  reek  of  Mr. 
Patrick  Hamilton,"  as  some  one  said  to  him, 
**  infected  as  many  as  it  did  blow  upon,"  and 
it  soon  became  necessary  to  establish  a  regu- 
lar tribunal  of  heresy.  Of  the  scenes  which 
took  place  at  the  trials,  the  following  is  not, 
perhaps,  an  average  specimen,  but  that  such 
a  thing  could  have  occurred  at  all,  furnishes 
matter  for  many  curious  reflections. 

A  certain  Alexander  Ferrier,  who  had  been 
taken  prisoner  in  a  skirmish  and  had  been 
kept  seven  years  in  England,  found  on  his 
return  that  *'  the  priest  had  entertained  his 
wife,  and  consumed  his  substance  the  while." 
Being  over  loud  in  his  outcries,  he  was  accu- 
sed of  being  a  heretic,  and  ^wus  summoned 
before  the  bishops :  when,  instead  of  pleading 
to  the  charges  against  himself,  he  repeated 
bis  own  charges  against  the  priest: — 

^  *  And  for  God's  cause,'  he  adJed,  *  will  ye  take 
wives  of  your  own,  that  1  and  others,  whose  wives 
ye  have  abused,  may  be  ravenged  upon  you.' 
Then  Bishop  Gavin  l>nnbar,  thinking  to  justify 
himself  before  the  people,  said,  *  Carle,  thou  shalt 
not  know  my  wife.'  The  said  Alexander  an- 
swered, *  My  lord,  ye  are  too  old,  but  with  the 
grace  of  God,  I  shall  drink  with  your  daughter  be- 
K>re  I  depart.'  And  thereat  was  smiling  of  the 
best,  and  loud  laughing  of  some :  for  the  bishop 
had  a  daughter,  marriM  with  Andrew  Balfour  in  I 
the  same  town.   Then,  after  divers  purposes,  they  I 


[Sept, 

commanded  him  to  burn  his  bill,  and  he  demand- 
ing the  cause,  said,  *  Because  ye  have  spoken  the 
articles  whereof  ye  are  accused.'  His  answer 
was,  *  The  muckle  devil  bear  themaway  that  first 
and  last  spake  them ;'  and  so  he  took  tne  bill  and 
chewing  it,  he  suit  it  in  Mr.  Andrew  Oliphant  's 
face,  saying, « Now  burn  it  or  drown  it,  whether 
ve  will,  ye  shall  hear  no  more  of  me.  But  I  mnst 
have  somewhat  of  every  one  of  you  to  beginmy 
pack  again,  which  a  priest  and  a  priest's  whore 
have  spent,'  and  so  every  prelate  and  rich  priest, 
glad  to  be  rid  of  his  evil  tongue,  gave  him  some- 
what, and  so  departed  he,  for  he  understood  no- 
thing about  religion." — Knox,  ffisL  p.  16. 

Knox  tells  the  story  so  dramatically,  that 
he  was  probably  present.     He  had  gone  to 
the  trial  perhaps,  taking  his  incipient  doubts 
with  him,  to  have  them  satisfied  by  high  au- 
thority.    Lists  of  obnoxious  persons,  con* 
taining  several  hundred  names,  were  present- 
ed to  the  king,  and  at  one  time  a  sort  of  con- 
sent was  extracted  from  him :  but  there  was 
a  generosity  of  nature  about  James  which 
would  not  let  him  do  wrong  for  any  length 
of  time,  apd  he  recalled  the  permission  which 
he  had  given  before  any  attempt  had  been 
made  to  execute  it.    Profligate  himself,  and 
indiflferent  to  the  profligacy  of  others,  his  in- 
stincts taught  him  that  it  was  not  for  such 
princes  as  he  was,  or  such  prelates  as  those 
of  his  church,  to  indulge  in  persecution ;  and 
as  long  ae  he  lived  the  sufferings  of  the  Pro* 
testants,  except  at  rare  intervals,  were  ne^er 
very  great.    The  example  of  England,  and 
the  spoliation  of  the  abbey  lands  now  in  rapid 
progress  there,  forbade  the  bishops  to  ven- 
ture on  a  quarrel  with  him,  he  might  so  ea- 
sily be  provoked  into   following  a  similar 
course :  and  for  a  time  they  thought  it  more 
prudent  to  suspend  their  proceedings,  and 
let  things  take  their  way. 

So  the  two  parties  grew  on,  watching  one 
another's  movements;  the  Reformation 
spreading  faster  and  faster,  but  still  princi- 
pally among  the  commons  and  the  inferior 
gentlemen ;  the  church  growing  «very  day 
more  fruitful  in  wickedness,  and  waiting  for 
its  opportunity  to  renew  the  struggle.  The 
Protestants  showed  no  disposition  to  resent 
their  past  ill  treatment ;  they  were  contented 
to  stand  on  their  defence,  and  only  wished 
to  be  let  alone.  We  are  apt  to  picture  them 
to  ourselves  as  a  set  of  gloomy  fanatics,  such 
men  as  Scott  has  drawn  in  Balfour  of  Burley 
or  Ephraim  MacBriar.  On  close  acquaint- 
ance, however,  they  appear  as  little  like  fa- 
natics as  any  set  of  men  ever  wore.  The 
gi'eat  thing  about  which  they  were  anxious 
was  to  get  rid  of  sin  and  reform  their  lives ; 
and  the  temper  in  which  they  set  about  it 


ISffd.J 


JOHN  KNOX. 


was  quiet,  simple,  and  nnobtnisire ;  a  eertsin 
broad  humorous  kindliness  shows  in  all  their 
movements,  the  result  of  the  unconscious 
strength  which  was  in  them;  they  meddled 
with  no  one,  and  with  nothing ;  the  bishops 
were  welcomed  to  their  revenues  and  their 
women ;  they  envied  them  neither  the  one 
nor  the  other;  they  might  hate  the  sin,  but 
they  could  pity  the  sinner,  and  with  their 
seraglios  and  their  mitres  these  great,  proud 
men,  believing  themselves  to  be  the  succes- 
sors of  the  apostles,  were  rather  objects  of 
compassionate  laughter.  Naturally  they 
recoiled  from  their  doctrines  when  they  saw 
the  fruits  of  them,  but  desirous  only  to  live 
justly  and  uprightly  themselves,  and  to  teach 
one  another  how  best  to  do  it,  they  might 
fairly  claim  to  be  allowed  to  go  on  in  such  a 
purpose  without  interference ;  and  tho^e  who 
chose  to  ioterfere  with  them  were  clearly 
responsible  for  any  consequences  which  might 
ensue. 

Lost  in  their  number,  and  as  yet  undistin- 
guished among  them,  was  John  Knox.  The- 
odore Beza  tells  us,  that  early  in  his  life  be 
had  drawn  on  himself  the  animadversions  of 
the  authorities  of  the  University  by  his  lec- 
tures ;  but  this  is  not  consistent  with  his  own 
account  of  himself,  and  it  is  clear  that  he  re- 
mained quietly  and  slowly  making  up  his 
mind,  till  within  a  year  of  James's  death, 
before  he  6nally  left  the  Catholic  church. 
He  must  then  have  been  thirty-seven  or 
thirty-eight  years  old,  and  that  he  was  so 
long  in  taking  his  first  step  is  not  easily  to 
be  reconciled  with  the  modem  theory,  that 
he  was  an  eager  and  noisy  demagogue.  Nor, 
after  he  had  declared  himself  a  Protestant, 
was  there  any  appearance  of  a  disposition  to 
put  himself  forward;  he  settled  down  to 
plain  quiet  work  as  a  private  tutor  in  a  gen- 
tleman's family.  Whoever  wishes  to  under- 
stand Knox's  character  ought  seriously  to 
think  of  this :  an  ambitious  man  with  talents 
such  as  his,  does  not  wait  till  middle  age  to 
show  himself.  Vanity,  fanaticism,  impa- 
tience of  control,  these  are  restless,  noisy 
passions,  and  a  man  who  was  possessed  by 
them  would  not  be  found  at  forty  teaching 
the  children  of  a  poor  Scotch  laird.  What- 
ever be  the  real  account  of  him,  we  must 
not  look  for  it  in  dispositions  such  as  these. 
But  we  are  now  coming  to  the  time  when 
he  was  called  upon  to  show  what  he  was. 

The  death  of  James  was  followed  by  a 
complication  ef  intrigues,  which  terminated 
in  the  usurpation  of  the  supreme  power  by 
Cardinal  Beaton,  the  nominal  authority  being 
left  to  the  regent— the  foolish,  incompetent 


Earl  of  Arran.    Cardinal  Beaton,  who  was 
the  ablest,  as  well  as  the  most  profligate  of 
the  prelates,  had  long  seen  that  if  the  Refor- 
mation was  to  be  crushed  at  all  it  was  time 
to  do  it.    The  persecution  had  recommenced 
after  the  death  of  the  king ;   but  the  work 
was  too  important  to  be  left  in  the  hands  of 
the  hesitating  Arran.     And  Beaton,  support- 
ed by  a  legatlne  authority  from  Rome,  and 
by  the  power  of  the  French  court,  took  it 
into   his   own    hands.     The    queen-mother 
attached   herself  to  his  party,  to  ^ve  his 
actions  a  show  of  authority ;  and  with  law, 
if  possible,  and  if  not,  then  without  law,  he 
determined  to  do  what  the  interests  of  the 
church  required.      At  this  crisis,   George 
Wishart,  a  native  Scotchman,  who  had  been 
persecuted  away  a  few  years  before  by  the 
Bishop  of  Brechin,  and  had  since  resided  at 
Cambridge,  reappeared  in  Scotland,  and  be- 
gan to  preach.     He  was  by  far  the  most 
remarkable  man  who  had  as  yet  taken  part 
in  the  Protestant  movement,  and  Knox  at 
once  attached  himself  to  him,  and  accom- 
panied him  on  a  preaching  mission  through 
Lothian,  carrying,  we  find  (and  this  is  the 
first  characteristic  which  we  meet  with  of 
Knox),  a  two-handed  sword,  to  protect  him 
from  attempts  at  assassination.     They  were 
many   weeks  out  together;  Wishart  field- 
preaching,  as  we  should  call  it,  and  here  is 
one  little  incident  from  among  his  adventures,, 
which  will  not  be  without  interest : 

'*  One  day  he  preached  for  three  hovrs  by  a 
dyke  on  a  muir  edge,  with  the  multituile  about 
him.  In  that  sermon,  God  wrought  so  wonder- 
fully by  him,  that  one  of  the  moAt  wicked  men 
that  was  in  that  country,  named  LAwrence  Ran- 
ken,  Laird  of  8hie1,  was  converted.  The  tears 
ran  from  his  eyes  in  such  abundance,  that  all 
men  wondered.  His  conversion  was  without  hy- 
pocrisy, for  his  life  and  conversation  witnessed  it 
in  all  time  to  come." 

Surely  that  is  very  beautiful :  remmding 
us  of  other  scenes  of  a  like  kind  fifteen  hun- 
dred years  before :  and  do  not  let.  ue  think 
it  was  noisy  rant  of  doctriae,  of  theoretic 
formulas  ;  like  its  antitype,  like-  all  true 
preaching,  it  was  a  preaching  of  repentance, 
of  purity  and  righteousness.  It  is  strange, 
that  the  great  cardinal  papal  legate,  repre- 
sentative of  the  vicar  of  Christ,  G<Kild  find 
nothing  better  to  do  with  such  a  man  than 
to  kill  him  ;  such,  however,  was  what  be  re- 
solved on  doing,  and  after  murder  had  been 
tried  and  had  failed,  he  bribed  the  Earl  of 
Both  well  to  seize  him  and  send  him  prisoner 
to  St.  Andrew's.  Wishart  was  taken  by 
treachery,  and  knew  instantly  what  was  be* 


JOHN  KNOX 


[Sept, 


fore  him.    Knox  refused  to  leave  bim,  and 
insisted  on  sharing  his  fate ;   but  Wishart 
forced  him  away.     "  ^2y»"  ^®  ^^»  *'  "^'ttrn 
to  your  bairns;  ane  is  sufficient  for  a  sacrifice." 
It  was  rapidly  ended.    He  was  hurried 
away,  and  tried  by  what  the  cardinal  called 
form  of  law,  and  burnt  under  the  walls  of 
the  castle;  the  cardinal  himself,  the  arch- 
bishop of  Glasgow,  and  other  prelates,  re- 
clining on  velvet  cushions,  in  a  window, 
while  the  execution  was  proceeded  with  in 
the  court  before  their  eyes.     As  the  conse- 
quences of  this  action  were  very  serious,  it 
is  as  well  to  notice  one  point  about  it,  one  of 
many — but  this  one  will,  for  the  present,  be 
sufficient.     The  execution  was  illegal.    The 
regelit  had  given  no  warrant  to  Beaton,  or 
to  any  other   prelate,  to  proceed  against 
Wishart ;  to  an  application  for  such  a  war- 
rant, he  had  indeed  returned  a  direct  and 
positive  refusal ;   and   the  execution   was, 
therefore,  not  in  a  moral  sense  only,  but  ac- 
cording to  the  literal  wording  of  the  law, 
.murder.    The  state  of   the  case,  in  plain 
terms,  was  this.     A  private  Scottish  subject, 
for  that  he  was  a  cardinal  and  a  papal  le- 
gate made  not  the  slightest  difference,  was 
taking  upon  himself  to  kill,  of  his  own  pri- 
vate motion,  another  Scottish  subject  who 
was  obnoxious  to  him.    That  the  executive 
government  refused  to  interfere  with  him  in 
such  proceedings,  does  not  alter  the  charac- 
ter of  them  ;  it  appears  to  us,  indeed,  that 
by  such  a  refusal,  the  government  itself  for- 
feited the  allegriance  of  the  nation ;  but,  at 
any  rate,  Beaton  was  guilty  of  murder,  and 
whatever  punishment  is  due  to  such  crimes, 
he  must  be  held  to  have  deserved.     Il  is 
necessary  to  keep  this  in  view,  if  we  are  to 
bring  our  judgment  to  bear  fairly  on  what 
followed.     When  governments  are  unwilling 
or  unable  to  enforce  the  established  law,  we 
are  thrown  back  upon  those  moral  instincts  on 
which  rightly  understood  law  itself  is  founded, 
and  those  who  feel  most  keenly  the  horrors 
of  great  crimes,  are  those  who,  in  virtue  of 
that  feeling,  are  the  appointed  avengers  of 
them.     We  shall  tell  the  story  of  what  fol- 
lowed in  Knox's  own  words,  his  very  nar- 
rative of  it  having  itself  been  made  matter 
of   weighty  accusation  against   bim.     The 
cardinal,  having  some  misgivings  as  to  the 
temper  of  the  people,  was  hastily  fortifying 
his  castle.     Wishart  had  been  burnt  in  the 
.winter;  it  was  now  the  beginning  of  sum- 
tmer,  and  the  nighis  were  so  short  that  the 
<lvorkmen  never  left  the  walls. 

^*  J^arly  upon  Saturday  in  the  morning,  the  2Qth 


of  May,  the  gates  being  open,  and  the  drawbridge 
let  down  for  receiving  of  lime  and  stone,  William 
Kircaldy  of-  Grange,  younger,  and  with  him  six 
persons,  getting  entrance,  neld  purpose  with  the 
porter,  if  my  lord  cardinal  was  waking?  who 
answered,  *  No,' — and  so  it  was  indeed ;  for  he 
had  been  busy  at  his  accounts  with  Mistress 
Marion  Ogilvy  that  night,  who  was  espied  to  de- 
part from  him  by  the  private  postern  that  morn- 
ing, and  therefore  quietness,  after  the  rules  of 
physic,  and  a  morning's  sleep  were  requisite  for 
my  lord.  While  the  said  William  and  the  porter 
talked,  and  bis  servants  made  them  look  to  the 
work  and  *tki^  workmen,  approached  Norman 
Leslie  with  his  company,  and  because  they  were 
noipvat  number,  they  easily  got  entrance.  They 
addresi^ed  them  to  the  middle  of  the  closs,  and 
immediately  came  John  Leslie  somewhat  rudely 
and  four  persons  with  him." 

Knox  goes  on  to  tell  how  these  young 
men,  sixteen  in  all,  seized  the  castle,  turning 
every  one  out  of  it,  and  by  threat  of  fire, 
forced  the  cardinal  to  open  the  door  of  the 
room  where  he  had  barricaded  himself ;  and 
then  he  continues : 

**  The  cardinal  sat  down  in  a  chair,  and  cried, 
*  I  am  a  priest — ^I  am  a  priest,  ye  will  not  slay 
me.'  Then  John  Leslie  struck  him  once  or 
twice,  and  so  did  Peter  CarmichaeK  But  James 
Melvin— a  man  of  nature,  most  gentle,  and  most 
modest — perceiving  them  both  in  cboler,  with- 
drew them,  and  said,  '  This  work  and  judgment 
of  God,  although  it  be  secret,  yet  ought  to  be 
done  with  greater  gravity.'  And  presenting  to 
him  the  point  of  his  sword,  be  said,  *  Repent  thee 
of  thy  former  wicked  life,  but  especially  of  the 
shedding  of  the  blood  of  that  notable  instrument 
of  God,  Mr.  George  Wishart,  which  albeit  the 
flames  of  fire  consumed  before  men,  yet  cries  it 
with  a  vengeance  upon  thee,  and  we  from  God 
are  sent  to  revenge  it.  For  here  before  my  God, 
I  protest,  that  neither  the  hatred  of  thy  person, 
the  love  of  thy  riches,  nor  the  fear  of  any  trouble 
thou  cottldst  have  done  to  me  in  particular,  moved 
or  moveth  me  to  strike  thee,  but  only  because 
thou  hast  been  and  remainest  an  obstinate  enemy 
to  Christ  Jesus  and  his  holy  evangel.'  And  so 
he  struck  him  twice  or  thrice  through  with  a 
sword ;  and  so  he  fell,  never  word  heard  out  of 
his  mouth,  but '  I  am  a  priest — I  am  a  priest— 
fie,  fie,  all  is  gone.' " 

"  The  foulest  crime,"  exclaims  Chalmers, 
**  which  ever  stained  a  country."  •  *  ♦  •«  It 
is  very  horrid,  yet,  at  the  same  time,  amus- 
ing," says  Mr.  Hume,  "  to  consider  the  joy, 
alacrity,  and  pleasure  which  Knox  discovers 
in  his  narrative  of  it,"  and  so  on  through  all 
the  historians. 

**  Expectes  eadem  summo  minimoque  poet&," 
even  those  most  favorable  to  the  Beformers* 


1868.] 


JOHK  KNOX. 


not  Tenturing  upon  more  than  an  apologetic 
disapproval.     With  the  most  unaccountable 
perversity  they  leave  out  of  sight,  or  in  the 
shade,  the  crimes  of  Beaton ;  and  seeing 
only  that  he  was  put  to  death  by  men  who 
bad  no  legal  authority  to  execute  him,  they 
can  see  in  their  action  nothing  but  an  out- 
break of  ferocity.     We  cannot  waste  our 
time  in  arguing  the  question.    The  estates 
of  Scotland  not  only  passed  an  amnesty  for 
all  parties  concerned,  but  declared  that  they 
had  deserved  well  of  their  cquj^^Wy  in  being 
true  to  the  laws  of  it,  when  the  legitimate 
guardians  of  the  laws  forgot  their  duty; 
and,  surely,  any  judgment  which  will  con- 
sider the  matter  without  temper,  will  arrive, 
at  the  same  conclusion.    As  to  Mr.  Hume's 
"  horror  and  amusement "  at  Knox's  narra- 
tive :  if  we  ask  ourselves  what  a  clear-eyed 
sound -hearted  man  ought  to  have  felt  on 
such  an  occasion,  we  shall  feel  neither  pne 
nor  the  other.     Is  the  irony  so  out  of  place  ? 
If  such  a  man,  living  such  a  life,  and  calling 
himself  a  priest  and  a  cardinal,  be  not  an 
object  of  irony,  we  do  not  know  what  irony 
is  for.     Nor  can  we  tell  where  a  man  who 
believes  in  a  just  God,  could  find   fitter 
matter  for  exultation,  than  in  the  punirthment 
which   struck  down  a  powerful    criminal, 
whose  position  appeared  to  secure  him  from 
it. 

The  regent,  who  had  been  careless  for 
Wishart,  was  eager  to  revenge  Beaton.  The 
little  "forlorn  hope  of  the  Reformation" 
was  blockaded  in  the  castle ;  and  Knox,  who, 
as  Wishart's  nearest  friend,  was  open  to  sus- 
picion, and  who  is  not  likely  to  have  conceal- 
ed his  opinion  of  what  had  been  done,  al- 
though he  had  not  been  made  privy  to  the 
intention,  was  before  long  induced  to  join 
them.  His  life  was  in  danger,  and  he  had 
thought  of  retiring  into  Germany  ;  but  the 
Lord  of  Ormiston,  whose  sons  were  under 
his  care,  and  who  was  personally  connected 
with  the  party  in  the  castle,  persuaded  him 
to  take  refuge  there,  carrying  his  pupils  with 
him.  Up  to  this  time  he  had  never  preach- 
ed, nor  had  he  thought  of  preaching ;  but 
cast  in  the  front  of  the  battle  as  he  was 
now,  the  time  was  come  when  he  was  to 
know  his  place,  and  was  to  take  it.  The 
siege  was  indefinitely  protracted.  The  castle 
was  strong,  and  supplies  were  sent  by  sea 
from  England.  The  garrison  was  strength- 
ened by  adventureis,  who,  for  one  motive  or 
another,  gathered  in  there,  and  the  regent 
could  make  no  progress  towards  reducing 
them.  The  town  of  St.  Andrews  was  gene- 
rally on  their  side,  and»  except  when  it  was 


occupied  by  the  regent's  soldiers,  was  open 
to  them  to  come  and  go.     Taking  advantage 
of  this  opportunity,  Knox  was  often  with 
his  boys  in  the  church,  and  used  to  lecture 
and  examine  them  there.     It  attracted  the 
notice  of  the  townspeople,  who  wished  to 
hear  more  of  the  words  of  such  a  man. 
The   castle   party  themselves,  too,  finding 
that  they  had  no  common  person  among 
them,  joined  in  the  same  desire:  and  as — 
being  a  priest — there  could  be-  no  technical 
objection  to  his  preaching,  by  a  general  con- 
sent he  was  pressed  to  come  forward  in  the 
pulpit.     The  modern  associations  with  the 
idea  of  preaching  will  hardly  give  us  an  idea 
I  of  what  it  was  when  the  prolwible  end  of  it 
was  the  stake  or  the  gibbet ;  and  although 
the  fear  of  stake  or  gibbet  was  not  likely  to 
have  influenced  Knox,  yet  the  responsibility 
of  the  office  in  his  eyes  was,  at  least,  as 
great  as  the  danger  of  it,  and  he  declined  to 
**  thrust  himself  where  he  had  no  vocation." 
On  which  there  followed  a  very  singular 
scene  in  the  chapel  of  the  castle.     In  the 
eyes  of  others  his  power  was  his  vocation, 
and  it  was  )iecessary  to  bring  him  to  a  con- 
sciousness of  what  was  evident  to  every  one 
but  himself.     On  Sunday,  after  the  sermon, 
John  Bough,  the  chaplam, 'turned  to  him  as 
he  was  silling  in  the  body  of  the  chapel,  and 
calling   him   by  his  name,  addressed   him 
thus : — 

'*  Brcther,  ye  shall  not  be  offended,  albeit,  that 
I  speak  unto  vou  that  which  I  have  in  charge, 
even  from  all  these  that  are  here  present,  which 
is  thifi.  In  the  name  of  God,  and  of  hi«i  son 
Jesus  Christ,  and  in  the  name  of  those  that  pre- 
sently call  you  by  my  mouth,  I  charge  you  that 
ye  refuse  not  this  holy  vocation  ;  but  as  ye  ti^n- 
der  the  glory  of  God,  the  increase  of  Christ's 
kingdom,  the  edification  of  your  brethren,  that  ye 
take  upon  you  the  public  ofiice  and  charge  of 
preaching,  even  as  ye  look  to  avoid  God's  heavy 
displeasure,  and  desire  that  he  shall  multiply  his 
grace  with  you." 

Then,  turning  to  the  rest  of  the  assembly, 
he  asked  whether  he  had  spoken  well. 
They  all  answered  that  he  had,  and  that  they 
approved. 

*'  Whereat,  the  said  John,  abashed,  burst  forth 
in  the  most  abundant  tears,  and  withdrew  him- 
self to  his  chamber.  His  countenance  and  be- 
havior from  that  day  till  the  day  that  he  was 
compelled  to  present  himself  to  the  public  place 
of  preaching,  did  sufficiently  declare  the  grief 
and  trouble  of  his  heart,  for  no  man  saw  any 
signs  of  mirth  in  him,  neither  yet  had  he  plea- 
sure to  accompany  any  man  many  days  to- 
gether." 


8 


JOHK  Kirox. 


[Septi 


Again,  we  ask,  is  this  the  ambidons  dema- 
gogue— the  stirrer-up  of  sedition — the  enemy 
of  order  and  authority  ?  Men  have  strange 
ways  of  accounting  for  what  prerlexes  them. 
This  was  the  cnll  of  Knox.  It  may  seem  a 
light  matter  to  us,  who  ha^e  learnt  to  look  on 
preaching  as  a  routine  operation  in  which  only 
by  an  effort  of  thought  we  are  able  to  stimu- 
late an  interest  in  ourselves.  To  him,  as  his 
after  history  slfowed,  it  implied  a  life*battle 
with  the  powers  of  evil,  a  stormy  tempestu- 
ous career,  with  no  prospect  of  rest  before 
the  long  rest  of  the  grave. 

The  remainder  of  this  St.  Andrews  busi- 
ness is  briefly  told: — At  the  end  of  fifteen 
months  the  castle  was  taken  by  the  French  in 
the  name  of  the  regent ;  and  the  garrison,  with 
John  Knox  among  them,  carried  off  as  prison- 
ers to  the  galleys,  thenceforward  the  greater 
number  of  them  to  disappear  from  history. 
Let  us  look  once  more  at  them  before  they 
take  their  leave.  They  were  f  ery  young  men, 
some  of  them  under  twenty ;  but  in  them,  and 
in  that  action  of  theirs,  lay  the  germ  of  the 
after  Reformation.  It  was  not,  as  we  said,  a 
difference  in  speculative  opinion,  like  that 
which  now  separates  sect  from  sect,  which 
lay  at  the  heart  of  that  firreat  movement ;  the 
Scotch  intellect  was  little  given  to  B^btJety, 
and  there  was  nothing  of  sect  or  sectarianism 
in  the  matter.  But  as  Cardinal  Beaton  was 
the  embodiment  of  everything  which  was  most 
wicked,  tyrannical,  and  evil  in  the  dominant 
Catholicism,  so  the  conspiracy  of  these  young 
men  to  punish  him  was  the  antecedent  of  the 
revolt  of  the  entire  nation  against  it,  when 
the  pollution  of  its  presence  could  no  longer 
be  borne.  They  had  done  their  part,  and  for 
their  reward  they  were  swept  away  into  exile, 
with  prospects  sufficiently  cheerless.  They 
bore  their  fortune  with  something  more  than 
fortitude,  yet  again  with  no  stoic  grimness  or 
fierceness  ;  but,  as  far  as  we  can  follow  them, 
with  an  easy,  resolute  cheerfulness.  Attempts 
were  made  to  force  them  to  hear  mass,  but 
with  poor  effect,  for  their  tongues  were  saucy, 
and  could  not  be  restrained.  When  the  Salve 
Regina  was  sung  on  board  the  galley,  the 
Scotch  prisoners  clapt  on  their  bonnets.  The 
story  of  the  painted  Regina  which  Knox,  or 
one  of  them,  pitched  overboard  is  well-known. 
Another  story  of  which  we  hear  less,  is  still 
more  striking.  They  had  been  at  sea  all  nigh  t, 
and  Knox,  who  was  weak  and  ill,  was  fainting 
over  his  oar  in  the  gray  of  the  morning,  when 
James  Balfour,  as  the  sun  rose,  touched  his 
arm,  and  pointing  over  the  water,  asked  him 
if  he  knew  where  he  was.  There  was  the 
white  church-tower,  and  the  white  houses, 


gleaming  in  the  early  sunlight,  and  all  which 
was  left  standing  of  the  Castle  of  St.  Andrews. 
"  I  know  it,"  he  answered  ;  "  yes,  1  know  it 
I  see  the  steeple  of  that  place  where  God  first 
opened  my  mouth  in  public  to. his  glory,  and 
I  shall  not  depart  this  life  till  my  tongue  again 
glorify  his  Name  in  that  place."  Most  touch- 
ing, and  most  beautiful.  We  need  not  be- 
lieve, as  some  enthusiastic  people  believed, 
that  there  was  anything  preternatural  in  such 
a  con  viction .  Love,  faith,  and  hope,  the  great 
Christian  virtues,  will  account  for  it.  Love 
kept  faith  and  hope  alive  in  hhn,  and  he  was 
sure  that  the  right  would  prosper,  and  he  hop- 
ed that  he  would  live  to  see  it.  It  is  but  a 
.poor  philosophy  which,  by  comparison  of  dates 
and  labored  evidence  that  the  words  were 
spoken  in  one  year  and  fulfilled  so  many  years 
after,  would  materialiee  so  fine  a  piece  of  na- 
ture into  a  barren  miracle. 

Such  were  the  conftpirators  of  St.  Andrews, 
of  whom  we  now  take  our  leave  to  follow  the 
fortunes  of  Knox.  He  remained  in  the  gal- 
leys between  three  and  four  years,  and  was 
then  released  at  the  intercession  of  the  Eng- 
lish Government.  At  that  time  he  was,  of 
course,  only  known  to  them  as  one  of  the  par- 
ty who  had  been  at  the  castle ;  but  he  was 
no  sooner  in  England  than  his  value  was  at 
once  perceived,  and  employment  was  found 
for  him.  By  Edward's  own  desire  he  was  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  preachers  before  the  court ; 
and  a  London  rectory  was  offered  to  him, 
which,  however,  he  was  obliged  to  refuse. 
England,  after  all,  was  not  the  place  for  him  ; 
nor  the  Church  of  England,  such  as,  for  po- 
litical reasons,  it  was  necessary  to  constitute 
that  Church.  Indeed  he  never  properly  un- 
derstood the  English  character.  A  Church 
which  should  seem  to  have  authority,  and  yet 
which  should  be  a  powerless  instrument  of 
the  State  ;  a  rule  of  faith  apparently  decisive 
and  consistent,  and  yet  so  little  decisive,  and 
so  little  consistent,  that,  to  Protestants  it  could 
speak  AS  Protestant,  and  to  Catholics  as  Ca- 
tholic ;  which  should  at  once  be  vague,  and 
yet  definite  ;  diffident,  and  yet  peremptory  ; 
and  yet  which  should  satisfy  the  religious 
necessities  of  a  serious  and  earnest  people ; 
such  a'midge-madge  as  this  (as  Cecil  describ- 
ed it,  when,  a  few  years  later,  it  was  in  the 
process  of  reconstruction  under  his  own  eye), 
suited  the  genius  of  the  English,  but  to  the 
reformers  of  other  countries  it  was  a  hopeless 
perplexity.  John  Knox  could  never  find  him- 
self at  home  in  it.  The  "  tolerabiles  intptim'^ 
at  which  C&lvin  smiled,  to  him  were  not  to- 
lerable ;  and  he  shrank  from  identifying  him- 
self with  so  seemingly  unreal  a  system,  !by  ao- 


1858.] 


JOBS  KNOX. 


ceptiBg  any  of  its  higfier  offices.  The  force 
of  his  character,  however,  brought  him  into 
constant  contact  with  the  ruling  powers ;  and 
here  the  extraordinary  faculty  which  he  pos- 
sessed of  seeing  into  men's  characters  becomes 
first  conspicuous.  At  no  time  of  his  life,  as 
far,  as  we  have  means  of  knowing,  was  he  ever 
ttffstiiken  in  the  nature  of  the  persons  with 
whom  he  had  to  deal ;  and  he  was  not  less 
remarkable  for  the  fearlessness  with  which 
he  would  say  what  he  thought  of  them.  If 
we  wish  to  6nd  the  best  account  of  Edward's 
ministers,  we  must  go  to  the  surviving  frag- 
ments of  Knox's  sermons  for  it,  which  were 
preached  in  their  own  presence.  His  duty 
as  a  preacher  he  supposed  to  consist,  not  in 
delivering  homilies  against  sin  in  general,  but 
in  speaking  to  this  man  and  tp  that  man,  to 
kin^  and  queens,  and  dukes,  and  earls,  of 
their  own  sinful  acts  as  they  sate  below  him  ; 
and  they  all  quailed  before  him.  We  hear 
much  of  his  power  in  the  pulpit,  and  this  was 
the  secret  of  it.  Never,  we  suppose,  before 
or  since,  have  the  ears  of  great  men  grown 
so  hot  upon  them,  or  such  words  been  neard 
in  the  courts  of  princes.  "I  am  greatly 
afraid/'  he  said  once, "  that  Ahitopbel  is  coun- 
sellor ;  and  Shebnah  is  scribe,  controller,  and 
treasurer."  And  Ahitopbel  and  Shebnah 
were  both  listening  to  his  judgment  of  them  : 
the  first  in  the  person  of  the  then  omnipo- 
tent Duke  of  Northumberland ;  and  the  se- 
cond in  that  of  Lord  Treasurer  Paulet  Mar- 
quis of  Winchester.  The  force  which  then 
must  have  been  in  him  to  have  carried  such 
a  practice  through,  he,  a  poor  homeless, 
friendless  exile,  without  stay  or  strength,  but 
what  was  in  his  own  heart,  must  have  been 
enormons.  Nor  is  it  less  remarkable  that 
the  men  whom  he  so  roughly  handled  were 
forced  to  bear  with  him.  Indeed  they  more 
tban  bore  with  him,  for  the  Duke  of  North- 
umberland pr^osed  to  make  him  Bishop  of 
Rochester,  and  had  an  interview  with  him  on 
the  subject,  which,  however,  led  to  no  con- 
clusion ;  the  duke  having  to  complain  that 
"he  had  found  Mr.  Knox  neither  grateful 
nor  pleaseable :"  the  meaning  of  which  was, 
that  Knox,  knowing  that  he  was  a  bad,  hol- 
low-hearted man,  had  very  uncourteously  told 
him  so.  But  upheld  as  he  was  by  the  per- 
sonal regard  of  the  young  king,  his  influence 
was  eyery  day  increasinfir,  and  it  was  proba- 
bly in  consequenee  of  this  that  the  further 
developments  of  Protestantism,  which  we 
know  to  have  been  in  contemplation  at  the 
close  of  Edward's  reign,  were  resolved  upon. 
It  is  impossible  to  say  how  far  such  mea- 
sares  could  have  been  carried  out  success- 


fully, but  we  cannot  think  that  it  was  for  the 
interest  of  England  that  Knox,  who  had 
formed  his  notions  of  Catholicism  from  his 
experience  of  Scotland,  should  determine 
how  much  or  how  little  of  it  should  be  re- 
tained in  the  English  polity.  Sooner  or  later 
it  would  have  involved  the  country  in  a  civil 
war,  the  issue  of  which,  in  the  criiical  temper 
of  the  rest  of  Europe,  could  not  have  been 
other  than  doubtful ;  and  it  has  been  at  all 
times  the  iustinctive  tendency  of  English 
statesmen  to  preserve  the  very  utmost  of  the 
past  which  admits  of  preservation.  The  Via 
Media  Anglicana  was  &  masterpiece  of  states- 
manship, when  we  consider  the  emergencies 
which  it  was  constructed  to  meet ;  the  very 
features  in  it  which  constitute  its  imbecility 
as  an  enduring  establishment,  being  what  es- 
pecially adapted  it  to  the  exigencies  of  a 
peculiar  crisis.  A  better  scene  for  Knox's 
labors  was  found  at  Berwick,  where  he  could 
keep  up  his  communication  with  Scotland, 
and  where  the  character  of  the  English  more 
nearly  resembled  that  of  his  own  people. 
Here  he  remained  two  years,  and  appealed 
afterwards,  with  no  little  pride,  to  what  he 
had  done  in  reinine  in  the  fierce  and  lawless 
border- thieves,  and  the  soldiers  of  the  Eng- 
lish garrison,  whose  wild  life  made  them  al- 
most as  rough  as  the  borderers  themselves. 
For  the  time  that  he  was  there,  he  says  him- 
self, there  was  neither  outrage  nor  license  in 
Berwick.  But  he  had  no  easy  work  of  it, 
and  whenever  in  his  letters  he  speaks  of  his 
life,  he  calls  it  his  "  battle." 

At  Berwick,  nevertheless,  he  found  but  a 
brief  resting-place,  and  on  the  death  of  Ed- 
ward, and  the  re-establishment  of  Catholi- 
cism, he  had  to  choose  whether  he  would  fly 
again,  or  remain  and  die.  He  was  a  man  too 
marked  and  too  dangerous  to  hope  for  escape, 
while  as  an  alien  he  had  no  relations  in  Eng- 
land to  be  offended  by  his  death.  In  such  a 
state  of  things  we  can  scarcely  wonder  that 
he  hesitated.  Life  was  no  pleasant  place  for 
him.  He  saw  the  whole  body  of  the  noble- 
men and  gentlemen  of  England  apostatize 
without  an  effort ;  and  the  Eeformationgone, 
as  it  seemed,  like  a  dream — Scotland  was 
wholly  French^the  Queen  in  Paris,  and  be- 
trothed to  the  Dauphin ;  with  the  persecu- 
tion of  Protestantism  in  full  progress  under 
the  Archbishop  of  St.  Andrews.  And  though 
his  faith  never  failed  him,  the  world  appeared^ 
for  a  time,  to  be  given  over  to  evil ;  martyrs, 
he  thought,  were  wanted,  "and  he  could 
never  die  in  a  more  noble  quarrel ;"  it  was 
better  that  he  should  stay  where  he  was,  and 
"  end  his  battle." 


10 


JOHN  EKOX 


ISept, 


In  this  purpose,  however,  he  was  overruled 
by  his  friends,  who,  "  partly  by  admonition, 
partly  by  tears,  constrained  him  to  obey,  and 
give  place  to  the  fury  and  rage  of-  Satan." 
He  escaped  into  France,  and  thence  into 
Germany  ;  and  after  various  adventures,  and 
persecuted  from  place  to  place,  he  found  a 
welcome  and  a  home  at  last  with  Calvin,  at 
Geneva.  While  in  England  he  had  been  en- 
gaged to  the  daughter  of  a  Mr.  Bowes,  a 
gentleman  of  family  in  the  north,  and  with 
Mrs.  Bowes,  the  mother,  he  now  kept  up  a 
constant  correspondence.  These  letters  are 
the  most  complete  exhibilion  of  the  real  na- 
ture of  Knox  which  remain  to  us.  We  can- 
not say  what  general  readers  will  think  of 
them.  It  will  depend  upon  their  notions  of 
what  human  life  is,  and  what  the  meaning  is 
of  their  being  placed  in  this  world.  It 
might  be  thought  that,  flying  for  his  life  into 
a  strange  country,  without  friends  and  with- 
out money,  he  would  say  something,  in  writ- 
ing to  the  mother  of  his  intended  wife,  of 
the  way  in  which  he  had  fared  She,  too, 
we  might  fancy,  would  be  glad  to  know  that 
he  was  not  starving ;  or,  if  he  was,  to  know 
even  that,  in  order  that  she  might  contrive 
some  means  of  helping  him.  And  after- 
wards, when  he  had  found  employment  and 
a  home  at  Geneva,  we  look  for  something 
about  his  prospects  in  life,  his  probable  means 
of  maintaining  a  family,  and  so  on.  To  any 
one  of  ourselves  in  such  a  position,  these 
things  would  be  at  least  of  some  importance ; 
but  they  were  of  none  either  to  him  or  to  his 
correspondent.  The  business  of  life,  as  they 
understood  it,  was  to  overcome  the  evil  which 
they  found  in  themselves;  and  their  letters 
are  mutual  confessions  of  shortcomings  and 
temptations.  When  Knox  thinks  of  England, 
it  is  not  to  regret  his  friends  or  his  comforis 
there,  but  only  to  reproach  himself  for  ne- 
glected opportunities : — 

**  Some  will  ask,"  he  writes,  •*  why  I  did  flee — 
assuredly  I  cannot  tell — but  of  one  thing  I  am 
sure,  that  the  fear  of  death  was  not  the  cause  of 
9iy  fleeing.  My  prayer  is  that  I  may  be  restored 
to  the  battle  again." 

It  would  not  be  thought  that,  after  he  had 
dared  the  anger  of  the  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land, he  could  be  accused  of  want  of  boLiness 
or  plainness  of  speech,  and  yet,  in  his  own 
judgment  of  himself,  he  had  been  a  mere 
coward : — 

*'  This  day  my  conscience  accuseth  me  that  I 
spake  not  so  plainly  as  my  duty  was  to  have  done, 
for  I  ought  to  have  said  to  the  wicked  man  ex- 


pressly by  his  name,  thon  shalt  die  the  death ;  for 
1  find  Jeremiah  the  prophet  to  have  done  so,  and 
not  only  be,  but  also  Elijah,  Elisha,  Micah,  Amoa, 
Daniel,  Christ  Jesus  himself.  I  accuse  none  but 
myself;  the  love  that  I  did  bear  to  this  my  wicked 
carcase,  was  the  chief  cause  that  I  was  not  faith- 
ful or  fervent  enough  in  that  behalf.  1  had  no 
will  to  provoke  the  hatred  of  men.  I  would  not 
be  seen  to* proclaim  manifest  war  affsinst  the  ma- 
nifest wicked,  whereof  unfeighedlyl  ask  my  God 
mercy."  .  .  .  .  "  And  besides  this,  I  waa 
assaulted,  yea,  infected  and  corrupted  with  more 
gross  sins — that  is,  my  wicked  nature  desired  the 
favor,  the  estimation,  the  praise  of  men.  Against 
which  albeit  that  some  time  the  Spirit  of  God  did 
move  me  to  fight,  and  earnestly  did  stir  me — ^God 
knoweth  I  lie  not— to  sob  and  lament  for  those 
imperfections,  yet  never  ceased  they  to  trouble  me, 
and  so  privily  and  craftily  that  I  could  not  perceive 
myself  to  be  wounded  till  vainglory  had  almost 
gotten  the  upper  hand." 

And  again,  with  still  more  searching  self- 
reproof  : — 

"  I  have  sometimes  been  in  that  security  that  I 
felt  not  dolor  for  sin,  neither  yet  displeasure 
against  myself  for  any  iniquity  in  which  J  did  of- 
fend ;  but  rather  my  vain  heart  did  then  flatter 
myself  (I  write  the  truth  to  my  own  confusion)— 
thou  hast  suffered  great  trouble  for  professing 
Christ's  truth  ;  God  has  done  great  things  for  thee, 
delivering  thee  from  that  most  cruel  bondage.  He 
has  placed  thee  in  a  most  honorable  vocation,  and 
thy  labors  are  not  without  fruit ;  therefore  thou 
oughtest  rejoice  and  give  praises  to  God.  Oh, 
mother,  this  was  a  sul^Ie  serpent  who  could  thus 
pour  in  venom,  I  not  perceiving  it" 

God  help  us  all,  we  say,  if  this  is  sin.  And 
yet,  if  we  think  of  it,  is  not  such  self-abnega- 
tion th^  one  indispensable  necessity  for  all 
men,  and  most  of  all  for  a  reformer  of  the 
world,  if  his  reformation  is  to  be  anything 
except  a  change  of  one  evil  for  a  worse.  Who 
can  judge  others  who  has  not  judged  him- 
self? or  who  can  judge  for  others  while  his 
own  small  self  remains  at  the  bottom  of  his 
heart,  as  the  object  for  which  he  is  mainly 
concerned  ?  For  a  reformer  there  is  no  sin 
more  fatal ;  and  unless,  like  St.  Paul,  he  can 
be  glad,  if  necessary,  to  be  made  even  **  an- 
athema for  his  brethren,'*  he  had  better  leave 
reforming  alone. 

The  years  which  Knox  spent  at  Geneva 
were,  probably,  the  happiest  in  his  life.  Es- 
sentially a  peace-loving  man,  as  all  good  men 
are,  he'found  himself,  for  the  first  time,  in  a 
sound  and  wholesome  atmosphere.  Mrs. 
Bowes  and  her  daughter,  after  a  time,  were 
able  to  join  him  there ;  and,  with  a  quiet  con- 
gregation to  attend  to,  and  with  Calvin  for  a 
friend,  there  was  nothing  left  for  him  to  de- 


18^8.J 


JOHN  KNOX 


11 


sire  which  such  a  man  as  he  coald  expect  life 
to  yield.     ''The  Geneva  Church,"  he  said, 
**  18  the  most  perfect  school  of  Christ  that 
ever  was  on  earth  since  the  days  of  the  apos- 
tles."    And  let  us  observe  his  reason  for  say- 
ing so.     "  In  other  places/'  be  adds,  <'  I  con- 
fess Christ  to  be  truly  preached,  but  manners 
and  religion  so  sincerely  reformed  I  have  not 
jet  seen  in  any  other  place  besides."    He 
could  have  been  well  contented  to  have  lived 
out  his  life  at  Geneva;  as,  long  after,  he 
looked  wistfully  back  to  it,  and  longed  to  re- 
turn and  die  there.     But  news  from  Scotland 
soon  disturbed  what  was  but  a  short  breath- 
ing time.     The  Marian  persecution  had  filled 
the  Lowlands  with  preachers,  and  the  shift- 
ing politics  of  ihe  time  had  induced  the  court 
to  connive  at,  if  not  to  encourage  them.   The 
queen-mother  had  manoeuvrea  the  regency 
into  her  own  hand,  but,  in  doing  so,  had  of- 
fended the  Hamiltons,  who  were  the  most 
powerful  of  the  Catholic  families ;  and,  at  the 
same  time,  the  union  of  EngUnd  and  8pain 
had  obliged  the  French  court  to  temporize 
with   the  Huguenots.    The  Catholic  vehe- 
mence of  the  Guises  was  neutralized  by  the 
hroader  sympathies  of  Henry  the  Second, 
who,  it  was  said,  "  would  shake  hands  with 
the  devil,  if  he  could  gain  a  purpose  by  it ;" 
and  thuBy  in  France  and  in  Scotland,  which 
was  now  wholly  governed  by  French  influ- 
ence»  the  Protestants  found  everywhere  a 
temporary  respite  from  ill  usage.     It  was  a 
shortlived  anomaly ;  but  in  Scotland  it  lasted 
long  enough  to  turn  the  scale,  and  give  them 
an  advantage  which  was  never  lost  again. 

At  the  end  of  1555,  John  Knox  ventured 
to  reappear  there;  and  the  seed  which  had 
been  scattered  eight  years  before,  he  found 
growing  over  all  the  Lowlands.  The  noble 
u>rds  now  came  about  him  ;  the  old  Earl  of 
^I'gylCy  Lord  James  Stuart,  better  known 
after  as  Earl  of  Murray,  Lord  Glencairn,  the 
Erskines,  and  many  others.  It  was  no  longer 
the  poor  commons  and  the  townspeople ;  the 
whole  nation  appeared  to  be  moving  ;  much 
latent  skepticism,  no  doubt,  being  quickened 
into  conversion  by  the  prospect  of  a  share 
in  the  abbey- lands ;  but  with  abundance  of 
real  earnestness  as  well,  which  taueht  Knox 
what  might  really  be  hoped  for.  Knox  him- 
self, to  whom,  with  an  unconscious  unanimi- 
ty, they  all  looked  for  guidance,  proceeded 
at  once  to  organize  them  into  form,  and,  as 
a  first  step,  proposed  that  an  oath  should  be 
taken  by  all  who  called  themselves  Protest- 
ants, never  any  more  to  attend  the  mass.  So 
serious  a  step  could  not  be  taken  without 
provoking  notice ;  the  Hamiltons  patched  up 


their  differences  with  the  regent  on  the  spot, 
and  Knox  was  summoned  before  the  Bishops' 
Court  at  Edinburgh  to  answer  for  himself. 
It  was  just  ten  years  since  they  had  caught 
Wishart  and  burned  him:  but  things  were 
changed  now,  and  when  Knox  appeared  in 
Edinburgh  he  was  followed  by  a  retinue  of 
hundreds  of  armed  gentlemen  and  noblemen. 
The  bishops  shrank  from  a  collision,  and  did 
not  prefer  their  charge;  and,  on  the  day 
whicn  had  been  fixed  for  his  trial,  he 
preached  in  Edinburgh  to  the  largest  Pro- 
testant concourse  which  had  ever  assembled 
there.  He  was  not  courting  rebellion,  but 
so  large  a  majority  of  the  population  of  Scot- 
land were  now  on  the  reforming  side,  that  he 
felt — and  who  does  not  feel  with  him  ? — 
that,  in  a  free  country,  the  lawful  rights  of 
the  people  in  a  matter  touching  what  they 
conceived  to  be  their  most  sacred  duty  were 
not  to  be  set  aside  and  trampled  upon  any 
mQre  by  an  illegal  and  tyrannical  power.  In 
the  name  of  the  people  he  now  drew  up  his 
celebrated  petition  to  the  queen  regent,  beg- 
ging to  be  heard  in  his  defence,  protesting  * 
against  the  existing  ecclesiastical  system,  and 
the  wickedness  which  had  been  engendered 
by  it.  It  was  written  firmly  but  respectfully, 
and  the  regent  would  have  acted  more  wise- 
ly if  she  had  considered  longer  the  answer 
which  she  made. to  it.  She  ran  her  eye  over 
the  p<  ges,  and  turning  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Glasgow,»who  was  standing  near  her,  she 
tossed  it  into  his  hands,  saying,  "Will  it 
please  you,  my  lord,  to  read  a  pasquil  ?" 

"  Madam,'*  wrote  Knox,  when  he  heard  of  it, 
**  if  ye  no  more  esteem  the  admonition  of  God,  nor 
the  cardinals  do  the  scofiing  of  pa aq nils,  then  He 
shall  shortly  9end  you  messengers  with  whom  ye 
shall  not  be  able  in  that  manner  to  jest." 

It  is  the  constant  misfortune  of  govern- 
ments that  they  are  never  able  to  disUnguish 
the  movements  of  just  national  anger  from 
the  stir  of  superficial  discontent.  The  sailor 
knows  what  to  look  for  when  the  air  is  moan- 
ing in  the  shrouds ;  the  fisherman  sees  the 
coming  tempest  in  the  heaving  of  the  under* 
roll;  but  governments  can  never  read  the 
signs  of  the  times,  though  they  are  written 
in  fire  before  their  eyes.  For  the  present  it 
was  thought  better  that  Knox  should  leave 
Scotland  while  his  friends  in  the  meantime 
organized  themselves  more  firmly.  To  a 
grave  and  serious  people  civil  war  is  the  most 
desperate  of  remedies,  and  by  his  remaining 
at  this  moment  it  would  have  been  inevitably 
precipitated.  He  was  no  sooner  gone  than 
the  Archbishop  of  St.  Andrews  again  sum- 


12 


jomr  KNOX. 


[Sept.9 


moned  him.  He  was  condemned  in  his  ab-  ^ 
sence,  and  bnraed  in  effigy  the  next  day  at 
the  market  cross.  But  the  people  were  no 
longer  in  the  old  mood  of  submission,  and  to 
this  bonfire  they  replied  with  another.  "  The 
great  idol"  of  Edinburgh,  St.  Giles,  vanished 
iDfif  his  perch  in  the  rood-loft  'of  the  High 
Church,  and,  after  a  plunge  in  the  North 
Loch,  the  next  day  was  a  heap  of  ashes.  The 
offenders  were  not  forth commg,  and  not  to 
be  found ;  and  the  regent,  in  high  anger, 
summoned  the  preachers  to  answer  for  them. 
To  secure  herself  against  being  a  second  time 
baffled  as  she  had  been  before,  by  the  inter- 
ference of  the  people,  she  put  out  a  procla- 
mation that  all  persons  who  had  come  to 
Edinburgh  without  authority  should  forth- 
with depart  from  it.  It  so  happened  that 
''certain  faithful  of  the  west,*'  some  of  Lord 
Argyle's  men,  probably,  were  in  the  town. 
They  had  come  in  at  the  news  that  the 
preachers  were  to  be  tried,  and  the  meaning 
of  this  proclamation  was  perfectly  clear  to 
them ;  so,  by  way  of  reply  to  it,  they  assem- 
bled together,  forced  their  way  into  presence- 
chamber,  where  the  queen  was  in  council 
with  the  bishops,  to  complain  of  such  strange 
entertainment ;  and  not  getting  such  an  an- 
swer as  they  desired,  one  of  them  said  to 
her,  **  Madam,  we  know  this  is  the  malice 
and  device  of  those  jefwellis  and  of  that 
bastard  (the  Archbishop  of  St.  Andrews) 
that  stands  by  you ;  we  avow  to  God  we 
shall  make  a  day  of  it.  They  oppress  us  and 
our  tenants  for  feeding  of  their  idle  bellies. 
They  trouble  us  and  our  preachers,  and 
would  murder  them,  and  us.  Shall  we  suf- 
fer this  any  more  ?  Nay,  madam,  it  shall  not 
be.''  "And  therewith  every  man  put  on 
his  steel  bonnet." 

When  i^ilinc;  powers  have  listened  to  lan- 
guage like  this,  and  answer  steel  bonnets 
with  smooth  speeches  and  concessions,  the 
one  thing  left  for  such  rulers  is  to  take  them- 
selves away  with  as  much  rapidity  as  they 
can,  for  rule  they  neither  do  nor  can.  At 
this  time  almost  the  whole  of  the  nobility, 
for  honest  or  dishonest  reasons,  were  on  the 
reforming  side.  The  Church,  unluckily  for 
itself,  was  rich  :  they  were  poor ;  and  if  some 
of  them  had  no  sympathy  with  Protestantism, 
they  had  also  ceased  to  believe  that  any  ser- 
vice which  Catholicism  could  do  for  them 
entitled  it  to  half  the  land  in  Scotland.  It 
was,  consequently,  with  little  or  no  effect, 
that  the  bishops  now  appealed  for  protection 
to  the  nobles.  The  Archbishop  of  St.  An- 
drews sent  a  long  remonstrance  to  Lord  Ar- 
gyle  for  maintainmg  a  reforming  preacher. 


*'  He  preaches  against  idolatry,"  Lord  Argyle 
answered  coldly.  *'  I  remit  it  to  your  lord- 
ship's conscience  if  that  be  heresy.  He 
preaches  against  adultery  and  fornication. 
I  remit  that  to  your  lordship's  conscience.'* 
And  the  archbishop's  connection  with  Lady 
Gilton  being  somewhat  notorious,  it  was  dif- 
ficult for  him  to  meet  such  an  answer. 

If  the  question  had  been  left  for  Scotland 
to  settle  for  itself,  the  solution  of  it  would 
have  been  rapid  and  simple.  But  the  regent 
knew  that  sooner  or  later  she  might  count  on 
the  support  of  France ;  and  she  believed, 
with  good  reason,  that  if  the  real  power  of 
France  was  once  brought  to  bear,  such  re- 
sistance as  the  Scotch  could  offer  to  it  would 
be  crushed  with  little  difficulty.  The  mar- 
riage of  the  young  queen  with  the  Dauphin, 
and  the  subsequent  death  of  Henry,  removed 
the  causes  which  had  hitherto  prevented  her 
from  being  supported.  The  Guises  were 
again  omnipotent  in  Paris,  and  their  ambi- 
tion, not  contented  with  France  and  Scot- 
land, extended  itself  on  the  death  of  Mary 
Tudor  to  England  as  well.  With  the  most 
extravagant  notions  of  England's  weakness, 
and  with  a  belief,  which  was  rather  better 
grounded,  that  the  majority  of  the  people 
were  ill  affected  to  a  Protestant  sovereign, 
they  conceived  that  a  French  army  had  only 
to  appear  over  the  border  with  the  flag  of 
Mary  Stuart  displayed,  for  the  same  scenes 
to  be  enacted  over  again  as  had  been  wit- 
nessed six  years  before ;  and  that  Elizabeth 
would  as  easily  be  shaken  from  the  throne 
as  Jane  Grey  had  been.  But  the  success  of 
the  blow  might  depend  upon  the  speed  with 
which  it  could  be  struck ;  and  no  time  was, 
therefore,  to  be  lost  in  bringing  Scotland  to 
obedience.  Accordingly,  under  one  pretence 
and  another,  large  bodies  of  troops  were  car- 
ried over,  and  the  queen  regent  was  instruct- 
ed to  temporize  and  flatter  the  Protestants 
into  security,  till  a  sufficient  number  had  been 
assembled  to  crush  them.  It  is  no  slight 
evidence  of  their  good  meaning  that  they 
should  have  allowed  themselves  to  be  de- 
ceived by  her,  but  deceived  they  certainly 
were;  and  except  for  Knox's  letters,  with 
which  he  incessantly  urged  them  to  watch- 
fulness, they  might  have  been  deceived  fatal- 
ly. But  the  clear  strong  understanding  of 
Knox,  far  away  as  he  was,  saw  through  the 
real  position  of  things.  There  was  no  one 
living  whose  political  judgment  was  more 
sound  than  his,  and  again  and  again  he  laid 
before  them  their  danger  and  their  duty. 
He  saw  that  the  intention  was  to  make  Scot- 
land a  French  province,  and  how  it  would 


1858.] 


JOHN  KNOX 


18 


fare  then  with  the  Reformation  was  no  diflS- 
cult  question. 

•*  Gfod  Fpeakelh  to  ynnr  conscience,  therefore," 
be  wrote  to  the  lords,  "  unless  ye  be  dead  with  the 
biind  world,  that  you  oogfht  to  hazard  your  lives, 
be  it  affainst  kings  and  emperors,  for  the  deliver- 
ence  of  your  brethren.  For  timt  cause  are  ye 
called  princes  of  the  people,  and  receive  of  your 
brethren  honor,  tribute,  and  homage — not  by  rea- 
son cf  your  birth  and  progeny,  as  most  part  of 
men  falsely  do  suppose,  but  by  reason  of  your 
office  and  duty,  which  is  to  vindicate  and  deliver 
your  subjects  and  brethren  from  all  violence  and 
oppreasion  to  the  uttermost  of  your  power." 

In  the  meantime  time  the  Church,  as  a 
prelude  to  the  energetic  measures  which 
were  in  contemplation,  thought  it  decent  to 
attempt  some  sort  of  a  reformation  within 
itself.  We  [smile  as  we  look  through  the 
articles  which  were  resolved  upon  by  the 
epbcopal  conclave.  They  proposed,  we  pre- 
sume, to  proceed  with  moderation,  and  con- 
tent themselves  with  doing  a  little  at  a  time. 
No  person  in  future  was  to  hold  an  ecclest 
asUcal  benefice  except  a  priest,  such  benefi- 
ces having  hitherto  furnished  a  convenient 
maintenance  for  illegiiigoate  children.  No 
hirkman  was  to  nourish  hia  bairn  in  his  own 
company,  but  every  one  was  to  hold  the  chil- 
dren of  others.  And  such  bairn  was  in  no 
case  to  succeed  his  father  in  his  benefice. 
The  naiveti  of  these  resolutions  disarms  our 
indignation,  but  we  shall  scarcely  wonder 
any  more  at  the  rise  or  the  speed  of  Pro- 
testantism. On  the  strength  of  them,  how- 
ever, or  rather  on  the  strength  of  the  French 
troops,  they  were  now  determined  to  go  on 
with  the  persecution ;  Walter  Milne,  an  old 
man  of  eighty,  was  seized  and  burnt ;  and 
although  the  queen  regent  aflfected  to  de- 
plore the  bishops'  severity,  no  one  doubted 
that  either  she  herself  or  the  queen  in  Paris 
had  directed  them  to  proceed. 

Now,  therefore,  or  never,  the  struggle  was 
to  be.  Knox  left  Geneva,  with  Calvin's 
blessing,  for  a  country  where  he  was  under 
sentence  of  death,  and  where  his  appearance 
would  be  the  signal  either  for  the  execution 
of  it  or  for  war.  Civil  war  it  could  scarcely 
be  called, — it  would  be  a  war  of  the  Scottish 
nation  against  their  sovereign  supported  by 
a  foreign  army ;  but  even  so,  no  one  knew  bet- 
ter than  he  that  armed  resistance  to  a  sover- 
eign was  the  last  remedy  to  which  subjects 
ought  to  have  recourse — a  remedy  which 
they  are  only  justified  in  seeking  when  to 
obey  man  is  to  disobey  God ;  or  to  use  more 
human  language,  when  it  is  no  longer  possi- 
ble for  them  to  submit  to  their  sovereign 


without  sacrificing  the  highest  interests  of 
life.  .  However,  such  a  time  he  felt  was  now 
come.  After  the  specimen  which  the  Catho- 
lics had  given  of  their  notion  of  a  reforma- 
tion, to  leave  the  religious  teaching  of  an 
earnest  people  in  their  hands  was  scarcely 
better  than  leaving  it  to  the  devil ;  and  if  iir 
was  impossible  to  wrest  it  from  them  except 
by  rebellion,  the  crime  would  lie  at  the  door 
of  those  who  had  made  rebellion  necessary. 
Crime,  indeed,  there  always  is  at  such  times ; 
and  treason  is  not  against  person,  but  against 
the  law  of  right  and  justice.  If  it  be  trea* 
son  to  resist  the  authority  except  in  the  last 
extremity,  yet  when  such  extremity  has 
arisen,  it  has  arisen  through  the  treason  of 
the  authority  itself ;  and,  therefore,  bad 
princes,  who  have  obliged  their  subjects  to 
depose  them,  are  justly  punished  with  the 
extremest  penalties  of  human  justice.  That 
is  the  naked  statement  of  the  law,  however 
widely  it  may  be  necessary  to  qualify  it,  in 
its  application  to  life. 

On  the  2nd  of  May,  1559,  Knox  landed  in 
Scotland ;  crossing  over,  by  a  curious  coinci- 
dence, in  the  same  ship  which  brought  in  the 
new  great  seal  of  the  kingdom,  with  the  arms 
of  England  quartered  upon  it.  The  moment 
was  a  critical  one ;  for  the  preachers  were  aU 
assembled  at  Perth  preparatory  to  appearing 
at  Stirling  on  the  lOth  of  the  same  month, 
where  they  wete  to  answer  for  their  lives. 
Lord  Glencairn  had  reminded  the  regent  of 
her  many  promises  of  toleration  ;  and  throw- 
ing away  the  mask  at  last,  she  had  haughtily 
answered,  that  "it  became  not  subjects  to 
burden  their  princes  with  promises  further 
than  as  it  pleased  them  to  keep  the  same." 
The  moment  was  come  she  believed  when  she 
could  crush  them  altogether,  and  crush  them 
she  would.  As  soon  as  the  arrival  of  Knox 
was  known,  a  price  was  set  upon  his  head ; 
but  he  determined  to  join  hia  brother  minis- 
ters on  the  spot  and  share  their  fortune.  He 
hurried  to  Perth,  where  Lord  Glencairn  and 
a  few  other  gentlemen  had  by  that  time  col- 
lected to  protect  them  with  some  thousand 
armed  followers.  The  other  noblemen  were 
distracted,  hesitating,  uncertain.  Lord  James 
Stuart, and  young  Lord  Argyle,  were  still  with 
the  queen  regent ,  so  even  was  Lord  Ruthven, 
remaining  loyal  to  the  last  possible  moment, 
and  still  hoping  that  the  storm  might  blow 
over.  And  the  regent  still  trifled  with  their 
credulity  as  long  as  they  would  allow  her  to 
impose  upon  it.  Pretending  to  be  afraid  of 
a  tumult,  she  used  their  influence  to  prevail 
upon  the  preachers  to  remain  where  they 
I  were,  and  not  to  appear  on  the  day  fixed  for 


14 


JOHN  KNOX. 


[Sept., 


their  trial ;  and  the  preachers,  acting  as  they 
were  advised,  found  themselves  outlawed  for 
contumacy.  It  was  on  a  Sunday  that  the 
news  was  brought  them  of  this  proceeding, 
and  the  people  of  Perth,  being  many  of 
them  Protestants,  Knox,  by  the  general  voice, 
was  called  upon  to  preach.  Let  us  pause 
for  a  few  moments  to  look  at  him.  He  was 
DOW  fifty -four  years  old,  undersized,  but 
strongly  and  nervomly  formed,  and  with  a 
long  beard  falling  down  to  his  waist.  His 
features  were  of  the  pure  Scotch  cast ;  the 
high  cheekbone,  arched  but  massive  eyebrow, 
and  broad  under  jaw ;  with  long  full  eyes, 
the  steadiness  of  which,  if  we  can  trust  the 
pictures  of  him,  must  have  been  painful  for 
a  man  of  weak  nerves  to  look  at.  The  mouth 
free,  the  lips  slightly  parted  with  the  inces- 
sant play  upon  thi^m  of  that  deep  power 
which  is  properly  the  sum  of  all  the  moral 
poweijs  of  man's  nature — the  power  which 
we  call  humor,  when  it  is  dealing  with  venial 
weakness,  and  which  is  bitterest  irony  and 
deepest  scorn  and  hatred  for  wickedness  and 
lies.  The  general  expression  is  one  of  repose, 
but  like  the  repose  of  the  limbs  of  the  Her- 
cules, with  a  giant's  strength  traced  upon 
every  line  of  it.  Such  was  the  man  who 
was  called  to  fill  the  pulpit  of  the  High 
Church  of  Perth  on  the  11th  of  May,  1669. 
Of  the  power  of  his  preaching  we  have  many 
testimonies,  that  of  Randolph,  the  English 
ambassador,  being  the  most  terse  and  striking ; 
that  "  it  stirred  his  heart  more  than  six  hun- 
dred trumpets  braying  in  his  ears.*'  The 
subject  on  this  occasion  was  the  one  all -com- 
prehensive **  mass,^*  the  idolatry  of  it ;  and 
the  good  people  of  Perth,  never  having 
heard  his  voice  before,  we  can  understand 
did  not  readily  disperse  when  he  had  done. 
They  would  naturally  form  into  groups,  com- 
pare notes  and  impressions,  and  bang  a  long 
time  about  the  church  before  leaving  it.  In 
the  disotder  of  the  town  the  same  church 
served,  it  seems,  for  sermon  and  for  mass ; 
when  the  first  was  over  the  other  took  its 
turn  :  and  as  Knox  had  been  longer  than  the 
pHest  expected,  the  latter  came  in  and  opened 
the  tabej;nacle  before  the  congregation  were 
gone.  An  eager-hearted  boy  who  had  been 
listening  to  Knox  with  all  his  ears,  and  was 
possessed  by  what  he  had  heard,  cried  out 
when  he  saw'  it,  "  This  is  intolerable,  that 
when  God  has  plainly  damned  idolatry  we 
shall  stand  by  and  see  it  used  in  despite. " 
The  priest  in  a  rage  turned  and  struck  him, 
his  temper  naturally,  being  at  the  moment 
none  of  the  sweetest ;  and  the  boy,  as  boys 
sometimes  do  on   such   occasions,  flung  a 


stone  at  him  in  return.  Missing  the  priest 
he  hit  the  tabernacle,  and  "  did  break  an 
image."  A  small  spark  is  enough  when  the 
ground  is  strewed  with  gunpowder.  In  a 
few  moments  the  whole  machinery  of  the 
ritual,  candles,  tabernacle,  vestments,  cruci* 
fixes,  images  were  scattered  to  all  the  winds. 
The  fire  burnt  the  faster  for  the  fuel,  and 
from  the  church  the  mob  poured  away  to  the 
monasteries  in  the  town.  No  lives  were  lost, 
but  before  evening  they  were  gutted  and  in 
ruins.  The  endurance  of  centuries  had  sud* 
denly  given  way,  and  the  anger  which  for  all 
these  years  had  been  accumulating,  rushed 
out  like  some  great  reservoir  which  has  burst 
its  embankment  and  swept  everything  before 
it.  To  the  Protestant  leaders  this  ebullition 
of  a  mob,  ''  the  rascal  multitude,"  as  even 
Knox  calls  it,  was  as  unwelcome  as  it  was 
welcome  to  the  queen  regent.  She  swore 
that  "  she  would  cut  oflf  from  Perth  man, 
woman,  and  child,  that  she  would  drive  a 
plough  over  it  and  sow  it  with  salt ;  and  she 
at  once  marched  upon  the  town  to  put  her 
threat  in  execution.  The  lords  met  in  haste 
to .  determine  what  they  should  do,  but  were 
unable  to  determine  anything;  and  only 
Lord  Glencairn  was  bold  enough  to  risk  the 
obloquy  of  being  charged  with  countenan- 
cing sedition.  When  he  found  himself  alone 
in  the  assembly,  he  declared,  that  "  albeit 
never  a  man  accompanied  him,  he  would  stay 
with  the  brethren,  for  he  had  rather  die  with 
that  company  than  live  after  them."  But 
his  example  was  not  followed  ;  all  the  others 
thought  ft  better  to  remain  with  the  regent, 
and  endeavor,  though  once  already  so  bitterly 
deceived  by  her,  to  mediate  and  temporize. 

The  town  people  in  the  meantime  had 
determined  to  resist  to  the  last  extremity, 
and  the  regent  was  rapidly*  approaching. 
With  a  most  creditable  anxiety  to  prevent 
bloodshed.  Lord  James  Stuart  and  Lord 
Argyle  prevailed  on  the  burgesses  to  name 
the  conditions  on  which  they  would  surren- 
der, and  when  the  latter  bad  consented  to 
do  so,  if  the  queen  would  grant  an  amnesty 
for  the  riot,  and  would  engage  that  Perth 
should  not  be  obliged  to  receive  a  French 
garrison,  they  hurried  to  lay  these  terms  be- 
fore her.  The  regent  had  no  objection  to 
purchase  a  bloodless  victory  with  a  promise 
which  she  had  no  intention  of  observing. 
Perth  opened  its  gates ;  and,  marching  in  at 
the  head  of  her  troops,  she  deliberately  vio- 
lated every  article  to  which  she  had  bound 
herself.  The  French  soldiers  passing  along 
the  High-street  fired  upon  the  house  of  an. 
obnoxious  citixen^  and  killed  one  of  his  chil- 


1859.] 


JOHN  KNOX 


15 


dren ;  and  witb/aA  impolitic  parade  of  per- 
fidy the  princess  replied '  only  to  the  com- 
plaints of  the  people,  that  *'  she  was  sorry 
it  was  the  child  and  not  the  father/'  and  she 
left  the  offending  soldiers  as  the  garrison  of 
the  town.     Her  falsehood  was  as  imprudent 
as  it  was  abominable.     The  two  noblemen 
withdrew  indignantly  from  the  court,  declar- 
ing formally  that  they  would  not  support 
her  in  "such  manifest  tyranny;"  and  join- 
ing themselves  openly  to  Knoi,  they  hast- 
ened with  him  to  St.  Andrews,  where  they 
were  presently  joined  by  Lord  Ochiltree  and 
Lord  Glencaim,  and  from  thence  sent  out  a 
hasty  circular,  inviting  the  gentlemen  and 
lords  of  Scotland  to  assemble  for  the  defence 
of  the  kingdom.     It  was  still  uncertain  what 
support  they  might  eipect,  and  before  any 
support  had  actually  arrived,  when  Knox 
hastened    to    realize  the  conviction  which 
long  ago   he  had  expressed  on  bo<ird  the 
French  galley,  and  to  <'  glorify  God  "  in  the 
pulpit  of  the  Church  where  "  God  had  first 
opened  his  voice."     If  he  had  superstitious 
feelings  on  the  matter  we   cannot  quarrel 
with  him  for  them ;  and  although  it  was  at 
the  risk  of  his  life,  (for  a  detachment  of  the 
French  were  at  Falkland,  only  twelve  miles 
distant,  and  the  archbishop  had  sent  a  mes- 
sage to  the  lords,  "  that  in  case  the  said 
John   presented   himself   to  the   preaching 
place   in  his   town,  he  should  gar  him  be 
saluted  with  a  dozen  culverins,  whereof  the 
most  part  should  light  on  his  nose,")  yet  at 
such  a  time  the  boldest  policy  is  always  the 
soundest,  and   he  refused  to  listen  to  the 
remonstrances  of  his  friends.     "To  delay  to 
preach    to-morrow,"    he   said   the  evening 
before  the  day  fixed,  "  unless  the  body  be 
violently  withholden,  I  cannot  of  conscience. 
For  in  this  town  and  kirk  began  God  first  to 
call  me  to  the  dignity  of  a  preacher,  and 
this  I  cannot  conceal,  which  more  than  one 
heard  me  say  when  the  body  was  far  absent 
from  Scotland,  that  my  assured  hope  was  to 
preach  in  St.  Andrews  before  I  departed  this 
life."     He  went  straightforward,  be  preach- 
ed as  he  had  done  at  Perth,  and  with  a  still 
more  serious  effect,  for  the  town  council 
immediately  after    the   sermon  voted    the 
abolition  of  "all  monuments  of  idolatry." 
The  circumstance  of  the  prophecy,  and  still 
more  the    circumstance  of    their  previous 
knowledge  of  him,  his  present  position  as  an 
outlaw   with  a  price  upon   his  head,   the 
threats  of  the  archbbhop  with  the  doubt 
whether  he  would  attempt  to  put  them  in 
force ;    all  these,  added   to  the  powr^r  of 
Knox's  own  thunder,  explain  the  precipitancy 


of  the  resolutions  in  the  excitement  which 
they  must  have  produced ;  and  the  resolu- 
tions themselves  were  immediately  carried 
into  effect.  Some  one  to  go  first  is  half  the 
battle  of  a  revolution,  and  with  such  a  leader 
as  Knox  it  is  easy  to  find  followers.  By  the 
time  the  regent's  troops  were  under  the  walls 
so  many  thousand  knights,  gentlemen,  and 
citizens,  were  in  arms  to  receive  them,  that 
they  shrank  back  without  venturing  a  blow, 
and  retired  within  their  intrenchments ;  and 
thus  within  six  short  weeks,  for  it  was  no 
more  since  Knox  landed,  the  Reformers  were 
left  roasters  of  the  field,  conquerors  in  an 
armed  revolt  which  had  not  cost  a  single  life 
of  themselves  or  of  their  enemies,  so  over- 
whelming was  iht  force  which  the  appear- 
ance of  this  one  man  had  summoned  into 
action.  We  require  no  better  witness  of  the 
prostration  of  the  Catholic  faith  in  Scotland, 
or  of  the  paralysis  into  which  it  had  sunk. 

"  And  now,"  wrote  Knox  to  a  friend,  "  the 
long  thirst  of  my  wretched  heart  is  sntisfied  in 
abundance.  Forty  days  and  more  hath  my  God 
used  my  tongue  in  my  native  country  to  the 
manifestation  of  His  glory.  Whalsoover  now 
Hhali  follow  as  touching  my  own  carcase,  His 
holy  name  be  praised." 

The  rest  of  the  summer  the  queen  regent 
was  obliged  to  remain  a  passive  spectator  of 
a  burst  of  popular  feeling  with  which,  as 
long  as  it  was  at  its  height,  her  power  was 
wholly  inadequate  to  cope,  and  which  she 
was  forced  to  leave  to  work  its  will,  till  it 
cooled  of  itself.  .  .  .  That  it  would  and 
must  cool  sooner  or  later,  a  less  shrewd  per- 
son than  Mary  of  Guise  could  foresee  :  feel- 
ing of  all  kinds  is  in  nature  transient  and 
exhausting,  and  the  goodness  of  a  cause  will 
not  prevent  enthusiasm  from  «fiagging,  or 
unpaid  and  unsupported  armies  from  disin- 
tegrating. Her  turn,  therefore,  she  might 
safely  calculate  would  come  at  last ;  and,  in 
the  meantime,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but 
to  sit  still,  while,  by  a  simultaneous  move- 
ment over  the  entire  Lowlands,  the  images 
were  destroyed  in  the  churches,  and  the  * 
monasteries  laid  in  ruins.  Not  a  life  was 
lost,  not  a  person  was  injured,  no  private 
revenge  was  gratified  iu  the  confusion,  no 
private  greediness  took  opportunity  to  pilfer. 
Only  the  entire  material  of  the  old  faith  was 
washed  clean  awav.  . 

This  passionate  iconoclasm  has  been  alter- 
nately the  glory  and  the  reproach  of  John 
Knox,  who  has  been  considered  alike  by 
friends  and  enemies  the  author  of  it.  For 
the  purification  of  the  churches  there  is  no 


u 


JOHN  KNOX 


[Sept* 


doubt. thai  he  was  responsible  to  the  fall» 
whatever  the  respoosibility  may  be  which 
attaches  to  it, — but  the  destruction  of  the 
religious  houses  was  the  spontaneous  work 
of  the  people,^  which  in  the  outset  he  looked 
upon  with  mere  sorrow  and  indignation. 
Like  Latimer  in  England,  he  had  hoped  to 
preserve  them  for  purposes  of  education  and 
chanty ;  and  it  was  only  after  a  warning 
which  sounded  in  his  ears  as  if  it  came  from 
heaven,  that  he  stood  aloof,  and  let  the  pop- 
ular anger  have  its  way  ;  they  had  been  nests 
of  profligacy  for  ages ;  the  earth  was  weary 
of  their  presence  upon  it ;  and  when  the  re- 
tribution fell,  it  was  not  for  him  to  arrest  or 
interfere  with  it.  Scone  Abbey,  the  resi- 
dence of  the  Bishop  of  Murray,  was  infamous, 
even  in  that  infamous  time,  for  the  vices  of 
its  occupants ;  and  the  bishop  himself  having 
been  active  in  the  burning  of  Walter  Milne, 
had  thus  provoked  and  deserved  the  general 
hatred.  After  the  French  garrison  was 
driven  out  of  Perth,  he  was  invited  to  appear 
at  the  conference  of  the  lords,  but,  unwilling 
or  afraid  to  come  forward,  he  blockaded  him- 
self in  the  abbey.  A  slight  thing  is  enough 
to  fnve  the  first  impulse  to  a  stone  which  is 
ready  to  fall ;  the  townpeople  of  Perth  and 
Dundee,  having  long  scores  to  settle  with 
bim  and  with  the  brotherhood,  caught  at  the 
opportunity,  and  poured  out  and  surrounded 
him.  John  Knox,  with  the  provost  of  Perth 
and  what  force  they  could  muster,  hurried  to 
the  scene  to  prevent  violence,  anc^  for  a  lime 
succeeded;  Knox  himself  we  find  keeping 
guard  all  one  night  at  the  granary  door :  but 
the  mob  did  not  disperse;  and  prowling 
ominou&ly  round  the  walls,  in  default  of  oth- 
er weapons,  made  free  use  of  their  tongues. 
From  sharp  words  to  sharp  strokes  is  an 
almost  inevitable  transition  on  such  occasions. 
In  the  gray  of  the  morning,  a  son  of  the 
bishop  ran  an  artisan  of  Dundee  through  the 
body,  and  in  an  instant  the  entire  mass  of 
the  people  dashed  upon  the  gates.  The 
hour  of  Scone  was  come.  Knox  was  lifted 
gently  on  one  side,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the 
$  abbey  was  in  a  blaze.  As  he  stood  watch- 
ing the  destruction,  "  a  poor  aged  matron," 
he  tells  us,  "  who  was  near  him,  seeing  the 
flame  of  fire  pass  up  so  mightily,  and  per- 
ceiving that  many  were  thereat  offended,  in 
plain  and  sober  manner  of  speaking  said, 
'  Now  I  perceive  that  God*s  judgments  are 
lust,  and  that  no  jnaia  is  able  to  save  when 
he  will  punish.  Since  my  remembrance, 
this  place  has  been  nothing  but  a  den  of 
whoremongers.  It  is  incredible  to  believe 
how  many  wives  have  been  adulterated,  and 


virgins  deflowered  by  the  filthy  beasts  which 
have  been  fostered  in  this  den,  but  es«peoia]ly 
by  that  wicked  man  who  is  called  the  bishop. 
If  all  men  knew  as  much  as  I,  they  would 
praise  God,  and  no  man  would  be  offend* 
ed.' " 

Such  was  the  first  burst  of  the  Reforma* 
tion  in  Scotland ;  we  need  not  follow  the 
course  of  it.  It  was  the  rising  up  of  a 
nation,  as  we  have  said,  against  the  wicked- 
ness which  had  taken  possession  of  the 
holiest  things  and  holiest  places,  to  declare 
in  the  name  of  Qod  that  such  a  spectacle 
should  no  longer  be  endured.  Of  the  doo- 
trines  of  Scotch  Protestantism,  meaning  by 
that  the  speculative  scheme  of  Christianity 
which  was  held  and  taught  by  Knox  and 
the  other  ministers,  we  say  but  little,  regard- 
ing it  as  by  no  means  the  thing  of  chiefest 
importance.  Formal  theology  at  its  best  ia 
no  more  than  a  language, — an  expression  in 
words  of  mysteries  which  the  mind  of  man 
can  UAver  adequately .  comprehend,  and  is* 
therefore,  like  all  other  human  creations, 
liable  to  continual  change.  In  Knox'^  own 
words,  "  All  worldly  .strength,  yen,  even  in 
things  spiritual,  doth  decay;"  and  all  lan- 
guages become  in  time  dead  languages,  and 
the  meaning  of  them  is  only  artificially  pre* 
served  among  us.  Religion,  as  these  Re- 
formers understood  it,  (and  as  all  religious 
men  understand  it,  whatever  be  their  lan- 
guage,) meant  this,  that  the  business  of  man 
upon  earth  was^to  scure  Almighty  Qod,  not 
with  forms  and  words^but  with  an  obedient 
life,  to  hate  all  sin,  impurity,  hypocrisy,  and 
falsehood  ;  and  whatever  Protestantism  maj 
have  become  after  three  centuries  of  esta- 
blishment, Protestantism  at  its  outset  meant 
a  return  to  this,  from  igrmaW&m^'i^  mother 
of  all  wickedness.  It  were  a  jj^qgr. concep- 
tion, indeed,  that  so  great  a  quair^  was  for 
the  truth  or  falsehood  oLb  speculative  sys- 
tem of  tlieology.  Then,  indeed,  the  world 
gained  little  by  the  change ;  for,  if  Calvin- 
ism was  once  a  motive  power  to  holiness,  so, 
too,  was  once  the  mass  itself;  and  if  the 
mass  became  an  idol  and  a  cause  of  confu- 
sion and  sin,  by  a  process  exactly  analogous 
the  theory  of  vicarious  righteousness  may 
now  be  found  in  the  Welsh  valleys  produ- 
cing an  identical  resulL  So  it  is,  and  so  it 
always  will  be,  as  long  as  any  special  virtue 
is  supposed  to  reside  in  formal  outward  act, 
or  formal  inward  theory,  irrespective  of 
purity  of  heart  and  manliness  of  life. 

The  details  of  the  war  which  followed  need 
not  concern  us  here.  The  French  were  re- 
inforced ;  the  Protestants,  as  had  been  fore- 


1853.] 


J0H17  EKOX 


17 


soen,  broke  in  pieces  at  the  begrinning  of  the 
Winter;  and,  reverse  following  on  reverse, 
there  was  soon  as  much  despondency  as 
there  had  been  enthusiasm,  and  they  were 
driven  in  the  end  to  throw  themselves  on  the 
protection  of  Elizabeth,  which  she  was,  only 
with  the  utmost  difficulty,  prevailed  upon  to 
consent  to  extend  to  them.  Her  English  love 
of  order  was  outraged  by  their  turbulence. 
Her  despotic  Tudor  blood  could  not  endure 
the  rising  of  subjects  against  their  sovereign  ; 
and,  though  she  knev  that  the  right  was  on 
their  side,  it  was  less  easy  for  her  to /eel  it. 
Knox  himself,  by  his  unfortunate  **  Blast 
against  the  Regimen  of  Women,"  had  made 
himself  personally  odious  to  her ;  and  though 
she  could  hardly  have  failed  to  see  his  merit, 
yet  bis  character  would  under  no  circumstan- 
ces have  attracted  her  afifection.  Nor  had  he 
any  skill  to  deal  with  such  a  temper  as  hers. 
The  diplomatic  correspondence  with  England 
fell  to  his  conduct ;  an4|be  began  it  with  a 
justification  of  his  book,  which,  riffht  or 
wron^,  he  had  much  better  have  passed  over ; 
he  told  her  that  she  was  to  consider  herself 
an  exception  to  a  rule,  that  she  reigned  by 
the  choice  of  God,  and  not  by  right  of  inheri- 
tance ;  and  he  could  not  have  touched  a  nerve 
on  which  she  was  more  sensitive,  or  chal- 
lenged a  right  of  which  she  was  more  jealous. 
Nor  did  Cecil  fare  any  better  than  his  mis- 
tress. To  him  he  commenced  with  rebukes 
for  his  '*  horrible  apostasy'*  in  having  con- 
formed, under  Mary,  to  the  Romish  ritual. 
He  was  unable  to  understand  the  difference 
in  the  circumstances  of  the  two  kingdoms,  or 
in  tne  characters  of  the  two  nations.  Cecil 
was  an  Englishman — it  is  at  once  the  expla- 
nation of,  and  the  apology  for  his  conduct ; 
but  to  Knox  it  was  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other.  He  could  only  conceive  of  the  Mass 
as  the  service  of  the  devil ;  and  the  ''  adia- 
phorism"  of  the  English  was  to  him  no  bet- 
ter than  atheism.  Elizabeth  took  no  notice 
of  the  letter  to  herself ;  Cecil  answered  him 
for  her  as  well  as  for  himself,  with  quiet  and 
well-timed  humor.  ^'  Non  est  masculus  ne- 
que  foemina"  he  wrote,  '•^omnes  enim  ui  ait 
Paulu9  unum  9umu9  in  Ckristo  Jesu,  Bene- 
dictum  vir  qui  confidit  in  Domino;  et  erit 
Dcminus  fiducia  ^ue.*^  He  knew,  and  the 
queen  knew,  however  difficult  she  found  it  to 
make  the  acknowledgment  to  herself,  that 
the  French  must  not  be  allowed  to  triumph 
in  Scotland ;  and  as  soon  as  it  became  clear 
that  the  Protestants  could  not  maintain  them- 
selves without  assistance  it  was  freely  and 
effectively  given. 

And  now  we  pi^ss  on  to  the  meeting  of  the 

YOIk  XXX.    NO.  L 


estates  and  the  settlement  of  the  new  kirk 
constitution.  Mary  of  Guise  was  dead  ;  the 
French  were  finally  driven  out,  and-the  queen 
of  Scotland  had  been  so  identiBed  with  them 
that,  on  their  defeat,  she  was  left  without  au- 
thority or  influence  in  the  country.  The  es- 
tates met  as  an  independent  and  irresponsible 
body  to  act  for  themselves  as  they  should 
think  good  ;  and  the  French  commissioners 
had  engaged  on  behalf  of  the  titular  queen 
that  she  would  ratify  whatever  they  should 
resolve  upon.  The  session  opened  with  a  na- 
tional thanksgiving;  and,  considering  how 
vast  a  victory  had  been  gained,  and  how 
*'  manifestly,"  as  Knox  conceived,  God  had 
fought  for  the  movement,  it  was  natural  that 
he  should  be  sanguine  in  his  expectation  of 
what  would  now  be  done  by  a  grateful  peo- 
ple. In  the  enormous  revenue  of  the  church 
he  saw  a  magnificent  material,  not  to  salarv 
the  new  kirk  ministers,  but  to  found  schools 
and  universities,  to  endow  hospitals  and  alms- 
houses ;  in  his  own  broad  language,  he  called 
it  restoring  the  temple  ;  and  perhaps  for  the 
moment,  he  allowed  himself  to  believe  that 
the  noble  lords  of  Scotland  were  as  enthusi- 
astic for  the  good  of  the  people  as  he  was 
himself.  But  it  was  one  thing;  to  win  the  victo- 
ry, and  another  to  divide  the  spoil.  "  Heh, 
then,"  said  young  Maiiland  of  Lethington, 
"  we  must  forget  ourselves  now ;  we  mun  a' 
bear  the  barrow,  and  build  the  house  of  the 
Lord."  Not  quite.  The  ministers  should 
have  sufficient  stipend,  but  for  the'  rest  they 
would  consider.  Nor  was  this  the  only  dis- 
appointment. We  have  seen  that  what  Knox 
had  chiefly  valued  in  the  Genevan  reforma- 
tion was  the  discipline  of  morals,  which  was 
established  along  with  it.  A  serious  atlempt 
had  been  made  by  Calvin  to  treat  sins  as  ci- 
vil crimes,  to  gradunte  all  punishments  inflict* 
ed  by  the  law,  according  to  the  scale  of  moral 
culpability ;  and  he  had  succeeded  apparently 
so  well,  that  the  example  was  pressed  upon 
Scotland ;  a  body  of  laws  was  drawn  up  by 
Knox,  known  commonly  by  the  name  of  the 
First  Book  of  Discipline,  and  offered  to  the 
private  consideration  of  the  lords.  So  many 
of  them  at  first  subscribed  their  names  to  it, 
that  it  was  formally  submitted  to  debate. 
But,  as  Maitland  a^ain  observed,  they  had 
subscribed  most  of  them  "  in  fide  parentum, 
as  children  were  baptized  ;^^  and  "certain 
persons;"  Knox  tolls  us,  "  perceiving  their 
carnal  liberty  to  be  somewhat  impaired 
thereby,  grudged ;  insomuch  that  the  name 
of  the  Book  of  Discipline  became  odious  to 
them.  Everything  which  repugned  to  their 
corrupt  affections  was  termed  in  their  mock- 


18 


JOHK  KNOX 


[Sept., 


age,  '  Devout  ImaginatioDs/  ''*  And  yet  if 
there  were  partial  failures,  when  we  consider 
the  necessary  imperfection  inherent  in  all  hu- 
man things,  and  when  we  remember  that  the 
work  which  actually  was  done  by  the  estates 
was  the  extemporizing  in  a  few  weeks  a  new 
ecclesiastical,  and,  in  many  respects,  civil 
constitution  for  an  entire  kingdom,  we  shall 
not  be  disposed  to  complain  of  them.  It  was 
roughly  done,  but  done  sternly  and  strongly, 
and  the  substantial  evils  were  swept  utterly 
away.  Of  the  "  Devout  Imaginations,"  so 
much,  was  actually  realized,  that  laws  were 
passed  with  punishments  anneied  to  them, 
against  adultery,  fornication,  and  drunken- 
ness, while  the  mass  was  prohibited  for  ever, 
under  penalty,  for  the  first  offence,  of  con- 
fiscation ;  for  the  second,  of  banishment ;  for 
the  third,  of  death* 

Ob !  intolerance  without  excuse !  exclaim 
the  modern  Liberals;  themselves  barely 
emancipated  from  persecution,  the  first  act 
of  these  Protestants  is  to  retaliate  with  the 
same  odious  cruelty  ;  clamoring  for  the  liberty 
of  conscience,  they  do  but  supersede  one 
tyranny  by  another,  more  narrow  and  exclu- 
sive, &c.  This,  at  bottom,  we  believe,  is  the 
most  grievous  of  all  Knox's  offences,  the  one 
sin  never  to  be  forgiven  by  the  enlightened 
mind  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Let  us  see 
what  can  be  said  about  it.  We  do  not  look 
for  the  explanation,  with  some  modern  apo- 
logists,  in  the  want  of  reciprocity  on  the  part 
of  the  Catholics,  in  the  impossibility  of  tol- 
erating a  creed  which  is  in  itself  intolerant. 
In  England,  the  mass  was  forbidde;i  because 
it  was  identified  with  civil  disafifedtion.  In 
Scotland,  it  was  forbidden  because  it  was 
supposed  to  be  idolatry,  and  so  to  be  for- 
bidden by  God ;  the  Bible  was  positive  and 
peremptory ;  and  the  Bible  was  accepted, 
bona  fide,  as  the  guide  of  life.  The  fact  is, 
toleration,  in  the  modem  sense,  is  a  pheno- 
menon of  modern  growth,  and  the  result  of 
a  condition  of  things  of  very  recent  exist- 
ence. We  have  no  toleration  for  what  we 
believe  to  be  evil,  or  for  what  plainly  and 

•  Thia  well-known  ezpreanon  has  been  placed 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  month  of  the  Earl  of 
Marray.  If  the  mistake  were  ever  ao  inaigoifioant 
it  would  be  worth  correcting ;  and  it  ia  therefore 
as  well  to  aay  that  Knox  himaelf  ia  the  only  antho- 
rity  for  the  worda^  and  that  the  deacription  which 
he  gives  of  the  apeaker  aa  little  agreea  with  the 
opinion  which  he  elaewhere  ezpreaaes  of  Murray  aa 
the  worda  themaelvee  with  Murray  a  general  cha- 
racter. There  ia  no  evidence,  either  |>ofiitive  or 
probable,  in  favor  of  Scott'a  conjecture — ^if,  indeed, 
it  waa  a  conjecture  at  idl,  and  was  more  than  care- 
leaaneH. 


obviously  leads  to  evil ;  God  forbid  that  we 
should.  But  as  we  look  round  among  the 
sects  into  which  we  are  divided,  and  see  that 
good  and  evil  are  very  equally  distributed 
among  us,  we  learn  to  speak  of  our  specula- 
tive differences,  no  longer  as  matters  of  con- 
science, but  merely  as  differences  of  opinion, 
which  do  not  touch  the  conscience  at  all. 
We  experience,  as  matter  of  fact,  that  the 
holding  of  this  or  that  opinion  is  no  obstacle 
to  an  adequate  discharge  of  public  and  pri- 
vate duty ;  that  a  man  may  be  a  Catholic>  a 
Protestant,  a  Socinian,  or  a  Jew,  and  yet  be 
an  honest  man  and  a  good  citizen ;  and  we 
cannot  permit  the  persecution  of  speculations 
of  which  moral  evil  is  not  a  visible  result. 
This  is  what  we  mean  by  toleration,  and  three 
centuries  ago  it  could  not  exist,  because  the 
reason  for  it  did  not  exist.  In  England,  a 
Catholic  could  notbesL  good  citizen :  in  Scot- 
land, he  WIS  not  an  honest  man.  The  pro- 
ducts of  Catholicism  there,  as  the  experience 
of  centuries  proved,  were  nothing  better  than 
hypocrisy  and  licentiousness ;  and,  finding  in 
the  Bible  that  "  the  idolater  should  die  the 
death,"  and  finding  the  mass  producing  the 
exact  fruits  which  the  same  Bible  connected 
with  idolatry,  the  Scotch  Reformers  could 
as  little  tolerate  Catholics  as  they  could  toler- 
ate thieves  or  murderers.  We  are,  therefor^, 
inclined  to  dismiss  thb  outcry  of  intolerance 
as  meaningless  and  foolish.  In  the  absolute 
prohibition  of  the  mass  lay,  when  rightly 
understood,  the  heart  of  the  entire  movement; 
and,  in  the  surrender  of  this  one  point,  as 
they  soon  experienced  to  their  sorrow,  they 
lost  all  which  they  had  gained. 

So  then,  in  spite  of  the  Maitlands  and  the 
Erskines,  and  the  other  spoliators  of  church 
property,  Knox  could  find  matter  enough  for 
exultation.  *'  What  adulterer/'  he  asks,  tri- 
umphantly, ''what  fornicator,  what  known 
mass-monger,  or  pestilent  papist,  durst  have 
been  seen  in  public  in  any  reformed  town 
within  this  realm  before  that  the  queen  arri- 
ved?*' Work  greater  than  this  was  never 
achieved  by  reformers  on  the  earth.  We 
may  well  wonder  that  the  arrival  of  a  young 
lady,  hardly  twenty  years  old,  should  have 
been  able  to  disintegrate  it.  We  have  seen 
Knox  in  conflict  with  many  forms  of  evil : 
he  had  now  to  contend  with  it  under  one 
more  aspect^  the  last,  but  most  dangerous  of 
all. 

But  one  year  had  passed  since  Mary  Stuart 
had  been  queen  of  France  as  well  as  of  Scot- 
land, and  self-elected  queen  of  England,  with 
the  full  power  of  a  mighty  nation  preparing 
to  enforce  her  right ;  and  now  she  was  com- 


1858.] 


JOHN  KNOX. 


10 


log  to  her  own  poor  inheritance  a  lonely 
widow,  at  the  moment  when  it  was  flushed 
with  a  successful  revolt,  her  influence  in 
France  lying  buried  in  her  husband^s  grHve, 
and  her  claim  to  England  disavowed  in  lier 
name  by  her  own  commissoners :  and  yet, 
feeble  as  she  seemed,  she  was  returning  with 
a  determined  purpose  to  undo  all  that  had 
been  done ;  to  overthrow  the  Reformation, 
to  oyerthrow  Elizabeth,  and,  on  the  ihrone  of 
the  two  kingdoms,  lay  them  both  as  an  offer- 
ing before  the  Pope.  Elsewhere,  in  this 
'*  Review,'*  we  have  given  our  opinion  of  this 
remarkable  woman,  and  she  will  only  appear 
before  us  here  in  her  relation  with  the  refor- 
mers ;  but  the  more  we  examine  her  history, 
the  more  cause  we  find  to  wonder  at  her ; 
and  deep  as  were  her  crimes,  her  skill,  her 
enterprise,  her  iron  and  dauntless  resolution, 
almost  tempt  us  to  forget  them. 

She  never  doubted  her  success ;  she  knew 
the  spell  which  would  enchant  the  fierce 
nobles  of  her  country.  There  was  but  one 
man  whom,  on  the  eve  of  her  setting  out,  she 
confessed  that  she  feared,  and  that  was  Knox. 
He  alone,  she  knew,  would  be  proof  against 
her  Armida  genius,  and  if  she  could  once  de- 
stroy him,  she  could  carry  all  before  her.  Nor 
had  she  either  misjudged  her  subjects  or 
overrated  her  own  power.  Before  she  had 
been  three  years  at  home,  she  had  organized 
a  powerful  party,  that  were  wholly  devoted 
to  her,  she  had  broken  the  Protestant  league, 
and  scattered  disaffection  and  distrust  among 
its  members.  Murray  had  quarrelled  with 
Elnoz  for  her.  Argyle  was  entangled  with 
the  Irish  rebels.  The  mass  was  openly  re- 
established through  town  and  country  ;  and, 
while  the  Reformation  was  melting  like  snow 
all  over  Scotland,  the  northern  English  coun- 
ties were  ready,  at  a  signal,  to  rise  in  arms 
against  Elizabeth 

The  self-restraint  which  she  practised  upon 
herself  in  order  to  effect  aJ  this  is  as  remarka- 
ble as  the  effect  itself  which  she  product'd. 
She  pretended,  at  her  return,  that  all  which 
she  desired  was  the  love  of  her  subjects. 
She  would  govern  as  they  wished,  and  do 
what  they  wished.  For  her  religion  she 
could  not  immediately  answer :  she  had  been 
brought  up  a  Catholic,  and  she  could  not 
change  her  faith  like  a  dress;  but  she  had 
no  thought  of  interfering  with  them ;  and, 
in  return,  she  modestly  requested,  what  it 
seemed  as  if  she  might  have  demanded  as  a 
right,  that  for  the  present  she  should  be  al- 
lowed the  private  exercise  of  the  religion  of 
her  fathers.  How  was  it  possible  to  refuse  a 
petition  so  humble  ?  urged,  too,  as  it  was,  in 


the  name  of  conscience  by  lips  so  beautiful. 
Honor,  courtesy,  loyalty,  every  knightly  feel- 
ing forbade  it.  What  was  there  in  a  single 
mass,  that  the  sour  ministers,  with  Knox  at 
tlie  head  of  them,  should  make  such  a  noise 
about  it?  Even  Murray  was  the  warmest 
advocate  for  yielding.  Scotland,  he  said, 
would  be  disgraced  forever  if  she  was  driven 
away  from  it  on  such  a  plea.  It  would  only 
be  for  a  little  while,  and  time  and  persuasion, 
and  above  all,  the  power  of  the  truth,  would 
not  fail  to  do  their  work  upon  a  mind  so  ten- 
der and  so  gentle. 

And  yet,  as  Knox  knew  well,, a  conviction 
which  courtesy  could  influence,  was  no  longer 
a  sacred  one  ;  and  to  concede  a  permission  to 
do  what  the  law  declared  to  be  a  crime,  was 
to  condemn  the  law  itself  as  unjust  and 
tyrannous.  **  That  one  mass,"  he  said, "  was 
more  fearful  to  him  than  the  landing  of  ten 
thousand  men ;"  he  knew,  and  Mary  knew 
too,  that  to  grant  her  that  one  step  was  to 
give  up  the  game,  and  that  on  the  mere 
ground  of  political  expediency  to  yield  on 
that  point  was  suicide. 

Here  is  a  picture  of  the  way  in  which 
things  went.  At  a  distance  from  Holyrood 
the  truth  had  a  better  chance  of  being  felt, 
and  the  noblemen  who  were  in  the  country 
hurried  up, "  wondrous  offended,'*  when  they 
heard  of  this  mass,  to  know  what  it  meant  :-^ 

"  So  that  every  man,  as  he  came  up,  accused 
them  that  were  before  him ;  bat  after  they  had  re- 
mained a  space,  they  were  as  quiet  as  the  former ; 
which  thing  perceived,  a  zealous  and  godly  man, 
Robert  Campbell,  of  Kingandeagh,  said  to  Lord 
Ochiltree, '  My  lord,  now  ye  are  come,  and  almost 
the  last,  and  I  perceive  by  your  anger  the  fire 
edge  is  not  off  you ;  but  I  fear  that,  after  the 
holy  ^ater  of  the  court  be  sprinkled  upon  you ; 
that  ye  shall  become  as  temperate  here  as  the 
rest.  I  have  been  here  now  five  days,  and  I 
heard  every  man  say  at  the  first.  Let  us  hang  the 
priest ;  but  after  they  had  been  twice  or  thrice  in 
the  Abbey,  all  that  fervency  passed.  I  think 
there  is  some  enchantment  whereby  men  are  be- 
witched.* *' 

The  queen  lost  no  time  in  measuring  her 
strength  gainst  Knox,  and  looking  her  real 
enemy  in  the  face.  A  week  after, her  land- 
ing, she  sent  for  him ;  and  the  first  of  those 
interviews  took  place  in  which  he  is  said  to 
have  behaved  so  brutally.  Violence  was  not 
her  policy ;  she  affected  only  a  wish  to  see 
the  man  of  whom  she  had  heard  so  much, 
and  her  brother  was  present  as  a  blind. 
We  confess  ourselves  unable  to  discover  the 
supposed  brutality.  Knux  for  many  years 
had  been  tl\e  companion  of  great  lords  and 


20 


JOHN  KNOX. 


fSept., 


princes ;  his  manner,  if  that  is  important,  had 
all  the  calmness  and  self-possession  which 
we  mean  hy  the  word,  high -hreeding;  and 
unless  it  be  the  duty  of  a  subject  lo  pretend 
to  agree  with  his  sovereign,  whether  he 
really  agrees  or  not,  it  is  difficult  to  know 
how  he  could  have  conducted  himself  other- 
wise than  he  did.  She  accused  him  of  dis- 
affection towards  her.  He  said  that  she 
should  find  him  dutiful  and  obedient  where- 
erer  his  conscience  would  allow  him.  She 
complained  of  the  eiception,  and  talked  in 
the  Stuart  style  of  the  obligation  of  subjects. 
He  answered  by  instancing  the  Jews  under 
the  Babylonian  princes,  and  the  early  Chris- 
tians under  the  emperors : — 

**  *  But  they  resisted  not  with  the  sword,'  she 
said. 

'*'6od,  madam,'  he  replied,  *had  not  given 
them  the  means.' 

" '  Then,  you  think  subjects  having  power  may 
resist  their  princes,'  she  said. 

*"  If  the  princes  exceed  their  bounds,  madam,* 
was  his  answer,  *  and  do  against  that  wherefore 
they  should  be  obeyed,  there  is  uo  doubt  that 
they  may  be  resisted  even  by  force.  For  there  is 
neither  greater  honor  nor  greater  obedience  to  be 
given  to  kings  or  princes  than  God  has  com- 
manded to  be  given  to  fathers  and  mothers ;  but 
so  it  is  that  the  father  may  be  stricken  with  a 
frenzy,  in  which  he  would  slay  his  own  children. 
Now,  madam,  if  the  children  arise,  join  themselves 
together,  apprehend  the  father,  take  the  sword 
and  other  weapons  from  him,  and,  finally,  bind*  his 
hands,  and  keep  him  in  prison  till  that  his  frenzy 
be  overpast-— ;thiok  ve,  madam,  that  the  children 
do  any  wrong  ?  It  fs  even  so  with  princes  that 
would  murder  the  children  of  God  that  are  sub- 
ject unto  them.  Their  blind  zeal  is  nothing  but 
a  mad  frenzy,  and  therefore  to  take  the  sword 
from  them,  to  bind  their  hands,  and  to  cast  them 
into  prison,  till  that  they  be  brought  to  a  more 
sober  mind,  is  no  disobedience  against  princes,  but 
just  obedience,  because  that  it  agreetfa  with  the 
will  of  God.' " 

He  had  touched  the  heart  of  the  matter ; 
the  queen  "  stood  as  it  were  amazed,"  and 
said  nothing  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  But 
is  there  anything  disrespectful  in  this? 
Surely  it  was  very  good  advice,  which  would 
have  saved  her  life  if  she  had  followed  it ; 
and,  for  the  manner,  it  would  have  been 
more  disrespectful  *if,  because  he  was  speak- 
ing to  a  woman,  he  had  diluted  his  solemn 
convictions  with  soft  and  unmeaning  phrases. 
**  He  is  not  afraid,"  some  of  the  courtiers 
whispered  as  he  passed  out.  'fWhy,"  he 
answered,  "should  the  pleasing  face  of  a 
ffentlewoman  fear  me  ?  I  have  looked  in  the 
faces  of  many  angry  men,  and  have  not  been 
afraid  above   measure."    Dr.    M'Orie    has 


spoilt  this  by  inventing  *'  a  sarcastic  scowl !" 
for  him  on  this  occasion.  Men  like  Enoz  do 
not  "  scowl  sarcastically,"  except  in  novels, 
and  Dr.  M'Crie  was  forgetting  himself.  We 
can  only  conjecture  what  the  queen  thought 
of  Knox.  Tears,  as  we  know,  were  her  re- 
source, and  we  have  heard  enough  and  too 
much  of  these ;  but  they  answered  their  pur- 
pose with  her  brother.  **Mr.  Knox  hath 
spoken  with  the  queen,"  Randolph  writes  to 
Cecil,  "  and  he  made  her  weep,  as  well  yoa 
know  there  be  of  that  sex  that  will  do  that 
for  anger  as  for  grief ;  though  in  this  the 
Lord  James  will  disagree  with  me."  Of  her» 
Knox  said  on  the  day  of  the  interview,  "  In 
communication  with  her  I  espied  such  craft, 
as  I  have  not  found  in  such  age.  If  there  be 
not  in  her  a  proud  mind,  a  crafty  wit,  and 
an  indurate  heart  against  God,  and  against 
his  truth,  my  judgment  faileth  me."  But, 
for  the  time,  he  was  alone  in  this  judgment ; 
he  could  neither  prevent  the  first  concession 
of  the  mass,  nor  could  he  afterwards  have  it 
recalled,  even  when  the  insults  began  to  show 
themselves.  And  let  us  acknowledge  that 
no  set  of  gentlemen  were  ever  placed  in  a 
harder  .position  than  this  Council  of  Scotland ; 
it  is  more  easy  to  refuse  a  request  which  is 
backed  by  sword  and  cannon,  than  when  it  is 
in  the  lips  of  a  young  and  beautiful  princess ; 
and  their  compliance  cost  them  dear  enough 
without  the  hard  opinion  of  posterity.  But 
it  was  from  no  insensibility  of  nature  that 
Knox  was  so  loud  in  his  opposition ;  it  was 
because  evil  was  evil,  let  the  persuasive  force 
be  what  it  would ;  and  the  old  story  that 
the  soundest  principle  is  the  soundest  policy, 
was  witnessed  to  once  more  by  thirteen  years 
of  crime  and  misery,  due,  all  of  it,  to  that 
one  mistake. 

But  there  were  forces  deeper  than  human 
will,  and  stronger  than  human  error,  on  the 
side  of  the  Protestants.  In  their  language 
we  should  sny  God  fought  for  them ;  in  our 
own,  that  the  laws  by  which  he  governs  the 
world  would  have  their  way ;  and  that  the 
inherent  connection  of  Catholicism,  in  those 
the  last  days  of  its  power,  with  evil,  was 
forced  again  to  manifest  itself.  Even  at  the 
outset,  in  its  claim  for  toleration,  unconsci- 
ously it  confessed  its  nature.  When  the 
municipal  law  was  read  according  to  custom 
at  the  Market  Cross  at  Edinburgh,  that  "  no 
adulterer,  fornicator,  or  obstinate  papist  that 
corrupted  the  people,  be  found  after  forty- 
eight  hours'  notice  within  the  precincts  of  the 
town,"  the  council  who  h^d  ordered  it  were 
deposed  by  command  of  the  court,  and  a 
counter-proclamation  issued,  "That  the  town 


1853.] 


JOHN  KNOX 


21 


should  be  patent  to  all  the  queen's  lieges." 
And  so,  says  Knox,  "  the  devil  got  freedom 
again,  whereas  before  he  durst  not  have  been 
seen  in  daylight  upon  the  common  street.*' 
How  it  came  to  pass  that  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic religion  had  come  to  be  attended  with 
such  companions,  why  it  was  then  so  fruitful 
in  iniquity,  when  once  it  had  been  the  faith 
of  saints,  and  when  in  our  own  day  the  pro- 
fessors of  it  (ii)  this  country)  are  at  least  as 
respectable  as  those  of  any  other  communion, 
are  questions  curious  enough,  but  which 
would  lead  us  far  from  our  present  subject ; 
the  fact  itself  is  matter  of  pure  experience. 
The  cause  perhaps  was,  briefly,  that  it  was 
not  a  religion  at  all ;  with  the  ignorant  it 
was  a  superstition  ;  with  the  queen  and  the 
ecclesiastics  it  was  the  deadliest  of  misbe- 
liefs; they  had  been  brought  to  conceive 
that  in  itself  it  was  a  cause  so  excellent,  that 
the  advocacy  and  defence  of  it  would  be 
accepted  of  Heaven  in  lieu  of  every  other 
virtue. 

The  court  set  the  example  of  profligacy. 
Mary's  own  conduct  was  at  first  only  ambigu* 
ous;  but  her  French  relations  profited  by 
the  recovered  freedom  of  what  Knox  calls  the 
devil.  The  good  people  of  Edinburgh  were 
scandalized  with  shameful  brothel  riots,  and 
not  Catherine  de  Medicis  herself  presided 
over  a  circle  of  young  ladies  and  gentlemen 
more  questionable  than  those  which  filled 
the  galleries  of  Holyrood.  From  the  court- 
iers the  scandal  extended  to  herself,  and  in 
two  years  two  of  her  lovers  had  already  died 
upon  the  scaffold  under  very  doubtful  circum- 
stances. E^en  more  offensive  and  impolitic 
was  the  gala  with  which  she  celebrated  the 
massacre  of  Vassy,  the  first  of  that  infernal 
catalogue  of  crimes  by  which  the  French  an- 
nals of  those  years  are  made  infamous,  and 
at  last  she  joined  the  league  which  was  to 
execute  the  Tridenthie  decrees,  and  extirpate 
Protestantism.  Knox,  from  his  pulpit,  in  St. 
Giles's,  week  after  week,  denounced  these 
things ;  but  the  knights  of  the  holy  war  were 
all  wandering  enchanted  in  the  Armida  forest, 
and  refused  to  listen  to  him ;  and  the  people, 
though  they  lay  beyond  the  circle  of  the 
charm,  were,  as  yet,  unable  to  interfere. 
Yet,  in  Knox,  the  fire  which  Mary  dreaded 
was  still  kept  alive,  and  she  left  no  means 
untried  to  extinguish  it.  She  threatened  him, 
she  cajoled  him,  sending  for  him  again  and 
agun.  Once  she  thought  she  had  caught 
him,  and  he  was  summoned  before  the  coun- 
cil to  answer  for  one  of  his  addresses,  but 
it  was  all  in  vain.  No  weapon  formed  against 
him  prospered.    "  What  are  you,"  she  said 


another  time,  '*in  this  commonwealth  ?"  "A 
subject  bom  within  the  same,  madam,"  he 
answered ;  "  and  albeit  neither  earl  nor  baron, 
yet  Qod  has  made  me,  how  abject  soever 
in  your  eyes,  a  profitable  member  within 
the  same."  If  no  one  else  would  speak  the 
truth,  the  truth  was  not  to  remain  unspoken, 
and  should  be  spoken  by  him.  After  one 
of  these  interviews  we  find  him  falling  into 
very  unusual  society.  He  had  been  told  to 
wait  in  the  anteroom,  and  being  out  of  favor 
at  court,  "  he  stood  in  the  chamber,  although 
it  was  crowded  with  people  who  knew  him, 
as  one  whom  men  had  never  seen."  So, 
perceiving  some  of  the  young  palace  ladies 
sitting  there,  in  their  gorgeous  apparel,  like 
a  gentleman  as  he  was,  he  began  to  "for^e 
talking"  with  them.  Perhaps  it  will  again 
be  thought  brutal  in  him  to  have  frightened 
these  delicate  beauties,  by  suggesting  un- 
pleasant recollections.  All  depends  on  the 
way  he  did  it ;  and  if  he  did  it  like  himself, 
there  was  no  reason  why,  once  in  their  lives, 
they  should  not  listen  to  a  few  words  of 
reason : — 

^  Oh,  fair  ladies,"  he  said  to  them,  "  how 
pleasing  were  this  life  of  yoars  if  it  should  ever 
abide,  and  then  in  the  end  that  we  might  pass  to 
heaven  with  all  this  g^y  gear.  But  fie  upon  that 
knave  Death,  that  will  come  whether  we  will  or 
not,  and  when  be  has  laid  on  his  arrest,  the  foal 
worms  will  be  busy  with  this  flesh,  be  it  never  so 
fair  and  tender ;  and  the  silly  soul,  I  fear,  shall  be 
so  feeble  that  it  can  neither  carry  with  it  gold, 
garnishing,  targeting,  pearls,  nor  precious 
stones." 

This  was  no  homily  or  admonition  escaped 
out  of  a  sermon,  but  a  pure  piece  of  genuine 
feeling  right  out  from  Knox's  hearL  The 
sight  of  the  poor  pretty  creatures  sffected 
him.     Very  likely  he  could  not  help  it. 

So,  however,  matters  went  on  growing 
worse  and  worse,  till  the  Darnley  marriage, 
the  culminating  point  of  Mary's  career.  Hith- 
erto, as  if  by  enchantment,  she  had  succeeded 
in  everything  which  she  had  attempted.  The 
north  of  England  was  all  at  her  devotion ; 
with  her  own  subjects  her  will  had  become 
all  but  omnipotent.  The  kirk  party  among 
the  commons  were  firm  among  themselves ; 
but  the  statesmen  and  the  noblemen  had  de- 
serted their  cause,  and  they  were  now  pre- 
paring to  endure  a  persecution  which  they 
would  be  unable  to  resist.  The  Earl  of  Mur- 
ray, whose  eyes  at  last  were  opened,  know- 
ing that  Darnley  had  been  chosen  by  his  sis* 
ter  as  a  prelude  to  an  invasion  of  England, 
had  opposed  the  marrisge  with  all  his  power ; 
I  and  well  it  would  have  been  for  her  if  she 


2d 


JOHK  KNOX. 


[Sept., 


bad  listened  to  him.  But  Murray  utterly 
failed.  He  called  on  his  old  party  to  sup- 
port hm,  but  it  was  all  gone — broken  in 
pieees  by  his  own  weakness,  and  by  others' 
faults ;  and  he  had  to  fly  for  his  life  over  the 
borders. 

The  Damley  marriage,  however,  which  ap- 
peared so  full  of  promise,  was  the  one  irre- 
trievable step  which  ruined  everything,  and 
we  can  easily  understand  how  it  came  to  be 
Bo.  Mary  married  for  a  political  object,  but 
she  had  over-calculated  her  powers  of  endu- 
rance, and  though  she  must  have  known 
Darnley  to  be  a  fool,  she  had  not  counted  on 
his  being  an  unmanageable  one.  If  he  would 
have  been  passive  in  her  hands — if  he  could 
have  bad  the  discretion  not  to  see  her  vices, 
and  would  have  been  contented  with  so  much 
favor  as  she  was  pleased  to  show  him — all 
would  have  gone  well ;  but  he  was  foolish 
enough  to  resent  and  revenge  his  disgrace, 
and  then  to  implore  her  to  forgive  him  for 
having  revenged  it ;  and  although  her  anger 
might  have  spared  him,  her  contempt  could 
not.  There  is  no  occasion  for  us  to  enter 
again  upon  that  story.  It  is  enough  that, 
having  brought  her  cause  to  the  very  crisis 
of  success  by  a  skill  and  perseverance  with- 
out parallel  in  history,  she  flung  it  away 
with  as  unexampled  a  recklessness,  and,  in- 
stead of  being  the  successful  champion  of 
her  faith,  she  became  its  dishonor  and  its 
shame. 

At  the  time  of  the  murder,  and  during 
the  months  which  followed  it,  Knox  was  in 
England  ;  he  returned,  however,  immediate- 
ly on  the  flight  of  Both  well,  and  was  one  of 
the  council  which  sat  to  determine  what 
should  be  done  with  the  queen.  It  has 
been  repeatedly  stated  that,  in  the  course 
which  was  ultimately  taken,  the  lords  vio- 
lated promif^es  which  they  made  to  her  be- 
fore her  surrender ;  but  there  is  no  reason 
for  thinking  so.  The  condition  of  a  more 
lenient  treatment  was  a  definite  engagement 
to  abandon  her  husband ;  and,  so  far  from 
consenting  to  abandon  him,  she  declared  to 
the  last  that  **  she  would  follow  him  in  a 
hnen  kirtle  round  the  world."  But  if  the 
imprisonment  at  Lochleven  appears  to  some 
amiable  persons  so  inhuman  and  so  barbar- 
ous, there  was  a  party  who  regarded  that 
measure  as  culpable  leniency.  Knox,  with 
the  ministers  of  the  kirk,  demanded  that  she 
should  be  brought  to  an  open  trial,  and  that, 
if  she  were  found  guilty  of  her  husband's 
murder,  she  should  be  punished  as  any  pri- 
vate person  would  be  who  committed  the 
same  crime.     We  have  found  hitherto  that 


when  there  was  a  difference  of  opinion  be' 
tween  him  and  the  other  statesmen,  th6 
event  appeared  to  show  that  he,  and  not 
they,  had  been  right ; — right  in  the  plain, 
common-sense,  human  view; — and  the  same 
continues  to  hold  on  the  present  occasion. 

We  are  most  of  us  agreed  that  the  enor- 
mity of  crimes  increases  in  the  ratio  of  the 
rank  of  the  offender ;  that  when  persons 
whom  the  commonwealth  has  intrusted  with 
station  and  power,  commit  murder  and  adul- 
tery, their  guilt  is  as  much  greater  in  itself, 
as  the  injury  to  society  is  greater  from  the 
effects  of  their  example.  But  to  acknow- 
ledge this  in  words,  and  yet  to  say  that  when 
sovereigns  are  the  offenders  sovereigns  must 
be  left  to  God,  and  may  not  be  punished  by 
man,  is  equivalent  to  claiming  for  them  ex- 
emption from  punishment  altogether,  and,  in 
fact,  to  denying  the  divine  government  of  the 
world.  God  does  not  work  miracles  to  pun- 
ish sinners;  he  punishes  the  sins  of  men 
by  the  hands  of  men.  It  is  the  law  of  the 
earth,  as  the  whole  human  history  from  the 
beginning  of  time  witnesses.  Not  the  sov- 
ereign prince  or  princess,  but  the  law  of  Al- 
mighty God  is  supreme  in  this  world ;  and 
wherever  God  gives  the  power  to  execute  it, 
we  may  be  sure  that  it  is  His  will  that  those 
who  hold  the  power  are  to  use  it.  If  there 
is  to  be  mercy  anywhere  for  offenders,  if  any 
human  beings  at  all  are  to  be  exempted  from 
penalties,  the  exceptions  are  to  be  looked  for 
at  the  other  extreme  of  the  scale,  among  the 
poor  and  the  ignorant,  who  have  never  had 
means  of  knowing  better. 

If,  therefore,  Mary  Stuart  was  guilty,  we 
cannot  but  think  that  Knox  knew  best  how 
to  deal  with  her ;  and  if  the  evidence,  which 
really  convinced  all  Scotland  and  England  at 
the  time  that  guilty  she  was,  had  been  pub- 
licly, formally,  and  judicially  brought  for- 
ward, it  would  have  been  to  the  large  advan- 
tage both  of  herself  and  the  world  that  then 
was,  and  of  all  after  generations.  She,  if 
then  she  had  ascended  the  scaffold,  would 
liave  been  spared  seventeen  more  years  of 
crime.  Scotland  would  have  been  spared  a 
miserable  civil  war,  of  which  the  mercy  that 
was  shown  her  was  the  cause ;  and  the  world 
that  came  after  would  have  been  spared  the 
waste  of  much  unprofitable  sympathy,  and 
a  controversy  already  three  centuries  long, 
which  shows  no  sign  of  ending.  It  is  one 
thing,  we' are  well  aware,  to  state  in  this  hard, 
naked  way,  what  ought  to  have  been  done ; 
and  quite  another  to  have  done  it.  Perhaps 
no  action  was  ever  demanded  of  any  body  of 
men   which  required  more  moral  courage. 


1868.] 


JOHN  KNOZ. 


28 


Bat  for  all  tbat  Enox  was  right  In  the 
Bible,  which  was  the  canon  of  his  life,  he 
foond  no  occasion  for  believing  that  kings 
and  queens  were,  ez  officio,  either  exempted 
from  committing  sins,  or  exempted  from  be- 
ing punished  for  them.  He  saw  in  Mary  a 
conspirator  against  the  cause  which  he  knew 
(a  be  the  cause  of  truth  and  justice,  and  he 
saw  her  visited,  as  it  were,  with  penal  bliod- 
ness,  staggering  headlong  into  crime  as  the 
necessary  and  retribulive  consequence.  For 
centuries  these  poor  Scotch  bad  endured 
these  adulteries,  and  murders,  and  fornica- 
tions, and  they  had  risen  up,  at  the  risk  of 
their  lives,  and  purged  them  away ;  and 
here  was  a  woman,  who  had  availed  herself 
of  her  position  as  their  queen,  "  to  set  the 
devil  free  again,*'  and  become  herself  high 
priestess  in  his  temple.  With  what  justice 
could  any  offender  be  punished  more,  if  she 
were  allowed  to  escape  ?  Escape,  indeed, 
she  did  not.  Vengeance  fell,  at  last,  on  all 
who  were  concerned  in  that  accursed  busi- 
ness. Both  well  died  mad  in  a  foreign  prison; 
the  Archbishop  of  St.  Andrews  was  hanged ; 
Maitland  escaped  the  executioner  by  poison  ; 
and  Mary  herself  was  still  more  sternly  pun- 
ished, by  being  allowed  to  go  on,  heaping 
crime  on  crime,  till  she,  too,  ended  on  the 
scaffold.  But  instead  of  accusing  Knox  of 
ferY)city  and  hardness  of  heart,  we  will 
rather  say  that  he  only,  and  those  who  felt 
with  him  and  followed  him,  understood  what 
was  required  alike  by  the  majesty  of  justice 
and  the  real  interests  of  the  world. 

The  worst,  however,  was  now  over :  the 
cause  of  the  Catholics  was  disgraced  beyond 
recovery:  the  queen  was  dethroned  and 
powerless;  and  the  reformers  were  once 
more  able  to  go  forward  with  their  work. 
Even  so,  they  were  obliged  to  content  them- 
selves with  less  than  they  desired ;  possibly 
they  had  been  over  sanguine  from  the  first, 
and  had  persuaded  themselves  that  more 
fruit  might  be  gathered  out  of  man's  nature, 
than  man's  nature  has  been  found  capable 
of  yielding ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  the  queen 
had  flung  a  spell  over  the  country  from 
which,  even  after  she  was  gone,  it  could  not 
recover.  Her  name,  as  long  as  she  was 
alive,  was  a  rallying  cry  for  disaffection,  and 
those  who  were  proof  against  temptation 
from  her,  took  little  pains  to  resist  temptation 
from  their  own  selfishness.  The  Earl  of 
Morton,  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  pro- 
fessors of  Protestantism,  disgraced  it  with 
his  profligacy ;  and  many  more  disgraced  it 
by  their  avarice.  The  abbey  lands  were  too 
little  for  thdr  large  digestions.    The  office 


of  bishops  had  been  abolished  in  the  church, 
but  the  maintenance  of  them,  as  an  institu- 
tion, was  convenient  for  personal  purposes ; 
the  noble  lords  nominating  some  friend  or 
kinsman  to  the  sees  as  they  fell  vacant,  who, 
without  duties  and  without  ordination,  re- 
ceived the  revenues  and  paid  them  over  to 
their  patrons,  accepting  such  salary  in  return 
as  was  considered  sufficient  for  their  discre- 
ditable service. 

Yet  if  there  was  shadow  there  was  more 
sunshine,  and  quite  enough  to  make  Knox's 
heart  glad  at  last.  The  Earl  of  Murray  was 
invited  by  the  estates  to  undertake  the 
regency ;  and  this  itself  is  a  proof  that  they 
were  sound  at  heart,  for  without  doubt  he 
was  the  best  and  the  ablest  man  among 
them.  The  illegitimate  son  of  James  the 
Fifth,  whatever  virtue  was  left  in  the  Stuart 
blood,  had  been  given  to  him  to  compensate 
for  his  share  in  it,  and  while  he  was  very 
young  he  had  drawn  the  attention  of  the 
French  and  English  courts,  as  a  person  of 
note  and  promise. 

After  remaining  loyal  as  long  as  loyalty 
was  possible  to  the  queen- mother,  he  attach- 
ed himself  as  we  saw  to  John  Knox,  and 
became  the  most  powerful  leader  of  the 
Reformation.  Bribes  and  threats  were  made 
use  of  to  detach  him  from  it,  but  equally 
without  effect ;  even  a  cardinal's  red  hat  was 
offered  him  by  Catherine  if  he  would  sell  his 
soul  for  it.  But  for  such  a  distinction  he 
had  as  little  ambition  as  Knox  himself  could 
have  had,  and  his  only  mistake  arose  from  a 
cause  for  which  we  can  scarcely  blame  hi» 
understanding,  while  it  showed  the  noble- 
ness of  his  heart ;  he  believed  too  well,  and 
he  hoped  too  much  of  his  father's  daughter,, 
and  his  affection  for  her  made  him  blind. 
For  her  he  ouarrelled  with  his  best  friends  ; 
he  defendeaher  mass,  and  was  for  years  her 
truest  and  most  faithful  servant;  and  she 
rewarded  his  affection  with  hatred,  and  hia 
fidelity  with  plots  for  his  murder.  What- 
ever uprightness  was  seen  in  the  first  yeais 
of  her  administration  was  his  work,,  for 
which  she  little  thanked  him ;  and  the  Scotch 
people,  even  while  they  deplored  the  posi- 
tion in  which  he  had  placed  himself^  yet 
could  not  refuse  him  their  love  for  it.  When 
he  saw  at  last  the  course  to  which  she  had 
surrendered  herself,  he  withdrew  in  shame 
from  the  court ;  he  had  no  share  in  hen  de- 
position ;  he  left  Scotland  after  the  murder, 
only  returning  to  it  when  he  was  invited  to 
take  upon  himself  the  regency  and  the  guar^ 
dianship  of  his  nephew ;  and  he  came  back 
saddened  into  a  truer  knowledge  of  mankind* 


24 


JOHN  KKOX. 


[Sept, 


and  a  determiaatioQ  to  do  his  duty,  cost  him 
what  it  would.  He  could  be  no  stranger  to 
what  the  world  would  say  of  him.  He 
knew  that  those  who  had  tried  already  to 
murder  him,  would  make  their  plots  surer, 
and  their  daggers  sharper  now — but  he 
dared  it  all,  and  the  happiest  three  years 
which  Scotland  had  known  were  those  of  his 
government.  The  thieves  of  the  Border 
were  held  down  ;  the  barons  were  awed  or 
coerced  into  respect  for  property  and  life, 
and  the  memory  of  those  golden  years  lived 
long  in  the  admiring  regret  of  less  favored 
times.  Even  the  Book  of  Discipline,  though 
it  could  not  be  passed  in  its  fulness,  yet  be- 
came law  in  many  of  its  most  important  pro- 
visions. Among  others  let  us  look  at  the 
punishment  which  was  decreed  against  for- 
nicators : — 

^*  On  the  first  offence  they  are  to  pay  eighty 
pounds  (Scots),  or  be  committed  to  prison  for 
eight  days,  and  there  fed  only  apon  bread  and 
the  smallest  beer.  They  are  a(\erwardj»,  on  the 
next  market-day,  to  be  placed  in  some  consplcuoos 
situation,  whence  they  may  easily  be  seen  by 
every  one,  there  to  remain  from  ten  o'clock  till 
twelve,  with  their  heads  uncovered  and  bound 
with  rings  of  iron.  For  the  second  offence,  the 
penalty  is  one  hundred  and  thirty  pounds,  or  six- 
teen days'  imprisonment,  on  bread  and  water; 
their  heads  to  be  shaved,  and  theinselves  to  be 
exposed  as  before.  For  the  third  offence,  two 
hundred  pounds,  or  forty-eight  days'  imprison- 
ment; and  then,  after  having  been  three  times 
dipped  in  deep  water,  to  be  banished  the  town  or 
parish." 

We  talk  of  the  progress  of  the  species, 
and  we  are  vain  of  our  supposed  advance  in 
the  virtues  of  civilized  humanity,  but  no  such 
wholesome  horror  of  sensuality  is  displayed 
among  ourselves.  We  shall  perhaps  insist 
that  this  law  was  a  dead  letter,  ihat  it  could 
not  have  been  enforced,  and  that  to  enact 
laws  which  are  above  the  working  level  of 
morality,  is  to  bring  law  itself  into  disrespect. 
But  there  is  reason  to  think,  that  it  was  not 
altogether  a  dead  letter,  and  there  was  a 
special  provision  that  ''  gryt  men  offending 
in  syk  crimes  should  receive  the  same  as  the 
pure;"  under  whieh  one  noble  lady  at  least 
actually  suffered,  though  for  a  different 
.offence. 

.Biit  nations,  it  will  be  said,  cannot  be 
jgoverned  An  this  way,  and  for  the  present, 
jBueh  is  the  "  hardness  of  our  hearts,''  it  is 
finfortunately  true  that  they  cannot.  Here' 
aft^,  perhaps,  if  progress  is  anything  but  a 
na«M^«  more  may  admit  of  being  done  with 
Jiumfla  nature;  but  while  we  remain  at  Dur 


present  level,  any  such  high  demands  upon 
it  are  likely  to  turn  out  failures.  In  the 
meantime,  however,  if  by  the  grace  of  the 
upper  powers,  sufficient  virtue  has  been 
found  in  a  body  of  people  to  endure  such  a 
law  for  however  brief  periods,  we  suppose 
that  such  periods  are  the  light  points  in  the 
history  of  mankind :  and  achievements  like 
this  of  Murray's  among  the  best  and  noblest 
which  man  has  been  permitted  to  accom- 
plish. 

It  is  not  a  little  touching  to  find  that 
Knox,  when  the  country  was  at  last  in  the 
right  hands,  thought  now  of  leaving  it,  and 
of  going  back  to  end  his  days  in  peace  at 
Geneva.  He  had  fought  the  fight,  he  had 
finished  the  work  which  was  given  to  him  to 
do;  it  was  imperfect,  but  with  the  given 
materials,  more  could  not  be  done ;  and  as 
it  had  been  by  no  choosing  of  his  own 
that  so  great  a  part  had  fallen  to  him,  so 
now  when  it  seemed  played  out,  and  his 
presence  no  longer  necessary,  he  would 
gladly  surrender  a  position  in  itself  so  little 
welcome  to  him. 

*-  God  comfort  that  little  flock,"  he  wrote  about 
this  time,  *'  among  whom  I  lived  with  quietness  of 
conscience,  ana  contentment  of  heart;  and 
amongst  whom  I  would  be  content  to  end  my 
daya,  if  so  it  might  stand  with  God's  good  plea- 
sure. For  seeinif  it  hath  pleased  His  Majesty 
above  all  men's  expectation  to  prosper  the  work, 
for  the  performing  whereof  I  left  that  company,  J 
would  even  as  gladly  return  to  them,  as  ever  I 
was  glad  to  be  delivered  from  the  rage  of  mine 
enemies." 

Surely  wa  should  put  away  our  notion  of 
the  ferocious  fanatic  with  the  utmost  speed. 
The  heart  of  Knox  was  full  of  loving  and 
tender  affections.  He  could  not,  as  he  said 
himself,  "  bear  to  see  his  own  bairns  greet 
when  his  hand  chastised  them.*' 

If  he  had  then  gone  back  to  Geneva,  and 
heard  no  more  of  Scotland ;  or  if  he  had  died 
at  the  time  at  which  he  thought  of  going,  he 
might  have  passed  away,  like  Simeon,  with 
a  Nunc  dimittis  Domine,  believing  that  the 
salvation  of  his  country  was  really  come.  So, 
however,  it  was  not  to  be.  Four  more  years 
were  still  before  him  :  years  of  fresh  sorrows, 
crimes,  and  calamities.  His  place,  to  the 
last,  was  in  the  battle,  and  he  was  to  die  upon 
the  field  ;  and  if  rest  was  in  store  for  him,  he 
was  to  find  it  elsewhere,  and  not  in  the  thing 
which  we  call  life — 

Ti^  oTSsv  si  TO  ^^v  itJv  i(fn  xardavsiv 
To  xardavsiv  Se  ^^v. 

The  why  and  the  how  is  all  mystery.    Our 


1858.] 


JOHH  KNOX 


28 


basineBa  is  with  the  fact  as  we  find  it,  which 
wise  men  accept  nobly,  and  do  not  quarrel 
with  it. 

The  flight  of  Mary  from  Lochleven  was  the 
signal  for  the  re  opening  the  civil  war.  If 
she  had  been  taken  at  Langside  she  would 
have  been  immediately  executed ;  but  by  her 
escape  into  England,  and  by  the  uncertainty 
of  Elizabeth's  policy  respecting  her,  she  was 
able  to  recall  the  act  by  which  she  had  ab- 
dicated her  crown,  and  reassert  her  right  as 
sovereign,  with  the  countenance,  as  it  ap- 
peared in  Scotland,  of  the  English  queen. 
ller  being  allowed  an  ambassador  in  London, 
and  Elizabeth's  refusal  to  confirm  her  depo* 
sition,  led  all  parties  to  believe  that  before 
long,  there  would  be  an  active  interference 
in  her  favor  :  and  the  hope,  if  it  was  no  more, 
was  sufficient  to  keep  the  elements  of  discord 
from  being  eiUnguished.  As  long  as  Mur- 
ray was  alive  it  was  unable  to  break  out 
into  flame,  but  more  dangerously,  and  at  last 
fatally  for  him,  it  took  the  form  of  private 
conspiracy  to  take  him  off  by  assassination. 
John  Knox,  in  the  bitterness  of  bis  heart, 
blamed  Elizabeth  for  Murray's  death.  He 
had  never  understood  or  liked  her,  and  when 
her  own  ministers  were  unable  to  realize  the 
difficulty  of  dealing  with  Mary,  when  even 
they,  after  the  share  of  the  latter  in  the  ris- 
ing of  the  north  was  discovered,  were  ready 
to  crush  the  "  bosom  serpent"  as  they  called 
her,  without  further  scruple,  it  was  not  likely 
that  he  would  forgive  the  protection  which 
had  cost  bis  country  its  truest  servant.  Per- 
haps when  we  think  of  the  bitterness  with 
which  Elizabeth's  memory  has  been  assailed 
on  account  of  this  wretched  woman,  even  af- 
ter the  provocation  of  seventeen  more  years 
of  wickedness,  we  can  better  appreciate  her 
heutation.  Knox  demanded  that  she  should 
be  delivered  up  to  justice;  and  for  the  peace 
of  Scotland,  and  of  England,  too,  it  would 
have  been  well  had  his  demand  been  acced- 
ed to.  Many  a  crime  would  have  been 
spared,  and  many  a  head  would  have  laid 
down  on  an  unbloody  pillow,  which  was 
sliced  away  by  the  executioner's  axe  in  that 
bad  cause;  and  yet  there  are  few  of  our 
readers  who  will  not  smile  at, the  novel  para- 
dox, that  Elizabeth  treated  Mary  Stuart  with 
too  much  leniency.  Elizabeth,  perhaps,  felt 
for  herself,  that  *'  in  respect  of  justice,  few 
of  us  could  'scape  damnation," 

**  And  earthly  power  doth  then  ehow  likest  God's, 
When  mercy  seasons  justice." 

Whea  the  rule  of  right  is  absolute,  at  all  haz- 


ards—even  at  the  hazard  of  our  good  name 
— we  must  obey  it.  But  beyond  all  ex- 
pressed rules  or  codes  lies  that  large  debate- 
able  land  of  equity  which  the  imperfection 
of  human  understandings  can  never  map  into 
formulae,  and  where  the  heart  nlone  can  feel 
its  way.  That  other  formula,  *^  the  idolater 
shall  die  the  deaths"  if  it  could  have  been 
universally  applied,  as  Knox  believed  it  to  be 
of  universal  application,  would  at  the  mo- 
ment at  which  he  uttered  it  have  destroyed 
Francis  Xavier. 

Yet,  again,  let  us  not  condemn  Knox.  It 
was  that  fixed  intensity  of  purpose  which 
alone  sustained  him  in  those  stormy  waters ; 
and  he  may  rightly  have  demanded  what 
Elizabeth  might  not  rightly  concede.  His 
prayer  on  the  murder  of  the  Regent  is  finely 
characteristic  of  htm.  It  was  probably  ex- 
tempore, and  taken  down -in  note  by  some 
one  who  heard  it : — 

**  Oh  Lord,  what  shall  we  add  to  the  former  pe- 
titions we  know  not ;  yet  alas,  oh  Lord,  oar  con- 
science bears  as  record  that  we  are  unworthy 
that  thou  shouldst  contlnae  thy  gncea  to  us  by 
reason  of  our  horrible  ingratitude.  In  oar  ex- 
treme miseries  we  called,  and  thoa  in  the  multi- 
tude of  thy  mercies  heard  us.  And  first  thou 
delivered  us  from  the  tyranny  of  merciless  stran- 
irers,  next  from  the  bondage  of  idolatry,  and  last 
from  the  yoke  of  tliat  wretched  woman,  the  moth- 
er of  all  mischief.  And  in  her  place  thoa  didst 
erect  her  son,  and  to  supply  his  infancy  thou  didst 
appoint  a  regent  endued  with  such  graces  as  the 
devil  himselfcannot  accuse  or  justly  convict  him, 
this  only  excepted,  that  foolish  pity  did  so  far  pre- 
vail in  him  concerning  execution  and  punishment 
which  thou  eommandedst  to  have  been  executed 
upon  her  and  her  complices,  the  murderers  of  her 
husband.  Oh  Lord,  in  what  misery  and  confusion 
found  he  this  realm.  To  what  rest  and  quietness 
suddenly  by  his  labors  he  brought  the  same  all 
estates,  but  specially  the  poor  commons,  can  wit- 
ness. Thy  image,  Lord,  did  so  clearly  shine  in 
that  personage,  that  the  devil,  and  the  wicked  to 
whom  he  is  prince,  could  not  abide  it ;  and  so  to 
punish  our  sins  and  ingratitude,  who  did  not 
riffhtlv  esteem  so  precious  a  gift,  thou  hast  per- 
mitted him  to  fall,  to  our  great  grief,  into  the 
hands  of  cruel  and  traitorous  murderers.  He  is 
at  rest,  oh  Lord,  and  we  are  left  in  extreme 
misery. 

*♦  If  thy  mercy  prevent  us  not,  we  cannot  es- 
cape just  condemnation,  for  that  Scotland  has 
spared  and  England  has  maintained  the  life  of 
that  most  wicked  woman.  Oppose  thy  power, 
oh  Lord,  to  the  pride  of  that  cruel  murderer  of  her 
awin  husband;  confound  her  faction  and  their 
subtle  enterprises,  and  let  them  and  the  world 
know  that  thou  art  a  God  that  can  deprehend  the 
wise  in  their  own  wisdom,  and  the  proad  in  the 
imagination  of  their  wicked  hearts.  Lord,  retain 
us  Uiat  call  upon  thee  in  thy  Uue  fear.    Give 


26 


JOHK  KKOX 


[Sept, 


thoQ  streoffth  to  us  to  fif  ht  our  battle ;  yea,  Lordi 
to  fight  it  lawfully,  and  to  end  our  lives  in  the 
aanctification  of  thy  holy  name." 

In  1570  he  was  struck  with  paralysis ;  he 
recovered  partially,  and  lived  for  two  more 
years,  but  they  were  years  so  deplorable 
that  even  bis  heart  grew  weary  and  sick 
within  bim»  and  he  longed  to  be  gone  out  of 
the  world.  As  before,  he  was  the  one  cen- 
tre of  life  round  which  the  ever-flagging  en- 
ergies of  the  Protestants  rallied  ;  but  by  the 
necessity  of  the  time,  which  could  not  be  re- 
sisted, the  lead  of  the  party  fell  to  one  or 
other  of  the  great  noblemen  who  were  small 
credit  to  it,  and  who  were  following  worldly 
objects  under  a  mask  of  sanctity.  The 
first  regent  who  succeeded  Murray  was  Darn- 
ley  V  father,  the  Earl  of  Lennox  ;  then  he  too 
was  murdered,  and  the  Earl  of  Mar  came, 
and  the  Earl  of  Morton,  with  their  tulchan 
bishops;  the  country  tearing  itself  in  pieces, 
and  they  unwilling  to  commit  themselves  to 
peremptory  action,  lest  Elizabeth  (as  they  ex- 
pected that  she  would)  should  restore  Mary, 
and  if  they  had  gone  too  far  in  opposition  to 
her  they  might  find  it  impossible  to  obtain 
their  pardon.  Once  more  in  this  distracted 
time  Knox  stood  out  alone,  broken  with  age 
and  sickness,  and  deserted  even  bj  the  as- 
sembly of  the  kirk,  to  brave  the  storm,  and 
again  to  conquer  in  it.  He  had  been  re- 
quired to  pray  for  the  queen. 

*  I  pray  not  for  her  as  queen,'*  he  said,  <*  for 
queen  to  me  she  is  not ;  and  I  am  not  a  man  of 
law  that  has  my  tongue  to  sell  for  silver  or  the 
favor  of  the  world.  And  for  what  I  have  spoke 
against  the  adultery  and  the  murder,  when  I  am 
taught  by  God's  word  that  the  reproof  of  sin  is  an 
evil  thing  I  shall  do  aa  God's  word  commands  me. 
But  unto  that  time,  which  will  not  be  till  the 
morn  after  doomsday,  and  not  then,  I  hold  the 
sentence  given  by  Uod  to  bis  prophets  Jeremy 
and  Ezekiel,  to  stand  for  a  perpetual  law,  which, 
with  God's  assistance,  I  follow  to  my  life's  end." 

Not  the  least  painful  feature  of  the  present 
state  of  things  was  the  disruption  of  friend- 
ships which  had  stood  through  all  the  years 
of  previous  trial.  The  most  important  lead- 
ers of  the  Marian  party  were  now  Mait- 
land  of  Lethiogton,  and  Sir  William  Kircal- 
dy,  both  of  whom  belonged  to  the  first  re- 
formers of  the  revolution,  and  one  of  whom 
ve  saw  long  ago  among  the  exiles  of  St.  An- 
drews; but  times  were  changed,  or  they 
were  changed,  and  they  were  now  the  bit- 
terest enemies  of  all  for  which  then  they 
risked  life  and  good  name.  It  was  probably 
Maitland  who,  feeling  the  same  anxiety  to 


silence  Eaox  as  Mary  had  felt,  took  the  op- 
portunity of  his  disagreement  with  the  as- 
sembly to  prefer  a  series  of  anonymous 
charges  against  him.  He  was  accused, 
among  other  things,  of  having  been  a  traitor 
to  his  country,  and  of  having  betrayed  Scot- 
land to  the  English ;  and  we  can  almost  par- 
don the  accusation,  for  the  answer  which  it 
drew  from  him : — 

^  What  I  have  been  to  my  country,"  he  said, 
"  albeit  this  unthankful  age  will  not  know,  yet 
the  age  to  come  will  be  compelled  to  bear  witness 
to  the  truth.  And  thus  I  cease,  requiring  all 
men  that  has  anything  to  oppose  against  me,  that 
he  will  do  it  so  plainly  as  I  make  myself  and  all 
my  doings  manifest  to  the  world ;  for  to  me  it 
seems  a  thing  most  unreasonable,  that  in  this  my 
decrepit  age,  I  shall  be  compelled  to  fight  against 
shadows  and  Ebwleltes,  that  dare  not  abide  the 
light." 

It  it  to  the  lasting  disgrace  of  Sir  William 
Eircaldy,  otherwise  a  not  ignoble  man,  that, 
commanding  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  as  he 
did,  he  permitted  an  attempt  which  was  now 
made  to  murder  Knox  to  pass  by  without  in- 
quiry or  punishment ;  and  that  when  the 
citizens  applied  for  permission  to  form  a 
bodyguard  about  his  house,  be  refused  to 
grant  it.  To  save  his  country  the  shame  of 
a  second  attempt  which  might  be  successful, 
the  old  man  was  obliged,  the  year  before  he 
died,  feeble  and  broken  as  he  was,  to  leave 
his  house  and  take  shelter  in  St.  Andrews. 
For  himself  it  was  in  every  way  trying ;  but 
sunny  lights  are  thrown  upon  his  retirement 
there  by  the  affectionate  reminiscences  of  a 
student,  young  Melville,  who  was  then  at 
the  college,  and  who  used  to  see  him  and 
hear  him  talk  and  preach  continually. 

*<He  ludgit,"  we  are  told,  <<  down  in  the  Abbey 
beside  our  college;  he  wad  sometimes  come  in 
and  repose  him  in  our  college-yard,  and  call  as 
scholars  unto  him,  and  bless  us,  and  exhort  us  to 
know  God  and  his  work  in  our  country,  and 
stand  by  the  eude  cause,  to  use  our  time  well,  and 
learn  the  gude  instruction." 

But  the  sermons,  of  course,  were  the  great 
thing.  We  remember  Randolph's  expres- 
sion of  the  six  hundred  trumpets,  and  we 
can  readily  fancy  the  eager  crowding  of 
these  boys  to  listen  to  him. 

*'I  heard  him  teach  the  prophecies  of  Daniel 
that  summer  and  winter,'  says  Melville.  *\i 
haid  my  pen  and  my  little  bulk,  and  tuk  away  sic 
things  as  I  could  comprehend.  In  the  opening  up 
of  his  text  he  was  moderate,  the  space  of  half 
an  hour ;  but  when  he  entered  into  application 
he  made  me  so  to  grewe  and  tremble,  that  I  could 


1853.] 


JOHN  KNOX 


2Y 


not  hold  a  pon  to  write.  He  was  very  weak. 
I  saw  him  ev^ry  day  of  his  doctrine  go  hulie  and 
fear,  with  a  farrtng  of  masticks  about  hie  neck,  a 
staff  in  one  hand,  and  godly  Richard  Ballenden 
(Bannatyne),  his  servant,  holding  up  tlie  other 
oxter,  from  the  Abbey  to  the  parish  kirk,  and  he 
the  said  Richard,  and  another  servant,  lifted  him 
up  to  the  pulptt,  where  he  behoved  to  lean  at  his 
first  entry;  but  ere  he  had  done  with  his  sermon 
be  was  sae  active  and  vigorous  that  he  was  lyke 
to  ding  the  pulpit  in  bladS,  and  fly  out  of  it." 

If  this  description  should  lead  any  person 
to  suppose  that  his  sermons  contained  what 
b  called  rant,  we  can  only  desire  him  to  read 
the  one  specimen  which  is  left  us,  and  for 
which  he  was  summoned  as  heing  unusually 
violent.  Of  that  sermon,  we  should  say,  that 
words  more  full  of  deep  clear  insight  into  hu- 
man life,  were  never  uttered  in  a  pulpit.  It 
is  all  which  pulpit  eloquence,  properly  so 
called,  is  not,  full  of  powerful  understanding 
and  broad  masculine  sense  ;  and  the  emotion 
of  it,  the  real  emotion  of  a  real  heart.  Doc- 
trine,  in  the  modem  sense,  we  suspect  was 
very  little  heard  in  Enoi's  sermons;  any 
more  than  vague  denunciations  of  abstract 
wickedness.  He  aimed  his  arrows  right 
down  upon  wicked  acts,  and  the  wicked  doers 
of  them,  present  or  not  present,  sovereign  or 
subject ;  and  our  Exeter  Hall  friends  would 
have  had  to  complain  of  a  lamentable  defi- 
ciency of  "gospel  truth." 

After  thirteen  months'  absence,  a  truce 
between  the  contending  parties  enabled  Knox 
to  return  to  Edinburgh.  The  summer  of 
1572  was  drawing  to  its  close,  and  his  life 
was  ebbing  away  from  him  with  the  falling 
year.  He  attempted  once  to  preach  in  his 
old  church,  but  the  effort  was  too  great  for 
him  ;  he  desired  bis  people  to  choose  some 
one  to  fill  his  place,  and  had  taken  bis  last 
leave  of  them,  when  at  the  beginning  of  Sep- 
tember the  news  came  of  the  Bartholomew 
massacre.  If  even  now,  with  three  centuries 
rolling  between  us  and  that  horrible  night, 
our  blood  still  chills  in  us  at  the  name  of  it, 
it  is  easy  to  feel  what  it  must  have  been 
when  it  was  the  latest  birth  of  time ;  and 
nowhere,  except  in  France  itself,  was  the 
shock  of  it  felt  as  it  was  in  Scotland .  The 
associations  of  centuries  had  bound  the  two 
countries  together  in  ties  of  more  than  com- 
mon alliance ;  and  between  the  Scotch  Pro- 
testants and  the  Huguenots,  there  were  fur- 
ther connections  of  the  closest  and  warmest 
attachment.  They  had  fought  for  the  same 
cause  and  against  the  same  persecutors ;  they 
had  stood  by  each  other  m  their  common 
trials ;  and  in  1559,  Cond^  and  Coligni  had 
saved  Scotland  by  distracting  the  attention 


of  the  Ouises  at  home.  Community  of  in- 
terest had  led  to  personal  intimacies  and 
friendships,  and  in  time  of  danger  such  links 
are  stronger  than  those  of  blood — so  that 
thousands  of  the  Paris  victims  were  dearer 
than  brothers  to  the  Lowland  Protestants. 
One  cry  of  horror  rose  all  over  Scotland. 
The  contending  parties  forgot  their  animosi- 
ties ;  even  the  Catholics  let  fall  their  arms 
in  shame,  and  the  flagging  energies  of  Knox 
rallied  back  once  more,  to  hurl  across  the 
Channel  the  execrations  of  a  nation  whom  a 
crime  so  monstrous  had  for  a  moment  re- 
united. The  Tolbooth  was  fitted  up  for  the 
occasion,  and  the  voice  of  the  dymg  hero 
was  heard  for  the  last  time  in  its  thunder, 
denouncing  the  vengeance  of  Heaven  on  the 
contrivers  of  that  accursed  deed. 

But  this  was  the  last  blow  to  him.  "  He 
was  weary  of  the  world,  as  the  world  was 
weary  of  him.''  There  was  nothing  now 
for  him  to  do ;  and  the  world  at  its  best, 
even  without  massacres  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
is  not  so  sweet  a  place,  that  men  like  him 
care  to  linger  in  it  longer  than  necessary. 
A  few  days  before  he  died,  feeling  what  was 
coming,  m  a  quiet  simple  way  he  set  his 
house  in  order  and  made  his  few  prepara- 
tions. We  find  him  paying  bis  servants' 
wages,  telling  them  these  were  the  last 
which  they  would  ever  receive  from  him, 
and  so  giving  them  each  twenty  shillings 
over.  Two  mends  come  in  to  dine  with 
him,  not  knowing  of  his  illness,  and  ''for 
their  cause  he  came  to  the  table,  and  caused 
pierce  an  bogged  of  wine  which  was  in  the 
cellar,  and  willed  them  send  for  the  same  as 
long  as  it  lasted,  for  that  he  would  not  tarry 
till  It  was  drunken." 

As  the  news  got  abroad,  the  world,  in  the 
world's  way,  came  crowding  with  their  anxie- 
ties and  inquiries.  Among  the  rest  came  the 
Earl  of  Morton,  then  just  declared  regent ; 
and  from  his  bed  the  old  man  spoke  words 
to  him  which,  years  after,  on  the  scafibld, 
Lord  Morton  remembered  with  bitter  tears. 
One  by  one  they  oame  and  went.  As  the  last 
went  out,  he  turned  to  Campbell  of  Braid, 
who  would  not  leave  him — 

**  Ilk  ane,"  he  said,  <*  bids  me  gude  night,  but 
when  will  ye  do  it  ?  I  have  been  greatly  be- 
haudin  and  indebted  to  you,  whilk  I  can  never 
be  able  to  recompense  yon.  But  I  commit  yon 
to  One  who  is  able  to  do  it,  that  is  to  the  eternal 
God." 

The  curtain  is  drawing  down;  it  is 
time  that  we  drop  it  altogether.  He  had 
taken  leave  of  the  world,  and  only  the  few 


98 


JOHN  KNOX 


[Sepl., 


dear  ones  of  his  own  family  now  remained 
with  him  for  a  last  sacred  parting  on  the 
8h«re  of  the  great  ocean  of  eternity.  The 
evening  before  he  died,  he  was  asked  how  he 
felt.  He  said  he  had  been  sorely  tempted 
by  Satan,  "  and  when  he  saw  he  could  not 
prevail,  he  tempted  me  to  have  trusted  in 
myself,  or  to  have  boasted  of  myself ;  but  I 
repulsed  him  with  this  sentence — Quid 
habes  quod  non  accepistV^  It  was  the  last 
stroke  of  his  **  long  struggle,*'  the  one  busi- 
ness of  life  for  him  and  aU  of  us — the  strug- 
gle with  self.  The  language  may  have 
withered  into  formal  theology,  but  the  truth 
is  green  for  ever. 

On  Monday,  the  twenty-fourth  of  Novem- 
ber, he  got  up  in  the  morning,  and  partially 
dressed  himself,  but  feeling  weak,  he  lay 
dqwn  again.  They  asked  him  if  he  was  in 
pain ;  "  It  is  na  painful  pain,''  he  answered, 
**  but  such  a  one  as,  I  trust,  shall  put  an  end 
to  the  battle." 

His  wife  sate  by  him  with  the  Bible  open 
on  her  knees.  He  desired  her  to  read  the 
fifteenth  of  the  first  of  Corinthians.  He 
thought  he  was  dying  as  she  finished  it.  "  Is 
not  that  a  beautiful  chapter  ?"  he  said ;  and 
then  added,  "  Now,  for  the  last  time,  I  com- 
mend my  spirit,  soul,  and  body,  into  thy 
hands,  0  Lord."  But  the  crisis  passed  off 
for  the  moment.  Towards  evening  he  lay 
still  for  several  hours,  and  at  ten  o'clock 
"  they  went  to  their  ordinary  prayer,  whilk 
was  the  loDger,  because  they  thought  he  was 
sleeping."  When  it  was  over,  the  physician 
asked  him  if  be  had  heard  anything.  *'  Aye," 
he  said,  "  I  wad  to  God  that  ye  and  all  men 
heard  as  I  have  heard,  and  I  praise  God  for 
that  heavenly  sound." 

"  Suddenly  thereafter  he  gave  a  long  sigh  and 
sob,  and  cried  out,  '^Now  it  is  come!'  Then 
Richard  Bannatyne,  sitting  down  before  him,  said, 
*  Now,  sir,  the  time  that  ye  have  long  called  for, 
to  wit,  an  end  of  your  battle,  is  come ;  and  seeing 
all  natural  power  now  fails,  remember  the  com- 
fortable promise  which  ofttime  ye  have  shown  to 
us,  of  our  Saviour  Christ ;  and  that  we  may  un- 
derstand and  knoW  that  ye  hear  us,  make  us  some 
sign,*  and  so  he  lifted  up  his  hand ;  and  inconti- 
nent thereafter,  rendered  up  the  spirit,  and  sleepit 
away  without  ony  pain." 


In  such  sacred  stillness,  the  strong  spirit 
which  had  so  long  battled  with  the  storm, 
passed  away  to  God.  What  he  had  been  to 
those  who  were  gathered  about  his  death-bed, 


they  did  not  require  to  be  taught  by  losing 
him.  What  he  had  been  to  his  country, 
"Albeit,"  in  his  own  words,  "that  unthank- 
ful age  would  not  know,"  the  after  ages  have 
experienced,  if  they  have  not  confessed. 
His  work  is  nojb  to  be  measured  by  the  sur- 
face changes  of  ecclesiastical  establishments, 
or  the  substitution  for  the  idolatry  of  the 
mass  of  a  more  subtle  idolatry  of  formulae. 
Religion  with  him  was  a  thing  not  of  forms 
and  words,  but  of  obedience  and  righteous 
life ;  and  his  one  prayer  was,  that  God  would 
grant  to  him  and  all  mankind  *'  the  whole 
and  perfect  hatred  of  sin."  His  power  was 
rather  over  the  innermost  heart  of  his  coun- 
try, and  we  should  look  for  the  traces  of  it 
among  the  keystones  of  our  own  national 
greatness.  Little  as  Elizabeth  knew  it,  that 
one  man  was  among  the  pillars  on  which  her 
throne  was  held  standing  in  the  hour  of  its 
danger,  when  the  tempest  of  rebellion  and 
invasion  which  had  gathered  over  her  pass- 
ed away  without  breaking.  We  complain  of 
the  hard  destructiveness  of  these  old  reform- 
ers, and  contrast  complacently  our  modern 
'^  progressive  improvement"  with  their  intole- 
rant iconoclasm,  and  we  are  like  the  agri- 
culturalists of  a  long  settled  country  who 
should  feed  their  vanity  by  measuring  the 
crops  which  they  can  raise  against  those 
raised  by  their  ancestors,  forgetting  that  it 
was  these  last  who  rooted  the  forests  off  the 
ground,  and  laid  the  soil  open  to  the  seed. 

The  real  work  of  the  world  is  done  by 
men  of  the  Knox  and  Cromwell  stamp.  It 
is  they  who,  when  the  old  forms  are  worn 
away  and  will  serve  no  longer,  fuse  again  the 
rusted  metal  of  humanity,  and  mould  it  afresh ; 
and,  by  and  by,  when  they  are  past  away, 
and  the  metal  is  now  cold,  and  can  be  ap- 
proached without  danger  to  limb  or  skin,  ap- 
pear the  enlightened  liberals  with  file  and 
sand-paper,  and  scour  off  the  outer  rough- 
ness of  the  casting,  and  say — See  what  a 
beautiful  statue  we  have  made.  Such  a 
thing  it  was  when  we  found  it,  and  now  its 
surface  is  like  a  mirror,  we  can  see  our  own 
faces  in  every  part  of  it. 

But  it  b  time  to  have  done.  We  had  in- 
tended to  have  said  something  of  Knox's 
writings,  but  for  the  present  our  limits  are 
run  out.  We  will  leave  him  now  with  the 
brief  epitaph  which  Morton  spoke  as  he 
stood  beside  his  grave:  "There  lies  one 
who  never  feared  the  face  of  mortal  man." 


1858.] 


BALZAC  AND  HIS  WSITIKGS. 


29 


FVom  th«  W«itiniBi^«r  Keritw. 


BALZAC    AND   HIS  WRITINGS.* 


Ik  the  last  act  of  Sonli^'s  *'  Clos^rie  des 
Oendts,"  (an  amputation  from  which,  with 
comic  excresences,  was  played  at  the  Adel- 
phi,  under  the  title  of  tne  "Willow  Copse/*) 
the  following  dialogue  takes  place  between 
two  of  the  principal  characters : — 

**  MtmtSdain,    Have  you  read  M.  de  Blazac  7 

**  lAtma,  I  should  not  be  a  woman  if  I  did  not 
know  all  his  delightful  works  by  heart. 

'*  MontSelain,  In  that  case  you  must  remember 
his  *  Histoire  des  Treize  ?* 

"  LSona,  Indeed  I  do  remember  it.  It  interest- 
ed me  exceedingly." 

The  "  Histoire  des  Treize"  is  a  most  ex- 
citing narrative,  founded  upon  a  compact  be- 
tween thirteen  "  great-hearted  gentlemen/* 
who  have  sworn  to  avenge  society  of  certain 
injuries,  the  authors  of  which  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  reach  by  the  ordinary  legal  means. 
We  never  admired  it  so  much  as  L^ona  ap- 
pears to  have  done,  and  we  have  no  preten- 
sions to  knowing  more  than  half  a  dozen  of 
"  Balzac's  delightful  works  by  heart  /*  but 
after  allowing  tor  the  exaggeration  peculiar 
to  the  theatre,  and  further,  for  the  exaggera- 
tion generally  found  in  the  expressions  of 
Isdies  in  real  life,  we  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  L6ona*s  admiration  for  the  au- 
thor of  the  "  Com6die  Humaine,'*  was  and 
is  equalled  by  that  of  the  most  educated 
women  in  France.  A  few  years  ago,  the 
most  popular  thing  in  Paris  after  M.  de 
Balzac  himself,  was  M.  de  Balzac's  cane; 
portraits  and  caricaturee  of  the  former  were 
m  all  the  print-shops,  and  Madame  de  Gira- 
din's  clever  novel  suggested  by  the  latter, 
was  in  all  the  libraries.  Now  that  Balzac's 
features  are  beginning  to  be  forgotten,  and 
that  his  diamond- headed  cane  has  become  a 
relic,  his  popularity  is  attested  by  the  numer- 
ous forms  in  which  his  works  are  produced, 
and  the  variety  of  other  works  of  which  his 

1.  Monori  dt  BaUae:  Suai  twr  VHcnwu  ei  $ur 
VCBmre,  Var  Armand  Baaohst  Avec  Notes  His- 
toriques  par  Champfleury. 

2.  Vie  de  ff,  de  Balxae.    Par  Desnoiresterrse, 


own  form  the  basis.  Since  1850,  the  year 
in  which  literature  was  deprived  of  the 
author  who  has  depicted  with  the  greatest 
success  the  morals  and  manners  of  the  first 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  works 
composing  his  "Com^die  Humaine"  have 
been  given  to  the  public  in  two  different  il- 
lustrated editions ;  his  plays  have  been  pub- 
lished in  a  complete  form ;  his  "  Mercadet " 
has  been  produced  amidst  universal  applause ; 
two  or  three  biographical  and  critical  sketches 
of  him  have  appeared ;  a  book  devoted  to 
his  female  characters,  and  another  containing 
his  maxims  and  reflections  have  been  brought 
out,  and  numerous  pieces,  founded  upon  nar- 
ratives by  him,  have  been  represented  at 
various  theatres. 

*'  In  the  provinces,"  wrote  Sainte  Beuve, 
a  few  years  since,  *'  M.  de  Balzac  has  met 
with  the  most  lively  enthusiasm.  There  are 
numbers  of  women  living  there  whose  secret 
he  has  divined,  who  make  a  profession  of 
loving  him,  who  discourse  continually  on  his 
genius,  and  who  endeavdr,  pen  in  hand,  to 
vary  and  embroider,  in  their  turn,  the  inex- 
haustible theme  of  these  charming  sketches, 
'  La  Femme  de  trente  ans,' '  La  Femme  mal- 
heureuse,*  <  La  Femme  abandonn^e."*  In 
St.  Petersburgh,  where  he  is  said  to  have 
been  invited  by  the  Court,  he  was  scarcely 
less  popular  than  in  Paris.  It  was  there  that 
a  lady,  hearing  Balzac  was  in  the  room, 
is  said  to  have  dropped  a  glass  of  water 
through  emotion.  In  Venice,  it  was  once 
the  fashion  to  represent  Balzac's  characters 
in  drawing-rooms,  and,  "  during  an  entire 
season,'*  says  the  critic  above  mentioned, 
«  nothing  but  Rastignacs,  Duchesses  de  Lan- 
geats,  and  Duchesses  de  Maufrigneuse  could 
he  seen."  Germany  sent  letters  entreating 
the  author  to  continue  his  "  illusions  per- 
dues"  without  delay ;  and  one  notary  wrote 
from  a  distant  and  uncivilized  part  of  France 
to  request  that  M.  de  Balzac  would  make  the 
members  of  his  profession  appear  in  a  more 
engaging  light  than  that  in  which  they  had 
hitherto  been  represented. 


30 


BALZAC  AND  HIS  WRITINGa 


[Sept. 


In  spite  of  Balzac's  long  and  continued 
popularity  on  the  continent,  only  two  of  his 
productions  have  been  translated  into  Eng- 
lish.    One  of  these,  '*  La  Grande  Bret^che,*' 
is  an  episode  in  one  of  his  novels  where  it  is 
introduced  as  a  tale  of  horror,  in  order  to 
dismay  a  lady  whose  conduct  has  been  sup- 
posed to  offer  some  analogy  to  that  of  the  her- 
oine of  the  said  episode.     Powerfully  written 
and  terrible  as  it  undoubtedly  is,  this  epi- 
sode, when  viewed  by  itself,  is  like  a  diamond 
taken  out  of  its  setting.     It  appeared  in  one 
of  the  annuals,  and  the  author's  name  was 
not  attached  to  it.    The  comedy  of  "  Mer- 
cadet"  also,  cut  down  from  five  acts  to  three 
by  M.  Dennery,  has  had  an  English  physi- 
ognomy given  to  it,  and  has  been  acted,  with 
great  success,  at  the  Lyceum.     How  it  hap- 
pens that  not  one  of  Balzac's  novels — not 
even  "  Eugenie  Grandet,*'  nor  the  **  Recher- 
che de  I'absolu,"  both  of  which  are  not  only 
irreproachable  as  to  the  morality  of  the  de- 
tails, but  have  the  additional  advantage  of 
being   master-pieses — how  it  happens  that 
neither  of  these  has  been  translated  into  Eng- 
lish, we  can  only  explain  by  the  supposition 
that  the  publishers  of  translations  imagine 
the  public  cares  for  nothing  more  elevated 
than  Eugene  Sue,  or  more  decent  than  Paul 
de  Kock.     Without  possessing  the  slightest 
affection   for   paradoxes,  we  think   we  can 
prove  that  the  popularity  of  French  novel- 
ists in  England,  is  in  inverse  proportion  to 
their  literary  merits.     If  we  judge  by  the 
number  of  his  works  (!)  translated,  we  find 
that   high-minded   and  conscientious  artist, 
Paul  de  Eock,  occupying  the  first  place  in 
popularity,  although  there  are  forcible  rea- 
sons— the  extended  sale  which  the  "  Myste- 
ries" and  the  "  Wandering  Jew "  met  with 
— for  assigning  the  post  of  honor  to  the  pure 
and  gentle  Eugene  Sue.     Next  comes  Du- 
ma<),   proving,  by  his  own  case  alone,  the 
truth  of  our  theory,  inasmuch  as  only  one 
volume  of  hb  "  Impressions  de  yoyage,"'and 
scarcely  any  of  his  carefully- written  novels 
have  been  translated,  whereas  most  of  his 
violently  unnatural  romances,  without  ever 
having  been  written  in  French,  have  never- 
theless  been   "done  mto  English."     Very 
few  of  George  Sand's  works  have  been  trans- 
lated, and  only  two  of  Merim6e's.    Lastly, 
not  one  of  Balzac's  novels  has  ever  been  pre- 
sented in  an  English  dress, — which,  accord- 
ing to  our  theory,  would  prove  M.  de  Bal- 
zac to  have  been  the  greatest  of  French  nov- 
elists, a  conclusion  to  which  a  careful  peru- 
sal of  his  works  had  already  led  us. 
In  Balzac's  *'M6moires  de  deux  jeunes 


Marines,"  one  of  the  heroines  mentions  what 
was  undoubtedly  true  at  the  time,  viz.,  that 
out  of  all  the  novels  and  romances  in  circu- 
lation, the  only  ones  worth  reading  are  *'  Co- 
rinne,"  and  Benjamin  Constant's  "Adolphe." 
In  "  Corinne,"  however,  the  characters  ore 
mere  shadows,  and,  moreover,  unnatural 
shadows ;  and  in  Benjamin  Constant's  admir- 
able tale,  Adolphe  and  E16onore,  are  quite 
without  individuality.  The  only  pictures  of 
manners  existing  in  France,  when  Balzac  was 
preparing  to  make  his  d^but,  were  "  Gil 
Bias  "  (if  we  can  apply  the  term  picture  to 
a  panorama)  and  "  Manon  Lescaut."  In 
"  Gil  Bias,"  the  fact  of  all  the  characters 
being  knaves,  with  the  exception  of  a  select 
few  who  are  fools,  and  the  entire  absence  of 
sentiment  and  passion,  render  it,  on  the  whole, 
an  untrue  picture  of  human  life,  in  spite 
of  the  knowledge  of  mankind  exhibited  in  al- 
most every  page ;  while  the  frequent  interrup- 
tion of  the  story  by  the  introduction  of  epi- 
sodes more  or  less  interesting,  renders  it  te- 
dious, in  spite  of  the  variety  of  ihe  incidents 
and  the  wit  of  the  narrative.  Absence  of 
passion  is  certainly  not  the  fault  of  *'  Manon 
Lescaut,"  and  although  the  constant  recur- 
rence of  the  same  situation  makes  it  resem- 
ble a  beautiful  duet,  in  which  the  same  mo- 
tive is  too  frequently  repeated,  it  was,  per- 
haps, the  truest  picture  of  human  Fife  exist- 
ing in  France  anno  Domini  1830.  The  coun- 
try which,  in  less  than  twenty  years,  has  pro- 
duced Balzac  and  George  Sand,  Nodier,  M6r- 
im^e,  Jules  Sandeau,  and  Alphonse  Karr, 
Victor  Hugo,  Th^ophile  Gauthier,  and  Al- 
fred de  Vigny,  can  afford  to  admit  this  un- 
deniable truth, — that  it  possessed  no  more 
than  the  germ  of  a  literature  of  fiction  until 
nearly  the  middle  of  the  present  century. 

The  influence  of  the  French  Academy, 
which,  while  endeavoring  to  preserve  the 
language  of  France,  has  nearly  stifled  its  lite- 
rature by  sacrificing  all  other  principles 
of  art  to  the  heroic  and  the  classical  (other- 
wise the  conventional),  can  alone  explain  the 
existence  of  Scudery  and  the  celebrity  of 
Florian  ;  and  the  attack  on  conventionality  in 
the  drama,  which  was  commenced  by  Victor 
Hugo  during  the  Restoration,  had  for  its  in- 
direct effect  a  reform  in  the  novel,  as  it  notori- 
ously aided  that  which  has  since  taken  place 
in  painting.  In  England,  where  Providence 
has  spared  us  the  infliction  of  an  Academy, 
and  where  the  standard  of  taste  has  always 
been  so  low  that  thinkers  have  been  able, 
ever  since  the  dark  ages,  to  express  their 
thoughts  in  any  form  which  they  have 
chosen    to  select — in   England  the  literary 


1858.] 


BALZAO  AlO)  HIB  VBTTINGa 


81 


warfare  of  the  romanticists  against  the  class- 
idsts,  or,  in  other  words,  of  those  who  would 
be  flogged  at  no  school  against  a  school  of 
pedants,  can  scarcely  be  comprehended. 
The  petition  of  certain  French  dramatists 
to  the  Academy,  praying  that  means  might 
be  taken  for  preventing  the  representation  of 
plays  written  by  Hngo,  Dumas,  and  all  such 
innovators,  is  as  inexplicable  to  us  as  the  op- 
position to  G^ricanlt,  who  had  the  audacity 
to  paint  modem  subjects  as  they  occurred 
in  modem  times,  and  who  could  not  be  per- 
suaded to  represent  a  French  hussar  in  the 
costume  of  a  Roman  gladiator.  When  the 
directors  of  the  Louvre  purchased  G^ricault's 
'*  Wreck  of  the  Medusa,''  they  intended  to 
oat  out  the  heads,  in  order  to  use  them  as 
studies  for  the  pupils  I  {vide  "  Memoirs  of  A. 
Dumas ;")  and  the  obstacles  which  were  con- 
stantly thrown  in  the  path  of  Victor  Hugo, 
show  that  more  than  one  person  connected 
with  the  production  of  his  plays,  would  glad- 
ly have  marred  their  general  effect  in  an  an- 
alogous manner.  Yet  this  painter,  who  is 
so  great  a  poet,  and  this  poet  who  is  so  great 
a  painter,  have  been  the  salvation  of  French 
art  and  French  literature,  by  driving  away 
the  more  or  less  successful  imitators  of  those 
who  have  themselves,  with  more  or  less  suc- 
cess, imitated  the  classics. 

The  reform  in  art,  to  which  the  name  of 
romanticism  has  been  given — a  name  which 
has  never  been  accepted  by  its  chiefs — by 
abolishing  the  cpuventional  models,  led  natu- 
rally enough  to  the  adoption  of  real  and 
natural  models,  and  to  the  exact  imitation  of 
nature.  '*  Art,"  says  one  of  Balzac's  literary 
heroes,  "is  nature  concentrated."  Those 
who  copy  from  nature,  and,  above  all,  from 
modern  nature,  and  the  nature  which  sur- 
rounds them  at  every  instant,  were  destined 
to  receive  from  the  champions  of  convention- 
ality the  appellation  of  "  realists," — this 
"  realism"  being  in  fact  only  a  continuation 
or  branch  of  what  had  before  been  absurdly 
styled  "romanticism."  The  head  of  this 
realist  school  was  Honor6  de  Balaac ;  and  we 
shall  see,  from  the  history  of  his  life  and  from 
an  examination  of  some  of  his  principal 
works,  in  the  order  in  which  they  appeared, 
that  it  was  many  years  even  before  he  under- 
stood the  trae  bent  of  his  genius  and  the 
destinies  of  the  modem  French  novel. 

Honor6  de  Balzac  was  bora  on  the  16th 
March,  1709,  at  Tours,  the  birth-place  of 
Rabelais,  Descartes,  and  Paul  Louis  Courier; 
and  it  is  at  this  town  that  the  scene  of  some 
of  his  most  admirable  productions  is  laid. 
Madame  de  Mortaaaf  lived  in  a  valley  of 


Touraine ;  the  "  Grenadi&re,"  to  which  Mad- 
ame de  Willemsens  retired  broken-hearted,  is 
at  Tours,  in  a  spot  which  those  who  have 
read  the  exquisite  tale  fancy  they  must  have 
seen;  the  carefully-finished  picture  of  the 
jealousies  and  maooeuvrings  of  small  people 
in  a  small  town,  with  the  effect  of  the  same 
upon  an  amiable  but  weak-minded  curate, 
represents  the  society  of  Tours;  and  it  was 
at  Tours  that  Gaudissart,  the  illustrious  bag- 
man, failed  in  his  daring  attempt  to  make  the 
lunatic  take  a  year's  subscription  to  the 
**  Globe"  newspaper.  Balzac  always  pos- 
sessed the  same  affection  for  the  "  Turkey  of 
France"  which  many  of  his  favorite  charac- 
ters are  made  to  exhibit:  in  the  prefatory 
letter  to  the  "  Lys  dans  la  Valine"  Felix  de 
Vandenesse,  writing  to  Natalie  de  Manner- 
ville,  says, ''  I  do  not  love  Touraine  as  muchr 
as  I  love  you,  but  if  Touraine  did  not  exist  I 
should  die." 

At  seven  years  of  age.  Honors  was  sent 
to  the  college  of  Yenddme,  where  he  is  said, 
by  M.  Desnoiresterres,  to  have  been  remark- 
able for  his  inattention  to  ordinary  studies, 
and  his  affection  for  '^  Louis  Lambert,"  whose 
story  M.  Desnoiresterres  appears  to  regard 
as  a  piece  of  actual  biography.  Similar 
mistakes  have  been  made  several  times  since 
the  days  of  Defoe,  and  must  be  looked  upon 
as  complimentary  to  the  realizing  power  of 
an  author,  although  they  say  little  for  the  dis- 
crimination of  the  reader  who  falls  into  such 
an  error.  M.  Armand  Baschet,  from  whose 
excellent  memoir  we  shall  borrow  the  few 
important  facts  connected  with  a  life  which 
was  purely  literary,  mentions  that  Balzac, 
when  at  school,  wrote  a  **  Traits  de  la  Vo- 
lenti," which  one  of  the  masters  discovered, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  course,  burned.  The 
''  human  will,"  as  the  readers  of  Balzac  will 
remember,  was  the  subject  to  which  Raphael, 
in  the  ^*  Peau  de  Chagrin,"  devoted  his  two 
years'  study,  which  ended  in  an  essay  intend* 
ed  to  form  the  "  necessary  complement  to 
the  works  of  Mesmer,  Gall,  and  Lavater." 

Having  taken  his  degree  of  bachelor  of 
arts,  Honor6  studied  law,  and  at  the  same 
time  attended  the  lectures  at  the  Sorbonne 
and  the  College  of  France  with  the  greatest 
punctuality.  At  the  age  of  nineteen  he  en- 
tered the  office  of  a  solicitor,  and  of  course 
discovered  that  the  profession  was  an  intoler- 
able one.  A  year  afterwards  he  attempted 
to  reduce  himself  to  the  proportions  of  a 
notary's  clerk,  without  any  sort  of  success. 
The  crisis,  as  the  newspapers  say,  was  now 
at  hand. 

The  scene  is  laid  in  the  Rue  da  Temple. 


82 


BALZAC  AKB  HIS  WRTTINOS. 


[Sept., 


M.  de  Balzac  pere,  his  wife,  his  daughter, 
and  his  son  Honors,  are  discovered  seated  in 
their  drawing-room.  The  father  is  walking 
up  and  down  the  room  in  an  agitated  man- 
ner, the  ladies  are  executing  some  fancy  work 
of  the  period,  and  the  son  is  turning  over 
the  leaves  of  a  book,  and  wishing  he  was 
not  clerk  to  a  notary.  M.  de. Balzac  pere 
pauses  in  his  promenade,  and  asks  his  son 
abruptly,  what  profession  he  intends  defi- 
nitively to  adopt.  M.  de  Balzac  fils  replies, 
that  he  wishes  to  become  an  author  (a  laugh). 
The  scene  ends  with  the  exit  of  M.  de  Balzac 
fiU^  who  hires  the  traditional  garret  of  au- 
thorship at  No.  7,  Rue  de  Lesdisui^res, 
close  to  the  library  of  the  Arsenal,  and  writes 
a  tragedy.  This  tragedy — the  inevitable 
prelude  to  almost  all  literary  labors — is  read 
to  the  Balzac  family,  and  submitted  by  its 
chief  to  M.  Andrieux.  M.  Andrieuz  declares 
that  the  author  is  incapable  even  of  attain- 
ing mediocrity,  and  Honor^  de  Balzac  is 
looked  upon  as  a  sublieutenant  named  Napo- 
leon was  looked  upon  at  Valence,  when  a 
lady  refused  her  consent  to  his  marriage  with 
her  daughter,  because  the  young  artillery 
officer  appeared  to  have  no  chance  of  getting 
on  in  the  world  ! 

The  Rue  des  Lesdiguieres  appears  to  have 
been  to  Balzac  what  the  Rue  de  Cluny  was 
to  the  aforesaid  Raphael,  when  he  lived 
on  a  franc  a  day,  and  concealed  his  five- 
franc  pieces  for  the  opposite  reason  to  that 
which  makes  the  miser  hide  his  treasures, 
and  lest  he  should  be  tempted  to  change 
one  of  them  before  its  time.  '*  This,*'  says 
M.  Baschet,  "  was  the  solitary  period  of  his 
existence.  He  saw  no  one,  made  long  walks, 
studied  the  quarter,  worked  much,  and  ate 
little.''  In  1822,  M.  de  Balzac  commenced 
his  practical  studies  as  a  novelist,  and  pro- 
duced in  the  course  of  four  years  some  thirty 
or  forty  volumes,  signed  Horace  Saint  Au- 
bin,  Viellergl6,  and  Lord  R'hoone  (an  ana- 
gram of  Honor6).  These  productions,  which 
were  looked  upon  by  Balzac  as  mere  exer- 
cises, were  written  in  collaboration  with  two 
or  more  writers,  who  have  preserved  their 
original  obscurity.  The  first  work  was^sold 
for  200  francs,  the  second  for  400,  the  third 
for  800,  and  the  fourth  for  1200,  the  pay- 
ments being  made  in  bills.  About  this  period, 
Balzac  must  have  been  attacked  by  the  severe 
illness,  the  recovery  from  which  he  ascribes, 
in  the  dedication  of  the  "  Lys  dans  la  Val- 
ine," to  the  care  and  skill  of  Dr.  Nacquart. 
**  I  studied  seven  years,"  said  M.  de  Balzac 
to  M.  Champfleury,  "  before  learning  what 
the  French  language    really  was.     When 


quite  young  I  had  an  illness,  of  which  nine- 
teen persons  out  of  twenty  die.  I  Vras  cured, 
and  commenced  writing  the  whole  of  the 
day.  I  wrote  seven  novels,  simply  as  exer- 
cises. One  to  learn  dialogue,  one  for  de- 
scription, one  for  the  grouping  of  the  cha- 
racters, one  for  the  composition,  dec.  I 
wrote  them  in  collaboration ;  some  of  them, 
however,  are  entirely  my  own,  I  do  not  know 
which.  1  do  not  recognize  them."  M.  de 
Balzac  said,  that  after  these  studies  and 
these  bad  novels,  he  began  to  disbelieve  ia 
the  French  language  "so  little  known  in 
France." 

In  1826,  M.  de  Balzac  went  into  partner- 
ship with  a  M.  Barbier,  as  a  printer.  A  one- 
volume  edition  of  La  Fontaine,  and  another 
of  Moliere,  had  been  previously  brought  out 
by  him,  and  it  was  in  hopes  of  regaining  the 
fifteen  thousand  francs  which  he  borrowed 
and  lost  in  the  speculation,  that  he  started 
the  printing-office.  The  printing-office  turn- 
ing out  a  failure,  Balzac  resolved  to  get  back 
from  the  publishers  and  printers  the  money 
which  he  had  lost  by  pnnting  and  publish- 
ing ;  and  in  1827,  produced  the  "  Dernier 
Chouan,"  the  first  book  to  which  he  affixed 
his  real  name;  and  the  only  contributioa 
towards  the  twenty-two  works  which  were 
to  have  composed  the  '**Sc^nes  de  la  Vie 
Militaire."  The  **  Dernier  Chouan"  is  written 
in  imitation  of  Walter  Scott,  and  many  of 
the  remarks  which  D'Arthez  makes  to  Lu- 
cicn  de  Rubempr6,  a  propas  of  his  "  Archer 
de  Charles  IX.,"  upon  which  his  reputation 
at  Paris-  is  to  depend  {vide  *'  Un  Grand 
Homme  de  Province  a  Paris"),  may. be  ap- 
plied to  it. 

In  1829,  M.  de  Girardin,  who  was  then 
editor  of  the  *'  Mode,"  inserted  in  that  pe- 
riodical a  tale  by  M.  de  Balzac,  entitled  **  £1 
Verdugo."  This  is  a  story  of  a  Spanish 
noble  family,  which  is  concerned  in  a  treach- 
erous plot  to  massacre  a  French  garrison. 
The  whole  family  is  sentenced  to  death,  but 
the  life  of  the  heir  to  the  title  is  at  length 
spared,  upon  condition  that  he  will  do  the 
office  of  executioner  upon  the  remaining 
members,  which  he  is  ultimately  forced  to 
do  by  the  peremptory  command  of  his  fa- 
ther. Although  the  tale  exhibits  great  nar- 
rative power,  the  general  effect  of  it  is  one 
of  unmitigated  horror,  and  it  certainly  be- 
longs to  Horace  Saint  Aubin  rather  than  to 
Honor^  de  Balzac. 

In  18S0,  Balzac  published  the  "  Physiol- 
ogy of  Marriage,"  (Physiohgie  du  Mariage^ 
ou  Meditations  de  philosophie  iclectique  sur 
le  bonheur  ei  U  malkeur  conjugal,  publOe  par 


1853.] 


BALZAC  AND  HIS  WBITIN6S. 


88 


tm  jeune  cilihiiaire,)  This  work  met  with 
the  greatest  success,  and  the  authorship  (for 
it  was  published  anonymously)  was  variously 
attributed  to  an  old  man  of  fashion  grown 
cynical,  an  old  rotU  of  a  physician,  and  other 
sexagenarians.  No  one  could  believe  that 
it  hs^  been  written  by  a  man  of  thirty,  until 
the  man  of  thirty,  in  consequence  of  repeated 
misrepresentations  as  to  the  authorship  and 
the  habits  and  character  of  the  author,  felt 
it  necessary  to  come  forward  and  avow  him- 
self. The  only  work  we  can  compare  the 
"Philosophy  of  Marriage"  with  is  the 
"  Marriage  Bed,"  by  Defoe,  to  which,  as  re- 
gards the  division  of  the  subject,  and  in  some 
other  particulars,  it  bears  a  considerable  re- 
semblance. Defoe  has  treated  his  subject 
much  too  coarsely  for  his  book  to  be  con- 
sidered readable  in  the  present  day ;  but  the 
objection  to  Balzac's  work  relates  not  so 
much  to  impropriety  in  the  details,  as  to  the 
grave,  scientiOc  manner  in  which  he  affects 
to  regard  the  most  trivial  matters  connected 
with  husbands  and  wives,  and  to  the  lone  of 
irony  which  pervades  his  entire  work,  and 
which,  for  those  who  understand  him,  con- 
stitutes its  greatest  charm.  M.  Jules  Janin, 
the  author  of  the  ^^  Ane  Mort,"  and  other 
unpopular  atrocities  which  seem  to  have 
been  written  by  a  bewildered  butcher,  with 
a  skewer  dipped  in  blood,  declared  that  the 
•'  Physiology  was  "  infernal."  Numerous 
journalists  of  virtue  misquotd  Balzac,  in  or- 
der to  prove  that  he  disbelieved  in  the  exist- 
ence of  a  single  virtuous  woman ;  and  our 
own  "  Quarterly  Review"  denounced  him  as 
a  writer,  who,  amongst  other  things,  "re- 
ferred us  to  Rousseau  as  the  standard  and 
text-book  of  public  moraU."  The  passage 
in  which  Balzac  refers  to  Rousseau  is  as  fol- 
lows :  ^^  Ouvrez  Bousseau,  ear  il  ne  s'agira 
€Paucune-que8twn  de  morale  publique  dont  il 
n'ait  d*avance  indigue  la  portbe."  To  ren- 
der the  word  portSe  by  either  ^*  standard"  or 
"  text-book,"  is  certainly  a  '*  free"  transla- 
tion. The  fact  is,  Balzac  had  a  far  more 
elevated  notion  of  virtue  than  those  who 
have  attacked  him.  He  knew  hovr  to  distin- 
grtush  between  virtue  and  **  the  homage 
which  vice  pays  to  virtue,"  and,  admiring 
it  profoundly,  found  it,  like  all  things 
worthy  of  profound  admiration,  exceedingly 
rare.  *'  A  virtuous  woman,"  says  the  author 
of  the  "  Physiology,"  *'  has  in  her  heart  a 
fibre  more  or  less  than  other  women  ;  she  is 
stupid  or  sublime."  Indeed^  it  is  not  the 
wives,  but  the  husbands,  against  whom  the 
book  in  question  is  directed.  ''  The  faults  of 
the  wives  are  so  many  acts  of  accusation 
VOL.  XXX    NO.  L 


against  the  egotism,  heedlessness,  and  worth- 
lessness  of  the  husbands,"  says  the  "  Jeune 
G61ibitaire."  And  again,  "  conjugal  happi- 
ness proceeds  from  a  perfect  concord  be- 
tween the  souls  of  the  husband  and  wife. 
Hence  it  results  that,  in  order  to  be  happy, 
the  husband  must  conform  to  certain  rules 
of  honor  and  delicacy.  If  bis  happiness  is 
to  consist  in  being  loved,  he  must  himself 
love  sincerely,  and  nothing  can  resist  a  genu- 
ine passion It  is  as  absurd  to  pre- 
tend that  it  is  impossible  to  love  the  same 
woman  always,  as  it  would  be  to  say  that  a 
celebrated  musician  requires  several  violins 
to  execute  a  piece  of  music,  and  to  create  an 
enchanting  melody." 

In  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  of  the 
''  Peau  de  Chagrin,"  Balzac  states,  that  in 
the  "  Physiology"  he  had  made  an  attempt  to 
revive  the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. This  preface  has  been  suppressed  in 
the  subsequent  editions,  but  the  author  de- 
clares in  it  (as  far  as  we  can  remember  his 
words),  that  "  unless  we  return  to  the  litera- 
ture of  our  ancestors,  a  deluge  of  barba- 
rians, and  the  burning  of  our  libraries,  are 
the  only  things  which  can  save  us,  and  ena- 
ble us  to  recommence  the  eternal  circle  in 
which  the  human  mind  appears  to  go  round." 
He  then  explains  that  the  public  had  de- 
clared itself  unable  to  sympathize  any  longer 
with  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  consump- 
tion, and  that  it  was  beginning  to  feel  the 
bad  effects  of  the  literature  of  blood,  fire  and 
rapine,  so  flourishing  immediately  before  the 
appearance  of  the  "  Peau  de  Chagrin/' 
which  was  written  with  the  avowed  purpose 
of  anatomizing  and  exposing  French  society 
as  it  existed  immediately  after  the  Revolution 
of  1830.  "  Your  mean  costumes,  your  un- 
successful revolutions,  your  shop-keeping 
politicians,  your  religion  dead,  your  powers 
paralyzed,  your  kings  on  half-pay — are  these 
so  fine,"  he  asks,  "that  you  would  have 
them  transfigured  ?  No,"  he  contioues,  "  I 
can  only  laugh  at  you  (t7  n^y  a  qu'^d  se  ma- 
quer) ;  that  is  the  only  literature  possible  in 
an  expiring  state  of  society."  The  "  Peau 
de  Chagrin,"  contained  the  most  brilliant 
descriptions  which  its  author  had  yet  pro- 
duced, as  the  "  Physiology"  exhibited  some 
of  his  best  analytical  writing.  The  conver- 
sation at  the  banquet,  where  artists,  writers, 
muMcians,  bankers,  doctors,  are  all  talking 
together  about  the  most  opposite  subjects, 
is  represented  with  consummate  art,  and  in 
a  manner  perfectly  novel. 

Balzac  did  not  exhibit  the  profound  know- 
ledge of  human  life  which  has  *  since  diatin- 

8 


34 


BALZAC  AKD  HIS  WBmHOP. 


[SepU 


guisbed  him,  until  18Sd,  between  wbicb 
year  and  1835  be  published  the  "  M^deoin 
de  Campagne/'  "  Eugenie  Grandet/'  and 
the  "  P^re  Goriot."  The  "P^u  de  Chagrin," 
powerfully  and  brilliantly  as  it  is  written, 
must  be  looked  upon  as  belonging  to  Balzac's 
'^second  manner/'  and  as  decidedly  wanting 
in  character  when  compared  with  the  three 
master-pieces  which  we  hare  just  mentioned. 

The  author  was  thirty-five  when  "  Euge- 
nie Grandet/'  and  the  ''  Scenes  de  la  vie  de 
Province,"  first  appeared — the  age  of  Gold- 
smith when  he  published  the  "Vicar  of 
Wakefield,"  and  of  Fielding  when  he  pub- 
lished "  Joseph  Andrews."  He  was  twenty- 
five  years  younger  than  Richardson  when  he 
wrote  "  Clarissa ;"  twelve  years  yonger  than 
Rousseau  when  he  brought  out  the  "  Nou- 
velle  Heloise :"  and  nearly  the  age  of  Thack- 
eray when  he  produced  **  Vanity  Fair."  It 
was  fashionable  for  some  time  with  critics 
to  speak  of  '^  Eugenie  Grandet,"  as  Balzac^s 
ehef  d'fjguvre,  as  if  he  had  only  written  one; 
and  many  years  afterwards  the  author  com- 
plained in  a  preface  that  an  attempt  had 
been  made  to  disparage  his  other  works  by 
bestowing  an  inordinate  amount  of  praise 
upon  the  one  in  question,  which,  nevertheless, 
he  said  (and  with  evident  delight),  the  critics 
had  been  unable  to  force  upon  the  public  (!) 
whereas,  the  '*  M6decin  de  Campagne"  had 
reached  a  fourth  edition.  The  well-known 
comparison  of  Balzac  to  the  Dutch  painters 
is  only  just  so  far  as  regards  the  truthfulness 
with  which  he  has  depicted  interiors,  and  the 
habits  of  some  homely  characters  ;  it  is  un- 
just 80  far  as  regards  his  exquisite  female 
characters,  (how  very  Dutch  the  Femme  de 
trente  ana,  Lady  Brandon,  Esther,  Pauline, 
Fcedora,  and  Honorine !)  and  is  stupidly  un- 
true with  respect  to  his  landscapes  of  Ton- 
raine,  and  the  sad  poetry  of  the  final  scene 
in  the  '^Lys  dans  la  Vallee." 

If  we  except  the  three  heads  of  criticism, 
Gustavo  Planche,  Philar^te  C basics,  and 
Sainte  Beuve,  Balzac  may  be  said  to  have 
had  all  the  reviewers  of  France  against  him. 
He  retaliated  with  Lousteau  the  feuilleionUte, 
the  "  Muse  du  Department,"  and  the  "  Grand 
Homme  de  Province  k  Paris."  We  remem- 
ber in  London,  the  frenzy  with  which  the 
inferior  weekly  newspapers  received  the 
ohapt«r8  of  "  Pendennis,"  in  which  ctsrtain 
gtriking  features  and  very  probable  charac- 
ters connected  with  the  English  press  were 
portrayed  ;  but  the  effect  of  the  terribly  ex- 
act picture  of  literary  life  in  Paris  which  the 
"  Grand  Homme  de  Province  a  Paris"  con- 
tained, was  such  as  to  make  every  journalist 


turn  his  pen  into  a  sfilette^  jn  order  to  con- 
vince Balzac  of  the  truly  Dutch  nature  of 
his  brilliant  and  poetical  genius. 

The  principal  characteristic  of  Balzac's 
novels  is,  nevertheless,  their  reality.  They 
differ  from  the  French  novels  which  preceded 
them,  not  only  in  the  truthfulness  of  the 
characters,  but  also  in  the  simple  and  natural 
motives  of  the  intrigue  which,  of  course, 
has  its  origin  in  the  hearts  of  the  characters. 
In  Balzac  s  novels,  love — a  comparatively 
unimportant  affair  in  modern  society — was 
no  longer  recognized  as  the  one  sole  dramatic 
agent,  and  a  sweeping  reform  was  effected 
in  the  terrible  last  chapter,  when  the  good 
used  to  be  gathered  together  and  respectably 
married,  while  the  bad  were  cast  out  into 
single-lived  perdition.  Balzac's  object  was 
to  do  for  the  nineteenth  century  that  which 
R6tif  de  la  Bretonne  had  announced  his  in- 
tention of  doing  for  the  eighteenth,  under 
the  title  of  "  Monuments  du  Costume  phy- 
sique et  moral  de  la  fin  du  18me  siecle." 
This  R^tif — who  wrote  one  novel  on.  the  sub- 
ject  of  hb  separation  from  his  wife,  and 
another  on  the  occasion  of  his  daughter's 
marryinof  without  his  consent  (he  called  this 
''  sacrificing  himself  to  the  good  of  his  fellow- 
citizens") — never  carried  out  his  promise 
with  respect  to  the  18th  century  in  general, 
and  we  are  not  aware  that  he  even  had  the 
honor  of  suggesting  the  "Com^die  Humaine" 
to  Balzac. 

The  '*  Comedie  Humaine"  contains  pictures 
of  every  kind  of  society  existing  in  France 
during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, whether  literary,  political,  commercial, 
military,  ecclesiastical,  or  rural.  Of  the  dif- 
ferent seines  into  which  the  work  is  divided, 
the  "  Scdnes  de  la  vie  de  Province*'  exhibit 
most  sentiment;  the  '*  Scones  de  la  vie  Pari- 
sienne"  most  brilliancy  ;  and  *'  Les  Paysans" 
in  the  "  Scenes  de  la'vie  de  Campagne,"  a 
rugged  truthfulness  which  had  never  before 
been  shown  in  France  in  connection  with  the 
peasant,  who,  according  to  Boucher,  Florian, 
and  others,  drove  with  a  ciseok  of  barley- 
sugar  his  milk-white  lambs,  decorated  with 
ribbons  of  azure. 

Balzac,  in  spite  of  the  animosity  of  the 
press,  was  always  admired  by  the  greatest 
men  of  the  day;  and  in  the  dedications  of 
various  volumes  of  the  "  Com6die  Humaine," 
he  has  recorded  his  friendship  for  No- 
dier,  Laraartine,  Th^phile  Gauthier,  Heine, 
George  Sand,  Delacroix,  Rossini,  and  Victor 
Hugo. 

With  regard  to  works  not  included  in  the 
«  Commie  Humaine,"  we  will  only  call  at- 


1858.] 


BALZAC  AND  HIS  WBHINGB 


36 


tentioD  to  the  ''  Enfant  Maadit»"  an  exqui- 
site tale  of  the  16th  century,  the  details  of 
which  are  a  sufficient  reply  to  those  ignorant 
personB  who  fancy  that  Balzac  could  only 
draw  the  society  and  scenes  by  which  he  was 
surrounded.  As  for  the  inferiority  of  his 
plays  to  his  novels,  we  attribute  their  want 
of  success  to  his  having  cultivated  descrip- 
tion at  the  expense  of  dialogue,  which  he 
never  employs  for  the  sake  of  telling  a  story : 
and  the  actual  scenery,  costumes,  and  prop- 
erties of  the  theatre  must,  of  course,  have 
been  common- place,  compared  to  what  they 
would  have  been  in  a  novel  by  Balzac. 

It  is  Balzac's  forU  to  illustrate  his  charac- 
ters by  the  accumulation  of  a  number  of 
little  incidents,  each  of  which  adds  some- 
thing to  the  inviduality  of  the  personages: 
so  that,  although  in  the  first  instance  we  re- 
cognize them  ^om  the  author's  description 
of  their  personal  appearance,  their  habits, 
the  scenes  by  which  they  are  surrounded, 
even  their  parentage,  and  the  manner  in 
which  they  have  been  educated,  we  are  at 
last  rendered  perfectly  familiar  and  even  in- 
timate with  them,  by  hearing  the  words 
placed  in  their  mouths,  and  witnessing  their 
every- day  actions.  He  never  proceeds  in 
any  other  manner  with  those  characters 
which  he  has  most  carefully  drawn :  Felix 
and  Monsieur  and  Madame, de  Mortsauf,  in 
the  "  Lys  dans  la  Valine ;"  the  Chevalier  de 
Yalois  in  the  "  Vieille  Fille ;"  Ursule  Mirouet, 
the  charming  young  girl  who  has  been  adopt- 
ed by  an  old  doctor,  and  educated  by  an  old 
priest ;  Despleins,  whom  anatomy  and  analy- 
•b  have  rendered  skeptical,  but  who  founds 
a  mass  for  the  soul  of  the  pious  Auvergnat 
who  assisted  him  when  he  was  a  penniless 
student;  Mademoiselle  Rogron,  the  vulgar 
and  jealous  old  maid,  who  persecutes  little 
Pierrette  to  death  under  pretence  of  be- 
having like  an  aunt ;  all  the  Grandet  family 
and  all  the  Claes  family  are  produced,  en- 
tirely or  in  part,  by  the  method  in  question. 

In  consequence  of  the  number  of  petty  inci- 
dents introduced  with  great  effect  by  Balzac 
throughout  most  of  his  novels,  it  has  been 
said  of  him,  as  it  has  been  said  of  Richard- 
son, Defoe,  and  other  writers  who  delighted 
in  details,  that  "  he  knew  how  to  invest  the 
most  ordinary  occurrences  with  interest" — 
the  fact  being  that  the  occurrences  in  ques- 
tion have  neither  more  nor  less  interest  than 
they  can  derive  from  the  characters  of  the 
persona  to  whom  they  are  represented  as 
happening.  Pierrette,  striking  her  head 
against  the  side  of  the  door  after  she  has 
been  sent  prematurely  to  bed  by  Mademoi- 


selle Rogron,  calls  forth  more  sympathy  than 
the  report  of  an  accident  on  the  Eastern 
Counties'  Railway  ;  and  the  first  indication 
of  Madame  de  Mortsaufs  illness  affects  us 
more  than  the  list  of  '^  the  number  of  deaths 
during  the  week  ending,"<Scc.,  for  an  almost 
indefinite  period.  Balzac  himself  says  that, 
for  suggestiveness,  the  two  fatal  lines,  "  Yes- 
terday evening  a  young  woman  threw  her- 
self from  the  Pont  Neuf  into  the  Seine,"  can 
never  be  equalled,  but  at  the  same  time  there 
can  be  no  doubt  but  that  Madame  du  Bruel 
would  have  been  more  seriously  affected  by 
bearing  that  La  Palferine  had  gone  without 
his  dinner,  and  that  Honorine's  husband 
would  have  been  more  hurt  by  hearing  that 
his  wife  had  passed  a  sleepless  night*. 

On  the  other  hand,  Balzac  has  been  accus- 
ed of  giving  an  unnatural  degree  of  impor- 
tance to  details,  of  recording  trivialities,  of 
describing  interiors  with  the  precision  of  an 
appraiser,  of  tiring  th«  reader  by  histories  of 
the  ancestors  (and  even  of  the  heraldic  bear- 
ings and  quarterings  of  the  ancestors)  of  some 
of  his  characters,  of  indulging  in  disquisitions 
on  the  manners  of  the  inhabitants,  natural  and 
mineral  productions,  morality,  state  of  trade, 
<fec.,  of  the  places  in  which  he  lays  his  scenes. 
To  which  it  may  be  replied,  that  the  arrange- 
ment or  disarrangement  of  the  furniture  of  a 
room  sometimes  expresses  the  character  of 
the  owner  more  clearly  thai?  his  or  her  own 
physiognomy  would  do;  and  that  a  child 
brought  up  in  an  old  castle  would  differ  from 
another  child  who  had  always  lived  in  a 
modern  fashionable  mansion,  while  neither  of 
them  would  entirely  resemble  a  third  child 
who  had  been  continuiilly  shut  up  in  a  puri- 
tanical parlor  of  the  Richardsonian  pattern, 
although  all  three  might  originally  have  pos- 
sessed almost  identical  dispositions  ;  that  an 
inventory  may  in  itself  be  both  comic  and 
poe.tical  (as  Balzac's  annotated  catalogue  of 
the  objects  in  the  celebrated  curiosity-shop 
of  the  "  Feau  de  Chagrin"  sufficiently  proves), 
and  that,  in  certain  cases  (as  in  the  last  scene 
of  the  first  part  of  '*  Ursule  Mirouet,"  in  which 
a  young  man  enters  the  room  where  his  fa- 
ther died,  for  the  first  time  since  his  death); 
the  said  ''  inventory"  is  as  unavoidable  as  the 
presence  of  scenery  on  the  stage  in  a  modem 
drama.  With  regard  to  the  long  family  his- 
tories which  are  occasionally  introduced,  they 
are  frequently  necessary,  in  order  to  prepare 
the  reader  for  one  of  those  events  of  which 
the  explanation  might  appear  unnatural  if  of- 
fered after  the  occurrence,  although  it  may 
be  simple  enough  as  contained  in  the  introduc- 
tion to  the  story.    Sometimes,  too,  these  in- 


36 


BALZAC  AND  HIS  WRITINGS. 


[Sept., 


troductions  serve  to  give  probability  to  a  cha- 
racter which,  although  true  in  natrue,  i3  not 
of  a  kind  met  with  every  day.  "  The  charac- 
ters of  a  novel,"  says  Balzac,  "  must  be  more 
logical  than  those  of  history.  The  latter  want 
to  have  life  given  them — the  former  have  liv- 
ed. The  existence  of  these  requires  no  proof, 
however  unnatural  their  actions  may  appear  ; 
while  the  existence  of  the  others  must  be  sup- 
ported by  unanimous  consent."  The  strange 
character  of  the  husband  of  the  prdvincial 
blue-stocking,  in  the  "  Muse  du  Department," 
has  been  accounted  for  in  an  introduction  of 
such  length,  that  those  who  are  not  aware  of 
the  utility  of  all  Balzac's  details,  might  be 
teooptefl  to  skip  it. 

The  system  of  details,  moreover,  gives 
great  reality  to  the  characters.  "  I  was  born 
in  the  year  1632,"  says  an  old^riend,  "  in  the 
city  of  York,  of  a  good  family,  though  not  of 
that  country,  my  father  being  a  foreigner  of 
Bremen,  who  settled  iirst  at  Hull.  He  got  a 
good  estate  by  merchandise,  and  leaving  off 
his  trade,  lived  afterwards  at  York,  from 
whence  he  married  my  mother,  whose  rela- 
tions were  named  Robinson,  a  very  good  fami- 
ly in  that  country,  and  from  whom  I  was  call- 
ed Robinson  Ereuznaer,  but,  by  the  usual 
corruption  of  words  in  England,  we  are  now 
called — ^nay,  we  call  ourselves,  and  write  our 
name,  Crusoe,  and  so  my  companions  always 
called  me."  *It  is  of  course  impossible  to 
disbelieve  in  the  existence  of  a  man  who  tells 
you  where  his  father  and  mother  lived,  and 
that  his  real  name  was.  Ereuznaer,  although 
"  by  the  usual  corruption  of  words  in  Eng- 
land he  is  called  Crusoe  1" 

^any  French  critics  have  affected  to  look 
upon  the  detailing  and  realizing  system  of 
Balzac  as  significant  of  the  decay  of  art  in 
France,  (the  decay  of  an  art  which,  before 
Balzac  wrote,  did  not  exist  there !)  They 
will  tell  you,  that  the  great  harvest  hfiving 
been  made,  the  detail  school  is  composed 
only  of  gleaners,  and  that  the  statue  is  disap- 
pearing before  the  daguerreotype.  Realism 
IS  confounded  with  materialism  by  writers 
who  have  never  been  able  to  distinguish  be- 
tween classicism  and  conventionalism,  and  is 
represented  as  being  the  art  of  copying  ex- 
ternal nature  with  correctness,  when  analysis 
•f  human  character  and  motives,  and  the  ob- 
servation of  mental  phenomena,  form  the  very 
foundation  of  the  system. 

It  is  not  even  true,  however,  that  the  novel 
descends  to  details  of  character  and  incident 
in  proportion  as  it  gets  older,  or  Thackeray, 
the  representative  of  the  English  novel  in 
the  present  day,  would  be  more  oircumstan- 


tial  than  Defoe,  and  more  minute  than  Rich- 
ardson. In  fact,  critics  can  no  more  lay  down 
general  rules  which  are  not  liable  to  be  up- 
set at  any  moment  by  the  appearance  of  a 
man  of  genius,  than  politicians  can  establish 
a  constitution  which  does  not  in  itself  contain 
the  elements  of  a  revolution.  To  complain 
of  Balzac's  details,  which  formed  part  of  his 
8}  stem,  is  to  object  to  his  existence  as  a  novel- 
ist. It  has  often  been  asked  why  "  Clarissa 
Harlowe"  was  written  in  letters,  and  Richard- 
son has  replied  that  he  wrote  it  in  letters, 
perhaps  because  he  had  previously  written  a 
novel  in  letters,  which  had  proved  a  success  ; 
perhaps  because  he  was  not  able  to  write 
narrative  ;  and  probably,  because  the  mode 
which  he  had  chosen  suited  him  better  than 
any  other.  Those  who  are  not  satisHed  with 
Richardson's  explanation  resemble  the  critic 
in  Balzac's  "  Grand  Homme  de  Province  a 
Paris."  Lucien  is  astonished  at  the  rapidity 
with  which  the  critic  has  disposed  of  a  book 
of  travels  in  Egypt.  "  I  have  discovered 
eleven  faults  of  French  in  it,"  says  the  feuil- 
letoniste,  "  and  I  shall  tell  the  author,  that, 
although  he  can  read  hieroglyphics,  he  can't 
write  his  own  language.  After  that,  I  shall  say, 
that  instead  of  troubling  himself  about  Egypt- 
ian art,  he  should  have  devoted  his  attention  to 
the  question  of  trade,  and  shall  end  with  a  flour- 
ish about  theLevant,  and  the  commerce  of 
France."  "And  if  he  had  devoted  himself  to 
the  commercial  question?"  inquires  Lucien. 
"  Then,"  replies  the  feuilletoniste,  "  I  should 
have  told  him  that  he  had  better  have  occu- 
pied himself  with  art." 

Balzac's  description  in  detail  of  Madame 
de  Mortsauf's  voice  has  been  often  quoted  as 
an  instance  of  the  abuse  of  the  system ;  "  Sa 
fagon  de  dire  les  terminaisons  en  %  faisait 
croire  a  quelque  chant  d'oiseau,  le  eh  pro- 
nonc6  par  elle  6tait  comme  une  caresse,  et 
la  mani^re  dont  elle  attaquait  les  /  accusait 
le  despotisme  du  cceur.  Elle  ^tendaii  ainsi 
sans  le  savoir  le  sens  des  mots,  et  vous  en- 
trainait  Tlime  dans  un  monde  immense."  It 
appears  to  us  that  this  description  of  certain 
sounds  of  the  voice  has  the  singular  merit 
of  suggesting  the  voice  itself.  An  "  idea- 
list," or  "  classicist,"  could  only  have  quali- 
fied Madame  de  Mortsauf  s  voice  as  "silvery,'* 
*'  liquid,"  or  by  some  other  adjective  which 
may  be  applied  to  a  thousand  different  voices; 
but  Balzac,  mentioning  the  sounds  which 
were  especially  beautiful  in  her  utterance, 
gives  as  clear  a  notion  of  her  mode  of  speak- 
ing, as  a  description  of  the  airs  she  was  in 
the  habit  of  executing,  aiid  of  the  notes 
which  she  possessed  in  greatest  perfection. 


1853.] 


THE  OHILDREy  OF  GREAT  POETP. 


Z1 


r 


TTOuld  give  of  her  singing.  Many  persons 
will  doabtless  be  unable  to  understand  this 
description  of  sound,  as  others,  who  are  en- 
tirely without  pictorial  faculties,  may  fail  to 
appreciate  the  descriptions  of  scenery  in  the 
exquisite  novel  from  which  we  have  extract- 
ed the  above.  M.  Henry  Mlirger,  who  fol- 
lows in  the  same  school  as  Balzac,  and  who 
is  a  faithful  observer  of  the  society  around 
him,  has  understood  this  description  of  Ma- 
dame de  Mortsaufs  voice,  as  he  proves  by 
a  passage  in  one  of  his  "  Scenes  de  la  vie  de 
Jeunesse/'*  In  another  tale  in  the  same 
collection,  (Madame  Olympe,)  he  has  imita- 
ted the  forms  of  Balzac  with  more  fidelity 
than  was  necessary,  the  consequence  being 
a  stiffness,  which  is  entirely  absent  from  the 
volume  generally. 

M.  Champfleury,  to  whom  we  are  indebt- 
ed  for  the  interesting  conversations  with  M, 
de  Balzac  appended  to  M.  Baschet's  memoir, 
is  the  author  of  several  volumes  of  tales, 
and  is  an  acknowledged  disciple  of  Balzac's. 

"  That  which  I  see,"  says  M.  Champfleury, 

• 

*  "  Ab  ta  remai;^!!^  ayeo  quelle  douceur  elle  dit 
oertains  mots — mon  ami  ^  exemple,  et  vi>i$tu,-* 
Ac — '  *  Zes  Amour9  d*  OHvter, " 


"  enters  into  my  head,  descends  into  my  pen, 
and  becomes  that  which  I  have  seen."  This, 
however,  only  describes  a  portion  of  the 
method  of  Balzac,  who,  after  observing  one 
fact  and  one  character,  arrived  at  the  truth 
with  regard  to  a  thousand  others  by  means 
of  an  analogical  process,  which  will  always 
remain  a  mystery  to  those  who  are  unable  to 
exercise  it.  Balzac  must  frequently  have 
perceived  a  whole  character  from  a  few  words 
or  a  single  incident,  as  a  c^atn^oyan^e  possess- 
ing a  letter,  or  a  lock  of  hair,  is  supposed 
to  be  instantly  acquainted  with  everything 
relating  to  the  person  to  whom  they  belong ; 
or  as  STiakspeare,  with  only  the  Italian  novdli 
and  Plutarch's  Lives,  imagined  the  manners 
and  customs  of  Italy  and  Greece.  M.  Champ- 
fleury's  last  work,  "  Les  Aventures  de  Mdlle. 
Mariette,"  is  advertised  as  belonging  to  "  Yd- 
cole  r^aliste  la  plus  avancSe ;"  and  a  classi- 
cal critic  has  threatened  the  author  of  that 
interesting  book  with  the  vengeance  of  the 
government,  in  case  he  should  realiize  any 
further  projects  of  realism.  Let  us  hope 
that  the  re- establishment  of  the  guillotine, 
which  was  talked  of  some  time  ago,  had  no 
connection  with  the  terrible  threat  of  the 
classical  critic. 


i«4- 


•♦♦• 


Thb  Children  of  Great  Poets. — It  is 
impossible  to  contemplate  the  early  death  of 
Byron's  only  child  without  reflecting  sadly 
on  the  fates  of  other  families  of  our  greatest 
poets.  Shakspere  and  Milton  each  died  with- 
out a  son,  but  both  left  daughters,  and  both 
names  are  now  extinct.  Shakspere's  was 
soon  so.  Addison  had  an  only  child,  a  daugh- 
let,  a  girl  of  some  five  or  six  years  at  her 
father's  death.  She  died  unmarried,  at  the 
age  of  eighty  or  more.  Farquhar  left  two 
girls  dependent  on  the  friendship  of  his  friend 
Wilkes,  the  actor,  who  stood  nobly  by  them 
while  he  lived.  They  bad  a  small  pension 
from  the  Government ;  and  having  long  out- 
lived their  father,  and  seen  his  reputation  un- 
alterably established,  both  died  unmarried. 
The  son  and  daughter  of  Coleridge  both  died 
childless.  The  two  sons  of  Sir  Walter  Scott 
died  without  children,  one  of  two  daughters 
died  unmarried,  and  the  Scotts  of  Abbotsford 
and  Waverley  are  now  represented  by  the 
children  of  a  daughter.  How  little  could 
Scott  foresee  the  sudden  failure  of  male  issue ! 
The  poet  of  the  "  Faerie  Queene''  lost  a  child 


when  very  yorung,  by  fire,  when  the  rebels 
burned  his  house  in  Ireland.  Some  of  the 
poets  had  eons  and  no  daughters.  Thus  we 
read  of  Chaucer's  son,  of  Dryden's  sons,  of 
the  sons  of  Burns,  of  Allan  RAmsay's  son,  of 
Dr.  Young's  son,  of  Campbell's  son,  of  Moore's 
son,  and  of  Shelley's  son.  Ben  Jonson  surviv- 
ed all  his  children.  Some — and  those  among 
the  greatest-— died  unmarried^  Butler,  Cowley, 
Congreve,  Otway,  Prior,  Pope,  Gay ,  Thomson, 
Cowper,  Akenside,  Shenstone,  Collins,  Gray, 
Goldsmith.  Mr.  Rogers  still  lives — single. 
Some  were  unfortunate  in  their  sons  in  a  sad- 
der way  than  death  could  make  them.  Lady 
Lovelace  has  laft  three  children — two  sons 
and  a  daughter.  Her  mother  is  still  alive, 
to  see  perhaps  with  a  softened  spirit  the  shade 
of  the  father  beside  the  early  grave  of  his  on- 
ly child.  Ada's  looks  in  her  later  years—* 
years  of  suflering,  borne  with  gentle  and 
womanly  fortitude — have  been  happily  caught 
by  Mr.  Henry  Phillips — whose  father's  pencil 
has  preserved  to  us  the  best  likeness  of  Ada's 
father. — Atkenamm, 


88 


THE  BOCARME  TBAGEDT 


[Sept., 


From  Sharpe        Magazine. 


THE    BOCARME    TRAGEDY. 


BY   MRS.   WARD. 


The  awful  interest  created,  between  two 
and  three  years  ago,  in  England,  France,  and 
Belgium,  by  Ibe  trial  of  the  Comte  and  Com- 
tesse  Bocarm6  for  the  murder  of  the  Com- 
teese's  ill-starred  brother  Gustave  Fougnies, 
— cannot  be  forgotten. 

Within  the  last  few  weeks,  Madame  Bocar- 
m6  has  again  been  brought  before  the  public, 
by  an  appeal  'of  Monsieur  Baugnies  to  the 
Civil  Tribune  of  Tournay,  on  behalf  of  this 
woman's  children,  who,  from  the  reckless  ex- 
travagance of  their  mother,  must,  in  default 
of  such  legal  help,  eventually  be  left  penni- 
less. "  Ill-gotten,  ill -spent,"  says  the  old 
proverb,  and,  according  to  Monsieur  Bau*- 
gnies'  showing,  and  some  experience  which  I 
have  to  offer  of  my  own,  touching  Madame 
Bocarm6,  the  reader  may  judge  bow  aptly 
she  has  illustrated  the  maxim. 

Monsieur  Baugnies  declared  that  the 
**Comte8se  had,  by  her  habits  of  extraya- 
gance  and  luxury,  ruined  the  estate  of  her 
husband  ;  and  that  since  she  had  inherited 
the  property  of  her  murdered  brother,  she 
had  frequented  the  most  fashionable  places, 
putting  herself  prominently  forward,  having 
carriages  and  valuable  horses,  extensive 
apartments,  <&c.,  and  dissipating  the  prpperty 
she  bad  inherited  so  rapidly  that  she  had 
raised  by  mortgage  and  otherwise,  between 
October,  1851  and  1852,  84,000  francs  on 
the  property  which  came  to  her  by  her 
brother's  death.  With  a  view  to  preserve 
her  children  from  ruin.  Monsieur  Baugnies 
had  determined  to  apply  for  a  civil  interdic- 
tion," &c,,  <fec.,  &c. 

This  suit  was  now  instituted  on  account 
of  the  rumored  marriage  of  the  Comtesse 
with  some  one  bold  enough  to  mate  with  such 
a  coxnpanion.  It  will  be  remembered,  that 
by  her  evidence  her  husband  was  guillotined 
for  the  murder  of  his  brother-m-law,  of 
which  murder  she  had  been  the  aider  and 
abettor,  and,  by  her  own  showing,  stimulator. 

It  was  during  the  month  of  October,  1851, 
that  I  happened  to  be  an  inhabitant  of  the 


same  house  at  Brussels  with  Madame  Bocar- 
m6,  and,  although  such  propinquity  was  not 
of  my  own  choosing,  I  could  not  help  taking 
a  certain  interest  in  observing,  as  opportu- 
nities offered,  the  various  points  in  tne  cha- 
racter of  such  a  person.  As  notoriety,  no 
matter  how  glaring,  was  evidently  her  pas- 
sion, I  felt  no  compunction  in  "  taking 
notes,'*  and  sidce  it  is  not  improbable  that 
she  may  again  appear  as  the  heroine  of  a 
dark  romance,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  *'  prent 
them." 

One  morning,  then,  my  lai^ady  professed 
herself  to  be  somewhat  mystified  by  the 
visit  of  a  femme  de  ckambre,  who  came  to 
hire  the  spare  apartments  of  her  house  for  a 
widow,  whose  name  she  hesitated  to  impart. 
Next  day,  a  hired  carriage  drove  to  the  door, 
and  there  descended  from  it  the  "  widow " 
and  her  female  attendant.  The  "widow's" 
bonnet  was  of  transparent  material,  placed 
far  back  on  the  head ;  bands  of  brown  hair 
were  widely  parted  off  a  bold  forehead,  and 
a  pair  of  wild  eyes  flashed  from  under  heavy 
lids;  the  nose  was  nondescript,  the  wide 
nostrils  indicated  scorn,  the  lairge  mouth  was 
sensual,  the  chin  elevated  with  an  air  of  vul- 
gar pride,  and  there  was  a  sneer  upon  the 
lips;  the  throat  was  bare, — and  the  arms 
were  scarcely  covered  by  the  loose  ruffled 
sleeves;  in  a  word,  the  chief  characteristic 
of  this. woman's  abord  was  audacity.  She 
swept  into  the  passage^  scanned  its  lofty  alti- 
tude with  affected  disdain,  and  mounted  the 
stairs  in  silence.  The  door  of  the  sitting- 
room  at  her  disposal  was  thrown  open  ;  the 
apartments  were  more  luxuriously,  and  even 
more  comfortably,  furnished  than  those  in 
Brussels  lodging- bouses  generally  are — but 
the  "  draperies  did  not  fnease  her :"  "  the 
sofa  was  not  so  soft  as  she  desired ;"  "  the 
street,  though  comme  U  faut,  was  irUte;*' 
in  short,  '*all  was  very  inferior  to  what  she 
had  been  accustomed  to  in  her  eh&tbau, — " 
and  *'  Who  were  the  other  inhabitants  of  the 
house  ?" 


'f 


1853.] 


THE  BOOAttME  TRAGEDY. 


89 


«< 


An  English  officer  and  his  wife/'  was 
the  landlady's  reply. 

Madame  Boearm6  turned  down  her  lip. 

She  descended  below :  observed  that  she 
must  send  to  her  ch&teau  for  her  batterie  de 
cuisine;  owned  to  a  fancy  for  taking  her 
lunch  and  breakfast  in  her  kitchen — but  as 
this  is  a  Belgian  fashion,  it  went  for  nothing, 
— and  proposed  adding  sundry  elegancies  to 
the  apartments.  She  perambulated  the 
whole  house,  and  would  have  taken  her 
choice  of  rooms,  without  reference  to  our 
convenience,  had  she  been  permitted ;  and  I 
confess  that  when,  subsequently,  we  learned 
who  had  stalked  through  our  dwelling,  I 
felt  very  much  as  if  a  dark  angel  had 
swooped  down  and  over-shadowed  the  place 
with  its  awful  presence. 

In  a  week  her  bargain  concluded,  and  her 
trunks  arrived  with  no  name  on  the  address. 
'*  Liege  "  and  '*  Cologne  "  indicated  their 
route. 

Soon  after  came  an  avocat,  inquiring  for 
Madame  Yisart : 

"Madame  Bocarm6  you  mean,  I  sup- 
pose," said  the  Belgian  landlady,  with  a  mis- 
chievous smile,  for  she  had  discovered  the 
name  of  her  new  lodger. 

The  trial  of  the  Comtesse  and  her  hus- 
band, filling  a  thick  volume,  is  one  of  the 
most  extraordinary  in  the  annals  of  the 
Causes  Celebres,  It  took  place  at  Mons,  in 
Belgium,  in  1851,  and  thousands  assembled 
to  judge  of  the   '^judicial  drama.'* 

For  a  drama,  a  tragic  one  it  was.  There 
was  a  dead  silence  in  the  court  on  the  open- 
ing of  the  first  scene,  as  the  President 
desired  that  "Lydie  Fougnies"*  should  come 
forward. 

*'  Lydie  ''  appeared  alone  and  unsupport- 
ed in  the  doorway :  her  step  was  assured, 
her  toilette  carefully  arranged — black  satin 
(Maria  Manning's  favorite  material),  forming 
her  robe — and  on  her  head  rested  a  small 
crape  bonnet,  adorned  with  a  wreath  of 
white  roses  ;  her  face  was  veiled. 

Then  was  summoned  Hippolite  Yisart  de 
Bocarm6.  Husband  and  wife  were  desired 
to  seat  themselves ;  a  gendarme  placed  him* 
self  between  them. 

Nothing  but  the  lowered  voice  and  fidgetty 
movement  of  the  well-gloved  hands  with  the 
folds  of  her  embroidered  handkerchief  be- 
trayed emotion  on  the  part  of  the  Comtesse ; 
the  Comte  seemed  stupe6ed. 

The  charge  against  them  was  re^d;  the 

* 

*  It  Ib  customary  in  Belgiam  for  the  wife  to  re- 
tain her  maiden  nsme. 


names  of  the  hundred  and  one  witneases! 
were  next  proclaimed.  The  examination  of 
Lydie  opened  the  trial. 

One  or  two  interrogatories  between  the 
president  and  the  prisoner  will  aflford  a  spe- 
cimen of  the  manner  in  which  she  was  per- 
mitted to  prejudice  the  court  against  her 
unfortunate  husband  :— 

Question, — "What  have  been  Visart  de 
Bocarm^'s  occupations  since  his  marriage  ?" 

Answer, — "He  has  spent  eighteen  or 
twenty  thousand  francs  .in  experiments  in 

agriculture,  in  bees,  and ,"  the  end 

of  the  sentence  is  better  omitted. 

Question. — "He  was  then  9,rouiP 

Answer, — "  Yes,  he  has  squandered  much 
money,  ^c." 

Then  came  questions  about  poisonous 
plants ;  and  the  wife  told  how  she  had  been 
"  made^  by  dint  of  blows  and  threats,"  to 
open  a  correspondence  with  a  chemist  at 
Ghent,  under  a  false  name.  Next,  she  drop- 
ped insinuations  of  quarrels  between  the  old 
Conote  Bocarm^  and  his  son,  of  sorrowful 
interpositions  by  the  mother,  and  finally  ad- 
mitted the  share  she  herself  had  had — ^invol- 
untarily she  protested — in  preparing  the 
nicotine  to  "settle  Gustavo,"  her  lame 
brother. 

For  months  before  the  murder,  were  the 
wretched  pair  engaged  in  concocting  the 
fatal  draught,  taking  it  in  turns  to  rise  at 
night  and  visit  the  cauldron  in  which  the 
potion  was  transmuting  from  tobacco  to 
nicotine.  The  woman  .  had  to  pass  her 
sleeping  children  on  her  fiendish  errand, 
which  she  accomplished  with  inconceivable 
coolness  and  deliberation,  watching  the  tem- 
perature of  the  contents  of  the  brazen  ves- 
sel by  means  of  a  thermometer. 

Now  and  then  a  laugh  disturbed  the  evi- 
dence— ^laughter  elicited  by  allusions  to  poi- 
soned cats  and  ducks  on  which  Comte  Bo- 
cann6  had  experimentalized  for  the  edifica- 
tion of  his  wire,  before  "  settling  Gustavo." 

The  unfortunate  Gustave's  heritage  of  a 
few  thousand  francs  had  long  excited  the 
greedy  cupidity  of  the  Bocarm6s.  The  com- 
tesse had  received  her  fortune  under  the  will 
of  her  father,  a  retired  grocer,  but,  like  all 
unprincipled  and  selfish  people,  the  false 
pride  of  her  husband  and  herself  had  led 
them  to  expenses  beyond  their  means. 

The  patrimony  of  this  poor  cripple  being 
the  thing  they  coveted,  husband  and  wife 
went  hand-in- hand  in  bringing  their  dark  de- 
sign to  an  issue.  As  the  details  were  un- 
folded at  the  trial,  it  must  have  become  clear 
to  the  audience,  that  Madame  Bocarm6  was 


40 


THE  BOOAfiBIE  TRAGEDY. 


[Sept 


not  a  person  to  be  swayed  by  any  will  but 
her  own ;  Lady  Macbeth  might  as  well  at- 
tempt to  make  her  audience  believe  that  she 
was  the  victim  of  her  husband's  ambition,  as 
this  Comtesse  persuade  common  sense  to  ac- 
cept her  excuses  on  this  plea.  It  was  shown 
that  she  had  entered  with  zest  into  the  ex- 
periments on  poisoned  animals ;  had  listened 
with  horrid  interest  to  the  report  made  by 
the  medical  man,  whom  the  comte  had  ques- 
tioned respecting  Gustavo's  health ;  and  that, 
ere  she  received  her  brother  at  the  table, 
where  he  was  invited  to  be  poisoned,  she 
had  made  the  necessary  arrangements  for 
getting  her  governess  and  servants  out  of  the 
bouse  ;  then  the  coachman  was  sent  one  way, 
the  children  and  their  nurses  another,  and  the 
train  being  laid,  madame  made  her  toilette 
for  dinner ! 

Business  had  been  made  the  excuse  for 
the  invitation.  The  brother  and  sister  had 
been  at  issue  for  months  on  the  subject  of 
Gustavo's  intended  marriage  with  a  Made- 
moiselle Dudzdle,  for  his  chance  of  an  early 
death  would  avail  the  Bocarm6s  nothing  if 
once  married ;  and,  although  Madame  Bo- 
carm6  had  esHayed  to  defame  Mademoiselle 
Dudzele,  Gustavo  was  resolved  to  espouse 
her,  and  by  his  declaration  sealed  his  doom. 

On  the  20th  of  November,  the  victim  came 
to  breakfast  and  pass  the  day  at  the  Ch&teau 
Betrimont.  He  sat  part  of  the  morning  with 
his  sister,  wandered  into  the  garden,  and 
watched  the  children  at  play,  and  "  seemed 
gay  and  happy."  One  of  his  little  nieces 
wove  him  a  garland  of  autumnal  flowers ! — 
it  was  found  after  the  murder  "  crushed  and 
faded  !*'  And  thus  the  day  wore  on  till  din- 
ner time. 

"  Infirm  of  purpose,"  the  wretched  Comte 
had  been  up  before  dawn,  wandering  about 
the  old  chateau,  while  madame  was  sleeping. 
She  rose  at  her  usual  hour,  nine  o'clock. 

After  dinner,  the  three  relatives  drew 
round  the  stoves,  and  **  sat  chatting  amica- 
bly together!"  When  the  gloom  of  an 
autumn  twilight  settled  on  the  room,  Emer- 
ance,  the  maid,  proposed  to  bring  in  the 
lamp,  as  usual,  but  was  forbidden.  It  seems 
the  exact  moment  for  the  deed  had  never  been 
fixed  on,  but  the  Comtesse  had  set  every 
wheel  in  motion,  and  now  the  sword  of  fate 
hung  by  a  slender  hair  over  the  victim's 
head. 

Gustavo  rose  to  go ;  the  Comte  went  out 
to  order  the  young  man's  cabriolet;  the 
coachman  was  absent,  but,  contrary  to  cal- 
culation, soon  returned.  While  the  Comte 
was  in  the  stables,  Madame  Bocarme  gave 


her  brother  a  document  to  read,  and  he  hob- 
bled across  the  room  to  the  stove,  having  in 
vain  asked  for  lights.  At  this  moment  the 
Comte  entered. 

In  this  part  of  the  evidence,  the  comtesse 
committed  herself  by  a  series  of  contradic- 
tions ;  the  facts  at  length  elicited  were,  that 
"  as  the  Comte  returned  from  the  stables,  she 
went  to  order  lights,  and  that,  as  she  was 
leaving  the  room,  she  heard  a  fall,  and  the 
soappmg  of   a  stick — a  crutch  breaking — 

and    heard    Gustavo    say "     Alas ! 

almost  the  last  word  that  passed  the  wretch- 
ed victim's  lip  was  an  oath  1  She  heard  the 
cry  for  mercy,  too,  "  Pardon,  Hip^olite,  par- 
don !"  But  she  hurried  out  of  the  room  as 
soon  as  she  saw  her  brother  down,  with  her 
husband's  grasp  upon  him !  There  was  one 
more  cry  of  **  Oh,  save  me !" 

It  rang  through  the  house  in  its  death 
agony  ;  the  servants  rushed  from  the  kitchen 
and  upper  rooms,  and  saw  their  mistress 
stealing  along  the  passage,  like  an  evil  spirit. 
Madame  Bocarm^  tried  to  evade  them,  but 
one  of  them  swore  to  recognizing  '*  the  rustle 
of  the  satin  robe,"  and  exclaimed,  '*Ah, 
there  is  madame  f" 

By  this  time  the  cries  in  the  dining-room 
had  become  but  stifled  moans,  and,  ere  long, 
all  was  nearly  over  with  Gustavo. 

Justine,  one  of  the  servants,  rushed  up  to 
the  nursery,  and  told  her  fears  to  Emerance : 
''You  are  young  and  fearful,"  said  Eme- 
rance, and  left  the  room  to  fetch  the  chil- 
dren's^supper,  which  Justine  had  fogotten  in 
her  alarm. 

A  frightful  vision  waylaid  Emerance.-  At 
the  door  of  his  chamber  stood  the  Conite, 
pale  as  death,  with  great  drops  of  perspira- 
tion and  gouts  of  blood  pouring  down  his 
face,  and  a  wound  upon  his  brow ;  his  trem- 
bling hands  refused  to  do  their  office,  he  could 
not  open  the  door,  and  his  knees  trembled 
under  him. 

Emerance  passed  on,  and  met  her  mistress 
with  a  bowl  of  water  in  her  hand ;  Madame 
Bocarm^  ordered  the  maid  back  to  the  nur- 
sery, and  began  speaking  to  her  husband  in 
a  low  voice.  In  five  minutes,  Madame  Bo- 
carm^  followed  her  servant  to  the  nursery, 
and  sitting  calmly  down,  took  one  of  her  in- 
nocent children  in  her  lap ;  her  presence  of 
mind  never  deserted  her  for  a  moment.  On 
hearing  her  husband's  agitated  voice,  she  put 
the  child  down,  and  hurried  to  him. 

Howxiiflerent  was  it  with  the  miserable 
Comte !  He  had  given  Gilles,  the  coachman, 
the  most  incoherent  orders  about  the  cabrio- 
let, had  sluiced  the  face  of  the  corpse  with 


1858.] 


THE  BOCARM^:  TRAOEDT. 


41 


vinegar,  and  was  now  wandering  about  tlfe 
house  asking  wildly  for  "  Help  for  Gustave, 
who  was  ill!" 

Emerance  accompanied  her  master  into  the 
dining-room ;  Madame  Bocarm^  followed. 
The  latter  had  the  grace  to  shrink,  or  pre- 
tend to  shrink  back,  on  the  threshold  of  the 
fatal  scene ;  "  Heaven  I"  exclaimed  this  blas- 
phemer, "what  is  the  matter  with  my 
brother  ?" 

The  Comte  was  wiping  away  the  vinegar 
from  the  dead  man  s  face.  The  idea  of 
Qustave  being  in  a  fit  was  kept  up  by  the 
Comte;  the  humane  waiting-woman  chafed 
the  cold  palms ;  a  muscular  movement  led 
her  to  fancy  life  was  returning : 

"  Yes !  yes ! "  cried  Comte  Bocarm^,  "  go 
on,  Emerance:  see,  he  comes  to  himself;"  so 
saying,  he,  as  well  as  the  Comtesse,  quitted 
the  room. 

Emerance  must  have  had  good  courage: 
\ett  alone  with  the  body,  she  held  the  candle 
over  it,  and  saw  the  stamp  of  d^th  at  once 
upon  the  distorted  features.  Comte  Bo- 
carm6,  restless  and  wavering,  returned  just 
as  she  had  finished  her  exammation. 

"  He  is  quite  dead,'*  said  Emerance. 

"  What  shall  we  do  with  his  body  ? " 
cried  the  Comte.  They  sent  for  Gilles,  the 
coachman,  who  testified  to  having  found  his 
master  pale,  and  wan,  and  trembling.  He 
could  only  stammer  out,  "•  Ta — a — -ke  this 
corpse  to  Emerance's  room." 

The  guilty  pair,  leaving  the  murdered  man 
to  the  care  of  the  servants,  retired  to  their 
apartment,  and  Madame  Bpcarm^,  who  had 
never  been  on  happy  te'fins  with  her  bus- 
band,  now  addressed  him.  by  the  most  en- 
dearing epithets. 

"The  Comte,"  said  the  witness,  "was  dead- 
ly sick  during  the  night,  and  Madame  had  a 
cup  of  cocoa  made,  which  she  took  at  mid- 
night 1" 

The  bold,  bad  woman's  presence  of  mind 
remained  unshaken ;  between  her  husband's 
fits  of  retching  she  sipped  her  cocoa,  and 
issued  her  orders  "  to  have  the  corpse  washed 
with  vinegar,"  and  "  to  put  on  it  a  coarse 
^hirt.  Be  sure,"  said  she  to  Emerance,  "  not 
to  take  a  fine  one !" 

She  burned  some  of  the  victim's  clothes, 
too,  and  his  crutches,  saying  she  could  not 
bear  to  see  them ;  and,  so  soon  as  Monsieur 
Bocarm6  revived,  took  him  into  the  library, 
and  burned  such  letters  as  she  thought  might 
commit  them.  The  books  of  chemistrv,  too,' 
she  destroyed ;  hid  the  crucible  and  rem- 
nants of  tobacco,  and,  in  the  course  of  the 
morning,  "desired  her  maid  to  go  and  tell 


those  coquines  (rogues),  Madame  and  Ma- 
demoiselle Dudzele,  thatGustave  was  dead  !" 

She  next  tried  to  school  the  servants  as  to 
the  testimony  they  would  be  called  upon  to 
give  :  then  the  doctor  was  sent  for,  who  at 
once  pronounced  the  case  to  be  one  of  poi- 
son ;  and  no  sooner  were  the  wretched  pair 
accused  of  the  murder,  than  the  Comtesse 
turned  upon  her  miserable  partner.  Her 
brother  despatched,  she  resolved  on  acquiring 
his  property  by  offering  her  evidence,  ana 
thus  condemning  her  weak-minded  husband 
to  death. 

The  evidence  on  the  trial  proved  the  guilt 
of  both,  and  the  spectators  breathlessly 
awaited  the  decision  of  the  jury. 

The  scene  will  never  be  forgotten  by  those 
who  witnessed  it.  The  day  had  closed  in, 
the  court  blazed  with  gas,  and  ranged  along 
the  white  and  lofty  walls  were  the  officers  of 
the  court,  the  gendarmes,  and  the  judge  in 
his  scarlet  robe,  the  most  conspicuous  figure 
of  all ;  but  the  eyes  of  the  crowd  were  fixed 
on  the  two  beings,  who  were  to  inscribe,  in 
bloody  characters,  on  the  list  of  criminals,  an 
ancient  name. 

A  bell  rang;  silence  fell  upon  the  court. 

**•  Visart  Bocarm6,"  said  the  president. 

Hope  shone  on  the  Comte's  face ;  many 
women  burst  into  tears. 

"Lydie  Fougnies,"  was  next  called. 

Not  the  least  emotion  was  visible  on  her 
face.  "This  stoicism,"  says  the  record, 
"  surprised  and  afflicted  the  audience." 

The  fatal  "  yes,"  of  the  jury  failed  to  shake 
the  calm  of  the  Comte's  features ;  but  at  the 
"  no,"  which  decided  the  safety  of  his  wife, 
an  expression  of  happiness  gleamed  across 
them,  and  he  cast  a  glance  of  unutterable 
tenderness  towards  the  author  of  his  ruin." 

Meanwhile  she  had  sat  motionless,  not  a 
gesture  betrayed  anxiety. 

"I  declare,"  said  the  president,  "  that  the 
accused,  Lydie  Fougnies,  is  acquitted  of  the 
charge  brought  against  her.  Lydie  Fou- 
gnies," a  dead  pause,  "  you  may  descend." 

And  Madame  Bocarme  did  descend,  and 
left  the  court,  attended  by  the  director  of 
the  prison. 

As  she  passed  out,  her  husband  cast  an- 
other look  of  tenderness  upon  her,  "  his  eyes 
sought  hers,'*'  but  there  was  no  responsive 
glance ;  she  never  even  turned  towards  him. 

He  had  been  humanely  placed  so  that  she 
should  not  pass  him  by ! 

Then  he  was  condemned  to  die  I 

Comte  Bocarme  appealed,  but  King  Leo- 
pold refused  to  listen  ;  the  unhappy  man's 
position  was  aggravated  by  suspense,  caused 


44 


THE  BOCARME  TRAOEDT. 


[Sept., 


ed  with  working  and  writing  materials,*  the 
bed  remained  as  its  tenant  had  left  it ;  the 
pillow-case  was  richly  embroidered  with  the 
cipher,  L.  B.,  and  the  coronet  above ;  and  at 
the  side  of  the  bed  hung  a  little  shrine  with 
its  tiny  fountain  of  holy  water,  and  the  image 
of  the  Yirgia  I  It  was  doubtless  before  this 
shrine  that  the  Comtesse  repeated  her  aves 
and  litanies,  which  sounded  so  distinctly 
through  the  house  at  midnight.  Her  rosary 
lay  near  her  looking-glass. 

Reports  were  circulated  of  property  left 
her  by  an  Englishman  who  had  died  at  Paris, 
and  a  crowd  of  lawyers  one  day  filled  Mad- 
ame Bocarm^'s  drawing-room.  These  must 
have  been  the  men  sent  for  to  arrange  the 
mortage  affair,  of  which  Hons.  Baugnies 
complains,  and  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that 
the  tale  of  the  Englishman's  will  was  an  in- 
vention of  the  intnguing  woman.  She  had 
even  then  a  lover  in  her  toils ;  and  her  con- 
duct soon  became  so  insolent  and  reckless, 
that  had  she  not  resolved  on  quitting  the 
house,  we  must  have  done  so. 

She  hired  the  apartments  formerly  occu- 
pied by  the  Spanish  Ambassador.  On  the 
morning  of  her  departure,  as.  the  carriage 
drove  up,  the  throng  gathered  to  see  her 
issue  from  the  doorway.  As  she  came  out, 
she  cast  her  usual  look  of  defiance  around, 
and,  having  seated  herself  with  her  two  little 
girls,  sent  her  maid  back  for  something  which 
Bad  probably  been  left  in  the  house  on  pur- 
pose. On  the  re-appearance  of  the  servant, 
some  words  were  whispered  to  her  by  Mad- 
ame Bocarm6,  upon  which  the  maid,  address- 
ins  Gilles  in  French,  and  in  a  tone  that  all 
might  hear,  desired  him  "not  to  hurry,  as 
Madame  would  be  happy  to  remain  as  long 
as  the  crowd  desired  to  stare  at  her." 

«  Drive  on,  Gilles,"  exclaimed  the  land- 
lady, a  demi-Italian,  with  a  flashing  eye ;  "if 
your  mistress  chooses  to  be  stoned,  I  don't 
wish  my  windows  to  be  broken." 

The  landlady  shut  the  door  in  haste,  and 
when  evening  fell,  made  the  following  ar- 
rangements in  the  sitting-room  vacated  by 
the  Comtesse. 

In  the  centre  of  the  apartment  she  placed 
a  table;  on  this  she  laid  a  fair  linen  napkin, 
and  on  the  napkin  put  a  small  bronze  cruci- 
fix, with  a  lighted  taper  on  either  side  of  it; 

*  Madame  Booarme  had  essayed  authonhip,  and 
I  am  in  possession  of  some  extraotsfrom  her  novel, 
the  scene  whereof  is  laid  in  England.  The  work 
was  entitled  The  History  of  Mist  Adeline  Helney  ; 
but  the  specimens  that  fell  by  accident  into  my 
huids  are  not  worthy  of  transcription ;  albiet  the 
secretary  of  the  Boeiiti  des Seieneesptonoxma^  "a 
benevolent  Judgment  upon  the  MS.*^ 


after  these  preparations,  she  threw  open  the 
doors  and  windows,  ^'  in  order,"  as  she  told 
me,  "  that  the  house  might  be  exorcised  of 
the  evil  spirit" 

A  strong  moral  may  be  drawn  from  the 
story  of  the  life  of  the  Comtesse  Bocarme, 
the  leading  feature  of  whose  character,  from 
her  childhood,  was  ambition;  her  play-fel- 
lows, in  ridicule  of  the  airs  she  assumed, 
nicknamed  her  ''  the  little  duchess ;"  and  on 
her  return  from  the  convent  of  St.  Andre,  at 
Tournay,  where  she  had  been  educated,  she 
passed  her  time  in  reading  the  novels  of 
George  Sand,  and  other  aut^iors  whose 
productions  suited  her  sensual  tastes  and  in- 
dolent habits. 

Lydie  was  superstitious ;  she  dreamed  one 
night  that  she  was  a  comtesse,  and  it  has 
been  said,  that  she  consulted  a  fortune-teller, 
who  showed  her  a  tall  fair  young  man,  of 
ancient  and  noble  family,  on  the  sea,  and 
homeward  bound. 

This  was  Comtc  Hippolite  Tisart  de  Bo- 
carme, on  his  way  from  Java,  where  his 
father  bad  long  lived  as  "  Inspecteur- Gene- 
ral,"— agent — on  the  Marquis  de  Chateler'a 
estate. 

The  unfortunate  Hippolite  was  born  at  sea 
in  a  hurricane ;  from  his  birth  he  was  feeble, 
and  the  privations  incidental  to  the  voyage 
produced  convulsions,  the  effects  of  which, 
by  the  showing  of  his  mother,  '*  hunff  upon 
him  through  life."  The  sketch  given  by  the 
old  Comtesse  Bocarme  of  her  son  is  too  long 
to  quote,  but  forms  a  melancholy  episode  in 
this  romance  of  real  life ;  it  tells  of  life  in 
exile — for,  through  pecuniary  difficulties,  his 
father  had  been  compelled  to  retire  to  South 
America ;  of  days  passed  in  great  solitary 
forests  on  sporting  exhibitions  ;  of  fever  and 
ague  accrumg  from  these  expeditions;  of 
nights  spent  in  study,  and  of  his  r^ection  of 
the  principles  of  religion ;  of  great  suffering 
and  almost  death,  from  successive  fits  of  ill- 
ness. 

The  poor  lady  had  tried  in  vain  to  unite 
her  son  to  some  virtuous  woman  ;  but  in  an 
ill-fated  moment  he  met  with  Lydie,  fixed  his 
affections  on  her,  and  they  were  married. 
They  took  up  their  abode  at  the  ancient 
family  Chateau  de  Bitremont. 

Bitremont  was  a  princely  residence  in  the 
days  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  had  been  the  scene 
of  many  a  fray  during  the  Brabantian  civil 
wars.  It  is  a  lonely  place,  moated,  and  with 
a  draw-bridge,  which,  it  is  said,  the  Bocar^ 
mei  were  wont  to  raise  when  creditore  were 
trcubleeome  ! 
Anne  Radcliffe  would  have  made  much  of 


r 


1868.] 


BKMARKABLE  TRIAL  IK  GREECE. 


46 


finch  a  locality.  A  few  modern  rooms  were 
occupied  by  the  family ;  the  more  ancient 
part  lis  cumbered  with  defaced  sculptures, 
faded  hangings,  rickety  cabinets,  and  crazy 
tables.  The  great  billiard-room  is  void,  but 
the  chapel  has  not  been  utterly  despoiled ; 
emblazoned  arms  adorn  the  walls,  and  the 
image  of  the  Virgin,  richly  dight  in  lace  and 
silver,  stands  on  the  altar.  No  one,  how- 
ever, can  tell  when  the  chapel  was  last  used. 
All  without  is  still  and  dreary  ;  swans  sail 
upon  the  green  bosom  of  the  stagnant  moat, 
but  plunge  below  the  waters  at  tue  sound  of 
human  voices ;  at  night  the  nightingale  pours 
her  wail  through  the  deep  woods,  and  all  the 
day  long,  a  nock  of  black  pigeons  wheel 
round  and  round  the  towers  that  mark  the 
oldest  portion  of  the  building.  Its  distance 
from  any  public  thoroughfare  makes  the 
Chateau  Bitremont  a  truly  desolate  and 
silent  place.  To  complete^ the  romance  at- 
tached to  the  history  of  the  old  chateau,  it 
has  its  ghostly  legend,  which  tells  of  "  one 
of  the  lords  of  Bitremont,  who  came  back 


from  the  Holy  Land  with  his  head  under  his 
arm,  like  St.  Denis,  and  appeared  yearly  on 
All  Saints*  Eve>  in  an  insulated  pavilion  in 
the  grounds.'' 

I  had  frequent  opportunities  of  seeing 
Madame  Bocarm6,  but  I  own  "  the  rustle  of 
her  dress,"  made  me  shudder :  I  never  could 
shake  off  the  idea  of  the  fratricide  stealing 
through  the  long  corridors  of  the  chateau  at 
m!&night,  to  watch  the  foaming  decoction  in 
the  brazen  cauldron ! 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  family  motto  of 
the  Bocarm^s  is,  "  I  protect  the  weak !" 

On  the  8th  of  December,  1851,  the  sale 
of  effects  took  place  at  the  chateau,  and 
great  was  the  surprise  of  the  persons  assem- 
bled there,  to  see  Madame  Bocarro^  enter 
undismayed,  to  *'  assbt  at  the  aaction,"  by 
bidding  for  all  the  best  articles  of  furniture ; 
and  at  the  close  of  the  day  she  retired  to  rest 
in  her  old  apartments. 

And  now,  what  may  we  expect  to  hear 
of  her  next :  will  it  be  matrimony,  or  murder, 
or  both  ? 


H   ^  I  I 


Remarkable  Trial  in  Greece. — The  trial 
of  an  ecclesiastic  has  just  tak^n  place,  which 
has  created  a  great  sensation.  A  monk  of 
Andros,  a  certain  Theophilus  Cairis,  was  a 
man  of  great  erudition,  and  at  one  time  c^ene- 
rally  respected  ;  and  after  having  figured,  like 
many  other  priests,  in  the  Greek  revolution, 
recoived  the  Preddent  Capodistria  with  a  ser- 
mon on  his  duties  as  chief  of  the  state,  which 
won  him  great  admiration  both  for  his  cour- 
age and  eloquence.  He  then  set  off  to  travel 
all  over  Europe,  collecting  money  to  establish 
a  college  in  his  native  island  of  Andros  ;  and 
on  his  return  the  order  of  the  Saviour  was  con- 
ferred upon  him,  for  his  zeal,  by  King  Otho, 
which  he  subsequently  declined,  dedicating 
himself  entirely  to  the  establishment  of  his 
school,  the  fame  of  which,  augmenting  every 
day,  soon  drew  an  immense  concourse  of  all 
classes  and  ages.  Soon,  however,  it  begun  to 
be  rumored  that  the  religious  principles 
taught  by  Cairis  were  far  from  orthodox ;  and 
the  holy  synod,  at  length,  taking  the  alarm, 
sent  for  the  monk,  to  submit  him  to  an  ex- 
amination, and  finding  that  his  answers  were 
evasive,  he  was  reqmred  to  sign  the  Nicene 
creed,  which  he  refused  to  do.  This  man 
who  thus  imposed  on  unsuspecting  persons 
by  his  ecclesiastical  dress  was,  m  fact,  a  deist, 


and  made  the  school  the  propaganda  of  his 
doctrines.  His  school  was  shut  up,  but  as 
he  still  continued  to  propagate  his  opinions, 
he  was  confined,  according  to  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal rule,  to  his  monastery.  Some  years  after- 
wards he  was  liberated,  on  condition  of  leav- 
ing the  country  for  a  time.  He  then  went 
to  England,  and  published  a  philosophical 
work,  a  catechism,  and  a  book  of  prayer,  in 
which  the  Christian  religion  is  quite  set  aside, 
and  which,  by  an  unaccountable  caprice,  are 
written  in  the  Doric  dialect  of  ancient  Greece. 
After  this  he  returned  to  Greece,  where  he 
proceeded  to  disseminate  these  works,  either 
personally  or  through  some  few  disciples 
whom  he  had  succeeded  in  making.  But  as 
this  came  under  the  penal  act,  he  was  6um- 
moned  before  the  assize  court  at  Syria,  where, 
among  other  things,  he  declared  that  he  had 
seen  in  the  heavens  a  star  of  singular  bright- 
ness, on  which  was  written  "  Worship  God, 
and  God  alone."  The  accusation  that  he 
taught  and  spread  a  religion  not  recognized 
by  the  state  having  been  proved,  he  was  con- 
demned to  two  years*  imprisonment,  and  nine 
years  under  the  inspection  of  the  police  ;  and 
two  of  his  adherents  were  at  the  same  time 
condemned  to  half  this  sentence. 


40 


HBRMAK  MSLYILLEL 


[Sept, 


fromColkirn's  NewHonthly. 


HEKMAN  MELYILLE 


3 


The  Muses,  it  was  once  alleged  hj  Christo- 
pher North,  have  but  scantly  patronized  sea- 
laring  verse  :  they  have  neglected  ship- 
building, and  deserted  the  dockyard, — though 
in  Homer's  days  they  kept  a  private  yacht, 
of  which  he*  was  captain.  **  But  their  at- 
tempts to  re-establish  anything  like  a  club, 
these  two  thousand  years  or  so,  nave  misera- 
bly failed;  and  they  have  never  quite  re- 
covered their  nerves  since  the  loss  of  poor 
Falconer,  and  their  disappointment  at  the  in- 
gratitude shown  to  Diodin."  And  Sir  Kit 
adds.that  though  they  do  indeed  now  and  then 
talk  of  the  "  deep  blue  sea,'*  and  occasional- 
ly, perhaps,  skim  over  it  like  sea- plovers,  yet 
they  avoid  the  quarter-deck  and  all  its  dis- 
cipline, and  decline  the  dedication  of  the  cat- 
o'-nine-tails,  in  spite  of  their  number. 

By  them,  nevertheless,  must  have  been 
inspired — in  fitful  and  irregular  afflatus — 
some  of  the  prose-poetry  of  Herman  Melville's 
sea- romances.  Ocean  breezes  blow  from 
his  tales  of  Atlantic  and  Pacific  cruises.  In- 
stead of  landsman's  gray  goose  quill,  he  seems 
to  have  plucked  a  quill  from  skimming  cur- 
lew, or  to  have  snatched  it,  a  fearful  joy, 
from  hovering  albatross,  if  not  from  the  wings 
of  the  wind  itself.  The  superstition  of  life 
on  the  waves  has  no  abler  interpreter,  un- 
equal and  undisciplined  as  he  is — that  super- 
stition almost  inevitably  engendered  among 
men  who  live,  as  it  has  been  said,  "  under  a 
solemn  sense  of  eternal  danger,  one  inch  only 
of  plank  (often  worm-eaten)  between  them- 
selves and  the  grave ;  and  who  see  for  ever 
one  wilderness  of  waters."^  His  intimacy 
with  the  sights  and  sounds  of  that  wilder- 
ness, almost  entitles  him  to  the  reversion  of 
the  mystic  "  blue  cloak"  of  Keats's  subma- 
rine gray  beard,  in  which 

-every  ocean  form 


Was  woven  with  a  black  distinctness;  storm, 
And  calm,  and  whispering,  and  hideous  roar 
Were  emblem'd  in  the  woof ;  with  every  shape 
That  skims,  or  dives,  or  sleeps  'twixt  cape  and 
cape.f 

*  Thomas  de  Qninoev. 
f  **  Endymion,''  Book  HI. 


A  landsman,  somewhere  observes  Mr. 
Tuckerman,  can  have  no  conception  of  the 
fondness  a  ship  may  inspire,  before  he  lis- 
tens, on  a  moonlight  night,  amid  the  lonely 
sea,  to  the  details  of  her  build  and  workings, 
unfolded  by  a  complacent  tar.  Moonlight 
and  midseas  are  much,  and  a  complacent  tar 
is  something ;  but  we  "  calculate"  a  lands- 
man can  get  some  conception  of  the  true-blue 
enthusiasm  in  question,  and  even  become 
slightly  inoculated  with  it  in  his  own  terra 
firma  person,  under  the  tuition  of  a  Herman 
Melville.  This  graphic  narrator  assures  us, 
and  there  needs  no  additional  witness  to  make 
the  assurance  doubly  sure,  that  his  sea  adven- 
tures have  often  served,  when  spun  as  a  yarn, 
not  only  to  relieve  the  weariness  of  many  a 
night-watch,  but  to  excite  the  warmest  sym- 
pathies of  his  shipmates.  Not  that  we  vouch 
for  the  fact  of  his  having  experienced  the 
adventures  in  literal  truth,  or  even  of  being 
the  pet  of  the  fo'castle  as  yarn-spinner  .extra- 
ordinary. But  we  do  recognize  in  him  and 
in  his  narratives  (the  earlier  ones,  at  least) 
a  "  capital"  fund  of  even  untold  "  interest," 
and  so  richly  veined  a  nugget  of  the  bim 
trovato  as  to  "  take  the  shine  out  of"  many 
a  golden  ^ero.  Readers  there  are,  who, 
having  been  enchanted  by  a  perusal  of 
**  Typee"  and  "  Omoo,"  have  turned  again 
and  rent  the  author,  when  they  heard  a  sur- 
mise, or  an  assertion,  that  his  tales  were  more 
or  less  imagination.  Others  there  are,  and 
we  are  of  them,  whose  enjoyment  of  the  his- 
tory was  little  affected  by  a  suspicion  of  the 
kind  during  perusal  (which  few  can  evade), 
or  an  affirmtion  of  it  afterwards.  "  And  if 
a  little  more  romantic  than  truth  may  war- 
rant, it  will  be  no  harm,"  is  Miles  Coverdale's 
morality,  when  projecting  a  chronicle  of  life 
at  Blithedale.     Miles  a  raison. 

Life  in  the  Marquesas  Islands ! — how  at- 
tractive the  theme  in  capable  hands  I  And 
here  it  was  treated  by  a  man  **  out  of  the 
ordinary,"  who  had  contrived,  as  Tennyson 
sings. 

To  burst  alt  links  of  habit— there  to  wander  far 
away, 


1868.] 


HERHAK  MBLVniA 


^   47 


On  from  island  uDto  island  at  the  gateways  of  the 

day. 
Larger  constellations  baming,  mellow  moons  and 

happy  skies^ 
Breadths  of  tropic  shade  and  palms  in  cluster, 

knots  of  Paradise, — 
Droops  the  heavy-blossom'd  bower,  hangs  the 

neayy-fruitedtree — 
hammer   isles    of  Eden    lying   in  dark-purple 

spheres  of  sea. 

"The  Marquesas !  what  strange  visions  of 
ontlandish  things/'  exclaims  Tommo  himself, 
''does   the  very   name  spirit  op!    Lovely 
houris — cannibal  banquets — ^groves  of  cocoa- 
outs — coral  reefs— tattooed  chiefs,  and  bam- 
boo  temples ;   sunny  valleys  planted   with 
bread-fruit  trees — carved  canoes  dancing  on 
the  flashing  blue  waters — savage  woodlands 
guarded  by  horrible  idols — heathenish  rites 
and   human  sacrifices."     And  then  the  zest 
with  which  Tommo  and  Toby,  having  desert- 
ed the  ship,  plunge  into  the  midst  of  these 
oddly-assorted  charms — cutting  themselves 
a  path  through  cane-brakes — living  day  hy 
day  on  a  stinted  table -spoonful  of  '  a  hash  of 
soaked  bread  and  bits  of  tobacco' — shivering 
the  livelong  night  under  drenching  rain — 
traverein^  a  fearful  series  of  dark  chasms, 
separated    by   sharp-crested    perpendicular 
ridges — leaping  from    precipice    above    to 
palm-tree  below — and   then  their  entrance 
into  the  Typee  valley,  and  introduction  to 
King  Mehevi,  and  initiation  into  Typee  man- 
ners,  and    willy-nilly  experience  of  Typee 
hospitality.     Memorable  is  the  portrait-gal- 
lery of  the  natives :  Mehevi,  towering  with 
royal  dignity  above   his  faithful  commons ; 
Mamoo,  that  all  influential  Polynesian  Apollo, 
whose  tattooing  was  the  best  specimen  of  the 
Fine  Arts,  in  that  region,  and  whose  elo- 
quence wielded  at  will  that  fierce  anthropo- 
phagic  demos  ;  Marheyo,  paternal  and  warm- 
hearted old  savage,  a  time-stricken  giant — 
and  his  wife,  Tinor,  genuine  busybody,  most 
notable  and  exacting  of  housewives,  but  no 
termagant  or  shrew  for  all  that ;  and  their 
admirable  son,  Kory-Kory^— his  face  tattooed 
with  such  a  host  of  pictured  birds  and  fishes, 
that  he  resembled  a  pictorial  museum  of 
natural  history,  or  an  illuminated  copy  of 
Goldsmith's  "Animated  Nature" — and  whose 
devotion  to  the  stranger  no  time  could  wither 
nor   custom    stale.     And   poor    Fayaway, 
olive-cheeked  nymph,  with  sweet  blue  eyes 
of  placid  yet  unfathomable  depth,  a  child  of 
nature  with  easy  unstudied  graces,  breathing 
from   infancy  an  atmosphere   of  perpetual 
summer — whom,  deserted  by  the  roving  Tom- 
mo, we  are  led  to  compare  (to  his  prejudice) 


with,  Frederika  forsaken  by  Goethe — an  epi- 
sode in  the  many-sided  Baron's  life  which  we 
have  not  yet  come  to  regard  so  tolerantly  as 
Mr.  Carlyle. 

"  Omoo/'  the  Bover,  keeps  up  the  spirit  of 
"Typee"  in  a  new  form.     Nothing  can  be 
livelier  than  the  sketches  of  ship  and  ship's 
company.     "  Brave  Little  JuU^  plump  Little 
Jule^^  A  very  witch  at  sailing,  despite  her 
crazy  rigging  and   rotten   bulwarks — blow 
high,  blow  low,  always  ready  for  the  breeze, 
and  making  you  forget  her  patched  sails  and 
blistered  hull  when  she  was  dashing  the 
waves  from  her  prow,   and   prancing,  and 
pawing  the  sea — flying  before  the  wind — 
rolling  now  and  then,  to  be  sure,  but  in  very 
playfulness — with  spars  erect,  looking  right 
up  into  the   wind's  eye,  the  pride  of  her 
crew  ;  albeit  they  had  their  misgivings  that 
this   playful  craft,  like  some  vivacious  old 
mortal  all   at  once  sinking  into  a  decline, 
might,  some  dark  night,  spring  a  leak,  and 
carry  them  all  to  the  bottom.     The  Captain, 
or  *'Miss  Guy,"— essentially  a  cockney,  and 
no  more  meant  for  the   sea   than  a  hair- 
dresser.   The  bluff  mate,  John  Jermin,  with 
his  squinting  eye,  and  rakishly-twisted  nose, 
and  gray  ringleted  bullet  head,  and  generally 
pugnacious  looks,  but  with  a  heart  as  big  as 
a  bullock— obstreperous  in  his  cups,  and  al- 
ways  for  having   a  fight,   but  loved  as  a 
brother  by  the  very  men    he   flogged,  for 
his  irresistibly  good-natured  way  of  knocking 
them  down.    The  ship's  carpenter,  "Chips,  * 
ironically  styled  "  Beauty"  on  strict  Incus  a 
non  lucendo  principles — as  ugly  in  temper  as 
in  visage.     Bungs,  the  cooper,  a  man  after  a 
bar-keeper's  own  heart;  who,  when  he  felt, 
as  he  said,  "just  about  right,"  was  charac- 
terized by  a  free  lurch  in  his  gait,  a  queer 
way  of  hitching  up  his  waistbands,  and  looking 
unnecessarily  steady  at  you  when  ^pe^king. 
Bembo,  the  harpooner,  a  dark,  moody  savage 
— none  of  your  effeminate  barbarians,  but  a 
shaggy-browed,    glaring-eyed,    crisp-haired 
fellow,  under  whose  swart,  tattooed  skin  the 
muscles  worked  like  steel  rods.     Rope  Yam, 
or  Ropey,  the  poor  distraught  land-lubber — 
a  forlorn,   stunted,   hook-visaged   creature, 
erst  a  journeyman  baker  in  Holborn,  with  a 
soft  and  underdone  heart,  whom  a  kind  word 
made  a  fool  of.     And,   best   of  all,  Doctor 
Long  Ghost,  a  six-feet  tpwer  of  bones,  who 
quotes  Virgil,  talks  of  Hobbes  of  Malmes- 
bury,  and  repeats  poetry  by  the  canto,  espe- 
cially "Hudibras;"  and  who  sings  mellow 
old  songs,  in  a  voice  so  round  and  racy,  the 
real  juice  of  sound  ;   and  who  has  seen  the 
world   from  so  many  angles,  the  acute  of 


48 


HERMAV  MKLYILLE. 


[Sept., 


civilization  and  the  obtuse  of  Bavagedom; 
and  who  is  as  inventive  as  he  is  incurable  in 
the  matter  of  practical  jokes — ^all  effervescent 
with  animal  spirits  and  tricksy  good-humor. 
Of  the  Tahiti  folks,  Captain  Bob  is  an  amus- 
ing personage,  a  corpulent  giant,  of  three- 
alderman-power  in  gormandizing  feats,  and 
80  are  Po-po  and  his  family,  and  the  irreve- 
rently-ridiculed court  of  Queen  Pomare.  It 
is  uncomfortable  to  be  assured  in  the  preface, 
that  "in  every  statement  connected  with 
missionary  operations,  a  strict  adherence  to 
facts  has,  ot  course,  been  scrupulously  ob- 
served"— ^and  the  satirist's  rather  flippant 
air  in  treating  this  subject  makes  his  protes- 
tation not  unnecessary,  that  "nothing  but  an 
earnest  desire  for  truth  and  good  has  led  him 
to  touch  upon  it* at  all."  Nevertheless,  there 
is  mournful  emphasis  in  these  revelations  of 
mickonaree  progress — and  too  much  reason 
to  accept  the  tenor  of  h\»  remarks  as  correct, 
and  to  bewail  the  inapplicability  to  modern 
missionaries  in  general,  of  Wordsworth's 
lines. 

Rich  conqaeat  waits  them : — ^the  tempestuous  sea 
Of  Ignorance,  that  ran  so  rouffh  and  high, 
These  ffood  men  humble  by  a  ^w  bare  words, 
And  calm  with  awe  of  God*8  divinity. 

For  does  not  even  so  unexceptionable  a  pil- 
lar of  orthodoxy  as  Sir  Archibald  Alison, 
express  doubt  as  to  the  promise  of  Missions, 
in  relation  to  any  but  European  ethnology  ? 
affirming,  indeed,*  that  had  Christianity  been 
adapted  to  man  in  his  rude  and  primeval 
state,  it  would  have  been  revealed  at  an 
earlier  period,  and  would  have  appeared  in 
the  age  of  Moses,  not  in  that  of  Csesar  : — a 
dogmatic  assertion,  by  the  way,  highly  cha- 
racteristic of  the  somewhat  peremptory  baro- 
net, and  not  very  harmonious,  either  in  let- 
ter or  spirit,  with  the  broad  text  on  which 
world-wide  missionary  enterprise  is  founded, 
and  for  which  Sir  Archibald  must  surely 
have  an  ethnic  gloss  of  his  own  private  inter- 
pretation :  Ilop6\>66vr6g  iuxAv\rs\j<faTS  ^ravra  ra 

But  to  Mr.  Melville.  And  in  a  new,  and 
not  improved  aspect.  JExit  Omoo ;  enter 
Mardi.  And  the  cry  is,  Heu!  quantum 
mutatus  ah  illo — 

Alasfhow  changed  from  him, 
This  vein  of  Ercles,  and  this  soul  of  whim — 

changed  enough  to  threaten  an  exeunt  onmee 
of  his  quondam  admirers.     The  first  part  of 

*  See  "  AIIbods's  Hifltory  of  Europe  "  (Xew  Se- 
rieeX  vol  i.,  p.  74, 


"  Mardi "  is  worthy  of  its  antecedents  ;  but 
too  soon  we  are  hurried  whither  we  would 
not,  and  subjected  to  the  caprices,  velut 
CBffri  somnia,  of  one  who,  of  malice  afore- 
thought, 

Delphinnm  silvis  appingit,  fluctibus  aprnm — 

the  last  clause  signifying  that  he  horee  us 
with  his  *<sea  of  troubles,"  and  provokes 
us  to  take  arms  against,  and  (if  possible)  by 
opposing,  end  them.  Yet  do  some  prefer 
his  new  shade  of  marine  blue,  and  exult  in 
this  his  "sea-change  into  something  rich 
and  strange."  And  the  author  of  "Nile 
Notes"  defines  "Mardi,"  as  a  whole,  to  be 
unrhymed  poetry,  rhythmical  and  measured 
— the  swell  of  its  sentences  having  a  low, 
lapping  cadence,  like  the  dip  of  the  sun- 
stilled.  Pacific  waves,  and  sometimes  the 
grave  music  of  Bacon's  Essays !  Thou  wert 
right,  0  Howadji,  to  add,  "Who  but  an 
American  could  have  written  them."  Alas, 
Cis-Atlantic  criticism  compared  them  to 
Footers  "  What,  no  soap  ?  So  he  died,  and 
she  very  imprudently  married  the  barber/' 
— with  the  wedding  concomitants  of  the 
Picninnies  and  Great  Panjandrum  and  gun- 
powderheeled  terpsichorics — Foote  being, 
moreover,  preferred  to  Melville,  on  the  score 
of  superiority  in  sense,  diversion,  and  brevity. 
Nevertheless,  subsequent  productions  have 
proved  the  author  of  "Mardi''  to  plume 
himself  on  his  craze,  and  love  to  have  it  so. 
And  what  will  he  do  in  the  end  thereof  ? 
^  In  tone  and  taste  "Redburn"  was  an 
improvement  upon  "  Mardi,"  but  was  as  de- 
ficient a§  the  latter  was  overfraughft-  with 
romance  and  adventure.  Whether  fiction  or 
fact,  this  narrative  of  the  first  voyage  of 
Wellingborough  Redburn,*  a  New  York  mer- 
chant's son,  as  sailor-boy  in  a  merchant-ves- 
sel, is  even  prosy,  bald,  and  eventless ;  and 
would  be  dull  beyond  redemption,  as  a  story, 
were  not  the  author  gifted  with  a  scrutinizing 
gaze,  and  a  habit  of  taking  notes  as  well  as 
"  prenting  "  them,  which  ensures  his  readers 
against  absolute  common-place.  It  is  true, 
he  more  than  once  plunges  into  episodic  ex- 
travaganzas—such as  the  gambling-house 
frenzy  of  Harry  Bolton — but  these  are,  in 
effect,  the  dullest  of  all  his  moods ;  and  tend 
to  produce,  what  surely  they  are  inspired 
by,  blue  devils.  Nor  is  he  over  chary  of  in- 
troducing the  repulsive, — notwithstanding 
his  disclaimer,  "Such  is  the  fastidiousness 

*  The  hero  himself  is  a  eort  of  amalgam  of  Per- 
ceval Eeene  and  Peter  Simple— the  keenneee 
Btnogely  antedaUng  the  simplioity. 


1658.] 


HERBUN  MELYTt.T.K 


40 


of  Bome  readers,  that,  many  times,  they  | 
must  lose  the  most  striking  incidents  in  a 
narrative  like  mifie  :***  for  not  only  some,  but 
most  readers,  are  too  fastidious  to  enjoy  such 
scenes  as  that  of  the  starving,  dying  mother 
and  children  in  a  Liverpool  cellar,,  and  that 
of  the  dead  mariner,  from  whose  lips  darted 
out,  when  the  light  touched  them,  "  threads 
of  greenish  fire,  like  a  forked  tongue,"  till 
the  cadaverous  face  was  ''  crawled  over  by 
a  swarm  of  worm-like  flames  '* — a  hideous 
picture,  as  deserving  of  a  letter  of  remon- 
strance on  aesthetic  grounds,  as  Mr.  Dickens' 
spontaneous  combustion  case  (Krook)  on 
physical.f  Apart  from  these  exceptions, 
the  experiences  of  Redburn  during  his  '*  first 
voyage "  are  singularly  free  from  excite- 
ment, and  even  incident.  We  have  one  or 
two  '*  marine  views  '*  happily  done,  though 
not  in  the  artist's  very  happiest  style.  The 
picture  of  a  wreck  may  be  referred  to — that 
of  a  dismantled,  water-logged  schooner,  that 
had  been  drifting  about  &r  weeks ;  her  bul- 
warks all  but  gone — the  bare  stanchions,  or 
posts,  left  standing  here  and  there,  splitting 
in  two  the  waves  which  broke  clear  over  the 
deck — her  open  main-hatchway  yawning  in- 
to view  every  time  she  rolled  in  the  trough 
of  the  sea,  and  submerged  again,  with  a 
rushing,  gurgling  sound  of  many  waters; 
the  relic  of  a  jacket  nailed  atop  of  the  bro- 
ken mainmast,  for  a  signal ;  and,  sad,  stern 
sight — most  strange  and  most  unnatural — 
*'  three  dark,  green,  grassy  objects,"  lashed, 
and  leaning  over  sideways  against  the  taffrail 
— slowly  swaying  with  every  roll,  but  other- 
wise motionless !  There  is  a  spirited  sketch, 
too,  of  the  sailor-boy's  first  ascent*  to  "  loose 
the  main-skysail " — not  daring  to  look  down, 
but  keeping  his  eyes  glued  to  the  shrouds — 
panting  and  breathing  hard  before  he  is  half- 
way up — reaching  the  "Jacob's  ladder," 
and  at  last,  to  his  own  amazement,  finding 
himself  hanging  on  the  skysail  yard,  holding 
on  might  and  main  to  the  mast,  and  curling 
his  feet  round  the  rigging,  as  if  they  were 
another  pair  of  hands;  thence  gazing  at 
length,  mute  and  awe-stricken,  on  the  dark 
midnight  sea  beneath,  which  looks  like  a 
great,  black  ^ulf,  hemmed  in  all  round  by 
beetling  black  cliffs — the  ship  below,  seem- 
ing like  a  long,  narrow  plank  in  the  water — 
the  boy  above,  seeming  in  utter  loneliness  to 
tread  the  swart  night  clouds,  and  every 
second  expecting  to  find  himself  falling — 
— falling — ^falling,  as  he  used  to  feel  when 

♦  "Redbnm,"  vol.  iL,  cL  27. 
f  See  a.  H.  Lewee'fl  Two  Letters 

VOIk  XXX    NO.  L 


the  nightmare  was  on  him.  Redburn  roan- 
aged  his  first  ascent  deftly,  and  describes  it 
admirably.  Sir  Nathaniel,  indeed,  never  has 
been  sedentary  8ia  wxtos  on  a  main  skysail ; 
but  he  is  pretty  sure,  from  these  presents, 
that  Mr.  Melville  has.  Equally  sure,  in  his 
own  case,  is  Sir  N.,  that  had  he  attained 
that  giddy  eminence,  not  only  should  he 
have  expected  to  find  himself  falling — falling 
— falling,  but  would  have  found  himself,  or 
been  found,  fallen  ;  which  Redburn  was  noL 
Gallant  boy — clear-headed,  light-hearted, 
fast-handed,  nimble-footed ! — he  deserved  to 
reach  the  top  of  the  tree,  and,  having  i^ach- 
ed,  to  enjoy  the  sweet  peril,  like  blossom 
that  hangs  on  the  bough  :  and  that  in  time 
he  did  come  to  enjoy  it  we  find  from  bis 
record  of  the  wild  delirium  there  is  about  it 
— the  fine  rushing  of  the  blood  about  the 
heart — the  glad  thrilling  and  throbbing  of 
the  whole  system,  to  find  yourself  tossed 
up  at  every  pitch  into  the  clouds  of  a 
stormy  sky,  and  hovering  like  a  judgment 
angel  between  heaven  and  earth ;  both 
hands  free,  with  one  foot  in  the  rigging,  and 
one  somewhere  behind  ^ou  in  the  air. 

The  crew,  again,  are  sketched  by  a  true 
draughtsman — though  one  misses  the  breadth 
and  finish  of  his  corresponding  descriptions 
in  "  Omoo."  There  is  Captain  Riga,  all  soft- 
sawed  ashore,  all  vinegar  and  mustard  nt 
sea — a  gay  Lothario  of  all  inexperienced^ 
sea-going  youths,  from  the  capital  or  the 
country — who  condoles  and  sympathizes  with 
them  in  dock,  but  whom  they  will  not  know 
again  when  he  gets  out  of  sight  of  land,  and 
mounts  his  cast-ofT  clothes,  and  adjusts  his 
character  to  the  shabbiness  of  his  coat,  and 
holds  the  perplexed  lads  a  little  better  tl^an 
his  boots,  and  will  no  more  think  of  address- 
ing them  than  of  invoking  wooden  Donald, 
thd  figure-head  at  the  ship's  bows.  There 
is  Jackson — a  meagre,  consumptive,  over- 
bearing bully — squinting,  broken-nosed,  rheu- 
matic— the  weakest  body  and  strongest  will 
on  board — "  one  glance  of  whose  squinting 
eye  was  as  good  as  a  knock-down,  for  it  was 
the  most  subtle,  deep,  infernal-looking  eye 
ever  lodged  in  a  human  head,"  and  must 
have  once  belonged  to  a  wolf,  or  starved 
tiger, — no  oculist  could  ever  "turn  out  a 
glass  eye  half  so  cold,  and  snaky,  and 
deadly" — fit  symbol  of  a  man  who,  '*  though 
he  could  not  read  a  word,  was  spontaneous- 
ly an  atheist,"  and  who,  during  the  long 
night-watches,  would  enter  into  arguments 
to  prove  that  there  was  nothing  to  be  be* 
lieved,  or  loved,  or  worth,  living  for,  but 
everything  to  be  hated,  in  the  wide  world : 
4 


50 


HERMAN  MELVILLK 


[Sept., 


in  short,  "  a  Cain  afloat;  branded  on  his  yel- 
low brow  with  some  inscrutable  curse  ;  and 
going  about  corrupting  and  searing  eveir 
heart  that  beat  near  him."  There  is  Jack 
Blunt,  the  *'  Irish  Cockney/'  with  his  round 
face  like  a  walrus,  and  his  stumpy  flgure  like 
a  porpoise  standing  on  end — full  of  dreams 
and  marine  romance — singing  songs  about 
susceptible  mermaids — and  holding  fast  a 
comfortable  creed  that  all  sailors  are  saved, 
having  plenty  of  squalls  here  below,  but  fair 
weather  aloft.  There  is  Larry,  the  w  haleman, 
or  "  blubber-boiler,"  ever  extolling  the  de- 
lighis*  of  the  free  and  easy  Indian  Ocean, 
and  deprecating  civilized  life,  or,  as  he  styles 
it,  "snivelization,"  which  has  "spiled  him 
complete,  when  he  might  have  been  a  great 
man  in  Madagasky."  There  is  Dutch  Max, 
stolid  and  seemingly  respectable,  but  a  sys- 
tematic bi-(if  not  po1y-)gamist.  And  there 
is  the  black  cook,  serious,  metaphysical, 
"  and  given  to  talk  about  original  sin" — sit- 
ting all  Sunday  morning  over  boiling  his  pots, 
and  reading  grease-spotted  good  books ;  yet 
tempted  to  use  some  bad  language  occasional- 
ly, when  the  sea  dashes  into  his  stove,  of  cold, 
wet,  stormy  mornings.  And,  to  conclude, 
there  is  the  steward,  a  dandy  mulatto, 
yclept  Lavender;  formerly  a  barber  in  West- 
Broadway,  and  still  redolent  of  Cologne  water 
and  relics  of  his  stock-in-trade  there — a  sen- 
timental darky,  fond  of  reading  **  Charlotte 
Temple,"  and  carrying  a  lock  of  frizzled 
hair  in  his  waistcoat  pocket,  which  he  vol- 
unteers to  show  you,  with  his  handkerchief  to 
his  eyes.  Mr.  Melville  is  perfectly  au  fail  in 
nautical  characterization  of  this  kind,  and  as 
thoroughly  vapid  when  essaying  revelations  of 
Enelish  aristocratic  life,  and  rhapsodies  about 
Itaaan  organ- boys,  whose  broken  English  re- 
sembles a  mixture  of  "  the  potent  wine  of 
Oporto  with  some  delicious  syrup,"  and  wlio 
discourse  transcendently  and  ravishingly  about 
their  mission,  and  impel  the  author  to  affirm 
that  a  Jew's-harp  hath  power  to  awaken  all 
the  fairies  in  our  soul,  and  make  them  dance 
there,  "  as  on  a  moonlit  sward  of  violets ;" 
and  that  there  is  no  humblest  thing  with 
music  in  it,  not  a  fife,  not  a  negro-fiddle,  that 
is  not  to  be  reverenced*  as  much  as  the 
grandest  organ  that  ever  rolled  its  flood- tide 
of  harmony  down  a  cathedral  nave  !  What 
will  Mr.  Melviire  think  of  our  taste,  when 
we  own  to  a  delight  in  the  cathedral  organ, 
but  also  to  an  incurable  irreverence  towards 
street  organ,  vagrant  fiddle,  and  perambula- 

*  No  parallel  passagre  is  that  fine  saying  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  in  *'  Religio  Medici,"  ii.,  9. 


tory  fife  ? — against  which  we  have  a  habit  of 
shutting  the  window,  and  retiring  to  a  back 
room.  Tliat  we  are  moved  by  their  concord 
of  sweet  sounds,  we  allow  ;  but  it  is  to  a  wish 
that  they  would  **  move  on,"  and  sometimes 
to  a  mental  invocation  of  the  police.  Whence, 
possibly,  Mr.  Melville  will  infer,  on  Shaks- 
pearian  authority,  that  we  are  met  only  for 

Treason,  stratagemF,  and  spoils ; 

and  will  demand,  quoad  our  critical  taste. 

Let  no  such  man  be  trasted. 

• 

Next  came  "  White  Jacket ;  6r,  the  World 
in  a  Man-of-War."  The  hefro's  soubriquet  is 
derived  from  his — shirt,  or  "  white  duck 
frock,"  his  only  wrap-rascal — ^a  garment 
patched  with  old  socks  and  old  trouser-legs, 
bedarned  and  bequilted  till  stiff  as  King 
James's  cotton-stufiTed  and  dagger-proof 
doublet — provided,  moreover,  with  a  great 
variety  of  pockets,  pantries,  clothes-presses, 
and  cupboards,  and  *'  several  unseen  recesses 
behind  the  arras,'' — insomuch,  exclaims  the 
proud,  glad  owner,  "  that  my  jacket,  like  an 
old  castle,  was  full  of  winding  stairs,  and 
mysterious  closets,  crypts,  and  cabinets; 
and  like  a  confidential  writing  desk,  abound- 
ed in  snug  little  out-of-the-way  lairs  and 
hiding-places,  for  the  storeage  of  valuables." 
The  adventures  of  the  adventurous  proprietor 
of  this  encyclopaedic  togo,  this  cheap  maga- 
zine of  a  coat,  are  detailed  with  that  eager 
vivacity,  and  sometimes  that  unlicensed  ex- 
travagance, which  are  characteristic  of  the 
scribe.  Some  of  the  sea- pictures  are  worthy 
of  his  highest  mood — when  a  fine  imagina- 
tion over-rides  and  represses  the  chaos  of  a 
wanton  fancy.  Give  him  to  describe  a  storm 
on  the  wide  waters — the  gallant  ship  labor- 
ing for  life  and  against  hope — the  gigantic 
masts  snapping  almost  under  the  strain  of 
the  top-sails — the  ship's  bell  dismally  tolling, 
and  this  at  murk  midnight — the  rampant  bil- 
lows curling  their  crests  in  triumph — the  gale 
flattening  the  mariners  against  the  rigging  as 
they  toil  upwards,  while  a  hurricane  of  slant- 
ing bleetand  hail  pelts  them  in  savage  wrath : 
and  he  will  thrill  us  quiet  landsmen  who 
dwell  at  home  at  ease. 

For  so  successful  a  trader  in  "  marine 
stores"  as  Mr.  Melville,  **  The  Whale"  seemed^ 
a  speculation  every  way  big  with  promise. 
From  such  a  master  of  his  harpoon  might 
have  been  expected  a  prodigious  hit.  There 
was  about  blubber  and  spermaceti  something 
unctuously  suggestive,  with  him  for  whale- 
man.   And  his  three  volumes  entitled  "  The 


r 


1863.] 

Whale"  andoabtedly  contain  inuch  vigorous 
description,  much  wild  power,  many  striking 
details.  But  the  effect  is  distressingly  mar- 
red throughout  by  an  extravagant  treatment 
of  the  subject.  The  style  is  maniacal — mad 
as  a  March  hare — mowing,  gibbeting, 
screaming,  like  an  incurable  Bedlamite, 
reckless  of  keeper  or  straight-waistcoat. 
Now  it  vaults  on  stilts,  and  performs  Bom- 
hastes  Furioso  with  contortions  of  figure,  and 
straining  strides,  and  swashbuckler  fustian, 
far  beyond  Pistol  in  that  Ancient's  happiest 
mood.  Now  it  is  seized  with  spasms,  Acute 
and  convulsive  enough  to  excite  bewilder- 
ment in  all  beholders.  When  he  pleases, 
Mr.  Melville  can  be  so  lucid,  straightforward, 
hearty,  and  unaffected,  and  displays  so  unmis- 
takable a  shrewdness,  and  satirical  sense  of 
the  ridiculous,  that  it  is  hard  to  suppose  that 
he  can  have  indited  the  rhodomontade  to 
which  we  allude.  Surely  the  man  is  a  Dop- 
pelganger — a  dual  number  incarnate  (singu- 
lar though  he  be,  in  and  out  of  all  con- 
science) : — surely  he  is  two  single  gentlemen 
rolled  into  one,  but  retaining  their  respective 
idiosyncrasies — the  one  sensible,  sagacious, 
observant,  graphic*  and  producing  admirable 
matter — the  other  maundering,  drivelling, 
suject  to  paroxysms,  cramps,  and  total  col- 
lapse, and  penning  exceeding  many  pages  of 
unaccountable  "  bosh."  So  that  in  tackling 
every  new  chapter,  one  is  disposed  to  ques- 
tion it  beforehand,  "  Under  which  king,  Be^ 
zonian  ?" — the  sane  or  the  insane ;  the  con- 
stitutional and  legitimate,  or  the  absolute  and 
usurping?  Writing  of  Leviathan,  he  ex- 
claims, "  Unconsciously  my  chirography  ex- 
pands into  placard  capitals.  Qive  me  a  con- 
dor's quill  1"  Give  me  Vesuvius'  crater  for 
an  inkstand !  Friends,  hold  my  arms'!" 
Oh  that  his  friends  had  obeyed  that  summons ! 
They  might  have  saved  society  from  a  huge 
dose  of  hyperbolicul  slang,  maudlin  sen- 
timentalism,  and  tragi-comic  bubble  and 
squeak. 

His  Yankeeisms  are  plentiful  as  blackber- 
ries. "  I  am  tormented,"  quoth  he,  "  with 
an  everlasting  itch  for  things  remote."  Re- 
mote, too  frequently,  from  good  taste,  good 
manners,  and  good  sense.  We  need  not 
pause  at  such  expressions  as  "  looking  a  sort 
of  diabolically  funny  ;"—'*  beefsteaks  done 
rare  ;" — "  a  speechlessly  quick  chaotic  bund- 
ling of  a  man  into  eternity ;" — "  bidding  adieu 
to  circumspect  life,  to  exist  only  in  a  deliri- 
ous throb.'  But  why  wax  fast  and  furious 
in  a  thousand  such  paragraphs  as  these : — 
*'In  landlessness  alone  resides  the  highest 
truth,  indefinite  as  the  Almighty.  .  .  .  Take 


HERMAN  MELVILLE 


51 


heart,  take  heart,  0  Bulkington !  Bear  thee 
grimly,  demi-god !  Up  from  the  spray  of 
thy  ocean-penshing — straight  up,  leaps  thy 
apotheosis  1" — "  Thou  [««7,  Spirit  of  Equali- 
ty] great  God !  who  didst  not  refuse  to  the 
swart  convict,  Bunyan,  the  pale,  poetic 
pearl;  Thou  who  didst  clothe  with  doubly 
hammered  leaves  of  finest  gold  the  stumped 
and  paupered  arm  of  old  Cervantes ;  Thou 
who  didst  pick  up  Andrew  Jackson  from  the 
pebbles;  who  didst  hurl  him  upon  a  war- 
horse  ;  who  didst  thunder  him  higher  than  a 
throne !" — "  If  such  a  furic^s  trope  may 
stand,  his  [Capt.  Ahab's]  special  lunacy 
stormed  his  genial  sanity,  and  carried  it,  and 
turned  all  its  concentrated  cannon  upon  its 
own  mad  mark ....  then  it  was,  that  his 
torn  body  and  gashed  soul  bled  into  one 
another ;  and  so  interfusing  made  him  mad." 
— •*  And  the  miser-merman,  Wisdon,  revealed 
[to  a  diving  negro]  his  hoarded  heaps ;  and 
among  the  joyous,  heartless,  ever-juvenile 
eternities,  Pip  saw  the  multitudinous,  God- 
omnipresent,  coral  jnsects,  that  out  of  the 
firmament  of  waters  heaved  the  colossal  orbs. 
He  fc-aw  God's  foot  upon  the  treadle  of  the 
loom,  and  spoke  it ;  and  therefore  his  ship- 
mates called  him  mad." 

The  story  itself  is  a  strange,  wild,  furi- 
bund  thing — about  Captain  Ahab's  vow  of 
revenge  against  one  Moby  Dick.  And  who 
is  Moby  Dick  ?  A  fellow  of  a  whale,  who 
has  made  free  with  the  captain's  leg ;  so 
that  the  captain  now  stumps  on  ivory,  and 
goes  circumnavigating  the  globe  in  quest  of 
the  old  offender,  and  raves  by  the  hour  in  a 
lingo  borrowed  frona  Rabelais,  Carlyle,  Em- 
erson, newspapers  transcendental  and  trans- 
atlantic, and  the  magnificent  poems  of  our 
Christmas  pantomimes.  Captain  Ahab  is  in- 
troduced with  prodigious  efforts  at  prepara- 
tion; and  there  is  really  no  lack  of  rude 
power  and  character  about  his  presentment 
— spoiled,  however,  by  the  Cambyses'  vein 
in  which  he  dissipates  his  vigor.  His  por- 
trait is  striking — looking  *'like  a  man  cut 
away  from  the  stake,  when  the  fire  has  over- 
runningly  wasted  all  the  limbs  without  con- 
suming «them,  or  taking  away  one  particle 
from  their  compacted  aged  robustness" — a 
man  with  a  brow  gaunt  and  ribbed,  like  the 
black  sand  beach  after  some  stormy  tide  has 
been  gnawing  it,  without  being  able  to  drag 
the  firm  thing  from  its  place.  Ever  since 
his  fell  encounter  with  Moby  Dick,  thb  im- 
passioned veteran  has  cherished  a  wild  vm- 
dictiveness  against  the  whale,  frantically 
identifying  with  him  not  only  all  his  bodily 
woes,  but  all  his  feelings  of  exasperatbn — 


52 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


[Sept, 


80  that  the  White  Whale  swims  before  him 
'*  as  the  monomaniac  incarnation  of  all  those 
malicious  agencies  which  some  deep  men  feel 
eating  in  them,  till  they  are  left  living  on 
with  half  a  heart  and  half  a  lung."  The 
amiable  cannibal  Queequeg  occasions  some 
stirring  and  some  humorous  scenes,  and  is 
probably  the  most  reasonable  and  cultivated 
creature  of  the  ship's  company.  Starbuck 
and  otubb  are  both  tiresome,  in  different 
ways.  The  book  is  rich  with  facts  connected 
with  the  natural  history  of  the  whale,  and 
the  whole  art  and  process  of  whaling;  and 
with  spirited  descriptions  of  that  process, 
which  betray  an  intense  straining  at  effect. 
The  climax  of  tha  three  days'  chase  after 
Moby  Dick  is  highly  wrought  and  sternly 
exciting — bat  the  catastrophe,  in  its  whirl  of 
waters  and  fancies,  resembles  one  of  Tur- 


ner's later  nebulous  transgressions  in  gam- 
boge. 

Speaking  of  the  passengers  on  board  Red- 
burn's  ship  Highlander^  Mr.  Melville  signifi- 
cantly and  curtl^^  observes,  "  As  for  the  la- 
dies, I  have  nothiog  to  say  eoncerning  them ; 
for  ladies  are  like  creeds ;  if  you  cannot  speak 
well  of  them,  say  nothing."  He  will  pardon 
us  for  including  in  this  somewhat  arbitrary 
classification  of  forms  of  beauty  and  forms 
of  faith,  his  own,  last,  and  worst  production, 
"  Pierre ;  or,  the  Ambiguities." 

O  author  of  "  Typee"  and  "  Omoo,"  we 
admire  so  cordially  the  proven  capacity  of 
your  pen,  that  we  entreat  you  to  doff  the 
*' non-natural  sense"  of  your  late  lucubra- 
tions— to  put  off  your  worser  self — and  to 
do  your  better,  real  self,  that  justice  which 
its  "  potentiality"  deserves. 


-*«- 


■♦♦' 


Tranilated  from  the  Rerne  deidcuia  Hondas. 


AMPERE     IN    PHILADELPHIA. 


The  journey  from  New  York  to  Philadel- 
phia is  made  in  half  a  day,  partly  by  railroad 
and  partly  by  steamboat.  Throughout  the 
whole  extent  of  the  United  States,  there  is 
no  other  mode  of  travel.  The  extent  of  rail- 
roads in  the  Union  is  almost  equal  to  that  of 
all  others  in  the  world.  It  is  estimated  that 
at  the  present  time  nearly  27,000  miles  of 
railway  have  been  constructed  upon  the 
globe,  which  laid  in  a  straight  line  would  ex- 
tend around  the  earth.  Of  this  whole  extent 
of  railway,  the  United  States  has  about 
12,000  miles,  twice  that  of  Great  Britain,  and 
five  times  that  of  France.  This  extent  has 
doubled  in  four  years.  The  traveller.  Sir 
Basil  Hall,  affirmed  in  1825,  that  it  would  be 
impossible  to  construct  railroads  in  the  Uni- 
ted States,  because  of  the  great  distances.  In 
France,  about  the  same  time,  some  doubted 
the  applicability  of  steam  to  those  ways  of 
communication  which  were  at  first  made  for 
the  transportation  of  coal,  and  upon  which 
vehicles  durawn  by  horses  have  been  replaced 
by  cars  running  at  the  rate  of  90  miles  an 
hour.  It  may  be  that  similar  triumphs 
are  reserved  to  electro-magnetism,  which 
some  are  now  attempting  to  substitute  for 


steam.  Meanwhile,  the  electric  telegraph  is 
making  a  wonderful  use  of  this  newly  dis- 
covered power.  There  are  now  in  the  United 
States  15,000  miles  of  telegraphic  wires. 

I  found  ray  travelling  companions  very 
social  and  agreeable.  As  I  have  been  accus- 
ed of  partiality  in  this  respect,  I  quote  the 
words  of  an  £nglish  traveller  desirous  of 
demonstrating  the  advantages  which  Canada 
possesses  in  consequence  of  its  union  with 
the  mother  country,  and  complacently  con- 
trasts its  prosperity  with  that  of  the  United 
States.  This  traveller  certainly  cannot  be 
suspected  of  partiality  in  their  favor.  "  A 
well-bred  American,"  says  Mr.  Tremenheere, 
*'  ever  manifests  the  greatest  kindness  and 
cordiality  to  a  stranger,  upon  the  least  recom- 
mendation and  even  without  recommendation, 
in  the  chance  meetings  of  hotel  life  or  in  travel- 
ling. I  have  always  found  every  one  disposed 
to  answer  all  inquiries,  and  eagerly  embra- 
cing every  opportunity  of  performing  acts  of 
courtesy  and  politeness."  How  shall  we  re- 
concile this  testimony  with  the  accusations 
of  so  many  other  travellers  against  the  gopd 
manners  of  the  Americans  ?     This  difference, 

think,  may  be  attributed  to  two  causes  : 


r 


1853.J 


AMPERE  m  PHILADELPHIA. 


53 


Mr.  Tremenbeere  has  fewer  prejudices  against 
this  country  than  many  of  his  countrymen, 
and  has  travelled  there  more  recently. 

I  expected  to  find  Philadelphia  entirely 
different  from  New  York.  I  had  anticipated 
a  quiet  city,  with  a  Quaker  air ;  but  the  uni- 
form activity  of  the  Americans  gives  a  simi- 
larity of  appearance  to  all  the  great  centres 
of  population.  Philadelphia  is  no  longer  the 
city  of  Penn.  The  Quakers  ceased  to  be 
dominant  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  Cer- 
tain portions  of  the  city,  however,  have  a 
more  quiet  and  more  ancient  aspect  than 
New  York.  There  is  no  street  so  command- 
ing as  Broadway ;  in  no  part  is  there  an  ap- 
pearance of  so  great  activity,  still  it  prevails 
to  a  very  great  extent  in  the  principal  streets. 
Philadelphia  is  a  manufacturing  city,  and 
New  York  a  commeii^iAl  city  ;  they  are  Bir- 
mingham and  Liverpool. 

For  a  long  time  Philadelphia  had  the  as- 
cendency of  New  York ;  but  the  day  that 
Jackson  vetoed  the  United  States  Bank  was 
fatal  to  its  prosperity.  The  commercial  su- 
periority of  New  York  is  cstAblished  by  the 
Erie  Canal,  which  pours  into  its  markets  the 
rich  products  of  the  West,  in  addition  to  the 
various  railroads  which  arc  in  operation. 
Philadelphia  is  projecting  and  preparing 
greater  facilities  of  communication  with  the 
valley  of  the  Ohio,  and  establishing  a  line  of 
trans- atl  an  tic  steamers,  which  will  turn  the 
tide  of  European  emigration  to  its  advantage. 
This  emulation  is  ardent.  The  superiority  of 
New  York  is  the  night-mare  of  the  Pennsyl- 
vanians,  who  are  reluctant  to  concede  that  it 
is  the  first  city  in  the  Union,  and  doubt  the 
results  of  the  last  census,  which  gives  to  the 
rival  city  a  greater  population  than  that  of 
Philadelphia. 

The  weather  was  cold  and  stormy  on  my 
arrival.  In  the  public  gardens  I  saw  gray 
squirrels  sporting  upon  the  dark  branches  of 
the  naked  trees.  I  perceived  that  there  had 
been  built  for  them  little  houses  among  the 
branches.  There  is  in  this  benevolence  to  ani- 
mals something  which  recalls  Penn.  These 
poor  squirrels  have  not  always  been  so  well 
treated  ;  as  they  were  destructive  to  the  grain, 
a  price  was  set  upon  their  heads  during  the 
last  century.  The  government  expended 
8,000  pounds  for  their  extermination. 

I  like  to  go  to  the  theatre  the  first  day  of 
my  arrival  in  a  city,  and  while  listening  to 
the  actors,  I  observe  the  people ;  besides,  it  is 
a  rest.  After  the  fatigue  of  travelling,  I  do 
not  feel  disposed  to  endure  that  other  fatigue 
which  conversation  in  a  foreign  language  with 
strangers  produces.     They  were  playing  at 


the  Philadelphia  theatre  the  translation  of 
the  Tyrant  of  Padua,  by  Victor  Hugo.  A 
remnant  of  Quaker  prudery,  not  allowing 
them  to  give  the  heroine  the  name  of  cour- 
tezan, she  was  styled  upon  the  placard  as  an 
actress,  which  destroys  the  whole  meaning 
of  the  play,  and  shows  at  the  same  time  that 
the  condition  of  the  theatre  here  is  consider- 
ed as  something  profane.  The  actress  repre- 
senting Tisb^  was  neither  Mile.  Rachel  nor 
Mme.  Dorval;  her  acting  appeared  to  me 
violent  and  immodest.  All  the  modesty  was 
expended  upon  the  placard.  The  theatre 
closed  with  a  scene  in  which  I  thought  I 
perceived  some  traits  of  American  character, 
especially  in  the  part  enacted  by  a  servant, 
who  performed  only  with  his  head,  saying  to 
his  master :  "  Why  will  you  write  upon  this 
table  rather  than  upon  that  ?'*  I  only  fear 
lest  this  little  comedy,  which  seems  to  me  so 
American,  should  be  a  translation  of  some 
French  ballad. 

If  Boston  was  witness  to  the  first  contests 
for  independence,  it  was  at  Philadelphia  that 
the  first  Congress  assembled,  one  year  before 
the  armed  struggle  comnyenced,  that  Con- 
gress of  which  Lord  Chatham  said  :  **  With 
whatever  admiration  the  free  States  of  antiqui- 
ty in  spire  me,  I  am  forced  to  acknowledge,  that 
for  solidity  of  reasoning,  penetration  of  mind, 
wisdom  of  conduct,  the  American  assembly 
yields  to  none  within  the  memory  of  man ;" 
that  Congress,  in  which  Christopher  Gads- 
den answered,  Roman-like,  those  who  express- 
ed the  fear  that  the  English  could  easily 
destroy  all  the  maritime  cities  of  North 
America :  "  Mr.  President,  our  maritime 
cities  are  made  of  wood  and  bricks.  If  they 
are  destroyed,  we  have  clay  and  forests  to 
rebuild  them  ;  but  if  the  liberties  of  our  coun- 
try are  destroyed,  where  shall  we  find  mate- 
rials to  repair  them?"  The  second  Con- 
gress which  chose  Washington  as  Comman- 
der-in-Chief, and  proclaimed  independence, 
also  convened  at  Philadelphia.  There  may 
still  be  found  the  hall  in  which  this  declara- 
tion was  made,  and  the  original  manuscript 
of  this  glorious  proclamation,  signed  by  the 
founders  of  American  liberty.  It  was  here 
that  John  Adams,  a  northern  man,  chivalrous- 
ly proposed  Washington,  of  Virginia,  for  the 
Supreme  command. 

In  the  place  which  recalls  so  great  an  event, 
we  cannot  forbear  to  glance  at  the  causes 
which  led  to  it.  The  enfranchisement  of  the 
English  colonies  of  America  was  not,  strictly 
speaking,  a  revolution.  It  was  a  separation. 
Each  colony,  in  becoming  independent,  was 
a  republic  in  almost  every  thing  but  in  nam^. 


54 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


[Sept., 


It  had  a  governor  and  two  assemblies ;  it  still 
had  a  governor  and  two  assemblies,  and  con> 
tinned  to  govern  itself  as  formerly.  There 
was  scarci^ly  a  change  of  name,  still  less  of 
things.  The  State  of  Rhode  Island  had,  until 
1826,  for  a  constitution  the  charter  granted  to 
it  by  the  crown  of  England.  America,  in  sep- 
arating herself  from  the  Metropolis,  was  like 
one  vessel  parting  from  another,  and  continu- 
ing to  pursue  the  same  course,  and  to  per- 
form the  same  movements.  The  independent 
colonies  even  experienced  some  difficulty  in 
submitting  to  the  power  of  Congress,  which 
in  some  respects  was  mcnre  burdensome  than 
the  distant  and  contested  authority  of  the 
English  government. 

S'ot  only  did  the  colonies  under  the  mon- 
archy possess  republican  institutions,  but, 
what  was  still  more  desirable,  they  had  had 
the  opportunity  to  develop  among  them  the 
republican  spirit.  With  the  exception  of 
some  wars  with  the  Indians,  and  some  expe- 
ditions against  the  French,  who  maintained 
in  their  commercial  and  agricultural  existence 
an  energy  which  might  become  advantage- 
ous in  the  struggle  for  independence,  the 
history  of  the  English  colonies  was  composed 
almost  wholly  of  disputes  with  the  ministers 
and  parliament,  or  with  the  governors  sent 
from  England.  It  was  a  gradual  contest ; 
like  that  of  the  commons  of  the  middle  age 
against  the  feudal  lords,  or  of  the  Italian  re- 
publics against  the  emperors.  There  were 
insurvections — that  of  Virginia  under  Bacon, 
who  burned  t\fe  new  capita],  Jamestown,  as 
the  Russians  burned  Moscow ;  the  conspira- 
cy of  Birkenhead,  attempted  in  the  same  pro- 
vince by  some  of  the  veterans  of  Cromwell ; 
there  were  demagogues,  who  zealously  sup- 
ported the  cause  of  the  people  and  after- 
wards perished  abandoned  by  them,  as  Say- 
ser  at  New  York,  under  William  3d.  But 
what  was  always  dominant  was  legal  resist- 
ance, the  obstinate  support  of  a  written  law, 
of  a  charter,  the  art  of  eluding  or  of  weary- 
ing tyranny,  and,  although  submitting  to  it, 
the  determination  to  oppose  it.  These  con- 
troversies, these  reclamations,  this  persever- 
ing opposition,  which  was  continually  chang- 
ing its  form,  and,  when  one  place  failed,  ap- 
peared in  another,  which  contended  without 
passion  yet  without  weakness,  protesting  ever, 
yielding  sometimes,  never  renouncing,  were 
like  a  patient  war,  a  siege  slow  but  sure, 
and  terminated  by  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, prepared  for  more  than  a  century. 

This  memorable  struggle  for  freedom  was 
gradually  evolved  by  the  natural  develop- . 
ment  of  the  principles  of  liberty,  brought  to  I 


America  by  the  colonists  of  New  England. 
They  contained  nothing  theoretical  or  ab- 
stract :  it  was  always  practice,  and  never 
philosophy.  I  am  mistaken,  one  attempt 
was  made  by  a  philosopher  to  create  a  con- 
stitution :  T  refer  to  the  constitution  pre- 
pared by  Locke  for  Virginia,  in  which,  pro- 
ceeding after  the  manner  of  the  18th  century 
by  combinations  drawn  from  his  own  mind 
and  not  from  the  actual  condition  of  the 
people,  he  had  conceived  the  idea  of  giving 
to  Virginia  a  feudal  organization.  This  con- 
stitution, the  Utopia  of  a  wise  mind,  but  at 
that  time  chimerical,  after  having  for  seve- 
ral years  been  the  occasion  of  despair  to 
those  upon  whom  it  had  been  imposed,  dis- 
appeared at  length,  with  its  margraves  and 
princes. 

The  city  of  Penn,  which  possesses  the 
glory  of  proclaiming  the  independence  of  the 
United  States,  has  moreover  exerted  a  par- 
ticular influence  over  the  new  republic.  The 
Quakers,  with  Penn  as  their  leader,  are  the 
true  founders  of  religious  toleration  in  a 
country  of  which  it  must  ever  be  one  of  the 
sources  of  its  strength  and  glory,  and  whence 
it  can  never  depart,  either  from  episcopal 
Virginia  or  puritan  New  England.  Tolera- 
tion was  established  almost  simultaneously 
in  three  different  places,  in  this  county  where 
the  law  was  equally  intolerant  to  the  church- 
men of  the  South  and  the  dissenters  of  the 
North.  Religious  liberty  was  proclaimed  in 
the  colony  of  Rhode  Island,  to  the  great  of- 
fence of  the  puritans,  by  Roger  Williams,  a 
generous,  though  extravagant  sectarian,  who 
declared  that  the  state  had  no  right  to  per- 
secute for  religious  opinion,  and  at  the  same 
time  refused  to  attend  divine  service  with  his 
own  family,  because  he  judged  them  unre- 
generate  ;  thus  combining  the  greatest  tole- 
ration with  the  strictest  separatism.  In  Ma- 
ryland, a  Catholic  Irishman,  Lord  Baltimore, 
also  establislied  liberty  of  belief.  Catholic- 
ism, instructed  by  persecution  and  enlight- 
ened by  the  spirit  of  modern  times,  gave  a 
noble  example,  which  Protestantism  ought 
to  have  followed,  instead  of  banishing  the 
Catholics  from  Maryland,  where  the  tolera- 
tion of  Catholics  had  offered  them  a  place  of 
refuge.  From  these  two  examples  may  be 
seen  how  difficult  it  is  to  free  religious  liber- 
ty, even  among  its  warmest  advocates,  and 
those  who  have  enjoyed  its  bene6ts,  from 
habits  of  intolerance  and  persecution. 

A  sect  which  originated  in  the  excesses  of 
a  mad  fanaticism,  but  which,  in  the  progress 
of  events,  became  modified  in  its  character, 
the  Quakers,  had  the  glory  of  giving  preva- 


1853.] 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


55 


lence  in  a  great  colony  to  the  principle  of 
toleration  which  they  had  but  seldom  en- 
joyed.     At  first  they  insulted  ministers  in 
their  pulpits,  and  the  Quakeresses  appeared 
naked  in  the  asserrbly  of  the  faithful  in  order 
to^express  the  humility  of  the  church  ;  but  the 
time  of  these  excesses  was  past.     Recovered 
from  these  extravagances,  into  whi.^h  an  im- 
moderate zeal   had  precipitated    their   first 
apostles,   the   Quakers,    directed  by  Penn, 
earnestly  professed  toleratfon  and  a  horror 
of  blood.     They  persecuted  no  one,  and,  sur- 
rounded by  savage  nations,  they  alone  of  the 
American  colonists  never  took  up  arms,  and 
indeed  never  found  it  necessary  to  do  so. 
There  may  still  be  seen  in  one  of  the  sub- 
urbs of  Philadelphia  the  spot  where  stood 
the  elm,  under  which  Penn  had  that  famous 
interview  with  the  Indians,  during  which  he 
seated  himself  on  the  ground  in  accordance 
with  their  custom,  shared  their  repast,  and 
ended  by  running,  leaping  like  them,   and 
even  surpassing  them  in  these  exercises. 

This  peaceful  sect  has  had,  however,  its  in- 
ternal dissensions.  It  is  divided  between 
those  who  have  faithfully  adhered  to  the  in- 
dependence of  their  church,  recognizing  no 
other  authority  than  that  of  individaal  inspi- 
ration, and  those  whose  doctrines  approach 
nearer  to  the  English  Church,  of  which  their 
ancestors  were  the  bitter  opponents.  At 
present  the  Quakers  have  no  peculiarities  ex- 
cept their  use  of  the  expressions  thee  and 
thou,  and  the  fashion  of  their  hats. 

The  sect  of  the  Mormons  is  at  the  present 
time  attracting  much  attention  on  account  of 
it«  eccentricities  and  its  progress.  Accus'^d 
of  opinions  the  most  subversive  of  family  in- 
terests, it  has  rapidly  developed  itself  during 
the  past  few  years,  and  enjoyed  a  constantly 
increasing  prosperity.  It  is  known  that  the 
sect  of  Mormons  has  been  founded  within  a  few 
years  by  an  impostor  named  J.  Smith,  who  pre- 
tended to  have  discovered  tablets  of  gold,  on 
which  was  written  the  new  law,  but  who 
found,  it  is  asserted,  his  religion  ready  made 
in  a  manuscript  romance,  which  came  by 
chance  into  his  possession.  This  Smith  was 
assassinated  in  one  of  the  insurrections  which 
the  Mormons  provoke  against  them  wherever 
they  establish  themselves.  These  insurrec- 
tions were  doubtless  wrons ;  but  it  is  surely 
a  bad  sign  for  a  new  religion  to  excite  such 
hostility  in  a  country  where  every  shade  of 
belief  may  be  indulged  without  obstacle. 
All  the  while  pursued,  and  ever  withdrawing 
from  the  persecutions  of  the  people  incensed 
against  them,  the  Mormons  established  them- 
selves upon  the  upper  Mississippi.     There 


they  constructed  a  temple  of  considerable 
dimensions,  and  of  peculiar  architecture. 
Besieged,  they  defended  themselves  until  the 
completion  of  their  temple,  and  then  with- 
drew from  their  enemies.  Driving  their  herds 
across  the  plains,  they  stopped. at  length 
upon  the  banks  of  the  Salt  Lake,  where  they 
have  formed  an  organized  community,  which 
prospers  by  their  industry  and  agriculture. 
These  strange  people  have  their  railroads  and 
improved  machinery;  their  population  is 
rapidly  increasing  through  the  success  of 
their  proselyting  agents  in  London,  Liverpool, 
and  even  in  Paris ;  they  will  have  in  a  few 
years  a  sufficient  population  to  form  a  state 
of  their  territory,  and  they  will  then  be  repre- 
sented in  the  Senate  and  Congress  of  the 
United  States, 

Here  a  difficulty  will  present  itself.  It 
appears  that  the  Mormons  entertain  views 
relative  to  marriage  quite  at  variance  with 
those  of  Christian  people.  The  chiefs  seem 
to  enjoy,  in  this  respect,  privileges  not  unlike 
the  ancient  patriarchal  customs  of  the  East. 
It  would  hardly  seem  possible,  that  in  a 
new  country,  peopled  by  immigration,  there 
should  be  a  sufficient  number  of  females  for 
the  general  prevalence  of  polygamy  ;  still  it 
is  an  indisputable  fact,  that,  under  one  name 
or  another,  it  exists  to  a .  certain  extent 
among  the  Mormons.  If  I  may  rely  upon 
the  statement  of  a  journal,  which  I  was 
reading  not  long  since,  one  of  their  principal 
functionaries  had  appeared,  accompanied  by 
his  sixteen  wives.  The  privilege  of  polyga- 
my, it  is  said,  is  reserved  for  the  saints,  by 
whom  are  meant  those  who  are  believed  to 
be  inspired,  and  control  the  other  Mor- 
mons. 

Utah,  the  country  which  the  Mormons  in- 
habit, being  still  only  a  territory,  their  magis- 
trates are  appointed  by  the  federal  govern- 
ment. It  seems  they  have  recently  mani- 
fested some  dissatisfaction  in  this  respect,  by 
sending  back  the  judges  appointed  by  Con- 
gress. The  Saints,  on  this  occasion,  uttered 
very  severe  language  against  the  Gentiles,  as 
they  designate  the  other  inhabitants  of  the 
United  States,  and  in  general  all  who  are  not 
Mormons.  They  seem  to  resemble,  in  many 
respects,  the  Jews,  of  whom  they  are  the 
pretended  descendants. '  They  have  the  same 
antipathy  for  all  the  rest  of  the  human  race 
— the  same  desire  of  gain — the  same  unity 
among  themselves.  Mr.  Kane,  who  accom- 
panied them  some  time  during  their  flight, 
was  much  affected  by  the  tenderness  which 
they  manifested  towards  each  other,  and  the 
care  they  took  of  the  aged  and  feeble.    He 


^ 


AMPERE  IN  P^ILABELPHIA 


[Sept, 


relates  the  history  of  a  young  Mormon,  who 
was  sick,  and  almost  dying,  who  desired  to 
be  conveyed  in  a  wagon  across  the  desert, 
in  order  to  join  his  brethren  before  his  death. 
After  his  sight  failed,  the  woman  who  at- 
tended him  desired  him  to  stop.  "  No,''  he 
answered,  "  I  can  no  longer  see  my  brethren, 
but  I  wish  to  hear  them  once  more." 

I  have  read  the  sacred  book  of  the  Mor- 
mons, and  I  must  confess  that  I  haye  not 
found  there  the  strange  morality  which 
has  been  imputed  to  them.  It  is  an  imi- 
tation, or  rather  a  parody,  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, a  recital  in  verse,  and  in  weak  biblical 
style,  of  the  migration  of  their  ancestors, 
under  different  chiefs,  one  of  whom  was 
Mormon,  from  Palestine  to  America,  where 
the  new  law  was  to  be  fully  revealed  by  J. 
Smith.  I  am  inclined  to  believe,  that  the 
idea  that  America  ought  to  possess  a  religion 
and  revelation  of  her  own,  in  order  to  be  in- 
dependent of  the  old  world,  and  in  no  way 
indebted  to  it,  has  especially  contributed  to 
the  progress  of  Mormonisqi  in  the  Cnited 
States. 

The  Mormon  bible  was  written  for  the 
Americans.  The  theory  of  the  right  of  the 
majority  to  rule,  is  there  expressed  by 
one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  chosen  tribe : — "  It 
is  not  often  that  the  voice  of  the  people 
desires  anything  opposed  to  the  general 
good ;  but  it  not  unfrequently  happens 
that  the  minority  desires  what  is  not  good  ; 
therefore,  you  will  enact  a  law  to  conduct 
your  affairs  in  accordance  with  the  will  of 
the  people."  Hence  it  is  evident,  that  how- 
ever different  may  be  their  views  upon  other 
points,  the  Mormons  are  indoctrinated  with 
the  idea  of  the  infallibility  of  the  majority, 
and  the  presumptive  error  of  the  minority — 
a  doctrine  less  objectionable,  where  the  mul- 
titude are  educated,  as  in  the  United  States, 
— ^but  which  always  may  result  in  using 
might  instead  of  right.  Pascal  said,  in 
speaking  of  a  vote  upon  ecclesiastic  matters, 
"  it  is  easier  to  find  monks  than  reasons." 

There  are  evidently  polemic  sentiments  in 
this  book,  which  do  no  honor  to  the  toleration 
of  the  Mormons.  A  certain  person  advocated 
the  opinion  of  the  Univei^alists,  respecting 
the  final  salvation  of  all  men,  and  was  hung 
for  preaching  this  doctrine.  It  is  evident  that 
the  Mormons  would  not,  like  the  Quakers, 
have  established  religious  toleration  in  Ame- 
rica. 

The  Mormons  will  doubtless,  in  time,  di- 
vest themselves  of  the  hostile  and  unsocial 
disposition  which  has  every  where  caused 
them  to  be  disliked  and  repulsed.     The  Ana- 


baptists, of  bloody  memory,  whose  leader 
had  twelve  wives,  whom  he  obliged  to  dance 
around  the  dead  body  of  one  of  their  num- 
ber, decifpitated  by  his  own  hands, — the  Ana- 
baptists of  Leyden  have  become  BaptistSi 
and  are  distinguished  at  the  present  day  for 
the  innocence  of  their  manners,  and  the  peace-  '**• 
ful  zeal  of  their  apostles.  The  Quakers  be-  *':  . 
gan  by  abandoning  themselves  to  the 
strangest  excesses,  and  by  exciting  as  much 
opposition  as  the  Mormons,  but  for  a  long 
time  they  Have  given  no  offence  to  any  one. 
I  imagine  that  it  will  eventuate  with  the  new 
sects  as  with  the  Anabaptists  and  Quakers  ; 
in  this  country,  if  individual  liberty  begets 
and  encourages  extraordinary  opinions,  the 
general  good  sense  and  the  universal  interest 
will  induce  them  to  modify  whatever  is  offen- 
sive to  the  community. 

Certain  passages  may  be  found  in  the 
Mormon  bible  evidently  imitations  of  the 
Gospel ;  and  Mormon  declares  himself  a  dis- 
ciple of  Jesus  Christ.  *'  And  behold  I  have 
written  all  this  upon  the  tablets  of  gold, 
which  I  have  made  with  my  own  hands ;  and 
behold  I  am  called  Mormon,  after  the  name 
of  the  country  where  was  established  the 
first  church  after  the  trangression ;  and 
behold  I  am  a  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Son  of  God."  The  religion  of  the  Mormons 
seems  to  be  a  Judaic  Christianity,  rather 
than  anything  else.  Their  obnoxious  prac- 
tices do  not  appear  to  form  an  essential 
part  of  their  belief,  and  it  is  probable  that 
necessary  association  with  the  other  States 
of  the  Union  will  modify  them.  The  Qua- 
kers have  caused  a  digression  to  the  Mor- 
mons ;  I  return  to  Philadelphia. 

I  was  so  fortunate  as  to  be  directed  in  my 
observations  by  Mr.  Gerhard,  a  distinguished 
member  of  the  bar,  to  whom  I  was  recom- 
mended. In  every  city  of  the  United  States 
which  I  visited,  [  met  one  or  more  indivi- 
duals of  true  merit,  who  have  freely  given  me 
all  the  information  which  I  could  desire,  and 
have  evinced  the  greatest  and  most  unex- 
pected kindness.  Mr.  Gerhard  is  one  to 
whom  I  am  much  indebted ;  like  Mr.  Kent 
and  Mr.  Sedgwick,  he  belongs  to  that  class 
of  lawyers  which  forms  in  the  United  States 
a  true  aristocracy  of  intelligence  and  man- 
nerd.  It  is  in  this  class  that  the  aristocracy 
may  be  found,  rather  than  among  the  wealthy, 
who  awkwardly  attempt  to  imitate  in  Ame- 
rica the  manners  of  Europe.  I  will  not 
include  in  this  class,  for  his  eccentricity  is 
quite  American,  an  apothecary  of  Philadel- 
phia, who  has  conceived  the  idea  of  building 
a  house  of  immoderate  height,  and  of  singu- 


1853.] 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


57 


lar  form,  wiih  turrets  and  |t>iRers,  a  style  of 
architecture  which  bears  the  same  resem- 
blance to  true  art  that  the  rhetoric  of  Tho- 
mas  Diafoirus  does  to  eloquence. 

I  visited  the  court- house  in  company  with 
Mr.  Gerhard,  during  the  trial  of  a  very  im- 
portant case  ;  that  of  the  riot  at  Christiana. 
A  planter,  from  Maryland,  was  killed  while 
in  pursuit  of  a  fugitive  slave  in  a  free  State. 
This  law  is,  at  this  time,  the  stumbling  stone, 
against  which,  the  Compromise  Act  is  at  all 
limes  ready  to  fall.  It  allows  the  master  to 
pursue  his  slave  into  the  State  in  which  he 
has  taken  refuge,  and  to  obtain  the  aid,  in 
this  pursuit,  of  the  officers  of  the  Federal 
Government.  It  must  be  conceded  that  the 
principle  of  this  law  is  to  be  found  in  the 
Constitution,  which  is  positive  in  this  re- 
spect, though  the  word  slave  is  not  men- 
tioned. It  seems  that  the  legislators  have 
substituted  for  this  unfortunate  name,  the 
words,  a  person  held  to  service  or  labor. 
The  States,  contrary  to  the  general  usage, 
allow,  in  this  particular,  the  intervention  of 
the  Federal  Government.  They  do  not 
countenance  their  own  officers  in  the  pursuit 
or  arrest  of  the  fugitives ;  though  they  al- 
low them  to  be  arrested ;  which  seems  too 
little  for  the  slave  States,  and  too  much  for 
the  free  States.  Without  this  legislative 
enactment,  the  slaves,  aided  in  their  escape 
by  the  abolitionists,  would  find  an  easy  and 
sure  refuge  in  a  neighboring  State,  and  the 
guarantee  granted  by  the  constitution  would 
be  fallacious  ;  but  in  another  point  of  view, 
the  fugitive  slave  law  presents  great  difficul- 
ties. It  is  scandalous  that  the  judge  who 
decides  the  action  in  favor  of  the  claimant,  is 
entitled  to  a  larger  fee  than  if  he  decides  to 
the  contrary  ;  and  aside  from  this  monstrous 
clause,  it  may  be  imagined  how  hard  it  is 
in  those  states  of  the  Union  where  slavery 
does  not  exist,  for  those  who  abhor  it  as  a 
crime,  and  reprove  it  as  a  sin,  to  see  a 
stranger,  accompanied  by  officers  who  belong 
to  another  state,  arrest  and  handcuff  a  peace- 
able citizen,  established  for  years  perhaps  in 
a  place,  and  recognized  as  a  neighbor  or 
friend.  These  arrests  are  often  the  occasion 
of  heart-rending  scenes.  I  was  informed, 
that  some  time  since  in  New  England,  a  fugi- 
tive slave  was  found  on  a  steamboat  with 
his  wife  and  two  children.  Some  one  jest- 
ingly told  him  that  there  were  persons  on  the 
boat  employed  to  arrest  him,  when  he  sud- 
denly stabbed  himself,  and  his  wife  threw 
herself  with  her  two  children  into  the  water. 

Such  scenes  are  not  calculated  to  calm  the 
public  mind.     Although  the  participation  of 


the  accused  in  the  riot  at  Christiana  is  gene- 
rally admitted,  it  is  thought  they  will  be  ac- 
quitted, especially  since  they  are  indicted 
for  treason,  which  is  a  capital  crime ;  and  as 
it  is  defined  in  the  old  English  law,  the  jury 
will  never  agree  that  those  who  were  irtipli- 
cated  in  this  affair  had  declared  war  against 
the  United  States.  I  heard  a  part  of  the 
accusation  which  was  expreesed  in  very 
suitable  terms,  carefully  avoiding  everything 
calculated  to  irritate  the  public  mind,  and 
confining  itself  exclusively  to  the  nieaning 
of  the  law. 

The  judges  did  not  appear  to  me  less  im- 
posing for  not  wearing  the  black  robe  and 
the  square  cap.  The  same  is  true  of  the  law- 
yers. I  like  to  see  a  mnn  in  a  frock  coat  ex- 
plain a  ease  to  others  similarly  dressed, 
rather  than  one  attired  like  Patelin,  who, 
while  gesticulating,  is  ever  taking  off  or  put- 
ting on  his  cap,  or  throwing  back  bis  sleeves 
before  other  persons  in  black  robes,  who  in- 
voluntarily remind  me  of  Perrin  Dandin  or 
Brid'oison.  These  costumes  are  aristocratic 
signs,  which  tend  to  separate  the  different 
classes,  by  imposing  upon  each  a  particular 
character,  and  it  is  known  that  there  is  but  one 
civil  costume  in  the  United  States.  The 
democratic  principle  tends  to  suppress  in 
everything  hierarchical  distinctions.  In  the 
United  States  there  is  no  difference  between 
the  attorney  and  counsellor,  as  the  same  in- 
dividual alternately  performs  the  duties  of 
both ;  still  less  do  there  exist  the  distinctions 
which  separate  in  England  the  civilian,  the 
barrister,  and  the  sergeant  at  law.  An  Ameri- 
can b  all  these,  and  may  be  besides  proctor, 
advocate,  solicitor,  conveyancer,  and  pleader, 
and  may  successively  or  simultaneously  en- 
gage in  other  pursuits.  The  United  States 
ia  not  a  country  of  rigorous  adherence  to 
one  thing  exclusively,  and  there  are  but  few 
who  have  not  had  a  variety  of  occupations. 

At  another  court,  where  I  was  present  at 
a  trial  of  less  importance,  I  was  surprised  to 
hear  one  of  the  judges  express  his  dissent 
after  the  verdict  had  been  rendered.  He 
did  it  with  much  calmness.  It  is  carrying 
the  respect  for  individual  opinion  very  far, 
thus  to  allow  the  minority  of  the  judges  to 
express  an  opinion  contrary  to  the  decision* 
at  the  risk  of  weakening  its  force ;  but  here 
it  seemed  to  occasion  no  difficulty. 

The  mayor  of  Philadelphia  -proposed  to 
accompany  me  this  evening  to  the  disorderly 
portions  of  the  city.  I  was  informed  that 
he  has  ever  performed  his  important  duties 
in  a  very  commendable  manner,  and  that  the 
pubUc  tranquillity  and  security  have  gained 


^8 


AMPBilE  IN  PHILADfiLPHTA, 


[Sept., 


raucb  by  tbe  organization  of  a  safety  police 
which  he  has  establishejd.  As  I  have  before 
observed,  the  police  system  is  the  weak 
point  of  many  of  the  large  cities  of  the 
United  Stales ; — New  York  among  the  rest, 
and  as  I  was  desirous  of  witnessing  what  had 
been  accomplished  in  Philadelphia,  I  was 
gratified  at  this  opportunity  of  becoming  ac- 
quainted with  that  part  of  the  papulation 
which  we  seldom  encounter  in  the  world,  and 
which  there  are  no  inducements  to  visit  un- 
less in  such  good  company. 

We  began  our  circuit  at  eight  o'clock 
in  the  evening,  and  ended  it  at  eleven.  Mean- 
while, we  entered  a  number  of  suspicious 
looking  houses,  visited  several  colored  fe- 
males, and  passed  through  certaih  streets, 
where  it  would  not  be  wise  to  venture  alone. 
The  magistrate  was  attended  by  two  large 
officers  armed  with  pistols,  and  serving  as 
our  body-guard. 

The  mayor  entered  into  a  house  occupied 
by  a  colored  woman  smoking  her  cigar.  We 
were  very  politely  received.  He  spoke  very 
kindly  to  the  woman.  Well,  Jane,  how  do 
you  do?  You  have  a  very  comfortable 
house  here.  He  was  answered  without  im- 
pudence or  embarrassment.  Now  and  then 
he  was  saluted  by  a  negro  whom  he  had  sent 
to  prison  some  time  before.  Be  careful,  he 
would  say  to  him,  not  to  appear  before  me 
again :  I  may  be  more  severe  the  next  time. 
Never  fear,  Mr.  Mayor,  I  shall  not  expose 

myself  again.    Mr. is  much  more  severe 

than  his  predecessors,  though  he  does  not 
approve  of  useless  severity.  His  motto  is,  as 
he  says :  Never  harsh,  and  always  ready. 
His  officers  are  ordered,  when  they  find  per- 
sons but  slightly  intoxicated,  to  lead  them 
home. 

Nothing  can  be  more  repulsive  than  the 
small  rooms  where  the  negroes  assemble  to 
dance— ^r  rather,  to  shake  themselves  mo- 
notonously before  each  other,  striking  the 
floor  with  the  heels  of  their  shoes,  in  the 
space  of  a  few  feet  encumbered  with  a  stove, 
and  a  revolting  group  of  old  negro  women 
smoking  their  pipes.  This  black  population 
furnishes,  as  might  be  expected,  the  greatest 
share  of  the  arrests  made  by  the  police  offi- 
cers ;  though  the  white  population,  especially 
the  Irish,  contributes  its  due  proportion. 
These  arrests  amounted  in  one  year  to  7,077; 
not  unfrequently  the  lock-up  contains  sixty 
women.  The  Germans  have  for  some  time 
had  a  bad  reputation  ;  the  French  comprise 
the  better  portion  of  the  foreign  population. 

We  visited  the  station  of  the  night  police, 
which  comprises  fifty  men  and  a  captain. 


The  Captain  receives  $600,  and  each  man 
$300  ;  nearly  all  are  laborers.  The  captain, 
an  intelligent  man,  is  a  carriage-maker,  by 
which  he  earns  ISOO.  The  men  serve  four- 
teen hours  in  winter,  and  ten  in  summer. 
They  watch  in  turn.  Each  one  goes  alone 
armed  with  a  club,  and  carries  a  rattle  to 
warn  his  companions  in  case  of  need,  and  to 
summon  assistance.  The  law  is  generally 
respected,  and  is  only  resisted  by  drunkards 
and  vagabonds  ;  bt^t  what  surprised  me,  it 
is  seldom  necessary  to  appeal  to  the  aid  of 
the  citizens.  Besides  the  force  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  mayor,  there  is  another  which 
receives  its  authority  from  the  marshal,  who 
may  in  a  case  of  emergency  dispose  of  all  of 
the  municipal  forces.  This  organization  seems 
to  me  characteristically  American  in  its  per- 
fect precision  and  accuracy. 

I  spent  the  remainder  of  the  evening  very 
agreeably  at  the  mayor's.  The  conversation 
turned  upon  that  adventurous  instinct  which 
prompts  the  American  to  tempt  fortune  at 
every  risk.  To  obtain  it,  many  go,  for  ex- 
ample^ to  New  Orleans  where  the  climate  is 
almost  fatal  in  summer,  and  where  they  die « 
or  become  rich.  Like  in  all  respects,  except 
in  the  instinct  of  glory,  to  that  military  senti- 
ment which  leads  to  the  desire  for  perilous 
warfare  where  there  is  sure  preferment  to  all 
who  are  not  killed.  I  was  informed  of  a 
man  who  had  arrived  from  California,  who 
had  been  successively  an  agriculturist,  a 
merchant,  and  captain  of  a  steamboat,  and  at 
length  became  very  rich.  He  returned  home, 
but  knew  of  no  way  to  dispose  of  his  money 
but  to  lend  or  give  it  to  hiis  friends,  of  whom 
he  had  scarcely  thought  in  his  absence. 
Evidently  the  passion  of  this  man  was  not  to 
possess  money,  but  to  acquire  it.  Much  was 
said  of  the  triumph  of  a  locksmith,  Mr.  Locke. 
The  famous  Bramah  had  proposed  a  reward 
to  any  one  who  should  succeed  in  opening  a 
lock  which  he  had  exerted  all  his  skill  to 
construct.  Mr.  Locke  opened  it,  then  placed 
100  guineas  in  a  safe,  and  locked  it  and  gave 
the  ley  to  Bramah,  offering  him  the  lOO 
guineas  if  he  opened  it :  I  have  not  heard  that 
it  has  been  opened.  The  triumph  of  Mr. 
Locke,  the  victory  of  the  yacht  America  over 
the  English  yachts  in  a  regatta  near  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  the  success  of  the  reaping  machine, 
are  three  topics  upon  which  the  press  is  in- 
exhaustible. To  these  three  great  industrial 
exploits  may  be  added  the  superior  speed  of 
the  American  steamers  in  crossing  the  At- 
lantic. They  are  the  four  great  victories. 
They  are  Areola,  Marengo,  Au.sterlitz  and 
Wagram.    The  national  vanity  is  quite  ex- 


1 863.] 


AMPERE  m  PHILADELPHIA. 


59 


cited.  The  English  deserve  honor  for  the 
courtesy  which  they  manifested  in  their  de- 
feat. When  the  Amerita  heat  their  yachts 
at  the  Isle  of  Wight,  the  Qaeen  congratulated 
the  victors.  The  conquered  gracefully  ap- 
plauded. I  have  heard  Americans  acknow- 
ledge that,  in  case  of  defeat,  they  would  not 
have  done  the  same. 

Philadelphia  is  said  to  he  one  of  the  roost 
scientific  and  literary  cities  in  the  Union,  and 
judging  from  what  I  have  seen,  I  am  in- 
duced to  helieve  it.     It  possesses  a  museum 
of  natural   history,  distinguished  especially 
for  its  heautiful  collection  of  hirds.    Aside 
from  science,  it  is  to  me  an  unwearied  source 
of  enjoyment  to  contemplate  heautiful  birds, 
and  I  can  comprehend  the  enthusiasm  of  two 
ornithologists  wht>  spent  their  lives  in  tra- 
versing the  forests  of  America  for  the  pur- 
pose of  studying  the  habits  uf  the  birds,  df 
which  they  have  published  representations 
in  two  w6rks  well  known  and  appreciated  by 
naturalists ;  these  two  men  are  Wilson  and 
Audubon.     Wilson,  a  Scotchman  by  birth,  a 
friend   of    Bums,   who  himself   attempted 
poetry  in  his  youth,   arrived   penniless    in 
America.     In  traversing  the  forests  of  Dela- 
ware, the  sight  of  a  beautiful  native  bird, 
the  red-headed  woodpecker,  filled  him  with 
an    admiration   which   decided    his    future 
career.     By  turns  pedlar  and  school-teacher, 
he  attempted  to  draw,  but  succeeded  only 
with  birds,  which  decided  his  avocation  as 
ornithologist.     With  no  other  resource  than 
a  strong  will,  he  conceived  the  design  of 
collecting  and  sketching  all   the   birds  of 
North  America,  and  with  this  view  he  spent 
his  life  wandering  in  the  forests,  with  no 
society    but    the    Indians.     There    he   was 
happy:  observing  the  habits  of  the  birds, 
and  enthusiastically  enjoying  solitude.     He 
suffered  only  while  in   the  cities,  "  forced," 
said   he,  "to  forget  the  harmonies  of  the 
woods,  for  the  incessant  turmoil  of  the  city, 
and  surrounded  with  musty  books."    The 
only  book  which  he  studied  with  enjoyment, 
was  the  book  of  nature.     In  his  wanderings 
he  had  a  double  aim :  "  I  go,"  wrote  he, "  in 
pursuit  of  birds  and  subscribers."     The  lat- 
ter were  more  difficult  than  the  former ;  but 
nothing  daunted  Wilson :  his  correspondence, 
full  of  vivacity  and  imagination,  shows  him 
sometimes  at  the  North  in  the  forests  of  New 
Hampshire,  where  he  is  mistaken  for  a  Cana- 
dian spy ;  sometimes  at  the  West,  descending 
the  Ohio  in  a  small  boat,  and  delighted,  he 
says,  to  feel  his  heart  dilate  in  view  of  the  new 
scenes  which  surrounded  him  ;  then  going  to 
New  Orleans,  through  a  region  of  country  I 


at  that  time  a  desert,  where  he  often  travel- 
led  150  miles  without  finding  an  inhabited 
place.  Wilson  died  in  1813,  at  the  age  of 
47,  after  having  surmounted  all  obstacles 
and  published  the  seventh  volume  of  his 
ornithology. 

Wilson  loved  and  appreciated  nature ;  he 
experienced  in  the  presence  of  creation  those 
pleasures  of  which  learned  statesmen  have 
no  conception.  I  read  in  one  of  his  letters : 
" Since  I  have  attempted  to  re- produce  the 
wonders  of  nature,  I  see  a  beauty  in  each 
plant,  fiower  and  bird  which  I  behold  ;  I  find 
that  my  ideas  of  the  first  and  incomprehen- 
sible cause  are  elevated  in  proportion  as  I 
examine  minutely  His  works.  I  often  smile 
at  the  thought  that  while  others  are  absorbed 
in  plans  of  speculation  and  fortune,  and  are 
occupied  in  purchasing  plantations  or  in 
building  cities,  I  am  observing  with  delight 
the  plumage  of  a  lark,  or  contemplating  with 
the  air  of  a  lover  in  despair,  the  profile  of 
an  owl."  Studying  did  not  render  him 
cruel.  "  One  of  my  pupils,"  he  adds,  "  the 
other  day  caught  a  mouse,  and  immediately 
brought  the  prisoner  to  me.  That  same 
evening  I  began  to  sketch  it ;  meanwhile  the 
beatings  of  its  little  heart  evinced  that  it  was 
suffering  the  extremest  agony  of  fear.  I 
was  intendiug  to  kill  it  by  placing  it  under 
the  claws  of  a  stuffed  owl ;  but  having  acci- 
dentally spilled  some  drops  of  water  near  the 
place  of  its  confinement,  it  began  to  lap  it  up 
with  so  much  eagerness  and  to  look  at  me  with 
such  an  appearance  of  supplicating  terror, 
that  it  triumphed  entirely  over  my  resolu- 
tion, and  I  accordingly  liberated  it.  Uncle 
Toby  would  not  have  been  paore  compassion- 
ate, had  he  been  a  naturalist 

Audubon  was  an  American  by  birth,  and 
his  life,  like  that  of  Wilson's,  affords  a  re- 
markable example  of  what  a  persevering 
will,  united  to  an  indomitable  passion,  can 
accomplish.  Both  possessed  the  same  pas- 
sion, both  devoted  their  lives,  in  the  depths 
of  the  forests,  in  studying  the  habits  of  the 
birds,  and  in  reproducing  their  varied  forms. 
The  description^  of  Audubon  are  interspers- 
ed with  the  most  interesting  details  of.  the 
habits  of  the  American  birds.  It  is  evident 
that  he  has  lived  with  them  in  their  solitudes, 
as  he  often  gives  variety  to  his  descriptions 
by  introducing  personal  reminiscences,  and 
sketches  of  the  prairies,  of  the  banks  of  the 
Ohio  and  of  Niagara.  One  interesting  feature 
of  his  publications  is,  that  the  colored  plates 
represent  objects  in  their  true  dimensions. 
For  the  first  time  in  a  zoological  atlas,  a  bird 
like  the  eagle  and  the  turkey  are  represent- 


60 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


[Sept., 


ed  iQ  their  natural  size.  Audabon  has  also 
placed  by  the  side  of  each  bird  the  flower 
or  branch  which  they  prefer,  and  has  chosen 
that  attitude  which  is  most  characteristic. 
This  magnificent  work,  conceived  and  pre- 
pared by  an  American,  was  published  in 
Scotland,  with  the  aid  of  an  English  artist. 

In  his  preface,  Audubon  has  related  how 
his  natural  taste  for  ornithology  was  develop- 
ed. From  his  childhood  he  was  passion- 
ately fond  of  the  woods.  The  sight  of  the 
graceful  creatures  which  animated  them, 
thenceforth  filled  his  mind  with  inexpressible 
joy.  He  passed,  he  says,  hours  full  of  calm 
delight  in  viewing  the  eggs  deposited  in  the 
moss ;  then  he  longed  to  possess  these  ob- 
jects of  his  admiration.  The  death  of  the 
birds  which  he  collected  grieved  his  youthful 
heart.  He  then  conceived'  the  idea  of  re- 
producing their  images  by  sketching  them, 
but  for  a  long  time  bis  efforts  were  fruitless, 
and  at  each  anniversary  of  his  birth,  he  was 
accustomed  to  destroy  many  of  his  sketches. 
He  went  to  France,  and  entered  the  studio 
of  David,  which  he  never  regretted,  though 
he  could  not  find  his  instinctive  love  of  nature 
gratified.  After  a  short  time  he  returned  to 
bis  forest  life  ;  but,  as  his  passion  for  birds 
did  not  exclude  all  others,  he  married,  and 
for  twenty  years  he  spent  a  restless,  unsatis- 
fied existence,  engaging  in  a  variety  of  occu- 
pations, but  succeeding  in  none,  becatise  his 
mind  was  elsewhere.  No  longer  able  to  re- 
strain his  propensity,  though  blamed  by  his 
friends,  he  resumed  his  wanderings  through 
the  woods,  on  the  banks  of  the  lakes,  and 
along  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic^  He  travel- 
led with  no  other  aim  than  to  gratify  his 
sight  with  the  scenes  of  nature,  and  especi- 
ally with  the  winged  creation.  One  day, 
while  traversing  the  forests  of  the  Upper 
Hudson,  the  idea  occurred  to  him  to  publish 
the  result  of  so  many  observations,  made 
solely  for  his  own  pleasure,  and  a  represen- 
tation more  complete,  more  true  to  nature, 
of  the  beings  he  so  loved.  He  encountered 
fewer  obstacles  than  Wilson.  The  American 
was  more  liberally  aided  in  Scotland,  than 
the  Scotchman  had  been  in  America ;  but 
before  the  completion  of  his  undertaking,  he 
met  with  sotne  reverses ;  for  one  day  he 
found,  upon  opening  a  trunk,  where  he  had 
deposited  a  thousand  designs,  that  two  Nor- 
wegian rats  had  taken  possession  with  their 
family,  surrounded  with  the  tattered  rem- 
nants of  his  work.  The  sight  almost  mad- 
dened him.  Audubon,  of  French  origin,  died 
some  years  since. 

At  the  Philadelphia  Museum  may  also  be 


seen  the  collection  of  skulls  made  by  Mr. 
Morton,  the  author  of  the  American  Cranio 
ology,  Mr.  Morton  aimed  particularly  at 
the  American  race  in  his  researches ;  but  the 
necessity  of  compairing  the  configuration  of 
the  people  of  the  new  world  with  that  of 
the  inhabitants  of  other  continents,  induced 
him  to  form  the  remarkable  collection,  which, 
since  his  death,  has  been  deposited  tempo- 
rarily in  the  inuseum  at  Philadelphia.  Mr. 
Morton  is  one  of  those  who  have  attempted 
to  demonstrate  that  we  must  seek  in  an  arti- 
ficial deformity  for  the  origin  of  certain 
forms  of  the  head,  unnaturally  flattened 
among  some  of  the  American  tribes  and  im- 
moderately enlarged  in  the  form  of  a  moon 
among  others, — practices  which  are  not  un- 
known in  France,  and  the  results  of  which 
have  been  observed  in  the  heads  of  foreign- 
ers. As  to  the  question  of  race  and  origin, 
Morton  has  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the 
new  continent  was  peopled  by  a  race  bear- 
ing no  essential  relation  to  the  Mongolian 
race,  and  consequently  did  not  come  from 
Asia.  But  what  particularly  attracted  my 
attention,  for  I  have  my  passion  like  Wilson 
and  Audubon,  were  the  Egyptian  skulls 
which  form  an  important  part  of  Mr.  Mor- 
ton's collection,  and  to  which  he  has  devoted 
a.  special  work.  He  recognized  in  the  Egyp- 
tian race  a  particular  type,  and  has  distin- 
guished in  the  Egyptian  style,  two  varieties, 
one  of  which  is  characterized  by  a  low,  nar- 
row forehead,  and  the  other  presenting  the 
principal  traits  of  the  Caucasian  race.  Have 
the  negro  race  ever  intermingled  themselves 
with  the  Egyptian  population  ?  This  is  per- 
haps not  impossible.  The  wife  of  Ameno- 
phis  1st  is  represented  upon  the  monuments 
as  black;  similar  unions  may  have  been 
formed  by  the  common  people,  especially 
at  the  time  of 'the  invasions  of  the  shepherds, 
who,  having  entered  Egypt  on  the  north, 
caused  the  native  population  to  emigrate 
southward.  To  this  union  may  be  attributed 
the  flatness  of  the  foreheads,  so  striking  in 
certain  heads  in  this  collection.  One  thing 
is  true,  that  the  Theban  skulls  bear  a  stronger 
resemblance  to  the  Nubian  skulls,  than  those 
of  Memphis.  Has  the  configuration  of  the 
black  population  of  the  south  of  Egypt  been 
influenced  by  that  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Upper  Egypt?  This,  in  my  opinion,  has 
seemed  to  result  from  the  examinations  of 
the  skulls  in  Mr.  Morton's  collection.  If  this 
fact  is  established,  we  may  avail  ourselves 
of  it  in  seeking  for  the  origin  of  the  aborigi- 
nes of  Egypt.  Pardon  me  for  these  Egyp- 
tian digressions,  which  perhaps  do  not  inter- 


1858.] 


AMPERE  IN  PHELABEU^HIA. 


61 


est  my  reader  as  mneli  as  myself.  X  will 
add  nothing  upon  the  skulls  of  the  mum- 
mies, but  will  resume  my  promenade  in 
PbUadelphia. 

We  will  return  to  America,  and  visit  the 
Mint  of  this  city.  The  Mint  at  Philadelphia 
presents  at  the  present  time  an  unusual 
spectacle:  thanks  to  the  California  gold» 
which  is  there  transformed  into  $5.00  pieces ; 
gold  literally  runs  and  flows  like  water.  The 
gold  pieces  are  poured  into  baskets  as  are 
elsewhere  the  commonest  pennies.  For 
some  time  past  they  have  been  obliged  to 
double  the  amount  of  labor,  and  I  was  in- 
formed that,  on  some  days,  there  have  been 
coined  in  this  establishment  pieces  to  the 
amount  of  $500,000.  As  I  expressed  some 
uneasiness  with  respect  to  the  safety  of  the 
hands  through  which  so  much  money  passes, 
I  was  answered :  If  a  few  pieces  are  taken  it 
matters  not ;  but  this  seldom  happens ;  and 
whoever  will  steal  small  sums,  will  be  in- 
duced to  commit  larger  thefts,  when  he  will 
be  infallibly  detected.  It  is  generally 
easier  to  resist  temptation  than  to  control  it. 

Philadelphia  is  celebrated  for  its  manu- 
factories, and  contains  the  largest  manufac- 
turing population  in  the  United  States.  I 
was  so  fortunate  as  to  have  the  opportunity 
of  visiting  the  interesting  white  lead  manu- 
factory of  Mr.  Wetherell :  the  carbonate  is 
prepared  under  water,  so  as  not  to  endanger 
the  health  of  the  workmen.  Mr.  Wetherell 
manufactures  three  tons  of  white  lead  daily, 
and  realizes  an  annual  profit  of  $10,000.  In 
former  years  he  has  realized  as  much  as 
$50,000,  but  the  competition  of  New  York 
has  reduced  his  profits.  He  also  manufac- 
tures hydrochloric  acid,  Prussian  blue,  mor- 
phine, refined  camphor,  and  several  other 
articles ;  forming  an  example  of  the  variety 
of  occupations  and  arts  so  frequent  in  the 
United  States.  Besides  the  technical  inter- 
est, there  was  a  greater  one  in  the  charac- 
teristic details  which  this  American  manV 
factory,  and  this  American  manufacturer, 
afforded  me.  One  of  the  workmen  was 
engaged  in  reading,  while  his  oven  was  heat- 
ing, as  I  lately  saw  a  boatman  at  West 
Point,  while  wiuting  for  the  hour  of  depar- 
ture, reading  one  of  Walter  Scott's  romances. 
The  reader  was  not  at  all  disturbed  when  his 
patron  passed  near  him. ,  Mr.  Wetherell  is 
the  type  of  scientific  activity  in  a  mechanic. 
After  having  explained  every  thing  to  me 
with  much  eagerness  and  vivacity,  he  con- 
ducted me  to  his  laboratory,  saying :  **  Here 
I  am  happy,  experimenting  upon  different 
things ;  af terwanis  it  is  all  taken  to  the  store- 


house, and  concerns  me  no  longer."  It  was 
impossible,  in  hearing  him  speak,  to  doubt 
his  mncerity.  Evidently  the  pleasure  of  re- 
search counterbalances,  with  him,  the  desire 
of  gain.  Mr.  Wetherell  showed  me  the 
gasometer  of  Philadelphia,  which  is  very 
beautiful,  and  the  one  now  in  process  of  con- 
struction, it  is  said,  will  be  the  largest  in  the 
world.  We  afterwards  visited  the  water- 
works on  the  banks  of  the  Schuylkill,  by 
means  of  which  water  is  carried  into  Phila- 
delphia by  a  number  of  pumps,  to  which  it 
is  intended  to  add  a  turbine  of  40  horse 
power,  at  the  cost  of  $10,000,  and  which 
will  increase  the  supply  of  water  4,000,000 
gallons.  We  entered  the  house  of  a  Welsh 
laborer  to  warm  ourselves.  I  was  informed 
by  Mr.  Wetherell,  that  there  exists  in  Phila- 
delphia a  society  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Welsh,  having  a  fond  of  $10  to  $20,000, 
which  loans  the  interest  of  this  sum  to 
needy  Welshmen.  The  money  thus  loaned 
has  always  been  faithfully  restored.  This 
British  blood  is  good.  Mr.  Wetherell,  who 
is  himself  of  Welsh  origin,  one  day  offered 
some  wood  to  a  poor  woman,  who  proudly 
answered,  ''I  am  able  to  buy  my  own 
wood."  "  You  are  Welsh,"  said  he  to  her, 
which  Was  true.  He  was  relating  this  anec- 
dote one  day  at  a  dinner,  when  one  of  the 
gentlemen  of  the  company  exclaimed — "She 
was  my  mother." 

This  last  trait  is  characteristic  of  society 
in  the  United  States.  It  is  pleasant  to  wit- 
ness the  facility  with  which  all  can  elevate 
themselves,  without  blushing  for  bis  origin, 
and  on  the  contrary  claiming  the  honor  of  a 
good  sentiment  in  a  poor  mother.  It  is  also 
pleasant  to  find  in  this  country,  in  the  midst 
of  the  external  uniformity  of  the  general 
manners,  those  nationalities  which  are  pre- 
served, perpetuated  by  a  bond  of  benevo- 
lence and  love.  In  New  York  each  race  has 
established  a  society,  for  the  benefit  of  its 
members,  under  the  patronage  of  their  na- 
tional saint.  Saint  George  for  the  English, 
Saint  Andrew  for  the  Scotch,  Saint  David 
for  the  Welsh,  and  Saint  Nicholas  for  the 
Dutch.  The  members  of  these  societies 
meet  annually  and  dine  together.  In  that 
of  the  Dutch,  two  pipes  and  a  vessel  of 
Dutch  freestone  filled  with  tobacco,  are  pre- 
sented to  all  who  are  present,  and  lively 
speeches  are  made.  Innocent  and  pleasant 
gayety :  it  is  like  our  social  balls,  which  some 
austere  persons  condemn ;  but  I  have  never 
found  that  good  was  not  good,  when  made 
a  source  of  amusement. 

At  Philadelphia  there  are  quite  a  number 


62 


AMPERE  Iir  PHILADELPHIA. 


[Sept., 


of  Swedes.  These  are  the  oldest  inhabitaDts 
of  the  State,  where  they  dwelt  before  Penn 
had  given  it  a  name.  Their  ministers  ought 
to  be  Lutherans,  for  Lutheranism  has  always 
had  undisputed  sway  in  Sweden;  but  they 
DO  longer  preach  in  the  Swedish  language. 
All  foreign  languages,  in  time,  are  superseded 
by  the  English,  in  the  United  States,  as  all 
national  individualities  become  merged  into 
the  Anglo-Saxon  nationality. 

It  was  in  this  city,  established  under  the 
auspices  of  the  unlimited  toleration  of 
Penn,  and  of  the  sect  of  Friends,  that  I  list- 
ened to  the  most  intolerant  sermon  which  I 
heard  in  America ;  though,  at  the  same  time, 
the  most  eloquent. 

The  theme  of  the  oration  was,  that  sin- 
cerity of  belief  was  no  ground  of  excuse  for 
error.  "  Sincere  belief,**  said  he,  "  may  be 
criminal,  for  it  may  produce  criminal  acts, 
and  a  tree  is  judged  by  its  fruits.  Besides, 
belief  results  from  the  moral  character,  and 
from  it  receives  its  impress.  Tell  me  what 
thou  believest,  and  I  will  tell  thee  what  thou 
art.  Whoever  deceives  himself  honestly 
is  culpable,  for  in  falsifying  the  proofs  of 
truth,  he  mutilates  its  witnesses,  which  is  a 
crime.  Were  the  inquisitors  innocent  when 
they  tortured  and  mutilated  the  witnesses  ? 
What!  is  the  geologist  innocent  when  he 
evokes  his  antediluvian  monsters  in  opposi- 
tion to  truth!  (What!  were  the  French 
philosophers  of  the  18th  century  innocent !) 
(What!  is  he  innocent  who  mutilates  the 
Bible,  and  by  mutilating  and  perverting  it, 
makes  it  speak  falsely  ?)  Was  Napoleon 
right,  when  he  oppressed  liberty  under  the 
pretence  of  suppressing  the  revolution? 
And  poor  Shelley,  who  one  stormy  night 
exclaimed,  '  No,  there  is  no  God  :*  think 
you  he  was  one  of  the  elect?  Newport  be- 
lieved there  was  no  hell ;  was  that  sufficient 
to  destroy  hell  ?  Does  he  who  falls  into  a 
cataract  avoid  it  by  shutting  his  eyes  as  he 
falls  in  the  deep  abyss  ?  The  pilot  in  the 
midst  of  shoals,  during  the  darkness  of  night, 
may  rely  upon  his  chart,  and  watch  the  rud- 
der to  avoid  these  shoals,  but  will  it  suffice 
to  escape  shipwreck,  to  believe  that  he  is  in 
the  right  direction  ?  Do  like  him,  examine 
your  route,  assure  yourselves  that  what 
seems  the  truth  is  the  truth,  and  not  its  ap- 
pearance.'* The  preacher  closed  with  a  sen- 
tence which  produced  a  truly  startling  effect. 
"  It  is  believed  that  the  way  to  hell  is 
gloomy,  that  ii\  approaching  it  we  must  see 
livid  reflections  and  hear  sinister  voices ;  no, 
my  hearers,  this  way  is  pleasant,  it  is  illumin- 
ed by  the  softest  light ;  we  think  we  hear 


the  voices  of  angels — on,  on  we  go — we  ap- 
proach— those  angel  voices  were  the  cry  of 
demons — that  light  so  soft  was  the  light  of 
hell." 

Rhetoric  so  brilliant  and  gloomy,  so  pathe- 
tic and  startling,  will  delight  the  intolerant  of 
every  creed,  and  each  will  pronounce  with 
enthusiasm  this  anathema  upon  all  others. 
Sincerity  not  being  sufficient  to  avoid  con- 
demnation, it  would  be  well  to  know  in  what 
variety  of  Protestantism  may  be  found  that 
church,  out  of  which,  according  to  this 
preacher,  there  is  no  salvation.  Unfortunate- 
ly I  do  not  recollect  to  what  sect  this  Phila- 
delphia minister  belonged. 

The  greatest  curiosity  in  Philadelphia  is 
the  celebrated  State  Prison  at  Cherry  Hill, 
where  the  so-called  Philadelphia  cellular  sys- 
tem has  been  introduced  to  a  greater  extent 
than  at  any  other  place,  and  consists  of  con- 
stant isolation  with  labor.  The  penitentiary 
question  has  excited  much  interest  in  Europe, 
but  still  more  in  America.  The  system  at 
Auburn,  where  silent  labor,  with  only  a  sep- 
aration at  night,  has  had  its  earnest  advo- 
cates, who  violently  oppose  the  Philadelphia 
system  as  barbarous,  and  calculated  to  induce 
insanity  and  deatli.  The  defenders  of  the 
Philadelphia  system  have  answered  these 
attacks  by  an  unlimited  glorification  of  their 
idol,  and  the  attacks  of  the  Boston  society 
were  treated  very  summarily.  They  declar- 
ed this  society  "  eminently  respectable,"  but 
at  the  same  time  affirmed  that  it  was  an  as- 
semblage of  fanatics,  whose  reports  upon  the 
Pennsylvanian  system  were  only  unwarranta- 
ble and  premeditated  perversions  of  the  truth. 
Both  systems  have  still  their  partisans  ;  but 
the  most  eminent  civilians  who  have  given 
their  attentipn  to  these  subjects,  among 
whom  are  M.  de  Tocqueville  and  M.  de 
Beaumont,  prefer  the  rigorous  system  of 
Philadelphia.  Lieber,  Moreau,  Christophe, 
and  Oscar  I.,  king  of  Sweden,  in  his  treatise 
upon  Penalties  and  Prisons,  also  concur  in 
this  opinion.  On  the  contrary,  opponents 
are  not  wanting  ;  and  Dickens  has  given  an 
animated,  though,  it  is  said,  exaggerated  pic- 
ture of  the  moral  misery  of  the  prisoners  of 
Cherry  Hill.  I  was  desirous  to  know  what 
would  be  my  own  impression  upon  this  con- 
tested question.  Accordingly,  I  started  for 
the  prison,  provided  with  a  letter  of  recom- 
mendation to  the  warden,  given  me  by  two 
merchants  who  are  trustees  of  the  establish- 
ment. I  was  informed  that  these  gentlemen 
are  accustomed  to  give  religious  instruction 
on  the  Sabbath  to  the  prisoners. 

Arriving  on  a  cold  winter  day  upon  the 


1853.] 


AJIFERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


es 


lonely  summit  of  Cherry  Hill,  in  front  of  this 
vast  enclosure  of  gray  walls  surmounted  by 
embattled  towers  like  a  castle  of  the  middle 
ages,  and  reflecting  upon  the  hundreds  of 
human  beings  therein  confined,  each  in  his 
cell,  never  seeing  any  of  his  companions  in 
captivity,  almost  always  alone  with  the 
thought  of  his  isolation,  I  could  not  but  ex- 
perience a  great  oppression  of  heart.  Upon 
entering,  I  soon  found  myself  in  a  room  situ- 
ated in  the  centre  of  a  building,  in  the  form 
of  a  cross,  whose  four  corridors,  exactly  sim- 
ilar, lined  with  two  tiers  of  cells,  extended  to 
a  great  distance.  The  sound  of  labor,  the 
stroke  of  the  hammer  could  be  heard,  remind- 
mg  one  of  a  barrack,  a  manufactory,  or  a 
cloister.  While  I  was  waiting  for  the  war- 
den, a  Quaker  with  his  large  hat  was  moving 
roand  the  corridors,  entering  now  into  one 
cell,  and  then  into  another,  with  the  busy  and 
indifferent  air  of  an  overseer ;  but  I  learned 
that  he  was  performing  a  voluntary  act  of 
charity. 

The  warden  conducted  me  for  several 
hours  through  the  different  parts  of  the  prison. 
Every  thing  appertaining  to  Ihe  directing  of 
the  establishment,  and  the  well-being  of  the 
prisoners,  bespeaks  order  and  regularity.  My 
guide  seemed  a  man  of  great  sense  and  mod- 
eration. He  favors  the  system  enforced  in 
the  prison,  but  is  not  too  strenuous.  I  inter- 
rogated him  upon  the  length  of  time  usually 
spent  in  the  prison.  No  one  is  sentenced  for 
less  than  one  year.  I  was  induced  to  believe, 
by  an  examination  of  the  official  reports,  that 
there  must  be  a  certain  limit  to  the  deten- 
tion of  prisoners,  in  order  to  the  development 
of  the  result  of  solitude  upon  their  moral 
nature;  on  the  other  hand,  too  great  a  prolon- 
gation of  the  penalty  would  be  terrible.  The 
minimum  of  condemnation  is  one  year,  the 
maximum  twelve  years.  According  to  my 
informant,  the  average  length  of  punishment 
does  not  exceed  four  years.  To  seven  out  of 
ten  of  the  prisoners,  a  sentence  of  twelve 
years  would  be  worse  than  death.  The  war- 
den considers  the  Pennsy Iranian  system  sal- 
utary in  itself,  but  does  not  exaggerate  its  ad- 
vantages. He  admits  that  it  may  reform  the 
criminal,  without  pretending  that  it  always 
has  that  effect.  This  mode  of  punishment  has 
one  inconsistency  in  common  with  many 
others,  though  perhaps  in  a  less  degree :  I 
refer  to  the  mequality  of  the  penalty  upon 
the  different  individuals  upon  whom  it  is  im- 
posed. There  are  some,  though  these  are 
few  in  number*  to  whom  solitude  is  not  irk- 
some. There  is  one  here,  for  example,  who 
has  so  well  distributed  the  employment  of 


his  hours,  that  he  always  finds  the  day  too 
short,  but  there  are  others  to  whom  solitude 
is  intolerable.  This. depends  entirely  upon 
the  character,  and  they  are  not  always  the 
most  vicious  who  suffer  most.  In  one  of  the 
reports  of  the  prison,  mention  is  made  of  two 
wretches  who  found  this  mode  of  life  quite 
agreeable.  But  in  general  it  inspires  those 
criminals  who  are  naturally  social  with  a  sal- 
utary terror,  which  induces  them  to  practise 
their  profession  in  places  where  they  are  not 
threatened.  The  women  are  usually  more 
resigned  than  the  men.  This  sedentary  mode 
of  life  is  less  different  from  their  accustomed 
habits,  and  whatever  may  be  said  of  their 
talkative  propensities,  silence  seems  less 
annoying  to  them  than  to  the  men. 

The  cells  are  neat,  well  kept,  well  warmed, 
and  of  sufficient  size  to  perform  their  labor. 
Each  prisoner  has  a  small  garden.  This 
bears  some  resemblance  to  the  cells  of  the 
Carpathian  friars,  who  have  also  a  garden, 
and  a  trade,  and  who  are,  like  the  prisoners 
at  Cherry  Hill,  condemned,  it  is  true,  by  an 
act  of  their  own  will,  to  silence,  and  to  a 
silence  much  more  rigorous,  for  the  prisoners 
are  allowed  to  converse  ten  or  fifteen  minutes 
every  day  with  the  guards,  with  the  warden, 
and  with  charitable  persons  who  visit  them, 
or  with  strangers  attracted  by  curiosity.  The 
system  of  absolute  isolation,  which  was  at 
first  adopted  in  the  prison  at  Pittsburg,  is 
now  abandoned.  It  proved  to  be  intolerable, 
and  even  fatal.  The  prisoners  are  allowed 
to  read  every  evening  after  supper ;  during 
the  day  they  work.  There  is  a  library  be- 
longing to  the  establishment ;  the  hbrarian  is 
a  prisoner  condemned  for  perjury.  He  was 
engaged  in  preparing  a  catalogue,  which 
seemed  to  be  executed  with  much  care.  The 
inmates  of  the  Philadelphia  State  Prison  have 
permission  to  sing,  to  whistle  while  at  work, 
and  to  smoke,  which  the  Clarpathian  friars 
have  denied  themselves.  They  breakfast  at 
seven  o'clock  with  tea,  which  is  substituted 
twice  a  week  by  coffee.  Formeriy  coffee  was 
used  every  day,  but  it  was  found  to  be  too 
exciting.  They  dine  at  noon.  Five  times  at 
week  the  prisoners  are  allowed  beef,  twice 
mutton,  and  bread  at  discretion.  In  the 
evening  they  have  tea  again.  This  regimen 
is  heatlhy  and  sufficient.  They  are  never 
beaten ;  their  punishments  are  a  diminution 
of  food»  imprisonment  in  dungeons,  and 
shower  baths,  a  mode  of  punishment  safe, 
but  disagreeable  to  them.  They  are  taken  to 
the  baths  once  in  two  weeks.  All  this  time, 
as  also  when  they  enter  the  prison,  or  change 
their  cells,  their  heads  are  covered,  so  that 


04 


AMPERE  IN  PHTTiADBLPHIA. 


[Sept., 


they  neither  see,  nor  are  seen  by  any  one. 
They  leave  the  prison  without  knowing  the 
countenance  of  one  of  their  companions  in 
captivity,  and  without  being  recognized  by 
them. 

I  visited  several  cells,  pnncipally  those  of 
the  Germans,  who  seldom  have  an  opportunity 
of  conversing  in  their  native  language.  To 
those  unacquainted  with  English,  this  is  a 
great  aggravation  of  their  punishment.  Sev- 
eral have  learned  English  in  prison.  I  in- 
quired if  there  were  any  French  among  the 
convicts,  and  learned  with  pleasure  that 
there  were  none,  which  confirmed  to  me  the 
truth  of  what  I  was  informed  by  the  Mayor 
of  Philadelphia,  to  the  advantage  of  this  por- 
tion of  the  foreign  population  of  the  city. 
The  first  German  I  saw  was  pale,  with  a  rest- 
less appearance  and  a  feverish  look.  He  had 
been  in  custody  but  three  months.  The 
commencement  is  always  hard.  Like  many 
others,  he  has  learned  his  trade  in  prison. 
Another,  on  the  contrary,  was  near  the  expi- 
ration of  his  term.  He  appeared  quite  jovial. 
He  did  not  like  to  work.  Sclecht  arheit,  said 
he.  I  did  not  consider  him  essentially  re- 
formed. The  parents  of  this  German  reside 
at  Philadelphia.  The  relatives  of  the  con- 
victs are  seldom  allowed  to  visit  them,  and 
never  without  the  permission  of  the  warden. 
A  third,  and  he  was  the  only  one,  assured  me 
of  his  innocence. 

I  saw  an  American  who  had  served  five 
years,  and  was  still  sentenced  for  two  more 
for  .having  stolen  a  horse,  a  frequent  crime 
among  the  convicts.  This  sentence,  after 
having  been  informed  by  the  warden  that 
the  average  length  of  imprisonment  was  four 
years,  seemed  to  me  excessive,  especially 
when  I  learned  that  an  Irishman  had  been 
condemned  to  only  four  years  of  solitude  for 
homicide.  This  inequality,  which  surprised 
me,  was  expl<\ined  by  the  fact  that  the  former 
had  been  sentenced  to  the  maximum,  and 
the  latter  to  the  minimum  of  the  penalty. 
It  is  none  the  less  incomprehensible  to  me 
how  a  man  can  be  punished  twice  as  much 
for  having  stolen  a  horse,  than  for  having 
killed  a  man. 

After  having  visited  several  other  cells,  I 
followed  my  guide  into  every  part  of  the  es- 
tablishment. During  our  walk,  I  interroga- 
ted him  upon  the  disputed  question  of  mor- 
tality and  insanity,  resulting  from  the  system 
adopted  at  Philadelphia.  The  mortality,  ac- 
cording to  his  statement,  ranged  from  2  to  4 
per  cent.  This  is  the  ratio  given  by  the  offi- 
cial reports.  As  to  insanity,  his  opinion  dif- 
fered from  those  reports,  whose  authors  seem 


to  me  to  delude  themselves  in  their  assertions 
that  the  system  is  not  responsible  for  the 
mental  derangement  of  the  prisoners,  al- 
though it  proceeds  from  causes  which  this 
system  induces.  Insanity  is  much  more  fre- 
quent among  the  negroes.  When  it  is  de- 
veloped among  the  prisoners,  or  when  their 
health  visibly  declines,  they  are  allowed  to 
associate  with  others — a  wise  regulation,  but 
demonstrating  that  solitude  may  be  fatal  to 
reason  and  health.  One  third  of  the  prison- 
ers are  negroes,  one  tenth  are  Irish,  and  one 
tenth  are  Germans. 

A  grave  problem  every  where,  but  partic- 
ularly in  America,  where  the  economical 
point  of  view  may  be  less  neglected  than  else- 
where, is  the  product  of  the  labor  of  the 
prisoners.  The  opinion  of  Mr.  Wood,  a  for- 
mer warden,  seems  to  me  very  rational  upon 
this  subject.  It  is  not  necessary  that  a  prison 
should  be  a  source  of  revenue  to  the  state; 
but  it  is  desirable  that  the  labor  of  the  con- 
victs should  indemnify  society  for  what  they 
cost  it|  and  it  appears  that  they  have  here 
attained  this  result,  since,  if  not  every  year, 
at  least  many  years,  the  product  of  their 
labor  has  balanced  their  expenses.  This  is 
all  that  should  be>  required  ;  and  it  cannot 
be  urged  that  the  JKiburn  system  is  prefer- 
able, because,  in  jbhe  circumstances  the  most 
favorable  for  labor,. tlie' prisons  in  the  north 
of  England,  organized,  after  this  system,  yield 
more  to  the  state;  ^ml  are  a  true  source  of 
profit.  As  Mr.  Wood  has  truly  maintained. 
It  is  not  an  affair  of  dollars,  but  of  humanity. 
The  danger  of  existing  conapetition  between 
prison  labor  and  free  Tabor  is  also  a  difficul- 
ty which  occurs  to  the  mind.  Usually  this 
competition  is  avoided  as  much  as  possible. 
As  for  instance,  the  prisoners  make  the  coarse 
shoes  which  are  taken  south,  and  which  the 
shoemakers  of  Philadelphia  do  not  wish  to 
manufacture.  They  formerly  complained, 
but  do  so  no  longer. 

No  where  is  the  activity  which  the  public 
spirit  impresses  upon  the  progress  of  institu- 
tions in  America,  more  apparent  than  in  the 
organization  and  development  of  the  public 
schools.  The  legislatures  of  the  different 
states  are  all  the  while  stimulated,  in  this  re- 
spect, by  the  zeal  of  private  individuals.  The 
interposition  of  private  associations,  so  ener- 
getic in  whatever  concerns  the  prisons,  is 
not  less  apparent  in  their  institutions  for  in- 
struction, especially  for  elementary  instruc- 
tion. I  have  a  report  made  in  1830  to  the 
Society  for  the  Improvement  of  Public 
Schools,  which  says,  that  ''almost  every 
where  the  law  upon  education  is,  as  it  were. 


1858.] 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA. 


65 


a  dead  letter,  and  tbat  in  view  of  such  a 
jane  tare  it  is  the  duty  of  the  society  to  re- 
double its  efforts,  to  excite  Pennsylvania  to 
manifest  its  energy  in  this  noble  cause,  and 
thereby  to  show  the  degree  of  its  intellectual 
culture,  as  fully  as  it  now  displays  its  physi- 
cal resources.     The  society  will  exoite  by  all 
possible  means  a  legislative   action  for  the 
establishment  of  normal  schools.    Meanwhile 
it  declares  that  it  has  already  furnished  a 
certain  number  of  teachers  for  different  parts 
of  the  state,  and  has  organized  schools  in  re- 
tired districts,  where  none  had  before  existed/' 
Here  may  be  seen   the  two*fold  action  of 
these  private  societies  :  appeals  to  the  legis- 
lature, by  the  agitation  of  public  opinion  and 
dictation  in  furnishing  instructors  and  in  es- 
tablishing schools.     To  act  and  to  cause  to 
act,  should  be  the  motto  of  the  innumerable 
associations  which  are  found  in  America,  and 
which  call  the  public  attention  to  the  institu- 
tions designed  to  provide  for  the  religious, 
moral,  and  intellectual  necessities  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  to  the  condition  of  the  prisons,  hos- 
pitals  and    schools.'    They   act  upon  the 
government  by  the  force  of  public  opinion, 
they  interpose  themselves  as  examples,  and 
direct  the  way.    This  movement  and  agita- 
tion have  effected  a  reformation  of  the  school 
system,  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia.     In  1 83  0, 
the  schools  experienced  a  radical  improve- 
ment in  becoming  entirely  public  to  the  whole 
community,  and  a  central  high  school  has 
also  been  established.     Since   that   period 
considerable  progress  has  been  made.     In 
1839,  there  were  16  schools,  100  teachers, 
and  a  littte  less  than  1^,000  pupils.     In  the 
scholastic  year  1 850-1 85 1»  the  number  of 
schools  established  by  the  aid  of  the  public 
fund  has  increased  to  60 ;    the  number  of 
teachers  to  781,  and  including   those   en- 
gaged in  the  high  schools  928,  while  the 
number  of  pupils  has  exceeded  48,000.     The 
proportion  of  teachers  to  the  pupils,  in  1839, 
was  in  the  ratio  of  one  to  one  hundred,  now 
it  is  one  to  sixty.     It  is  seen  that  here,  as 
in  New  York,   instruction  has  increased  in 
greater  proportion  than  the  population  it- 
self. 

Instead  of  $190,000,  of  which  at  least  one 
fifth  was  at  the  first  period  furnished  by  the 
state  treasury,  more  than  $366,000,  the  re- 
sult of  county  taxation,  is  now  expended  for 
schools,  only  one  eleventh  of  which  is  fur- 
nished by  the  state. 

I  was  desirous  of  visiting  these  schools  es- 
tablished by  the  persevering  zeal  of  the  citi- 
zens. Mr.  B  introduced  me  to  several 
classes,  and  questioned  the  little  boys  and 

VOL.  XXX,    NO.  L 


girls  in  my  presence.  Their  answers  were 
prompt,  and  might  be  heard  from  several  at 
once.  A  lively  emulation  seemed  to  incite 
these  children,  who  were  animated  without 
ill-nature,  and  eager  without  coarseness.  The 
little  girls  were  acquainted  with  the  princi- 
pal facts  in  the  history  of  the  United  States, 
and  were  familiar  with  the  names  of  the  im- 
portant pohtical  men,  as  Clay  and  Webster, 
and  answered  very  pertinently,  when  asked  : 
What  are  the  principal  poll  teal  parties  ? — 
They  are  Whigs  and  Democrats. — These  an- 
swers interested  me  much,  but  less  than  Mr. 

B ,  who  is  one  of  the  Directors  of  the 

institution,  and  who  derived  so  much  gratifi- 
cation in  interrogating  the  pupils,  that,  as 
my  time  was  limited,  I  was  obliged  to  ex- 
cuse myself.  I  left  him  perfectly  happy, 
with  this  rather  monotonous  occupation,  and' 
I  could  not  but  admire,  as  I  left,  (he  disin- 
terested zeal  and  the  kind  enthusiasm  of  a 
gentleman,  who  forgot  his  business  to  inter- 
rogate children  upon  history  and  geography, 
as  if  he  had  none  other  claim  and  indemnity 
than  the  pleasure  of  being  useful. 

The  Lancasterian  system,  so  celebrated  in 
France  at  the  time  of  the  restoration  under 
the  name  qC  mutual  instruction,  and  which 
was  a  great  source  of  revenue  to  France,  was 
formerly  more  in  vague  in  America,  than  at 
the  present  time.  This  system,  though  still 
pursued,  is  not  exclusively  adopted  in  Phil- 
adelphia, and  other  places.  One  would  sup- 
pose that  it  would  succeed  in  this  country, 
where  they  aim,  in  all  things,  at  rapidity  of 
execution,  at  the  simplification  of  means,  and 
where  the  mechanical  processes  are  in  use 
to  some  extent  for  every  thing,  where  the 
daguerreotype,  for  example,  is  very  univer- 
sal, to  the  great  injury  of  portrait  painting. 
An  eminent  man,  De  WittCHnton,  a  governor 
of  the  State  of  New  York,  said  of  the  Lan- 
casterian method  :  "  It  has  the  same  advan- 
tage for  education,  that  labor-saving  machines 
possess  for  the  useful  arts."  We  must 
beware  how  we  spare  the  children  too  much, 
lest  their  intellectual  powers  become  weaken- 
ed, and  they  themselves  become  machines. 

An  institution  resembling  no  other  in  the 
world,  is  the  college  founded  by  Stephen 
Girard  for  three  hundred  poor  white  male 
children,  with  this  strange  provision,  that  no 
priest  or  clergyman  of  any  denomination 
whatever  should  ever  enter  the  college. 
This  proviso  is  more  singular  in  the  United 
States  than  it  would  be  any  where  else, 
for  in  this  country,  almost  all  the  college^ 
have  been  founded  under  the  auspices,  and 
by  the  agency  of  some  sect.  Jefferson,  im- 
5 


60 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIi. 


[Sept., 


bued  with  the  French  opinions  of  the  18th 
century »  wished  to  establish  the  University  of 
Virginia,  without  any  religious  direction ; 
but  it  proved  a  failure.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  infer  that  it  was  the  intention  of  Girard  to 
exclude  all  religious  instruction  from  the 
college  which  he  founded,  but  to  withdraw 
the  children  from  the  influence  of  wiiat  is 
here  denominated  sectarian  spirit,  for  laymen 
preach  to  and  catechize  the  children  every 
Sabbath.  To  those  belonging  to  the  differ- 
ent Protestant  denominations,  there  is  no 
particular  disadvantage.  The  principal  per- 
forms devotional  exercises  twice  a  day  and 
officiates  on  Sabbath  morning,  and  the  in- 
spector of  studies  conducts  the  evening  ser- 
vice; but  the  Citholic  children,  who  com- 
prise one  third  of  the  whole  number  in  the  col- 
lege, and  are  the  children  of  poor  Irish  Catho- 
lics, are,  by  this  strange  reservation  in  the 
will  of  Mr.  Girard,  deprived  of  their  worship 
and  religion.  The  laity  can  neither  say  mass, 
nor  grant  absolution.  The  priests,  whose 
position  I  appreciate,  are  opposed  to  the 
practice  of  sending  Catholic  children  to  Girard 
College  ;  but  many  parents  allow  it.  Their 
course  of  study  is  quite  extensive.  It  em- 
braces mathematics,  as  far  as  the  application 
of  algebra  to  geometry,  natural  philosophy, 
natural  history,  French,  Spanish,  general  his- 
tory and  the  history  of  the  United  States. 
Here  is  much  to  learn,  and  when  these  poor 
children  have  completed  their  course  they 
will  not  know  how  to  apply  it. 

The  magnificence  of  this  institution  is  still 
another  objection.  Mr.  Girard  having  left  a 
large  sum  for^  its  foundation,  his  executors, 
desiring  to  make  a  great  display,  lyive  built, 
instead  of  a  college,  a  temple  of  white  mar- 
ble,  a  little  after  the  model  of  the  Parthenon. 
This  resolution  was  not  very  wise,  for  when 
the  monument  was  completed,  nothing  was 
left  of  the  large  legacy  of  Mr.  Girard,  and 
the  state  was  opliged  to  furnish  the  necessa- 
ry sum  to  put  it  in  operation.  Every  thing 
is  in  harmony  with  such  an  edifice  ;  the  in- 
terior is  comfortable  and  in  good  order  ;  the 
floors  are  covered  with  matting,  and  the  desks 
with  green  serge.  All  this  is  beautiful ;  but 
what  a  contrast  to  what  these  children,  now 
so  neatly  dressed,  so  orderly  and  so  happy, 
will  find  when  they  leave  this  institution.  It 
is  to  be  regretted  that  stern  reason  will  not 
allow  us  to  enjoy  without  the  obtrusion  of 
these  severe  reflections,  this  only  example  in 
the  world,  of  a  palace  open  to  the  democra- 
tsy,  and  of  this  homage  to  indigent  childhood 
too  often  neglected.  Those  who,  in  the  cities 
of  Europe,  would  be  found  begging  in  the 


streets,  or  playing  in  the  wafer,  sleep  here 
under  a  marble  roof,  but  this  is  an  extreme. 
Where  the  people  reign,  the  children  of  the 
sovereign  should  not  be  spoiled,  and  it  was 
no  disadvantage  to  Henry  4th,  that  he  was 
educated  with  the  young  peasants  of  Berne. 
I  visited  Girard  College  on  the  same  day 
that  I  visited  the  prison.  The  two  edifices 
are  separated  but  a  short  distance,  and  pre- 
sent a  singular  contrast ;  the  one  mournful 
and  gloomy  with  its  gray  and  lofty  walls 
resembling  a  feudal  fortress,  the  other  cheer- 
ful and  magnificent,  with  its  columns  of  white 
marble,  like  a  temple  of  Delos.  In  the  one, 
were  criminals  imprisoned  less  by  lofty  walls 
than  by  solitude  and  silence,  counting  one  by 
one  the  hours  always  alike,  because  they 
present  no  variety,  and  resembling  the  veiled 
faces  of  a  procession  of  spectres,  and  in  the 
other,  happy  children  drawn  from  their  hum- 
ble homes  to  live  in  a  palace,  and,  as  I  saw 
them  in  their  evening  recreations,  filling  this 
magnificent  abode,  with  their  joyous  shouts, 
and  bird-like  gay ety,  then  betaking  themselves 
to  refreshing  sleep  in  neat  little  beds,  but  a 
few  steps  from  those  convicts  once  joyous 
and  laughing  children  like  themselves.  And 
yet  some  of  these  children  now  so  happy,  but 
it  may  be  ill  prepared  for  the  society  which 
they  must  encounter,  may  one  day  occupy 
the  silent  cell,  and  extend  themselves  upon 
the  rude  couch  of  the  convicts  of  Cherry 
Hill. 

It  would  afford  me  much  pleasure  to  prolong 
my  visit  in  this  city,  but  the  weather,  which 
has  been  quite  mild,  has  suddenly  become 
severely  cold.  As  the  principal  if  not  the 
only  aim  of  my  journey,  is  to  avoid  the  winter, 
which  is  everywhere  my  enemy,  I  shall  leave 
for  Washington,  where  I  shall  not  remain  long, 
o»  my  way  to  South  Carolina  and  Louisiana. 
There  is  no  country  in  the  world  where 
the  changes  of  temperature  are  more  sudden, 
and  the  contrasts  more  extreme  than  in  the 
United  States.  New  York  has  in  summer 
the  temperature  of  Naples  and  in  the  winter 
that  of  Copenhagen.  In  all  the  northern 
parts  of  the  United  States,  they  often  pass 
almost  without  transition  from  a  mild  to  a 
cold  day.  At  Rome,  the  difference  between 
the  maximum  of  heat  and  cold  is  24  degrees, 
while  at  Salem,  in  New  England,  it  is  51  de- 
grees. These  sudden  alternations  of  heat  and 
cold  tend  to  give  strength  and  firmness  to 
the  muscular  system  of  the  Americans ;  it 
is  thus  that  steel  is  tempered.  The  heat  of 
the  summer  may  be  explained  by  the  lati- 
tude :  Philadelphia  being  nearly  in  the  same 
degree  as  Naples.    The  excessive  cold  may 


1859] 


AMPERE  IN  PHILADELPHIA; 


6*1 


be  attributed,  among  other  causes,  to  the 
fact  that  in  America  the  mountains  extend 
North  and  South,  and  hence  interpose  no  ob- 
stacle to  the  cold  polar  winds. 

Before  leaving  Philadelphia,  I  enjoyed  the 
pleasure  which  I  had  long  desired,  of  listen- 
ing to  Jenny  Lind,  the  Swedish  nightingale, 
as  she  is  here  styled,  whom  I  followed  through 
the  different  cities  of  the  Union,  but  who  al- 
ways left  before  my  arrival.  Fortunately  Miss 
Lind  sang  in  Philadelphia  the  evening  previous 
to  my  departure.  Several  reasons  may  be  as- 
signed for  the  enthusiasm  which  she  had  excit- 
ed in  this  country  ;  she  possesses  great  talent, 
a  reputatiofi  established  in  Europe,  besides, 
her  character  is  justly  respected,  and  her 
disposition  very  generous.  She  has  sung  in 
America  for  the  beneBt  of  many  useful 
institutions,  schools,  hospitals,  &c.  To  fash- 
ion is  united  esteem.  I  listened  to  the  night- 
ingale at  R  concert  attended  by  the  fashion- 
able world,  I  was  glad  at  this  opportunity 
of  observing  the  musical  taste  of  the  Ameri- 
cans. It  se^md  to  me  that  the  great  airs  of 
the  opera  were  listenedto  with  some  indif- 
ference, while  the  romances  were  much  Ihore 
enjoyed.  A  Swedish  ballad  was  very  suc- 
cessful, especially  the  last  verse  was  much 
applauded,  in  which  Miss  Lind,  with  pathetic 
grace,  allowed  her  voice  to  die  away  so  per- 
fectly, that  all  listened  even  after  she  had 
ceased.  This  remembrance  of  Sweden  in 
America  was  very  pleasing  to  me,  and  I  was 
glad  to  hear  once  more,  aft^r  an  interval  of 
many  years,  the  sweet  sounds  of  this  lan- 
guage, the  most  melodious  of  all  the  German 
languages,  and  which  might,  with  propriety, 
be  styled  the  Spanish  of  the  North.  By  a 
singular  chance,  I  met  twenty- five  years 
since,  Madame  Catalini  at  Stockholm,  and 
I  now  meet  Miss  Lind  at  Philadelphia. 

Baltimore,  Dec,  13tk. 
It  is  impossible  to  stop  here,  which  I  much 
regret,  since  all  that  I  have  heard  of  the  so- 
ciety of  Baltimore  is  calculated  to  inspire  me 
with  this  feeling  ;  but  it  is  too  cold  for  an  in- 
valid, as  they  say  in  English,  who  is  in  pur- 
suit of  a  southern  climate,  and  has  allowed 
himself  to  be  overtaken  by  the  rigorous  cold 
of  the  North.  I  have  not  found  the  state- 
ment, made  by  Volney,  true,  that  the  climate 
becomes  materially  milder  after  passing  the 
Patapsco  river.  Well  wrapped  up,  I  hastily^ 
passed  through  the  principal  streets  of  Balti- 
more. This  city  appears  to  me  neater  and 
gayer  than  any  other  city  in  America,  es- 
pecially the  upper  part,  which  is  a  kind  of 
faubourg  St.  Qermain.      I  walked  a  long  dis- 


tance without  observing  any  shops.  Upon 
the  summct  of  the  hill  upon  which  Baltimore 
is  situated,  are  the  churches,  and  at  the  base, 
are  the  chimneys  of  the  manufactories  and 
the  shipping.  But  I  was  too  benumbed  to 
form  any  distinct  impression  of  any  thing. 
I  shall  soon  depart  for  "Washington,  where 
I  wish  to  arrive  in  season,  to  be  present  at 
the  opening  session  of  Congress,  and  before 
the  interruption  of  the  sessions  in  the  first 
days  of  January.  Fortunately  Miss  Cathe- 
rine Hayes  sings  this  evening.  The  swan  of 
Erin,  as  she  is  styled,  has  her  admirers,  who 
prefer  her  to  the  nightingale  of  Dalecarlie. 

I  considered  it  a  happy  chance  which  pro- 
cures me  the  pleasure  of  hearing  thus,  one 
after  the  other,  the  two  voices  so  celebrated 
in  prose  and  verse  in  the  twenty-three  states 
of  the  Union,  and  at  the  same  time,  that  of 
mingling  with  the  society  of  Baltimore.  Af- 
ter seeing  their  city  by  a  beautiful  sun,  and 
by — I  had  almost  said  a  beautiful  cold, 
but  I  will  never  concede  that  the  cold  can 
be  beautiful,  I  found  the  assemblage  of  this 
evening  more  brilliant  even  than  that  of 
Philadelphia.  In  approaching  the  South  a 
certain  elegance  of  manners  is  more  and  more 
apparent.  I  have  entered  the  slave  states, 
and  sec  for  the  first  time  in  a  concert  hall  a 
circular  gallery  appropriated  to  persons  oj 
color,  as  they  are  truly  called,  for  this  ex- 
pression includes  not  only  blacks  in  this  cate- 
gory, but  all  the  shades  to  white  inclusively. 
To  those  acquainted  with  them,  the  African 
descent  may  be  detected  in  a  corner  of  the 
eye  or  in  the  root  of  the  nail,  and  though  her 
complexion  may  be  very  fair,  a  quadroon  is 
obliged  to  take  her  place  by  the  side  of  the 
negro. 

Miss  Hayes  is  not  an  artist  that  will  rank 
with  Jenny  Lind ;  but  she  possesses  more 
novelty,  she  is  Irish,  and  sings  the  ballads  of 
her  country  very  agreeably,  and  I  think  has 
had  greater  success  this  evening,  than  had 
jresterday — I  was  going  to  say  her  rival,  but 
mdeed  they  ought  not  to  be  placed  in  the  same 
line.  Although  the  concerts  are  well  attend- 
ed, though  much  is  expended  for  seats,  and 
though  the  journals  make  use  of  the  stron- 
gest hyperboles,  and  the  same  hyperboles,  to 
celebrate  superior  and  moderate  talents,  I  do 
not  think  that  the  musical  instinct  is  very  well 
developed  in  America.  The  Americans  are 
too  English  to  be  musicians.  They  practice 
music  to  a  very  great  extent,  they  manufac- 
ture a  great  number  of  pianos,  and  their 
concerts  are  as  frequent  and  as  numerously 
attended  as  in  Europe ;  but  I  am  not  aware 
that  this  country  has  produced  any  celebra- 


68 


THE  PREAOHER'S  DAUOHTER. 


[Sept, 


ted  perfornaers.     The  Americans  have  sculp-  | 
tors,  and  even  painters,  but  I  have  not  heard 
the  name  of  a  single  American  composer. 

Some  efforts  have  been  made  to  cultivate 
sacred  music.  Church  music  has  been 
brought  to  a  high  standard  by  the  Handel 
and  Haydn  Society ;  and  at  Lowell,  I  have 
found  the  masic  of  the  great  masters  ar- 
ranged in  a  cheap  form,  so  as  to  be  within 
the  reach  of  the  people ;  but,  notwithstand- 
ing all  these  laudable  efforts,  the  Anglo-Sax- 
on organization  has  a  tendency  to  resistance. 
It  is  easier  to  unharness  the  horses  of  Euro- 
pean singers  and  to  pay  $1,000  for  a  concert 
ticket,  than  to  possess  musical  ta^te.  Fortu- 
nately the  English  have  proved  that  a  nation 
can  be  great  without  this ;  it  is  also  true  that 
this  taste  may  be  developed  by  education 
and  practice,  as  has  been  demonstrated  in 
France. 

In  the  United  States  the  Germans  are  the 
principal  resource  of  the  orchestras  and  con- 
certs.    The  music  of  the  military  regiments 


is  often  performed  by  negroes.  That  the 
negro  race  possesses  a  superior  natural  taste 
for  music,  is  a  point  upon  which  the  proud 
Yankees  must  acknowledge  their  inferiority 
to  those  men  who  are  scarcely  recognized  by 
many  of  them  as  human  bemgs.  The  ne- 
gro is  condemned  by  slavery  or  contempt  to 
a  miserable  condition,  but  he  has  received  a 
gift  which  those  who  enslave  and  degrade  him 
do  not  possess,  namely,  gayety.  To  aid  him  to 
forget  the  bitterness  of  his  lot.  Providence 
has  given  him  a  taste  for  singing  and  dan- 
cing : 

The  good  God  says  to  him :  Sing, 
Sing,  poor  little  one. 

It  is  natural  to  think  of  the  negroes,  on  the 
first  day  that  I  entered  the  slave  states. 
Strange  circumstance  1  I  depart  for  Wash- 
ington. I  go  to  see  the  Congress  and  the 
President  of  the  republic,  to  salute  the  Capi- 
tol, and  I  am  no  longer  in  what  are  here 
called  the  free  states. 


-M- 


>♦♦■ 


From  th*   Naw  Monthly  Magazine 


THE  PREACHER'S  DAUGHTER. 


AN  UNPUBLISHED  ANECDOTE  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT. 


In  the  year  1821,  during  a  tour  I  was 
making  in  the  north  of  Germany,  an  accident 
introduced  me  to  a  clergyman,  who  invited 
me  to  spend  a  few  days  with  him  in  the 
country.  The  second  day  of  my  stay  was 
to  be  devoted  to  an  excursion  in  the  neigh- 
boring mountains,  whence  a  glorious  view 
could  be  enjoyed  of  the  Frische  Haff  and 
the  littoral  pf  Fomerania. 

We  had,  however,  scarce  quitted  the  rec- 
tory, when  my  new  friend  attracted  my  at- 
tention to  an  old  man  who  was  sitting  on 
the  root  of;  a  tree,  smoking  his  pipe  with 
apparently  the  greatest  contentment,  while 
his  geese  were  feeding  on  the  grassy  borders 
of  the  wide  village  street. 

"  Look  there,"  the  clergyman  said  ;  ''  that 
old  man  is  the  only  living  witness  of  a  trait 
of  iron  justice  in  the  life  of  Frederick  the 


Great  which  but  very  few  are  acquainted 
with.  Halloh !  Father  Frank,  do  you  re- 
member bringing  the  baron  home  from 
Stettin  ?" 

"  How  could  I  forget  it  ?"  the  old  man  re- 
plied, as  he  doffed  his  cap  reverently ;  **  I 
was  a  yonng  fellow  of  about  twenty-five  at 
the  time." 

"  Did  he  swear  at  all  ?**  my  friend  asked 
further. 

"I  should  think  so,"  the  old  man  said 
with  a  laugh ;  "  he  raved  furiously  the  whole 
distance,  especially  when  the  carriage  drove 
over  the  pine-roots  on  the  heath." 

**  Yes,    my  friend  replied,  "  you  may  laugh 
now.  Father  Frank,  but  in  truth  you  ought, 
to  have  shared  the  baron's  punishment,  for. 
I  can  never  forgive  you  for  helping  to  carry 
my  poor  predecessor  out  of  his  house  in  hia. 


1858.] 


THE  PREAOHSR'S  DAUGHTER. 


60 


dying  moments,  and  placing  him  in  the  glar- 
ing sunshine." 

"  I  was  forced  to  do  so,"  the  old  man  an- 
swered ;  and  as  he  pointed  with  his  staff  to 
a  neighboring  garden,  he  continued :  "  The 
baron  was  standing  behind  that  walnut-tree 
with  his  telescope,  and  if  we  had  not  placed 
the  old  gentleman  on  the  exact  spot  he  or- 
dered, he  would  have  beaten  us  to  death. 
Still  I  shall  feel  sorry  for  it  as  long  as  I 
live,  and  cannot  look  at  the  spot  without 
sighing.  His  chair  was  just  at  the  very 
place  where  you  are  now  standing,  and  there 
he  died  within  a  quarter  of  an  hour." 

The  reader  may  fancy  that  these  remarks 
caused  me  to  feel  considerable  curiosity,  and 
we  had  scarce  left  the  old  man,  when  I 
begged  the  rector  to  tell  me  the  story.  He 
did  so  in  the  following  terms : 

The  Baron  von  L ,  of  whom  our  old 

friend  was  talking,  was  formerly  owner  of 
this  estate,  and  a  favorite  of  Frederick  the 
Great.  The  nearer  circumstances  of  his  in- 
troduction to  the  king  are  sufBciently  re- 
markable to  induce  me  to  mention  them. 
Frederick  had  come  to  inspect  a  morass  that 
had  been  latelv  drained  by  the  baron,  and 

while  waiting  for  fresh  horses  at  P ,  he 

talked  with  the  land-agent,  and  as  he  saw 
some  gentlemen  in  military  uniform  at  a  little 
distance,  he  asked  him,  "  Where  have  those 
gentlemen  served?" 

The  agent,  who  knew  that  the  king  liked 
a  quick  and  ready  answer,  replied,  with  a 
deep  bow,  "  In  your  majesty's  army  ;"  to 
which  the  king  rejoined,  with  equal  quick- 
ness. 

"Sheepshead!  I  am  well  aware  that 
they  have  not  served  as  laborers  on  your 
estate.     But  where  is  the  baron  ?" 

The  latter,  however,  had  been  delayed,  and 
arrived  just  as  the  king  was  asking 'for  him, 
in  such  a  hurry  that  the  coachman  drove 
against  a  tombstone,  which  had  been  brought 
the  day  before  for  the  grave  of  a  lately  de- 
ceased clergyman,  and  had  been  placed  tem- 
porarily by  the  side  of  the  road.  The  car- 
riage was  overturned,  and  the  baron  as  well : 
a  terrible  prognostic,  for  he  was  fated  to 
owe  his  ruin  to  the  tombstone  of  a  clergy- 
man, though  it  did  not  occur  on  this  occa- 
sion. On  Uie  contrary,  he  managed  to  ac- 
quire the  king's  favor  in  such  a  degree,  that 
his  majesty  was  continually  sending  for  him 
to  be  present  at  the  reviews  in  Stargardt,  and 
eventually  invested  him  with*  the  then  highly 
distinguished  order,  "  Pour  le  Merite." 

Through  this,  however,  the  baron's  arro- 
gance waxed  incredibly.    He  was  not  merely 


I  a  tyrant  whom  every  one  in  the  neighbor- 
hood feared  because  they  knew  the  favor  in 
which  he  stood  with  the  king,  but  a  still 
greater  tyrant  to  all  the  clergy.  For  while 
he  usually  called  the  landed  gentry,  when 
speaking  about  them,  "  uncultivated  clods," 
he  also,  after  the  fashion  of  the  great  king, 
termed  the  clergy  "  unreasoning  brutes," 
and  displayed  his  enlightenment  on  every  oc- 
casion in  a  manner  as  ridiculous  as  it  was  in- 
sulting :  for  education  and  respect  could  not 
be  counted  among  our  baron's  virtues. 

But  of  all  the  clergymen,  his  own,  Thilo 
by  name,  my  poor  predecessor,  fared  the 
worst.  He  was  an  old  man,  modest  in  the 
highest  degree,  and  put  up  with  anything 
from  his  patron.  His  only  daughter,  Sophie, 
was,  however,  one  of  the  most  energetic 
women  I  ever  saw,  and  even  at  the  advanced 
age  when  I  first  formed  her  acquaintance, 
bore  evident  traces  of  her  former  beauty. 

She  was  attached  to  the  son  of  the  royal 

forester  Weiher,  who  lived  in  S ,  and  used 

to  visit  the  old  pastor  when  he  came  to 
church.  The  affair  was,  however,  not  known 
for  a'long  while,  as  Sophie  always  received 
the  young  fellow's  ardent  declarations  of  love 
with  great  though  pretended  coolness.  Be- 
sides, the  young  man  was  nothing,  and  had 
nothing,  and  it  was  very  doubtful  whether 
he  would  succeed  his  father  in  the  forestry. 
Such  being  the  case,  there  was  little  to  be 
done  in  those  days,  and  it  is  much  the  same 
now.  But  it  is  equally  true  that  a  lover 
never  did,  and  never  will,  trouble  himself 
about  such  paltry  details.  It  was  the  same 
with  our  Fritz.  On  one  occasion,  when  he 
had  brought  the  old  pastor,  'or  rather  his 
daughter,  a  brace  of  wild  duck,  and  the  latter 
gave  him  a  rose  in  return,  for  she  had  no- 
thing else  to  offer,  Fritz  regarded  it  as  a  de- 
claration of  her  love,  and  begged  her  to  give 
him  her  hand  and  heart.  The  sensible  girl 
naturally  tried  to  persuade  him  of  his 
folly,  and  asked  him  how  ho  could  support  a 
wife. 

But  Fritz  had  his  answer  cut  and  dried. 

"  I  have  a  little,"  he  rejoined,  "  and  you, 
too,  my  dear  girl,  could  have  three  times  as 
much  as  myself,  if  you  only  wished." 

"  I  am  curious  to  know  what  you  mean," 
Sophie  remarked. 

"Well,  your  father  says  that  the  baron 
owes  him  bis  dues  for  the  last  ten  years. 
That  would  make,  at  the  rate  of  sixty  bush- 
els per  annum,  GOO  bushels,  worth,  at  the 
present  price  of  grain,  about  800  crowns. 
With  that,  and  my  little  savings,  we  coald 
manage.    We  would  take  a  farm  in  the  neigh- 


10 


THE  PBEAGHEB*S  DAUGHTER. 


[Sept.  y 


borhood  if  I  was  not  made  assistant  to  my 
father,  as  I  expect,  and  could  live  happily." 

But  Sophie  rejected  this  idea  with  a  smile, 
and  expressed  her  opinion  **  that  the  young 
man  could  sooner  shake  down  wheat  from  his 
beech-trees  than  her  father  get  his  rye  from 
the  baron." 

Still  the  plan  continually  occurred  to  her. 
She  begged  her  father  to  make  an  earnest 
demand  for  his  dues  from  the  baron ;  for  if 
he  were  to  die,  and  she  be  left  a  poor  unpro- 
tected orphan,  the  hard- hearted  and  arrogant 
man  would  not  give  her  a  shilling  more  in 
money  or  money's  worth.  Still  the  old  man 
would  not  consent,  though  she  renewed  her 
entreaties  repeatedly.  The  next  Sunday,  how- 
ever, the  forester  turned  the  conversation  to 
the  same  subject,  whence  it  may  be  presumed 
that  his  son  had  opened  his  heart  to  him. 
But  it  was  of  no  avail.  The  old  man  trem- 
bled even  if  he  heard  the  baron's  name,  and 
said,  earnestly  and  simply  : 

"  It  would  be  of  no  use ;  I  have  tried  to 
no  purpose  every  year.  But  the  Lord  is 
judge  of  all  things." 

•*  That's  all  very  good,"  the  forester  re- 
plied ;  "  but  I  don't  see  what  your  daughter 
will  have  to  live  on,  if  you  were  to  quit  the 
world  this  day  or  the  next.  Lay  a  complaint 
against  the  baron,  unless  he  listens  to  your 
reasonable  demands." 

The  old  man  shook  his  head  and  sighed, 
upon  which  the  former  continued : 

"  Well,  then,  I  must  reveal  something  to 
you,  pastor ;  my  Fritz  is  ashamed  to  do  it 
himself." 

At  these  words,  the  young  folk  turned  as 
red  as  cherries,  and  Sophie  ran  out  of  the 
room.  Fritz  stopped,  it  is  true,  but  did  not 
dare  to  raise  his  head,  when  his  father  pro- 
ceeded to  say : 

"  My  Fritz  here  and  your  dear  daughter 
would  gladly  get  married  ;  but  as  they  want 
the  main  thing,  and  I  do  not  know  whether  the 
boy  will  succeed  me,  you  could  make  the 
young  couple  happy  if  you  would  send  in  a 
complaint  against  the  baron,  and  force  him 
to  pay  you  either  the  corn  or  the  money. 
Then  we  would  take  a  farm  for  them." 

"  I  never  heard  a  word  of  this  before," 
my  old  predecessor  here  remarked,  "  and  do 
not  know  a  better  answer  to  give  you  than 
one  from  the  Bible :  '  We  will  call  the  dam- 
eel,  and  inquire  at  her  mouth.' " 

Our  Fritjis  now  regained  both  his  heart  and 
his  feet.  He  ran  out  of  the  room,  and,  on 
this  occasion,  his  power  of  persuasion  must 
have  been  very  great,  for  he  returned  in  a  few 
minutes,  hand  in  hand  with  the  blushing  girl. 


**  My  daughter,"  the  old  man  said  to  her, 
"  what  am  I  forced  to  hear  ?  You  never 
kept  anything  from  me  before,  and  now  have 
made  a  secret  of  the  most  important  thing 
— that  you  wish  to  be  married.  Is  that 
really  true,  Sophie  ?" 

*'  Yes,  father,"  she  replied,  without  aflfec- 
tation,  "  if  we  only  knew  what  we  should 
have  to  lire  on :  for  without  some  certainty, 
I  have  always  told  Fritz,  the  marriage  can- 
not take  place." 

Fritz  now  gained  heart  too,  and  said  :  "  But 
the  pastor  has  our  future  welfare  in  his  own 
hands ;  for  if  you  were  to  complain  against 
the  baron,  it  would  be  very  strange  if  you 
did  not  get  your  own." 

The  old  man,  however,  replied,  after  repeat- 
ed representations,  "  I  will  sleep  on  it ;'  and 
would  probably  have  done  so  for  the  rest  of  his 
days,  if  his  daughter  had  left  him  in  peace. 
But  it  seemed  to  him  almost  a  crime  to  pro- 
ceed straightway  to  a  plaint,  and  an  encroach- 
ment on  the  reverence  he  fancied  he  owed  to 
his  patron.  He  made  one  attempt  more  on 
the  path  of  conciliation,  and  begged  the  baron, 
in  writing,  and  most  respectfully,  to  pay  him 
the  dues  owing  to  him  for  nearly  ten  years, 
at  the  same  time,  apologizing  very  humbly 
for  making  the  request  on  this  occasion  be- 
fore Michaelmas,  because  his  dear  daughter 
designed  to  alter  her  condition  of  life. 

Of  course  the  latter  knew  nothing  of  this 
confidential  remark,  which  afterwards  cost 
her  so  many  tears,  or  else  she  would  have 
protested  against  it  most  solemnly.  But  the 
patron  acted  m  the  usual  way :  whether 
Michaelmas  or  not,  he  did  not  pay  the  slight- 
est attention. 

The  old  man  was  at  length  forced  to  bite 
into  the  sour  apple,  and  yield  to  the  repeated 
entreaties  of  his  daughter.  He  sent  in  a 
complaint  against  the  baron,  and,  by  his 
daughter's  special  solicitation,  not  merely 
asked  for  his  dues,  but  also  complained 
about  the  wretched  state  of  dilapidation  in 
which  the  rectory  was,  about  which  repeated 
useless  petitions  had  been  sent  to  the  harsh 
man,  who  allowed  his  preacher  to  live  worse 
than  his  daily  laborers.  It  is  true  that  this 
was  not  done  without  a  severe  struggle  ;  but 
as  Sophie  at  length  represented  to  him  that 
the  baron  would  be  equally  embittered 
whether  he  laid  one  or  two  complaints  before 
the  authorities,  he  seemed  at  last  to  allow 
the  truth  of  this,  and  wrote,  though  not 
without  begging  the  baron's  pardon  for  each 
of  his  complaints.  The  result  might  be  an- 
ticipated. The  chamber,  which  signed  itself 
at  that  day,  to  some  purpose,  "  'V\^,  Freder- 


1863.] 


THE  PREACHER'S  DAUGHTER. 


71 


ick,  by  God's  grace/'  entirely  shared  the 
king's  contemptuous  views  of  the  clergy,  but 
not  his  love  of  justice  towards  all — ^anoong 
thom,  consequently,  the  pastors.  The  baron, 
on  being  requested  to  answer  his  rector's 
plaint,  denied  everything,  assetled  that  he 
bad  always  paid  his  dues  regularly,  and  that 
this  highly  insulting  charge  could  only  be  ex- 
plained or  excused  by  the  fact  that  the  old 
man  was  quite  childish,  and  did  not  know 
what  he  said  or  wrote.  He  ought,  at  any 
rate,  to  have  produciid  liis  witnesses;  but, 
far  from  doing  so,  or  being  able  to  do  it,  the 
old  lackbrains  had  apologized  to  him,  his 
patron,  in  a  fashion  that  would  furnish  a  very 
poor  notion  of  the  honesty  of  his  fancied 
claim.  His  complaint  about  his  house  was 
equally  false ;  for,  though  it  was  no  palace,  it 
was  still  habitable  enough. 

He  had  certainly  some  good  reasons  to  re- 
gard his  pastor's  surprising  demands  from  a 
much  more  criminal  point  of  view;  for  it- 
was  shown  by  the  annexed  letter  in  bis  hand- 
writing, that  he  wished  his  daughter  to  marry, 
and  was  greatly  embarrassed  about — the 
dowry.  Still  he  would  not  carry  out  this 
idea  for  the  pastor's  sake,  and  would  rather 
ascribe  to  his  age  and  his  forgetfulness,  what 
others  perhaps  would  impute  to  his  villany. 
Still  the  authorities  would  perceive,  without 
it  being  necessary  for  him  to  call  their  atten- 
tion to  it,  that  it  was  high  time  to  dismiss  the 
old  man,  and  he  would,  therefore,  present 
another  candidate  as  soon  as  possible. 

We  may  easily  foresee  the  result  of  this 
reply.  The  old  pastor  was  not  only  refused 
a  heannfir  and  threatened  with  an  ungracious 
dismissal,  but,  besides,  received  some  repri- 
mands of  the  very  coarsest  style,  as  was  the 
fashion  in  that  day. 

"  I  thought  it  would  be  so !''  he  exclaimed, 
in  the  deepest  sorrow,  **  and  for  that  reason 
I  would  not  write,  but  you  forced  me  to  do 
so. 

The  consequence  of  this  painful  excite- 
ment was  a  severe  illness,  to  which  the  old 
man  yielded,  not  immediately  though,  but 
after  the  forester  had  come  to  him  and  told 
both  him  and  his  daughter,  with  unfeeling 
harshness,  that  all  idea  of  a  marriage  with 
his  son  must  be  given  up,  whether  he  suc- 
ceeded him  or  not,  for  bis  son  could  make  no 
use  of  a  portionless  wife. 

The  old  pastor  only  replied  to  this  by  a 
sigh ;  but  hn  daughter  answered  instead  of 
him,  that  this  was  quite  natural,  and  that  she 
was  merely  surprised  that  the  forester  had 
not  said  this  only  to  them,  but  had  before 
stated  publicly  in  the  village,  ''  If  she  gets 


the  600  bushels  of  rye,  my  Fritz  will  take 
her ;  if  not,  the  bargain  will  be  off."  This 
had  annoyed  her  so  much,  that  she  had  de- 
termined on  not  being  mixed  up  in  this  corn 
transaction,  had  the  result  been  favorable  to 
her.  So  much  the  more  she  now  requested 
that  the  whole  affair  should  be  broken  off, 
and  his  son  not  annoy  her  again  under  any 
pretext. 

."  That  you  may  be  assured  of,"  the  forest- 
er replied  with  equal  roughness ;  '*  he  shan't 
trouble  you  again,  or,  if  he  does,  I'll  break 
every  bone  in  his  body.  Good-by!  The 
Lord  strengthen  the  old  man !" 

Fritz,  though,  did  come  again,  and  that 
too  on  the  next  night,  as  he  did  not  dare  do 
so  by  day.  He  knocked  at  his  belo\'ed's 
little  bedroom  window ;  she  recognized  him 
immediately  in  the  moonlight,  but  would  not 
open  to  him.  At  length  she  did  so,  how- 
ever, and  she  now  heard  his  complaints, 
which  were  accompanied  by  bitter  tears,  and 
with  the  entreaty  that  she  would  remain  faith- 
ful to  him,  let  things  happen  as  they  would. 

But  she  replied  boldly,  "  Fritz,  our  con- 
nection is  broken  off  for  ever.  Farewell,  and 
do  not  dare  to  knock  at  my  window  a  second 
time  by  night;  I  give  you  my  word,  that  if 
you  do,  I  will  write  to  your  father  the  next 
morning.  So  now,  farewell,  and  may  the 
Lord  guide  you,  and  preserve  your  father 
longer  to  you  than  He  will  mine  to  me." 

With  these  words  she  sighed  and  closed 
the  window,  and  spite  of  all  poor  Fritz's  en- 
treaties, could  not  be  induced  to  open  it  again, 
but  went  into  her  father's  room,  whom  she 
heard  sighing  and  groaning. 

On  the  next  morning,  however,  she  was 
destined  to  suffer  still  more.  The  baron  no 
sooner  heard  of  the  old  man's  serious  illness, 
than  he  spitefully  sent  a  message  to  him: 
"He  would  have  the  goodness  to  leave  his 
house  next  morning,  for  the  rectory  was  go- 
ing to  be  pulled  down,  and  a  new  one  built 
in  its  stead." 

He  naturally  answered:  "That  it  was 
perfectly  impossible  for  him  to  do  so,  as  he 
was  very  ill,  and  would  hardly  leave  his  bed 
again.  He  had  lived  so  long  in  the  old 
house,  that  he  should  like  to  stay  in  it  till  his 
death.  The  baron  would  surely  be  kind 
enough  to  let  him  die  there." 

But  the  first  messenger  was  followed  by 
another,  "  The  matter  could  not  be  deferred  : 
the  pastor  had  made  such  serious  complaints 
to  the  Royal  Chamber,  that  the  baron  could 
by  no  posbibility  delay  in  sending  in  carpen- 
ters and  masons ;  the  house  must  be  given 
up  the  next  day." 


72 


THE  PREACHER'S  DAUGHTEB. 


[Sept., 


Sophie,  however,  did  not  sufler  this  second 
messenger  to  appear  before  the  terrified 
pastor,  but  sent  to  tell  the  baron,  that  if  he 
could  answer  it  to  God  and  man  for  driving 
a  dying  man  out  of  his  house,  he  might  do 
it.  If  her  father  died,  though,  she  would 
spend  her  last  farthing  in  avenging  his  death, 
even  if  she  had  to  beg  her  way  to  Potsdam. 

Of  course  the  baron  was  not  induced  by 
this  to  alter  his  views  in  the  slightest ;  for 
what  could  appear  to  him  more  ridioulous 
than  this  threat  ?  On  the  next  morning  a 
number  of  carpenters  and  masons  came  from 

the  town  of  U ,  climbed,  in  spite  of  all 

poor  Sophie's  entreatie;*,  on  to  the  roof,  and 
tiles,  beams,  and  spars  soon  fell  down  before 
the  sick  man's  window. 

Sophie  attempted  to  calm  her  dying  father 
as  well  as  he  could,  and  persuade  him  that 
the  baron  was  going  to  have  the  house  new 
roofed  ;  but  when  the  carpenters  came  in 
and  sorrowfully  stated  that  they  must  now 
pull  up  the  flooring,  she  fainted  with  a  loud 
shriek  at  the  baron's  barbarity,  while  the 
compassionate  carpenters  raised  the  dying 
man  from  his  bed,  put  on  his  dressing-gown 
and  slippers,  placed  him^  in  his  easy -chair, 
and  carried  him  out  and  seated  him  in  the 
full  glare  of  the  sun,  by  the  side  of  the  road. 
The  baron  stood  with  his  telescope  behind 
the  walnut-tree :  Sophie  was  still  in  a  faint- 
ing fit;  and*  only  an  old  woman  had  the 
courage  to  approach  the  chair,  and  throw 
her  apron  over  the  head  of  the  old  man,  who 
continually  ejaculated,  "My  eyes  !  my  eyes!" 
Hut  almost  at  the  same  moment  he  breathed 
his  last  sigh  ;  and  when  Sophie  was  at  length 
aroused  to  life,  and  rushed  towards  her 
father  with  a  cry  of  horror,  she  only  held  a 
corpse  in  her  arms. 

Although  she  asked  the  clergyman  pre- 
sent at  her  father's  funeral  how  she  should 
act  against  the  baron's  unsupportable  tyranny, 
they  .only  shrugged  their  shoulders ;  and 
even  ii  one  oflfered  her  counsel,  it  did  not 
appear  to  her  good.  But  her  determination 
— which  the  gentlemen  disapproved — of 
going  to  Potsdam  and  telling  her  sorrrw  to 
the  great  king,  remained  firmer  than  ever, 
and  was  executed  even  before  she  anticipated. 

She  had,  namely,  been  forced  to  take  up 
her  abode  in  the  barn,*  into  which  she  had 
carried  her  scanty  furniture,  and  cooked  her 
poor  food  in  the  pardon.  For,  as  she  had  a 
year  of  grace  allowed  her,  and  no  other 
place  of  shelter  could  be  found  in  the  village, 
she  was  not  able  to  quit  the  terrible  spot. 
A  few  days  later  some  butchers  arrived,  and 
she  suddenly  decided  on  selling  her  six  sheep. 


in  order  to  procure  money  for  her  travel- 
ling expenses  to  Berlin ;  a  matter  that  had 
troubled  her  greatly.  But  when  the  maid 
opened  the  door  of  the  dilapidated  stable, 
all  the  sheep  had  found  their  way  out,  for 
the  stables  at  the  rectory  had  always  been 
left  by  the  patron  in  the  same  miserable  con* 
dition  as  the  dwelling-house.  She  therefore 
sent  the  maid  along  the  road  to  look  for  the 
sheep,  while  she  herself  went  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  baron's  garden,  to  see  whether 
they  had  found  their  way  thither.  The 
butchers  followed  her  by  some  divine  inter- 
position, for  unfortunately,  or  rather  fortu- 
nately, the  sheep  had  got  into  the  baron's 
garden,  and  were  cropping  the  grass  along 
the  flower-beds.  Sophie  was  preparing  lo 
drive  them  out,  and  called  the  men  to  her 
assistance,  when  the  baron  made  his  appear- 
ance, and,  in  his  rage,  attacked  the  poor  girl 
with  the  lowest  abuse. 

''What!  the  infamous  creature  has  the 
audacity  to  let  her  sheep  enter  my  garden ! 
If  she  dare  do  it  again,  I  will  demand  the 
pound  money  with  my  hunting  whip !" 

When  she  fell  back  at  this  coarse  remark, 
and  replied,  "Is  it  not  enough  that  your 
grace  has  robbed  my  father  of  his  life,  but 
you  wish  to  deprive  me  of  my  honor  before 
these  strange  men  ?" 

The  baron  vociferated,  with  a  contemptu- 
ous laugh,  "  Ha,  ha !  your  honor !  Your 
father  wrote  me  himself  that  you  had  to  do 
with  the  forester's  Fritz,  and  the  herd  lately 
saw  the  young  clodhopper  climb  in  at  your 
window.     Your  honor !" 

Upon  this  she  advanced  boldly  up  to  the 
baron,  and  said,  in  a  loud  voice :  "  You  lie, 
you  are  a  miserable  calumniator,  and  injus- 
tice is  still  to  be  found  on  earth,  I  will  seek  it 
with  my  lapt  farthing.     God  help  me !" 

The  baron,  however,  could  no  longer  re- 
strain his  anger ;  he  rushed  at  her  and  struck 
her  repeatedly,  while  assailing  her  with  the 
coarsest  invectives. 

The  poor  ill-treated  girl  soon  made  up  her 
mind,  and  said  to  the  butchers,  "  You  shall 
have  the  sheep  for  the  price  you  offered,  al- 
though it  is  very  low,  but  you  must  come 

with  me  to  U -,  and  bear  testimony  on 

oath  to  what  you  have  seen  and  heard  here." 

The  men  consented,  and  after  giving  them 
something  to  eat,  she  tied  up  her  best  clothes 
in  a  bundle,  gave  the  maid  charge  of  the 
rectory,  and  followed  the  men  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  afterwards  to  the  neighboring  town. 
The  burgomaster  there  was  an  old  friend  of 
her  father,  and,  like  all  the  rest,  detested  the 
proud   and   tyrannical   baron.      He  gladly 


1868.] 


THE  PREACHER'S  DAUGHTER. 


1Z 


heard  the  testimony  of  the  witnesses^  and 
swore  them  to  the  truth,  at  the  same  time 
sent  for  the  carpenters  who  were  witness  to 
her  father's  death,  hut  expressed  his  opinion 
that  the  journey  to  Potsdam  would  be  of 
little  service  to  her,  as  the  baron  was  an  ex- 
traordinary fovorite  of  the  king,  as  all  the 
world  knew,  and  his  majesty,  through  his  in- 
creasing age  and  weakness,  was  not  in  the 
habit  of  receiving  anybody — more  especially 
women.  He  would  advise  her  to.  commence 
legal  proceedings. 

This,  however,  she  would  not  listen  to,  and 
only  looked  about  for  the  herd,  that  his  tes- 
timony might  also  be  taken.  Fortunately 
the  baron  had  very  lately  discharged  him 
on  account  of  his  age,  and  he  had  been  at  a 
neighboring  farm  for  the  last  month  in  the 
same  capacity.  It  was  not  difficult,  there- 
fore, to  obtain  his  testimony,  which,  besides, 
was  perfectly  consistent  with  truth  ;  and  he 
asserted  that  he  had  never  mentioned  the 
nightly  scene  of  which  he  had  been  witness 
in  any  other  way,  and  the  baron  lied  in  his 
throat  if  he  said  anything  about  climbing  in 
at  the  window.  In  fact,  he  quoted  all  that 
Sophie  had  said  on  the  occasion,  before  she 
shut  the  window  in  her  lover's  face,  as  he  ex- 
pressed himself.  Besides  the  herd,  the  sex- 
ton, several  preachers  of  the  vicinity,  the 
forester  Weihcr,  and  others  not  immeaiately 
subjected  to  the  baron's  tyranny,  gave  their 
evidence  about  the  owing  dues,  which  at 
least  proved  thus  much — that  the  deceased 
pastor  had  repeatedly  asserted  that  the  baron 
was  indebted  to  him  in  the  dues  for  the  last 
ten  years. 

Several  days  were  occupied  in  protocolling 
all  this:  but  it  was  scarce  done  before  Sophie 
took  her  seat  in  the  mail,  accompanied  by 
the  heartiest  wishes  on  |;he  part  of  the  burgo- 
master, and  in  six  or  seven  days  arrived 
safely  in  Potsdam. 

But  what  to  do  then  ?  She  sat  and  told 
her  landlord,  with  tears,  how  she  had  been 
treated,  and  begged  his  advice.  He,  how- 
ever, only  shrugfl^ed  his  shoulders,  and  said : 
"The  old  gentleman  was  growing  far  too 
peevish ;  he  could  not  offer  her  any  hope." 
Bat  as  suffering  Beauty  has  always,  up  to 
the  present  day,  maintained  its  power  over 
every  uncorrupted  heart,  the  same  occurred 
here.  A  guest,  who  was  accidentally  present, 
and  had  been  sitting  over  his  beer  silently, 
and,  as  it  seemed,  witl^out  paying  any  atten- 
tion, now  asked,  in  a  cordial  tone,  if  he  might 
look  through  mamsell's  papers  for  a  moment  ? 
Of  course  she  gladly  consented,  and  the  man, 
after  casting  his  eye  over  them,  and  finding 


they  perfectly  agreed  with  her  statement,  be- 
came quite  the  opposite  of  what  he  had  ap- 
peared. 

'*  The  rascally  baron  !"  he  exclaimed ;  "  it's 
hardly  credible  that  such  villany  can  take 
place!  But,  God  willing,  dear  mamsell,  I 
can  help  you.  I  am  the  brother  of  the  roy- 
al gardener  at  Sans  Souci,  and  will  go  there 
directly  and  see  what  can  be  done  ;  and  you 
will  follow  me  boldly  in  an  hour.  His  house 
is  on  the  right  hand  side  after  you  enter." 

With  these  words  the  worthy  man  left  the 
room,  while  Sophie  dried  her  tears,  and  with 
longing  eyes  followed  the  minute-hand  on 
the  clock.  The  hour  had  scarce  elapsed^ 
when  she  entrusted  her  bundle  to  the  land- 
lord, and  commenced  her  walk  with  the  docu- 
ments beneath  her  arm.  She  had  but  reach- 
ed the  street,  when  the  clock  struck  the  hour 
in  the  steeple  of  the  garrison  church,  and 
the  chimes  commenced  plaj'ing  the  melody 
of  the  beautiful  hymn,  "  Who  puts  his  trust 
in  God  alone  !"  This  moved  her  to  tears ; 
and  repeating  the  whole  hymn  fervently,  she 
went  along  the  road  that  was  pointed  out  tp 
her.  In  the  gardener  she  found  a  man  as 
well-meaning  as  his  brother.  "  But,"  he 
said,  "if  the  king  is  not  in  a  good  humor 
to  morrow  morning  when  he  visits  the  gar- 
den, you  will  have  to  wait  several  days,  for 
it  would  be  dangerous  to  speak  to  him  before. 
He  is  accustomed  to  inspect  the  large  orange 
and  lemon-trees  th^re  on  the  terrace  every 
morning  about  ten  o'clock,  when  no  one  ac- 
companies him  except  a  little  grayhound. 
You  must  conceal  yourself  sotaewhere  in  the 
neighborhood,  which  I  will*  show  you  be- 
forehand, so  that  I  may  be  able  to  make  you 
a  sign  when  it  is  time  to  appear.  Be  per- 
fectly calm,  and  give  short  and  bold  answers : 
the  king  still  likes  to  see  pretty  girls,  although 
he  is  so  old.  Well,  then,  I  shall  see  you  to- 
morrow morning  at  nine  o'clock  by  the  latest, 
dear  child !" 

She  took  her  leave :  but  it  may  be  easily 
conceived  that  the  poor  village  girl  did  not 
'sleep.  At  the  appointed  hour  she  again 
went  timidly  to  Sans  Souci,  and  after  being 
in  some  degree  cheered  and  encouraged  by 
the  kind  gardener,  she  hid  herself  behind  a 
large  myrtle- tree. 

She  had  been  standing  there  scarce  half 
an  hour,  when  the  king,  dressed  in  a  plain 
blue  coat,  with  the  celebrated  crutch-stick  in 
his  hand,  and  an  old,  shabby  chapeau,  a  tri" 
comes,  upon  his  head,  came  out  of  a  neigh- 
boring allee,  and  stopped  before  a  splendid 
orange-tree. 

The  gardener    immediately  approached 


74 


THE  PREACHER'S  DAUGHTER. 


[Sept,, 


him  with  great  reverence :  but  while  the  king 
was  addresising  a  few  words  to  him,  the  gray- 
hound  had  seen  the  poor  trembling  girl»  and 
ran  towards  her  with  such  violent  barking 
that  the  king  noticed  it,  and  cried  to  the  dog, 
**  Molly  !  Molly  1  qu*y-a-t-il  ? — couche  mon 
chienr 

But  fate  willed  it  that,  while  he  looked  up, 
Sophie  also  peeped  out  from  behind  the 
myrtle-tree,  and  their  eyes  met.  She  thought 
that  she  would  sink  into  the  ground  from  ter- 
ror ;  but  this  rencontre  perfectly  satisfied  the 
king's  poetical  feelings. 

"  Diable,  gardener  !"  he  cried,  with  a  loud 
laugh,  "you  hide  your  pretty  girls  behind 
myrtle-bushes  ?" 

The  gardener  now  had  a  famous  opportuni- 
ty. He  imparted  the  poor  girl's  story  to  the 
lung  with  brevity,  but  great  sympathy;  and 
it  was  not  long  before  Frederick  pointed  with 
his  crutch  to  the  myrtle,  and  called  out,  "  She 
must  come  hither." 

This  naturally  increased  Sophie's  terror: 
but  she  became  still  more  alarmed,  when  the 
great  king  fixed  his  great  eyes  upon  her,  and 
said,  in  a  rather  harsh  tone,  "  What  does  she 
want  here  ?" 

She  turned  pale,  and  was  silent  for  a  mo- 
ment ;  but  soon  collected  herself,  and  gave 
the  reply,  which  seemed  to  please  the  kin 
immensely,  '*  What  I,  a  poor  orphan,  can  fin 
nowhere  else — ^justice  V  for  he  smiled,  and 
said : 

"  Well,  we'll  see  :  she  can  give  me  the  pa- 
pers, and  come  again  to-morrow  morning.  I 
should  never  have  believed  it  of  the  fellow ; 
but  several  complaints  have  been  already  sent 
in  about  him.    So,  to-morrow,  at  this  time !" 

With  these  words  the  fi^reat  man  dismissed 
her  with  a  kind  nod,  and  on  the  next  morn- 
ing she  did  not  think  of  concealing  herself 
behind  the  myrtle.  The  king  did  not  keep 
her  waiting  long.  He  approached  her  with 
the  words : 

"  Why,  these  are  terrible  matters :  but  she 
can  now  go  home ;  she  shall  have  justice ; 
and  as  regards  the  dues,  she  need  only  give 
the  baron  this  letter.  And  now  she  must  make 
haste  home,  or  the  bridegroom  will  find  time 
hang  heavy  on  his  hands." 

And  as  she  blushed  deeply,  and  received 
the  letter  with  downcast  eyes,  the  king  added, 

"  Apropos,  what  is  her  bridegroom's  name  ?" 

*'  Ah  !  your  majesty,*^  she  replied,  as  she 
became  more  and  more  embarrassed,  "  the 
marriage  is  entirely  broken  off.  For,  as  the 
fathW  IS  in  doubt  whether  his  son  will  be  ap- 
pointed his  assistant,  he'll  not  know  anything 
about  the  marriage." 


"  What's  the  father's  name,  and  what  is 
he?" 

*'  Weiher,  most  gracious  sire,  and  he  is  a 
royal  forester." 

"  Well,  I  will  make  some  inquiries  about 
him,  and  if  he  is  an  honest  fellow,  she  can 
ask  the  folk  to  the  wedding — does  she  un- 
derstand me  ?" 

Delighted,  but  at  the  same  time  ashamed, 
the  poor  girl  did  not  know,  what  answer  to 
give,  and  commenced  stammering,  when  the 
king  laughingly  helped  her  in  her  charming 
confusion,  by  saying, 

^*  Well,  well,  she  can  go ;  or  else,  as  I  said, 
her  bridegroom  will  be  wishing  her  back." 

It  is  not  necessary  to  state  that  she  did  not 
delay  a  moment,  but,  after  returning  her 
sincere  thanks  to  the  generous  gardener  and 
his  brother,  she  commenced  her  journey 
home  on  the  same  day.  But  travelling  in 
those  days  was  a  tedious  and  laborious  affair. 
She  required  nearly  eight  days  to  reach  her 
sequestered  village  again,  and  her  first  inqui- 
ry, after  entering  the  rectory,  or  rather  the 
barn,  naturally  was  about  the  baron.  Bat 
not  merely  the  maid,  but  the  whole  village, 
informed  her  that  he  would  certainly  become 
a  minister,  as  he  had  always  said,  for  he  had 
gone  to  Stettin  that  morning  in  his  best  equi- 
page, by  royal  order,  and  all  his  household 
was  full  of  joy  and  delight. 

Sophie  thought  it  advisable  to  keep  silent, 
although  the  baroness,  on  hearing  of  her  re- 
turn, sent  her  compliments,  and  asked  her 
*'  How  old  Fritz  was,  and  what  the  yonng 
lady  had  obtained  from  him  ?" 

She  determined  on  awaiting  the  result, 
and  informed  no  one  of  her  success,  not  even 
the  young  forester,  whom  she  saw  the  next 
day  walking  through  the  village  and  looking 
towards  the  barn,  but  who  did  not  dare  to 
approach  her,  and  only  met  her,  as  it  were, 
accidentally,  on  the  third  day.  To  his  earnest 
entreaties  about  what  she  had  done,  and  if 
she  still  loved  him,  he  received  the  reply, 
'^  I  cannot  tell  you,  Mosye  Fritz,  till  you  are 
appointed  assistant  to  your  father." 

"  What,  are  you  jesting  with  me  ?" 

''  No!  but  I  trust  it  will  soon  happen." 

" In  heaven's  name,  what  do  you  mean?" 

"  Take  your  time,  dear  Fritz." 

"  Well,  then,  what  did  you  do  about  the 
baron  ?" 

"All  in  good  time,  dear  Fritz.  Adye, 
forester,  adye ;"  and  she  ran  into  the  court- 
yard without  another  word. 

Fritz  did  not  dare  follow  her,  for  she  had 
not  recalled  her  orders ;  and  he  saw  at  the 
same   time  that   such  a  proceeding   would 


1858.J 


THE  PREACHER'S  DAUGHTER. 


75 


cause  her  great  pain.  He  satisfied  himself, 
therefore,  with  goin^r  at  least  once  to  the 
village  to  peep  into  the  rectory,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  inquire  ahout  the  haron's  return. 
And  the  latter  really  came  hack  in  a  few  days, 
but  in  what  a  condition!  Groaning  with 
pain,  and  invoking  the  most  terrible  curses 
on  the  king  and  the  preacher's  daughter,  he 
was  raised  from  his  carriage  by  four  servants, 
and  carried  into  the  house,  while  his  family 
followed  him  with  looks  of  horror — some- 
thing different  from  the  expected  ministerial 
appointment. 

The  rumor  of  his  terrible  punishment  in 
Stettin  soon  spread  through  the  village,  as 
well  as  the  whole  neighborhood.  For  al- 
though he  had  ordered  his  coachman  and 
servants,  with  fearful  threats,  not  to  say  a 
word  about  the  chastisement  he  had  received, 
and  of  which  they  had  been  witnesses,  still 
his  continued  iroprecation3  on  the  king,  whom 
he  had  formerly  lauded  to  the  skies,  and  the 
preacher's  daughter,  made  the  villagers  half 
mad  "with  excitement,  and  coachman  and 
servants  were  compelled  to  tell,  whether  they 
liked  it  or  not. 

The  following  is  old  Father  Frank's  nar- 
rative,  who,  a  young  man  of  about  twenty- 
five  years  of  age,  drove  his  master  in  the 
state  carriage  and  gold  livery  to  Stettin ;  the 
others  are  long  since  dead. 

'*We  had  scarcely,"  he  stated,  "driven 
m  a  sharp  trot  up  to  the  gate-house  at ''Stet- 
tin, and  the  baron  had  hardly  mentioned  his 
name,  before  two  under- officers  came  out,  one 
of  whom  entered  the  carriage,  and  sat  by 
my  master's  side,  the  other  mounted  the  box. 
The  baron  cursed  and  abused  like  a  spar- 
row, and  called  the  gate-keeper  to  witness 
that  a  common  fellow    had  dared  to  enter 

the  Baron  von  L 's  carriage.     No  one 

took  any  notice,  however,  and  it  was  not 
long  before  the  under-officer  by  my  side  or- 
dered me  to  drive  straight  to  the  main  guard- 
house. The  carriage  had  hardly  stopped  be- 
fore it,  when  the  guard  assembled  under 
arms,  and  the  under-officer  who  sat  in  the 
carriage  cried  from  the  window,  *  Lieutenant, 
I  have  the  prisoner  with  me.' 

"  My  master  had  a  good  deal  to  say>  but 
the  officer  would  not  suffer  him  to  speak,  and 
ordered  him  to  be  taken  to  the  guard-room, 
and  spend  the  night  there  with  the  common 
soldiers.  This  did  not  at  all  please  the  baron, 
and   he    repeatedly  cried, '  There  must   be 

some  mistake  ;  he  was  the  Baron  von  L , 

and  a  friend  of  the  king.  The  devil  might 
fetch  officer  and  soldiers ;'  he  requested  paper 
and  ink,  that  he  might  write  to  the  governor. 


This  was  allowed  him,  and  Carl,  his  servant, 
hurried  away  to  the  president  with  the  let- 
ter, but  no  answer  was  returned. 

"  My  master  stopped  in  the  stifling  hole 
till  ten  the  next  morning,  when  I  received 
orders  to  put  the  horses  to,  and  drive  in  front 
of  the  main  guard.  This  was  scarce  done 
when  the  guard  again  assembled  under  arms, 
and  soon  formed  a  circle  round  the  baron, 
whom  two  corporals  now  led  out  and  placed 
before  a  bundle  of  straw  that  lay  on  the 
pavement.  A  government  councillor  soon 
made  his  appearance,  and  after  taking  off  his 
hat,  read  an  order  signed  by  old  Fritz,  in  pur- 
suance of  which,  the  Baron  von  L was 

to  be  stripped  of  his  order  '  Pour  le  M6rite,* 
before  the  guard -house  of  Stettin,  and,  in 
addition,  receive  forty  blows  with  the  hazel 
stick,  for  ill-treating  the  Pastor  Thilo  and 
his  daughter. 

'*  When  my  master  was  about  to  reply,  the 
drums  commenced  playing  the  '  rogue's 
march,'  by  order  of  tne  officer  on  duty ;  the 
government  councillor  tore  the  order  from 
his  neck,  two  under-officers  threw  him  on 
the  bundle  of  straw,  and  two  others  began 
laying  on  to  him.  They  were  the  same  who 
had  got  into  the  carriage  on  the  previous  day, 
and  received  dog's  thanks  from  the  baroQ  for  • 
it.  This  they  now  honestly  repaid  him.  My 
master  roared,  so  that  he  could  be  heard 
above  all  the  drums ;  and  when  he  had  re- 
ceived his  punishment,  the  two  under-officers 
who  had  beaten  him  carried  him  to  the  car- 
riage, placed  him  in  it,  and  then  said  to  me, 
with  a  laugh,  'Now,  coachman,  drive  home.' " 

Thus  old  Father  Frank  told  the  tragical 
story  at  that  day,  and  does  the  same  now  (my 
friend  continued))  and  the  news  spread  like 
wildfire  throughout  the  neighborhood.  No 
one  pitied  the  baron,  but  all  were  delighted 
with  the  courageous  preacher's  daughter, 
who  behaved,  however,  as  if  nothing  had  oc- 
curred, and  remained  quietly  at  home.  When 
she  heard,  though,  that  the  baron  was  grow- 
ing daily  weaker,  she  went  to  U ,  and 

induced  the  burgomaster  to  deliver  the  royal 
letter  personally  to  the  unfortunate  man.  No 
one  ever  learned  its  contents,  but  the  effect 
was  so  powerful,  that  the  dying  baron  im- 
mediately sent  to  ask  her  whether  she  would 
have  the  600  bushels  in  natura  or  in  money, 
according  to  the  average  of  the  last  six  years  ? 
As  she  preferred  the  fatter,  he«  com  missioned 
the  burgomaster  to  pay  her  the  money  im- 
mediately, in  the  presence  of  witnesses  at 
IT .     The  next  day  he  expired. 

But  in  this  instance  Sophie  again  acted 
very  cleverly.    She  begged  the  burgomas- 


Yfl 


THE  GREEK  OP  HOMER  A  LIVING  LANGUAGEL 


[Sept., 


ter  to  summon  the  forester  Weiher  as  wit- 
ness, under  the  pretence  that  he  had  lately 
sworn  by  all  that  was  good  and  great  that 
she  would  never  get  the  money,  and  would 
not  be  satisfied  unless  his  eyes  told  him  the 
contrary.  The  real  cause  of  this  request 
lay  deeper,  for  how  the  forester  repented 
his  sins,  when,  in  a  few  days  after,  the  hard 
crowns  were  counted  out  on  the  table  in  his 
presence,  and  Rector's  Sophie,  as  he  called 
her,  received  the  money  quite  calmly,  paid 
no  attention  to  his  grimaces,  but  made  a  low 
curtsey  to  him  on  leaving,  and  packed  the 
heavy  bags,  one  after  the  other,  in  the  car- 
riage, to  deposit  them  with  a  clergyman,  a 
cousin  of  hers,  in  the  neighborhood.  At 
that  day  it  was  an  immense  sum,  and  many 
a  gentleman  would  not  have  feit  ashamed 
about  doing  a  foolish  trick,  and  courting 
Rector's  Sophie. 

But  what  were  his  feelings  when,  in  a  few 
weeks  after,  he  received  a  letter  from  the 
chief  forester,  with  the  joyful  news  "  that 
his  majesty  had  been  pleased,  on  the  inter- 
cession of  Sophie  Thilo,  the  daughter  of  the 
Rector  of  S ,  to  appoint  his  son  his  as- 
sistant, as  he,  the  chief  forester,  had  repre- 
sented him  to  his  majesty  as  a  good  wood- 
man, and  at  the  same  time  trusted  that  his 
son,  &c.,  <S?c." 

Father  and  son  were  liighly  delighted, 
and  all  their  anxiety  was  how  to  restore  mat- 
ters on  the  old  footing  with  Sophie. 

"  You  must  go  first,  Fritz,"  the  old  man 
said. 


"  No,  you  must  go  first,  papa,"  said  the 
son,  ''for  you  alone  broke  the  marriage 
oflF." 

The  old  man  scratched  his  head,  and  con- 
sented to  do  it,  but  first  sent  her  a  cartload 
of  dry  beech  fire-wood,  to  get  her  in  a  good 
humor. 

In  short,  the  end  may  be  anticipated.  Af- 
ter Sophie  had  given  the  old  gentleman  a 
proper  lecture,  the  blood  rushed  to  her  face 
when  Fritz  came  creeping  in  half  an  hour 
later,  and  stood  bashfully  at  the  door. 

"Nearer,  nearer,  dear  Fritz,"  she  cried,  as 
she  extended  her  arms  towards  him ;  and 
when  their  emotion  had  subsided,  she  told 
them  circumstantially  all  that  had  occurred 
to  her. 

The  merriest  possible  marriage  soon  fol- 
lowed, about  which  old  Father  Frank  still 
has  a  good  deal  to  say ;  for,  after  the  baron's 
death,  he  immediately  entered  the  forester's 
service, 

'*  I  never  met,"  my  friend  concluded  his 
narrative,  "  a  more  happy  and  contented 
couple  than  they  were.  They  were  grow- 
ing old  when  I  was  appointed  to  the  rectory 
here ;  but,  let  me  visit  them  when  I  would, 
they  were  always  cheerful,  happy,  and 
pious." 

Thus  much  about  Fritz  the  forester  and 
Sophie  Thilo,  whose  modest  grave  I  visited 
during  the  afternoon  with  my  friend,  and  re- 
garded with  much  interest.  They  died 
fifteen  years  before,  on  the  same  day,  and 
were  buried  in  one  grave.  Fortunate  beings ! 


i>»«- 


•♦♦• 


The  Greek  of  Homer  a  Living  Language. 
— ^An  effort,  savs  the  Westminster  Review, 
has  been  made  by  Mr.  Blackie,  Professor  of 
Greek  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  to  re- 
form the  pronunciation  of  Greek  in  that  Uni- 
Tersity.  He  is  teaching  his  students  to  pro- 
nounce Greek  as  they  do  in  Greece,  insisting 
that  it  is  not  a  dead,  but  a  living  language — 
as  any  one  may  see  by  looking  at  a  Greek 
newspaper.  Professor  Blackie  ffives  an  ex- 
tract from  a  newspaper  printed  last  year  at 
Athens,  giving  an  account  of  Kossuth  s  visit 
to  America,  from  which  it  is  evident  that  the 


language  of  Homer  lives  in  a  state  of  purity, 
to  which,  considering  the  extraordinary  dura- 
tion of  its  little  existence — two  thousand  five 
hundred  years  at  least — there  is  no?  parallel 
perhaps  on  the  face  of  the  globe.  After  no- 
ticing a  few  trifling  modifications,  which  dis- 
tinguish modem  from  ancient  Greek,  he  states, 
as  a  fact,  that  in  three  columns  of  a  Greek 
newspaper  of  the  year  1852,  there  does  not 
occur  three  words  that  are  not  pure  native 
Greek ;  so  very  slightly  has  it  been  corrupt- 
ed from  foreign  sources. 


1863.] 


THE  DAUGHTEBS  OF  CHARLES  I. 


11 


From  the  Gentleman's  Magazine. 


THE     DAUGHTERS    OF    CHARLES  I 


Crashaw,  the  poet  and  protegi  of  Henri- 
etta Maria,  appears  to  have  striven  with 
much  zeal  and  entire  fruitlessness  to  catch 
the  laureate  crown,  which  Ben  Jonson  had 
worn  with  rough  but  glittering  dignity. 
Never  did  any  patented  "  Versificator  Regis," 
from  Gaulo  to  Davenant,  so  praise  princes 
and  princesses,  born  or  expectant,  as  Crashaw 
did.  The  Carolinian  births  were  the  active 
stimulants  of  his  muse.  The  coming  tf  the 
heir  apparent  was  hailed  by  his  "  In  Sanctis- 
simae  Reginas  partum  hyemalem."  The  first 
wailing  cry  of  the  little  Duke  of  York  was 
celebrated  in  the  "  Natalis  Ducis  Eboracen- 
sis."  His  prophetic  muse  waxed  bold  during 
a  later,  pregnancy  of  the  queen,  and  the  vktea 
confidently  predicted  the  addition  of  another 
prince  to  the  family  circle  of  Charles.  Nor 
was  he  wrong ;  the  ode  '•  Ad  Principem 
nondum  natum,  Regin&  gravida,"  was  apt 
welcome  for  the  unconscious  Duke  of  Glouces- 
ter, who  lived  to  be  the  simple  "Master 
Henry"  of  the  plain-spoken  Puritans.  The 
zeal  of  Crashaw  went  so  far  that  he  even 
rushed  into  metre  to  make  thankful  record  of 
the  king's  recovery  from  an  eruption  in  the 
face.  The  rhymer's  "  In  Faciem  Augustissimi 
Regb  a  morbillis  integram"  pleasantly  por- 
trayed how  his  sacred  majesty  had  been 
afflicted  with  pimples,  and  how  he  had  been 
ultimately  relieved  from  the  undignified 
visitation. 

The  poet  would  seem  to  have  somewhat  un- 
gallantly  neglected  the  daughters  of  Charles 
and  Henrietta  Maria.  His  poetic  fire  never 
blazed  very  brilliantly  for  the  princesses. 
His  inspiration,  like  the  Salic  law,  favored 
only  the  heirs  male.  The  young  ladies,  how- 
ever, were  not  undeserving  of  having  lyres 
especially  strung  to  sound  their  praises. 
There  were  four  of  them — namely,  Mary,  bom 
in  1631  ;  the  heroic  little  Elizabeth,  born  in 
1635  ;  the  happy  Anne,  in  1636 — 1 ;  and 
the  celebrated  Henrietta  Anne,  in  1644. 

Of  these  the  Prince9s  Anne  was  by  far 
the  happiest,  for  she  had  the  inexpressible 
advantage  of  gently  descending  into  toe  grave 
at  the  early  yet  sufficiently  advanced  age  of 


three  years  and  nine  months.  It  was  some 
time  before  the  birth  of  "liappy  Anne"  that 
Rochester  Carr,  brother  of  the  Lincolnshire 
baronet,  Sir  Robert,  publicly  declared,  in  his 
half-insane  way,  that  he  would  fain  kill  the 
king,  if  he  might  only  wed  with  his  widow. 
When  this  offensive  sort  of  gallantry  was  re- 
ported to  Henrietta,  **  She  fell  into  such  a 
passion  as  her  lace  was  cut  to  give  her  more 
breath."  Thus  the  storms  of  the  world  blew 
around  "  felix  Anna,"  even  before  her  little 
bark  entered  on  the  ocean  over  which,  angel- 
led,  she  made  so^apid  a  passage  to  the  ha- 
ven of  the  better  land. 

Mary,  the  eldest  of  the  daughters  of 
Charles,  had  something  of  a  calculating  dis- 
position; she  possessed  a  business-like  mind, 
had  much  shrewdness,  and  contrived  to 
secure,  in  her  quiet  way,  as  much  felicity  as 
she  could  or  as  she  cared  to  secure.  Her 
mother  had  an  eager  desire  to  rear  this 
favorite  child  for  the  Romish  communion. 
Charles  himself  is  said  by  the  queen's  chap- 
lain, Gamache,  not  to  have  cared  much  about 
the  matter.  The  priest  says  of  the  king  that 
the  latter  held  that  salvation  did  not  depend 
on  communion,  and  that,  if  he  expressly 
desired  a  child  of  his  to  be  a  Protestant,  it 
was  in  some  sort  because  his  people  accused 
him  of  being  too  favorably  disposed  towards 
the  faith  of  Rome.  However  this  may  have 
been,  Gamache  did  his  best  to  undo  the 
teaching  of  Mary's  orthodox  instructors.  He 
boasts  of  having  impressed  on  this  child — by 
command,  if  I  remember  rightly,  of  her 
mother — the  necessity  and  the  profit  of 
knowing  and  practising  all  that  was  taught 
by  Roman  Catholicism.  The  little  girl's  eyes 
sparkled  as  the  remarkably  honest  fellow  sug- 
gested to  her  that  she  would  probably  marry 
a  great  Catholic  potentate,  the  King  of  Spain, 
the  Emperor  of  Germany,  or,  greater  than 
both,  the  Grand  Monarque  of  France.  There 
were  no  other  thrones,  he  intimated,  much 
worth  the  having ;  and,  if  she  hoped  ever  to 
hold  a  sceptre  on  one  of  them,  the  first  ne- 
cessary qualification  was  to  become  a  Ro- 
manist at  once,  and  to  say  nothing  about  it 


IS 


THE  DAUGHTEKS  OF  CHARLES  L 


[Sept., 


or  the  present !  Our  Mary  did  not  choose 
he  better  part.  She  stole  to  mass  with  the 
delight  of  Madame  de  Caylus,  who  told  Ma- 
dame de  Maintenon  that  she  would  turn  Ro- 
man Catholic  at  once  if  she  might  only  once 
hear  the  royal  mass,  listen  to  the  music,  and 
smell  the  incense  daily.  It  was  "so  nice/' 
she  remarked. 

Well,  Mary  had  much  the  same  opinion 
of  all  this,  particularly  as  there  was  a  choice 
selection  of  consorts  at  the  end  of  it.  A 
little  **  Catholic"  maid  was  placed  about  her 
person,  who  received  from  Father  Gamache 
instructions  similar  to  those  given  by  Brother 
Ignatius  Spencer  for  the  guidance  of  all 
Romish  servants  in  Protestant  fumiiies,  and 
the  little  maid  fulfilled  her  office  admirably. 
Mary,  though  she  outwardly  wore  the  guise 
of  a  thorough  Protestant  princess,  wore  also 
a  rosary  in  her  pocket ;  and  nothing  gave  her 
greater  glee,  or  more  delight  to  Father  Ga- 
mache, than  when  she  could  display  it  behind 
the  back  of  her  father's  chaplain,  and,  after 
kissing  it,  hide  the  forbidden  aid  to  devotion 
before  the  Protestant  minister  could  divine 
why  the  queen  and  Father  Gamache  were 
smiling. 

But,  after  all,  the  mirth  and  the  machina- 
tions of  this  worthy  pair  were  all  in  vain.  A 
wooer  came  in  due  time,  not  from  the  Romish 
pale,  but  from  stout  Protestant  Holland ;  and 
before  the  warmth  with  which  Prince  Wil- 
*  liam  of  Orange  plied  his  ^uit  the  Catholicity 
of  the  lady  melted  like  morning  dew  beneath 
a  May  sun.  The  princess  was  touched  and 
her  sire  approved  ;  and  in  1643,  when  Mary 
was  but  twelve  years  old,  she  was  conducted 
across  the  seas,  by  Van  Tromp  and  an  escort 
of  a  score  of  gallant  ships- of- war,  ,to  the 
country  of  her  future  husband.  The  great- 
est joy  she  had  after  her  early  marriage  was 
in  1648,  when  she  welcomed  at  the  Hague 
the  Duke  of  York  (who  had  escaped  from 
St.  James'  in  female  costume)  and  her  other 
brother  the  Prince  of  Wales,  who  had  gone 
to  Helvoetsluys,  where  there  ensued  much 
intrigue,  little  action,  and  less  profit. 

A  brief  two  years  followed,  and  then  th  s 
youthful  wife  found  herself  a  widow,  and  a 
mother  expectant.  Her  husband  suddenly 
died  of  the  scourge  that  then  commonly  de- 
stroyed princes  and  peasants — the  smalUpox. 
She  remained  in  dignified  retirement  at  her 
house  near  the  Hague,  where,  says  Pepys, 
"  There  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  rooms  for 
pictures  in  the  whole  world.  She  had  here 
one  picture  upon  the  top,  with  these  words, 
dedicating  it  to  the  memory  of  her  husband : 
— '  Incomparabili    marito,  inconsolabilis  vi- 1 


dua.* "  Poor  thing !  the  "  semper  moerens" 
promised  by  mourners  has  but  a  stunted 
eternity.  Our  last  year's  dead  are  beyond 
both  our  memory  and  our  tears. 

At  the  Restoration  Mary  repaired  to  Eng- 
land to  felicitate  her  worthless  brother  on  his 
good  fortune.     She  there  once  more  met  her 
mother ;  and  the  court  was  in  the  very  high 
top-gallant  of  its  joy,  when  the  princess  was 
suddenly  seized  with  smalUpoz.     Henrietta 
Maria  was  desirous  that  her  daughter  should 
at .  least  die  in  the  profession  of  the  Romish 
faith;  but  she  was  deterred  from  entering 
the^  apartment  of  her  sick  child,  either  by  thq 
malignity  of  the  disorder  or  the  jealousy  of 
the  princess'  attendants.     Father  Gamache 
takes  it  as  the  most  natural  and  proper  thing 
in  the  world  that,  conversion  not  having  beea 
realized,  the  disease  had  been  made  fatal  by 
divine  {ippointment  I     However  this  may  be, 
the  death  of  the  princess  (on  the  21st  Decem- 
ber, 1660)  was  laid  to  tl^e  incapacity  of  Dr. 
Farmer  and  the  other  medical  men  to  whose 
care  she  was  entrusted ;  and  we  hear  from 
Evelyn  that  her  decease  '*  entirely  altered  the 
face  and  gallantry  of  the  whole  court."    Bur- 
net, by  no  means  so  good  authority  in  this 
particular  case  as  Evelyn,  gives  a  different 
view  of  the  effect  produced  at  court  by  the 
demise  of  the   princess  royal,  following  so 
swiftly  as  it  did  on  the  death,  also  by  small- 
pox, of  her  young  and  clever  brother,  Henry 
Duke  of  Gloucester.     "  Not  long  after  him, 
says  Burnet,  '^the  princess  royal  died,  also 
of  the   small-pox,   but   was  not   much   la- 
mented."    Burnet  acknowledges,  however, 
her  many  merits — that  she  had  been  of  good 
reputation  as  wife  and  widow,  had  lived  with 
becoming   dignity  as  regarded  herself  and 
court,  treated  her  brothers  with  princely  lib- 
erality, and  kept  within  the  limits  of  her  own 
income.     The  same  writer  says  of  her  that 
her  head  was  turned  by  her  mother's  pretence 
of  being  able  to  marry  her  to  the  King  of 
France — a  prospect  that  turned  the  heads  of 
many  ladies  at  that  time,  the  niece  of  Cardi- 
nal Mazarin  among  various  others.     Burnet 
roundly  asserts  that  to  realize  this  prospect 
she  launched  into  an  extravagant  splendor, 
the  cost  of  which  not  only  injured  her  own 
income,  but  tempted  her  to  deal  dishonestly 
with  the  jewels  and  estates  of  her  son,  held 
by  her  in  a  guardianship,  the  trusts  of  which 
she  betrayed.     He  adds  that  she  not  only 
was  disappointed  in   her  expectations,  but 
that  she  *'  lessened  the  reputation  which  she 
had  formerly  lived  in," — a  strange  epitaph 
to  be  written  by  him  who  found  a  benefactor 
in  her  son,  and  of  her  who  is  allowed  to  have 


1853.  J 


THE  DAFGHTERS  OF  OHARLES  L 


79 


been,  with  some  faults,  gentle,  forgiving,  pa- 
tient, affectionate,  and  Brm-minded. 

Of  her  younger  sister,  Elizabeth,  Clarendon 
has  given  a  perfect  picture  in  a  few  express- 
ive words.  She  was,  says  the  parenthesis- 
loving  historian,  "  a  lady  of  excellent  parts, 
great  observation,  and  an  early  understand- 
ing." The  whole  of  her  brief  but  eventful 
life  gave  testimony  to  the  truth  of  this  de- 
scription. The  storms  of  the  times  had  swept 
her  from  the  hearts  of  her  parents,  as  they  had 
indeed  also  divided  those  parents,  and  extin- 
guished the  fire  at  that  hearth.  She  had 
successively  been  under  the  wardenship  of 
Lady  Dorset  and  of  old  Lady  Yere,  and  was 
transferred  from  the  latter  to  the  custody  of 
the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  was  already 
responsible  for  the  safe-keeping  of  her  broth- 
ers York  and  Gloucester.  In  the  good  earl 
they  had  no  surly  jailer,  and  he  shared  in  the 
joy  of  the  children  when,  in  1647,  they  were 
permitted  to  have  an  interview  with  their  un- 
happy father  at  Maidenhead,  and  to  sojourn 
with  him  during  two  fast-dying  days  of 
mingled  cloud  and  sunshine  in  Lord  Craven's 
house  at  Caversham,  near  Reading.  The 
house  still  stands,  and  is  a  conspicuous  ob- 
ject seen  from  the  Reading  station.  It  is  in 
the  occupation  of  the  great  iron- master,  Mr. 
Crawshay. 

Some  of  the  touching  interviews  which 
were  held  in  Caversham  House  are  said  to 
have  been  witnessed  by  Cromwell,  and  Sir 
John  Berkeley  states  that  Oliver  described 
them  to  him  as  "  the  tenderest  sight  his  eyes 
ever  beheld."  "  Cromwell,**  adds  Sir  John, 
"said  much  in  commendation  of  his  maj- 
esty," and  expressed  his  hope  that  ^  God  would 
be  pleased  to  look  upon  him  according  to  the 
sincerity  of  his  heart  towards  the  king." 

The  prison  home  of  the  Princess  Elizabeth 
and  her  brothers  was  Syon  House  at  Isle- 
worth — the  house  of  ill-omen  from  which 
Lady  Jane  Grey  had  departed  by  water  for 
the  Tower  to  seek  a  sceptre  and  to  find  an 
axe.  The  monarch  visited  his  children  more 
than  once  at  the  house  of  the  Earl  of  North- 
umberland, at  Syon.  With  the  boys  he 
talked,  and  to  them  gave  counsel ;  but,  if  he 
advised  Elizabeth,  he  also  listened  with 
marked  and  gratified  attention  to  her  descrip- 
tions of  persons  and  things,  and  to  her  clear 
ideas  upon  what  was  passing  around  her. 
His  chief  advice  to  her  consisted  in  the  re- 
iterated injunction  to  obey  her  mother  in  all 
things  except  in  matters  of  religion — "  to 
which  he  commanded  her,  upon  his  blessing, 
never  to  hearken  or  consent,  but  to  continue 
firm  in  the  religion  she  had  been  instructed 


and  educated  in,  what  discountenance  or  ruin 
soever  might  befall  the  poor  church  at  that 
time  under  so  severe  persecution.*'  She  pro- 
mised obedience  to  her  father's  counsel,  and 
imparted  joy  by  that  promise,  as  she  did  two 
years  subsequently,  when,  in  1649,  she  layon 
her  sire's  bosom  a  few  hours  before  his  exe- 
cution, and  made  him  alternately  weep  and 
smile  at  the  impression  which,  he  saw  had 
been  made  upon  her  by  the  calamities  of  her 
family,  and  at  the  evidence  of  advanced 
judgment  afforded  by  her  conversation.  As 
the  young  girl  lay  on  the  father's  heart — that 
heart  that  was  so  soon  to  be  no  longer  con- 
scious of  the  pulse  of  life — he  charged  her 
with  a  message  to  her  mother,  then  in  France. 
It  was  a  message  of  undying  love  mingled 
with  assurances  of  a  fidelity  strong  unto 
death.  The  little  message-bearer  was  never 
permitted  to  fulfil  her  mission,  and  the 
mother  to  whom  she  was  to  have  borne  it, 
found,  it  is  said,  a  pillow  for  her  aching  head 
on  the  sympathizing  breast  of  the  Earl  of 
St.  Alban's.  The  wife  of  Caesar  stooped  to 
a  centurion.  • 

•*  If  I  were  you  I  would  not  stay  here," 
was  the  speech  uttered  one  day  by  Elizabeth 
to  her  brother  James.  They  were  both  then, 
with  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  in  confinement 
at  St.  James'.  The  speech  was  at  once  an 
incentive  and  a  reproach.  Elizabeth  urged 
him  thereby  to  accomplish  the  fliglit  which 
theirfather  had  recommended  him  to  attempt. 
The  young  Duke  of  Guise,  heir  of  the  slayer 
who  was  slain  at  Blots,  escaped  from  his 
prison  by  outwitting  his  keeper  at  a  childish 
game.  The  royal  captive  children  of  the 
Stuart  for  the  same  end  got  up  a  game  at 
"hide  and  seek,"  and  they  were  still  in 
pretended  search  of  James,  when  the  latter, 
disguised  as  a  girl,  was  awkwardly  but  suc- 
cessfully making  his  way  to  temporary  safety. 
For  their  share  in  this  escapade  the  little  con- 
spirators were  transmitted  to  Carisbrook, 
where  they  were  kept  in  close  confinement  in 
the  locality  where  their  father  had  so  deeply 
suffered  in  the  last  days  of  his  trials.  The 
prineess  bore  her  captivity  like  a  proudly-de- 
sponding caged  eaglet,  whom  grief  and  indig- 
nity can  kill,  but  who  utters  no  sound  in 
testimony  of  suffering.  The  utilitarian  gov- 
ernment of  the  period  designed,  it  is  said,  to 
have  apprenticed  this  daughter  of  a  line  of 
kings  to  a  needle  or  button  maker  in  New- 
port! Providence  saved  her  from  the  degra- 
dation by  a  well-timed  death.  "Elizabeth 
Stuart"  sickened,  died,  and  was  buried.  The 
very  locality  of  her  burial  even  perished  with 
her  from  the  memory  of  man.    It  was  only 


ao 


THE  DAUGHTERS  OF  CHARLES  I. 


[Sept, 


discovered  more  than  two  centuries  after, 
-when  kincrs  were  acrain  at  a  discount  and 
idtra-democracy  was  once  more  rampant. 

It  is  somewhat  singular  that,  whereas 
among  the  inhabitants  of  Newport  it  became 
forgotten  that  the  body  of  the  young  Eliza- 
beth lay  in  their  church,  the  villagers  of 
Church  Handborough,  near  Whitney,  boasted 
of  possessing  the  mortal  remains  of  her  father, 
Charles  I.  Tliis  boast  was  founded  on  a  very 
magniloquent  inscription  on  a  tablet  within 
the  church,  and  wliich  the  parishioners  took 
for  an  epitaph.  He  was  a  hearty  old  cava- 
lier who  wrote  it,  and  though  the  villagers 
comprehend  nothing  of  the  robust  Latin  of 
which  it  is  constructed,  tliey  understand  the 
sentiment,  and  to  this  day  consider  it  as  tes- 
timony to  the  fact  that  they  are  as  guardians 
round  the  grave  of  the  Chftrles — who  is  not 
there  interred.* 

The  young  Elizabeth  died  about  a  year  and 
a  half  after  her  father  s  execution.  In  the 
year  1793,  the  year  of  the  decapitation  of 
Louis  XVL  and  of  Marie  Antoinette,  ultra- 
democracy  was  again  raising  its  head  in 
England  where  Charles  had  been  stricken. 
Gentlemen  like  Dr.  Hudson  and  Mr.  Pigott 
drank  seditious  healths  at  the  London  Coffee 
House,  and  rode  in  hackney  coaches  to  prison, 
shouting  Vive  la  Repuhlique,  Libels  against 
the  Queen  of  France,  like  those  of  mad  Lord 
George  Gordon,  were  flying  about  our  streets 
"  thick  as  leaves  in  Valambrosa."  The  Rev- 
erend Mr.  Winterbottom  was  fined  and  im- 
prisoned for  preaching  treasonable  sermons, 
and  so  high  did  party  spirit  run  that  good 
Vicesimus  Knox  had  well-nigh  got  into  seri- 
ous trouble  for  delivering  from  the  Brighton 
pulpit  a  philippic  against  going  to  war.  The 
discourse  so  ruffled  the  plumage  of  some  offi- 
cers, who  liappened  on  the  following  evening 
to  meet  the  reverend  doctor  with  his  wife  and 
family  at  the  theatre,  that  they  created  a 
patriotic  riot,  before  the  violence  of  which 
the  celebrated  essayist,  his  lady,  and  children 

*  The  folio  wiDg  is  the  inscription.  It  might  have 
been  written  between  a  volume  of  Walker^a  La(^- 
rymoo  Koolesin  on  the  one  hand  and  a  flask  of 
Canary  on  the  other.  Thus  rolls  its  thunder  and 
thus  siffhs  the  strain: — "M.  S.  sanotissimi  regis  et 
martyris  Caroli.  SIste  yiator;  lea^,  obmutesce, 
mirare,  memento  Caroli  illius  nommis,  pariter  et 
pietatis  insignidsimo),  primi  Maffnse  BritannisB  regies 
Qjii  rebellium  perfidia  prime  deoeptuSi  et  in  perfi- 
aiorum  rabie  perculsus  inooncusaus  tamen  legum  et 
fidei  defensor,  schismaticorum  tyrannidi  succubuit^ 
anno  servitutis  nostne,  felicitatis  swb,  primo,  corona 
tarrestri  spoliatu^  ooslesti  donatus.  Sileant  autem 
peritunc  tabellsB,  perlege  reliquiasyeresacrasCaro- 
linas,  in  queis  sui  mnemosynem  icre  perenniorem 
vavicius  exprimit;  ilia,  illa'^(«tc)  "Eikon  Basilike." 


were  fairly  swept  out  of  the  house,  the  loyal 
audience  in  which  celebrated  their  tiiumph 
over  as  loyal  a  subject  as  any  there,  by  sing- 
ing God  save  the  King  and  Rule  Britannia. 

Amid  this  noise  of  contending  parties,  roy- 
alist and  republican,  a  quiet  sexton  was  tran- 
quilly engaged,  in  October,  1703,  in  digging 
a  grave  in  the  chancel  of  Newport  church  for 
the  body  of  Septimus  Henry  West,  the  young- 
est brother  of  Lord  Delaware.  The  old  delver 
was  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  bis  exciting  occu- 
pation when  his  spade  struck  against  a  stone, 
on  which  were  engraven  the  initials  **  E.  S." 
Curiosity  begat  research,  and  in  a  vault  per- 
fectly dry  was  found  a  coffin  perfectly  fresh, 
\)n  the  involuted  lid  of  which  the  wondering 
examiners  read  the  words — "Elizabeth,  2d 
daughter  of  y*  late  King  Charles,  dece**  Sept. 
8,  MDCL.*'  Thus  the  hidden  grave  of  her 
who  died  of  the  blows  dealt  at  monarchy  in 
England  was  discovered  when  like  blows  were 
being  threatened,  and  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  republicans  over  the  channel  were 
slaying  their  hapless  queen.  The  affrighted 
spirit  of  Elizabeth  might  well  have  asked  if 
nothing  then  had  been  changed  on  this  trou- 
bled earth,  and  if  killing  kings  were  still  the 
caprice  of  citizen^.  The  only/ answer  that 
could  have  been  given  at  the  moment  would 
have  been,  in  the  words  of  the  adjuration 
"  Vatene  in  pacb'alma  beata  e  bella.''  Torn 
we  now  to  the  sister,  who  was  of  quite  an- 
other complexion. 

On  the  site  of  Bedford  Crescent,  Exeter, 
there  once  stood  a  convent  of  Black  or  Domin- 
ican friars.  At  the  ReCormation  the  convent 
property  was  transferred  to  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell, who  made  of  the  edifice  thereon  a  pro- 
vincial town  residence,  which  took  the  name 
of  "Bedford  House,"  when  the  head  of  the 
Russells  was  advanced  to  an  earldom.  As 
further  greatness  was  forced  upon  or  achieved 
by  the  family  the  old  country  mansion  fell 
into  decay.  There  are  still  some  aged  per- 
sons, verging  upon  ninety,  whose  weary 
memories  can  faintly  recall  the  old  conven- 
tual building  when  it  was  divided  and  let 
in  separate  tenements.  It  was  taken  down, 
to  save  it  from  tumbling  to  pieces,  in  1773, 
and  on  the  site  of  the  house  and  grounds 
stands,  as  I  have  said,  the  present  '^  Bed* 
ford  Crescent."  "Friars'  Row"  would  have 
been  as  apt  a  name. 

In  the  year  1644  the  shifting  fortunes  of 
Charles  compelled  his  queen,  Henrietta 
Maria,  to  seek  a  refuge  in  Exeter,  in  order 
that  she  might  there  bring  into  the  world 
another,  and  the  last,  heir  to  the  sorrows  of 
an  unlucky  sire.    The  corporation  assigned 


1853.] 


THE  DAUGHTEBS  OF  CHARLES  I. 


81 


Bedford  House  to  her  as  a  residence,  and 
made  her  a  present  of  two  hundred  pounds 
to  provide  against  the  exigencies  of  the  com- 
ing time.  In  this  house  was  bom  a  little 
princess,  who  wtis  the  gayest  yet  the  least 
happy  of  the  daughters  of  Charles.  The  day 
of  her  birth  was  the  16th  of  June,  1644. 
She  was  shortly  after  christened  in  the  cathe- 
dral (at  a  font  erected  in  the  body  of  the 
church  under  a  canopy  of  state),  by  the  com- 
pound name  of  Henrietta  Anne.  Dr.  Burnet, 
the  chancellor  of  the  diocese,  officiated  on 
the  occasion,  and  the  good  man  rejoiced  to 
think  that  he  had  enrolled  another  member 
on  the  register  of  the  English  Church.  In 
this  joy  the  queen  took  no  part.  It  is  said 
that  the  eyes  of  the  father  never  fell  upon  the 
daughter  bom  in  the  hour  of  his  great  sor- 
rows ;  but  as  Charles  was  in  Exeter  for  a 
brief  moment  on  the  26th  July,  1644,  it  is 
more  than  probable  that  he  looked  for  once 
and  all  upon  the  face  of  his  unconscious 
child. 

The  Queen  Henrietta  Maria  left  Exeter  for 
the  continent  yery  soon,  some  accounts  say  a 
fortnight,  after  tne  birth  of  Henrietta  Anne. 
The  young  princess  was  given  over  to  the 
tender  keeping  of  Lady  Morton ;  and  when 
opportunity  for  escape  offered  itself  to  them, 
the  notable  governess  assumed  a  somewhat 
squalid  disguise,  and  with  the  little  princess 
(now  some  two  years  old)  attired  in  a  ragged 
costume,  and  made  to  pass  as  her  son  Peter, 
she  made  her  way  on  foot  to  Dover,  as  the 
wife  of  a  servant  out  of  place.  The  only  peril 
that  she  ran  was  from  the  recalcitrating  ob- 
jections made  by  her  precious  and  trouble- 
some charge.  The  little  princess  loved  fine 
clothes,  and  would  not  don  or  wear  mendicant 
rags  but  with  screaming  protest.  All  the  way 
down  to  the  coast ''  Peter"  strove  to  intimate 
to  passing  wayfarers  that  there  was  a  case  of 
abduction  before  them,  and  that  she  was  being 
carried  off  against  her  will.  Had  her  expres- 
sion been  as  clear  as  her  efforts  and  inclina- 
tion, the  pretty  plot  would  have  been  be- 
trayed. Fortunately  she  was  not  so  preco- 
cious of  speech  as  the  infant  Tasso,  and  the 
passengers  on  board  the  boat  to  Calais,  when 
they  saw  the  terrible  "  Peter"  scratching  the 
patient  matron  who  bore  him,  they  only 
thought  how  in  times  to  come  he  would 
make  the  mother's  heart  smart  more  fiercely 
than  he  now  did  her  cheeks.  Peace  of 
course  was  not  restored  until  Lady  Morton, 
soon  after  landing,  cast  off  the  hump  which 
marred  her  naturally  elegant  figure,  and, 
transforming  "  Peter  into  a  princess,  both 
rode  joyously  to  Paris  in  a  coach-and-siz — 

VOL.  XXX,    NO.  L 


as  wonderful  and  as  welcome  as  that  built  by 
fairy  hands  for  the  lady  of  the  glass  slipper, 
out  of  a  portly  pumpkin. 

The  fugitive  princess  had  scarcely  reached 
Paris  when  Henrietta  Maria  resolved  to  undo 
what  Dr.  Burnet  had  so  well  done  at  Exeter, 
and  to  convert  Henrietta  Anne  to  Romanism. 
Father  Gamache  attempted  the  same  with 
Lady  Morton,  but  as  the  latter,  though  she 
listened,  would  not  yield,  the  logical  Jesuit 
pronounced  her  death  by  fever,  many  years 
subsequently,  to  be  the  award  of  Heaven  for 
her  obduracy !  He  found  metal  far  more 
ductile  in  the  youthful  daughter  of  the  King 
of  England.  For  her  especial  use  he  wrote 
three  heavy  octavo  volumes,  entitled  "  Exer- 
cises d'un  Ame  Royale,"  and  probably 
thought  that  the  desired  conversion  was  ac- 
complished less  by  the  bonbons  of  the  court 
than  the  reasoning  of  the  confesson 

The  royal  exiles  lived  in  a  splendid  ndisery. 
They  were  so  magnificently  lodged  and  so 
pitiably  cared  for,  that  they  are  said  to  have 
often  lain  together  in  bed  at  the  Louvre  dur- 
in  a  winter's  day,  in  order  to  keep  themselves 
warm ;  no  fuel  having  been  provided  for  them, 
and  they  lacking  money  to  procure  it.    They 
experienced  more  comfort  in  the  asylum  af- 
forded them  in  the  convent  of  St.  Maria  de 
Chaillot.     Here  Henrietta  Anne  grew  up  a 
graceful  child,  the  delight  of  every  one  save 
Louis  XIY.,  who  hated  her  mortally,  until 
the  time  came  when  he  could  only  love  her 
criminally.     Mother  and   daughter   visited 
England  in  the  autumn  of  the  year  of  the 
Restoration.     P^pys  has  left  a  graphic  out- 
line of  both.     "  The  queen  a  very  little,  plain 
old  woman,  and  nothing  more  in  her  pre- 
sence, |n  any  respect,  nor  garbe,  than  any 
ordinary  woman.     The  Princess  Henrietta  is 
very  pretty,  but  much  below  my  expecta- 
tion ;  and  her  dressing  of  herself,  with  her 
haire  frized  short  up  to  her  eares,  did  make 
her  seem  so  much  the  less  to  me.    But  my 
wife  standing   near  her  with  two  or  three 
black  patches  on,  and  well-dressed,  did  seem 
to  me  much  handsomer  than  she."     Death, 
as  I  have  before  stated,  marred  the  festivities. 
Love  mingled  with  both ;  and  Buckingham, 
who  had  been  sighing  at  the  feet  of  Mary, 
Princess  of  Orange,  now  stood  pouring  un- 
utterable nothings  into  the  ear  of  her  sister. 
Henrietta  Anne.     When  the  latter,  with  her 
mother,  embarked   at   Calais  on  this  royal 
visit  to    England,    they  spent  two  days  in 
reaching  Dover.     On  their  return  they  went 
on  board  at  Portsmouth,  but  storms  drove 
them  back  to  port,   and  the  princess  was 
attacked    by  measles  while    on    the    sea. 
ft 


82 


THE  DAUGHTERS  OF  CHAJtLES  L 


[Sept, 


Buckingham,  in  his  character  of  lover,  at- 
tended her  to  Havre,  displaying  an  out- 
rageous extravagance  of  grief.  Philippe, 
the  handsome,  eneminato,  and  unprincipled 
Duke  of  Orleann,  her  affianced  husband,  met 
her  at  the  last-named  port,  and  tended  her 
with  as  much  or  as  little  assiduity  as  man 
could  show  who  never  knew  what  it  was  to 
feel  a  pure  affection  for  anj  woman  in  the 
world.  The  princesn  felt  little  more  for  him, 
and  still  less  for  Buckingham,  on  whose 
forced  departure  from  Pans  the  daughter  of 
Charles  was  married  to  the  brother  of  Louis, 
the  last  day  of  March,  1661,  in  full  Lent, 
and  with  maimed  rites — a  disregard  for  sea- 
sons and  ceremonies  which  caused  all  France 
to  augur  ill  for  the  consequences. 

'*  Madame,"  as  she  was  now  called,  be- 
came the  idol  of  a  court  that  loved  wit  and 
beauty,  and  was  not  particular  on  the  score 
of  morality.  All  the  men  adored  her ;  and 
the  king,  to  the  scandal  of  his  mother  (Anne 
of  Austria),  was  chief  among  the  worship- 
pers. Her  memoirs  have  been  briefly  and 
rapidly  written  by  her  intimate  friend,  Ma- 
dame de  La  Fayette.*  The  latter  was  an 
authoress  of  repute,  and  the  "  ami  de  coaur," 
to  use  a  soft  term,  of  the  famous  La  Roche- 
foucauld. This  lady  wrote  the  memoirs  of 
the  princess  from  materials  furnished  by  her 
royal  highness,  and  thus  she  portrays  the 
delicate  position  of  Louis  le  Grand  and  Hen- 
riette  d'Angleterre : — "  Madame  entered  into 
close  intimacy  with  the  Countess  of  Soissons, 
and  no  longer  thought  of  pleasing  the  king, 
but  as  a  sister-in-law.  I  think,  however, 
that  she  pleased  him  after  another  fashion ; 
but  I  imagine  that  she  fancied  that  the  king 
himself  was  agreeable  to  her  merely  as  a 
brother-in-law,  when  he  was  probably  some- 
thing more  ;  but,  however,  as  they  were  both 
inflnitely  amiable,  and  both  born  with  dis- 
positions inclined  to  gallantry,  and  that  they 
met  daily  for  purposes  of  amusement  and 
•  festivity,  it  was  clear  to  everybody  that 
they  felt  for  one  another  that  sentiment 
which  is  firenerally  the  forerunner  of  passion- 
ate love. 

"  Monsieur"  became  jealous,  the  two 
queen-mothers  censorious,  the  court  delight- 
ed spectators,  and  the  lovers  perplexed.  To 
conceal  the  criminal  fact,  the  poor  La  Yali^re 

*A  new  aDd  highly  improved  edition  of  theee 
Memoire  has  just  appeared  in  Paris.  It  bears  the 
title  of  "  Histoire  oe  Madame  Henriette  d'Anele- 
terre,  premiere  femme  de  Philippe  de  France,  Duo 
d'Orleans."  Par  Madame  de  La  Fayette.  Publiee 
par  Fen  A  Bazin.  It  is  a  most  amuaiDg  piece  of 
•*oaqueC' 


was  selected  that  the  king  might  make  love 
to  the  latter,  and  so  give  rise  to  the  belief 
that  in  the  new  love  the  old  had  been  for- 
gotten.*    But  Louis  fell  in  lovie  with   La 
Valiere  too,  after  his  fashion,  and  soon  visit- 
ed her  in  state,   preceded  by  drums  and 
trumpets.      "  Madame  "    was  piqued,   and 
took  revenge  or  consolation  in  receiving  the 
aspirations  of  the  Count  de  G niche.   "Mon- 
sieur "  quarrelled  with  the  latter,  confusion 
ensued,  and  the  ancient  queens  by  their  in- 
t(rigues  made  the  confusion  worse  confound- 
ed..   Not  that  they  were  responsible  for  all 
the  confusion.    How  could  they  be,  since 
they  only  misruled  in  an  imbroglio  where- 
in the  kingr  loved  La  Yali^re,  the  Marquis  de 
Marsillac  loved  Madame,  Madame  loved  the 
Count  de  Guiche,  Monsieur  affected  to  love 
Madame   de  Yalentinois,  who  loved  M.  de 
Peguilon,  and  Madame  de  Soissons,  beloved 
by  the  king,  loved  the  Marquis  de  Vardes, 
whom,  however,  she  readily  surrendered  to 
"  Madame,"  in  exchange  for,  or  as  auxiliary 
to.  Monsieur  de  Guiche  1  and  this  chain  of 
love  is,  after  all,  only  a  few  links  in  a  net- 
work that  would  require  a  volume  to  un- 
ravel, and  even  then  would  not  be  worth  the 
trouble  expended  on  it.     They  who  would 
learn  the  erotic  history  of  the  day,  may  con- 
sult the  memoirs  by  Madame  de  La  Fay- 
ette.    The  story  is  like  a  Spanish  comedy, 
full  of  intrigue,  deception,  stilted  sentiment, 
and  the  smallest  possible  quantity  of  prin- 
ciple. There  are  dark  passages,  stolen  meet- 
ings, unblushing  avowals,  angry  husbands 
who  are  not  a  jot  better  than  the  seducers 
against  whom  their  righteous  indignation  is 
directed,  and  complacent  priests  who  utter  a 
low    "  Oh,   fie !''    and  absolve  magnificent 
sinners  who  may  help  them  to  scarlet  hats 
and  the  dignity  of  "  Eminence."     The  chaos 
of  immorality  seemed  come  again.  '^  Madame" 
changed  her  adorers,  and  was   continually 
renewing  the  jealousy  of  "  Monsieur ;"  but 
she  in  some  sort  pacified  him  by  deigning  to 
receive  at  her  table  the  "  ladies  "  whom  he 
mostly  delighted  to  honor.     The  lives  of  the 
whole  parties  were  passed  in  the  unlimited 
indulgence  of  pleasant  sins,  and   in  gayly 
paying  for  their  absolution  from  the  conse- 
quences !    Old  lovers  were  occasionally  exiled 
to  make  room  for  new  ones,  or  out  of  ven- 
geance, but  the  "commerce  d'amour"  never 
ceased  in  the  brilliant  court  of  Lous  le  Grand. 
There  was  scarcely  an  individual  in  that 

*  Btunet  says  that  the  king  made  love  to  Hen- 
rietta to  conceal  his  passion  Tor  La  Valiere ;  bnt^ 
eonsidering  how  he  paid  court  to  the  Utter,  this  is 
not  very  likely. 


1858.] 


THE  DAUGHTERS  OF  CHARLES  L 


88 


court  who  might  not,  when  dying*  have  said 
what  Lord  Muskerry  said,  as  tl^at  exemplary 
individual  lay  on  his  death-hed — "Well,  I 
have  nothing  wherewith  to  reproach  myself, 
for  I  never  denied  myself  anything  !" 

At  length,  in  1670,  Henrietta  once  more 
visited  England.  It  was  against  the  consent 
of  her  husband.  She  had  that  of  the  king ; 
and  her  mission  was  to  arrange  matters  with 
her  brother,  Charles  II.,  to  establish  Roman- 
bm  in  England,  and  to  induce  him  to  become 
the  pensioned  ally  of  France  1  To  further 
her  purpose  she  brought  in  her  train  the 
beautiful  Louise  de  Querouaille.  This  was  a 
"  vrai  trut  de  g^nie."  Charles  took  the  lady 
and  the  money,  and  doubly  sold  himself  and 
country  to  France.  He  made  a  Duchess  (of 
Portsmouth)  of  the  French  concubine,  and 
Louis  added  a  Gallic  title  to  heighten  the 
splendor  of  her  infamy,  and  that  of  the  mon- 
arch who,  for  her  and  filthy  lucre,  had  sold 
his  very  soul.  There  was  some  horrible  story 
referring  to  himself  and  Henrietta,  which  was 
probably  only  invented  to  exasperate  the  hus- 
band of  the  latter  against  her.  There  is  pro- 
bably more  truth  in  the  report  that  the  young 
Duke  of  Monmouth  gazed  on  her  with  a  gal- 
lant assurance  that  met  np  rebuke.  A  few 
days  afterwards,  on  the  29th  of  June,  1070, 
she  was  well  and  joyous  with  Philippe,  no 
participator  in  her  joy,  at  St._  Cloud.  In  the 
evening  she  showed  symptoms  of  faintness, 
but  the  heat  was  intense ;  a  glass  of  chicory 
water  was  offered  to  her,  of  •  which  she 
drank ;  and  she  immediately  complained  of 
being  grievously  ill.  Her  conviction  was 
that  she  was  poisoned,  and  very  little  was 
done  either  to  persuade  her  to  the  contrary, 
or  to  cure  her.  The  agony  she  suffered 
would  have  slain  a  giant.  Amid  it  all  she 
gently  reproached  her  husband  for  his  want 
of  affection  for  her,  and  deposed  to  her  own 
fidelity  1  The  court  gathered  round  her  bed ; 
Louis  came  and  talked  religiously  ;  bis  con- 
sort also  came,  accompanied  by  a  poor  guard 
of  honor,  and  the  royal  concubines  came  too 
escorted  by  little  armies  I  Burnet  says  that 
her  last  words  were,  "  Adieu  Treville,"  ad- 
dressed to  an  old  lovert  who  was  so  affected 
by  them  that  he  turned  monk — for  a  short 
time.  Bossuet  received  her  last  breath,  and 
made  her  funeral  oration ;  of  the  speaker 
and  of  the  oration  in  question,  Yinet  says : 
"  Since  this  great  man  was  obliged  to  flatter, 
I  am  very  glad  he  has  done  it  here  with  so 
little  art,  that  we  may  be  allowed  to  think 
that  adulatiob  was  not  natural  to  his  bold 
and  vigorous  genius."  The  oration  could 
do  as  little  gwA  to  her  reputation,  as  the 


dedication  to  her,  by  Racine,  of  his  "  An- 
dromaque,"  could  do  her  glory.*  As  to  her 
ultimate  fate,  it  was  difficult  even  at  the  time 
to  prove  that  she  was  poisoned.  The  chicory 
water  was  thrown  away,  and  the  vessel  which 
contained  it  had  been  cleansed  before  it 
could  be  examined.  There  were  deponents 
ready  to  swear  that  the  body  betrayed  evi- 
dences of  poison,  and  others  that  no  traces 
of  it  were  to  be  discovered.  All  present 
protested  innocence,  while  one  is  said  to 
have  confidentially  confessed  to  the  king,  on 
promise  of  pardon,  that  he  had. been  ex- 
pressly engaged  in  compassing  the  catastro- 
phe. No  wonder,  amid  the  conflicting  tes- 
timony, that  Temple,  who  had  been  dis- 
patched from  London  to  inquire  into  the 
affair,  could  only  oracularly  resolve  that 
there  was  more  in  the  matter  tban  he  cared 
to  talk  about,  and  that  at  all  events  Charles 
had  better  be  silent,  as  he  was  too  power- 
less to  resent  the  alleged  crime.  And  so 
ended  the  last  of  the  daughters  of  Charles 
Stuart,  all  of  whom  died  young,  or  died 
suddenly — and  none  but  the  infant  Anne 
happily. 

At  the  hour  of  the  death  of  Henrietta 
there  stood  weeping  by  her  side  her  fair 
young  daughter,  Maria  Louisa.  The  child 
was  eight  years  of  age,  and  Montague,  on 
that  very  day,  had  been  painting  her  portrait. 
In  the  year  1688,  that  child,  who  had  risen 
to  the  dignity  of  Queen  of  Spain,  and 
was  renowned  for  her  beauty,  wit,  and 
vivacity,  was  presented  by  an  attendant  with 
a  cup  of  milk.  She  drank  the  draught  and 
died. 

Thus  was  extinguished  the  female  line 
descended  from  Charles.  Their  mother 
Henrietta  Maria,  left  her  heart  to  the  Nuns 
of  the  Visitation,  to  whose  good-keeping 
James  II.  left  his  own,  and  confided  that  oi 
his  daughter,  Louisa  Maria.  The  heart  of 
the  king  was  finally  transferred  to  the  chapel 
of  the  English  Benedictines  in  the  faubourg 
St.  Jacques.  During  the  Revolution,  the  in- 
surrectionists of  the  day  shivered  to  pieces 
the  urn  in  which  it  was  contained,  and  trod 
— — *   ■       ■        ■ 

*The  funeral  oration  contained  the  following 
passage:  "She  most  deeoend  to  tlioae  gloomy  re- 

g'ons  (he  was  speaking  of  the  rov^  vaults  at  St 
enis)^  with  thoee  annihilated  kings  and  prinoes 
among  whom  we  can  soareelj  find  room  to  place 
her,  80  crowded  are  the  ranloL''  When  the  oody 
of  the  Dauphin,  son  of  Louis  XIV.,  was  deposited 
in  these  vaults^  in  1778,  it  was  remarked  with  a 
"vague  terror,"  as  Bungener  says  in  his  "Un 
Sermon  sous  Louis  XFv./'  that  the  royal  vanlt 
waa  entirely  full.  There  was  literally  no  pkM  for 
Louis  ZYI.  in  the  tottb  of  his  anoeston. 


84 


GHLOBOFORH 


the  heart  into  dast  upon  the  floor  of  the 
chapel.  They  did  as  much  to  the  royal 
hearts  enshrined  at  the  "  Visitation."    The 


[Sept., 


very  dust  of  the  sons  and  the  daughters  of 
Stuart  was  again  an  abomination  in  the  eyes 
of  democracy. 


From  Bent  ley's  Hitcellany 


CHLOROFORM. 


Here  Letluw^,  with  deadly  deep  oppreeeed. 
Stretched  onniB  back,  a  mighty  Inboard  lay, 
Heaving  his  sides  and  snoring  night  and  day; 
To  stir  him  from  his  trance  it  was  not  eath, 
And  his  half-opened  eyne  he  shnt  straightwi^; 
He  led,  I  wot^  the  softest  way  to  death. 
And  tanght  withonten  pain  and  strife  to  yield  the  breath. 

Castlk  or  Imdolxkos. 


Thb  desire  to  drown  pain  has  existed  from 
the  time  that  suffering  became  the  inheritance 
of  fallen  man ;  and  the  discovery  of  means 
by  which  it  can  be  averted  has  justly  been 
regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest  triumphs  of 
modem  science,  for  in  it  are  alike  interested 
high  and  low,  rich  and  poor ;  and  it  is  the 
general  interest  which  leads  us  to  draw  aside, 
m  some  degree,  the  veil  from  the  chamber 
of  suffering  for  the  comfort  of  some,  perhaps, 
and  the  information  of  many  who  are  desi- 
rous of  knowing  in  what  way  people  are  af- 
fected by  Chloroform. 

The  most  usual  effect  is  to  produce  a  pro- 
found sleep ;  so  profound  that  volition,  and 
sensation  are  alike  suspended,  and  this  is  of- 
ten attended  with  a  symptom  very  alarming 
to  relatives  or  bystanders  unprepared  for  it ; 
we  allude  to  a  loud  snoring  or  stertorous 
breathing,  which  conveys  the  idea  of  much 
suffering  to  those  who  are  not  aware  that  in 
itself  it  IS  direct  evidence  tSf  the  deepest  un- 
consciousness. It  is  not  however  invariably 
produced  :  we  have  seen  a  fine  child  brought 
in — ^laid  down  with  its  hands  gently  folded 
across  its  body — ^have  chloroform  adminis- 
tered— undergo  a  severe  operation,  and  be 
oarried  to  bed  without  once  changing  its  at- 
titude, or  its  countenance  altering  from  the 
expression  of  the  calm  sweet  sleep  of  infan- 
cy. Sometimes,  however,  strange  scenes  are 
enacted  under  anaestheticB,  one  of  which  we 
will  describe.  The  uninitiated  have  a  vague 
idea  that  the  operating  theatre  of  hospitals 


is  a  very  dreadful  place ;  certainly,  patients 
having  once  given  their  consent  to  enter  it 
may,  so  far  as  escape  goes,  say  in  the  words 
of  Dante, 

'  Lasciate  ogni  speranza  voi  ch'  entrate,' 

but  every  consideration  is  shown  to  soften 
down  as  much  as  possible  the  terrors  insepa- 
rable from  a  chamber  of  torture. 

Ima^ne  then  a  lofty  semicircular  apart- 
ment, lighted  from  above,  with  a  large  space 
railed  off  on  the  ground,  and  railed  steps  in 
tiers,  sweeping  half  round,  and  affording 
standing  room  for  more  than  a  hundred  spec- 
tators, principally  students,  who,  conversing 
in  low  tones,  are  awaiting  the  expected  ope- 
ration. In  the  centre  of  the  open  space  is  a 
strong  conch,  or  table,  now  covered  with  a 
clean  sheet,  and  beneath  its  foot  is  a  wooden 
tray,  thickly  strewn  with  yellow  sand.  On 
another  table,  also  covered  with  a  white  cloth, 
are  arranged,  in  perfect  order,  numerous 
keen  and  formidable  looking  instruments,  the 
edge  of  one  of  which,  a  long,  sword-like, 
double-edged  knife — a  gentleman  with  his 
cuffs  turned  up,  is  trying,  by  shaving  off  little 
bits  of  cuticle  from  the  palm  of  his  hand,  and 
two  or  three  assistants  are  quietly  threading 
needles,  and  making  other  preparations.  The 
gentleman  with  the  knife  being  satisfied  as 
to  its  condition,  gives  a  glance  round,  and 
seeing  everything  m  perfect  readiness,  nods, 
and  a  dresser  leaves  the  room.    After  a  min- 


1853.] 


OHLOBOFOBll 


SB 


ute  or  two,  a  shuffling  of  feet  is  heard,  the 
folding  doors  are  thrown  open,  and  a  strong, 
surly-looking,  bull-headed  ''navvy/'  whose 
leg  has  been  smashed  by  a  railway  accident, 
is  borne  in  and  gently  placed  on  the  table. 
His  face  is  damp  and  pale,  he  casts  an  anx- 
ious— eager  look  around,  then  with  a  shud- 
der closes  his  eyes,  and  lies  down  on  his 
back.  The  chloroform  apparatus  is  now  ap- 
plied to  his  mouth,  i  nd  a  dead  silence  marks 
the  general  expectancy.  The  man's  face 
flushes — he  struggles,  and  some  muffled  ex- 
clamations are  heard.  In  a  minute  or  two 
more  the  gentleman  who  has  charge  of  the 
chloroform  examines  his  eyes,  touches  the 
eyeball — the  lids  wink  not,  the  operator  steps 
forward,  and  in  a  trice  the  limb  is  transfixed 
with  the  long  bistoury. 

Some  intelligence  now  animates^  the  pa- 
tient's face,  which  bears  a  look  of  drunken 
jollity.  '^Ha!  ha!  ha!  Capital  I"  he 
shouts,  evidently  in  imagination  with  his  boon 
companions,  "a  jolly  good  song,  and  jolly 
well  sung !  I  always  know'd  Jem  was  a  good 
un  to  chaunt !  I  sing !  dash  my  wiffif  I 
ain't  as  husky  as  a  broken-winded  'os.  Well, 
if  I  must,  I  must,  so  here  goes." 

By  this  time  the  bone  hcs  been  bared,  and 
the  operator  saws,  whilst  the  patient  shouts 

« <  rTiB  my  delight  o'  a  moonlight  night—' 

whose  that  a  treading  on  my  toe?  None 
o'your  tricks,  Jem !  Hold  your  jaw,  will 
you  ?  Who  can  sing  when  you  are  making 
such  a  blessed  row  ?  ToU-de-roMoll.  Come, 
gi'e  us  a  drop,  will  ye  ?  What !  drunk  it 
all  ?  Te  greedy  beggars !  I'll  fight  the  best 
man  among  ye  for  half  a  fardenl"  and 
straightway  he  endeavors  tu  hit  out,  narrow- 
ly missing  the  spectacles  of  a  gentleman  in 
a  white  cravat,  who  steps  hastily  back,  and 
exclaims,  *'  hold  him  fast !" 

The  leg  being  now  separated,  is  placed  un- 
der the  table,  and  the  arteries  are  tied,  with 
some  little  difflculty,  on  account  of  the  un- 
steadiness of  the  patient,  who,  besides  his 
pugnacity  in  general,  has  a  quarrel  with  an 
unaginary  bull-dog,  which  he  finds  it  neces- 
sary to  kick  out  of  the  room.  He,  however, 
recovers  his  good  humor  whilst  the  dressings 
are  being  applied,  and  is  borne  out  of  the 
theatre  shouting,  singing,  and  anathematizing 
in  a  most  stentorian '  voice ;  when  in  bed, 
however,  he  falls  asleep,  and  in  twenty  min- 
utes awakes  very  subdued,  in  utter  ignorance 
that  any  operation  has  been  performed,  and 
with  only  a  dim  recollection  of  being  taken 
into  the  theatre,  breathing  something,  and 
feeling  *'  werry  queer,"  as  he  expresses  it. 


Now  this  scene  is  a  faithful  description  of 
an  incident  witnessed  by  tlie  writer  at  one  of 
our  county  hospitab  to  which  he  is  attached, 
and  those  who  have  seen  much  of  the  admin- 
istration of  ether  and  chloroform  will  remem- 
ber many  resembling  it.  The  man  was  a 
hard  drinker,  and  a  dose  of  chloroform  which 
would  have  placed  most  persons  in  deep 
sleep,  deprived  him  of  sensation,  but  went  no 
further  than  exciting  the  phantasms  of  a 
drunken  dream. 

A  writer  in  the  North  British  Review  says 
that "  experience  has  fully  shown  that  the 
brain  may  be  acted  on  so  as  to  annihilate  for 
the  time  what  may  be  termed  the  faculty  of 
feeline  pain;  the  organ  of  general  sense 
may  be  lulled  into  profound  sleep,  while  the 
orffan  of  special  sense  and  the  organ  of  in- 
tellectual function  remain  wide-awake,  ac- 
tive, and  busily  employed.  The  patient  may 
feel  no  pain  under  very  cruel  cutting,  and 
yet  he  may  see,  hear,  taste,  and  smell,  as 
well  as  ever,  to  all  appearance ;  and  he  may 
also  be  perfectly  conscious  of  everything 
within  reach  of  his  observation — able  to 
reason  on  such  events  most  lucidly,  and  able 
to  retain  both  the  events  and  the  reasoning 
in  bis  memory  afterwards.'  We  have  seen  a 
patient  following  the  operator  with  her  eyes 
most  intelligently  and  watchfully  as  he  smft- 
ed  his  place  near  her,  lifted  his  knife,  and  pro- 
ceedea  to  use  it — wincinff  not  at  all  during 
its  use  ;  answering  questions  by  gesture  very 
readily  and  plainly,  and  after  the  operation 
was  over,  narrating  every  event  as  it  occur- 
red, declaring  that  she  knew  and  saw  all ; 
stating  that  she  knew  and  felt  that  she  was 
being  cut,  and  yet  that  she  felt  no  pain 
whatever.  Patients  have  said  quietly,  '  Vou 
are  sawing  now,'  during  the  use  of  the  saw 
in  amputation ;  and  afterwards'  they  have 
declared  most  solemnly  that  though  quite 
conscious  of  that  part  of  the  operation,  they 
felt  no  pain."  We  may  here  remark,  that  a 
very  common,  but  erroneous  supposition  is, 
that  sawing  through  the  marrow  is  the  most 
painful  part  of  an  amputation;  this  has 
arisen  from  confounding  thb  fatty  matter  of 
the  txue  marrow  with  the  spinal  cord — a 
totally  different  thing — the  sensation  of  saw- 
ing the  bone  is  like  that  of  filing  the  teeth, 
and  is  not  to  be  compared  with  tne  first  in- 
cision, which  is  verv  much  as  if  a  red-hot 
iron  swept  round  the  limb. 

When  ether  was  used,  such  scenes  as 
that  described,  occurred ;  but,  with  rare  ex- 
ceptions, chloroform  effectually  wipes  out  the 
tablets  of  the  bnun,  and  prevents  any  recol- 
lection of  the  incidents  that  occur  during  its 


86 


OHLOROFORiq 


[Sept., 


influence ;  we  bare  often  beard  a  person  talk  | 
coherently  enough  when  pArliallj  under  its 
influence,  yet  afterwards  no  effort  of  memory 
could  recall  the  conversation  to  his  mind. 

An  able  London  physician.  Dr.  Snow,  has 
paid  great  attention  to  the  administration  of 
chloroform,  and  has  satisfied  himself  by 
actual  observation,  that  when  there  are  ob- 
seure  indications  of  pun  during  an  opera- 
tion, there  is  no  Buffering,  properly  so  to 
speak,  for  sensation  returns  gradually  in  thos« 
cases  where  complete  consciousness  is  regained 
before  the  common  sensibility.  Under  these 
circumstances  the  patient,  when  first  begin- 
ning to  feel,  describes  as  something  priclcing 
or  pinching,  proceedings  that  without  andBs- 
Ihetics  would  cause  intense  pain,  and  does 
not  feel  at  all  that  which  would  at  another  time 
excite  considerable  suffering. 

The  disposition  to  sing  is  by  no  means  un- 
common during  the  stage  of  excitement ; 
we  well  remember  the  painful  astonishment 
of  a  grave  elderly  abstinent  divine,  who, 
on  being  told  after  an  operation  that  he  had 
sang,  exclaimed,  **  Good  gracious,  is  it  pos* 
sible !  Why,  my  dear  Sir,  I  never  sang  a 
song  in  my  life,  and  is  it  possible  I  could 
have  so  committed  myself — but  what  could  I 
have  sung  ?*'  A  little  badinage  took  place, 
it  being  insinuated  that  the  son^  was  of 
a  rather  Tom-Moorish  character,  tiTl  his  hor- 
ror became  so  great  it  was  necessary  to  re- 
lieve his  mind  by  telling  him  that  ''  Halle- 
lujah "  was  the  burden  of  his  chaunt. 

The  general  condition  of  the  patient  as 
regards  robustness  or  the  contrary,  has  been 
found  by  Dr.  Snow  to  exercise  a  consider- 
able influence  on  the  way  in  which  chloro- 
form acts;  usually  the  more  feeble  the 
patient  is,  the  more  quietly  does  he  become 
msensible ;  whilst  if  he  is  strong  and  robust 
there  is  very  likely  to  be  mental  excitement, 
rigidity  of  the  muscles,  and  perhaps  strug- 
gling. Dr.  Snow  has  frequently  exhibited 
chloroform  in  extreme  old  age  with  the  best 
effiects,  and  does  not  consider  it  a  source  of 
danger  when  proper  care  is  taken  ;  old  per- 
•  sons  are  generally  rather  longer  than  others 
in  recovering  their  consciousness,  probably 
because,  owing  to  their  circulation  and  respi- 
ration being  less  active,  the  vapor  requires 
a  longer  time  to  escape  by  thu  lungs,  and  it 
may  be  remarked,  that  chloroform  passes  off" 
unchanged  from  the  blood,  in  the  expired 
air. 

The  usual  and  expected  effect  of  chloro- 
form is  to  deprive  the  individual  of  con- 
sciousness ;  but  it  occasionally  fails  to  do 
thb,  and  gives  rise  to  a  very  remarkable 


irance-like  'condition.  We  were  once  pres- 
ent when  chloroform  was  administered  to  a 
lady  about  to  undergo  a  painful  operation  on 
the  mouth ;  the  usual  phenomena  took  place, 
and  in  due  time  the  gentleman  who  adminis- 
tered the  vapor  announced  that  she  was  per- 
fectly insensible  ;  the  operation  was  perform- 
ed, and  during  its  progress  the  bystanders 
conversed  unreservedly  on  its  difficulties  and 
the  prospects  of  buccess. 

When  the  patient  *•  came  to,"  she,  to  our 
utter  astonishment,  asserted  that  she  had 
been  perfectly  conscious  the  whole  time, 
though  unable  to  make  the  least  sign  or 
movement,  had  felt  pain,  and  had  heard 
every  word  spoken,  which  was  proved  by 
her  repeating  the  conversation ;  she  stated 
that  the  time  seemed  a  perfect  age,  and  that 
though  hearing  and  feeling  what  was  going 
on  she  lived  her  life  over  again,  events  even 
of  early  childhood  long  forgotten,  risiiiig  up 
like  a  picture  before  her.  It  is  said,  and 
truly,  that  in  the  few  seconds  between  sleep- 
ing and  waking,  some  of  the  longest  dreams 
take  place,  and  that  a  drowning  man  has 
just  before  the  extinction  of  consciousness 
reviewed  as  in  a  mirror,  every  action  of  his  life. 
So  in  the  case  of  this  lady,  years  appeared 
to  move  slowly  on  and  to  be  succeeded  by 
other  years  with  all  their  events,  each  at- 
tended with  corresponding  emotions,  during 
the  few  minutes  she  was  fairly  under  the  chlo- 
roformic  influence  :  yet  with  all  this  the  pro- 
minent feeling  was  an  intense  struggling  to 
make  us  aware  that  she  was  not  insensible; 
of  which  condition  there  was  every  outward 
indication. 

Our  readers  must  all  be  familiar,  from  ob- 
servation or  description,  with  the  mimosa 
pudica  or  sensitive  plant ;  now  it  is  a  curi- 
ous fact  that  the  influence  of  chloroform  is 
not  confined  to  the  animal  kingdom,  but 
extends  to  the  vegetable  world,  for  Profes- 
sor Marcet  of  Geneva  has  ascertained  that 
it  possesses  the  power  of  arresting  for  a 
time,  if  not  of  altogether  destroying,  the  irri- 
tability of  the  sensitive  plant.  Thus  we 
find  from  time  to  time  striking  illustrations 
of  the  identity  which  exists  in  the  irritability 
of  plants  and  the  nervous  systems  of  animals. 

Among  the  ancients  the  mandrake,  or 
mandragora,  held  a  high  reputation  for  utili- 
ty in  drowning  pain.  Pliny  tells  us  that  "in 
the  digging  up  of  the  root  of  mandrage  there 
are  some  ceremonies  observed ;  first,  they 
that  goe  about  this  worke  looke  especially  to 
this,  that  the  wind  be  not  in  their  face  but 
blow  upon  their  backs ;  then  with  the  point 
of  a  sword  they  draw  three  circles  round  about 


1868.] 

the  plant,  which  don,  they  dig  it  up  after- 
wards with  their  face  into  the  west  *  *  It 
may  be  used  safely  enough  for  to  procure 
sleep  if  there  be  a  good  regard  had  in  the 
dose,  that  it  be  answerable  in  proportion  to 
the  strength  and  complexion  of  the  patien 
it  is  an  ordinary  thing  to  drink  it  againsl  the 
poison  of  serpents ;  likewise  before  the  cut- 
ting or  cauterizing,  pricking  or  lancing;  of 
any  member,  to  take  away  the  sense  and 
feeling  of  such  extreme  cures :  and  sufficient 
it  is  in  some  bodies  to  cast  them  into  a  sleep 
with  the  smell  of  mandrage,  against  the  time 
of  such  chirurgery."* 

The  dbcovery  of  chloroform,  as  an  anaes- 
thetic agent,  was  made  by  Dr.  Simpson  of 
Edinburgh,  and  was  attended  with  some  very 
amusing  circumstances,  as  narrated  by  Pro- 
fessor Miller.  Dr.  Simpson  had  long  felt  con- 
Tinced  that  there  existed  some  anaesthetic 
agent  superior  to  ether,  which  was  then  all 
the  rage,  and,  in  October,  1847,  got  up  pleas- 
ant little  parties  quite  in  a  sociable  way,  to 
try  the  effects  of  other  respirable  ^ases  on 
himself  and  friends.  The  ordinary  way  of 
experimenting  was  as  follows.  Each  guest 
wag  supplied  with  about  a  teaspoonful  of  the 
fluid  to  be  experimented  on,  in  a  tumbler  or 
finger-class,  which  was  placed  in  hot  water  if 
the  substance  did  not  happen  to  be  very  vola- 
tile. Holding  the  mouth  and  nostrils  over  the 
open  vessel,  inhalation  was  produced  slowly 
and  deliberately,  all  inhaling  at  the  same 
time,  and  each  noting  the  effects  as  they 
arode.  Late  on  the  evening  of  the  4th  No- 
vember, 1847,  Dr.  Simpson,  with  two  of  his 
friends,  Drs.  Keith  and  Duncan,  sat  down  to 
quaff  the  flowing  vapor  in  the  dining-room 
of  the  learned  host.  Having  inhaled  several 
substances  without  much  effect,  it  occurred 
to  Dr.  Simpson  to  try  a  ponderous  materia] 
which  he  had  formerly  set  aside  on  a  lumber 
table  as  utterly  uncompromising.  It  hap- 
pened to  be  a  small  bottle  of  chloroform,  and 
with  each  tumbler  newly  charged,  the  inha- 
lers solemnly  pursued  their  vocation.  Imme- 
diately an  unwonted  hilarity  seized  the  party 
-—their  eyes  sparkled — they  became  exces- 
sively jolly  and  very  loquacious.  Their  con- 
versation flowed  so  briskly,  that  some  ladies 
and  a  naval  officer  who  were  present  were 
quite  charmed.  But  suddenly  there  was  a 
talk  of  sounds  being  heard  like  those  of  a  cot- 
ton mill,  louder  and  louder — a  moment  more 
— a  dead  silence,  and  then  a  crash  1  On 
awaking.   Dr.    Simpson's    first    perception 

•  Philemon  Holland'a  TranslAtion  of  Pliny.    Part 
IL  p.  285. 


CHLOROFORM. 


87 


was  mental,  "  this  is  far  stronger  and  better 
than  ether,"  said  he  to  himself  His  second 
was  to  note  that  he  was  prostrate  on  the 
floor,  and  that  among  his  friends  about  him, 
there  was  both  confusion  and  alarm.  Hear- 
ing a  noise,  he  turned  round  and  saw  Dr. 
Duncan  in  a  most  undignified  attitude  be- 
neath a  chair.  His  jaw  had  dropped,  his 
eyes  were  starting,  his  head  bent  half  under 
him  ;  quite  unconscious  and  snoring  in  a  most 
determined  and  alarming  manner — more  noise 
still  to  the  doctor  and  much  motion — disa- 
greeably so— and  then  his*  eyes  overtook  Dr. 
Keith's  feet  and  legs,  making  valorous  efforts 
to  overturn  the  supper  table,  and  annihilate 
everything  that  was  on  it. 

By -and- by  Dr.  Simpson's  head  ceased  to 
swim,  and  he  regained  his  seat ;  Dr.  Duncan^ 
having  finished  his  uncomfortable  slumber, 
resumed  his  chair ;  and  Dr«  Keith,  having 
come  to  an  arrangement  with  the  table,  like- 
wise assumed  his  seat  and  his  placidity ;  then 
came  a  comparing  of  notes  and  a  chorus  of 
congratulation,  for  the  object  had  been  at- 
tained ;  and  this  was  the  way  in  which  the 
wonderful  powers  of  chloroform  were  first 
discovered  and  put  to  the  test.  It  may 
be  added,  that  the  small  stock  of  chloroform 
having  been  speedily  exhausted,  Mr.  Hunter, 
of  the  firm  of  Duncan,  Flockhart,  k  Co.,  was 
pressed  into  the  service  for  restoring  the  sup- 
ply, and  little  respite  had  that  gentleman  for 
many  months  from  his  chloroformic  labors. 

According  to  our  own  experience,  chloro- 
form is  by  no  means  disagreeable.  Circum- 
stances led  to  our  taking  it,  and  as  far  as  we 
remember,  our  feelings  were  nearly  as  fol- 
lows : — the  nervousness  which  the  anticipa- 
tion of  the  chloroform  and  the  expected  op- 
eration had  excited,  gradually  passed  away 
after  a  few  inhalations,  and  was  succeeded  by 
a  pleasant  champagny  exhilaration;  a  few 
seconds  more  and  a  rather  unpleasant  oppres- 
sion of  the  chest  led  to  an  endeavor  to  ex- 
press discomfort,  but  whilst  still  doing  so — or 
rather  supposing  we  were  doing  so — we  were 
informed  that  the  operation  was  over.  Ut- 
terly incredulous,  we  sought  for  proof,  soon 
found  it,  and  then  our  emotions  of  joy  were 
almost  overwhelming.  In  truth  we  had  been 
insensible  full  five  minutes ;  but  one  of  the 
peculiarities  of  chloroformic  unconsciousness 
being  the  obliteration  of  memory,  the  person 
is  carried  on  from  the  last  event  before  the 
full  effect  of  the. chloroform,  to  the  return  of 
consciousness,  as  one  and  the  same  current  of 
ideas. 

.  An  important  point  in  connection  with  chlo- 
roform, is  the  possitnlity  of  its  illegal  use  for 


88 


GHLOROFOBM. 


[Sept. 


the  purposes  of  robbery,  6sc,  About  two 
years  ago,  several  cases  occurred,  ip  which  it 
was  said  to  have  been  employed  for  that  ob- 
ject, and  so  serious  was  the  matter  consider- 
ed, that  Lord  Campbell  made  it  the  special 
subject  of  a  penal  enactment.  There  are, 
however,  something  more  than  grave  doubts 
on  the  minds  of  those  best  acquainted  with 
the  subject,  as  to  whether  chloroform  has  not 
labored  under  an  unjust  accusation,  in  some, 
at  least,  of  the  cases  alluded  to ;  and  as  it  is 
very  possible  that  the  question  may  from  time 
to  time  be  raised,  we  will  state  the  grounds 
on  which  Dr.  Snow,  a  peculiarly  competent 
authority,  arrived  at  the  opinion  that  chloro- 
form cannot  be  used  with  eflfect  in  street  rob- 
beries. 

When  administered  gradually,  chloroform 
can  be  breathed  easily  enough  by  a  person 
willing  and  anxious  to  take  it ;  but  he  has  to 
draw  his  breath  many  times  before  he  be- 
comes unconscious.  During  all  this  inter- 
val he  has  the  perfect  perception  of  the 
Impression  of  the  vapor  on  his  nose,  mouth, 
and  throat,  as  well  as  of  other  ^nsations 
which  it  causes;  and  every  person  who 
has  inhaled  chloroform,  retains  a  recollection 
of  these  impressions  and  sensations.  If 
chloroform  be  given  to  a  child  whilst  asleep, 
the  child  awakes  in  nearly  ever^  instance  be- 
fore being  made  insensible,  however  gently 
the  vapor  may  be  insinuated,  and  no  animal, 
either  wild  or  tame,  can  be  made  insensible 
without  being  first  secured ;  the  chloroform 
may,  it  is  true,  be  suddenly  applied  on  a 
handkerchief  to  the  nose  of  an  animal,  but 
the  creature  turns  its  head  aside  or  runs 
away  without  breathing  any  of  the  vapor. 
If  a  handkerchief  wetted  with  sufficient  chlo- 
roform to  cause  insensibility,  is  suddenly  ap- 
plied to  a  person's  face,  the  pungency  of  the 
vapor  is  so  great  as  immediately  to  interrupt 
the  breathing,  and  the  individual  could  not 
inhale  it  even  if  he  should  wish.  From  all 
these  facts,  it  is  evident  that  chloroform  can- 
not be  given  to  a  person  in  his  sober  senses 
without  his  knowledge  and  full  consent,  ex- 
cept by  main  force.  It  is  certain,  therefore, 
that  this  agent  cannot  be  employed  ia  a  pub- 
lic street  or  thoroughfare;  and  as  the  lorce 
that  would  be  required  to  make  a  person 
take  it  against  his  will,  would  be  more  than 
suflicient  to  effect  a  robbery,  and  enough  to 
effeet  any  other  felony  by  ordinary  means,  it 
would  afford  no  help  to  the  criminal  in  more 
secluded  situations.  Supposing  that  the 
felon,  or  felons,  could  succeed  in  keeping  a 
handkerchief  closely  applied  to  the  face,  the 
person  attacked  would  only  begin  to  breathe 


the  chloroform  when  thoroughly  exhausted 
by  resistance  or  want  of  breath,  and  when, 
in  fact,  the  culprits  could  effect  their  pur- 
pose without  it. 

A  proof  of  these  positions  was  afforded 
by  the  circumstances  attending  a  case  in 
which  chloroform  really  was  used  for  the 
purpose  of  committing  a  robbery.  A  man 
contrived  to  secrete  himself  under  a  bed  ia 
an  hotel  at  Kendal,  and  at  midnight  attempt- 
ed to  give  chloroform  to  an  elderly  gentlemaa 
in  his  sleep.  The  effect  of  this  was  to  awa- 
ken him,  and  though  the  robber  used  such 
violence  that  the  night-dress  of  his  victim 
was  covered  with  blood,  and  the  bedding  fell 
on  the  floor  in  the  scuffle,  he  did  not  succeed 
in  his  purpose ;  the  people  in  the  house  were 
disturbed,  the  thief  secured,  tried,  and  pun- 
ished by  eighteen  months'  hard  labor. 

When,  therefore,  we  hear  marvellous  tales 
of  persons  going  along  the  street  being  ren- 
dered suddenly  insensible  and  in  that  state 
robbed,  it  may  fairly  be  concluded  that  all 
the  facts  are  not  stated,  and  that  chloroform 
is  brought  forward  to  smother  something 
which  it  may  not  be  convenient  to  make 
known. 

The  conclusion  so  eagerly  jumped  at,  that 
because  people  had  been  robbed  in  an  un- 
usual manner,  they  had  certainly  been  chlo- 
roformed, reminds  us  of  a  story  of  a  very 
respectable  quack,  who  was  in  the  habit  of 
listening  to  the  statements  of  his  clients,  and 
under  pretence  of  retiring  to  a  closet  to  me- 
ditate, there  opened  a  book  which  contained 
cures  for  all  diseases,  and  on  whatever  re- 
medy his  eyes  first  fell,  that  he  resolved  to 
try. 

On  one  fine  morning  he  was  summoned  to 
a  giri,  who,  being  tickled  whilst  holding  some 
pins  in  her  mouth,  unfortunately  swallowed 
one,  which  stuck  in  her  throat.  The  friends, 
with  some  justice,  urged  the  doctor  to  de- 
part from  his  usual  custom,  and  do  some- 
thing instantly  for  the  relief  of  the  sufferer ; 
but  the  sage  was  inexorable,  and  declined  to 
yield  to  their  entreaties,  though  their  fears 
that  the  damsel  would  be  choked  before  the 
remedy  arrived  were  energetically  expressed. 
Happily  they  were  groundless,  for,  on  his 
return,  the  doctor  ordered  a  scalding  hot 
poultice  to  be  applied  over  the  whole  abdo- 
men, which  being  done,  an  involuntary  spas* 
modic  action  was  excited,  the  pin  was  ejected, 
and  the  doctor's  fame  and  his  practice  great- 
ly extended.  The  remedy  had  certainly  the 
charm  of  novelty,  but  will  scarcely  do  to  be 
relied  on  in  similar  cases. 

A  very  remarkable  difference  exists  be 


185d.] 


CHLOROFORM. 


89 


tween  persoDS  as  to  their  capability  of  bear- 
ing paio ;  generally  those  of  high  sensitive- 
ness and  intellectuality — whose  nerves,  in 
common  parlance,  are  finely  strung,  evince 
the  greatest  suscepUbility.  To  them  a  scratch 
or  trifling  wound,  which  others  would  scarcely 
feel,  is  really  a  cause  of  acute  pain.  The 
late  Sir  Robert  Peel  presented  this  condition 
in  a  marked  degree ;  a  slight  bite  from  a 
monkey  at  the  Zoological  Gardens,  some  time 
before  his  dekth,  caused  him  to  faint ;  and 
after  the  sad  accident  which  took  him  from 
among  us,  it  was  found  impossible  to  make  a 
full  and  satisfactory  examination  of  the  seat 
of  injury,  from  the  exquisite  torment  which 
the  slightest  movement  or  handling  of  the 
parts  occasioned.  Some  serious  injury  had 
been  inflicted  near  the  collar-bone,  and  a  for- 
cible contrast  to  the  illustrious  statesman  is 
presented  by  General  Sir  John  Moore,  who, 
on  the  field  of  Corunna,  received  his  mortal 
wound  in  the  sagde  situation.  The  following 
is  the  account  given  by  Sir  William  Napier. 

"  Sir  John  Moore,  while  earnestly  watch- 
ing the  result  of  Uhe  fight  about  the  village 
of  Elvina,  was  struck  on  the  left  breast  by 
a  cannon-shot.  The  shock  threw  him  from 
his  horse  with  violence,  but  he  rose  again  in 
a  sitting  posture,  his  countenance  unchanged, 
and  his  steadfast  eye  still  fixed  on  the  regi- 
ments engaged  in  his  front,  no  sigh  betray- 
ing a  sensation  of  pain.  In  a  few  moments, 
when  he  was  satisfied  that  the  troops  were 
gaining  ground,  his  countenance  brightened 
and  he  suffered  himself  to  be  taken  to  the 
rear.  Then  was  seen  the  dreadful  nature  of 
his  hurt.  The  shoulder  was  shattered  to 
pieces,  the  arm  was  hanging  by  a  piece  of 
skin,  the  ribs  over  the  heart  were  broken  and 
bared  of  flesh,  and  the  muscles  of  the  breast 
torn  into  lonfir  strips,  which  were  interlaced 
by  their  recoil  from  the  dragging  of  the  shot. 
As  the  soldiers  placed  him  in  a  blanket,  his 
sword  got  entangled,  and  the  hilt  entered 
the  wound.  Captain  Hardinge  (the  present 
Lord  Hardinge),  a  staff  officer,  who  happened 
to  be  near,  attempted  to  take  it  off,  but  the 
dying  man  stopped  him,  sarins, '  It  is  as  well 
as  it  is :  I  had  rather  it  should  go  out  of  the 
field  with  me :'  and  in  that  manner,  so  be- 
coming a  soldier,  Moore  was  borne  from  the 
fight.'^ 

From  the  spot  where  he  fell,  the  General 
was  carried  to  the  town  by  a  party  of  sol- 
diers, his  blood  flowed  fast,  and  the  torture  of 
bis  wound  was  great,  yet  such  was  the  un- 
shaken firmness  of  his  mind,  that  those  about 
him,  judging  from  the  resolution  of  his  coun- 
tenance that  his  hart  was  not  mortal,  express- 


ed a  hope  of  his  recovery ;  hearing  this,  he 
looked  steadfastly  at  the  inji^y  for  a  moment, 
and  then  said, ''  No,  I  feel  that  to  be  impossi- 
ble." 

Several  times  he  caused  his  attendants  to 
stop  and  turn  him  round,  that  he  might  be- 
hold the  field  of  battle,  and  when  the  firing 
indicated  the  advance  of  the  British,  he  dis- 
covered his  satisfaction,  and  permitted  the 
bearers  to  proceed.  Being  brought  to  his 
lodgings,  the  surgeons  examined  his  wound, 
but  there  was  no  hope,  the  pfun  increased, 
and  he  spoke  with  great  difficulty.  *  *  ♦ 
His  countenance  continued  firm,  and  his 
thoughts  clear ;  once  only,  when  he  spoke  of 
his  mother,  he  became  agitated ;  but  he  oft- 
en inquired  after  the  safety  of  his  friends  and 
the  officers  of  his  staff,  and  he  did  not,  even 
in  this  moment,  forget  to  recommend  those 
whose  merit  had  given  them  claims  to  pro- 
motion. His  strength  failed  fast,  and  life 
was  just  extinct,  when,  with  an  unsubdued 
spirit,  he  exclaimed,  "  I  hope  the  people  of 
England  will  be  satisfied — I  hope  my^  coun- 
try will  do  me  justice !''    And  so  he  died. 

Ijt  is  to  be  hoped  that  intense  mental  pre- 
occupation somewhat  blunted  the  sufferings 
of  the  General,  but  a  strong  high  courage 
prevented  any  unseemly  comptaint.  Vfe, 
ourselves,  have  seen  many  instances  in  an 
operating  theatre — a  far  severer  test  of  true 
courage  than  the  excitement  of  battle — where 
mutilations  the  most  severe  have  been  borne 
with  unflinching  courage ;  more  frequently 
by  women  than  by  men.  Perhaps  the  cool- 
est exhibition  of  fortitude  under  such  a  trial 
was  exhibited  bv  a  tailor,  who  effectually 
cleared  his  profession  of  the  standing  re- 
proach, showing  nine  times  the  pluck  of  or- 
dinary men.  This  man's  right  leg  was  re- 
moved right  below  the  knee,  lon^  before 
chloroform  was  known ;  on  being  placed  on 
the  table,  he  quietly  folded  his  arms,  and 
surveyed  the  preliminary  proceedings  with 
the  coolness  of  a  disinterested  spectator.  He 
closed  his  eyes  during  tbe  operation,  but  his 
face  remained  unchanged,  and  he  apologized 
for  starting  when  a  nerve  was  snipped. 
When  all  was  over  he  rose,  quietly  thanked 
the  operator,  bowed  to  the  spectators,  and 
was  carried  out  of  the  theatre.  We  grieve 
to  say  the  poor  fellow  died,  to  the  regret  of. 
every  one. who  witnessed  his  heroic  couragel' 

The  most  remarkable  account  of  indiffer- 
ence to  pain  with  which  we  are  acquainted, 
is  that  by  Mr.  Catlin,  of  the  self^mposed 
tortures  of  the  Mandan  Indians,  in  order  to 
qualify  themselves  for  the  honored  rank  of 
warriors.    **  One  at  a  time  of  the  young  fel- 


00 


THE  PBUSSIAN  COURT  AND  ARBTOCRAOT. 


[Sept., 


lows  already  emaciated  with  fasting,  and 
thirsting,  and  walking,  for  nearly  fonr  days 
and  nights,  advanced  from  the  side  of  the 
lodge  and  placed  himself  on  his  hands  and  feet, 
or  otherwise,  as  hest  adapted  for  the  per- 
formance of  the  operation,  where  he  submit- 
ted to  the  cruelties  in  the  following  manner. 
An  inch  or  more  of  the  flesh  of  each  shoul- 
der was  taken  up  between  the  finger  and 
thumb  by  the  man  who  held  the  knife  in  his 
right  hand,  and  the  knife  which  had  been 
ground  sharp  on  both  edges  and  then  hacked 
and  notched  with  the  blade  of  another  to 
make  it  produce  as  much  pain  as  possible, 
was  forced  through  the  flesh  below  the  fin- 
gers, and  being  withdrawn  was  followed  by 
a  splint  or  skewer  from  the  other,  who  held 
a  bundle  of  such  in  his  left  hand,  and  was 
ready  to  force  them  through  the  wound. 
There  were  then  two  cords  lowered  down 
from  the  top  of  the  lodge,  which  were  •  fas- 
tened to  these  splints  or  skewers,  and  they 
instantly  began  to  haul  him  up  :  he  was  thus 
raised  until  his  body  was  just  suspended 
from  the  ground  where  he  rested,  until 
the  ^nife  and  a  splint  were  passed  through 
the  flesh  or  integuments  in  a  similar  manner 
on  each  arm  below  the  shoulder,  below  the 
elbow,  on  the  thighs,  and  below  the  knees. 
In  some  instances,  they  remained  in  a  re- 
clining posture  on  the  ground  until  this  pain- 
ful operation  was  finished,  which  was  per- 
formed in  all  instances  exactly  on  the  same 
parts  of  the  bodies  and  limbs ;  and  which, 
m  its  progress,  occupied  some  five  or  six 
minutes. 

"  Each  one  was  then  instantly  raised  with 


the  cords,  until  the  weight  of  his  body  was 
suspended  by  them,  and  then,  while  the 
blood  was  streaming  down  their  limbs,  the 
bystanders  hung  upon  the  splints  eaoh  man's 
appropriate  shield,  bow,  quiver,  &c.,  and  in 
many  instances,  the  skull  of  a  buffalo,  with 
the  horns  on  it,  was  attached  to  each  lower 
arm,  each  lower  leg,  for  the  purpose,  proba- 
bly, of  preventing,  by  their  great  weight,  the 
struggling  which  might  otherwise  take  place 
to  their  disadvantage  whilst  they  were  hung 
up.  When  these  things  were  all  adjusted, 
each  one  was  raised  higher  by  the  cords,  un- 
til these  weights  all  swung  clear  from  the 
ground.  *  *  The  unflinching  fortitude 
with  which  every  one  of  them  bore  this  part 
of  the  torture  surpassed  credibility/'* 

Happily,  in  this  country  at  least,  torture 
is  BOW  only  made  subservient  to  the  restora- 
tion of  health  ;  and  more  than  this,  the  most 
timid  may  survey  an  expected  operation  with 
calm  indifiference — so  far  as  the  pain  is  con- 
cerned :  the  terrors  of  the  knife  are  extin- 
guished, and  though  the  result  of  all  such  pro- 
ceedings rests  not  with  man,  it  is  permitted 
us  to  apply  the  resources  of  our  art  for  the 
relief  of  suffering  humanity  ;  and  the  afllicted 
can,  in  these  times,  avail  themselves  of  sur- 
gical skill,  without  passing;  through  the  ter- 
rible ordeal  which  formerly  filled  the  heart 
with  dread,  and  the  contemplation  of  which 
increased  tenfold  the  gloom  of  the  shadow  of 
the  dark  valley  beyond. 

*  **  Notes  on  the  North  Amerioaa  Indiana"  Vol. 
IL  p.  17a 


"♦♦- 


!-»«- 


From  Fraser's  Magazine. 


THE  PRUSSIAN  COURT  AND  ARISTOCRACY.* 


The  object  of  Dr.  Vehse  in  these  vol- 
umes 18  to  give,  in  greater  detail  than  has 
hitherto  been  done,  an  account  of  the  man- 
ners of  the  Prussian  court  and  aristocracy 
during  the  three  periods  into  which  the  histo- 

?r  of  that  country  naturally  divides  itself. 
he  first  is  the  period  immediately  following 
the  Reformation,  when  the  Government  was 

*  C^ichichte  de%  PreuttUchen  Hofi  und  AdeUy 
und  der  Preuatischen  DiplomatU'  By  Dr.  Edward 
Yehse.    Hambar|^  1861,  9  volai 


rude  and  contained  many  middle  age  ele- 
ments, and  when  the  petty  Elector  of  Bran- 
denburg was  the  most  insignificant  of  his 
seven  brother  electors.  The  second  is  that 
after  the  thirty  years'  war,  when  the  Court 
presented  a  singular  combination  of  French 
gallantry  and  military  absolutism.  And  the 
third  and  last  period  is  the  age  of  Frederick 
the  Great  and  his  successors. 

Dr.  Yehs^  has  availed  himself  of  all  the 
recent  contributions  to  history,  such  as  the 


1859.] 


THE  PRUSSIAN  OOFRT  AND  ARISTOORAOT. 


91 


despatches,  memoirs,  and  journals  of  those 
who  were  engaged  in  diplomacy,  or  had  pe- 
culiar opportunities  of  knowing  the  secret  de- 
tails of  political  life.  Dr.  Vehse  pays  a  well 
merited  compliment  to  the  important  works 
that  have  lately  been  published  in  this  coun- 
try. He  states  thdt  he  has  invariably  found 
English  writers  giving  the  best  reports  of 
public  matters ;  that  they  are  the  most  clear- 
sighted and  the  most  unprejudiced  in  their 
accounts,  and  that  therefore  their  judj^ments 
are  more  to  be  trusted  than  those  of  other 
diplomatists.  In  Germany,  with  perhaps  the 
single  exception  of  Count  Kevenhuller,  who 
wrote  memoirs  in  the  time  of  the  Great  Fred- 
erick, the  task  of  writing  history  has  been 
confined  to  men  who  made  letters  a  profes- 
sion, and  who  were  more  acquainted  with 
books  than  with  men  and  the  passions  that 
influence  them.  Works  like  those  of  Bishop 
Burnet ;  memoirs  like  those  of  Horace  Wal- 
pole  of  the  Court  of  George  H. ;  valuable 
contributions  to  the  history  of  our  own  time, 
like  the  diaries  and  correspondence  of  Lord 
Malmesbury,  the  memoirs  of  Lord  Hervey, 
the  memoirs  just  published  by  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  of  the  Court  and  Cabinet  of 
George  HI. ; — French  memoirs  like  those  of 
Cardinal  de  Retz,  the  Duke  of  Sully,  St. 
Simon,  and  so  many  others,  who  have  thrown 
light  on  the  history  of  the  periods  in  which 
they  write ;  histories  written  by  men  who, 
like  Macaulay  or  Mr.^  Grote,  are  politicians  as 
well  as  authors — for  works  such  as  these  we 
look  in  vain  in  Germany.  There  is  one  mark- 
ed difference  that  must  strike  even  the  most 
careless  reader  between  the  English  and  the 
French  memoir  writers.  The  French  invari- 
ably are  great  masters  of  form  ;  they  give  a 
flowing,  eloquent,  well  arranged  narrative, 
full  of  life  and  vigor — the  necessary  authori- 
ties and  documents  being  generally  thrown 
into  the  appendix ;  whereas  in  the  English 
memoirs  the  documents — whether  they  be 
despatches,  letters,  or  journals — play  the  most 
conspicuous  part  in  the  work,  and  the  narra- 
tive is  often  meagre  enough. 

In  the  work  before  us,  which  does  not  pro- 
fess to  do  more  than  record  the  on  dits  of 
past  times,  Dr.  Yehse  seems  to  have  taken  as 
his  motto  a  passage  from  St.  Simon's  mem- 
oirs, C^est  Bouvent  une  pure  bagatelle  guipro- 
iuit  lei  effete  qu^on  veut  attribtter  aux  motifs 
lee  plus  graves. 

In  the  sixteenth  and  even  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  the  dynasty  of  the  Hohenzol- 
lems  were  not  great  geniuses  or  heroes; 
they  patientiv  bore  the  yoke  which  the  Aus- 
trians  had  placed  on  the  neck  of  the  whole  [ 


of  the  German  nation.  They  bent  to  the 
storm  until  the  time  of  the  Great  Elector. 

The  first  five  Electors  of  Brandenburg,  from 
the  time  of  the  Reformation  till  that  of  the 
Great  Elector,  were  not  remarkable  for  any 
great  intelligence,  but  they  had  the  good  for- 
tune to  be  served  by  men  of  distinguished 
abilities. 

We  will  not  for  this  reason  follow  Dr. 
Yehse  through  the  account  he  gives  of  the 
earlier  Electors  of  Brandenburg — the  Joa- 
chims, the  Hectors,  6z;c. ;  but  we  must  find 
room  to  present  our  readers  with  a  sketch  of 
the.  life  of  a  man  who  played  a  remarkable 
part  durinff  the  reign  of  the  Elector  John 
George  of  Brandenburg. 

Dr.  Leonhard  Thurnyesser  was  bom  in 
1530,  at  Basle.  His  father,  who  wasagold- 
smith,  brought  his  son  up  to  his  own  profes- 
sion, but  apprenticed  him  afterwards  as/ant- 
ulus  to  a  certain  Dr.  Huber,  of  Basle,  for 
whom  the  lad  prepared  medicines  and  col- 
lected herbs,  and  in  whose  service  he  studied 
Paracelsus.  Thurneysser  married  at  seven- 
teen, but  deserted  his  wife  at  the  end  of  a 
year;  when  he  comn^nced  his  travels.  He 
went  first  to  England,  then  to  France,  fought 
under  the  wild  Margrave  Albrecht  Branden- 
burg-Culmbach,  and  was  uUcen  prisoner  in 
the  battle  of  Sievershausen,  in  1553.  He 
then  supported  himself  by  working  as  a  miner 
and  smelter.  As  his  wife  had  divorced  him, 
Thurneysser  married  the  daughter  of  a  gold- 
smith at  Constance,  with  whom  he  went,  in 
1558,  to  Imst,  in  the  Tyrol,  where  he  starlr 
ed  a  mining  and  smelting  business  on  his  own 
account.  In  1560  the  Archduke  Ferdinand,  of 
the  Tyrol,  took  Thurneysser  into  his  service, 
and  sent  him  on  his  travels.  For  five  years 
he  again  wandered  about  the  world,  visitino; 
Scotland  and  the  Orkneys,  Spain,  Portusai, 
Africa,  Barbary,  JSthiopia,  Egypt,  Arabia, 
Syria,  and  Palestine,  returning  in  1565  to 
the  Tyrol,  by  way  of  Candia,  Greece,  Italy, 
and  Hungary.  He  remained  in  the  service  of 
the  Archduke  inspecting  mines,  <&c.,  until  the 
year  1570.  His  extraordinary  knowledge  of 
metals  and  ctiemistry  made  him  regarded  as 
the  wonder  of  his  age — as  a  second  Paracel- 
sus. He  wrote  books  on  the  influences  of 
the  planets,  and  their  effects  on  the  bodies  of 
men  and  beasts,  but  the  style  of  his  works  is 
diffuse  and  unintelligible. 

The  Elector  John  George's  second  wife, 
Sabina  of  Ansp^ch,  was  ill,  and  Thurneysser 
was  sent  for.  In  the  course  of  the  consulta- 
tion Thurneysser,  to  the  astonishment  of  the 
Elector,  described  sundry  bodily  infirmities 
of  the  Electress,  which  in  his  opinion  might 


d2 


THE  PRUSSIAN  OOUBT  AND  ABISTOGRAGY. 


[Sept., 


be  attended  with  dangerous  results.  The 
Elector,  struck  bj  this  knowledge,  put  his 
wife  under  Thumeysser's  charge ;  the  cure 
was  effected,  and  the  doctor's  fortune  was 
from  that  moment  made.  He  was  employed 
and  consulted  by  all  who  had  mines  or  alum 
works,  while  the  court  ladies  spread  his  re- 
nown far  and  wide.  Letters  came  from  the 
remote  country  districts,  from  married  and 
unmarried  ladies,  begging  the  learned  doctor 
to  send  his  fur  correspondents  cosmetics, 
with  particular  descriptions  how  to  use  them. 
The  postscript  generally  added  that ''  he  was 
on  no  account  to  betray  them,  and  not  to 
give  any  cosmetics  to  other  people." 

Thurneysser  had  a  remarkable  memory, 
and  a  great  thirst  for  knowledge.  He  had 
closely  studied  nature  in  yarious  countries, 
and  had  learned  much  from  books.  He 
knew  Greek  and  several  of  the  Oriental 
languages ;  Latin  he  had  learned  in  his 
forty-sixth  year,  at  Berlin.  He  knew  suffi- 
cient drawing  to  illustrate  his  anatomical  and 
botanical  works.  He  made  a  map  of  the 
March  of  Brandenburg  far  superior  to  any- 
thing that  had  yet  appeared.  His  know- 
ledge of  mathematics,  astronomy,  and  as- 
trology was  very  considerable,  and  enabled 
him  to  publish  almanacs,  in  which  he  pre- 
dicted coming  events,  and  the  manner  of 
their  fulfilment  was  explained  in  subsequent 
tables.  Thes^  almanacs  had  a  prodigious 
sale.  The  great  defect  in  Thumeysser's 
mind  was  a  want  of  philosophical  clearness  ; 
his  knowledge  was  undifirested,  without  order 
or  arrangement ;  but  spite  of  this  he  was  one 
of  the  best  naturalbts  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury ;  his  activity  was  boundless,  and  his 
head  full  of  projects. 

The  Elector  named  Thurneysser  his  body 
physician,  with  the  yearly  salary  of  1352 
thfuers — a  large  sum  for  those  days ;  more- 
over he  had  an  allowance  for  horses,  and 
other  extras.  He  also  made  money  by  the 
commission  on  the  purchases  he  effected  for 
the  Elector,  of  silver  and  gold  pl^te,  in 
Leipsic,  Nuremberg,  and  Frankfort.  For 
fourteen  years  Thurneysser  maintained  his 
ascendancy  in  the  court  of  Brandenburg. 
Shortly  after  his  arrival  in  Berlin,  the  Elector 
had  given  him  rooms  in  what  had  been  the 
Franciscan  or  Grey  Convent,  where  Thur- 
neysser lived  in  great  style.  He  built  a 
large  laboratory,  in  which  were  prepared  his 
orcoiKi — ^gold  powder,  golden  drops,  ame- 
thyst waters,  tinctures  of  sapphires,  rubies, 
emeralds,  d^c,  which  soon  made  the  in- 
ventor's fortune.  He  held  a  sort  of  minor 
court  in  the  Grey  Convent ;  his  household 


seldom  consisted  of  less  than  200  persons, 
some  of  whom  were  employed^  in  copying 
letters,  while  others  worked  in  his  laboratory, 
or  acted  as  messengers  or  travellers.  He 
also  set  up  a  printing  establishment  in  the 
Grey  Convent,  which  was  provided  not  only 
with  German  and  Roman,  but  with  Greek, 
Hebrew,  Chaldaic,  Syrian,  Turkish,  Persian, 
Arabian,  even  with  Abyssinian  types.  Al- 
most all  these  workers  in  the  laboratory  and 
for'  the  press  were  married  men,  and  lived 
with  their  wives  and  children  in  the  convent ; 
the  expenditure,  therefore,  was  considerable. 
Whenever  Thurneysser  walked  abroad,  he 
was  accompanied  by  two  pages  of  noble 
blood,  who  had  been  sent  by  their  parents  to 
a  household  where  they  would  learn  virtue 
and  regular  habits.  All  the  great  people. 
Prince  B^dzivil,  nay,  even  the  Elector  him- 
self and  his  wife,  came  to  visit  him  in  his 
Grey  Convent.  He  was  a  sort  of  oracle,  and 
was  consulted  by  many  .".crowned  heads. 
"  The  letters,"  says  his  biographer  Mohsen, 
"which  the  Emperor  Maximilian  U.,  and 
Queen  Elizabeth  of  England  wrote  to  him, 
together  with  thirty-nine  other  letters  from 
illustrious  princes,  were  cut  out  of  the  col- 
lection at  Basle."  But  there  are  many  letters 
to  Thurneysser  from  Frederick  II.,  the  King 
of  Denmark,  from  Stephen  Bathory,  the 
King  of  Poland,  preserved  in  the  library  at 
Berlin,  in  which  these  monarchs  ask  Thux^ 
neysser's  advice  on  mining  subjects.  Letters 
came  to  him  daily  from  Bonemia,  Silesia, 
Poland,  and  Prussia,  with  medical  consulta- 
tions ;  he  answered  none  unless  a  remittance 
accompanied  the  letter.  Count  Burchard 
Yon  Barby  sent  an  account  of  his  symptoms, 
but  received  no  answer  to  his  first  letter ;  a 
second,  with  a  fee  of  a  hundred  ducats,  re- 
ceived immediate  attention.  Thumeysser's 
messengers  went  all  over  Germany,  convey- 
ing the  doctor's  infallible  remedies,  and 
brought  back  money,  rare  books,  and  manu- 
scripts. 

But  the  almanacs,  to  which  we  have 
before  alluded,  brought  him  in  the  largest 
income;  the  booksellers  from  all  parts  of 
Germany  and  other  countries  sent  mes- 
sengers to  Thurneysser  for  early  copies.  He 
printed  large  editions  of  these  almanacs,  of 
which  he  published  a  regular  series  between 
the  years  1573  and  1585.  Each  month  had 
its  Prognostica.  In  1679  he  foretold  a 
hideous  deed;  in  1580  the  prophecy  was 
discovered  to  allude  to  the  poisoning,  by 
Bianca  Dapelli,  of  her  step-son  at  Florence. 
He  also  foretold  the  day  of  the  month  and 
the  year  when  King  Sigismund  Augustus  of 


1858.] 


THE  PRUSSIAN  OOURT  AlTD  ARIST00RAG7. 


98 


Poland  died.  These  fortunate  hits  brought 
him  in  large  sums.  He  also  east  nativities : 
scarcely  an  heir  to  anj  noble  family  in  Ger- 
many was  bom  without  Thurneysser  being 
consulted  as  to  the  conjunction  and  aspects 
of  the  planets,  by  which  he  foretold  the 
probable  fate  of  the  infant.  These  FrognoB- 
ilea  interested  every  one  in  those  days; 
every  one  believed  in  them — even  bishops 
and  learned  professors.  Thurneysser  like- 
wise prepared  talismans.  Even  Osiander, 
the  great  polemical  writer  at  Kdnigsberg, 
wore  an  amulet  round  his  neck  as  a  pre- 
servative against  the  leprosy  and  other  ma- 
ladies. Osiander  purposely  mentions  the 
object  with  which  he  wore  this  chain,  lest  it 
should  be  set  down  to  vanity.  The  best 
talismans  were  the  sigUla  solis,  on  which 
Jupiter  is  represented  like  a  professor  of 
Wittenberg,  with  a  long  beard,  a  fur  coat, 
and  a  large  book  in  his  hand.  These  sigilla 
xdia,  which  were  to  avert  all  solar  maladies, 
were  made  after  the  method  sugg^ested  by 
the  Abbot  Tntheim,  and  Agrippa  of  Nettes- 
heim,  in  his  work  De  OccultA  Philosophict. 
There  were  other  talismans — such  as  the 
sigilla  lunce,  specially  directed  against  lunar 
influences;  others,  again,  made  of  seven 
different  metals,  had  the  peculiar  property 
of  making  men,  though  born  under  some 
malignant  'star,  fortunate  and  successful. 
Whatever  was  required,  Thurneysser  was 
ready  to  manufacture ;  his  wares  were  suited 
to  all  conditions  of  men,  from  the  Emperor 
down  to  the  cowherd. 

By  these  means  Thurneysser  became  ex- 
ceedingly rich.  He  not  only  had  a  treasure 
estimated  at  12,000  pieces  of  gold,  but  a 
rich  collection  of  books,  manuscripts,  silver 
plate,  and  pictures.  He  also  had  made  a 
cabinet  of  minerals  and  herbs,  and  strange 
anatomical  preparati£>ns  of  men,  birds,  and 
beasts  ;  a  scorpion  preserved  in  oil  was  held 
by  the  vulgar  in  extreme  awe  as  a  familiar 
imp  of  the  doctor's. 

Unluckily  for  himself,  Thurneysser  mar- 
ried a  third  time,  and  this  was  his  ruin.  He 
divorced  his  wife  for  light  conduct,  and  a 
scandalous  suit  took  place,  in  the  course  of 
which  much  of  his  money  was  spent.  In 
1684  Thurneysser  quitted  Berlin,  turned 
Catholic,  and  went  to  Rome,  where  he  lived 
some  time  under  the  Pope's  protection.  He 
died  in  a  convent  at  Cologne,  in  the  year 
1595/aged  65,  in  poor  circumstances,  and 
on  the  very  day  for  which  he  had  prognos- 
ticated his  death. 

Dr.  Yehse  enters  with  great  detail  into 
the  reigns  of  the  Great  Elector ;  of  Frederick, 


the  first  King  of  Prussia ;  of  Frederick  Wil- 
liam I.,  to  whose  rough  but  sterling  qualities 
Prussia  owes  so  much  ;  and  of  his' illustrious 
son,  Frederick  the  Great.  It  is  worthy  of 
remark j  that  the  men  who  contributed  most 
to  raise  the  Prussian  monarchy  to  its  high 
estate  were  not  the  nobles,  but  men  for  uie 
most  part  sprung  from  the  burgher  class : 
men  of  talent  were  sought  out,  rather  than 
those  of  illustrious  descent;  and  Prussia 
owes  as  much  to  the  ability  with  which  these 
men  wielded  the  pen  as  the  sword.  Joachim 
II.'s  chancellor,  Lamport  Distilmeyer,  who 
was  called  ocuIub  et  lumen  marchicB,  was  the 
son  of  a  tailor  at  Leipsic;  Derfflinger,  to 
whom  the  Great  Elector  was  chiefly  indebted 
for  the  victory  over  the  Swedes  at  Fehrbel- 
lin,  was  the  son  of  an  Austrian  peasant.  Mein- 
ders,  Fuchs,  and  Spanheim,  in  the  time  of  the 
Great  Elector ;  Dankelman,  Kraut,  and  Bar- 
tholdi,in  the  reign  of  the  firstPrussian  monarch ; 
Ilgen,  Thulemeyer,  Cocceji,  in  the  reign  of 
Frederick  William  I.,  were  men  of  the  middle 
class ;  and  to  these,  next  to  its  sovereigns, 
the  greatness  of  Prussia  is  to  be  attributed. 

The  thirty  years'  war  had  depopulated 
Prussia,  and-  the  Great  Elector's  wish  to  in- 
troduce agriculture,  commerce,  and  manu- 
factures into  his  country  was  admirably  as- 
sisted by  the  proceedings  of  his  neighbors. 
Thousands  and  thousands  of  industrious  fam- 
ilies, driven  out  of  the  Palatinate  and  from 
France  for  their  religion,  were  received  with 
joy  into  Prussia.  After  the  revocation  of 
the  edict  of  Nantes,  in  the  year  1 685,  above 
20,000  French  refugees  came  at  once  into 
Prussia,  bringing  with  them  much  capital, 
and,  what  was  far  more  important,  habits  of 
thrift  and  a  taste  for  literature  and  the  fine 
arts.  The  silk,  wool,  and  other  factories  in 
Prussia  owe  their  origin  to  these  refugees. 
The  advent  of  the  refugees  introduced  French 
habits  of  dress  and  modes  of  thought.  But 
with  this  came  also  the  luxurious  tastes  of 
the  court  of  Louis  XIV. ;  and  to  check  the 
custom  of  going  to  Paris  to  acquire  the  fash- 
ionable air  of  the  French  court,  the  Great 
Elector,  who  knew  the  license  and  extrava- 
gance that  prevailed  in  Paris,  issued  an  edict, 
in  1686,  forbidding  his  vassals  to  travel  and 
waste  their  substance  in  foreign  parts. 

The  whole  reign  of  Frederick  William  offers 
a  curious  picture  of  refinement  and  religious 
toleration  mixed  with  the  grossest  supersti- 
tions of  the  middle  ages.  The  Great  Elector 
was  much  addicted  to  the  study  of  alchemy. 
He  had  a  laboratory  of  his  own,  and  bought 
up  all  books  and  manuscripts  relating  to 
these  secret  arts.     For  a  long  time  he  Kept 


9i 


THE  PBU83IAK  COUBT  Am)  ABISTOORACY 


[Sept., 


at  his  court  bis  famous  alchemist,  Johann 
Kuukel,  who  shared  the  fate  of  many  others 
of  his  trade,  and  was  prosecuted,  after  the 
Great  Elector^s  death,  for  peculation.  Fred- 
erick William,  moreover,  had  the  most 
implicit  belief  in  devils,  ghosts,  witches, 
sorcerers,  and  astrologers.  He  fully  believed 
in  the  letter  supposed  to  have  been  written 
to  a  certain  Dodo  von  Eniphausen  by  his 
wife  from  the  other  world.  Leibnitz  men- 
tions in  his  journal  that  he  had  dined  at  the 
prince's  table,  and  heard  the  matter  dis- 
cussed, and  that  Kniphausen,  who  was  of  a 
melancholy  temperament,  asserted  that  he 
had  seen  his  deceased  wife,  who  told  him 
many  strange  things. 

The  Great  Elector  was  fond  of  alluding  to 
the  story  of  the  White  Lady — the  '  Weisse 
Frau' — whose  appearance  portended  calam- 
ity or  death  of  some  member  of  the  royal 
family.  She  is  said  to  have  been  seen  in  the 
ominous  years  1640,  1740,  and  1840.  She 
was  first  seen  shortly  after  the  death  of  John 
Sigismund,  in  1619.  She  is  supposed  by 
some  to  have  been  the  mistress  of  Joachim 
II.,  Anna  Sydow,  who  died  a  prisoner  in  the 
fortress  of  Spandau ;  others  say  she  was  a 
certain  Beatrix,  Countess  of  Orlamunde,  who 
fell  in  love  with  the  Burgrave  Albrecht,  of 
Nuremberg ;  others,  again,  say  that  her  name 
was  Bertha  of  Rosenberg,  ^  who  was  con- 
demned to  haunt  the  castles  of  her  descend- 
ants in  Brandenburg,  Baden,  and  Darmstadt. 
Whoever  she  might  be,  the  Elector's  favor- 
ite— one  Kurt  von  Burgsdorf — who  professed 
incredulity  about  her,  and  a  strong  desire  to 
meet  the  spectre  face  to  face,  was  gratified 
in  his  wish.  After  seeing  the  Elector  to  bed 
one  night,  Burgsdorf  was  going  down  the 
back  stairs  to  the  garden,  when  he  saw  the 
White  Lady  standing  on  the  steps  before 
him.  A  little  disturbed  at  the  unexpected 
rencontre,  he  quickly  collected  his  senses, 
and  after  addressing  some  harsh  epithets  to 
the  spectre,  asked  her  if  she  had  not  already 
had  enough  of  the  princely  blood  of  Prussia 
to  satisfy  her.  The  White  Lady  answered 
never  a  word,  but  seized  him  by  the  throat 
and  hurled  him,  half  throttled,  down  stairs. 
The  noise  was  so  great  as  to  disturb  the  Elector, 
who  sent  one  of  bis  attendants  to  learn  what 
had  occurred.  When  the  old  palace  at  Ber- 
lin was  rep^red,  in  the  year  1609,  a  female 
skeleton  was  found,  which  was  held  by  the 
people  to  be  that  of  the  White  Lady :  it  was 
buried  with  due  ceremony  in  the  cathe- 
dral ;  it  was  then  hoped  that  the  ghost  was 
laid.  She  has  had  several  base  imitators, 
who  were  caught  by  the  watch  :  one  turned 


out  to  be  a  scullion,  another  was  a  soldier  : 
both  were  well  whipped. 

Kurt  von  Burgsdorf,  the  Elector's  favorite, 
was  of  an  old  Brandenburg  family  ;  he  had 
fought  in  the  thirty  years'  war,  and  had 
thrice  repulsed  Wallenstein's  attack  on 
Schweidnitz.  He  fell  in  disgrace  for  oppos- 
ing the  Elector's  scheme  of  a  standing  army, 
and  for  other  reasons  more  fully  given  in  a 
rare  old  book  published  at  Dresden  in  1705, 
and  called  Apoihegmata,  or  274  Wise  and 
Ingenious  Maxims :  '  Touching  the  disgrace 
of  the  Prime  minister  and  favorite  at  the 
court  of  Electoral  Brandenburg,  Herr  von 
Borgstorff,  under  the  reign  of  nis  Electoral 
Bjghness  Frederick  William.' 

This  minister  (according  to  the  Ajxdkegmaid) 
had  risen  so  high  that  he  was  allowed  to  clap 
his  electoral  highness  on  the  shoalder,  and  was 
looked  upon  as  a  father  by  that  heroic  prince. 
If  his  electoral  highness  wore  a  enit  worth  400 
rix  dollars  one  day,  on  the  next  the  minister  must 
needs  have  one  worth  600.  But  a  great  fortune 
built  upon  an  ill  foundation  of  wick^ness  is  sure 
to  decay ;  and  thus  it  soon  fell  out  with  this  min- 
ister, who  had  chiefly  prospered  in  wealth  and 
power  by  winebibbing;  for  the  late  elector  was  a 
singular  lover  of  drinking,  and  this  Borgstorff 
comd  drink  eighteen  pints  of  wine  at  one  meal, — 
nay,  he  could  even  gulp  down  a  whole  pint  at  a 
draught,  and  without  so  much  as  drawing  breath. 
Now  the  elector,  Frederick  William^  of  blessed 
memory,  lived  more  soberly,  which  much  dis- 
pleased this  minister,  who  once  said  to  him  at 
table,  *  Please  your  highness,  I  don't  understand 
your  way  of  living ;  your  highness'  father's  times 
were  much  merrier;  we  drank  about  bravely 
then,  and  now  and  then  a  castle  or  a  village  was 
to  be  won  by  hard  drinking.  I  myself  remember 
when  I  could  drink  eighteen  pints  of  wine  at  a  sit- 
ting.' Hereupon  the  electress,  a  princess  of  the 
House  of  Orange,  and  the  example  of  every  virtue, 
did  not  let  his  words  pass  unnoticed,  but  replied, 
^That  was  fine  house- keeping,  truly,  when  so 
many  fair  castles  and  villages  were  given  away  to 
reward  beastly  and  riotous  drunkenness !' 

Besides  this  fault  the  minister  sought  to  per- 
suade the  elector  not  to  lie  only  with  nis  prince- 
ly consort,  but  to  divert  himself  with  gallantry,  in 
order  that  he  might  not  have  so  many  lawful 
princes  and  princesses,  who  could  not  all  be 
provided  for  according  to  their  rank,  and  must 
therefore  grow  up  beggarly  princes.  And  herein 
the  truth  of  the  adage,  Malum  consilium  eonmh 
taiori  pessimumf  was  soon  made  manifest ;  for  the 
electress  never  rested  until  this  minister  was  de- 
graded fW)m  the  highest  honors  and  dignities  of 
his  court,  and  publicly  deprived  of  his  nobility  in 
church,  and  in  the  presence  of  a  multitude  of 
people.  He  retired  into  the  country,  where  after 
a  time  he  died  quite  mad  and  miserable,  and  la- 
mented by  none,  because  he  had  tried  to  mislead 
his  sovereign  into  an  ungodly,  scandalous,  and 
debauched  way  of  life. 


1863.] 


THE  PBUSSIAir  GOITBT  AND  ARISTOCRACY. 


9B 


The  Great  Elector  was  succeeded  by  bis 
son,  tbe  Elector  Frederick  III.,  whose  ruling 
passion  was  pomp  and  display.  In  order  to 
gratify  this  passion  to  the  utmost  it  was  ne- 
cessary to  exchange  the  Electoral  hat  for  a 
kingly  crown,  and  owing  to  several  fortunate 
coincidences  this  long  coveted  honor  was  ob- 
tained by  the  mediation  of  Bartholdi,  the 
Prussian  envoy  at  Vienna,  in  November, 
1700. 

Frederick  (aays  Dr.  Yehse)  was  so  rejoiced  at 
the  snccesdfttl  issue  of  his  favorite  scheme  that 
be  could  not  even  wait  for  fine  weather  for  the 
ceremony  of  the  coronation,  but  started  in  mid- 
winter, jttst  one  moDth  aAer  the  attainment  of  his 
object,  00  the  17th  December,  1700,  with  the 
whole  of  his  court,  on  his  way  to  Konigsberg. 
The  cavalcade  was  one  of  tne  grandest  ever 
known  in  Germany.  The  whole  coart  travelled 
in  300  carriages,  besides  waeons.  The  royal 
company,  which  journeyed  in  tour  divisions,  was 
so  large  that  in  addition  to  the  horses  taken  from 
Berlin,  not  less  than  30,000  were  required  to  draw 
the  carriages.  The  king  onlv  travelled  during  the 
forenoon,  and  the  journey  lasted  twelve  whole 
days ;  wherever  halt  was  made,  dinners  and  fes- 
tivities took  place  from  mid-day  till  evening.  The 
aoeen  was  driven  by  her  dashing  brother-in-law, 
le  Margrave  Albrecht ;  spite  of  the  bitter  cold, 
he  sat  on  the  box  dressed  in  a  gala  costume  of 
embroidered  satin,  silk  stockings,  and  a  huge  wig. 
The  18th  January,  1701,  was  fixed  upon  as  the 
coronation  day.  On  the  29th  December,  1700, 
tbe  elector  Frederick  drove  into  Konigsberg. 

The  festivities  lasted  all  through  the 
months  of  January  and  February,  and  on 
the  8th  March  the  cavalcade  returned  with 
equal  pomp  to  Berlin,  where  for  two  or  three 
months  more  the  same  frivolities  took  place. 
The  sketch  eiven  by  Dr.  Yehse  of  life  at 
the  court  of  the  first  Prussian  monarch  fully 
justifies  Niebuhr  in  his  assertion,  that  "  the 
court  of  Frederick,  like  that  of  almost  all 
German  courts  of  that  period,  was  unspeak- 
ably odious — ^it  was  at  the  same  time  both 
coarse  and  frivolous.  There  was  no  worse 
sort  of  frivolity  than  what  prevailed  during 
the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

The  only  exception  to  this  sweeping  con- 
demnation was  the  separate  court  of  Fred- 
erick's wife,  the  intellectual  and  brilliant  So- 
phia Charlotte  of  Hanover.  At  first  she 
submitted  to  the  stiff  and  dull  ceremonial  of 
her  husband's  court,  but  by  degrees  she 
formed  a  little  circle  of  her  own  in  Llitzel- 
burg,  near  Berlin,  where  she  giive  uncere- 
monious evening  parties.  People  might  go 
from  these  pleasant  supper  parties  of  the 
Queen  to  the  levees  held  by  the  King  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning.    The  most  agreeable 


woman  at  this  little  court  was  a  certain  Frau- 
lein  von  Pollnitz,  distinguished  for  her  beauty 
and  wit,  but  accused  by  her  enemies  of  being 
too  fond  of  men,  wine,  and  play.  The 
Queen's  greatest  friend,  however,  and  the 
real  ornament  of  her  court,  was  Leibnitz,  who 
complains  that  she  was  never  satisfied  Mrith 
any  answer,  but  wanted  to  know  the  "  why 
and  wherefore"  of  everything.  Her  opin- 
ions on  religion  and  politics  were  those  of  a 
philosopher.  On  her  death*  bed  she  thanked 
a  French  clergyman,  "  La  Bergerie,"  who 
came  to  give  her  religious  consolation,  saying 
that  "she  had  for  twenty  years  or  more 
meditated  on  those  matters ;  that  no  doubt 
remained,  and  that  he  could  tell  her  nothing 
that  she  had  not  already  thought  over. 
She  assured  him  that  "  she  died  contented 
and  at  peace."  She  spoke  with  equal  calm- 
ness to  one  of  her  beloved  and  sorrowing  at- 
tendants. "  Do  not  pity  me,  for  I  shall  soon 
f ratify  my  curiosity  on  several  points  which 
leibnitz  could  not  explain  to  me.  Moreover, 
I  procure  for  the  king  the  pleasure  of  a  fu- 
neral, in  which  he  will  have  the  opportunity 
of  displaying  his  love  for  pomp  and  cere- 
mony. 

This  most  accomplished  princess,  une  des 
plus  accompUea  princesses  de  la  terre,  as 
Leibnitz  terms  her,  died  at  the  early  age  of 
thirty-six.  In  a  letter  to  Wootton,  written 
in  July,  1705,  shottly  after  her  death,  Leib- 
nitz says  that  "she  possessed  extraordinary 
knowledge,  and  a  strong  yearning  to  obtain 
more.  Her  conversations  with  me  always 
were  directed  towards  gratifying  this  passion. 
Never  was  seen  a  more  intellectual  or  more 
joyous  princess.  As  she  often  did  me  the 
honor  to  converse  with  me,  and  as  I  was  ac- 
customed to  this  pleasure,  I  have  felt  her 
loss  more  than  others."  He  also  wrote  to 
Fraulein  Pollnitz,  '*  that  he  does  not  cry,  nor 
pity  himself,  but  he  does  not  know  where  he 
is ;  the  queen's  death  seems  like  a  dream  to 
him  ;  but  on  awaking  he  finds  it  is  too  true. 
.  .  .  The  king  is  inconsolable ;  all  the  town 
is  in  a  state  of  consternation." 

For  a  whole  year  the  king  mourned,  but 
in  1708  he  married  a  princess  of  Meck- 
lenburg-Schwerin,  who  atoned  for  certain 
youthful  indiscretions  by  a  life  of  severe  piety, 
which  at  last  degenerated  into  moody  fits  of 
melancholy.  The  king,  who  was  ill,  and  had 
long  been  separated  u-om  her,  was  for  some 
time  ignorant  of  the  real  state  of  her  health. 
One  morning  the  queen  escaped  from  her 
attendants,  ran  through  a  gallery  leading 
from  her  room  to  the  king's,  burst  through 
the  glass  window,  and  rushed  with  bleeding 


#6 


THE  PRUSSIAN  OOtJET  AKD  ARISTOCRACY. 


[Sept., 


hands,  dishevelled  hair,  and  in  white  undress, 
into  the  kind's  apartment.  The  sudden  ap- 
parition of  tnis  bleeding  spectre,  who  over- 
powered him  with  reproaches,  was  too  much 
for  the  ailing  monarch  ;  the  fever  increased 
upon  him,  and  the  pomp-loving  Frederick 
died  after  a  few  weeks'  illness,  of  the  fright, 
in  the  full  conviction  that  he  had  seen  the 
White  Lady. 

The  second  Prussian  monarch,  Frederick 
William  I.,  showed  from  earliest  infancy  the 
strongest  aversion  both  to  the  pomps  and 
ceremonies  of  his  father's  court,  and  to  the 
learning  and  love  of  art  of  his  mother.  He 
bated  everything  French,  and  was  essentially 
German  in  his  habits  and  tastes.  He  had 
but  two  ruling  passions,  and  these  never  left 
bun,  vi/!.,  money  and  tall  soldiers.  In  his 
will  he  states  that  he  was  compelled  during 
bis  whole  life,  as  a  blind  to  the  house  of  Aus- 
tria, to  assume  two  passions  he  did  not  really 
possess — the  one  was  an  unreasonable  ava- 
rice, the  other  an  excessive  desire  for  tall 
soldiers.  These  were  the  only  weaknesses 
that  could  excuse  his  collecting  so  large  a 
treasure  and  so  strong  an  army. 

The  first  step  the  new  king  took  was  to 
summon  the  treasurer  of  the  household,  and 
to  strike  his  pen  through  the  whole  list  of 
the  court  officers.  A  certain  General  Tet- 
tau,  noted  for  his  coarse  wit,  increased  the 
confusion  of  the  treasurer  by  saying,  "  Gen- 
tlemen, our  excellent  lord  is  dead,  and  the 
new  king  sends  you  all  to  the  devil."  No- 
thing but  soldiers  were  now  to  be  seen  about 
the  court. 

We  will  give  Dr.  Vehse's  account  of  the 
tahagie  or  club,  where  Frederick  William  I. 
was  to  be  found  every  night  surrounded  by 
bis  counsellors  and  generals  : 

The  Areopagus,  in  which  matters  of  domestic 
and  foreign  politics  were  discussed,  was  the  far 
moua  T&ack9-ColUgiam^  or  smoking-club.  A 
smoking-room  was  establislied  at  Berlin,  Potsdam, 
and  in  the  summer  months  at  Wusterhausen. 
The  smoking-room  at  Berlin — La  chambre  rouge 
avec  les  nues  de  tt^xiCy  oui  eomnosent  la  moyenne 
r^on  d*air  dt  la  chambre^  as  rrederick  the  Great 
describes  it  in  a  letter  to  Grumbkow,  dated  Rup> 
pin,  17th  March,  1733— was  built  after  the  Dutch 
fashion,  like  a  model  kitchen,  with  an  array  of 
blue  china  plates  on  a  dresser,  and  has  been  pre- 
served until  the  present  day  in  the  same  state,  as 
a  memorial  of  the  strict  warrior  king.  Large 
silver  beer-cans,  out  of  which  the  beer  was  poured 
by  means  of  a  cock  into  the  ju'js  and  glasses, 
were  placed  on  the  table.  The  strangers'  book  is 
still  shown,  with  the  names  of  the  Czar  Peter  and 
Frederick  the  Great,  who  was  introduced  at  the 
early  age  of  eleven.  The  members  of  the  smo- 
king-club met  at  about  five  or  six,  and  stayed  till 


ten,  eleven, or  sometimes  till  twelve  o'clock.  The 
club  was  composed  of  the  generals  and  other  offi- 
cers who  formed  the  usual  society  of  the  king. 
The  most  remarkable  among  them,  next  'to 
Grumbkow  and  the  Prince  of  Anhalt  Dessaa, 
were :  1st,  Christian  Wilhelm  von  Derschan,  a 
man  much  feared  for  his  harshness.  He  was  the 
superintendent  of  the  new  building  in  the  new 
Fredrickstadt,  and  is  said  to  have  ruined  many 
families  by  his  extortions  in  carrying  out  his 
plans.  2nd,  General  Count  Alexander  Donhoff, 
who  had  the  control  of  the  Court  players.  Sid, 
Gen.  David  Gottlob  von  Gersdorf.  4th,  Egidius 
Ehrenreich  von  Sydow.  These  four — Derschan, 
Donhoff*,  Gersdorf,  and  Sydow — had  more  influ- 
ence than  all  the  other  ministers  put  together. 

There  were  some  ten  other  habittUSf 
scarcely  worth  naming. 

But  besides  these  officers,  the  ministers  and 
foreign  envoys  were  invited  to  the  smoking-club. 
Among  the  latter,  next  to  the  Austrian  envoy, 
Seckendorf,  the  person  most  in  favor  was  the 
Dutch  general,  Ginckel.  Foreig^n  princes,  who 
came  to  Berlin  on  a  visit,  and  omer  notable  tra- 
vellers, also  received  invitations  to  the  smokioff- 
club.  Stanislaus  Leszzinsky^  the  King  of  Poland, 
was  a  frequent  guest.;  so  was  Francis  of  Lor- 
raine, when  he  came  to  solicit  the  King  of  Prus- 
sia to  vote  for  him  ss^mperor. 

The  servants  were  dismiesed,  so  ^.  to  be  freed 
from  all  restraint.  Towards  seven '  o'clock,  the 
king  paid  a  visit  to  the  queen,  where  a  cover  was 
always  laid  for  him;  but  lie  stayed  there  a  very 
short  time.  Such  of  the  guests  as  had  not  yet 
dined  found  cold  meats  on  the  side-table.  At 
about  eight,  the  young  jpnnces  came  in  to  wish 
the  king  good  night.  The  members  of  the  smo- 
king club,  decorated  with  the  several  orders,  sat 
round  the  table  and  smoked  long  pipes ;  before 
each  of  them  was  placed  a  white  jug  full  of  Ouch- 
stein  beer,  from  Konigslutter,  in  Brunswick. 
Those  who  could  not  smoke,  such  as  the  old 
Prince  of  Dessau,  and  Seckendorf,  took  their 
pipes  cold,  and  made  a  show  with  their  lips,  as  if 
they  were  smoking.  The  king,  who  likeo  coarse 
jokes,  was  delighted  when  foreign  princes  were 
either  intoxicated  with  the  strong  beer,  or  were 
made  sick  by  the  tobacco,  to  which  they  were  not 
used.  He  himself  was  passionately  fond  of  smo- 
king, and  sometimes— when  Stanislaus  Leszzin- 
sky,  who  also  was  a  great  smoker,  was  present-*- 
smoked  as  many  as  thirty  pipes  at  a  sitting.  .  On 
the  table  were  laid  the  papers  published  at  Ber- 
lin, Hamburg,  Leipsic,  fireslau,  Vienna,  Frank- 
fort, the  Hague,  and  Paris.  A  reader  was  ap- 
pointed to  read  out  and  explain  what  was  too  ab- 
struse* This  reader  was  the  learned,  coxcombi- 
cal Jacob  Paul,  Freiherr  von  Gundling. 

Gundling  was  born  in  1673,  and  was  the  son  of 
a  curate  at  Hersbruck,  near  Nuremburg.  He 
had  been  a  professor  at  Berlin,  and  was  appointed, 
at  Grumbkow's  suggestion,  to  be  reader  to  the 
smoking-club.  He  had  rooms  allotted  to  him  at 
Potsdam,  was  supplied  with  food  from  the  royal 
tabic,  and  accompanied  the  king  wherever  he 
went,  so  as  to  be  at  hand  to  assist  the  king  with 


18S3.] 


THE  PRUSSIAN  COXJKH  AND  AEISTOQRAOY. 


91 


his  iDBtriictive  conversation.  Grumbkow  had  put 
up  a  sort  of  pulpit  in  his  dining-room,  especially 
for  Gandling  8  nse,  whence  the  Court  reader  ex- 
pounded the  newspapers  while  the  guests  sat  at 
meat.  Gundling  was,  therefore,  in  his  way,  a 
person  of  some  importance — so  much  so,  that 
both  the  Russian  and  Austrian  Courts  thought  it 
worth  their  while  to  win  him  to  their  side. 
Seckendorf  wrote  to  Prince  Eugene  on  the  23rd 
Oct,  1726, '  that  no  one  did  the  Austrians  more 
harm  than  a  certain  privy  councillor,'Gundling, 
who,  much  against  his  will,  was  forced  to  act  the 
part  of  a  merry-andrew,  but  who  was  always  in 
the  kine's  company;  that  he  was  looked  upon  as 
an  oracle  in  jmhlicis.  Whenever  Austrian  affairs 
were  discussed,  this  man  was  insinuated  into  the 
king's  ear  falsa  principia ;  that  he  was  wiirth 
winning  by  the  present  of  a  golden  cliain  and  a 
miniature  of  the  emperor.'  Gundling  according- 
ly was  presented  with  a  miniature  set  in  dia- 
monds. In  order  to  render  learning— ^wbich 
Gundling  reallv  possessed — ridiculous,  he  was 
forced  to  act  the  part  of  a  jester,  for  the  kind's 
amuseident.  The  king  revived  for  him  the  office 
of  master  of  the  ceremonies,  and  bestowed  upon 
him  the  dress  of  that  office — a  red  frock-coat  em- 
broidered with  black  satin,  with  large  French 
cofis  and  gold  buttpn-holeb,  a  large  peruke,  with 
long  pendant  curls  made  of  white  goat's  hair,  a 
large  hat  with  an  ostrich's  feather,  straw-colored 
breeches,  red  silk  stockings,  with  gold  clocks  to 
them,  and  high  red-heeled  shoes.  Gundling, 
moreover,  was  made  President  of  the  Academy 
of  Sciences,  a  post  formerly  held  by  Ijeibnitz. 
He  was  also  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  count. 

The  king  then  made  Gundling  one  of  his  cham- 
berlains. One  day,  when  Gundling  was  drunk, 
they  cut  his  chamberlain's'  key  off  his  coat ;  the 
king  threatened  to  treat  him  like  a  soldier  who 
bad  lost  his  musket.  After  poor  Gundling  had 
been  forced  to  wear,  by  way  of  punishment,  a 
large  wooden  key  a  yard  long,  the  lost  key  was 
restored  to  him.  The  careful  chamberiuin  had  it 
firmly  attached  to  his  coat  by  a  blacksmith.  All 
these  honors  wer^  bestowed  upon  Gundling  only 
to  make  him  and  them  ridiculous.  Among  other 
things,  Gundling  was  appointed  by  the  king  to 
superintend  all  the  mulberry  trees  in  his  domin- 
ions ;  he  was  made  finance  councillor ;  the  min- 
isters were  ordered  to  introduce  him  formally  into 
their  office,  to  provide  him  with  the  vota  sessionis, 
and  to  hand  over  to  him  the  department  of  all  the 
silkworms  in  the  whole  monarchy. 

In  the  smoking-club  the  coarsest  and  roughest 
jokes  were  play^  off  upon  him.  Soldiers  were 
the  only  people  whoin  the  king  held  in  any  re- 
spect ;  learned  men  he  called  pedants,  paper- 
stainers  and  smearers ;  these  were  to  be  taught 
how  superior  soldiers  were  to  them  in  everything. 
It  was,  as  we  have  already  said,  the  king's  great 
pleasure  to  make  his  guests  drunk,  and  Gundling 
was  plied  with  liquor  till  he  was  insensible. 
When  they  had  thus  gained  the  victory  over 
learning,  poor  Gundling  was  exposed  to  the  heavy 
coarse  jokes  of  the  king  and  his  officers.  Figures 
of  donkeys,  apes,  and  oxen  were  pinned  to  his 
coat,  and  his  upper  lip  was  adorned  with  a  cork 

TOL.  XXX.    NO.  I 


mnstachio.  He  was  made  to  read  the  most  atro- 
cious libels  on  himself,  which  the  king  had  caus- 
ed to  be  inserted  in  the  newspapers.  An  ape, 
dressed  exactly  like  Gundling,  and  with  a  cham- 
berlain's kevj'was  placed  at  his  elbow,  and  the 
king  insisted  upon  his  embracing  this  bis  natural 
eon,  before  the  whole  company.  At  Wusterbau- 
sen  some  tame  bears  were  kept  in  the  court-yard, 
and  some  of  these  were  placed  in  Gundling's 
bed ;  their  hug  made  him  keep  his  bed  and  spit 
blood  for  several  days.  Once,  in  mid-winter, 
Gundling  was  reelinc  home,  over  the  draw-bridge, 
when  he  was  seized  by  four  stout  grenadiers, 
and  dropped,  with  a  cord,  down  into  the  frozen 
moat,  until  his  weight  broke  the  ice.  This  excel- 
lent joke  was  repeated,  for  the  especial  amuse- 
ment of  the  king,  and  commemorated  by  a  picture. 
Another  time  Gandling  was  invited  to  dinner,  and 
the  sedan-chair  was  purposely  made  to  let  him 
drop  through.  The  more  he  cried  to  the  bearers 
to  stop,  the  faster  they  went,  and  he  was  compel- 
led to  run  all  the  way.  Frequently,  when  Gund- 
ling got  home,  he  found  the  door  of  his  room 
bricked  up,  and  be  was  hunting  for  it  all  night ; 
at  other  times  he  was  besieged  in  his  studies  with 
squibs  and  crackers. 

At  length  the  wretched  man  could  stand  it  no 
longer,  and  fled  to  his  brother,  who  was  a  profes- 
sor, at  Halle.  The  King  had  him  fetched  back, 
and  threatened  to  treat  him  as  a  deserter,  but, 
seeing  that  be  was  crest-fallen,  soothed  him  with 
excessive  praise,  and  a  present  of  1000  thalers ; 
ne  had,  moreover,  sixteen  quaterings  bestowed 
upon  him,  and  the  title  of  Count.  This  was  in 
1724.  Some  three  years  after  this  the  greatest 
joke  was  played  upon  him.  His  rival  and  succes- 
sor, one  Fassman,  by  the  King's  command,  wrote 
the  severest  satire  upon  him,  called  The  Learn' 
ed  Fool,  Fassman  was  ordered  to  present- this 
production  to  Gundling,  in  the  smoking  club. 
Gundling,  bursting  with  'fury,  seized  a  smdl 
silver  pan,  filled  with  charcoal,  intended  to  light 
the  pipe.8,  and  flung  its  contents  into  Fastoian's 
face,  singing  his  eyebrows  and  eyelashes.  Fass- 
man seized  Gundling,  and  belabored  him  so  with 
the  pan,  that  he  was  unable  to  sit  down  for  a 
month,  without  pain.  The  two  rivals  never  could 
meet  again  in  the  smoking  room  without  coming 
to  blows,  to  the  intense  delighf  of  the  king  and 
ministers,  the  'generals  and  the  foreign  envoys. 
At  length  the  king  insisted  on  the  two  gentlemen 
settling  their  difference  by  a  regular  duel.  Fass- 
man called  Gundling  out,  and  the  latter  was  forced 
to  accept  the  challenge,  whether  be  liked  it  or  na 
But,  when  the  combatants  met  in  the  field,  Gund- 
ling flung  down  his  pistol,  while  Fassman  dis- 
charged his,  which  was  loaded  only  with  powder, 
and  set  fire  to  Gundling's  peruque ;  it  required 
buckets  of  water  to  extinguish  the  fire,  and  to 
bring  Gundling  to  himself.  At  length  Gundling 
brought  his  learned  but  much  plagued  life  to  a 
close.  He  died  at  Potsdam,  in  the  year  1731,  at 
the  age  of  fifty-eight,  of  an  ulcdr  in  the  intestines, 
produced  by  excessive  drink.  The  King  did  not 
spare  him,  even  when  dead.  For  ten  years  or 
more,  a  huge  wine-butt  had  been  prepared  for  the 
reception  of  Gundling's  corpse,  and  in  this  cask 


98 


THE  PRUSSIAN  COURT  AND  ARISTOCRACY. 


[Sept, 


he  was  baried,  spite  of  the  expostulations  of  the 
clergy. 

A  more  active,  restless  man  than  the  King 
(says  Dr.  Vehse)  it  was  impossible  to  find.  There 
was  not  an  atom  of  repose  in  him.  Frederick 
was  so  vehemently  active,  that  it  caused  no  as- 
tonishment when  he  beat  with  his  own  hand  a 
lazy  fellow,  who  was  idling  his  time  away  in  the 
streets  at  Berlin.  He  likewise  roused  one  of  the 
guards  of  the  gate  at  Potsdam,  who  had  overslept 
himself,  and  had  kept  the  peasants  waiting  outsiae 
the  gate.  *  Good  morning,  sir,'  said  he,  while  he 
kicked  him  out  of  bed. 

It  was  an  awkward  business  to  meet  the  King 
in  the  street.  Whenever  he  saw  any  one  he 
rode  close  up  to  him,  till  his  horse's  head  touched 
the  man's  shoulder.  Then  came  the  regular 
question,  *  Who  are  you  V  Those  who  looked 
like  Frenchmen  were  certain  to  be  detained  by  him. 
One  of  them  very  prudently  answered  his  question 
of  Qui  iifs  vans  7  by  saying  that  he  did  not  under- 
stand French.  He  even  stopped  the  French 
priests  in  the  streets,  and  always  asked  if  they 
nad  read  Molidre,  meaning  to  insinuate  that  he 
took  them  to  be  no  better  than  actors.  The  son 
of  Beausobre,  whom  Frederick  the  Great  respect- 
ed so  much,  answered  this  stereotyped  question 
by  saying,  Ouif  sire,  et  surtout  ATvare.  The 
King  liked  a  quick  repartee  like  this.  A  student 
in  theology  was  one  day  accosted  by  the  King  in 
the  street.  '  The  Berliners  are  good  for  nothing,' 
said  the  King.  'That  is  true,  as  a  general  role,'* 
said  the  student,  *  but  there  are  exceptions.'  'And^ 
who  may  they  be  ?'  said  the  King.  *  Your  Majes- 
ty and  I.'  The  King  Immediately  had  him  up  to 
the  palace,  to  be  examined,  and,  as  the  candidate 
for  orders  passed  well  through  the  ordeal,  he  re- 
ceived the  first  living  that  became  vacant.  Those 
who  ran  away,  on  seeing  the  king  approach,  fared 
the  worst.  Frederick  ^at  a  Jew  severely  who 
ran  away  on  meeting  him  in  the  street,  and  for 
saying  that  he  had  done  so  for  fear.  During  the 
beating  the  king  administered  to  the  Jew,  he  re- 
peatecTthe  words  '  You  are  to  love  me,  I  tell  you, 
and  not  to  fear  me.' 

The  king's  bamboo  cane  was  a  weapon 
constantly  put  in  requisition,  and  held  in  due 
honor. 

Frederick  William  I.  died  in  May,  1740. 
His  coarse,  rough,  overbearing  nature,  was 
not  devoid  of  certain  sterling  qualities,  and 
he  was  altogether  well  fitted  for  the  age  of 
transition  in  which  he  lived.  Luther's  dictum 
of  Auf  ein  prober  Klotz  gehort  ein  prober 
Keil — (a  sturdy  log  requires  a  sturdy  axe) 
applies  as  wc*l  to  Frederick  William  as  it 
.  did  to  Luther  himself.  The  king  would  bear 
*'  .  opposition  or  even  discussion.  An  appeal 
from  the  University  of  Halle  in  favor  of 
some  wretched  professor  who  had  been 
turned  out  of  the  university,  was  answered 
by  a  marginal  note  to  this  effect : — '  Should 
not  reason ;— is  my  subject.'  A  collection 
4ii  the  king's  marginal  notes  would  equal 


Dean  Swift's  in  point  and  terseness.  Opor- 
tet  meant,  the  memorialist  must  help  himself 
as  well  as  he  could.  I^on  habeo  peeuniam 
was  a  frequent  answer.  ,  '  Nonesense  1  non- 
sense! nonsense!'  seems  a  standard  phrase 
with  him,  uttered  with  every  variety  and  in- 
tensity of  expression.  A  bill  for  a  broken 
window-pane  had  thi»  note  appended  to  it : 
'  It  does  not  annoy  me. — Frederick  William.' 
He  was  just,  when  his  passions  did  not  get 
the  better  of  him,  and  made  no  distinction  of 
persons.  He  was  as  ready  to  hang  a  noble- 
man or  an  unjust  judge  as  a  common  male- 
factor ;  nor  would  he  suffer  the  intrigues  of 
his  court  to  interfere  with  him.  He  estab- 
lished his  sovereignty,  as  he  himself  said, 
like  a  Bocher  de  Bronee, 

The  six-and-forty  years'  rule  of  his  son, 
Frederick  the  Great,  is  so  much  better  known 
in  this  country,  that,  although  we  had  mark- 
ed many  passages  for  comment,  we  will  in- 
stead proceed  to  the  next  reign,'  and  present 
our  readers  with  a  condensed  account  of  a 
certain  Madame  de  Lichtenau,  who  played  a 
prominent  part  during  the  life  of  Frederick 
William  II. 

Wilhelmine  Encke,  the  Prussian  Madame 
de  Pompadour,  was  a  handsome  brunette, 
the  daughter  of  a  trumpeter  in  one  of  the  re- 
giments quartered  in  Berlin ;  her  sister  was  a 
figurante  in  the  Opera.  The  good-natured 
prince,  who  was  struck  by  her  beauty,  s^nt 
her  to  Paris  to  finish  her  education.  She 
had  such  influence  over  the  Crown  Prince, 
that  Frederick  the  Great  gave  orders  to  his 
ministers  not  to  pay  any  attention  to  the  re- 
commendations coming  from  'a  certain  per- 
son ;'  and  to  put  a  stop  to  her  intrigues  mar- 
ried Wilhelmine  at  once  to  the  son  of  one  of 
the  gardeners  at  Potsdam,  of  the  name  of 
Rietz.  This  marriage,  however,  was  merely 
nominal,  as  Rietz  undertook  never  to  live  un- 
der the  same  roof  with  her.  A  house  was 
taken  for  her  at  Potsdam,  where  the  Crown 
Prince  visited  her  with  his  uncle's  consent. 
*  She  is,'  writes  Lord  Malmesbury  in  1775, 
'  large  in  her  person,  spirited  in  her  looks, 
loose  in  her  attire,  and  gives  a  true  idea  of  a 
perfect  Bacchante.  He  is  liberal  to  her  to 
profusion,  and  she  alone  spends  the  full  in- 
come he  receives  from  the  king.  She  makes 
indeed  the  best  return  in  her  power  to 
such  generosity,  for  at  the  same  time  she 
assures  him  that  he  has  the  sole  possession 
of  her  affections,  she  by  no  means  exacts  the 
same  fidelity  from  him.'  When  Frederick 
William  ascended  the  throne,  the  influencaof 
the  favorite  was  all-powerful.  She  was  then 
thirty-four  years  old,  and  says  in  her  apolo- 


1853.] 


THE  PRUSSIAJ*  COURT  AND  ARISTOCRACY. 


99 


gy  that  friendship  had  taken  the  place  of 
love ;  the  bond  of  union  between  tlxe  king 
and  Madame  Bietz  was  ber  two  children  by 
him,  one  born  in  1770,  another  in  1778  ;  a 
third  child  the  king  did  not  acknowledge. 
Frederick  William,  not  content  with  his  own 
wife,  and  his  favorite,  Madame  Rietz,  made 
a  morganatic  marriage,  Orst  with  a  Frau- 
lein  Yoss,  whom  he  created  Countess  Ingen- 
hein,  and  who  died  after  a  year  or  two, 
and  secondly  with  a  certain  Fraulein  Don- 
hoff.  The  latter  was  the  mother  of  the  late 
prime  minister  of  Prussia,  Count  Branden- 
burg; but  her  overbearing  temper  soon 
brought  her  into  disgrace,  and  Madame  Rietz 
again  became  undisputed  favorite,  and  was 
the  fountain  of  nil  honors.  She  accompa- 
nied the  king  in  his  unfortunate  campaign  into 
France,  held  a  sort  of  court  at  Spa  and  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  and  was  offered  one  hundred 
thousand  pounds  by  Lord  Henry  Spencer,  the 
English  envoy  at  Berlin,  if  she  would  make 
Prussia  join  the  coalition  against  France,  in 
1795,  at  least,  so  she  says  in  her  apology, 
and  this  assertion  is  borne  out  by  Count  Har- 
denburg,  in  his  Memoires  d'un  Homme  d^EtaL 

In  1793,  Lord  Templetown,  a  fiery  young 
Irishman  of  twenty,  had  offered  her  his  hand 
and  heart,  but  the  king  refused  his  consent, 
feeling  that  he  would  be  in^  the  condition  of 
the  man  who,  on  losing  his  wife,  and  being 
recommended  to  marry  his  mistress,  said, 
^mais  ou  passerais-je  mes  soirees  f  In  1795 
this  .courtship  came  to  a  violent  end,  and 
Lord  Templetown  was  ordered  to  leave  Ber- 
lin. Madame  Rietz  now  determined  to  go 
abroad  for  a  change  of  scene. 

The  king  gave  her  carte  blanche  to  buy 
works  of  art,  and  unlimited  credit  upon  bank- 
ers in  Milan,  Florence,  Leghorn,  Rome,  and 
Naples.  She  travelled  like  a  princess.  Al- 
though past  forty,  she  had  numerous  love  ad- 
ventures, old  and  young  men  had  their  heads 
turned  by  this  siren.  One  of  her  most  enthu- 
siastic admirers  was  the  Chevalier  de  Saze, 
the  son  of  Prince  Xavier  of  Saxony,  a  young 
man  of  twenty,  who  was  living  in  Italy ;  he 
subsequently  was  made  governor  of  Naples, 
and  was  killed  in  a  duel,  in  1802,  at  Toplitz. 
His  letters  breathe  the  most  violent  love. 
Another  equally  vehement  admirer  was  the 
archaeologist  Hirt,  whose  love  for  art  had 
brought  him  to  Rome.  Aloys  Hirt  had  been 
a  monk,  and  acted  in  1776  as  the  guide  to 
strangers  in  Rome.  Hirt  followed  Madame 
Rietz  to  Potsdam. 

Among  other  admirers  we  ought  to  men- 
tion Lord  Bristol,  Bishop  of  Londonderry, 


who  had  met  Madame  Rietz  at  Munich,  on 
her  way  to  Italy.  He  followed  her  from 
Italy  to  Berlin,  and  at  the  age  of  sixty  offer- 
ed her  his  hand.  Another  admirer,  of  whom 
Madame  Rietz  made  sport,  was  a  rich  manu- 
facturer in  Berlin,  named  Schmidts,  better 
known  as  the  '  fat  Adonis,'  who  ipade  her 
splendid  presents.  In  her  subsequent  dis- 
grace, Le  gros  Smith,  who  cherished  her  with 
all  the  faculties  of  his  fat  soul,  remained  her 
devoted  friend. 

All  the  minor  courts  in  Italy  vied  with 
each  other  to  do  honor  to  their  distinguished 
guest.  To  insure  a  better  reception  for  her, 
Madame  Rietz  had  sixteen  quarterings  be- 
stowed upon  her,  and  was  created  Countess 
of  Lichtenau.  In  1796  news  came  of  the 
king's  illness,  and  Countess  Lichtenau  left 
Italy  and  went  back  to  Potsdam,  where  she 
took  every  charge  of  the  sick  monarch,  with- 
out however  giving  up  the  advantages  or 
pleasures  of  her  new  rank  and  position. 
.  Countess  Lichtenau  continued  prime  favor- 
ite till  the  king's  death.  During  his  last  ill- 
ness there  was  some  talk  of  her  having  some 
millions  of  thalers  placed  in  an  English  bank- 
er's hands,  and  she  was  advised  to  fly  and 
to  settle  in  England,  but  she  remained  with 
the  king  to  the  last.  On  his  death  she  was 
arrested  and  all  her  property  confiscated. 
Her  friends,  many  of  whom  she  had  promo- 
ted, turned  their  backs  upon  her  and  became 
her  accusers.  In  1798  she  was  sent  to  the 
fortress  of  Glogau,  with  a  yearly  allowance 
of  4000  thalers ;  at  the  end  of  three  years  she 
was  released,  and  lived  afterwards  at  Bres- 
laii,  where  at  the  age  of  fifty  she  married 
Franz  von  Holbein,  the  well  known  dramatic 
writer,  a  young  man  of  eight-and-twenty. 
Countess  Lichtenau  was  deserted  by  her  hus- 
band in  ]  802 — she  quitted  Breslau  during 
the  war,  and  lived  in  Vienna.  In  1809  she 
returned  again  to  Breslau,  after  the  pence  of 
Tilsit,  and  eventually  died  at  Berlin,  in  1820, 
at  the  advanced  age  of  eighty.  She  was  ac- 
cused in  various  publications  of  the  most  fla- 
gitious crimes,  but  she  found  many  defend- 
ers ;  she  has  written  her  own  apology  in  two 
volumes,  at  the  end  of  which  she  has  print- 
ed many  very  interesting  letters,  which  form 
by  far  the  most  valuable  part  of  the  work, 
and  which  prove  that  even  in  her  'disgrace 
she  still  retained  many  warm  friends  and  ad- 
mirers. 

We  must  here  close  our  extracts  from  a 
book  which,  although  full  of  repetitions  and 
useless  detail,  has  afforded  us  much  amuse- 
ment. 


100 


TBAnS  OP  THE  TRAPPBTS. 


[Sept. 


From   the   Oen  tie  man's   M&g&zine. 


TRAITS  OP  THE  TRAPPISTS. 


Thb  Cardinal  de  Richelieu  and  the  Mar- 
quise d'Effiat  (whose  son,  Cinq  Mars,  his 
eminence  soon  after  judicially  murdered),  on 
the  9th  Jan.,  1626,  met  to  hold  as  sponsors 
at  the  baptismal  font  the  young  heir  to  the 
almost  ducal  house  of  Bouthilier  de  Ranc6. 
The  infant  received  the  Christian  names  of 
his  illustrious  godfather,  and  the  little  Jean 
Armand  was  endowed  by  the  cardinal  with 
the  sponsorial  gift  of  the  Abbey  de  la  Trappe, 
to  be  holden  by  him  in  "  command,*'  that  is, 
to  take  its  profits  and  neglect  its  duties. 

Let  me  here  state,  by  way  of  parenthe- 
sis, that  of  all  the  abuses  in  the  Church  of 
France,  there  was  none  so  outrageous  as  that 
of  the  "  commendams."  In  old  times,  when 
war  or  pillage  threatened  an  ecclesiastical 
property  or  institution,  it  was  the  custom  to 
make  overt  he  same,  recommended  (commen- 
datum)  to  some  noble  powerful.'enough  to  pro- 
tect it.  This  was  a  provisional  arrangement 
with  the  election  of  the  titulary;  but  the 
commmdatory  drew  the  revenues,  and  men 
became  proud  of  being  commendatories. 
They  were  ready  to  pay  for  the  office  by  as- 
signing to  the  nominators  a  portion  of  the 
income ;  and,  moreover,  the  papal  sanction 
always  made  an  ultramontanist  of  him  who 
profited  by  the  bargain.  The  cammendams 
mcreased  daily,  and  that  most  in  times  when 
they  ceased  to  be  needed.  "If  an  Indian 
were  to  visit  us,"  remarks  Montesquieu,  **  it 
would  take  more  than  half  a  year,  as  he 
walked  over  the  trottoirs  of  Paris,  to  make 
him  comprehend  what  a  commendam  is."  An 
abb6  en  commande  was  "in  orders,"  without 
being  a  priest,  and  might  take  a  wife  unto 
himself,  on  condition  of  surrendering  his 
*'  commande."  If  he  did  worse  than  marry, 
such  sacrifice  was  not  required  of  him.  At 
all  time^  the  office  might  be  retained  by  a 
liberal  payment.  Indeed,  the  nobles  who  had 
the  power  of  appointing,  derived  a  considera- 
ble fortune  from  them.  In  the  reign  of  Louis 
XIII.  the  Count  de  Soissons  heaped  a  dozen 
of  these  offices  on  a  single  abbe,  who  retained 
but  a  poor  thousand  crowns  for  his  pay,  and 
retoraed  many  hundred  thousand  iilto  the 


coffers  of  his  very  religious  patron. — But  to 
return  to  De  Ranc6. 

He  was  a  marvellous  boy,  that  Jean  Armand 
Bouthilier  de  Ranee  !  He  was  yet  in  short 
clothes  when  he  puzzled  the  king's  confessor 
by  asking  him  questions  on  Homer  in  Greek ; 
and  he  published  an  edition  of  Anacreon, 
with  notes,  at  the  same  age  (twelve  years)  as 
Campbell  made  the  translation  of  the 
"  Clouds"  of  Aristophanes,  which  was  given 
to  the  world  by  a  two-penny  subscription  of 
his  school-fellows.  The  cardinal  gave  his 
godson  some  valuable  church  preferment  for 
this  piece  of  scholarship.  Marie  de  Medicis 
presented  him  with  greatness  in  the  form  of 
empty  titles,  and  church  and  crown  vied  with 
each  other  in  showering  down  upon  him 
ecclesiastical  privileges  with  much  profit  at- 
tached, and  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  ambition 
of  the  most  unconscionable  of  aspirants. 

He  was  a  marvel  of  a  priest  was  this  same 
Jean  Armand  !  For  once  that  he  preached, 
a  thousand  times  did  he  conter  JUurettei  in 
the  willing  ears  of  noble  lady  or  village 
maid.  He  dressed  in  fine  linen  and  a  world 
of  lace,  wore  red  heels  to  his  shoes,  talked 
euphuistic  nonsense  in  the  circle  at  Madame 
de  Rambouillet's,  carried  a  sword  on  his  hip, 
and  was  ever  ready  to  run  it  through  the 
body  of  the  first  man  who  dared  but  to  "  bite 
his  thumb"  as  he  passed.  He  drank  hard, 
danced  gracefully,  swore  round  oaths,  and  . 
made  love  irresistibly.  He  was  grand  master 
in  the  court  of  folly,  and  was  perhaps  scarcely 
out  of  his  character  when  he  espoused  the 
widow  of  Scarron  to  the  grand  monarque. 
Compared  with  the  orgies  which  scared  the 
good  people  on  his  estate  at  Veretz,  those  at 
Medenham  Abbey  were  puritanic  righteous- 
ness. The  only  symptom  of  seriousness  given 
by  the  master  of  the  revel  was  in  his  addic- 
tion to  the  study  of  astrology.  If  beneath 
the  shadowy  splendor  of  the  stars  he  regis- 
tered many  a  perjured  vow,  he  was  as  credu- 
lous as  the  maids  whom  he  deceived  in  the 
promises  he  read  in  the  constellations ;  and, 
if  he  was  ardent  in  the  pursuit  of  "  maids 
who  love  the  moon,"  he  was  not  less  so  in 


1858.] 


TRAITS  OP  THE  TRAPPIBTS. 


101 


the  study  of  the  moon  itself.  And  this  time 
he  was  not,  indeed,  in  fall  orders,  and  therein 
he  saw  ample  apology  for  his  debauchery, 
his  duelling,  his  love  of  field-sports,  and  his 
murderous  cruelty  to  all  who  stood  for  a 
moment  between  him  and  his  inclinations. 

In  1651,  soon  after  his  full  ordination,  he 
refused  the  bishopric  of  Leon,  in  Brittany,  for 
the  twofold  reason  that  its  revenues  were 
small,  and  that  its  distance  from  the  gay 
capital  lent  anything  but  enchantment  to  its 
episcopal  prospect.  He  walked  abroad  in  a 
perfect  blaze  of  glory,  such  as  tailors  alone 
can  create  for  man.  The  summary  of  his 
character  may  be  found  in  an  expression  of 
his  own  :  "  I  preached  this  morning,"  said 
he  on  one  occasion,  "  like  an  angel,  and  now 
I  am  going  to  hunt  like  the  very  devil !" 

This  demoniacal  incarnation  set  the  dimaz 
to  his  crimes  by  seducing  the  Duchess  de 
Montbazon — no  very  difficult  task ;  but  the 
duke  had  been  his  benefactor.  He  was  so 
gentlemanlike  in  his  vices  that  he  might  have 
pleased  that  very  nice  man  of  the  world,  Lord 
Chesterfield  himself.  If  he  lived  ten  years 
m  close  intimacy  with  the  duchess,  he  did  all 
he  could  not  to  shock  the  duke  by  forcing  the 
intimacy  on  his  knowledge.  Excellent  man ! 
Mephistopheles  could  not  have  been  more 
devilishly  complaisant. 

The  guilty  duchess  suddenly  died  of  an 
attack  of  measles.  There  is  a  legend  which 
tells  of  De  Ranc6  having  unexpectedly  "beheld 
her  in  her  coffin ;  it  is  somewhat  apocryphal. 
It  is  fact,  however,  that  he  rushed  through 
his  own  woods  screaming  her  name,  and  hurl- 
ing imprecations,  like  Ajax  when  defying 
Heaven.  He  was  shocked,  but  it  was  after 
the  fashion  of  Lady  Jane  Grey*s  husband  in 
Dr.  Young's  poem.  He  bewailed  his  lost 
delights  rather  than  his  mistress'  destiny, 
and  his  thoughts  in  presence  of  her  body 
rested  upon  incidents  that  had  better  have 
been  forgotten.  He  seriously  tried  to  raise 
the  devil  in  order  to  procure  the  restoration 
of  the  duchess  to  life.  Failing  in  this,  he 
became  half  insane,  and  in  one  of  his  wildest 
fita  betook  himself  to  a  cast-off  mistress  of 
Gaston  of  Orleans  for  ghostly  advice.  The 
deposed  concubine  was  sick  of  the  world,  and 
she  speedily  made  De  Ranc6  share  in  her 
sentiments.  He  went  about  with  points  un- 
trussed,  doublet  unbuttoned,  beard  untrim- 
med,  and  cruelly  loose-gartered.  '  He  began 
in  this  guise  to  excite  admiration,  and  his 
fanaticism  assumed  such  an  aspect  that  his 
ecclesiastical  superiors  deemed  nim  a  fitting 
missionary  to  explore  the  wilds  of  the  Hima^ 
laya.     He  deeply  declined  the  office,  and 


hinted  to  the  Bishop  of  Aleth  that  he  thought 
bis  vocation  was  to  turn  hermit.  The  good 
bishop  said  Satan  himself  had  often  done  that, 
and  impelled  others  to  do  the  like,  but  that 
if  he  were  a  man  with  a  manly  heart  there 
was  other  work  for  him  in  the  world  than  the 
toil  of  eternally  doing  nothing.  De  Ranc6 
took  six  years  to  make  up  his  mind.  At  the 
end  of  that  time  he  defrauded  his  natural 
heirs  by  selling  his  estates.  The  produce  he 
invested  for  the  benefit  of  the  abbey  of  La 
Trappe,  and,  having  obtained  the  consent  of 
the  kmg  and  the  authorization  of  the  pope  to 
enter  upon  the  '*  regular"  administration  of 
the  institution  of  which  he  had  hitherto  been 
only  the  titular  superior,  he  proceeded  to  the 
godless  locality,  restored  the  old,  or  rather 
created  an  original,  rigidity  of  rule,  and  very 
much  disgusted  the  few  monks  who  still  lin- 
gered behind  the  dilapidated  walls,  and  who 
were  given  to  sip  ratafia  rather  than  read 
their  breviaries.  When  De  Ranc6  entered 
upon  his  new  duties  at  La  Trappe  he  received 
episcopal  benediction  at  the  hands  of  no  less 
a  person  than  the  Irish  Bishop  of  Ardagh. 

There  were  but  seven  monks  in  residence 
at  the  monastery  when  De  Kanc(6  assumed 
authority  there.  He  at  once  stopped  their 
playing  at  bowls,  and  they  threatened  to 
horsewhip  him.  They  were  got  rid  of  by  a 
pension  of  four  hundred  livres  each ;  and  the 
new  abb6  added  example  to  precept  by  soon 
after  burning  all  the  love-letters  he  had  re- 
ceived from  the  Duchess  de  Montbazon,  and 
distributing  daily  alms  and  food  to  no  less 
than  four  thousand  beggars !  He  opened 
the  institution  to  all  comers,  and  without 
much  questioning.  Occasionally  some,  who 
after  admission  repented  of  their  course,  and 
became  desirous  of  entering  the  world  again, 
were  detained  against  their  will ;  and  I  can- 
not help  thinking  that  the  abb6  himself,  who 
maintained  a  heavy  correspondence  and  re- 
paired not  unfrequently  to  the  capital,  was 
employed  by  the  government  to  carry  out  its 
vengeance  against  political  offenders.  The 
regulations  of  the  monastery  would  have  made 
a  Sybarite  faint  at  hearing  them  only  read. 
The  hour  for  rising  was  the  second  after  mid- 
night. Silence  was  seldom  broken,  and  the 
brother  who  ventured  to  raise  his  eyes  from 
the  ground,  except  when  bidden,  was  guilty 
of  a  great  offence.  Hard  labor,  hard  fare, 
and  hard  beds  were  allotted  to  the  monks, 
whose  only  hope  of  escape  from  them  was  by 
death.  The  abbot  himself  lived  simply,  and 
was  no  doubt  a  sincere  roan  ;  but  he  had  in 
his  household  a  "cellarer,"  and  what  that 
official  served  at  the  abbot's  own  table  is  a 


102 


TRAna  OF  THE  TRAPPISTS. 


[Sept, 


matter  upon  which  I  confess  to  be  exceedingly 
curious.  If  De  Ranc6  had  a  table  and  flask 
of  his  own,  *so  also  had  he  a  will  and  a  de- 
termination. He  professed  Jansenism — in 
other  words,  he  believed  that  man  of  his  own 
resolution  could  not  walk  in  righteousness^ 
but  that  he  needed  the  prevenient  grace  of 
God  to  put  him  in  that  path,  and  enable  him 
thereon  to  make  progress.  The  Jesuits  and 
Jesuitically-inclined  popes  held  that  where 
man  had  a  will  to  be  righteous  the  grace 
would  follow  to  help  him,  and  that  such 
divine  grace  could  not  well  be  efficacious 
without  the  human  will.  No  wonder  that 
De  Ranc6  was  only  considered  half  a  saint  by 
many  of  his  co-religionists.  It  did  not  assist 
him  to  better  his  reputation  that  he  quoted 
Horace  and  Aristophanes  in  his  letters,  and 
that  he  corresponded  with  Bossuet,  the  Eagle 
of  Meaux.  What  merit  was  there  in  his  de- 
nunciation of  all  classical  learning  (which  he 
decried  with  a  rabid  earnestness  that  is  imi- 
tated in  our  days  by  the  Abb6  Gaume),  while 
he  cited  the  erotic  and  irreligious  poets  of 
antiquity  ?  What  was  the  worth  of  his  works 
to  Rome  when  he  sided  with  Bossuet  in  advo-. 
eating  the  liberties  of  the  Gallican  church  ? 
Biecluse  he  was,  and  austere ;  but  in  his  se- 
clusion, and  amid  the  practices  of  his  self- 
discipline,  he  wrote  to  and  was  visited  by 
some  very  gay  people.  The  Duchess  of 
Guiche  enlivened  his  cell  by  many  a  visit,  St. 
Simon  amused  him  with  his  court-gossip,  and 
Pelisson,  the  ex-Protestant,  exhibited  on  his 
table  the  accomplished  spider  which  that  ex- 
emplary convert  had  laboriously  educated. 
When  alone  he  wrote  diatribes  against  the 
learned  Benedictines,  and  after  these  had 
shamed  him  into  silence  he  penned  lengthy 
apologies  in  support  of  the  revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes.  The  work  he  most  ardently 
pursued  was  one  that  has  been  taken  up  by 
the  Yeuillots  and  Cahills  of  these  later  times; 
and  he,  was  the  first  who  qualified  as  a  ^'glo- 
runts  idea"  the  union  of  all  Homish  powers 
to  annihilate  the  Satanic  kingdom  of  Eng- 
land! He  hated  marriage,  even  in  laics,  and* 
denounced  it  sarcastically  as  a  more  severe 
penance  than  any  he  had  enjoined  at  La 
Trappe.  This  was  among  his  capital  errors ; 
yet  he  was  rich  in  capital  virtues  too ;  but 
the  contradictions  in  his  character  were  very 
many.  .His  latter  years  were  years  of  dignity 
and  perhaps  usefulness,  and  he  finally  died, 
in  the  quality  of  a  simple  brother  of  the 
order,  in  the  year  1700.  Of  the  seventy-four 
years  of  his  life  exactly  one- half  was  spent  in 
the  world,  the  other  half  in  the  cloister. 
They  who  would  become  more  fully  ac- 


quainted with  the  details  of  the  life  of  this 
singular  man  may  consult  Chateaubriand's 
last  and  dullest  work,  published  during  the 
viscount's,  lifetime.  Of  the  companions  and 
followers  of  De  Ranc6  many  interesting  inci- 
dents may  be  found,  by  those  who  have  pa- 
tience to  dig  for  them,  in  the  five  weary  vol- 
umes, entitled  "  Relations  de  la  Vie  et  de  la 
Mort  de  quelques  Religieux  de  I'Abbaye  de 
la  Trappe,"  published  in  Paris  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  last  century.  In  these  volumes 
we  find  that  the  brethren  were  sworn  to  im- 
part even  their  thoughts  to  the  abbot.  They 
who  did  so  most  abundantly  appear  to  have 
been  most  commended  in  very  bad  Latin  ;  and 
this  and  other  acts  of  obedience  were  so  dear 
to  Heaven  that  when  the  authors  of  them 
stood  at  the  altar  their  less  eager  brothers 
beheld  their  persons  surrounded  with  a  glory 
that  they  could  bardly  dare  to  gaze  upon. 
The  candidates  for  admission  included,  doubt- 
less, many  sincerely  pious  men ;  but  with 
them  were  degraded  priests,  haunted  murder- 
ers, run-away  soldiers,  robbers,  and  defraud- 
ers,  who  could  find  no  other  refuge,  and  on 
whose  heels  the  sharply-pointed  toe  of  the  law 
was  most  painfully  pressing.  All  that  was 
asked  of  these  was  obedience.  Where  this 
failed,  it  was  compelled.  Where  it  abounded, 
it  was  praised.  Next  to  it  was  humility. 
One  brother,  an  ex-trooper,  reeking  with 
blood,  is  lauded  because  he  lived  on  baked 
apples,  when  his  throat  was  too  sore  to  admit 
of  his  swallowing  more  substantial  food ! 
Another  brother  is  compared  most  gravely 
with  Moses,  because  he  was  never  bold  enough 
to  enter  even  the  pantry  with  his  sandals  on 
his  feet.  Still,  obedience  was  the  first  virtue 
eulogized — so  eulogized,  that  I  almost  suspect 
it  to  have  been  rare.  It  was  made  of  so  much 
importance  that  the  community  were  informed 
that  all  their  faith  and  all  their  works,  with- 
out blind  obedience  to  the  superior,  would 
fail  in  securing  their  salvation.  Practical 
blindness  was  as  strongly  enjoined,  and  he 
who  used  his  eyes  to  least  purpose  was  ac- 
counted as  the  better  man.  One  brother  did 
this  in  so  praiseworthy  a  way  that  in  eight 
years  he  had  never  seen  a  Cfiult  in  any  of  his 
brethren.  It  was  not  this  son  of  blindness 
that  De  Ranc6  required,  for  he  encouraged 
the  brethren  in  the  accusation  of  one  another. 
More  praise  is  given  to  the  brother  who  in 
many  years  had  never  beheld  the  ceiling  of 
his  own  cell ;  and  vast  laudation  is  poured 
upon  another  who  was  so  little  accustomed  to 
raise  his  eyes  from  the  ground  that  he  was 
not  aware  that  a  new  chapel  had  been  erected 
in  the  garden  until  he  broke  his  head  against 


1853.] 


TRAITS  OF  THE  TRAPPISTS. 


103 


the  wall.  On  one  occasion  the  Duchess  de 
Guiche  and  a  prelate  visited  the  monastery ; 
after  they  had  left,  a  monk  flung  himself  at 
the  abbot's  feet,  and  confessed  that  he  bad 
during  the  visit  ventured  to  look  at  the  face 
— "  Not  of  the  lady,  thou  reprobate  !"  said 
De  Ranc6 : — **  Of  the  aged  bishop !"  gasped 
the  monk.  A  course  of  bread  and  water 
compensated  for  the  crime.  Some  of  the 
brethren  illustrated  what  they  understood  by 
obedience  and  humility  after  a  strange  fash- 
ion. For  example,  there  was  a  rude  basket- 
maker  who  had  been  received,  and  who  was 
detained  against  his  will,  after  he  had  ex- 
pressed an  inclination  to  withdraw.  His 
place  was  in  the  kitchen.  The  devastation 
he  committed  amongst  the  crockery  was 
something  stupendous,  and  not,  I  suspect, 
altogether  unintentional.  However  this  may 
be,  he  was  not  only  continually  fracturing  the 
Delft  earthenware  dishes,  but  incessantly 
running  to  the  abbot,  and  from  him  to  the 
prior,  from  the  prior  to  the  sub-prior,  and 
from  the  sub-prior  to  the  master  of  the  nov- 
ices, to  confess  his  fault ;  and  then  to  his 
kitchen  again,  once  more  to  smash  whole 
crates  of  plates,  followed  by  his  abundant 
confessions,  and  deriving  evident  enjoyment 
alike  in  destroying  the  property  and  assailing 
with  noisy  apologies  the  officers  of  an  institu- 
tion which  he  was  resolved  to  inspire  with  a 
desire  of  getting  rid  of  him.  In  spite  of  forced 
detention  there  was  a  mock  appearance  of  lib- 
erality, and  at  monthly  assemblies  the  brethren 
were  asked  if  there  were  anything  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  institution  and  its  rules  which 
they  would  desire  to  have  changed.  "  They 
had  only  to  speak."  True,  but,  as  they 
knew  what  would  follow  upon  expressed  ob- 
jection, every  brother  held  his  peace. 

If  death  were  the  suicidal  object  of  many, 
the  end  appears  to  have  been  generally  at- 
tained with  speedy  certainty.  The  superiors 
and  a  few  monks  reached  an  advanced  age, 
but  few  of  the  brethren  died  old  men.  Con- 
sumption, inflammation  of  the  lungs,  and 
abcesses — at  memory  of  the  minute  descrip- 
tion of  which  the  very  heart  turns  sick — car- 
ried off  their  victims  with  terrible  rapidity. 
Men  entered,  voluntarily  or  otherwise,  in 
good  health.  If  they  did  so,  determined  to 
achieve  suicide,  or  were  driven  in  by  the  gov- 
ernment with  a  view  of  putting  them  to 
death,  the  end  soon  C^me,  and  was,  if  we 
may  believe  what  we  read,  welcomed  with 
alacrity.  After  gradual,  painful,  and  unre- 
sisted decay,  the  sufferer  saw,  as  his  last 
hour  approached,  the  cinders  strewn  on  the 
ground  in  the  shape  of  a  cross,  a  thin  scatter- 


ing of  straw  was  made  upon  the  cinders,  and 
that  was  the  death-bed  upon  which  every 
Trappist  expired.  The  body  was  buried  in 
the  habit  of  the  order,  without  coffin  or 
shroud,  and  was  borne  to  the  grave  in  a  cloth 
upheld  by  a  few  brothers.  If  it  fell  into  its 
last  receptacle  with  huddled-up  limbs,  De 
Ranee  would  leap  in  and  dispose  the  uncon- 
scious members  so  as  to  make  them  assume 
an  attitude  of  repose. 

Every  man,  at  least  every  man  whose  life 
is  narrated  in  the  volumes  I  have  named 
above,  changed  his  worldly  appellation,  on 
turning  Trappist,  for  one  more  becoming  a 
Christian  vocation.  A  good  deal  of  confusion 
appears  to  have  distinguished  the  rule  of 
nomenclature.  In  many  instances  when  the 
original  names  had  impure  or  ridiculous  sig- 
nifications the  change  was  advisable ;  but  I 
cannot  see  how  a  brother  became  more  cog- 
nizable as  a  Christian  by  assuming  the  names 
of  Palemon,  Achilles,  Moses  even,  or  Dorothy! 
*'  Theodore"  I  can  understand,  but  Dorothy^ 
though  it  bears  the  same  meaning,  seems  to 
me  but  an  indifferent  name  for  a  monk,  even 
in  a  country  where  the  male  Montmorencies 
delighted  in  the  baptismal  prefix  of  "  Anne." 

None  of  the  monks  were  distinguished  by 
superfluous  flesh.  Some  of  them  were  so  thin- 
skinned  that  sitting  on  hard  chairs  their  bones 
fairly  rubbed  through  their  very  thin  epider- 
mis. They  who  so  suffered,  and  joyfully, 
were  held  up  as  bright  exam  pies  of  godliness. 
This  reminds  me  of  Voltaire's  famous  Faquir, 
Bababec,  who  walked  the  world  naked,  car- 
ried sixty  pounds  of  chain  round  his  neck,  and 
never  sat  down  but  upon  a  wooden  chair, 
covered  with  nails,  the  points  upwards !  The 
dialogue  between  the  Faquir  and  Omri  is 
really  not  widely  discordant  from  the  senti- 
ments in  the  old  Trappist  biographies,  Omri 
asks  if  he  has  any  chance  of  ever  reaching  the 
blessed  abode  of  Brahma.  "  Well,"  answer! 
Bababec  (I  am  quoting  from  memory,)  "  that 
depends  very  much  upon  circumstances ;  how 
do  you  live  ?"  "  I  try,"  answers  Omri,  "  to 
be  a  good  citizen,  father,  husband,  and  friend. 
I  lend  my  money  without  usury,  I  give  of  my 
substance  to  the  poor,  and  I  maintain  peace 
among  my  neighbors."  "Do  you  ever  sit 
upon  nails  with  the  points  upwards?" 
•'  Never."  ."  Well,  then,  I  am  sorry  for 
you,"  answers  the  Faquir,  "  for  till  you  do, 
you  have  no  chance  of  getting  beyond  the 
nineteenth  heaven."  Do  not  let  us  be  too 
hasty  either  to  censure  or  to  ridicule.  Where 
there  is  gross  error,  great  sincerity  may 
abound.  Faquir  and  Trappist .  thought  as 
they  had  been  taught  to  think: 


1    -xr^ 


104 


TRAITS  OF  THE  TBAPPISTS. 


[Sept., 


Thompson,  wbo  has  barely  concladpd  the 
Bampion  Lectures  at  Oxford  for  1853,  has 
told  us  in  one  of  them,  that  even  the  sincere 
worshippers  of  Baal  may  have  been  more  tol- 
erable m  the  sight  of  God  than  intellectual 
Christians  who,  having  a  right  understanding 
of  the  truth,  neglect  the  duties  which  that 
truth  enjoins  them. 

There  is,  however,  matter  for  many  a  sigh 
in  these  saffron-leaved  and  worm-eaten  tomes 
whose  pages  I  am  now  turning  over.  I  find 
a  monk  who  has  passed  a  sleepless  night, 
from  pain.  To  test  his  obedience,  he  is  or- 
dered to  confess  that  he  has  slept  well  and 
suffered  nothing.  He  tells  the  He,  and  is 
commended.  Another  confesses  his  readi- 
ness, as  Dr.  Newman  has  so  recently  done, 
to  surrender  any  of  his  own  deliberately 
made  convictions  at  the  bidding  of  his  su- 
perior. **  I  am  wax,"  he  says,  "  for  you  to 
mould  me  as  yon  will ;" — and  his  utter  sur- 
render of  self  is  commended  with  much 
windiness  of  phrase.  A  third,  involuntarily, 
as  it  were,  remarking  that  his  scalding  broth 
is  over- salted,  bursts  into  tears  at  the  enor- 
mity of  the  crime  involved  in  such  a  com- 
plaint ;  and  praise  falls  upon  him  more 
thickly  than  the  salt  did  in  his  broth. 
"  Yes,"  says  the  abbot,  "  it  is  not  praying, 
nor  watching,  nor  repentance,  .that  is  alone 
asked  of  you  by  God,  but  humility  and 
obedience  therewith,  and  first  obedience." 
To  test  the  fidelity  of  those  professing  to 
have  this  humility  and  obedience,  the  most 
outrageous  insults  were  inflicted  on  such  as 
in  the  world  had  been  reckoned  the  most 
high-spirited ;  and  it  is  averred  that  these 
never  failed.  They  kissed  the  sandal  raised 
to  kick,  blessed  the  hand  lifted  to  smite 
them.  A  proud  young  officer  of  Mousquc- 
taires,  of  whom  I  have  strong  suspicions  that 
he  had  embezzled  a  good  deal  of  his  ma- 
jesty's money,  acknowledged  that  he  was  the 
greatest  criminal  that  ever  lived,  but  he 
stoutly  denied  the  same  when  the  officers  of 
the  law  visited  the  monastery  and  accused 
him  of  fraudulent  practices.  This  erst 
young  nobleman,  in  his  character  of  Trap- 
pist,  had  no  greater  delight  than  in  bein^ 
allowed  to  clean  the  spittoons  in  the  chapel, 
and  provide  them  with  fresh  saw-dust ! 
Another,  a  young  marquis,  performed  with 
delight  a  servile  office  of  a  still  more  offen- 
sive character.  The  monk  was  the  flower  of 
the  fraternity.  He  was  given  to  accuse  him- 
self, we  are  told,  of  all  sorts  of  crimes,  not 
one  of  which  he   had  committed  or 


was 


capable  of  committing.      ^'  He  represented 
matters  so  ingeniously,"  says  De  Ranc6,  who 


on  this  occasion  is  the  biographer,  "that 
without  lying  he  made  himself  pass  for  the 
vile  wretch  which  in  truth  he  was  not."  He 
must  have  been  a  clever  individual!  He  lied 
like  truth. 

When  I  say  that  he  was  the  flower  of  the 
fraternity,  I  probably  do  some  wrong  to  the 
Count  de  Santim,  who,  under  the  name  of 
Brother  Palemon,  was  undoubtedly  the  chief 
pride  of  La  Trappe.  He  had  been  an  officer 
in  the  army,  without  love  for  God,  regard  for 
man,  respect  for  woman,  or  reverence  for 
law.  By  a  rupture  between  Savoy  and 
France,  he  lost  the  annuity  by  which  he 
lived ;  and,  as  his  constitution  was  hope- 
lessly shattered  at  the  same  time,  he  took  to 
reading,  was  partially  converted  by  perus- 
ing the  history  of  Joseph,  and  was  finally 
perfected  in  the  half- worked  conversion  by 
seeing  the  dead  body  of  a  very  old  and  very 
ugly  monk  assume  the  guise  and  beauty  of 
that  of  a  young  man.  These  were  good 
grounds;  but  the  count  had  been  so  thorough 
a  miscreant  in  the  world,  that  they  who 
lived  in  the  latter  declined  to  believe  in  the 
godliness  of  Brother  Palemon ;  thereupon  he 
_waa  exhibited  to  all  comers,  and  he  answered 
every  question  put  to  him  by  pious  visitors. 
All  France,  grave  and  gay,  gentle  and  sim- 
ple, flocked  to  the  spectacle.  'At  the  head 
of  them  were  our  James  the  Second  and  his 
illegitimate  son.  The  replies  of  Palemon  to 
his  questioners  edified  countless  crowds — 
and  he  shared  admiration  with  a  guileless 
brother  who  told  the  laughing  ladies,  who 
flocked  to  behold  him,  that  he  had  sought 
refuge  in  the  monastery  because  his  sire  had 
wished  him  to  marry  a  certain  lady,  but  that 
his  soul  revolted  at  the  thought  of  touching 
even  the  finger-tips  of  one  of  a  sex  by  the 
first  of  whom  the  world  was  lost !  The  monk 
was  as  ungallant  to  Eve  and  her  daughters 
as  Adam  was  unjust  to  her  who  dwelt  with 
him  in  JParadise.^ 

*  FarindoD,  the  old  royaliBt  divine  in  the  days 
of  King  Charlea,  sava,  on  the  sdbject  of  Adam  put- 
ting the  blame  of  his  disobedience  on  the  shonlder 
of  Eve,  thus  quaintly :  '*  Behold  here  the  fint  tan 
ever  committcxl,  and  behold  our  first  fathdt  Adam 
ready  with  an  ezcose  as  soon  as  it  was  oommitted. 
He  aoth  not  denj,  but  in  plain  terms  doth  confess, 
that  he  did  eat ;  and  eomedi^  *1  have  eaten,'  bj  it- 
self had  been  a  wiee  answer ;  but  it  is  eomedi  with 
mulier  dedit^  *  I  did  eat^'  bat  '  the  woman  gave  it ;' 
a  confession  with  an  extenuation,  and  such  a  con- 
fession as  is  worse  than  a  flat  deniaL  '  The  woman 
gave  it  me,'  was  a  deep  aggravation  of  the  man's 
transgression.  It  is  but  decUt,  she  gave  it  him,  but 
be  was  willing  to  receive  it  And  that  which 
maketh  his  apology  worse  than  a  lie  (t),  and  ren- 
dereth  his  excuse  inexcusable,  ia^  that  he  removeth 


1853.] 


TRAnS  OF  THB  TRAPPISTS. 


lOo 


I  cannot  close  these  brief  sketehes  without 
remarking  that  among  the  professed  brethren 
of  La  Trappe  was  a  certain  "  Robert 
Graham/'  whose  father.  Colonel  Graham, 
was  cousin  to  Montrose.  Robert  was  bom 
in  the  **  Chateau  de  Mostoume,**  a  short 
league  (it  is  added,  by  way  of  help,  I  sup- 
pose, to  perplexed  travellers)  from  Edin- 
burgh. By  bis  mother's  side,  he  was  related 
to  the  Earl  of  Perth,  of  whom  the  Trappist 
biographer  says,  that  ''he  was  even  more 
illustrious  for  his  piety,  and  through  what 
he  suffered  for  the  sake  of  religion,  than  by 
his  dignities  of  'Viceroy,'  High  Chancellor 
of  Scotland,  and  Governor  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  now  (1716)  rightful  King  of  Great 
Britain.'*  The  mother  of  Robert,  a  zealous 
Protestant,  is  spoken  of  as  having  "  as  much 
piety  as  one  can  have  in  a  false  religion." 
In  spite  of  her  teaching,  however,  the  young 
Robert  early  exhibited  an  inclination  for  the 
Romish  religion ;  and  at  ten  years  of  age  the 
precocious  boy  attended  the  celebration  of 
mass  in  the  chapel  at  Holyrood,  to  the  great 
dbpleasure  of  his  mother.  On  his  repeating 
his  visits,  she  had  him  soundly  whipped  by 
his  tutor ;  but  the  young  gentleman  declared 
that  the  process  was  unsuccessful  in  persuad- 
ing him  to  embrace  Presbyterianbm.  He 
accordingly  rushed  to  the  house  of  Lord 
Perth,  "  himself  a  recent  convert  from  the 
Anglican  Church,"  and  claimed  his  protec- 
tion. After  some  family  arrangements  had 
been  concluded,  the  youthful  prot6g6  was 
formally  surrendered  to  the  keeping  of  Lord 
Perth — by  his  mother,  with  reluctance ;  by 
his  father,  with  the  facility  of  those  Gallios 
who  care  little  about  questions  of  religion. 
After  Lord  Perth  was  compelled  to  leave 
Scotland,  Robert  sojourned  with  his  mother, 
in  the  house  of  her  brother,  a  godly  Pro- 
testant minister.  Here  he  showed  the  value 
he  put  upon  the  instructions  he  had  received 
at  the  hands  of  Lord  Perth  and  his  Romish 
chaplain,  by  a  conduct  which  disgusted 
every  honest  man  and  terrified  every  honest 
maiden  in  all  the  country  round.  His  worthy 
biographer  is  candid  enough  to  sav  that 
Robert,  in  falling  off  from  popery,  did  not 
become  a  Protestant,  but  an  atheist.  The 
uncle  turned  him  out  of  his  house.  The 
prodigal  repaired  to  London  and  rioted  pro- 
digally ;  and  thence  he  betook  himself  to 
France,  and  even  startled  Paris  with  the  bad 

the  fault  from  the  woman  on  God  himself.  Not 
the  woman  alone  is  brought  in,  but  mulier  quam 
Tu  dedisti.  God  indeed  gave  Adam  the  woman, 
but  He  gave  him  not  the  woman  to  give  him  the 
H>pl6*    J)edU  $oeiam  wm  Untatrieem? 


J  renown  of  his  misdoings.  On  his  way  thither 
through  Flanders  he  had  had  a  moment  or 
two  of  misgiving  as  to  the  wisdom  of  his 
career,  and  be  hesitated,  "  while  he  could 
count  twenty,"  between  the  counsel  of  some 

food  priests  and  the  bad  example  of  some 
acobitp  soldiers.  The  latter  prevailed,  and 
when  Robert  appeared  at  the  Court  of  St. 
Germains  Lord  Perth  presented  to  the  fugi- 
tive king  and  queen  there  as  accomplished  a 
scoundrel  as  any  in  Christendom. 

There  was  a  show  of  decency  at  the  exiled 
court,  and  respect  for  religion.  Young  Gra- 
ham adapted  himself  to  the  consequent  influ- 
ences. He  studied  French,  read  the  Lives  of 
the  Saints,  entered  the  seminary  at  Means, 
and  finally  re-professed  the  Romish  religion. 
He  was  now  seized  with  a  desire  to  turn  her- 
mit, but,  accident  having  taken  him  to  La 
Trappe,  the  blas^  libertine  felt  reproved  by 
the  stern  virtue  exhibited  there,  and  in  a  mo- 
ment of  enthusiasm  he  enrolled  himself  a  pos- 
tulant, bade  farewell  to  the  world,  and  de- 
voted himself  to  silence,  obedience,  humility, 
and  austerity,  with  a  perfectness  that  sur- 
prised alike  those  who  saw  and  those  who 
heard  it.  Lord  Perth  opposed  the  reception 
of  Robert  in  the  monastery.  Thereon  arose  se- 
rious difficulty^  and  therewith  the  postulant 
relapsed  into  sin.  He  blasphemed,  reviled 
his  kinsman,  swore  oaths  that  set  the  whole 
brotherhood  in  speechless  terror,  and  finally 
wrote  a  letter  to  his  old  guardian  so  cram- 
med with  fierce  and  unclean  epithets,  that 
the  abbot  refused  permission  to  have  it  for- 
warded. The  excitement  which  followed 
brought  on  illness ;  with  the  latter  came  re- 
flection and  sorrow;  at  length  all  difficulties 
vanished,  and  ultimately,  on  the  Eve  of  All- 
Saints,  1699,  Robert  Graham  became  a  monk, 
and  changed  his  name  for  that  of  Brother 
Alexis.  King  James  visited  him,  and  was 
much  edified  by  the  spiritual  instruction 
vouchsafed  him  by  the  second  cousin  of  the 
gallant  Montrose.  The  new  monk  was  so 
perfect  in  obedience  that  he  would  not  in 
winter  throw  a  crumb  to  a  half-starved  spar- 
row, without  first  applying  for  leave  from 
his  immediate  superior.  ''Indeed,"  says  his 
biographer,  "  I  could  tell  you  a  thousand  ver- 
itable stories  about  him ;  but  they  are  so  ex- 
traordinary that  I  do  not  suppose  the  world 
would  believe  one  of  them."  The  biogra- 
pher adds,  that  Alexis,  after  digging  and 
cutting  wood  all  day,  eating  little,  drinking 
less,  praying  incessantly,  and  neither  wash- 
ing nor  unclothing  l^mself,  lay  down — but  to 
pass  the  night  without  closing  his  eyes  in 
sleep !    He  was  truly  a  brother  Vigilantius ! 


106 


LAPLACE  AKD  BIOT. 


[Sept., 


Tbe  renown  of  this  conversion  bad  many 
influences.  The  father  of  Alexis,  Colonel 
Graham,  embraced  Romanism,  and  with  an 
elder  brother  of  the  former, who  was  already 
a  Capuchin  friar,  betook  themselves  to  La 
Trappe,  where  the  reception  of  the  former 
into  the  church  was  marked  by  a  double  so- 
lemnity— De  Ranc6  dyin^i^  as  the  ceremony 
was  proceeding.  The  wife  of  Colonel  Gra- 
ham is  said  to  have  left  Scotland  on  receipt 
of  the  above  intelligence,  to  have  repaired  to 
France,  and  there  embraced  the  form  of  faith 
followed  by  her  somewhat  facile  husband. 
There  is,  however,  great  doubt  on  this  point. 

The  fate  of  young  Robert  Graham  was  simi- 
lar to  that  of  most  of  the  Trappists.  The  dead- 
ly air,  the  hard  work,  the  watchings,  the  scan- 
ty food,  and  the  uncleanliness  which  prevailed, 
soon  slew  a  man  who  was  as  useless  to  his  fel- 
low-man in  the  convent  as  ever  he  had  been 
when  resident  in  the  world.  His  confinement 
in  fact  was  a  swift  suicide.  Consumption 
seized  on  this  poor  boy,  for  he  was  still  but  a 
boy,  and  his  rigid  adherence  to  the  severe  dis- 
cipline of  the  place  only  aided  to  develop  what 
a  little  care  might  easily  have  checked.  His 
serge  gown  clove  to  the  carious  bones  which 
pierced  through  his  diseased  skin.  The  por- 
tions of  the  body  on  which  he  immovably  lay 
became  gangrened,  and  nothing  appears  to 
have  been  done  by  way  of  remedy.  He  en- 
dured all  with  patience,  and  looked  forward  to 


I  death  with  a  not  unaccountable  longing.  The 
"  Infirmier"  bade  him  be  less  eager  in  pressing 
forward  to  the  grave.  "  I  will  now  pray 
God,"  said  the  nursing  brother,  **  that  He  will 
be  pleased  to  save  you."  "And  I,"  said 
Alexis,  "will  ask  Him  not  to  heed  you." 
Further  detail  is  hardly  necessary  ;  suffice  it 
to  say,  that  Robert  Graham  died  on  the  21st 
May,  1701,  little  more  than  six  months  after 
he  had  entered  the  monastery,  and  at  the 
early  age  of  twenty-two  years.  The  father 
and  brother  also  died  in  France — and  ^o  end- 
ed the  Cousins  of  Montrose. 

The  great  virtue  inculcated  at  La  Trappe 
was  obedience.  The  only  means  whereby  to 
escape  Satan  was  bodily  suffering.  Salva- 
tion was  most  surely  promised  to  him  who 
suffered  most.  Of  the  one  great  hope  com- 
mon to  all  Christians  the  Trappists  of  course 
were  not  destitute ;  but  that  hope  seemed 
not  to  relieve  them  of  their  terrible  dread  of 
the  Prince  of  Evil,  and  his  power.  There  is 
a  good  moral  in  Cuvier's  dream,  which  might 
have  profited  these  poor  men  had  they  but 
known  it.  Cuvier  once  saw  in  his  sleep,  the 
popular  representation  of  Satan  advancing 
towards  him^  and  threatening  to  eat  him. 
"Eat  me!"  exclaimed  the  philosopher,  as 
he  examined  the  fiend  with  the  eye  of  a  na- 
turalist, and  then  added — "  Horns  !  hoofs ! 
— graminivorous  !  ! — need  n't  be  afraid  of 
him !" 


1 1  ^>  1 1 


From    Hogg*!    Initrnotor 


LAPLACE   AND   BIOT. 


An  anecdote  of  M.  Laplace,  the  celebra- 
ted author  of  the  '  Mecanique  Celeste,'  was 
lately  read  before  the  French  Academy  by 
Mons.  J.  B.  Biot,  one  of  Laplace's  most  emi- 
nent pupils,  and  now,  vre  believe,  filling  the 
chair  of  the  mathematics.  M.  Biot  terms 
his  paper,  or  memoir,  an  anecdote ;  but  it  is 
more  a  piece  of  entertaining  scientific  auto- 
biography, illustrating  the  love  of  science, 
hopefulness  of  heart,  and  magnanimity  of  na- 
ture, of  both  pupil  and  tutor. 

It  is  now  fifty  years  ago  (commences  M. 
Biot)  since  one  of  the  greatest  philosophers 


France  has  produced  took  by  the  hand  a 
young  and  inexperienced  student  of  the 
mathematics,  who  had  the  presumption  to 
form  the  resolution  of  personally  waiting 
upon  the  great  professor,  'although  a  com- 
plete stranger,  and  requesting  his  examina- 
tion of  a  crude  essay  connected  with  the 
above  science.  At  the  time  I  speak  of  (1 803) 
the  academy  hardly  demanded  more  of  young 
students,  than  that  they  should  at  least  show 
jseal  in  whatever  engaged  their  studies.  I 
was  fond  of  the  study  of  geometry,  but  like 
other  young  men,  lost  a  good  deal  of  time  in 


1853.  J 


LAPLACE  AND  BIOT. 


107 


CRprieiously  dallying  with  other  sciences. 
^Nevertheless,  mj  ambition  was  to  penetrate 
those  higher  regions  of  the  mathematics  on' 
which  the  laws  of  the  heavenly  bodies  could 
be  defined.  But  the  works  of  the  ancients 
on  this  grand  subject  are  abstruse,  and  na- 
turally taxed  a  tyro's  comprehension  on  the 
threshold  of  his  inquiries.  At  the  com- 
mencement of  the  present  century*  M.  La- 
place WAS  laboring  at  the  composition  of  a 
work,  now  celebrated,  which  was  to  unite,  in 
a  comprehensive  form,  the  calculations  of  the 
old  astronomers  as  well  as  modern,  and  sub- 
mit them  to  the  test  of  new  calculations.  The 
first  volume  of  M.  Laplace's  book  was  pro- 
mised to  appear  under  the  title  of  the  'Me- 
canique  Celeste,'  it  being  then  in  the  press. 
This  fact  induced  me  to  take  a  step  which 
was  both  precipitate  and  impertinent,  al- 
though it  fortunately  proved  successful,  and 
opened  the  door  of  M.  Laplace's  studio  to 
me.  I  had  the  presumption  to  write  to  the 
professor,  requesting  that  he  would  permit 
me  to  assist  him  in  correcting  the  proof-sheets 
of  his  celebrated  work,  while  they  were  pro- 
ceeding through  the  press.  M.  Laplace  re- 
plied to  my  letter  politely,  but  excused  him- 
self from  complying  with  its  request,  on  the 
plea  that  his  calculations  might  become  anti- 
cipated in  publication,  by  their  being  submit- 
ted to  a  stranger.  This  refusal,  reasonable 
as  it  was,  did  not  satisfy  me ;  and  so  greatly 
did  my  zeal  outweigh  my  sense  of  propriety, 
that  I  made  a  second  appeal  to  the  learned 
author,  representing,  that  all  I  wished  was 
to  test  the  amount  of  my  own  proficiency  in 
the  mathematics,  by  having  the  opportunity 
of  inspecting  and  studying  his  valuable  pages. 
I  stated,  that  my  prevailing  taste  was  to  pur- 
sue calculations  of  the  abstruse  order  of  his 
book  ;  and  that,  if  he  granted  me  permission, 
I  would  devote  myself  carefully  to  the  task 
of  endeavoring  to  discover  any  typographi- 
cal errors  that  might  exist  in  his  volume  then 
goingj  through  the  press.  My  persistence 
disarmed  him ;  and,  m  short,  he  sent  me  all 
the  proof-sheets,  accompanied  by  an  exceed- 
ingly kind  letter  of  encouragement.  I  need 
not  say  with  what  ardor  I  devoted  myself  to 
my  task.  I  could  well  apply  to  my  case  the 
Latin  maxim — '  Violente  rapiunt  illud.' 

At  the  date  of  this  occurrence,  I  resided 
at  some  distance  from  Paris ;  but  from  time 
to  time  I  went  thither,  taking  with  me  what- 
ever I  had  got  through  of  my  revision,  and  I 
certainly  found  opportunities  for  making  er- 
rata. At  each  succeeding  visit,  Laplace  receiv- 
ed me  in  the  most  encouraging  and  friendly 
manner,  examining  my  revisions  attentively, 


the  while  discussing  with  me,  in  the  most  con- 
descending manner,  my  favorite  topic  of  the 
mathematics.  His  kind  reception  and  deport- 
ment won  all  my  confidence.  I  frequently 
drew  his  attention  to  what  I  thought  were 
difficulties  in  my  studies,  but  he  always  help- 
ed me  over  the  stile  condescendingly,  although 
his  valuable  time  must  have  been  somewhat 
unfairly  trespassed  upon.  But,  in  fact,  La- 
place, out  of  sheer  good-nature,  often  pretend- 
ed to  consider  questions  of  importance  the 
simplest  propositions,  which  my  inexperience 
caused  me  to  submit  to  him. 

Shortly  after  I  had  become  his  regular  visit- 
or, and  was  received  as  a  guest,  or  rather  pu- 
pil, I  was  so  fortunate  as  to  accidentally  ofifer 
a  suggestion,  which  threw  some  new  light  on 
the  mode  in  which  mathematical  calculations 
were  to  be  made  in  correction  of  Euler's  work, 
*'De  Insignia  Promotione  Method!  Tangen- 
tium."  In  Peterbbourg's  scales,  there  are 
classes  of  questions  in  geometry  of  a  very 
singular  kind,  which  Euler  has  only  partly 
solved.  The  singularity  of  the  problems  con- 
sisted in  explaining  the  nature  or  true  charac- 
ter of  an  irregular  curve,  of  an  almost  shape- 
less form  to  any  eye  but  a  mathematical  one. 
His  description  of  irregular  curves  is  so  crook- 
ed, and  full  of  minor  and  mixed  irregularities 
of  shape,  that  it  is  quite  capable  of  confusing 
a  beginner  in  the  mathematics  in  his  attempts 
at  rendering  it  amenable  to  mathematical  prin- 
ciples and  rules.  It  presented  to  me  a  pro- 
blem which  no  one  had,  I  believed,  fairly 
solved,  Euler  and  Laplace  inclusive,  and  it 
was  important  enough  to  engage  my  special 
attention  and  severest  application. 

It  is  not  necessary  that  the  translator 
should  follow  M.  Biot's  explanations  of  his 
actual  method  of  solving  the  problem,  since 
they  are  extremely  difficult  to  explain  within 
moderate  limits  either  of  space  or  patience ; 
suffice,  that,  having  dived  to  the  profoundest 
depths  of  the  science,  he  says  be  rose  up 
possessed  of  the  Eureka — viz.,  in  certain 
unique  analytical  and  symbolical  equations,  by 
which  occult  means  he  solved  the  problem 
in  question. 

My  calculations  (pursues  M.  Biot)  were 
duly  and  patiently  gone  into  and  finished, 
their  object  being  to  explain  the  nature  or 
characteristics  of  this  irregular  curve.  The 
symbols  or  hieroglyphics  I  chose  to  employ, 
for  want  of  any  better,  covered  many  folios 
of  foolscap,  and  finally  I  submitted  my  man- 
uscript to  my  excellent  tutor.  He  examined 
it  with  manifest  surprise  and  curiosity,  and 
appealed  much  pleased  with  the  production. 
The  next  day  he  told  me  that  I  must  make 


108 


liAPLAOE  AND  BIOT. 


[Sept.^ 


a  copy  of  mj  memoire,  for  the  purpose  of 
its  being  laid  before  the  Academy,  and  that 
he  would  introduce  me  as  the  author  of  an 
original  paper  on  the  mathematics,  which  I 
was  to  read.  This  was  an  honor  I  did  not 
even  think  of,  and  I  felt  in  doubt  whether  I 
ought  to  accept  it ;  but  the  judgment  of  La- 
place being  so  strongly  in  behalf  of  my  doing 
so,  I  acted  upon  his  advice,  and  prepared 
myself  for  the  coming  ordeal. 

'  I  presented  myself  at  the  Academy  the 
following  day  accordingly.  By  permission 
of  the  president,  I  proceeded  to  draw  upon 
the  large  black  table,  used  for  ocular  demon- 
strations, the  figures  and  formula  I  was  desir- 
ous to  employ  as  modes  of  explanation  before 
an  auditory.  When  the  opportunity  was  af- 
forded me  to  commence,  the  table  at  which  I 
stood  was  immediately  surrounded  by  the 
geometricians  of  the  Academy.  Gener^ 
Bonaparte,  then  just  returned  from  Egypt, 
was  one  of  those  seated  amongst  them.  I 
overheard  l^apoleon,  in  conversation  with  M. 
Monge,  a  celebrated  academician  of  the  day, 
express  his  interest  in  the  debut  of  one  who, 
like  himself,  had  been  a  student  in  the  Poly- 
technic School.  This  was  a  gratifying  circum- 
stance ;  but,  to  my  surprise,  Bonaparte  pre- 
tended to  anticipate  the  contents  of  my  paper, 
by  exclaiming  aloud  to  Monge,  who  sat  near 
him — "  What !  surely  I  know  those  figures 
again  ;  I  have  certainly  met  those  symbols  be- 
fore ! "  I  could  not  help  fancying,  that  the 
general  was  extremely  premature  in  thus  de- 
claring knowledge  of  what  no  one  save  M. 
Laplace  had  any  opportunity  of  examining, 
at  least  by  my  consent ;  but,  occupied  as  I 
was,  every  other  thought  gave  way  before  the 
one  great  aim  I  had  m  view,  to  explain  my 
calculations  in  correction  of  Euler's  problem. 
In  my  agitation,  I  neither  thought  of  Napo- 
leon's military  greatness  nor  hb  political  pow- 
er ;  consequently,  his  presence  on  those  ac- 
counts did  not  trouble  me  much.  Neverthe- 
less, Bonaparte's  well-known  talents  as  a  geo- 
metrician, which  had  been  not  only  exercised 
inthe  Polytechnic  School,  but  on  a  wider  and 
bolder  scale  during  his  military  career,  par- 
ticularly in  fortification,  joined  to  his  well- 
known  quickness  and  foresight,  were  sufficient 
to  make  me  pause  ere  I  attempted  to  com- 
municate matters,  in  the  study  of  which  I  might 
prove,  after  all,  but  a  mere  tyro.  However, 
It  was  only  the  hesitation  of  a  few  minutes. 
The  thought  that  Laplace  had  been  my  ad- 
viser re-assured  me.  I  proceeded  with  my 
demonstrations,  and  soon  found  myself  in  the 
midst  of  them,  explaining  very  freely,  and  I 
believe,  also,  as  clearly,  the  nature,  point,  and 


results  of  my  researches.  On  conclusion,  I 
received  numerous  assurances  from  the  aca- 
demicians that  my  calculations  possessed  con- 
siderable scientific  value.  Laplace,  Bonaparte 
and  Lacroix,  were  appointed  adjudicators  upon 
my  contribution  to  the  Academy,  and  they  ac- 
corded me  the  usual  honors  of  a  successful 
memoire. 

After  the  seance,  I  accompanied  M.  Laplace 
to  his  residence ;  he  very  openly  expressed 
his  satisfaction  at  the  neatness  and  finish  (these 
were  his  words)  of  my  demonstrations,  and 
he  said  his  pleasure  was  greater  still,  from 
my  having  had  the  good  sense  to  take  his  ad- 
vice, and  not  hazard  too  much  to  theory.  But 
I  was  quite  unprepared  for  what  was  to  come. 
When  we  reached  home,  Laplace  invited  .me 
to  come  at  once  into  his  study,  "  for,"  said  he, 
'*  I  have  something  there  to  show  you  that  I 
am  sure  will  interest  you."  I  followed  him,  and 
he  made  me  sit  down  in  his  fauieuil,  while 
he  rummaged  amongst  his  keys  for  one  which 
belonged  to  a  cupboard  that,  he  asserted,  had 
not  been  opened  for  years.  Out  of  this  cup- 
board he  took  a  roll  of  yellow  and  dusty  pa- 
pers, which  he  carried  to  the  window,  threw 
up  the  sash,  and  then  began  energetically 
beating  the  manuscripts  against  the  wall,  in- 
tent, apparently,  on  divesting  them  of  the 
dust  and  spiders  which  had  made  the  writ- 
ings their  resting-place.  At  length  the  pa- 
pers were  in  a  condition  to  be  deciphered ; 
and  Laplace  put  them  before  me,  to  make 
what  I  could  of  the  figures  inscribed  upon 
the  old  manuscripts.  I  had  gone,  however, 
but  a  little  way  in  my  examination,  when 
(conceive  my  surprise  at  the  discovery)  I  found 
that  the  mouldy  papers  contained  all  my  pro* 
blema,  and  those  also  of  Euler,  treated  and 
solved  even  by  the  identical  method  I  had  be- 
lieved myself  to  have  alone  discovered  1 

Laplace  informed  me,  that  he  had  arrived 
at  the  solution  of  most  of  Euler's  problems 
many  years  ago,  but  that  he  had  been  stop- 
ped in  his  calculations  by  the  same  obstacle 
of  which  he  had  warned  me — the  fear  of  carry- 
ing theory  too  far.  Hoping  to  be  able  to  re- 
concile his  doubts  sooner  oY  later,  he  had  put 
the  calculations  aside,  and  had  said  nothing 
about  them  to  any  one,  not  even  to  me,  not- 
withstanding my  having  taken  up  the  same 
theme,  and  attempted  to  foist  my  wonderful 
symbols  upon  him  as  a  novelty/  I  cannot 
express  what  I  felt  during  the  short  hour  in 
which  Laplace  laid  before  me  these  proofs  of 
his  professional  talents  and  the  magnanimity 
of  his  nature. 

The  success  of  my  paper  was  everything 
to  me ;  but,  had  it  pleased  Laplace's  humor 


1653.] 


POPUIiAS  EDUCATION  IN  THB  UNITED  STATES. 


109 


to  have  questioned  its  originality  before  the 
Academy  received  it,  I  should  have  lost  heart 
altogether,  and  never  dared  again  to  put  for- 
ward any  claims  of  mine  to  being  an  original 
mvestigator  in  science.  Professional  abnega- 
tion is  seldom  enough  practised  in  trifling  mat- 
ters, much  less  in  great  ones,  like  that  I  have 
adduced  to  the  honor  of  Laplace.  But,  be- 
sides the  liberality  of  the  act  of  keeping  his 
work  a  secret  from  me  until  it  could  do  me 
no  harm,  the  professor  exercised  throughout 
such  delicacy  towards  me  as  a  humble  stu- 
dent, that  it  won  my  deep  respect.  My  ca- 
reer, ever  since  the  day  he  took  me  by 'the 
hand,  and  presented  me  to  the  most  eminent 
learned  society  of  France,  has  been  one  of 
success — success,  I  fear,  far  bejond  my  merits* 
But,  under  Heaven,  it  is  Laplace  I  have  to 


thank  for  all,  and  for  the  honorable  station 
I  have  been  permitted  to  attain.  To  him  I 
owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  I  can  never  adequate- 
ly repay.  The  extent  of  my  power  is  to  make 
these  general  acknowledgments  of  his  great 
worth,  and  to  offer  this  public  testimony  to 
my  apprieciation  of  his  rare  talents.  His  in- 
fluence upon  the  progress  of  physical  as  well 
as  mathematical  science  has  been  immense. 
During  fifty  years,  nearly  all  those  who  have 
cultivated  such  studies,  have  gone  for  instruc- 
tion to  the  works  of  Laplace;  we  have  been 
enlightened  by  his  discoveries,  and  we  have 
depended  considerably  upon  his  labors  for 
any  improvements  our  own  works  possess. 
There  are  few  now  living  who  were  the  as- 
sociates of  Laplace  ;  but  the  scientific  world 
must  ever  do  homage  to  his  genius.* 


■♦♦" 


-♦♦i 


From  the  Edinbargh  Review. 


POPULAR  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


Thb  man  still  lives  who  can  remember  the 
United  States  of  America  as  the  humble  de- 

L  Fifteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  Board  of 
Eaueaiion :  toaether  mth  the  Fifteenth  Annual 
JUport  of  the  Secretary  of  the  ioard,  Boston, 
IfoMOchiuetts :  1862. 

2.  Bevised  Statutes  of  Maeeaehusetti,    1837. 

8.  Report  of  the  Vambridge  School  Committee, 
1862. 

i.  Report  on  the  Organization  of  the  Primary  and 
Orammar  School  Committee,     Boston :  1852. 

6.  Annual  Report  of  the  Superintendent  of  Com- 
mon SehooU  of  the  State  of  New  York,    1861. 

6.  Report  of  Committee  of  the  Board  of  Education 
on  the  System  of  Popular  Education  in  the  City 
of  New  York,  May  28,  1861. 

7.  Annual  Report  of  the  Regents  of  the  University 
of  the  State  of  New  York,     1861. 

8.  Seventeenth  Annual  Report  of  Superintendent 
of  Common  Schools  of  Pennsylvania  for  the  year 
ending  June^  1860. 

9.  Thirty-third  Annual  Report  of  the  Controllers 
of  Public  Schools  of  the  City  and  County  of 
Philadelphia.     1861. 

10.  Biennial  Report  of  the  Superintendent  of  Pub- 
lic Instructionfor  the  State  of  Iowa,  printed  for 
the  use  of  the  General  Assembly.    1850. 

11.  Reports  on  the  Public  Libraries  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  January  1,  1860.  By 
Chabibb  C.  Jxwstt,  Libramn  of  the  Smithsonian 
Instttute. 

12.  7%e  Educational  Institutions  of  the  United 
States;  their  Character  and  Organixationi 
Translated  from  theSwedislTof  P.  A.  Sibjxstbox, 
M.  A.,  by  Fbedxkioa  Rowa^v.  In  1  vol.  12mo. 
London:  1868: 


pendencies  of  Great  Britain.  A  few  remote 
colonies  fringing  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic 
hemmed  in  by  mountains  and  forests  had 
made  little  impression  on  the  wilderness. 
Almost  without  roads,  a  mere  bridle  path 
sufficed  for  their  weekly  mail.  No  banks  nor 
monied  institutions  gave  aid  to  cpmmerce. 
Agriculture  resorted  to  the  rudest  tools.  A 
small  class  of  vessels  confined  to  the  coasting 
trade,  the  fisheries,  or  an  occasional  voyage 
to  the  West  Indies  or  Europe,  formed  their 
shipping.  Manufactures  and  the  mechanic 
.arts  were  in  their  cradle.  A  little  molasses 
was  distilled  into  rum.  A  few  coarse  cloths 
were  made  in  the  handloom,  and  so  inferior 
were  the  sheep  that  a  traveller  predicted 
broadcloth  could  never  be  manufactured. 

Some  iron  had  been  melted  with  charcoal, 
but  furnaces  and  forges  languished  under 
jealous  Governor^.  Ihe  vast  beds  of  coal 
which  underlie  the  Middle  States  were  un- 
known, and  cotton,  the  great  basis  of  modern 
manufactures,  had  not  blossomed  in  the  Colo- 
nies. The  policy  of  the  mother  country  was 
to  make  marts  for  her  merchants,  and  to  re- 

*  On  M.  Biot  has  descended  the  manUe  of  Laplace. 
He  is  reputed  to  be  the  greatest  living  mathemati- 
cian  in  France.  He  is  a  member  of  the  Institute 
and  Academy  of  Sciences,  and  an  honorary  member 
of  the  French  Academy  of  the  Bellea-lettres. 


110 


POPULAR  EDUCATION  DT  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


[Sept., 


strict  the  Colonies  to  the  cultiyation  of  tobac- 
co»  indigo,  rice,  and  to  breadstuffs,  and  the 
shipment  of  these  staples,  with  staves,  lum- 
ber, and  naval  stores,  to  the  mother  country. 
These  articles  were  dispensed  by  England  to 
the  residue  of  Europe. 

The  population  of  these  colonies  was  less 
than  8,000,000 ;  and  their  chief  sea-ports, 
Boston,  Newport,  New  York,  and  Philadel- 
phia, contained  each  from  ten  to  twenty 
thousand  inhabitants. 

But  the  colonists,  though  poor  and  indebt- 
ed to  the  British  merchants,  had  carried  with 
them  from  their  native  land  an  inalienable 
love  of  freedom;  were  tenacious  of  their 
rights,  and  resolute  in  their  opposition  to  ex- 
cise and  stamp  acts.  They  spurned  the  idea 
of  taxation  without  representation.  England 
was  sadly  misguided  ;  a  seven  years'  war  en- 
sued. The  British  arms,  often  victorious, 
achieved  no  permanent  success,  and  were 
finally  foiled  by  an  endurance  never  surpassed. 
The  colonists  prevailed,  but  their  success  was 
almost  ruinous.  At  the  close  of  a  protract- 
ed war  they  found  their  country  impoverish- 
ed, their  Union  dissolving,  their  sea-ports 
desolate,  their  ships  decayed,  and  the  flower 
of  their  youth  withered  in  the  field  or  in  the 
prison-ship.  .  From  this  period  of  gloom  and 
exhaustion  little  progress  was  made  until  the 
adoption- of  the  Constitution  in  1788,  and  the 
funding  of  the  public  debt  under  the  wise  ad- 
ministration of  Washington. 

We  now  begin  a  new  era.  Let  us  consid- 
er what  advance  the  United  States  have  made 
from  this  dawn  of  the  nation  in  the  sixty 
years  which  have  ensued.  The  country  has 
shown  a  renovating  power.  The  flood  of 
population  has  swept  over  the  Alle^hanies, 
crossed  the  blue  Ohio  and  Father  of  Waters, 
followed  the  shores  of  the  great  lakes,  and  is 
rolling  up  the  Missouri  of  the  West.  Its  ad- 
vancing tide  has  already  enlivened  the  coasts 
of  Florida  and  Texas,  and  reached  the  shores 
of  Oregon  and  California.  The  thirteen 
States  have  swelled  to  thirty-one,  and  the 
national  territory  now  covers  3,000,000  of 
square  miles,  mostly  adapted  to  cultivation. 

A  prolific  and  almost  exhaustless  soil  in- 
vites the  Western  husbandmen. 

The  implements  of  husbandry,  improved  by 
thousands  of  patents,  have  adapted  them- 
selves to  a  country  in  which  land  is  cheap 
and  labor  dear,  and  some  of  them  compete 
successfully  with  English  tools  in  foreign 
markets. 

.Cotton  has  be^n  acclimated,  and  gives 
yearly  its  3,000,000  of  bales.  Tobacco  yields 
its  170,000  hogsheads,  and  sugar,  of  recent 


introduction,  a  similar  amount.  Such  is  the 
capacity  of  the  country  for  bread  stufis,  that 
the  failure  of  a  crop  in  Europe  draws  out  a 
supply  not  only  sufficient  to  check  the  march 
of  famine,  but  to  baffle  all  previous  calcula- 
tions. Manufactures  have  become  firmly 
rooted.  The  manufacture  of  iron  annually 
reaches  to  600,000  tons.  Not  less  than 
700,000  bales  of  cotton  are  also  consumed  in 
the  country,  if  we  may  rely  on  the  late  census. 

Not  only  do  short-horn  Durhams  graze  on 
the  plains  of  the  Ohio,  but  the  Spanish  and 
French  merinos  aqd  Saxon  flocks  have  been 
imported,  and  the  native  race  been  gradually 
improved. 

The  home  manufacture  now  consumes 
52,000,000  of  pounds  of  native  wool,  besides 
large  imports  of  foreign  from  Turkey,  Bue- 
nos Ayres,  and  Africa.  A  single  State  man- 
ufactures boots  and  shoes  to  the  amount  of 
6,000,000^.  sterling,  and  exports  glass-wares, 
cotton  goods,  and  wooden  ware  to  India, 
South  America  and  the  Mediterranean. 
Singular  as  it  may  appear,  the  United  States 
now  draw  some  of  their  raw  materials  from 
Great  Britain.  Large  shipments  of  skins  and 
hides  are  often  made  from  London  and  Liver- 
pool, to  be  tanned  into  leather  by  cheap  and 
expeditious  processes  in  the  hemlock  forests 
of  New  York. 

Before  the  Revolution  an  American  book 
was  a  rarity ;  but  now  rags  are  imported 
from  England  and  Italy,  converted  into  paper 
by  patented  machines,  and  circulated  in  books 
and  journals  through  North  America.  Some 
of  these  journals  issue  50,000  copies  daily, 
and  there  are  publishers  who  find  an  annual 
vent  for  150,600  copies  of  geographies  and 
arithmetics.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  leas 
attention  is  given  in  the  States  to  more  cost- 
ly and  delicate  products  of  art  than  in  Europe; 
but  it  is  also  well  understood,  that  many 
of  the  most  expert  manufacturers  declined  to 
send  their  goods  to  the  London  Exhibition, 
for  they  preferred  the  home  market  to  the 
European,  and  wished  to  invite  no  rivalry  in 
goods  suited  to  the  States. 

The  late  census  exhibits  the  progress  of 
the  mechanic  arts  throughout  the  Union.  In 
other  departments  the  United  States  have 
not  been  dormant.  While  Mexico  has  for 
sixty  years  either  receded  or  remained  sta- 
tionary in  the  population  of  its  states  and  ci- 
ties, the  United  States  have  increased  from 
3,000,000  to  26,000,000,  and  now  exhibit  an 
annual  accession  of  1,100,000  people. 

The  city  of  New  York,  with  its  suburbs, 
presents  700,000  inhabitants  ;  Philadelphia, 
500,000 ;  Boston,  with  its  environs,  300,000 ; 


1853.] 


POPULAR  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UNITET)  STATES. 


Ill 


and  Baltimore  nearly  200,000  ia  one  compaot 
body.  Cincinnati  and  New  Orleans,  respec- 
tively, exceed  100,000 ;  and  St.  Louis,  Lou- 
isville, Pittsburg,  Albany  and  BuiSalo  follow 
close  in  their  rear. 

The  country  is  threaded  by  numerous  post 
roads,  interlaced  by  13,000  miles  of  railway, 
and  still  more  closely  united  by  a  greater 
length  of  telegraph  wires.  By  means  of 
these,  a  message  can  be  sent  hundreds  of 
miles  for  a  shilling,  and  the  merchant  at  New 
Orleans  can  in  the  same  day  charter  ships  at 
New  York  ^  or  Boston,  and  order  their  car- 
goes from  St.  Louis  or  Cincinnati ;  while  the 
orator  addresses  in  the  same  hour  audiences 
in  all  the  large  cities  of  the  Union. 

The  mails,  accelerated  by  steam,  bear  let- 
ters from  Savannah  to  Eastport  for  a  stamp 
costing  little  more  than  the  penny  postage  of 
England.  The  foreign  trade  exhibits  an  ag- 
gregate of  80,000,000/.  sterliog  of  imports 
and  exports.  The  inland  commerce  exceeds 
the  foreign,  while  the  shipping  at  this  mo- 
ment, December  1852,  amounts  to  4,000,000 
of  tonnage,  and  is  annually  growing  at  the 
rate  of  300,000  tons.* 

Banking  houses  and  insurance  companies 
are  established  throughout  the  Union. 
Steamers  throng  the.  coast  and  rivers  to  the 
amount  of  400,000  ton;),  and  are  claimed  as 
an  American  invention.  In  other  respects, 
the  advance  of  this  nation  is  interesting  to 
England.  The  United  States,  not  content 
with  the  vast  emigration  they  naturally  ab- 
sorb, have  borrowed  at  least  one- third  of  the 
sailors  of  the  British  nation,  and  placing 
them  before  the  mast,  officer  their  ships  with 
young  Americans.  They  then  navigate  them 
with  half  the  crews  employed  by  other  na- 
tions, viz.,  with  two  or  three  men  only  to  the 
100  tons,  command  high  freights,  and  per- 
form their  voyages  with  certainty  and  dis- 
patch. They  have  copied,  too,  the  railway, 
almost  as  soon  as  England  had  invented  it ; 
and  have  not  only  given  it  a  wide  diffusion, 
but  import  from  England  a  large  part  of 
their  rails,  and  then  manage  their  own  ways 
with  less  expense,  with  more  profit,  and  with 
lower  charges  than  are  customary  in  Eng- 
land.    By  what  appliances  has  this   nation, 

*  'Registered,  enrolled,  and  licensed  tonnage  of 

United  Statei^  Jane  dOth,  1850    .    .    .  8,535,454iS 

ditto        Jane  80tb,  1851     .     .     .  8,772,4891^ 
Veflsels  bailt   in  the  United  States^  year  ending 

Jnne  SOtli,  1S50, 1860:  tonnage  .    .    .    272,218im 

ditto    Jane  80th,  1851, 1367:  tonnage  298,208ioo 
ditto    ditto     1852, 1448 :  tonnage  .     851,494 
See  U.  3.  doeamenta^  Commerce  and  Kavi^tion, 
1852  and  1858.' 


in  a  little  more  than  half  a  century,  thus 
emerged  from  poverty  and  weakness,  ab- 
sorbed and  civilized  the  outcasts  of  Europe, 
and  been  able  to  achieve  such  remarkable 
changes? 

The  inquiry  is  ona  of  no  common  interest 
to  the  world.  Should  the  population  of  the 
United  States  progress  for  one  century  more 
as  it  has  done  for  the  past  sixty  years,  and 
the  Union  continue,  the  number  of  its  inhabi- 
tants ip^ould  exceed  300,000,000,  Such  a 
people,  fronting  on  two  oceans,  with  a  tem- 
perate cKmate  and  vast  expanse  of  country, 
must  exert,  under  any  circumstances,  an  in- 
creasing influence  over  the  globe.  What 
agencies  are  at  work  to  shape  and  temper 
that  influence  ?  The  progress  of  the  United 
States  of  America  is  often  ascribed  to  their 
form  of  government ;  this  combines  many 
features  of  the  English,  and  is  borrowed  in 
part  from  the  institutions  of  England.  It 
has  doubtless  aided  their  growth,  although  it 
does  not  uniformly  draw  into  the  public  ser- 
vice the  highest  order  of  character.  But  re- 
publics have  neither  stability  nor  safety,  un- 
less founded  on  virtue  and  intelligence.  We 
have  seen  the  republics  of  Mexico  and  La- 
plata  alternating  with  despotism  ;  and  the  re- 
p  blio  of  France  revolutionized  in  a  night. 
We  must  look  behind  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  at  the  knowledge  and  virtue 
which  characterize  their  citizens,  at  the  cul- 
ture and  training  which  foster  those  indis- 
pensable requisites. 

Education  is  not  indissolubly  connected 
with  any  frame  of  government.  It  may  be 
cherished  and  flourish  under  a  limited  mon- 
archy or  a  republic.  It  is  requisite  for  the 
full  development  of  each.  And  while  efforts 
ai*e  made  to  extend  it  in  England,  it  may 
not  be  amiss  to  inquire  how  far  it  has  been 
cultivated,  and  what  shape  it  is  ussuraing,  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  If  the  plant 
shows  a  novel  hue  or  more  vigorous  growth 
West  of  the  Atlantic,  the  system  of  the 
Western  gardener  demands  attention.  And 
if  we  find  there  unprecedented  results  from 
the  action  of  mind  on  matter,  we  may  well 
ask,  what  has  roused  that  mind  to  action .? 
What  has  given  an  impulse  and  direc- 
tion to  its  movements?  Let  us  take  a  brief 
view  of  education  in  the  United  States. 

Many  of  the  early  settlers  of  New  Eng- 
land and  the  Middle  States  were  men  of  let- 
ters :  they  carried  with  them  a  love  for  learn- 
ing to  the  wilderness.  They  considered  it 
essential  to  their  progress,  and  founded 
schools  and  colleges  as  soon  as  they  had 
gained  a  foot-hold  in  the  country.      Schools 


112 


POPULAR  EDtJOATION  IS  THE  nNITBD  STATES. 


[Sept., 


soon  multiplied ;  colleges  were  established  in 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  New  Jersey. 

The  fame  of  Harvard,  Yale,  and  Princeton 
reached  the*  mother  country  before  the  Re- 
volution, and  found  many  benefactors  in  the 
British  States.  •  In  these  colleges  were  rear- 
ed some  of  the  prominent  leaders  in  the  Re- 
volution, and  many  of  the  statesmen  who 
framed  the  Constitution. 

The  State  of  Massachusetts,  one  of  the 
oldest  of  the  original  thirteen,  was  particu- 
larly active  in  the  cause  of  letters.  As  early 
as  1635  the  public  Latin  school  wasjounded 
in  Boston,  and  soon  after,  every  town  con- 
taining 100  families  was  required  to  main- 
tain a  school,  with  a  teacher  competent  to 
fit  youth  for  the  University.  Three  colleges 
were  subsequently  founded  in  Massachusetts. 

The  deep-seated  respect  for  learning  Is 
evinced  by  the  Constitution  and  laws  adopted 
by  this  State.  Bv  its  constitution  (cap.  v. 
sec.  2.)  it  is  made  the  duty  of  the  magistrates 
and  legislators,  '  To  cherish  the  interests  of 
literature  and  science,  and  all  seminaries  of 
them,  and  to  countenance  and  inculcate  the 
principles  of  humanity  and  general  benevo- 
lence, public  and  private  charity,  industry 
and  frugality,  honesty  and  punctuality  in 
their  dealings,  sincerity  and  good  humor,  all 
social  affections  and  generous  sentiments 
among  the  people.' 

In  accordance  with  the  Constitution,  the 
revised  statutes  provide  for  a  school,  to  be 
opened  at  least  six  months  annually,  in  each 
town  containing  fifty  householders  ;  for  simi- 
lar schools,  and  instruction  in  book-keeping, 
surveying,  geometry  and  algebra,  in  all  towns 
containing  500  householders ;  and  in  towns 
containing  4000  inhabitants,  for  the  con- 
tinuance of  such  schools  for  at  least  ten 
months,  with  masters  competent  to  teach 
rhetoric,  logic,  history,  and  the  Greek  and 
Latin  languages. 

By  such  statutes  (chap,  xxiii.  sect.  7.) 
provision  is  expressly  made  for  instruction  in 
morals;  and  all  teachers  are  required  to 
^  impress  on  the  minds  of  the  children  and 
youth  committed  to  their  care  and  instruction, 
the  principles  of  piety,  justice,  and  sacred 
regard  to  truth,  love  to  their  country,  hu- 
manity and  universal  benevolence,  sobriety, 
industry,  frugality,  chastity,  moderation  and 
benevolence,  and  those  other  virtues  which 
are  the  ornament  of  human  society.' 

By  sect.  8.  of  the  same  chapter  it  is  pro- 
vided that  ''It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  resi- 
dent ministers  of  the  gospel,  the  select  men 
and  school  committee  in  the  several  towns, 
to  exert  their  influence,  and  use  their  best 


endeavors  that  the  youth  of  their  town  shall 
regularly  attend  the  schools  established  for 
their  instruction." 

To  defray  the  expenses  of  education  no 
specified  tax  is  imposed,,  and  it  remains  op- 
tional with  each  town  to  raise  any  amount 
found  requisite.  But  a  school  fund  has  been 
formed,  and  no  town  can  participate  in  the 
income  of  the  fund  unless  it  raises  by  tax  at 
least  one  dollar  and  a  half  for  every  child 
within  itr  limits,  between  the  age  of  five  and 
fifteen  years  ;  and  the  spirit  of  the  citizens  is 
evinced  by  the  fact,  that  the  average  sum 
raised  by  voluntary  tax  for  each  child  within 
the  age  for  education,  is  nearly  threefold  the 
amount  prescribed  by  statute. 

Boston,  the  ancient  capital  of  this  State, 
has  ever  taken  a  distinguished  part  in  the 
culture  of  learning.  Its  Latin  school  and 
other  institutions  stood  high  before  the  Re- 
volution, but  have  made  great  progress  since. 

Before  this  period,  females  did  not  partici- 
pate in  the  benefits  of  the  public  schools ; 
but  in  1789  they  were  permitted  to  attend. 
Down  to  1817  pupils  were  not  admitted  to 
the  public  schools  until  they  had  learned  to 
read ;  but  in  that  year  primary  schools  were 
opened  for  both  sexes.  Ip  1821  a  public 
high  school  was  established  in  Boston,  which 
now  contains  nearly  200  pupils,  under  four 
highly  educated  teachers,  and  gives  instruc- 
tion in  drawing,  book-keeping,  elocution,  the 
higher  mathematics,  logic,  philosophy,  the 
French  and  Spanish  languages.  The  public 
Latin  school,  with  five  able  masters,  and  195 
pupils,  prepares  youth  for  the  Universities. 

A  normal  school  accommodating  200  girls, 
who  have  completed  with  success  the  course 
of  studies  in  the  grammar  schools,  under  the 
instruction  of  five  accomplished  teachers, 
qualifies  every  year  nearly  100  graduates  to 
perform  the  duties  of  teacher  in  the  schools 
for  the  younger  children. 

Reading,  spelling,  arithmetic,  and  music 
are  taught  in  all  the  primary  schools,  and  to 
these  branches  are  added  in  the  grammar 
schools,  writing,  geography,  English  gram- 
mar, history,  and  exercises  in  writing  the 
English  language  for  all  the  pupils  and  de- 
clamation for  the  boys.  In  proportion  to 
her  population,  Boston  expends  annually  a 
larger  amount  of  money  for  public  schools 
than  any  city  in  the  United  States.  Boston 
has  now  more  than  1,200,000  dollars  in- 
vested in  schoolhouses ;  and  with  a  popula- 
tion of  138,000,  has  22,000  in  her  public 
schools,  employs  350  teachers,  and  expends 
annually  more  than  300,000  dollars  for  the 
education  of  the  people.      All  these  schools 


1858.] 


POPULAR  EDTJOATIOK  DT  THK  UNITED  STATE& 


118 


are  free,  and  three  oflScers  are  employed  to 
look  after  truant  and  idle  children,  and  to 
induce  their  parents  to  send  them  to  school. 
And  yet  Boston  is  aiming  at  a  still  higher 
standard  of  popular  education,  and  in  order 
to  attain  it  employs  a  superintendent  who, 
in  the  language  of  the  law  dfefining  his  duties, 
*  shall  devote  himself  to  the  study  of  the 
school  system,  and  of  the  condition  of  the 
schools,  and  shall  keep  himself  acquainted 
with  the  progress  of  instruction  and  disci- 
pline in  other  places,  in  order  to  suggest 
appropriate  means  for  the  advancement  of 
the  public  schools  in  this  city/ 

Under  these  heavy  disbursements  for  edu- 
cation, the  city  has  made  rapid  progress  in 
wealth,  commerce,  and  population, — has 
taken  the  lead  in  manufactures,  railways, 
the  India  trade,  and  the  improvement  of 
naval  architecture.^  Its  progress  will  apjpear 
in  the  following  table  based  upon  official 
documents  :-^ 


1840. 

83,979 


1860. 

138,788 


Popalation  of  Boston 
Population  of  Boston 

and  suburbs  .  185»546  369,874 

Assessors'  valuation 

of  Boston  .  .$94,681,600  $210,000,000 
Tonnage  of  Boston 

per  returns  of  1842 
^    and  1861  193,602  343,308 

While  the  capital  of  the  State  has  been 
active  in  advancement  of  letters,  the  State 
government  has  not  been  unmindful  of  its 
duties  under  the  constitution  and  laws.  Aid 
has  been  given  by  liberal  grants  to  the  uni- 
versity and  colleges ;  three  normal  schools 
for  the  education  of  teachers  have  been 
established  at  the  public  expense.  A  Board 
of  Education  has  been  created,  composed  of 
the  principal  officers  of  State,  with  a  work- 
ing secretary  and  two  agents  who  traverse 
the  State,  and  draw  attention  by  addresses 
and  conference  with  teachers  to  school  ar- 
chitecture, the  best  modes  of  teaching,  and  the 
importance  of  a  higher  standard  of  education. 

Institutes,  or  meetings  of  teachers  and 
friends  of  education,  are  held  in  various  parts 
of  the  State,  under  the  sanction  of  the  Board 

* 

of  Education,  and  a  corps  of  professors  em^ 
ployed  to  address  them  on  the  best  mode  of 
miparting    knowledge,    and  to   lecture    on 

[      _  -  -  Mill  111 

*  The  Boston  dipper,  "Sovereign  of  the  Sea," 
a  ship  of  2200  tons,  with  a  orew  of  86  men,  is  re- 
ported in  the  New  York  Joumal  of  May  last,  to 
have  made  her  passage  from  the  Sandwich  Islands^ 
around  Gape  Horq,  to  New  York,  in  80  days;  and 
in  one  day  to  have  mn  480  milei^  or  18  miles  per 
honr.  Another  clipper,  of  4000  tooB^  to  carry  four 
masts^  was  in  Uaj  last  on  the  stocks  at  Boston. 

YOI*  XXX    N  0.  L 


frammar,  elocution,  arithmetb,  music,  and 
rawing.  Professors  Guyot  and  Agassiz  are 
now  engaged  in  that  duty.  Four  or  five  days 
are  devoted  to  each  of  these  institutes,  and  so 
popular  and  useful  are  these  meetings,  that 
the  cities  and  villages  where  they  are  held, 
provide  lodgings  for  the  teachers  at  their  own 
expense,  and  are  clamorous  for  their  turns. 

Under  the  stimulus  thus  given  to  educa- 
tion, we  are  not  surprised  to  learn,  from  th^ 
report  of  the  Board,  that  in  this  small  State, 
with  a  harsh  climate  and  sterile  soil,  with  but 
7,600  square  miles  of  surface,  and  1,000,000 
of  people,  there  were,  in  1851, 3,987  schools, 
or  one  for  two  square  miles  of  surface,  and  an 
annual  eipenditure  on  schools,  including 
buildings,  not  far  from  1,600,000  dollars,  or 
to  learn  the  facts  condensed  in  the  following 
table: — 

BXTUAHSOF  BIASSACBUSETTI. 

1887.  1881. 

No.  of  children  m  the 

State  from  4  to  16        184,896 
No.  of  children  in  the 

State  from  6  to  16  196,636 

Number  of  children 

in     nablic      free 

schools  In  summer  .  179,497 

Nnmber  of  same  in 

winter  of  aU  ages  ....  199,429 
Average  attendance 

in  winter 162,664 

Number  of  teachers    .      6,961  8,694 

Average    length   of 

school  term  6  mo.  86  days  7  mo.  14  days. 

Wages  of  male  tea^ 

chers  per  month  |26^  9^^^ 

Wages    of    female 

teachers  pr.  month  fl  1  ^  ^l^h^ 

Average  tax  pr«  child 

of  educational  age, 

assessed  principal- 
ly on  property  $%fff  $A^^ 
Amount   raised    for 

waees,   fuel    and 

booKs,  exclusive  of 

repairs   and   new 

structures  9387,184  $916,389 

Population  of  State 

per  census  of  1840 

and  1860  737,699  992,499 

Assessors    valuation 

of  taxable  property 

in  the  State  for  re- 
turns of  1840  and 

1850  $299,878,829  8597,986,996 

Whole   amount  ex- 
pended  in  public 

and  Dfivate  schools 

in    Massachusetts 

—  exclusive      of 

buildings,  in  1861  $1,363,700  63 

Amount    of    public 

school  fund  $1,000,000 

8 


114 


POPULAR  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


[Sept., 


'  It  is  «fl.sy  to  draw  the  inference  from  this 
table,  that  the  standard  ot  education  has 
been  raised,  the  quality  of  teachers  and  teach- 
ing improved,  while  the  State  has  continued 
to  increase  to  a  remarkable  extent  in  popula- 
tion, and  still  more  rapidly  in  wealth. 

During  the  period  in  question,  this  State, 
which  is  devoted  in  a  great  measure  to  manu- 
facturesy  has  absorbed  between  one  and  two 
hundred  thousand  illiterate  emigrants  from 
Ireland.  * 

In  the  schools  of  Massachusetts,  no  in- 
struction is  given  in  the  tenets  of  any  religious 
denomination.  The  schools  are  usually  open- 
ed with  reading  a  chapter  of  the  Bible,  and 
a  brief  prayer,  or  address,  from  the  master  ; 
but  the  duty  of  the  master  and  committee  to 
inculcate  morals  is  by  no  means  forgotten. 
It  is  prescribed  by  the  fundamental  laws,  and 
the  attention  paid  to  it  may  be  inferred  from 
the  following  passages,  which  we  cite  from 
the  report  of  a  scnool  committee  to  their 
constituents,  in  the  little  town  of  Winchen- 
down,  in  Worcester  county. 

*The  object  of  edncation  is  not  merely  to 
teach  the  pupil  to  read,  to  learn  the  news  of  the 
day,  to  write,  to  cypher,  to  keep  his  accounts,  but 
to  receive  that  thorough  mental  discipline  which 
may  prepare  him  for  any  sphere  in  which  he  may 
be  callea  to  move ;  that  development  of  the  mind 
which  will  elevate  and  ennoble  his  aspirations ; 
that  cultivation  of  the  faculties  wbKb  will  awaken 
a  quenchless  thirst  for  knowledge;  that  influence 
on  the  mental  powers  which  will  incline  them  to 
the  truth,  as  delicately  as  the  needle  seeks  the 
pole.  Its  object  is  to  make  strong  minds,  coura- 
geous hearts,  prompt,  active  and  energetic  men.' 

'  In  relation  to  obedience,  diligence,  stillness, 
decorum,  manliness  of  manners,  respect  ta][supe- 
riors,  the  pupil  should  be  disciplined  most  tho- 
.ronghly.' 

The  committee  conclude  with  this  earnest 
appeal,  as  applicable  to  England  as  to  Ame- 
nca — 

*  Shall  not  we,  the  moral  guardians,  the  foster- 
fathers  of  the  children  of  the  ignorant  and  de- 
pendent, see  that  our  wards,  whom  Heaven  has 
put  into  our  hands,  are  provided  for  ?' 

The  report  of  the  town  of  Cambridge  in 
Massachusetts  takes  the  ground  that, — 

*  Our  wealth  is  in  the  mines  of  the  intellect 
that  lie  hidden  in  the  popular  body,  and  not  in 
gold  or  silver  coin.*  <  To  make  this  available,  we 
must  labor  not  only  to  extend  some  education  to 
all,  but  to  put  the  best  education  within  the  reach 
of  those  who  can  turn  it  to  the  best  account.' 


'  No  wastefulness  is  so  mischievous  as  this,  to 
leave  the  high  faculties  to  run  to  waste.* 

^Onr  duty  is  *fo  awake  a  just  conception  of 
what  is  exalted  in  feeling  and  conduct,  and  an  in- 
extinguishable love  of  moral  purity  and  intellec- 
tual culture."  The  great  objects  of  school  edu- 
cation, are  to  give  children  such  habits,  tastes, 
and  ideas,  as  will  strengthen  them  against  the 
temptations  to  which  they  are  exposed,  and  form 
their  characters  for  further  progress.' 

When  such  sentiments  and  views  guide 
the  managers  of  the  schools,  may  not  the 
Catechism  be  safely  left  to  the  religious  in- 
structor ? 

One  more  extract  must  suffice.  A  Boston 
committee  gives  us  some  light  on  the  effect 
of  schools  on  the  population  of  the  eity,  one 
half  of  which  now  consists  of  emigrants  from 
Ireland  and  their  children.  'By  these 
schools  much  has  been  done  to  convert  the 
stagnant  pools  of  ignorance  and  vice  into 
pure  and  healthful  fountains  of  knowledge, 
whose  life-giving  power  pervades  and  pene- 
trates all  portions  of  society.' 

A  noble  library,  just  founded  in  Boston  by 
Mr.  Bates  of  London,  of  the  house  of  Baring 
Brothers,  and  a  native  of  Massachusetts,  will 
aid  and  extend  the  influence  of  the  schools. 

The  great  State  of  New  York,  the  most 
populous  in  the  Union,  has  since  1825,  when* 
the  Erie  canal  was  built,  paid  marked  atten- 
tion to  education. 

De  Witt  Clinton  gave  an  impulse  to  both. 
New  York  has  gradually  been  accumulating 
large  funds  for  the  advancement  of  letters, 
and  annually  increasing  its  appropriations  for 
that  object.  Under  the  auspices  of  the  State, 
several  colleges  and  universities  have  been 
founded,  eleven  of  which  report  to  the  State 
in  1851,  that  1801  students  are  in  attend- 
ance. One  hundred  and  sixty  academies  also 
report  their  pupils  as  15,947,  their  perma- 
nent endowments  at  $1,694,660.  They  give 
the  salaries  of  their  teachers  as  $247,341, 
and  theit'  libraries  as  containing  72,568  vol- 
umes. 

The  superintendent  of  the  common  free 
schools  reports  the  entire  number  of  school 
.districts  as  11,297,  and  the  entire  expenditure 
for  1849,  on  the  free  schools  of  the  State, 
as  $1,766,668.  We  have  condensed  from 
several  reports  the  following  summary. 


Population  of  the  State  in  1850 
ditto  1840 

Number  of  children  between  the 

ages  of  five  and  sixteen  years  in 

the  State,  1850 
Number  of  children  of  all  ages 

taught  during  the  year 


3,097,394 
2,428,941 


735,188 
794,500 


1858.] 


POPULAB  EDIJOATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES^ 


115 


Whole  amoiint  of  money  expended 
in  common  schools,  incladini; 
baildingfs,  salaries,  fuel,  and 
books  in  1849 

Amount  paid. for  bnildings,  fuel, 
&c.,  included  in  anra  aix>ve 

Amount  contributed  by  State  from 
general  tax  and  income  of  lauds 

Income  of  school  funds,  1849 

Number  of  volumes  in  district 
school  libraries 

Average  length  of  school  term, 
1849,  eight  months. 

Whole  amount  received  and  ex- 
pended in  common  schools  in 
1825,  but 


91,766,668 

$398,097 

$906,822 
$302,524 

1,449,950 


$265,720 


The  State  of  New  York,  as  will  appear 
from  the  above,  is  fast  increasing  its  outlay 
on  schools,  and  has  liberally  provided  a  li* 
brary  for  each  district.  The  State  has  also 
established  normal  schools,  which  are  tend- 
ing to  improve  the  teachers,  and  raise  the 
standard  of  qualification  for  office  through- 
out the  State. 

Teachers'  institutes  have  been  authorized, 
and  will  soon  be  commenced.  A  school 
journal  has  also  been  established,  which  serves 
as  the  official  channel  of  communication  be- 
tween the  superintendent  and  the  officers  of 
the  district,  and  contributes  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  system  of  public  instruction. 
The  library  and  journal,  as  appendages  of 
the  common  shool,  are  apparently  peculiar 
to  New  York. 

With  respect  to  new  sites  and  structures 
for  school- houses,  the  superintendent  reports 
that  an  increased  regard  to  the  comfort,  con- 
venience, and  health  both  of  pupils  and 
teachers  and  to  refined  taste,  have  been  mani- 
fested. He  recommends  enlarged  sites  for 
school -houses,  the  introduction  of  tasteful 
shrubbery,  useful  and  ornamental  plants,  and 
while  providing  for  wholesome  exercise,  would 
make  some  provision  for  developing  those 
higher  faculties  of  our  nature,  which  can  ap- 
preciate the  beautiful,  tasteful  and  orna- 
mental. 

The  city  of  New  York,  the  commercial 
centre  of  the  New  World,  is  making  pro- 
gress in  her  schools.  A  few  years  since  they 
were  inferior  to  those  of  New  England ;  but 
of  late  years  its  most  able  and  influential  citi- 
sens  have  taken  them  in  charge,  and  nipid 
improvement  has  been  made.  Normal 
schools  have  been  established,  evening  schools 
have  begun  to  instruct  the  adult  emigrants, 
who  land  there  from  Ireland  and  Germany 
without  the  rudiments  of  knowledge,  and  a 
free  academy  has  been  opened  to  teach  the 
bigber  branches  and  the  ancient  languages  to 


the  most  distinguished  graduates  of  the  gram- 
mar schools.  The  following  table  gives  the 
statistics  of  the  schools.  We  would  remark, 
however,  that  some  deduction  must  be  made 
from  the  aggregate  number  of  scholars  on 
the  registers  of  the  city  and  State  of  New 
York,  as  those  who  remove  from  district  to 
district  during  the  year,  are  sometimes  twice 
entered  on  the  register. 

Whole  number  of  children  in  the  city 

betwf'en  five  and  fifteen  years  of 

age,  January,  1850                 .       .  90,145 

Whole  number  entered  on  register  in 

schools  daring  the  year  1849  of  all 

ages    * 102,974 

Number  in  free  academy  .  382 

Number  in  evening  schools  .  3,450 
Number  in  private,  church,  and  other 

schools 18,250 

Amount  paid  for  teachers*  salaries, 

1850     .       .                                   .  $274,794 

New  buildings         *        .        .         .  $32,000 

Repairs $18,660 

Sites $41,680 

Cost  of  evening  schools  .        .  $16,621 

Cost  of  free  academy  $16,270 

Entire  cost  of  free  schools  $400,029 

Population  of  city  proper,  1850  515,347 

Ditto                  1840  312,710 

In  the  schools  of  the  city  and  State  of  New 
York,  the  exercises  are  usually  begun  by 
reading  a  passage  from  the  Bible ;  but  no 
favor  is  shown  to  any  religious  denomination. 
The  degree  of  moral  culture  afforded  by  these 
schools — their  influence  over  the  community, 
and  the  favor  with  which  they  are  regarded, 
may  be  inferred  from  the  extract  we  subjoin 
from  the  annual  report  of  the  superintendent 
of  common  schools  to  the  legislature  for  1850, 
page  19. 

'The  idea  of  universal  education  is  the  grand 
central  idea  of  the  age.  Upon  this  broad  and 
comprehensive  basis  all  the  experience  of  the  past, 
all  the  crowding  phenomena  of  the  present, 
and  all  our  hopes  and  aspirations  for  the  future, 
must  rest.  Oar  forefathers  have  transmitted  to 
us  a  noble  inheritance  of  national,  intellectual, 
moral  and  religious  freedom.  They  have  con- 
fided our  destiny  as  a  people  to  our  own  hands. 
Upon  our  individual  and  combined  intelligence, 
virtue,  and  patriotism,  rests  the  solution  of  the 
great  problem  of  self-government.  We  should 
be  untrue  to  ourselves,  untrue  to  the  memory  of 
our  statesmen  and  patriots,  untrue  to  the  cause  of 
liberty,  of  civilization  and  humanity,  if  we  neg- 
lected the  assiduous  cultivation  of  those  means 
by  which  alone  we  can  secure  the  realization  of 
the  hopes  we  have  excited.  Those  means  are 
the  universal  education  of  our  future  citizens 
without  discrimination  or  distinction.  Wherever 
in  our  midst  a  human  being  exists  with  capacities 


116 


FOPUXiAB  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UIOTED  STATES. 


tflept. 


and  facnlties  to  be  developed,  improved,  culti- 
vated, and  directed,  tlie  avenaes  of  knowledge 
should  be  freely  opened,  and  every  facility  af- 
forded to  their  nnrestricted  entrance*  Ignorance 
should  no  more  be  countenanced  than  vice  and 
crime.  The  one  leads  almost  inevitably  to  the 
other.  Banish  ignorance,  and  in  its  stead  intro- 
duce intelli^nce,  science,  knowledge,  and  in- 
ereasingj  wisdom  and  enlightenment,  and  yon 
remove  in  roost  cases  all  those  incentives  to  idle- 
ness, vice,  and  crime,  which  produce  such  frightful 
harvests  of  retribution,  misery,  and  wretchedness. 
Educate  every  child  ^'to  the  top  of  his  faculties,'* 
and  vou  not  only  secure  the  community  against 
the  depredations  of  the  ignorant  and  the  criminal, 
but  you  bestow  upon  it,  instead,  productive 
artisans,  good  citizens,  upright  jurors  and  magis- 
trates, enlightened  statesmen,  scientific  disco- 
verers and  inventors,  and  the  dispensers  of  a 
pervading  influence  in  favor  of  honestv,  virtue, 
and  true  goodness.  Educate  every  child  physi- 
cally, morally,  and  intellectually,  from  the  age  of 
four  to  twenty-one,  and  many  of  your  prisons, 
penitentiaries,  and  almshouses  will  be  converted 
into  schools  of  industry  and  temples  of  science ; 
and  the  amount  now  contributed  for  their  main* 
tenance  and  support  will  be  diverted  into  far  more 
profitable  channels.  Educate  every  child  not  su- 
perficially, not  partially,  but  thoroughly ;  develop 
equally  and  healthfully  every  faculty  of  his  nature, 
every  capability  of  his  being,  and  you  infuse  a  new 
and  invigorating  element  intothe  very  life-blood 
of  civilization,  an  element  which  will  difiuse  itself 
throughout  every  vein  and  artery  of  the  social 
and  political  system,  purifying,  strengthening,  and 
regenerating  all  its  impulses,  elevating  its  aspini' 
tions,  and  clothing  it  with  a  power  equal  to  every 
demand  upon  its  vast  energies  and  resources. 

'These  are  some  of  the  results  which  must 
follow  in  the  train  of  a  wisely  matured  and  judi- 
ciously organized  system  of  universal  education. 
They  are  not  imaginary,  but  sober  deductions 
from  well-authenticated  facts,  deliberate  conclu- 
sions, and  sanctioned  by  the  concurrent  testimony 
of  experienced  educators  and  eminent  statesmen 
and  philanthropists.  If  names  are  needed  to 
enforce  the  lesson  they  teach,  those  of  Washing- 
ton, and  Franklin,  and  Hamilton,  and  Jefferson, 
and  Clinton,  with  a  long  array  of  patriots  and 
statesmen,  may  be  cited.  If  facts  are  required  to 
illustrate  the  connection  between  ignorance  and 
crime,  let  the  officers*  return  of  convictions  in  the 
several  courts  of  the  State  for  the  last  ten  years 
be  examined,  and  the  instructive  lessons  be 
heeded.  Out  of  nearly  28,000  jpersons  convicted 
of  crime,  but  128  had  enjoyea  the  benefits  of  a 
good  common  school  education.* 

The  influence  of  education  in  New  York  is 
still  farther  illustrated  in  a  report  of  the 
Board  of  Education  of  the  city  of  New  York 
on  the  system  of  popular  education^  May  28, 
1851.  The  report  appears  to  have  been  in 
answer  to  a  message  of  the  mayor  on  the 
increase  of  expense  in  the  police,  almshouse, 
and  school  departments,  which  may  be  as-  J 


cribed  doubtless  to  the  great  influx  of  foreign 
emigrants.  The  report  is  a  most  able  defence 
of  a  system  which  has  been  found  in  New 
York  to  give  increased  elevation  to  morals^ 
additional  value  to  property,  and  higher 
respectability  and  safety  to  the  city. 

*  The  mayor  has  associated  the  department  of 
common  schools  with  those  of  the  almshouse  and 
police.  There  are  near  and  interesting  relations 
existing  between  these  several  departments.  So 
intimate  indeed  are  these  relations,  and  so  imme- 
diate and  strong  are  the  reciprocal  influences 
springing  out  of  them,  that  the  more  you  cherish 
and  sustain  the  one,  the  more  von  relieve  the 
other,  and  the  more  liberal  an(f  difiTusive  your 
system  of  education,  and  the  more  you  contribute 
for  irs  improvement  and  extension,  the  less  you 
will  have  to  pay  for  the  maintenance  of  the  other 
two  departments. 

*The  more  you  subject  all  to  the  elevating', 
refining,  and  conservative  influences  of  a  whole- 
some, moral,  intellectual,  and  industrial  training, 
the  more  you  relieve  your  almshouses  and  police. 
Extend  education,  and  you  diminish  pauperism 
and  crime.  Increase  the  number  of  scnoom,  and 
yon  diminish  in  more  than  a  corresponding  de- 
gree the  number  of  those  who  are  otherwise  to 
become  the  recipients  of  your  charity,  or  the  sub- 
jects of  your  penal  code.  Between  these  alter- 
natives you  must  decide.  Can  the  choice  in  a 
civilized  and  Christian  community  be  either  difli- 
cult  or  doubtful,  I  will  not  say  to  the  philanthro- 
pist merely,  but  even  to  the  taxpayer  ?* 

The  city  of  New  York  continues  to  increase 
its  appropriations  for  schools ;  4nd  its  pro* 
gress  in  the  arts,  commerce,  wealth,  and  pop- 
ulation attest  their  value. 

The  splendid  library  recently  founded  with 
a  bequest  of  half  a  million  of  dollars  by  Astor, 
originally  a  poor  German  emigrant,  will  find 
many  readers  in  New  York,  and  add  much 
to  the  attraction  of  the  city. 

On  the  southwest,  New  York  borders  on 
Pennsylvania,  a  rich,  central,  agricultural 
State,  early  settled  by  the  Swedes,  Germans, 
and  English  Quakers.  In  1682,  William 
Penn  formed  the  first  constitution  of  the 
colony,  and  incorporated  this  clause  into  his 
frame  of  government :  '  Wisdom  and  virtue 
are  qualities  which,  because  they  descend  not 
with  worldly  inheritances,  must  be  carefully 
propagated  by  a  virtuous  education  of  youth.' 
Although  the  value  of  education  was  thus 
recognised  by  the  first  lawffiver  of  the  colony, 
his  successors  appear  to  have  forgotten  the 
policy  enjoined  by  their  ancestors,  and  paid 
little  regard  to  it  until  the  year  1831»  when 
the  system  of  popular  instruction  was  estab- 
lished in  the  State. 

At  the  outset,  great  diflicullies  were  en-> 
countered  in  the  apathy  of  the  German  pop* 


1858.] 


POPULAB  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


11» 


alatioD,  BBd  the  want  of  competent  teachers. 
These  were  increased  by  the  pecuniary  em- 
barrassments in  which  the  state  was  involved 
by  the  fail  are  of  its  banks,  and  the  manage- 
ment of  the  pablic  works ;  but  gradually 
these  obstacles  have  been  surmounted.  The 
State  has  recovered  from  its  depression,  re- 
sumed the  payment  of  the  interest,  and, 
since  1844,  annually  appropriates  200,000 
dollars  in  aid  of  the  public  schools.  The 
value  of  normal  schools  has  also  been  recog- 
nised, and  several  are  now  established. 

The  State  has  been  divided  into  districts, 
and  each  is  required  to  assess  taxes  sufficient, 
with  its  proportion  of  the  public  fund,  to  pro- 
vide instruction  for  three  or  four  months 
yearly.  We  subjoin  a  condensed  table  of 
the  population,  schools,  and  school  expenses 
of  the  State  :— 


Population  of  the  State,  1850  .  . 
ditto  1840    .    . 

Number  of  children  registered  in 

schools  ID  1861 

Number  of  children  registered  in 

schods  in  1836 

Average  length  of  short  term,  1836 
ditto  1861 

Average  salaries  of  male  teachers 

per  month 

Average  salaries  of  female  teachers 

per  month 

Number  of  schools  in  1861     .    .    . 
ditto            still  required    . 
Entire  expense  of  schopis  .    .    .    . 
Amount  in  above  items  for  struc- 
tures      


2,311,786 
1,724,033 

424,344 

32,644 
8  mo.  12  d. 
6  mo.  1  day 

$17.20 

I10.16 

8,610 

674 

$926,447.66 

$263,741.06 


In  the  brief  period  of  sixteen  years,  the 
pupils  have  increased  thirteen-fold.  The 
term  of  instruction  has  been  extended  nearly 
fifty  per  cent.,  and  provision  made  to  qualify 
a  superior  class  of  teachers  in  normal  schools. 

Pennsylvania  has  not  only  secured  its 
schools,  but  has  ascertained,  by  its  experience, 
that  the  most  efficacious  plan  to  educate  a 
community  is  to  train  the  teachers,  enabling 
them  to  acquire  knowledge,  and  the  most 
improved  modes  of  imparting  what  they  ac- 
quire. The  whole  State  is  alive  to  the  im- 
portance of  institutions  affording  ample  means 
for  teachers  to  learn  their  duties  before  at- 
tempting to  perform  them ;  and  those  who 
hare  questioned  the  value  of  such  institutions 
are  now  their  most  ardent  friends. 

The  superintendent  of  the  schools,  after 
dilating  on  ^he  importance  of  having  good 
teachers,  and  giving  testimony  to  the  value 
and  popularity  of  the  normal  schools,  sub- 
mits to  the  State  a  plan  for  an  agricultural 
college,  for  the  gratmtous  instruction  of  the 


most  promising  youth,  and  estimates  the  an- 
nual cost  at  46,300  dollars. 

Philadelphia,  the  commercial  capital  of 
the  State,  and  the  second  city  in  the  Union, 
anticipated  the  action  of  the  State,  but  did 
not  commence  its  common  school  system  un- 
til 1818,  or  open  its  schools  to  the  whole 
community  until  1836.  In  the  last  fifteen 
years,  however,  it  has  laid  the  foundations 
deep  and  wide,  and  is  now  making  progress 
in  its  free  schools.  No  improvement  escapes 
its  notice.  The  form,  size,  and  classification 
of  its  schools  are  subjects  of  study.  The 
most  liberal  provision  is  made  for  preparing 
teachers  in  normal  institutions. 

Females  are  very  generally  employed  in 
the  primary  and  grammar  schools,  with  fa- 
vorable results.  This  furnishes  a  most  ap- 
propriate occupation  for  women,  besides  re- 
Qucing  the  cost  of  tuition.  A  high  school 
has  been  formed  to  receive  the  ilite  pupils  of 
the  grammar  schools,  and  the  qualifications 
for  admissions  have  been  gradually  raised, 
and  the  studies  advanced,  until  a  collegiate 
education  is  now  given  at  the  public  expense, 
and  degrees  of  bachelors  and  masters  of  arts 
are  conferred  on  the  graduates. 

In  this  high  school  are  employed  ten  pro- 
fessors and  two  assistants.  Five  hunared 
and  five  students  are  on  the  register.  The 
course  is  four  years,  and  instruction  is  given 
in  the  classics,  French,  Spanish,  and  the 
higher  mathematics,  logic,  elocution,  and 
philosophy  in  all  its  branches;  chemistry, 
navigation,  and  phonetics ;  and  all  who  enter 
are  obliged  to  pass  a  severe  examination  in 
reading,  writing,  grammar,  arithmetic,  geog- 
raphy, algebra,  and  geometry.  The  princi- 
pal reporters  of  Congress  are  phonographic 
reporters  from  this  institution.  We  subjoin, 
in  tabular  form,  a  brief  view  of  the  state  of 
education  in  Philadelphia : — 

1840.  ISfiO. 

Population  of  Philadelphia  228,691  408,766 

Number  of  school  houses  16  60 

ditto        teachers  190  928 

ditto        scholars  19,000  48,000 

Expenditures  for  schools  $190,000  $336,000 

The  rapid  growth  of  the  State  and  its  me- 
tropolis in  manufactures,  commerce,  build- 
ings, population,  and  the  useful  arts,  shows 
that  education  has  not  checked  their  career ; 
while  the  popular  feeling  which  has  been 
awakened  in  its  behalf,  where  apathy  former- 
ly prevailed,  attests  its  beneficial  influence. 

We  have  thus  cited  three  of  the  leading 
States,  and  three  of  the  principal  cities  of  the 
Union,  to  illustrate  what  progress  the  United 
States  have  niade,  and  are  still  making,  in 


118 


POPUIiAR  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATEJPu 


[Sept., 


education.  But  let  it  not  be  supposed  tfiat 
the  subject  is  disregarded  in  other  sections  of 
the  Union ;  although  in  some  of  the  southern 
States,  where  the  population  is  sparse  and 
slavery  exists,  less  zeal  is  evinced.  Even 
there  the  influence  of  the  leading  States  is 
widely  felt,  and  a  spirit  of  inquiry  and  rivalry 
is  awakened. 

In  Richmond  and  New  Orleans  measures 
are  in  progress  to  improve  their  system  of 
free  schools.  In  most  of  the  western  and 
southwestern  States,  large  reservations  of 
land  have  been  made  by  Congress  for  the 
purposes  of  education,  which  will  soon  be,  or 
already  are,  productive.  The  remote  city  of 
St.  Louis,  in  the  border  State  of  Missouri, 
appropriates  yearly  100,000  dollars  to  the 
public  schools — a  sum  greater  in  proportion 
than  the  disbursemeut  of  New  York ;  and 
even  in  Texas,  where  a  few  years  since  the 
bowie-knife  and  revolver  were  used  to  settle 
all  difficult  questions,  the  Journal  of  Com- 
merce apprises  us  that  schools  exist  in  every 
county,  and  nearly  200  churches  are  in  pro- 
gress. So  many  States  are  now  embarked 
in  education,  and  such  is  the  current  in  its 
favor,  that  none  can  resist  the  force  of  public 
opinion.  The  school  rises  in  the  forest,  and 
is  but  the  precursor  of  the  spire  and  belfry 
of  the  village  church.  Religion,  if  it  maj 
not  guide,  is  a  close  attendant  upon  the 
schools  of  America. 

On  the  western  frontier  of  the  Union  on 
the  bank  of  the  Mississippi  lies  the  frontier 
State  of  Iowa,  one  of  the  youngest  members 
of  Ihe  confederacy.  The  adventurous  settlers 
have  but  just  built  their  cabins  and  marked 
out  their  shire  towns  and  villages,  but  they 
have  carried  with  them  the  love  for  learning  ; 
and  on  those  prairies  where  the  Indian  but 
yesterday  figured  in  the  war-dance,  of  chased 
the  buffalo,  the  philosopher  now  plans  a  sys- 
tem of  moral  ana  intellectual  culture. 

A  superintendent  of  schools  has  already 
been  appointed,  and  education  provided  for 
by  an  organic  law.  The  central  government 
here,  with  wise  liberality,  reserved  for  edu- 
cation a  million  and  a  half  acres  of  land,  val- 
ued at  two  to  three  millions  of  dollars.  A 
portion  is  already  productive.  Public  provi- 
sion has  been  made  for  the  instruction  of  the 
deaf  and  dumb.  A  treatise  by  Mr.  Barnard 
on  school  architecture  is  circulated  at  the 
public  expense.  Three  colleges  have  been 
founded.  Two  normal  schools  have  been  in- 
stituted ;  district  schools  have  been  com- 
menced ;  the  old  theory  that  the  parent  and 
schoolmaster  were  responsible  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  child  has  been  exploded,  and  the 


State  is  held  responsible  for  the  education  of 
its  youth. 

Such  are  the  state  and  prospects  of  edu- 
cation on  the  very  verge  of  the  wilderness, 
more  than  1200  miles  from  tide  water,  in  a 
State  which  numbered  but  43,000  people  in 
1840,  and  but  192,000  souls  by  the  late 
census. 

After  this  glance  at  particular  States  and 
cities,  the  reader  will  not  be  surprised  at  the 
results  which  we  condense  from  Mitchell  into 
the  following  summary.  The  returns  em- 
brace States  containing  more  than  two-thirds 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Union.  The  others 
have  not  yet  published  their  returns: 


Number  of  children  in  States  mak- 
ing returns  of  educational  age 

Number  of  children  attending  pub- 
lic schools  in  same     .... 

Annual  expenditure  on  public 
schools  in  same 

Number  of  students  in  colleges, 
law,  and  medical  schools    .    . 

Number  of  volumes  in  public  libra- 
ries of  the  United  States  .  .  . 
ditto  colle^  libraries 

Amount  of  public  Bchool  funds  be- 
side land    

Population  of  the  United  States, 

Estimated  population,  December, 
1862 • 


3,723,766 

2,967,741 

$7,086,693 

18,260 

3,954,375 
846,465 

$17,967,662 

23,266,972 

26,000,000 


The  z^  for  education  in  the  United  States 
has  passed  their  bordeVs,  already  animates 
Upper  Canada,  and  is  gradually  penetrating 
the  provinces  of  Lower  Canada  and  Nova 
Scotia.  Normal  schools  have  been  for  some 
time  in  progress  in  Upper  Canada,  and  will 
soon  find  countenance  in  the  other  provinces. 
The  comparative  progress  of  these  colonies 
may  be  inferred  from  the  annexed  table : 

Canada,  West,  1849,  population    .     .      803.566 
«  •*        "     children  in 

public  schools 161,891 

Canada,  West,  1849,  paid  for 

salaries $330,720 

Canada,  East,  1849,  population  .  .  768,344 
Canada,  East,  1849,  children  in 

public  schools 73,651 

Canada,  East,  1849,  public  grant  .  .  $50,772 
Nova  Scotia,  1849,  population  .  .  .  300,000 
Nova  Scotia,  1849,  children  in 

public  schools    ..*....        30,631 
Nova  Scotia,  1849,  annual  ex- 
pense for  same $136,286 

While  the  upper  province  of  6anada  rea- 
dily adopts  the  school  which  has  borrow- 
ed from  the  improved  system  of  Ireland,  the 
French  inhabitants  of  the  lower  province  cling 
more  tenaciously  to  their  ancient  usages  and 


1858.] 


POPULAE  EDUCATION  IN  THE  UOTTED  STATESu 


119 


habits.  Railways,  hoirever,  are  fast  inva- 
ding the  provinces,  and  will  soon  bring  them 
in  contact  with  iheir  more  mercurial  neigh- 
bors, and  obliterate  their  prejudices. 

Our  glance  at  education  m  the  Transat- 
lantic States  leads  us  to  some  important  re- 
sults. We  glean  from  it,  not  only  the  facts 
that  more  than  3,000,000  of  pupils  attend 
the  public  fre^  schools,  and  that  large  funds 
are  accumulating  for  the  purposes  of  educa- 
tion, but  we  deduce  more  interesting  conclu- 
sions. It  is  obvious  that  the  system  of  pub- 
lic instruction  has  taken  firm  hold  of  the  pub- 
lic mindj  and  is  eminently  popular  and  pro- 
gressive ;  that  it  is  pervading  the  entire  coun- 
try, and  assuming  a  higher  tone  and  charac- 
ter. 

There  is  a  determination  in   America   to 
unite   the  thinking   head  with  the  working 
hand,  and  to  elicit  all  the  talent  of  the  coun- 
try.    The   system  of  public   schools   drew 
Daniel  Webster  from  obscurity  to  guide  and 
enlighten  his  country ;  and  more  Websters 
are  required.     The  respect  for  education  dis- 
plays  itself  in   the   embellishment  of  the 
grounds  of  the  country  schools.     In  place  of 
the  low  and  comfortless  school-room,  brick 
structures  are  now  reared  in  the  large  towns, 
seventy  feet  in  length  by  sixty  in  width,  and 
four  stories  high,  well  ventilatd,  and  warmed 
by  furnaces.     Tiie  books  are  improved,  and 
libraries   provided.     The  local    committees 
give  place  to  able  superintendents  and  boards 
of  control.     Music  is  added  to  the  studies, — 
schools  of  design  are  established, — normal 
schools  to   prepare  teachers,  are   provided. 
Institutions  are  started  to  educate  the  deaf, 
dumb,  blind,  and  idiotic :  all  these  are  at  the 
public  charge.     Academies  and  colleges  fol- 
low, and  schools  for  arts,  law,  medicine,  and 
divinity  succeed  ;  and  to  stimulate  the  whole, 
teachers'  institutes,  school    journals,    and 
agents  are  employed  by  the  State  to  disse- 
minate information,  and  fan  the  public  enthu- 
siasm.    Appeals  are  constantly  made  to  the 
public  to  suffer  no  waste  of  talent  or  intellect; 
to  give  the  luxury  of  learning  to  the  class 
doomed  to  toil,  and  to  counteract  the  bad 
influences  of  the  home  of  the  illiterate  emi- 
grant by  the  attractions  of  the  school. 

Under  these  incentives  the  taxes  for  schools 
are  cheerfully  paid,  and  education  progresses. 
What  are  its  effects  ?  Do  we  not  see  them 
in  the  quickened  action  of  the  American 
mind,  in  its  more  rapid  adaptation  of  means 
to  ends ;  in  the  application  of  steam,  and  the 
great  water  power  of  the  country,  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  labor ;  in  teaching  it  to  move  the 
spindles,  the  loom,  the  saw,  drill,  stone-cut- 


ter, and  the  planing,  polishing,  and  sewing 
machines ;  in  replacing  the  living  man  and 
woman  by  steam  carpet  looms  and  artificial 
reapers ;  in  teaching  the  locomotive  and  car 
to  surmount  steep  acclivities,  and  wind  round 
sharp  curves  at  trifling  expense;  in  design- 
ing new  models  and  new  modes  of  construct- 
ing, rigging,  and  steering  ships  upon  the  sea, 
diminishing  the  crews  while  doubling  the 
speed  and  size  of  the  vessel ;  inventing  new 
processes  for  spinning  and  bleaching;  new 
furnaces  for  the  steam  engine,  and  new 
presses  for  the  printer  ? 

A  few  years  since,  the  question  was  asked 
by  a   distinguished  divine,   '  Who  reads  an 
American   work  ?'     The  question  now  is, 
'  Who  does  not  read  an  American  book,  jour- 
nal, or  newspaper  ?'    The  trained  soldier  can 
effect   more  than  the  raw  recruit,  and  the 
skilled  artisan  more  than  the  rude  plough- 
boy.     Disciplined  America  can  entrust  the 
guidance  of  her  mechanism  and  the  teaching 
of  her  children  to  the  trained  female,  and 
devote  the  strength  and  talent  of  the  male 
to  agriculture,  navigation,  construction,  and 
invention.     Temperance  seems  to  follow  in 
the  train  of  education.     Thirty  years  since, 
spirits  were  used  to  excess  in  many  of  the 
States.     A  marked  change  has  occurred  as 
education  has  advanced,  and  now  in  sojne 
States  the  sale  of  spirits  is  almost  disconti- 
nued.   The  saving  thus  effected  more  than 
counterbalances  the  whole  cost  of  education. 
The  effect  of  education  on  morals  is  well 
illustrated  by  the  progress  of  Massachusetts 
in  one  branch  of  manufactures,  that  of  boots 
and   shoes.     While  in  some  countries   the 
manufacturer  dares  not  entrust  the  materials 
to  the  workmen  at  their  houses,  in  this  State 
the  artisans  are  scattered  in  their  rural  homes, 
the  materials  sent  to  them  with  entire  con- 
fidence, and  returned  weekly  ready  for  the 
market.     Among  other  great  branches  of  in- 
dustry, this  now  amounts  annually,  in  this 
little  Stete,  to  6,000,000/.  sterling. 

In  this  same  State,  in  the  face  of  a  large 
immigration  of  laborers  from  Ireland^  and 
liberal  outlay  for  their  shelter,  pauperism  has 
been  virtually  receding.  We  learn  from 
Hunt's  Merchants'  Magazine  for  June,  1851, 
that  in  the  twelve  years  preceding,  in  that 
State,  population  had  increased  40  per  cent., 
wealth  120  per  cent.,  and  the  cost  of  pau- 
perism but  38  per  cent.,  although  2,880 
foreigners  were  aided  in  1847,  and  12,384 
received  assistance  in  1850.  ''Thi^  in 
twelve  years,"  the  writer  remarks,  "  the 
cost  of  maintaining  the  poor,  distributed  per 
capita  upon  the  population,  has  fallen  from 


120 


FRENCH  LTTERATCTRE. 


[Bepl., 


44  cents  per  head  to  43,  and  the  percentage 
on  property  has  been  actually  reduced  one- 
third.  Native  pauperism  is  comparatively 
diminished,  and  the  principal  draft  on  the 
charity  of  Massachusetts  is  the  temporary 
aid  given  to  the  foreign  emigrant." 

We  learn  by  the  census  returns  lately  pub- 
lished, that  in  1850  the  whole  number  of 
churches  and  meeting-houses  in  the  United 
States  was  36,011,  containing  13,849,896 
seats,  or  room  for  three- fifths  of  the  existing 
population.  In  this  growing  country  nearly 
one-fifth  of  the  inhabitants  are  under  the  age 
of  six  ;  and  if  we  deduct  those  who  from  sicK- 
ness,  extreme  youth,  old  age,  or  domestic 
duties,  are  unable  to  worship  together,  this 
must  be  a  very  liberal  provision.  By  the 
same  returns  we  find  the  whole  number  of 
foreigners  in  the  country  was  2,210,828,  or 
less  than  one-tenth  the  entire  population; 
and  while  the  annual  expense  for  paupers 
was  but  600,000/.,  the  permanent  foreign 
paupers  were  )3,437,  and  the  native  36,947 
only.  With  respect  to  crime  the  ratio  is  still 
more  striking.  Of  27,000  crimes  in  the 
United  States  during  1850,  no  less  than 
14,000  were  committed  by  foreigners.  In  a 
country  whose  natives  are  educated,  more 
than  half  the  crimes  are  traced  to  illiterate 
foreigners,  forming  less  than  one- tenth  of  the 
whole  population. 

It  seems,  then,  to  be  established  in  Ameri- 
ca, that  general  education  increases  the  effi- 
ciency of  a  nation,  promotes  temperance,  aids 
religion,  and  checks  pauperism;  while  all 
concede  that  it  diminishes  crime.  Why 
should  its  effects  be  different  in  England,  and 
why  should  we  not  find  in  education  a  cheap 
ana  most  admirable  substitute  for  prisons  and 
penal  colonies  ?  If  in  America  holders  of  pro- 
perty sustain  education,  because  they  insure 
their  own  safety,  and  the  security  of  their 
fortunes,  by  the  instruction  of  the  masses. 


why  should  not  the  same  results  attend  edu- 
cation in  England  ? 

Ag^in,  if  America,  with  all  her  accessions 
from  natural  growth  and  immigration,  cannot 
afford  to  lose  the  mines  of  intellect  hidden 
in  the  popular  masses ;  if  she  is  not  rich 
enough  in  intellect  to  suffer  their  faculties  to 
run  to  waste,  can  England,  comparatively 
stationary  in  growth  and  population,  afford 
such  loss  ? 

The  future  contests  of  nations  will  not  be 
confined  to  warlike  encounters.  They  will 
be  in  the  field  of  science  and  arts,  and  that 
nation  will  attain  to  th^  highest  distinction 
which  shall  excel  in  the  arts  of  peace.  If 
other  nations  are  cultivating  and  developing 
the  human  intellect,  let  not  England  be  dis- 
tanced in  the  course.  She  can  appreciate  the 
effective  force  of  the  skilful  artisan,  the  dis- 
ciplined soldier,  and  trained  athlete.  Will 
she  not  appreciate  the  value  of  the  disciplined 
mind,  of  educated  labor?  Do* not  her  posi- 
tion, climate,  and  wealth  enable  her  to  wield 
them  with  the  most  advantage  ?  If  the  hum- 
ble citizen  of  a  village  in  America  considers 
himself  the  foster  father  of  the  children  of 
the  poor,  the  natural  guardian  of  those  Hea- 
ven has  intrusted  to  him,  and  under  moral 
obligations  to  educate  his  wards,  will  the 
philanthropists  of  England  exhibit  less  bene- 
volence ?  And  is  there  any  country  in  which 
the  natural  powers  of  the  mind  offer  a  more 
favorable  field  for  cultiva^on — ^in  which  edu- 
cation is  likely  to  yield  a  more  plentiful  har- 
vest— than  England?  We  have  so  lately 
given  a  full  consideration  to  the  subject  of 
popular  education  in  this  country,  that  we 
need  not  here  dwell  upon  its  importance; 
we  will  only  add  our  conviction,  that  when- 
ever the  conflicting  religious  views  which 
now  impede  its  extension  shall  have  been 
reconciled,  no  difficulties  of  a  merely  econo- 
mical character  will  prove  insuperable. 


■**• 


«♦♦- 


French  LrrKRATURK. — ^The  Athenceum,  re- 
viewing (with  much  ability)  the  literary  char- 
of  the  past  year,  remarks  that  France  is,  for 
the  moment,  blotted  out  from  the  list  of  lite- 
rary nations.  "  All  the  muses  are  silent  on 
her  soil.  Her  poets  are  exiles — ^her  wits  and 
orators  silent.  Her  historians,  with  one  bold 
and  noble  exception,  are  abashed  and  idle." 


What  is  true  of  literary  France  is  true  in  its 
degree  of  almost  every  other  country  on  the 
continent  of  Europe.  "  In  Prussia,  the 
Muses  have  been  gagged — as  Freiligrath 
would  tell  us,  did  we  need  his  word  for  such 
a  fact ; — in  Austria  they  have  been  sent  to 
jail ; — in  Italy  they  have  been  shot  in  almost 
every  market-place." 


1853] 


POLITICAL  SATIBIS  UmDER  OBSORGB  THE  THISD. 


121 


From   the  Betroipectire  Bevi«w. 


POLITICAL   SATIRES   UNDER   GEORGE   THE   THIRD.* 


Thb  literature  of  politics  is  a  Tery  dbtinct 
and  a  very  peculiar  one,  aud  is  not  undeserv- 
ing of  our  attention ;  for,  though  full  of  ex- 
aggeration and  falsehood,  it  alone  gives  us  an 
bsight  into  an  important  part  of  historical 
knowledge,  that  of  contemporary  political 
sentiment,  and  it  often  throws  a  light  on  po- 
litical motives  and  causes  for  which  we  may 
look  elsewhere  in  vain.  It  is  a  literature 
which,  wherever  it  exists,  strongly  marks  the 
independence  of  the  people,  and  the  freedom 
of  the  press,  yet  it  varies  much,  according  to 
times  and  circumstances.  In  England,  umler 
the  commonwealth  it  was  a  bitter  war  of  con- 
troversial pamphlets ;  after  the  restoration  it 
degenerated  into  mere  personal  slander  and 
defomation  ;  and  this  character  was  unfortu- 
nately more  or  less  preserved  until  the  com- 
mencement of  the  present  century.  With 
George  II.  political  caricatures  began  to  be 
numerous  and  influential,  and  these  and  po- 
litical satire  took  a  grand  development  under 
the  eventful  reign  of  George  III.  Use  breeds 
familiarity,  and  we  derive  a  strong  argument 
in  favor  of  the  freedom  of  the  press  from  the 
contrast  between  the  extraordinary  influence 
of  such  productions  in  the  age  when  the  gov- 
ernment tried  to  overawe  the  press,  and  their 
utter  harmlessness  at  present,  when  the  press 
b  altogether  unshackled.  When  we  cast  a 
retrospective  glance  over  the  political  writings 
of  diffisrent  ages,  we  cannot  but  feel  the  great 
worthlessness  of  this  literature  in  general,  as 
a  literature,  but  at  times — moments  of  extra- 
ordinary excitement — a  few  political  writings 

*  The  Rolliadt  ^«  *Wi  Pa/rU;  Probaiianary  Odei 
for  the  Zauremisshfp ;  and  PolUieal  Mieeellaniee : 
wUh  CfiHeienu  and  Illuatrationt,  Bevieed,  ear- 
rected,  and  enlarged  by  the  Original  AtUhort.  Lon- 
don: Printed  for  J.  Bidgwsv,  York  Street^  St. 
Jamea^B  Square.    1796.    (8vo,  ionrth  edition.) 

Poetry  of  the  Anti-^/acohin :  eomprieing  the  cele- 
brated Political  and  Satirical  PoenUf  Parodiee,  and 
Jeux'd'eaprit  of  the  Right  Hon.  George  Canning^  the 
Marl  of  JAverpoolf  Margie  WelUtley,  the  Right 
Hon.  Jt,  H.  Prere,  Q.  Ellis,  Esq.,  W,  Oifford,  Esq., 
and  othere.  New  and  Revised  Edition,  with  Expta- 
naiory  Notes.  [Edited  by  CHAaun  Edmokds.] 
London:  G.  Willu^  Great  Piazza,  Covent  Garden. 
1852.    (12nio.) 


have  appeared  which  deserved  to  be  remem- 
bered, and  perhaps  republished,  although 
even  these  are  too  temporary  in  their  allu- 
sions to  admit  of  being  made  very  popular 
at  the  present  day. 

The  sentiments  of  George  III.  were  hostile 
to  the  Whig  party,  which  had  so  vigorously 
supported  die  house  of  Hanover  on  the  Eng- 
lish throne,  and  the  men  who  had  been  ac- 
customed to  guide  the  helm  of  the  state  with 
small  interruption  since  the  revolution,  were 
bitterly  provoked  at  the  triumph  of  their  op- 
ponents. The  reign  of  Bute  was  assailed  m 
a  continual  strain  of  coarse  and  indecent 
abuse,  which  deserved  only  to  be  forgotten. 
The  Whigs  again  obtain  a  temporary  tri- 
umph. We  pass  over  the  period  of  the 
American  war,  which  was  followed  by  the 
coalition  ministry  of  North  and  Fox.  Then 
came  the  India  bill,  back-stairs  influence,  the 
overthrow  of  the  ministrv»  and  the  com- 
mencement of  the  long  ministerial  career  of 
younff  William  Pitt.  These  events,  and  es* 
pecially  the  Westminster  election  of  1784, 
with  the  political  activity  of  the  beautiful 
and  accomplished  Georgiana,  Duchess  of 
Devonshire,  and  the  defeat  of  Sir  Cecil  Wray 
by  Fox,  drew  forth  an  extraordinary  number 
of  caricatures  and  political  squibs.  Many  of 
the  latter  exhibited  more  than  usual  talent, 
but  one  among  them  gained  a  reputation 
which  -has  outlived  that  of  nearly  all  its  con- 
temporaries.  John  RoUe,  one  of  the  minis- 
terial supporters,  had  acted  a  very  prominent 
part  in  the  vexatious  scrutiny  set  agoing  by 
the  court,  after  the  Westminster  election,  and 
one  of  the  cleverest  of  the  Whig  writers,  a 
young  doctor  of  laws,  named  Lawrence,  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  making  him  the  subject  of 
a  supposed  epic  poem,  in  which  his  descent 
was  pretended  to  be  traced  from  Rollo,  Duke 
of  Normandy.  This  supposed  epic  was  only 
produced  in  fragments,  imbedded' in  a  witty, 
and  often  very  ludicrous  critique,  which  first 
appeared  in  consecutive  chapters  in  the  jour- 
nals, but  was  subsequently  collected  together 
in  a  volume,  and  went  through  rather  nume- 
rous editiooB. 


122 


FOUnCAL  SATIRES  UNDER  GEORGE  THE  THIRD. 


[Sept., 


The  subject  of  the  pretended  epic  is  sup- 
posed to  be  the  invasion  of  England,  by  Duke 
RoUo,  who  has  a  child  by  the  wife  of  a  Saxon 
^  drummer,  and  in  a  secret  visit  to  London,  is 
indulged  by  the  soothsayer.  Merlin,  with  a 
vision  of  the  future  glories  of  his  descendant, 
Rolle,  in  the  House  of  Commons.  On  this 
canvass  is  engrafted  a  running  satire  on  the 
Tory  ministers  and  their  partisans,  which  is 
often  exquisitely  refined  and  pungent.  The 
style  of  banter  in  which  the  critique  is  carried 
on  through  page  after  page,  may  be  best  il- 
lustrated by  one  or  two  examples.  The  first 
is  an  extract  from  the  description  of  the 
king's  chaplain,  Dr.  Prettyman : — 

**Our  author  now  pursues  his  herb  to  the  pul- 
pit, and  there,  in  imitation  of  Homer,  who  always 
takes  the  opportunity  for  giving  a  minute  des- 
cription of  his  persona: ,  when  they  are  on  the 
very  verge  of  entering  upon  an  en^gement,  he 
gives  a  labored,  but  animated  detail  of  the  Doc- 
tor's personal  manners  and  deportment.  Speak- 
ing of  the  penetrating:  countenance  for  which  the 
doctor  is  distinguished,  he  says, 


"  Abgus  could  boast  an  hundred  eyes,  'tis  true. 
The  Doctor  looks  an  hundred  ways  with  two : 
Gimlets  they  are,  and  bore  you  through  and 
through." 

*'  This  is  a  very  elegant  and  classic  compliment, 
and  shows  clearly  what  a  decided  advantage  onr 
reverend  hero  possesses  over  the  celebrated 
j^^aXfJLo^ouXo^  of  antiquity.  [Addison  is  justly 
famous  in  the  literary  world,  for  the  judgment 
with  which  he  selects  and  applies  familiar  words 
to  great  occasions,  as  in  the  instances : 

" The  great,  the  important  day. 

Big  with  the  fate  of  €ato  and  of  Rome." 

"  The  sun  grows  dim  with  age,"  &c.  &.c. 

"  This  is  a  very  great  beauty,  for  it  fares  with 
ideas,  as  with  individuals ;  we  are  the  more  in- 
terested in  their  fate,  the  better  we  are  acquaint- 
ed with  them.  But  how  inferior  is  Addison  in 
this  respect  to  our  author ! 

**  Gimlets  they  are,"  &.C. 

**  There  is  not  such  a  word  in  all  Cato !  How 
well-known  and  domestic  the  image !  How  specific 
and  forcible  the  application  !" 

The  following  passage  illustrates  the  man- 
ners of  the  young  country  members  of  the 
House  of  Commcns,  who  lounged  in  the  lob- 
bies, while  it  strikes  sideways  at  the  habits 
of  inebriety  of  the  prime  minister : — 

"The  description  of  the  lobby  also  furnishes 
an  opportunity  of  interspersing  a  passage  of  the 
tender  kind,  in  praise  of  the  Fomona  who  attends 
there  with  oranges.  Our  poet  calls  her  Hucstb- 
BiA,  and,  by  a  dexterous  stroke  of  art,  compares 
her  to  Shiptonia,  whose  amours  with  Rollo  forai 
the  third  and  fourth  books  of  the  Rollijj). 


*  Behold  the  lovely  wanton,  kind  and  fair, 

As  bright  Shiftonia,  late  thy  amorous  care ! 
Mark  now  her  winning  smiles,  and  witching 

eyes, 
On  yonder  unfledg'd  orator  she  tries  ! 
Mark  with  what  grace  she  offers  to  his  hand 
The- tempting  orange,  pride  of  China's  land !' 

'*  This  gives  rise  to  a  panegyric  on  the  medical 
virtues  of  oranges,  and  an  oblique  censure  on  the 
indecent  practice  of  our  young  senators,  who 
come  down  drunk  from  the  eating-room,  to  sleep 
in  the  gallery. 

*  O !  take,  wise  youth,  th'  Hesperian  fruit,  of  use 
Thy  lungs  to  cherish  with  balsamic  juice. 
With  this  thy  parch'd  roof  moisten ;  nor  con- 
sume 

Thy  hours  and  guineas  in  the  eating-room, 
Till,  full  of  claret,  down  with  wild  uproar 
You  reel,  and  stretch'd  along  the  gallery,  snore.' 

^'From  this  the  poet  naturally  slides  into  a 
general  caution  against  the  vice  of  drunkenness, 
which  he  more  particularly  enforces,  by  the  in- 
stance of  Mr.  Pitt's  late  peril,  from  the  farmer  at 
Wandsworth. 

'  Ah  !  think,  what  danger  on  debauch  attends : 
Let  Pitt,  once  drunk,  preach  temp'rance  to  his 

friends ; 
How,  as  he  wander'd  darkling  o'er  the  plain. 
His  reason  drowned  in  Jeneinson's  champaigne, 
A  rustic's  hand,  but  righteous  fate  withstood, 
Had  shed  a  premier's  tor  a  robber's  blood."' 

The  back -stair  influence,  and  the  part 
which  the  Marquis  of  Buckingham  had  acted 
in  it,  provoked  the  following  sarcastic  pas- 
sage : — 

**  It  being  admitted,  that  the  powers  of  the  hu- 
man mind  depend  on  the  number  and  association 
of  our  ideas,  it  is  easy  to  show  that  the  illustrious 
marquis  is  entitled  to  the  highest  rank  in  the 
scale  of  human  intelligence.  His  mind  possesses 
an  unlimited  power  of  inglutition,  and  nis  ideas 
adhere  to  each  other  with  such  tenacity,  that 
whenever  his  memory  is  stimulated  by  any  power- 
ful interrogatory,  it  not  only  discharges  a  full 
answer  to  that  individual  question,  but  likewise 
such  a  prodigious  flood  of  collateral  kndwledge, 
derived  from  copious  and  repeated  infusions,  aa 
no  common  skull  would  be  capable  of  containing. 
For  these  reason«i,  his  lordship's  fitness  for  the 
department  of  the  Admiralty,  a  department  con- 
nected with  the  whole  cydopeedia  of  science,  and 
requiring  the  greatest  variety  of  talents  and  ex- 
ertions, seems  to  be  pointed  out  by  the  hand  of 
Heaven  ; — it  is  likewise  pointed  out  by  the  dying 
drummer,  who  describes,  in  the  following  lines, 
the  immediate  cause  of  his  nomination : — 

*  On  the  great  day,  when  Buckingham,  by  pairs 
Ascended,  Heaven  impell'd,  the  K -g's  back- 
stairs; 

And  panting,  breathless,  strain'd  his  lungs  to 

show 
From  Fox's  bill  what  mighty  ills  would  flow ; 


1868.] 


POLITICAL  SATIRES  UNDBB  GEOBOE  THE  THIRD. 


128 


That  6oon,  its  source  eorrupi^  opini&rCs  thready 
On  India's  deleterious  streams  wm'd  shed  ; 
That  Hastinjfs,  Miinny  Begun), Scott,  must  fall. 
And  Pitt,  and  Jenkinson,  and  Leadenhal! ; 
Still,  as  with  stammering  tongue,  he  told  his  tale. 
Unusual  terrors  Brunswick's  heart  assail ; 
Wide  starts  his  white  wig  from  his  royal  ear. 
And  each  particular  hair  stands  stiff  with  fear.' 

•*  We  flatter  ourselveH  that  few  of  our  readers 
are  so  void  of  tar^te,  as  not  to  feel  the  transcen- 
dent beauties  of  this  description.  First,  we  see 
the  noble  Marquis  mount  the  fatal  steps  **by 
pairs,'*  i.  e.  by  two  at  a  time ;  and  with  a  degree 
of  effort  and  fatigue :  and  then  he  is  out  of  breath, 
which  is  perfectly  natural  The  obscurity  of  the 
third  couplet,  an  oftscurity  which  has  been  imita- 
ted by  all  the  ministerial  writers  on  the  India  hill, 
arises  from  a  confusion  of  metaphor,  so  inexpressi- 
bly beautiful,  that  Mr.  Hastings  has  thought  fit 
to  copy  it  almost  verbatim,  in  his  celebrated  letter 
from  Lack  now.  The  effects  of  terror  on  the 
royal  wig,  are  happily  imagined,  and  are  infinite- 
ly more  sublime  than  the  "  steleruntque  cotjkc"  of 
the  Roman  Poet ;  as  the  attachment  of  a  wig  to 
its  wearer,  is  obviously  more  generous  and  disin- 
terested than  that  of  ttie  person's  own  hair,  which 
naturally  participates  in  the  gocid  or  ill  fortune  of 
the  head  on  which  it  grows.  But  to  proceed. 
Men  in  a  fright  are  usually  generous;  on  that 
great  day  therefore  the  marquis  obtained  the  pro- 
mise uf  the  Admiralty.  The  dying  drummer  then 
proceeds  to  describe  the  marquis's  well-known 
vision,  which  he  prefaces  by  a  compliment  on  his 
lordship's  extraordinary  proficiency  in  the  art  of 
lace-making.  We  have  all  admired  the  parlia- 
mentary exertions  of  this  great  man,  on  every 
subject  that  related  to  an  art  in  which  the  county 
of  Buckingham  is  so  deeply  interested ;  an  art» 
hj  means  of  which  Britannia  (as  our  author  hap- 
pily expresses  it) 

'  Puckers  round  nkked  breasts^a  decent  trimming. 
Spreads  the  thread-trade,  and  propagates  oul 
women ! ' " 

These  extracts  will  be  enough  to  show  the 
character  and  style  of  the  famous  RoUiad, 
which  must  be  read  through  to  be  apprecia- 
ted. Unfortunately,  many  of  ita  allusions 
are  to  persons  now  so  entirely  forgotten,  that 
it  would  require  a  rather  copious  commen- 
tary to  make  it  generally  understood. 

Several  other  remarkable  political  satires 
came  out  nearly  contemporaneously  with  the 
Rolliad.  A  vacancy  in  the  laureatesbip, 
which  was  filled  by  the  well-known  Thomas 
Warton,  gave  occasion  for  the  publication  of 
a  collection  of  what  were  supposed  to  be 
"  Probationary  Odes/'  written  in  the  names 
of  the  ministers  and  leading  men  of  the  mi- 
nisterial party,  in  the  characters  of  candidates 
for  the  vacant  office.  Some  of  them  are  ex- 
ceedingly droll,  and  amusingly  characteristic 
of  the  pretended  writers.  The  batch  of  ode 
writers  opens  with  Sir  Cecil  Wray,  the  de- 


feated of  Westminster,  who  was  accused  of 
childish  incapacity,  and  of  having  perpetra- 
ted some  attempts  at  poetry  of  a  very  laugh- 
able kind.  'We  need  only  give  the  opening 
lines  of  the  ode  here  fathered  upon  Wray : 

«  Hark !  Hark  !— hip !  hip !— hoh !  hoh  ! 
Wha)/a  mort  of  bards  are  a  singing ! 
Alhwjui— across^  below — 

I  'nf.  sure  there's  a  dozen  a  dinging ! 
I  hear  sweet  shells,  loud  harps,  large  lyres^ — 
Some,  1  trow,  are  tun'd  by  sauirea — 
Some  by  priests,  and  some  by  lords ! — while  Joe 

and  I 
Our  bloody  hands,  hoist  up,  like  meteors,  on  high ! 

Yes,  Joe  and  I 
Are  em'lous — Why  ? 
It  is  because,  great  Cjesar,  you  are  clever — 
Therefore  we'd  sing  of  you  for  ever ! 

Si  ng — sing — f»i  ng — si  ng 
God  save  the  King ! 
Smile  then,  Cjesar,  smile  on  Wray ! 
Crown  at  last  his  poll  with  bay ! — 
Come,  oh  !  bay,  and  with  thee  bring 
Salary,  illustrious  thing ! — 
Laurels  vain  of  Covenl  Garden, 
I  don't  value  you  a  farding ! — 

Let  sack  my  soul  cheer, 

For  'tis  sick  of  small  beer  !"  &«. 

The  Attorney-General  (Pepper  Arden),  in 
a  truly  legal  ode,  comes  out  strong  on  his  do- 
mesticities : — 

**  And  oh !  should  Mrs,  Arden  bless  me   with  a 
child, 
A  lovely  boy,  as  beauteous  as  myself,  and  mild ; 
The  little  Pepper  would  some  caudle  lack ; 
Then  think  of  Arden  s  wife, 
My  pretty  'plaintiff's  life, 
The  t)est  of  caudle's  made  of  best  of  sack  ! 
Let  thy  dectu 
But  favor  me 
My  hills  and  briefs,  rebutters  and  detainers. 
To  Archy  I'll  resign 
Without  a/ee  ot  fine, 
Attaekments,  replications,  and  retainers ! 

To  Juries,  Benchy  Exchequer,  Seals, 
To  ChancWy  Court,  ani  Lords,  I'll  bid  adieu; 

No  more  demurrers  nor  appeals; 

My  writs  of  error  shall  hejm'gd  by  you." 

Major  Scott  is  pre-eminently  loyal,  and 
makes  choice  attempts  at  the  sublime : — 

*•  Curs'd  be  the  clime,  and  curs'd  the  laws,  that  lay 
Insulting  bonds  on  George's  sovereign  sway ! 
Arise,  my  soul,  on  wings  of  fire, 
To  God's  anointed,  tune  the  lyre ; 
Hail !  George,  thoo  all-accomplished  King ! 

Just  type  of  Him  who  rules  on  high  ! 
Hail !  inexhausted,  boundless  spring 
Of  sacred  truth  and  Holy  Majesty  I 
Grand  is  thy  form, — 'bout  five  feet  ten. 
Thou  well-built,  worthiest,  best  of  men  ! 
Thy  chest  is  stoat,  thy  back  is  broad, — 
Thy  pages  view  thee,  and  are  aw'd ! 


124 


FOunoAL  sahbeb  uitder  oboroe  the  thibb. 


[Sept., 


Lo !  how  thy  white  eyes  roll ! 
Thy  whiter  eyebrows  stare ! 

Honest  soul ! 
Thou*rt  witty,  as  thou'rt  fair ! " 

The  swearing  and  blustering  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Thurlow  18  made  equally  to  keep  up  his 
character ;  and  his  ode  is  so  absolutely  pro- 
fane, that  we  can  venture  no  further  than  the 
commencement  :— 

"  Damnation  seize  ye  all, 
Who  puff,  who  thram,  who  bawl  and  squall ! 
Fir'd  with  ambitious  iiopes  in  vain, 
The  wreath  that  blooms  for  other  brows  to  ^in ; 
Is  Thurlow  yet  so  little  known  ? — 
Bv  G— d  1  swore,  while  George  shall  reign, 
The  seals,  in  spite  of  changes,  to  retain. 
Nor  quit  the  woolsack  till  he  quits  the  throne ! 
And  now  the  bays  for  life  to  wear. 
Once  mure,  with  mightier  oaths  by  G — d  I  swear ! 
Bend  my  black  brows  that  keep  the  Peers  in  awe. 
Shake  my  full-bottom  wig,  and  give  the  nod  of 
law." 

The  weight  of  literary  talent  was  now  cer- 
tainly on  the  side  of  the  Whigs,  and  for  se- 
veral years  their  opponents  smarted  bitterly 
under  these  satirical  attacks.  At  length  the 
French  revolution  broke  out,  and  the  atro- 
cities which  accompanied  it,  and  the  sangui- 
nary wars  that  followed,  produced  a  reaction 
in  public  sentiments  in  England.  Still  the 
Tory  ministers  winced  under  the  force  of  sa- 
tirical talent  which  was  bent  against  them, 
until,  in  the  autumn  of  1797,  George  Canning 
started  the  '  Anti-Jacobin  Review/  which 
was  edited  by  Gifford,  the  author  of  the  'Ba- 
viad'  and  'Maeviad,'  and  which 'was  written 
by  a  knot  of  young  Tory  writers,  of  no  mean 
talent.  Its  object  was  to  turn  into  ridicule 
the  French  republicans,  as  well  as  those  in 
England  who  were  supposed  to  favor  their 
sentiments,  which  the  ministerialists  insinua- 
ted, included  the  whole  liberal  party.  These 
writers  (including,  besides  Canning  and  Gif- 
ford, John  Hookham  Frere,  Jenkinson  (after- 
wards Earl  of  Liverpool),  George  Ellis,  Lord 
Clare^  Lord  Mornington  (afterwards  Marquis 
of  Wellesley),  and  Dr.  John  Whitaker)  "  en- 
tered upon  their  task  with  no  common  spirit. 
Their  purpose  was  to  blacken  their  adversa- 
ries, and  they  spared  no  means,  fair  or  foul, 
in  the  attempt.  Their  most  distinguished 
countrymen,  whose  only  fault  was  their  being 
opposed  to  government,  were  treated  with 
no  more  respect  than  their  foreign  adversa- 
ries, and  were  held  up  to  public  execration 
as  traitors,  blasphemers,  and  debauchees. 
So  alarmed,  however,  became  some  of  the 


more  moderate  supporters  of  ministers,  at 
the  boldness  of  the  language  employed,  that 
Mr.  Pitt  was  induced  to  interfere,  and,  after 
an  existence  of  eight  months,  the '  Anti-Jaco- 
bin' (in  its  original  form)  ceased  to  exist." 

These  are  the  words  of  Mr.  Charles  Ed- 
monds, to  whom  we  owe  a  very  nice  edition 
of  the  only  part  of  the  '  Anti- Jacobin'  that 
will  bear  reprinting,  its  poetry.  The  poetry 
of  the '  Anti*  Jacobin,'  which  comprises  some 
of  the  best  effusions  of  the  witty  iirriters 
mentioned  above,  was  reprinted  in  a  collec- 
tive form  soon  after  the  'Review'  was  dis- 
continued; and,  always  sought  after  with  in- 
terest, the  original  edition  had  become  a  rare 
book.  Mr.  Edmonds's  reprint  is  not  only 
very  carefully  edited,  but  it  is  rendered  in- 
telligible to  readers  at  the  presiient  day,  by  a 
tolerably  copious  addition  of  illustrative 
notes ;  and  this  celebrated,  though  small,  col- 
lection is  now  placed  so  far  within  the  reach 
of  every  reader,  that  it  is  quite  unnecessary 
for  us  to  enter  into  any  detailed  account  of 
it.  We  need  only  say,  that  it  contains  one 
or  two  of  the  most  celebrated  pieces  in  oar 
language,  such  as  Canning's  'Friend  of  Hu- 
manity' and  the  'Knife  Grinder,'  the  song  of 
^La  Sainte  Guillotine,'  and  others.  The 
'  Loves  of  the  Triangles,'  and  the  '  Progress 
of  Man,'  written  for  the  purpose  of  ridicu- 
ling Dr.  Darwin's  '  Loves  of  the  Plants,'  and 
Payne  Knight's  *  Progress  of  Civil  Society,' 
are  among  the  cleverest  parodies  of  modem 
times.  Tom  Moore  has  said  of  the  two 
works  to  which  we  have  been  more  especial- 
ly calling  attention :  "  'The  Rolliad '  and  the 
'  Anti- Jacobin '  may,  on  their  respective  sides 
of  the  question,  be  considered  as  models  of 
that  style  of  political  satire,  whose  lightness 
and  vivacity  give  it  the  appearance  of  pro- 
ceeding rather  from  the  wantonness  of  wit 
than  of  ill-nature,  and  whose  very  malice, 
from  the  fancy  with  which  it  is  mixed  up, 
like  certain  kinds  of  fire-works,  explodes  in 
sparkles."  The  poetry  of  the  *  Anti-Jacobin* 
deserved  a  reprint ;  and  we  rejoice  to  hear 
that  Mr.  Edmonds's  first  edition  is  already 
sold,  and  that  he  is  preparing  another,  to  be 
made  more  complete,  by  the  addition  of  new 
notes,  and  of  an  appendix.  We  would  recom- 
mend to  him,  afterwards,  the  '  RoUiad '  it- 
self, which  is,  in  many  respects,  superior  to 
the '  Anti- Jacobin'  poetry,  and  a  new  edition 
of  which,  with  explanatory  notes,  would,  we 
think,  be  equally  successfuL  We  believe, 
indeed,  that  a  '  Select  Political  Library,'  of 
a  few  of  the  choice  works  of  this  class,  would 
not  be  an  unsuccessful  undertaking. 


18(3.] 


WAINWBIOHT,  THE  MUHDEKER. 


12ft 


From  Frtneii'   Annals,   ftc,  of  Life  Insnrtne«. 


WAINWRIOHT,    THE   MURDERER. 


In  1830,  two  ladies,  both  yoang  and  both 
attractive,  were  ia  the  habit  of  visiting  vari- 
ous offices,  with  proposals  to  insure  the  life  of 
the  younger  and  unmarried  one.  The  visi^ 
of  these  persons  became  at  last  a  somewhat 
pleasing  feature  in  the  monotony  of  business, 
and  were  often  made  a  topic  of  conversation. 
Ko  sooner  was  a  policy  effected  with  one 
company  than  a  visit  was  paid  to  another, 
with  the  same  purpose.  From  the  Hope  to 
the  Provident,  from  the  Alliance  to  the  Peli- 
can, and  from  the  Eagle  to  the  Imperial,  did 
these  strange  visitors  pass  almost  daily. 
Surprise  was  naturally  excited  at  two  of  the 
gentler  sex  appearing  so  often  alone  in  places 
of  business  resort,  and  it  was  a  nine  days' 
wonder. 

Behind  the  curtain,  and  n^rely  appearing 
as  an  actor,  was  one  who,  to  the  literary 
reader,  versed  in  the  periodical  productions 
of  thirty  years  ago,  will  be  familiar  under  the 
name  of  Janus  Weathercock ;  while,  to  the 
student  of  our  criminal  annals,  a  name  will 
be  recalled  whbh  is  only  to  be  remembered 
as  an  omen  of  evil.  The  former  will  be  re- 
minded of  the  "London  Magazine,"  when 
Elia  and  Barry  Cornwall  were  conspicuous  in 
its  pages,  and  when  Hazlitt,  with  Allan 
Cunningham,  added  to  its  attractions.  But 
with  these  names  it  will  recall  to  them  also 
the  face  and  form  of  one  with  the  craft  and 
beauty  of  the  serpent ;  of  one  too  who,  if  he 
broke  not  into  ''  the  bloody  house  of  life," 
has  been  singularly  wronged.  The  writings 
of  this  man  in  the  above  periodical  were  very 
characteristic  of  his  nature ;  and  under  the 
nom  de  guerre  of  Janus  Weathercock,  Thomas 
Griffith  Wainwright  wrote  with  a  fluent, 
pleasant,  egotisticiil  coxcombry,  which  was 
then  new  to  English  literature,  a  series  of 
papers  on  art  and  artists.  An  habitui  of  the 
opera  and  a  fastidious  critic  of  the  hcdlety  a 
mover  among  the  most  fashionable  crowds, 
into  which  he  could  make  his  way,  a  lounger 
in  the  parks  and  the  foremost  among  the  visi- 
tors at  our  pictorial  exhibitions,  the  fine 
person  and  superfine  manners  of  Wainwright 
were  ever  prominent.    The  articles  which  he 


penned  for  the  "  London/*  were  lovingly  il- 
lustrative of  self  and  its  enjoyments.  He 
adorned  his  writings  with  descriptions  of  his 
appearance,  and — an  artist  of  no  mean  abili- 
ty himself — sketched  boldly  and  graphically 
'^  drawings  of  female  beauty,  in  which  the 
voluptuous  trembled  on  the  borders  of  the 
indelicate ;"  and  while  he  idolized  his  own, 
he  depreciated  the  productions  of  others* 
This  self-styled  fashionist  appears  to  have 
created  a  sensation  in  the  circle  where  he  ad- 
ventured. His  good-natured,  though  "  pre- 
tentious" manner;  his  handsome,  though 
sinister  countenance;  even  his  braided  sur« 
tout,  his  gay  attire,  and  semi-military  aspect, 
made  him  a  favorite.  "  Kind,  light-hearted 
Janus  Weathercock,'^  wrote  Charles  Lamb. 
No  one  knew  anything  of  his  previous  life. 
He  was  said  to  have  been  in  the  army — ^it 
was  whispered  that  he  had  spent  more  than 
one  fortune ;  and  an  air  of  mystery,  which  he 
well  knew  how  to  assume,  magnified  him  into 
a  hero.  About  1825,  he  ceased  to  contribute 
to  the  magazine ;  and  from  this  period,  the 
man  whose  writings  were  replete  with  an  in- 
tense luxurious  enjoyment, — ^whose  organi- 
zation was  so  exquisite,  that  his  love  of  the 
beautiful  became  a  passion,  and  whose  mind 
was  a  significant  union  of  the  ideal  with  the 
voluptuous — was  dogged  in  his  footsteps  by 
death.  It  was  death  to  stand  in  his  path — 
it  was  death  to  be  his  friend — it'  was  death 
to  occupy  the  very  house  with  him.  Well 
might  his  associates  join  in  that  portion  of 
our  litany  which  prays  to  be  delivered  "from 
battle,  from  murder,  and  from  sudden  detUh*^ 
for  sudden  death  was  ever  by  his  side. 

In  1829,  Wamwright  went  with  his  wife 
to  visit  his  uncle,  by  whose  bounty  he  had 
been  educated,  and  from  whom  he  had  ex- 
pectancies. His  uncle  died  after  a  brief  ill- 
ness, and  Wainwright  inherited  his  property. 
Nor  was  he  long  in  expending  it.  A  fur- 
ther supply  was  needed ;  and  Helen  Frances 
Phoebe  Abercrombie,  with  her  sister,  Made- 
line, step-sisters  to  bis  wife,  came  to  reside 
with  Wainwright;  it  being  soon  after  this 
that  those  extraordinary  visits  were  made  at 


120 


WAINWRIGHT,  THE  MUBDEBER. 


[Sept, 


the  yarious  life  offices,  to  which  allusioo  has 
been  made.  On  28th  March,  1830,  Mrs. 
Wainwright,  with  her  step-sister,  made  their 
first  appearance  at  an  insurance  office,  the 
Palladium ;  and  by  the  20th  April  a  policy 
was  opened  on  the  life  of .  Helen  Frances 
Phoebe  Aberorombie,  a  "  buxom,  handsome 
girl  of  oneand-twenty,"  for  3000/.,  for  three 
years  only.  About  tne  same  time  a  further 
premium  was  paid  for  an  insurance  with  an- 
other office,  also  for  8000/.,  but  only  for  two 
years.  The  Provident,  the  Pelican,  the  Hope, 
the  Imperial,  were  soon  similarly  favored; 
and  in  six  months  from  granting  the  first 
policy  12,000/.  more  had  been  insured  on  the 
fife  of  the  same  person,  and  still  for  only 
two  years.  But  18,000/.  wss  not  enough  for 
"  kind,  light-hearted  Janus-  Weathercock ;" 
2000/.  more  was  proposed  to  the  Eagle,  6000/. 
to  the  Globe,  ana  5000/.  to  the  Alliance ;  all 
of  whom  however  had  learned  wisdom.  At 
the  Globe,  Miss*  Abercrombie  professed  scarce- 
ly to  know  why  she  insured ;  telling  a  palpa- 
ble and  foolish  falsehood,  by  saying  that  she 
had  applied  to  no  other  office.  At  the  Alli- 
ance, the  secretary  took  her  to  a  private  room, 
asking  such  pertinent  and  close  questions, 
that  she  grew  initated,  and  said  she  sup- 
posed her  health,  and  not  her  reason  for  in- 
suring, was  most  important.  Mr.  Hamilton 
then  gave  her  the  outline  of  a  case,  in  which 
a  young  lady  had  met  with  a  violent  death  for 
the  sake  of  the  insurance  money.  '*  There  is 
no  one,"  she  said  in  reply,  ''  likely  to  murder 
me  for  the  sake  of  my  money."  No  more 
insurances,  however,  being  accepted^  the  visits 
which  bad  so  often  relieved  the  tedium  of 
official  routine  ceased  to  be  paid.  These  ap- 
plications being  unsuccessful,  there  remained 
18,000/.  dependent  on  the  life  of  Helen  Aber- 
crombie. 

In  the  meantime  Wainwright's  affairs 
waxed  desperate,  and  the  man  grew  familiar 
with  crime.  Some  stock  had  been  vested  in 
the  names  of  trustees  in  the  books  of  the 
Bank  of  England,  the  interest  only  of  which 
was  receivable  by  himself  and  his  wife ;  and 
determined  to  possess  part  of  the  principal, 
he  imitated  the  names  of  the  trustees  to  a 
power  of  attorney.  This  was  too  successful 
not  to  be  improved  on,  and  five  successive 
similar  deeds,  forged  by  Wainwright,  proved 
his  utter  disregard  to  moral  restraint.  But 
this  money  was  soon  spent,  till  everything 
which  ho  possessed,  to  the  very  furniture  of 
his  house,  became  pledged ;  and  he  took  fur- 
nished apartments  in  Conduit  street  for  him- 
self, his  wife,  and  his  sisters-in-law.  ^Imme- 
diately after  this.  Miss  Abercrombie,  on  pre- 


tence or  plea  that  she  was  going  abroad,  made 
her  will  in  favor  of  her  sister  Madeline,  ap- 
pointing Wainwxight  sole  executor,  by  which, 
in  the  event  of  her  death,  he  would  have  the 
entire  control  of  all  she  might  leave.  She 
then  procured  a  form  of  assignment  from  the 
Palladium,  and  made  over  the  policy  in  that 
office  to  her  brother-in-law.  Whether  she 
really  meant  to  travel  or  not  is  uncertain ;  it 
is  possible,  however,  that  this  might  have 
been  part  of  the  plan,  and  that  Wainwright 
hoped,  with  forced  papers  and  documents,  to 
prove  her  demise  while  she  was  still  living, 
for  it  is  difficult  to  comprehend  why  she 
should  have  voluntarily  stated  she  was  going 
abroad,  unless  she  really  meant  to  do  so.  In 
this  there  is  a  gleam  of  light  on  Wainwright*s 
character,  who,  when  he  first  insured  the  life 
of  Miss  Abercrombie,  might  have  meant  to 
treat  the  officers  with  a  '*  mudulent,"  and  not 
a  positive  death.  Whatever  her  rOle  in  this 
tragic  dramt^  hdwever,  it  was  soon  played. 
On  the  night  which  followed  the  assignment 
of  her  policy,  she  went  with  her  brother  and 
sister-in-law  tp  the  theatre.  The  .evening 
proved  wet ;  but  they  walked  home  together, 
and  partook  of  lobsters  or  oysters  and  porter 
for  supper.  That  night  she  was  taken  ill. 
In  a  (bay  or  two  Dr.  Locock  attended  her. 
He  attributed  the  indisposition  to  a  mere 
stomach  ^derangement,  and  gave  some  simple 
remedies,  no  serious  apprehension  being  en- 
tertained by  him.  On  the  14th  December, 
she  had  completed  her  will,  and  assigned  her 
property.  On  the  2l8t  she  died.  On  that 
day  she  had  partaken  of  a  powder,  which  Dr. 
Locock  did  not  remember  prescribing ;  and 
when  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wainwright — who  had 
left  her  with  the  intention  of  taking  a  long 
walk — returned,  they  found  that  she  was 
dead.  The  body  was  examined ;  but  there 
was  no  reason  to  attribute  the  death  to  any 
other  cause  than  pressure  on  the  brain,  which 
obviously  produced  it. 

Mr.  Wainwright  was  now  in  a  position  to 
demand  1 8,000/.,  from  the  various  offices,  but 
the  claim  was  resisted,  and  being  called  on  to 
prove  an  insurable  interest,  he  left  England. 
In  1835,  he  commenced  an  action  against  the 
Imperial.  The  reason  for  resisting  payment 
was  the  alleged  ground  of  deception ;  but  the 
counsel  went  further ;  and  so  fearful  were  the 
allegations  on  which  he  rested  his  defence, 
that  the  jury  were  almost  petrified,  and  the 
judge  shrunk  aghast  from  the  implicated 
crime.  The  former  separated,  unable  to 
agree ;  while  the  latter  said,  a  criminal  and 
not  a  civil  court  should  have  been  the  theatre 
of  such  a  charge.    In  the  following  December* 


1858.] 


THE  COOT  OF  INIQUITY. 


127 


tbe  compftny  gained  a  verdict ;  and  as  the 
forgery  on  the  Bank  of  England  had  been  dis- 
covered. Wain  wright,  afraid  of  apprehension, 
remained  in  France.  Here  his  adventures  are 
unknown.  At  Bologne,  he  lived  with  an 
English  officer ;  and,  while  he  resided  there, 
his  host's  life  was  insured  by  him  in  the 
Pelican  for  5000^.  One  premium  only  was 
paid,  the  officer  dying  in  a  few  months  after 
the  insurance  was  effected.  Wainwright  then 
left  Bologne,  passed  through  France  under  a 
feigned  name,  was  apprehended  by  the  French 
police  ;  and  that  fearful  poison  known  as 
strychnine  being  found  in  bis  possession,  he 
was  confined  at  Paris  for  six  months. 

After  his  release  he  ventured  to  London, 
intending  to  remain  only  forty-eight  hours. 
In  an  hotel  near  Covent  Garden  he  drew  down 
the  blind  and  fancied  himself  safe.  But  for 
one  fatal  moment  he  forgot  his  habitual  craft. 
A  noise  in  the  street  startled  him ;  incau- 
tiously he  went  to  the  window  and  drew  back 
tbe  blind.  At  the  very  moment  "  a  person 
passing  by"  caught  a  glimpse  of  his  counte- 
nance, and  exclaimed,  "1  hat's  Wainwright 
the  bank  forger.'^    Immediate  information 


was  given  to  Forrester ;  he  was  soon  appre- 
hended, and  his  position  became  fearful 
enough.  The  difficulty  which  then  arose 
was,  whether  the  insurance  offices  should 
prosecute  him  for  attempted  fraud,  whether 
the  yet  more  terrible  charge  in  connection 
with  Helen  Abercrombie  should  be  opened,  or 
whether  advantage  should  be  taken  of  his 
forgery  on  tbe  bank,  to  procure  his  expatria- 
tion for  life.  A  consultation  was  held  by 
those  interested,  tbe  home  secretary  was  ap- 
prised of  the  question,  the  opinions  of  the 
Jaw  officers  of  the  crown  were  taken,  and  the 
result  was  that,  under  the  circumstances,  it 
would  be  advisable  to  try  him  for  the  forgery 
only.  Thb  plan  was  carried  out,  the  capital 
punishment  was  foregone,  and  when  found 
guilty  he  was  condemned  to  transportation 
for  life.     •     .         .        f 

Tbe  career  of  Wainwright  is  instructive. 
From  the  time  that  he  quitted  the  simple 
rule  of  right,  he  wandered  over  tbe  world 
under  influences  too  fearful  to  detail,  and  he 
died  in  a  hospital  at  Sydney  under  circum* 
stances  too  painful  to  be  recapitulated. 


From    Chamb«rs't   Journtl. 


THE   COST  OP  INIQUITY. 


It  is  a  fact,  in  the  history  of  Prussia,  that 
Frederick  II*  would  never  have  inflicted  upon 
his  country  the  evil  of  farming  out  his  reve- 
nues, had  it  not  been  that,  while  he  had  them 
in  his  own  hands,  he  was  cheated  so  exten- 
sively by  bis  subjects.  For  the  same  rea- 
son, about  the  same  time,  the  government  of 
the  king  of  Great  Britain  in  Hanover  was 
obliged  to  adopt  the  same  oppressive  mea- 
sure. If  we  call  tomind  the  anecdote  of  a 
party  of  Frenchmen  trying  which  could  bring 
the  blackest  charge  againbt  human  nature, 
when  Voltaire,  commencing  with,  ''  There 
was  once  a  farmer-general, '  was  admitted 
by  common  consent  to  have  already  carried 
the  day — we  may  form  some  idea  of  the  se- 
verity of  a  punishment  which  consisted  in 
farming  out  a  nation's  revenues.  But  the 
anecdote  is  merely  a  type  of  a  class  of  trou- 


bles which  men  are  continually  bringing  upon 
themselves  by  false  doings  and  appearances. 
Why  is  it  that  merit  has  such  difficulty 
in  obtaining  preferment?  False  pretension 
stands  in  the  way.  Why  is  it  that  a  truth 
is  so  long  in  forcing  its  way  amongst  man- 
kind ?  Because  it  is  so  difficult  to  obtain 
sound  evidence  in  its  favor,  and  distinguish 
It  from  the  hundreds  of  falsehoods  which  are 
constantly  contending  with  it  for  notice. 
We  know  it  as  a  certain  fact  of  society,  that 
a  man  may  come  forward  with  the  design  of 
offering  bis  fellow- creatures  some  great  be- 
nefit, and  yet  he  will  be  received  with  dis- 
trust, and  checked  at  every  turn,  as  if  he 
were  a  knave  aiming  at  some  sordid  advan- 
tage for  himself.  And  the  reason,  we  can 
all  see,  is  that  selfish  aims  are  so  often  con- 
cealed under  a  philanthropic  guise,  that  so- 


128 


THE  006T  OF  INIQUITT. 


[9ept/ 


cietv  is  compelled  to  be  upon  its  eoard 
against  even  the  fairest  appearances  of  oene- 
Tolence,  until  time  has  given  a  guarantee  for 
their  genuineness. 

Fictitious  literature  has  no  more  favorite 
point  than  that  furnished  bv  the  claims  of 
virtuous  poverty  treated  witn  coldness,  and 
left  to  neglect.  Its  heroes,  manly  bat  out- 
at-elbows — its  heroines,  amiable  but  outcast 
— are  always  turned  away  from  in  an  unac- 
countable manner,  to  the  indignation  of  all 
readers  of  sensibility.  People  living  in  com- 
fortable cottages  are  mysteriously  addicted 
to  the  unchristianlike  practice  of  refusing  ad- 
mission to  vagrants,  just  as  the  heavens  are 
about  to  break  forth  in  a  snow-storm.  Coun- 
try justices  are  invariably  harsh  towards  the 
respectable  persons  who  come  in  equivocal 
circumstances  before  them.  These  descrip- 
tions, we  can  have  no  doubt,  are  a  reflection 
of  what  passes  in  actual  life — only  in  actual 
life  there  is  never  any  reason  for  wonder  about 
the  causes.  Shabby  vagrant  people,  and-peo- 
ple  who  appear  in  equivocal  circumstances 
and  without  good  credentials,  are  there  so 
commonly  found  to  be  bad,  that  no  one  stops 
to  think  of  possible  exceptions.  The  few 
good  suffer  because  of  the  prevalence  of  ini- 
quity in  connection  with  those  appearances. 
Were  there  no  transgressors  of  any  kind  in 
the  world,  fiction  would  be  entirely  deprived 
of  this  important  province  of  its  domain ;  for 
the  wretched,  under  no  suspicion,  would  then 
be  everywhere  received  with  open  arms,  suc- 
cored, and  set  on  their  feet  again.  Even  the 
superintendents  of  Unions  would  in  that  case 
become  genial,  kindly  men,  quite  different 
from  the  tyrants  which  they  always  are  in 
novels ;  or,  rather,  there  being  no  longer  any 
human  failings,  there  would  be  no  longer  any 
poverty  calling  for  public  aid,  and  u  nions 
would  go  out  of  fashion. 

Every  one  acquainted  with  business  must 
have  occasion  to  observe  how  many  transac- 
tions of  hopeful  appearance  are  prevented  by 
the  want  of  confidence.  And  even  where 
transactions  take  place,  we  constantly  see 
that  something  must  be  sacrificed,  or  some 
inconvenience  incurred,  in  order  to  guard 
against  possible  default.  Were  there,  on  the 
contrary,  unlimited  confidence  between  man 


and  man,  no  bargain  or  barter,  great  or  small, 
tending  to  mutual  advantage  and  convenience, 
would  ever  be  prevented ;  and  all  such  ar- 
rangements would  be  conducted  on  a  footing 
of  the  utmost  economy.  We  cannot  doubt 
that  the  general  happiness  of  society  would 
thus  be  greatly  increased.  Even  those  trans- 
cendental blessings  which  are  dreamed  of  by 
the  votaries  of  Socialism,  what  is  to  prevent 
their  being  realized  but  the  one  little  unfor- 
tunate fact,  that  men  are  not  yet  prepared  to 
act  upon  perfectly  upright  and  unselfish  prin- 
ciples ?  They  require  to  put  all  their  indus* 
trial  operations  into  the  form  of  a  conflict^ 
rendering  themselves  at  the  best  good-humor- 
ed enemies  to  each  other,  and  entailing  fright- 
ful misexpenditure  of  means,  simply  because 
no  one  can  entirely  trust  his  fellows.  If  men 
were  disposed  each  to  do  his  utmost  for  the 
commonwealth,  not  caring  for  special  bene- 
fits to  himself,  it  might  quite  well  be  that 
the  enjoyments  of  all  would  be  increased, 
and  earth  rendered  only  a  lower  heaven. 
But  how  to  bring  them  to  this  disposition — ^ 
and  how  to  keep  them  at  it ! 

As  all  the  losses,  inconveniences,  draw* 
backs,  shortcomings  of  expected  good,  and 
miserable  failures  and  disappointments  expe- 
rienced in  life  from  these  causes,  are  capable 
of  being  viewed  in  a  positive  aspect,  it  does 
not  seem  at  all  unreasonable  to  speak  of  them 
as  forming  an  Iniquity  Tax.  There  is,  it  may 
be  said,  an  Excise  from  the  happiness  of  us 
all,  through  the  operation  of  our  moral  defi- 
ciencies and  misdoings,  although  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  state  in  any  one  instance  its  exact 
amount.  It  is  very  hard  that  the  faithful  here 
suffer  for  the  unfaithful,  the  wise  for  the  fool- 
ish, the  sober  for  the  profligate ;  but  that  is 
only  accordant  with  the  great  law  of  society 
— that  we  are  all  more  or  less  comprombed 
for  each  other.  The  Iniquity  Tax  may  be 
viewed  very  much  as  we  view  what  are  call- 
ed War  Taxes.  As  these  are  strong  reasons 
for  maintaining  peace,  so  is  the  Iniquity  Tax 
a  powerful  motive  for  our  doing  whatever  is 
in  our  power  to  improve  the  national  integri- 
ty and  advance  truthfulness  in  all  things. 
An  improved  civilization  is  an  improved  eco- 
nomy, with  increased  blessings  for  us  all. 


18M.] 


OttLRATS  CAKICATTJRE9. 


129 


Proih    the  Ret  r  otpec  t  i  re    Revietr. 


GILLRAT'S    CARICATUKESJ 


The  history  of  the  plates  engraved  by  Gill- 
ray,  as  given  in  the  octavo  volume  thus  en- 
titled, is  not  a  little  remarkable.  For  many 
years,  this  celebrated  artist  resided  in  the 
house  of  Mrs.  Humphrey,  the  well  known 
publisher  in  New  Bond  Street,  and  after- 
wards of  St.  James's  Street,  to  whom  he 
was  under  a  positive  engagement,  that  all 
his  works  should  be  exclusively  her  proper- 
ly ;  ibis  engagement,  however, — for  the  sake 
of  his  insatiable  desire  for  drink — he  avoided, 
by  selecting  new  subjects,  successfully  dis- 
guising his  usual  style  and  manipulation, 
and  upon  such  occasions  he  disposed  of  his 
engraved  plates  to  Mr.  Fores,  of  Piccadilly. 

Times  went  not  well  with  Mrs.  Humphrey 
in  latter  years,  and  upon  the  plates  that  she 
possessed,  she  obtained  a  loan  of  one  thou- 
sand guineas;  unable  to  redeem  them,  an 
offer  of  five  hundred  pounds  had  been  refu- 
sed,— that  offier  made  by  Mr.  Bohn.  A  few 
years  more  and  Mrs.  Humphrey  died, — the 
plates  still  unredeemed,  and  her  executors, 
no  doubt  in  ignorance,  disposed  of  them  as 
useless  copper.  They  were,  however,  saved, 
thanks  to  the  present  publisher,  who,  by  the 
merest  accident,  rescued  them  from  destruc- 
tion, and  then  procuring  whatever  else  he 
could,  formed  the  extraordinary  collection 
now  before  us.  ^ 

In  early  life,  the  father  of  James  Gillray 
was  a  soldier,  born  at  Lanark,  in  Scotland, 
in  1720  ;  he  lost  an  arm  at  the  battle  of  Fon- 
tenoy ;  on  his  return  to  England  he  became 
an  out-pensioner  of  Chelsea  Hospital,  and 
for  forty  years  held  the  office  of  sexton  at  the 
Moravian  burying- ground  there,  where  his 
remains  were  deposited  in  1799. 

His  son,  young  Gillray,  made  his  first  ap- 

{)earance  in  this  world  in  the  year  1757,  and 
ike  the  illustrious  Hogarth,  began  his  career 
a&  a  letter  engraver.     It  may  be  presumed, 

*  The  Works  of  Jamsb  Gillbat,  from  the  Original 
Plates,  with  the  addition  of  many  Bubjectd  not  be- 
fore coUeeted.    Imperial  folio.    Bohn. 

HIatorical  and  deforiptive  aceonnt  of  the  Garica- 
toree  of  Jamu  Gillsat,  oompriaiog,  a  Political 
and  HumorouB  History  of  the  latter  part  of  the 
reign  of  George  the  Third.  By  Thomas  Wright, 
Em^.,  F.  a  A.,  and  R.  H.  Bvamb,  Esq.    8vo.  Bohn. 

▼OL.  XXX    NO.  L 


the  monotony  of  such  employment  was  ill 
fitted  to  a  temperament  like  his,  for  he  de- 
serted his  employer.  He  is  next  heard  of 
as  one  of  a  company  of  strolling  players,  un- 
dergoing various  hardships, — such  as  this 
course  of  life  invariably  entails,  and  made  it 
even  much  more  precarious  at  that  period 
than  now ; — this  he  quitted,  and  we  find  him 
a  student  of  the  Royal  Academy, — where 
he  must  have  pursued  his  studies  with  great 
diligence,  for  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven, 
many  plates  had  left  his  burin,  of  great  pictor- 
ial effect  and  freedom,— "resembling," — says 
his  biographer,  "  much  of  the  earlier  manner 
of  Stothard."  The  •  Village  Train,'  and  the 
'Deserted  Village,*  dated  as  early  as  1784, 
are  not  the  works  of  promise,  but  of  maturi- 
ty in  art,  exceeding  well  engraved ;  and  about 
this  time  also  are  his  two  admirable  portraits 
of  William  Pitt :  he  also  engraved  from  Lady 
Spencer's  drawings, — from  some  caprice, — 
it  might  be  with  the  idea  of  mystifying,  or 
misleading,  but  he  adopted  fictitious  names, 
often  in  his  early  caricatures  using  J.  S.  in- 
terlaced— ^the  monogram  of  Sayer;  and  he 
might  thus  unconsciously  have  been  of 
great  service  to  Sayer  in  assisting  him  to 
his  pension ;  for  Sayer  was  either  liked  or 
feared  by  Pitt  sufficiently  to  obtain  of  that 
minister  a  pension  from  the  civil  list  for  life. 
Although  his  own  caricatures  were  eagerly 
sought  for,  Gillray  ceased  not  his  labors  in 
engraving  from  the  works  of  others,  as  the 
large  plates  of  "The  Delivery  of  the  Pri- 
soners from  the  Bastile,"  and  the  Marquis 
Cornwallis  Receiving  the  Royal  Hostages,  at 
Seringapatam  (after  Northcote),  prove; 
though  the  latter  may  be  considered  the  last 
production  of  this  class.  Gillray  knew  the 
art  of  lithography,  and  exercised  it  with  con- 
siderable ability ;  he  could  also  engrave  on 
wood,  of  which,  specimens  like  the  litiiograph 
of  the  "Musical  Party"  are  extremely  rare; 
one  other  power  he  acquired  in  an  eminent 
degree — he  could  draw :  a  quality  most  of 
the  engravers  of  the  present  day  deem  need- 
leas,  and  hence  their  inferiority.  Well  would 
it  be  for  the  student  in  the  art  to  remember 
that  the  freedom  we  so  value  in  the  works  of 
Sir  Robert  Strange,  Bartolozzi,  and  of  Ven- 
9 


130 


GILLRAT'S  CABICATURES. 


[Sept., 


dramini,  is  the  result  of  this  same  quality, 
each  having  left  him  brilliant  examples  of 
Jiis  skill,  especially  the  latter,  which  seem 
not  of  late  years  to  be  held-  at  their  proper 
value. 

That  Gillray  possessed  poetical  feeling  as 
well  as  delicacy  of  treatment,  we  would  in- 
stance the  allegory  of  "Britannia  between 
Scylla  and  Charybdis ;"— of  refined  senti- 
ment and  exquisite  finish,  the  charming  full 
length  portrait  of  the  Duchess  of  York  is 
evidence  enough ; — for  grandeur  of  concep- 
tion, that  crowded  emblematical  panorama, 
called  the  "  Apotheosis  of  Hoche," — ^is  sin- 
gularly successful;  it  is  neither  more  nor 
less  than  a  grand  historical  picture  display- 
ing the  horrors  of  the  French  Revolution ; 
seated  midwayx)n  a  rainbow,  and  surrounded 
by  a  halo,  is  the  figure  of  Hoche,  playing  upon 
the  guillotine,  as  though  it  were  a  lyre ;  over 
him  and  guarded  by  monsters,  are  the  tables  of 
the  commandments  perverted — as,  thou  shalt 
siealj — thou  shalt  commit  mufder,  &c, ;  upon 
the  right  are  thousands  of  headless  beings 
kneeling  before  the  commandments;  on  the 
opposite  side  are  groups,  in  vast  multitudes, 
bearing  copies  of  blasphemous  works,  and 
representing  the  vices  and  crimes  of  the  Na- 
tional Assembly ;  below  are  plains  deserted 
— cities  given  to  the  flames,  murder,  suicide, 
duelling,  and  carnage ;  while  plague,  pesti- 
lence, fire,  and  famine  are  dispersed  through- 
out the  picture. 

3ut  it  is  with  Gillray,  as  a  caricaturist,  we 
have  most  to  deal ;  and  it  is  only  when  com- 
pared with  all  others  who  ever  made  it  a  pro- 
fession, that  we  see  how  infinitely  superior 
he  rises  above  them.  ^  It  is  while  wading 
through  a  pile  of  those  produced  by  Sayer, 
the  elaer  Cruikshank,  Rowlandson,  and  others, 
that  we  can  form  a  true  estimate  of  Gillray, 
and  a  consciousness  that  he  stands  alone. 
It  should  also  be  remembered,  that  under  the 
first  three  monarchs  of  the  house  of  Hano- 
ver, politics  drew  into  its  vortex  art  as  well 
as  literature ;  the  very  passion  for  caricature 
tended  in  a  great  measure  to  debase  art.  Al- 
though Hogarth  believed  himself  a  great 
historical  painter,  yet  he  escaped  it  not;  Gill- 
ray, as  great  as  Hogarth,  was  drawn  into  it, 
and  he,  it  may  with  truth  be  said,  was  a 
great  artist  thrown  away  upon  politics;  never- 
theless, it  is  to  that  very  greatness  we  owe 
the  high  artistic  qualities  so  prominent  in  all 
of  them.  He  it  was  who  first  gave  John 
Bull  personal  identity;  we  trace  the  old  fel- 
low through  various  forms  and  phases  of  cha- 
racter, until  he  settled  down  into  the  jolly 
top- booted  old  gentleman  we  now  recognize 
at  once.    "  There  is  no  species  of  humor,"  | 


says  Washington  Irving,  ''  in  which  the  Eng- 
lish more  excel  than  that  which  consists  in 
caricaturing  and  giving  ludicrous  appellations 
or  nicknames.  In  this  way  they  have  whim- 
sically designated  not  merely  individuals,  but 
nations ;  and  in  their  fondness  for  pushing  a 
joke,  they  have  not  spared  even  themselves. 
Thus  have  they  embodied  their  national  odd- 
ities in  the  figure  of  a  corpulent  old  fellow, 
with  a  stout  oaken  cudgel."  True  it  is,  there 
is  scarcely  a  person  in  actual  existence,  more 
absolutely  present  to  the  public  mind, 
than  that  eccentric  personage  John  Bull, 
esquire. 

One  of  Gillray's  settled  objects,  and 
which  he  prosecuted  with  great  energy,  was 
to  render  the  French  revolution  and  the  Na- 
tional Assembly  atrocious  and  disgusting 
in  the  eyes  of  Englishmen,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  make  Napoleon  the  detestation  of  the 
British  people ;  to  effect  the  former  purpose,  he 
pictures  the  sans-culottes  as  a  hideous  set  of 
fiends,  cooking  and  gorging  upon  the  bodies 
of  their  murdered  victims  ;  he  illustrates  ihe 
execution  of  the  French  king  under  the  title 
of  The  blood  of  the  murdered  crying  for  ven- 
ffcance, — and  a  fearful  picture  he  makes  of 
it ;  he  gives  a  state  banquet  to  Dumouriez, 
with  Fox  in  attendance  serving  up  the  decap- 
itated head  of  Pitt  on  a  salver  for  the  repast 
The  exquisite  care  and  finish  Of  the  plates 
give  additional  force  and  value  to  such  satire. 
There  are  four  plates  also,  showing  the  con- 
sequences of  a  successful  French  invasion, 
and  in  them  we  find  all  that  an  Englishman 
can  love  or  cherish  being  destroyed  or  given 
to  the  flames ; — the  House  of  Lords  disman- 
tled, busts  of  the  regicides  made  prominent, 
the  throne  broken  and  cast  aside,  and  in  the 
place  of  it  the  guillotine,  St.  Paul's  on  fire, 
the  king  butchered  ;  the  queen,  ministers,  and 
judges  huncr  at  the  lamp  posts;  and  in  all 
the  invaders  rioting  in  plunder  and  in  mur- 
der. No  wonder  then  that  the  prejudice 
which  such  productions  were  intended  to  ex- 
cite should  soon  communicate  itself  to  the 
populace. 

Anything  that  could  foster  a  hostile  feel- 
ing be  had  recourse  to,  and  thus  we  find 
twelve  plates  of  leading  politicans,  costumed 
as  though  they  were  members  of  the  National 
Assembly,  simply  because  they  dared  to 
sympathize  with  the  French  people.  No  op- 
portunity was  neglected  to  ridicule  Napoleon, 
or  to  make  him  figure  in  a  contemptible 
light ;  to  this  end  are  the  whole  events  of  his 
life  grossly  exaggerated,  and  the  wars  with 
France  and  Spain  made  fertile  subjects  for 
the  pencil  of  the  satirist.  The  short  peace 
of  1802,  and  the  war  which  followed,  with 


1853.] 


GUXRAT'S  OABICATITBE& 


181 


the  fear  and  defiance  of  the  Addington  ad- 
ministration, caused  a  vast  number  of  carica- 
tures to  be  issued,  and  these  certainly  some 
of  the  most  humorous.  The  Destruction  of 
the  French  Colossus  is  an  extraordinary  con- 
ception. 
Pitt  he  first  treats  as  a  Political  Fungus, 

rfting  itself  upon  the  crown,  and  though 
does  publicly  flog  him  in  the  market- 
place for  increasing  the  debt  and  taxation  of 
the  country,  he  afterwards,  as  if  to  make 
amends,  produced  those  beautiful  allegories — 
Light  expelling  darkness — Scylla  and  Cha- 
rybdis,  and  the  Destruction  of  the  Faithful. 

Gillary  seems  to  have  allowed  himself  no 
respite  from  lampooning  Burke,  Sheridan, 
Priestley,  and  Fox — the  former  of  whom  he 
designated  Foz*s  Martyr,  but  the  latter  he 
travestied  into  a  revolutionist,  often  into  a 
villanous  unshaven  assassin,  fit  only  for  mur- 
der ;  and  the  prime  mover  of  what  it  pleased 
Gillray  to  call  the  seditious  meetings  at  the 
Crown  and  Anchor, — always  in  ecstacy  at 
our  reverses,  always  in  grief  at  our  success. 
When  the  news  arrived  of  the  victory  of  the 
Nile,  Pitt  and  Dundas  are  intoxicated  with ' 
delight, — and  wine ;  but  poor  Fox  has  hung 
himself  in  despair.  When  the  king's  carriage 
was  attacked,  '*  Fox  and  his  gang*^  are  the 
instigators  and  the  doers, — no  employment 
too  vile  for  them.  That  the  pencil  \%  at  times 
more  powerful  than  the  pen  or  oratory,  there 
can  be  no  question  ;  and  Fox  felt  it.  "  He 
acknoledged,"  says  Wright,  in  his  '  England 
under  the  House  of  l£inover,'  "  that  his 
India  bill  received  its  severest  blow  in  public 
estimation  from  the  caricature  of  Carlo 
Khan's  Triumphant  Entry  into  Leadenhall 
Street."  In  illustration  of  object  teaching, 
or  the  force  of  such  squibs,  it  may  be  re- 
membered, that  until  a  few  months  ago,  no 
man  ever  went  to  have  his  hair  cut,  but  the 
operator  was  sure  to  inform  him  it  was 
**  getting  thin  on  the  top  ;"  slI  length  there 
came  a  day,  when  a  sleek-headed  member  of 
the  comb  and  scissors,  in  an  unlucky  and  ill- 
timed  moment,  ventured  the  same  suggestion 
to  a  choleric  old  gentleman ;  at  which  the 
said  old  gentleman,  full  of  indignation,  jumps 
off  his  chair,  exclaiming,  <*How  dare  you, 
sir,  make  any  impertinent  remarks  upon  my 
personal  deficiencies  ? — thin  on  the  top  in- 
deed 1  if  you  dare  to  say  another  word,  sir, 
I'll  thin  your  top  for  you  1"  Well,  the  bar- 
ber fears  to  jeopardize  his  skull,  so  now  we 
'*  hear  it  not." 

Gillray  was  in  the  asenith  of  his  power 
while  the  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings 
was  pending,  and  the  rapidity  with  which  he 


supplied  the  town  with  incidents  that  grew 
out  of  the  discussion  is  really  astonishing ; 
and,  as  might  be  expected,  the  king,  the 
queen,  Burke,  Fox,  Sheridan,  Pitt,  add 
Thurlow  play  important  parts  ;  the  facts  and 
the  course  pursued  are  thus  briefly  stated  by 
Mr.  Wright : 

**  Hastings,  who  was  supported  by  the  whole 
strength  of  the  East  India  CompanVf  and  who 
was  understood  to  enjoy  the  kings  favorable 
opinion  in  a  special  degree,  had  calculated  on  the 
support  of  his  ministers,  and  everybody's  astonish- 
ment was  great  when  they  now  saw  Pitt  turn 
round  and  join  his  enemies.  Hastings  felt  this 
desertion  with  great  acateness,  and  it  is  said  that 
he  never  forgave  it.  Some  accounted  for  it  by  snp- 
posinj;  that  Pitt  and,  more  especially,  Dundas 
were  jealous  of  Hastings'  personal  Influence,  and 
feared  his  rising  in  court  favor ;  and  a  variety  of 
other  equally  discreditable  motives  were,  assigned 
for  this  extraordinary  change.  The  return  of  the 
ex- governor's  wife  had  preceded  his  own,  and 
Mrs.  Hastings  was  received  at  court  with  much 
favor  bv  Queen  Charlotte,  who  was  flfenerally 
believed  to  be  of  a  very  avaricious  disposUion,  and 
was  popularly  charged  with  having  sold  her 
favor  for  Indian  presents.  The  supposed  patron- 
age of  the  court,  and  the  manner  in  which  it  was 
said  to  have  been  obtained,  went  much  further  in 
rendering  Hastings  an  object  of  popular  odinm, 
than  all  the  charges  alleged  against  him  by 
Burke;  and  they  were  accordingly  made  the 
most  of  by  that  class  of  political  afiritators  who 
are  more  immediately  employed  in  influencing  the 
mob.  .  .  .  The  supporters  of  the  impeachment 
represented  Hastings  as  another  Verres  called 
upon  by  a  modern  Cicero  (Burke)  to  answer  for  his 
oppressive  government  of  the  provinces  entrusted 
to  his  care.  A  bold  sketch  of  the  orator  was 
published  on  the  7th  of  February,  1787 — ^the  day 
on  which  the  proceedings  against  Hastings  were 
resumed  in  the  House  of  Commons,  under  the 
title  of  Cicero  against  Verres.  Fox  and  North 
are  seen  behind  the  eloquent  accuser.  In  1788, 
the  year  of  the  impeachment,  the  caricatures  on 
this  subject  became  more  numerous.  One  by 
Gillray,  published  Ist  of  March,  under  the  title  of 
'  Blood  on  Thunder  fording  the  Red  Sea,'  repre- 
sents Hastings  carried  in  safety  on  the  shoulders 
of  Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow  through  a  sea  of 
blood,  strewed  with  the  bodies  of  mangled 
Indiansr" 

• 

The  volumes  Are  full  of  evidence  to  show 
the  advantage  taken  of  this  state  of  affairs, 
and  also  show  how  he  labored,  like  Dr.  Wol- 
cott,  to  bring  royalty  into  contempt,  and  has 
constantly  portrayed  the  undignined  person- 
al appearance  of  both  George  the  Third  and 
his  queen ;  he  makes  them  perform  the  most 
mean,  contemptible,  and  servile  offices  for  the 
sake  of  saving  money.  By  the  following  ex- 
tract from  the  work  already  quoted,  the  pre- 
vailing opinions  will  be  gathered: — "  The  ex- 


182 


OaLRATS  OAKICATUREB. 


[Sept. 


treme  frugality  of  the  king  and  queen  in  pri- 
vate life,  and  the  meanness  which  often  cha- 
racterized their  dealings,  had  already  become 
subjects  of  popular  satire,  and  contrasted 
strangely  with  the  reckless  extravagance  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales.  As  there  was  no  visi- 
ble outlet  by  which  so  much  money  could 
have  disappeared,  people  soon  made  a  varie- 
ty of  surmises  to  account  for  King  George's 
heavy  expenditure.  Some  said  the  money 
was  spent  privately  in  corrupting  English- 
men, to  pave  the  way  to  arbitrary  power. 
Most  people  believed  their  monarch  was 
making  large  savings  out  of  the  public  money, 
and  hoarding  it  up  either  here  or  at  Hanover." 
It  was  said  that  the  royal  pair  were  so  greedy 
in  the  acquisition  of  money,  that  they  con- 
descended to  make  a  profit  by  farming,  and 
the  royal  farmer  and  his  wife  figured  about 
rather  extensively  in  prints  and  songs,  in 
which  they  are  represented  as  haggling  with 
their  tradesmen  and  cheapening  their  merchan- 
dise. Pictures  represent  them  as  visiting 
the  shops  at  Windsor  in  person.  Such  be- 
ing the  popular  feeling,  the  satirists  of  both 
pen  and  pencil  certainly  fostered  it  to  the 
uttermost,  as  the  repeated  allusions  testify. 
Parsimony  and  avarice  were  the  favorite 
themes. 

The  way  the  lash  was  laid  upon  the  prin- 
ces is  certainly  something  more  than  would 
be   permitted  now-a-days  ;    the  Prince  of 
Wales,  for  instance,  without  one  redeeming 
point,-^ever  the  associate  of  gamblers,  drunk- 
ards, and  extravagance, — ever  a  voluptuary, 
and  the  companion  of  Mrs.  Fitzherbert,  Lady 
Jersey,  Mrs.  Robinson,  and  others  ;  his  pro- 
digality ever   contrasted  with  the  grasping 
avarice  of  his  parents,  until,  at  last,  we  find 
him    soliciting    alms,  and    retiring   as    the 
Prodigal  Son.     The  Duke  of  York  is  little 
better  than  a  poltroon,  with  his  inglorious  re- 
turn from  Flanders, — the  Duke  of  Clarence 
with  his  Wouski  and  Mrs.  Jordan.      Such 
prints,  however,  are  not  at  all  consistent  with 
our  present  notions  of  decency ;  and   the 
wonder  is,  so  short  a  time  ago  as  sixty  years 
since,  they  could  have  been  exhibited  in  the 
windows  of  the  printsellers.     The  publisher 
has  wiselv  placed  them  in  a  volume  by  them- 
selves.    It  is  with  satires  as  with  old  plays, 
.  they  hit  the  vice  and  follies  of  the  times ; 
and  if  they  truly  hit,  its  truth  is  often  that 
which  we  deplore.    As  the  man  no  more  re- 
tains the  feelings  that  he  knew  in  boyhood, 
than  he  retains  the  form,  but  changes  with 
his  garments ;  so  is  it  with  society,  its  man- 
ners go  with  costume:  we  know  a  certain 
▼ice  was  fashionable  with  such   or  such  a 


dress — for  vices  have  their  fashion,  be  it  said 
— and  we  can  no  more,  however  hard  we 
try,  dissever  gambling  from  patches  and  from 
powder,  than  couple  chastity  with  the  cos* 
tume  of  Sir  Peter  Lilly's  time. 

In  a  short  notice  of  the  life  of  Oillray  pre- 
fixed to  the  explanatory  volume,  his  biogra- 
pher states,  "  That  Crillray  was  unfortunately 
an  example  of  the  imprudence  that  so  fre- 
quently accompanies  genius  and  great  talent. 
His  habits  were  in  the  highest  degree  intem- 
perate." Full  fifty  years  ago,  when  Gillray 
wrought,  drunkenness  and  debauchery  were 
the  prevailing  vices  of  the  period,  into  which 
vice  Gillray  himself  fell,  notwithstanding  his 
continual  delineations  of  its  worst  features. 
Indeed,  to  such  an  extent  did  he  carry  his 
carousal,  that  his  mind  became  a  wreck,  and 
insanity  usurped  the  place  of  reason.  To 
him,  to  Morland,  and  a  few  others  of  the 
same  time,  are  we  indebted,  as  far  as  art  is 
concerned,  for  the  vulgarism — "  all  men  of 
genius  are  drunkards."  At  that  period  no 
class  in  society  escaped  the  prevailing  rage : 
intoxication  became  the  delight  and  ambition 
of  most.  The  Fox  Club  and  the  six-bottle 
men  are  notorious,  and  "  as  drunk  as  a  lord" 
passed  into  a  proverb.  But  to  suppose 
drunkenness  is  a  necessary  attribute  to  genius, 
is  simply  a  slander  upon  the  greatest  gift  the 
Deity  bestows  upon  mortality.  Vulgar  and 
narrow  minds  up  to  the  present  hour  will  es* 
pouse  that  cause,  forgetting,  in  their  limited 
notions,  the  bright  phalnax  of  glorious  and 
illustrious  names  that  must  rise  up  in  judg- 
ment against  such  falsehood.  Great  men  in 
some  few  instances  have  been  drunkards,  and 
that's  the  easy  part  of  greatness  lesser  minds 
could  imitate. 

The  historical  and  descriptive  account  by 
Wright  and  Evans  is  of  great  value,  as  a  key 
to  the  folio  volume.  Compiled  with  much 
judgment,  it  gives  a  brief  and  careful  sum- 
mary of  the  political  events  for  nearly  thirty 
years,  with  short  biographical  notices  of  men 
who  played  the  most  important  parts  during 
that  memorable  and  exciting  period,  as  well 
as  a  full  explanation  of  every  plate.  The 
least  that  can  be  said  of  the  plates  and  the 
volume  to  which  reference  is  made,  is  that 
they  are  good  historical  lessons.  It  informs 
us,  <<  Gillray  had  recently  (1792)  accompa- 
nied Loutherbourg  the  painter  into  France, 
to  assist  in  making  sketches  for  his  grand 
picture  of  the  siege  of. Valenciennes.  After 
their  return,  the  king,  who  made  great  pre- 
tensions to  taste,  desired  to  look  at  their 
sketch.  He  was  already  prejudiced  against 
Gillray  for  his  political  caricatures,  and  not. 


1858.] 


GILLBAT'S  CARICATITRES. 


183 


withstanding  the  rough  style  in  which  he 
had  made  his  spirited  sketches  of  the  French 
officers  and  soldiers,  he  threw  them  down 
contemptuously,  with  the  more  hasty  ohser- 
vation,  'I  don't  understand  these  caricatures !' 
while  he  expressed  the  greatest  admiration 
at  Loutherbourg's  more  finished  and  intelli- 
gible drawings  of  landscapes  and  buildings. 
Gill  ray,  who  was  mortified  at  the  neglect 
shown  towards  himself,  and  was  not  at  this 
time  pensioned  by  the  court,  revenged  him- 
self by  publishing  the  picture  of  the  monarch 
contemplating  the  features  of  the  great  ene- 
my of  kings,  who  was  an  object  of  particu- 
lar abhorrence  to  George  III.,  and  observed, 
'  I  wonder  if  the  royal  connoisseur  will  un- 
derstand this."'  The  king  is  examining 
Cooper's  portrait  of  Oliver  Cromwell;  the 
parsimonious  manners  of  the  monarch  are 
satirized  in  the  save-all,  by  means  of  which 
he  uses  up  the  last  fragment  of  his  candle, 
— the  face  of  the  king  is  a  highly-finished 
miniature,  as,  indeed,  a  vast  number  of  others 
are  ;  the  instance  of  the  candle  end  is  only 
another  instance  of  Gillray's  attention  to  ac- 
cessories and  allusions  which  are  at  all  times 
so  expressive  and  significant.  Personal  pe- 
culiarities and  actions  never  escaped  him. 
No  wonder,  then,  that  the  king  should  dis* 
like  a  man  who  had  used  his  utmost  ability 
to  make  the  public  believe  he  was  an  avari- 
cious fool,  and  who  at  that  very  time  had 
rendered  the  queen  little  less  than  odious, 
by  drawing  a  revolting  picture  of  her  in  the 
character  of  Sin,  which  had  given  great  of- 
fence to  the  court.  We  find  as  a  peculiarity 
but  few  parodies  of  other  men's  pictures 
throughout  his  works ;  he  had  no  need  to 
borrow  who  knew  no  poveity  of  invention. 

Whatever  was  uppermost  in  the  public 
mind  was  food  for  our  caricaturist,  costume, 
coalition,  or  Catholic  emancipation,  music  or 
ministers,  gout  or  gambling,  for  which  latter 
offence   he   places  the  Ladies  Archer  and 


Buckinghamshire  in  the  pillory,  and  is  un- 
ceasing in  his  onslaught.  Judging  from  his 
productions,  our  naval  victories  afforded  him 
great  delight :  like  many  others  in  the  col- 
lections, they  are  not  caricatures.  The  issue 
of  paper  money  during  the  administration  of 
Pitt,  and  the  split  between  Burke,  Fox,  and 
Sheridan,  are  also  fertile  subjects  with  him  ; 
but  every  new  incident,  political  or  otherwise, 
seemed  to  give  birth  to  some  new  ideas. 
About  this  period  a  caricature  was  published, 
illustrative  of  the  encroachmennts  of  Russia 
upon  Turkey — as  in  our  own  day  ;  England 
offers  her  aid,  and  as  it  was  doubtful  what 
the  policy  of  France  would  be,  a  member  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is  made  to  ask, 
"  where^9  France  ;"-^this  print  by  some  ac- 
cident found  its  way  into  the  hands  of  a 
small  self-sufiicient  orator  in  Devon;  Lon- 
don papers  then  were  very  rare.  The  cus- 
tom was  upon  the  Sunday  afternoon  to  meet 
upon  the  green  before  the  village  inn,  and  so 
discuss  the  little  news  they  had.  Our  orator 
began,  "  Well !  so  you  are  going  to  have 
more  taxes  put  upon  you — that's  Pitt's  do- 
^  ing^  that  is — and  you  may  pay  them  if  you 
like,  mind,  I  sham't,  that's  all  I've  got  to 
tell  you,  that  b:  And  what's  it  all  for,  I'd 
like  to  know  ? — to  keep  off  the  French — the 
war  with  France ! — with  France,  by  the 
Lord  I — ^with  France  !  Now  d —  me  if  /be- 
lieve there  U  such  a  place  /*'  This  was  rather 
a  startling  assertion,  and  so  new,  besides, 
that  hts  hearers  we're  what  he  called  '*  flab- 
bergasted"— they'd  "  neur  thought  o'that ;" 
perhaps  there  wasent  after  all — at  length 
one  standing  by  said,  "  Oh  I  yes ;  but  there 
is,  though.'  "  Is  there  ?"  said  our  dema- 
gogue. "  You  seem  to  know  a  good  deal 
about  it,  John ;  where  is  it  ?"  Why,  that 
John  "  coudent  tell ;" — so  now,  out  came  the 
new  imported  print,  and  the  blacksmith  was 
triumphant.  There  is  no  such  place  as 
France. 


184 


THE  LADY  NOVELISTS  OP  GREAT  BRITAIN, 


[Sept., 


From  the  Gentleman's  Magazine 


THE  LADY  NOVELISTS  OF    GREAT   BRITAIN. 


Endless  have  been  the  theories  which 
writers  in  different  periods  have  broached 
respecting  the  proper  work  of  women ;  it  is, 
we  believe,  generally  considered  now  to  be  a 
yery  tiresome  subject.  We  do  not' think 
many  men,  or  women  either,  doubt  the  dis- 
tinctive character  of  the  female  mind — that 
it  is  not  made  to  do  every  sort  of  work  that 
man  can  or  may  do,  at  least  not  in  the  same 
manner;  but  we  cannot  help  suspecting  that 
the  sooner  all  these  nice  questions — as  ques- 
tions, as  matters  of  argument,  of  limitation, 
rule,  and  dictation — are  dropped,  the  better. 
Men  are  never  so  near  being  nporally  and 
divinely  right  as  when  they  content  them; 
selves  with  enjoying  and  ministering  to  what 
is  good  with  no  theoretical  reference  to  sex 
at  all;  and  woman  is  surely  most  womanly  in 
the  highest  sense,  most  gentle,  fervent  and 
sincere,  when  she  is  thinking  least  about  the 
matter. 

So  with  respect  to  the  question  of  tohich 
among  women  should  write,  and  what  they 
should  write,  we  have  heard  and  read  a  large 
amount  of  fluent  nonsense,  as  it  has  appeared 
to  us — such  as  that  wives  and  mothers  may 
write  novels,  but  single  women  may  not ;  and 
that,  in  short,  all  women  whpse  position  in 
society  is,  in  the  one  respect  of  being  unmar- 
ried, isolated,  should  not  increase  that  isolation 
by  such  a  self-centering  thing  as  authorship  of 
any  kind.  On  these  and  other  similar  discus- 
sions we  have  only  one  remark  to  make — 
ttat  they  really  are  very  useless ;  that  when- 
ever a  woman  feels  she  has  something  to  say 
whioh  may  do  good,  even  to  the  lower  ex- 
tent of  giving  pleasure,  she  will  generally 
And  means  of  saying  it,  and  had  much  better 
not  be  hindered.  Mere  cessation  of  author- 
ship, we  suspect,  will  do  but  little  in  correct-" 
ing  those  tendencies  of  which  authorship  is  a 
sign.  Let  the  novel,  poem,  or  essay  be  writ- 
ten, and  let  the  public  criticize  it  freely.  Our 
conclusion  still  fs  that  the  grandest,  wisest, 
simplest  thing  man  or  woman  can  do  is  to 
obey  any  strong,  clear  call  of  duty  towards 
God  or  man ;  to  express  that  which  has  been 
brought  home  to  the  mind  in  a  truthful,  un- 


exaggerative  way,  if  it  be  a  case  in  which 
writing  seems  the  most  natural  instrument 
for  the  conveyance  of  what  they  have  to  say ; 
to  hope,  humbly  but  firmly,  that  a  few  words 
of  theirs  may  be  the  inspirers  of  deeds— to 
look  indeed  upon  the  smallest  self-sacrificing 
deed  as  worth  more  than  many  books — but 
still  hot  to  disparage  any  vocation — spoken, 
written,  or  acted  out. 

As  a  general  rule,  we  do  not  much  wonder 
that  men  have  come  to  look  with  distrust  on 
woman's  championship  of  social  questions  in 
the  way  of  argument.  They  do  often,  cer- 
tainly, go  beyond  the  mark.  They  are  apt 
to  bring  prominently  forward  all  those  mere 
offsets  from  the  main  subject  which  a  sound 
lawyer  or  moderately  wise  man  would  leave 
out  of  the  discussion  as  apt  to  divert  atten- 
tion from  the  main  point,  and  put  clear  logic 
out  of  court.  And  then  the  bravery  of 
women,  allied  though  it  may  be  to  many 
noble  qualities,  is  against  them.  When  they 
talk,  as  sometimes  they  do,  in  the  most  irri- 
tating manner  of  man's  cowardice,  it  ought 
to  be  noted  how  often  they  themselves  pro- 
vokingly  carve  out  new  and  hard  work  for 
him  bytheir  own  rashness  and  one-sidedness. 
Taking  willingly  a  credit — which  men  are 
rather  too  ready  to  resign — of  being  more 
religious  than  their  brothers  or  husbands, 
they  do  and  say  more  things  that  put  prac- 
tical religion  in  jeopardy  than  those  brothers 
or  husbands  would  ever  dream  of.  In  fact, 
in  matters  of  reasoning,  the^i  are  really 
harder  upon  their  friends  than  their  foes,  for 
the  magnanimity  of  woman's  nature  makes 
her  peculiarly  anxious  to  be  generous  and 
candid  to  antagonists^  Hence  we  often  find 
her  more  liberal  towards  works  of  danger- 
ous tendency  than  towards  those  which,  hav- 
ing a  much  securer  foundation,  are  a  little 
straitened  and  narrow  in  their  outward  form. 

One  cannot  but  be  struck,  meanwhile,  with 
the  great  increase  in  quantity,  and  general 
improvement  in  the  quality,  of  novels  written 
by  women.  We  are  quite  aware  that  every 
sort  of  evil  may  steal  into  our  houses  under 
the  guise  of  an  interesting  fiction ;  that  broad. 


1658.] 


THE  LADY  NOTEXKTS  OP  GREAT  BRITAIN. 


136 


coarse  norels  of  the  Fielding  and  Smollett 
kind  are  not  what  we  have  to  dread,  bat 
rather  the  insidious  poison  of  false  sentiment 
or  the  noyelties  of  great  assumptions,  pass- 
bg  unquestioned  because  of  the  glare  which 
surrounds  them.  Nothing,  however,  of  thi^ 
kind  moves  us  from  our  belief  that  novel- 
writing  is  quite  one  of  the  legitimate  occupa- 
tions of  women.  They  cannot,  indeed,  fetch 
up  materials  from  the  haunts  into  which  a 
Dickens  or  Bulwer  may  penetrate.  They 
may  in  vain  try  to  grapple  with  the  more 
complicated  diflScuUies  of  many  a  man^a  posi- 
tion and  career  ;  but,  as  far  as  they  go — and 
often  they  can  and  do  go  far — they  are  ad- 
nurable  portrayers  of  character  and  situation. 
They  know — there  is  no  denying  it — a  great 
deal  about  men.  Brothers,  friends,  husbands, 
open  to  them  widely,  in  many  cases,  the 
doors  of  their  hearts.  They  are  allowed  to 
see  much  of  that  inner  life.  They  see  what 
is  merely  small  and  conventional,  but  also 
what  is  lofty  and  simple.  And  then  how 
much  is  the  store  of  woman's  ideas  enlarged 
by  the  mingling  of  other  literatures  with  our 
own !  The  grave  old  Roman  culture  we 
never  wish  to  see  neglected ;  we  feel  its 
value  to  the  mind ;  but  an  Englishwoman 
most  now,  to  some  extent,  be  also  European, 
American,  Asiatic,  nay  Australian.  Nor  can 
she  shut  herself  up  here  at  home,  except  by 
violence,  in  the  Church-woman's,  or  the  Dis- 
senter's, or  the  Catholic's  circles  of  thought. 

With  all  these  facilities — with  the  means 
of  high  religious  and  moral  cultivation  within 
her  reach — with  a  public  ready  to  read, 
thankful  to  be  amused — with  no  more  than 
a  fair  share  of  criticism  to  apprehend — why 
should  not  woman  write  fiction  admirably 
well  ?  Bear  witness  to  a  woman's  power, 
most  wonderful  Consuelo !  Stand  forward, 
earnest,  inspired,  duteous,  magnanimous 
"  Uncle  Tom,"  and  say  what  there  is,  what 
long-standing  system  of  wickedness,  that  may 
not  be  shaken  to  its  centre  by  the  touch  of  a 
woman's  hand ! 

Nor  can  we  agree  to  stop  our  ears  against 
the  voices  of  the  past.  We  remember  the 
beauty  and  deep  pathos  of  Mrs.  Inchbald. 
We  remember  Jane  and  Anna  Maria  Porter, 
who,  when  they  left  ordinary  life  behind,  and 
treated  of  characters  safely  removed  from  the 
then  English  public  by  time  and  distance, 
made  the  prettiest  romances  about  them 
imaginable.  The  general  strain  of  Mrs.  Opie's 
novels  we  are  compelled  to  own  was  feeble, 
but  she  surely  worked  up  some  of  her  scenes 
with  an  even  terrible  power,  as  in  **  Murder 
will  Out,"  "  The  Ruffian  Boy,"  and  the  ma- 


I  niac  scene  in  "  The  Father  and  Daugl^ter."* 
Mrs.  Radcliffe,  surely,  that  great  dealer  in 
mysteries,  was  not  useless  in  her  day.  Admi- 
rable indeed  is  the  adaptation  from  age  to  age 
of  outward  supplies  to  man's  inward  wants ; 
admirable  the  provision,  in  every  period,  of 
material  out  of  which  imagination  may  shape 
that  which  is  needed  to  supply  the  real  want 
of  a  period ;  and  we  should  say  that  in 
nothing  is  this  shown  more  strikingly  than  in 
the  gradual  clearing  away  of  the  unknown, 
in  proportion  as  the  knowp  world  becomes 
more  various,  more  rich  in  stirring  interests, 
more  likely  to  stimulate  mental  enterprise, 
and  strongly  to  influence  the  moral  energies. 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  material  world  is  gone  ; 

For  now  where  may  we  find  a  place 

For  any  spirit's  dream  7 
Oar  steps  have  been  ou  every  soil, 

Oar  sails  on  every  stream. 

In  her  day,  castles  and  convents,  and 
mighty  nobles  and  wicked  monks  and  ab- 
besses, could  be  planted  in  fiction  all  over 
Switzerland  and  Italy  ;  tyrants  might  be  tor- 
turing vassals,  and  women  might  be  buried 
alive  every  day,  for  aught  that  could  be 
demonstrated  to  the  contrary ;  and  peasants 
were  always  dancing  on  the  vme-covered  hills. 
Even  nature  had  a  trick  or  two  played  with 
her.  It  was  always  full  moon  in  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe's pictures ;  she  never  did  things  by 
halves.  Now  we  should  say  that  the  then 
living  world  of  England  was,  on  the  whole, 
the  better  for  these  things  ;  and  that,  judgin 
by  those  novels  of  the  time  which  portraye 
actual  English  domestic  life,  it  was  better 
that  fiction  should  withdraw  men  and  women 
out  of  their  own  realities,  and  take  its  mate- 
rials from  a  romantic  and  comparatively  little 
known  world.  Clara  Reeve,  and  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe, and  the  authors  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales,  did  not  merely  shun  polluting  things, 
but  were  themselves  poetical  and  elevating. 

We  are  half  unwilling  to  mention  Miss 
Burney,  whose  talent  we  allow ;  yet  we  must 
confess  that,  in  spite  of  applauding  Dr.  John- 
son and  plain  literal  George  the  Third,  we 
never  can  read  a  chapter  of  Evelina,  or  even 
Cecilia,  without  disappointment  and  disrelish. 

*  0d6  of  those  dearly  beloved  sisters  of  ours  in 
America,  of  whom  we  have  recently  been  hearing 
BO  much,  baa,  we  find,  given  death  and  burial  to 
our  bright^  kindlj,  happy  friend  (never  bo  happy 
and  kindly  aa  now),  Mrs.  Opie.  The  spire  of  ner 
native  town's  cathedral  ecaroely  carried  itself  more 
erectly  than  she  when  we  aaw  her.  last,  not  bo  veir 
long  ago.  May  ahe  live  on,  unaffected  by  all 
premature  obituary  articlea.  for  some  peaceful  years 
I  yet  I 


136 


THE  LADY  NOVELISTS  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN. 


[Sept. 


The  common  run  of  her  characters  is  not 
merely  a  local  and  coDV^Dtioaal  one,  but  it 
seems  to  us  divested  of  those  touches  of  truth 
and  nature  which  in  the  hands  of  higher 
writers  often  dignify  what  is  in  itself  mean. 
Her  portraits  are  portraits  with  little  of  soul ; 
they  are  hopelessly  low  in  tone,  and  deficient 
in  the  higher  traces  of  imagination.  There 
are  exceptive  passages  in  Camilla,  though  the 
importation  of  Johnsonian  sentences  quenches 
our  dawning  pleasure ;  but  the  character  of 
Sir  Hugh  Tyrold,  booby  as  he  is,  has  in  it 
some  very  beautiful  touches. 

Time  would  fail  us  were  we  to  enter  on 
the   religious  novels — on  Coelebs,  and   the 

£  reductions  which  followed,  from  the  pen  of 
[iss  Hawkins,  Mrs.  Brunton,  and  several 
others.  In  quite  another  strain,  Miss  Ferriar 
had  exceeding  great  merit ;  and  we  need  not 
do  more  than  mention  the  names  of  Miss 
Edge  worth  and  of  Jane  Austen. 

Let  us  move  on  to  our  own  times.  Here 
the  field  is  so  extensive  that  our  difficulties 
of  selection  increase.  Only  to  enumerate  the 
principal  female  novelists  who  have  been  at 
work  for  the  last  twenty  or  twenty-five  years 
is  something  startling.  In  that  time  we  have 
had  at  least  three  or  four  able  novels  per 
annum,  not  to  mention  others  of  respectable 
promise.  We  have  had  Lady  Dacre,  Mrs. 
Marsh,  Mrs.  Gore,  Miss  Martineau,  Lady 
Georgina  Fullerton,  Lady  Ponsonby,  Mrs. 
Norton,  Miss  Mulock,  Mrs.  Gaskell,  Currer 
Bell,  Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall,  the  authoress  of  Mrs. 
Margaret  Maitland  and  of  Adam  Grseme, 
Miss  Jewsbury,  Miss  Elavanagh,  and  the  un- 
known author  of  Rose  Douglass.  As  English 
we  may  not  lay  claim  to  Mrs.  Stowe — ^and 
yet  how  much  of  Saxon  origin  in  Unrle  Tom, 
and  also  in  the  clever  novels  of  Elizabeth 
Wetherell  and  her  sister ! 

We  could  wish,  however,  that  some  of  our 
lady  writers  were  not  so  damagingly  rapid 
and  frequent  in  their  gifts.  Mrs.  Marsh,  for 
instance,  most  of  whose  first  volumes  are 
generally  good,  but  who  is  so  apt  to  fail  as 
she  proceeds. 

May  we  not  venture  to  add  that,  as  all 
authors  have  power  over  their  own  works  till 
they  are  made  over  for  good  or  evil  to  the 
trader,  they  would  be  doing  a  good  deed  if 
they  would  inform  themselves  beforehand  of 
the  manner  in  which  their  productions  are  to 
be  sent  into  the  market  ?  It  cannot,  we  are 
sure,  be  a  matter  of  indifierence  to'a  sensitive 
woman  whether  her  name  is  to  usher  forth  a 
fair  or  a  scanty  allowance,  in  quantity  and 
quality,  in  proportion  to  price.  It  must 
surely  be  painful  to  her  if  she  knows  that  the  i 


eyes  of  readers  are  angrily  wandering  over  a 
wide  margin,  a  straggling  mode  of  printing, 
and  those  other  devices  of  which  the  public 
is  often  made  to  complain,  while  remarkable 
and  very  pleasing  contrasts  are  occasionally 
exhibited.  Not  wishing  to  make  any  invidi- 
ous remarks  on  what  we  dUWke,  we  will  only 
give  one  instance  of  what  we  think  commend- 
able generosity  to  the  public,  in  a  tale  en- 
titled "The  Heir  of  Redclyffe,"  recently  pub- 
lished in  two  volumes.  We  are  not  now 
noticing  its  literary  ability,  and  are  quite 
uninstructed  as  to  its  authorship,  whether 
male  or  female — it  would  do  honor  to  any 
pen  ;  but  also  it  deserves  to  be  singled  out 
for  its  generous  allowance  of  matter — it  con- 
tains as  much  as  four  volumes  o^our  ordinary 
novels,  furnished  at  less  than  half  the  price. 

Every  one  knows  that  the  last  glowing 
summer  inspired  several  of  our  best  lady  nov- 
elists to  write,  and  that  we.  in  the  past  win- 
ter and  present  spring,  have  been  profiting 
by  their  labors.  Among  the  rest  we  should 
have  liked  to  read  the  name  of  the  authoress 
of  "  Deerbrook;"  for  though  Miss  Martineau 
wanders  widely  (too  widely)  abroad,  we 
know  that  she  loves  and  appreciates  fiction, 
and  we  feel  the  great,  though  somewhat 
peculiar,  merit  of  what  she  has  accomplished 
in  that  department.  Looking  in  vain  for  her, 
however,  we  must  thankfully  (though  not 
unquestioningly)  receive  what  has  been 
given  us  by  others. 

The  authoress  of  Jane  Eyre,  of  Shirley, 
and  now  of  Vilette,  stands  in  our  minds  very 
much  where  she  did.  She  may  have  become 
a  little  more  cautious  — she  does  not  so 
deeply  offend — but  we  cannot  with  truth  say 
that  we  think  her  tone  higher.  She  does  not 
rise,  as  we  hoped  she  would ;  she  is  as  fresh, 
as  suggestive,  as  full  of  originality  as  ever — 
and  an  original  book  is  rare  enough  in  these 
days  to  be  highly  prized.  There  are  parts 
of  Shirley,  the  least  popular  of  her  works, 
which  show  that  she  has  more  feminine  per- 
ception of  character  than  either  Jane  Eyre  or 
Vilette  betokens.  Nevertheless,  in  Shirley, 
even  more  than  in  the  others,  the  predominant 
impression  is  that  it  is  unwomanly.  Can  the 
authoress  live  among  wives  and  mothers  ? 

Miss  Mulock  also  has  appeared  again.  Of 
her  no  complaint  can  be  made  similar  to  that 
we  have  just  uttered ;  all  she  writes  is  not 
merely  pure,  but  purifying.  We  do  not 
think  she  is  possessed  of  the  talent  of  Currer 
Bell,  but  she  is  a  beautiful,  engaging,  elevat- 
ing writer.  Her  first  novel,  "  The  Ogilvies," 
did  not,  we  think,  promise  very  much ;  but  in 
"  Olive"  there  are  noble  scenes  and  exquisite 


1859.] 


THE  LADY  NOVEj4S9fI8  OF  GREAT  BRTTAm. 


137 


touches.  Iq  the  whole  range  of  our  fiction, 
nothing  seems  to  ub  more  beautiful  than  the 
picture  of  the  artist  and  his  unselfish,  devoted 
sister,  or  of  the  improving,  gentle  Mrs. 
Rothesay,  in  this  book ;  and  in  *'  The  Head 
of  the  Family,"  Ninian  Greame  and  his  Lind- 
say, their  guardian  care  of  the  young  family 
committed  to  their  charge,  the  contrasts  in 
their  position,  as,  one  by  one,  their  pleasures 
and  cares  are  withdrawn,  are  surely  delightful 
pictures.  Miss  Mulock  errs,  however,  we 
think,  in  dealing  too  much  and  too  long  in 
secret  loves  and  needless  restraints.  She 
makes  deep  and  silent  attachment  too  much 
the  burden  of  her  song ;  and  this  is  the 
more  curious,  as  she  deprecates  the  false 
morality  thus  induced,  in  "The  Ogilvies." 
A  novelist  should  take  care  not  to  remind  the 
reader  too  often  how  soon  and  pleasantly  a 
tale  miffht  come  to  an  end,  but  for  these 
foolish  scruples  and  overstrained  sacrifices  on 
the  part  of  the  heroes  and  heroines.  In 
''Agatha's  Husband,"  the  scrupulous  con- 
cealments of  moneyed  difficulties  by  a  hus- 
band from  his  wife,  have  the  effect,  we  think, 
of  almost  destroying  the  interest  of  both 
characters. 

There  are  two  or  three  other  novels  of  last 
year,  written  by  women,  of  which,  had  we 
time,  we  should  like  to  say  something.  The 
American  ladies,  in  particular,  are  coming 
out  delightfully  in  this  department ;  for  in- 
stance, "  The  Wide,  Wide  World,"  '*  Quee- 
chy,"  and  "  Glen  Luna,"  are  promising 
books.  The  most  striking  of  our  English 
female  novels  seems  to  us,  however,  to  be 
"  Ruth,"  by  the  authoress  of  "  Mary  Bar- 
ton." 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  many  good 
people  are  aggrieved  by  ''  Ruth."  There  is 
no  disguising,  that  a  girl  who  has  taken  her 
place  among  the  fallen  is  finally  raised  to  the 
level  of  a  real  and  most  exemplary  heroine. 
This  is  the  fact  lying  at  the  foundation  of  the 
novel.  By  what  management  can  this  have 
been  made  bearable  to  strict  and  severe 
readers? 

By  no  management  at  all,  we  should  say. 
It  must,  we  think,  be  allowed  to  every 
woman,  be  she  novelist,  or  simply  wife» 
mother,  and  housekeeper,  to  have  formed 
some  sort  of  opinion  on  cases  of  this  kind 
which  may  have  come  before  her;  cases  in 
which  she  may  have  witnessed  various  shades 
of  better  feeling — have  known  of  more  or 
less  extenuating  circumstances — have  been 
more  or  less  convinced  of  the  evil  consequences 
of  unmitigated  exclusion  and  severity.  Now, 
if  one  who  has  received  a  strong  impression  on 


these  points  be,  like  Mrs.  Gaskell,  prompt  to 
clothe  her  thoughts  in  language,  to  tell  oat 
her  feelings  (because  nothing  seems  to  her  so 
directly  to  the  purpose)  in  the  form  of  h  tale^ 
she  does  no  more  than  give  simple  utterance 
to  her  own  aspect  of  a  truth — she  does  not 
exclude  other  views,  other  sides  of  a  question 
— she  merely  presents  one  real  living  picture, 
which  she  justly  thinks  the  world,  in  its 
great  purity  and  wisdom,  may,  if  it  is  true  to 
nature^be  the  better  for  knowing.  A  strong 
conviction  of  the  evil  of  putting  aside  the 
once  frail,  as  beings  who  can  scarcely  be 
named  without  danger  of  contamination — a 
certainty  that  this  swells  the  number  of  sin- 
ners, and  tends  to  corrupt  society  more  and 
more — is  the  one  idea  present  to  her  mind,  and 
under  it  she  writes.  That  some,  and  those 
among  very  true  lovers  of  their  kind — very 
excellent,  admirable  people,  by  no  means 
overstrained  in  their  general  views  of  moral 
questions — should  recoil  from  both  the  sub- 
ject and  Mrs..  GaskelKs  way  of  treating  it, 
does  not  surprise  us ;  but  we  think  their  views 
somewhat  narrow  and  oppressive. 

There  is  another  part  of  the  subject  which 
is  very  painful :  from  it,  however,  we  may  not 
shrink;  and,  happily,  there  are  good  and 
strong  men  who  allow  the  injustice  of  merely 
punishing  the  delinquents  of  one  sex,  how- 
ever repentant,  however  desirous  of  return, 
with  perpetual  exclusion — ^while  not  the  be- 
trayer only,  but  the  actual  deserter  of  the 
betrayed  woman  is  scarcely  less  welcomed  by 
society  after  than  be/ore  his  ofience.  Here 
again  then  Mrs.  Gaskell  has  strongly  felt  a 
deep  and  painful  truth,  and  has  written  under 
its  influence.  * 

This  is  the  sum  of  the  whole :  the  tale  tells 
by  implication  the  author's  views  of  the  evil 
of  closing  summarily  the  doors  of  mercy  and 
hope ;  it  points  out  the  danger  of  driving 
merciful  people  into  falsehoods,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  the  author  shows,  with  all  her 
might,  the  short-sighted,  confusing,  evil  nature 
of  all  such  expedients — how  they  detract 
from  the  merit  of  a  generous  act,  and  by  fixing 
the  censor's  eye  upon  the  means,  steal  away 
for  a  time  sympatny  with  the  end.  As  for 
the  execution  of  the  work,  nothing  really  can 
be  more  beautiful.  Mrs.  Gaskell  s  language 
is  the  perfection  of  easy,  simple,  womanly 
grace;  her  wit  is  irresistible.  Nevertheless, 
wc  do  not  think  her  always  alike  successful 
in  the  management  of  the  story.  We  think 
that  it  would  have  been  more  true  to  paint 
Ruth  as  both  more  alive  and  less  simple. 
She  ought  not  to  have  gone  astray  from  stu- 
pidity or  from  fear,  but  with  all  her  poetic 


138 


THE  LADY  NOVELISTS  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN. 


[Sept., 


love  of  beauty  should  have  been  less  passive, 
more  enkiodled — more  of  the  woman,  in  short; 
ensnared  from  within  as  well  as  from  without, 
though  still  possessed  of  a  young  heart's  de* 
licacy.  At  the  same  time  we  are  far  from 
insensible  to  Mrs.  Gaskell's  difficulty.  Had 
Buth  erred  from  passion  rather  than  from 
ignorance,  scenes  must  have  been  constructed 
in  accordance  with  that  view,  and  then  we 
should  have  had  the  usual  objectionable 
draggings  through  dangerous  mazes  of  senti- 
ment and  suffering,  which  a  pure  writer 
would  of  course  much  prefer  shunning  alto- 
gether. 

Passing  to  the  more  lengthy  process  of 
poor  Ruth's  misery  and  recovery,  if  we  were 
asked  to  point  out  that  part  of  the  succeeding 
^narrative  which  w'e  could  decidedly  wish  had 
been  otherwise  framed,  it  would  be  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  deception  on  Buth's  part, 
after  the  scene  on  the  sea-shore,  in  which  her 
seducer  reappears.  From  this  moment  must 
be  datid  her  own  independent  mental  and 
moral  efforts ;  till  then  she  has  been  a  passive 
instrument  in  the  Bensons'  hands,  but  now  a 
new  life  is  breathed  into  her.  She  herself 
resists  temptation — she  herself  from  this  time 
takes  her  destiny  into  her  own  hands ;  and 
grrowing  out,  then  and  there,  with  that  new 
existence,  should  have  been  born,  we  think, 
an  abhorrence  of  the  lie,  and  a  determination 
to  have  the  truth  known  at  all  cost.  How 
the  story  might  have  beerf  told  it  is  not  for 
us  to  say  ;  we  have  faith  in  the  authoress,  in 
her  rich  resources  and  dramatic  powers,  and 
believe  she  would  have  wrought  out  her  con- 
clusions with  triumphant  power;  as  it  is, 
though  nothing  can  be  more  masterly  than 
'the  scene  on  the  actual  discovery  of  the  de- 
ception, the  character  of  Ruth  is  not  raised 
as  it  might  have  been  if  the  disclosure  had 
been  voluntary.  She  bears  the  treatment  she 
receives  nobly ;  but  one  cannot  forget  that  it 
is  a  compulsory  endurance,  however  accepted 
and  improved. 

It  is  impossible  to  notice  all  the  opposing 
opinions  we  have  heard  and  read  on  other 
parts  of  the  narrative — we  shall  merely  ad- 
vert to  one.  It  has  been  gravely  said  that 
Buth  should  not  have  rejected  her  seducer's 
late  and  desperate  offer  of  marriage.  From 
that  opinion  we  give  our  unqualified  dissent ; 
no  stick  woman,  we  think,  could  ever  have 
accompanied  W4ih  a  man  to  the  altar,  there 
to  plight  her  solemn  vows  before  God  and 
man. 

Much  exception  has  been  taken  to  the 
characters  of  both  Benson  and  Bradshaw.  We 
have  little  sympathy  in  the  ordinary  objec- 


tions made  to  either  of  them.    They  are  fine 
studies,  and  deserve  most  careful  examina- 
tion.    Thurston  Benson  is  a  man  of  whom 
many  good  people  say  that  it  is  nearly  im- 
possible such  a  one  could  have  been  a  party 
ence  on  Others  have  early  been  nourished  in 
to  deceit.     They  cannot  surely  have  taken 
into  account  all  the  antecedents.     He  ap- 
pears at  no    part  of  his   career  to   have 
been  a  strong,  well-exercised  man.     With 
a   weak,    ailing    frame,   habits   of  depend - 
him,  and  a  studious,  contemplative,  poetical 
turn  of  mind  has  been  fed  by  his  way  of  life ; 
of  the  kindest  possible  nature,  the  sterner 
parts  of  religion  do  not  lay  hold  on   him ; 
mercy  and  tenderness  are  all  his  thought. 
The  harshness  he  has  both  witnessed  and 
experienced  in  Mr.  Bradshaw,  the  great  man 
of  his  mighty  small  world,  yet  further  drives 
him  to  the  side  of  loving- kindness.     Then, 
as  a  minister,  let  his  real  position  be  fairly 
stated.     Mr.  Benson  conducts  the  worship 
of  a  dissenting  congregation,  and  is  looked 
upon   with  respect  and   regard  ;  but,  as   is 
generally  more  or  less  the  case  among  sueh 
congregations,   with   great   familiarity   and 
considerable  contempt  for  his  judgment  in 
worldly  matters.     He  is  not,  except  by  the 
already  civilized  and  softened,  a  man  to  stand 
in  holy  awe  of.  He  is  far  more  what  we  might 
call  a  class-leader,  than  an  appointed,  or- 
dained minister  of  God's  word.     Such  a  man, 
so  placed,  if  he  has  extraordinary  giftp,  may 
awaken  a  wide  and  strong  interest ;  his  peo- 
ple may  be  proud  of  him.     He  is  their  min- 
ister— their  Mr.  Benson.     But,  take  an  or- 
dinary, average  case ;  suppose  too  that  111 
health  both  lessens  his  chance  of  a  change, 
and  sheds  languor  over  the  fram^ ;  this  min- 
ister will  grow  passive,  and  get  into  the  ha- 
bit of  being  tutored.     Porfrion^  of  his  inde- 
pendence will  be  lost — particularly  sister  or 
wife  will  be  infected  with  the  fear  of  espio- 
nnge,  and  this  will  react  on  himself.^    He 
grows  nervous  and  cowardly ;  not  probably 
in  the  matter  of  preaching  and  proclaiming 
his  religious  views,  for  there  the  perpetual 
habit  of  acquaintance  with  his  Bible,  the  ser- 
vice to  which  he  is  vowed,  the  immediate 
end  of  his  life — will  keep  him  awake  and 
alive,  and  we  do  not  think  his  error  would 
be  tiiat  of  faithlessness  to  his  convictions. 
On  the  contrary,  were  you  to  test  love  of 
truth  by  some  kinds  of  trial,  to  place  before 
him  a  false  object  of  worship,  a  creed  which 
his  conscience  disowns — though  martyrdom 
were  on  one  side  and  every  worldly  advan- 
tage on  the  other — you  would  find  him  firm 
and  upright.     But  should  he  meet  with  a 


185d.J 


THE  LADY  NOVELISTS  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN. 


1S9 


very  singular  call  for  the  exercise  of  his  bene- 
volence, and  thereupon  the  imnge  of  bis  con- 
gregational leader  arise  also  clothed  in  its 
stem  terrors,  what  will  be  in  all  probability 
his  course  ?  In  many  cases,  in  most  in  which 
the  character  has  been  what  we  have  por- 
trayed, we  suspect  that  the  result  would  be 
that  which  Mrs.  Gaskell  depicts.  Not  inev- 
itably, of  course ;  there  are  strong  and  pa* 
tient  men  who  would  have  dashed  away  the 
temptation  in  a  moment.  There  are  men 
who  would  instantly  have  felt  that ''  God  does 
not  need  our  sinful  acts,"  who  would  have 
taken  the  poor,  suffering,  fallen  thing  by  the 
hand,  and  given  her  shelter  and  aid  without 
the  smallest  sacrifice  of  truth.  But  they 
would  have  been  the  exceptions,  and  it  be- 
hoves us  to  say  that  their  venture  would 
have  been  tremendous,  their  faith  very  rare. 
Take  the  case  of  Ruth.  Benson  was  risking 
all  upon  a  hope.  He  had  never  known  her 
previous  to  her  fall.  Position,  friendship, 
pecuniary  means,  were  all  to  be  thrown  up 
for  the  possibility  of  doing  good  to  an  un- 
khown  and  erring  creature.  Another  sug- 
gestion would  come — ''  If  the  secret  remains 
my  own,  on  my  head  will  all  the  risk  fall ; 
if  Ruth  proves  unworthy,  my  trusting  heart 
only  will  feel  the  pain  of  disappointment." 
Moralists !  mortal  men  and  women !  which 
among  you  will  **  throw  the  first  stone  "  at 
this  failing  man  ? 

But  is  Benson's  error  varnished  over  in 
Mrs.  Gaskell's  story  ?  Surely  not  so.  To 
say  nothing  of  the  augmented  troubles  and 
tangles  which  arise  out  of  the  false  position 
in  which  he  has  placed  himself  and  Ruth,  the 
evil  is  shown  most  strongly  by  the  second 
and  far  more  inexcusable  transaction  into 
which  he  is  led.  This,  too,  alas  I  is  sadly 
life-like ;  and  here  the  power  of  the  narrator 
is  not  more  marked  than  the  depth  of  her 
moral  feeling.  It  is  a  noble  thing  to  carry 
the  sympathies  of  the  reader  from  the  win- 
ning, attractive  Benson  to  the  unamiable  and 
repulsive  Bradshaw,  simply  through  the 
force  of  right  and  truth — and  this  she  has 
done  most  triumphantly.  Who  is  there  that 
does  not  feel  Bradshaw's  indignation  to  be 
on  the  whole  righteous  ?  Who,  building  up 
in  his  own  mind  the  image  of  such  a  man, 
does  not  regard  the  wrong  done  him  by  Ben- 
son as  a  cruel  and  a  cowardly  deceit  ?  The 
power  of  exercising  his  own  judgment  on  a 
matter  when  its  exercise  was  peculiarly  his 
pride  and  delight,  to  be  thus  clandestinely 
taken  from  him,  was  an  injury  which  writes 
itself  upon  our  minds  more  strongly  than  any 


burst  of  passion,  however  coarse,  and  how- 
ever unjustifiable  when  applied  to  Ruth  her- 
self. 

Our  readers  will  see  that,  deeply  as  we  ad- 
mire this  beautiful  work,  we  do  not  think  it 
faultless,  and  are  by  no  means  inclined  to  un- 
derrate the  amount  of  difficulty  and  disappro- 
bation which  must  adhere  to  any  such  at- 
tempt as  Mrs.  GaskelKs.  Nevertheless,  we 
reiterate  our  opinion  that  often  where  it  has 
been  censured  it  has  been  least  understood. 
We  think  it  a  beautiful  poem,  full  of  lovely 
lights  and  refreshing  shades,  ministering  to 
the  best  part  of  our  nature,  rising  into  the  re- 
gion of  our  highest  contemplations.  Whether 
it  has  done  or  will  do  good — whether  any  ac- 
tors on  this  strange,  complicated  stage  of  life 
will  be  stimulated  to  look  into  cases  of  depar- 
ture from  the  strict  path  of  virtue,  with  a  view 
to  arrest  the  downward  course — whether  (still 
better  and  more  promising  course)  they  will 
be  led  to  study  the  causes  which  most  di- 
rectly lead  to  vice,  with  a  view  to  their  re- 
moval, we  cannot  and  probably  never  shall 
know.  That  it  is  not  an  ill-timed  work,  at 
least,  we  believe.  At  this  day  there  is  a 
strong  prevailing  disposition  put  forth,  not 
before  it  was  needed,  to  look  after  our  out- 
casts of  all  sorts,  trusting  that  the  ninety  and 
nine  will  hold  their  safe  ground  meanwhile. 
Something  there  may  be  of  sentimentality, 
something  of  the  love  of  excitement,  in  this ; 
but  let  no  one  neglect  or  throw  contempt  on 
the  impulse  which  leads  the  higher  classes — i 
high  whether  in  the  social  or  the  moral  scale 
— to  communicate  freely  with  the  lower.  It 
is  not  as  flatterers  of  the  people  that  we  say 
this,  anfl  heartily  agree  in  the  opinion  of 
those  who  think  that  our  literature  and  our 
morals  require  more  and  more  for  their  basis 
a  sound  increasing  knowledge  and  sympathy 
between  all  orders  of  men.  Mutual  com- 
prehensions—mutual understanding  of  each 
other,  how  inestimable  a  privilege  it  is !  This 
is  what  woman  can  especially  forward ;  and 
those  other  ministers  of  the  people — our 
physicians,  watching  over  their  bodily  health 
— our  clergymen,  laboring  after  their  spirit- 
uals— how  much  may  they  do  to  promote 
this  great  object  of  mutual  good  understand- 
ing 1  Scarcely  less  important  is  the  novelist's 
part.  Of  all  men,  the  novelist  should  not 
divide,  but  unite.  We  have  recently  had  a 
very  beautifu)  example  of  the  harmonizing 
process,  and  few  things,  we  think,  can  be 
more  profoundly  just  and  conciliatory  than 
some  of  the  truths  put  by  the  author  of 
"  My  Novel"  into  the  mouths  by  his  practi- 


140 


LITilRABY  MISGELLAIOES. 


cal  squires  and  time-taught  philosophers. 
Well  has  it  been  said  by  a  charming  writer 
and  wise  thinker  of  our  day,  **  Every  great 
poet  (or  novelist)  is  a  'double-natured  man/ 
He  is  not  one-sided ;  can  see  the  truth  which 
.  lies  at  the  root  of  error ;  can  blame  evil,  with- 
out hysterically  raving  against  every  doer  of 
it;  distinguishes  between  frailty  and  villany; 
judges  leniently,  because  by  sympathy  he  can 
look  on  faults  as  they  appear  to  those  who 
committed  them — judges  justly,  because,  so 
far  as  he  is  an  artist,  he  can  regard  the  feel- 
ing with  which  he  sympathizes  from  without ; 
in  a  double  way  realizing  it,  but  not  surren- 


[Sept., 

I  dered  to  it."^  Be  such  forever  the  spint  of 
our  English  fictions !  Vivid,  life-like,  yet 
large  and  humanizing;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  more  execrable  aim  can  hardly  be 
than  his  who  calls  up  the  spirits  of  discontent, 
insurbordination,  and  revenge,  while  affecting 
to  recreate  the  tired  mind.  But  we  cannot 
enter  upon  this  chapter  of  perversions.  From 
all  participation  in  such  may  Heaven  keep 
women,  and  especially  the  women  of  Eng- 
land ! 

•  Rev.  F.  "W.  RobertBOD,  Influenoee  of  Poetry; 
Two  lectures  delivered  at  Brighton.  Hamilton 
and  AdamB. 


•««• 


"•♦■ 


LITERARY  MISCELLANIES. 


Thk  principal  iflsnes  of  the  Preae,  at  home  and 
abroad,  are  noticed  in  the  foUowing  list,  with  indi- 
cations of  the  opinions  pronoonoed  of  them  by  the 
leading  literaiy  joumalB : 

Mr.  Ruskin's  new  volume  of  the  8tone»  of  Yenicey 
entitled  the  Sea  Stories,  elicits  general  praise.  The 
lAierary  Gazette  Bays :  "  It  is  not  often,  in  these 
days  of  rapid  action  and  superficial  thought^  that 
we  are  called  upon  to  notice  books  which  embody 
the  fruits  of  such  long  and  earnest  study  as  those 
of  Mr.  RuBkin.  He  writes  at  all  times  with  the 
force  of  earnest  conviction,  and  the  ardor  of  a 
stroDff  but  tempered  'imagination  gives  dignity  and 
relietto  a  style  of  unusual  richness  and  brilliancy. 
In  the  volume  before  us  we  have  the  results  of 
years  of  deep  and  passionate  study  of  Venice,  with 
all  its  marvels  in  history,  in  architecture,  and  in 
art,  on  which  the  author's  mind  has  brooded  until 
all  the  past  has  become  vivified  anew,  and  the 
stones  of  the  wondrous  City  of  the  Sea  have  be- 
come eloquent  of  the  master  minds  under  whose 
direction  they  rose  out  of  the  plashing  waters  of 
the  Adriatic  His  descriptions  are  the  perfection 
of  word  painting,  and  there  is  this  additional 
charm  in  them,  that  the  intellect  and  heart  are 
sure  to  be  gratified,  as  we  follow  them,  by  pro- 
found thoughts  and  noble  veins  of  sentiment.''  llie 
Spectator  thinks  that  "  Mr.  Ruskin,  by  this  second 
instalment  of  his  important  labors,  adds  to  his  re- 
putation as  a  vigorous  and  original  critic,  a  high- 
toned  man,  and  a  writer  of  the  first  order.  His 
exposition  continues  lucid,  his  eloquence  earnest 
and  dienified,  his  description  pictorial  and  highly 
wrought"  The  Atfieneeunif  on  the  other  hand, 
pronounces  it, — "  As  a  rhapsody,  it  is  ^charming, — 
though  as  a  piece  of  reasonable  teaching,  it  is  any- 
thing rather  than  impeccable." 

Classic  and  Historic  Portraitsw  By  James  Bruce. 
2  vols.     '*  Instead  of  meeting,"  says  the  Athetueum, 


"  with  a  mere  catalogue,  filled  with  the  well-known 
names  and  well-worn  anecdotes,  yet  wanting  in 
color,  novelty,  and  interest^  we  find  in  these  pages 
the  liberal  outpourings  of  a  ripe  scholarship,  uie 
results  of  wide  and  various  reading,  given  in  a 
style  and  manner  at  once  pleasant^  goBsippy>  and 
picturesque.  Mr.  Bruce  does  not  appear  to  be  the 
man  to  tell  old  stories,  or  take  respectable  tradi- 
tions on  trust  On  almost  every  subject  he  con- 
trives to  say  something  new, — to  bring  in  fresh 
illustrations^  or  to  correct  some  ancient  error." 

Mount  Lebanon.  A  Ten  Tears'  Residence,  from 
1842  to  1852.  By  Colonel  Churchill,  Staff  Officer 
on  the  British  Expedition  to  Syria.  The  Literary 
Gazette  esteems  this  *'  the  fullest  and  best  account 
that  has  yet  appeared  of  the  mountain  district  of 
Lebanon." 

.  Ten  Months  among  the  Tents  of  the  Tuski.  By 
Lieut  W.  H.  Hooper.  The  Tuski  are  a  tribe  of 
people  inhabiting  the  north-eastern  comer  of  Asia^ 
boroering  Behring's  Straits^  and  Lieut  Hooper  waa 
an  officer  of  the  Plover,  sent  out  in  1847  to  join 
the  Herald,  in  an  expedition  in  search  of  Sir  (John 
Franklin.  Having  reached  Behring's  Strait  with- 
out meeting  its  intended  consort,  the  Plover  win- 
tered in  Emma  Harbor,  at  the  southern  extremity 
of  this  comparatively  new  land,  and  ten  months 
were  spent  in  feasting,  dwelling,  trading  and 
sledging  among  its  sociable  and  interesting  natives. 
They  are  located  principally  along  the  coast  line  in 
tents  of  walrus  skin,  and  penetrate  into  the  interior 
only  so  fiu*  as  may  be  gained  by  an  occasienal  d<^ 
or  deersledge  excursion.  The  book,  though  not 
*  without  literary  defects,  is  readable  and  instmctive. 

Recollections  of  a  Three  Tears'  Residence  in 
China ;  including  Pere^nations  in  Spain,  Morocco, 
Egypt,  India,  Australia,  and  New  Zealand.  By 
W.  Tyrone  Power,     Thia^  the   Athenceum   pro- 


1853.] 


LTTEBABT  BflSOELLANIEa 


141 


noiiiio60  "oo«  of  the  most  lively  and  entertftining 
book*  of  trayel  whi<^  hns  lately  appeared.  Mr. 
Power  IB  in  the  CommiBflariat  Department,  and  in 
his  varied  aoenee  of  service  he  has  made  obaerva- 
tions  which  he  now  records  for  the  instruotion  and 
amnaement  of  the  public" 

Thackeraj'B  HumorUU  attracts  general  atten- 
tion, the  papers  speaking  well  of  it  The  Literary 
Gazette^  however,  thinks  it  not  up  to  the  measure 
of  the  subject^  or  the  author's  powers. 

Hie  Grimes  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg  against  its 
own  Liege  Sabjects.  Bj  F.  W.  Newman.  As  in 
everything  that  comes  from  Prof.  Newman's  pen, 
there  are  earnestness  of  tone,  weight  of  reflection, 
and  knowledge  of  the  subject  on  every  page  of  this 
terrible  little  volume.  Dynastic  stories  are  seldom 
such  as  the  minds  of  moral,  moderate  men  can  lin- 
ger on  with  pleasure: — ^Tudors  and  Stuarts^  Bour- 
bons and  Bonapartes^  Hohenstaufens  and  Roman- 
offs <^1  the  r^^  families  of  the  modem  world, 
have,  each  in  turn,  furnished  their  full  share  of 
crime,  intrigue,  and  treason  to  the  archives  of  hu- 
man history.  Prof  Newman  sees  this  clearlv: — 
**A11  great  empires^**  he  admits,  "have  been  born 
in  crime."  But  he  believes  that  in  "  the  lowest 
depths"  there  is  a  deeper  still, — ^that  among  great 
offenders  against  civilization  there  is  a  greatest; 
and  he  goes,  in  successive  chapters,  over  the  tale  of 
Hapsburg  rule  in  Castile — in  Valencia  and  Ara- 

§m — in  Bohemia — in  Protestant  Germany — ^in  the 
ereditary  States  of  Austria — ^in  the  Netherlands 
— ^in  Belgium — ^in  its  dealings  with  the  Protestants 
and  Moors  of  Spain — ^in  Austrian  Poland — ^in  Hun- 
gary— ^in  Servia  and  Croatia — in  Austrian  Italv, 
and  in  Sicily, — showing  in  a  few  pregnant  words, 
fortified  by  references  of  good  authority,  what  his- 
toiy  has  to  plead  at  its  calm  and  impartial  bar  against 
the  good  faith  of  this  imperial  race. — Athenceum, 

Essays  on  Various  Subjects.  By  Cardinal  Wiae- 
man.  After  noticing  the  polemical  character  of 
this  volume, — made  up  ot  contributions  to  the 
DvMin  Review, — the  reviewer  in  the  Athetumm 
thus  speaks  of  its  literary  merits :  "  Of  the  literary 
merits  of  these  volumes  we  must,  with  all  our  dis- 
sent from  much  that  the  author  esteems  more  essen- 
tial than  their  literary  merits,  speak  vexr  highly. 
They  display  a  mind  naturally  powerful,  trained 
to  a  subtle  and  laborious  use  of  itself,  stored  with 
very  various  learning,  and  cultured  to  a  high  de- 
gree of  taste  and  refinement.  There  is  much  strik- 
ing thought  in  the  volumes^  much  rare  and  exact 
scholarsMp,  much  eloquent  and  beautiful  writing, 
and  much  ingenious  and  pungent  criticism.  It 
must  be  allowed,  too,  that,  with  all  his  severity  as 
a  controversialist,  the  author  maintains  the  cour- 
tesy of  high  literary  breeding.  'On  the  whole,  on 
the  evidence  of  these  volumes  we  should  pronounce 
Oard'mal  Wiseman  to  be  a  man  of  powerful,  mas- 
culine mind,  great  learning,  fine  culture,  and  strong 
consistent  purpose, — but  wanting  in  the  crowning 
element  of  '  genius.'  which  places  a  man  among  the 
first-rate.  Even  in  the  department  of  speculation 
he  is  inferior  to  some  other  writers,  with  whom, 
in  certain  respects,  he  may  be  very  fitly  compared. 
He  always  thinks  strongly: — but  he  makes  no 
deep  incisions,  penetrating  to  the  marrow  of  what 
is  under  discussion, — and  there  is  always  a  very 
obvious  limit  to  the  range  of  his  generalizations.'* 

The  Story  of  Mont  Blana    By  Albert  Smith. 


This  is  called  by  the  Bxaminer  as  ".sincere  and 
pleasant  a  little  book  as  we  have  lately  looked 
into ;  and  it  will  not  surprise  us  if  its  popularity 
keep  pace  with  that  of  the  Exhibition  to  which 
it  may  be  called  a  supplement  The  style  is  un- 
affected, the  matter  is  neaUy  brought  together  and 
arranged,  and  the  impression  produced  is  that  of  a 
subject  treated  by  one  who  knows  it  well,  and  to 
whom  the  treatment  of  it  has  been  a  delight, — not 
a  task." 

Memoirs  and  Correspondence  of  Dr.  Henry 
Bathurst,  Lord  Bishop  of  Norwich.  By  his  daugh- 
ter, Mrs.  Thistlethwayte.  The  Literary  Gazette 
prefaces  its  review  of  this  work  by  the  following 
estimate  of  the  subject  of  it :  "  Few  English  bishops 
of  modern  times  have  left  a  name  more  justly  and 
more  universally  respected  than  Dr.  Henry  Bath- 
urst  of  Norwich.  Joseph  John  Gumey,  a  man  of 
kindred  spirit^  thus  spoke  of  his  venerable  friend 
and  neighbor  a  few  days  before  his  death :  '  I  can- 
not well  express  the  warm  regard  and  affection  I 
feel  for  him.  His  liberality  and  absence  of  preju- 
dice were  noble,  and  his  Christian  courtesy  delight* 
ful/  Such  was  the  Impression  made  by  Dr. 
BathursVs  character  on  all  with  whom  he  came  in 
contact  Those  who  least  liked  blm  had  no  fault 
to  find  but  one,  which  leaned  to  virtue's  side,  and 
which  in  a  bishop  of  the  last  generation  could  not 
fjftil  to  be  conspicuous" 

Mr.  Thomas  Lynch,  whose  "  Memorials  of  Theo- 
philus  Trinal,  Student,"  attracted  much  attention 
some  time  since,  has  published  a  course  of  lectures 
on  various  literary  subjects,  delivered  at  the  Royal 
Institution,  Manchester,  under  the  title  of  Etsayt 
on  tome  of  the  Forms  of  Literature,  The  titles  of 
the  lectures  are— 1.  Poetry ;  its  sources  and  influ- 
ences. 2.  Biography,  autobiography,  and  history. 
8.  Fictions  and  imaginative  prose.  4.  Criticism, 
and  writings  of  the  day.  There  is  much  ingenious 
and  philosophical  thought,  united  with  good  and 
genial  feeling,  in  Mr.  Lynch's  essays. 

The  Evangelist  of  the  Desert :  a  Life  of  Claude 
Broussot,  from  Original  and  Authentic  Records. 
By  H.  S.  Baynee.  The  Claude  Brousson  whose 
story  is  here  to)d  was  an  advocate  of  the  provin- 
cial Parliament  of  Toulouse,  in  the  reign  oi  Louis 
the  Fourteenth ;  subsequently,  he  became  a  preach- 
er of  the  Reformed  Church  of  France,  and  ulti- 
mately a  martyr  to  the  doctrines  which  he  had 
embraced.  The  biography  is  carefully  and  ably 
executed.  Mr.  Baynes  has  had  access  to  manu- 
script and  other  documents  of  great  rarity  for  the 
purposes  of  his  work,  and  he  has  written  the  life 
of  Brousson  with  earnestness  of  feeling.  The  two 
volumes,  sequent  in  subject  as  thev  are  in  appear^ 
ance,  constitute  a  trustworthy  ana  popular  euide 
for  the  English  reader  to  the  secret  annals  of  the 
Protestant  Church  In  France: — one  of  the  most  ro- 
mantic, and  at  the  same  time  most  neglected  epi- 
sodes in  European  history. 

Celebrated  Jesuita  By  the  Rev.  W.  H.  Rule. 
"Mr.  Rule  has  produced  in  these  two  volumes," 
says  the  Athenceum,  "a  popular  and  acceptable 
contribution  to  the  library  of  Jesuit  story.  The 
work  contains  six  biographies, — ^those  of  St  Francis 
Xavier,  Diago  Laynei^  Henry  Gamett,  Cardinal 
Bellarmine,  John  Adam  Schall  (the  famous  Tarn- 
yo-vam),  and  Gabriel  Gruber.   Much  of  the  ground 


142 


UTBRABT  MISCELLANIES. 


[Sept, 


here  trodden  is  little  worn.  With  the  exeeption  of 
Xayier,  Bellarmine,  and  perhaps  Garnett;  little  ie 
popularly  known  in  England  of  these  men  or  tiieir 
doings.  The  story  of  Schall  and  his  astronomical 
mission  in  China  is  extremely  interesting: — and 
we  do  not  remember  any  other  aoooont  of  him  ac- 
cessible to  English  readers.  But  the  chief  interest 
for  present  readers  will  be  foond  in  the  last  chap- 
ter, neaded  'Gabriel  Graber.*  There  is,  to  most 
men,  a  mystery  in  this  secret  existence  of  the  order, 
which  Mr.  Rule's  account  of  *  Gabriel  Gruber,'  the 
visible  providence  of  the  'institution,'  will  help 
Tery  materially  to  dispel." 

Select  Letters  and  Remains  of  the  late  Rev.  W. 
H.  Hewitson.  Edited  by  the  Rev.  John  Baillie, 
of  Linlithgow.  A  memoir  of  Mr.  Hewitson  was 
recently  published  by  his  friend,  Mr.  Baillie,  to 
which  these  volumes  are  supplementary.  They 
contain  selections  from  his  correspondence,  and 
from  his  manuscript  papers.  The  selections  from 
the  sermons  and  the  tneological  notes,  and  the 
fragments  and  aphorisms,  are  very  interesting  and 
profitable  reading,  and  sustain  fully  the  hi^  im- 
pression of  the  aouteness  and  learning  as  well  as  the 
piety  of  the  author,  as  derived  from  the  memoir  of 
Ids  fife. 

Indications  of  the  Creator ;  or,  the  Natural  Evi- 
dences of  Final  Cause.  By  George  Taylor.  Origi- 
nally  published  by  C.  Scbibbtir,  New  York.  The 
AtheruBum  calls  it  "  the  best  American  book  on  the 
evidences  of  natural  religion  with  which  we  are 
acquainted.  With  science  in  its  various  depart- 
ments the  author  shows  himself  familiar,  and  he 
makes  judicious  application  of  his  knowledge  to  the 
illustration  of  theology.  The  work  is  divided  into 
five  parts,  in  which  the  Nebular  Hypothesis,  As- 
tronomy, Geolcgy,  Comparative  FhysioloK^,  and 
Physical  Geography,  are  severally  treated.  On 
geolo^  he  enters  into  most  details,  and  gives  a 
very  interesting  and  instructive  review  of  its  prin- 
ciples and  discoveries  in  conn<»ction  with  the  evi- 
dences of  design,  and  in  illustration  of  the  divine 
attributes  of  power,  wisdom,  and  goodnesa,  It  is  a 
well-argued  and  well-written  treatise,  equally  toi 
be  commended  for  its  scientific  information  ana  its 
literary  style." 

Mr.  Everett's  Address,  delivered  before  the  New 
York  Historical  Society,  with  an  introduction  by 
the  Hon.  Joseph  R.  Ingersoll,  has  been  published  in 
London,  and  it  is  thought  by  the  Oritie  to  give  "  a 
graphic  sketch  of  the  leading  points  of  American 
progress  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  recent  Euro- 
pean immigration. 

A  little  treatise  on  The  Body,  Mind  and  Spirit ; 
or,  the  Life  of  Nature,  of  Reason,  and  of  Heaven, 
describes  human  life  in  its  physical,  intellectual, 
and  spiritual  relations.  The  style  is  somewhat 
mystical,  but  there  are  curious  facts  and  ingenious 
and  intelligent  reflections  and  remarks  in  the 
work. 

Of  the  celebrated  Confessions  of  an  English 
Opium  Eater,  a  new  edition  appears.  We  have 
read  the  book  over  again  with  undiminished  zest^ 
and  feel  how  great  must  be  the  attractiveness  of 
the  style  and  subject  to  those  who  listen  for  the 
first  time  to  Mr.  De  Quincey*s  strangely  interesting 
confessions.  | 


An  Occasional  Discourse  on  the  Nimr  Qneetion 
has  been  republished,  in  which  Mr.  %iomas  Car- 
lyle  utten  some  characteristic  extravagances  on  the 
subject  of  slaverv.  The  Literary  Gazette  thinks  it 
**  difiicult  to  maae  out  whether  shrewdness  or  ab- 
surdity most  marks  the  discourse.  Amidst  what  in 
the  author's  own  words  may  be  called  '  dark,  ex- 
tensive moon-calves,  unnameable  abortions,  and 
wide-coiled  monstrosities,'  there  occur  some  strik- 
ing and  sensible  remarks,  well  formed  and  forcibly 
expresMd  thoughts  and  sentiments." 

History  of  the  French  Protestant  Refugees,  from 
the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  down  to  our 
own  daya  By  M  Ch.  Weis^  2  vola  This  im- 
portant work  IS  reviewed  at  length  in  J5laekwoo(L 
The  British  Quarterly  Review  says  of  it :  "  Among 
the  works  which  have  been  issued,  owing  to  the 
revived  interest  felt  for  their  religion  by  the  Pro- 
testants of  France,  this,  by  Mr.  Weiss,  may  be 
reckoned  among  the  most  important  and  the  most 
interesting.  Indeed,  these  volumes  are  full  oC  in- 
struction, and  frequently  possess  a  dramatic  inter- 
est. The  author  traces  the  men  whom  the  bigotiy 
of  Louis  XIV.  and  his  courtezans  drove  from  their 
hearth^  and  their  native  land,  into  the  several 
places  of  their  exile,  and  describes  the  establish- 
ment of  their  colonies  in  Germany,  in  England,  in 
Holland,  in  Switzerland,  in  America,  and  even  in 
Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Russia;  speaking  of  the 
edicts  of  the  governments  of  those  countries  in  their 
fisvor,  the  services  which  they  rendered  to  the  na- 
tions by  whom  they  were  welcomed,  as  much  in 
relation  to  politics  as  to  sericulture,  industry,  com- 
merce, literature,  and  religion;  and  showing  the 
extent  to  which  they  contributed  to  the  greatness 
the  riches,  and  the  liberties  of  those  lands ;  and, 
finally,  their  successive  fusion  with  the  nativei^  as 
well  as  the  actual  condition  of  their  descendants" 

Our  countryman,  Dr.  Coleman's  work.  Ancient 
Christianity  Exemplified  in  the  Private,  Domestic, 
Social,  and  Civil  Ufe  of  the  Primitive  Christiana,  is 
warmly  recommended  by  the  "British  Quarterly 
Review,  It  says:  "Our  brethren  of  the  United 
States  have  profited  more  by  German  industry  and 
learning  than  we  Englishmen.  We  have  men 
among  us  who  get  reputation  by  using  up  materials 
collected  by  the  toil  of  our  German  neignbors,  but 
the  class  is  more  limited  with  us  than  on  the  other 
side  the  Atlantic.  Mr.  Coleman  has  gone  to  the 
best  sources  of  information,  and  produced  a  work 
alike  instructive  and  reliable,  relating  to  a  subject 
with  which  every  intelligent  Christian,  and  espe- 
cially students  for  the  ministry,  ought  to  make 
themselves  familiar.  Besides  treating  of  all  sub- 
jects which  ordinarily  enter  into  the  general  class 
of  Christian  antiquities,  this  volume  contains  an 
account  of  the  rites  of  the  Armenian  Church,  also 
a  sketch  of  the  Nestorian  Church,  and  a  chapter  on 
the  Sacred  Seasons  of  the  New  England  Puritans^ 
together  with  a  detailed  index  of  authorities,  and 
index  of  councils^  a  chronological  index,  and  a  gen- 
eral index ;  the  whole  forming  a  complete  and  very 
useful  book." 

The  Maid  of  Florence ;  or,  NiccoI5  de'  I^pi.  By 
the  Marquis  Massimo  IVAzegUo.  Translated  from 
the  Italian  by  W.  Felgate^  M.  A.  This  historical 
romance  is  worthy  of  the  reputation  of  the  enlight- 
ened and  accomplished  statesman  by  whom  it  is 
written.    Oar  only  fear  is  that  the  work  is  too 


1858.] 


LTTERABT  lOBGELLAMBa 


148 


ciutomarj  anntial  Retarn  to  Parliament  about  the 
Library  of  th«  BritiBh  MoMum.  llie  estimated 
number  of  Tolumea  now  in  the  Library  is  510,110. 
Mr.  Panizzi's  New  General  or  Supplementary  Cata- 
logue (of  which  only  three  oopiee  exists  and  those  in 
MS.)  has  run  to  806  yolumes ! — containing  it  is  esti- 
mated, the  titles  of  185,000  yolumes  of  printed  books 

• 

Mr.  Huffh  Miller,  the  Geologist,  in  a  leading 
article  in  the  Witness  newspaper,  of  which  he  is 
editor,  has  written  an  able  and  ingenious  reply 
to  Mr.  Macaulay's  assertion,  in  his  late  Indian 
speech,  of  the  superiority  of  distinguished  uniyer- 
sity  men  for  the  practical  afihirs  of  life.  The  in- 
stances adduced  by  Mr.  Miller,  if  they  do  not  re- 
fute Mr.  Maoaulay's  statements^  at  least  show  how 
much  may  be  said  on  the  other  side  of  the  ques- 
tion. "  Two  boys  were  once  of  a  class  in  the 
•Edinburgh  Grammar  School, — John,  eyer  trim, 
precise,  and  dux ;  Walter,  eyer  sloyenly,  confused, 
and  dolt  In  due  time  John  became  naillie  John, 
of  Hunter  Square,  Edinburgh ;  and  Walter  became 
Sir  Walter  Scott  of  the  Universe."  "  Oliyer  Crom- 
well eot  but  indifferently  through  college;  John 
Churchill  spelt  but  badly,  even  a^rhe  had  beaten 
all  the  most  accomplished  soldiers  of  France ;  and 
Arthur  Wellesley  was  but  an  uninformed  and  va- 
cant young  lad  for  some  time  after  acquiring  his 
first  commission.'*  In  literature,  besides  Scott,  the 
instances  of  Goldsmith,  Cowper,  Dryden,  Swift, 
Chalmers,  Johnson,  and  others^  are  cited,  to  show 
that  excellence  is  often  attained  after  the  absence 
of  precocity.  Mr.  Miller's  own  case  is  one  in  point, 
where  highest  scientific  and  literary  eminence  has 
been  gained  without  juvenile  scholastic  distinctions. 
Mr.  Macaulay's  rhetorical  paradoxes  must^  there- 
fore, be  received  with  great  mistrust 

Thackeray  has  a  new  serial  in  preparation. 

Mr.  Samuel  Warren's  works  will  shortly  be  re- 
published in  a  cheap  form,  in  weekly  and  monthly 
parts,  commencing  with  the  Diary  of  a  Physician, 

Mr.  Prosper  Merim^e  has  been  named  by  the 
French  Emperor  a  member  of  the  Senate.  Tliis 
nomination  s^ves  him  a  salary  of  £1200  a  year.  M. 
Merim^e  is  favorably  known  in  modern  literature. 

His  Majesty  the  King  of  Hanover  has  conferred 
on  Mr.  S.  W.  Fullom,  the  author  of  The  Marvels  of 
Science,  and  their  Testimony  to  Holy  Writ  the 
Hanoverian  medal  of  the  Arts  and  Sciences^  to  mark 
his  approbation  of  that  work. — ^It  is  not  generally 
known  that  the  King  of  Hanover  exhibited  powers 
as  an  author  which  might  have  enabled  him  to  at- 
tain distinguished  eminence  in  literature,  had  not 
the  ordinary  and  most  urgent  motives  for  their  ex- 
ertions been  neutralized  or  excluded  by  his  exalted 
rank.  In  1889  his  Mnjesty,  then  Crown  Prince, 
published  anonymously  at  Hanover,  a  little  work 
m  German,  entitled,  Ideen  und  Betraehtungen  uber 
die  Eigenshaften  der  Music  (Ideas  and  Reflections 
ort  the  Properties  of  Music),  which  was  reviewed  in 
the  Quarterly  Review  for  September,  1840,  in  an 
article  beeinnine  thus :  "  This  litUe  work  is  the  well 
known,  although  not  openly  avowed,  production 
of  Prince  George  of  Hanover ;  and  it  is  with  un- 
feigned pleasure  that  we  refer  to  it^  as  incontesta- 
bly  establishing  his  daim  to  rank  as  the  most 
accomplished  amongst  contemporary  scions  of  roy- 
alty." 

Sir  Henry  Ellia  and  Mh  Panizzi  have  made  their  1     The  Great  Industrial  Exhibition  is  making  the 


philoeophical  to  be  popular.  With  historical  inei- 
dents  are  mingled  profound  reflections  and  politi- 
cal comments,  whicn  ordinary  novel  readers  will 
only  consider  hindrances  to  the  development  of  the 
story,  and  to  the  flow  of  the  narrative.  But  for 
intelligent  and  educated  readen  few  books  of  fic- 
tion of  such  ti  kind  are  provided,  and  they  will 
value  the  work  accordingly.  The  story  is  one  of 
the  time  of  the  famous  sieee  of  Florence,  when  the 
city  defended  itself,  unaided,  against  the  arms  of 
Clement  YIL  and  Charles  Y.  The  Emperor,  to 
give  effect  to  the  treaty  of  Barcelona^  concluded 
with  the  Pope,  wished  the  Florentines  to  submit  to 
the  Medici  Kiccolo  de'  Lapi,  the  father  of  the 
Maid  of  Florence,  the  son  of  a  citizen  who  had  died 
in  exile,  had  from  infancy  conceived  a  hatred  against 
the  Medici,  and  the  party  of  the  PalleschL  Hay- 
ing returned  to  Florence,  and  obtained  immense 
wealth,  he  was  one  of  the  chief  defences  of  the 
dty.  Round  the  family  of  Niccolo  the  principal 
events  and  characters  of  the  siege  are  grouped. 

New  Novel  of  Political  Life,  entitled  "  Charles 
Delmer,"  by  a  distinguished  writer,  is  pronounced 
by  the  Spectator  to  be  "a  remarkable  book,  ex- 
hibiting a  wide  acquaintance  with  the  biography 
and  personal  traits  of  public  men,  the  result  of 
considerable  thought  on  parties  and  politics.  Dis- 
raeli figures  favorably  as  Jacobi.  Lord  Palmerston, 
who  is  admirably  drawn  as  Lord  Tiverton.  Gra- 
ham, rather  harshly  painted,  as  Sir  John  Everard 
Grimstone.  Peel  is  not  disguised  at  all,  and  Lord 
John  Russell  scarcely." 

Correspondence  of  the  American  Revolution. 
Edited  by  Jared  Sparks.  4  vola  The  twelve  vol- 
umes of  the  Washington  Letters  are  necessarily  in- 
complete without  the  letters  ^which  replied  to  the 
questions  asked,  or  to  which  they  were  themselves 
repliesL  Hence  these  volumes.  We  do  not  see 
that  Mr.  Sparks,  once  committed  to  his  task,  had 
any  choice  in  the  matter ;  but  neither  can  it  be 
denied  UiiA  the  result  is  somewhat  formidable. 
Sixteen  ponderous  volumes  of  ponderous  letters — 
each  volume  containing  about  ^ve  hundred  and 
fifty  pages — are  enough  to  alarm  even  a  lover  of 
big  books.  Ihe  Atkenaum  says  of  this  work :  "A 
correspondence  so  extensive,  were  it  as  luminous 
as  it  is  voluminous,  could  scarcely  hope  to  obtain  a 
large  popular  acceptance.  Still  it  was  a  useful 
thing — a  necessary  thing  in  its  way — ^to  gather  at 
the  present  time,  while  papers  are  m  existence,  all 
the  aocumentary  and  authentic  memorials  of  the 
War  of  Independence.  The  days  of  Washington 
were  the  heroic  times  of  America.  Washington 
himself  is  the  hero  of  a  great  continent : — a  hero, 
all  of  whose  proportions  are  noble,  and  whose 
figure  grows  in  the  love  and  reverence  of  mankind 
with  every  passing  year.  With  the  sole  exception 
of  Napoleon,  he  is  the  most  conspicuous  personage 
in  modem  history : — and  he  has  the  vast  advan- 
tage over  his  Italian  rival  in  fame,  that  his  genius 
was  essentially  moral,  so  that  he  could  rule  himself 
as  well  as  he  could  sway  the  mind  and  direct  the 
energies  of  his  countrymen.  Of  such  a  man  the 
memorials  are  infinitely  precious.  They  concern 
not  only  the  country  whicn  he  served  by  his  genius^ 
but  the  world  to  which  he  left  the  example  of  his 
moderation  and  his  virtues." 

ITEMS. 


144 


LTTERART  MISOELLAKHa 


[Sept.,  1858.] 


tour  of  the  world.  The  J^i^nkfort  Jowmal  etiitei^ 
that  the  BaTarian  OoTemment  nas  reBoWed  on  the 
erection  of  an  edifice,  on  the  model  of  the  Hyde 
Park  Palace,  for  the  Zolyerein  exhibitioD,— «t  a  eort 
of  800,000  florins. 

It  IB  the  intention  of  the  PruaeiaD  Government 
to  hold  next  year  in  BerliD  a  general  Exhibition  of 
the  Arte  of  Germany.  The  plan  ia,  to  aasemble  the 
most  remarkable  works  and  producte  which  hare 
appjcared  within  the  laat  fiye  and  twenty  year^  a 
period  which  ^oee  back  to  the  reviral  of  German 
art.  The  yarions  German  States  will  shortly  be 
invited  to  co-operate. 

From  a  return  jnst  iasued  it  appears  that  there 
were  eleven  pensions  granted  between  the  20th  of 
June,  1852,  and  the  20th  of  June  last,  charged  upon 
the  civil  list^  amounting  to  £1200.  To  John  Kus- 
sell  Hind,  the  astronomer,  £200 ;  Gideon  Algernon 
Mantell,  the  geologist^  £100;  Caroline  Southey 
(widow  of  the  late  poet  Iaureat),£200 ;  Nancy  Tay- 
lor, (^idow  of  Colonel  Tavlor,  killed  at  Sobraon), 
£100 ;  Francis  Ronalds,  for  discoveries  in  electricity, 
Ac,  £76 ;  Charles  Richardson,  author,  £^6  ;  Louisa 
Stuart  Costello,  authoress,  £70 ;  Jane  Pugio,  wife 
of  R.  W.  Pugin,  architect,  £100;  Elizabeth  Hester 
Colby,  wife  of  Major-General  Colby,  £100 ;  Wm. 
Jerdan,  "  in  consideration  of  his  services  to  litera- 
tuVe  for  many  years,  and  his  distressed  circum- 
stances at  an  advanced  period  of  life,  £100;"  and 
Elizabeth  M.  Dunbar,  widow  of  the  late  Professor 
of  Greek  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  £75,  and 
her  three  daughters^  for  the  survivors  or  survivor 
of  them.     ' 

A  tribute  had  been  rendered  to  the  memory  of 
Dr.  MantcU,  in  a  memoir  read  by  a  McmlxH*  of  the 
Council  of  the  Clapham  Athcnsoum,  in  the  welfare  of 
which  institution.  Dr.  Mantell  took  an  active  inte- 
rest An  obituary  notice,  written  in  the  '  American 
Journal  of  Scieoce,-  by  Professor  Silliman,  is  ap- 
pended to  the  Clapham  memorial,  the  whole  pre- 
senting a  flattering  and  agreeable  portrait  of  Dr. 
Manteirs  personal  and  acientiflc  character. 

Mr.  Charles  Bloomfield,  eldest  son  of  the  author 
of  '  The  Farmer-fl  Boy,'  died  on  the  26th  inst  in  the 
fifty-flfth  year  of  his  age.  He  was  formerly  con- 
nected with  the  press,  but  the  last  fifteen  years  of 
his  life  were  passed  in  the  office  of  Messrs.  Weir  and 
Smith,  solicitors,  Basinghall  street. 

The  submarine  electro-telegraphic  communication 
between  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  has  at  length 
been  successfully  completed. 

An  interesting  pahcontologic  discovery  has  jnst 
been  made  at  Villefranche,  near  Lyons  in  France, 
in  the  execution  of  some  railway  works,  consisting 
of  the  remains  of  some  huge  antediluvian  animals. 
They  are  in  a  fair  state  of  preservation.  Amongst 
them  arc  a  tusk,  which  though  broken  is  about  two 
and  a  quarter  yards  in  length,  and  two  jaw-bones  of 
such  monstrous  dimensions,  that  it  is  said  to  have 
required  twelve  men  to  carry  them. 

GOSSIP. 

A  GRANDSON  of  William  Wilberforce  la  preparing 
a  book  of  travel  in  Brazil,  including  some  remarks 
on  slavery  there. 

Hurst  and  Blackett  have  In  the  press  MefMir$  of 


Dr,   Ahemethy^  toith    a    Ftfio    of  hi$    Writingt 
Lectures,  and  C/Uiracier,  by  George  Macilwain. 

Professor  Faraday's  explanation  of  the  mystery 
of  table-turning  has  been  translated  into  all  the 
newspapers  in  Paris,  and  has  excited  very  great 
attention. 

The  Saltan  has  conferred  the  Order  of  Med- 
Bchitshe  on  Rossini,*  as  a  reward  for  his  having 
composed  two  military  marches  for  Turkey. 

M.  Francis  Arago,  whose  death  has  been  more 
than  once  reported,  is  dangerously  ill  at  Pcrsignan, 
where  he  went  firom  the  baths  of  the  Pyrene^ 

The  Chair  of  Botany  at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes, 
vacant  by  the  death  of  M.  Ad.  de  Jussieu,  has  been 
abolished,  and  one  of  Palaeontology  has  been  sab- 
stituted,  to  which  M.  Alcide  d'Orbigny  has  been  ap- 
pointed. 

"  Between  the  11th  Deoember,  1851,  and  the  11th 
December,  1852,"  wrote  Alexandre  Dumas  a  few 
days  ago  to  the  editor  of  one  of  the  principal  jour- 
nals, **  I  have  written  a  work  in  five  volumes,  called 
Conseience  V Innocent ;  another  in  twelve  volumes, 
called  the  ComtcMe  de  Chamy  ;  another  in  six  vol- 
umes, called  the  Pasteur  d'Aahboum ;  another  in 
six  volumes,  called  leaojc  Laqueden;  another  in 
two  volumes,  called  Leone  Zeona  ;  and,  in  addition, 
eight  volumes  of  the  Memoirs  of  my  Life,  Adding  to 
these  about  a  volume  of  other  writings,  which  I  do 
not  take  the  trouble  to  recapitulate,  1  arrive  at  a 
total  of  forty  volumes,  which  comprise  something 
like  120,000  lines  or  8,000,000  letters.  Such  has 
been  my  year's  work." 

The  young  men  of  Edinburgh  have  petitioned 
Parliament  in  favor  of  an  extension  of  Mr.  Ewart's 
Act  to  that  country. 

The  select  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons 
recommend  that  free  libraries,  mechanics'  institn- 
tions,  and  other  public  institutions  be  supplied  with 
Parliamentary  papers.  The  committee  recom- 
mend that  a  committee  be  appointed  at  the  com- 
mencement of  each  session  to  consider  all  applica- 
tions made  for  Parliamentary  papers. 

The  House  of  Commons  Committee  on  Decimal 
Coinage  have  concluded  their  inquiries :  and  it  is 
reported  that  the  members  are  of  one  opinion  in  fa- 
vor of  its  adoption,— tfUcing  the^pound  as  integer, 
divisible  into  a  thousand  mills  or  farthings. 

A  case  of  si)ecimens  of  Swedish  porphyry  fVom  the 
royal  quarries  at  Elfdal  has  arrived  m  England. 
These  specimens  include  fifteen  distinct  varieties, 
some  of^grcat  beauty.  They  have  been  presented 
to  the  Crystal  Palace  Company  by  Mr.  Chsffles 
Henry  Edwards. 

Dr.  Macbride,  Principal  of  Magdalene  Hall,  has 
offered  an  exhibition  of  20^  per  annum,  for  three 
years'  residence,  to  any  body  educated  at  the  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon  Grammar  School,  whom  the  master 
may  select  as  fittest  for  the  University.  Lord  Dela- 
warr  and  Mr*  J.  R.  West  have  each  given  100/.  to- 
wards the  fund,  and  other  sums  have  been  subscribed 
to  the  amount  of  425/. 

The  Geographical  Society  of  Berlin,  in  its  last 
sitting,  was  informed  that  the  Russian  Government 
intends  to  measure  the  degrees  of  the  meridian  from 
Cape  North  (latitude  72 p  north)  to  the  mouths  of 
the  Danube  (latitude  45 1^  north.) 


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faces  to  tbe  coiiecieu  euitiua  of  bU  wuia.^ , 
secondly,  a  number  of  letters,  already  above 

^3femoir9j  Journal,  and  Oorr€$pandence  of 
ThomoM  Moore.  Edited  by  the  Right  Honorabfe 
Lord  John  Roiiel],  HP.  Yoli.  L,  U^  III,  and  lY. 
186S. 

TOL.  XXX,    NO.  U 


KJH   1018  JLiord  tfuiiu  w«/»w. .  ^» :'. 

reader  will  not  wonder  that  he  has  thought 
it  right  to  comply  with  the  request  of  his 
deceased  friend.'  To  the  general  proposi- 
tion we  cheerfully  assent,  but  the  manner 
in  which  the  task  has  been  executed  is  a 

10 


^r--H^Puy.'-'^lLy^^^..''->'>^  ■■ 


ECLECTIC  MAGAZINE 


FOREIGN  LITERATDRE,  SCIENCE,  AND  ART. 


OCTOBER,   1853. 


HEH0IR8  OF  THOMAS   MOOEE.* 


IThu  powufal  utisi*,  inl«nM  (a  unibiUt*  llw  pomlu 
Wkif  pal  ind  FinlBB,  !•  fnm  Iha  pin  of  tli*  Tatj  C«T- 
fkui,  I.  HUB*  Cnkn,  ud  U  in  kia  Uu  Uyl*.— £d  J 

Wb  have  given  onr  general  views  of  Mr. 
Moore's  literary  character,  as  well  as  of 
Hime  of  bis  principal  productions,  so  fully 
on  former  occatiions  that,  on  tlie  preaent,  we 
shall  confine  our  obseirationB  to  the  tpeciat 
contenls  of  the  volumes  before  us.  This  is 
a  task  which  we  wisb  we  could  have  spared 
Dureelves ;  for  we  bave  but  Ultle  to  com- 
mend either  in  the  substance  or  the  cir- 
cumstances of  Che  publication — which  has 
not  merely  disappointed  the  general  reader, 
bnt  must,  we  believe,  have  given  pain  to 
every  one  who  has  any  regard  for  the  me- 
mory of  poor  Moore. 

The  book  presents  os  with,  first,  an  au- 
tobiographical sketch  of  Moore's  earlier  life, 
of  wnion  a  good  deal  seems  to  ns  very 
apocryphal,  and  what  is  of  any  vHlue  has 
been  already  before  the  pnbtic  in  the  pre- 
faces to  the  collected  edition  of  his  works  ; 
secondly,  ■  number  of  letters,  already  above 


'MtmoiTt,     JouTttai,    and   Oomlpondmet    of 


ms. 
VOL.  zxx  va  IL 


400,  chiefly  to  his  mother,  and  Mr.  Power 
the  publisher  of  his  "Melodies;"  thirdly — 
but  much  the  larger  and  more  important 
section,  occupying  naif  the  second  and  tha 
whole  of  the  thinl  and  fourth  volumes — ■ 
Diary — beginning  in  August,  1818 — and 
thenceforward  most  assiduously  and  minute- 
ly kept — of  not  merely  the  incidents  of  bis 
literary  and  domestic  life,  hut  the  sayings 
and  doings  of  the  extensive  and  variegated 
society  in  which  he  moved. 

These  materials  he  bequeathed  under  the 
following  clause  of  his  will  (dated  1828)  : — 

"  [  lion  confide  to  my  valued  friend  Lord  John 
Kuesell  (having  tAtained  bis  kind  promise  U 
undertake  tbis  service  for  me'}  the  task  of  look> 
ing  over  whatever  papers,  letters,  or  jotfrnsls  I 
may  leave  beliind  me,  for  the  puroose  of  form- 
ing from  them  some  kind  of  pubiicatioD,  whe- 
ther in  the  shape  of  memoirs  or  otherwise,  which 
may  aSbnl  the  mesna  of  making  some  provision 
for  my  wife  sod  family." — Pr^ace,  p.  i. 

On  this  Lord  John  observes  "that  the 
reader  will  not  wonder  that  he  has  thought 
it  right  to  comply  with  the  request  of  his 
decrased  friend.'  To  the  general  propoai- 
tiou  we  cheerfully  assent,  but  the  manner 
in  which   the  tasK  has  been  executed  is  a 


146 


MEHOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOOR& 


[Oct. 


▼ery  different  question.  Every  one  recol- 
lects his  friend  Sydney  Smith's  description 
of  his  Lordship's  readiness  to  undertake  any 
tbinjir  and  every  thing — to  build  St.  Paul's — 
cut  for  the  stone — or  command  the  Channel 
fleet."  We  cannot  guess  what  he  might 
have  been  as  an  architect,  an  anatomist,  or 
an  admiral,  but  he  is  assuredly  a  very  in- 
different  editor. 

His  position,  indeed,  is  altogether  a  strange 
one.  We  see  him  in  the  political  world  exe- 
cuting the  most  important  duties  without  an 
office,  and  in  his  literary  capacity  accepting 
a  very  important  office,  without  performing 
its  most  ordinary  duties.  He  is  also,  we  find, 
simultaneously  editing  the  correspondence  of  ^ 
Mr.  Fox.  Yet  it  evidently  never  once  occurs 
to  him,  that  one  who  has  so  many  irons  in 
the  fire  runs  a^  risk  of  burning  his  fingers. 

In  the  first  place,  the  volumes  are — what 
is  called — edited  in  the  most  slovenly  and 
perfunctory  style.    Por  instance: — 

At  the  close  of  the  letters  we  find  one  of 
the  few,  and  generally  very  idle  notes  that 
he  condescends  to  give  us : — 

•*  %♦  These  letters  are,  many  of  them-^-most 
of  them,  I  may  say — without  a  full  date,  and  I 
fear  several  have  been  wrongly  placed. — J.JR." 
— i.  141. 


**  FearT  any  one  who  had  read  the  Let- 
ters must  have  been  eure  of  it ;  and  why  is 
it  so  ?  What  is  the  use  of  an  editor  but  to 
look  after  such  things?  and,  in  this  case,  we 
really  believe  that  it  might  have  been  done 
by  an  hour's  attentive  perusal  and  compari- 
son with  the  other  contents  of  the  volumes. 
But  the  materials  are  not  only  negligently 
misplaced — but,  if  Lord  John  had,  as  he  in- 
timates, a  power  of  selection,  in  many  in- 
stances very  ill  chosen.  We  by  no  means 
quarrel  with  his  having  given  us  much  that 
may  appear  trifling — ^it  was  incident  to  the 
nature  of  the  task  he  had  undertaken — but 
we  smile  at  the  pompous  solemnity  with 
which  he  endeavors  to  excuse  such  an  un- 
sifted accumulation  of  littleness  and  nothings 
as  we  have  now  before  us. 

<*  Mr.  Moore,''  his  Lordship  says,  **  was  one  of 
those  men  whose  genius  was  to  remarkable  that 
the  world  ou^ht  to  be  aetruainted  with  the  daily 
current  of  his  life  and  toe  lesser  traits  of  his 
character." — ^p.  vi. 

To  this  we  may  make  the  old  reply,  Je  n'en 
vois  pai  la  nieemti.  Mr.  Moore  was  a  live- 
ly and  a  popular  writer,  and  a  most  agreea- 
ble eompaoioD,  and  well  entitled  to  a  spe* 
eial  biography,  but  we  never  imagined  that 


the  recesses  of  his  private  life  were  to  afford 
anything  so  emphatically  important  to  man- 
kind. 

Admitting,  however,  as  we  are  quite  will- 
ing to  do,  the  amusement  and  even  the  in- 
struction to  be  derived  from  a  Dutch  delinea- 
tion of  the  smaller  details  of  social  life,  it  is 
essential  even  to  that  petty  pleasure  to  know 
something  about  the  company  into  which 
we  are  thus  introduced.  Of  the  many  hun- 
dred persons  who  are  more  or  less  promi- 
nent actors  in  the  long  melo-dmme  of  Moore's 
life,  there  are  not  above  a  couple  of  dozen 
that  would  not  require  a  nomenclator,  while 
the  editor  has  not  thought  fit  to  fix  the  iden- 
tity of  any  one,  and  leaves  us  a  mere  mob  of 
undistinguishable  names.  There  are,  or  seem 
to  be,  five  or  six  different  tribes  of  Moores, 
three  or  four  septs  of  NugentB,  four 
or  five  clans  of  Douglasses,  Smiths  in  their 
usual  abundance,  and  lonff  strings  of ''  Brown 
— Jones — ^Robinson,"  and  the  like,  but  not  a 
hint  from  the  writer  or  the  editor  which  of 
the  Browns,  Joneses,  or  Robinsons  is  the 
party  concerned.  Lord  John,  we  admit, 
may  say  that  in  the  great  majority  of  cases 
we  should  probably  think  any  explanation 
that  could  be  given  very  barren  and  unprofit- 
able. Just  so :  but  what  b  that  excuse  but 
a  proof  that  the  greater  part  of  the  work  is 
itself  unprofitable  and  barren ;  for  what  in- 
terest can  there  be  about  the  sayings  and 
doings  of  people  whose  personal  identity  ia 
not  even  worth  realizing  ? 

There  is  one  instance  of  this  neglect  or 
reserve  so  remarkable  and  so  unaccountable 
that  it  seems  to  throw  something  of  suspi- 
cion where  we  are  sure  Lord  John  could 
have  had  none — we  mean  the  announcement 
of  Moore's  marriage.  We  need  not  say  in 
what  a  variety  of  ways  such  an  event  influ* 
ences  any  man's  subsequent  life.  In  Moore's 
case  it  seems  to  have  been  singularly  impru- 
dent, and  if  not  clandestine,  at  least  very 
mysterious,  and  must  have  been  the  cause  of 
much  embarrassment,  and  in  spite  of  hb 
joyous  and  sanguine  temper,  of  constant 
anxiety.  Almost  every  page  of  the  Diary, 
and  many  pages  twice  or  thrice  over,  testify 
how  vividly,  how  ostentatiously  he  produces 
and  reproduces  the  happy  consequences  of 
this  alliance;  but  those  who  will  take  the 
trouble  of  looking  closer  will  see  that  he 
seems  to  have  been  in  a  constant  fidget  about 
the  various  shades  of  coolness  or  coun te- 
rn nee  with  which  his  choice  was  received, 
and  that  his  feelings  towards  individuals 
were  evklently  sweetened  or  soured  accord* 
ing  to  this  special  influence;  and  yet  all. that 


1853.] 


MSMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOORR. 


14? 


either  he  or  his  editor  tells  us  on  this  affair 
which  predominates  over  every  hour  of  his 
after  life  is  this — 

— At  page  252  of  the  first  volume,  under 
date  *^  May,  1811,"  he  writes  to  his  mother 
that  he  is  to  meet  at  breakfast  at  Lady  Don- 
egal's* and  at  dinner  at  Mr.  Rogers's, 

*'  A  person  whom  yon  little  dream  of,  but  whom 
I  Bbatl  introduce  to  your  notice  next  week." 

To  which  the  editor  appends  this  note : — 

**  Mr.  Moore  was  married  to  MIes  Dyke  on 
March  22,  1811,  at  St.  Martin's  Church  in  Lon- 
don." 

Surely  after  Lord  John's  dissertation  on 
the  necessity  of  the  world's  being  made  ac- 
quainted with  the  minute  details  of  Mr. 
Moore's  life,  it  is  very  strange  to  find  him 
thus  slurring  over  the  chief  personage  and 
topic  of  all.  We  throw  into  a  foot  note  a 
few  words  on  this  subject  (chiefiy  collected 
from  the  Diary)  which  seem  necessary  to 
supply  the  editor's  injudicious  omission,  and 
to  explain  Moore's  real  position.  We  do  so 
the  more  willingly,  lest  our  silence,  added  to 
that  of  Lord  John,  should  lead  to  a  suspi- 
cion that  any  thing  should  be  truly  said  derog- 
atory in  the  slightest  degree  from  the  merits 
of  "  this  excellent  person,"  as  she  is,  no 
doubt  justly,  described  by  Lord  John,  and 
by  every  one  else  that  we  have  ever  heard 
speak  of  her.f 

*  Barbara,  the  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Godfrey, 
became  in  1790,  the  third  wife  of  the  first  Marquis 


„  I  always  Bpeaki 

them  as  the  DonegiUs.  They  were  amongst  the 
earliest,  kindest^  and  most  sensible  of  Moore's 
friends;  and  a  few  of  Miss  Mary  Godfrey's  letters 
to  him,  full  of  lively  talk  and  excellent  advioe,  are 
certainly  the  beet  things  in  the  volumes  It  is  not 
stated,  and  we  very  much  doubt,  that  Lady  Done- 
gal knew  anything  of  Miss  Dyke  be/ore  the  mar^ 
riage,  but  she  immediately,  as  Moore  phrases  it, 
"took  her  by  the  hand."  Lady  Donegal  died  in 
1829.  Of  Mifls  Godfrey  we  regret  that  we  know 
nothing  bnt  her  half- dozen  agreeable  letters. 

f  Mr.  Dyke  was,  we  are  informed,  a  subaltern 
aetor  on  the  Irish  stage;  he  also  gave  lessons  in 
i^^«iwiigr  and  showed  some  artistic  talents  in  scene 
painting.  He  had  three  daughters ;  the  eldest 
married  a  Mr.  Duf^  also,  we  have  been  informed, 
on  the  stage,  and  the  youngest  Mr.  Murray,  of  the 
EdkibarBh  Theatre  [ ii.  208] ;  the  seoond,  EUzabetli, 
bora  in  1798,  was  the  wife  of  Moore.  They  were 
all  on  the  stage,  [I  804],  when  young  as  dancers, 
and  afterwards  as  actresses;  in  both  these  capaoitiee 
they  were  engaged  to  fill  the  female  parts  in  the 
AnuOeur  I%eatricals  of  Kilkenny  in  the  years  1809 
and  1810,  when  Moore^  then  one  <tf  the  pexfonnen 


But  besides  these  obvious  defects  of  Lord 
John's  editorial  system,  some  questions  of 
more  serious  importance  present  themselves. 
He  considers  it,  he  says  '*  clear,"  that 

**by  assigning  to  me  the  task  of  Mocking  over 
whatever  papers,  letters,  or  journals'  he  might 
leave  behind  him,  *for  the  purpose  of  forming 
from  them  some  kind  of  publication,  whether  in 
the  shape  of  memoirs  or  otherwise,'  he  meant  to 
leave  much  to  my  discretion.^^ — i.  ix. 

It  is  clear  Lord  John  could  not  rationallv 
have  accepted  the  duty  without  some  degree 
of  control — not,  however,  and  arbitrary,  but 
a  responsible  control. 

When  a  man  of  strong  party  feelings  like 
Lord  John  Kussell  has  an  unlimited  power 
over  a  miscellaneous  mass  of  papers,  written 
on  the  spur  of  every  transient  feeling  by  a 
partizan  of  his  own,  and  teeming  with  all  the 
political  partialities  and  personal  antipathies 
of  their  eomnum  habits  and  opinions,  it  would 
be  only  fair  to  tell  us  distinctly  at  the  outset, 
whether  he  makes  a  selection  or  whether  he 
prints  in  eztenso  the  whole  work  as  he  finds 
it ;  and  in  the  former  case  he  should  indicate 
by  blanks  or  asterisks  where  any  suppression 
occurs.  We  observe  that  Lord  John  in  a  few 
places  does  introduce,  in  the  exercise  of  his 
discretion,  blanks  and  asterisks.  This  would 
imply  that  he  has  made  no  other  suppressions 
— and,  if  so,  the  Diary  must  have  been,  on 
the  whole  singularly  inoflfensive,  and  a  dozen 
similar  suppressions  would  have  removed  the 
chief  blots  of  this  kind  that  we  have  heard 
complained  of;  but  here  a  recent  circum* 
stance  suggests  some  rather  puzzling  consid- 
erations. There  occurs  in  the  Diary  the  fol- 
lowing passage : — 

<*June  16,  1826.— Breakfasted  at  Roffers'e: 
Sidney  Smith  and  his  family,  Luttrell,  Lord  John 

^ Bi-n,    t^-      -  If    I  -  r-         -   -   T  -        I      J  11  - • ~ 

[and  it  is  said  a  very  good  one],  became  acquainted 
with  them,  and  enamoured  of  Miss  K  Dyke.  The 
courtship  commenced  at  Kilkenny  [iv.  108],  was 
continued  in  Dublin  [ib,  126],  but,  it  seems,  with- 
out the  knowledge  of  hia  familv,  as  his  mother,  we 
see,  did  not  hear  of  the  match  for  two  months  after 
it  had  taken  place,  and  then  as  being  with  "  one  she 
little  dreamed  of."  It  appears  that  these  ^oung 
persons  were  always  noder  the  care  of.  their  mo- 
ther, and  their  personal  characteVB  were  irreproach- 
able, "nie  Kilkennyplay-bills  supply  a  fact  thai 
should  be  noticed.  The  season  was  about  the  Oo- 
tober  of  each  year.  In  1 809,  Miss  £.  Dyke  appears 
constantly,  and  she  and  Moore  played  repeatedly 
Lady  Oodiva  and  Peeping  Tom  together.  In  1810, 
her  name  is  not  found  in  the  bilu^  and  her  sisters 
took  her  usual  parts.  We  conclude  that  Moore  had 
then  made  up  his  miad  to  the  matoh,  and  his  deU- 
ea^y  had  indaoed  the  lady  to  quit  the  stage. 


148 


IfEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORB. 


[Oct., 


[Raraell],  Sharpe,  &c., — hig^hW  amnsing.  Talked 
t»f  Sir  Robert  VVilson : — after  the  battle  of  Leipsic, 
to  the  gaining  of  which  he  was  instrumental. 
Lord  Castloreagh,  in  sending  over  to  Lord  Stewart 
the  public  document,  containing  the  order  for 
thanks  to  Wilson,  amons  others,  on  the  occasion, 
accompanied  it  with  a  private  one,  desiring  Lord 
Stewart  [now  Marquis  of  Londonderry]  to  avoid 
the  thanks  to  Wilson  as  much  as  he  could,  in  order 
not  to  give  a  triumph  to  his  party.  Lord  Stewart, 
hy  mistake,  showed  this  letter  instead  of  the  pub* 
lie  one,  to  Wilson,  who  has  had  the  forbearance 
never  to  tarn  it  against  the  Government  since." — 
iv.  291. 

This  very  naturally  produced  a  letter  from 
Lord  Londonderry  to  Lord  John,  denying 
the  whole  statement,  and  strongly  reproaching 
him  with  not  having  consulted  any  of  the  legi- 
timate and  accessible  sources  of  information 
which  weie  within  both  his  private  and  offi- 
cial reach,  and  which  would  have  shown  that 
the  story  was  a  scandalous  falsehood.  Lord 
John's  answer  was  prompt  and  gentleman- 
like:— 

**  Chetham  Place,  May  21,  1863. 

*'  Mr  Load— I  am  deeply  concerned  that  the 
passage  to  which  your  Lordship  alludes  should 
have  been  published  by  me. 

»<  My  first  impulse  on  readinsr  it  was  to  strike 
it  out,  both  as  extremely  improbable  in  itself  and 
as  injurious  to  the  memory  of  the  late  Jjord  Lon- 
donderry. [!.]  In  the  hurry  with  which  the  publi- 
cation was  conducted,  for  a  peculiar  purpose,  the 
passage  was  afterwards  overlooked,  1  shall,  how- 
ever, expunge  it  from  a  new  edition  which  is  now 
preparing.  The  anecdote  itself  I  had  entirely 
forgotten ;  nor  do  I  know  who  mentioned  it,  in 
the  vear  1825,  at  Mr.  Rogers's  breakfast-table. 

**  It  is  certainly  inconsistent  with  the  bold  and 
open  character  of  the  late  Lord  Londonderry. 

"  Your  Lordship's  denial  that  there  was  anv 
foundation  for  it  is  enough  to  prove  its  falsehood, 
nor  do  I  require  for  that  purpose  the  additional 
testimony  of  Mr. .  Bidwell.  The  story  must  be 
placed  among  those  calumnies  which  noat  in  the 
kile  gossip  of  the  day,  and  I  must  repeat  to  your 
Loroship  my  regret  that  I  should  have  been  in* 
strumcDtal  in  reviving  it. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  ^c, 

*'J.  Russell. 

*'The  Marquis  of  Londonderry." 

This  candid  and  graceful  explanation  is,  of 
coarse,  quite  satisfactory  as  to  the  facts  of 
the  Castlereagh  and  Wilson  case,  but  it  is 
rather  the  reverse  on  the  point  which  we  are 
discussing,  and  which  is  of  more  extensive 
consequence.  In  the  first  place,  the  propos- 
ed iupfpression  in  a  second  edition  could  go 
but  a  short  way  in  remedying  the  specific 
mischief — since,  as  we  presume,  the  sale  of 
the  editio  prineeps  has  been  extensive ;— -bat 


besides,  we  think  that  other  parties  calumni- 
ated in  Moore'a  Diary  have  an  interest  in 
having  this  flagrant  proof  of  its  inaccuracy 
kept  on  record.  Lorct  John^s  reparation  to 
Lord  Londonderry  should  be,  not  the  sup- 
pression of  the  passage,  but  the  addition  of 
a  note  to  correct  it.  But  we  must  further, 
and  with  a  more  general  view,  observe  that 
Lord  John's  statement  that,  when  he  first 
read  it,  "  his  impulse  toas  to  strike  it  ouf* — 
though  it  was  "afterwards  overlooked" — 
admits  that  he  exercised  the  power  of  ex- 
punging passages  which  he  thought  "  injuri- 
ous" or  even  •'  improbable" — a  vast  power 
in  partizan  hands,  and  which  substitutes 
Lord  John  Russell's  private  judgment  for 
Mr.  Moore's  evidence.  It  further  associates 
Lord  John  in  the  responsibility  of  all  the 
"injurious"  or  "improbable  gossip"  which 
these  volumes  actually  contain — it  proves 
the  culpable  heedlessness  with  which  be 
deals  with  his  own  editorial  duties  and  with 
other  folks'  feelings-— and  it  confesses  that 
the  Diary  issued  to  the  world  under  his 
auspices  was  in  fact  a  receptacle  for  "calum- 
nies which  floated  in  the  idle  gossip  of  the 
day."  These  are  serious  admissions,  nor  is 
their  importance  in  any  degree  diminished 
by  his  attempting  to  lay  a  share  of  the  blame 
on  the  "  hurry  with  which,  for  a  particular 
purpose,"  the  publication  was  conducted. 
He  might  have  been  in  some  "hurry"  to 
conclude  the  bargain  with  the  bookseller; 
— there  might  even  be  some  hurry  in  ar- 
ranging and  getting  out  the  first  livraison  of 
the  work ;  but  this  is  in  the  second  batch^ 
which  was  a  long  time  delayed — and  would 
have  equally,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  answered 
its  ^'  peculiar  purpose"  if  it  had  been  delayed 
till  the  whole  was  completed.  We  are, 
however,  glad  that  things  have  turned  out  as 
they  have.  We  are  glad  that  Lord  John 
had  not  time  to  expunge  the  passage,  for  it 
now  helps  to  characterize  the  Diary,  and  it 
might  be  produced  by  and  by,  when  Lord 
Londonderry  would  not  be  alive  to  contra- 
dict it,  and  the  memories  of  his  brother  and 
himself  would  have  remained  stigmatised  to 
posterity  for  a  most  base  fraud. 

But,  though  we  think  that  Lord  John  Ros- 
sell's  editorial  proceedings  are  very  question- 
able, we  must  on  the  other  hand  admit — 
supposing  that  there  have  been  no  serious 
deviations  from  the  original  materials — that 
a  more  diligent  editor  could  not  have  reme- 
died in  any  essential  degree  the  innate  de- 
fects of  the  book.  So  voluminous  a  poly- 
glot of  gossip — such  a  gigantic  distention 
of  nothings  and  next  to  nothings— cannot, 


1863.] 


MEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


149 


we  believe,  be  paralleled,  even  in  its  present 
slate ;  and  what  may  it  not  grow  to?  The 
present  work  occupies  bat  seven  jears — 
1818-1825 — of  Moore's  life — so  that  five  or 
eix  and  twenttf  remain.  Not  th'at  it  is  all 
mere  gossip,  nor  all  trivial ;  nor  unamusing 
— nor  even  altogether  uninstructive.  Its 
most  substantial  value  is,  undoubtedly,  that 
it  throws  a  great  deal  of  liffht,  and  corrective 
light,  both  on  Moore's  genius  and  the  char- 
acter and  tendency  of  his  most  popular 
works;  and  the  "vforld,**  we  admit,  may  be 
in  some  degree  the  better  for  it — as  Rous- 
Beau's  Car^essions  tended  to  correct  the 
mischief  of  the  Heloise  and  the  Emile,  It 
also  aflfords  some  glimpses  (though  less  than 
might  be  expected)  of  the  state  of  society 
and  manners.  It  sketches  or  rather  touches 
— slightly  indeed,  and  seldom  impartially — 
/many  public  characters ;  and  skims  over  as 
mubb  of  the  literature  of  the  day  asliad 
any  relation  to  Moore's  own  productions. 
But  these  more  interesting  topics  are  so 
loosely  and  incidentally  handled,  so  com- 
,  paratively  scant  in  quantity,  and  so  scat- 
tered through  the  inferior  matter,  that  we  do 
the  Diary  no  injustice  in  calling  it  like 
Gratiano's  talk — "  an  infinite  deal  of  nothing, 
two  grains  of  wheat  hid  in  two  bushels  of 
chaff :" — or  to  use  Moore's  own  words,  which 
are  really  prophetic  of  this  work  in  an  ex- 
traordinary degree — 

''With   crumbs  of  gossip  caught  from  dining 

wits. 
And  half-heard  jokes  heqweiUked  like  half-chewed 

bits,  V 

With  each  ingredient  served  up  oft  before, 
Bot    with    fresh  fudge    and   fi/eUon   garnish'd 

o'er."—  W(yrhs,  p.  520. 

Any  extent  of  extract  for  which  we  could 
find  room  would  give  a  very  imperfect  idea 
of  the  miseellaniety  of  the  whole,  and  the 
tenuity  of  at  least  half  of  the  Diary  ;  but, 
as  our  readers  ought  to  have  some  general 
idea  of  the  style  and  the  fashion  of  the  work, 
we  shall  lay  before  them  a  transcript  in 
extenso  of  a  couple  of  pages — and,  to  escape 
all  cavil  as  to  our  selection  of  entries,  we 
shall  take  the  four  or  five  at  the  commence- 
ment of  hip  last  year  of  etWe  at  Paris  and 
the  first  at  his  residence  in  Wiltshire  after 
his  return. 

'<  1822,  Jcmuary  Ist, — ^Walked  out  with  Bessy 
[bia  wife]  in  the  morning  to  choose  an  Hrenne 
for  Mrs.  Story.  Had  Vlilamil,  Dalton,  Douglas, 
and  Dr.  Yonge  to  dine  with  me.  In  the  evening 
came  Mrs.  Storv,  and  at  supper  arrived  the 
Madeods..     Took  two  games  of  forfeit;  drank 


champagne  and  brandy-punch  afterwards;  then 
to  dancing,  and  did  not  sepsrate  till  near  three 
o'clock. 

"2nd—- Dined  at  Macleod's;  Mrs.  Story  of 
the  party.  Went  from  thence  to  the  Opera 
(Lord  Fife  having  sent  me  a  ticket) ;  too  late  for 
the  divertissement  in  the  Opera.  Miss  Drew  was 
to  have  called  to  take  me  to  Mrs.  Roche's  ball,  but 
instead  of  her  came  Mrs.  Story,  Mrs.  M&cleod, 
and  her  sister.  Drove  with  them  about  the 
Champs  Elyr des ;  a  fine  moonlight  and  a  merry 
one.  They  left  me  at  Mrs.  Roche's  ;  found  that 
Miss  D.  had  called  for  me  at  the  Opera  ;  stayed 
only  a  short  time  at  the  ball.  On  my  return 
home  found  our  two  maids  still  engaged  with 
their  company,  we  having  treated  them  with  an 
entertainment  for  their  friends  Uwlay. 

**  3rd!. — Kept  in  u  bustle  all  the  morning ;  so 
much  so  as  to  forget  (for  1  believe  the  first  time 
since  I  have  been  in  France)  my  letter  to  mv 
dear  mother,  to  whom  I  write  twice  a  week,and 
have  done  so,  with  but  few  failures,  for  more 
than  twenty  years  past.  Dined  with  the  Robin- 
sons: no  one  but  Cadogan;  a  good  dinner  and 
agreeable  dav.  Sung  to  them  in  the  evening, 
and  saw  in  Lady  Helena's  eyes  those  heads  (tu 
use  the  language  of  distillers),  which  show  that 
the  spirit  is  T^onf.  Went  from  thence  to  Lady 
Pigott's  ball.  Bessy  gone  to  the  Italian  Opera, 
where  Dalton  procured  her  a  box." — iii.  313-14. 

Such  were  among  the  most  rational  of 
the  Parisian  days  and  nights.  As  to  those 
of  the  Wiltshire  cottag< 


**  Sloperion,  January  1*/,  1823.— The  coat  (a 
Kilkenny  uniform)  which  I  sent  to  town  to  be 
new-lined  for  the  fancy  ball  to-morrow  night,  not 
vet  arrived.  Walked  to  Bowood.  Found  Lady 
Lansdowne  and  Jekyll,  L%dy  L.  again  expressing 
her  strong;  admiration  of  the  poem.  Said  she 
had  proposed  to  the  Bowleses  to  dine  at  Bowood  on 
Saturday,  and  hoping  that  Bessy  would  have  na 
objection  to  be  of  the  party. 

^'  2nd, — Obliged  to  make  shift  for  to  night,  by 
transferrin?  the  cut  steel  buttons  from  my  dress 
coat  to  a  black  one,  and  having  it  lined  with 
white  silk.  Dined  with  the  Phippses.  Went 
in  the  same  way  as  before;  Mrs.  P.  dressed  as 
a  Sultana  and  looking  very  well.  The  ball  at  a 
Mrs.  Hardm%n'8  (a  German)  beyond  Devizes; 
odd  enough,  and  amusing,  though  in  a  small  ill- 
lighted  room.  Two  fine  girls  there,  the  Miss 
Holtons,  the  eldest  beautiful.  Not  home  till 
between  four  and  five. 

''  4ih. — The  day  very  wet.  Had  promised  the 
Bowleses  to  meet  them  at  dinner  at  Bowood  to- 
day (Bessy  having  given  up  the  ^hole  plan), 
and  ffo  on  with  them  to  Bremhill,  to  stay  till 
Monday,  but  sent  an  excuse,  and  offered  myself 
to  the  Lansdownes  for  to-morrow  instead.  An 
answer  from  Lady  Lansdowne,  begging  roe  to 
stay  till  Tuesday,  and  as  much  longer  as  Mrs. 
Moore  could  spare  me." — iv.  32. 

**  5ih  — Have  received  several  new.-i  apers  with 
reviews  of  the  poem ;  all  very  favorable.  Dined 
at  Bowood ;  taken  by  the  Phippses,  ^c. 


160 


MBMOIB8  09  THOMAS  MOOR& 


[Oct, 


These  extracts,  though  aflbrding  no  doabt  I 
an  average  sample  of  the  whole,  happen  to 
contain  no  entries  of  a  class  of  mere  trivial- 
ities too  large  to  be  left  altogether  out  of 
our  account,  but  of  which  a  very  small  taste 
will  suffice — duch  as  his  thus  registering 
(a.  ^.  1819)  for  the  benefit  of  posterity  when 
and  where  he  ate  an  ice : — 

«<  Sept  8(^.4-Eat  ice  at  the  Milles  Colonnes.'* 
—111.  7. 

«<  9/fc.— An  ice  at  the  Milles  Colonnes."— ib. 

'•  lOtA.— Eat  an  ice  at  Tortoni's."— p.  8. 

"  I6th, — ^Took  an  ice  with  Lord  John  at  Ruch- 
eases  " — p.  31: — 

and  whether  when  he  went  next  summer — 
(a.  d.  1820) — to  lodge  at  Severes,  he  got  to 
town  (on  his  almost  daily  visit)  by  a  cab  or 
an  omnibtis: — 

**  July  7ih. — ^Villamile  and  I  went  in  a  cuckoo.** 
— ib.  126. 
"  13^.— To  town  in  a  cSUn/ere:* 
«  Aug.  4(4.— Retarned  in  a  cHirifire:* 

And  so  on  in  fifty  places — varying  occasion- 
ally the  cuckoo  and  cilirifere  for  the  pondole 
and  the  Farisienne.  He  might  just  as  well 
have  added  the  Nos.  and  the  fare. 

With  what  possible  object  could  he,  even 
the  morning  after  they  had  happened,  regis- 
ter such  events  as  the  following  of  his  coun- 
try life  ?— 

«  1823,  Dec.  29«A.— [Dined]  at  Dr.  Starkey's. 
Company,  the  Phippses,  Hughes,  and  ourselves. 
The  P.*8  lefl  us  at  home  at  eight. 

•*  "  Dec.  4ih. — Power  [the  Music  publisher] 
arrived.  .  .  .  Asked  the  Phippses  to  dinner, 
%B  Power  had  bought  fish  and  oysters. 

"  "  Dec  5ih. — The  Phippses  again  dine 
with  us  to  finish  the  fish.  Also  Hughes." — iv. 
151. 

Or  in  London:' — 

**  1825,  Sept  8^.— Walked  about  with  Lut- 
trell,  but  he  was  obUged  to  go  home,  not  being 
AoOir-Av.  315. 

'*  *'  Sqtt  17tA.— Called  at  Power's  on  my 
way  to  Shoe-lane,  and  felt  such  a  einking  m  my 
ihrrubchf  that — ^I  stopped  to  dine  with  him.— i&. 
317. 

The  Diary,  as  it  is  now  presented  to  us, 
beginning  the  18th  August,  1818,  has  all  the 
appearance  of  being  only  a  continuation. 
So  that  it  affords  no  indication  of  either 
when  or  for  what  precise  object  it  was  com- 
menced. It  may  have  been  in  part  design- 
ed as  a  bond  fide  collection  of  memoranda  for 
an  autobiography — ^partly  as  a  repository  for 


odds  and  ends  that  might  be  turned  to  ac- 
count in  some  literary  shape  or  other — and 
evidently  as  a  magazine  of  jokes  and  stories, 
to  be  occasionally  brought  out  a  la  Joe 
Miller  in  conversation.  He  may  also  have 
calculated  that  it  might  one  day  be  a  profit- 
able pecuniary  speculation  for  the  benefit  of 
his  family — an  idea  which  the  gift  of  the 
Byron  Memoirs,  and  the  price  of  2000  gui- 
neas for  which  he  sold  them,  may  have  con- 
firmed ;  but  neither  this  nor  any  other  con- 
jecture we  can  make  will  account  for  the 
quantity  of  lower  topics  which  intrude  them- 
selves. We  suppose  that  he  must  have  in- 
tended to  revise  and  expurgate  them. 

But  there  was,  no  doubt,  a  still  earlier 
feeling — one  indeed,  in  a  greater  or  less  de- 
gree, at  the  bottom  of  all  diaries  written  for 
publication — personal  vanity ; — and  this  in- 
.  fluence,  which  is  "  like  Aaron's  rod  and  swal* 
low6  all  the  rest,"  very  speedily  showed'  its 
predominancy.  It  is  as  constant  and  as 
strong  in  his  journals  as  in  poor  Madame 
D'Arblay's — though  unquestionably  he  man- 
ages it  with  more  tact  and  dexterity.  In  his 
social  manners  it  was  admirably  vailed,  and 
no  one  we  ever  saw  received  so  much  per- 
sonal admiration  with  more  ease  and  sim- 
plicity. But  such  reserve  is  hardly  main- 
tainable when  a  man  is  soliloquizing  in  the 
tempting  solitude  and  (as  he  tries  to  per- 
suade himself)  the  secrecy  of  a  Diary.  It  is 
a  kind  of  intellectual  dram -drinking,  which 
becomes  irresistible  and  ends  in  a  delirium 
tremens  of  morbid  vanity.  We  are  satisfied 
that  neither  Lor4  Landsdowne,  nor  Mr.  Rog- 
ers, nor  any  one  of  Moore's  habitual  so- 
ciety, had  any  idea  of  the  extent  of  this 
weakness.  Sometimes  it  transpires  slily  in 
little  inuendoes  of  his  own — sometimes  he 
puts  it  adroitly,  oftener  clumsily,  into  the 
mouths  of  other  persons — sometimes  it  flares 
out  boldly  in  long  transcripts  from  books, 
newspapers  or  letters.  The  amount  of  the 
Diary  which  this  sort  of  matter  occupies 
would  be  incredible  if  we  did  not  produce 
rather  copious  specimens  of  the  various  in- 
genious devices  by  which  Moore  manages  to 
tickle  himself: — 


"  Received  a  letter  from  Rogers,  which  begins 
thus : — *  What  a  lucky  fellow  you  are  !  Surely 
you  must  have  been  bom  with  a  rose  on  your  lips 
and  a  nighUngale  singing  on  the  top  of  your  bed.*  ** 
— iv.  139. 


Bom  "at  the  comer  of  Little  Longford 
Street"  with  a  rose  in  his  mouth,  and  not,  as 
most  people  are,  in  his  mother*s  bed,  but  in 


.16S8*] 


XBIIOIBB  or  roOMAS  MOORS. 


151 


km  <nm/    Wm  Mr.  Bogen  laughing   at 
him? 

^Saw  the  Examiner,  which  qaotee  inv  Nea- 
poiitao  verses  from  the  Chronicle,  and  says 
*  Their  fine  spirit  and  flowing  style  sufficiently  in- 
dicate the  poet  and  patriot  from  whose  pen  they 
come.' " — iii.  324. 

**  The  Examiner  quoted  aome  lines  I  had  sent 
to  Perry  [of  the  morning  Chronicle],  and  added, 
'We  think  we  can  recognize  wJioae  easy  and 
tparkUng  hand  it  is.'  I  wonder  he  found  me 
out* '—ii.  18^. 

Other  persons  might  be  in  doubt  whether 
there  was  not  some  other  poet  and  patriot, 
and  some  other  easy  and  sparkling  hand  in 
all  England :  bat  Moore  has  no  doubt  at  all, 
and  Jinds  himself  out  directly. 

"  A  flonrishing  speech  of  SheiPs  about  me  in 
the  Irish  papers.  Says  I  tan  the  first  poet  of  the 
day,  and  join  the  beauty  of  the  bird  of  Para- 
dise's plumes  to  the  strength  of  the  eagle's 
wing.'  ^'— iv.  243. 

One  is  at  first  surprised  to  find  copied  into 
Moore's  London  Diary  an  extract  from  '*  Pe- 
ter's Letrers  to  his  Kinsfolk/'  about  Mr. 
Jeffrey's  dress  at  an  evening  party  at  Edin- 
burgh— A.D.  1819.  It  seems  the  last  thing 
to  be  expected  in  another  man's  autobiogra- 
phy, and  to  be  left  by  him  for  re-publi- 
catioa: — on    looking    closer    we    find    the 


''He  [Peter]  says  of  Jeffrey^s  dress  at  some 
assembly,  '  In  short  he  is  more  of  a  dandy  than 
SLuy  great  author  I  ever  saw — aHways  excepting 
Tom  Moore:  "— ii.  357. 

Argal — ^Moore  is,  even  by  the  hostUe  evi- 
dence of  Peter^  a  great  author ! 

Going  one  night  to  Al  mack's  he  asks  a 
lady  whether  she  did  not  think  Lady  Charle- 
mont lovely — "  Beautiful,"  replied  the  lady — 
so  notorious  a  truism  that  we  doubt  wheth- 
er Moore  himself  would  have  thought  of  no- 
ticing it — if  the  lady  had  not  added — "  as 
lovely  08  Lalla  Rookh  herself /'*  (ii.  833.) 

Of  the  conversation  of  a  most  accom- 
plished gentleman  and  scholar,  whom  he 
mentions  as  Duncan  of  Oxford — and  whom, 
of  course,  he  had  not  had  the  good  fortune 
to  meet  before — he  can  remember  only  his 
having  said,  after  having  heard  a  speech  of 
Moore's  at  a  Literary  Institution  at  Bath,  "  I 
have  had  that  sweet  oratorv  ringing  in  my 
ears  all  night."  (iv.  273.) 

Mr.  Bowles  pttblish«)8  one  of  his  contro- 
versial pamphlets  on  Pope,  which  Moore 
used  habitaally  ta  laugh  at  aa  twaddle—- bat 


Bowles,  "  grown  wiaer  than  before,"  seeoret 
honorable  mention  of  this  one  by  an  inserip* 
tion  transcribed  from  his  fugitive  title-page 
into  the  safer  asylum  of  the  Diary**«^'tnlei[ 
Poetas  suaves,  iuavissimo"     (iv.  273.) 

Moore  laughs  at  the  vanity  of  old  Delille, 
who,  on  Lord  Holland  having  paid  him  an 
elaborate  but  well- turned  compliment  in 
French,  answered,  "  Savez  vous.  Milord,  que 
ce  quo  vous  dites-la  esttr^s  joli"  (iv.  276)  ; 
but  he  does  not  see  anything  ridiculous  in 
having  himself  registered  a  few  pages  before, 
that,  on  hearing  Moore  himself  sing,  the 
Duchess  de  Broglie  had  "  exclaimed  continU' 
ally,  Ok,  Dieu!  que  c'est  joli/" 

On  the  28th  Nov.,  1818,  he  goes  to  dine 
with  Mr.  Rogers's  brother  and  sister,  at 
Highbury,  and  finds  "Miss  Rogers  very 
agreeable."  No  doubt;  and  we  dare  say 
the  lady  was  always  so ;  but  what  was  the 
peculiar  agreeability  of  that  day  ? — 

"She  mentioned  that  she  had  had  a  letter 
from  a  friend  in  Germany  saying  that  the  Ger- 
mans were  learning  English  in  order  to  read" — 

Milton,  Shakspeare  ? — No : — 

"  Lord  Byron  and  me. — ii.  229. 

"  Bayly"  takes  him  to  an  amateur  play 
and  fancy  ball.  Moore  remembers  but  one 
detail : — "  an  allusion  to  me,  in  the  epilogue 
by  Bayly,  as  Urines  matchless  sqn,  &c., 
brought  thunders  of  applause  and  stares  on 
me."     (iv.  274.) 

He  meets  Lady  Cochrane  at  an  assem* 
bly — is  introduced  to  her — finds  her  "  pretty 
and  odd," — which  he  exemplifies  by  her  hav- 
ing told  him  "  that  she  would  at  any  time 
have  walked  ten  miles  barefoot  to  see  me,** 
(iv.  290.) 

He  dines  with  his  old  friend  Lord  Strang- 
ford  at  the  Athenseum,  and  both  are  de- 
lighted with  his  renewal  of  their  early  hab* 
its.  Two  days  after  he  meets  his  Lordship, 
who,  with  true  diplomatic  tact,  reads  him 
part  of  a  letter  he  had  had  from  Lady 
Strangford,  saying  how  pleased  she  was  al 
his  account  of  the  meeting,  and  adding,  "  / 
shall  henceforward  love  Moore  as  mttcn  as  I 
have  always  admired  him.** 

His  daughter's  schoolmistress  at  Bath 
fails — and  her  pupils  are  sent  home;  an- 
other offers  to  take  the  child: — "terms 
would  be  a  minor  consideration  indeed  with 
the  daughter  of  such  a  man  as  Moore  P*  (iv, 
313.) 

When  he  baa  a  mind  to  regale  himself 
with  some  flattering  recollections  which  do 


1  •  *< 


MSM0IR8  OF  THOMAS  MOOBK 


[Oct., 


not  exactly  fall  ia  with  the  thread  of  the 
Diary,  he  draga  them  in  with  a  by  the  bye — 
which  is  with  Moore  a  happy  verBion  of  a 
propas  d$  bottes : — 

^*  By  the  hye,  was  pleased  to  hear  from  Rogers 
thai  Luttrell  said,  *  If  any  body  can  make  such  a 
eub'ect  [Captain  Rock]  hvely,  Moore  will/  " 

**By  the  bye,  received  a  letter  from  a  Sir  John 
Wycherly,  of  whom  I  know  nothing,  apolo- 
gizing for  such  a  liberty  with  the  first  poet  of  the 
age." — iii.  11. 

He  meets  Mr.  Hutchinson,  just  come  from 
being  made  M.P.  for  Cork,  where — 

^  By  the  bye,  they  hipped  and  hurraed  me  as 
the  Poet^  Pairi(4^  and  Pride  of  Ireland,  I  am 
becoming  a  stock  toast  at  their  di\iners.  Had 
seen  this  very  morning  an  account  of  a  dinner 
to  Mr.  Denny  of  Cork,  when  I  was  drunk  as  the 
Poet  and  Patriot  with  great  applause." — ii.  157. 

^  Forgot,  by  Ihe  bye,  to  take  notice  of  some 
verses  of  Luttrell's : — 

*  I  am  told,  dear  Moore,  your  lays  are  sung — 
Can  it  be  true,  you  lucky  man  t — 
By  moonlight,  in  the  Persian  tongue, 
Along  the  streets  of  Ispahan.'  " — iii.  301. 

But  he  does  not  tell  us  that  Mr.  Luttrell's 
authority  for  the  fact  was — Moore  himself, 
who  in  another  by  the  bye  tells  us  where  he 
got  it. 

**  By  the  bye^  Mr.  Stretch,  with  whom  I  walked 
yesterday  [in  Paris],  eaid  he  had  been  told  by 
the  nephew  of  the  Persian  Ambas8€uU>r,  the  Lalla 
Rookh  had  been  translated  into  their  language, 
and  that  the  songs  are  sung  about  everywrhere." 
— iii.  167. 

Moore,  generally  so  profuse  of  proper 
names,  omits  to  tell  us  those  of  the  Persian 
Ambassador  and  his  nephew — but  we  have 
little  doubt  they  were  of  the  illustrious  house 
of  Mamamouchi,  which  has  had  so  long  a 
tenure  of  Oriental  embassies  at  Paris. 
Stretch,  too,  seems  a  singularly  appropriate 
name  for  the  retailer  of  such  an  Eastern 
story  1 

This  Mamamouchi  report  is,  we  suppose, 
Moore's  authority  for  saying  that  Lalla 
Rookh 


**has  now  appeared  in  the  French,  Italian,  Grer- 
man,  and  Pereian  languages.*^ 

**  Lady  Saltoun  told  me  that  a  gentleman  had 
just  said  to  her,  '  If  Mr.  Moore  wished  to  be 
made  much  of — ^if  Mr.  Moore  winhes  to  have  his 
head  turned — let  him  go  to  Berlin;  there  is 
nothing  Ulked  of  there  but  Lalla  Rookh.'  "—iii. 
219. 


He  ''  meets  Mr.  and  Miss  Camiing  at  a 
Paris  dinner,  and  observed — 

**a  circumstance  which  showed  a  very  pttaeami 
sort  of  inteUigence  between  the  father  and  the 
daughter.*'— iii  160. 

Our  readers  will,  by  this  time,  not  be  sur- 
prised at  the  "pleasant  sort**  of  sympathy 
which  Moore's  ingenuity  was  on  the  watch 
to  detect  between  these  twO  brilliant  intel- 
ligences.    "  /,"  adds  the  Diarist — 

*"  liMa  story  to  Miss  Canning,  which  the  father 
was  the  only  one  who  overheard,  and  it  evidently 
struck  them  both  as  very  comical." — 2b. 

Occasionally  his  self-importance  takes  a 
still  higher  flight.  At  an  Aasembly  at  De- 
vonshire House — 

**  The  Duke,  in  coming  to  the  door  to  meet  the 
Duke  of  WelUngton,  near  whom  I  stood,  turned 
aside  first  to  shake  hands  with  me — though  the 
great  Captain's  hand  toas  waiting  ready  stretched 
otrf."— iv.  76. 

Sometimes  when  we  think  that  he  is  about 
to  offer  a  pugar-plum  to  a  bystander,  we  are 
surprised  at  the  legerdemain  with  which  he 
pops  it  into  his  own  mouth.  Thus — Catalani 
visits  Dublin  when  Moore  happened  to  be 
there;  a  Mr.  Abbot 

•<  brought  my  sister  Ellen  to  introduce  to  Cata- 
lani.   Her  kindness  to  Nell,  calling  her" — 

of  course  one  expects  some  little  kind  com- 
pliment to  the  young  lady  herself — ^not  a  bit 
of  it — 

"  calling  her —  la  sceur  d^Anacrion  /" 

We  shall  conclude  these,  after  all,  scanty 
samples  with  one  which  takes  the  unusual 
form  of  humility,  and  is,  with  its  context, 
even  more  amusing.  After  a  page  of  re- 
capitulation of  the  various  forms  of  compli- 
ment and  oddrs  of  incense  which  he  received 
at  a  Harmonic  meeting  at  Bath,  he  concludes 
with  the  most  amiable  nalveti : — 

"During  the  ball  was  stared  at  on  all  sides 
without  mercy.  In  such  a  place  as  Bath  any 
little  Uon  makes  a  stir." — ii.  280. 

This  is  rather  hard  on  Bath,  as  we  have 
just  seen  what  pains  the  same  little  lion 
takes  to  let  us  know  that  he  was  making 
the  same  kind  of  stir  all  the  world  over — ^in 
various  shapes  and  distant  regions — as  a 
nightingalci  a  bird  of  Paradise,  an  eagle, 


1858.] 


MEMOIBS  07  THOMAS  MOOSE. 


158 


and  a  dandy — at  Berlio,  Cork,  Ispahan,  and  I 
the  corner  of  Little  Longford  Street  I 

In  short,  Moore  reminds  us  in.  every  page 
of  what  Johnson  said  of  that  caricature  of 
authorly  vanity,  old  Richardson  the  novelist 
— ''That  fellow  could  not  be  contented  to 
sail  quietly  down  the  stream  of  reputation 
witkaut  longing  to  taste  the  froth  from  every 
niroke  of  the  oar.^ 

This  excess  of  amour  propre^^so  judi- 
ciously veiled  in  society,  but,  as  we  now 
see,  so  active  and  industrious  in  turning  the 
smallest  circumstances  to  its  own  private 
account — was,  of  course,  as  morbidly  sensi- 
tive of  anything  to  which  his  fear  or  his 
fancy  could  give  a  less  flatterinff  color. 
These  latter  were  obviously  distasteful  mat- 
ters, and  not  to  be  registered ;  but,  like  ac- 
tion and  reaction,  the  two  opposite  but  in- 
separable principles  were  always  at  work. 
We  have  heard  and  seen  many  individual 
complaints  of  the  misrepresentation  and 
malevolence  of  several  passages  in  the  Di- 
ary. Of  the  frequent  misrepresentations 
there  can  be  no  doubt ;  but  whatever  there 
may  be  of  malevolence  (except  always  on 
party  matters)  we  are  inclined  to  attribute 
rather  to  the  momentary  impulses  of  the 
amour  propre  blessi,  than  to  any  predisposi- 
tion to  ill-nature  or  cynicism.  The  truth, 
we  believe,  is,  that  he  was  naturally  kind 
and  loving,  but  proportionately  susceptible 
of  petty  jealousies  and  imaginary  slights, 
and  having,  as  these  volumes  too  clearly 
show,  passed  his  whole  life  in  a  more  habit- 
ual state  of  public  exhibition  than  any  other 
person — not  being  a  professional  performer 
— ^that  we  ever  heard  of,  he  acquired  much 
of  the  irritability  of  professional  people-^ 
outwardly  checked,  indeed,  but  internally 
sharpened  by  his  anxiety  to  combine  his 
artistic  powers  of  amusing  with  the  dignity 
of  an  author  and  the  independence  of  a  pri- 
vate gentleman.  In  society  he  played  these 
united  parts  admirably.  The  Diary  has 
now  furnished  us  with  a  less  satisfactory 
analysis  of  the  elements. 

We  are  restrained,  by  considerations  too 
obvious  to  require  explanation,  from  enter- 
ing into  the  individual  complaints  to  which 
we  have  just  alluded ;  but  it  would  be  a 
dereliction  of  our  duty  not  to  apprise  our 
readers  that  they  involve  grave  charges  of 
inaccuracy,  misstatement,  and  culpable  in- 
sincerity on  his  part.  We  have  had  an  op- 
portunity of  examining  the  evidence  in  some 
of  the  cases — and  we  regret  to  say,  there 
must  be,  on  all  those  counts,  an  unhesitating 
verdict  against  Moore. 


There  is  one  instance  of  the  caution  with 
which  his  most  deliberate  assertions  of  facts 
should  be  received  that  is  innocuous  and  "high- 
ly amusing."  He  was  extremely  sore  on  the 
subject  of  his  ridiculous  duel  with  Jeffrey, 
when  the  Bow  Street  officer  who  interrupted 
the  proceeding  found  that  one  at  least  of  the 
pistols  had  no  ball.  We  find  in  these 
volumes  a  formal  account  of  the  affair  from 
his  own  pen — some  of  which  is  certainly 
untrue,  and  most  of  it,  we  think,  colored  and 
discolored. 

We  have  no  doubt  of  Moore's  courage, 
or  that  he  meant  to  fight,  but  we  incline  to 
suspect  that  his  eef^nd,  Doctor  Thomas 
Hume,*  always  considered  an  honest  and 
good-hearted  man,  saw  the  extreme  ab- 
surdity of  the  quarrel,  which  Moore,  in  a 
very  wanton  and  •braggadocio  style,  chose 
to  fasten  on  Jeffrey,  and  being  intrusted,  as 
Moore  admits,  by  Jeffrey's  friend  Horner — 
propter  ignorantiam — with  the  loading  of 
both  pistols,  very  wisely  omitted  to  insert 
any  balls;  and  that  this  omission  (unnoticed 
by  the  anxious  and  inexpert  Homer)  was 
the  reason  why  the  Irish  doctor  refused  to 
sign  a  fine  statement  on  the  subject  which 
Aloore  had  drawn  up — a  refusal  which,  adds 
Moore,  occasioned  an  estrangement  of  thirty 
years  between  him  and  that  old  friend. 
How  it  hnppened  (as  the  police  report  seems 
to  indicate)  that  a  bullet  was  found  in  one 
of  the  pistols  (Moore's)  and  in  the  other  a 
paper  pellet,  we  cannot  explain,  unless  by 
the  supposition  that  Hume,  after  the  inter- 
ruption, contrived  to  slip  the  bullet  into  one 
pistol  and  had  not  time  or  opportunity  to  do 
so  in  the  other.  It  may  be  thought,  no 
doubt,  an  easier  solution  to  suppose  (with 
Jeffrey's  learned  biographer  amonff  others) 
that  the  pistols  were  fairly  but  loosely  loaded, 
and  that  one  bullet  dropped  out ;  but  if  that 
had  been  the  case,  there  was  no  reason  whv 
Hume  should  have  refused  to  attest  Moore  a 
statement. 

But  there  are  points  of  Moore's  narrative 
which  exhibit  stronff  specimens  of  that  spe- 
cies of  rodomontade  which  throws  doubt 
over  all  the  rest.  He  says  of  the  evening 
before  the  meeting — 

**  I  forget  where  I  dined,  but  j  know  it  was  not 
in  company,    Hume  bad  left  to  me  the  task  of 


*  Not,  SB  has  been  iometimes  rappoted,  Dr.  J.  R. 
Hnme,  the  friend  and  physioianof  the  Dake  of  Wel- 
lington. Dr.  Hiomas  Uume  was  for  some  time 
attached  to  the  army  in  the  PeniiiBiila— which  ao- 
coiiDte  for  this  ooniusion  of  him  with  a  more  dis- 
tangoiBhed  medical  officer. 


1» 


KEM0IB8  OF  XBOMAE  MOOiU. 


[Oetn 


providing  powder  and  ballets,  which  I  bought  in 
the  course  of  the  evening  at  some  shop  in  Bond- 
street,  and  in  such  large  quantities,  I  rememberj 
as  would  have  done  for  a  score  duels.'*— ri.  202. 

All  a  fable.  We  have  before  us  a  letter 
of  his  to  Lord  Strangford,  then  minister  at 
Lisbon,  written  on  the  eve  of  the  great  en- 
counter, which  contradicts  every  syllable  of 
the  foregoing  statement,  and  is  curious  also 
on  other  accounts : — 

"  Mt  dbar  Strahoford, — I  have  owed  you  a 
letter  this  long  time,  and  now  that  I  do  write,  it 
will  be  perhaps  for  the  last  time.    I  have  thoaght 

{»roper  to  call  out  Mr.  Jeffrey,  who  has  been  so 
ong  abusing  you'  and  me,  and  we  are  to  fight 
to-morrow  morning  at  Chalk-farm.  I  am  afraid, 
my  dear  Strangford,  much  as  I  value  yon,  I 
should  have  forgot  sending  a  valedictory  word 
to  you  if  it  were  not  for  a  pretty  little  woman 
who  has  this  moment  reminded  me  of  a  promise 
I  made  to  procure  her  letters  from  you  for  Ma- 
deira. The  cloth  has  been  but  this  instant  taken 
from  the  table,  and,  though  to-morrow  may  be  my 
last  view  of  the  bright  sun^  I  shall  (as  soon  as  I 
have  finished  this  letter)  drink  to  the  health  of  my 
Strangford  with  as  unafiected  a  warmth  as  ever 
I  have  felt  in  the  wildest  days  of  our  fellowship. 
My  dear  fellow,  jf  they  want  a  biographer  of  me 
when  1  am  gr.ne,  l  think  in  your  hands  I  ihouMmeet 
with  mo»i  kind  embalmment,  so  pray,  say  some- 
thing for  me :  and  now  to  the  object  of  my  letter. 
Mrs.  W — ,  a  very  particular  friend  of  mine,  is 
ordered  by  her  physicians  to  Madeira,  and  she 
thinks  it  would  be  pleasant  to  know  some  of  the 
Portugueee  grandees  of  the  island :  if  vou  can 
get  her  letters  from  your  friends  at  Lisbon,  you 
will  oblige  me  not  a  little.  Who  knows,  my 
dear  Strangford,  but  it  may  be  a  posthumous  ob* 
ligation  ?  For  fear  of  the  worst,  send  the  letters 
enclosed  to  Mrs.  W — ,  W —  street,  London,  and 
remember  me  as  one  who  has  felt  your  good  and 
social  qualities,  who  at  this  moment  recalls  with 
pleasure  the  days  he  has  spent  with  you,  and 
who  hopes  that  his  good  genius  to-morrow  will 
allow  him  to  renew  them  hereafter.  These  fine 
women  hace  their  glasses  filled  to  your  health. 
So  good  bye. 

God  bless  you,  yours  while  I  lire, 
Sunday,  August  lOth.  T.  Moorb. 

We  shall  say  nothing  of  the  silly  vaporing 
style  of  this  letter,  which  would  certainly  fa« 
a  most  characteristic  prelude  to  a  mock  duel. 
We  need  only  observe  that  this  was  the  day 
that  Moore  knowsYiQ  did  not  dine  in  company, 
and  this — Sunday — was  the  evening  on  which 
he  went  to  a  shop  in  Bond-street  to  buy  all 
the  superfluity  of  ammunition.  Which  of 
the  stories  is  true?  or  was  either?  We 
must  further  observe  that,  as  the  letter  was 
written  late  on  Sunday  night,  it  could  hardly 
have  beea  posted  till  Moi^y»  when  it  might 


have  been  suppressed  as  some  other  vale- 
dictory epistles  were  (i.  207),  and  a  simpler 
request  substituted,  which  would  have  spared 
Lord  Strangford  a  long  doubt  of  his  friend's 
safety ;  but  Moore,  it  seems,  could  not  resist 
the  temptation  of  sending  it-^nay,  perhaps, 
of  writing  it  on  the  Monday — as  a  proof  of 
the  anacreontic  spirit  with  which  he  could 
face  death  while  fine  women  were  filling  their 
glaseee,  and  that,  in  the  words  of  his  own 
song,  his  last  hour  was  dedicated  to  "smiles 


irf^i 


79 


ana  wtne. 

Next  after  his  own  self- worship — if  indeed 
it  was  not  a  branch  of  it — there  is  nothing  so 
prominent  throughout  the  volumes  as  his 
adoration  of  his  wife.  Let  us  say,  once  more, 
that  she  seems  to  have  been  worthy  of  his 
affection ;  and  there  is  no  praise — prodigal 
as  it  may  sometimes  seem — which  she  does 
not  appear,  from  the  evidence  of  all  who 
knew  her,  to  have  deserved ;  but,  after  this 
tribute  of  justice  to  the  lady,  we  oonfess  that 
there  is  something  in  the  way  in  wbieh 
Moore  parades  her  throughout  his  Diary  that 
we  cannot  understand,  and  that  seems  evi- 
dently artificial.  Why  have  expended  so 
much  time  and  trouble  in  elaborating  on 
paper  the  expression  of  a  steady  and  habitual 
feeling,  which  he  could  find  fresh  and  fresh 
in  his  own  heart  ?  What  could  be  his  motive 
for  making  such  an  etalage  of  what  we  must 
suppose  was  the  daily  bread  of  his  hap- 
pinAss? 

We  can  have  no  doubt  of  the  sincerity  of 
Moore's  attachment  to  and  admiration  of  his 
wife,  but  we  must  observe  that  these  ultra- 
uxorious  expressions  occur  with  peculiar  em- 
phasis just  before  and  just  after  some  escapade 
from  home ;  they  are  the  honey  with  w  hich 
he  sweetens  the  edges  of  his  absences.  It  is 
evident  that  Mrs.  Moore  saw  the  Jonmal 
(iv.  16);  and  we  now  have  no  doubt  that 
many  of  these  flattering  phrases  were  peace*' 
offerings  to  his  Ariadne.  The  instances  are 
too  numerous  and  too  regrularly  recurring  to 
be  accidental. 

We  shall  select  a  few  here,  just  to  direct 
our  readers'  attention  to  this  ingenious  de- 
vice. 

•*1818,  April  2ith.^Arrived  at  my  cottage— 
always  glad  to  return  to  it,  and  the  dear  girl 
that  makes  it  so  happy  for  me. — ii.  151. 

*'  1818,  Nov.  18w— walked  with  my  <lfar  Bessy 
.  .  .  .  my  darlit^  girl !  21st. — Told  L.  Lans* 
downe  1  was  going  to  town, — ^ii.  218. 

"1819,  Aug.  a3d. — Employed  in  preparing 
for  my  departure.  My  darling  Bessy  bears  all  so 
sweetly,  though  she  would  give  her  eyes  to  go 
with  me ;  but,  please  Heaven,  we  shall  not  be 
long  separate. — ii.  353. 


I85lel 


MSM OlfiS  OF  THOMAS  HOOBK 


Ui 


*'Jn]y9l8t. — Makitti;  preparatiocs  for  my  de* 
paitare.  Bessy  mnoh  saddened  and  out  of  sorU 
at  my  leaving  her  for  so  long  a  iime~bat  still 
most  tkoughtfuUy  and  sweetly  preparing  every- 
thitip  comrortable  for  me. — 97. 

"  1827,— Oct.  l^th.^Bessy  wonld  not  hear  of 
my  staying  at  home.  Insisted  that,  if  [  did  not 
ffo  to  France,  I  mast  go  either  to  Scotland  or 
ueland  to  amuse  myself  a  hule.  Dear,  generous 
girl  I  there  never  tcos  anything  like  her  wamh 
aeartedness  and  devotum," 

Other  instances  will  occur  in  future  ex- 
tracts. 

We  have  do  doubt  that  Moore  calculated 
that  these  tender  expressions  would  not 
merely  soothe  the  lady  s  feelings  at  the  mo- 
ment, but  would  also  tell  very  much  in  his 
awn  favor — as  a  model  husband — when  his 
Memoirs  should  come  to  be  published ;  but 
they  are  accompanied,  as  we  shall  now  show, 
by  many  circumstances  which  make  a  strong 
and  unamiable  contrast  with  th^  exhuberani 
and  passionate  expressions  of  his  devotion  to 
the  tutelary  angel  at  home. 

Legal  proceedings  taken  against  Moore 
for  the  defalcation  of  his  deputy  in  an  office 
which  he  held  in  the  Admiralty  Court  at 
Burmuda,  obliged  him  to  quit  England  ;  and 
Lord  John  Kussell — not  yet,  we  suppose, 
aware  of  the  besetting  weakness  of  Moore's 
mind — advised  him  to  &x  his  temporary 
residence  in  Paris,  where  he  became,  as  he 
did  everywhere,  the  delight  of  all  his  ac- 
quaintance, and  wasted  his  time  and  his  mo- 
ney— which  in  such  circumstances  could 
hardly  be  called  his  own — in  a  style  as  giddy 
and  extravagant  as  any  that  has  been  imput- 
ed to  either  of  the  improvident  classes,  to 
both  of  which  he  happened  to  belong — of 
poets  and  Irishmen. 

His  longest  residence  w&s  in  the  Mlee  des 
Veuves  in  the  Champs  Elys^es,  but  in  the 
summer  months  he  was  allowed  by  a  Spanish 
gentleman  of  the  name  of  Villamil — to  oc- 
cupy a  small  cottage,  a  dependance  of  a  fine 
yilla  which  he  had  at  Sevres.  Nothing 
could  be  more  convenient  and  promising. 
The  place  was  rural  and  extremely  pretty, 
and  the  retirement  exactly  suited  for  the  va- 
rious literary  pursuits  in  which  Moore  was 
engaged.  But  though  these  were  his  only 
meads  of  livelihood,  he  worked  at  them  in  a 
very  desultory  way ;  and  whether  in  Paris 
or  the  country,  spent  more  than-  half  his 
mornings,  and  all  his  eTenings,  in  a  constant 
whirl  of  gayeties,  alike  inconsistent  with  study 
and  economy. 

**  1820,  t7iine.F-^ave  a  good  many  dinners  this 
month,  till  Bessy  (whose  three  poonda  a^week 


was  beginning'  to  ran  venr  short)  cried  out  for  a 
rtlAche,  Had  Lady  Davy,  Si  1  vert<^,  and  Lord  6ra* 
nard  together :  the  Storys  another  day;  Sullivan, 
Dr.  Yonge,  Heath  (my  old  friend  the  engraver), 
and  his  travelling  companion  Mr.  Green,  &c. 
The  day  that  Heath  dined  with  us  was  one  of  the 
few  hot  days  that  we  have  had  this  summer,  and 
we  had  dinner  out  of  doors  under  the  shade  of 
the  trees,  #hich,  with  champagne  and  vin  de 
Grave  well  frappi,  was  very  faxorious.  Fre- 
quent parties  too,  to  plays  and  gardens.  Saw  a 
man  go  up  in  a  balloon  from  Tivoli,  which  hrought 
tears  into  my  eyes,  being  the  first  I  have  seen 
J  was  a  little  child.^— iii.  124. 


since 


There  were  matters  nearer  and  more  ur- 
gent which  might  have  brought  less  irrational 
tears  into  his  eyes.  But  when  any  gleam  of 
reflection  as  to  iiis  position  did  occur,  it  was 
hardly  ever  to  awaken  a  proper  sense  of  his 
own  imprudence,  but  only  to  make  him 
wonder  that  his  friends  in  England  were  not 
more  thoughtful  and  more  active  about  him 
than  he  showed  the  least  inclination  to  be 
about  himself, 

'*1821.  June  14th. — A  letter  from  the  Longmans, 
which  makes  me  even  more  downhearted  than  I 
have  been  for  some  days,  as  it  shows  how  dtlaUh 
ry  and  indifferent  cdl  parties  have  been  in  the 
Bermuda  negotiation,  and  how  little  probability 
there  is  of  a  speedy,  or  indeed  any,  end  to  my 
ca»fo."— iii.  242. 

If  his  frysnds  in  England  could  have 
guessed  what  the  Diary  has  now  revealed  to 
us  of  the  life  of  the  Exile  of  Erin,  they 
would  not  have  thought  it  any  great  hard- 
ship. Dinners,  concerts,  operas,  theatres 
two  or  three  of  an  evening,  suppers,  balls, 
&c.,  occupied  almost  every  day  and  night. 
Visiting  with  a  childish  impatience  and  en- 
joyment the  pablio  gardens  of  Beaujon^* 
Tivoli — Jardin  Suisse — and  carefully  register- 
ing when  and  how  often  he  went  down  in 
the  cars  of  the  Montages  Busses  and  what 
ladies  were  the  companions  of  these  flights — 
strange  ones,  we  think,  for  a  father  of  a 
family  aged  43  ;  for  instance : — 

<<I821.  May  7ih,^Went  to  Beaujon;  descend- 
ed in  the  cars  tliree  times  with  each  of  the  [Miss] 
Kingstons,  and  four  times  with  Mrs.  S."— iii.  229. 
[No  "Bessy."] 

"1821.  Aug,  19<ft. — At  Beaujon;  went  down 
the  cars  ten  or  twelve  times  with  the  young  Scotch 
gifl."— 265.     [No  "  Bessy."] 

1822.  Avg,  ]1(^.— With  Lucy  [Miss  Drew,  it 
seems]  to  the  Jardin  Suisse :  very  pretty ;  went 
down  in  the  cars."— 3d6.    [No  **  Beasy."] 

While  he  was  living  in  this  way,  the  idea 
of  writing  The  Epicurean  moat  appropriatelj 


156 


MEMOIBa  OF  THOMAS  MOOBXL 


[Oct, 


presented  itself  to  him.  To  read  up  for  this 
projeoted  work,  he  wanted  Les  Voyages  de 
Pythagore,  but  hesitated  at  the  price — three 
Napoleons.  This  economical  scruple  is  dated 
8th  September,  1820.  Three  dajs  after  we- 
find  the  following  entry : — 

**  1820.  Sept  11^.— Went  into  Paris  at  twelve, 
in  order  to  take  Bessy  to  the  Phre  la  Chaise  he^ 
fore  the  flowers  are  aU  gone  from  the  tombs.  The 
dear  girl  was,  as  I  knew  she  would  be,  very  much 

affected Gave  them — Bessy,  Dumoulin 

[a  poor  starving  Irishman,  who  soon  aAer  died  in 
a  hospital],  Miss  Wilson  [we  believe  a  governess], 
Anastasla  [his  own  little  child],  and  Dr.  Yonge's 
little  girl — a  dinner  at  the  Cadran  hUuy  and  took 
them  afterwards  to  the  Porte  St.  Martin  [a  melo- 
drama theatre].  IcecL  punch  on  our  way  home. 
The  whole  cost  me  aftout  three  Napoleons^  just 
what  I  ought  to  have  reserved  for  the  Voyages  de 
Pythagore,  Bessy,  however,  told  me  when  we 
came  home  that  she  had  saved  by  little  pilferings 
from  me  at  different  times,  four  Napoleons,  and 
that  I  should  have  them  now  to  buy  those  books." 
— iii.  146-7. 

All  this — the  Pire  la  Chaise  and  the 
Cadran  bleu — the  funeral  flowers  and  the 
Porte  St.  Martin — the  ice  punch  and  the 
Voyages  de  Pythagore — reaos  like  a  mere 
farce,  but  the  smile  it  creates  is  a  bitter  one 
when  we  reflect  on  poor  Bessy's  honestly- 
pilfered  Napoleons,  so  wantonly  squandered. 

At  last  the  seasoti  drives  them  back  to 
Paris : — 

''  1820.  Oct,  16(^.— We  took  onr  leave  of  La 
Butte,  after  three  months  and  a  halfs  residence ; 
and,  so  far  as  tranquillity,  fine  scenery,  and 
sweet  sunshine  go,  I  could  not  wish  to  pass  a 
more  delightful  summer.  Our  dSmSnagement 
was,  as  usual,  managed  so  well  and  expeditiously 
by  Bessy,  that  I  felt  none  of  the  inconvenience 
of  it,  and  we  are  now  reinstated  comfortably  in 
our  home  in  the  Alldes  des  Veuves.  We  dined 
alone  with  our  little  ones  for  the  first  time  since  the 
\st  ofJuly^  which  was  a  great  treat  to  both  of  us ; 
and  Bessy  said,  in  going  to  bed, '  This  is  the  first 
rational  day  we  have  had  for  a  long  time.* " 

On  this  Lord  John  adds  a  note — saying  very 
coolly : — 

'*  Mrs.  Moore  was  qoite  right.  In  reading  over 
the  diary  of  dinners,  balls,  and  visits  to  the  thea- 
tre, I  feel  some  regret  in  reflecting  that  I  had 
some  hand  in  persuading  Moore  to  prefer  France 
to  Holyrood.  His  universal  popcdarity  was  his 
chief  enemy." — ^.  iii.  1.67. 

I 

This  appears  to  us  altogether  inadequate 
to  the  occasion,  and  laying  the  chief  blame 
on  Moore's  popularity  is  a  poor  evasion  o 
the  real  state  of  the  case,  which  was  his  ina- 


bility to  refrain  from  such  self-indulgence. 
We  say  fe(/'-indulgencey  for  it  is  remaraable, 
in  all  this  tourbiUon  at  Paris  as  well  as  in 
bis  English  life,  both  in  town  and  country« 
that  "  Bessy  V  share  in  all  external  sayeties 
was  infrequent — and  it  seems  reluctant. 
Illness  is  frequently  given  as  an  excuse  for 
her  absence  from  these  gayeties — but,  even 
when  she  appears  to  be  well  enough,  we  can 
trace  little  or  no  change  in  these  arrange- 
ments. There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  fool- 
ish and  unaccountable  mystery  in  which  he 
chose  to  envelop  his'  marriage  continued  to 
hang  about  her.  The  ladies  of  the  highest 
rank  and  character  who  were*  the  best  ac- 
quainted with  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
case — Lady  Donegal,  Lady  Lansdowne,  La- 
dy Loudon— all  received  her  with  unreserved 
attention,  and  even  cordiality  ;  yet  it  is  evi- 
dent that  Moore  was  in  a  constant  fidget 
about  her  reception  in  mixed  society,  while 
she  herself  seetns  to  have  been  unwilling  to 
step  beyond  her  own  narrow  circle  both  of 
intimates  and  amusements.  Her  conduct 
throughout  appears  to  have  been  perfect ; 
but  this  difference  of  tastes,  or  at  least  of 
practice,  in  their  social  tendencies  must, 
we  suppose,  have  contributed  to  the  very 
singular  phenomenon  that — notwithstanding 
Moore's  constant  and  enthusiastic  eulogiums 
on  his  domestic  paradise — he  seems  to  have 
given  to  either  wife  or  home  no  more  of  his 
time  and  company  than  he  could  possibly 
help.  Sometimes  he  diarizes  specimens  of 
behavior  which  a  husband  of  but  ordinary 
feeling  might  have  been  ashamed  to  practise, 
and  one  of  the  very  commonest  sense  to  re- 
cord. What  comiort  could  he  expect  from 
reading  in  after-life  such  entries  as  these  ? 

"1820,  JtLH.-^Bessy  very  ill  on  the  13th  and 
14th.  Asked  to  dine  at  the  Flahaults  on  the  14th, 
but  she  could  notga    I  did.** — ^iii.  97. 

So  small  an  incident  as  a  gentleman  dining 
out,  though  his  wife  was  not  well  enough  to 
accoqppany  him,  would  not  be  worth  notice ; 
but  we  shall  see  that  it  was  not  an  excep- 
tional case^-indeed  the  exceptions  were 
all  the  other  way : — 

«*1822,  Feb.  18.— Bessy  very  HI  Dined  at 
home  uncomfortably.  Went  to  the  French 
Opera,  sxid  forgot  my  uneasiness  in  the  beauty  of 
the  BdUetr-^ni.  327. 

**  April  2nd. — ^The  Macleods  wanted  Bessy  and 
me  to  join  them  at  the  Cafi^  Francais.  Bessy  net 
liking  to  go,  I  did.** 

'*  3rd. — Bessy  ill  with  a  pain  in  her  face,  which 

^  vented  her  going  to  one  of  the  little  theatres; 
I  went  alone  to  the  Ambigu.'*— 15.  338. 


1859.] 


MEMOntS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


157 


Thb  contrast  between  his  professions  and 
his  practice  may^  in  the  hurry  and  bustle 
the  Diary,  escape  a  cursory  reader — but  will 
be  exhibited  in  the  following  synopsis  of 
Moore's  movements  and  engagements  for  a 
fortnight  at  the  Allie  des  Veuves — which  we 
select,  not  as  being  pecuh'arly  erratic,  but 
only  for  the  singularity  of  its  concluding  day 
having  been  dedicated  to  "  Bessy" : — 


« 1820  Morning, 

Nov.  24. — Into  Paris  at  3  . 


JEhtening, 
.  Dined  at  Very's. 
[No  Bessy.] 
26.— Early  into  Paris        .  Dined   at    Lord 

John's  Hotel. 
[No  Bessy.] 
26.— Walked  into  Paris   .  [Notstat'd  where 

dined,  but  prob- 
ably at  home.] 
27.— Early  into  Paris       .  Dined  at  Very's. 

[No  Bessy.] 
.  28 — Eariy  into  Paris       .  Dined  at  Mad.  de 

Soaza's.    [No 
Bessy.] 
29—  Party  at   home, 

sung. 
30. — In  Paris  .  Dined    at   Lord 

Granard's,  song. 
[No  Bessy.] 
Dec.     1. — [Not  stated]    .     .  Dined    at     Lord 

Rancliff*A,sung. 
[No  Bessy.] 
2.— [Not  stated]    .     .[Probablyat 

home.] 
3. — [Probably  at  home]  Dined  at  home. 
4.    into  town    .    .    .  Dined  at  a  restau- 
rateurs,     then 
went     to     the 
Forsters,  sung, 
and    home    by 
12.      [No  Bes- 
sy.] 
6.— Into  town  at  4  .     .Dined  at  Very's. 

[No  Bessy.] 
6. — Walked  for  an  hour    Dined  at  home." 
by  the  Seine.    —  iii,  pp.  172, 176. 

At  last,  on  the  7th,  we  find  a  remembrance 
of  "  Bessy,"  and  a  pleasing  one : — 

•*  Dec.  7th. — A  note  from  Lord  Ranclifie,  ask- 
ing me  to  meet  Lord  John  to-day;  but  having 
given  Bessy  the  hope  of  our  enjoying  a  day  tO' 
gether,  did  not  like  to  disappoint  her,  so  refused." 

Bat,  alas !    Here  is  the  "  promised  day  of 
enjoyment :" — 

** Bessy  and  I  went  shopping;  dined  after- 
wards at  a  wretched  restaurant  at  the  corner  of 
the  Rue  de  la  Paix ;  and  in  the  evening  to  the 
Vsri^i^j :  four  pieces,  none  of  them  very  good." 
— J6. 

And  80  home,  we  presume,  in  the  ifSloci/ere. 


Such  a  return,  after  a  fortnight's  racketing, 
to  an  appropriated  day  of  conjugal  quiet,  and 
such  a  careful  record  thereof,  are  perhaps 
unique  in  life  and  in  autobiography.  But 
other  extracts  have  a  stiH  more  serious  ap- 
pearance : 

- 1821,  July  8th.— Dined  at  Lcird  Granard's. 
[No  Bessy.] 

"9th.— Dined  at  General  Fuller's,  at  Ver- 
sailles.    [No  Bessy.] 

"  10th.— Dined  at  Lord  Holland's.   [No  Bessy.] 
"  11th.— Late  dinner  with  Villamil.    [No  men- 
tion of  Bessy.] 

*•  12th.— Dined  at  home. 

"  13tb.— Dined  with  the  Villamila  at  Iliche'a 
[a  rehtanrateur].    [No  mention  of  Bessy.) 
.  •*  I4tb.— Dined  with  Lord  Holland.     [No  Bes- 

8V«1 

**  15th.— Went  in  [tb  Paris]  for  the  purpose 
of  passing  two  or  three  days  with  the  Storvs. 
[No  Bessy.]  ^ 

"16ih.— A  ball  at  Story's  in  the  evening,  in 
honor  of  her  [Mrs.  Story's]  birtL-day.  A 
strange  evening,  from  various  reasons,  Bessy  did 
not  appear,  notfieling  well  enough,  andfiaring  to 
bring  on  the  erysipelas  again  by  dancing,  I  danced 
quadrilles  all  night  with  Misses  Drew,  Pigot, 
Chichenter,  Arthur,  &.c.  Supper  very  magnifi- 
cent. Did  not  gel  to  bed  till  five  o'clock."— iii. 
256. 

We  pause  to  remark  that  there  is  no  pre- 
vious note  of,  *'  Bessy's  illness,"  nor  indeed 
had  she  been  so  much  as  mentioned  for  a 
fortnight  before.  The  four  days  that  fol- 
lowed  this  *^  strange  evening"  were  spent  as 
usual  in  dinners  with  the  Storys  and  Villa- 
mils  and  visits  to  Tivoli,  without  the  slight- 
est allusion  to  "Bessy"  since  the  16th  ;  so 
that  we  are  quite  startled  at  reading,  without 
any  preparatory  hinf 


"  21.— Went  into  town  eariy  in  order  to  gel 
Bessy's  passports,  tike  places,  &c  Dined  at  Vil- 
lamil's.    [No  Bessy.] 

"  22d.—  Drove  into  town  with  Bessy  at  three. 
Dined  at  Story's  [no  Bessy],  and  came  out  at 
eight  in  the  evening. 

"  23d.— All  in  a  bustle  preparing  for  Bessy's 
departure.  Went  in  to  provide  money  for  the 
dear  girl.  Dined  at  Story's.  Bessy  arrived  with 
her  trunks  in  the  evening. 

**24th. — AH  up  and  ready  in  time.  Saw  Bes- 
sy comfirrtahly  off!  at  nine  o'clock,  with  dear 
little  Tom  [their  boy].    Heaven  guard  her/** 

No  hint  is  given  of  either  the  wky  or  the 
whither  of  this  sudden  movement  of  one  so 
generally  quiescent  as  "  my  darling  Bessy," 
till,  on  the  6th  of  August,  she  turns  up  in 
Wiltshire.  On  the  1 7th  Moore  is  "in  low 
spirits,"  and  *'  cries  bitterly"  over  the  loss  of 
the  Liverpool  packet  which  he  had  "just 


168 


IfRMOIBS  OF  TECMAB  MOOIUL 


[Oei. 


read  in  the  newspnper ;"  but  "  a  picnic  with 
the  Villamils  and  Mrs.  S.'^  and  "  a  letter,  too, 
from  Bessy,"  make  a  material  "  alteration  in 
his  spirits"  (268).  Then  went  on  the  usual 
routine — ^ices  at  Tortoni's — dining  at  tayerns 
— singing  with  the  Villamils — supping  with 
the  Btorjs — and  we  h^ar  nothing  more  of 
the  wife  and  child  till  the  3d  of  September, 
when  a  letter  announces  "  to  his  great  de- 
light," her  approaching  return ;  and  on  the 
4th  "  he  was  right  happy  to  see"  alight,  at 
the  Messageries  Royales,  "  the  dear  girl  and 
her  little  one"  (p.  274).  But  short,  alas! 
was  his  enjoyment  of  their  loved  society — 
for,  at  the  end  of  one  week — on  the  12th  of 
the  said  September — we  find  that  he  em- 
braced the  "  lucky"  opportunity  of  accompa- 
nying Lord  John  Russell  to  England,  where 
he  remained  two  months.  What  sudden 
call  after  that  "  strange  evening'^  the  dear  girl 
and  her  little  hoy  had  in  Wiltshire,  or  why 
Moore  could  not  have  combined  any  busi- 
ness he  might  have  had  in  England  with  her 
visit  we  are  not  told ;  but  the  Diary  scraps 
look  very  like  a  mystification  of  something 
which  there  was  some  reason  or  other  for 
not  clearly  explaining. 

We  have  already  hinted  that  our  poet  was 
not  always  insensible  to  the  extravagance 
and  culpability  of  his  Parisian  life : — 

**1822,  Jan.  7th.~Dined    by  myself  at  the 
Troia  Frhree^  and  fouud  great  pleasure  in  the 
few  moments  of  sUtni  repose  which  it  gave  me." 

The  inhabitants  of  the  Allh  des  Veuves  find- 
ing "silent  repose"  at  the  Trois  Freres — the 
best  perhaps,  certainly  the  busiest,  and  there- 
fore not  the  quietest  cafi  of  the  Palais  Roy- 
al ! — but  he  proceeds  in  a  still  more  serious 
style : — 

7— <*  Never  did  I  lead  such  an  unquiet  life :  Bfssy 
%U;  my  home  uncomfortable;  anxious  to  employ 
myself  in  the  midst  of  distractions,  and  full  of 
remorse  in  the  utmost  of  my  gayeiyy — iii.  316. 

One  would  be  inclined  to  respect  and  pity 
his  "  remorse  ;"  and  we  can  well  understand 
his  recording  it  in  his  Diary  as  a  pledge  of 
amendment.  But  mark  what  immediately 
follows  :— 

"  Jan.  8th. — Dined  at  Pictet's,  a  Swiss  bank- 
er's, &c» ;  thence  to  L)idy  E.  Stuart's  assembly, 

dlLC. 

^*  9th. — Dined  at  home  quietly,  for  a  wonder. 
Evening,  to  Mrs.  Armstrong's  ball,  &c.  &c. ;  did 
not  go  to  bed  till  5  o'clock. 

•*  10th.— Was  to  have  dined  with  Hibbert,  but 
preferred  Lambton.  All  went  to  the  Fran^ais 
afterwards  to  see  a  new  tragedy. 


«<  llth.--Dined  at  tiord  Henry  Fitzirerald's  ;— 
company,  &c.  At  nine  to  the  Vari^t^s — laugh* 
ed  almost  to  pain.  Went  afterwards  tu  the 
Macleods,  and  thence,  at  twelve,  to  liady  Charle- 
mont's  ball. 

**  12th.— Dined  at  the  Douglas's,  &c.  In  the 
evening  to  Mercer's — sung  a  little — ^then  went 
to  Laffitte's  ball,  &c.  &c. 

**13th. — Dined  at  Col.  Ellice's;  company,  &c. 
Thence  to  Madame  de  Flahaut's,  dtc.  Did  not 
stay,  meaning  to  go  to  Mrs.  Gent's  ball.  Went 
to  the  wrong  place — found  it  was  Marshal  Sn- 
chet's,  and  made  my  escape.  Dirtied  my  shoes 
in  looking  for  the  carriage,  and  gave  up  Mrs. 
Gent 'p.    Went  to  the  MacTeods. 

«*  l4th. — Dined  at  the  Douglas's — ^a  party  in 
the  eveni|)g.  For  half  an  hour  at  Mrs.  Newte's 
ball." 

And  so  on  for  ten  consecutive  days,  without 
— amidst  so  copious  a  variety  of  places  and 
persons — one  single  mention  of  the  word 
*'  hom/e*^  or  the  name  "  Bessy*' — the.  last  we 
had  heard  of  either  being  that  "  it  was  un^ 
comfortable,**  and  that  "  she  teas  ill,**  Under 
what  infatuation  Moore  should  have  made 
these  entries  directly  following  the  peniten- 
tial remorse  of  the  TVois  Freres,  we  cannot 
conceive;  and  indeed  as  little,  how  Lord 
John  (since  it  is  clear  that  he  has  omitted 
some  things)  should  have  published  details 
so  worthless  in  themselves,  and,  we  should 
suppose,  so  exceedingly  disagreeable  to  the 
amiable  person  in  whom  he  has  taken  so 
much  interest. 

His  Lordship  expresses,  as  we  have  seen, 
some  regret  at  having  contributed  to  throw 
Moore  into  his  Parisian  vortex.  But  he 
may  console  himself : — it  was  the  nature  of 
the  man,  and  not  the  influence  of  place,  that 
produced  these  effects. 

**  Coalum  non  animum  mutant  qui  trans  mare 
currunt." 

The  same  passion  for  exhUntion  and  enjoy- 
ment, and  the  same  kind  of  dislike  or  wea- 
riness of  domestic  habits,  seem  to  have  in- 
fluenced his  English  life  almost  to  the  same 
extent.  As  Mrs.  Moore  remained  in  the 
country  while  her  "bird** — as  he  says  "she 
generally  called  him" — and  surely  the  word 
was  never  better  applied  than  to  her  volatile 
little  songster — ^was  pursuing  his  business  or 
his  pleasures  in  town,  the  contrast  is  not  so 
constant  and  striking  as  it  was  in  France ; 
but  even  when  in  the  country,  the  Diary  lets 
us  see  that  the  same  principle  of  escaping 
from  mere  domesticity  was  still  as  active  as 
the  decency  of  English  manners  would  per!* 
mit. 
His  cottage  in  Wiltshire,  fortunately  for 


1858.] 


MEMOntS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


159 


his  tastes,  bat  unlnckily  for  bis  studies  asd 
his  bnsinessy  was  witbio  a  short  walk  of  the 
elegant  and  intelleotual  hospitality  of  Bo- 
wood,  and  surrounded  by  a  circle  of  country 
neighbors  less  distinguished  bat  not  less  joy« 
ous,  kind,  and  clever.  The  neighborhood  of 
seyeral  little  towns,  and  that  great  mart  of 
idleness — Bath — afforded  freqaent  occasions 
or  excuses  for  escape  from  the  monotony  of 
home ;  and  this  sometimes  even  under  cir- 
camstances  similar  to  those  at  Paris,  which 
might  have  been  expected  to  keep  a  less  de- 
voted husband  more  at  home. 

**  1824,  Nov.  2l8t.— Bensy  hy  no  means  well 
Walked  over  to  Bowood.  Sang  in  the  evening. 
Slept  there. 

'*22d. — Walked  home  after  breakfast  to  see 
how  Bessy  was.  Fonnd  Bessy  not  mudi  better. 
God  wet  in  returning  to  Bowood.  Sanpr  curain. 
Siq4  <A«re."— iv.  263. 

A  morning  call  to  the  sick  wife — but  break- 
fast, dinner,  supper,  singing,  sleeping  at  Bo- 
wood. 

We  could  fill  pages  with  similar  extracts, 
but  the  following  summary  of  occurrences 
io  the  autumn  of  1825  will  superabundantly 
saffice. 

It  appears  that  in  the  summer  of  1825 
Mrs.  Moore  was  really  suffering  under  some 
painful,  though,  we  presume  not  serious,  com- 
pliant, for  which  she  was  ordered  to  Chelten- 
ham, where  she  arrived  on  the  22d  July. 
Moore  followed  the  •*  darling  airV^  on  the 
4th  August,  and  remained  with  her  two 
whole  days  (!),  during  which  she  was  wheeled 
about  in  a  chair.  On  the  7th  he  left  "  the 
dear  girV^ — "  his  darling  Bess** — for  London. 
There  he  remained  between  eight  and  nine 
weeks,  working  no  doubt  in  the  morning  at 
the  Life  of  Sheridan,  but  spending  his  after- 
noons and  nights  in  more  than  his  usual 
whirl  of  dinners,  sappers,  concerts,  theatres, 
without  making,  during  all  the  time,  the 
slightest  allusion  to  the  state  of  the  poor 
lady  at  Cheltenham,  of  whom  the  first  we 
hear  is  that,  when  Moore  returned  to  Slop- 
erton  on  the  27th  September,  he  found  her 
there,  but  not  recovered.  Then  follows  a  se- 
ries of  entries  in  the  Diary,  of  ^hich  our 
space  allows  us  only  to  give  the  dates  and 
chief  memorabilia : — 

'- 1825.     Sept  28th.-~Dined  at  home. 

''29ch. — Dined  at  Bowood.  Company,  &c. 
Sang  in  the  evening,  and  slept  there. 

*•  30th.— Walked  home  to  breakfast  to  see 
Bessy — the  boil  coming  to  a  head.  Retamed  to 
Bowood  to  dinner*  &c.  Sang  again  in  the  eve- 
ning.   Slept  there. 


**  Oct  Ist. — Bowles  called  at  Bowood,  while  I 
was  listening  to  Mrs.  Fazakerley's  singing  to 
the  guiiar.  Wanted  me  to  dine  with  him  to- 
day, bat  told  him  Bessys  illness  rendered  it  im- 
possible. After  luncheon,  home,  &c. ;  found 
Bessy  better,  and  anxious  I  should  go  to  Bowles, 
&c. ;  so  returned  to  Bowood.  Thence  walked  to 
Bowles's.  Company,  &c.,  &c.  A  great  many 
glees,  duets,  &c.,  in  the  evening.-  My  singing 
much  liked. 

"  2nd. — Dined  at  home. 

'*  3rd. — Dined  at  Bowood,  &c.,  &c. 

"  4th  and  5th. — [No  entry.  Still,  it  seems,  at 
Bowood.] 

**  6th.---[ Breakfast,  it  seems:,  at  Bowood.]  Re- 
turned home.  Dined  at  Money^s  [another  neigh- 
bor], &c.,  &,c."—iv.  321. 

Where  he  may  have  dined  the  following 
days  is  not  noted  ;  but  enough  is  told.  We 
lay  no  stress  on  the  silence  of  the  Diary 
about  '*  Bessy"  while  he  was  in  London  :  ho 
no  doubt  received  frequent,  perhaps  daily, 
accounts  of  her.  Our  wonder  is  that,  find- 
ing on  his  return  that  she  was  still  so  ill 
that  it  was  impossible  to  leave  her  for  a  single 
dag,  it  should  turn  out  that  of  the  nine 
succeeding  days  he  spent  but  two  at  home, 
and  all  the  rest  in  the  various  gayeties  of  the 
neighborhood. 

Even  when  at  what  he  called  home,  it  is 
surprising  to  count  up  how  seldom  he  really 
was  enfamille,  and  his  joy  at  his  escapes. 
Take  one  sample  : — 

*"  1824.  April  13.— Started  at  3  oVIock  for 
Farley  Abbey  (Colonel  Houllon's  place),  in  con- 
sequence of  a  promise  made  at  the  masquerade 
that  Bessy  and  I  would  pay  them  a  visit  of  a  few 
days.  Besfy^  however,  not  wdt  enough  to  go^-^ 
iv.  179. 

That,  however,  was  so  little  a  damper  on 
his  spirits,  thnt  on  the  second  day  of  the 
visit  he  exclaims  in  rapture  :-— 

"  The  day  very  agreeable ;  could  hardly  be 
otherwise.  A  pretty  house,  beautiful  girls,  hos- 
pitable host  and  hostess,  excellent  cook,  good 
Champagne  and  Moselle,  charming  music^- 
What  more  enrdd  a  man  want  ?" — 179. 

Tis  a  pity  that  there  was  no  Irish  echo  to 
answer — "  Bessg .'" — poor  Bessy  that  was 
sick  at  home. 

But  though  Mrs.  Moore  seems,  like  a  pru- 
dent as  well  as  an  affectionate  wife,  to  have  in 
general  submitted  to  these  wanderings,  and 
even  (as  Moore  says  in  a  preceding  extract) 
sometimes  encouraged  them — seeing  proba- 
bly that  she  could  not  resist  his  restless  dis- 
position— ^yet  it  is  evident  that  she  was  not 
msensible  to  these  derelictions.     The  first 


160 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOORK 


[Oct., 


symptom  of  this  is  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Power, 
his  music- publisher — who  jobbed  bis  songs 
from  him  at  500/.  a  year ;  here  we  find  a 
paragraph  which  is  really  a  clue  to  much 
that  would  be  else  unintelligible  in  Moore's 
life  ;  it  confirms  our  former  obserration,  that 
his  existence  was  essentially  one  of  theatrical 
exhibition,  and  adds — what  we  never  sus- 
pected— exhibition  for  profit : — 

"  Yon  will  be  ^lad  to  hear  that  Bessy  has  con- 
sented to  my  passing  next  May  in  town  alone ; 
to  take  her  would  be  too  expensive ;  and  indeed 
it  was  only  on  my  representing  to  her  that  my 
songs  would  all  remain  a  dead  letter  [sic]  with 
you,  if  I  did  not  go  op  in  the  gay  time  of  the 
year  and  give  them  life  by  singing  them  abotUf 
that  she  agreed  tp  my  leaving  her.  This  is  guite 
my  object,  I  shall  make  it  a  whole  month  of 
company  and  exhibition  [sic],  which  will  do  more 
service  in  the  sale  of  the  songs  than  a  whole 
year's  advertising.** — i.  330. 

Little  did  the  fashionnble  coteries  whom 
he  obliged  and  delighted  with  his  songs  im- 
agine what  was  '*  quite  his  object" — that  he 
was  really  going  about  as  Mr.  Power's  ad- 
vertising  van. 

"  1823.  April  14th  [in  London].— Received  an 
impatient  letter  from  Bess^  which  rather  dis- 
turbed me,  both  on  her  account  and  my  own. 
Perceive  she  is  getting  uncomfortable  without 
me."— iv.  65. 

Yet  still  he  lingered  in  town,  "  leading,"  he 
says,  **  a  restless  and  feverish  life  "  (iv.  89), 
till  the  24th  June,  when  he  returned  home, 
but  only  for  three  weeks — for  a  proposal 
from  Lord  LansHowne  for  a  tour  in  Ireland 
was  irresistible. 

One  of  these  absences  was  marked  by  a 
peculiar  incident. 

"  1825.  28th  May.— With  an  excellent,  warm- 
hearted,  lively  wife,  and  dear  promising  children, 
what  more  need  I  ask  for?  Prepared  for  my 
trip  to  town.'' — iv.  283. 

And  next  day  was  off;  but  Bessy  was  this 
time  on  the  alert  also.  She  followed  the 
truant  (unbidden,  it  is  pretty  clear)  two 
days  after,  and  stayed  six  days  in  town — 
but  without  seeing  much  more  of  her  "  bird** 
than  if  she  had  remained  alone  in  the  cage 
atSloperton;  for  they  were  not- lodged  in 
the  same  house — and  of  the  six  days  of  her 
stay  they  dined  together  bui  twice,  break- 
fasted not  at  all,  and  pasaea  no  evening  to- 
gether but  one  at  the  opera.  But  on  the 
sixth  morning — 

**  8th  Jane. — ^Up  at  five.  And  saw  my  tkxas- 
VBEs  mrfe  in  the  coach  I " — \y,  284. 


The  reader  will  observe  how  the  cup  is 
sweetened  to  Bessy's  taste ;  when  he  was 
going  off,  he  had  hoped  to  reconcile  her  by 
a  tribute  to  her  '*  licelinesi  "  and  "  excellence, 
and  when  he  sends  her  back  he  consoles  her 
with  the  record  that  she  is  a  '*  treaeure/*' 

Having  thus  got  rid  of  his  treasures,  h% 
remained  in  London,  in  bis  usual  round  of 
amusements,  for  near  two  months,  wlien  at 
last  he  paid  his  invalid  at  Cheltenham  that 
visit  of  two  days  which  has  been  already 
mentioned. 

Such  are  the  very  unexpected  details  of 
Moore*s  domestic  life  which  these  volumes 
reveal,  and  which,  we  think,  with  all  defer- 
ence to  Lord  John  Russell,  instead  of  being 
thus  blazoned  to  the  world,  might  rather 
better  have  been  suffered  to  "  sleep  in  the 
shade." 

Some  other  circumstances  no  less  surprise 
us.  In  the  midst  of  all  the  gayety  and  bril- 
liancy in  which  Moore  figured,  who  could 
have  suspected  an  '  extrenva«  of  penury  at 
home  ?  We  find  a  pompously  recorded  visit 
to  the  High  Sheriff  of  Leicestershire — with 
turtle,  venison,  and  so  forth — :Wound  up 
with  a  confession  that  he  and  his  wife  were 
forced  to  remain  there  longer  than  they  had 
intended,  from  not  possessmg  a  fewshillioga 
to  give  to  the  servants  at  coming  away.  He 
writes  to  Mr.  Power : — 

"  [Longley  Priaryl,  Nov.  12, 18J2. 
**  Mt  Dear  Sir  : — I  have  only  time  to  say  that 
if  you  can  let  me  have  three  or  fuur  pounds  by 
return  of  post  yon  will  oblige  me.  I  have  fool- 
ishly run  dry.  without  trying  my  other  resources ; 
and  (  have  been  this  week  pal^t  literally  without 
a  shilling.  .  .  .  You  may  laugh  at  my  ridic- 
ulous ditttress  in  being  kept  to  turtle-eating  and 
claret-drinking  longer  than  I  wisli,  and  merely 
because  we  have  not  a  shilling  in  our  pockets  to 
give  the  servants  in  going  away." — 1:'315-16. 

From  this  novel  mode  of  being  in  the 
custody  of  the  sheriff,  Mr.  Power,  by  a  re- 
mittance of  10/.  enabled  the  captives  to  re- 
deem themselves :  and,  indeed,  throughout 
the  whole  of  Moore's  after-life,  Mr.  Power's 
highly-tried  but  always  ready  liberality  en- 
abled Moore  to  work  through  the  '*  never 
ending  still  beginning"  difficulties  in  which,, 
what  appears  to  us  a  most  reckless  impro- 
vidence involved  him.  With  receipts  which 
to  a  poet  who  did  not  set  up  for  a  man  of 
fashion  would  be  thought  enormous,  he 
never  had  a  penny  in  his  pocket,  and  seems 
to  have  existed  by  loans,  site-flying,  antici- 
pations, and  petty  shifts,  hardly  reconcileable 
with  integrity,  or,  at  least,  delicacy.  What 
shall  we  say  to  such  anecdotes  as  the  foi- 


1868.] 


HBM0IB8  OF  THOMAS  HOOBG. 


161 


lowing,  wbicb  we  are  almost  ashamed  to 
repeat?  In  December,  1818,  Lord  Lans- 
dowoe  stood  godfather  to  Moore's  second 
boy: — 

'  **  After  the  ceremony  be  gave  Bessy  a  paper 
which  contained,  he  said,  a  present  for  the  nurse. 
The  paper  contained  two  61.  notes,  one  of  which 
Bessy  gave  the  nurse,  and  reserved  the  other  as 
a  present  for  her  mother." — ^ii.  239. 

and  this  strange  misappropriation  of  Lord 
Lansdowne's  bounty  is  followed  up  by  a 
cool  observation  that  "  they"  (Bessy's  mother 
and  sister) — 

"have  latterly  been  very  eonnderate  indeed  in 
their  applications  for  assistance  to  me." — lb. 

We  hardly  think  that  Moore  was  in  this  case 
sufficiently  considerate  as  to  the  source  from 
which  he  assisted  them. 

A  Mr.  Branigan,  with  whom  he  had  made 
some  acquaintance  in  the  country, 

**  announces  to  me  by  letter  that  he  had  ordered 
his  partners  in  London  to  send  me  a  Bank  post- 
bill  to  defrsy  the  expenses  of  his  little  girl,  which 
have  not  yet  come  to  half  the  sum,  but  il*8  very 
convenient  just  now." — ii.  331. 

When  we  recollect  his  appearance  in  so- 
ciety and  now  see  the  real  misery  of  his  po- 
sition, we  are  struck  at  once  with  pity  and 
wonder.  We  know  not  whether  it  may  be 
thought  more  like  praise  or  censure  to  say 
that  in  his  personal  deportment  no  one 
could  trace  anything  of  the  constant  anxiety 
and  embarrassment  which  such  a  condition 
of  affairs  would  produce  on  most  men's 
manpers  and  temper.  He  seemed  always 
cheerful,  always  at  ease,  making  no  iialage 
of  finery  or  foppery :  and  we  believe  we 
may  say  that  none  of  his  friends — none  but 
those  with  whom  he  had  money  dealings — 
could  have  the  slightest  idea  that  be  was 
not  ID  easy  circumstances,  and  on  a  footing 
of  independence  and  equality  with  any  other 
member  of  good  society. 

He  says  on  one  occasion — ^December  2drd, 
1826  :— 

**  Shearer  said  that  the  Longmans  had  told  his 
brothef  that  /  had  the  most  generous  eorUempifor 
money  <^any  man  they  had  ever  me/." — ^iv.  262. 

That  "contempt  for  money"  which  con- 
sists in  throwing  it  away  Moore  may  have 
had,  but  we  must  say  that  this  is  the  only 
passage  in  the  Diary  that  affords  us  the 
slightest  hint  of  his  liberality  in  money  af- 

YOL  XXX.   Na  u 


fairs.  An  author  in  the  sale  of  his  works  is 
as  fairly  a  tradesman  as  the  bookseller  with 
whom  he  deals,  and  we  do  not  in  the  least 
cavil  at  the  eagerness  which  Moore  shows  in 
his  bargains,  but  we  really  cannot  allow  him 
thus  to  record  his  own  easy  liberality  with- 
out showing  from  the  same  pages  how  Utile 
the  praise  was  deserved.  Ail  that  he  tells 
of  himself  is  of  so  different  a  character,  so 
full  of  tricks,  and  what  would  be  called  sharp 
practice,  that  we  can  only  rejoice  that 
Messrs.  Longman  fared  better  than  their 
neighbors ; — ^yet  we  have  Moore's  own  evi- 
dence that  even  they,  hid  they  known  all, 
might  have  had  some  grounds  of  complaint. 
He  had,  as  early  as  July,  1814,  commenced 
bis  negotiation  with  Messrs.  Longman  for 
his  poem  of  Lalla  Rookh,  which  came  (after 
a  good  deal  of  sharp  bargaining  on  Moore's 
part)  to  an  agreement  for  3000  guineas.  Mr. 
Longman,  finding,  it  seems,  some  unexpected 
delay  in  the  production  of  the  poem,  in- 
quired in  April,  1816,  about  its  progress, 
and  Moore  answers  on  the  25th  of  that 
month, — 

**  /  had  copied  out  fairly  about  four  thousand 
lines  of  my  work,  for  the  purpose  of  submittine 
them  to  your  perusal,  as  I  had  promised,  but  I 
have  changed  my  intention." — ii.  14. 

And  then  he  proceeds  with  some  ingenious 
reasons  for  requesting  his  leave  to  tvithhold 
the  said  fairly  copied  MS  ^ from  his  perusal : — 

**  bat  I  mean,  with  your  permission,  to  say  in  town 
that  the  work  is  finished  [sic],  and  mereiy  withheld 
from  publication  on  account  of  the  lateness  of  the 
season." — ib. 

But  in  the  very  next  page — in  a  letter, 
dated  a  fortnight  later,  to<a  private  confidant 
in  Ireland — he  confesses  that  all  this  was 
sham — that  there  were  no  **'  four  thousand 
lines  fairly  copied  for  Mr.  Longman's  peru- 
sal :"  that  there  was  no  possibility  of  the 
poems  being  published  at  any  period  of  that 
year ;  and  that  "  it  can  hardly  be  till  this 
spring  twelvemonth  that  it  can  be  finished  off 
fit  for  delivery."  {ib.  p.  76.)  It  was  not,  in 
fact,  published  till  tufo  years  later. 

Here  is  another  private  confession  to  his 
mother : — 

**  There  is  so  much  call  for  the  opera  [M.P.], 
that  I  have  made  a  present  of  it  to  little  Power  to 
publish ;  tliat  is,  nominally  I  have  made  a  present 
of  it  to  him,  but  I  am  to  nave  the  greater  part  of 
the  profits  notwithstanding.  I  do  it  in  this  way, 
however,  for  two  reasons — one  that  it  looks  more 
dignified,  particularly  afler  having  made  so  light 

11 


162 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOOBE. 


[Oct., 


of  the  piece  myself;  and  the  second,  that  I  do  not 
mean  to  give  anythmg  more  to  Carpenter,  yet  do 
not  think  it  worth  breaking  with  him  till  I  have 
pomething  of  consequence  to  give  Longman." — i. 
264,  265. 

Tricks  of  this  sort  are  not  so  openly  co'n- 
fessed  in  the  Diary  as  in  these  confidential 
letters ;  but  the  scattered  indications  of  them 
are  frequent,  and  we  do  not  remember  one 
single  instance  of  liberality  in  money  deal- 
inp^s  on  the  part  of  Moore,  nor  any  one  proof 
— though  many  imputations — of  a  contrary 
disposition  in  any  of  his  publishers.  To  this 
class  of  topics  beloncrs,  we  are  sorry  to  say, 
a  great  deal  of  double'-dealing  and  shuffling 
with  Messrs.  Murray  and  Wilkie,  with  whom 
he  had  made  his  first  agreement  for  the 
"  Life  of  Sheridan,"  and  which  he  afterwards 
transferred  to  Messrs.  Longman,  who  fur- 
nished him  with  near  500/.  to  repay  what 
Murray  had  already  advanced  him  on  the 
credit  of  that  work.  The  transaction — 
vaguely  shadowed  as  it  is  in  '  the  Diary — 
shows  anything  rather  than  that  contempt  for 
money  which  Lord  John  seems  to  rank  among 
Moore's  higher  characteristics.  But  still 
more  remarkable  is  the  story  of  Lord  Byron's 
Autobiographical  Memoirs,  their  sale«  re- 
demption, and  destruction — very  confusedly 
and  disjointedly  told  in  the  Diary ;  but 
which,  as  it  involves  not  only  personal  char- 
acter,  but  a  question  of  considerable  literary 
interest,  and  perhaps  of  some  future  impor- 
tance, we  shall  endeavor,  though  it  will  occu- 
py more  space  than  we  can  well  spare,  to 
bring  into  one  comprehensible  view. 

It  appears  that  Moore  had  at  first  offered 
them  for  sale  to  Messrs.  Longman,  who  de- 
clined to  purchase  them ;  and  this,  we  sup- 
pose, brought  him  over  from  Paris  in  Sep- 
tember, 1821,  to  endeavor  to  dispose  of  them 
to  greater  advantage.  He  arrived  in  Lon- 
don at  eleven  o'clock  on  the  night  of  the  26th, 
and  early  next  morning  '*  wrote  a  note  to 
summon  Murrny."  Murray  came  next  day — 
"  agreed  to  his  own  terms — viz.,  two  thousand 
guineas  for  the  Memoirs — and  took  away 
the  MS." 

When  Moore  communicated  his  bargain  to 
Lord  Holland,  his  lordship  looked  at  the 
case  with  a  gentlemanlike  delicacy  which 
was  natural  to  him  when  party  prejudices 
did  not  intervene,  and  which  may  on  this 
occasion,  have  been  a  little  quickened  by  some 
pereoncU  considerations — 

**  He  expressed  some  scruples  about  my  sale  of 
Lord  B.*s  Memoirs ;  said  he  wished  I  could  have 
gotten  the  2000  guineas  any  other  way.  Seemed 
to  think  it  was  in  cold  blood  depositing  a  quiver  of 


poisoned  arrows  for  future  tooffare  on  privaie  ehO' 
meter."— iii.  298. 

We  wonder  that  Lord  John  Russell,  when 
he  came  to  read  this  opinion  of  Lord  Hol- 
land's, did  not  agree  with  him  that  the  sale 
of  such  a  work  was  not  a  creditable  way  of 
obtaining  two  thousand  or  even  three  thou- 
sand guineas. 

After  meditating  on  this  suggestion,  Moore 
seemed  to  think  it  so  important  that  he  ought 
to  attempt  a  rescinding  of  the  bargain.  Sub- 
sequent circumstances,  however,  leave  no 
doubt  that  it  was  not  Lord  Holland's  sug- 
gestion, but  the  prospect  of  making  a  better 
bargain,  that  induced  Moore  to  try  to  recover 
the  property  of  the  MS.  We  hear  no  more 
of  the  affair  for  six  months,  but  on  the  22nd 
of  April,  1822,  we  find  the  following  entry: — 

**  Spoke  to  Murray  on  the  subject  of  Lord  B.'8 
Memoirs ;  of  my  wish  to  redeem  them,  and  can- 
cel the  deed  of  sale;  which  Murray  acceeded  to 
ivUh  the  best  grace  imaginable.  Accordingly 
there  is  now  an  agreement  making  out,  by  which 
I  become  hip  debtor  for  two  thousand  guineas, 
leaving  the  MS.  in  his  hands  as  security  till  1  am 
able  to  pay  it.  This  is,  I  feel,  an  over  delicate 
deference  to  the  opinion  oft/thers  ;  but  it  is  better 
than  allowing  a  shadow  of  suspicion  to  approach 
within  a  mile  of  one  in  any  transaction,  and  I 
know  I  shall  feel  the  happier  when  rid  of  the  bar- 
gain."— iii.  346. 

We  see  no  ground  whatsoever  for  this  self- 
applause;  for  the  only  practical  effect  of 
this  new  arrangement  was  one  which  seems 
to  have  been  for  some  months  occupying  no 
trivial  share  in  Moore's  ponderings — name- 
ly, that  if  he  could  at  any  time  get  any  one 
to  give  him  2500^  or  8000^.  for  the  Me- 
moirs, he  had  a  right  to  pay  off  Murray, 
and  transfer  the  MS.  to  a  new  purchaser — 
pu  tting  the  difference  in  his  own  pocket.  Such 
an  arrangement,  we  need  not  say,  did  not  at 
all  meet  Lord  Holland's  objection — and 
Mr.  Murray  was  certainly  the  most  liberal 
of  men  to  consent  to  it,  for  he  remained 
2000  guineas  out  of  pocket,  and  must  have 
done  80  as  long  as  Lord  Byron  should  hap- 
pen to  live — while  Moore  had  the  option, 
when  he  pleased,  of  turning  the  MS.  to  bet- 
ter account  and  leaving  Murray  in  the  posi- 
tion of  having  had  so  much  risk  and  trouble, 
only  to  be  laughed  at  by  some  higher  bidder 
in  Mr.  Moore  s  auction.  We  shall  aee  that 
all  this,  and  worse  than  this,  did  in  fact  take 
place  to  the  fullest  extent,  as  far  as  concerned 
Murray's  pecuniary  interests. 

So  (omitting  some  minor  details)  matters 
fitood  till  the  8rd  of  May,  1824 — we  request 
attention  to  the  dates — when    Moore   had 


1853.] 


MEMOIfiS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


168 


*  R  letter  from  Lord  Byron,  at  MissaloDghi ;  haa 
had  an  attack  of  epilepsy  or  apoplexy,  the  pliy- 
stciana  do  not  know  which.** — iv.  182. 

No  observation  wbatsoeTer  follows  this 
serious  announcement ;  but  we  have  not  long 
to  wait  for  its  collateral  consequences  : — 

"  1834,  May  12th.— Dined  early  with  Rees 
[managing  partner  of  Mesara.  Longman].  Rees 
adced  me  if  I  had  called  on  Murray  to  get  him  to 
complete .  the  arrangement  entered  into  when  I 
UKU  laxt  in  town  [of  which  we  tind  no  other  men- 
tion than  we  have  quoted]  for  the  redemption  of 
Byron's  ^iemoirs  7 — said  1  had  nut.  Told  me  ihe 
money  was  ready ^  and  advised  me  not  to  lose  any 
Ume  about  it.'* — ib.  p.  186. 

Who  can  doubt  that  Moore  had  been  on 
the  lookout  for  a  better  bargain  ? — for  here 
is  what  he  significantly  calls  a  **  riwU  bib- 
liopolist"  who  has  the  money  ready  to  pay 
oflf  Murray,  and  who  advises  Moore  to  lose 
no  time  in  doing  so.  But  lo!  by  one  of 
the  most  extraordinary  coincidences  we  have 
eter  read,  on  the  very  next  morning  Moore 
learns  by  accident,  in  another  bookseller's 
shop — 

<*  thai  Lord  Byron  was  dead,  .  .  ReooUeeUd  then 
the  unfiaished  state  of  my  agreement  for  the  re- 
demption of  the  Memoirs." 

It  needed,  we  thinlc,  no  creat  effort  of 
memory  to  "recolket^*  a  subject  which -Mr. 
Rees  bad  brought  so  strongly  before  him  the 
day  before. 

This  event  made  a  total  change  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case.  Murray  had  paid, 
two  years  before,  2000  guineas  on  the  spec- 
ulative  value  of  the  Memoirs  when  Lord 
Byron  should  die.  Lord  Byron  was  but 
thirty* three  when  the  bargain  was  made. 
Murray  had,  according  to  all  calculations, 
many  a  year  to  wait  before  he  could  expect 
any  return  for  his  capital — or  rather  indeed, 
being  considerably  Byron's  Senior,  be  could 
hardly  have  anticipated  any  such  return 
during  his  own  life-time ;  but  now  the  event 
had  unexpectedly  occurred — the  contingent 
reversion  of  the  MS.  had  become  a  posses- 
don,  and  its  value  proportionably  increased — 
probably  doubled — as  it  ought  to  be,  on  a 
mere  business  calculation  of  Murray's  previ- 
ous risk.  But  again  (Diary,  16th  May) 
Moore  luckily  "recoUeets  that  he  had 

<*  directed  a  clause  to  be  inserted  in  the  [second] 
agreement,  giving  me,  in  the  event  of  Lord 
Byron*8  death,  a  period  of  three  months  after 
such  event  for  th6  purpose  of  raising  the  money 
and  redeeming  my  pledge.    This  clause  /  die- 


UUed  as  dearly  as  possible  both  to  Murray  and 
his  solicitor  J  Mr.  Turner ^  and  saw  the  s^idtor 
interline  U  in  a  rough  draft  of  {he  agreement. 
Accordingly,  on  recollecting  it  now,  1  felt)  of 
course,  confident  in  my  claim.  Went  to  the 
Ix>nfrnian9,  who  promised  to  bring  the  two  thou- 
sand  guineas  for  me  on  Monday  moming."i<^ 
iv.  189.  > 

With  such  a  clause,  how  could  Moore 
have  had  a  moment's  alarm  or  even  doubt 
about  his  right?  The  fact,  however,  turned 
out  to  be  that  there  was  no  such  clause  ! 

But  in  the  mean  while  there  had  started 
up  a  third  party.  The  Diary  for  the  previ-i 
ous  day  (May  14th)  ends — 

**  Found  a  note  on  my  return  home  from 
Douglas  Kinnaird  anxiously  inquiring  in  whose 
possession  the  Memoirs  were ;  and  saying  that 
he 'was  ready,  on  the  part  of  Lord  Byron^s  fami- 
ly, to  advance  the  two  thousand  pounds  for  the 
MS.,  in  order  to  give  Ijsdy  Byron  and  the  rest 
of  the  family  an  opportunity  of  deciding  whether 
they  wished  them  to  be  published  or  na"— 
iv.  187. 

Murray  at  this  time,  had  no  communication 
from  Moore,  nor  could  he  have  the  slightest 
idea  that  Moore  could  hare  any  claim  to  the 
MS.,  the  absolute  property  being  vested  in 
Murray  by  Byron's  death ;  but  he  at  once, 
with  a  liberality  and  feeling  which  did  him 
honor,  offered  to  forego  the  prize  he  had 
drawn  in  this  lottery  of  business,  and  to 
place  the  Memoirs  at  the  disposal  of  Lord 
Byron's  friends. 

This  ii  is  obvious  would  have  been  the 
best  and  most  delicate  way  of  carrying  out 
the  spirit  of  Lord  Holland's  suggestion,  by 
which  Moore  had  professed  to  be  guided  in 
his  efforts  to  get  hold  of  the  MS.,  but  it 
would  not  at  all  have  suited  his  real  object 
— evidently  that  of  selling  them  elsewhere 
— ^and  he  therefore  vehemently  opposed  this 
arrangement,  and,  relying  on  his  own  ver- 
sion of  the  second  deed,  denied  Murray's 
right  to  give  up  the  MS.  to  any  one  but 
himself — whom  (so  Moore  asserted)  the 
alleged  clause  in  the  deed  constituted,  under 
the  existing  circumstances,  the  sole  and 
rightful  proprietor.  Murray  was  very  much 
surprised  at  hearing  of  such  a  clause,  but 
unluckily  the  deed  had  been  mislaid,  and  he 
had  only  his  own  disbelief  to  oppose  lo  the 
positive  assertion  of  Moore. 

Then  follows,  in  the  Diary,  a  long,  very 
confused,  but  of  course  unilateral  histoiy 
of  the  discussions  that  ensued  between  Sir 
John  Hobhouse  and  Mr,  Douglas  Kinnaird» 
as  the  friends  of  Lord  Byron — Mr.  Wilmot 
HortoD  and  Col.  Doyle,  on  the  part  of  Lad; 


164 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOOBE 


[Oct., 


Byron  and  Mrs,  Leigh — and  Moore — ^in 
Vfhich  the  latter  insisted  on  his  right  of  pro- 
|ierty  in  the  MS.,  and  protested  in  the 
strongest  manner  against  its  destruction  ; 
offering,  indeed,  **  the  suppression  of  all  that 
might  be  thought  objfctionable,"  but  con- 
tending that  what  was  not  so  should  be  re- 
tained for  his  own  benefit  and  that  of  the 
Sublic.  The  progress  of  the  affair  is,  we 
ave  said,  very  confusedly  told  even  in 
what  Lord  John  Russell  gives  us  of  Moore's 
Diary — but  it  becomes  more  so  by  his 
Lordship's  choosing  to  suppress  a  separate 
and  "  long  account  of  the  destruction  of  the 
MS."  left  by  Moore,  and  to  substitute  for  it 
some  studiously  obscure  sentences  of  his  own. 
Lord  John  says : — 

**  l*be  result  was  that,  nfler  a  very  unpleasant 
scene  at  Mr.  Murray^s,  the  mannecript  was  de- 
stroyed by  Mr.  Wilmot  Horton  and  Col.  Doyle, 
as  the  representafives  of  Mrs.  Leigh,  with  the 
full  consent  of  Mr,  Moore — who  repaid  to  Mr. 
Murray  the  sum  he  Imd  advanced,  with  the  in- 
terest then  due.  After  the  whole  had  been  bumt^ 
the  agreement  was  founds  and  it  appeared  thai 
Mr,  Moore's  interest  in  the  MS.  had  entirely 
ceased  on  the  death  of  Lord  Byron,  by  which  event 
the  property  became  absolutely  vested  in  Mr,  Mur- 
ray, 

**  The  details  of  this  scene  have  been  recorded 
both  by  Mr.  Moore  and  Lord  Broagfhton  [Hob- 
house],  and  perhaps  by  others.  L^rd  Brough- 
ton  having  kindly  permitted  me  to  read  hid  narra- 
tive, [  can  sav  that  the  leading  facts  related  by 
him  and  Mr.  Moore  a^ree.  Both  narratives  re- 
tain marks  of  the  irritation  which  the  circum- 
stances of  the  moment  produced,  but  as  they  both 
(Mr.  Moore  and  Sir  John  Hobbouse)  desired  to 
do  what  was  most  honorable  to  Lord  Byron's 
memory,  and  as  they  lived  in  terms  of  friendship 
afterwards,  I  have  omitted  details  which  recaU  a 
painful  scene,  and  would  excite  painful  fedings,^* 
— iv.  192. 

We  cannot  omit  to  enter  our  protest 
against  Lord  John's  assertion,  that  the  MS. 
was  d 'Stroyed  with  the  full  consent  of  Mr, 
Moore :  we  know  not  what  may  be  said  in 
the  portions  of  the  Diary  that  Lord  John 
has  suppressed,  but  in  all  that  he  has  pub- 
lished, and  in  all  the  other  evidence,  we  find 
the  most  resolute  opposition  to  any  such 
measure. 

All  seemed  now  ended — but  Moore  con- 
jured up  a  fresh  difficulty,  of  which,  what- 
ever may  have  been  the  real  motive,  that 
which  he  assigned  seems  absurdly  punctil- 
ious. The  actual  cash  in  which  the  repay- 
ment to  Murray  was  made,  was  supplied  to 
Moore  by  the  Longmans  (on  the  security  of 
bis  bond);  and  of  course  Lord  Byron's 
family  and  friends,  who   had  received  and 


destroyed  the  MS.,  were  immediately  pre- 
pared to  reimburse  Moore.  Moore  posi- 
tively refused  to  be  reimbursed;  he  per- 
sisted (contrary  to  the  direct  and  indisputa- 
ble terms  of  the  agreement)  in  asserting 
that  the  MS.  was  his,  and  that  his  honor 
required  that  it  was  he  who  should  have  the 
merit  of  the  sacrifice.  Merit,  we  have  seen, 
there  was  none,  for  he  had  opposed  the  sa- 
criEce  to  the  utmost ;  and  his  alleged  rights 
had  been  extinguished  by  the  production  of 
the  deed  ;  but  he  still  pertinaciously  pleaded 
his  honor,  and  spends  a  great  deal  of  ver- 
biage to  justify  a  punctilio  for  which  we  can 
see  no  ground  nor  any  object.  If  we  could 
see  or  imagine  any  rational  or  even  colora- 
ble point  of  honor  in  the  case,  we  could 
understand  and  admire  Moore's  feelings  and 
conduct.'  As  it  is,  we  confess  that  this  part 
of  the  affair  remains  to  us  a  suspicious  mys- 
tery. 

The  final  result  will  surprise  our  readers 
and  the  public  as  much  as  it  did  us  when 
our  recent  inquiries  brought  it  to  our  know- 
ledge. Moore — through  the  unheard  of 
liberality  of  Murray — ^finally  pocketed  more 
than  double  the  sum  he  had  been  intriguing 
and  squabbling  about  For  the  2000  guineas 
originally  agreed  on  for  the  Memoirs,  Moore 
had  engaged  to  Murray  to  edit  them,  and  to 
accompany  them  with  a  Life,  After  the  de- 
struction of  the  Memoirs,  Murray  recurred 
to  the  idea  of  a  Life ;  and  as  Mqore  was  cer- 
tainly, for  many  reasons,  the  person  best 
fitted  for  the  task,  Murray  proposed  it  to 
him.  But  the  sum  originally  agreed  on  for 
both  Memoirs  and  Life  had  now  become, 
through  Moore's  complicated  manoeuvres, 
wholly  inadequate  for  the  Life  alone.  His 
debt  to  the  Longmans,  arising  out  of  these 
transactions,  had  grown  to  a  sum  of  £3020, 
for  which  they  had  his  bond;  and  Moore 
seems  to  have  been  in  a  state  of  irremedia- 
ble insolvency — fur  whatever  he  might  be 
able  to  earn  by  his  pen  could  at  most  have 
met  his  current  expenses,  but  not  availed 
against  such  a  permanent  and  growing  bur- 
den as  this.  Murray,  who  had — like  every- 
body else  who  knew  the  fascinating  little 
**  bird" — a  strong  personal  feeling  for  Moore, 
hoped  that  he  might  combine  his  own  inter- 
est as  a  tradesman  with  the  extrication  of 
the  author ;  and  he  not  merely  consented  to 
reliere  him  from  Longman's  bond — (though 
it  was  a  debt  incurred  in  hostility  to  Murray) 
— but,  to  enable  him  to  exist  while  he  was 
employed  at  the  Life,  he  gave  him  a  further 
sum  of  £1200,  which,  with  some  other  small 
advances  of  cash,  interest,  &c.,  amounted  in 


IBBB.I 


HBHOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORF. 


165 


the  whole  to  £487 0,  which  was,  in  fact,  what 
Hiiurraj  paid  to  Moore  for  the  *<  Life/'  half 
the  materials  of  which  Murray  himself  con- 
tributed. Such  generosity  is,  we  think,  un- 
paralleled ;  and  would  probably  have  never 
been  known  but  for  an  additional  ezhibition 
of  Moore's  greediness,  almost  as  surprising. 
The  Life  was  published ;  but  Moore,  over- 
rating  its  success,  and  under-rating  what  it 
had  cost  Murray,  endeavored  to  obtain  a 
further  remuneration.  In  answer  to  an  at- 
tempt so  unreasonable — and,  might  we  not 
say,  so  ungrateful  ? — Murray,  in  a  letter  to 
Moore,  dated  the  24th  of  May,  1831,  stated, 
first,  the  fact  that  the  book  had  not  paid 
its  expenses,  and  he  then  detailed  the  cir- 
cumstances above  stated ;  which  we  think  a 
coup  de  grace  to  the  pretence  of  his  having  a 
*^  most  generous  contempt  of  money,*' 

Long  as  this  detail  has  been,  there  are 
still  two  collateral  points  of  the  case  on  which 
we  must  make  some  observations. 

The  first  is  that  Lord  John  talks  only  of 
the  destruction  of  Lord  Byron's  original  MS. 
He  passes  sub  nlentio  the  possibility  of 
eopies  of  the  MS. — and  their  fate.  One 
complete  copy  we  know  was  made  with 
Lord  Byron's  concurrence,  and  of  the  vari- 
ety of  hands  through  which  it  passed,  some 
at  least  attempted  copies.  One  transcript 
(complete  or  incomplete)  is  stated  by  Moore 
to  have  been  given  up,  or  torn  up,  by  a  lady 
wbo  had  made  it,  upon  her  hearing  of  the 
"  painful  scene"  at  Murray's : — but  this  only 
heightens  the  probability  that  there  might 
have  been  other  irregular  transcripts.  And, 
if  so,  what  proof  is  there  that  they  were  a//, 
penitentially  or  delicately,  destroyed  ?  We 
see  it  surmised  in  several  publications  of 
the  day  "  that  they  were  not ;  and  that,  after 
all,  it  is  probable  that  the  Memoirs  may  be 
still  in  existence,  and  one  day  published." 
We  ourselves  give  no  credit  to  these  sur- 
mises ;  and  Lord  John  Russell  could  not  be 
expected  to  answer  for  surreptitious  copies 
— but  we  think  he  ought  to  have  made  some 
inquiry  after  the  copy  which  the  Diary  states 
to  have  been  made,  or  at  least  have  added  a 
line  to  state — as  we  believe  the  fact  to  be — 
that  no  trace  of  any  copy  appears  in  Moore's 
papers. 

The  second  point  we  have  to  notice  is  one 
that  touches  Moore's  character  for  veracity, 
and  which  Lord  John  Russell  should  surely 
have  endeavored  to  explain.  Our  readers 
will  have  seen  in  the  extract  in  p.  272,  that 
Moore  asserted  that  he  had  dictated  and  saw 
the  solicitor  insert  a  clause  in  the  draft  of 


the  agreement,  which,  when  the*  deed  itself 
was  produced,  did  not  appear  in  it.    This 
assertion,  ostentatiously  repeated  by  Moore, 
implies  certdnly  a  serious  charge    against 
both  Mr.  Murray  and  his  eminently  respect- 
able solicitor  (the  late  learned  and  ingenious 
Mr.  Sharon  Turner),  as  if  they  had  omitted 
in  the  deed  the  clause  which  Mr.  Moore  die- 
tated  and  saw  inserted  in  the  draft.    This  has 
induced  Mr.  Turner's  son,  naturally  solici- 
tous for  his  distinguished  father's  reputation, 
to  make  search  for  the  original  draft.     He 
has  been  lucky  enou^ifh  to  find  it,  and  it  is  now 
under  our  eyes.     Well — it  contains  no  such 
clause — it  agrees    exactly — literatim — with 
the  deed.    Here,  then,  are   Messrs.  Murray 
and  Turner,  as  might  have  been  expecteo, 
fully  acquitted;  but  what  becomes  of  Mr. 
Moore,  who  seems  as  clearly  convicted  of 
deliberate    and    reiterated     falsehood    and 
fraud  ?     We  are  glad  to  be  able,  from  the 
examination  of  the  document  itself,  to  suggest 
a  hypothesis  which  would  acquit  him  of  so 
grave  a  charge — though  only  by  finding  him 
guilty  of  what  seem  to  have  been  habitual 
with  him — great  confusion  and  inaccuracy. 
We  see  on  the  face  of  the  draft  that  there 
was  an  interlineation  made  allowing  a  limit 
of  three  mont?is — not  as  Moore  asserted  for 
his  redemption  of  the  MS. — but  for  Murray's 
publication  of  it — (viz.  "  within  three  months 
after  Lord  Byron's  death") — and  this  addi- 
tion, so  far  from  being  dictated  by  Moore 
and  written  in  by  the  solicitor,  is  written  in 
by  Moore's  own  hand.     Here,  then,  is  an- 
other palpable  misstatement;  but  it  affords 
us  a  probable  clue  to  the  whole  imbroglio. 
Moore  most  Ijkely  had  in  his  mind  the  in- 
tention of  extending  the  limit  of  redemption 
to  three  months,   but  instead  of  dictating 
what  he  desired  to  the  solicitor,  he  with  his 
oum  pencil — and  perhaps  without  fully  ex- 
plaining his  meanmg — wrote  in  the  words 
"within  three  months  — but  wrote  them  in  at 
a  wrong  place.    So  that,  instead  of  provid- 
ing, as  he  may  have  intended,  to  give  him- 
self  a  power  to  redeem — he  in  fact  only  im- 
posed on  Murray  the  obligation  of  publish- 
inff — within  three  months.    We  think  our- 
selves very  fortunate  in  having,  by  the  in- 
spection of  the  original  paper,  arrived  at  this 
solution,  which  relieves  Moore's   character 
from  so  deep  a  stain  as  his  own  Diary  had 
thrown,  and  his  own  editor  had  left,  upon  it. 
But  on  a  review  of  the  whole  affair  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  Moore  is  convicted  on  his 
own  evidence  of  gross  inaccuracy,  a  very 
unhandsome   double-dealing  with   Murray, 


166 


MBMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  KOOR& 


[Oct. 


and  an  ostentations  parade  of  liberality  and 
disinterestedness  which  existed  neither  in 
his  thoughts  nor  his  acts.* 

There  is  another  revelation  made  in  these 
volumes    equally,   or,   indeed    more  unex- 
pected,  as  to  Moore's    literary  character. 
Every  one  sees  at  a  glance   that  all   his 
works — except  a  few  of  his  earlier  songs — 
smell  a  good  deal  of  the  lamp ;  and  that  the 
text,  and  still  more  the  notes,  are  redundant 
with   all   sorts  of  out-of-the-way   reading. 
There  are  more  Greek  quotations  in  Moore  s 
works  than  in  all  the  English  poets  put  to- 
gether, from    Chaucer    to    Crabbe.     Most 
readers,  we  believe,   skip  them  over,  like 
the  student  of  Euclid,  who  never  looked  at 
the  euta.    They  were  thought  to  be  nothing 
more  than  a  misplaced  itaiage  of  the  early 
studies  of  the  Trandator  of  Ancufreon ;  and 
in  great  measure  no  doubt  they  were  so; 
but  these  volumes    show  that    they  were 
something  more.    We  here  see  that  Moore's 
poetical  impulses  arose  more  from  reading 
than  from  feeling — from  books  rather  than 
nature ;  that  his  genius  was  not  inventive. 
He   looked  for  inspiration   neither    to   the 
skies  nor  the  seas,  nor  the  forests,  nor  even 
the  busy  haunts  of  men,  but  to  the  shelves 
of  the  library,  where,  accordingly,  we  find 
him  studying,  or  rather  reading  up,  for  each 
of  his    greater   poems — Lalla  Kookh — the 
Angels — and  Alciphron — as  assiduously, and 
copying  as  copiously,  as  one  would  for  so 
many  DUsertatioM  on  Persian,  Turkish,  and 
Egyptian  scenery  and  manners.     It  is  true 
that  he  has  worked  up  his  materials  with 
great  taste,  and  all  the  verbal  powers   of 
poetry — sweetness,  polish,  brilliancy,  splen- 
dor ;  but  still  it  has  all  the  air  of  ezquisite 
manufacture  rather  than  of  spontaneous  efifu- 
sion — materiem  mperabat  opus;  the  inven- 
tive genius    is  wanting.     In  some    of   his 
lighter  love-songs  we  are  startled  with  pe- 
dantic conceits,  which  require  a  learned  note. 
And  even  when  he  degrades  his  muse  into 
a  drab,  and  sets  her  to  talk  slang  with  Tom 
Cribb,  we  find  him  interlarding  it  with  the 
most  laborious  pedantry,  till  at  last,  when 
he  finishes    this    stupid  fatras  (which  his 
publishers  seem  ashamed  to  reprint  in  their 
fast  edition  of  his  works),  he  cannot  help 
exclaiming,  "  What  a  rag-fair  of  learning  I 
have  made  it  1"     In  the  labors  of  the  Scrib- 
lerus  club  the  affectation  of  learning  heightens 

^  We  shall  add  at  the  ooncliuion  of  this  Article  a 
letter  which  the  late  Mr.  Marrav  addreaaed  at  the 
time  to  Mr.  Wilmot  HortoD,  and  which  most  satis- 
fMtoriljr  explains  his  share  in  this  extraordinary 
transaotion. 


the  ridicule ;  but  that  is  not  Moore's  case. 
There  is  no  fun  at  all  in  his  pedantry ;  nor 
is  it  intended  for  fun,  but  simply  to  exhibit 
what  in  the  sincerity  of  the  Diary  he  calls 
'*  a  rag-fair  of  learning'^ — not  seeing  that  his 
greater  poems  are,  in  the  original  conception 
as  well  as  in  the  illustrations,  obnoxious  to 
much  the  same  kind  of  criticism. 

We  are  not    so   absurd  as  to  reproach 
Moore  for    studying    to  invest  his  fictions 
with  all  attainable    reality  and  truth— our 
surprise  is,  that  a  poet  so  cried  up  as  *<  pos- 
sessing in  his  own  fancy  and  feeling  an  inex- 
haustible fountain    of  ingenious  creations" 
{Lord  John,  Preface,  xxviii.)   should  have 
selected  for  all  his  great  efforts  ncn-natural 
subjects,  so  little  sympathetic  even  with  his 
own  heart  or  mind  that  he  himself  is  driven 
to  hunt  through  utterly  unfamiliar  authors 
for  any  available  scrap  of  information  about 
them  ;  and,  after  all,  so  little  is  there  of  dis- 
tinctive and  appropriate  either  in  the  sub- 
stance   or  details  of    those  works,  that  it 
would,  we  believe,  have  cost  Moore  no  great 
trouble    to    have  incorporated  his  Angels 
with  LalUt  Rookh,  or  Alciphron  with  the 
Angels.     A  curious  illustration  of  this  occurs 
in  the  Diary.     After  the  Loves  of  the  An- 
gels, founded  on  a  passage   of  Scripture, 
helped  out  by  the  apoory  phal  book  of  Enoch, 
had  been  published  and  four  editions  sold, 
Moore  found  the  imputation  of  impiety  so 
strong,  that  he  took  the  bold  resolution  of 
shifting  his  whole  machinery  to  Mahomet's 
Paradise ;  and  did  so  in  a  few  weeks  by  the 
assistance  of  **  D* Herhelot,*^  *^Prideaux's  lAfe 
of  Mahomet,*^    *'  Beausobre*s  Manicheism,*' 
**  Hyde's  Beligio  Perearum,*'  "  Philo-Judoh 
us,**  dke.,  d:c.  (iv.  41-2).    Yet,  when   after 
so  substantial  a  change  the  metamorphosed 
work  came  forth,  we  do  not  remember  that 
the  public  ever  seemed  to  observe  the  dif- 
ference any  more  than  if  it  had  been  an  or- 
dinary second  edition.     Such  a  disponabiliiyf 
as  the  French  call  it — such  a  dissolving  view 
— would  not  have  been  possible  if  there  had 
been  anything  of  truth  or  nature,  or  even 
fictitious  interest,  in  the  original  composition. 
Johnson  ridiculed  epitaphs  to  let;  but  here 
was  a  whole  poem  to  let  like  furnished  lodg- 
ings, and  nobody  took  the  least  notice  of  the 
new-comers,  nor  discovered  that  they  were 
not  the  old  occupants. 

In  the  midst  of  so  much  show  of  odd  erudi- 
tion— he  even,  we  think,  had  the  temerity  to 
review  some  of  the  Greek  Fathers  !— ^Moore 
ever  and  anon  betrays  utter  igrnorance  of 
literary  points  with  which  we  might  expect 
any  educated  man  of  his  day  to  have  been 


1858.J 


MEMOntS  OF  THOMAS  MOORK 


167 


familiar.  This  must  we  suppose  be  aUri- 
bated  to  tbe  desultory  habits  of  his  life.  He 
seems  to  have  been  by  no  means  a  bookish 
man,  and  to  have  given  but  little  of  his  time 
to  general  or  even  carrent  literature,  though 
by  fits  ver/  studious  of  "  all  such  reading  as 
was  never  read"  when  he  wanted  to  work  it 
into  some  particular  design. 

"  Colonel  Henley  mentioned  a  play  of  Racine's 
(of  which  I  forget  the  name),  the  commence- 
ment of  which  is  very  applicable  to  the  history  of 
Napoleon." — iii.  240. 

It  is  odd  that  he  should  forget  the  name  of 
one  of  the  few  tragedies  of  this  great  dra- 
matist. Colonel  Henley,  no  doubt,  alluded 
to  the  first  lines  of  Alexandre.  And  in  some 
remarks  that  Moore  makes  (iii.  226,  238) 
on  the  structure  of  the  French  heroic  or  tra- 
gic verse,  he  shows  that  he  knows  nothing 
about  it 

"  1822,  July  30th.— Came  home  by  the  gondole. 
An  amazing  reciter  of  verses  among  the  pas- 
sengers :  set  him  right  abont  some  Unes  of 
MiUeeherbes.  Seemed  rather  astonished  Ht  my 
ejcclairoing,  from  my  dark  corner,  at  the  end  of 
each  of  his  recitations^  (Test  de  MdUsherheB^  fa. 
Qui  Monsieur.  (Test  de  Scarroru  Ouiy  Monsieur.** 
—iii.  359. 

Astonished  the  poor  man  might  well  be 
at  the  interference  of  a  "  learned  Theban" 
from  the  Western  Bceotia,  who  confounded 
the  names  of  M,  Lamoignon  de  Malesherbes, 
the  celebrated  minister  and  venerable  friend 
of  Louis  XVI.,  with  that  of  Malkerbe,  a  poet 
of  the  days  of  Henry  IV.,  of  whom  we  will 
venture  to  guess  that  Moore  never  read  a 
line  but  one  little  elegiac  ode  on  the  death 
of  Rose  Duperrier,  which  is  preserved  in  all 
the  French  Recueih,  and  which  every  one 
has  by  heart.  Moore's  intrusive  parade  of 
his  learning,  and  his  real  confusion  of  two 
such  different  and  well-known  persons,  seem 
to  us  quite  as  comical  as  his  own  story  of 
another  Frenchman,  who,  when  Lord  Moira 
showed  him  the  castle  of  Macbeth  in  Scot- 
land, corrected  him,  **Maccabeey  Milord  : — 
nous  le  pronongons  Maccabee  sur  le  Continent 
— JvdoB  Maccabeus^  Empereur  Romain,**  (ii. 
247). 

We  find  him  gravely  quoting  Mr.  Luttrell 
as  complaining — 

**  that  he  has  all  his  life  had  a  love  for  domestic 
comforts,  though  passing  his  time  in  such  a 
different  manner,  *  like  that  King  of  Bohemia 
who  had  so  unlnckily  a  taste  for  navigation, 
though  condemned  to  live  in  an  inland  town.' " 
—iu.  262. 


Is  it  possible  that  Moore  should  not  have 
known  whence  Mr.  Luttrell's  pleasantry  was 
derived  ?  It  seems  so :  and  there  is  a  simi- 
lar instance  in  vol.  iv.  p.  72. 

Again,  he  quotes,  Jrom  Lord  Holland^ 
Cowper's  burlesque  lines,  "  Doctor  Jortin," 
&c.  (iii.  272),  evidently  having  either  not 
read  or  forgotten  one  of  the  most  delightful 
and  popular  publications  of  his  own  time — 
Cowper's  Letters. 

'*  19th  Sept  1818.— Dined  at  Bowood.  Some 
amusing  things  mentioned  at  dinner.  Talked 
of  Penn's  book  about  the  end  of  the  world,  and 
Sw^^s  ridicule  of  Bickerstajf^s  propftecy^  which  I 
must  see.** — ii.  167. 

"Swift's  ridicule  of  Bickerstaff's  prophecy  — 
which  I  must  see/"  He  would  have'  to 
search  long  enough  before  he  saw  any  such 
thing.  It  is  wonderful  that  he  should  not 
have  known  that  Swift  was  himself  Bicker- 
staffs  under  which  pseudonyme  he  ridiculed 
the  prophecies  of  the  notorious  almanac- 
maker  Partridge,  where,  however,  there  is 
nothing  at  all  about  "  the  end  of  the  world.*' 
But  neither  Bickerstaff  nor  Partridge  had 
anything  to  do  with  the  passage  referred  to 
at  Bowood,  which  is  from  an  altogether 
different  drollery,  in  ridicule  of  Whiston^s 
theory  of  comets.  We  should  have  hardly 
thought  that  there  was  any  reading  roan  in 
England  who  was  not  familiar  with  all  these 
pleasantries. 

Moore  talks  of  a  Mr.  Theophilus  Swift  who 
had  in  his  time  some  squabble  with  the  heads 
of  the  University  in  which  his  son,  Mr. 
Deane  Swift,  had  a  share — •*  Mr.  Swift,"  says 
Moore,  "  having  had  his  son  so  christened  in 
honor  of  the  namt"  (i.  88).  Moore  must 
have  looked  but  little  into  the  Dean's  histo- 
ry not  to  know  that  one  of  his  uncles  had 
married  the  daughter  of  Admiral  Deane^ 
whose  surname  had  thence  become  a  Chris- 
tian name  of  the  Swift  family.  It  is  strange 
that  he  should  not  have  read  Swift's  Corres- 
pondence, the  second  letter  of  which,  dated 
1694,  is  addressed  to  "his  cousin,  Deane 
Swift,  Esq.":  and  stranger  still  that  he 
should  never  have  seen  or  heard  of  so  well- 
known  a  work  as  the  Essay  on  the  Life  of 
the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's,  by  an  elder  Mr. 
Deane  Swift — the  father  of  Theophilus  and 
grandfather  of  the  second  Deane — whom 
Moore  supposes  to  have  been  the  first. 

Again  : — 

**  Douglas  said  he  supposed  that  it  was  from 
the  Patriarch  that  the  garment  called  a  Joseph 
was  named.    Douglas  must  have  been  thinking 


168 


MEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


[Oct, 


of  a  Benjamint  for  a  Joteph  is,  I  believe,  a  wo- 
man's garment.'' — ^ii.  182. 

How  could  Moore  forget  the  highest  poeti- 
cal authority  for  JoMph  as  a  man's  gar- 
ment ? — 

**  He  grasps  an  empty  JoMeph  for  a  John." — 
Dunciad,  ii.  128. 

He  had  not  even  read,  it  seems,  that "  hand- 
book" of  anecdotes — the  Walpoliana — for 
he  thinks  it  necessary  to  transcribe  (iv.  247) 
a  story  as  told  by  Lord  Lansdowne,  which  is 
printed  there.  Lord  Lansdowne  might  very 
naturally  tell  it,  but  Moore's  transcribing  it 
proves  that  he  had  never  read  it. 

^*  Lord  Lansdowne  mentioned  an  epimm  as 
rather  happy  in  its  structure :  I  forget  the  exact 
words : — 

"  [The  bearer]  perplexed 

'Twixt  the  two  to  determine — 
Watch  and  pray  says  the  text, 
Go  to  sleep  says  the  sermon." — iv.  241. 

Moore  might  have  found  it  in  the  very  first 
page  of  epigrams  in  the  "  Elegant  Extracts." 
Presently,  however,  we  find  him  sneering 
at  Lord  Lansdowne,  as  **  showing  o^"  some 
criticism  on  Dryden's  translation  of  the  open- 
ing of  the  i£neid,  and  especially  on  the  im- 
perfect rendering  of  fato  prqfugus,  which 
Moore  had  heard  from  him  before  (ii.  246). 
If  Lord  Lansdowne — who  is  as  little  of  a 
mere  show  off  man  as  we  ever  met — did  re- 
peat himself,  it  certainly  was  not  Moore  who, 
enjoying  hb  hospitality,  should  have  been  on 
the  watch  to  detect  and  record  it.  Moore 
goes  on  to  attribute  to  Lord  Lansdowne  some 
further  remarks  on  the  word  pro/ugus : — 

"Bowood,  1818,  Dec.  30th. — ^Lord  L.  men- 
tioned a  passage  in  Florus,  where  the  word  prtr 
fvigus  was  very  strangely  used.  J  forget  it ;  but 
it  describes  one  of  the  Roman  generals  as  frofxi' 
gus  for  the  sake  of  seeking  out  an  enemy  to 
Rome.  Dr.  Faley  at  Ciimbridge  (Q.  E.  E.) 
called  the  word  prc^xigus  (the  consequence  of  his 
northern  education),  and  the  following  line  was 
written  on  the  occasion, — ^Errat  VirgUiuSffnrte 
frofxigus  eral.*  '* — ii.  246. 

All  we  can  understand  from  this  strange 
passage — marked  and  accented  as  we  have 
given  it — is,  that  Moore  seems  not  to  have 
had  the  slightest  idea  of  what  his  friends 
were  talking  about — that  he  confounded  the 
meaning  with  the  prosody  of  the  word — that 
he  fancied  Florus  to  be  a  poet,  whose  au- 
thority would  determine  the  penultimate  syl- 
lable to  be  long — and  that  Dr.  Paley  having, 


in  consequenee  of  his  northern  eduea 
nounced  it  a  short,  he  was  ridicule 
fellow  Cantabs  for  so  monstrous 
We  cannot  imagine  how  Moore 


»a 


6f  having  any  share  in  them.  i^'^a^^g"'?-. 

On  another  question  of  prosodjfi  •'sl,i|"||'5f 
gets  out  of  his  depth  in  very  shallol  o-|J  ^^1  f*'" 
In  confessing  that  the  Dublin  Univef  |||g'i'Seo§ 
were  in  his  day  deficient  in  prosod*  S*«5  o  <i.p.5c 
mits 
and 
and 
and 

long  arui  ff»i/rf    ftwic*"— ».   e.,  ucAHiutv  --  g       _   _  _         ^ 

pentameters:  and  twenty  years later| | d  g  ^S  2"  f  |  £ 
he  had  not  discovered  his  mistake.  ^     V^ . ^  ^ 

It  makes  a  significant  conclusiofrnk)  I^e" 
foregoing  negligences  and  ignorances  to  find 
that  it  was  only  one  week  before  his  final  de- 
parture from  Fans,  after  a  residence  of  near 
two  gears,  that  he  found  his  way  to  the  royal 
library : — 

"1822.  Nov.  15th.  Went  to  the  library. 
What  a  shame  that  I  should  not  iiJJ  now  have 
availed  myself  of  the  facilities  of  this  treasury !'' 
— iv.  20. 

He  left  Paris  on  the  third  day  after  this 
compunctious  entry. 

On  the  whole,  there  is  hardly  anything  in 
the  Diary  that  has  surprised  us  more  than 
the  frequent,  and,  as  it  seems,  conclusive, 
evidence  of  Moore's  deficiency,  not  only  in 
more  serious,  but  even  in  ordinary,  reading. 
There  are  hardly  any  of  his  acquaintance, 
and  we  should  note  more  especially  his  no- 
ble friends  Lord  Lansdowne  and  Lord  Hol- 
land, who  do  not  appear  to  have  heeti—guod 
minime  reris — better  versed  than  this  volu- 
minous poet  and  historian  both  in  English  and 
classical  literature. 

A  very  prominent  feature  of  the  Diary  is 
and,  indeed,  one  of  its  least  irrational  objects 
would  be — the  record  of  the  jokes  and  sto- 
ries that  Moore's  taste  should  think  worth 
remembering.  Knowing  that  he  lived  with 
all  the  wits  of  the  day.  Whig  and  Tory,  and 
having  ourselves  often  admired  his  tact  and 
humor  in  reproducing  such  things  to  enliven 
his  own  conversation,  we  expected  a  choice 
harvest :  but  there,  »s  everywhere  else,  we 
have  been  disappointed.  Few  are  good,  and 
the  majority  are  downright  failures.  Amongst 
the  few  tolerable  with  which  we  are  not  fa- 
miliar the  following  are  the  best.     Foremost 


1858.] 


HEMOntS  OF  THOMAS  MOORiL 


169 


we  place  two  of  Kenny's,  the  dramatist, 
wbo— 

'^said  of  Lattrell's  *  Julia,' that  it  was  too  long, 
and  not  broad  enough." 

Ad  excellent  critique  on  that  somewhat  pon- 
derous levity. 

And  again,  when  Moore's  troubles  came 
upon  him,  without  appearing  to  affect  his 
spirits,  Kenny  said,  with  a  pleasantry  that 
reminds  one  of  Gil  Bias, — 

"  Tig  well  you  area  poet :  a  philosopher  never 
could  bear  it.'^— iii.  169. 

"  On  somebody  remarking  that  Payne  Knight 
had  got  very  deaf,  « 'Tis  from  want  of  practice,' 
says  Rogers :  Knight  being  a  very  bad  listener." 

Lord  Ellenborough  showing  some  impa- 
tience at  a  barrister  s  speech,  the  gentleman 
paused,  and  said — 

**  *  Is  it  the  pleasure  of  the  Court  that  I  should 
proceed  with  my  statement  ? '     *  Pleasure,  Mr. 

,  has  been  out  of  the  question  for  a  long 

time;  but  you  may  proceed.'" — ^ii.  312. 

Moore,  confessing  that  he  was  not  a  scien- 
tific Musician — 

*'  mentioned  the  tendency  I  had  to  run  into  conse- 
cutive fifths,  adding  that  [Sir  Henry]  Bishop  now 
revised  my  music;  [George]  Ix)rd  Auckland 
said,  *  Other  bishops  take  care  of  the  titles — but 
he  looks  after  the  J^iht.' "— iv.  263. 

'*  Curran,  upon  a  case  where  the  Theatre  Royal 
in  Dublin  brought  an  action  against  Astley's  for 
acting  Lock  and  Key,  said,  '  My  Lords,  the  whole 
question  turns  upon  this,  whether  the  said  Lock 
and  Key  is  to  be  considered  as  a  patent  one,  or  of 
the  spring  and  tumbler  kind.' " — iv.  7. 

At  a  stag-hunt  at  Killarney,  the  animal 

"  came  close  to  where  Lord  Avonmore,  then  At- 
tornev- General,  and  Dr.  O'Leary  were  standing 
— O'Leary  said — How  naturally  instinct  leads 
him  to  you  for  a  noUe  prosequi !  " — iv.  112. 

A  dialogue  between  a  visitor  and  a  servant 
at  a  hall  door  in  Dublin : — 

"•Is  vottr  master  at  home?'  *No,  Sir,  he's 
out.'  '  Your  mistress  ? '  *  No,  Sir,  she's  out.' 
*  Well,  I'll  just  go  in,  and  take  an  air  of  the  fire 
till  they  come.'  •  Faith,  Sir,  it's  out  too.' "— iii. 
288. 

These  are  at  least  among  the  best  that 
have  any  novelty ;  they  are  generally  hack- 
neyed, and,  what  is  surprising,  sometimes 
very  ill  told.  "  It  is  not  every  one,"  says 
Johnson,  "  who  can  carry  a  joke."  Moore  we 


always  thought  was  one  of  those  who  could, 
and  indeed  he  had  considerable  success  in 
that  way ;  but  the  following  failure  is  almost 
as  bad  as  the  Joe-Miller  story  of  him,  who 
called  the  fall  of  a  shoulder  of  mutton  a  lap- 
sus linguee : — 

"1821.  Feb.  2.— Talking  of  letters  being 
charged  by  weight,  Canding  said  that  the  Post 
Office  once  refused  to  cany  a  letter  of  Sir.  J. 
Cox  Hippesley.  *  it  was  so  dulV  "—iii.  166. 

Oh,  no,  Mr.  Moore,  Canning  said  "it  was 
so  heavy.**  He  attempts  to  repeat  after  Tier- 
ney  two  pleasantries  of  Mr.  Pitt— of  one  he 
makes  nonsense,  and  the  other  he  maims  and 
loses  its  point.  It  is  truly  told  in  Q.  R.,voL 
79,  p.  513.  Here  is  an  imbroglio,  to  us 
quite  incomprehensible.  Creevey,  he  says, 
who  bad  passed  some  time  with  Sheridan  at 
Mr.   Ord'd  in  Northumberland,  described — 

**  Sheridan's  Gayety:  acted  over  the  battle  of  the 
Pyramids  on  Marston  Moor^  ordering  Captain 
Creevey  to  ctU  out  that  cow — pointing  to  a  cow  in 
a  ditch."— iv.  296. 

Was  it  Creevey  or  Moore  who  imagined  that 
either  the  battle  of  the  Pyramids  or  that  of 
Marston  Moor  was  a  maritime  exploit — like 
the  celebrated  cutting  out  the  Hermione  ? 

**  I  quoted  the  following  on  Cesar  Colclough's 
taking  boat  at  Luggelaw  to  follow  the  hounds : — 

*  Csesarem  vehis  et  fortunas.  (sie) 

'  When  meaner  souls  the  tempest  struck  with 
awe, 
Undaunted  Colclough  crossed  at  Luggelaw, 
And  said  to  Boatmen,  shivering  in  their  rags, 
You  carry  Csaar  and  his — saddle-bags!'" 

—111.  5. 

This  pleasantry,  not  itself  a  very  choice  one, 
is  miserably  mangled  in  every  way.  Luggt' 
law  is  a  mountain^  tarn,  in  the  county  of 
Wicklow,  where  no  one  ever  took  boat  un- 
less to  fish  or  sketch,  and  where  hounds 
never  could  come — nor,  if  they  did,  do 
sportsmen  hunt  with  saddle-bags.  The  epi- 
gram was  made,  we  believe,  by  Charles 
Bushe  on  Mr.  Caesar  Colclough,  a  barrister 
riding  the  Leinster  Circuit,  who,  in  a  storm 
that  deterred  others,  crossed  the  ferry  at 
Ballinlaw,  between  Waterford  and  Wexford. 
It  was  said  that  he  took  this  short  cut  to 
anticipate  the  rest  of  the  bar  by  an  earlier 
arrival  at  Wexford,  and  that  Bushe  took  this 
kind  of  revenge  on  him.  This  blunder  is 
the  more  remarkable  because  it  proves  that 
Moore  never  oould  have  visited  Luggelaw, 


170 


KEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  HOOB& 


[Oct. 


one  of  the  most  striking  scenes  of  that  pic- 
turesque district  so  often  mentioned  in  his 
Melodies.  How  this  should  have  happened 
we  cannot  imagine,  particularly  if  he  saw 
the  "Meeting  of  the  Waters,"  Glandelough, 
&c.,  in  going  to  which  he  must  have  passed 
close  to  Luggelaw,  which  is  nearer  to  Dublin, 
and  we  think  finer  than  any  of  them. 

Moore  professed  to  feel  great  pleasure 
from  natural  scenery,  but  this  and  several 
other  passages  in  the  Diary  lead  us  to  doubt 
whether  the  feeling  was  very  strong.  Dove- 
dale,  for  instance,  gives  him  no  more  distinct 
idea  than  that  it  is  the  very  abode  of — genii  f 
(i.  301).  To  be  sure,  both  he  and  Lord 
John  tell  us  that  be  wept  at  the  sight  of 
Mont  Blanc,  but  he  also  tells  us  tbat  he 
wept  at  seeing  a  Frencbman  go  up  in  a  bal- 
loon. We  know  also  that  he  never  saw 
Eiliarney  till  his  English  friends  the  Lans- 
downes  took  him  there  in  his  forty-second 
year ;  and  when  he  was  asked  which  of  two 
diflferent  confluences  he  meant  to  describe  in 
his  celebrated  song  of  the  '*  Meeting  of  the 
Waters,"  he  was  unable  to  say. 

The  specimens  he  giyes  of  his  own  bons- 
mots  or  rapartees  are  very  poor — take  one, 
which,  from  the  rank  of  the  lady  and  the 
care  with  which  he  records  it,  was,  we  pre- 
sume, a  favorite  recollection : — 

"Had  music  in  the  evening  [at  Woburn]. 
The  duchess  [of  Bedfprd]  said  she  wished  I 
could  transfer  my  genius  to  her  for  six  weeks ; 
and  I  answered, '  most  willingly,  if  Woburn  was 
placed  at  my  disposal  for  the  same  time.'  " — iii. 
283. 

The  good  taste  of  agreeing  so  readily  in 
the  Duchess*  humble  estimation  of  herself, 
and  in  her  Grace's  high  opinion  of  him,  and 
of  estimating  his  own  superiority  at  just  the 
worth  of  }Volnim{/),  seems  to  us  equal  to 
its  pleasantry. 

After  the  publication  of  the  Life  of  Sheri- 
dan there  was  some  talk  of  his  undertaking 
those  of  ( I  rattan  and  Byron : — 

"  Lord  Lansdowne  much  amused  by  the  custom 
for  Lives  I  was  likely  to  have — I  said  I  had  bet- 
ter publish  nin«  together,  in  one  volume,  and  call 
it  The  (7a/."~iv.  323. 

Spoiled  it  seems  from  the  old  drollery  in 
Walpole's  Letters :  *'  If  I  had  as  many  many 
lives  as  a  cat,  or  as  one  Plutarch." 

Finding  some  difficulty  in  lighting  a  fire 
at  a  French  inn — 

*'  I  said  the  wood  was  like  the  houses  in  Paris, 
oMuri  eontre  Vincendie — which  amused  Lord 
/oAn."~lii.  13. 


Having  thus  endeavored  to  collect  from 
the  scattered  evidence  of  the  Diary  a  kind 
of  synopsis  of  some  of  the  chief  points  of 
Moore's  personal  and  literary  character,  we 
now  turn  to  the  consideration  of  some  cir- 
cumstances of  a  more  public  nature;  and 
here  it  is  that  we  can  cordially  say  that, 
whatever  neglect  or  error  of  detail  may  be 
imputed  to  Lord  John  RusseVs  editorship, 
his  work  is  a  public — we  had  almost  said 
historical— benefit.  Moore's  political  satires 
had  a  considerable  effect  in  their  day,  not 
so  much  from  their  gayety  and  wit — which 
was  often  feeble,  and  more  often  forced — ^as 
from  the  deep  bitterness  and  personal  ran- 
cor by  which  they  recommended  them- 
selves to  that  combination  of  factions  self- 
styled  the  Whig  party.  Of  this  active  and 
unscrupulous  opposition  Moore  became  the 
poet-laureate;  and  though  his  vituperatory 
verses  are  as  essentially  effete  as  the  pane- 
gyrics of  any  court  laureate  of  them  all, 
they  have  left  behind  them,  both  in  common 
talk  and  in  the  oUa-podrida  literature  of  our 
day,  a  kind  of  vague  impression,  which 
these  volumes  will  tend  to  correct  and  efface 
to  a  degree  of  which  Moore's  egotism  was, 
and  Lord  John  RusseU's  prejudice  is,  we 
suspect,  alike  unconscious. 

To  exhibit  this  in  its  true  light  we  must 
revert  a  little  to  Moore's  autobiography. 

We  here  find  more  than  we  had  ever  be- 
fore heard  or  suspected  of  his  early  initiation 
into  the  United  Irish  Conspiracy.  Moore 
tells  us  that  he  was  not. actually  a  United 
Irishman — and  hia  youth  would,  no  doubt, 
prevent  his  being  in  their  councils — but  he 
frequently  boasted  that  he  was  heart  and 
soul  devoted  to  their  principles,  &nd,  to  the 
extent  of  his  little  power,  active  in  prop- 
agating them.  All  of  what  are  called  his 
patriotic  songs  were  calculated  to  revive  and 
feed  the  spirit  of  the  Irish  Rebellion ;  and, 
to  the  very  last,  he  seems  to  be  proud  of 
being  considered  a  Jacobin,  and  even  a  traitor 
— which  latter  title  is  evidently  viewed  by 
him  as  equivalent  to  that  of  patriot. 

This  leads  us  to  observe  on  two  passages 
of  Lord  John  Russell's  Preface,  penned  no 
doubt  with  the  object  of  justifying  Moore's 
extreme  politics,  but  which  we  think  de- 
serve, on  higher  grounds,  serious  animad- 
version. In  nis  critical  summary  of  Moore's 
works,  Lord  John  says  of  his  life  of  Lord 
Edward  Fitzgerald,  that  **  the  character  and 
fate  of  Lord  £dward  are  made  to  touch  the 
heart  of  every  Irish  patriot ;"  and  in  speak- 
ing of  the  Irish  Rebellion  of  1798,  the  noble 
Editor  affirms  that  it  was  "  wickedly  provoke 


1868.] 


MBMOIBS  or  THOMAS  MOOBB. 


m 


«r'  by  the  Government.  This  oanonization 
of  treason  and  murder  as  patriotism,  and 
this  calamnj  on  the  Government  of  the 
country,  are  among  the  legacies  that  Lord 
John  has  had  from  Holland  House.  Our 
readers  know  that  Lord  Holland  avowed 
both  these  scandalous  opinions  in  his  last 
volume  of  Memoirs;  and  we  hope  they 
have  not  forgotten  our  refutation  of  them 
(Q.  R.  June,  1852).  We  need  hardly  say 
that  we  have  very  little  reliance  on  Lord 
John  Russell's  judgment  on  any  question 
where  party  prejudices  can  intervene;  but 
that  an  author  who  has  published  largely 
on  modern  history — a  statesman  who  has 
been  successively  Secretary  of  State  for  the 
Colonial,  the  Foreign,  and  the  Home  De- 
partments, Prime  Minister,  and  who  is  now 
Leader  of  the  House  of  Commons— should 
go  out  of  his  way  to  gild  over  rebellion  as 
patrioiism,  and  to  assert  so  gratuitous  and 
so  absurd  a  slander  as  that  the  English  and 
Irish  ministers  of  those  days  had  "  wickedly 
pTWfoked^'  the  rebellion,  passes  our  under- 
standing :  it  is  like  nothing  we  ever  read  of, 
except  the  assertion  of  certain  French  his- 
torians that  Mr.  Pitt  provoked  the  massa- 
cres of  September. 

We  are  astonished  at  Lord  John  Russell's 
venturing  to  reproduce  such  a  misrepresen- 
tation if  it  were  merely  historical: — it  is 
worse,  as  we  have  just  intimated,  when  a 
man  in  such  a  station  endeavors  to  palliate 
not  merely  rebellion — but  a  rebellion  of 
which  we  can  scarcely  say  that  the  ashes 
are  yet  cold;  but  worst  of  all  it  is,  when 
the  very  book  he  is  editing — notwithstand- 
ing the  avowedly  rebellious  bias  of  the 
author — contradicts  Lord  Holland's  and 
Lord  John  Russell's  fable  of  the  rebellion 
having  been  "  wickedly"  or  in  any  wslj  **  pro- 
voked" by  the  Government.  Moore's  first 
political  recollections — dating  many  years 
before  1798 — he  tells  us,  were  that — 

**  all  the  oldest  acquaintances  of  bis  father  and 
mother  were  some  of  the  most  deeply  involved 
in  the  grand  conspiracy  against  the  Qovemmev^,''^ 
*-i.  48. 

Again,  in  <  the  year  before  the  rebellion, 
Moore  says — 

**  the  celebrated  newspaper  called  the  Press  was 
set  up  by  Arthur  O'Connor,  Thomas  Addis  Em* 
melt,  and  the  other  chiefs  of  the  United  Irish 
Conspiracy  [Were  they  the  ioole  of  Pitt  and  Oam" 
dm/],  with  the  view  of  preparing  tmd  ripening 
the  public  mind  for  the  great  crisis  that  was  fast 
approaehisigJ*^^,  65, 


Mooro  would  have  been  willing  enough 
to  palliate  the  rebellion — but  he  had  been 
too  near  an  observer  to  attempt  any  such 
imposition ;  and  every  line  and  every  word 
of  his  record  of  those  times  is  a  contradic- 
tion of  Lord  John  Russell's  most  indecent 
and  most  unfounded  —  we  might  almost 
borrow  his  own  term  **  wicked" — charge  on 
the  Government  of  the  time. 

From  these  perilous  political  connections 
— though  never  from  these  rebellious  princi- 
ples— Moore  seems  to  have  soon  escaped 
into  a  very  diflferent  and — in  spite  of  his 
Jacobin  opinions — more  congenial  society. 
His  musical  taste  introduced  him  to  one  or 
two  musical  families,  which  he  surprised 
and  delighted  by  a  combination  of  poetry 
and  music  in  a  style  altogether  peculiar  to 
himself.  He  sang  his  own  verses  to  his  own 
tunes,  in  a  style  still  more  his  own:  the 
songs  were  indeed  rather  little  amatory 
breathings  than  poetry — the  voice  rather  a 
warbling  than  singpng — ^but  both  were  set 
off  by  an  expression  of  countenance  and 
charm  of  manner  the  most  graceful,  the 
most  natural,  and  the  most  touching  that 
we  have  ever  witnessed ;  in  truth  we  believe 
that  those  who  have  ever  heard  Moore's 
own  performance  will  agree  that  from  no 
other  lips — ^not  even  those  of  female  beauty 
— did  his  songs  ever  come  with  such  fasci- 
nating effect.  With  this  singular  and  seduc- 
tive talent,  accompanied  by  perfect  good 
manners  and  lively  conversation,  he  soon 
made  his  way  in  the  "singing,  dancing,  sup- 
pering"  society  of  Dublin;  and  it  is  evident 
from  all  the  names  that  occur  in  the  letters 
of  this  period  that  it  was  of  an  altogether 
different  political  complexion  from  his  for- 
mer associations. 

At  this  time  his  parents,  though  little  in  a 
condition  to  meet  such  an  expense,  decided 
on  his  being  educated  for  the  Bar — ^and  ac- 
cordingly, in  April,  1799,  he  proceeded  to 
London,  to  be  entered  at  the  Middle  Tem- 
ple. The  preparations  for  this  journey  are 
told  with  singular  naivete,  and  include  a 
peculiarity  which  we  should  not  have  ex- 
pected from  what  he  says  of  the  general  good 
sense^of  his  mother:— 

^  A  serions  drain  was  now,  however,  to  be  made 
upon  our  scanty  resources ;  and  my  poor  mother 
had  long  been  hoarding  np  every  penny  she  could 
scrape  together,  towards  the  expenses  of  my 
journey  to  London,  for  the  purpose  of  being  enter- 
ed at  the  Temple.  A  part  of  the  iiroall  sum  which 
I  took  with  me  was  in  guineas,  and  i  recollect  was 
carefully  sewed  up  by  my  mother  in  the  waists 
band  of  my  pantaloons.    There  was  also  smother 


lira 


MEMOIBS  OF  tHOllAS  HOOBE. 


[Oct, 


treasure  whit^  she  had^  unknown  tn  me^  sewed  up 
in  some  other  part  of  my  clothes,  and  fhat  was  a 
scapular  (as  it  is  called),  or  small  hit  of  doth, 
blessed  by  the  priest,  which  a  fond  superatitioD  in- 
clined her  to  believe  would  keep  the  wearer  of  it 
from  harm.  And  thus,  with  this  charm  about  me, 
of  which  I  was  wholly  unconscious,  and  my  little 
]Nicket  of  guineas,  of  which  I  felt  deeply  the  re- 
sponsibility, did  I  for  the  first  time  start  from  home 
for  the  great  world  of  London." — i.  72. 

He  remained  here,  it  seems,  only  long 
enough  to  keep,  as  it  is  called,  two  law 
terms,  and  returned  to  Dublin  in  July ; 
where,  the  season  of  the  year  having  no 
doubt  thinned  the  gay  company  in  which 
he  had  before  lived,  he  probably  worked 
more  assiduously  at  preparmg  for  the  press 
the  translation  of  Anacreon  which  he  had 
begun  while  yet  in  college.  This  work-^ 
then  his  only  ticket  in  the  lottery  of  life — 
being  at  last  ready  for  the  press,  he  returned 
to  London,  where  he  immediately  circulated 
proposals  for  publishing  it  by  subscription. 

He  had  brought  also  a  letter  of  introduc- 
tion to  the  Earl  of  Moira,  who  at  that  time 
was  the  chief  professor  of  Irish  patriotism 
in  England;  the  intercourse  of  that  date 
was  confined  to  a  morning  visit  and  a  dinner ; 
but  he  then  received  an  invitation  to  the 
Earl's  seat  at  Donington  Castle  in  Leicester- 
shire, of  which  he  availed  himself  on  his 
way  to  London  the  second  time,  in  Novem- 
ber, 1799. 

He  made  for  many  years  hot  merely  fre- 
quent visits  to  Lord  Moira  at  Donington, 
but  several  lengthened  abodes  with  which 
his  Lordship  indulged  him,  in  the  absence  of 
the  family,  to  pursue  his  studies  free  from 
expense  and  the  absorbing  distractions  of 
society,  and  with  the  advantage  of  a  fine 
library, — &  considerate  kindness  on  the  part 
of  Lord  Moira  which  showed  an  early  ap- 
preciation of  the  danger  to  which  Moore's 
taste  for  the  dissipations  of  London  exposed 
him.  Soon  after  his  marriage  Moore  hired 
a  cottage  in  the  neighboring  village  of 
Kegwonh,  where  he  had  the  library  always, 
and  occasionally  the  society  of  ^  the  castle, 
within  his  reach. 

Very  early  in  their  acquaintance  Lord 
Moira  seems  to  have  obtained  from  George 
IV.,  then  Prince  of  Wales,  the  acceptance  of 
the  dedication  of  the  forthcoming  Anacreon ; 
and  as  Moore's  subsequent  conduct  towards 
that  Prince  was  altogether,  we  think,  the 
least  creditable  as  well  as  the  most  remark- 
able  circumstance  of  his  whole  life,  it  is 
our  historical  dnty  to  give  as  particular  an 
aocount  of  it  as  we  can  gather  from  these 


volumes.    Some  time  before  the  personal 
introduction  Moore  writes : — 

•«  riSOO.  May.]— My  dear  Mother,— I  have  got 
the  rrince's  name  [to  the  subscription],  and  his 

Srmission  that  I  should  dedicate  Anacreon  to  hint 
urra!    Hurra !"—!.  104. 

"Surra/  Hurra P*  We  pause  for  a  mo- 
ment, not  to  sneer  at  this  burst  of  exultation, 
very  natural  in  a  youth  of  Moore's  then  cir- 
cumstances, but  to  lament  that  the  next  time 
we  meet  these  words  from  Moore's  pen 
should  be  in  an  insult  to  the  very  personage 
of  whose  favor  he  was  once  so  proud — in  a 
burlesque  description  of  the  Regent's  open- 
ing Parliament : — 

**  Hurra !  Hurra !  I  heard  them  say, 

And  they  cheered  and  shouted  all  the  way, 

As  the  great  Panurge  in  his  glorv  went 

To  open  in  state  his  Parliament.— fFor^,  611. 

At  one  of  the  fashionable  assemblies  in 
which  Moore's  agreeable  talents  soon  ren- 
dered him  so  universally  acceptable — a 
arty,  we  believe,  of  Lady  Harrington's — ^he 
ad  by  and  by  the  honor  of  being  personally 
introduced  to  His  Rc^al  Highness : — 


I 


""  1800.  Aug.  4th. — I  was  yesterday  introduced 
to  His  Royal  Highness  George  Prince  of  Wales. 
He  is,  beyond  doubt,  a  man  of  very  fascinating 
manners.  When  I  was  presented  to  him,  he  said 
he  was  very  happy  to  know  a  man  of  my  abilities ; 
and  when  I  thanked  him  for  the  honor  he  had 
done  me,  he  stopped  me,  and  said  the  honor  was 
entirely  his,"  &c.,  &c. — 107. 

"1801.  March  8th.— I  last  night  went  to  a 
little  supper  after  the  onera,  where  the  Prince  and 
Mrs.  Fitzherbert  were.  — 111. 

"  March  28th. — You  may  imagine  the  afiTability 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  when  his  address  to  me 
was  *  How  do  you  do,  Moore  ?  I  am  glad  to  see 
you.'"— 112. 

This  is  all  we  find  before  Moore^s  trip  to 
America;  but  immediately  after  his  return 
he  writes : — 

«[1804.]  Saturday  [Dec.  7th].— My  dariing 
Mother — I  have  only  just  time  to  tell  you  that 
the  Prince  was  extremely  kind  to  me  last  night 
at  a  small  supper  party  at  which  I  met  him. 
Every  one  noticed  the  cordiality  with  which  he 
spoke  to  me.  His  words  were  these: — ^'I  am 
very  glad  to  see  you  here  again,  Moore.  From 
the  reports  I  had  heard,  [  was  afraid  we  had  lost 
you.  I  assure  you  [laying  his  hand  on  my  shoul- 
der at  the  same  time]  it  was  a  subject  of  general 
concern.'  Coiild  anything  be  more  flattering? 
I  must  say  I  felt  rather  happy  at  that  moment 
The  idea  of  such  reports  having  reached  htm— 
I  his  remembering  them  upon  seeing  me,  and  ex- 


1858.] 

pressing  them  so  cordially— was  all  pleasant^ 
and  win,  J  know,  ffratify  my  dear  father's  and 
mother's  hearts,  isaw  him  afterwards  go  up 
to  Lord  Moira,  and,  pointing  towards  me,  ex- 
press, I  suppose,  the  same  thing.  It  was  at  Lord 
Harrington's.*' — i.  178. 

''ISoe.  May.— 1  believe  I  told  you  the  kind 
things  the  prince  said  to  me  about  "my  book  (the 
Odes  and  Epistles)."— 193. 

"18H.  June  2l8t. — My  dearest  mother, — I 
ought  to  have  written  yesterday,  but  I  was  in  bed 
all  day  after  the  fdte  [at  Cariion  House],  which 
I  did  not  leave  till  past  six  in  the  morning.  No- 
thin'T  was  ever  half  so  magnificent;  it  was  in 
retdily  all  that  they  try  to  imitate  in  the  gorgeous 
scenery  of  the  theatre;  and  I  really  sat  three 
quarters  of  an  hour  in  the  Prince's  roorn  after 
supper,  silently  looking  at  the  spectacle,  and 
feeding  my  eye  with  Uie  assemblage  of  beauty, 
splendor,  and  profuse  magnificence  which  it  pre- 
sented. It  was  quite  worthy  of  a  Prince,  and  I 
would  not  have  lost  it  for  any  consideration.  .  . 
The  Prince  spoke  to  me,  as  he  always  does,  with 
the  cordial  familiarity  of  an  old  aqnaintance."— 
i.  254,5. 

This  was  one  of  the  two  fetes  at  the  be- 
ginning at  the  Regency  to  which  Moore's 
subsequent  libels  make  so  many  offensive, 
and,'  as  we  now  see,  ungrateful  allusions. 
We  see  also  that  he  had  once  at  least  dined 
at  Carlton  House. 

The  Prince  was  certainly  struck  with  the 
talents  and  manners  of  the  young  poet,  and 

Sartook  of  Lord  Moira's  good  will  towards 
im : — and  during  Mr.  Addington's  adminis- 
tration— in  1603— their  joinl  influence  (we 
speak  advisedly)  procured  for  their  prol^g^ 
a  very  easy  office  in  the  Admiralty  Court 
of  Bermuda.  It  is,  no  doubt,  to  palliate 
Moore's  subsequent  ingratitude  to  holh  his 
patrons,  that  he  and  his  partizans,  and  of 
course  Lord  John,  take  the  tone  of  denounc- 
ing this  appointment  as  "  the  greatest  mis- 
fortune of  Moore's  life,"  and  even  of  treating 
the  kindness  of  his  early  protectors  as  a 
matter  of  reproach.  This  is  altogether  un- 
founded. We  nowhere  find  any  distinct  ac- 
count of  the  value  of  the  office,  and  on  the  con- 
trary there  seems  a  studied  reserve  on  that 
subject;  but  we  see  that  both  Moore  and  his 
father  made  close  inquiries  into  that  important 
point,  the  results  of  which  were  so  satisfactory 
as  to  itiduce  Moore  to  make  a  voyage  to  Ber- 
muda to  take  possession  of  the  post.  We 
know  that  it  yielded  someihing  (i.  184.)  :-*-and 
indeed  during  twelve  years — the  most  strug- 
gling years  of  bis  life,  we  hear  no  com- 
plaint of  its  not  being  productive.  On  the 
contrary,  in  1810,  he  talks  of  "bis  Bermuda 
treoiury,^*  and  expects  to  receiye  something 
tbence  very  shortly,  [i.  245].    In  May,  1612, 


MSMOIfiS  OF  THOMAS  HOOKK 


178 


he  expected  '*  money  from  Bermuda,"  which 
turned  out  ta  be  '^  money  indeed  /"  [i.  280]. 
In  the  winter  of  1813  we  find  him  entering 
into  a  negotiation  for  getting  an  immediate 
advance  on  the  credit  of  his  coming  profits 

ti.  d69j  ;   and  in  December,  1814,  we  have 
lim  acknowledging  the   remittance  of    no 
less  a  sum  than  £500,  which  he  immediately 
invests  in  the  funds,  and  glories  in  being  **  a 
stock-holder"    [ii.  58 j.     It  is  just  a  year 
after  the  receipt  of  this  £500  that  we  find 
his  first  complaint  about  Bermuda — "  I  get 
as  near  nothing  from  it  as  possible  "  [ii.  88]. 
No   wonder :    he   had    been   twelve    years 
pocketing  whatever  monies  his  deputy  chose 
to  send  him,  and,  though  warned  and   ad- 
vised both   officially  arid  privately  that  he 
ought  to  look  after  this  important  business, 
he  never  took,  as  far  as  appears,  any  trouble 
about  it.     At  last,  in  the  spring  of   1818 — 
after  fifteen  yeare^  enjoyment  of  the  office — 
came   the   real   disaster,  which  was  this : — 
The  proceeds  of  the  sales  of  two  or  three 
ships  and  cargoes,  which  had  been  condemn- 
ed, were  lodged  in  the  registry  of  the  court, 
pending  an  appeal ;  this  sum  Moore's  deputy 
embezzled,   and  Moore,  who  had,  he  says, 
"  forgotten  both  the  deputy  and  the  office," 
was   disagreeably  awakened   by  a  demand 
from  the  injured  parlies  to  make  good  the 
deposit.     What  the   real  defalcation  was  is 
not  exactly  stated,  but  it  was  finally  compro- 
mised for  £1040.     Twice  or  thrice  that  sum 
need  not  have  overwhelmed  a  prudent  man  in 
Moore's  circumstances.     He  was  in  the  re- 
ceipt of  very  large  sums  for  his  works,  and 
for  immediate  aid,  on  this  occasion,  Messrs. 
Longman  offered  to  advance  the  whole  sum 
on  his  own  security,  and  several  of  his  private 
friends — Mr.  Rogers,  Mr.  Jeffrey,  Mr.  Rich- 
ard Power,  Lord  John  Russell,  and  the  pre- 
sent  Duke  of    Bedford,    were    anxious    to 
enable  him  to  have  settled  the  affair  at  once. 
These  offers  his  delicacy  rejected,  and  he 
proceeded  to  resist  the  demand  by  dilatory 
proceedings  in  the  court.     We  do  not  under- 
stand this  kind  of  delicacy:  would  it  not  have 
been  more  delicate,  or,  in  plain  English,  more 
honest— even  if  he  had  exhausted  his  own 
immediate  resources — ^to  have  accepted  tem- 
porary loans  from    such  old  and  affluent 
friends  as  we  have  named-^or,  still  better, 
Messrs.  Longman's  proposal  in  the  way  of  bu- 
siness— than  to  have  not  only  left  the  claim- 
ants unpaid,  but  increased  their  loss  by  a 
litigious  resistance?     Instead,  however,  of 
feeling  either  for  himself  or  the  claimants,  it 
appears  from  the  Diary  that  for  a  year  and 
a  half — ^from  April,  1818  to  August,  1819 — 


174 


MBHOIBS  OF  THOHAS  HOOBE. 


[Oct., 


Moore  was  enjoying  himself  in  his  usnal 
round  of  fashionable  amusement,  and  it  was 
not  til)  the  progress  of  the  suit  rendered  de- 
lay no  longer  possible  that  he  thought  of 
escaping  from  arrest,  first  in  the  sanctuary 
of  Holy  hood  House,  but,  as  the  safety  of  that 
asylum  was  doubtful,  finally  by  retiring  to 
the  Continent. 

Why  should  the  bounty  of  his  royal  and 
noble  patrons  be  in  any  way  made  respon- 
sible for  all  this  personal  neglect  and  im- 
prudence on  Moore's  part  ?  They  gave  him 
an  office,  estimated  as  we  think  we  have 
heard,  at  £400  a  year  clear  profit,  which 
— ^besides  being  as  much  as  they  had  any 
chance  of  obtaining  from  a  Government 
with  which  they  were  not  connected — was 
also  in  every  way  suitable  to  Moore's  then 
position.  It  secured  him  a  moderate  in- 
come, and,  being  almost  a  sinecure,  left  him 
at  liberty  to  dedicate  his  time  to  his  literary 
avocations.  Such  is,  we  believe,  the  truth 
of  this  long  misunderstood  and  misrepresent- 
ed aflfair. 

We  must  now  revert  to  Moore's  political 
prospects.  In  1806  All  the  Talents  came 
mto  office,  and  amongst  them  Lord  Moira. 
Moore,  with  as  keen  an  appetite  for  place 
as  ever  a  patriot  had — and  we  can  say  no 
more — is  in  a  perfect  fever  of  greedy  de- 
light. He  writes  to  his  mother,  Feb.  4th, 
1806,— 

**  I  am  quite  in  a  bewilderment  of  hope,  fear, 
and  anxiety :  the  very  crisis  of  my  fate  is  ar- 
rived. Lord  Moira  has  everything  in  his  power, 
and  my  fate  now  depends  upon  his  sincerity, 
which  it  would  be  profanation  to  doubt;  and 
Heaven  grant  he  may  justify  my  confidence! 
Tierney  goes  [Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer]  to 
Ireland,  so  there  a  hope  opens  for  my  father^s 
advancement.  In  short,  every  thing  promises 
brilliantly ;  light  breaks  in  on  all  sides,  and 
Fortune  smiles." — 192. 

Fortune  smiled,  but  not  so  bountifully  as 
Moore  anticipated.  Lord  Moira  was  only 
Master- General  of  the  Ordnance,  an  office 
which  has  little  civil  patronage,  but  he  did 
for  Moore  all  that  he  could,  and  more  than 
he  ought.  He  made  his  father  barrack- 
master  of  Dublin,  for  which  the  old  man's 
years  and  habits  rendered  him  wholly  unfit ; 
and  having  in  his  own  gift  ^*  a  small  appoint- 
ment to  give  away,  he  proposed  it  to  Moore 
himself— till  something  better  offered"  [i.  1 92]. 
Moore  does  not  say  what  it  was,  but  de- 
elines  it,  telling  his  lordship  he  would  wait 
till  something  worthier  of  his  [sic]  ''gene- 
rosity and  my  ambition  should  occur"  [t&]. 
Lord  Moira,  instead  of  being  offended,  ap- 


plies to  Mr.  Fox  for  that  '*  something  wor- 
thier," and  Mr.  Fox  seems  good  naturedly  to 
have  promised  compliance  with  his  request. 

"  You  may  tell  my  uncle  and  aunt  of  Fox's 
promise — Lord  Moira  has  told  roe  that  it  is  one 
of  the  Irish  Commiasionerships  that  I  am  to  have  \ 
but  these  will  not  be  arranged  until  those  in 
England  are  settled.'' 

Whatever  the  promise  may  have  been,  it 
and  Lord  Moira's  influence  vanished  at  Mr. 
Fox's  death ;  and  Moore,  ignorant,  no  doubt, 
at  the  time,  of  the  delicate  situation  in  which 
Lord  Moira  was  placed  after  Mr.  Fox's 
death,  never  forgave  his  lordship  for  the 
neglect  and  lukewarmness  to  which  he  attrib- 
uted his  disappointment. 

Dissatisfied  with  Lord  Moira  and  the  Tal- 
ents, Moore  became  outrageous  at  their  suc- 
cessors.— "  Fine  times,"  he  says, "  for  chang- 
ing a  ministry — and  changing  to  such  foois 
too"  (i.  222) ;  the  fools  being — inter  alias — 
Percival,  Liverpool,  Harrowby,  Huskisson, 
Palmerston,  Canning,  Castlereagh,  Welling- 
ton ! — He  goes  down  in  despair  to  Doning- 
ton  Park,  to  vent  his  bile  on  this  new  Minis- 
try :— 

"I  am  not  (he  says  to  Lady  Donegal,  37th 
April,  1807,  writing  love  verses.  \  begin  at  last 
to  find  out  that  politics  is  the  only  ihing  minded 
in  this  country,  and  that  it  is  better  to  rebel  against 
Government  than  have  noUiing  to  do  with  it.  So 
I  am  writing  politics,  but  all  I  fear  is  that  my 
former  ill  luck  will  ride  up  against  me,  and  that, 

as  I  could  not  write  love  without  getting  into , 

so  I  shall  not  be  able  to  write  politics  without 
getting  into  treason  (sic)." — i.  225. 

This,  a  confession  more  candid  than  deli- 
cate to  be  made  to  a  Tory  lady,  was  followed 
up  by  his  two  political  satires  of  "  Corrup- 
tion" and  "  Intolerance,"  which,  bitter  and 
even  personally  libellous  as  they  are,  may 
be  fairly  forgiven  to  a  papist  who  had  lost 
the  prospect  of  an  Irish  Commissionership 
by  the  cry  of  "  No  Popery."  But  he  still 
had  hopes  from  Lord  Moira,  which  the  me- 
lancholy illness  of  George  III.,  and  the  pros- 
pect of  a  new  reign  kept  alive.  On  this 
latter  subject  we  find  in  a  letter  of  the  17th 
of  August,  1811,  a  passage  so  discreditable 
that  nothing  but  his  own  evidence  could 
make  us  believe.  He  had  it  seems  at  that 
time  his  silly  opera  of  "  M.P."  in  rehearsal 
at  the  Hay  market,  and  thus  expresses  his 
apprehension  that  the  King^s  death  might  in- 
terfere with  it  :— 

"  I  have  been  a  g^ood  deal  and  loyally  (sic) 
alarmed  lest  a  certain  catastrophe  should  inter 


185a.] 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


116 


rapt  the  perfonnances  of  the  playbousee ;  but  i 
believe  there  is  no  fear  whatever,  and  that  I  may 
be  verv  well  satisfied  if  my  piece  is  not  dead  and 
d—d  before  he  is — [N.B.  before  he  is  dead,  [ 
mean — don't  mistaJceme].'* — i.  268. 

He  then  proceeds  to  repeat  an  account  of 
the  "  poor  King  being  turned  loose  and  suf- 
fered to  range  blindly  and  frantic  about  his 
apartments  at  Windsor,  like  Polypheme  in 
his  cave,"  which,  however,  **  he  is  quite  happy 
to  find  woi  all  a  fabrication^^  {ib).  This 
brutal  trifling  with  the  two  most  awful  inci- 
dents of  human  nature — insanity  and  death 
— ^is  rendered  additionally  painful  and  pitia- 
ble by  the  recollection  ihat  the  giddy  author 
was  doomed  to  have  his  own  rea^son  quenched 
and  his  own  life  closed  under  the  calamitous 
circumstances  which  he  then  treated  so  lightly. 

In  February,  1812,  the  restricted  Regency 
expired ;  and  the  Prince — after  an  ineffect- 
ual effort  to  form  a  combined  ministry, 
which  was  chiefly  defeated  by  the  dissen- 
sions and  extravagant  pretensions  of  the 
Whigs  themselves — continued  Mr.  Perce- 
val's administration*  Moore  writes  to  Lady 
Donegal : — 

'*  In  Lord  Moira's  exclusion  from  all  chances  of 
power  1  see  an  end  of  the  long  hope  of  my  life, 
and  my  intention  is  to  go  far  away  into  the  coun- 
try, &c.  ...  the  truth  is,  that  the  political  events 
ot  the  last  few  days,  so  suddenly  breaking  up  a//  ttte 
proepects  of  oiy  life,  have  sunk  my  spirits  a  lie  tie, 
so  forgive  me  if  1  am  either  unjust  or  ill  natured." 
— i.  2(>9,  270. 

In  an  immediately  following  letter  he  states 
bis  own  motives  still  more  clearly — no  loy- 
alty to  the  Prince,  no  devotion  to  Lord 
Moira,  no  Whiggery,  no  popery,  no  pa- 
triotism— nothing  but  a  personal  speculation. 
He  tells  lady  Donegal  that  he  needs  no  con- 
solation, for — 

"the  truth  is,  1  feel  as  if  a  load  had  been  taken 
ofi*  me  by  this  tiuai  termination  to  all  the  hope  and 
suspense  in  which  the  prospect  of  Lord  Moira*s 
advancement  has  kept  me  for  so  many  years. 
It  has  been  a  sort  of  WiU-o^-the-wiBp  ail  my  life, 
and  the  only  thing  I  regret  is,  that  it  was  not 
extinguished  earlier,  for  it  has  led  me  a  sad 
dance."— i.  271. 

But  he  has  bUU  another  consolation : — 

*"  /,  thank  Heaven !  (and  it  consoles  me  for  my 
poverty)  am  free  to  caU  a  rascal  a  rascal  wherever 
£  meet  fUm^  and  never  was  I  belter  disposed  to  make 
use  if  my  pritHege,*^ — i.  271. 

That  is,  in  plain  English,  "  having  no  longer 


any  hope  of  a  place,  I  hmfree  to  become  a 
libeller,  and  I  mean  to  use  my  privilege." 

This  laudable  resolution  soon  connected 
him  with  Holland  House— ^here  Lord  Moira 
had  become  an  object  of  suspicion  or  worse, 
because  the  Prince  showed  more  reluctance 
"  to  desert  Lord  Moira  than  the  rest  of  the 
party,"  amongst  whom  Lord  Moira  was  now 
evidently  de  trop, 

Moore,  already  secretly  dissatisfied  (as 
we  have'  seen)  with  Lord  Moira,  now  began 
immediately,  under  >Lord  Holland's  special 
auspices,  that  series  of  personal  libels  on  the 
Prince  which  made  so  much  noise  in  their 
day,  but  which,  when  we  are  now  obliged  to 
look  through  them,  appear  to  us  to  have  less 
of  wit  or  even  gayety  than  we  thought,  and 
to  have  owed  their  vogue  to  what  we  may 
call,  in  the  original  and  most  appropriate 
meaning  of  the  word,  their  scurrility.  The 
salt  of  these  productions  was  their  ingrati- 
tude, irreverence,  and  insult  against  one  who 
ought  to  have  been  in  a  peculiar  degree 
exempt  from  them — not  only  by  the  absence 
of  every  private  provocation  and  the  ex- 
istence of  personal  obligation  on  Moore's 
part,  but  still  more — by  his  public  station, 
which,  besides  its  legal  claims  to  respect,  had 
one  which  should  have  been  even  more  binding 
on  a  man  of  delicacy  and  honor — that  he  was 
as  helpless  as  a  woman  against  Bnch  polisson- 
nerie. 

These  showers  of  garbage,  flung  in  news- 
papers at  the  Sovereign,  as  if  he  had  been 
a  criminal  in  the  pillory,  Moore  in  1813 
collected,  with  some  additional  lampoons,  in 
a  little  volume  called  the  Twopenny  Post- 
Bag.  One  of  Lord  John  Russel's  rare  notes 
— and  a  rare  one  this  is — assures  us  that 
this  Post-Bag  '•  is  full  of  fun  and  humor, 
wihout  ill-nature''  (i.  331).  We  will  not 
dispute  Lord  John's  taste  as  to  what  he  may 
think  fun  and  humor.  Anything  that  abuses 
a  political  opponent  is,  no  doubt,  fun  and 
humor;  but  we  should  have  been  utterly 
astonished  at  his  finding  no  ill-nature  in  the 
Twopenny  Post- Bag  if  we  did  not  know  that 
there  are  palates  so  disordered  as  not  to  find 
vinegar  sour,  nor  aloes  bitter.  We  can  only 
say  that  to  our  taste,  and  that  we  think  of 
the  majority  of  mankind,  there  never  was 
a  bitterer  or  sourer  specimen  of  concentrated 
malignity ;  and  we  quite  agree  in  the  judg- 
ment passed  on  it  by  a  Whig — a  clever 
man,  and  a  personal  friend  of  Moore — that 
it  was  "  ribaldry  not  to  be  palliated  even  by 
its  wit ;"  and  that  "  deep  must  have  been  the 
hate    that  prompted  it;  and    bitterly  and 


176 


HEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


[Oct., 


raneorously  it  %ms  uttered^  And  we  shall 
see  by  and  by  that  Lord  Holland  hitnself 
repented  him  of  such  impolitic  as  well  as 
unworthy  libelling.  Lord  John's  strange 
compliment  to  his  friend*s  ^oo(^  na^i<r«  puts 
us  in  mind  of  Foote's  to  the  Duchess  of 
Kingston.  "  Well,  I  have  heard  of  Tartars  and 
Brimstones,  but  your  Grace  is  the  Jlowsr  of 
the  one  and  the  cream  of  the  other."  Such 
seem  lo  us  the  cream  and  Jlowers  of  Moore's 
potticul  lampoons.  A  more  practical  and 
conclusive  commentary  on  Lord  John's  es- 
timate of  these  good-natured  verses  is  fur- 
nished by  the  fact,  that  Moore  was  afraid  to 
own,  and  Carpenter  of  Bond  Street,  then  his 
usual  publisher,  to  print  them ;  and  so  the 
title-page  announced  some  obscure  name,  or 
perhaps,  pseudonyme,  under  which  the  poi- 
son might  be  safely  disseminated. 

This  course  of  libelling  ran  on  for  many 
years,  and  in  a  spirit  still  more  ignoble  than 
it  began.  Moore  might  be  excused  for  pre- 
ferring Lord  Holland  to  Lord  Moira — ^for  re- 
senting the  discountenance  of  the  Catholic 
claims — for  sharing  the  sudden  disappoint- 
ment of  hii  political  party  ;  but  an  odium  in 
longum  jacens,  bad  as  it  is,  would  be  less  dis- 
creditable than  such  a  motive  as  the  follow- 
ing, which  it  seems  to  us  astonishing  that 
Moore  should  have  confessed  even  to  his  own 
pen : — 

«»1818.  Nov.  20.— Went  on  with  the  slanfir 
epistle.  It  seems  prof>inarion  to  write  such  hux- 
foonery  in  the  midst  of  this  glorious  sunshine ; 
bat,  alas!  momey  must  he  Aad,  and  the^e  trifles 
bring  it  fastest  and  easiest.'* — ii.  218. 

"Dec.  17th. — Twenty  lines  more.  This  sort 
of  stuflT  goes  glibly  from  tiie  pen.  I  sometimes 
ask  myself  why  I  write  it;  and  the  only  answer 
1  ffet  is,  that  1  natter  myself  it  serves  the  cause 
oxpoHtics  which  1  espouse,  and  that,  at  all  events, 
it  orings  a  UUle  mtmey  without  much  trouble." — 
li.  240. 

The  first,  certainly  the  most  remarkable, 
and  artistically,  we  think,  the  best,  was  a 
parody  on  the  letter  (Feb.  15,  1812)  of  the 
Prince  to  the  Duke  of  York,  explanatory  of 
his  motives  for  retaining  his  father's  ministry, 
whose  measures  had  ai  that  important  crisis 
of  the  affairs  of  the  world,  been  so  successful, 
but  proposing  to  combine  with  them — to 
resist  the  common  danger — the  Whig  party 
under  Lords  Grey  and  Grenville.  The  lat- 
ter peremptorily  declined.  W^e  do  not  stop 
to  inquire  whether  these  Lords  were  right 
or  wrong — Moore  pronounces  them  decided- 
ly wrong,  because  they  spoiled  his  hopes  of 
a  place — nor  do  we  mean  to  revive  that  or 
indeed  any  other  merely  political  question  of 


the  day,  further  than  to  say  that  the  Prince's 
letter  received  the  general  assent  of  the 
country  and  of  what  was  left  of  independ- 
ence in  Europe,  and  was  the  basis  of  that 
triumphant  policy  which  led  Wellington  from 
the  Tagus  to  the  Seine,  and  Bonaparte  from 
the  Tuileries  to  St.  Helena. 

Moore  did  not  trouble  himself  with  any 
such  considerations.  He  saw  in  the  royal 
letter  nothing  but  the  destruction  of  the 
**  long  hope"  of  his  life  that  he  had  been  build- 
ing on  the  Prince's  friendship  for  Lord  Moira 
and  Lord  Moira's  friendship  for  himself,  and 
he  endeavored,  like  other  disappointed 
fortune-hunters,  to  disguise  his  own  vexation 
under  the  cloak  of  patriotism.  It  was  on  or 
about  the  same  day  that  he  announced  to 
Lady  Donegal  his  intention  to  use  his  '*  priv- 
ilege" of  libelling  that  this  parody  was  read 
to  a  select  conclave  at  Holland  House, 
preparatory  to  its  being  published  in  the 
Morning  Chronicle.  There  is  a  curious  se- 
quel to  this  affair.  We  find  in  the  Diary, 
near  ten  years  later — 

**  1821,  Nov.  2. — Lord  Holland  anxious  to  ask 
me  about  my  parody  on  the  Regent*s  letter, 
whether  I  had  shown  it  to  Lord  Moira;  heard 
that  I  had,  and  that  Lord  Moira  had  advised  the 
leaving  out  of  some  lines.  Told  him  that  none 
of  this  was  true ;  that  none  had  seen  it  before 
it  was  circulated  but  himself,  Rogers,  Perry,  and 
Luttrel.  He  quoted  something  which  be  had 
been  told  Rogers  had  said  about  his  (Lord  H.*b) 
having  urged  me  to  write  this,  and  the  likelihood 
of  my  being Jeft  in  the  lurch  after  having  suffered 
for  doing  sa  Lord  K  confessed  ii  was  aU  very 
imprudent^  and  that  ike  whole  conduct  of  the  party 
(Whig)  at  that  time  was  anything  but  wif«,  as 
they  must  know  the  King  would  never  forgive  the 
personalities  they  then  beset  him  with,  i  should 
much  like  to  knuw  the  secret  of  his  reviving  thi4 
matter  just  now." — iii.  297. 

And  four  years  later  still — 

"  1825,  Aug.  16— Lord  Holland  read  to  me 
several  cahiers  of  what  I  rather  suspect  to  be 
memoirs  of  his  own  times.  There  was  mention 
in  it  of  my  parody  on  the  Princess  letter.  '  Ano^ 
ther  poet,*  he  i»aid,  '  Mr.  Moore,  with  more  of 
Irish  humor  than  of  worldly  prudence,*  &c. 
This  is  too  had — Lord  Holland  himself  having 
been  the  person  who  first  put  it  into  my  head  to 
write  that  parody.'* — iv.  304. 

The  secret  is  now  plain  enough.  Lord 
Holland,  when  he  came  in  a  less  heated 
moment  to  write  an  account  of  the  affair, 
saw  it  was  indefensible,  and  was  desirous  of 
implicating  poor  Lord  Moira  in  the  blame; 
and  so  disguising  a  main  point  of  the  Prince 
Regent's  case,  which  was,  that  the  jparfy  had 
thrown  Lord  Moira  overboard,  not  he  theoL 


1858.J 


UEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORF. 


Ill 


We  know  not  where  we  cotdd  find  a 
stronger  instance  of  prophetic  self- censure 
than  is  afforded  by  some  lines  of  a  satire  of 
Moore's  called  The  Skeptic,  published  in 
1809,  in  which,  with  that  blindness  to  the 
tu  quoque  which  so  often  afflicts  writers  of 
this  class,  he  says : — 

**  Self  \B  the  medinni  through  which  judgment's 

rav 
Can  seldom  pass  without  beinp  turned  astray. 
Had  Walcot  first  been  pension'd  by  the  Crown, 
Kiiiffs  would  have  suffered  by  his  praise  alone ; 
Ana  Paine  perhaps,  for  something  snugjper  ann., 
Had  laughed,  like  Wellesley,  at  the  rights  of 

Man." 

We  forget  to  what  phrase  of  Lord  Welles- 
ky*s  he  may  have  alluded,  but  certainly  any 
one  who  reads  of  bis  own  morbid  anxiety  for 
government  patronage  and  place  might  not 
nncharitably  apply  the  preceding  line  to  his 


*'And  Moort  perhaps,  for  something  snug^r 
ann»i* 

would  have  taught  his  Muse  a  different  song 
than  those  libel's  on  the  Sovereign.  The 
poem  proceeds ; — 

*  Woe  to  the  skeptic,  in  these  party  days. 
Who  wafts  to  neither  shrine  his  pnffa  of  praise, 
For  him  no  pension  pours  its  annual  Jruita, 
No  fertile  sinecure  spontaneous  nhoots. 
Nor  his  the  meed  that  crowned  Don  Hookham's 

rhyme ; 
Nor  sees  he  e'er  in  dreams  of  foture  time 
Those  shadowy  forms  ofsUeTc  reversions  rise 
So  dear  to  Scotchmen's  second-sighted  eyes ; 
Yet  who  that  looks  to  History's  damning  leaf, 
Where  Whig  and  Tory— i^ie/ opposed  to  thirf^ 
On  either  side,  in  lofty  shade,  are  seen. 
While    Freedom's   form    hangs  crucified  be- 
tween, &c. 

Worles.i  45. 

Who  would  believe  that  the  penman  of  this 
sneer  at  that  eminent  scholar,  writer,  and 
diplomatist,  Mr.  Hookham  Frere,  and  this 
tirade  against  all  placemen,  was  himself  in 
possession  of  a  **s%necure*^  and  a  ** fertile^* 
one,  too,  till  he  mismanaged  and  lost  it  by  his 
entire  neglect ;  that  he  procured  for  his  fa- 
ther a  place  almost  a  ''  nnectire,"  which  the 
old  man  also  mismanaged  and  lost ;  that  his 
own  life  was  passed  in  dreams  of  reversions 
as  "  dear**  as  any  Scotchman  ever  entertain- 
ed ;  that  when  those  "  thieves''  the  '*  Whigs*' 
bad  come  into  power,  in  1806,  he  was  in  "  a 
bewilderment  of  hope  and  anxtetv''  for  a 
places — and  that  he  was  destined  to.be  at 
last  *' pensioned  by  the  Crown"  f 

▼OL.  ZXX.    NO.  IL 


So^far  we  have  only  looked  to  Moore's 
personal  relations  with  the  Prince  and  the 
patriot  pretences  under  which  he  endeavored 
to  color  his  libels;  but  we  find  in  these 
volumes  some  elucidation  of  a  more  impor- 
Unt  matter.  The  great  point  of  Moore's 
attack,  and  that  which  in  a  variety  of  shapes 
was  urged  against  the  Prince  by  the  Whigs, 
was  His  Royal  Hi^hness's  desertion  of  his 
old  political  friends  in  forming  that  ministry 
of  fooU  in  1 807.  We  should  not  have  thought 

it  worth  while  to  discuss  such  a  charge aa 

if  great  national  interests  were  to  be  made 
subservient  to  the  partialities  of  private  life 
—as  if  Prince  Henry  ought  to  have  preferred 
Sir  John  Falstaff  to  Chief  Justice  Gascoyne 
—but  unreasonable  and  unconstitutional  as  the 
indulgence  of  such  personal  partialities  would 
have  been  if  they  had  existed,  the  fact  is  that 
they  did  not  exist,  and  that  the  imputation 
against  the  Prince  was  an  anachronism  and 
a  misrepresentation.  The  Prince  is  charged 
with  *'  deserting  his  old  friends:'  Now,  the 
plain  historic  fact  is,  and  Moore  himself  is 
forced  to  attest  it,  that,  whatever  it  may  be 
called,  coolness,  separation,  desertion  was  the 
act  of  the  party  and  not  of  the  Prince.  Those 
of  the  party  T?ho  possessed  especially  his 
private  regard  were  Mr,  Fox,  Lord  Mbira, 
and  Sheridan  (Moore,  Life  of  Sheridan,  ii. 
384).  These  composed  the  heir-apparent'a 
"  little  senate."  His  deference  for  Mr.  Fox 
induced  him  to  submit  to  his  coalition  with 
Lord  Grenville,  but  he  was  "  never  friendly 
to  it;"  {ib,  ii.  883—),  so  that  on  Mr.  Fox's 
death,  as  Moore  himself  states--* 

"  the  chief  personal  tie  that  connected  the  Heir 
Apparent  with  the  party  was  broken— its  political 
identity  had  been  already  disturbed  [by  the  Gren- 
ville coalition] ;  .  .  .  and  immediately  after  Mr. 
Fox's  death  His  Royal  Highness  made  known  Ms 
intent  ions  of  wUhdrawing  fram  dU  interference 
in  politics^  and  expressed  himself  aa  no  longer 
do8iroii8  of  beiniar  considered  asavoWy  man-Jbis 
own  phrase." — lb. 

What  possible  pretence  could  there  be, 
four  or  five  years  after  that  explicit  decla- 
ration, to  consider  him  as  bound  to  that 
party  ? 

Lord  Holland  himself,  in  1818,  confessed 
to  Moore  that  Lords  Grenville  and  Grey 
were  to  blame  for  the  final  rupture  with  the 
Prince  in  1812— and  this  he  did  so  strongly 
that  Moore  goes  on  to  say — 

•*  All  this  accounts  most  saUsfadortly  for  the 
defection  of  the  Prince,  and,  if  anything  could 
justify  his  dupUeity  and  apostacy,  it  would  be 
their  arrogance  and  folly.— ii.  184. 

12 


178 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOOREL 


[Oct., 


This  is  bat  a  cross-grained  caDdor;  for  of 
what  duplicity  and  apostacj,  as  respects 
friendly  relations,  was  the  Prince  ever  ac- 
cused, except  in  this  defection  so  **  satisfacto- 
rily accounted  for"  ?  But  in  justice  to  Moore 
we  must  say,  that  at  this  time  he  probably 
was  not  aware  of  the  extent  of  Lord  Moira's 
separation  from  the  party  in  1807 — which 
the  Earl  subsequently  told  him,  and  author- 
ized him  to  repeat. 

So  far  as  to  the  pretence  of  the  Prince's 
deserting  his  friends.  Now  a  word  ahout 
the  principle  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  which 
he  was  also  said  to  have  deserted.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  Prince's  own  opinion 
never  was  in  favor  of  that  question ;  indeed 
it  would  have  been  a  strange  abnegation  in 
one  whose  power  and  station  had  no  other 
basis  in  this  country  than  Catholic  exclusion  ; 
and  Moore  himself  furnishes  us  with  evidence, 
not  merely  of  this  adverse  feeling,  but  of  its 
being  well  known  to  those  of  the  Prince's 
most  intimate  friends  who  took  the  opposite 
view.  That  question  was  first  broached  in 
the  Imperial  Parliament  in  the  spring  of 
1805.  The  Prince's  opposition  to  it  was 
immediate  and  decided.  Being  informed 
that  Fox  had  consented  to  present  the 
Catholic  petition  in  the  Commons  (as  Lord 
Grenville  was  to  do  in  the  Lords),  the  Prince 
endeavored  to  dissuade  him  from  that  step. 
This  we  learn  from  Fox's  answer  to  Sheridan, 
who  conveyed  the  Prince's  wishes.  Fox 
avowed  and  persisted  in  his  intentions,  adding, 
**  I  am  sure  you  know  how  painful  it  would 
be  to  me  to  dieohey  any  command  of  Hie 
Hayal  Highness,  or  even  to  act  in  any  man- 
ner which  might  he  in  the  slightest  degree 
contrary  to  his  wishes,  and  therefore  I  am  not 
sorry  that  your  information  came  too  late" 
(Life,  ii.  334).  At  this  time — the  beginning 
of  May,  1805 — there  was  no  prospect  of  any 
political  change;  Mr.  Pitt  was  alive — the 
King  in  good  health-^the  Catholic  question 
was  new — it  had  not  yet  taken  its  strong 
party  color^  and  had  none  of  the  prestige 
which  in  a  long  subsequent  struggle  it  ac- 
quired— there  was  nothing  therefore  at  this 
tiuio  to  affect  the  sincerity  of  the  Prince's 
opinion,  and  in  that  opinion  there  is  no  reason 
to  suspect  that  he  ever  for  a  moment  waver- 
ed. Shortly  after  this,  when  the  Catholic 
question  had  grown  to  be  a  thorough  party 
measure,  we  find  {ib,,  ii.  S64)  a  letter  from 
Sheridan  to  the  Prince,  in  which  he  states 
the  Prince's  position  on  that  question  to  be 
so  different  from  his  own,  that  he  had  not 
liked  to  talk  to  him  on  the  subject.    This 


letter  is  undated,  but  it  must  have  been  two 
or  three  years  before  the  Regency. 

Moore  himself  was,  about  this  time,  no 
very  zealous  emancipator,  and  talks  what 
we  dare  say  he  would  a  little  later  have 
called  the  language  of  bigotry  and  intolerance. 
He  writes  to  his  mother  in  the  summer  of 
1807 :— 

*'  Dublin  is  R|;ain,  I  find,  or  rather  sttll  the  seat 
of  wrangle  and  illiberal  contention.  The  Roman 
OathoUcs  deserve  very  Utile;  and  even  if  they 
merited  all  they  ask,  I  cannot  see  how  it  is  in  the 
nature  of  things  that  they  could  get  i^.'* — i.  231. 

This  paragraph  is  much  more  significant  than 
it  seems  at  first  sight.  The  month  or  day 
is  not  given,  but  it  was  written  from  Do- 
nington,  where  he  then  was  with  Lord  Mtnra  ; 
and  it  appears  from  the  context  that  it  was 
towards  the  end  of  June  or  beginning  of 
July  in  1707 — just  at  the  meeting  of  the  new 
Parliament  which  followed  the  dismissal  of 
All  the  Talents,  and  when  Catholic  Emanci- 
pation had  become  the  leading — indeed  the 
paramount  principle  of  the  Whig  party,  now 
again  become  the  Opposition.  Can  it  be 
reasonably  doubted  that  Lord  Moira's  opin- 
ion was  not  very  different  from  Moore's? 
Moore,  in  his  **  Life  of  Sheridan,"  makes  an 
awkward  and  tardy  confession  of  the  injustice 
of  his  calumnies  on  then  Prince  in  this  mat- 
ter : — 

"  With  respect  to  the  chief  personage  connected 
with  these  transactions,  it  is  a  proof  of  the  ten- 
dency of  knowledge  to  produce  a  spirit  of  toler- 
ance, that  they  who,  judging  merely  from  the  sur- 
face have  been  most  forward  in  reprobating  his 
separation  from  the  Whigs,  as  a  rupture  of  politi- 
cal ties  and  an  abandonment  of  private  friendships, 
must,  on  becoming  more  thoroughly  a^quairied 
with  all  the  circumstances  that  led  to  this  crisis,  learn 
to  soften  down  considerably  their  angry  feelings, 
and  to  see,  indeed,  in  the  whole  history  of  the 
connexion — ^from  its  first  formation  in  the  hey-day 
of  youth  and  party,  to  its  faint  survival  after  the 
death  of  Mr.  Fox— but  a  natural  and  distinct  gra- 
dation towards  the  result  at  which  it  at  last  arriv- 
ed, after  as  much  fluctuation  of  political  principle 
on  one  side*  as  there  was  of  indifference  perhaps 
to  all  political  principle  on  the  other." — Life,  li. 
408-9. 

The  cloudy  verbosity  of  this  confession  shows 
the  reluctance  with  which  it  was  made ;  but, 
as  it  finally  gives  the  substantial  truth,  we 
shall  not  quarrel  with  its  style  or  taste. 

There  remains,  however,  another  incident 
in  this  afiG9iir,  hitherto  very  indistinctly  no- 
ticed, but  which  really  was  the  hinge  on 


1853.] 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOORR 


179 


which  Moore's  fortune  turned.  Towards  the 
close  of  1812»  when  Lord  Moira  was  ap- 
pointed (jovernor- General  of  India,  Moore's 
own  hopes  began  to  revive,  but  he  soon  saw, 
from  Lord  Moira's  cool  and  distant  manner, 
that  something  had  changed  his  Lordship's 
disposition  towards  him ;  he  begins  to  fore^ 
see  a  disappointment,  which  he  accounts  for 
to  his  two  most  confidential  correspondents 
in  the  same  repeated  words : — 

**  I  do  not  think  that  Lord  Moira— ea/en  up  aa 
his  patronage  loUl  be  by  the  hungry  pack  of  foh 
lowers  that  he  has  about  him^-will  be  able  to 
offer  me  or  procure  me  anything  worth  my  accept- 
ance.'*-—i.  312-13. 

Vexation  and  vanity  are  blind  guides,  or 
Moore  would  not  have  thus  irreverently  de- 
scribed a  class  to  which  he  himself  so  pro- 
minently belonged ;  for  it  is  but  too  evident 
that  he  was  as  hungry  as  any  of  the  pack, 
and  that  the  rest  of  the  pajck  probably 
thought  as  contemptuously  of  him.  But  this 
suggestion  was  no  more  true  than  it  was 
decorous.  The  real  cause  was  much  sim- 
pler. It  was  that  of  which  Moore  must 
have  been  conscious,  though  he  affected  not 
to  see  it — it  was  that  indicated  by  Lord 
Holland  in  the  conversation  of  the  2d  of, 
November,  1821,  above  quoted;  namely, 
the  self-evident  fact  that  neither  Lord  Moira 
nor  any  other  friend  of  the  Prince  or  ser- 
vant of  the  Crown  could  have  ventured  to 
propose  any  species  of  favor  to  a  person 
who  had  made  himself  so  gratuitously,  so 
prominently,  and  so  personally  offiansive  to 
the  Sovereign.  It  was  therefore,  as  we  have 
shown,  neither  the  Prince  that  deserted 
Lord  Moira,  nor  Lord  Moira  that  deserted 
Moore ;  it  was  Moore  who,  under  the  joint 
influence  of  personal  disappointment  and  of 
Holland  House,  had  giddily  abandoned 
Lord  Moira,  outrageously  insulted  the 
Prince,  and  rendered  absolutely  impossible 
sny  further  kindness  that  either  might  have 
originally  designed  him. 

Amongst  all  these  libels  there  is  one  that 
deserves  special  notice,  not  only  for  its  un^ 
truth,  but  because  Moore  himself  furnishes 
us  with  proofs  of  its  deliberate  malignity; 
we  mean  that  concerning  the  conduct  of  the 
Pilnce  towards  poor  Sheridan,  towards  the 
close  of  his  life ;  and  as  the  matter  is  of 
more  lasting  interest  than  almost  anything 
else  in  these  volumes,  and  as  we  have  it  in  our 
power  to  add  something  to  what  we  said  on 
the  same  subject  in  our  review  of  Moore's 
life  of  Sheridan  when  first  printed  {Q.  B,, 
vol.  xxxiii.)— 'the  Diary  itself,  indeed,  aflford- 


ing  additional  conformation  of  the  view  we 
then  took  of  this  almost  historical  question — 
we  shall  be  excused  for  entering  the  more 
fully  into  its  details. 

On  the  5th  of  August,  1816,  a  month 
after  Sheridan's  death,  Moore  published, 
anonymously  of  course,  in  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  nine  malignant  stanzas  on  "The 
Death  of  Sheridan,'*  of  which  three  were  ad- 
dressed especially  to  the  Prince  Regent. 
Those  three  we  feel  it  necessary  to  quot^  in 
this  place,  not  merely  as  a  specimen  of 
Moore's  style  of  insulting  the  Sovereign, 
but  because  we  are  able  to  accompany  them 
with  a  fuller  refutation  from  Moore's  own 
confessions,  DOW  fortunately,  and  in  spite  of 
himself,  supplied : — 

**  And  THOU  too  whose  life,  a  sick  Epicure^  dream, 
Incoherent  and  gross,  even  grosser  had  passM, 
Were  it  not  for  that  cordial  and  soul-giving  l)eam 
Which  his  friendship  and  wit  o*er  thy  nothing- 
nees  cast : 
No,  not  for  the  wealth  of  the  land  that  supplies 
thee 
With  millions  to  heap  upon  Foppery's  shrine ; 
No,  not  for  the  riches  of  all  who  despise  thee, 
Though  this  would  make  Europe  s  whole  opu- 
lence mine : 
Would  I  suffer  what — e'en  in  the  heart  that  thou 
hast, 
All  mean  as    it    is — must  have  consciously 
burn'd 
When  the  pittance,  which  shame  had  wrung  from 
thee  at  last 
And  which  found  all  bis  wants  at  an  end,  was 
returned." 

The  ground  of  thif  outrageous  insult  and 
calumny  was  as  follows: — A  very  few  days 
before  Sheridan's  death,  Mr.  Yaughan,  com- 
monly called  '*  Hat  Yaughan,"  an  old  friend 
of  his,  called  at  Carlton  House,  and  told 
Colonel  Macmahon,  the  Prince's  private  se- 
cretary, that  poor  Sheridan  was  in  a  deplora- 
ble state  of  both  health  and  circumstances 
— in  fact  dying  of  disease  and  starvation. 
Sheridan  had  of  late  (from  a  motive  which 
we  shall  mention  in  the  sequel)  made  him- 
self a  stranger  at  Carlton  House,  where 
therefore  this  news  created  equal  sorrow  and 
surprise ;  but  Mr.  Yau^hnn's  picture  of  the 
destitution  was  so  vivid,  that  the  Prince, 
without  any  further  inquiry  authorised 
Colonel  Macmahon  to  advance' in  the  first 
instance  to  Mr.  Yaughan  £500  to  be  em- 
ployed in  the  immediate  relief  of  the  sordid 
misery  he  described,  but  with  an  injunction 
that  what  was  done  should  appear  to  be 
done  by  Mr.  Yaughan  as  a  private  friend 
and  most  especially  that  the  Prince's  nair 
should  not    be   mentioned.    Mr.  Yau]  ' 


180 


MEMOIRS  OF  THOMAS  MOORK 


[Oct., 


decliDed  to  take  more  ihaa  £200  at  first, 
and  wilh   that  aum  he  iostantly   went   to 
Sheridan's   bouse:    under  his  direction,  and 
Hi  the  expense  of  about  £150,  the  pressing 
distress  was  relieved;    and   he    saw    poor 
Sheridan  and  his  wife — who  was  almost  as 
ill  and  quite  as  destitute — in  a  state  of  com- 
parative comfort.     Two  dajs  after  this  had 
been  accomplished,  the  comforts   provided 
and  paid  for  by  Mr.  Vaughan,  and  while  he 
was  preparing  ulterior  measures,  he  was  sur- 
prised by  having  the  money  he  had  expend- 
ed returned  to  him,  as  from  Mrs,  Sheridan's 
friends,  who,  it  was  said,  would  not  allow 
Mr.   Sheridan   to  want  for   anything — and 
Mr.  Vaughan'a  further  interposition  was  re- 
jected.    Such  are  the  naked  fauets  of  the  case, 
at  least  as  Mr.  Vaughan  reported  them  to 
Col.   Macmahon.    He    added,   as    his  own 
conjecture,  that  it  was  soon  suspected  that 
be  was  only  the  secret  agent  of  the  Regent, 
and  that  some  zealous     political   partizans, 
who  had  hitherto  taken  no  notice  of  Sheri 
dan*s  distress,  thought  this  a  good  oppor- 
tunity of  insulting  his  Royal  Highness,  and, 
under  pretence  of  ^*  Mrs,  Shendan's  inde- 
pendent spirit,"  "bad  induced  and  enabled  her 
to  repay  Mr.  Yaughan's  advances.     Of  the 
justice  of  this  conjecture  we  have  no  direct 
evidence,  for  Mr.  Vaughan  did  not  know 
whence  either  the  money  or  the  advice  came, 
but,  seeing  how  exactly  it  tallies  with  Moore*s 
libellous  misrepresentation,  it  cannot  be  rea- 
sonably doubted  that  they  came  from  the 
same  source. 

We  must  now  go  back  to  account  for 
Sheridan's  estrangement  from  Carlton 
House,  and  here  we  have  the  evidence 
(imperfect  as  we  shall  afterwards  see,  but 
substantially  sufficient)  of  Lord  Holland — as 
stated  in  Moore's  record  of  a  conversation 
between  them.  We  omit  a  passage  or  two 
very  abusive  of  Sheridan's  general  character, 
but  which  do  not  immediately  apply  to  the 
point  to  which  we  wish  to  confine  ourselves. 
What  we  are  obliged  to  tell  is  painful 
enough,  and  needs  no  aggravation.  The 
first  and  main  charge  is  that ''  this  gracious 
Prince,**  as  Moore  ironically  calls  him, 
abandoned  to  obscurity  and  even  absolute 
want  an  old  and  faithful  friend.  Hear 
Moore's  report  of  Lord  Holland's  own  an- 
swer to  that : — 

^  1818, 1th  Ocl. — ^Had  a  good  deal  of  conver- 
sation with  Lord  Holland  about  Sheridan;  told 
me  the  most  romantic  professions  of  honor  and 
independence  were  coupled  with  conduct  of  the 
meanest  and  most  noindHng  kind    ....     A 

x>f  of  this  mixture  was  that,  after  the  Prince 


became  Regent,  he  offered  to  bring  Sheridan  into 
parUament;  and  said,  at  the  same  time,  thai  he 
by  no  means  m>eant  to  fetter  him  in  his  political 
conduct  by  doing  so;  bat  Sheridad  refused,  be- 
cause, as  he  told  Lord  Hoiland, '  he  bad  no  idea 
of  risking  the  high  independence  of  character 
which  he  had  always  sustained,  by  putting  it  in 
the  power  of  any  man,  ,by  any  possibility  what- 
ever, to  dictate  to  him.'  xet,  in  the  very  same 
conversation  in  which  he  paraded  all  this  fine 
flourish  of  high  mindedness,  he  told  Lord  Hol- 
land of  an  intrigue  he  had  set  on  foot  for  indoeing 
the  Prince  to  lend  him  4000Z.  to  purchase  a  b(^ 
rough,  &c."— ii.  184. 

The  intrigue  Lord  Holland  alludes  to  took 
place  after  Sheridan's  defeat  at  Stafford,  in 
October,  1812,  which,  as  Moore  says, 

"completed  his  ruin.  He  was  now  excluded 
both  from  the  theatre  and  parliament — ^the  two 
anchors  of  his  life — and  he  was  left  a  lonely  and 
helpless  wreck  on  the  waters,"  &c. — Life^  ii.  437. 

We  need  hardly  observe  that  exclusion  from 
Parliament  was  the  more  serious  in  poor 
Sheridan's  case,  as  it  exposed  him  to  the 
personal  degradation  of  arrests,  from  which, 
during  his  long  course  of  pecuniary  shifts 
and  difficulties,  he  had  hitherto  been  exempt. 
But  did  the  Prince  then  abandon  him?  The 
foregoing  extract  answers  that  question — 
and  Moore  himself  acknowledges  that  the 
Prince  offered  to  find  him  a  seat;  but,  adds 
Moore — 

<*  the  thought  of  returning  to  that  scene  of  his 
triumphs  and  his  freedom,  with  the  Royal  own- 
er's mark,  as  it  were,  upon  him,  was  more  than 
he  could  bear,  a/nd  he  declined  it,^* — Life^  ib. 

So  Moore,  in  the  published  "Life"  (1825), 
chose  to  color  the  case;  but  we  now  see 
in  the  Diary  of  seven  years'  earlier  date 
(1818),  that  when  Lord  Holland  told  him  of 
this  affectation  of  independence,  it  was  only 
as  illustrative  of  Sheridan's  habitual  system 
of  "meanness  and  swindling;"  and  that  it 
was  refuted  by  the  concomitant  fact  that 
Sheridan  was  **  setting  on  foot  an  intrigue" 
to  induce  the  Prince  to  advance  4000/.  to 
buy  a  borough.  This  decisive  fact,  told  to 
Moore  by  Lord  Holland  at  the  same  time 
as  the  rest  of  the  story,  was — may  we  not 
say  fraudulently — suppressed  in  the  "  Life," 
as  was  also  that  other  important  fact  that 
the  Prince  had  told  Sheridan  that  the  seat 
was  **by  no  means  to  fetter  him  in  his  politi- 
cal conduct**  To  this  double  suppressio  veri 
Sheridan's  biographer,  to  complete  his  fable, 
added  a  suggestio  falsi  of  his  own  invention 
— that  Sheridan  had  declined  the  Regent's 


1853.] 


MEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOOBS. 


181 


offer.  For  this  supplement  Lord  Holland, 
it  appears,  did  not  afford  him  the  slightest 
color,  and,  we  can  add,  it  never  had  the 
least  foundation.  On  the  contrary,  Sheridan 
was  naturally  and  notoriously  anxious  to 
avail  himself  of  the  Regent's  offer,  and  very 
active  in  endeavoring  to  discover  how  and 
where  the  seat  was  to  be  obtained :  thcU,  and 
that  alone  ^and  not  any  question  of  inde- 

Kndence,  wnioh  had  been  already  provided 
r),  was  the  difficulty.  It  was  while  Sheri- 
dan was  employed  in  this  search  after  a  seat 
that  a  circumstance  occurred  which  termi- 
nated all  these  negotiations,  and  produced  the 
self-banishment  of  Sheridan  from  Carlton 
House.  The  case  was  this : — ^Af ter  the  ne- 
gotiation  mentioned  by  Lord  Holland  about 
the  seat  that  was  to  be  had  for  4000/.,  and 
which  had  failed — not  through  either  Sheri- 
dan  or  the  Prince — Sheridan,  in  his  renewed 
inquiries,  found,  or  pretended  to  have  found, 
that  a  gentleman,  returned  at  the  general 
election  for  a  close  borough,  wished  to  re- 
sign it,  and  would  do  so,  and  secure  the  elec- 
tion of  his  successor,  for  3000/.  This  sum 
we  know,  from  the  best  authority,  the  Prince 
also  consented  to  advance,  and  did  advance, 
and  it  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  third 
person  (a  solicitor  named  by  Sheridan)  to 
be  paid  to  the  anonymous  gentleman  on 
Sheridan's  return.  Sheridan  being  then,  as 
he  had  been  all  his  life,  in  great  pecuniary 
straits,  was  unfortunately  tempted  to  obtain 
possession  of  this  8000/..  There  even  seems 
reason  to  doubt  whether  the  whole  story 
had  not  beep  an  invention  to  get  the  cash 
into  this  solicitor's  hands.  At  all  events, 
however,  nothing  that  we  have  ever  heard, 
even  of  Sheridan,  was  more  complicated, 
more  farcical,  or  more  disgraceful,  than  the 
devices  which  he  employed  to  get  hold  of 
this  money — which  he  eventually  did;  but 
not  without  grievous  complaints  on  his  part 
that  some  of  the  people  he  employed  in 
cheating  the  Prince  had,  in  their  turn,  cheat- 
ed him.  The  result  was,  that  the  3000/. 
vanished,  and  with  it  sll  hope  of  the  seat.  It 
was  not  till  then  that  Sheridan  was,  as  Moore 
says,  "completely  ruined" — "a  wreck,"  in- 
deed, but  of  his  own  making:  He  never 
had  the  courage  to  see  the  Prince  a^ain. 
He  soon  hid  himself,  as  it  were,  in  a  differ- 
ent class  of  company,  and  was,  as  we  our- 
selves remember,  lost  sight  of  by  all  his 
former  society. 

On  this  last  point  also  we  must  say  a  few 
words.  In  the  verses  in  the  *' Chronicle,*' 
there  were,  besides  the  three  stanzas  against 
the  Prince  before  quoted,  several  more,  in 


which  Moore  reproaches,  in  the  most  bitter 
terms,  the  Princes,  noblemen,  and  gentle- 
men who,  he  says,  ostentatiously  paraded 
themselves  at  Sheridan's  funeral,  but  had 
suffered  him  to  die  of  want ;  and  this,  ano- 
ther gross  calumny,  he  reproduced  in  the 
"Life?' 

**  Where  were  they  all,  those  Royal  and  noble 
persons,  who  now  crowded  to  *  partake  the 
gale'  of  Sberidan's  glory  T^where  were  they 
all  while  anv  life  remained  in  him? — where 
were  they  all  but  a  few  weeks  before,  when  their 
interposition  might  have  saved  his  heart  from 
breaking?— ^r  when  zeal,  now  wasted  on  the 
grave,  might  have  soothed  and  comforted  bis 
death-bed?  This  is  a  subject  on  which  it  is 
difficult  to  speak  with  patience.** — Lifey  ii.  461. 

So  it  seems.  Mr.  Moore,  at  least,  had 
not  patience  to  investigate  the  truth-^ihe 
truth  being,  that  these  most  respectable  per- 
sonages, whose  names  Moore  carefully  enu- 
merates— that  is,  as  he  thinks,  gibbets,  for 
thus  paying  him  the  last  office  of  humanity 
— knew,  and  could  know,  nothing  of  the  pre* 
vious  destitution.  .  Sheridan — a  self-immo- 
lated victim  to  his  own  lamentable  and 
shameful  weaknesses — had  hidden  himself 
from  their  society ;  and  it  was,  as  Lord  Hol- 
land told  Moore  (which  Moore  ought  not, 
when  dealing  out  his  censures,  to  have  for- 
gotten), a  peculiarity  of  Sberidan's  disposi- 
tion, that  he  had  all  his  life  endeavored  to 
put  a  false  face  on  his  difficulties,  and  to  con- 
ceal his  private  embarrassments  and  wants. 
He  was  still  living — nominally  at  least — in 
his  usual  respectable  residence  in  Saville 
Row;  beyond  that  circumstance  everything 
about  him  had  long  been  obscure.  No  one 
knew  or  suspected  the  extremities  to  which 
he  was  reduced;  this  Moore  himself  confess- 
es. The  first  signal  of  distress  was  a  pri- 
vate one,  a  request  to  Mr.  Rogers,  dated  the 
I5th  May,  to  lend  him  150/.,  which,  he  said, 
wpuld  "  remove  all  difficulty."  Moore  him- 
self was  the  bearer  of  the  money. 

**  I  found  Mr.  Sheridan  as  good-natured  and 
candid  as  ever;  and  thoufirb  he  was  within  a  few 
weeks  of  bis  death  [he  died  on  the  7th  of  July], 
his  voice  had  not  lost  its  fulness  or  strength, 
nor  was  that  lustre,  for  which  his  eyes  were  so 
remarkable,  diminished.  He  showed,  too,  his 
usual  sanguineness  of  disposition  in  speaking  of 
the  price  be  expected  for  bis  dramatic  works, 
&.c.'*—Lt7c  ii.  466. 

There  was  nothing,  it  seems,  like  deetitU' 
tion — nothing  to  alarm  Mr.  Moore — nothing 
to  induce  Mr.  Rogers  to  increase  or  repeat 
the  advance  of  150/.    Moore  proceeds  to 


182 


MEHOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOORE. 


[Oct, 


say,  that  he  cnnnot  find  that  during  the 
following  month  any  of  his  royal  and  noble 
friends  called  at  his 'door  or  sent  to  inquire 
after  him.  Why  should  they  ?  What  rea- 
son had  they  to  suspect  a  danger  which  nei- 
ther Moore  nor  Mr.  Rogers  appear  to  have 
done?  And  a  little  further  on  we  find  this 
passage : — 

**  AboQt  the  middle  of  Jane  the  attention  and 
sympathy  of  the  public  was,  /or  the  first  ftW, 
awakened  to  the  aesolate  situation  of  Sheridan, 
by  a  paragraph  in  the  Morning  Post" — Li/e,  ii. 
459. 

"/br  the  first  timer — and  what  was  the 
consequence  ? 

"This  article  produced  a  strong  and  general 
seneation.  Its  effect,  too,  was  Roon  visible  in  the 
calls  made  at  Sheridan's  door,  and  in  the  appear- 
ance of  Fuci  names  as  the  Duke  of  York,  Duke 
of  Argyle,  &.C.,  among  the  visitors." — i5. 

That  is,  they  came  as  soon  as  they  heard 
that  he  was  ill;  and  now,  we  ask,  with  what 
fairness  or  candor  did  Moore,  in  his  libel  of 
1816,  and,  still  worse,  in  his  history  of  1825, 
hold  ifp  to  public  execration  or  contempt 
those  royal  and  noble  personages,  as  not  hav- 
ing shown  sympathy  for  a  danger  they  had 
never  heard  of,  while  he  knew  and  confesses 
that  they  showed  that  sympathy  as  soon  as 
the  truth  reached  them  ?  Moore  had  sharp- 
ened his  original  libel  by  what  he  thought  a 
striking  contrast;  and  ten  years  after,  when 
he  came  to  publish  his  history,  he  adhered 
to  and  reprinted  the  libel,  utterly  regardless 
of  having  in  the  same  pages  proved  its  false- 
hood. 

But  we  have  not  yet  done  with  this  series 
of  deliberate  misrepresentations. 

Moore  is  very  indignant  at  the  tardy  par- 
simony of  the  Prince's  assistance  throu^^h 
Mr.  Vaughan.  He  first  heard  the  story, 
four  days  after  Sheridan's  death,  by  a  letter 
from  town — that  is,  no  doubt,  from  one  of 
the  Holland  House  clique — and  he  writes  to 
his  mother: — 

1*1816,  July  10th.— Poor  Sheridan!  The 
Prince  (I  hear  from  town),  after  neglecting  him 
and  leaving  him  in  the  bands  of  baliffd  all-time 
of  his  sickness^  sent  him  at  last  the  princely  dona- 
tion of  two  hundred  pounds,  which  Sheridan  re- 
turned.   I  hope  this  is  true." — ii-.  102. 


A  more  malignant  sentiment  than  that  **%l 
hope  this  is  true**  we  never  read — "hope** 
that  something  painful,  cruel,  scandalous, 
that  must  have  sharpened  the  death-pangs 


of  one  friend,  and  stiuned  the  character  of 
one  who  had  been  a  friend  and  benefactor, 
"  may  he  true  !**  But,  again ;  if  Sheridan  was 
in  the  hands  of  balififs  all  the  time  of  his  HI- 
Hess,  it  was  not  the  fault  of  the  Prince— for 
there  is  no  proof  that  the  Prince  knew  any- 
thing about  it — but  rather  of  Mr.  Rogers  and 
Mr.  Moore,  who,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
themselves  visited  him  in  his  last  illness; 
and  if  he  was  then  in  the  hands  of  balififs, 
must  have  known  it,  and  left  him  so.  Moore 
could  have  afforded  no  pecuniary  relief,  but 
the  wealthy  brother-poet  and  banker  mi^ht ; 
at  all  events,  neither  Moore  nor  any  of  his 
correspondents  could  be  justified  in  saving 
that  the  Prince  had  left  him  in  the  hands  of 
baliffs.  Upon  this  "letter  from  town" — 
which  we  should  like  to  see — Moore's  libel 
was  founded,  and  to  that  he  stuck,  even  after 
its  falsehood  was  proved  to — we  cannot  say 
his  satisfaction,  but — his  conviction. 

The  point  in  dispute  was,  whether  the  200^ 
which  Mr.  Vaughnn  brought  was  the  whole 
intended  donation,  or  whether  it  was  only  a 
first  instalment  to  relieve  the  urgent  neces- 
sities of  the  moment.  Now  we  entreat  our 
readers  to  attend  to  the  following  dates  and 
circumstances.  Moore's  Diary  has  this  en- 
try:— 

"  1820,  Auff.  16.— Received  a  letter  from  Lord 
Strangford,  tellinflf  nae  that  be  is  anxious  to  re- 
move a  misapprehension  I  am  under  about  the 
Prince's  2002«  gift  to  Sheridan,  and  can  furnish  me 
with  facts  which  he  says  will  completely  disprove 
that  story.  Shcdl  be  glad  to  hear  them  [we  doubt 
that,  for  we  have  seen  that  he  Tioped  the  scandal 
might  be  true].  I  can  only  say  that  /  have  the 
atdhoriiy  direct  of  Vaughan  (him  of  the  Hat)  for 
bis  being  commissioned  by  the  Prince  to  offer  the 
money.'— iii.  138. 

This  is  an  evasion  of  the  question.  There 
was  no  doubt  about  the  money  having  been 
sent.  The  point  was  whether  that  was  an 
inchoative  or  a  final  contribution.  Now 
there  is  not  in  the  Diary,  in  which  all  his 
inquiries  about  Sheridan  are  so  minutely  re- 
gistered, any  trace  that  he  had  at  this  date 
ever  seen  Mr.  Vaughan.  We  have  the  evi- 
dence of  his  own  note  on  this  subject  in  the 
<*  Life,"  that  he  had  had 

"  a  conversation  with  Mr.  Vaughan,  in  which  Mr. 
Vaughan  told  him  that  a  further  supply  was  in- 
tended."— lAfe,  ii.  467. 

This,  therefore,  must  have  been  the  same  con- 
versation subsequently  reported : — 

"1822,  April  30th.— Met  (hat  [misprint  for 


1858.] 


MEMOIBS  OF  THOMAS  MOOBS. 


188 


ff€d\  Vaughan,  who  said,  in  answer  to  my  in- 

r*  ries  about  the  2001.  sent  by  the  Prince  to  Sheri- 
,  that  it  was  understood  to  be  merdy  for  Ihe 
mamentj  and  ihai  more  was  to  eome  when  wanted. 
This  tdUre  Ihe  complexion  of  (kt  thing  maieri- 
0%."— iii.  348. 

« 
Now,  we  put  Moore's  yeracity  as  to  a  point 
of  fact  and  his  candor  in  point  of  statement 
in  issae  on  his  own  assertions.  How  could 
he,  on  the  16th  August,  1820,  quote,  against 
Lord  Strangford's  suggestion,  Mr.  Vaughan's 
authority,  when  it  appears  that  he  did  not 
see  Mr.  Yaughan  till  near  two  years  later — 
SOth  April,  1822;  and  how  could  he,  under 
the  former  date,  misrepresent  Mr.  Yaughan 's 
communication  as  the  very  reverse  of  what 
it  turns  out  to  have  really  been  in  the  inter- 
view in  1822!  and  in  which  Moore  is  forced  to 
admit  materially  altered  the  complexion  of  the 
ease — that  is,  overthrew  Moore's  whole  cal- 
umny. If  it  should  be  suggested  that  Moore 
might  possibly  have  seen  Vaughan  ttoice,  we 
disprove  any  such  hypothesis :  first,  by  the 
silence  of  the  Diary — so  minute  in  all  that 
relates  to  his  collectanea  about  Sheridan; 
secondly,  because  if  Yaughan  has  told  him 
two  different  stones,  it  is  hardly  possible 
that,  writing  in  the  spirit  Moore  did,  he 
should  not  have  availea  himself  of  such  a 
contradiction — instead  of  saying  of  the  last 
communication  that  'Mt  altered  the  complex- 
ion  of  the  thing**  he  would  have  said,  ** it  is 
contradicted  by  what  Yaughan  told  me  be- 
fore." And  finally,  why  did  he,  so  lale  as 
the  25th  May,  1825,  in  restating  the  affair, 
say  that  Dr.  Bain,  the  physician  who  at- 
tended Sheridan, 

**  never  understood  (as  Croker  and  others  assert) 
that  there  was  more  than  that  sum  to  come  1  '*-^ 
iv.  281. 

Why,  we  say,  did  he  at  this  last  date  put 
the  fact  on  Mr.  Croker*s  authority — which 
had  never  been  mentioned  before,  and  which 
could  only  have  been  hearsay,  at  second  or 
third  band — when  he  had  himself  heard  the 
facts  so  long  before  as  1822  from  Mr. 
Yaughan,  the  sole  agent  and  testU  ipMsimus 
of  tlve  transaction? 

There  are  one  of  two  other  equally  slip- 
pery passages  concerning  this  affair  m  the 
biary,  with  which  we  need  not  trouble  our 
readers  after  the  decisive  extracts  we  have 
made ;  but,  to  complete  the  picture,  and  ex- 
hibit Moore's  obstinate  resolution  to  obscure 
the  truth  of  the  matter,  we  must  add  that  in 
the  ''Life"  he  reproduces  the  calumny  in  the 
texty  and  only  throws  into  b  foot-note,  as  if  he 
disbelieved  it,  the  fact  which  he  thought  had 


made  io  material  an  alteration  in  the  conv 
plexion  of  the  cate. 

The  revival  of  these  calumnies  against 
George  lY.,  by  the  publication  of  Moore's 
Memoirs,  induces  us  to  insert  here  part  of  a 
memorandum  taken  down  from  his  Mi^es- 
ty's  own  lips  on  the  28th  of  November,  1825, 
shortly  after  the  appearance  of  Moore's  Life 
of  Sheridan.  His  Majesty,  in  dictating  these 
notes,  intended  them  to  be  made  use  of  to 
repel  Moore's  misstatements;  and,  by  now 
producing  the  portion  that  relates  to  Mr. 
Yaughan  s  mission,  we  feel  that  we  are  at 
last  doing  what,  from  an  over- delicacy,  has 
been  perhaps  too  long  delayed.  The  com- 
munication was  made  jn  the  familiar  tone  of 
private  conversation,  and  we  have  not  pre- 
sumed to  alter  a  word,  but  we  have  omitted 
some  of  the  very  painful  details  reported  by 
Mr.  Yaughan^  which,  however,  add  nothing 
to  the  main  point  of  his  narrative. 

The  Kito— «  The  last  time  that  I  saw  Sheri- 
dan was  in  the  neighborhood  of  Leatherhead,  on 
the  17th  of  August,  1815.  I  know  the  day  from 
this  circumstance,  that  I  had  gone  to  pay  my  bro- 
ther a  visit  at  Oatlands  on  his  birthday,  and  next 
day,  as  I  was  crossing  over  to  Brighton,  I  saw, 
in  the  road  near  Leatherhead,  old  Sheridan  com- 
ing along  the  pathway.  I  see  him  now,  in  the 
black  stockings,  and  blue  coat  with  metal  buttons. 
I  said  to  Bloomfield.  *  There's  Sheridan  ;*  but,  as 
I  spoke,  he  turned  off  into  a  lane  when  we  were 
within  thirty  yards  of  him,  and  walked  off  without 
looking  behind  him.  That  was  the  last  time  I 
ever  saw  Sheridan,  nor  did  I  hear  of  or  from  him 
for  some  months;  but  one  morning,  Macmabon 
came  up  to  my  room,  and  after  a  little  hesitation 
and  apology  for  speaking  to  me  about  a  person 
who  had  lately  swindled  me  and  him  so  shame- 
lessly, he  told  me  that  Mr.  Yaughan — J5a^  Yaugh- 
an they  used  to  call  him-^had  called  to  say  l£at 
Sheridan  was  dangerously  ill,  and  really  in  great 
distress  and  want.  I  think  no  one  who  ever  knew 
me  will  doubt  that  I  immediately  said  that  his 
illness  and  want  made  me  forget  his  faults,  and 
that  he  must  be  taken  care  of;  and  that  any  mo- 
ney that  was  necessary  I  desired  Macmahon 
should  immediately  advance.  He  asked  me  to 
name  a  sum,  as  a  general  order  of  that  nature 
was  not  one  on  which  be  could  venture  to  act : 
and  whe  ther  /  named,  or  he  suggested,  600/.  1  do 
not  now  remember,  but  I  do  remember  that  the 
500/.  was  to  be  advanced  at  once  to  Mr.  Yaughan, 
and  that  be  was  to  be  told  that  when  that  was 
gone  he  should  have  more.  I  set  no  limit  to  the 
sum,  nor  did  I  say  or  hear  a  word  about  the  mode 
in  which  it  was  to  be  applied,  except  only  that  I 
desired  that  it  should  not  appear  to  come  from  me. 
1  was  induced  to  this  reserve  by  several  reasons. 
I  thought  that  Sheridan's  debts  were>  as  the 
French  say, '  la  mer  4  boire,*  and  unless  I  was 
prepared  to  drink  the  sea,  I  had  better  not  be 
known  to  interfere,  as  I  should  only  have  brought 


184 


MEM0IB8  OP  THOMAS  MOORK 


[OcW 


more  preBsme  embamssmentt  on  him;  bat  I 
will  also  confess  that  I  did  not  know  how  really 
ill  he  was,  and,  after  the  i^ross  fraud  he  had  so 
lately  practised  upon  me  ♦  I  was  not  inclined  to 
forgive  and  forget  it  »o  suddenly,  and  without 
any  color  of  apology  or  explanation ;  for  a  pre- 
tended explanation  lo  Macmahon  was  more  dis- 
respectful and  offensive  to  me  than  the  original 
transaction :  and  finally,  there  is  not  only  bad 
taste  but  inconvenience  in  letting  it  be  known 
what  pecuniary  favors  a  person  in  my  situation 
confers,  and  I  therefore,  on  a  consideration  of 
all  these  reasons,  forbid  my  name  being  men- 
tioned at  present,  but  I  repeated  my  directions 
that  he  should  want  for  nothing  that  money  could 
procure  him. 

"  MacMahoQ  went  down  to  Mr.  Vaughan,  and 
told  him  what  I  had  said,  and  that  he  had  my 
directions  to  place  50d/.  in  his  hands.  Mr. 
Vaughan,  with  some  expression  of  surprise,  de- 
clared that  no  such  sum  was  wanted  at  present, 
and  it  was  not  without  some  pressing  that  he 
took  200/.,  and  said  that  if  he  found  it  insuffi- 
cient he  would  return  for  more.  He  did  come 
back,  but  not  for  more;  for  he  told  Macmahon 
that  he  had  spent  only  130/.  or  140/.,  and  he  gave 
the  most  appalling  account  of  the  misery  which 
he  had  relieved  with  it.  He  said  that  he  found 
bim  and  Mrs.  Sheridan  both  in  their  beds,  both 
apparently  dying,  and  both  starving  I  It  is  sUted 
in  Mr.  Moore's  book  that  Mrs.  Sheridan  attended 
her  husband  in  his  last  illness ;  it  is  not  true,  she 
was  too  ill  to  leave  her  own  bed,  and  was  in  fact 
already  suffering  from  the  lingering  disease  of 
which  she  died  in  a  couple  of  years  after.  They 
had  hardly  a  servant  lefl  Mrs.  Sheridan's  maid 
she  was  about  to  send  away,  but  they  could  not 
collect  a  guinea  or  two  lo  pay  the  woman's 
wages.  When  Mr.  Vaughan  entered  the  house 
he  found  ail  the  reception  rooms  bare,  and  the 

whole  house  in  a  state that  was  quite 

intolerable.  Sheridan  himself  he  found  in  a 
truckle  bed  in  a  garret,  with  a  coarse  blue  and 
red  coveriid,  such  as  one  sees  used  as  horse- 
cloths, over  him.    Out  of  this  bed  he  had  not 

moved  for  a  week nor  could 

vaughan  discover  that  any  one  had  taken  any 
notice  of  him,  except  one  lady— whose  name  I 
nardly  know  whether  T  am  authorized  to  mention. 
Home  ice  and  currant-water  was  sent  from  Hol- 
land House— an  odd  contribution,  for  if  it  was 
Jtnown  that  he  wanted  these  little  matters,  which 
might  have  been  had  at  the  confectioner's,  it 
might  have  been  suspected  that  he  was  in  want 
of  more  essential  things. 

"  Yet,  notwithstanding  all  this  misery,  Sheri- 
dan on  seeing  Mr.  Vaughan  appeared  to  revive : 

n  ^-  J  ^**  ^"^^®  ^®^^  ^**^ed  of  paying  off 
all  his  debts,  and,  though  h^  had  not  eaten  a 
morsel  for  a  week,  and  had  not  had  a  morsel  lo 

®*j  k  ^^^^  ^'^^  *  certain  degree  of  alacrity 
and  hope.    Mr.  Vaughan,  however,  saw  that  this 

•This  aflair  is  imperfectly  stated  by  Lord  Hoi- 

^fiT^r^''  P;  ^^^)'  ^"^^  ***«  general  result  wa^ 
that  Shendan  obtained  8000/.  from  the  Prince  by 
what  cau  reaUy  only  be  described  by  Lord  Hol- 
land's phrase— wwjMtfifly.  ^ 


was  a  kind  of  bravado,  and  that  he  was  in  a.  faint- 
\ne  state,  and  he  immediately  procured  bim  a  little 
spiced  wine  and  toast,  which  was  the  first  thing 
(except  brandy)  that  he  had  tasted  for  some  days. 

"  mr.  Vaughan  lost  no  time  in  next  buying  a 
bed  and  bed-clothes,  half  a  dozen  shirts,  some 
l^sins,  towels,  &^.  &c.    He  had  Sheridan  taken 

up and  put  into  the  new  bed — he  had 

the  rooms  cleaned  and  fumigated — ^he  discharged, 
I  believe,  some  immediately  pressing  demands, 
and,  in  short,  provided,  as  well  as  circumstancea 
would  admit,  for  the  care  and  comfort,  not  only  of 
Sheridan,  but  of  Mrs.  Sheridan  also. 

■*  I  sent  the  next  day,  (it  was  not  till  next  day 
that  Macmahon  repeated  this  melancholy  history 
to  me,  for  1  myself  did  not  see  Mr.  Vaughan)  to 
inquire  after  Sheridan,  and  the  answer  was  that 
he  was  better  and  more  comfortable,  and  I  had 
the  satisfaction  to  think  that  he  wanted  nothing 
that  money  and  the  care  and  kindness  of  so  judi- 
cious a  friend  as  Mr.  Vaughan  could  procure 
him ;  but  the  day  following,  that  is  two  days  after 
Mr.  Vaughan  had  done  all  this,  and  actually  ex- 
pended near  160/.  as  I  have  stated,  he  came  to 
Macmahon  with  an  air  of  mortification,  and  stated 
that  he  was  come  to  retom  the  200/.  '  The  200 1* 
said  Macmahon,  with  surprise ;  *  why,  you  had 
spent  three-fourths  of  it  the  day  before  yesterday  V 
*  True,'  returned  Vaughan,  *  but  some  of  those 
who  lef^  these  poor  people  in  misery  have  now 
insisted  on  their  returning  this  money,  which  they 
suspect  lias  come  from  Uie  Prince.  Where  they 
got  the  money  I  know  not,  but  they  have  given 
me  the  amount  with  a  message  that  Mrs,  Sheri* 
dan''s  friends  had  taken  care  that  Mr.  Sheridan 
wanted  for  nothing.  I,'  added  Mr.  Vaughan, 
*can  only  say  that  this  assistance  came  rather 
late,  for  that  three  days  ago  I  was  enabled,  by 
His  Royal  Highness's  oounty,  to  relieve  him  and 
her  from  the  lowest  state  of  misery  and  debase* 
ment  in  wluch  I  had  ever  seen  human  beings.' " 

As  this  article  is  passing  through  the  press 
we  are  surprised  by  receiving  an  extraordi- 
nary supplement  to  the  work  we  have  been 
discussing,  in  the  shape  of  a  catalogue  of 
autograph  letters  of  Moore  to  his  musio- 
publisher,  Mr.  Power,  which  are,  at  the  mo- 
ment we  write,  sold  or  selling  by  auction. 
Of  these  letters  it  is  stated  that  only  fifty- 
seven  have  been  printed  in  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell's  work.  This  implies  that  Lord  John 
had  a  wider  choice,  and  indeed  we  find  that 
there  are  about  one  hundred  and  sixty  lots, 
each  containing  several  letters,  whose  dates 
are  contemporaneous  with  those  given  by 
Lord  John.  But  the  striking  peculiarity  of 
the  catalogue  is  this,  that  it  notes  that  Lord 
John  has  made  many  omistions  in  the  leU 
ters  he  has  printed,  and  it  gives  large  ex- 
tracts from  the  much  greater  number  that 
are  still  unpublished.  As  far  as  we  can 
judge  from  the  short  notices  of  the  catalogue. 
Lord  John's  omissions  of  fosaagea  seem  not 
to  have  been  many,  nor  of  any  importance ; 


1853.] 


MR.  GLADSTONE. 


18ft 


bat  if  aU  the  letters  here  catalogued  were 
(as  seems  implied)  placed  at  his  disposal, 
he  has  pretty  evidently  not  selected  the  most 
ehar<tcteristie.    As  to  the  great  mass  of  those 
that  are  unpublished,  the  extracts  from  them 
given  in  the  catalogue  appear  to  us  quite  as 
carious  as  anj  that  Lord  John  has  pubKshed, 
and   even  as    Moore's    own    Diary.      Mr. 
Power  seems  to    have    been    the    person 
deepest  in  his  personal   confidence — most 
employed  in  all  his  concerns — and  for  many 
long  and    struggling    years,  while  Moore 
looked  so  gay  and  prosperous  to  the  world, 
his  only  resource  almost  for  his  daily  bread. 
The  details  giren  in  the  extracts  of  the  cat- 
alogue are  often   very  painful — sometimes 
ignoble— but  they  are  intense] v  character- 
istic of  a  state  of  things  for  which  not  even 
the  humiliating  confessions  of  the  Diary  had 


prepared  us,  and  we  hesitate  not  to  say,  even 
as  they  stand  in  the  auctioneer's  catalogue, 
afford  a  much  clearer,  and  by  their  vivid-' 
ness,  reality,  and  truth,  more  interesting 
view  of  Mooro^s  habits,  circumstances  and 
feelings,  than  all  Lord  John  Russeirs  vol- 
umes^-of  the  value  of  which,  as  affording 
a  complete  picture  of  Moore,  the  catalogue 
has  very  considerably  lowered  our  opinion. 
We  suppose  that  another  livraison  of  his 
Lordship's  work  must  be  near  at  hand,  and 
we  must  reserve  for  that  occasion  a  great 
deal  more  than  we  at  present  have  time  or 
space  for,  both  as  to  portions  of  these  open- 
ing volumes  on  which  we  have  not  touched, 
and  as  to  this  Power  correspondence,  of 
which  we  confidently  expect  to  •hear  more 
than  the  auctioneer  has  told  us. 


•^^ 


-♦♦■ 


MR.    GLADSTONE. 


Mr.  Gladstone  is  now  in  his  forty-sixth 
year,  and  may  consequently  be  said  to  be  in 
the  prime  of  life,  and  in  full  possession  of  his 
capacious  intellect.  His  future  career  fur- 
nishes abundant  room  for  speculation,  not  un- 
mixed with  anxiety.  It  may  be  assumed 
that  he  has  fairly  outgrown  those  confined 
notions  of  pditical  principle  with  which  he 
commenced  his  chequered  career ;  hb  mind 
has  firmly  grasped  and  fully  comprehended 
the  liberal  tendencies  of  the  age.  But  it  is 
impossible  not  to  see  that  politics  have  ever 
been  subordinate  in  his  mind  to  theology,  and 
on  this  point  he  has  changed  less  than  the 
other.  He  no  longer  seeks,  indeed,  to  ad- 
vance the  Church  of  England,  or  rather  his 
own  peculiar  section  of  that  Church,  at  the 
expense  of  other  sects  ;  but  it  b  by  no  means 
certain  that  he  would  not,  if  the  choice  were 
before  him,  excommunicate  those  who  took 
a  different  view  of  church  doctrine  from  him- 
self, and  thus  rend  asunder  the  Church  of 
England.  As  it  is  easy  to  see,  that  theolo- 
gical questions  are  coming  every  year  more 
prominently  into  view,  in  proportion  as  they 
occupy  a  larger  share  of  the  public  attention, 
Mr.  Gladstone  mav  be  expected  to  play  a 
conspicuous  part  !n  these  transactions,  and 
his  influence  on  the  Church  of  England^  and 
by  consequence  on  the  general  religious  con- 


dition of  the  country,  will,  in  all  probability, 
be  great.     We  have  already  adverted  to  the 
characteristics  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  style  of 
speaking.     It  is  impossible  to  listen  to  him 
without  admiring  the  beauty  of  his  language,, 
the  stately  march  of  his  measured  tones,  and 
the  perfect  mastery  he  possesses  over  all  the 
resources  of  a  language  which  never  allows 
him  for  a  moment  to  be  at  a  loss  for  a  word. 
His  chief  defect  is  an  occasional  obscurity  of 
meaning,  arising  from  the  subtle  and  pene- 
trating intellect  of  the  man,  which  seems 
constantly  suggesting  doubts  and  modifica- 
tions of  the  principle  he  is  advancing ;  so 
that  there  seems  to  be  carried  on  at  the  same 
time  throughout  his  speech,  not  only  the 
main  propositions  he  is  concerned' to  prove, 
but,  in  addition,  a  sort  of  under-current  of 
thought  which  insensibly  modifies  its  sharp- 
ness, and  blunts  its  edge.     It  ought  to  be 
added,  however,  that  his  later  speeches  have 
been  singuhirly  free  from  this  defect ;  he  has 
shown  himself  more  of  the  practical  states- 
man and  less  of  the  school-man.     As  a  model 
of  eloquence,  he  is,  undoubtedly,  next  to 
Macaulay,  the  most  finished  orator  in  the 
House  of  Commons.— T»tf  British  Ckibinetin 
1853 ;  in  Nelson's  Library  for  Travellers 
and  the  Fireside. 


186 


MARIA  THKBKSA  AND  HER  SON. 


[Oct., 


From  th«  Bdinbargk  Reviaw. 


MARIA    THERESA,    AND    HER   SON.* 


A  RECENT  Swiss  traveller  describes  a 
village  io  the  Grison  country,  situated  on  the 
slope  of  a  great  mountain,  of  which  the  strata 
shelve  in  the  direction  of  the  place.  Huge 
crags  directly  overhanging  ^  the  village,  and 
massy  enough  to  sweep  Ihe  whole  of  it  into 
the  torrent  below,  have  become  separated 
from  the  main  body  of  the  mountain  in  the 
course  of  ages  by  great  fissures,  and  now 
scarcely  adhere  to  it.  When  they  give  way, 
the  village  must  perish  ;  it  is  only  a  question 
of  time,  and  the  catastrophe  may  happen 
any  day.  For  years  past,  engineers  nave 
been  sent  from  time  to  time  to  measure  the 
width  of  the  fissures*  and  report  them  con- 
stantly increasing.  The  villagers  for  more 
than  one  generation  have  been  fully  aware 
of  their  danger ;  subscriptions  have  been  once 
or  twice  opened  in  the  cantons  and  in  Ger- 
many to  enable  them  to  remove :  yet  they 
live  on  in  their  doomed  dwellings  from  year 
^0  year,  fortified  against  the  ultimate  cer- 
tainty and  daily  probability  of  destruction  by 
the  common  sentiment — things  may  last  their 
time,  and  longer. 

It  is  needless  to  say  how  much  of  this  po- 
pular fatalism  is  exhibited  in  the  habitual  ac- 
quiescence of  modern  society  in  the  political 
institutions  under  which  it  lives.  The  cracks 
and  crevices  in  the  mountain  which  overhangs 
our  old  privilege-founded  European  system, 
are  constantly  sounded  by  explorers,  and  their 
reports  are  never  very  reassuring;  we  are 
more  and  more  convinced  of  thb  insecurity  of 
thrones  and  commonwealths,  and  political 
sagacity  wholly  fails  to  reveal  to  us  the  man- 
ner of  their  reconstruction.  Yet  we  live  on 
in  a  kind  of  provisional  safety,  reconciled  to 
that  constant  neighborhood  of  dangers 
against  which,  apparently,  we  can  no  better 
guard  ourselves  than  the  villagers  can  prevent 
the  fall  of  their  rocks.     And  certainly  no  ex- 

*A]iT.  L — Gesehiehte  det  OetireichUhen  Hofiund 
Adeli,  wad  der  Oeitreichisehen  JHjplcmatie,  (His- 
tory of  the  Atutrian  Oourtf  Nt>huity,  and  JHplo- 
maey,)  By  Dr.  Edward  Ykbbe  (forming  part  of 
a  series  of  HiBtories  of  the  Gtorman  Courts 
ilDoe  the  Reformation.)  Ten  Parts.  Hamborgh: 
1858. 


isUng  portion  of  that  system  more  frequently 
reminds  us  of  the  case  of  our  Grison  vil- 
lagers, than  the  fabric  of  the  Austrian  Em- 
pire ;  an  edifice  raised  by  a  succession  of  ac- 
cidents^  on  the  surface  of  a  mass  destitute  of 
all  the  ordinary  political  principles  of  cohe- 
sion, and  doomed  for  generations  past,  by 
seers  of  all  political  sects,  to  speedy  destruc- 
tion. Yet  the  fatalist  principle  seems  to  pre- 
vail there  as  elsewhere.  Its  statesmen  live 
on,  not  as  disbelieving  in  the  destiny  predict- 
ed to  them,  but  as  conscious  of  inability  to 
escape  from  it.  They  look  on  the  revolution- 
ary enemies  with  whom  they  maintain  their 
everlasting  struggle  of  repression,  as  the 
Turks  do  on  the  yellow-haired  Russians, — 
as  those  who  are  destined,  sooner  or  later,  to 
take  away  their  place  and  nation.  Thdr 
rules  of  conduct,  their  professed  principles, 
even  their  favorite  maxims, — the  alors 
comme  alors  of  Kounitz,  the  apres  nous  U  di* 
luge  of  Mettemich, — all  seem  to  indicate  the 
thorough  consciousness  that  what  exists  is 
provisional  only,  while  to  attempt  to  fashion 
the  unknown  future  out  of  the  present  is  but 
the  hopeless  task  of  a  visionary.  Yet  the 
empire  subsists  meanwhile,  and  gives  every 
now  and  then  ample  proof  that  its  institutionsy 
whatever  their  real  strength  may  be,  possess 
at  least  a  superficial  vigor  and  tenacity  suf- 
ficient to  repel  outward  invasion,  and  to  re* 
consolidate  the  fabric  after  temporary  shocks 
from  within. 

The  reigns  of  Leopold  L,  Joseph  I.,  and 
Charles  VI.  (1657—1740)  compiise  this 
latter  period,*— the  last  age  of  the  male  line 
of  the  Hamburghs, — which  may,  on  the  whole, 
be  regarded  as  one  of  progressive  decline. 
The  Jesuits  remained  all  powerful  through 
most  of  it :  but  their  rule  had  lost  its  energy 
for  lack  of  serious  opposition:  the  spiritual 
managers  of  Austria  degenerated  into  a 
feeble  council  of  ancients,  devoted  to  those  end- 
less and  trifling  intrigues  of  which  inferior 
minds  conceive  State-craft  to  consist.  No- 
where did  the  PerriXcken-Zeit,  the  age  of  peri- 
wigs, exhibit  so  much  of  its  characteristic 
formality,  deadness,  and  absurdity  as  in  Aus^ 


1853.] 


MARIA  THBRESA  AKD  HEB  SOIT. 


18Y 


tria.    A  tendency  toward  Oriental  state  and 
profttrationy  unknown  to  the  freer  siiteenth 
century,  overspread  everything.    The  mono- 
tonous seclusion  of  the  monarch,  the  passive 
obedience  of  the  people,  the  ubiquitous  bas- 
tinado by  which  that  obedience  was  enforced, 
all  partook  of  the  Asiatic  character.     Be- 
tween its  etiquette  and  its  devotions,  Vienna 
was  utterly  intolerable  to  foreigners  bred  in 
a  kindlier  atmosphere.    *'  J'avoue,**  says  the 
Due  de  Richelieu  in  1726,  "qui  si  j'avois 
connu  la  vie  que  m^ne  ici  un  Ambassadeur, 
rien  dans  la  nature  ne  m'aurait  d6termin6 
4  accepter  cette  ambassade.     II  faudrait  la 
8ant6  d'un  Capuchin  robuste  pour  en  sup- 
porter les  fatigues."    And  no  wonder :  for  the 
libertine  duke  complains  of  having  spent  ex- 
actly one  hundred  hours  in  church,  by  the 
side  of  the  emperor,  between  Palm  Sunday 
and  Easter  Thursday.     If  such  was  the  pur- 
gatory endured  by  ambassadors,  J.he  sufferings 
of  the  sovereign  himself  may  be  imagined. 
He  must  often  have  felt  what  the  late  simple- 
hearted  Emperor  Ferdinand  expressed  after 
his  abdication,  **  We  know  that  we  made. our 
subjects  happy;  but  it  was  the  life  of  a  dog !" 
Life  at  court  was  reduced  to  one  long  tedious 
ceremonial ;  life  at  Vienna,  and  in  the  pro- 
vinces, was  coarse  and  insipid.     The  reader 
will  recollect  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu's 
brief  but  effective  sketches  of  this  society ; 
and  he  will  derive  similar  impressions  from 
the  Memoirs  of  the  Saxon  Baron  Pdllnitz, 
cited,  with  many  other  authorities,  in  Dr. 
Vehse's  amnsingchapters  on  "  the  Condition 
of  the  Court  of  Vienna  under  the  last  Haps- 
burgs." 

The  army  degenerated  no  less  than  the 
civil  government.  The  blood-cemented  fabric 
of  the  second  military  monarchy  of  Austria 
gave  way  by  internal  decline.  The  victories 
of  Eugene  scarcely  form  a  brief  exception ; 
indeed,  the  Austrian  troops  formed  only  a 
contingent  in  the  Imperial  or  allied  armies 
which  he  commanded.  At  the  death  of 
Charles  VI.  in  1740,  the  army  had  dwindled 
down  to  less  than  50,000  effective  men, 
scattered  over  Europe  from  Ostend  to  Bel- 
grade, and  from  Breslau  to  Milan. 

The  male  line  of  the  Hapsburgs  died  out 
in  its  degeneracy,  in  Austria  as  in  Spain. 
But  in  the  former  country  its  power  passed  to 
a  young  and  brilliant  princess,  Maria  Theresa 
(we  prefer  the  popular  spelling  to  the  German 
form,  Theresia),  whose  mother,  the  beautiful 
Elizabeth  of  Brunswick — die  weisse  Liesel,  as 
her  husband  used  to  call  her, — born  of  a 
house  distinguished  for  ability,  had  infused, 
by  her  marriage  with  Charles  VI,,  a  new  ele- 


ment into  the  stagnant  ichor  of  his  ancient 
race.    Austria  was  saved  in  1740,  as  in  1620 
and  as  in  1848,  by  the  very  rapacity  of  her 
neighbors,  eagrer  to  anticipate  the  moment  of 
her  expected  dissolution.   The  sudden  enthu- 
siasm which  greeted  the  accession  of  the 
persecuted  queen  of  Hungary,  her  own  un- 
conquerable spirit,  the  Hungarian  **  insurrec- 
tion,'*  the  great  feats  of  the  war  of  succes- 
sion, are  matters  of  too  notorious  history 
to  need  more  than  an  allusion.     But  those 
who  recount  them  have  passed  over  almost 
in  silence  the  great  blot  on  the  early  part 
of   the  empress-queen's  reign — her  recil^- 
rence  to  the  precedents  of   the  worst  and 
bloodiest  period  of  her  country's  history,  in 
the  merciless  revenge  which  she  took  on  sub- 
jects whose  crime,  at  the  worA,  was  a  nega- 
tive one.     In  fact,  the  Austrian  government 
has  obtained  gentler  treatment  from  history 
than  it  deserved,  in  this  instance  as  in  that  of 
the  religious  cruelties  of  the-former  century, 
from  the  comparative  obscuilty  of  its  internal 
annals;    while  the  memory  of   far  inferior 
excesses,  committed  by  powers  whose  actions 
were  more  open  to  the  light  of  day,  has  been 
branded  with  much  more  severity.      Thus 
history  and  romance  have  vied  in  preserving 
the  recollection  of  the  punishment  of  the  Scot- 
tish Jacobites,  in  1746.  Few  have  ever  heard 
of  the  **  bloody  assizes"  of  Prague  in  1743, 
held  on  subjects  who  had  never  taken  up 
arms  against  their  Sovereign,  and  whose  only 
crime  was  a  passive  submission  to  the  Bava- 
rian claim  of  succession,  grounded  on  the 
will  of  one  of  her  predecessors.     Not  to 
speak  of  banishments  and  confiscations,  some 
of   the  higher  classes  "  were  condemned  to 
cruel  deaths,  some  to  torture  and  degradation, 
some  to  sweep  the  streets  in  opere  publico, 
some  to  daily  hard  labor  in  the  bridewell 
with  ordinary  flagellation,  others  to  imprison- 
ment for  life."     Twenty-one  persons — their 
names  unknown  to  history — are  <aid  to  have 
perished  by  secret  execution.     One  ancient 
family,  that  of  Wrtby,  is  supposed  to  have 
been  exterminated  on  this  occasion ;  for  the 
registers  of  the  Hof*Com mission  never  gave 
up  their  dark  secrets.     It  is  only  known  that 
the  Wrtbys  did  not  reappear  from  imprison- 
ment, and  that  their  hereditary  office  of  trea- 
surer, and  their  estates,  passed  to  the  family 
of  Lobkowitz.     At  Maria  Theresa's  corona- 
tion, a  priest  brought  before  her  "  more  than 
fifty  little  children   and   pregnant  wives  of 
those  who  had  been  imprisoned  by  the  Hof- 
Commission,   who  with    shrieks  and   tears 
implored  pardon  for  them  in  the  name  of 
God's  mercy,  and  of  the  native  clemency 


188 


MARIA  THEBBSA  AND  HER  SON. 


[Oct, 


and  moderation  of  their  g^cious  sovereign." 
( Vehse,  vii.  1 66.)  Their  petition  was  refused. 
To  recount  such  things  of  a  masculine 
ruler  would  be  to  pronounce  him  a  tyrant  of 
the  worst  description.  It  would  be  unjust  so 
to  decide  of  Maria  Theresa,  eyen  in  the  first 
flush  of  her  blood-bought  triumph.  She  was 
in  all  things  very  woman ;  and  in  this  intensi- 
ty of  the  qualities  of  her  sex,  much  of  the 
secret  of  her  greatness  lay.  Her  yindictive- 
ness,  also,  was  feminine,  passionate,  not  im- 
placable. Yehse  had  done  her  in  this  respect 
no  more  than  justice,  if  his  portrait  does  on 
the  whole  betray  some  symptoms  of  the 
popular  idolatry  of  her  name. 

"  Maria  Theresa's  voice  was  clear,  her  speech 
rapid,  accompanied  with  much  and  lively  gesture ; 
the  fireiest  expression  in  every  movement,  miti- 
gated only  by  that  lofty  dignity  which  never 
deserted  her,  even  in  her  fits  of  involuntary  ill- 
hnmor  or  easily-roused  anger.  Of  pure  sanguine 
temperament,  she  was  very  excitable,  easily 
provoked,  but  pactlBed  at  once,  especially  when 
mere  mistakes  had  been  committed ;  and  ready 
to  recompense  with  overflowing  munificence 
wherever  she  felt  that  she  had  ffone  beyond  the 
right  limits  in  her  anger;  for  she  was  iust,  and 
even  painfully  conscientious.  It  was  only  neces- 
sary to  persuade  her  of  the  injustice  of  a  project, 
however  advantageous  to  herself,  and  she  let  it 
drop  immediately,  and  disliked  even  to  hear  it 
mentioned  afterwards."    (Vol.  vi.  p.  a29.) 

It  seems  strange  to  award  the  last  praise 
to  the  divider  of  Poland ;  yet  it  is  not  un- 
deserved. It  is  known  that  she  consented  to 
that  measure  when  her  energy  was  enfeebled 
by  disease,  under  the  pressing  influence  of 
Kaunitz,  and  as  it  should  seem  under  the  fear 
of  a  northern  league  against  her.  But  she 
wrote  under  Kaunitz's  minute  the  memorable 
words : 

**^  Placet,  since  so.  many  great  and  learned 
men  will  have  it  so :  but  when  I  have  long  been 
dead,  men  will  learn  the  consequences  of  this 
violation  of  all  that  has  hitherto  been  regarded  as 
just  and  holy.*  .  .  .  '  I  observe  well,'  she  added 
in  another  scrap  of  paper,  still  preserved,  •  that  I 
am  left  alone,  and  no  longer  en  vigueur;  there- 
fore, I  let  thinflfs  take  their  course,  though  to  my 
deep  sorrow.'  " 

'*  *  Like  all  great  spirits,'  Vehse  proceeds, '  she 
was  enthusiastic  in  love  and  friendship.  Who- 
ever was  loved  hy  her  became  the  entire  possessor 
of  her  afiection.  The  feeling  of  gratitude  was  in  her 
unusually  strong ;  she  never  forgot  the  slightest 
service,  OF  most  trivial  mark  of  alUchmenl.  The 
Hungarians,  who  had  rescued  her  at  the  outset  of 
her  reign,  were  among  the  last  thoughts  which 
occupied  her  deathbed ;  nor  did  she  ever  forget 
that  the  Turks  had  abstained  from  turning  her 
extremity  on  that  occasion  to  their  advantage. 


.......  She  was  whenever  there  was  occa- 
sion for  it,  heroic  in  demeanor,  clear  in  judg- 
ment, consistent  in  conduct.  Of  humor,  and 
the  genial,  jovial  temperament  of  her  ancestor 
Rudolf,  she  possessed  nothing  whatever.  Yet 
she  was  always  cheerful,  and  in  her  vouth,  a 
lover  of  amusement  and  festivity.  The  most 
threatening  vicissitudes  of  fortune  disturbed  her 
outward  composure  but  little.  Impatient  appre- 
bensiveness  was  an  ingredient  altogether  foreign 
from  her  thoroughly  princely  blood.'^ 

The  household  virtues  of  correct  life  and 
family  aflTection  in  great  princes  have  become, 
fortunately,  matter  of  rather  common-place 
encomium  at  the  present  day  ;  it  was  not  so 
in  Maria  Theresa's ;  and  her  conduct  in  these 
respects  contrasted  nobly  with  that  of  the 
crowned  profligates  of  her  sex  who  succeeded 
each  other  on  the  neighboring  throne  of 
Russia.  Young  and  beautiful,  amidst  all  the 
vice  of  a  corrupt  age,  and  all  the  temptation 
to  uncontrolled  indulgence  which  the  world's 
ready  acquiescence  or  approval  could  have 
afforded,  she  was  preserved  at  once  by  strong 
religious  principle,  and  by  that  passionate, 
imaginative  attachment  which  women  of  her 
temperament  can  often  bring  themselves  to 
feel  for  a  handsome,  good-natured,  rakish 
pococurante  husband,  with  no  one  tittle  of 
their  owti  heart  or  intellect,  and  who  loves 
them  but 

"  A  little  better  than  his  horse,  a  little  dearer  than 
his  hound." 

The  married  life  of  Maria  Theresa  and 
Francis  of  Lorraine  should  be  portrayed  by 
the  hand — a  great  deal  too  cunning  in  such 
disagreeable  delineation — which  has  described 
for  us  the  menage  of  Lady  Castle  wood  and 
her  profligate  of  a  Viscount.  We  should, 
however,  do  the  Emperor  Francis  injustice 
by  too  close  a  comparison.  Though  so  ill  edu- 
cated that  he  could  hardly  read  or  write,  his 
unaffected  good  sense  and  amiable  character 
made  him  one  of  the  most  attractive  persons 
of  his  age ;  and  irresistible,  it  seems,  by  many 
besides  nis  empress.  She  was  ready  to  sacri- 
fice all  and  everything  for  him,  save  power, 
the  darling  of  her  life,  which  even  conjugal 
endearment  could  not  win  from  her.  She 
could  bear  no  partner  on  the  throne,  and 
Francis  had  not  the  force  of  character  to  gain 
from  her  the  cherished  possession.  Reduced 
to  unwilling  insignificance,  yet  disagreeably 
conscious  of  his  own  unfitness,  even  if  allowed 
to  take  any  real  share  in  the  government  of 
his  realm,  he  became,  as  his  son  Joseph  II. 
described  him,  '*  an  idler,  surrounded  by  flat- 
terers."   "  Be  warned  by  me,"  said  the  £m* 


1853.] 


MABIA  THEBBSA  AKD  HKB  SOIT. 


189 


press,  in  a  fit  of  confidence  to  her  reader 
Madame  Greiner,  "and  never  marry  a  man 
who  has  nothing  to  do." 

It  was  a  natural  consequence  that  she 
plagued  his  life  out  with  jealousy.  She 
tried  to  get  rid  of  all  the  pretty  aristocratic 
faces  which  might  tempt  the  eyes  of  her 
saantering  consort.  Like  her  great  English 
prototype  Elizabeth,  though  from  a  very 
diflferent  development  of  character,  she  got, 
by  degrees,  to  detest  gallantry  and  flirtation, 
and  all  that  could  recall  to  her  mind  the 
frailty  of  marital  nature.  "  Elle  voudrait," 
says  the  Prussian  envoy.  Count  Podewils,  in 
1747,  "  par  le  m^me  principe,  bannir  tout 
galanterie  de  la  cour.  Elle  voudrait  faire  un 
manage  bourgeois.''  The  effect  even  survived 
the  cause,  and  Maria  Theresa's  close  and  con- 
ventual watchfulness  over  the  morals  of  her 
court  and  metropolis,  after  her  husband's 
death,  became  by  no  means  the  most  digni- 
fied feature  in  her  administration.  ''The 
thought,"  says  Vehse,  '*  incessantly  accompa- 
nied her,  that  it  was  her  duty,  as  the  first  of 
her  sex,  to  protect  its  morals  and  dignity." 
Some  of  the  consequences  of  this  notion,  the 
secret  drawine-room  inquisition  or  "Sitten- 
gericht,"  the  ''uleuschheits- Commission,"  and 
the  like,  might  furnish  a  ludicrous  commen- 
tary on  the  results  of  such  imperial  fancies. 

But  if  Maria  Theresa  did  little  but  mischief 
by  this  meddling,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of 
the  immense  effect  for  good  of  her  imperial 
example.  Every  one  conversant  with  the 
history  of  our  country,  has  done  justice  to 
the  influence  of  the  domestic  life  of  George 
III.  on  its  moral  progress ;  even  higher  merit 
of  the  same  order  was  due  to  Maria  Theresa, 
in  less  auspicious  times.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say,  that  by  the  proof  which  she  gave, 
that  beauty,  and  grace,  and  enthusiasm,  the 
love  of  admiration  and  the  love  of  power^ 
and  every  other  quality  of  the  queenly  lady, 
were  compatible,  not  only  with  high  religious 
views,  but  with  a  strict  and  religious  life,  she 
greatly  raised,  in  Germany,  the  dignity  of  her 
own  sex,  and  its  appreciation  by  the  other, 
and  counteracted  successfully  the  evil  influ- 
ences which  radiated  from  that  seat  of  cold 
and  cynical  profligacy,  the  court  of  her  victo* 
nous  neighbor  Frederick.  Perhaps  the 
greater  directness  of  the  influence  of  that 
example  on  the  female  half  of  her  court, 
produced  the  result  so  frequently  observed  on 
by  Sir  R.  Keith  in  his  correspondence, — that 
the  ladies  of  Vienna  were  far  superior,  in 
point  of  cultivation  and  intellect,  to  the  men. 

It  must  be  added  to  this  part  of  her  por- 
trait, that  even  injuries  on  the  tenderest  point 


neither  affected  her  constitutional  magna- 
nimity, nor  her  constant  attachment.  When 
the  remains  of  her  husband  were  at  Hall  on 
the  Inn,  waiting  for  conveyance  to  Vienna, 
after  his  sudden  death  at  Innspruck,  she  ap- 
peared in  public  for  the  first  time.  Alone  in 
a  corner  of  the  room,  in  deep  mourning,  and 
avoided  by  all,  stood  the  last  object  of  his 
too  notorious  admiration,  the  beautiful  Prin- 
cess Heinrich  von  Auersperg.  The  empress 
stepped  at  once  from  the  circle  and  took  her 
by  the  hand :  *'  We  have  indeed  both  lost 
much,  meine  Liehey  And  from  that  day  she 
took  the  princess  under  her  protection!* 
Maria  Theresa  survived  her  husband  fifteen 
years,  living  amid  the  emblems  of  perpetual 
mourning.  She  shut  herself  up  on  the 
eighteenth  of  every  month,  and  the  whole  of 
every  August,  the  day  and  month  of  bis 
death.  As  her  life  drew  near  its  end,  she 
spent  many  days  at  times  in  the  funeral  cha- 
pel, before  the  picture  of  her  husband,  taken 
as  he  lay  in  his  coflin,  and  her  last  ^ords, 
well  understood  by  those  around  her,  were, 
"I  come  to  thee." 

But  perhaps  the  empress's  maternal  virtues 
constituted  a  higher  claim  on  the  affections  of 
the  good-humored  Viennese  than  even  her 
conjugal.  Who  can  estimate  the  value,  for 
the  promotion  of  loyalty,  of  those  sympathies 
of  the  nursery  and  the  school- room  which  so 
irresistibly  attach  the  most  influential  half  of 
mankind?  The  happy  mother  of  sixteen 
little  archdukes  and  archduchesses,  absorbed 
in  the  endless  details  of  their  teething,  wean- 
ing, and  education,  possessed  a  source  of  in- 
nocent popularity  which  her  good-natured 
and  somewhat  gossiping  disposition  rendered 
still  more  efficacious.  She  lived,  so  to  speak, 
in  public,  and  make  all  Vienna  and  all  Aus- 
tria as  far  as  she  could,  the  confidants  of  her 
maternal  pleasures  and  anxieties.  There  was 
no  loss  of  dignity  or  refinement  to  be  hazard- 
ed by  such  condescension  as  this :  least  of  all 
in  a  country  where  the  romance  of  life,  and 
its  commonest  domestic  details,  have  always 
been  linked  together  more  closely  than  else- 
where ;  where  lieroines  are  still  said  to  effect 
their  conquests  while  cutting  slices  of  bread 
and  butter,  and  sentiment  to  find  its  favorite 
lodging  in  the  store-room.  When  the  news 
arrived  of  the  birth  of  her  grandson  (after- 
wards Francis  the  Second)  in  1768,  she  hur- 

*  Some  ingenious  German  «peoiilator  has  oon- 
jeetured  that  the  pefsoDsge  called  **the  German 
prinoew,"  whoae  mysterious  diaooverj  under  a  hay- 
stack near  Bristol,  oocnpied  the  lovers  of  the  mar- 
vellous in  1780,  was  a  daughter  of  Franeis  L  bj 
this  lady. 


190 


MARIA  THERBSA  AND  HER  SON. 


[Oct., 


ried  off  to  the  opera,  where  she  had  not  been 
for  a  long  time,  in  most  domestic  dishabille, 
leant  over  the  ledge  of  the  box,  and  called  to 
her  neighbors  loud  enough  for  the  informa- 
tion of  the  whole  house,  "  Poldel"  (Leopold) 
"  has  got  a  boy  and  on  my  wedding  day  too ; 
is  not  that  gallant?'*  Pit  and  boxes  were 
electrified. 

Yet  though  Maria  Theresa  was  the  home- 
liest and  most  natural  of  mothers,  so  long  as 
she  could  keep  her  children  under  her  wing, 
her  affection  was  ev^r  subordinate  to  the 
fatal  *^  Region  di  Stato,"  to  that  political  game 
which  was  the  great  object  of  her  life.  She 
never  understood  the  noble  character  of  her 
son  Joseph,  her  "  Starrkopf,"  as  she  called 
him.  The  bigotry  of  his  education  made  him 
reserved  and  suspicious,  while  its  pedantry 
rendered  him  ill-informed*  ;  and  by  her  ob- 
stinate refusal  to  part  with  one  atom  of  her 
power  to  him,  though  nominally  associated 
with  her  and  already  advanced  in  middle  age 
when  she  died,  she  made  his  love  of  reform, 
which  would  have  found  a  thousand  useful 
events,  ferment  within  him  to  a  dangerous  re- 
volutionary passion.  Iler  beloved  daughters 
were  sacrificed  one  by  on^  to  state  conveni- 
ence. Three  of  them  in  turn  were  destined 
for  the  royal  wretchedness  of  union  with  Fer- 
dinand of  Naples;  two  were  rescued  from 
the  honor  by  death.  "  Je  regarde  la  pauvre 
Josdphe,"  (she  said  of  the  favorite  among 
them)  ^'comme  un  sacrifice  de  politique; 
pourvu  qu'eile  fasse  son  devoir  envers  Dieu  et 
son  6poux,  et  qu'elle  fasse  son  salut,  dut-elle 
m^me  Hre  malheureuse,  je  serai  contente." 
In  an  evil  day  for  the  Neapolitan  people  and 
for  humanity,  Josepha  was  replaced  by  Caro- 
line in  the  contract  with  the  Lazzarone  king, 
who  received  his  Austrian  princesses  fresh 
and  fresh,  as  they  were  served  up,  with  per- 
fect indifference.  A  courtier  asked  him  how 
be  liked  the  bride  ?  *'  Dorme  come  un'  am- 
mnzzata,  e  suda  come  un  porco,"  was  the  po- 

*  It  is  diatresaiog  to  think  of  the  Bufferings  the 
young  philosopher  must  have  undergone  at  the 
hand  of  liia  well-meaning  instructorB.  The  history 
of  the  Aufttrian  Empire  was  written  on  purpose  for 
him,  in  fifteen  folio  volumes.  Some  judsment  of 
its  diaracter  may  be  formed  from  what  Mailath  says 
of  the  Hungarian  division,  written  by  a  patrioUo 
canon,  in  which  twice  as  much  space  was  allotted 
to  the  Huns  and  Avars  as  to  events  after  the  suc- 
cession of  the  House  of  Hapeburg.  One  result  on 
Joseph's  mind,  among  others,  was  a  great  distaste 
for  the  acquisition  of  positive  knowledge,  usually 
the  branch  in  which  sovereigns  of  any  education 
have  shone  the  most;  insomuch  that  there  was 
some  truth  in  Firederick's  remark,  that  though  al- 
ways learning,  he  knew  nothing.  His  fancy  was 
^11  of  idea%  ma  memory  barren  of  faotn 


lite  reply.  But  Maria  Theresa's  darling  wish 
was  fulfilled,  when  her  youngest  daughter 
was  summoned  to  the  proudest  and  appar* 
ently  the  happiest  of  unions  which  affection 
or  policy  could  have  desired, — the  brightest 
and  most  cloudless  morning  which  ever  belied 
its  promise. 

As  was  in  natural  accordance  with  a  do- 
mestic character  of  this  description,  affability 
and  ease,  the  favorite  Gutmiithigkeit  of  her 
country, — something  com.pounded  of  good 
nature  and  good  humor — were  among  the 
chief  charms  of  Maria  Theresa's  disposition, 
and  the  chief  secrets  of  her  influence.  It 
seemed  strange,  that  one  who  appeared  to  the 
world  wrapt  in  the  stateliest  etiquette,  and 
who  was,  moreover,  everywhere  regarded  as 
a  punctilious  asserter  of  her  rights  and  dig- 
nity, should  be  at  the  same  time  so  accessible 
to  those  about  her,  and  so  little  excited  by 
trifling  neglect  or  even  affront ;  but  so  it  was. 
Even  the  weakness  which  Wraxall  remarks 
in  her,  of  believing  too  readily  the  stories 
which  found  their  way  to  her  private  ear,  and 
taking  partial  views  in  consequence,  arose  out 
of  the  same  disposition.  The  liberties  which 
were  sometimes  taken  with  so  mighty  an 
Empress,  and  in  public  too,  seem  surprising. 
The  young  Prince  Christian  von  Lowenstein 
was  banished  on  one  occasion  from  Court 
for  some  excess.  He  appeared  there  the 
next  day  notwithstanding.  The  Empress 
had  him  brought  before  her  to  give  account 
of  his  audacity.  **  At  Berlin,"  was  his  an- 
swer, **  an  order  is  given  only  once,  but  at 
Vienna  you  must  speak  three  times  before  a 
thing  is  done.*'  The  Empress  smiled,  and  the 
order  was  withdrawn.  In  her  zeal  for  cor- 
recting the  morals  of  her  people,  she  one  day 
commenced  an  address  to  her  great  minister 
Kaunitz,  as  he  attended  in  her  CHbinet,  on  the 
subject  of  his  extravagances.  ''Je  ferai  ob- 
server &  S.M.,"  was  his  reply,  "que  je  suis 
venu  ici  pour  lui  parler  de  ses  affaires,  et  non 
des  miennes."  The  imperial  lecturer  was  si- 
lenced at  once. 

This  kind  of  yielding  disposition  in  trifles, 
coupled  with  stubbornness  in  essentials,  was 
far  from  unsuccessful,  as  in  countries  requir- 
ing stronger  management  it  might  have  been. 
It  suited  the  character  of  the  German- Aus- 
trians,  the  courtiers  and  court  aristocracy, 
the  townsfolk  of  Vienna,  the  public  under 
whose  immediate  observation  Maria  Theresa 
had  chiefly  to  act  her  forty  years'  part.  Like 
Elizabeth's  courtier  Lord  Hunsdon,  "  nati  sunt 
ex  salice,  non  ex  quercu."  Good  temper, 
yieldingness,  a  habit  of  bowine  to  adverse 
fortune,  and  taking  defeat  and  oppression 


185d.J 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  HSR  SON. 


191 


with  a  kind  of  simple  resignation,  have  always 
characterized  them  among  the  nations  of  Eu- 
rope. During  the  endless  reverses  of  the  Si- 
lesian  and  Seven  Tear's  Wars,  Empress, 
army,  and  citizen  seemed  to  vie  with  each 
other  in  this  half-comic  submission  to  destiny, 
and  mutual  forgiveness  of  faults  and  weak- 
nesses, as  Sganarelle  and  Pantaloon  take 
their  thrashings  on  the  theatre.  Witness  the 
trait  which  ticl&led  Horace  Wal pole's  fancy 
so  much  that  he  perpetually  quotes  it,  in 
Count  Neipperg's  despatch  oii  the  defeat  at 
MoUwitz:  "  Je  suis  fach6  de  dire  a  S.M.  que 
son  arm^e  &  6t^  battue,  et  tout  par  la  faute 
de  son  serviteur,  Neipperg."  Charles  of  Lo- 
raine, — the  loser  of  battles,  der  Schlachtver- 
lierer,  as  he  is  styled,  was  never  punished  for 
his  many  sins  in  this  line,  except  by  the  oc- 
casional pasquinades  of  the  very  gentle  wits 
of  Vienna.  These  fell  also  to  the  lot  of  Daun, 
the  Austrian  Fabius,  who  now  and  then  won 
a  battle,  but  invariably  went  to  steep  in  his 
quarters  for  some  months  afterwards.  When 
his  wife  drove  to  court  after  one  of  these 
feats,  she  was  saluted  in  the  street  with  au 
universal  shower  of  nightcaps.  As  for  the 
Prussians,  they  mocked  at  their  Southern 
rivals,  even  in  occasional  defeat,  as  the  Athe- 
nians did  at  the  Boeotians.  When  General 
Haddick  took  Berlin,  he  despatched  to  his 
gracious  sovereign  two  dozen  pair  of  Berlin 
gloves,  stamped  with  the  city  arms,  by  way 
of  spolia  qpima,  but  he  forgot  to  send  a  file 
of  his  grenadiers  to  superintend  the  packing: 
when  the  pnrcel  was  opened  at  Vienna,  the 
gloves  proved  all  left-handed ! 

Maria  Theresa  was  doubtless  proud,  as  be- 
came a  descendant  of  eo  many  Caesars;  but  it 
can  hardly  be  said  that  pride  formed  a  sub- 
stantial element  in  her  character ;  what  passed 
for  such  in  public  estimation  of  her,  was  ra- 
ther love  of  power  and  extreme  jealousy  of 
her  authority.  Such  pride  as  she  possessed 
easily  yielded  to  any  suggestion  of  policy.  In 
her  anxiety  to  found  the  French  alliance,  she 
demeaned  herself  so  far  as  to  address  Madame 
de  Pompadour  under  her  own  hand  as  **  Ma- 
dame, ma  chdre  soeur  et  cousine."  The  fa- 
vorite addressed  her  playfully  in  answer  as 
"chere  reine."  When  her  husband,  the  j6vial 
Fran4,  read  the  letter,  he  threw  himself  on 
two  chairs  and  laughed  till  they  cracked  under 
his  weight.  ''  What  is  there  to  laugh  at  ?"  she 
quietly  asked.  ''  I  have  written  to  Farinelli 
before  now." 

Not  only  Maria  Theresa's  pride,  but  her 
devotion — a  far  stronger  principle  of  laction — 
was  sinffularly  subordinate  to  her  engrossing 
political  zeal  and  her  masculine  understand 


ing.  Devout  she  was  even  to  excess ;  her 
piety  degenerating  into  a  world  of  scrupulous 
observance  and  idle  questions  of  conscien- 
tious casuistry.  Her  bigotry  made  her  commit 
many  foolish  actions,  and  not  a  few  unjust 
ones ;  but  it  scarcely  exercised  any  percepti- 
ble influence  on  the  general  destinies  of  the 
empire  under  her  sway.  Dearly  a^  she  loved 
her  spiritual  teachers,  she  kept  the  priestly 
^olus  in  general  pretty  closely  confined  to 
his  natural  province  of  court  and  chamber  in- 
fluence— illci  sejactat  inauld — excluding  him 
from  the  wider  region  of  politics.  And  . 
therefore  the  latest  political  champion  of 
Ultramontanism,  Count  Montnlembert,  re- 
gards her  reign  as  a  period  of  persecution  to 
the  Church.  She,  the  most  pious  sovereign 
in  Europe,  whs  the  chief  leader  in  the  over- 
throw of  the  Jesuits.  Dr.  Vehse  says  that  she 
yielded  this  point  to  Kaunitz  only  after  long 
resistance  and  many  tears,  and  finally  on  his 
giving  her  proof  that  a  general  confession 
made  by  her  to  Father  Harobacher  had  been 
taken  down  in  writing,  and  sent  to  the  general 
of  the  ordt^r.  Others  affirm  that  she  gave 
way  to  the  direct  spiritual  injunction  of  the 
Pope.  But  the  secret  history  of  the  fall  of 
the  Jesuits,  after  all  that  has  been  written  on 
it,  seems  to  remain  secret  still. 

Baron  Gleichen  says  of  her,  that  when  at 
the  point  of  death,  "as  soon  as  she  had  ascer- 
tained from  her  physician  the*  number  of 
hours  she  had  to  live,  she  hastened  to  receive 
the  sacraments ;  and  this  done,  she  dis- 
missed altogether  the  material  objects  of  her 
habitual  devotions,  did  not  even  look  at  the 
crucifix,  despatched  several  afifairs  of  business, 
and  ended  her  life  seated  on  a  sofa  in  the 
middle  of  her  family."  The  Baron  himself 
believing  in  nothing  but  ghosts,  magnetism, 
and  alchemy,  merely  cites  the  story  as  evi- 
dence of  the  general  unreality  of  religious 
professions.  If  there  be  any  truth  in  it,  we 
imagine  him  to  be  wholly  wrong.  Such 
resolute  return  to  her  ordinary  duties  was  the 
act  of  devotion,  in  extremis^  of  a  noble  and 
most  conscientious  spirit,  persuaded  that  the 
execution  even  to  the  last  of  the  great  earthly 
task  alloted  to  it  was  due  not  to  the  world 
only,  but  to  its  own  eternal  welfare. 

No  picture  of  Maria  Theresa's  reign,  how- 
ever slight,  would  be  complete  without  a 
sketch  of  the  great  minister  Von  ELaunitz, 
who  managed  her  foreign  aflaira  without  in- 

*  Aooording  to  one  story,  she  authorized  him  to 
give  her  notice  of  her  approAchiog  end  by  a  pre- 
oonoerted  question.  When  he  asked  "whether  she 
wanted  lemonade!"  she  knew  that  sentence  was 
paaed. 


in 


MARIA  THERESA  AKD  HER  SON. 


[Oct, 


terrapiion  for  twenty  years,  and,  nominally, 
those  of  her  son  during  his  whole  reign : 
and  whose  influence  was  strongly  perceptible 
in  much  of  her  internal  policy  also.  The 
figure  of  Kaunitz  is  one  of  those  which  come 
out  in  more  definite  importance  as  we  recede 
from  their  times,  and  are  better  able  in  some 
respects  to  judge  of  them  than  their  contem- 
poraries, since  we  see  as  great  and  consistent 
political  schemes  what  the  latter  only  observed 
m  fragraenis.  The  author  of  three  great 
political  events,  the  long  French  alliance  of 
Austria,  the  fall  of  the  Jesuits,  and  (jointly 
with  his  northern  coadjutors)  of  tlie  partition 
of  Poland,  cannot  pass  into  the  oblivion 
which  awaits  ordinary  premiers  ^fter  their 
day  of  influence ;  although  none  of  these 
three  strokes  of  policy  have  been  strictly 
speaking,  permanent;  for  the  French  alliance 
died  with  the  French  Revolution,  and  Austria 
fell  back  on  her  more  natural  affinities  ;  the 
Jesuits  have  returned ;  and  the  partition  of 
Poland,  though  a  subsisting  fact,  has  turned 
almost  wholly  to  the  profit  of  Russia. 

Kaunitz  was  a  Moravian  of  a  converted 
Protestant  family  ;  an  exception  to  the  gene- 
ral rule,  that  the  greatest  Austrian  statesmen, 
as  well  as  soldiers,  have  been  foreigners. 
There  was,  however,  no  national  feeling  or 
character  about  him.  As  a  public  man,  he 
was  the  servant  of  a  crown,  not  a  country ; 
and  in  private  his  affectation  of  French  man- 
ners and  predilections  were  carried  to  an 
absurd  excess.  He  remained  through  life  a 
coxcomb  and  petit  maiire, — a  German  petit 
maitre,  too,  who  never  could,  by  the  most 
laborious  exertions,  attain  the  graces  of  the 
native  article.  The  French  laughed  at  him 
while  ^e  aped  their  manners  and  language  to 
the  extent  of  purposely  speaking  their  bad 
German.  Many  strange  things  are  told  of 
him  by  our  countrymen  Wraxall  and  Swin- 
burne ;  and  Dr.  Yehse  has  gleaned  his  anec- 
dotes from  their  pages  as  well  as  from  other 
quarters ;  but  we  will  ourselves  borrow  the 
pen  of  a  personal  observer,  the  Baron  Von 
Gleichen,  whose  curious  ^'Denkwiirdigkeiten'' 
were  published  in  1847,  under  a  German 
title  though  composed  by  himself  in  French. 

'*  Kaunitz  was  tall  and  ivell  made,  particular  in 
his  dress,  notwithstanding  the  somewhat  ludi- 
crous appearance  presented  by  his  five  tailed 
wie;  he  was  dignified  in  his  hearing,  and  his 
address  was  rather  stiflT  and  ceremonious.  His 
formality  of  manner,  however,  sat  more  easily 
upon  him  than  upon  most  of  the  Austrian  nobles ; 
for  it  seemed  of  right  to  belong  to  him,  and  to 
bear  the  stamp  of  a  superior  mind. 

'^His  usual  salutation  was  merely  a  nod,  but  it 
was  accompanied  by  a  benevolent  smile  to  his 


friends,  and  a  patronising  air  towaids  others.  He 
was  kindhearted,  upright,  loyal,  and  disinterested, 
although  by  no  means  disinclined  to  receive  pre- 
sents   from    different    courts,  of   wine,   horses, 
pictures,  and  other  articles  which  gratified  his 
taste.    He  expressed  himself  in  carefully  chosen 
language,  and  in  a  slow,  deliberate  manner.     Pew 
men  had  such  an  extensive  acquaintance  with 
technical  language  as  he  had,  and  he  highly  ap- 
preciated a  command  of  it  in  others.    An  unusual 
word  of  this  description  would  win  his  good 
opinion  as  easily  as  a  hon-mot  would  that  of  the 
Duke  of  Choiseul.    He  was  well  informed  and 
fond  of  art,  especially  of  painting,  and  patronised 
artists  of  every  class.    He  had  a  great  esteem 
for  accomplished  craftsmen,  even  in  the  subordi- 
nate branches  of  handiwork,  and  had  a  real  passion 
for  well  executed  productions  of  every  kind. 
Prudent  and  dispassionate,  his  excellent  judgment 
and   long  experience   well  entitled  him  to  the 
name  they  won  for  him,  of  the  political  Nestor 
of   his   age.     He  was  happy  in   possessing  a 
variety  of  elegant  tastes,  without  being  under 
the  influence  of  any  one  ruling  passion.     His 
friends  complained  of  the  coolness  of  bis  partial* 
ity  to  them,  but  his  enemies,  on  the  other  hand, 
could  accuse   him   of   no   harsh   or    vindictive 
conduct.     He  would  listen  with  patience  and 
attention  to  the  most  prolix  details,  and  was  very 
full  and  precise  in  his  replies,  but  be  would  rarely 
permit  a  rejoinder.    He  was  singularly  sparing 
uf  his  labor,  and  seemed  often  to  be  throwing 
away  his  time  on  dreams  and  trifling  occupations, 
but  his  real  object  was  to  save  time  fur  tnought, 
and  to  keep  his  head  clear  and  collected.     One  of 
the  maximn  that  he  was  constantly  quoting,  and 
which  the  Emperor  Joseph  might  have  studied 
with  advantage,  was,  never  to  do  one's  self  what 
another  can  do  for  o^«    '  I  would  rather  tear 
up  paper,'  he  used  tp.'i^y,  'than  write  a  line 
which  another  persorroould  write  as  well  as  my- 
self.'   He  was  indeec]  so  sparing  of  his  writing, 
that  his  less  important  letters  were  only  sign^ 
with  a  K.    On  the  other  hand,  he  made  it  a  rule 
never  to  leave  his  office  till  all  the  business  on 
hand  was  dispatched.    He  carried  his  care  of  his 
health  to  the  length  of  egotism.    Anxious  to  keep 
himself  free  from  every  species  of  annoyance,  he 
sacrificed  every  consideration  to  his  personal  com- 
fort and  convenience.     Even  in  his  youth,  he 
used  to  make  the  Empress  Maria  Theresa  aTlow 
him  to  close  the  window  of  her  apartment  if  he 
felt  it  cold,  and  to  wear  his  cap  In  her  presence. 
In  order  to  keep  himself  in  an  equal  temperature, 
he  carried  a  great  coat  and  a  cloak  in  the  winter. 
It  was  his  habit  to  retire  every  evening  at  eleven 
o'clock,  and  neither  the  presence  of  an  archduke, 
nor  even  of  the  Emperor,  could  induce  him  to  put 
any  conntraint  upon  himself;  and  if  he  happened 
to  be  plnying  billiards  with  the  latter,  when  eleven 
o'clock  struck,  he  would  make  his  obeisance,  and 
leave  His  Majesty  standing.    He  bad  a  great 
aversion  to  scents,  and  if  approached  by  a  lady 
who  had  any  about  her,  even  though  she  might 
be  a  stranger  to  him,  he  would  accost  her  bluntly 
with  the    words,  'Allez,  madame,  vous    puez.' 
He  tried  to  keep  death  and  old  age  out  of  his 
thoughts,  and  would  allow  no  notice  to  be  taken 


18S3.] 


MARIA  THERBSA  AND  p£B  SON. 


198 


of  his  bifthday.  In  the  instrnctionfl  which  he 
wrote  with  his  own  hiakkl  for  bis  reader,  he 
earnestly  reqaested  him  never  to  name  the  words 
desth  or  small-pox  in  his  presence. 

**To  such  a  lengrth  did  he  carry  bis  self-estAem, 
that  be  was  accastomed  to  speak  of  himself  as 
of  a  third  person.  The  Emperor  Joseph  had 
caused  busts  of  Marshal  Lascy  and  Prince 
Raanitz  to  be  made.  Under  that  of  the  latter  had 
been  placed  a  Latin  inscription,  fall  of  magnificent 
enloffies  on  the  minister.  Some  one  praised  the 
excellent  style  of  this  inscription  in  his  presence, 
and  the  prince  replied,  '  i  wrote  it.'  (It  is  said 
of  him  by  Vehse  that,  if  be  wanted  to  praise  any- 
thing very  highly,  he  used  to  say,  *  Mein  Gott,  I 
coald  not  have  done  that  better  myself)  He 
was  a  good  judge  of  horses,  and  was  greatly 
pleased  when  any  one  admired  his  performances 
in  his  riding  school,  where  he  was  always  to  be 
met  with  before  dinner.  Thd  Ehiglish  ambassa- 
'  dor,  Keith,  sent  one  of  bis  conntrymen  there  on 
one  occasion,  charging  him  to  pay  the  prince  the 
highest  compliments  be  could,  and  to  season  them 
as  strongly  as  was  required  for  a  man  already 
sated  with  praises.  The  Englishman,  who  was 
no  adept  in  the  art  of  flattery,  hesitating  and 
blnsbing,  brought  out  the  words,  *  Oh !  mon 
prince^  you  are  the  best  rider  I  ever  saw  in  my 
life.'  *  (  believe  I  am,'  was  the  only  answer  he 
leceived." 

The  death  of  this  singular  being  was  in 
keeping  wi^h  the  rest  of  his  career.  He  lived 
to  the  age  of  eighty-four,  outlasting  two  gen- 
erations of  his  masters,  and  witnessing  the 
B'rench  Revolution  and  reign  of  Francis  II. 
Deaf  and  doting,  he  clung  to  power  with 
tenacious  jealousy,  and  they  were  obliged  at 
last  to  withdraw  important  papers  from  his 
cognizance  by  stratagem.  When,  like  Achi- 
tophel  of  old,  ho  saw  that  his  counsel  was  no 
more  followed,  he  is  said  to  have  refused 
sustenance,  and  died  of  exhaustion. 

With  the  really  greater  though  less  impos- 
ing operations  of  Maria  Theresa's  reign — 
those  of  reform  in  the  internal  administration 
of  her  states — Kaunitz  had  only  indirectly  to 
do.  Her  ablest  counsellor  in  this  department 
was  Count  Haugwitz,  a  Silesian,  born  a  Pro- 
testant subject  of  Austria,  but  who  abandoned 
bis  religion  and  came  to  Vienna  when  his 
native  province  was  conquered  by  Frederick. 
The  task  of  administration  reform  imposed 
on  her  at  her  accession  was  indeed  enormous  ; 
yet  tbere  were  circumstances  which  rendered 
it  less  difficult  than  might  have  been  suppos- 
ed from  its  apparent  magnitude.  We  must 
eoncaive  the  Austrian  empire,  in  1740,  as  not 
so  much  a  State  as  a  bundle  of  States  under 
one  sovereign, — ^a  monarchy  of  the  middle 
affes  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
£ch  separate  state  had  its  viceroy  or  stadt- 
holder,  its  diet,  its  administration,  and  a  sepa- 1 
TOI^  ILSSL.    NO.  n. 


rate  branch  of  the  Council  in  Vienna  in  com- 
munication with  it.  There  was  great  pres- 
sure of  taxation  on  the  people,  with  scarcely 
any  return  to  the  treasury ;  an  army  neither 
regularly  equipped  nor  recruited ;  a  crown 
singularly  poor  in  domain  lands  and  private 
revenues,  the  resources  of  most  German 
sovereigns.'  There  was  every  obstecle  which 
ignorance  or  apathy  could  oppose  to  re- 
form ;  but  there  was  no  active  hostility  to 
it ;  scarcely  any  section  of  the  people  in  the 
hereditary  states  were  inclined  or  able  to  make 
a  stand  for  privilege.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
old  Austrian  provinces  were  docile  and  man- 
ageable. In  Bohemia,  Moravia  and  Silesia, 
there  was,  as  we  have  seen,  a  kind  of  con- 
dottiere-descended  nobility  very  slightly  root- 
ed in  the  soil,  and  leaning  on  the  crown  for 
support ;  and  a  populace  tamed  into  submis- 
sion by  ages  of  tj^ranny.  Where  any  popular 
spirit  existed,  it  was  but  the  jealousy  of  rival 
rights  and  nationalities,  holding  each  other  in 
perpetual  check,  and  looking  to  the  crown  as 
the  only  umpire.  Accordingly,  great  as  the 
changes  effected  by  her  government  were,  yet, 
being  temperately  though  firmly  introduced, 
we  hear  little  or  nothing  of  any  difficulty  ex- 
perienced in  their  execution.  In  a  few  years, 
the  old  stattholderships  and  separate  govern- 
ments were  totally  abolished,  and  exchanged 
for  A  centralised  sjrstem  of  government  from 
Vienna;  a  large  revenue  was  raised  from 
regular  taxation ;  the  largest  standing  army 
in  Europe  recruited  by  regular  conscription ; 
a  great  absolute  monarchy  compacted  out  of 
a  multitude  of  limited  principalities. 

With  the  detached  portions  of  the  empire 
enjoying  distinct  constitutional  rights — the 
Tyrol,  the  Netherlands,  Hungary — those 
which  really  possessed  a  national  spirit — the 
prospect  or  success  was  widely  different  in 
the  eyes  of  a  prudent  sovereign,  however 
despotically  inchned.  Accordingly,  we  do- 
not  find  that  Maria  Tberesa  meddled  with  the 
rights  of  the  two  former  at  all.  Her  dealings 
with  her  ancient  and  eccentric  kingdom  of 
Hungary,  too  near  and  powerful  a  neighbor 
to  Vienna  to  be  simply  disregarded,  were 
throughout  very  characteristic.  In  that  re- 
gion there  was  fiery  spirit  enough,  and  jealous 
opposition  to  all  increase  of  the  central  power; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  were  those  deep- 
rooted  internal  divisions  which  have  caused 
the  masses  ever  to  play  the  Austrian  game*, 
—differences  of  religion,  differences  of  race 
(the  latter  not  less  felt  in  those  times  than 
in  our  own,  although  their  effect  was  less  ap- 
preciated,) and  the  constant  suppressbd  war- 
fare between  the  populus  and  tne  mUira  can- 

18 


I9i 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  SON. 


[Oct., 


tribuens  plebs,  the  half  a  million  of  nobles 
and  the  iuiIl4on$  of  trampled  peasants.  Above 
all,  there  was  that  organized  anarchy  which 
the  HungHfians  then  called  a  constitution ; 
which,  by  maintaining  a  perpetual  conflict  of 
rights,  claims,  and  protests,  kept  all  internal 
government  at  a  dead  lock,  and  rendered  re- 
course to  the  central  power,  however  distaste- 
ful, matter  of  sheer  necestiitj,  when  there  was 
anything  really*  to  be  done :  even  as  the  con- 
tending parties  in  the  play  must  have  stood 
for  ever  with  their  points  at  each  other's 
throats,  had  not  some  one  entered  to  bid 
them,  *'  in  the  Queen's  name,  drop  all  their 
swords  and  daggers."     It  was  clear  that, 
although  Hungary  could  not,  without  en- 
counteiing  violent  resistance,  be  so  governed 
as  to  add  much  to  the  regular  financial  or 
military  strenglh  of  the  monarchy,  it  might 
at  least  be  so  governed  as  to  furnish  no  cause 
of  weakness  in  ordinary  thnes,  and  a  great 
reserve  of  strength  in  emergencies,  by  an  ad- 
ministration content  neither  to  anticipate  nor 
oppose  the  course  of  events,  and  to  leave 
"  progress"  to  take  care  of  itself.  The  flowers 
of  constitutional  privilege,  the  attempt  to 
pluck  which  by  force  from  the  national  tree 
irould  draw  blood,  would  fall  of  themselves, 
lik«  ripe  figs  into  the  mouth  of  the  eater,  if 
left  alone.     Such  was  the  general  and  most 
successful  pohcy  of  her  Hungarian  govern- 
ment.    She  did   "nil  contra  legem,  multa 
prsater  legem."    She  convoked  three  diets, 
and  quarrelled  with  all  of  them  about  internal 
reforms ;  she  then  resolved  to  convoke  no 
more,  and  none  met  during  the  last  sixteen 
years  of  her  reign.     Nor  did  she  appoint  a 
Palatine,  the  ancient  mediator  between  the 
crown  and  nation  in  Hungary,  after  the  death 
of  Louis  Bathyany  in  1765.     But  what  the 
nobles  had  refused  to  the  Plebs,  she  took 
advantage  of  an  apprehended  Jacquerie  .to 
confer,  of  her  own  authority.     The  famous 
"Urharium,"— -the  bill  of  rights,  such  as  it  is, 
of  the   Hungarian   peasantry — was  simply 
published  by  the  crown,  and  not  confirmed 
by  the  Diet  until  many  years  after  her  death. 
The  privileged  classes  submitted — under  per- 
petual protest  of  course — to  the  gentle  vio- 
lence which  did  fof  them  what  the  esprit  de 
corps  of  the  inferior  nobility  would  never  have 
allowed   them   to  do  for  themselves;   and 
they  submitted,  with  similar  apathy,  to  the 
gradual   and  indirect    substitution    of    the 
ready,  active,  and  helpful  subordinates  of  the 
executive  for   their  own  clumsy  municipal 
authorities.     '*  The  Constitution  would  have 
fairly  gone  to  sleep,"  says  Mailath,  "  if  Ma- 
ria Theresa  had  lived  much  longer." 


But  the  great  Empress-queen  loved  the 
Magyars;  and  that  chivalrous  race  were 
proud  of  the  gracious  and  accomplished  sove- 
reign, whom  they  had  rescued  in  her  utmost 
necessity;  and  this  tie  between  them  con- 
tributed even  more  than  policy  to  the  main- 
tenance of  her  authority.  She  made  her 
favorite  friends  and  gossips  of  the  ladies  of 
their  aristocracy;  she  drew  their  magnates  to 
Vienna  by  all  the  attractions  of  her  perf^onal 
influence ;  she  carried  on  the  Germanizing  of 
the  nobility,  of  which  stern  patriots  at  times 
complained,  by  the  most  quiet  and  gradual 
means.  Only  an  occasional  outbreak  of  feel- 
ing would  betray  the  intense  jealousy  with 
which  she  watched  any  revival  of  the  old 
independent  spirit.  An  Austrian  Count,  As* 
permont,  enjoyed  larg^  Hungarian  estates 
through  a  female  descent  from  the  greal  * 
Prince  of  Transylvania,  Ragoczj.  The 
Count's  carriage  once  stuck  fast  on  a  journey 
in  the  depths  of  a  Hungarian  cross  road. 
Numbers  of  peasants  were  passing  in  their 
market  carts,  but  they  remained  deaf  to  all 
the  solicitations  of  his  servants  for  help,  and 
only  enjoyed  the  sight  of  the  Germans  in  a 
"  fix."  At  last  the  Count  got  on  the  roof  of 
his  carriage  and  shouted,  **  Will  you  let  the  . 
grandson  of  Rigoczy  be  smothered  in  the 
mud?"  They  rushed  to  his  assistance  at 
once,  and  drew  him  out  in  triumph.  When 
next  he  appeared  at  Court,  the  Empress 
called  him  before  her. — **  Listen  to  me,  As- 
permont :  I  do  not  wish  you  to  be  smothered 
in  the  mud;  but  leave  alone  this  nonsense 
about  Ragoczy,  or  I  shall  assuredly  send 
you  to  prison." — (Vol.  vii.  p.  169.) 

'  Great,  however,  as  were  the  administrative 
reforms  effected  under  Maria  Theresa,  it  can 
hardly  be  said  that  they  extended  so  far  as 
to  produce  any  substantial  change  in  the 
social  condition  of  her  people.  In  this  re- 
spect, undiscriminating  eulogy  has  done  her 
rather  more  than  justice.  Little  impression 
was  made,  during  her  time,  on  the  vast  mass 
of  barbarism  and  serfdom  which  overspread 
the  bulk  of  her  empire.  Her  good  disposi- 
tions towards  the  inferior  classes  of  her  sub- 
jects, whatever  they  may  have  been,  found 
but  little  practical  scope.  She  was  probably 
very  willing  to  make  mankind  happy  under  a 
beneficent  despotism ;  her  tendencies,  as  an 
Austrian  writer  describes  them,  with  some 
affectation  but  some  truth,  were  "idyllisch- 
autocratisch ;"  her  fancy  may  have  aspired 
to  a  pastoral  reign  among  neatly  powaered 
Arcadians  after  the  fashion  of  Watteao.  But 
the  loving  mother  of  the  empire  knew  little, 
face  to  face,  of  the  sufferings  and  oppressions 


1859.] 


MARIA.  THERESA  AKB  HER  SOK. 


106 


of  her  poorer  children.  Her  legislation,  in 
these  respects,  followed  with  a  lagging  pace 
the  spirit  of  the  age.  She  reK>rmed  tiie 
crimiDal  law  indeed,  but  hers  wns  still  '*  ein 
grausames  Gesetzbuch/'  a  savage  code  ;  tor- 
ture was  only  abolished,  even  at  Vienna,  in 
1776,  the  law  of  witchcraft  "modi6ed"  about 
the  same  time,  justifying  the  saying  attri- 
buted to  Pitt,  that  Austria  "is  always  an 
idea  behind  the  rest  of  the  world."  What 
she  did  for  the  peasants  of  Hungary  has  al- 
ready been  noticed;  in  the  German  States, 
she  went  no  farther  than  to  ameliorate,  in 
some  respects,  the  condition  of  "leibeigen- 
Bchafi"  or  personal  servitude. 

It  was,  above  all  things,  the  sense  of  this 
great  duty  unaccomplished,  fermenting  in  a 
dharacter  of  strong  will  and  positive  judgment, 
during  twenty  years  of  nominal  power  and 
real  impotence  under  his  mother's  rule,  which 
made  of  Joseph  II.  what  he  was,  the  royal 
comet,  travelling  with  brilliant  but  question- 
able impetus  without  the  regular  orbit  in 
which  crowned  luminaries  usually  revolve. 
The  world  has  judged  this  sovereign,  the 
despotic  precursor  of  the  French  Revolution, 
as  it  usually  Judges,  by  success.  Because  he 
failed,  he  has  become  a  bye-word ;  had  he 
carried  through  the  great  scheme  of  policy 
which  he  had  conceived,  he  would  have  been 
regarded  as  the  greatest,  and  with  all  his  ab- 
solutism the  most  beneficent,  sovereign  who 
ever  swayed  the  destinies  of  the  human  race. 
And  bad  not  his  early  death  intervened,  it  is 
difficult  to  say  that  a  large  portion  of  that 
scheme  might  not  have  been  realized.  We 
cannot  safely  pronounce  on  what  might  have 
been,  nor  decide  whether,  as  the  popular 
notion  is,  his  death  rescued  him  from  general 
rebellion,  or  whether  it  cut  short  the  career 
of  one  who  was  beginning  to  learn,  by  expe- 
rience, the  right  means  towards  his  magnifi- 
cent ends,  and  who  would  in  a  few  years 
more  have  changed  much  more  than  the 
surface  of  European  politics  and  society. 

But  however  this  may  be,  we  utterly  dis- 
claim the  test  of  mere  success  in  the  judgment 
of  characters  such  as  his.  That  one  bred  up 
in  an  atmosphere  of  bigotry,  court  flattery, 
and  aristocratic  pride,  should  for  years  have 
been  framing  to  himself  a  distinct  perception 
and  thorough  appreciation  of  the  iniquities 
and  oppressions  wrought  under  the  sun ;  that 
he  should  have  realized  the  depth  of  popular 
ignorance,  the  crying  injustice  of  noble  privi- 
leges, the  canker  of  idle  monachibm,  the 
countless  sufferings  of  the  enslaved  mjilti- 
tttde ;  that  he  should  have  formed  within  his 
mind  the  deliberate  resolution.  These  things 


shall  not  be ;  they  are  simply  evil,  and  they 
shall  perish,  if  my  power  is  torn  up  by  the 
roots  along  with  them^  if  my  own  ease  and 
popularity,  and  life  itself,  are  shattered  to 
pieces  in  the  encounter  with  them  ; — that  he 
should  have  issued  at  once  to  attack  these 
gigantic  abuses,  like  Thalaba  among  the  en- 
chanters, without  parley  or  preparation,  rely- 
ing on  his  own  good  right  alone,  and  reso- 
lutely cutting  away  his  own  chance  of  re- 
treat ; — ^all  this  amounts,  in  point  of  k  priori 
moral  probability,  to  little  less  than  a  miracle. 
It  were  a  likelier  task  for  nature  to  produce 
another  Napoleon  than  another  Joseph  II. 
Yet  he  is  generally  passed  by  with  the  cur- 
sory sentence,  that  he  was  one  who  formed 
vast  projects,  but  lacked  judgment,  tact,  and 
moduration  to  put  them  into  useful  execution. 
That  his  composiiion  did  lack  these  whole- 
some diluents  is  certain,  but  it  is  equally 
certain  that  a  man  possessed  of  them  to  any 
large  amount  would  never  have  formed  such 
projects  at  all.  As  well  complain  of  want  of 
judgment,  tact,  and  moderation  in  Shaw,  the 
life-guardsman  at  Waterloo. 

How  many  inferior  qualities  go  to  make 
up  a  mind  like  his — how  much  there  may 
have  been  of  vanity,  and  desire  to  astonish, 
and  love  of  power  in  his  character — a  bio- 
graphical analyst  may  think  it  his  duty  to 
inquire  :  for  our  purpose,  the  purity  and  lofti- 
netjs  of  its  chief  elements  dispenses  with  the 
duty  of  examining  how  much  of  the  grosser 
clay  was  mixed  with  it.  The  main  springs  of 
his  policy  were  a  fervent  love  of  mankind,  and 
an  intensely  acute  sense  of  justice;  and  his 
chief  errors  were  caused  by  the  excess  of  these, 
not  by  any  intrusion  of  baser  motives.  That 
philanthropy  is  a  somewhat  revolutionary 
virtue  we  now  well  know :  excessive  love  of 
justice  in  a  sovereign  is  hardly  less  so. 
"L'art  de  bouleverser  les  ^tats"  (says  Pascal) 
*'  est  d'^branler  les  cotltumes  ^tablies,  en  son- 
danti usque  dans  leur  source,  pour  marquer 
leur  aefaut  de  justice :  il  faut,  dit-on,  recourir 
aux  lois  fondamentales  et  primitives  de  I'^tat, 
qu'une  costume  in  juste  a  abolis.  C'est  un 
jeu  stir  pour  tout  perdre ;  rien  ne  sera  juste  & 
cette  balance.''  This  strong  conscientiousness 
Joseph  inherited  from  his  mother :  but  the 
passion  for  ideal  political  justice  was  his  own. 
He  carried  it  to  a  point  at  which  it  became 
not  only  a  weakness  in  the  eyes  of  statesmen, 
but  in  those  of  the  multitude  a  positive  vice. 
To  take  an  instance  which  strongly  exempli- 
fies our  meaning :  the  popular  notion  that  a 
sovereign  should:  only  mterfere  with  the  sen- 
tences of  criminal  courts  to  remit  them,  that 
a  "King's  face  should  give  grace" — is  insepa- 


196 


BIABIA  THERESA  AND  HEE  SON. 


[Oct, 


rable  in  feudal  Europe  from  the  very  idea  of 
monarchy.  But  this  one-sided  interference 
was  revolting  to  his  sense  of  absolute  equity. 

He  was  the  only  Christian  monarch  out  of 
Russia,  so  far  as  we  know,  who  ever  assumed 
as  a  regular  course,  the  function  of  increasing 
as  well  as  diminishing  the  punishments 
awarded  by  the  ordinary  tribunals :  and  this 
innovation,  founded  as  it  was  on  the  strictest 
view  of  right,  was  the  very  first  which  he  was 
compelled  by  public  feeling  to  withdraw. 

Never,  assuredly,  was  so  complete  a  sweep 
made  of  old  institutions  and  usages,  as  far  as 
mere  change  of  the  law  could  do  it,  as  in  the 
five  first  years  of  Joseph's  reign.  That  of  the 
French  Revolution  itself  will  hardly  bear  the 
comparison,  especially  when  regard  is  had  to 
the  different  genius,  and  state  of  preparation, 
of  the  two  communities.  It  was  like  the  sud- 
den change  in  the  locomotion  of  the  same 
country,  from  the  old  Eilwagen  crawl  of  four 
miles  an  hour,  without  intervening  innprove- 
ments,  to  the  speed  of  the  railway.  It  takes 
away  the  breath  of  those  accustomed  to  the 
bit-by- bit  proceedings  of  constitutional  coun- 
tries, to  recite  the  mere  catalogue  of  Joseph's 
reforms.  In  the  short  space  of  time  we  have 
mentioned,  all  exclusive  rights  and  privileges 
were  clean  abolished ;  serfdom  and  compul- 
sory feudal  dues*  and  services,  ceased  legally 
to  exist :  all  men  became  equal  before  the 
law  under  the  sovereign.  All  old  local  con- 
stitutions, including  that  of  Hungary,  with 
which  his  mother  had  dealt  so  warily,  were 
abolished  or  violently  invaded,  old  provinces 
obliterated  from  the  map,  and  a  division  of 
the  whole  empire  into  thirteen  great  depart- 
ments, with  a  civil  administrator  (Kreish- 
hauptmann)  at  the  head  of  each,  substituted. 
All  ecclesiastical  dependence  on  the  see  of 
Rome  was  removed;  all  convents  not  con- 
nected with  useful  institutions,  such  as  schools 
and  hospitals  suppressed ;  universal  religious 
toleration,  or  rather  equality,  established, 
except  for  some  unlucky  deistica]  sectaries, 
who,  instead  of  toleration,  incurred  the  Aus- 
trian classical  number  of  fifty-five  "  Stockpru- 
gel,"  or  blows  with  a  stick  ;  for  Joseph,  with 
all  his  radicalism,  was  a  religious  man,  and  no 
friend  to  deists.  "  I  am  no  divine,"  he  said 
to  the  professor  of  theology  at  Bologna,  "but 


*  It  waa  in  referenoe  to  some  change  of  this  kind 
that  the  Bohemian  Count  Chotek  remonstrated, 
and  declared  that  the  peasants  ought  to  pav,  and 
mnst  be  made  to  pay.  "  I  fancy,  dear  Chotek,"  Jo^ 
seph  wrote  in  reply,  "  that  physical  force  is  after  all 
on  the  aide  of  tne  peasants ;  and  if  it  ever  should 
happen  that  they  vul  not  pay,  what  is  to  become  of 
usaUr 


a  soldier :  but  this  much  I  know,  that  there 
is  only  one  road  to  Heaven,  and  only  one 
doctrine,  that  of  Jesus  Christ."*  Education 
was  made  national,  the  press  rendered  free, 
the  old  and  inveterate  "  unwesen"  (to  use  a 
German  word  for  which  we  want  an  equiva- 
lent) of  guilds  and  corruptions  in  the  towns, 
and  other  restrictions  on  internal  commerce, 
utterly  abolished ;  the  superstructure  of  ages 
rased  down  to  the  very  foundation. 

It  need  not  be  said,  that  a  great  number 
of  these  changes  remained  in  the  form  of  de- 
crees only,  and  never  attained  a  practical  ex- 
istence. Yet  he  actually  performed  much ; 
energetically,  but  intemperately,  and  without 
the  slightest  trace  of  that  politic  respect 
which  might  have  been  shown  for  interesta 
injured,  or  feelings  wounded  in  the  process. 
Meffis  ad  exemplar,  the  subordinates  who 
were  entrusted  with  the  execution  of  the  Em- 
peror's innovating  decrees,  set  to  work  with 
a  revolutionary  violence  which  seems  scarcely 
credible  in  a  civilised  and  regular  State.  In 
fact,  much  of  what  we  read  of  the  Austrian 
reforms  of  1780 — 1785,  resembles  the  some- 
times grotesque  and  sometimes  terrible  scenes 
which  took  place  ten  years  later  in  France. 
Convents  were  ransacked  with  merciless  vio- 
lence, their,  goods  plundered,  the  precious 
contents  of  their  libraries  destroyed  or  scat- 
tered ;  the  bones  of  the  dead  disturbed  by 
official  rifiers  of  the  graves.  At  the  'Char- 
treuse, at  Vienna,  the  mummied  corpse  of  Al- 
bert the  Wise  was  ejected  from  its  leaden 
coffin,  for  the  sake  of  the  metal,  and  lay  for 
months  exposed. to  the  curiosity  and  insults 
of  the  populace.  An  order  was  at  one  time 
issued  by  Joseph  for  the  conversion  of  that 
venerable  pile,  the  ancient  palace  of  the 
Hradschin,  at  Prague,  into  barracks :  to  be 
executed  by  a  given  day.  Instantly  a  band 
of  Vandals  was  let  loose,  to  strip  it  of  the 
accumulated  relics  of  centuries.  The  mys- 
terious treasure  chamber  of  the  star-gazing 
Emperor  Rudolf  was  utterly  despoiled  of  its 
renowned  antiquarian  collections.  "  The  sta- 
tues were  sold  off;  a  torso  found  no  pur- 
chaser ;  it  was  thrown  at  last  out  of  the 
window  into  the  garden ;  an  oculist  of 
Vienna,  Barth,  bought  it  for  six '  siebzehner.' 
It  was  sold  at  the  congress  of  Vienna  to  the 
Crown  Prince,  Louis  of  Bavaria,  for  6000 
ducats — it  is  the  Ilioneus  of  the  Glyptothek 
at  Munich.  The  antique  coins  were  sold  by 
weight.  An  inventory  of  the  contents  of  the 
treasury  was  made,  which  was  preserved  in 
the  Schonfeld  Museum,  at  Vienna;  a  Leda 
of  Titian  figures  in  it,  as  '  a  woman  bitten  by 
an  enraged  goose."    (Vol.  iii.  p.  8.)    Tet> 


1858.] 


MABIA  THSBISA  AKD  HSR  SOJT. 


197 


after  all  this  mischief  was  done,  Joseph  was 
induced  by  the  murmers  of  the  Bohemians 
to  revoke  his  order ;  a  strong  proof  of  the 
truth  of  Frederick's  sarcasm,  that  ''he  always 
took  the  second  step  before  the  first." 

The  truth  is,  that  Joseph  had  learned, 
during  his  long  apprenticeship  in  his  mo- 
Xher's  court,  a  Kind  of  cynical  contempt  for 
men.  He  connected  this,  in  his  own  mind, 
with  the  equalising  precepts  of  his*  philo- 
sophy: he  admired  the  constant  exhibition 
of  it  by  his  great  model,  Frederick,  of  whose 
peculiar  aquafortis  wit  he  possessed  nothing. 
He  did  himself  probably  more  injury  by  his 
labored  smartnesses  against  religious  frater- 
nities and  monks — those  ulemas  and  fakirs, 
as  he  affected  to  call  them — than  by  suppres- 
sing their  convents.  His  nobility  could  more 
easily  have  for^ven  his  attacks  on  their  pri- 
vfleges,  and  his  endeavor  to  diminish  their 
importance  by  pitchforking  into  their  class 
a  herd  of  insigmficant  people,  civil  function- 
aries, municipal  authorities,  and  the  like,  the 
notorious  ^'  Bagadelladel"  of  Austria,  than  his 
parade  of  maxims  about  the  equality  of  man- 
kind, and  the  grim  satisfaction  with  which 
he  gave  the  Viennese,  by  way  of  corollary  to 
these  maxims,  the  spectacle  of  a  count  who 
had  forged  banknotes,  sweeping  the  streets  in 
chains ;  and  another,  a  grey-haired  colonel  of 
the  guards  who  had  ^undered  his  military 
chest,  exposed  in  the  pillory. 

Closely  allied  with  tnese  peculiarities,  were 
a  roughness  of  manner  carried  to  affectation, 
a  harsh  and  dictatorial  air ;  an  assumed  out- 
side, which  covered  singular  delicacy  as  well 
as  strength  of  sentiments :  feelings  trembling- 
ly alive  to  every  variation  in  those  of  the 
persons  whom  he  loved ;  a  lively  sympathy 
for  suffering,  a  special  fondness  for  elegant 
and  particularly  female  society ;  his  only  re- 
laxation in  later  years,  and  in  which  he  ap- 
peared to  great  advantage,  as  what  Kaunitz 
described  him,  in  his  barbarous  Frenchified 
dialect, ''  ein  ganz  aimabler  perfecter  Cava- 
lier.'* Baron  Reizenstein, in  his  "Journey  to 
Vienna  *'  (1780),  describes  not  amiss  this  dou- 
ble aspect  of  Joseph's  outward  demeanor. 
••When  I  entered  the  room,"  he  says,  "  the 
Emperor  was  still  speaking  with  a  gentleman 
to  whom  he  gave  some  orders.  His  tone  was 
so  rough,  so  harsh,  his  pronunciation  so  Aus- 
trian, that  the  impression  made  on  me  was 
unpleasing  in  the  highest  degree.  Immedi- 
ately afterwards,  two  French  ladies  were  in- 
troduced to  him.  How  polite,  refined,  and 
soft  his  manner  at  once  oecame!  The  im- 
perious monarch  disappeared ;  the  most  pre- 
possessing, attractive  man  of  the  world  stood 


before  me  instead."  His  death  is  said  to  have 
been  accelerated  by  his  passionate  grief  at 
the  loss  of  his  favorite  niece,  Elizabeth  of 
Wirnemberg,  the  first  wife  of  Francis  the  Se- 
cond. One  of  the  most  touching  of  the 
many  pieces  of  his  writing  which  remain,  is 
the  billet  of  adieu  to  the  Princess  Frances 
Lichtenstein,  written  just  before  his  decease, 
and  addressed  "  Aux  cinq  dames  r^unies  do 
la  soci6t6,  qui  m'y  tol^raient."  The  reader 
will  find  it  at  vol.  viii.  p.  807  of  the  work 
before  us. 

It  was  in  his  ecclesiastical  reforms,  in  real- 
ity the  most  beneficial  part  of  his  operations, 
that  Joseph  encountered  the  first  and  most 
violent,  if  not  most  determined  resistance. 
The  leader  of  the  Ultramontane  opposition 
was  the  Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Vienna,  Mi- 
gazzi,  no  saint,  but  more  resembling  Thomas 
k  Becket  before  he  began  to  exhale  the  odor 
of  sanctity ;  a  "  handsome,  gallant  man  of 
the  world,"  says  Vehse,  and  a  great  intriguer 
in  the  former  reign.  It  was  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  representations  of  Migazzi  and  his 
party,  that  Pius  VI.  determined  on  his  me- 
morable journey  to  Vienna,  in  1782. 

It  was  in  truth  a  memorable  journey ;  and 
we  of  the  third  generation  after  it,  are  now 
for  the  first  time  able  to  perceive  its  true  sig- 
nificance. It  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to 
call  it  one  of  the  turning  points  m  the  his- 
tory of  the  world.  Rome  on  that  occasion 
renewed  her  youth  by  touching  her  mother 
earth ;  the  succeseor  of  the  Apostles  becamct 
for  a  moment,  the  brother  and  companion  of 
that  mass  of  mankind  from  which  his  first 
predecessors  sprang.  In  earlier  days,  during 
the  life  and  death  .struggles  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, the  importance,  in  religious  quarrels,  not 
only  of  exciting  the  general  sympathies  of  the 
multitude,  but  of  downright  popular  agita- 
tion with  all  its  vulgar  incidents,  had  been 
thoroughly  understood  on  both  sides  of  the 
question.  To  know  how  and  when  to  let 
loose  with  success  the  passions  of,  the  popu- 
lace, lacker  la  grande  Uvriere,  as  the  leaders 
of  the  French  League  were  wont  to  call  it,  was 
then  an  important  point  in  the  politician's  art. 
But  the  age  of  popular  enthusiasm  had  now 
long  passed  :  and  in  Germany  especially, 
where  the  Thirty  Years'  War  degenerated 
from  a  great  religious  quarrel  into  a  struggle 
of  rival  condottieri,  the  importance  of  the 
plebeian  element  in  Church  politics  was  prac- 
tically forgotten.  Of  the  intriguing  and 
diplomatic  statesmen-popes  of  theseventeentli 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  not  one  would  have 
thought  of  descending  from  his  pedestal  to 
invoke  the  aid  of  the  masses  in  an  emergen- 


id8 


MARU  THERESA  AKD  HER  SON. 


[Oct., 


cj,  any  more  than  he  would  have  thought 
of  preaching  a  crusade. 

Nor  do  we  believe  that  Pius  VI.  for  a  mo- 
ment  enleitained    the    notion.     He   was  a 
good  and  zealous  churchman,  but  neither 
wiser  nor  more  original  in  his  views  than 
cardinals  in  general.     His  idea  seems  only 
to  have  been  that  of  making  a  personal  im- 
pression on  Joseph,  partly  by  his  own  per- 
suasive powers — for  there  entered  no  small 
amount  of  vanity    into  his  composition — 
partly  through  that  traditional  aid  from  above 
which  had    made  Attila  quail  before   Leo. 
In  this  sense  only  his  project  was  judged, 
when  his  advisers  strenuously  urged   him 
against  it,  and  the  wise  men  of  the  world 
taied  him  with  consummate  folly.     "  I  was 
almost  beginning  to  believe  in  your  master's 
infallibility,"  said  Frederick  to  Pius's  envoy 
at  Berlin,  "  but  this  journey  to  Vienna  !*'  Nor 
did  the  adoration  of  the  multitudes  which 
threw  themselves  at  his  feet  in  sudden  en- 
thusiasm during  that  long  Alpine  journey, 
or  of  those  who  flocked  from  far  and  near  to 
Vienna  to  idolise  him,  insomuch  that  a  famine 
was  apprehended  during  his  stay,  however  it 
might  affect  the  feelings  of  observers,  alter 
the  general   estimate  of   his   undertaking. 
Even  now  some  liberal  historians,  like  Schlos- 
ser,  affect  to  donbt  the  reality  of  its  effects, 
and  assert  that  the  great  South  German  '*  re- 
vival" of  1785  evaporated  in  smoke.    They 
do  not  perceive  the  new  impulse  which  was 
then  given  to  the  minds  of  men,  if  not  to  the 
immediate  march  of  events.    The  progress 
of  religious  democracy  in  Catholic  countries 
since  that  day,  is  but  too  marked  a  feature 
in  modern  history.     There  was  but  too  much 
significance  in  the  emblematic  medal  which 
the  legate  at  Munich  struck  on  the  occasion, 
representing  Religion  as  Cybele,  drawn  in 
her  car  by  lions  among  the  prostrate  bodies 
of  men. 

The  Pope  ,  indeed,  gained  no  present  ad- 
vantage by  his  journey,  as  is  well  known. 
Joseph  received  him  with  a  polite  affectation 
of  keeping  all  serious  conversation  at  a  dis- 
tutji-e.  Kaunitz,  according  to  the  anecdotes 
repealed  by  Vehse,  thought  it  politic  to  treat 
the  unwished-for  stranger  with  peculiar  rude- 
ness, as  if  in  contempt  of  his  supposed  power, 
shook  lustily  the  hand  which  Pius  offered  him 
to  IkIss  !  received  him  at  his  villa  in  morning 
dishabille,  talked  of  nothing  but  his  statues 
and  pictures,  and  pushed  his  visitor  into  all 
kinds  of  places  and  postures  in  order  to  give 
him  a  better  sight  of  them,  insomuch  that 
the  high-bred  Italian,  at  once  pontiff  and 
patrician,  remained  *'  tutto  stupefatto."    Jo- 


seph even  gave  his  supposed  victory  over  his 
Holiness  something  of  a  comic  turn,  by  paying 
him  a  return  visit  at  Rome,  where  the  popu- 
lace, always  an ti- papal  whatever  the  senti- 
ment may  be  elsewhere,  received  him  with 
shouts  of  "  Long  live  the  Emperor-king,  sUte 
a  casa  vostra,  siete  il  padrone.^     But  the  work 
of  resistance  to  his  reforms  was  not  the  less 
effectively  commenced.     The  cause  of  reac- 
tion had  received  a  moral  aid,  worth  more 
than     myriads  of    bayonets.     Joseph    was 
taught  how  thoroughly  he  had  miscalculated, 
in  his  heedlessness,  the  influence  of  the  ule- 
mas  and  fakirs — the  objects  of  his  scorn — 
over  the  masses  which  he  deemed  made  but 
to  obey  a  beneficent  despot.    He  knew  that 
there  was  a  powar  within  his  states  greater 
than  that  of  the  Smperor ;  that  half  the  al- 
legiance, and  more  than  half  the  reverence, 
of  the  millions,  belonged  to  another  than  him. 
His  pride  was  no  less  wounded  than  his  pur- 
pose thwarted.     And  the  blow  was  a  fatal 
one. 

We  have  no  space  to  dwell  on  the  details 
of  that  reaction  which  completes,  as  it  were, 
the  dramatic  unity  of  Joseph's  ten  years  of 
reign.     Perpetual  opposition  in  Church  and 
State  made  him  in  no  degree  alter  his  pur- 
pose, but  it  rendered  him  impatient  and  vio- 
lent, and  apt  to  exercise  his  power  the  more 
stubbornly  in  trifles,  because  he  felt  hindself 
bound  fast  by  a  thousand  invisible  chains, 
when  he  attempted  any  greater  movement. 
He  became  suspicious ;  and  Vienna  swarmed 
with  government  agents,  noble  and  plebeian 
spies,  instruments  of  the~ secret  police,  who 
poisoned  his  ear  with  suggestions  of  imag^i- 
nary  plots,  and  led  him  into  the  commission 
of  acts  of  injustice  towards  some  of  his  most' 
faithful  subjects.     Then  commenced  in  reali- 
ty or  in  popular  belief,  that  fearful  system 
of  the  employment  of  agens provocateurs  to 
stir  up  the  opposition  of  classes  and  races, 
with  which  Austrian  policy  under  several 
reigns  has  been  reproached,  how  far  justly 
it  IS  impossible  to  say.     When  the  Hunga- 
rian nobles  were  in  organized  passive  resist- 
ance  to  the  attack  on   their   Constitution 
(1784),  a  Wallach  boor,  Horya,  became  the 
leader  of  a  peasant  insurrection  against  them. 
His   supposed  complicity  with  government 
agents  was  never  proved ;  but  he  had  tokens 
to  show  which  worked  strongly  on  the  ima- 
gination of  his  followers ;  a  golden  chain  with 
a  picture  of  the  Emperor,  a  writing  in  gold 
letters  which  he  called  an  imperial  patent. 
The  revolt  was  accompanied  with  great  atro- 
cities, and  was  repressed  with  equal  cruelty. 
Horya  was  executed  by  the  wheel,  a  hundred 


1853.] 


MARIA  THEBEBA  AND  HER  SOK. 


199 


and  fifty  of  bis  pe5ple  "  after  their  country- 
fashion,'*  th^t  b,  impaled  alive.  These  hor- 
rors worked  powerfully  on  the  sensitive  mind 
of  Joseph,  which  was  by  this  time  lapsing  into 
fixed  disgust  and  weariness  of  life. 

It  was  mainly  to  shake  off  the  pressure  of 
disappointment  at  home  that  he  rushed  into 
the  Turkish  war,  only  to  see  thousands  of  his 
soldiery  perish  of  fever  in  the  marshes  of  the 
Lower  Danube,  and  an  Austrian  army,  for 
the  first  time  since  the  rescue  of  Vienna,  re*^ 
treat  in  disorderly  dispersion  before  the  un- 
believers. Then  came  the  successful  progress 
of  the  Belgian  revolt,  a  revolt  of  which  the 
cause  was  as  undeniably  rightful,  as  the  con- 
duct and  agents  were  contemptible;  begun 
by  the  drunken  students  of  Louvain  shouting 
for  "  better  beer,  bread,  and  tobacco,  and  or- 
thodox doctrine  and  discipline,"  continued  by 
a  coalition  of  priest-led  zealots  and  empty 
democrats.  Conquered  at  last,  he  had  to 
withdraw  reforms  and  restore  privileges, 
even  with  greater  precipitation  than  he  had 
evinced  in  the  first  part  of  his  career.  In  a 
few  months,  all  his  greater  innovations  were 
cancelled,  except  the  abolition  of  serfdom 
and  the  toleration  edict.  He  could  not  sur- 
vive his  broken  hopes  and  outraged  authori- 
ty. By  whatever  name  his  last  disease  might 
pass  in  the  physician's  catalogue,  over-exer- 
tion, dropsy  of  the  chest,  malaria  fever 
brought  bacK  from  the  Turkish  frontier — the 
true  cause,  a  broken  heart,  was  plain  enough 
to  all.  Yet  he  retained  to  the  last,  both  the 
fundamental  heroism  of  his  character,  and 
bis  clear  conviction  of  the  righteousness  of 
his  cause.  "  I  know  my  own  heart,"  he  wrote ; 
''  1  am  convinced  in  my  innermost  soul  of  the 
purity  of  my  intentions ;  and  I  hope,  that 
when  I  am  no  more,  posterity  will  examine, 
aye  and  judge,  more  considerately,  more 
justly,  and  more  impartially  than  the  present 
age,  what  I  have  done  for  my  people." 

"Here  lies  Joseph  II."  is  his  well-known 
self-composed  epitaph,  "who  failed  in  every- 
thing he  undertook.  They  were  the  words 
of  disappointment,  not  of  truth.  The  great- 
ness of  what  he  achieved  has  been  under- 
estimated, only  because  measured  by  the 
gigantic  scale  of  what  he  projected.  The 
two  great  measures  which  we  have  just 
noticed,  alone  suffice  to  immortalize  him :  the 
liberation  of  the  Leibeigeners,  which  has  re- 
mained an  accomplished  fact ;  and  the  JBdict 
of  Toleration,  which,  however  it  may  have 
appeared  at  times  to  be  menaced)  has  never 
as  yet  been  seriously  encroached  upon.  But 
these  torm  only  a  part  of  what  his  empire 
has  to  thank  him  for.    As  his  latest  biogra- 


pher (Rose)  observes,  much  of  what  he  re- 
tracted was  lost  in  form  only,  but  preserved 
in  substance.  Independently,  of  mere  politi- 
cal theory,  the  importance  of  his  administra- 
tive changes  is  fully  recognised  by  Austrian 
statesmen,  who  know  the  practical  necessity 
of  unity  of  action  on  the  part  of  the  central 
power.  The  obstinate  and  compact  strength 
opposed  by  Austria  to  the  invasions  of  Na- 
poleon, is  mainly  attributed  by  some  to  the 
solidity  which  his  reforms  communicated  to 
her  executive ;  and  Count  Ficquelmoi>t,  in 
his  recent  writings,  appeals  to  the  occurrences 
of  1848,  as  bearing  the  most  decisive  evidence 
to  the  correctness  of  his  judgment  of  her 
prospects  and  requirements.  The  national 
system  of  education,  often  admired  even  by 
those  least  in  love  with  Anstrian  institutions, 
is  mainly  the  result  of  his  regulations.  The 
good  which  he  did  by  the  removal  of  feudnl 
and  municipal  obstructions  to  industry,  it  is 
scarcely  possible  to  over-estimate.  Without 
believing  what  some  affirm — that  the  popu- 
lation of  Austria  increased  by  one- fourth  in 
the  ten  years  of  his  reign,  while  its  revenue 
undoubtedly  doubled- — we  have  no  doubt 
that  a  great  and  simultaneous  increase  of 
population  and  wealth  bore  incontestable  evi- 
dence to  the  soundness  of  his  economical 
measures. 

Has  posterity  yet  attained  that  impartiality 
respecting  him  for  which  he  prayed  ?  Placed 
beyond  the  sympathies  of  both  the  great 
leagues  of  modern  thinkers,  he  has  been  con- 
demned and  satirized  by  liberals  as  an  abso- 
lutist— by  the  partisans  of  reaction  as  a  dem- 
agogue. With  courtiers  and  statesmen  it 
was  the  fashion,  particularly  during  the  rev- 
olutionary era,  to  sneer  at  him  as  a  mistaken 
visionary.  There  was,  at  all  events,  one  class 
among  whom  his  memory  was  long  and  fond- 
ly cherished :  and  it  was  that  to  the  sym- 
pathies of  which  he  would  best  have  loved 
to  make  his  appeal.  The  Austrian  peasant- 
ry of  German  blood  are  at  once  an  eminently 
loyal  race,  and  one  on  which  affection' and 
kindness  are  rarely  thrown  away.  They 
were  never  misled  in  their  judgment  of  him. 
Even  when  they  were  kneeling  before  the 
carriage  of  the  Pope,  they  had  no  idea  that 
they  were  assuming  an  attitude  of  opposition 
to  their  friend  and  Emperor.  No  royal  name 
lives  among  them  at  this  day,  in  revel'ential 
tradition,  so  truly  as  that  of  Kaiser  Joseph. 
Their  estimate  of  him  cannot  be  better  ex- 
pressed than  in  the  simple  apologue  which  is 
still  popular  in  Austria.  The  peasantry  of  a 
Styrian  village  are  assembled  to  discuss  the 
news  of  the  Emperor's  death.    They  will  not 


200 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  SON. 


[Oct., 


believe  it, — it  is  a  he  of  the  coart  nobles, 
the  lawyers,  the  lazy  friars.  While  they 
are  debating,  information  is  brought  of  the 
revival,  bit  by  bit,  of  the  old  order  of 
things :  the  Carthusians  have  returned  to 
the  neighboring  abbey,  the  Capuchins  have 
resumed  their  rounds,  the  Forstmeister  and 
the  gamekeeper  have  reoccupied  their  lodges 
and  the  steward  is  sitting  at  the  receipt  of 
feudal  dues.  The  old^t  peasant  risei^  and 
takes  off  his  hat, — "  Then  Joseph  is  dead  in- 
deed,— may  Heaven  have  mercy  on  his  soul." 
Sixty  years  have  since  elapsed,  and  the 
prolific  house  of  Hapsburg-Lorraine  has  fur- 
nished two  numerous  generations  of  princes, 
several  distinguished  for  civic  virtues,  and 
one  at  least  of  high  military  renown  ;  but  no 
spirit  like  that  of  Joseph,  or  his  mother,  has 
animated  the  race  since  his  remains  desended 
to  the  vaults  of  the  Capuchins,  nor  has  any- 
thing occurred  to  refute  the  saying  of  Eau- 
nitz,  that  it  takes  "  a  hundred  years  to  make 
an  Austrian  great  nian."  We  should  have 
wished^  had  space  permitted,  to  follow  Dr. 
Vehse  through  his  last  volume,  bringing  the 
internal  history  of  the  monarchy  to  our  own 
times,  and  showing  the  connection  of  the 
present  with  the  past.  We  should  then 
have  seen,  how  the  long  struggle  with  France 
purified  away,  as  it  were,  whatever  there 
was  of  encroaching  and  arbitrary  in  the 
foreign  policy  of  Austria,  and  substituted  for 
it  a  strong  principle  of  self-sufficing  forbear- 
ance. We  should  have  seen  how  the  same 
events  raised  into  life,  for  the  third  time,  the 
military  monarchy,  and  created  that  heroic 
army,  itself  almost  a  nation,  of  which  the 
endurance  and  constant  fidelity  are  among 
the  most  remarkable  features  of  political  his- 
tory in  our  age ;  whose  unsoldierly  spirit  is 
the  one  living  principle  of  unity  in  that  mis- 
cellaneous empire.  We  should  recognize, 
in  the  long  administration  of  Metternicn,  one 
painful  endeavor  to  maintain  the  status  quo, 
by  a  temperate  and  self-denying  policy  with- 
out, but  by  unsparing  and  unsleeping  re- 
pression within :  a  repression  the  less  endu- 
rable, because  enforced  by  statesmen  who 
had  no  faith  in  its  effects,  like  religious  per- 
secution by  unbelievers.  For  all  the  while, 
as  we  have  said  above,  these  have  seemed 
to  labor  under  the  consciousness  that  the 
elements  of  that  stability,  to  which  they  sa- 
crificed all  other  considerations,  were  tempo- 
rary only.     And  so  matters  remain  to  this  I 


day,  notwithstanding  tj^e  unquestionable 
strength  which  the  cause  of  order^  as  under- 
stood in  Austria,  has  derived  from  the  mad 
outbreak  of  1848  and  its  first  conseqnences. 
There  are  indeed  many  who  imagine,  though 
recent  events  have  made  the  trade  of  pro- 
phesying more  hazardous  than  ever,  that 
those  events  may  have  brought  the  catas- 
trophe nearer.  Many  of  the  manifestations 
of  local  feeling  then  elicited,  may  now  ap- 
pear irrational  enough.  We  may  smile  as 
we  please  on  the  recollection  of  Austro- Ger- 
mans raving  abuut  the  Frankfort  Parliament 
and  the  National  Fleet ;  haughty  Magyars 
preaching  French  democracy,  with  one  foot 
trampling  on  the  Wallach  and  the  other  on 
the  Croat;  fierce  military  borderers  brandish- 
ing their  sabres,  not  as  of  old  for  plunder 
and  provant,  but  for  Federalism,  and  Pan- 
slavism,  and  all  the  inconceivable  dreams  of 
the  German  Professorate.  But  the  practi- 
cal question  for  our  day  is,  whether  the 
events  to  which  we  refer  have  increased  that 
mutual  repulsion  between  the  several  races, 
through  which  the  strength  of  the  central 
government  is  now  mainly  preserved,  or  whe- 
ther they  have  been  taught  something  of  the 
necessity  of  union,  and  of  forming  mutual 
and  balanced  leagues  for  their  support.  If 
the  latter  be  really  the  case,  the  map  of  Eu- 
rope can  hardly  remain  long  as  it  is.  And 
those  politicians,  both  within  and  without 
Austria,  who  wish  to  avert  such  an  end,  and 
at  the  same  time  look  beyond  the  probable 
duration  of  a  throne  supported  by  bayonets, 
and  a  bundle  of  States  tied  together  by  red 
tape,  have  to  consider  the  double  alternative 
which  now  deeply  occupies  many  minds, 
whether  Austria  must  revert  to  the  centraH- 
ztng  policy  of  Joseph,  substituting  by  de- 
grees liberty  for  repression,  as  becomes  the 
age,  and  creating  an  Austrian  nation  through 
and  benel^th  Austrian  institutions,  or  must 
have  recourse,  in  due  measure,  to  that  feder- 
al principle  which  has  had  such  triumphant 
results  elsewhere.  Either  project  is  full  of 
difficulties,  but  neither,  perhaps,  beyond  the 
reach  of  practical  accomplishment,  if  the  en- 
ergy which  Austria  has  shown  in  self-asser- 
tion and  defence,  were  turned  towards  inter- 
nal reform,  and  courageous  concessions  made 
to  that  spread  of  political  will  and  intelli- 
gence which  is  inevitably  transforming  the 
community,  there  as  elsewhere,  from  an  inert 
mass,  to  a  living  body. 


1858.3 


MODERN  BRIT]pH  OJUTOBa 


201 


From    Hogg'i    Initmctor. 


MODERN  BRITISH  ORATORS.— No. 1.  EDMUND  BURKE. 


BT   OXOROB   OILFILLAN. 


All  bail  to  Edmund  Burke,  the  greatest 
and  least  appreciated  man  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  even  as  Milton  had  been  the  great: 
est  and  least  appreciated  man  of  the  century 
before !  Each  century,  in  fact,  bears  its  pe- 
culiarly great  man,  and  as  certainly  either 
neglects  or  abuses  him.  Nor  do  after  ages 
always  repair  the  deficiency.  For  instance, 
between  the  writing  of  the  first  and  second 
sentences  of  this  paper,  we  have  happened  to 
take  up  a  London  periodical,  which  has  new- 
ly come  in,  and  have  found  Burke  first  put 
at  the  feet  of  Fox,  and  secondly,  accused  of 
being  actuated  in  all  his  political  conduct  by 
two  objects — those  of  places  and  pensions 
for  himself  and  his  family ;  so  that  our  esti- 
mate of  him,  although  late,  may  turn  out, 
on  the  whole,  a  "  word  in  season."  It  is,  at 
all  events,  refreshing  for  us  to  look  back 
from  the  days  of  a  Derby,  a  Disraeli,  and  a 
Biographer  Russell,  to  those  of  the  great 
and  eloquent  Burke,  and  to  turn  from  the 
inhuman  rayings  and  essential  atheism  of  the 
"Latter  Day  Pamphlets,"  to  the  noble  rage  and 
mi^ificent  philippics  of  a  *'  Regicide  Peace." 

First  of  all,  in  this  paper,  we  feel  ourselves 
constrained  to  proclaim  what,  even  yet,  is 
not  fully  understood — Burke's  ,unutterable 
superiority  to  all  his  parliamentary  rivals. 
It  was  not  simply  that  he  was  above  them  as 
one  bough  in  a  tree  is  above  another,  but 
above  them  as  the  sun  is  above  the  top  of 
the  tree,  and  Sirius  above  the  sun.  He  was 
'•  not  of  tbeir  order."  He  had  philosophic  in- 
tellect, while  they  had  only  anthmetic.  He 
had  genius,  while  they  had  not  even  fancy. 
He  had  heart,  while  they  had  only  passions. 
He  had  widest  and  most  comprehensive 
views ;  their  minds  had  little  real  power  of 
generalization.  He  had  religion;  most  of 
them  were  infidels  of  that  lowest  order,  who 
imagine  that  Christianity  is  a  monster,  bred 
between  priestcraft  and  political  expediency. 
He  loved  literature  with  his  inmost  soul ;  they 
rPox  on  this  point  must  be  excepted)  knew 
little  about  it  and  cared  less.  In  a  word, 
tbey  were  men  of  their  time ;  he  belonged  to 


all  ages,  and  his  mind  was  as  catholic  as  it 
was  clear  and  vast. 

Contrast  the  works  and  speeches  of  the 
men !  Has  a  sentence  of  Pitt's  ever  been 
quoted  as  a  maxim  ?  Does  one  passage  of 
Fox  appear  in  even  our  common  books  of 
elocutionary  extracts  ?  Are  Sheridan's  flights 
remembered  except  for  their  ambitious  and 
adventurous  badness?  Unless  one  or  two 
showy  climaxes  of  Gratten  and  Curran,  what 
else  of  them  is  extant  ?  How  different  with 
Burke  I  His  works  are  to  this  hour  burning 
with  genius,  and  swarming  with  wisdom. 
You  cannot  open  a  page,  without  finding  ei- 
ther a  profound  truth  expressed  in  the  short- 
est and  sharpest  form,  looking  up  at  you  like 
an  eye ;  or  a  brilliant  image  flashing  across 
with  the  speed  and  splendor  of  a  meteor ;  or 
a  description,  now  grotesque,  and  now  gor- 
geous ;  or  a  literary  allusion,  cooling  and 
sweetening  the  fervor  of  the  political  discus- 
sion ;  or  a  quotation  from  the  poets,  so  point- 
ed and  pat,  that  it  assumes  the  rank  of  an 
original  beauty.  Burke's  writing  is  almost 
unrivalled  for  its  combination  and  dexterous 
interchange  of  excellencies.  It  is  by  turns 
statistics,  metphysics,  painting,  poetry,  elo- 
quence, wit,  and  wisdom.  It  is  so  cool  and 
so  warm,  so  mechanical  and  so  impulsive,  so 
measured  and  so  impetuous,  so  clear  and  so 
profound,  so  simple  and  so  rich.  Its  senten- 
ces are  now  the  shortest  and  now  the  long- 
est ;  now  bare  as  Butler,  and  now  figured  as 
Jeremy  Taylor  ;  now  conversational,  and  now 
ornate,  intense,  and  elaborate  in  the  highest 
degree.  He  closes  many  of  his  paragraphs 
in  a  rushing  thunder  and  fiery  flood  of  elo- 
quence, and  opens  the  next  as  calmly  as  if 
he  had  ceased  to  be  the  same  being.  Indeed, 
he  is  the  least  monotonous  and  manneristic 
of  modern  writers,  and  in  this,  as  in  so  many 
other  respects,  excels  such  authors  as  Mac- 
aulay  and  Chalmers,  who  are  sometimes  ab- 
surdly compared  to  him.  He  has,  in  fact, 
four  or  five  distinct  styles,  and  possesses 
equal  mastery  ovep  alL  He  exhibits  speci- 
mens of  the  law-paper  style  in  his  artiolee 


202 


MODEBN  BRITISH  ORATOB& 


[Oct., 


of  charge  against  Warren  Hastings ;  of  the 
calm,  sober,  nncolored  argument,  in  his 
''  Thoughts  on  the  present  Discontents ;"  of 
the  ingenious,  high-finished,  but  temperate 
philosophical  essay,  in  his  "Sublime  and  Beau- 
tiful ;"  of  the  flushed  and  fiery  diatribe,  here 
storming  into  fierce  scorn  and  invective,  and 
there  soaring  into  poetical  eloquence,  in  his 
"  Letter  to  a  noble  Lord,"  and  in  his  '*  Regi- 
cide Peace ;"  and  of  a  style  combining  all 
these  qualities,  and  which  he  uses  in  his 
speech  on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts,  and 
in  his  "  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution." 
Thus  you  may  read  a  hundred  pages  of  him 
at  once,  without  finding  any  power  but  pure 
intellect  at  work,  and  at  other  times  every 
sentence  is  starred  with  an  image,  even  as 
every  moment  of  some  men's  sleep  is  spirit- 
ualized by  a  dream ;  and,  in  many  of  them, 
figures  cluster  and  crowd  upon  each  other  in 
bickering  profusion.  It  is  remarkable  that 
h^  imagination  becomes  apparently  more 
powerful  as  he  draws  near  the  end  of  his 
lourhey.  The  reason  t)f  this  probably  wf^, 
he  became  more  thoroughly  in  earnest  toward 
the  close.  Till  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings, 
or  even  on  to  the  outbreak  of  the  French 
Revolution,  he  was  a  volcano  speaking  and 
snorting  out  fire  at  intervals — ^an  Etna  at  ease 
— but  from  these  dates  he  began  to  pour  out 
incessant  torrents  of  molten  lava  upon  the 
wondering  nations.  Figures  are  a  luxury  to 
cool  thinkers ;  they  are  a  necessity  to  pro- 
phets. The  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel 
have  no  choice.  Their  thought  must  come 
forth  with  the  fiery  edge  of  metaphor  around 
it.  The  Minerva  of  deep  earnest  feeling  ever 
rushes  out  in  armor. 

Let  us  look,  in  the  course  of  the  re- 
marks that  follow,  to  the  following  points — to 
Burke's  powers,  to  his  possible  achievements, 
to  his  actual  works^  to  his  oratory,  to  his 
conversation,  to  his  private  character,  to  his 
critics,  and  to  the  question,  what  has  been 
the  net  result  of  his  influence  as  a  writer  and 
a  thinker  ? 

I.  We  would  seek  to  analyze  shortly  his 
powers.  These  were  wonderful,  in  their  va- 
riety, comprehensiveness,  depth,  harmony, 
and  brilliance.  He  was  endowed  in  the  very 
"prodigality  of  heaven"  with  genius  of  a  crea- 
tive order,  with  boundless  fertility  of  fancy, 
with  piercing  acuteness  and  comprehension 
of  intellect,  with  a  tendency  leading  him  ir- 
resistibly down  into  the  depths  of  every  sub- 
ject, and  with  an  eloquence  at  once  massive, 
profuse,  fiery,  and  flexible.  To  thewe  pow- 
ers he  united,  what  are  not  often  found  in 
their  company,  slow  plodding  perseverance, 


indomitable  industry,  and  a  cautious  balan- 
cing disposition,.  We  may  apply  to  him  the 
wonis  of  Scripture,  "  He  could  mount  np 
with  wings  as  an  eagle,  he  could  run  ana 
not  be  weary, he  couldtoa^X; and  not  be  faint.^ 
Air,  earth,  and  the  things  under  the  earth, 
were  equally  familiar  to  him,  and  you  are 
amazed. to  see  how  easily  he  can  fold  up  the 
mighty  wings  which  had  swept  the  ether, 
and  '*knit"  the  mountain  to  the  sky,  and  turn 
to  mole-like  minings  in  the  depths  of  the 
miry  clay,  which  he  found  it  necessary  also 
to  explore.  These  vast  and  various  powers 
he  had  fed  with  the  most  extensive,  most 
minute,  most  accurate,  most  artistically  man- 
aged reading,  with  elaborate  study,  with  the 
closest  yet  kindliest  observation  of  human 
nature,  and  with  free  and  copious  intercourse 
with  all  classes  of  men.  And  to  inspirit  and 
inflame  their  action,  there  were  a  profound 
sense  of  public  duty,  ardent  benevolence,  the 
passions  of  a  hot  but  generous  heart,  and  a 
strong- felt,  although  uncanting  and  unosten- 
tatious piety. 

2.  His  possible  achievements.  To  what 
was  a  man  like  this,  who  could  at  once  soar 
and  delve,  overtop  the  mountain,  skim  the 
surface,  and  explore  the  mine,  not  competent? 
He  was,  shall  we  say  ?  a  mental  cameleopard 
— patient  as  the  camel,  and  as  the  leopard 
swift  and  spotted  with  splendor.  We  nave 
only  in  his  present  works  the  fragments  of 
his  genius.     Had  he  not  in  some  measure, 

**  Bom  for  the  universe,  narrowed  his  mind, 
And  to  party  given  up  what  was  meant  for 
mankind, ' 

what  rich  works  on  general  subjects  had  he 
written  !  It  had  been,  perhaps,  a  system  of 
philosophy,  merging  and  kindling  into  poetry, 
resembling  Brown's  "Lectures,"  but  informed 
by  more  masculine  genius;  or  it  hvd  been, 
perhaps,  a  treatise  on  the  Science  of  Politics, 
viewed  on  a  large  and  liberal  scale ;  or  it  had 
been,  perhaps,  a  history  of  his  country, 
abounding  in  a  truer  philosophy  and  a  more 
powerful  narrative  than  Hume,  and  in  pic- 
tures more  brilliant  than  Macaulay^s ;  or  it 
had  been,  perhaps,  a  work  on  the  profound- 
er  principles  of  literature  or  of  art ;  or  it  had 
been,  perhaps — for  this  too  was  in  his  power 
— some  stram  of  solemn  poetry,  rising  higher 
than  Akenside  or  Thomson ;  or  else  some 
noble  Argument  or  Apology  for  the  faith 
that  was  in  him  in  the  blessed  religion  of 
Jesus.  Any  or  all  of  these  tasks  we  believe 
to  have  been  thoroughly  within  the  compass 
of  Burke's  universal  mind,  had  his  lot  been 
otherwise  cast,  and  had  his  genius  not  been 


1858.] 


MODERN  BRITISH  ORATOBR 


2f>3 


so  fettered  by  oircumstonce  and  subject,  that 
be  Beems  at  times  a  splendid  generalizer  in 
chains. 

8.  These  decided  views,  as  to  the  grand 
possibilities  of  this  powerful  spirit,  must  not 
be  permitted  to  blind  us  to  what  he  has 
actually  done.  This,  alike  in  quantity  and  in 
quality,  challenges  our  wonder.  Two  mon- 
ster octavos  of  his  works  are  lying  before  us ; 
and  we  believe  that,  besides,  there  is  extant 
matter  from  his  pen  equal  to  another  volume. 
What  strikes  you  most  about  the  quality  of 
his  writing,  is  the  amazinpf  restlessness  and 
richness  of  his  thought.  His  book  is  an  ant- 
hill of  stirring,  swarming,  blackening  ideas 
and  images.  His  style  often  reposes — his 
mind  never.  Hall  very  unjustly  accuses  him 
«f  amplification.  There  are,  indeed,  a  few 
passages  of  superb  amplification  sprinkled 
through  his  writings ;  but  this  is  rarely  his 
manner,  and  you  never,  as  in  some  writers, 
see  a  thought  small  as  the  bodj  gf  a  midge 
suspended  between  the  wingrs  of  an  eagle. 
He  has  too  much  to  say,  to  care  in  general 
about  expanding  or  beating  it  thin.  Were 
he  dallying  long  with,  or  seeking  to  distend, 
an  image,  an  hundred  more  would  become 
impatient  for  their  turn.  Foster  more  truly 
remarks,  ^  Burke's  sentences  are  pointed  at 
the  end — instinct  with  pungent  sense  to  the 
last  syllable,  they  are  like  a  charioteer's 
whip,  which  not  only  has  a  long  and  effective 
lash,  but  cracks  and  inflicts  a  still  smarter 
sensation  at  the  end.  They  are  like  some 
serpents,  whose  life  is  said  to  be  fiercest  in 
the  tail."  It  is  a  mind  full  to  overflowing, 
pouring  out,  now  calmly  and  now  in  tumult 
and  heat,  now  deliberately  and  now  in  swift 
torrents,  its  thoughts,  feelings,  acquirements, 
and  speculations.  This  rich  restlessness 
might,  by  and  by,  become  oppressive,  were 
it  not  for  the  masterly  ease  of  manner,  and 
the  great  variety,  as  well  as  quantity,  of 
thinking.  He  never  harps  too  long  on  one 
string.  He  is  perpetually  making  swift  and 
subtle  transitions  from  the  grave  to  the  gay, 
from  the  severe  to  the  lively,  from  facts  to 
figures,  from  statistics  to  philosophical  specu- 
lations, from  red-hot  invective  to  caustic 
irony,  from  the  splendid  filth  of  his  abuse  to 
the  flaming  cataracts  of  his  eloquence  and 
poetry.  His  manner  of  writings  has  been  ac- 
cused of  '^  caprice,"  but  unjustly.  Burke 
was  a  great  speculator  on  style,  and  was 
regulated  in  most  of  its  movements  by  the 
principles  of  art,  as  well  as  impelled  by  the 
force  of  genius.  He  held,  for  instance,  that 
every  great  sentence  or  paragraph  should 
contain  a  thought,  a  sentiment,  and  an  image ; 


and  we  find  this  rule  attended  to  in  all  his 
more  elaborate  passages.  He  was  long 
thought  a  "  flowery  and  showy"  writer,  and 
contrasted,  by  Parr  and  others,  unfavorably 
with  such  writers  as  Macintosh  and  even 
Paine.  Few  now  will  have  the  hardihood  to 
reiterate  such  egregious  nonsense.  His  flow- 
ers were,  indeed,  numerous  ;  but  they  sprang 
out  naturally,  and  were  the  unavoidable 
bloom  of  deep  and  noble  thought.  We  call 
the  foam  of  a  little  river  "  froth,"  that  of 
Niagara,  or  the  ocean,  "spray."  Burke's 
imagination  was  the  giant  spray  of  a  giant 
stream,  and  his  fancy  resembled  the  rain- 
bows which  often  appear  suspended  in  it. 
Besides  all  this,  he  had  unlimited  command 
of  words  and  allusions,  culled  from  every 
science,  and  art,  and  page  of  history ;  and 
this  has  rendered,  and  will  ever  render,  his 
writings  legible  to  those  who  cire  very  little 
for  his  political  opinions,  and  have  slender 
interest  in  the  causes  he  won  or  lost.  His 
faults  were  not  numerous,  although  very 
palpable.  He  cannot  always  reason  with 
calm  consecutiveness.  He  sometimes  per* 
mits,  not  so  much  his  imagination,  as  his 
morbidly  active  intellect  and  his  fierce  pas- 
sions, to  run  him  into  extravagance.  He 
lays  often  too  much  stress  upon  small  causes, 
although  this  sprung  from  what  was  one  of 
his  principal  powers — that  of  generalizing 
from  the  particular,  and,  Cuvier-like,  seeing 
entire  mammoths  in  small  and  single  bones. 
He  is  occasionally  too  truculent  in  his  invec- 
tive, and  too  personal  in  his  satire.  His 
oracular  tone  is  sometimes  dogmatic  and 
offensive ;  and  he  frequently  commits  errors 
of  taste,  especially  when  his  descriptions 
verge  upon  the  humorous ;  for.  Irishman 
though  he  was,  his  wit  and  humor  were  far 
inferior  to  his  other  powers. 

We  select  three,  from  among  his  produc- 
tions, for  short  special  criticism  :  his  Speech 
on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts,  his  "  Reflec- 
tions on  the  French  Elevolution,"  and  his 
"  Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace."  The  first  is 
probably  the  most  complete  oration  in  litera- 
ture. Henry  Rogers,  indeed,  prefers  the 
speeches  of  Demosthenes,  as  higher  speci- 
mens of  pure  oratory ;  and  so  they  are,  if 
you  take  oratory  in  a  limited  sense,  as  the 
art  of  persuasion  and  immediate  effect.  But. 
Burke's  speech,  if  not  in  this  sense  equal  to 
the  "  Pro  Corona,"  even  as  Milton's  "  Areo- 
pagitica"  is  not  in  this  sense  equal  to  Sheri- 
dan on  the  *'  Begum  Charge,"  is,  in  all  other 
elements  which  go  to  constitute  the  excel- 
lence of  a  composition,  incomparably  supe- 
rior.   You  see  a  great  mind  meeting  with  a 


204 


If ODEBN  BBiriBH  bSATORa 


[Oclt 


great  subject,  and  intimate  with  it»  in  all  its 
length,  and  breadth,  and  depth,  and  thick- 
ness ;  here  diving  down  into  its  valleys,  and 
there  standing  serene  upon  its  heights ;  here 
ranging  at  ease  thrown  its  calms,  and  there, 
with  tyrant  nerve,  ruhng  its  storms  of  pas- 
sion and  harrowing  interest.  The  picture  of 
Hyder  All,  and  of  the  "  Cloud"  which  burst 
upon  the  plains  of  the  Camatic,  has  been 
subjected  to  Brougham's  clumsy  and  captious 
criticism,  but  has  come  out  unscathed ;  and, 
we  venture  to  say,  that  in  massive,  unforced 
magnificence  it  remains  unsurpassed.  There 
is  no  trick,  no  heaving  effort,  no  "  double, 
double  toil  and  trouble,"  as  in  most  of  Lord 
Brougham's  own  elaborate  passages.  The 
flight  is  as  calm  and  free,  as  it  is  majestic 
and  powerful ; 

*^  Sailing  with  supreme  dominion, 
Through  the  azure  deep  of  air.'* 

His  "Reflections"  was  certainly  the  most 
powerful  pamphlet  ever  written,  if  pamphlet 
It  can  be  called,  which  is  only  a  pamphlet  in 
form,  but  a  book  in  reality.  It  should  have 
been  called  a  "  Reply  to  the  French  Revo- 
lution." Etna  had  spoken,  and  this  was 
Vesuvius  answering  in  feebler,  but  still  strong 
and  far-heard  thunder.  Its  power  was 
proved  by  its  effect.  It  did  not,  indeed, 
create  the  terror  of  Europe  against  that 
dreadful  Shape  of  Democracy  which  had 
arisen  over  its  path,  and  by  its  shadow  had 
turned  all  the  waters  into  blood ;  but  it  con- 
densed, pointed,  and  propelled  the  common 
fear  and  horror  into  active  antagonism  with 
its  opponent.  It  sharpened  the  sword  of 
the  prevailing  desire  for  the  fight.  It  was 
the  first  wild  wailing  trumpet  of  a  battle- 
field of  twenty-four  years'  duration.  One  is 
reminded  of  the  contest  between  Fingal  and 
the  Spirit  of  Loda.  There  seemed,  at  first, 
a  great  disparity  between  the  solitary  warrior 
and  the  dreadful  Form  riding  upon  the  mid- 
night tempest,  and  surrounded  with  his 
panoply  of  clouds.  But  the  warrior  was 
ipse  agmeut  his  steel  was  sharp  and  true ;  he 
struck  at  the  demon,  and  the  demon  shrieked, 
rolled  himself  together,  and  retired  a  space, 
to  return,  however,  again,  with  his  painful 
wound  healed,  and  the  fury  of  his  blasts 
aggravated,  when  there  was  no  Burke  to 
oppose  him.  The  merits  of  this  production 
are,  we  think,  greatly  enhanced  by  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  vehicle  in  which  its  thoughts 
ride.  The  book  is  a  letter ;  but  such  a  let- 
ter 1  It  reminds  us  of  a  Brobdignagian 
epistle.  In  this  simplest  shape  of  literature, 
we  find  philosophy  the  most  subtle ;  invec- 


tive the  most  sublime ;  speculation  the  most 
fior-stretching ;  Titanic  ridicule,  like  the 
cachinnation  of  a  Cyclops ;  piercing  pathos ; 
powerful  historic  painting;  and  eloquence 
the  most  dazzling  that  ever  combined  depth 
with  splendor.  That  it  is  the  ultimate  esti- 
mate of  *  the  French  Revolution,  is  contended 
for  by  no  one.  That  shall  only  be  seen  after 
the  history  of  earth  is  ended,  and  after  it  is 
all  inscribed  (to  allude  to  the  beautiful 
Arabian  fable)  in  laconics  of  light  ever 
"  Allah's  head  ;"  but,  meantime,  while  ad- 
mitting that  Burke's  view  of  it  is  in  some 
points  one-sided,  and  in  others  colored  hj 
prejudice,  we  contend  that  he  has,  with 
general  fidelity,  painted  the  thing  as  it  thea 
was — the  bloody  bantling  as  he  saw  it  in  the 
cradle — although  he  did  not  foresee  that 
circumstances  and  events  were  greatly  to 
modify  and  soften  its  features,  as  it  advanced. 
Let  him  have  praise,  at  least,  for  this,  that  he 
discerned  and  exposed  the  true  character  of 
modem  infidelity,  which,  amid  all  the  dis- 
guises it  has  since  assumed,  is  still,  and  shall 
remain  till  its  destruction,  the  very  monster 
of  vanity,  vice,  malignity,  and  sciolism* 
which  he  has,  by  a  few  touches  of  lightning, 
shown  it  to  be.  How  thoroughly  he  com- 
prehended the  devil-inspired  monkey,  Vol- 
taire ;  and  the  winged  frojg,  Rousseau ;  and 
that  iron  machine  of  artbtic  murder,  Carnot; 
and  La  Fayette,  the  republican  coxcomb; 
and  that  rude  incarnation  of  the  genius  of 
the  guillotine,  Robespierre  I  Through  those 
strange  satanic  shapes  he  moves  in  the 
majesty  of  his  virtue  and  his  manly  genius, 
like  a  lofty  human  being  through  the  corner 
of  a  museum  appropriated  to  monsters — 
not,  like  Carlyle,  snuffing  the  tainted  air,  and 
doing  violence  to  his  own  senses  by  seeking 
to  include  them  in  the  catalogue  x>f  men,  nor 
in  an  attitude  of  effected  pity  and  transcen- 
dental charity; — but  feeling  and  saying, 
"  How  ugly  and  detestable  these  miscreations 
are,  and,  faugh  1  what  a  stench  they  emit." 

In  a  similar  spirit,  and  with  even  greater 
power,  does  he  seek  to  exorcise  the  evil 
spirit  of  his  times,  m  his  "Letters  on  a 
Regicide  Peace."  These  glorious  fraffments 
employed  his  last  hours,  and  the  shadow 
of  the  grave  lies  solemnly  upon  them,  fluc- 
tuating, as  it  were,  at  times,  in  the  breath  of 
his  impetuous  genius.  When  he  wrote 
them,  although  far  from  being  a  very  old 
man  (he  was  just  sixty-four),  yet  the  cur- 
tains of  hb  life's  hope  had  suddenly  been 
dropped  around  him.  It  was  not  that  he 
and  his  old  friends,  the  Whigs,  had  qurrelled ; 
it  was  not  that  he  had  stood  by  the  death- 


1858.] 


MODERK  BBmSH  ORATOBa 


205 


bed  of  Johnson,  and  had  undergone  the  far 
severer  pang  which  attended  his  divorce 
from  the  friendship  of  Fox  ;  it  was  not  that 
his  circumstances  were  straitened;  it  was 
not  that  hu  motives  were  misrepresented ; 
it  was  not  that  ^*  misery  had  made  him  ac- 
quainted wMth  strange  bedfellows/'  and 
driven  him  to  herd  with  beings  so  inferior 
and  radically  different  as  Pitt  and  Dundas ; 
— but  it  was  that  death  had  snatched  away 
him  in  whom  he  had  "  garnered  up  his  heart 
— ^his  son.  Be  it  that  that  son  was  not  all 
his  father  had  thought  him  to  be,  to  others 
— he  VHU  it  all  to  him.  If  not  rich  himself, 
was  it  nothing  that  his  father  had  lavished 
on  him  his  boundless  wealth  of  esteem  and 
affection  ?  As  it  is,  he  shines  before  us  in 
the  light  of  his  father's  eloquence  for  ever- 
more. Strange  and  enviable  this  power  of 
Senius  1  It  can  not  only  *'  give  us  back  the 
ead  even  in  the  loveliest  looks  they  wore,*' 
but  it  can  give  them  a  loveliness  they  never 
possessed;  it  can  defy  the  obscure,  it  can 
illuminate  the  dark/it  can  enbalm  the  de- 
cayed ;  and  in  its  transforming  splendor,  the 
common  worm  becomes  a  glow-worm,  the 
common  cloud  a  cloud  of  fire  and  glory, 
every  arch  a  nunbow,  every  spark  a  star, 
and  every  star  a  sun.  It  can  preserve  ob- 
scure sorrows,  and  the  obscurer  causes  of 
these  sorrows,  and  hang  a  splendor  in  the 
tears  of  childhood,  and  eternize  th&  pathos 
of  those  little  pangs  which  rend  little  hearts. 
How  De  Quincey,  for  example,  has  beautified 
the  sorrows,  ana  peculiarities,  and  small  ad- 
ventures of  his  boyhood — and  in  what  a 
transfiguring  beam  of  imagination  does  he 
show  the  dead  face  of  his  dear  sister,  Eliza- 
beth!* And  this  young  Burke  sleeps  at 
once  guarded  and  glorified  beneath  the 
bright  angel  wings  of  his  father's  mighty 
genius. 

It  is  most  affecting  to  come  upon  those 
plaintive  expressions  of  desolation  which 
abound  in  Burke's  later  works,  as  where  he 
calls  himself  an  **  unhappy  man,"  and  wishes 
to  be  permitted  to  "  enjoy  in  his  retreat  the 
melancholy  privileges  of  obscurity  and  sor- 


*  The  anthor,  in  this  beantifiil  panage,  refers  to 
the  "Atttobiographieal  Sketehea"  of  Thomas  de 
Qnincey,  last  publiahed,  formiDg  the  first  volume 
of  his  ooflected  and  selected  worka^  The  readers 
of  this  jounial  know  the  reason  why  we  do  not 
draw  their  attention  to  thi»  volame,  by  extracting 
from  it,  or  otherwise;  but  no  feeling  of  delicacy 
ahall  prevent  us  from  anggesting,  that  they  will  do 
themselves  a  lastinff  benefit  by  beeoming  subaori- 
ben  to  the  work. — Mitar^ 


row ;"  and  where  he  compares  himself  to  an 
"  old  oak  stripped  of  his  honors,  and  torn 
up  by  the  roots."  But  not  for  nothing 
were  these  griefs  permitted  to  environ  him. 
Through  the  descending  cloud,  a  mighty 
inspiration  stooped  down  upon  his  soul. 
Gnef  roused,  and  bared,  and  tossed  up  his 
spirit  to  its  very  depths.  He  compares  him- 
self to  Job,  lying  on  his  dunghill,  and  in- 
sulted by  the  miserable  comfort  of  his 
friends.  And  as  Job's  silent  anguish  broke 
out  at  last  into  sublime  curses,  and  his 
dunghill  heaved  up  into  a  burning  prophetic 
peak,  so  it  was  with  the  "  old  man  eloquent" 
oefore  us.  From  his  solitary  Beaconsfield, 
with  its  large  trees  moaning  around,  as  if  in 
sympathy  with  his  incommunicable  sorrow, 
he  uttered  prophetic  warnings  which  startled 
Europe;  he  threw  forth  pearls  of  deepest 
thought  and  purest  eloquence;  he  blew  war- 
blasts  of  no  uncertain  sound,  to  which 
armies  were  to  move,  and  navies  to  expand 
their  vast  white  wings ;  he  poured  out  plaints 
of  sorrow,  which  melted  the  hearts  of  millions ; 
his  "lightnings  also  lie  shot  out,"  forked 
bolts  of  blasting  invective,  against  the  ene- 
mies or  pretended  friends,  the  impostors 
high  or  low,  who  dared  to  intrude  on  his 
sacred  solitude ;  and  it  fared  alike  with  a 
Duke  of  Bedford  and  a  Thomas  Taine,  as 
with  the  rebel  angels  in  Milton : — 

"  On  each  wing 
Uriel  and  Raphael,  his  vaunting  foe, 
Though  huge,  and  in  a  rock  of  diamond  arm*d, 
Vanquish^  Adramelech  and  Asmadai, 
Two  potent  thrones,  that  to  be  less  than  ^ods 
Disdam'd,  hat  meaner  thoughts  learnM  in  their 

filght, 
Mangled  with  ghastly  wounds  through  plate  and 

mail. 
Nor  stood  unmindful  Abdiel  to  annoy 
The  atheist  crew,  but,  with  redoubled  blow, 
Ariel  and  Arioch,  and  the  violence 
Of  Ramiel  scc^rch'd  and  blasted,  overthrew.'* 

But  he  had  not  only  the  inspiration  of 
profound  misery,  but  that,  also,  of  a  power 
projected  forward  from  eternity.  He  knew 
that  he  was  soon  to  die,  and  the  motto  of 
all  his  later  productions  might  have  been* 
"  Moriturus  vos  saluto."  This  gave  a  deeper 
tone  to  his  tragic  warnings,  a  higher  dignity 
to  prophetic  attitude,  and  a  weightier  em- 
phasis to  his  terrible  denunciations.  He 
reminded  inen  of  that  wild-eved  prophet, 
who  ran  around  the  wall  of  doomed  Jeru- 
salem till  he  sank  down  in  death,  and  cried 
out,  "  Wo,  wo,  wo,  to  thifl  city."  In  the 
utterance  of   such  wild  but  musical  and 


106 


MODERN  BRmSH  ORATOB& 


[Oct, 


meaning  cries,  did  Burke  breathe  out  bis 
spirit. 

The  "  Regicide  Peace"  contains  no  pas- 
sages so  well  known  as  some  in  the  "  Reflec- 
tions," but  has,  on  the  whole,  a  profounder 
vein  of  thinking,  a  bolder  imagery,  a  richer 
and  more  peculiar  language,  as  well  as 
certain  long  and  high-wrought  paragraphs, 
which  have  seldom  been  surpassed.  Such 
is  his  picture  of  Carnot  "  snorting  away  the 
fumes  of  the  undigested  blood  of  his  sove- 
reign ;"  his  comparison  of  the  revolutionary 
France  to  Algiers ;  his  description  of  a  sup- 
posed entrance  of  the  regicide  ambassadors 
into  London :  and  the  magnificent  counsels 
he  g^ive  Pitt  as  to  what  he  thought  should 
have  been  his  manner  of  conducting  the  war. 
As  we  think  this  one  of  the  noblest  swells 
of  poetic  prose  in  the  language,  and  have 
never  seen  it  quoted,  or  even  alluded  to  by 
•former  critics,  we  shall  give  it  entire : — 

"  After  such  an  elaborate  display  had 
been  made  of  the  injustice  and  insolence  of 
an  enemy,  who  seems  to  have  been  irritated 
by  every  one  of  the  means  which  had  com- 
monly been  used  with  effect  to  soothe  the 
rage  of  intemperate  power,  the  natural  re- 
sult would  be,  that  the  scabbard  in  which 
we  in  vain  attempted  to  plunge  our  sword, 
should  have  been  thrown  away  with 
scorn.  It  would  have  been  natural,  that, 
rising  in  the  fulness  of  their  might,  insulted 
magesty,  despised  dignity,  violated  justice, 
rejectea  supplication,  patience  goaded  into 
fury,  would  have  poured  out  all  the  length 
of  the  reins  upon  all  the  wrath  they  had  so 
long  restrained.  It  might  have  been  ex- 
pected, that,  emulous  of  the  glory  of  the 
youthful  hero  (Archduke  Charles  of  Austria) 
in  alliance  with  him,  touched  by  the  example 
of  what  one  man,  well  formed  and  well  placed, 
may  do  in  the  most  desperate  state  of  affairs, 
convinced  there  is  a  courage  of  the  cabinet 
full  as  powerful,  and  far  less  vulgar,  than 
that  of  the  field,  our  minister  would  have 
changed  the  whole  line  of  that  useless  pros- 
perous prudence,  which  had  hitherto  pro- 
duced all  the  effects  of  the  blindest  temerity. 
If  he  found  his  situation  full  of  danger  (and 
I  do  not  deny  that  it  is  perilous  in  the  ex- 
treme), he  must  feel  that  it  is  also' full  of 
glory,  and  that  he  is  placed  on  a  stage,  than 
which  no  muse  of  fire,  that  bad  ascended 
the  highest  heaven  of  invention,  could  ima- 
gine anything  more  awful  or  august.  It 
was  hoped  that,  in  this  swelling  scene  in 
which  he  moved,  with  some  of  the  first 
potentates  of  Europe  for  his  fellow -actors, 
and  with  so  many  of  the  rest  for  the  anxious 


spectators  of  a  part  which,  68  be  plays  it, 
determines  for>  ever  their  destiny  and  his 
own,  like  Ulysses  in  the  unravelling  point  of 
the  epic  story,  he  would  have  thrown  off 
his  patience  and  his  rags  together,  and, 
stripped  of  unworthy  disguises,  he  would 
have  stood  forth  in  the  form  and  in  the 
attitude  of  a  hero.  On  that  day  it  was 
thought  he  would  have  assumed  the  port 
of  Mars;  that  he  would  h^ive  bid  to  be 
brought  forth  from  their  hideous  kennel 
(where  his  scrupulous  tenderness  had  too 
long  immured  them)  these  impatient  dogs 
of  war,  whose  fierce  regards  affright  even 
the  minister  of  vengeance  that  feeds  them ; 
that  he  would  let  them  loose,  in  famine, 
fever,  plagues,  and  death,  upon  a  guilty 
race,  to  whose  frame,  and  to  all  whose  habit, 
order,  peace,  religion,  and  virtue  are  alien 
and  abhorrent.  It  was  expected  that  he 
would  at  last  have  thought  of  active  and 
effectual  war ;  that  he  would  no  longer 
amuse  the  British  lion  in  the  chase  of  rats 
and  mice ;  that  he  would  no  longer  employ 
the  whole  power  of  Great  Britain,  once  the 
terror  of  the  world,  to  prey  upon  the 
miserable  remains  of  a  peddlrng  commerce, 
which  the  enemy  did  not  regard,  and  from 
which  none  could  profit.  It  was  expected 
that  he  would  have  re-asserted  the  justice 
of  his  cause ;  th&t  he  would  have  re-animated 
whatever  remained  to  him  qf  his  allies,  and 
endeavored  to  recover  those  whom  their  fears 
had  led  astray ;  that  he  would  have  re- 
kindled the  martial  ardor  of  his  citizens; 
that  he  would  have  held  out  to  them  the 
example  of  their  ancestry,  the  asserier  of 
Europe,  and  the  scourge  of  French  ambition ; 
that  he  would  have  reminded  them  of  a 
posterity,  which,  if  this  nefarious  robbery, 
nnder  the  fraudulent  nan^e  and  false  color 
of  a  government,  should  in  full  power  be 
seated  in  the  heart  of  Europe,  must  for  ever 
be  consigned  to  vice,  impiety,  barbarism,  and 
the  most  ignominious  slavery  of  body  and 
mind.  In  so  holy  a  cause,  it  was  presumed 
that  he  would  (as  in  the  beginning  of  the 
war  he ,  did)  have  opened  all  the  temples, 
and,  with  prayer,  with  fasting,  and  with 
supplication  (better  directed  than  to  the 
grim  Moloch  of  regicide  France,)  have  called 
upon  us  to  raise  that  united  cry  which  has 
so  often  stormed  heaven,  and,  with  a  pious 
violence,  forced  down  blessings  upon  a  re- 
pentant  people.  It  was  hoped  that,  when 
he  had  invoked  upon  his  endeavors  the 
favorable  regards  of  the  Protector  of  the 
human  race,  it  would  be  seen  that  his  mena- 
ces to  the  enemy,  and  his  prayers  to  the 


1859.] 


MODERN  BRITISH  ORATOR& 


201 


Almighty,  were  not  followed,  but  accom- 
panied, with  corresponding  action.  It  was 
hoped  that  bis  shrilling  trumpet  should  be 
heard»  not  to  announce  a  show,  but  to  sound 
a  charge." 

We  come  now  to  Burke  as  an  orator.  And 
here  we  must  correct  a  prevailing  miscon- 
ception. Many  seem  to  imagine  that  he  had 
no  power  of  oratorical  expression  ;  that  he 
was  a  mere  "  dinner-bell ;"  and  that  all  his 
speeches,  however  splendid,  fell  still-born 
from  his  lips.  So  far  was  this  from  being 
the  case,  that  his  very  first  orations  in  Par- 
liament— those,  namely,  on  the  Stamp  Act — 
delivered  when  he  had  yet  a  reputation  to 
make,  according  to  Johnson,  "  filled  the  town 
with  wonder;'  ^an  effect  which,  we  fancy, 
their  mere  merit,  if  unaccompanied  by  some 
energy  and  interest  of  delivery,  could  hardly 
have  produced.  So  long  as  he  was  in  office 
under  Lord  Rockingham,  and  under  the  Co* 
alition  Ministry,  he  was  listened  to  with  def- 
erence and  admiration.  His  speech  against 
Hastings  was  waited  for  with  greater  eager- 
ness, and  heard  with  greater  admiration,  than 
any  of  that  brilliant  series,  except,  perhaps, 
Sheridan's  on  the  Begum  Charge ;  and  in 
its  closing  passage,  impeaching  Hastings  "  in 
the  name  of  human  nature  itself,'*  it  rose, 
even  as  to  effect,  to  a  height  incomparably 
above  any  of  the  rest.  His  delivery,  indeed, 
and  voice  were  not  first-rate,  but  only  frib* 
biers  or  fools  regard  such  things  much,  or  at 
least  long,  in  a  true  drator ;  and  when  Burke 
beoanae  fully  roused,  his  minor  defects  were 
always  either  surmounted  by  himself,  or  for- 
gotten by  others.  The  real  secret  of  his 
parliamentary  unpopularity,  in  his  latter 
years,  lay,  Ist,  in  the  envy  with  which  his 
matchless  powers  were  regarded ;  2d,  in 
his  fierce  and  ungovernable  temper,  and  the 
unguarded  violence  of  his  language ;  3d,  in 
the  uncertainty  of  his  position  and  circum- 
stances ;  and,  lastly,  in  the  fact,  as  Johnson 
has  it,  that  *'  while  no  one  could  deny  that 
he  spoke  well,  yet  all  granted  that  he  spoke 
too  often  and  too  long.  His  soul,  besides, 
generally  soared  above  his  audience,  and 
sometimes  forgot  to  return.  In  honest  Gold- 
smith's version  of  it, 

*'  Too  deep  for  his  hearers,  he  went  on  refining, 
And  thought  of  convincing,  while  they  thought 
of  dining.'* 

But  he  could  never  be  put  down  to  the  last, 
and  might,  had  he  chosen,  have  contested 
the  cheap  palm  of  instant  popularity  even 
with  the  most  voluble  of  his  rivals.  But  the 
"play   was  not  worth    the    candle."    He 


mingled,  indeed,  with  their  temporary  con- 
flicts ;  but  it  was  like  a  god  descending  from 
Ida  to  the  plains  of  Troy,  and  sharing  in  the 
vulgar  shock  of  arms,  with  a  high  celestial 
purpose  in  view.  He  was,  in  fact,  over  the 
heads  of  the  besotted  parliaments  of  his  day, 
addressing  the  ears  of  all  future  time,  and 
has  not  been  inaudible  in  that  gallery. 

Goldsmith  is  right  in  saying  that  so  far  he 
"narrowed  his  mind."  But,  had  he  nar- 
rowed it  a  little  farther,  he  could  have  pro- 
duced so  much  the  more  of  immediate  im- 
pression, and  so  much  the  more  have  circum- 
scribed his  future  influence  and  power.  He 
w<M  by  nature  what  Clootz  pretended  to  be, 
and  what  all  genuine  speakers  should  aim  at 
being,  '*  an  orator  of  the  liuman  race,"  and 
he  never  altogether  lost  sight  of  this  his  high 
calling.  Hence,  while  a  small  class  adored 
him,  and  a  large  class  respected,  the  majority 
found  his  speaking  apart  from  their  purpose, 
and  if  they  listened  to  it,  it  was  from  a  cer- 
tain vague  impression  that  it  was  something 
great  and  splendid,  only  not  very  intelligible, 
and  not  at  all  practical.  In  fact,  the  brilhance 
of  bis  imagination,  and  the  restless  play  of 
his  ingenuity,  served  often  to  conceal  the 
solid  depth  and  practical  bearings  of  his  wis- 
dom. Men  seldom  give  a  famous  man  credit 
for  all  the  faculties  he  possesses.  If  they 
dare  not  deny  his  gonius,  they  deny  his  sense; 
or,  if  they  are  obliged  to  admit  his  sense, 
they  question  his  genius.  If  he  is  strong,  he 
cannot  be  beautiful,  and  if  beautiful,  he  must 
be  weak.  That  Burke  suffered  much  from 
this  false  and  narrow  style  of  criticism,  is  un- 
questionable ;  but  that  he  was  ever  the  gi- 
gantic bore  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of 
Commons  which  some  pretend,  we  venture 
to  doubt.  The  fact  was  probably  this — on 
small  matters,  he  was  thought  prosy,  and 
coughed  down,  but,  whenever  there  was  a 
large  load  to  be  lifted — a  great  question  to  be 
discussed — a  Hastings  to  be  crushed,  or  a 
French  revolution  to  be  analysed — the  eyes 
of  the  House  instinctively  turned  to  the  seat 
where  the  profound  and  brilliant  man  was 
seated,  and  their  hearts  irresistibly  acknow- 
ledged, at  times,  what  their  tongues  and 
prejudices  often  denied. 

And  yet  it  is  amusing  to  find,  from  a  state- 
ment of  Burke's  own,  that  the  Whigs  whom 
he  had  deserted  solaced  themselves  for  the 
unparalleled  success  of  the  "  Reflections  on 
the  French  Revolution,"  by  underrating  it  in 
a  literary  point  of  view.  Is  this  the  spirit  of 
real  or  of  mock  humility  in  which  he  speaks, 
in  his  "  Appeal  from  the  New  to  the  Old 
Whigs  ?"    '*  The  gentlemen  who  in  the  name 


208 


HODERK  BRITISH  OBATOBa 


[Oct, 


of  the  party  have  passed  sentence  on  Mr. 
Burke's  book  in  the  lieht  of  literary  criticism, 
are  judges  above  all  challenge.     He  did  not 
indeed  flatter  himself  that,  as  a  writer,  he 
could  claim  the  approbation  of  men  whos^ 
talents,  in  his  judgment  and  in  the  public 
judgment,  approach  to  prodigies,  if  ever  such 
persons  should  be  disposed  to  estimate  the 
merit  of  a  composition  upon  the  standard  of 
their   own   ability.*'     Surely   this   must  be 
ironical,  else  it  would  seem  an  act  of  volun- 
tary humility  as  absurd  as  though  De  Quincy 
were  deferring  in  matters  of  philosophy  or 
style  to  the  "  superior  judgment"  of  some  of 
our  American-made  doctors ;  or  as  though 
Mrs.  Stowe  were  to  dedicate  her  next  novel 
to  the  author  of  the  "Coming  Struggle." 
Pretty  critics  they  were !     Think  of  the  glo- 
rious eloquence  wisdom,  passions,  and  poe- 
try, the   "  burning  coals  of  juniper,   sharp 
arrows  of  the  strong,"  to  be  found  in  every 
page   of  the    "Reflection,"   the   power  of 
which  had  almost  stifled  the  ire  of  a  na- 
tion, and  choked  up  a  volcano  which  was 
setting  the  world  in  flames ;  sneered  at  by 
two  men,  at  least,  not  one  of  whose  works 
is  now  read — by  the  writer  of  a  farrago  like 
the  **  Spital  Sermon,"  or  by  the  author  of 
such  illegible  dullness  as  the   "History  of 
James  II.,"  or  even  by  Sheridan,  with  his 
clever,  heartless  plays,  and  the  brilliant  fal- 
setto of  his  speeches ;  or  even  by  Macintosh, 
with  the  rhetorical  logic  and  forced  flowers 
of  his  "Vindiciae  Gallicse."     Surely  Burke 
did,  in  his  heart,  appeal  from  their  tribunal 
to  that  of  a  future  age.    To  do  Macintosh 
justice,  he  learned  afterwards  to  form  a  far 
loftier  estimate  of  the  author  of  the  "Re- 
flections."    He  was,  soon  after  the  publica- 
tion of  his  "Vindiciae  Gallicse,"  invited  to 
speed  some  days  at  Beaconsfield.    There  be 
found  the  old  giant,  now  toying  on  the  car- 
pet with  little  children,  now  cracking  bad 
lOkes  and  the  vilest  of  puns,  and  now  pour- 
mg  out  the  most  magnificent  thoughts  and 
images.  *    In  the  course  of  a  week's  animated 
discussion  on  the  French  Revolution,  and 
many  cognate  subjects,  Macintosh  was  com- 
pletely converted  to  Burke's  views,  and  came 
back  impressed  with  an  opinion  of  his  genius 
and  character,  far  higher  than  his  writings 
had  given  him.     Indeed,  his  speech  in  de- 
fence of  Peltier — by  much  the  most  eloquent 
of  his  published  speeches — bears  on  it  the 
fiery  traces  of  the  influence  which  Burke  had 
latterly  exerted  on  his  mind.    The  early  ser- 
mons too,  and  the  "  Apology  for  the  Liberty 
of  the  Press,"  by  Hall,  are  less  colored,  than 
created  by  the  power  which  Burke's  writings  ' 


had  exerted  on  his  dawning  genius.     But 
more  of  this  afterwards. 

What  a  pity  that  Boswell  had  not  been 
bom  a  twin,  and  that  the  brother  had  not 
attached  himself  as  fondly  and  faithfully  to 
Burke,  as  Jemmy  to  Johnson!     Boswell's 
life  of  Burke  would  now  have  been  even 
more  popular  than  Boswell's  Life  of  John- 
son.    For,  if  Johnson's  sayings  were  more 
pointed  and  witty,  Burke's  were  profounder 
and   sublimer  far.    Johnson   had   lived   as 
much  with  books  and  with  certain  classes  of 
men,  but  Burke  had  conversed  more  with 
the   silent  company  of  thoughts;  and   all 
grand  generalizations  were  to  nim  palpable, 
familiar,  and  iife-like  as  a  gallery  of  pictures. 
Johnson  was  a  lainr,  slumbering  giant,  sel- 
dom moving  himself  except  to  strangle  the 
flies  which  bussed  about  his  nostrils  ;  Burke 
wrought  like  a  Cyclops  in  his  cave,  or  like  a 
Titan,  piling  up  mountains  as  stepping-stones 
to   heaven.     Johnson,  not  Burke,  was  the 
master  of  amplification,  from  no  poverty,  but 
from  indolence ;  he  often  rolled  out  sounding 
surges  of  commonplaces,  with   no  bark  and 
little  beauty,  upon  i1^  swell  of  the  wave ; 
Burke's  mind,  as  we.  have  seA"  before,  was 
morbidly  active;  it  was  impatient  #QYrcular 
movement  round   an  idea,  or  of  floise  and 
agitation  without  progress :  his  motto  ever 
was  "  Onwards,"  and  his  eloquence  always 
bore  the  stamp  of  thought.    Johnson  looked 
at  all  things  through  anjitniosphereof  gloom; 
Burke  was  of  a  more  sanguine  temperament; 
and  if  cobwebs  did  at  any  time  gather,  the 
breath  of  his  anger  or  of  his  industry  speed- 
ily blew  them  away.    Johnson  had  mingled 
principally  with  scholars,  or  the  middle  class 
of  the  community ;  Burke  was  brought  early 
into  contact  with  statesmen,  the  nobility  and 
gentry,  and  this  told  both  upon  his  private 
manners  and  upon  his  knowledge  of  human 
nature.     Johnson's  mind  was  of  the  sharp, 
strt)ng,  sturdy  order ;  Burke's,  of  the  subtle, 
deep,  revolving  sort;  as  Goldsmith  said,  he 
"  wound  into  every  subject  like  a  serpent." 
Both  were  honest,  fearless,  and  pious  men ; 
but,  while  Burke's  honesty  sometimes  put  on 
a  court  dress,  and  his  fearlessness  sometimes 
"  licked  the  dust,"  and  his  piety  could  stand 
at  ease ;  Johnson  in  all  these  points  was  ever 
roughly  and  nakedly  the  same.    Johnson,  in 
wit,  vigor  of  individual  sentences,  and  solemn 
pictures  of  human  life,  and  its  sorrows  and 
frailties,  was  above  Burke ;  but  was  as  far 
excelled  by  him  in  power  of  generalization, 
vastness  of  range  and  reading,  exuberance  of 
fancy,  daring  rnetoric,  and  m  skillful  man- 
agement and  varied  cadence  of  style.    John- 


1858.] 


HODXRir  BRTTIBH  ORATOB& 


208 


son  had  a  philosophical  vein,  but  it  had 
never  received  much  culture;  Burke's  had 
been  carefully  fed,  and  failed  only  at  times 
througn  the  subjects  to  which  it  was  directed. 
Johnson's  talk,  although  more  brilliant,  me- 
morable, and  imposing,  was  also  more  set, 
starched,  and  produced  with  more  effort 
than  Burke's,  who  seemed  to  talk  admirably 
because  he  could  not  help  it,  or,  as  his  great 
rival  said,  **  because  his  mind  was  full." 
Johnson  was,  notwithstanding  his  large  pro- 
portions, of  the  earth  earthy,  after  all ;  his 
wingSy  like  those  of  the  ostrich,  were  not 
commensurate  with  his  size  ;  Burke,  to  vast 
bulk  and  stature,  added  pinions  which  bore 
him  from  peak  to  peak,  and  from  one  gor- 
geous tract  of  "cloudland"  to  another. 

Boswell  and  Prior  have  preserved  only  a 
few  specimens  of  Burke's  conversation,  which 
8re»  however,  so  rich  as  to  excite  deep  regret 
Chat  more  has  not  been  retained ;  and  a  pro- 
found conviction  that  his  traditional  reputa- 
tion has  not  been  ezaggeratedt  and  that  his 
talk  was  the  truest  revelation  of  bis  powers. 
Every  one  knows  the  saying  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
that  you  could  not  go  with  Burke  under  a 
shed  to  shun  a  shower,  without  saying,  "this 
is  an  extraordinary  man."  Nor  was  this 
merely  'because  he  could  talk  cleverly  and  at 
random,  on  all  subjects,  and  hit  on  brilliant 
things ;  but  that  he  seemed  to  have  weighed 
and  digested  his  thoughts,  and  prepared  and 
adjusted  his  language  on  all  subjects,  at  the 
same  time  that  impulse  and  excitement  were 
ever  ready  to  sprinkle  splendid  impromptus 
upon  the  stream  of  his  speech.  He  combmed 
the  precision  and  perfect  preparation  of  the 
lecturer,  with  the  ease  and  fluency  of  the  con- 
versationalist. He  did  not,  like  some,  go  on 
throwing  out  shining  paradoxes;  or,  with 
fithers,  hot  gorgeous  metaphors,  hatched  be- 
tween excitement  and  vanity ;  or,  witli  others^ 
ffive  prepared  and  polished  orations,  disguised 
m  the  likeness  of  extempore  harangues ;  or, 
with  others,  perpetually  strive  to  startle,  to 
perplex,  to  mystify,  and  to  shine ;  or,  with 
others  still,  become  a  kind  of  oracle,  or  ste- 
reotyped prophet,  coiled  up  in  the  ^corner  of 
a  drawing-room,  and  uttering  voces  ambigueu, 
Borke's  talk  was  that  of  a  thoroughly  fur- 
lUBhed,  gifted,  and  profoundly  informed  man, 
ikmkinp  aloud.  His  conversation  was  just 
the  course  of  a  great,  rich  river,  winding  at 
ha  sweet  or  its  wild  will-'-always  full,  often 
overflowing ;  sometimes  calm,  and  sometimeB 
fretted  and  fierce;  sometimes  level  and  deep, 
and  aometim^  starred  with  spray,  or  leaping 
into  cataracts;  Who  shall  venture  to  give  us 
an  ''imaginary  conversation"  between  him 

TOLb  XXX.    NO.  IL 


and  Johnson,  on  the  subject  referred  to  by 
Boswell,  of  the  comparative  merits  of  Homer 
and  Virgil,  or  on  some  similar  topic,  in  a  style 
that  shall  adequately  represent  the  point, 
roughness,  read  mess,  and  sense  of  the  one, 
and  the  subtlety,  varied  knowledge,  glares  of 
sudden  metaphonc  illumination,  crossing  the 
veins  of  profound  reflection,  which  distin- 
guished the  other — the  "  no,  sirs,"  and  the 
*•  therefores"  of  the  one,  with  the  *'  huts,"* 
the  '*unlesses,"  and  the  terrible  "excuse  me, 
sirs"  of  the  other  ?  We  wonder  that  Savage 
Landor  has  never  attempted  it,  and  brought 
in  poor  Burns — the  only  man  then  living  in 
Britain  quite  worthy  to  be  a  third  party  in 
the  dialogue ;  now  to  shed  his  meteor  light 
upon  the  matter  of  the  argument ;  and  now, 
by  his  wit  or  song,  to  soothe,  and  calm,  and 
harmonize  the  minds  of  the  combatants. 

Burke's  talk  is  now,  however,  as  a  whole» 
irrecoverably  lost.  What  an  irrepressible^ 
sigh^escapes  us,  as  we  reflect  that  this  is  true 
of  so  many  noble  spirits  I  Their  works  may 
remain  with  us,  but  that  fine  aroma  which 
breathed  in  their  conversation,  that  wondrous 
beam  which  shone  in  their  very  eyes,  are  for 
ever  gone.  They  have  become  dried  flowerSb 
Some  of  the  first  of  men,  indeed,  have  had 
nothing  to  lose  in  this  respect.  Their  coa- 
Yen»ation  was  inferior  to  their  general  powera. 
Their  works  were  evening  shadows,  more 
gigantic  than  themselves.  We  have,  at  least, 
their  essence  preserved  in  their  writings. 
This  probably  is  true  even  of  Shakspere  and 
Milton.  But  Johnson,  Burke,  Bums,  and 
Coleridge  were  so  constituted,  that  conversa- 
tion was  the  only  magnet  that  could  draw  out 
the  full  riches  of  their  transcendent  genius ; 
and  all  of  them  would  have  required  each  hia 
own  Siamese  twin  to  have  accompanied  him 
through  life,  and  with  the  pen  and  the  pa- 
tience of  BoKzy,  to  have  preserved  the  con- 
tinual outpourings  of  their  fertile  brains  and 
fluent  tongn<B8.  We  are  not,  however,  argu- 
ing their  superiority  to  the  two  just  mentioned, 
or  to  others  of  a  similar  stamp,  whose  wri- 
tings were  above  their  talk — far  the  reverse 
— but  are  simply  asserting  that  we  may  re- 
gret more  the  comparative  meagreness  of 
biography  in  the  case  of  the  one  class  than 
of  the  other. 

Burke,  in  private,  was  unquestionably  the 
most  blameless  of  the  eminent  men  of  his  dav. 
He  was,  in  all  his  married  life  at  least,  entirely 
free  from  the  licentiousness  of  Fox,  the  dissi- 

Eation  of  Sheridan,  and  the  hard-drinking 
abita  of  Pitt.  But  he  was  also  the  most 
amiable  and  actively-benevolent  of  them. 
Wise  as  a  serpent,  he  was  harmless  as  a  (^ 

U 


810 


MODERN  BRIUBH  OBATOBa 


[Oct., 


and»  when  the  deep  sources  of  his  virtuous 
indignation  were  not  touched,  gentle  as  a 
lainb.  Who  has  forgot  his  fatherly  interest 
in  poor  Crabbc — that  flower  blushjng  and 
drooping  unseen,  till  Burke  lifted  it  up  in  his 
hand,  and  gave  his  protege  bread  and  immor- 
tality ?  or  his  kindness  to  rough,  thankless 
Barry,  whom  he  taught  and  counselled  as 
wisely  as  if  .he  had  been  a  prophet  of  art,  not 

Eolitlcs,  and  as  if  he  had  studied  nothing  else 
ut  painting  (proving  thus,  besides  his  tender 
heart,  that  a  habit  and  power  of  deep  and 
genuine  thinking  can  easily  be  transferred 
from  one  branch  to  all,  and  that  the  great 
genius  is  great  all  round — a  truth  substantia- 
ted, besides,  by  the  well-known  aid  be  ffave 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  in  his  lectures) ;  or  last, 
not  least,  his  Good  Samaritan  treatment  of 
the  wretched  street-stroller  he  met,  topk 
home,  introduced,  after  hearing  her  story,  to 
Mrs.  Burke,  who  watched  over,  reformed, 
and  employed  her  in  her  service  ?  "  These 
are  deed^  which  must  not  pass  away."  Like 
green  laurels  on  the  bald  head  of  a  Caesar, 
they  add  a  beauty  and  softness  to  the  gran- 
deur of  Burke'a  mind,  and  leave  you  at  a  loss 
(fine  balance!  rare  alternative  I  compliment, 
like  a  biforked  sunbeam,  cutting  two  ways!) 
whether  more  to  love  or  to  admire  him.  Fit 
it  was  that  be  should  have  passed  that 
noble  panegyric  on  Howard,  the  ''Circum- 
navigator of  Charity,"  which  now  stands,  and 
shall  eternally  stand,  like  a  mountain  before 
Its  bla^k  and  envious  shadow,  over  against 
Carlyle's  late  unhappy  attack  on  the  unri- 
▼ailed  philanthropist. 

We  promised  a  word  on  Burke's  oritios. 
They  have  been  numerous  and  various.  From 
Johnson,  Fox,  Laurence,  Macintosh,  Words- 
worth, Brougham,  Hazlitt,  Macaulay,  De 
Quincey,  Croly,  H.  Rogers,  <&c.,  down  to 
Prior,  &c,  Johnson  gave,  again  and  again, 
his  sturdy  verdict  in  his  favor,  which  was 
more  valuable  then  than  it  is  npw.  "  If  I 
were,"  he  said,  when  once  ijl  and  unable  to 
talk,  **  to  meet  that  fellow  Burke  to-night,  it 
would  kill  me."  Fox  admitted  that  he  had 
learn^  more  from  Burke's  conversation  than 
from  all  his  reading  and  experience  put  to- 
ffether.  Laurence,  one  of  his  executors,  has 
left  recorded  his  glowing  sense  of  his  friend's 
genius  and  virtues.  Of  Macintosh's  admira- 
tion We  have  spoken  above;  although,  in  an 
article  which  appeared  in  the  "  Edinburgh 
Review,"  somewhere  in  1830,  he  seems  to 
modify  his  approbation;  induced  to  this, 
partly,  perhaps,  by  the  influences  of  Holland 
bouse,  and  partly  by  those  chilb  of  age 
which,  falling  on  the  higher  genius  and  na- 


ture of  Burke,  served  only  to  revive  and 
stimulate  him,  but  which  damped  whatever 
glow  Macintosh  once  had.  Wordsworth's 
lofty  estimate  is  given  in  Lord  John  Russell's 
recent  biography  of  Moore,  and  serves  not 
only  to  prove  what  his  opinion  wlus,  but  to 
establish  a  strong  distinction  between  the 
mere  dilettante  litterateur  like  Canning,  and 
the  mere  statesman  like  Pitt,  and  a  man  who, 
like  Burke,  combined  the  deepest  knowledge 
of  politics,  and  the  most  un^ected  love  for 
literature  and  literary  men.  Brougham's 
estimate,  in  his  "Statesmen,"  <&c.,  is  not 
exactly  unfair,  but  fails,  first,  through  his 
lordship's  profound  unlikeness,  in  heart, 
habits,  kind  of  culture,  taste,  and  genius,  to 
the  subject  of  his  critique — (Burke,  to  name 
two  or  three  distinctions,  was  always  a  care- 
ful, while  Brougham  is  often  an  extempore, 
thinker.  Burke  is  Cicero,  and  something  far 
more ;  Brougham  aspires  to  be  a  Demosthe- 
nes, and  is  something  far  less.  Burke  rea- 
sons philosophically — a  mode  of  ratiocination 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  can  be  employed 
with  advantage  on  almost  all  subjects;  Broug- 
ham reasons  geometrically,  and  is  one  of 
those  who,  according  to  Arbtotle,  are  sure  to 
err  when  they  turn  their  mathematical  method 
to  moral  or  mental  themes.  Burke's  process 
of  thought  resembles  the  swift  synthetic  alge- 
bra; Brougham's,  the  slow,  plodding,  geo- 
metric analysis.  Burke  had  prophetic  in- 
sight, earnestness,  and  poetic  fire ;  Brougham 
has  marvellous  acuteness,  the  earnestness  of 
passion,  and  the  fire  of  temperament.  Burke 
had  genuine  imagination^  Brougham  had 
none) ;  and,  second,  through  his  prodigious 
exaggeration  of  Burke's  rivals,  who,  because 
they  were  near  and  around,  appear  to  him 
cognate  and  equal,  if  not  superior;  even  as 
St.  Peter's  is  said  to  be  lessened  in  effect  by 
some  tall  but  tasteless  buildings  in  the  neigh- 
borhood ;  and  as  the  giant  Ben  Macdhui  was 
long  concealed  by  the  lofty  but  subordinate 
hills  which  crush  in  aroi|nd  him.  Hazlitt, 
Macaulay,  and  De  Quincey  have  all  seen 
Burke  in  a  truer  light,  and  praised  him  in  the 
spirit  of  a  more  generous  and  richer  recogni« 
tion. 

Hazlitt  has  made,  he  tells  us,  some  dozen 
attempts  to  describe  Burke's  style,  without 
pleasing  himself, — so  subtle  and  evasire  he 
found  its  elements,  and  so  strange  the  com- 
pound in  it  of  matter  of  fact,  speculation,  and 
poetic  eloquence.  His  views  of  him,  too, 
veered  about  several  times, — at  least  they 
seem  very  different  in  his  papers  in  the  "Edin- 
burgh'Review,"  and  in  his  acknowledged 
essays ;  although  we  believe  that  at  heart  he 


MODERN  BRmSH  OBATOBa 


1858.] 

always  admired  him  to  enthusiasm,  and  is 
often  his  unconscious  imitator.    Macaulay  has 
also  a  thorough  appreciation  of  Burke,  the 
more  that  he  is  said  to  fancy — it  is  nothing 
more  than  a  fancy — that  there  is  a  striking 
resemblance  between  his  hero  and  himself ! 
De  Quincey  following  in  this,  Coleridge  has 
felt,  and  eloquently  eicpressed,  his  immeasur- 
able contempt  for  those  who  praise  Burke's 
fancy  at  the  expense  of  his  intellect.     Dr. 
Croly  has  published  a  Political  Life  of  Burke, 
full  of  eloquence  and  fervid  panegyric,  as 
well  as  of  strong  discrimination;  Burke  is 
manifestly  his  master,  nor  has  he  found  an 
unworthy  disciple.    Henry  Rogers  has  edited 
and  prefaced  an  edition  of  Burke^s  works,  but 
the  prefixed  essay,  although  able,  is  hardly 
worthy  of  the  author  of  *'  Rieason  and  Faith, ' 
and  its  eloquence  is  of  a  laborious  mechanical 
sort.     And  Hall  has,  in  his  "  Apology  for  the 
Liberty  of  the  Press,"  which  was  in  part  a 
reply  to  the  "  Reflections,"  painted  him  by  a 
few  beautiful  touches,  less  true,  however, 
than  they  are  beautiful ;  and  his  pamphlet, 
although  carefully  modelled  on  the  writings 
of  his  opponent,  is  not  to  be  named  beside 
them  in  depth,  compass  of  thought,  richness 
of  imagery,  or  variety  and  natural  vigor  of 
style  ;  his  splendor,  compared  to  Burke's,  is 
stiff;  his  thinkmg  and  his  imagery  imitative — 
no  more  than  in  the  case  of  Macaulay  do  you 
ever  feel  yourself  in  contact  with  a  "'  great 
virgin  mind,"  melting  down  through  the  heat 
and  weight  of  its  own  exhaustless  wealth, 
although  in  absence  of  fault,  stateliness  of 
manner,  and  occasional  polished  felicities  of 
expression.  Hall  is  superior  even  to  Burke. 

That  Burke  was  Junius,  we  do  not  believe  : 
but  that  Burke  had  to  do  with  the  com- 
position of  some  of  these  celebrated  letters, 
we  are  as  certain  as  if  we  had  seen  his  careful 
front,  and  dim,  but  searching  eyes  looking 
through  his  spectacles  over  the  MS*  He 
was  notoriously  (see  Prior's  Life)  in  the 
secret  of  their  authorship.  Johnson  thought 
him  the  only  man  then  alive  capable  of  wri- 
ting them.  Hall's  objection,  that  '*  Burke's 
freat  power  was  amplification,  while  that  of 
unius  was  condensation,"  sprung,  we  think, 
from  a  totally  mistaken  idea  of  the  very 
nature  of  Burke's  mind.  There  is  far  more 
condensed  thinking  and  writing  in  many 
.  parts  of  Burke  then  in  Junius, — the  proof  of 
which  is,  that  no  prose  writer  in  the  language 
except,  perhaps,  Dean  Swift,  has  had  so 
many  single  sentences  so  often  quoted.  That 
the  motum  of  the  mind  of  Junius  differs  ma- 
terially from  Burke's,  is  granted ;  but  we 
could  account  for  this  (even  although  we 


211 


contended,  which  we  do  not,  that  he  was  the 
sole  author,)   from  the  awkwardness  of  the 
position  in   which   the   Anonymous   would 
necessarily  place  himself.    He  would  become 
like  a  n&an  writing  with  his  left  hand.     The 
mask  would  confine  as  well  as  disguise  him. 
He  durst  not  venture  on  that  free  and  soar- 
ing movement  which  was  natural  to  him. 
Who  ever  heard  of  a  man  in  a  mask  swaying 
a  broadside?     He  always  uses  a  stiletto  or 
a  dagger.     Many  of  the  best  things  in  Junius 
are  in  one  of  Burke's  manners;    for,  as  we 
have  seen,  many   manners  and  styles  were 
his.     He   said  to   Boswell,   in  reference  to 
Crofts'  "Life  of  Young,"  "  It  is  not  a  good 
imitation  of  Johnson  :    he  has  the  nodosities 
of  the  oak,  without  its  strength — the  con- 
tortions of  the  sibyl,  without  her  inspiration." 
Junius  says  of  Sir  W.  Draper,  '•  He  has  all 
the  melancholy  madness  of  poetry,  without 
the  inspiration.'^  How  like  to  many  sentences 
in    Burke  are  such    expressions   as   these 
(speaking  of  Wilkes:) — "The  gentle  breath 
of  peace  would  leave  him  on  the  surface,  un- 
ruffled and  unremoved ;  it  is  only  the  tem- 
pest which  lifts  him  from  his  place."     We 
could  quote  fifty  pithy  sentences  from  Junius 
and  from  Burke,  which,  placed  in  parallel 
columns,   would   convince  an  unprejudiced 
critic  that  they  came  from  the  same  mind.* 
It  is  the  union  in  both  of  point,  polish,  and 
concentration — a  union  reminding  you  of  the 
deep  yet  shining  sentences  of  Tacitus — that 
establishes  the  identity.    Junius  has  two  salts 
in  his  style — the  sal  acridum,  and   the  sal 
atticum.     Sir  Philip  Francis  was  equal  to  the 
supply  of  the  first ;  Burke  alone  to  that  of 
the  second.     It  adds  to  the  evidence  for  this 
theory,  that  Burke  was  fond  of  anonymous 
writing,  and  that  in  it  he  occasionally  *'  chang- 
ed his  voice,"  and  personated  other  minds : 
think  of  his  "  Vindication  of  natural  society, 
in  the  manner  of  Lord  Bolingbroke."     He 

*  Amid  the  innumerable  full-grown  beauties,  or 
even  hints  of  beaatieiv  borrowed  by  after- writers 
from  Burke,  we  have  just  noticed  one,  which  Mao- 
Intoah,  in  hit  famous  letter  to  Hall,  has  appropri- 
ated without  acknowledgment  It  is  where  he 
speaks  of  Hall  turning  from  literature,  Ac^  to  -the 
far  nobler  task  of  "  rememherina  the  forgotteti,**  ^c 
This  grand  simplicitj,  of  which  Maolntofth  was 
altogether  incapable,  maj  be  found  in  Burke's 
panegyrio  on  Howard.  Indeed,  we  wish  we  had 
time  to  go  over  Burke*B  works,  and  to  prove  that 
a  vast  number  of  the  profound  or  brilliant  thiufcs 
that  have  since  been  uttered  (disguised,  or  partially 
altered,)  in  most  of  our  favourite  writers  on  grave 
subjects,  present  and  past,  are  stolen  from  the  great 
fountain  mind  of  the  eighteenth  century.  We  may 
do  so  on  some  future  occasion;  and  let  the  pla- 
giarists tremble  I  Enough  at  present 


212 


MODERN  BRTTIBH  ORATOBa 


[Oct, 


often,  too^  assisted  other  writers  suh  rosoj 
such  as  Barry  and  Reynolds,  in  their  pre- 
lections on  painting.  We  believe,  in  short, 
this  to  be  the  truth  on  the  subject :  he  was 
in  the  confidence  of  the  Junius  Club — for  a 
club  it  confessedly  was  ;  he  overlooked  many 
of  the  letters ;  (Prior  asserts  that  he  once  or 
twice  spoke  of  what'was  to  be  the  substance 
of  a  letter  the  day  before  it  appeared  ;)  and 
he  supplied  many  of  his  inimitable  touches, 
just  as  Lord  Jeffrey  was  wont  to  add  spice 
even  to  some  of  rlazlitt's  articles  iu  the 
"Edinburgh  Review.''  So  that  he  could 
thus  very  safely  and  honestly  deny,  as  be  re- 
peatedly did,  that  he  was  the  author  of 
Junius,  and  yet  have  a  strong  finger  in  that 
•trangely-concocted  eel-^\e. 

We  come,  lastly,  to  speak  of  the  influence 
which  Burke  has  exerted  upon  his  and  our 
times.  This  has  been  greater  than  most 
even  of  his  admirers  believe.  He  was  one  of 
the  few  parent  minds  which  the  world  has 
produced.  Well  does  Burns  call  him  "  Dad- 
die  Burke."  And  both  politics  and  literature 
owe  filial  obligations  to  his  unbounded  genius. 
In  politics,  he  has  been  the  father  of  moderate 
Conservation,  which  is,  at  least,  a  tempering 
of  Toryism,  if  not  its  sublimation.  That  con- 
servatism in  politics  and  in  church  matters 
exists  now  in  Britain,  is,  we  believe,  mainly 
owing  to  the  genius  of  two  men,  Burke  and 
Coleridge.  In  literature,  too,  he  set  an  ex- 
ample that  has  been  widely  followed.  He 
unintentionally,  and  by  the  mere  motion  of 
bis  powerful  mind,  broke  the  chains  in  which 
Johnson  was  binding  our  style  and  criticism, 
without  however,  going  back  himself,  or 
leading  back  others,  to  the  laxity  of  the 
Addisonian  manner.  All  good  and  vigorous 
English  styles  since — that  of  Godwin,  that 
of  Poster,  that  of  Hall,  that  of  Horsley,  that 
of  Coleridge,  that  of  Jeffrey,  that  of  Hazlitt, 
that  of  De  Quincey,  that  of  the  "Times" 
newspaper — are  unspeakably  indebted  to  the 
power  with  which  Burke  stirred  the  stagnant 
waters  of  our  literature,  and  by  which,  while 
professedly  an  enemy  of  revolutions,  he  him- 
self established  one  of  the  greatest,  most 
beneficial,  and  most  lasting — that,  namely, 
of  a  new,  more  impassioned,  and  less  con- 


ventional mode  of  addressing  the  intellects 
and  hearts  of  men. 

Latterly,  another  change  has  threatened 
to  come  over  us.  Some  men  of  genius  have 
imported  from  abroad  a  mangled  and  mystic 
Germanism,  which  has  been  for  a  while  the 
rage.  This  has  not,  however,  mingled  kindly 
with  the  current  of  our  literature.  The 
philosophic  language  or  jargon-^-and  it  ia 
partly  both — of  the  Teutons  has  not  been 
well  assimilated,  or  thoroughly  digested 
among  us.  From  its  frequent  and  affected 
use,  it  b  fast  becoming  &  nuisance.  While 
thinkers  have  gladly  availed  themselves  of 
all  that  is  really  valuable  in  its  terminology^ 
pretenders  have  still  more  eagerly  sought 
shelter  for  their  conceit  or  morbid  weakness 
under  its  shield.  The  stuff,  the  verbiage, 
the  mystic  bewilderment,  the  affectation,  the 
disguised  common-place,  which  every  per- 
iodical almost  now  teems  with,  uqder  the 
form  of  this  foreign,  phraseology,  are  enor* 
mous,  abd  would  require  a  Swift,  in  a  new 
"  Tale  of  a  Tub"  or  •*  Battle  of  the  Books," 
to  expose  them.  We  fancy,  however,  we 
see  a  reaction  coming.  Great  is  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  the  language  of  Shakspere  and  Byron, 
and  it  shall  yet  prevail  over  the  feeble  refine- 
ments of  the  small  toadies  of  the  Teutonic 
giants,  Germany  was  long  Britain's  humble 
echo  and  translator.  Britain,  please  God! 
shall  never  become  its  shadow.  Britain's 
literature  never,  shall  we  say  ?  can  thus  be- 
come its  own  grandchild.  Our  thought,  too, 
and  faith,  which  have  suffered  from  the  same 
cause,  are  in  due  time  to  recover;  nay,  the 
process  of  restoration  is  begun.  And  among 
other  remedies  for  the  evil,  while  yet  it  in  a 
great  measure  continues,  we  strongly  recom- 
mend a  recurrence  to  the  works  of  our  great 
classics  in  the  past ;  and  among  their  bright 
list,  let  not  him  be  forgotten  who,  apart  from 
his  genius,  his  worth,  and  his  political  achieve- 
ments, has  in  his  works  presented  so 
many  titles  to  be  considered  hot  only  as  the 
facile  princeps  among  the  writers  of  his  own 
tibie,  although  this  itself  were  high  dis- 
tinction, but  as  one  of  the  first  authors  who, 
in  any  age  or  country,  ever  speculated  or 
wrote. 


185S.J 


WniiAH  MACGILUVRAT,  THB  NATUBALIBT. 


213 


From   Elisa   Cook'a   J«arnaL 


WILLIAM    MAC6ILLIVKAY,    THE    NATURALIST. 


This  country  has  as  yet  produced  no 
naturalist  so  distinguished  as  Audubon  in  his 
particular  department  of  science.  Wilson, 
the  Paisley  weaver,  published  an  admirable 
work  on  the  birds  of  Ainerica,  and,  having 
settled  in  that  countryi  he  oame  to  be  regard- 
ed as  an  American  rather  than  as  a  British 
writer.  The  subject  of  this  memoir,  who 
died  only  a  few  months  ago,  certainly  stands 
at  the  head  of  all  our  native  writers  on 
British  birds.  His  history  is  similar  to  that 
of  many  other  ardent  devotees  of  science 
and  art.  His  life  was  a  long  and  arduous 
struggle  with  difficulties,  poverty,  and  neg- 
lect ;  and  it  was  only  towards  the  close  of 
his  career,  when  he  had  completed  the  last 
volume  of  his  admirable  work  that  he  saw 
the  clouds  which  had  obscured  his  early  for- 
tunes clearing  away  and  showing  him  the 
bright  sky  and  sunshine  beyond ; — but,  alas  I 
the  success  came  too  late ;  his  constitution 
had  given  way  in  the  ardor  of  the  pursuit, 
and  the  self-devoted  man  of  science  sank 
lamented  into  a  too  early  grave. 

William  Macgillivray  was  bom  at  Aber- 
deen, the  son  of  comparatively  poor  parents, 
who  nevertheless  found  the  means  of  sending 
him  to  the  university  of  his  native  town,  in 
which  he  took  the  degree  of  master  of  arts. 
It  was  his  intention  to  have  taken  out  a 
medical  degree,  and  he  served  an  appren- 
ticeship to  a  physician  with  this  view,  but 
his  means  were  too  limited,  and  his  love  of 
natural  history  too  ardent,  to  allow  him  to 
follow  the  profession  as  a  means  of  support. 
He  accordingly  sought  for  a  situation  which 
should  at  the  same  time  enable  him  to  sub- 
sist and  to  pursue  his  favorite  pursuit. 

Such  a  situation  presented  itself  in  1823, 
when  he  accepted  the  appointment  of  assist- 
ant and  secretary  to  the  regius  professor  of 
natural  history,  and  keeper  of  the  museum 
of  the  Edinburgh  University.  The  collection  of 
natural  history  at  that  place  is  one  of  peculiar 
excellence,  and  he  was  enabled  to  pursue  his 
studies  with  increased  zest  and  profit, — not, 
however,  as  regarded  his  purse,  for  the  office 
was  by  no  means  lucrative ;  but,  having  the 


charge  of  this  fine  collection,  he  was  enabled 
to  devote  his  time  exclusively  to  the  study 
of  scientific  ornithology  during  the  winter, 
while  durinff  the  summer  vacation  he  made 
long  excursions  in  the  country  in  order  to 
investigate  and  record  the  habits  of  British 
birds.  He  was  afterwards  appointed  con- 
servator to  the  museum  of  the  Royal  College 
of  Surgeons  at  Edinburgh,  where  we  have 
often  seen  him  diligently  pouring  over,  dis- 
secting, and  preparing  the  specimens  which, 
from  time  to  time,  were  added  to  that  fine 
collection.  It  was  while  officiating  in  the 
latter  capacity  that  he  wrote  the  three  first 
volumes  of  his  elaborate  work  on  British 
birds.  His  spare  time  was  also  occupied  in 
the  preparation  of  numerous  other  works  on 
natural  history,  some  of  them  of  standard 
excellence,  by  which  he  was  enabled  to  eke 
out  the  means  of  comfortable  subsistence. 

Mr.  Macgillivray  was  a  man  of  indefati- 
gable industry,  of  singular  order  and  method 
in  his  habits,  a  strict  economist  of  time,  every 
moment  of  which  he  turned  to  useful  account. 
Although  he  studied  and  wrote  upon  many 
subjects, — zoology,  geology,  botany,  mol- 
lusca,  physiology,  agriculture,  the  feeding  of 
cattle,  soils  and  sub-soils, — ornithology  was 
always  his  favorite  pursuit.  He  accom- 
panied Audubon  in  most  of  his  ornithological 
rambles  in  Scotland,  and  doubtless  imbibed 
some  portion  of  the  ardent  enthusiasm  with 
which  the  American  literally  burned.  Mr. 
Macgillivray  wrote  the  descriptions  of  the 
species,  and  of  the  alimentary  and  respiratory 
organs  for  Audubon's  great  work.  His  own 
British  Birds  reminds  us  in  many  parts  of 
the  enthusiasm  of  Audubon,  and  of  the  grace 
of  that  writer's  style.  Like  him,  Macgil- 
livray used  to  watch  the  birds  of  which  he 
was  in  search  by  night  and  day.  Wrapped 
m  his  plaid,  he  would  lie  down  upon  the 
open  moor  or  on  the  hill-side,  waiting  the 
approach  of  morning  to  see  the  feathered 
tribes  start  up  and  meet  the  sun,  to  dart 
after  then:  prey,  or  to  feed  their  impatient 
brood.  We  remember  one  such  night  spent 
by  him  on  the  side  of  the  Lammermoor  b**^ 


21i 


WILLIAM  MACGILLIVBAY,  THE  NATORAUBT. 


[Oct^ 


described  in  one  of  his  early  works,  which  is 
fall  of  descriptive  beauty  as  well  as  of  sound 
information  upon  the  subject  in  hand.  There 
is  another  simiUr  description  of  a  night  spent 
by  him  among  the  mountains  of  Braemar. 
He  had  been  in  search  of  the  gray  ptarmi- 
gan, whose  haunts  and  habits  he  was  en- 
gaged in  studying  at  the  time,  and  had  traced 
the  river  Dee  far  up  to  Us  sources  among  the 
hills,  when  all  traces  of  the  stream  became 
lost;  clouds  began  to  gather  about  the  sum- 
mits of  the  mountains,  still  he  pressed  on 
towards  the  hill-top,  until  he  found  himself 
on  the  summit  of  a  magnificent  precipice, 
several  hundred  feet  high,  and  at  least  half 
a  mile  in  length.  "  The  scene,"  he  says, 
"  that  now  presented  itself  to  my  view  was 
the«mo8t  splendid  that  I  had  then  seen.  All 
around  rose  mountains  beyond  mountains, 
whose  granite  ridges,  rugged  and  tempest- 
beaten,  furrowed  by  deep  ravines  worn  by 
the  torrents,  gradually  became  dimmer  as 
they  receded,  until  at  length  on  the  verge  of 
the  horizon  they  were  blended  with  the 
clouds  or  stood  abrupt  against  the  clear  sky. 
A  solemn  stillness  pervaded  all  nature;  no 
living  creature  was  to  be  seen ;  the  dusky 
wreaths  of  vapor  rolled  majestically  over  the 
dark  valleys,  and  clung  to  the  craggy  sum- 
mits of  the  everlasting  hills.  A  melancholy, 
pleasing,  incomprehensible  feeling  creeps  over 
the  soul  when  the  lone  wanderer  contem- 
plates the  vast,  the  solemn,  the  solitary 
scene,  over  which  savage  grandeur  and  ste- 
rility preside. 

.••♦*•♦ 

*'  The  summits  of  the  loftier  mountains ; 
Oairngorm  on  the  one  hand,Ben-na-muic-dui, 
and  Benvrotan,  on  the  other,  and  Loch-na- 
gar  on  the  south,  were  covered  with  mist ; 
but  the  clouds  had  rolled  westward  from 
Ben-na-buird,  on  which  I  stood,  leaving  its 
summit  entirely  free.  The  beams  of  the 
setting  sun  burst  in  masses  of  light  here  and 
there  through  the  openings  in  the  clouds, 
.  which  exhibited  a  hundred  varying  shades. 
There,  over  the  ridges  of  yon  brown  and  tor- 
rent-worn mountain,  hangs  a  vast  mass  of 
livid  vapor,  gorgeously  glowing  with  deep 
crimson  along  all  its  lower-fringed  margin. 
Here,  the  white  shroud  that  clings  to  the 
peaked  summits  assumes  on, its  western  side 
a  delicate  hue  like  that  of  the  petals  of  the 
pale- red  ro$e.  Far  away  to  the  north  gleams 
a  murky  cloud,  in  which  the  spirits  of  the 
storm  are  mustering  their  strengh,  and  pre- 
paring the  forked  lightnings,  which  at  mid- 
night they  will  fling  over  the  valley  of  the 
Spey," 


The  traveller,  seeing  niffht  coming  on,  struck 
into  a  corry,  down  which  a  small  mountain 
streamlet  rushed ;  and  having  reached  the 
bottom  of  the  slope,  began  to  run,  starting 
the  ptarmigans  from  their  seats  and  the  does 
from  their  lair.  It  became  quite  dark ;  still 
he  went  on  walk'ng  for  two  hours,  but  all 
traces  of  path  became  lost,  and  he  groped 
his  way  amid  blocks  of  granite,  ten  miles  at 
least  from  any  human  habitation,  and  "  with 
no  better  cheer  in  my  wallet,"  he  says,  "than 
a  quarter  of  a  cake  of  barley  and  a  few 
crumbs  of  cheese,  which  a  shepherd  had 
given  me.  Before  I  resolyed  to  halt  for  the 
night,  I  had,  unfortunately,  proceeded  so  far 
up  the  glen  that  I  had  left  behind  me  the 
region  of  heath,  so  that  I  could  not  procure 
enough  for  a  bed.  Pullin^p  some  ^grass  and 
moss,  however,  I  spread  it  in  a  sheltered 
place,  and  after  some  time  succeeded  in  fall- 
ing into  a  sort  of  slumber.  About  midnight 
I  looked  up  on  the  moon  and  stars  that  were 
at  times  covered  by  the  masses  of  vapor  that 
rolled  along  the  summits  of  the  mountains, 
which,  with  their  tremendous  precipices,  com- 
pletely surrounded  the  hollow  in  which  I 
cowered,  like  a  ptarmigan  in  the  hill-corry. 
Behind  me,  in  the  west,  and  at  the  head  of 
the  glen,  was  a  lofty  mass  enveloped  in 
clouds;  on  the  right  a  pyfamidal  rock,  and 
beside  it  a  peak  of  less  elevation ;  on  the  left 
a  ridge  from  the  great  mountain,  terminatinff 
below  in  a  dark  conical  prominence;  and 
straight  before  me,  in  the  east,  at  the  dis- 
tance apparently  of  a  mile,  another  yast  mass. 
Finding  myself  cold,  although  the  weather 
was  mild,  1  got  up  and  made  me  a  couch  of 
large  stones,  grass,  and  a  little  short  heath ; 
unloosed  my  pack,  covered  one  of  my  ex- 
tremities with  a  night-cap,  and  thrust  a  pair 
of  dry  stockings  on  ^he  other,  ate  a  portion 
of  my  scanty  store,  drank  two  or  three  glasses 
of  water  from  a  neighboring  rill,  placed  my- 
self in  an  easy  posture,  and  fell  asleep. 
About  sunrise  I  awoke,  fresh  but  feeble ; 
ascended  the  glen ;  passed  through  a  mag- 
nificent corry,  composed  of  vast  rocks  of 
granite ;  ascended  the  steep,  with  great  diffi- 
culty, and  at  length  gained  the  summit  of 
the  mountain,  which  was  coyered  with  light 
grey  mist  that  rolled  rapidly  along  the  ridges. 
As  the  clouds  cleared  away  at  intervals,  and 
the  sun  shone  upon  the  scene,  I  obtained  a 
view  of  the  glen  in  which  I  had  passed  the 
night,  the  corry,  the  opposite  hills,  and  a 
blue  lake  before  me.  The  stream  which  I 
had  followed,  I  traced  to  two  large  fountains, 
from  each  of  which  I  took  a  glassful,  which 
I  quaffed  to  the  health  of  my  best  friends. 


1803.] 


WILLIAM  MACQILLIYRAT,  THE  NATURAUBT. 


215 


"  Desoendinff  from  this  Bummit,  I  wan- 
dered over  a  uigh  moor,  came  upon  the 
briDk.  of  rocks  that  bounded  a  deep  valley, 
in  which  was  a  black  lake ;  proceeded  over 
the  unknown  region  of  alternate  bogs  and 
crags ;  raised  several  flocks  of  gray  ptarmi- 
gans,, and  at  length,  by  following  a  ravine, 
entered  one  of  the  valleys  of  the  Spey,  near 
Che  mouth  of  which  I  saw  a  water  ouzel.  It 
was  not  until  noon  that  I  reached  a  hut,  in 
which  I  procured  some  milk.  In  the  even- 
ing, at  ELingussie,  I  examined  the  ample  store 
ofplants  that  I  had  collected  in  crossing  the 
Grampians,  and  I  refreshed  myself  with  a 
long  sleep  in  a  more  comfortable  bed  than 
one  of  granite  slabs,  with  a  little  grass  and 
heather  spread  over  them." 

Macgillivray's  description  of  the  golden 
eagle  of  the  highlands,  in  its  eloquence,  re- 
minds one  of  the  splendid  descriptions' of  his 
friend  Audubon.  We  can  only  give  a  few 
brief  extracts. 

"  The  golden  eagle  is  not  seen  to  advan- 
tage in  the  menagerie  of  a  zoological  society, 
nor  when  fettered  on  the  smooth  lawn  of  an 
aristocratic  mansion,  or  perched  on  the  rock- 
work  of  a  nursery  garden ;  nor  can  his  habits 
be  well  described  by  a  cockney  ornithologist, 
whose  proper  province  it  is  to  concoct  sys*' 
tems, '  work  out'  analogies,  and  give  names 
to  skins  that  have  come  from  foreign  lands, 
oarefuUy  packed  in  boxes  lined  with  tin. 
Far  away  among  the  brown  hills  of  Albyn, 
is  thy  dwelling  place,  chief  of  the  rocky  glen! 
On  the  crumbling  crag  of  red  granite — that 
tower  of  the  fissured  precipices  of  Loch-na- 
gar — thou  hast  reposed  in  safety.    The  croak 
of  the  raven  has  broken  thy  slumbers,  and 
thou  gatherest  up  thy  huge  winffs,  smooth- 
eat  thy  feathers  on  thy  sides,  and  preparest 
to  launch  into  the  aerial  ocean.     Bird  of  the 
desert,  solitary  though  thou  art,  and  hateful 
to  the  sight  of  many  of  thy  fellow- creatures, 
thine  must  be  a  happy  life  1    No  lord  hast 
thou  to  bend  thy  stubborn  soul  to  his  will, 
no  cares  corrode  thy  heart ;  seldom  does  fear 
chilli  thy  free  spirit,  for  the  windy  tempest 
and  the  thick  sleet  cannot  injure  thee,  and 
the  lightning^  may  flash  around  thee,  and  the 
thunders  shake  the  everlasting  hills,  without 
rousing  thee  from  thy  dreamy  repose. 

*  *  «r  «r  «r  «r 

*'  See  how  the  sunshine  brightens  the  yel- 
low tint  of  his  head  and  neck,  until  it  shines 
almost  like  gold !  There  he  stands,  nearly 
ereot,  with  his  tail  depressed,  his  large  wings 
half  raised  by  his  side,  his  neck  stretched 
outp  and  his  eye  glistening  as  he  glances 


around.    Like  other  robbers  of  the  desert, 
he  has  a  noble  aspect,  an  imperative  mien,  a 
look  of  proud  defiance ;  but  his  nobility  has 
a  dash  of  churlishness,  and  his  falconsbip  a 
vulturine  tinge.     Still  he  is  a  noble  bird, 
powerful,  independent,  proud,  and  ferocious ; 
regardless  of  the  weal  or  woe  of  others,  and 
intent  solely  on  the  gratification  of  his  own 
appetite;  without  generosity,  without  honor ; 
bold  against  (he  defenceless,  but  ever  ready 
to  sneak  from  danger.     Such  is  his  nobility, 
about  which  men  have  so  raved.    Suddenly 
he  raises  his  wings,  for  he  has  heard  the 
whistle  of  the  shepherd  in  the  corry;  and 
bending  forward,  he  springs  into  the  air. 
Oh  I   that  .this  pencil  of  mine  were  a  musket 
charged  with  buckshot  1    Hardly  do  those 
vigorous  flaps  serve  at  first  to  prevent  his 
descent ;  but  now,  curving  upwards,  he  glides 
majestically  along.    As  he  passes  the  corner 
of  that  buttressed  and  battlemented  crag,' 
forth  rush  two  ravens  from  their  nest,  croak- 
ing fiercely.     While  one  flies  above  him  the 
other  steals  beneath,  and  they  essay  to  strike 
him,  but  dare  not,  for  they  have  an  instinctive- 
knowledge  of  the  power  of  his  grasp;  and 
after  following  him  a  little  way,  they  return 
to  their  home,  vainly  exulting  in  the  thought 
of  having  driven  him  from  their  neighbor- 
hood.    Bent  on  a  far  journey,  he  advances 
in  a  direct  course,  flapping  bis  great  wings 
at  regular  intervals,   then    shooting  along 
without  seeming  to  move  them.         *         * 
"Over  the  moor  he  sweeps  at  the  height 
of  two  or  three  hundred  feet,  bending  his 
course  to  either  side,  his  wings  wide  spread, 
his  neck  and  feet  retracted,  now  beating  the 
air,  and  again  sailing  smoothly  along.     Sud- 
denly he  stops,  poises  himself  for  a  moment, 
stoops,  but  recovers  himself  without  reaching 
the  ground.     The  object  of  his  regards,  a 
golden  plover,  which  he  had  espied  on  her 
nest,  has  eluded  him,  and  he  cares  not  to 
pursue  it.     Now  he  ascends  a  little,  wheels 
m  short  curves — ^presently  rushes  down  head- 
long— assumes    the    horizontal    position, — 
when  close  to  the  ground,  prevents  his  being 
dashed  against  it  by  expanding  his  wings 
and  tail,  thrusts  forth  his  talons,  and  grasp- 
ing a  poor  terrified  ptarmigan  that  sits  cow- 
ering among  the  gray  lichen,  squeezes  it  to 
death,  raises  his  head  exultingly,  emits  a 
clear  shrill'  cry,  and   springing  from    the 
ground  pursues  his  journey. 

"In  passing  a  tall  cliff  that  overhangs  a 
small  lake,  he  is  assailed  by  a  fierce  pere- 
grine falcon,  which  darts  and  plunges  at  him 
as  if  determined  to  deprive  him  of  nis  booty, 
or  drive  him  headlong  to  the  ground.    This 


216 


WILLIAM  HAC6ILIJVBAT,  THE  KATUKALISr. 


roou 


proves  a  more  dangrerous  foe  than  the  raven, 
and  the  eagle  screams,  yells,  and  throws 
himself  into  postures  of  defiance;  but  at 
length  the  hawk,  seeing  the  .tyrant  is  not 
bent  on  plundering  his  nest,  leaves  him  to 
pursue  his  course  unmolested.  Over  woods 
and  -green  fields,  and  scattered  hamlets, 
speeds  the  eagle ;  and  now  he  enters  the 
bng  valley  of  the  Dee,  near  the  upper  end 
of  which  is  dimly  seen  through  the  thin 
gray  mist  the  rock  of  his  nest.  About  a 
mile  from  it  he  meets  his  mate,  who  has 
been  abroad  on  a  similar  errand,  and  is  re- 
turning with  a  white  hare  in  her  talons.  They 
congratulate  each  other  with  loud  yelping 
criesf'  which  rouse  the  drowsy  shepherd  on 
the  strath  below,  who,  mindful  of  the  lambs 
carried  off  in  spring  time,  sends  after  them 
his  malediction.  Now  they  reach  their  nest, 
and  are  greeted  by  their  young  with  loud 
clamor." 

His  descriptions  of  the  haunts  of  the  wild 
birds  of  the  north  are  full  of  picturesque 
beauty.  Those  of  the  grouse,  the  ptarmigan, 
the  merlin,  are  full  of  memorable  pictures, 
and  here  is  a  brief  sketch  of  the  haunts  of 
the  common  snipe,  whieh  recalls  many  de- 
lightful associations : — "  Beautiful  are  those 
green  woods  that  hang  upon  the  craggy  sides 
of  the  fern-clad  hills,  where  the  heath-fowl 
threads  its  way  among  the  tufts  of  brown 
heath,  and  the  cuckoo  sings  his  ever-ple^ing 
notes  as  he  balances  himself  on  the  gray 
stone,  vibrating  his  fan -like  tail.  Now  I 
listen  to  the  simple  song  of  the  mountain 
blackbird,  warbled  by  the  quiet  lake  that 
spreads  its  glittering  bosom  to  the  sun,  wind- 
ing far  away  among  the  mountains,  amid 
whose  rocky  glens  wander  the  wild  deer, 
tossing  their  antiered  heads  on  high,  as  they 
snuff  the  breeze  tainted  with  the  odor  of  the 
slow-paced  shepherd  and  his  faithful  dog. 
In  that  recess,  formed  by  two  moss-clad  slabs 
of  mica-slate,  the  lively  wren  jerks  up  its 
little  tail,  and  chits  its  merry  note,  as  it  re- 
calls its  straggling  young  ones  that  have 
wandered  among  the  bushes.  From  the  sedgy 
slope,  springled  with  white  cottoorgrass,. 
comes  the  shrill  cry  of  the  solitary  curlew  ; 
and  there,  high  over  the  heath,  wings  bis 
meandering  way  the  joyous  snipe,  giddy  with 
excess  of  unalloyed  happiness. 

^' There  another  has  sprung  from  among 
the  yellow-flowered  marigolds  that  profusely 
cover  the  marsh.  Upwards  slantingly,  on 
rapidly  vibrating  wings,  he  shoots,  uttering 
the  while  his  shrill,  two-noted  cry.  Tissick, 
tissick,  quoth  the  snipe  as  he  leaves  the  bog. 
Now,  in  silence,  he  wends  his  way,  until  at 


length  having  reached  the  height  of  perhaps 
a  thousand  feet,  he  zigzags  along,  emitting  a 
louder  and  shriller  cry  of  zoo-zee,  zoo-zee^ 
zoo-zee ;  which  over,  varying  his  action,  hs 
descends  on  quivering  pinions,  curving  to- 
wards the  earth  with  surprising  speed,  while 
from  the  rapid  be^ts  of  his  wing  the  tremu- 
lous air  gives  to  the  ear  what  at  first  seems 
the  voice  of  distant  thunder.  This  noise  some 
Ittve  likened  to  the  bleating  of  a  goat  at  a 
distance  on  the  hill- side,  and  thus  have  named 
oxSt  bird  the  Air-goat  and  Air-bleater." 

In  his  later  volumes,  the  naturalist  gives 
many  admirable  descriptions  of  the  haunts  of 
seabirds  along  the  rock-bound  shores  of  his 
native  Highlands.  He  loves  to  paint  the 
coasts  of  the  lonely  Hebrides,  where  he  often 
resorted  in  the  summer  months  to  watch  and 
study  the  divers  and  plungers  of  the  sea. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  picture  of  the  grey 
heron  on  a  Highland  coast : — 

"The  cold  blasts  of  the  north  swept  aloi^ 
the  ruffled  surface  of  the  lake,  over  whose 
deep  waters  frown  the  rugged  crags  of  r  rusty 
gneiss,  having  their  crevices  sprinkled  with 
tufts  of  withered  herbage,  and  their  sum- 
mits covered  with  stunted  birches  and  aiders. 
The  desolate  hills  around  are  partially  covered 
with  snow,  the  pastures  are  drenched  with 
the  rains,  the  brown  torrents  scum  the  heathy 
slopes,  and  the  little  birds  have  long  ceased 
to  enliven  those  deserted  thickets  with  their 
gentle  songs.    Margining  the  waters,  extends 
a  long  muddy  beach,  over  which  are  scat- 
tered blocks  of  stone,  partially  clothed  with 
dusky  and  olivaceous  weeds..  Here  and  thens 
a  gull  floats  buoyantly  in  the  shallows ;  some 
oyster-catchers  repose  on  a  gravel  bank,  their 
bills  buried  among  their  plumage ;  and  there, 
on  that  low  shelf,  is  perched  a  solitary  heron» 
like  a  monument  of  listless  indolence, — a  bird 
petrified  in  its  slumber.    At  another  time^ 
when  the  tide  has  retired,  you  may  find  it 
wandering,   with    slow   and  careful    tread, 
among  the  little  pools,  and  by  the  sides  of 
the  rocks,  in  search  of  small  fishes  and  crabs ; 
but,  unless  you  are  bent  on  watching  it,  you 
will  find  more  amusement  in  observing  the 
lively  tringaa  and  tumstones,  ever  in  rapid 
motion ;  for  the  heron  is  a  dull  and  lazy  bird, 
or  at  least  he  seems  to  be  such  ;  and  even  if 
you  draw  near,  he  rises  in  so  listless  a  man- 
ner, that  you  think  it  a  hard  task  for  him  to 
unfold  his  large  wings  and  heavily  beat  the 
air,  until  he  has  fairly  raised  himself.     But 
now,  he  floats  away,  lightly,  though  with  slow 
flapping,  screams  his  harsh  cry,  and  tries  to 
soar  to  some  distant  place,  where  he  may  re- 
main unmolested  by  the  prying  naturalist. 


1858.] 


WILLIAM  MA06ILIIVSAT,  THE  KATITRALIST. 


211 


**  Perhaps  yoa  may  wonder  at  finding  him 
in  80  cold  and  desolate  a  place  as  this  dull 
ae»-ereek,  on  the  most  northern  coast  of  Scot- 
land, and  that  too,  in  the  very  midst  of  win- 
ter; but  the  heron  courts  not  society,  and 
seems  to  care  as  little  as  any  one  for  the  cold. 
Were  you  to  betake  yourself  to  the  other  ex- 
tremity of  the  island,  where  the  scenery  is  of  a 
Tery  different  character,  and  the  inlands  swarm 
with  ducks  and  gulls,  there,  too,  you  would 
find  the  heron,  unaltered  in  manners,  slow 
in  his  movements,  careful  and  patient,  ever 
hnnsry  and  ever  lean, — ^for  even  when  in  best 
condition,  he  never  attains  the  plumpness  that 
pves  you  the  idea  of  a  comfortable  ezist- 


We  should  like  also  to  give  his  descriptions 
of  the  haunts  and  habits  of  the  "Great 
Northern  Diver,"  and  the  ''Great  Black- 
baoked  Gull,"  which  are  most  vigorously 
painted ;  but  we  must  forbear;  referring  the 
reader  to  the  fifth  volume  of  the  work  itself, 
which  is  throughout  a  most  able  one.  At 
present  we  shall  conclude  our  brief  sketch  of 
the  naturalist's  too  brief  life. 

In  1841,  Mr.  Macgillivray  was  appointed 
by  the  Crown  to  the  Professorship  of  Natural 
Hutory  in  Marischal  College,  Aberdeen, 
solely  on  account  of  his  acknowledged  merit, 
for  he  had  no  interest  whatever ;  and  the 
seal,  ability,  and  success,  with  which  he  dis- 
charged his  duties,  amply  justified  the  nomi- 
nation. He  was  an  admirable  lecturer, — 
clear,  simple,  and  methodical,  laboring  to  lay 
securely  the  foundations  of  knowledge  in  the 
minds  of  his. pupils.  He  imbued  them  with 
the  love  of  science,  and  communicated  to 
them — as  every  successful  lecturer  will  do — 
a  portion  of  his  own  enthusiasm. 

In  the  autumn  of  1850,  he  made  an  excur- 
sion to  Braemar,  with  the  intention  of  writing 
an  account  of  the  Natural  History  of  Bal- 
moral ^which  was  ready  for  publication  at  the 
time  or  his  death) ;  and  he  afterwards  ex- 
tended his  excursion  to  the  central  region  of 
the  Grampians,  in  pursuit  of  the  materials  for 
another  work.  The  fatigue  and  exposure 
which  he  underwent  on  this  occasion  seriously 
affected  his  health ;  and  he  removed  to  Tor- 
quay, in  Devon,  in  hopes  of  renewed  vigor. 
But  he  never  rallied.  A  severe  calamity  be- 
fel  him  while  in  Devon,  through  the  sudden 
death  of  his  wife,  to  whom  he  was  tenderly 
attached.  Nevertheless,  he  went  on  steadily 
with  his  work,  which  even  his  seriously  im- 
paired health  did  not  allow  him  to  interrupt. 
We  can  conceive  him  in  such  a  state  to  have 
written  the  following  passage^  which  appears 


in  the  preface  to  his  last  work,  published  in 
the  week  of  his  death : — 

*'  As  the  wounded  bird  seeks  some  quiet 
retreat,  where,  freed  from  the  persecution  of 
the  pitiless  fowler,  it  may  pass  the  time  of  its 
anguish  in  the  forgetfulness  of  the  outer 
world,  so  have  I,  assailed  by  disease,  betaken 
myself  to  a  sheltered  nook,  where,  unannoyed 
by  the  piercing  blasts  of  the  North  Sea,  I 
had  been  led  to  hope  that  my  life  might  be 
protracted  beyond  the  most  dangerous  season 
of  the  year.  It  is  thus  that  I  issue  from 
Devonshire 'the  present  volume,  which,  how- 
ever, contains  no  observations  of  mine  made 
there,  the  scenes  of  my  labors  being  in  dis- 
tant parts  of  the  country.  •         •        ♦ 

"  It  is  well  that  the  observations  from 
which  these  descriptions  have  been  prepared, 
were  made  many  years  ago,  when  I  was  full 
of  enthusiasm,  and  enjoyed  the  blessings  of 
health,  and  freedom  from  engrossing  public 
duties ;  for  I  am  persuaded  that  now  I  should 
be  in  some  respects  less  qualified  for  the 
task, — more,  however,  from  the  failure  of 
physical  than  of  mental  power.  Here,  on  the 
rocky  promontory,  I  shiver  in  the  breeze, 
which,  to  my  companion,  is  but  cool  and 
bracing.  The  east  wind  rufiles  the  sea,  and 
impels  the  little  waves  to  the  shores  of  the 
beautiful  bay,  which  present  alternate  cliffs 
of  red  sandstone  and  beaches  of  yellow  sand, 
backed  hy  undulated  heights  and  gentle,  ac- 
clivities, slowly  rising  to  the  not  distant 
horizon ;  fields  and  woods,  with  villages,  and 
scattered  villas,  forming — not  wild  nor  alto- 
gether tame — a  pleasing  landscape,  which, 
m  its  summer  and  autumnal  garniture  of  grass 
and  corn,  and  sylvan  verdure,  orchard  blos- 
som and  fruit,  tangled  fence- bank,  and  furze- 
clad  common,  will  be  beautiful  indeed  to  the 
lover  of  nature.  Then,  the  balmy  breezes 
from  the  west  and  south  will  waft  health  to 
the  reviving  invalid.  At  present,  the  cold 
vernal  gales  sweep  along  the  channel,  con- 
veying to  its  haven  the  extended  fleet  of  boats 
that  render  Bircham,  on  the  opposite  horn  of 
the  bay,  one  of  tne  most  celebrated  of  the 
southern  fishing-stations  of  England.  High 
over  the  waters,  here  and  there,  a  solitary 
gull  slowly  advances  against  the  breeze,  or 
shoots  ath warty  or  with  a  beautiful  glidmg 
motion  sweeps  down  the  aerial  current.  At 
the  entrance  to  Torquay  are  assembled  many 
birds  of  the  same  kind,  which,  by  their  hover- 
ing near  the  surface,  their  varied  evolutions, 
and  mingling  cries,  indicate  a  shoal,  probably 
of  athennes  or  sprats.  On  that  little  pyra- 
midal rock,  projecting  from  the  water,  repose 


1 


S18 


THB  TOMB  OF  POFffS  KUBSB. 


fOct, 


two  dusky  Cormorants;  and,  far  away,  in 
the  direction  of  Portland  Island,  a  eannet, 
well-known  by  its  peculiar  flight,  winpows 
its  exploring  way,  and  plunges  headlong  into 
the  deep." 

And,  speakioff  of  the  conclusion  of  his 
great  work,  on  the  last  page,  he  says  of  it : — 

"  Commenced  in  hope,  and  carried  on  with 
seal,  though  ended  in  sorrow  and  sickness,  I 
can  look  upon  my  work  without  much  regard 
to  the  opinions  which  contemporary  wnters 
may  form  of  it,  assured  that  what  is  useful 
in  it  will  not  be  forgotten ;  and  knowing  that 
already  it  has  had  a  beneficial  effect  on  many 
of  the  present,  and  will  more  powerfully  in- 
fluence the  next  generation  of  our  home- 
ornithologists.  I  had  been  led  to  think  that 
I  had  occasionally  been  somewhat  rude,  or  at 
least  blunt,  in  my  criticisms ;  but  I  do  not 
perceive  wherein  I  have  much  erred  in  that 
respect,  and  I  feel  no  inclination  to  apologise. 
I  have  been  honest  and  sincere  in  my  en- 
deavors to  promote  the  truth.  With  death, 
apparently  not  distant,  before  my  eyes,  I  am 
pleased  to  think  that  I  have  not  countenanced 
error,  through  fear  or  favor  :  neither  have  I 
in  any  case  modified  my  statements  so  as  to 
endeavor  thereby  to  conceal  or  palliate  my 
faults.  Though  I  might  have  accomplished 
more,  I  am  thankful  for  having  been  per- 
mitted to  add  very  considerably  to  the  know- 
ledge previously  obtained  of  a  very  pleasant 


subject.  If  I  have  not  very  frequently  in- 
dulged in  reflections  on  the  power,  wisdom, 
and  goodness  of  God,  as  suggested  by  even 
my  imperfect  understanding  of  his  wonderful 
works,  it  is  not  because  I  have  not  ever  been 
sensible  of  the  relation  between  the  Creator 
and  his  creatures,  nor  because  my  chief  en- 
joyment, when  wandering  among  the  hilla 
and  valleys,  exploring  the  rugged  shores  of 
the  ocean,  or  searching  the  cultivated  fields, 
has  not  been  in  a  sense  of  His  presence. 
'  To  Him  who  alone  doeth  great  wonders '  bo 
all  the  glory  and  praise.  Header,  farewell  1  ^ 
Mr.  Macgillivray  was  able  to  return  to 
Aberdeen — to  die.  He  expired  on  the  5th 
of  September  last,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six, 
leaving  a  large  family  behind  him,  for  whom 
he  had  been  unable  (through  the  slendemess 
of  his  means  throughout  life)  to  make  any 
provision.  His  eldest  son  has,  however, 
already  distinguished  himself  as  a  naturalist, 
having  been  employed  by  the  late  earl  of 
Derbv,  on  board  the  expedition  sent  by  him 
round  the  world ;  and  he  is  now  absent  aa 
Government  Naturalbt  on  board  the  Rattle^ 
make,  which  lately  sailed  to  carry  out  and 
complete  the  exploration  of  the  Eastern 
Archipelago  and  Southern  Pacific.  We  may 
therefore  expect  to  have  considerable  acces- 
sions to  our  Knowledge  of  the  Natural  His- 
tory of  these  regions  from  his  already  ex- 
perienced pen. 


H  ^  H 


The  Tomb  o»  Pope's  STurse.^"  I  lately 
observed,  on  the  outside  wall  of  Twickenham 
Church,  a  plain  but  respectable  stone,  with 
the  following  inscription,  which  I  have  never 
seen  in  print : — 

•  To  the  Memory  of 
Mary  Beach, 
who  died  Nov.  6,  1726,  aged  78. 
Alex.  Pope,  whom  she  nurseid  in  his  infancy, 
aiid  constantly  attended  for  38  years, 
in  gratitude  to  a  faithful  old  servant, 
erected  this  stone.' 

I  confess  I  read  this  affectionate  memorial 
with  more  pleasure  and  admiration  than  the 
smartest  or  most  elaborate  epitaph  of  the 
illustrious  poet  in  Westminster  Abbey  or 
elsewhere.    Whatever  was  the  irritability  of 


his  feelings  towards  dunces  or  the  great,  his 
domestic  affections  were  warm  and  constant; 
he  was  the  best  of  sons,  and  the  above  is 
but  one  of  the  many  proofs  he  gave  of  his 
gratitude  for  the  attention  he  received  from 
those  in  humble  life,  which  his  feeble  and 
sickly  frame  rendered  necessary;  His  old 
and  faithful  servant,  John  Searl,  was  remem- 
bered under  that  character  in  his  will ;  he  to 
whom  was  addressed  the  well  known  '  Shut, 
shut  the  door,  good  John,  fatigued  I  said ;' 
and  who  can  forget  the  lines : — 

*  Me  let  the  tender  office  long  engage 
To  rock  the  cradle  of  reposing  age, 
With  lenient  arts  extend  a  mother's  breath. 
Make  languor  smile,  and  smooth  the  bed  of 
death.' " 


1858.] 


INDIA,  ITS  PEOPLE,  AND  ITB  GOYERNHEKTB. 


210 


From  Tail's  Magazine. 


INDIA,  ITS  PEOPLE,  AND  ITS  GOVERNMENTS. 


No.  1— THE  HINDOOS  AND  MUSSULMANS. 


BT  J.   MO  ORBGOOB. 


If  the  nations  who  inhabit  the  regions  ex- 
tending from  the  Himalaya  to  Cape  Comorin, 
from  the  Indies  to  the  Burhampootra,  spoke 
one  language  and  possessed  one  literature, 
professed  one  religion  and  were  under  one 
sovereignty,  they  might,  notwithstanding  the 
distinction  of  races,  constitute  the  most  pow- 
erful empire  in  the  world. 

But  from  the  earliest  accounts — from  the 
conquests  by  Alexander,  limited  to  no  great 
distance  beyond  the  Indies,  those  nations 
have  been  engaged  in  destroying  the  inhabi- 
tants and  devastating  the  territories  of  each 
other,  enfeebling  their  strength,  disturbing 
their  internal  tranquillity,  and  rendering  life 
and  property  insecure.  In  fact,  religious 
bigotry  and  traditional  hatred  have  involved 
them  in  almost  perpetual  civil  war,  and 
opened  their  country  and  their  cities  to 
foreign  invasion,  rapine,  and  bloodshed. 

We  are  not  goingto  write  even  a  sketch 
of  Indian  history.  We  will  endeavor  to  re- 
view clearly  and  briefly  the  condition  of  the 
nations  of  Hindostan,  before  and  since  they 
became  subject  to  British  authority. 

Without  some  accurate  knowledge  of  the 
former  as  well  as  of  the  present  condition  of 
the  religions,  traditions,  customs,  and  govern- 
ment of  the  people,  it  would  be  impossible  to 
judge  of,  or  legislate  for,  an  empire  of  many 
nations,  inhabited  by  150  millions  of  Hin- 
doos, Mohammedans,  Parsees,  and  other 
Asiatics  ;  all  now  ruled  over  by  a  Christian 
race,  of  which  not  more  than  12,000,  ex- 
cluding the  British  regiments,  are  residents 
within  the  vast  dominion  of  India. 

Europeans  usually  judge  of  all  other  coun- 
tries according;  to  European  ideas  of  right 
and  wrong,  of  what  is  practicable  and  im- 
practicable. Frenchmen,  especially,  judge 
all  things  according  to  French  ideas;  and 
nearly  all  Englishmen,  whose  travels  have 


been  confined  to  the  United  Kingdom,  view 
through  an  English  social  and  political  me- 
dium, all  other  countries  and  people.  This 
local  and  false  view,  has  often  led  to  the 
most  unjust  and  impracticable  conceptions 
and  legislation. 

Locke  drew  up  the  most  beautiful  and 
rational  theory  ever  designed,  of  a  Constitu- 
tion, extending  to  one  hundred  and  fifty-two 
clauses,  for  the  government  of  Carolina.  It 
was  perfect  and  practical  for  such  a  nation, 
or  state,  as  has  never  yet  existed,  and  for  a 
people  all  rationally  and  fully  educated,  with 
no  supreme  church — no  intolerance  in  religion 
— with  the  utmost  civil  and  political  liberty, 
and  with  the  most  refined  civilization ;  Mr. 
Locke's  perfect  constitution  was,  therefore^ 
found  utterly  impracticable  for  the  govern- 
ment of  Carolina* 

So  with  India.  In  our  recent  debates  in 
the  Commons,  the  arguments  and  remedies 
used  by  the  opponents  of  the  India  Bill,  were 
all  excellent  for  Christians  and  Englishmen ; 
but  they  were  utterly  unfit  and  impractica- 
ble for  the  government  of  Hindoos,  Moham- 
medans, and  other  Asiatics. 

If  we  seriously,  impartially,  and  justly  ap- 
preciate the  empire  over  which  the  British 
Crown  has  extended  its  rule  during  the  last 
hundred  years,  the  responsibility  of  the 
Queen's  government  in  administering,  and  of 
Parliament  in  legislating  for  India,  constitute 
an  accountability  on  the  part  of  the  Crown^ 
of  the  Peers,  and  of  the  representatives  of 
the  people,  tremendous  in  its  magnitude  and 
awful  in  its  contemplation ;  but  still  not  im- 
practicable, with  wisdom,  intelligence,  and 
justice,  guiding  those  who  administer  the 
government,  laws,  and  institutions  of  that 
mighty  empire. 

Let  us,  therefore,  review  the  past,  in  order 
to  bring  knowledge  anil  experience  to  aid 


220 


INBIA,  ITB  FEOPtiE;  AND  FFS  OOVEBNHENT. 


[Oct, 


our  judgment  in  legislating  with  regard  to 
the  present  and  the  future^of  India. 

Notwithstanding  the  accounts  which  we 
have  of  the  ezpeditioDS  to  India  under  Qaeen 
Semiramis  and  Darius,  the  only  reliable  ac- 
quaintance which  we  have  of  any  part  of 
India  or  its  people  is  the  notices  which  have 
been  preserved  of  the  conquests  by  Alexan- 
der to  and  beyond  the  Indus  to  the  Hyphasis 
or  Sutlej,  and  the  voyage  of  Nearchus  down 
the  latter  and  the  Indus  to  the  ocean,  and 
thence  by  sea  to  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the 
Euphrates, 

Alexander  was  prevented  by  his  mutinous 
army  from  crossing  the  deserts  which  sepa- 
rate Lahore  from  the  fertile  countries  drained 
by  the  streams  of  the  Ganges.  He,  how- 
ever, felled  sufficient  quantities  of  the  majes- 
tic timber  that  grew  on  the  banks  of  the 
Hydaspes  to  enable  the  Phoenician  carpen- 
ters and  mariners  who  accompanied  him  to 
construct  a  fleet  of  more  than  2,000  ships, 
eighty-three  of  which  had  three  banks  of 
oars.  With  this  splendid  navy  he  descended 
the  Indus  to  the  sea,  and  he  might  have  re- 
turned to  the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris  by 
sea,  but  his  army  and  mariners,  all  except 
his  Admiral,  Nearchus,  and  a  few  seamen, 
were  terrified  at  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  tides, 
and  the  mysterious  and  apparently  boundless 
ocean. 

The  Macedonian  king,  with  his  army,  re- 
turned over  the  Sands  of  Beloochistan  and 
other  savage  lands,  finally  reaching  Kerman 
and  his  capital  Babylon.  His  conquests  in 
India  were  consequently  abandoned,  and  we 
only  know  that  he  fought  battles,  performed 
hardy  and  daring  exploits,  that  the  inhabit- 
ants were  Hindoos  in  religion,  and  ruled  by 
their  High  Priests  or  Brahmins — that  they 
were  divided  into  hereditary  castes,  each  of 
which  had  their  respective  employments  and 
dignities — that  the  regions  watered  by  the 
Jehun,  Sullej,  and  Indus,  were  populous  and 
cultivated  much  in  the  same  way,  as  when,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century,  they 
were  invaded  and  devastated  by  Mahmud, 
the  Ghaznavide,  and  that  the  manners,  cus- 
toms, and  habitations  of  the  Hindoos  were 
nearly  similar  to  those  which  prevail  at  the 
present  time. 

It  would  appear  from  the  short  account 
given  us  by  Arrian,  who  wrote  also  the  voy- 
age of  Nearchus,  that  Seleucus,  the  genera] 
of  Alexander,  made  an  expedition  to  India 
to  claim  as  his  successors  the  countries  Con- 
quered by  the  Macedonian ;  but  meeting  with 
the  formidable  power  of  Sandrocotta  (or 
Ohadragupta)  the  Emperor  of   nearly  all 


India,  the  general  abandoned  his  pretensions 
to  any  territory  east  of  the  Indus,  and  by 
inter-marriage  and  mutual  presents,  a  treaty 
of  peace  and  friendship  was  concluded  be- 
tween the  Hindoo  monarch  and  the  Greek 
warrior. 

According  to  the  account,  preserved  by 
Arrian,  given  by  the  ambassador  sent  by 
Seleucus  to  Palibothra,  the  capital  of  the  em- 
pure,  this  metropolis,  supposed  by  D'Auville, 
to  be  the  holy  city  ofAUahabad,  at  the  junction 
of  the  Jumna  with  the  Ganges,  was  then  ten 
miles  in  length  by  two  in  breadth.  It  had 
lofty  walls,  with  670  towers,  60  gates,  and 
surrounded  by  a  broad  ditch  thirty  cubits 
deep.  Major  Rennel  insists  that  the  city 
stood  where  Patna  is  now  situated ;  and  nu- 
merous other  places,  by  Ptolomy  and  Pliny, 
as  well  as  modern  writers,  are  given  as  its 
site.  The  Emperor's  army,  says  Arrian,  con- 
sisted of  400,000  soldiers,  with  2,000  chari- 
ots and  20,000  horsemen. 

Such  are  the  earliest  reliable  accounts  of 
the  Hindoos  and  of  India,  The  Arabians 
from  that  period  commenced  to  make  voyages 
to  India.  Until  the  discovery  of  a  passage 
round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to  India,  by 
the  Portuguese ;  and  until  that  nation  openea 
a  trade,  formed  settlements,  and  made  con- 
quests in  Asia,  during  the  early  part  ^  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  Moors,  or  Arabs,  alone, 
traded  with  the  empire  of  the  Hindoos  and 
Moguls,  and  supplied  the  Venetians  and  other 
European  nations  with  the  spices,  precious 
gems,  and  cotton  and  silk  fabrics  of  Hindos- 
tan.  They  described  the  countries  they  visi- 
ted as  rich  and  populous;  and  these  accounts, 
no  doubt,  afterwards  excited  the  avarice  of 
the  Mohammedan  invaders,  who,  in  their 
conquests,  were  remorseless  in  their  cruelty, 
imsparing  in  their  devastation,  and  tyrants  in 
their  domination  over  all  the  regions  of  Hin-. 
dostan. 

The  early  history  of  India,  like  that  of 
many  other  countries,  is  utterly  unknown,  or 
fabulous.  Their  writers  divide  their  annals 
into  four  periods  or  YuffS, 

The  social  and  moral  conditions  of  nations 
and  of  races,  are,  in  all  countries,  intimately 
and  hereditarily  influenced  and  moulded, 
according  to  the  simplicity  or  complexity, 
the  truth  or  the  falsehood  of  their  religious 
creed  and  the  ceremonies  and  practices  of 
their  worship.  Never  in  the  history  of  the 
world  has  there  been  seen  so  absurd  a  cata* 
logue  of  gods,  doctrines,  and  monstrosities, 
as  in  the  creed  of  the  HindooB. 

The  fabulous  accounts  of  Menu,  the  son  of 
Brahma,  assert  that  a  self-existent  and  invisi- 


1858.] 


INDIA,  HB  PEQFUBl  AND  ITS  GOYSRNMSNIB. 


921 


ble  god  had  transformed  the  world  from 
indlsceraible  darkness  by  the  breaking  of  a 
golden  eggy  withiq  which  resided  Brahma, 
the  parent  of  all  rational  beings.  Brahma, 
for  many  years,  while  within  that  egg,  had 
meditated  upon  himself;  and  when  delivered 
from  it,  on  its  being  broken  by  the  onset  of 
a  bull,  he  divided  it  into  two  eqaal  parts, 
forming  one  into  the  heavens,  the  other  into 
the  earth,  dividing  them  by  the  subtle  aether 
and  the  eisht  points  of  the  world,  within 
which  was  formed  a  permanent  receptacle  of 
waters.  The  Veda,  written  in  the  Lahyrinthic 
Devinagara  characters,  and  understood  only 
by  the  Brahmins,  is  considered  to  be  a  divine 
revelation*  The  various  Sastraa,  or  Com- 
mentaries, are  composed  in  Sanicrit,  the  lan- 
guage in  which  also  is  written  the  Puranas, 
or  circles  of  Hindoo  science. 

The  first  Tug  or  period  of  time,  the  Satya- 
yog  comprised  1,728,000  years,  the  second 
or  Trelayug  1,296,000,  the  Dwaparyug 
864,000  years,  and  the  remaining  or  Calya- 
yug  is  to  extend  to  432,000  years.  The  first 
of  these  periods  is  described  as  the  Golden 
Age  of  Innocence.  In  their  fabulous  wriUngs 
they  also  give  long  lists  of  the  dynasties  of 
their  kings,  during  the  three  past  yugas,  as 
well  as  of  the  dynasties  who  reigned  at  the 
same  time  in  the  sun  and  moon.  Some  of 
the  Hindoo  dynasties  they  say  sprung  from 
Pavana,  the  god  of  lands  and  rivers,  and 
others  from  the  firmaments. 

After  Brahma,  the  first  god,  next  to  the 
invisible  of  the  great  Hindoo  Trinity,  and 
who  shares  the  essence  of  the  supreme  god, 
comes  Vishnu,  the  preserver  or  deliverer, 
whose  avatars  or  monstrous  transformations 
in  his  descents  to  the  earth,  are  so  conspicu- 
ous in  the  theology  of  the  Hindoos.  Vishnu 
sometimes  appeared  on  earth  or  in  the  waters 
as  a  fish,  or  as  a  horse  with  several  heads, 
and  in  various  other  hideous  forms.  Siva  or 
the  Destroyer  b  the  third  deity.  Some  of 
the  Hindoos  consider  this  god,  who  also 
makes  xnsitations  in  various  hideous  forms, 
superior  either  to  Brahma  or  Vishnu. 

Among  the  female  deities  Doorga  is  the 
chief.  Her  original  name  was  Farvati,  but 
having  at  the  head  of  an  army  of  9,000,000 
of  warriors,  who,  all  armed  cap-a-pie,  sprung 
out  of  her  body,  destroyed  the  giant  Doorga, 
she  assumed  his  name.  She  is  the  partner 
of  Siva,  the  destroyer.  This  goddess  assumes 
as  many  transformations  as  Vishnu;  occa- 
sionally appearing  perfectly  black,  as  Kalee 
the  goddess  of  murder,  the  chief  deity  of 
the  Thugs,  with  the  skulls  and  hands  of 
numerous  slaughtered  giants  hanging  round 


her  waist,  and  two  dead  bodies  suspended  as 
ear-rings.  The  avatars  of  this  monster  are 
the  most  hideous  of  all  representations  of 
horrors.  She  is  the  peculiar  goddess  of  the 
JDakoits,  or  robber-gangs  of  Bengal.  The 
Thugs  also  alwaya  invoke  and  worship  her, 
before  setting  out  to  commit  their  assassina- 
tions. Besides  these  gods  and  goddesses, 
there  are  a  multitude  of  inferior  deities, 
inhabiting  the  Swerga,  a  kind  of  heaven,  and 
their  number  is  represented  as  333,000,000. 
A  selection  only  is  worshipped.  One  great 
deity  is  Kartikeya,  the  god  of  war.  He  has 
six  heads  and  twelve  hands,  all  bearing  wea- 
pons, and  he  is  represented  as  riding,  upon  a 
huge  peacock.  Among  the  other  deities  is 
Ganessa,  a  fat  monster,  with  the  head  of  an 
elephant.  A  pious  Hindoo  will  do  nothing 
without  invoking  this  terrible  god.  There 
are  also  other  respective  gods,  as  Suraya  of 
the  Sun ;  Pavana,  of  the  winds ;  Agnee,  of 
fire;  Varuna,  of  the  waters;  Kuvera,  of 
riches ;  Aswinder,  of  physicians ;  and  Yama 
is  a  deity  who  judges  the  dead.  Venus  and 
Ceres  appear  united  in  the  goddess  of  plenty 
and  beauty,  called  Laksmi,  The  patrbness 
of  learning  is  called  Saras  watti. 

The  Hindoos  have  also  their  devils,  who 
occasionally  storm  and  occupy  the  abodes  of 
the  Gods.  The  rivers  and  mountains  are 
also  deified.  Even  the  serpents  are  included 
in  the  many  objects  of  devotion ;  but  the  cow 
is  the  holiest  of  all  animal  deities.    Transmi- 

g ration  of  souls  is    inculcated  by  all  the 
rahmins  and  priests,  and  believed  by  fdl 
Hindoos. 

The  most  splendid  temples  have  been 
erected  for  the  worship  of  the  Hindoo  dei* 
ties;  with  all  their  vices  and  all  the  crimes 
sanctioned  by  Brahminical  doctrines^  they 
had  virtues  and  morals,  yet  it  is  almost  im- 
possible for  human  imagination  to  conceive  a 
religion  so  low  and  degrading  to  the  human 
intellect  as  that  which  generally  prevailed 
over  India  from  the  earliest  period  to  the 
time  of  the  first  Mohammedan  invasion.  The 
Hindoos  had  however  their  system  of  as* 
tronomy,  their  zodiacs,  and  a  knowledge  of 
sciences  not  altogether  peculiar  to  themselves. 
India,  at  the, period  of  the  first  Mohammedan 
conquest,  and  long  afterwards,  presented  the 
extremes  of  magnificence  and  barbarisoL 
There  were  contrasted  with  splendid  palacea 
and  temples.  Suttees,  Thugees,  Dakoitees, 
and  infanticide,  as  universally  prevailing  cna^ 
toms  and  crimes  sanctioned  by  religion. 

Sir  William  Jones  has,  however,  made  us 
acquainted  with  some  of  the  most  sublime 
doctrines  of  one  Supreme  Deity  found  in  the 


222 


INDIA,  ITS  people;  Am>  ITS  OOYERNMENTa 


[Oct., 


Vedas,  especially  the  Holiest  Text,  which 
sets  forth,  *^  Let  us  adore  the  supremacy  of 
that  divine  Sun,  the  godhead,  who  illumioes 
all — who  recreates  alt-— from  whom  all  pro- 
ceed-^to  whom  all  must  return — whom  we 
invoke  to  direct  our  understanding  aright  in 
our  progress  towards  his  holy  seat. 

*<  What  the  Sun  and  light  are  to  the  vbi- 
ble  world,  that  are  the  supreme  good  and 
truth,  to  the  intellectual  and  invisible  uni- 
verse. Without  eyes,  he  sees — without  ears, 
he  hears — without  hand  and  foot,  he  runs 
rapidly  and  walks  firmly.  He  knows  what- 
ever can  be  known,  but  there  is  none  who 
knows  him.  Him' the  wise  call  the  Supreme, 
Pervadiiig  Spirit." 

But  unhappily  these  beautiful  and  sublime 
ideas  are  inundated  and  drowned  in  the 
superstitious,  idolatrous,  and  horrible  worship 
of  the  more  terrible  and  supposed  visible,  or 
at  least  visitorial  deities  of  the  hideous  Pan- 
theon of  the  Hindoos.  Hope  and  fear,  those 
passions  which  have,  and  ever  will,  influence 
mankind,  are  overruling  in  the  superstitions 
of  India,  whether  Hindoo  or  Mussulman. 
Nor  must  we  overlook  them  while  governing 
or  making  laws  for  India. 

The  first  caste  among  the  Hindoos  is  the 
Brahmin, — next  the  soldier, — then  the  capi- 
talist or  trader, — and  then  immeasurably  low 
in  degradation,  the  laborer.  The  distinc- 
tions and  separations  are  hereditary  and  irre- 
vocable. 

The  Bhudist-worship  is  now  chiefly  con- 
fined to  Ceylon,  although  it  originated  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ganges.  The  first  great  inter- 
ference with  the  worshippers  of  the  333,- 
000,000  of  gods,  was  by  those  who  came  forth 
believing  in  an  eternal  truth,  that  there  is  but 
one  God,  and  in  the  bold  and  successful  false- 
hood thatMohamed  is  His  Prophet.  Mahmud, 
the  Ghaznavede,  or  Ghiznivide,  was  the  son 
of  Subuktagi,  the  slave  of  the  slave  of  the 
slave  of  the  Caliph  of  Bagdad,  or  comman- 
der of  the  Faithful ;  by  serving  his  master  in 
a  succesd'ul  revolution,  he  became  his  General 
in  the  sovereignty  which  he  founded  in 
Ghazna,  or  Ghizni,  which  included  the  coun- 
try of  the  warlike  Afghans,  Cabul,  and  Can- 
dahar.  Subuktagi  is  extolled  as  distinguished 
for  wisdom,  firmness,  mercy,  and  simplicity. 
Mahmud,  his  son  and  successor,  niade  twelve 
expeditions  to  India,  between  997  and  1025; 
extended  his  empire  from  Trt^nsoxiana  to  the 
vicinity  of  Ispahan,  and  from  the  Caspian  to 
the  banks  of  the  Indus.  His  war  against  the 
Hindoos,  by  which  he  acquired  great  wealth 
and  historical  fame,  was  a  war  of  the  religion 
of  the  Musselman  for  the  destruction  of  the 


idolatrous  Gentoos.  His  conquests  were 
more  wonderful  and  successful  than  those  of 
Alexander  or  Csesar.  Never  was  Mahmud 
discouraged  by  the  formidable  difficulties 
which  lay  between  his  own  dominions  and 
those  of  India.  He  overcame  all  the  obsta- 
cles of  the  desert,  of  mountains,  rivers,  and 
climate.  He  marcned  over  Cashmere  and 
Thibet  to  the  upper  Ganges;  he  encoun- 
tered, and  captured  or  destroyed  4,000  boats 
ou  the  Indus;  and  he  entered  and  plundered 
the  populous  rich  cities  of  Bime,  with  its 
prodigious  sacred  wealth — of  Tanassar,  with 
its  unparalleled  rich  shrine  of  gold ;  Kanouge, 
with  its  30,000  Bete  shops  and  60,000  musi- 
cians ;  Muttra,  sacred  to  the  goddess  Krishna, 
Moultan,  and  Delhi,  Lahore,  all  abounding  in 
wealth  and  splendor.  He  reduced  the 
Rajahs  to  vassalage  and  the  payment  of 
tribute ;  and  though  he  generally  spared  the 
lives  of  the  people,  he  attacked  the  worship 
and  holy  places  of  the  Hindoos  with  unspar- 
ing ferocity.  He  leveled  several  hundred 
temples  and  pagodas;  thousands  of  idols 
were  by  his  orders  broken  ;  and  the  precious 
metals  and  gems  of  which  those  gods  and 
pagodas  were  constructed  or  adorned,  amply 
rewarded  the  army  of  the  Destroyers. 

Of  all  those  temples,  the  Pagoda  of  Sum- 
nath  in  Guzerat  was  the  most  famous.  It 
was  flanked  on  three  sides  by  the  ocean,  and 
was  strongly  fortified  by  art,  as  well  as  natu- 
rally by  a  narrow  precipice  on  the  land-side. 
The  neighboring  city  and  country  was  in- 
habited by  desperate  fanatics.  The  great 
deity  of  the  temple  had  his  service  performed 
daily  by  2,000  Brahmins,  and  he  was  washed 
each  morning  in  water  brought  from  the 
Ganges.  Two  thousand  villages  contributed 
their  whole  revenue  to  maintain  this  gorgeous 
temple.  To  its  service  was  also  attached  a 
body  of  300  musicians,  the  same  number  of 
barbers,  and  500  dancing  girls  of  remarkable 
beauty,  and  belonging  to  families  of  distinc- 
tion. 

The  fanatics  of  Sumnath  admitted  that  the 
towns  already  conquered  by  Mahmud  were 
punished  for  their  sins ;  but  they  proudly  as- 
serted that  those  who  worshipped  in  their 
temple,  were  so  holy  in  their  lives,  that,  if 
the  Sultan  dared  to  approach  their  sacred 
ground,  the  vengeance  of  their  deity  would 
overwhelm  him  in  destruction.  The  Islamite 
was  neither  daunted  by  their  threats  or  by 
the  difficulties  of  a  siege.  Fifty  thousand 
Gentoos  were  victimized  by  the  scimitar  or 
the  spear  of  the  Turks.  The  city  and  the 
temple  were  taken  by  assault,  the  pagoda 
was  desecrated,  and  the  priests  insulted. 


1853.J 


INDIA,  ITS^PSOPLE;  AND  ITB  aOVERNMENTH. 


228 


The  Brahmins  stood  around  their  idol,  and 
as  Mahmud  approached  to  cleave  its  head, 
they  offered  a  ransom  in  money  equal  ^n 
amount  to  more  than  £10,000,000  for  ito 
preservation.  Mahmud  scorned  to  bargain 
for  idolatry.  He  broke  the  stone  image  by 
heavy  blows  with  his  mace.  It  was  hollow 
within,  and  its  belly  was  filled  with  rubies 
and  pearls  of  incalculably  greater  value  than 
the  amount  offered  for  its  ransom.  The  fact 
affords  a  probable  reason  for, the  liberality 
and  devotion  of  the  Brahmins.  The  treasure 
and  the  fragments  of  the  idol  were  sent  tri- 
umphantly to  the  holy  cities  of  Arabia  and 
to  Ghasna. 

Mahmud,  the  Gkasnavide,  returned  with 
all  the  magnificence  of  a  conqueror  to  his  own 
dominions.  He  will  ever  rank  as  an  eminent 
personage,  and  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
warriors  in  Oriental  history.  He  was  en- 
dowed with  many  virtues ;  rendered  Ghizni 
a  celebrated  seat  of  learning — he  founded  a 
nniversity,  presided  over  by  the  philosopher, 
Oonsuri;  yet  after  patronizing,  he  mortally 
offended  the  celebrated  Ferdusi.  His  avarice 
was  insatiable,  and  no  man  ever  accumulated 
such  great  treasures  of  diamonds,  rubies, 
pearls,  gold  and  silver.  In  1030  he  died  in 
grief,  although  at  the  head  of  an  army  of 
100,000  infantry  and  55,000  cavalry,  with 
1,300  war  elephants,  because  the  Turkmans, 
introduced  by  himself,  had  acquired  a  power 
which  threatened  the  dissolution  of  his  king- 
dom, and  which,  soon  after  his  death,  was 
overturned  by  the  Seldsckukian  Turks,  who 
established  in  Persia  a  new  and  famous  dy- 
nasty. 

The  Ghisnivide  Dynasty  existed,  reviving 
but  more  frequently  declining  in  power,  until 
destroyed  by  Mohammed -Ghor,  who  estab- 
lished his  brother's  throne  in  Gbisni  in  1 174, 
annexed  Lahore,  attacked  the  powerful  king 
of  the  Hindoos,  and  bis  army  of  200,000  in- 
fantry and  3,000  elephants,  and  routed  them 
with  terrible  slaughter,  pursuing  them  for 
forty  miles. 

The  King  of  Delhi  raised  a  new  and  greater 
army;  but  the  Mussulman  marched  into 
India,  and  with  his  squadrons  of  cavalry 
broke  down  the  vaunted  "  rank-breaking  ele- 
phants, the  war-treading  horses,  and  blood- 
thirsty soldiers"  of  the  King  of  the  Hindoos, 
although  they  had  sworn  by  the  Ganges  to 
perish  or  conquer.  The  impetuosity  of  Scy- 
thian warfare  put  into  utter  confusion  and 
into  complete  flight  the  great  army  of  the 
King  of  Delhi,  who  felt  in  this  battle,  one  of 
the  most  bloody  on  record.  During  the  nine 
expeditions  of  Mohammed  Ghor  into  Hindos- 


tan,  he  carried  back  to  Ghizni,  treasures  to 
an  incredible  amount,  placed  bis  lieutenant 
Cuttub  in  the  Government  of  Delhi,  defeated 
the  King  of  Kanouje,  besieged  and  entered 
the  sacred  city  of  Benares,  destfoyed  its 
thousand  shrines  of  idols,  and  sent  4,000 
camels  loaded  with  its  treasures  of  precious 
stones  and  gold  to  Ghisni^  But  this  great 
conqueror  was  assassinated  while  asleep;  near 
the  banks  of  the  Indus,  by  a  band  of  G  wick- 
wars,  who  forced  their  way,  after  slaying  the 
sentinels,    into    his    chamber,   where    they 

f)lunged  twenty  daggers  into  his  body.  lie 
eft  no  heir,  but  hJK  lieutenant  Cuttub  founded 
an  independent  kingdom,  governed  by  Mo- 
hammedans, in  the  India  of  the  Hindoos ;  * 
while  another  lieutenant  ruled  in  the  Mussul- 
man territories. 

The  Affghan  Dynasty  was  distinguished 
for  its  ferocity,  assassination,  and  irregular 
accessions  to  the  throne,  until  broken  down 
by  the  inroads  and  conquests  of  Timor  the 
Tartar,  called  Tamerlane,  and  until  van- 
quished by  the  most  remarkable  descendant 
of  Tamerlane,  the  Great  Baber,  and  the  per- 
manent founder  of  the  Mohammedan,  or 
Mogul  Dynasty,  in  1526. 

During  the  three  hundred  years  of  the 
Affghan  Dynasty,  such  was  the  irregularity 
of  successions,  caused  by  assassinations,  civil 
wars,  and  treachery,  that  no  family  succeeded 
for  three  generations,  in  sitting  on  the  throne 
of  Delhi.  No  power  has  been  presnant  with 
greater  calamities  than  those  which  afflicted 
the  Hindoos  during  the  whole  of  the  Affghan 
tyranny. 

From  the  downfall  of  the  Affghan  Sove- 
reigns, in  1526,  until  the  death  of  Auren- 
gezibe,  in  1707,  the  Mogul  Empire  maintained 
a  power  and  splendor  over  all  India  of  the 
greatest  magnincence ;  but  from  the  death  of 
that  bigoted,  intolerant,  and  yet  bold  and 
vigorous  monarch,  the  decline  of  that  empire 
was,  until  its  fall,  rapid  and  irretrievable. 

The  Mogul  dynasty — the  conquests  of  the 
Portuguese,  Dutch,  and  French — the  first  in- 
tercourse of  the  English  .with  Hindostan — 
the  condition  of  India  at  that  period — the 
progress  of  the  Company  until  they  became 
terntorial  Sovereigns,  after  the  day  on  which 
Clive  fought  and  gained  the  battle  of  Plussy 
— the  Manratta  and  othei'  wars — the  extinc- 
tion of  Portuguese,  Dutch,  and  French  power 
and  commerce  in  and  with  India,  we  must 
reserve  for  our  next,  and  its  following  num- 
bers. But,  after  fairly  examining  the  govern- 
ment and  administration  of  the  East  India 
Company,  since  that  extraordinary  corpora- 
don,  of  usually  rather  an  ignorant  than  an 


224 


SATIBB3  OF  THOMAS  VASB. 


[Oct, 


intelligent  proprietary,  became  tenitorial 
sorereigns, — condemning  their  previous  ava- 
ricious policy  and  the  conduct  of  many  of  their 
officers  and  agents,  "who  often  committed  great 
crimes,  and  outraged  both  religion  and  morals, 
— and  looking  at  the  radical  defects  of  their 
plan  of  government,  we  are  compelled  to  ad* 
mit  that  it  will  appear  wonderful  in  history, 
not  that  they  have  performed  so  little,  but 
that  they  have  accomplished  so  much,  for 
the  benefit  of  India,  for  the  extension  of 


Britisb  dominion,  and  with  so  few  crimes  to 
tarnish  the  honor,  credit,  and  brarery  of  tha 
nation,  which  sent  forth  the  adventurers* 
merchants,  fleets,  and  soldiers,  who  from 
being  more  traders  for  140  years,  have  pro- 
gressively, during  the  last  100  years,  mads 
the  Queen  of  Enffland  sovereign  over  all  tha 
kingdoms  once  forming  the  empire  of  th» 
Hindoos,  and  afterwards  of  the  Mohamme* 
dans  and  Mahrattas. 


H    »    l» 


From    th«  R«troip«otiTe  R«Tt«w. 


SATIRES   AND  DECLAMATIONS  OF  THOMAS  NASH.* 


In  selecting  these  works  from  the  many 
which  the  author  left  behind  him,  we  have 
been  influenced  less  by  any  similarity  or  con- 
gruity  between  them  than  by  the  simple  wish 
to  make  our  readers  acquainted  with  the  once 
renowned  but  now  little-known  satirist, 
whose  mirthful  sallies  passed  from  mouth  to 
mouth  in  the  days  of  queen  Bess  much  as 
the  good  things  of  a  Hood  or  a  Sidney  Smith 
did  m  our  own  younger  days.  But  his  wit 
88  well  as  his  satire  partook  largely  of  the 
grossness  of  the  times  in  which  he  lived,  as 
the  books  before  us  abundantly  testify ;  and 
in  this  and  other  instances  of  a  similar  nature 
oar  object  will  ever  be  to  present  our  readers 
with  the  spirit,  if  not  the  quintessence,  of  an 
author,  while  we  leave  the  scum  and  dregs 
of  bis  productions  to  their  deserved  oblivion. 
In  the  present  case  it  is  especially  incumbent 
npon  us  to  adopt  this  course,  for  the  author, 

*  Pimree  PerUlesse  his  Supplication  to  the  Devill, 
Deteribing  the  over-tpretuUng  of  Vice,  and  the 
Buppre99i<m  of  Vertue,  Pleasantly  interlaid 
with  variahle  deligkte :  and  patheticallg  intermixt 
with  canceipted  reproofes.  Written  by  Thomas 
Nash,  Gentleman.  London,  Imprinted  by  Rioh- 
anl  Ihonei^  dwelling  at  the  Siffne  of  the  Rose 
and  Crowne,  nere  Holburoe  Bridge^  1692.  [Re- 
prhited  for  the  Shakespeare  Society,  1842.] 

bathe's  Lenten  Stuff^e,  containing  the  JDeseription 
and  First  Procreation  and  Increase  of  the  Toume 
of  Cheat  Yarmouth  in  Norffolke:  with  a  new 
Play  never'  played  beforCf  of  the  Praise  of  the 
Bed  Herring,  Fitte  of  all  Clearkee  of  Noblemene 
KUehin*  to  be  read:  and  not  unnecessary  by  ail 
aerving  men  that  have  short  boardrwageSf  to  be  rs" 
membered,  Famam  peto  per  undas,  London, 
Printed  for  N.  Lb  ana  G.  B.  and  are  to  be  sold  at 
the  west  end  of  Panlea.     1 699. 


in  the  epistle  prefixed  to  his  "  Christ's  Tears,** 
says :  "  Many  vain  things  have  I  vainly  set 
forth,  ifihereof  now  it  repenteth  me,  St 
Augustine  writ  a  whole  book  of  his  Retrao- 
tions.  Nothing  so  much  do.  I .  retract  as 
that  whereinsoever  I  have^^jjifdclalized  the 
meanest.  Into.,  some  splenetive  veins  of 
wantonness  heretofore  have  I  foolishly  re- 
lapsed to  supply  my  private  wants :  of  them 
no  less  do  I  desire  to  be  absolved  than  the 
rest,  and  to  God  and  man  do  I  promise  an 
unfeigned  conversion."  Now  this  is  nobly 
said ;  and  far  be  it  from  us  to  make  tha 
Retrospective  Review  the  vehicle  for  bringing 
to  light  what  so  ingenuous  a  mind  woula 
gladly  have  consigned  to  the  flames.  We 
shall,  however,  make  one  reservation:  we 
do  not  engage  to  b\oi  all  that  Nash  himself 
would  have  blotted,  as  thereby  much  of  the 
riiciness  of  his  personal  satire  would  be  lost ; 
but  blot  we  will  all  that  could  reasonably  be 
construed  into  a  breach  of  modesty. 

The  history  of  Thomas  Nash  is  that  of  Sav- 
age, Chatterton,  Hood — a  tale  of  the  misery 
(self-procured  or  otherwise)  which  is  so  often 
the  concomitant  of  genius.  He  was  born  of 
gentle  parentage  at  Lowestoffe  in  Suffolk, 
his  father  being  a  member  of  the  Nashes  of 
Herefordshire,  and  in  some  way  a  relative  of 
Sir  Robert  Cotton.  He  took  his  degree  of 
B.A.  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in 
1585,  and  was,  as  be  himself  tells  us,  a  resi- 
dent there  ("  the  sweetest  nurse  of  know^ 
ledge  in  all  that  university  ")  for  almost  seven 
years.  For  some  unexplained  reason,  how- 
ever, he  quitted  Cambridge  without  proceed- 
ing M.A.    Mr.  Payne  Collier,  to  whom  we 


1858.] 


8ATIR18  AND  DE0LAHATI0N3  OP  THOMAS  KASH. 


22S 


are  indebted  for  the  edition  of  '*  Pierce  Pen- 
nileas/'  thinka  he  left  his  College  under  some 
imputation  of  misconduct.  He  appears  soon 
afterwards  to  have  visited  Italy,  Ireland,  and 
many  parts  of  England.  In  1587  he  was  in 
London  and  associated  with  the  celebrated 
Robert  Greene,  the  dramatist,  in  literary  oo- 
copations.  Two  or  three  years  later  he 
engaged  in  his  contest  with  the  Puritans, 
which  was  the  opening  of  the  celebrated 
''Martin  Marprelate  controversy."  His  ad- 
versaries were  very  numerous,  but  Nash's 
sprightly  warfare  with  the  small  shot  of 
satire  and  wit,  was  unmatched  even  by  a 
host  of  theologians  and  a  cannonade  of  scrip- 
tare  quotations.  Among  all  his  antaeonists 
none  had  so  large  a  share  of  his  biiterest 
objurgations  as  Gabriel  Harvey,  with  whom 
tlie  contest  was  protracted  through  several 
years,  until  it  was  at  length  put  a  stop  to  by 
the  public  authorities.  Nash  also  wrote 
several  plays,  and  other  pieces  too  numerous 
to  be  named  here.  The  satirist  is  not  a  likely 
man  to  get  friends:  few  respect  him  other- 
wise than  as  some  savages  are  said  to  worship 
tlie  devil — lest  he  should  hurt  them.  This 
may  partly  account  for  the  extreme  misery 
and  distress  into  which  Nash  fell ;  but  ex- 
travagance and  debauchery  are  alleged  as 
other  causes ;  and  these  alas !  are  no  unusual 
concomitants  of  genius  when  it  takes  this 
direction."*  Besides  other  misfortunes  in  which 
his  satirical  vein  involved  him,  we  find  him,  in 
1697,  imprisoned  by  the  Privy  Council  for 
having  written  a  play  called  "  The  Isle  of 
Dogs.  "  About  the  same  time  he  wrote  a 
letter  to  his  kinsman,  Sir  Robert  Cotton,  in 
which  occurs  the  expression:  "I  am  merry 
now,  though  I  have  ne'er  a  penny  in  my 
purse."  He  died — probably  under  forty 
years  of  age — in  1601. 

It  was  in  one  of  his  ''pennilesse"  periods, 
if  we  are  to  take  him  literally,  that  he  wrote 
the  first  work  on  our  list:  this  was  in  1502. 

**  Having  spent  manie  yeres  in  stndying  how  to 
five,  and  livde  a  long  time  withoat  money ;  having 
Qrred  my  youth  with  foUie,  and  snrfeited  my  minde 
with  vanitie,  I  began  at  length  to  looke  backe  to 
fepentannce,  and  addresse  my  endevors  to  pros- 
peritie.  ^  But  all  in  vaine :  I  sate  up  late,  and  rose 
early,  contended  with  the  colde,  and  conversed 
with  scarcitie;  for  all  my  labours  turned  to  losse, 
my  vulgar  muse  was  despised  snd  neglected, 
my  paines  not  regarded,  or  slightly  rewarded,  and 
I  myselfe,  (in  prime  of  my  test  wit)  layde  open 
to  povertie.  Whereupon,  in  a  male  content 
humour,  I  accused  my  fortune,  raild  on  my  patrones, 
bit  my  pen,  rent  my  papers,  and  ragde  in  all 
points  like  a  mad  man.  In  which  agonie  torment- 
uig  myself  a  long  time,  I  grew  by  degrees  to  a 

YOIb  ZXX.    NO.  IL 


milde  discontent;  and  pausing  awhile  over  my 
standish,  I  resolved  in  verise  to  paynt  forth  my 
passion  :  which,  best  agreeing  with  the  vaine  of 
my  nnrest,  I  .began  to  complaine  in  this  sort : — 

"  Why  i*6t  damnation  to  despaire  and  dye, 
I    When  life  is  my  true  happinesae'  disease  ? 
My  soule;  my  soule,  thy  safetie  makes  me  flye, 
The  faukie  meanes  that  might  my  paine  ap- 
pease ; 
Divines  and  dying  men  may  talks  of  hell, 
But  in  my  hart  her  severall  torments  dwell. 

Ah  worthless  wit,  to  traine  me  to  this  woe, 
Deceitfull  artes,  that  nourish  discontent  I 

III  thrive  the  foliie  that  bewitcht  me  so ; 
Vaine  thoughts  adieu,  for  now  I  will  repent ; 

And  yet  my  wants  perswade  me  to  proceede, 

Since  none  takes  pitie  of  a  8choller*8  neede.*' 

And  thus  he  goes  on  with  his  lament  of 
neglected  talents,  and  the  poor  requital  of 
literary  labor.  <*  I  cald  to  mind  a  cobler, 
that  was  worth  five  hundred  {>ound;  aa 
hostler  that  had  built  a  goodly  inne,  and 
might  dispende  fortie  pounds  yetely  by  his 
land ;  a  carreman  in  a  lether  pilche  that  had 
whipt  a  thousand  pound  out  of  his  horaa 
tavle :  and  have  I  more  wit,"  he  asks,  "  than 
all  these  ?  am  I  better  borne  ?  am  I  better 
brought  up  ?  yea,  and  better  favored  ?  and 
yet  am  I  a  begger?  what  is  the  cause?" 
The  answer  to  this  string  of  interrogatories  ia 
much  the  same  in  substance,  as  that  which 
an  unsuccessful  or  an  improvident  literary 
man  would  now  give,  namaly,  that  it  is  the 
fault  of  an  undiscerning  public,  which  prefers 
the  trashy  and  ephemeral  to  the  substantial 
and  profound.  "  Everie  grosse-brainde  idiot 
is  suffered  to  come  into  print,  who,  if  hee  set 
foorth  a  pamphlet  of  the  praise  of  pudding- 
pricks,  or  write  a  treatise  of  Tom  Thumme, 
or  the  exployts  of  Untrusse,  it  is  bought  up 
thicke  and  three- folde,  when  better  things 
lye  dead."  So  complains  Pierce  Penilesse* 
but  without  redress.  '*  Opns  and  U8U8  are 
knocking  at  my  door  twenty  times  a  weeke," 
he  says,  '*when  I  am  not  at  home."  At 
length,  finding  that  pretended  friends  will 
give  him  nothing,  though  entreated  for  God*s 
sake,  he  bethinks  himself  of  a  tale  that  ho 
has  heard,  of  pecuniary  advances  made  by 
"the  gentleman  in  black,"  and  thereupon 
indites  a  "  Supplication  to  the  Divell."  Thb 
''supplication  is  nothing  more  than  a  satire 
on  the  prevailing  vices  of  the  day ;  and  we 
now  proceed  to  adduce  from  it,  a  few  speci- 
mens of  the  author's  peculiar  humor. 

**  In  the  inner  part  of  this  ugly  habitation  stands 
.  Qreedinesse,  prepared  to  devoore  all  that  enter* 
'  attired  in  a  capouch  of  written  parchment,  buU 
tond  downs  before  with  labels  of  wax,  and  lined 

16 


286 


8A33BB3  ASD  DBGLAXAIIOIRI  OF  THOMAS  NAfflL 


[Oct., 


with  8heep6*8  fels  for  wairnenea :  his  eap|>e  fard 
with  catsKins  after  the  Muscovie  fashion,  and  all 
be-tasseld  with  ansle^bookes,  instead  of  aglets, 
ready  to  catch  hold  of  all  those  to  whom  he 
shewes  any  hamblenes :  as  for  his  breeches,  they 
were  made  of  the  lists  of  broad  cloatbs,  which  he 
had  by  letters-patents  assured  to  him  and  his 
heyres,  to  the  otter  overthrow  of  bow-cases  and 
CQshin*nDakers ;  and  bambasted  they  were,  like 
beer  barrels,  with  statnte-marchants  and  forfeit- 
ures." 

In  Penilesse's  "  complaynt  of  pryde,"  he 
18  extremely  severe  against  the  sectaries  of 
his  age,  who  think  "  to  live  when  they  are 
dead,  by  having  theyr  sect  called  after  their 
names. 

**  *  We  devide  Christ's  garment  amongeat  as  in 
manie  peeces,  and  of  the  vesture  of  salvation 
make  some  of  us  babies  and  apes  coates,  others 
straight  trusses  and  divell's  breeches,  some  gaily 

Sscoynes,  or  a  shipmans  hose ;  like  the  Anabap- 
ts  and  adulterous  Familiats,  others  with  the 
Martinists,  a  hood  with  two  fiices  to  hide  their 
bypocrisie,  and,  to  conclude,  some,  like  the  Bar- 
rowists  aud  Greenwoodians,  a  garment  fal  of  the 
plague,  which  is  not  to  be  worn  before  it  be  new 
washt.  Hence  atheists  triumph  and  rejoyce,  and 
talke  as  prophanely  of  the  Bible  as  of  Bevis  of 
Hampton.  I  heare  say  there  be  mathematitians 
abroad  that  will  proove  men  before  Adam ;  and 
they  are  harboured  in  high  places  who  will  main- 
tayne  it  to  the  death  that  there  are  no  divells.  It 
is  a  shame  f Senior  Belzebub)  that  you  ehonlde 
suffer  yourself  thus  to  be  tearmed  a  bastard,  or 
not  prove  to  your  predestinate  children  not  only 
that  they  have  a  father,  but  that  you  are  hee  that 
must  owne  them  !'  A  side  note  adds,  *  The  devill 
bath  children,  bat  fewe  of  them  know  their  owne 
father.' " 

Pierce,  after  belaboring  the  pride  of  mer- 
chants' wives,  upstarts,  parasites,  dec,  pro- 
ceeds, to  point  out  the  peculiar  forms  and 
phases  of  pride  which  distinguish  various 
nations.  lie  Spaniard,  for  example,  is 
''bom  a  braggart;"  the  Italian,  "a  more 
cunning,  proud  fellow;"  the  Frenchman, 
**  wholly  compact  of  deceivable  courtship." 
But  it  is  against  the  Danes  that  he  inveighs 
most  bitterly.  "  The  most  ffrosse  and  sense- 
lesse  proud  dolts  are  the  Danes,  who  stand 
80  much  upon  their  unweldie  burlibound 
souldiery,  that  they  account  of  no  man  that 
hath  not  a  battle-axe  at  his  girdle  to  hough 
dogs  with,  or  weares  not  a  cock's  fether  in  a 
thrumb-hat,  like  a  cavalier :  briefly,  he  is  tlie 
best  foole  bragart  under  heaven.  For  be- 
sides nature  hath  lent  hhn  a  flabberkin  face 
like  one  of  the  four  winds,  and  cheekes  that 
■agge  over  his  chin-bone,  his  apparaile  is  so 
puft  up  with  bladders  of  taffatie,  and  his  back 
}Uke  biefe  stuft  with  parslie)  so  drawn  out 


with  ribands  and  devises,  and  blistered  with 
light  sarcenet  bastings,  that  you  would  think 
him  nothing  but  a  swarme  of  butterflyes,  if 
you  saw  him  afarre  off.  ...  .  They  are  an 

arrogant  asse-headed  people Not 

Barbary  itselfe  is  halfe  so  barbarous  as  they 
are,"  dec.  <&c. 

Here  we  have  a  sketch  of  an  antiquary's 
museum : 

*  "A  thousand  jymjams  and  toyes  have  they  in 
thevr  chambers,  which  they  heape  up  together 
with  infinite  ezpence,  and  are  made  beleeve  of 
them  that  sel  them,  that  they  are  rare  and  precious 
things,  when  they  have  gathered  them  up  on  some 
dunghill,  or  rakte  them  out  of  the  kennell  by 
chaunee.  I  knowe  one  [who]  sold  an  olde  rope 
with  foure  knots  on  it  for  fours  pound,  in  that  ne 
gave  it  out,  it  was  the  length  and  bredth  of 
Christ's  tomb.  Let  a  tinker  take  a  peece  of 
brasse  worth  a  halfpenie,  and  set  strange  stampes 
on  it,  and  I  warrant  he  may  make  it  more  worth 
to  him  of  some  fantastical  foole  than  of  all  the 
kettels  that  ever  he  mended  in  his  life.  This  is 
the  disease  of  oar  new-fiin^led  humorists  that 
know  not  what  to  do  with  their  wealth.  It  argu» 
eth  a  verie  rwlie  wk  io  to  dooie  on  toorm^esm 

But,  into  the  preface  to  his  second  edition, 
Nash  introduces  the  following  remarks  for 
the  behoof  of  the  insulted  archaeologists : 
"  The  antiquaries  are  offended  without  cause, 
thinking  I  goe  abput  to.  detract  from  that 
excellent  profession,  when  (God  is  my  wit- 
nesse)  I  reverence  it  as  much  as  any  of  them 
all,  and  had  no  manner  of  allusion  to  them 
that  stumble  at  it  I  hope  they  wil  give  me 
leave  to  think  there  be  fools  of  that  art  as 
well  as  of  al  other;  but  to  saj  I  utterly 
condemn  it  as  an  unfruitful!  studie,  or  seeme 
to  despise  the  excellent  qualified  partes  of  it, 
is  a  most  false  and  injurious  surmise." 

The  "  Supplication"  goes  on  next  to  lash 
envy  and  wrath ;  and  here  he  has,  inciden- 
tally, a  fair  chance  of  a  slap  at  the  litigious 
spirit  of  the  age.  "If  John  a  Nokes  his 
henne  doo  but  leap  into  Elizabeth  de  Gappes 
close,  shee  will  never  leave  hunting  her  hus- 
band till  ho  bring  it  to  a  nisi  prius,'*  But 
we  must  pass  over  aome  of  our  author's  ex- 
cellent stories  to  give  a  specimen  of  his  most 
cutting  invective  as  directed  against  his  ene- 
my, Gabriel  Btarvey : 

**  Put  case  Tsince  I  am  not  yet  out  of  the 
^earoe  of  Wratli)  that  some  tyred  jade  belonging 
to  the  presse,  whome  I  never  wronged  in  m^ life, 
hath*  named  me  expressly  in  print  (as  I  will  not 
doo  him),  and  accused  me  for  reviving  in  an  epis- 
tle of  mine  the  reverend  memorie  of  Sir  Thomas 
Moore,  Sir  John  Cbeeke,  Dr.  Watson,  Dr.  Had* 
don,  Dr.  Carre,  Aiaster  Ascham,  as  if  they  were 


Id58.] 


SATIRES  AND  DKOLAMATIOIIB  OF  THOMAS  KASH. 


221 


no  meate  bat  for  his  roasterBhip's  moatb ;  or  none 
bat  some  sacb  as  the  sonne  or  a  ropemaker  [the 
trade  of  Harvey's  fatberl  were  worthy  to  mention 
them.  To  shewe  how  I  can  nyle,  thus  would  I 
begin  to  ravle  on  him : — Thon  that  hadst  thy 
hood  turned  over  thy  eareH,  when  thou  wert  a 
bachelor,  for  abasing  of  Aristotle  and  setting  Mm 
upon  the  schoole  gates  painted  with  asses  eares 
on  his  head,  is  it  anie  discredit  for  me,  thon  great 
baboane,  thon  pigmee  braggart,  thou  pamphleteer 
of  nothing  bat  tMnxtw,  to  be  censured  by  thee, 
that  hast  scorned  the  prince  of  philosophers  7  Off 
with  thy  gowne  and  ontrosse,  for  (  mean  to  lash 
thee  mightily.  .  .  .  Poor  slave !  I  pitie  thee  that 
thoa  hadst  no  more  grace  bat  to  borne  in  my  way. 
Why  could  not  you  have  sate  quyet  at  home  and 
writ  catechisms,  but  you  must  be  comparing  me 
to  Martin,  and  exclayme  against  me  for  reckning 
up  the  high  schollers  of  worthie  memorie?  Jw- 
pUer  ingeniiB  praibet  ma  numina  volMm,  saith 
Ovid  ;  segtM  ceUhrari  qttoUbet  ore  ainU,  which, 
if  it  be  so,  I  hope  I  am  aiiquia;  and  those  men 
quoa  honoris  catua  nominavit  are  not  greater  than 
gods.  Methinks  I  see  thee  stand  quivering  and 
quaking,  and  even  now  lift  no  thy  hands  to  hea* 
veo,  as  thanking  (iod  my  choier  itf  somewhat  as- 
004  ged  ;  but  thoa  art  deceived,  for  however  I  let 
fill!  my  stile  a  little,  to  talk  in  reason  with  thee 
that  hast  none,  I  doo  not  meane  to  let  thee  scape 


80. 


"Ihavereade  over  thy  sheepish  discourse  .  .  . 
and  entreated  my  patience  to  be  good  to  thee 
whilst  I  read  it.  .  .  .  Monstroas,  monstrous,  and 
palpable ;  not  to  be  spoken  of  in  a  Christian  con- 
gregation !  thou  hast  skumed  over  the  schoole 
men,  and  of  the  froth  of  their  folly  made  a  dish 
of  divinitie  brewesse,  which  the  dogges  will  not 
eate.  If  ti»e  printer  have  any  i^reat  dealings  with 
thee,  he  were  best  get  a  priviledge  betimes,  ad 
imprvmendum  aolwa^  forbidding  all  other  to  sell 
waste  paper  but  himselfe,  or  else  he  will  be  in  a 
wofull  taking.  ...  I  doubt  thou  wilt  be  driven 
to  leave  all,  and  fall  to  thy  father's  occupation 
which  is  to  goe  and  make  a  rope  to  hang  thyself. 
Neqw  enim  lex  ceguior  vUa  esty  quam  necia  artifir 
eea  arte  perire  sua  I 

^Reaeo  ad  vos,  met  audUoree,  Have  I  not 
a  indifferent  pretty  veine  in  spurgalling  an  asse  7 
if  yoa  knew  bow  eztemporall  it  were  ai  this  in- 
aUnt,  and  with  what  baste  it  is  writ,  you  would 
■ay  sa  But  I  would  not  have  you  thinke  that  all 
this  timt  is  set  down  heere  is  io  good  earnest,  for 
then  yoa  goe  by  S.  Giles  the  wrong  way  to 
Westminster ;  hA  onely  io  aheuf  how  for  a  neede  I 
toM  rayle,  if  I  were  throughly  fyroiP^ 

llioroQghly  fired  indeed!  and  well  may 
our  friend  Pierce  conolade  tbat  be  himself  is 
not  altogether  free  from  "  the  sin  of  wrath'* 
against  wbicb  be  has  been  declaiming ;  but, 
we  must  now  pass  on  with  him  to  tho  *'  com- 
playnt  of  gluttonie."  Here  be  falh  foul 
with  Master  Dives,  the  type  of  a  London 
alderman  then,  and  according  to  the  valgar 
idea,  in  our  own  days.  " mitertrt met"  he 
eiclaiffls,  "  what  a  fat  charle  it  is  1    Why,  he 


hath  a  belly  as  big  as  tho  round  church  in 
Cambridge,  [ — a  bad  simile,  since  it  is  aa 
unlike  as  may  be  to  a  holy  sepulchre !]  a 
face  as  huge  as  the  whole  bodie  of  a  base- 
viall,  and  legs  that  if  they  were  hollow  a 
man  might  keepe  a  mill  in  either  of  them  1" 
While  upon  this  subject,  we  must  not  lose 
an  anecdote  of  the  learned  Dr.  Watson, 
quaintly  told  by  our  author. 

"  A  notable  jest  I  heard  long  agoe  of  Dr.  Wat- 
son, verie  conducible  to  the  reproofe  of  these 
fleshly-minded  Belials,  or  rather  belly-alU,  be> 
cause  all  theyr  mind  is  on  their  belly.  He  being 
at  supper,  on  a  fasting  or  fish  night,  with  a  great 
number  of  his  friends  and  acquaintance,  there 
chanced  to  be  in  the  companie  an  outlandish  doc- 
tor, who,  when  all  others  fell  to  suoh  victuals 
(agreeing  to  the  time)  as  were  before  ihem,  he 
overslipt  them ;  and  there  being  one  joynt  of  flesh 
on  the  table  for  such  as  had  meate  stoma  ekes, 
fell  freshly  to  it.  Afler  that  hunger  (halfe  con- 
quered) had  restored  him  to  the  use  of  his  speech, 
for  his  excuse  he  said  to  his  friend  that  brought 
htm  thether,  Profeeto,  d^nuine,  egosummalisHmuM 
piacat^^i  meaning  by  piaeaior,  a  lish-man ;  (which 
is  a  libertie,  as  also  maUsaiMtis^  that  outhndish 
men  in  their  familiar  taike  doo  challenge,  or  at 
least  use,  above  u^).  At  tu  ea  hrmiaaimua  cami- 
fexf  quoth  Dr.  Watson,  retorting  very  merrily  his 
owne  licentious  figures  upon  him.  So  of  us,  it 
may  be  said,  we  are  mcdiaaimi  piacatorea  but  &o- 
niaaimi  camifioei.  I  would  English  the  jest  for 
the  edificatiou  of  the  temporalitie,  but  that  it  is 
not  so  good  in  Engliah  as  in  Lattne:  and  though 
it  were  as  good,  it  would  not  convert  clubs  and 
cl(futed  shoone  from  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt  to 
the  provanl  of  the  Low  Count reys ;  they  had  ra- 
ther (with  the  serving-man)  put  up  a  supplication 
to  the  pariiament  House,  tbat  thev  might  have  a 
yard  of  pudding  for  a  penie,  than  desire  (with  the 
bajcer)  there  mtffht  bee  three  ounces  of  bread  sold 
for  a  half-penie. 

Sloth  is  the  next  "  complaint"  that  Peni- 
lesse  brings  forward ;  and,  among  the  meana 
to  avoid  it,  he  recommends  plavs,  such  espe- 
cially as  are  borrowed  out  of  our  English 
Chronicles.  "How  would  it  have  joyed 
brave  Talbot,"  he  says,  "  (the  terror  of  the 
French)  to  think  that  after  he  had  lyne  two 
hundred  yeare  in  his  tomb,  he  should  tri- 
umphe  againe  on  the  stage,  and  have  hb 
bones  new-embalmed  with  the  tears  of  ten 
thousand  spectators !"  With  the  "  seaventh 
eomplaynt,  of  lechery"  the  *'  supplication" 
closes. 

Pierce  having  drawn  up  his  document 
ready  for  presentation,  and  duly  addressed 
it  "  To  the  High  and  Mi^htie  Prince  of  Dark- 
nesse,  Donsell  dell  Lucifer,  King  of  Ache- 
ron, Styx,  and  Phlegeton,  Duke  of  Tartary, 
Marquesse  of  Gocytus,  and  Lord  High  re- 
gent of  Limbo,"  casts  about  for  the  meant 


228 


SATIRES  AND  DECLAMATIONS  OF  THOMAS  NASF. 


[Oct., 


of  its  prompt  and  careful  delivery.  He  bad 
understood  that  the  fiend  was  to  be  heard 
of  at  Westminster  Hall ;  but  the  lawyers 
all  denied  any  acquaintance  with  him,  and 
recommended  him  to  try  his  luck  at  the  Ex- 
change. The  answer  of  every  one  there  was 
Non  novi  Dogmonem,  and  Pierce  turned  away 
disappointed,  to  seek  his  dinner  with  Duke 
Humphrey.  Soon  afterwards,  however,  he 
encountered  *'  a  neat  pedanticall  fellow  in 
forme  of  a  citizen,"  who  was  no  other  than  a 
disguised  imp,  and  who  readily  agreed  to  de- 
liver the  "supplication"  to  his  master.  But 
previously  he  read  the  paper,  and,  having  con- 
cluded his  perusal,  exclaimed :  "  A  suppli- 
cation caldst  thou  this  ?  It  is  the  maddest 
supplication  that  ev«r  I  saw;  me  thinkes 
thou  hast  handled  all  the  seaven  deadly 
sinnes  in  it,  and  spared  none  that  exceeds  his 
limits  in  any  of  them.  It  is  well  done  to 
practise  thy  wit,  but  I  believe  our  lord  will 
cun  thee  little  thanke  for  it."  After  this, 
Pierce  interrogates  the  satanic  messenger  on 
the  nature  of  his  native  region  and  its  inhab- 
itants, and  the  imp,  with  a  frankness  little  to 
be  expected  from  such  a  quarter,  gratifies 
his  curiosity  in  a  long  dissertation  drawn 
from  a  great  number  of  sources — heathen 
philosophy  and  mythology,  the  Scriptures, 
the  fathers,  and  the  school-men.  It  is  in 
fact  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  clever  es- 
say on  demonology. 

Nashe^a  Lenten  Stuffe  is,  as  may  be  inferred 
from  its  title,  a  very  singular  and  quaint  pro- 
duction. It  is  written  in  much  the  same 
humorous  and  satirical  vein  as  "  Pierce  Peni- 
lease,"  and,  like  that,  treats  of  two  distinct  sub- 

J'ects.  The  first  is  a  kind  of  outline  of  the 
listory  of  Great  Yarmouth,  highly  compli- 
mentary to  that  town,  its  inhabitants,  and 
their  occupations.  Parts  of  it  remind  as 
somewhat  of  Fuller,  although  they  are  want- 
ing in  the  peculiar  terseness  of  that  inimitable 
writer.  Nash's  humor  is  too  difuse  and 
rambling  to  be  at  once  appreciated.  Some- 
times indeed  our  first  impression  of  a  passage 
is,  that  it  is  mere  buffoonery  or  rhodomontade, 
but  on  a  second  reading  it  is  often  found 
pregnant  with  true  humor.  The  second  and 
larger  part  of  this  little  book,  is  a  serio- 
comic eulogium  of  the  red  herring,  the  pecu- 
liar pride  of  the  Norfolk  port ;  and  cert&s,  no 
fitier  encomiast  of  a  Yarmouth  bloater  could 
be  found  than  one  who  deals  so  largely  in 
the  inflated  and  bombastical  as  Nash  does. 
Bat  to  our  extracts. 

"  But  how  Yarmouth  of  it  selfe  bo  innumerable 
pbpulons  and  replenished,  and  in  sobarraine  a  plot 
seated,  should  not  onely  supply  her  inhabitants 


with  plentiful  purveyance  of  sustenance,  but 
provant  and  victual  moreover  this  monstrous  army 
of  strangers,  was  a  matter  that  e|rregiou8ly  be- 
puzled  and  entranced  my  apprehenaion.  Uolland- 
eru,  Zelanders,  Scots,  French,  Wosterne  men, 
Northern  men,  besides  all  the  hundreds  and  wapen- 
takes nine  miles  compasse,  fetch  the  beet  of  their 
viands  and  mangery  from  her  market.  For  ten 
weeks  together  [m  the  herring  season]  this  rabble 
rout  of  outlandisbers  are  biliitted  with  her,  yet  in 
all  that  while  the  rate  of  no  kinde  of  food  is  raised, 
nor  the  plenty  of  their  markets  one  pinte  of  butter 
rebated ;  and  at  the  ten  weeks  end,  when  the 
campe  is  broken  up,  no  impression  of  any  dearth 
left,  but  rather  more  store  than  before.  Some  of 
the  towne  dwellers  have  so  larcre  an  opinion  of 
their  settled  provision,  that  if  all  her  majesties 
fleet  at  once  snould  put  into  their  bay,  with  twelve 
dayes  warning  with  so  much  double  beere,  beefe, 
fish,  and  biskit  they  would  bulke  them  as  they 
could  wallow  away  with." 

Our  next  quotation  furnishes  an  early  in- 
stance of  the  use  of  galleries  in  churches, 
and  shows  the  economical  cause  of  their  in- 
troduction. It  is  a  common  notion  that  these 
unsightly  appendages,  together  with  the  pews, 
originated  with  the  puritans,  but  here  we 
have  an  anti-puritan  apologising  for  them. 

**  The  newe  building  at  the  west  ende  of  the 
church  was  begunne  there  1330,  which  like  the 
imperfit  workes  of  Kinges  Col  ledge  in  Cambridge, 
or  Christ  Church  in  Oxford,  have  too  costly  large 
foundations  to  be  ever  finished.  It  is  thought  if 
the  towne  had  not  been  so  scourged  and  eaten  up 
by  that  mortality  [the  plague  of  1348],  out  of  their 
owne  purses  they  woulde  have  proceeded  with  if, 
but  nowe  they  have  gone  a  neerer  way  to  the 
woode,  for  with  wooden  galleries  in  the  church 
that  they  have,  and  stayry  degrees  of  seats  in 
them,  they  make  as  much  rooms  to  sitte  heare,  as 
a  new  west  end  would  have  done." 

The  cause  of  Yarmouth's  greatness : — 

■*  I  fell  a  communing  hereupon  with  a  gentle* 
man,  a  familiar  of  mine,  and  he  eftsoones  defined 
unto  mee  that  the  Redde  Herring  was  the  old 
Jaddecoh^  or  Magister  Ihcioium  that  brought  in 
the  red  ruddocks  snd  the  grummell  seed  as  thicke 
as  oatmeale,  and  made  Yarmouth  for  argent  to  put 
downe  the  cittv  of  Argentine.  Doe  but  convert, 
said  bee,  the  slenderest  twinckling  reflexe  of  your 
eie-sight  to  this  flinty  rings  diat  engirtes  it,  these 
towred  walles,  port-cullizd-gates  and  gorgeous 
architectures  that  condecorate  and  adorne  it,  and 
then  preponder  of  Ihe  red  herringes  priority  and 
prevalence,  who  is  the  onely  untfxhaustible  mine 
that  hath  raisd  and  begot  all  this,  and  minutely  to 
riper  maturity  fosters  and  cberieheth  it.  The  red 
herrinff  alone  it  is  that  countervailes  the  burden- 
some detriments  of  our  haven,  which  every  twelve- 
month devours  a  Justice  of  Peace,  living  in  weares 
and  banckes  to  beate  off  the  sand  and  overthwart 
ledging  and  fencing  it  in ;  and  defrayes  all  im- 
positions and  outwards  payments  to  her  majestic, 


1863.] 


SATIRES  AND  DECLAMATIONS  OF  THOMAS  NASH. 


228 


in  which  Yarmouth  gives  not  the  wall  to  sixe, 
though  Hxteene  moaih  eaUne  hurgess  Unones  ^ai 
have  dawbers  and  thatchera  io  their  mayors^  chal- 
lenge in  parliament  the  upper  hand  of  it.'* 

As  to  the  herring  himsell;  we  are  told  that 
when  the  lordly  sun,  *'  the  most  rutilant 
planet  of  the  seven,  shines  forth  in  Lent,  .  . 
Heralius  herring  enters  into  his  chiefe  reign 
and  scepterdome."  **  Stately  borne,  stately 
sprung  b  he — the  best  bloud  of  the  Ptolomies 
no  statelier!"  "Of  so  eye-bewitching  a 
deaurate-ruddie  dye  is  the  skin  coat  of  this 
Lantsgrave,  that  happy  is  that  nobleman  who 
for  bis  colours  in  armory  can  nearest  imitate 
his  chimicall  temper ;  nay,  which  is  more,  if  a 
man  should  tell  you  that  God  Himen^s  saffron 
coloor'd  robe  were  made  of  nothing  but  ted 
herrings'  skins,  you  would  hardly  beleeve 
him  :  such  is  tbe  obduracy  and  bardnesse  of 
heart  of  a  number  of  infidels  in  these  dayes  1 " 
"  But  to  think  on  a  red  herring — such  a  hot 
stirring  meate  it  is — ^is  enough  to  make  the 
cravenest  dastard  proclaime  fire  and  sword 
against  Spaine."  Tbe  greatest  milk-sop  (we 
do  not  quote  verbally  here)  who  eats  "  the 
least  ribbe  of  it,  it  will  embrawne  and  iron- 
crust  bis  flesh,  and  harden  bis  soft  bleding 
vaines  as  stiff  and  robustious  as  branches  of 
corrall."  "  The  art  of  kindling  fires  that  is 
practised  in  the  smoking  or  parching  of  him 
18  old  dog  [a  sovereign  defence  ?]  against  the 
plague."  He  is  further  styled  the  father  of 
nis  country — "  Pater  pairice,  providitore  and 
supporter  of  Yarmouth,  the  lock  and  key  of 
Norfolke." 


''  There  are  tha:t  number  of  herringa  vented  oat 
of  Yarmouth  every  yeare  (though  the  grammar- 
ians make  no  pmral  number  of  halec)  as  not 
onely  they  are  more  by  two  thousand  last  than 
our  owne  land  can  spend,  but  the^  fil  all  other 
lands  to  whome  at  tiieir  owne  prises  they  sell 
them,  and  happy  is  he  that  can  first  lay  bold  of 
them.    And  bow  can  it  bee  otherwise,  for  if 
Cornish    pilchards*   otherwise    called  fumadoe, 
taken  on  tbe  shore  of  Cornewall,  from  July  to 
November,  be  so  saleable  as  they  are  in  Fraunce, 
Spaine,  and  Italy,  (which  are  but  counterfets  to 
the  red  herring,  as  copper  to  gold,  or  ockamie  to 
silver — much  more  their  elbows  itch  for  joy  when 
they  meete  with  the  true  golde,  the  true  red 
herrinff  it  selfe.    No  true  flying  fish  but  he,  or,  if 
there  be,  that  fish  never  flyes  but  when  his  wings 
are  wet,  and  the  red  herring  flyes  best  when  his 
wings  are  dry,  throughout  Belffia,  Uiffh  Ger- 
roanie,  Fraunce,  Spaine,  and  Italy  hee  nyes,  and 
up  into  Greece*  and  Africa  south  and  south-west, 
estrich-Iike  walkes  his  stations.     And  the  sepul- 
cher-palmers  or  pilgrims,  because  hee  is  so  port^ 
able  fill  their  scrips  with  them ;  yea,  no  dispraise 
to  the  blood  of  the  Ottamans,  the  Nabuchedonesor 
of  Constantinople  and  giantly  Antsus  that  never  | 


yawneth  nor  neezeth  but  he  affrishteth  tbe  whole 
earth,  gormandizing  muncheth  him  up  for  im- 
periall  dainties,  and  will  not  spare  his  idol  Ma- 
homet a  bit." 

The  romantic  history  of  the  herring — "  to 
recount  ab  ovo  from  the  church-booke  of  his 
birth,  howe  be  first  came  to  be  a  fish,  and 
then  how  he  came  to  be  king  of  fishes,  and 
gradionately  bow  f^om  white    to    red    ha 
changed" — is  exceedingly  drolly,  but    not 
very  delicately,  narrated.    It  seems  that  after 
that  memorable  Hellespontine  tragedy,  the 
death  of  Leander  and  Hero,  the  conclave  of 
Olympus  determined  to  make  them  denizens 
of  the  element  in  which  they  had  perished. 
And  as  during  life  they  had  been  separated 
by  the  sea,  so  it  was  resolved  that  a  great 
waste  of  waters  should  divide  them  after 
their  metamorphosis.    Leander,  therefore,  in 
the  form  of  a  ling,  had  his  habitation  assign- 
ed him  '*  on  the  unquiet  cold  coast  of  Ice- 
land," while  the  beautiful  Hero  was  sent  to 
the  British  seas  to  bless  all  aftercoming  times 
as  the  herring  I    The  gods  moreover  in  mercy 
to  their  love,  granted  tbe  two  fishes  an  occa- 
sional interview,  as  *'  at  the  best  men's  tables 
in  the  heele  of  the  weeke,  uppon  Fridayes 
and  Satterdayes,  the  holy  time  of  Lent  ex- 
empted, and  then  they  might  be  at  meate 
and  meale  for  seven  weeks  togitherl"    To 
make  the  history  complete,   the  nurse  or 
duenna  of  Hero  was  changed  "  into  that  kind 
of  graine  which   wee  call  mustard- seede." 
Hence,  it  is  added,  it  is,  that  **  the  red  her- 
ring and  ling  never  come  to  the  boord  without 
mustard  1"    The  manner  in  wbich  the  herring 
became    "king    of   fishes,"   is    sufllciently 
curious.    Nash  may  have  taken  it  from  some 
medieval  apologue  unknown  to  us,  though  it 
would  rather  appear  to  be  the  produce  of 
bis  own  exuberant  fancy.    It  is  substantially 
as  follows.    A  falconer  bringing  over  certain 
hawks  from  Ireland,  and  airing  them  above 
hatches  on  ship-board,  one  of  them  broke 
from  his  fist,  and  being  hungry  began  to  seek 
for  prey.     At  last,  she  spied  a  speckled  fish, 
whicb  she  mistook  for  a  partridge,  and  made 
a  stoop  for  it  accordingly,  when,  suddenly 
she  found  herself  *'  snapt  up,  belles  and  all 
at  a  mouthful"  by  a  shark  that  happened  to 
be  at  hand.    A  kingfisher,  who  saw  the  deed, 
reported  it  to  the  *'  land  fowls,"  and  there 
was  nothing  to  be  heard  among  them  but 
**  Arme,  arme,  arme  !  to  sea,  to  sea !  swallow 
and  titmouse,  to  take  chastisement  of  that 
trespasse  of  bloud  and   death    committed 
against  a  peere  of  their  bloud  royal."    War- 
like preparations  were  made,  the  muster  "^ 


280 


SATIBES  AND  DEGLAMATI0N8  OF  THOMAS  NASH. 


[0«t, 


taken,  and  the  leaders  selected,  '*  who  had 
their  bills  to  take  up  pay.*'  Field-marshal 
Bparhawke  took  the  command  ;  several  pea- 
cocks, in  consideration  of  their  gay  coats  and 
"  affrighting  voyces,"  were  selected  as  her- 
alds, while  some  cocks  played  the  part  of 
trumpeters;  the  kestrils  were  standard- 
bearers,  the  cranes  pikemen,  and  the  wood- 
cocks demi-lances!  But  on  reaching  the 
Land's  End,  they  were  fain  to  exclaim, 
^quora  noa  terrent,  et  ponti  tristis  imago^ 
and  must  have  returned  as  they  came,  bat 
for  the  water-fowl, — ducks,  drakes,  swans, 
geese,  cormorants,  and  sea-gulls — who  lent 
them  their  "  oary  assistance .  and  aydeful 
furtherance  in  this  action."  The  puffin,  a 
thing  half  bird,  half  fish,  in  the  spirit  of  mis- 
chief, informed  the  fishes  of  the  armament 
that  had  been  prepared  against  them ;  but 
the  whale,  the  sea-horse,  the  dolphin,  and 
the  grampus  ridiculed  the  whole  affair.  Not 
80  however  the  smaller  fish,  who  held  a  con- 
sultation and  agreed  to  appoint  a  king. 
Afraid  to  fix  on  any  of  the  larger  deni  ens 
of  the  deep,  lest  they  should  prove  despots 
and  tyrants,  their  choice  at  last  fell  upon  the 
herring,  who  was  forthwith  installed  amidst 
shouts  of  Vive  le  r<n^  and  God  save  the  king ; 
the  only  dissentients  being  the  plaice  and  the 
butt,  who  made  wry  mouths  at  his  diminutive 
majesty,  and  this  is  the  reason  why  all  their 
descendants  down  to  the  present  day  have 
their  mouths  awry  !  The  result  of  the  cour 
flict  is  not  recorded;  but  the  herring  still 
wears  a  coronet  as  a  mark  of  regal  dignity, 
and  never  stirs  abroad  without  a  numerous 
army.  The  third  transition,  or  how  our 
herring  was  **  camelionized''  from  white  to 
red,  concludes  the  wondrous  history.  A 
fisherman  of  Yarmouth,  having  taken  so 
many  herrings  that  he  could  neither  sell  nor 
eat  them  all,  hung  some  up  in  his  smoky 
cabin,  and  was  astonished,  some  days  after- 
wards, to  find  they  had  changed  their  color 
from  white  to  the  "  deaurate  ruddie"  of  well- 
seasoned  bloaters.  The  sight  so  astonished 
both  the  fisherman  and  his  wife,  that  they 
fell  down  on  their  knees  *'and  blessed  them- 
selves and  cride,  a  miracle,  a  miracle  !"  He 
next  went  to  the  king*8  court,  then  held  at 
Burgh  Castle,  to  exhibit  these  odd. fish,  and 
his  majesty,  partaking  of  the  fellow's  as- 
tonishment, licensed  him  to  carry  them  up 
and  down  the  realm  as  strange  monsters.  He 
afterwards  went  to  the  Pope,  and  sold  him 
the  last  one  of  his  stock  for  three  hundred 
crowns  as  the  king  of  fishes — but  the  details 
of  the  purchase,  the  cooking,  and  the  bring- 
ing of  the  herring  to  the  apostolic  table  with 


canopy  and  procession,  would  occupy  too 
much  of  our  space ;  suffice  it  to  say,  that 
from  that  day  downwards  the  red  herring 
has  enjoyed  all  the  popularity  that  his  zeal- 
ous eulogist  and  biographer  could  possibly 
desire. 

After  a  tirade  against  lawyers,  rather  in- 
congruously brought  into  his  book,  and  a  little 
allusion  to  alchemy,  Master  Nash  tells  us  a 
secret  which  he  thinks  all  tapsters  will  blame 
him  for  blabbing — ;"  In  his  (that  is,  the  red 
herring's)  skin, 

"  There  is  plaine  witchcraft,  for  doe  bnt  mbbe  a 
kanne  or  quarte  pot  round  about  the  mouth  wyth 
it,  let  the  canniugest  licke-spiggot  swelt  his  heart 
out,  the  beere  *sbal  never  foame  or  froth  in  tbe 
cnpp,  whereby  to  deceyve  men  of  their  measuTO, 
but  be  as  setled  as  if  it  stoode  all  night" 

After  rebutting  some  disrespectful  things 
that  have  been  said  of  herrings: — 

*<  Sq  I  coulde  plucke  a  crowe  wyth  Poet  Mai^ 
tiall  for  calling  it  jmtrt  halec^  the  scauld  rotten 
herring,  but  he  meant  that  of  the  fat  reasty  Scot^ 
tish  herrings,  which  will  endure  no  salt,  and  in 
one  moneth  (bestow  what  cost  on  them  you  wil) 
waxe  ramish  if  they  be  kept ;  whereas  our  em- 
barreld  white  herrings,  flourishing  with  the  stately 
brand  of  Yarmouth  upon  them,  acUicet,  the  three 
halfe  lions  and  the  three  halfe  fishes,  with  the 
crowne  over  the  head  [the  arms  of  the  port],  last 
in  long  voyages  better  than  the  redde  herring,  and 
not  onely  are  famous  at  Roan,  Paris,  Diepe,  Cane 
(whereof  the  first,  which  is  Roan,  serveth  all  the 
high  countries  of  Fraunce  with  it,  and  Diepe, 
which  is  the  last  save  one,  victualles  all  Picaray 
with  it),  but  heere  at  home  is  made  account  oif 
like  a  marquesse,  and  received  at  court  right 
solemnly,  I  care  not  much  if  I  rehene  to  yon  the 
manner,  and  that  is  thus : — 

"  Every  year  about  Lent  tide  the  sherifes  of 
Norwich  bake  certayne  herrinff  pies  (foure-and- 
twenty  as  I  take  it),  and  send  them  as  a  homage 
to  the  lorde  of  Caster  hard  by  there,  for  lands 
that  they  hold  of  him,  who  presently,  upon  the 
like  tenure,  in  bouncing  hampers  covered  over 
with  his  clothe  of  arms,  sees  them  conveyed  to 
the  court  in  the  best  equipage :  at  court,  when 
tliey  are  arrived,  his  roan  entereth  not  rudely  at 
first,  but  knocketh  very  civilly,  and  then  officers 
come  and  fetch  him  in  with  torch-light,  where, 
having  disfranghted  and  unloedled  his  luggage,  to 
supper  he  sets  him  downe  like  a  lord,  with  his 
waxe  lights  before  him,  and  hath  his  messe  of 
meate  allowed  him  with  the  largest,  and  bis 
horses  are  provendered  as  cpicureiy :  after  this 
some  foure  marke  fee  towardes  his  charges  is 
tendered  him,  and  he  jogges  home  agfuoe  merrily." 

We  shall  bring  our  notice  of  Ncufii^t  Len- 
ten Stuffe  to  a  close  by  transcribing  the 
peroration  of  the  book  itself. 

.**  Tbe  pussiant  red  herring ;  the  golden  Hes- 


I8«a.] 


SATIRES  AND  DKOTiAMATIOMB  OF  THOMAS  NASS 


281 


peridea  red  beniog ;  the  Meonian  red  herring ; 

the  Red  Herring  of  Red  Herrings  Hal;  every 

prepmat  peculiar  of  whose  resplendent  lande 

an<r  honor  to  delineate  and  adambrate  to  the 

ample  life  were  a  worke  that  woald  drinke  drie 

fonrescore  and  eighteene  Castalian  fonntaines  of 

"tioqucnce,  consume  another  Athens  of  facnnditie, 

and  abate  the  haughtiest  poeticall  fury  twixt  this 

and  the  burning  zone  ana  the  tropike  of  Cancer. 

My  conceit  is  cast  into  a  sweating  sickeness, 

with  ascending  these  few  steps  of  his  renowne : 

into  what  a  hote  broyling  Samt  Laurence  fever 

would  it  relapse  then  should  I  spend  the  whole 

bagge  of  my  wind  in  climbing  up  to  the  lofty 

mountain  crest  of  his  trophees.    but  no  more 

winde  will  I  spend  on  it  but  this:  Saint  Denis 

for  Fraunce,  Saint  James  for  Spaine,  Saint    / 

Petri ke  for   Ireland,  Saint    George 

for     Bngland,    and     the     Red 

Herring    for    Yarmouth." 

(V) 

We  have  placed  Christ »  Tears  over  Jeru- 
mUm  third  on  our  list,  (though  it  was  origi- 
nally produced  jo  the  year  1594,  between 
the  two  former  works),  because  its  subject 
matter  is  totally  different,  and  its  mode  of 
treatment  of  course  proportionably  grave 
and  serious.  It  is  also  a  much  larger  work. 
The  limits  of  this  article  will  not  allow  of 
our  giving  more  than  a  passing  notice  of  it. 
It  opens  with  a  most  fulsome  dedication  to 
the  Lady  Elizabeth  Carey,  wife  of  Sir 
Qeorge  Carey,  afterwards  Lord  Hudson, 
who  is  styled  ''Excellent,  accomplished, 
court-glorifying  lady,"  ''illustrate  ladyship," 
''renowned  madam,"  "judicial  madam," and 
**  divine  lady  I"  "  Varrow  saith,  the  philo- 
sophers held  two  hundred  and  eight  opmions 
of  felicity :  two  hundred  and  eight  felicities 
to  me  BusM  it  be,  if  I  have  framed  any  one 
line  to  your  liking."  Well  may  such  a 
flatterer  as  thia  account  himself  "  a  young 
imperfect  practitioner  in  Christ's  school!" 
It  was,  however,  the  common  foible  of  the 
day.  In  his  epistle  to  the  reader,  he  bids 
''a  hundred  unfortunate  farewels  to  fantas- 
tical satirism,"  and  expresses  a  hope  that 
those  who  hare  been  "  perverted"  by  any  of 
his  works  will  read  this  and  so  acquire  a 
threefold  benefit. 

Almost  a  third  of  the  book  is  occupied  by 
a  diffuse  monologue,  which  the  author  desig* 
nates  "Our  Saviour's  coUachrimate  oration." 
This  is  followed  by  reflections  on  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem.  Bat  the  main  design  of 
the  publication  is  to  censure  the  sins  of  Lon- 
don, and  to  warn  the  inhabitants  against  a 
similar  catastrophe.  We  have  declamaUons 
in  turn  against  ambition,  avarice,  usury, 
,  contentions,  pride  of  apparel^and 


many  other,  vices.  Aeainst  the  indolence 
and  frivolity  of  the  ladies  he  is  particularly 
severe: 

"  Just  to  dinner  they  will  arise,  and  after  dinner 
go  to  bed  again  and  lie  until  supper.  Yea,  some- 
times, by  no  sickness  occasioned,  they  will  lie  in 
bed  three  days  together,  provided,  every  morning^ 
htfore  four  odock,  thev  have  their  broths  and  their 
adlisea  with  pearl  and  gold  sodden  in  them  t  If 
haply  they  break  their  hours  and  rise  more  early 
to  go  a.banqnettin^,  they  stand  practising  half  a 
day  with  their  lookmg-gfass  bow  to  pierce  and  to 
glance  and  look  alluringly  aroiaUe.  Their  feet 
are  not  so  well  framed  to  the  measures  as  are 
their  eyes  to  move  and  bewitch.  Even  as  angeU 
are  painted  in  churchmndowa  tcith  glorious  gtMen 
fronU  beset  mith  sunbeams,  so  beset  they  their  fore- 
heads on  either  side  with  glorious'  borrowed 
gleamy  bushes,  which  rightly  interpreted  should 
signify,  beauty  to  sell,  since  a  busn  is  not  else 
hanged  forth  but  to  invite  men  to  buy  !*' 

But  the  men  do  not  escape  :— 

"  England,  the  players'  staee  of  gorgeous  attire, 
the  ape  of  all  nations'  superfluities,  the  continual 
masquer  in  outlandish  habiliments,  great  plenty- 
scanting  calamities  art  thou  to  await,  for  wanton 
disguising  thyself  against  kind,  and  digressinff 
from  the  |)lainne8s  of  thine  ancestors.  Scandal 
ous  and  shameful  it  is,  that  not  any  in  thee,  fisher- 
men and  husbandmen  set  aside,  but  live  above 
their  ability  and  birth;  that  the  outward  habit, 
which  in  other  countries  is  the  only  r?)  distinction 
of  honor,  should  yield  in  thee  no  diffi^rence  of 
persons :  that  all  ancient  nobility,  almost,  with  this 
gorgeous  prodigalitv  should  be  devoured  and  eaten 
up,  and  upstarts  kinabit  their  stately  palaces,  who 
from  far  have  fetched  in  this  variety  of  pride  to 
entrap  and  to  spoil  them.  Those  of  thy  people 
that  in  ail  other  things  are  miserable,  in  their  ap« 
parel  will  be  ptodigal.  No  laqd  can  so  infallibly 
experience  the  proverb,  *  The  hood  makes  not  the 
monk,'  as  thou ;  for  tailors,  serving-men,  make- 
shifts, and  gentlemen  in  thee  are  confounded." 

The  work  was  written  during  the  preva- 
lence of  the  plague  which  destroyed  so  many 
thousands  of  tb6  citizens  in  the  year  1504. 

'*  In  this  time  of  infection  we  purge  our  houses 
our  bodies,  and  our  streets,  and  look  to  all  but  our 
soul. 

'*The  psalmist  was  of  another  mind,  for  he 
said, '  O  Lord,  I  have  purged  and  cleansed  my 
spirit'  Blessed  sre  they  that  are  clean  in  heart, 
however  their  houses  be  infected.  There  were 
then,  in  the  heat  of  the  sickness,  those  that  thought 
to  purge  and  cleanse  their  houses,  by  conveymg 
their  ineffected  servants  by  night  into  the  fields, 
which  there  starved  and  died  for  want  of  relief 
and  warm  keeping.  Such  merciless  cannibals, 
instead  of  purging  their  spirits  and  their  houses, 
have  thereby  doubled  the  plague  aH  them  and 


232 


THE  HOUBE  OF  C0MM0N8, 


[Oct. 


their  houses.  In  Gray's  Idd,  Gerkenwell,  Fins* 
bury,  aod  Moorfields,  with  miDS  own  eyes  have  I 
seen  half-a-dozen  of  such  lamentable  outcasts. 
Their  brethren  and  their  kinsfolks  have  offered 
large  sums  of  money  to  get  theni  conveyed  into 
any  outhouse,  and  no  man  would  earn  it,  no  roan 
would  receive  them.  Curbing  and  raving  by  the 
highway  side  have  they  expired,  and  their  mas- 
ters never  sent  to  them  nor  succored  them.  The 
fear  of  God  has  come  amongst  us,  and  the  love  of 
God  gone  from  us.*' 

The  pestilence  which  called  forth  these  re- 
marks, and  which  probably  prompted  the 
writing  of  the  book,  filled  the  minds  of  the 
Londoners  with  superstitious  dread.  It  was 
viewed  as  a  heavy  judgment  and  a  direct 
▼isitation  of  God's  hand.  "  His  hand  I  may 
well  term  it,  for  on^  many  that  are  arrested 
with  the  plague  ia  the  print  of  a  hand  seen, 
and  in  the  very  moment  it  first  takes  them, 
they  feel  a  sensible  blow  given  them^  as  it 
were  the  hand  of  some  stapder  by."  Some 
explained  it  by  natural  causes;  others  by 
•upematural  agency. 

"^  As  God*8  hand  we  will  not  take  it,  but  the 
hand  of  fortune,  the  hand  of  hot  weather,  the  hand 
of  close  smouldry  air.  The  astronomers  assign 
it  to  the  regimen  and  operation  of  planets.  They 
say  Venus,  Mars,  Saturn,  are  motives  thereof,and 
never  mention  our  sins,  which  are  its  chief  pro- 


creators.  The  vulgar  menialty  conclude,  there" 
fore,  it  is  like  to  increase,  because  a  hearnshaw 
(young  heron)  a  whole  afternoon  together,  satB 
on  the  top  of  Saint  Peter's  Church,  in  ComhilL 
They  talk  of  an  ox  that  tolled  the  bell  at  Wool- 
wich, and  how  from  an  ox  he  transformed  him- 
self to  an  old  man,  and  from  an  old  man  to  an  in- 
fant, and  from  an  infant  to  a  young  man.  Strang* 
prophetical  reports  (as  touching  the  sickness) 
they  mutter  he  gave  out,  when  in  truth  they  are 
nought  else  hut  cleanly  coined  lies,  which  soma 
pleasant  sportive  wits  have  devised  to  gull  them 
most  grossly.  Under  Master  Dee's  name  the  lik» 
fabulous  divinations  have  they  bruited,  when, 
good  reverend  old  man,  he  is  as  far  from  such  ar- 
rogant preciseness  as  the  superstitious  spreaders 
of  it  are  from  true  peace  of  conscience." 

The  morbid  feeling  which  gave  rise  to 
these  delusions  seems  to  have  taken  in  Nash's 
breast  another  direction,  and  to  have  led  him 

greatly  to  exaggerate  the  actual  amount  of 
epravity  in  the  metropolis.  The  contrast 
which  this  work  presents  to  the  other  two 
affords  curious  matter  of  reflection  for  the 
moralist.  They  have  few  points  in  common  ; 
and  it  is  in  the  light  and  humorous  satire; 
and  not  in  the  Jeremiad,  that  the  real  charao- 
ter  of  the  writer  is  developed.  The  plagiie 
passes  away,  and  Nash  writes  again  as  of  old 
— gross  personalities  excepted — in  praise  of 
the  Red  Herring  1 


From   Tait'a    Magaxiae. 


THC  HOUSE    OF  COMMONS,  FROM  THE  STBAN6EKS'  OALLEKT. 


Not  far  from  Westminster  Abbey,  as  most 
of  our  readers  know  well,  stands  the  gorgeoua 
pile  which  Mr.  Barry  has  designed,  and  Tor 
which  in  a  pecuniary  sense  a  patient  public 
has  been  ratiier  handsomely  bled.  Few  are 
there  who  have  looked  at.  that  pile  from  the 
Bridge — or  from  the  numerous  steamers 
which  throng  the  river— -or  loitered,  round  it 
on  a  summer's  eve,  without  feelipg  some 
little  reverence  for  the  spot  haunted  by  noble 
memories  and  heroic  shades — where  to  this 
day  congregate  the  talent,  the  wealth,  the 
learning,  the  wisdom  of  the  land.  It  is  true, 
there  are  men,  and  that  amiable  cynic,  Mr. 
Henry  Drummond,  is  one  of  them,  who  main- 
tain that  the  House  of  Commons  is  utterly 
corrupt — that  there  is  not  a  man  in  that 
House,  but  has  his  price ;  but  we  instinct- 


ively feel  that  such  a  general  xsharge  is  false 
— that  no  institution  could  exist  steeped  ill 
the  demoralization  Mr.  Drummond  supposes  ^ 
— that  his  statement  is  rather  one  of  those 
ingenious  paradoxes,  in  which  eccentric  men 
delight,  than  a  sober  exposition  of  the  real 
truth.  Mr.  Drummond  should  know  bettec 
A  poor  penny-a-liner — of  a  bilious  tempera- 
ment, without  a  rap  in  his  pocket — might  be 
excused  such  cyncism ;  but  it  does  not  become 
an  elderly  religious  gentleman,  well  shaven — 
with  clean  linen,  and  a  good  estate.  The 
House  of  Commons  is  a  mixed  assenably. 
It  contains  the  fool  of  quality — ther  Beotian 
squire — the  needy  adventurer — the  unprinci- 
pled charlatan ;  but  these  men  do  not  rule  it 
— do  not  form  its  opinion — do  not  have  much 
influence  in  it.    It  is  an  assembly  right  in  the 


1858.] 


FROM  THJB 


Practically,  it  cooBists  of  well-en- 
dowed, well- informed  business  men — men 
with  little  enthusiasm,  but  with  plenty  of 
common  sense,  and  with  more  than  average 
intellect,  integrity,  and  wealth.  Still  more 
may  be  said.  AH  that  is  great  in  our  land 
is  there.  It  boasts  the  brightest  names  in 
literature,  in  eloquence,  aud  law.  Our  island- 
mother  has  no  more  distinguished  sons  than 
those  whose  names  we  see  figuring  day  by 
day  in  the  division  lists.  Nowhere  can  a 
man  see  an  assembly  more  honourable,  more" 
to  be  held  in  honor,  for  all  that  men  do 
honor,  than  the  British  House  of  Commons, 
to  which  we  now  propose  to  introduce  the 
refider. 

We  suppose  it  to  be  the  night  of  an  im- 
portant debate,  and  that  we  have  an  order 
for  the  Strangers'  Gallery.  As  the  gallery 
will  not  hold  more  than  seventy,  and  as  each 
member  may  mve  an  order,  it  is  very  clear 
Ihat  at  four,  when  the  gallery  will  be  thrown 
open,  there  will  be  more  waiting  for  admis- 
sion than  the  place  can  possibly  contain,  and 
that  our  only  chance  of  getting  in  will  be  by 
being  there  as  early  as  possible.  When  Mr. 
Gladstone  brought  forward  the  Budget,  for 
instance,  there  were  strangers  waiting  for  ad- 
mission as  early  as  ten  in  the  morning.  We 
go  down  about  one,  and  are  immediately  di- 
rected to  a  low,  dark  cellar,  with  but  little 
light,  save  what  comes  from  a  fire,  that 
nuikes  the  place  anything  but  refreshingly 
cool  or  pleasant.  Being  of  a  stoical  turn  of 
mind,  we  bear  our  lot  in  patience,  not,  how- 
ever, without  thinking  that  the  Commons 
might  behave  more  respectfully  to  the  sove- 
reign people,  than  by  consigning  them  to 
this  horrid  black  hole.  It  is  in  vain  we  try 
to  read — ^it  is  too  dark  for  that ;  or  to  talk — 
the  atmosphere  is  too  oppressive  even  for 
ihat  slight  exertion;  and  so  we  wile  away 
the  time  in  a  gentle  reverie,  occasionally  in- 
terrupted by  the  purchase  of  oranges  from 
the  merry  Irish  woman,  who  comes  to  us  as 
a  ministering  angel,  and  is  in  capital  spirits  at 
doing  so  much  business,  and  only  wishes  there 
was  a  budget  once  a  week.  As  soon  as  this 
room  is  full,  the  rest  of  the  strangers  are  put 
under  the  custody  of  the  police  in  St.  Ste- 
phen's Hall.  This  b  much  more  pleasant 
than  waiting  in  the  cellar,  for  there  is  a  con- 
tinual passing  to  and  fro  of  lords  and  law- 
yers, and  M.  P.^s,  and  parliamentary  agents 
and  witnesses ;  so  that  if  you  do  not  get  into 
the  House,  you  will  see  something  going  on. 
Bat  in  the  cellar  you  sit^  as  Shelly  says, 

Like  a  party  in  a  parlor, 
All  silent,  and  all  damned ! 


GALLERY. 


288 


At  length  we  hear  the  ringing  of  a  bell,  it 
is  a  welcome  sound,  for  it  announces  that 
the  Speaker  is  going  to  prayers.  A  few 
minutes,  and  another  ringing  makes  us  aware 
of  the  pleasing  fact  that  that  Gentleman's 
devotions  have  already  comoienced.  We 
are  delighted  to  hear  it,  for  we  know  that 
the  policeman  who  has  had  us  in  charge,  and 
who  has  ranged  us  in  the  order  of  our  re- 
spective entrances,  will  presently  command 
the  first  five  to  get  out  their  orders  and  pro- 
ceed. The  happy  moment  at  last  arrivea, 
and  with  a  light  heart  we  run  up  several 
flights  of  stairs  and  find  ourselves  in  thb 

BOUSB. 

At  first  we  hardly  know  what  we  see. 
Chaos  seems  come  ^ain ;  every  one  is  out 
of  his  place.  On  the  Opposition  benches  sits 
Joseph  Hume,  on  the  Ministerial  Colonel 
Sibthorp.  All  is  confusbn  and  disorder.  No 
one  but  the  Speaker  seems  to  know  what  he 
is  about.  It  IS  the  hour  devoted  to  private! 
business.  Amidst  the  hum  of  conversation 
we  hear  the  deep-toned  voice  of  the  Speaker, 
hastily  reading  over  the  titles  of  bills,  and 
declaring  them  read  a  first,  or  second,  or 
third  time,  as  the  case  may  be.  Then  we 
hear  him  announce  the  name  of  some  honor- 
able M.P.,  who  immediately  rises  and  reads 
a  statement  of  the  petition  he  holds  in  his 
hand,  with  which  he  immediately  rushes  down 
to  the  clerk,  and  which,  thereupon,  the  Spea- 
ker declares,  is  ordered  to  lie  upon  the  table — 
literally  the  petition  is  popped  into  a  bag. 
In  the  meanwhile  we  take  a  look  around. 
We  are  up  in  the  Strangers'  Gallery  ;  before 
us  is  the  Speaker's  Gallery,  which  is  a  row 
nearer  the  busy  scene,  and  which  is  furnished 
with  easy  leather  cushions,  while  we  sit  upon 
bare  boards.  On  either  side  of  the  house  are 
Galleries,  very  pleasant  to  sit,  or  lie,  or  occa- 
sionally sleep  on,  and  by  and  by  we  shall  see 
in  them  old  fogies,  red  in  the  face,  talking 
over  the  last  bit  of  scandal,  and  young  mus- 
tached  lords  or  officers,  sleeping  away  the 
time,  to  be  ready,  when  the  house  breaks 
up,  for 

Fresh  fields  and  pastures  new. 

Opposite  to  us  is  the  Reporters'  Gallery. 
Already  some  dozen  of  them  are  there ;  those 
three  boxes  in  the  middle  belong  to  the 
Time9.  At  present,  the  getftlenaen  of  the 
press  are  taking  it  easy ;  they  will  have  to 
work  hard  enough  anon.  Above  them  are 
gilt  wires,  behind  which  we  see  the  glare  of 
silks  and  satins,  and  faintly — for  otherwise 
attenUon  would  be  drawn  from  the  gentlemen 


284 


THB  HOUHE  OF  OOMMONa 


Oct, 


to  the  ladies  above— but  sUU  clearly  enough 
to  make  us  believe — 

That  we  can  almost  think  we  gaxe 
Through  golden  vistas  into  heaven, 

we  see  outlines  of  female  forms,  and  we  won- 
der if  the  time  will  ever  arrive  when  Lucretia 
Hott's  dream  shall  be  realized,  and  woman 
take  her  seat  in  the  senate,  side  by  side  with 
the  tyrant  man.  Under  the  Reporters'  Gal- 
lery, and  immediately  facing  us,  sits  the 
Speaker,  in  his  chair  of  state.  On  his  right 
are  the  Treasury  Benches ;  on  the  left,  those 
where  the  Opposition  are  condemned  to  sit, 
and  fume  and  fret  in  vain.  Between  these 
benches  is  the  table  at  which  the  clerk  sits, 
and  on  which  petitions,  when  they  are  re- 
ceived, are  ordered  to  lie,  and  where  lie  the 
green  boxes,  on  which  orators  are  very  fond 
of  striking,  in  order  to  give  to  their  speeches 
particular  force.  At  the  end  of  this  table 
commences  the  gangway,  which  is  supposed 
to  be  filled  with  independent  statesmen,  and 
to  whom,  therefore,  at  particular  times,  the 
most  passionate  appeals  are  addressed. 
Lower  down,  is  the  Bar  of  the  House;  and 
that,  in  our  position,  we  cannot  see.  At  the 
end  of  the  table  lies  the  "gilt  bauble,"  as 
Cromwell  called  the  mace — which  is  the  sign 
of  the  Speaker's  presence,  and  which  is 
always  put  under  the  table  when  the  Speaker 
leaves  the  chair.  When  a  message  from  the 
Lords  is  announced,  the  Mace- bearer,  bearing 
the  Mace,  goes  to  the  Bar  of  House,  and 
meets  the  Messenger,  who  comes  forward 
bowing,  and  retires  in  the  same  manner,  with 
hb  face  to  the  Speaker,  for  it  would  be  a 
terrible  breach  of  etiquette  were  the  Messen- 
ger to  favor  that  illustrious  personage  with  a 
glimpse  of  his  back.  When  the  Speaker 
leaves  the  chair  no  one  else  occupies  it.  One 
of  the  forms  of  the  House,  pertinaciously 
adhered  to,  and  often  productive  of  good 
results,  was  employed  to  some  purpose  the 
last  time  we  were  in  the  House.  According 
to  Parliamentary  rules,  when  the  Speaker 
puts  the  motion  for  leaving  the  chair,  pre- 
vious to  the  House  going  mto  a  Committee 
of  Supply,  it  is  at  the  option  of  any  mem- 
ber who  has  a  grievance,  to  bring  it  forward 
then.  Accordingly,  Tom  Duncombe  skilfully 
availed  himself  of  this  privilege.  The  ri- 
diculous proceedings  of  the  Government  in 
the  late  gunpowder  plot,  was  the  burden  of 
honest  Tom's  speech.  Duncombe  expatiated 
on  the  hardship  done  to  Mr.  Hales,  showed 
that  the  Times  had  libelled  Lord  Palmerston 
even  more  than  Kossuth,  and  did,  what  he 


generally  does,  make  the  house  laugh.  Pal- 
merston answered  with  equal  ease,  and  was 
equally  successful  in  making  the  house  laugh ; 
and  the  man  who  does  that  will  always  be 
heard  in  St.  Stephen's.  Lord  Dudley  Stuart 
then  started  to  his  less,  to  express  his  de- 
light to  find  that  Lord  Palmerston  declared 
that  Kossuth  had  nothinc^  to  do  with  the 
afihir,  and  then  wandered  into  a  panegyrie 
on  Palmerston  himself.  Lord  Dudley  is  a 
good  man  and  an  honest  man,  but  he  is  not 
a  first-rate  tactician ;  and  there  are  better 
orators  than  he.  In  his  untiring  devotion  to 
the  cause  of  the  exile  and  the  refugee,  he 
deserves  thanks  and  praise ;  one  feels  inclined  ' 
to  repeat  Coleridge  s  lines,  and  say  : — 

Oh,  lady,  nursed  in  pomp  and  pleasure, 
Where  learnt  you  that  heroic  measure  ? 

But  still  his  lordship  is  not  always  up  to  the 
mark,  and  certainly  was  not  so  on  the  occasion 
to  which  we  refer.  But  if  he  was  not  that 
broad-shouldered,  square-headed  Quaker  by 
his  side,  John  Bright,  was,  and  he,  at  any 
rate,  determined  that  Palmerston  should  not 
be  let  off  so  easily.  As  Lord  Dudley  sat 
down,  up  then  rose  honest  John.  Kossuth 
had  been  slandered  in  an  article  in  the  jTimetf 
which  not  a  man  calling  himself  a  gentleman 
would  put  his  hand  to.  That  was  a  point 
which  the  House  took  up  and  cheered. 
Country  gentlemen — ^poor  old  Spooner  ait- 
ting  on  his  bench  alone — could  join  in  that 
Then  Kossuth  had  been  dogged  by  spies. 
Was  that  with  Palmerston's  sanction.  His 
lordship  blandly  replied ;  but  Bright  is  not 
a  man  easily  soaped  down,  and  he  returned 
fresh  and  furious  to  the  charge.  His  lord- 
ship again  rose  to  reply,  but  without  the  lifis 
that  amused  the  House  when  he  replied  to 
Duncombe.  Then  Cobden,  regardless  of  the 
noble  lord's  feelings,  would  have  got  him  up 
again,  had  not  the  Speaker  interfered.  This 
chattering  must  be  stopped.  Lord  Palmer- 
ston had  already  spoken  three  times.  It 
was  time  the  badger-baiting  were  ended. 
The  pause  gave  occasion  to  some  Irish  M.P. 
to  ask  a  question  relative  to  ministers'  money^ 
and  to  get  what  Mr.  Maguire  termed  an 
evasive  reply  from  the  Treasury  benches, 
which,  under  other  circumstances,  would 
have  made  a  nice  little  row  by  itself ;  but 
the  Kossuth  matter  was  not  to  be  so  easily 
disposed  of,  and  Mr.  Cobden  was  determined 
to  have  his  say  as  well  as  his  cUter  e^o. 
Bright  Accordingly,  with  his  usual  tacl^ 
he  got  a  cheer  or  two  from  the  House  for  the 
I  Hungarian  hero,  and  then  came  down  on 


1868.] 


FROM  THB  STBAKGXB8'  GAZXERY. 


2Zf 


Lord  John,  who,  as  he  generally  does,  made 
a  neat  and  appropriate  speech .  No  man  can 
do  this  better  than  Lord  John ;  and  there 
the  matter  ended,  and  the  House  then  pro- 
ceeded with  its  business.  Such  forms  as 
those  we  refer  to  hare  advantages — they  give 
men  opportunities  of  uttering  their  senti- 
ments— of  castigating  Governments  when 
they  deserve  it — of  being  a  terror  to  Min- 
isters when  evil  disposed. 

But  time  has  passed  away,  and  the  hour 
Cor  private  business  has  ceased.  The  ben- 
ches on  both  sides  of  the  House  are  already 
filled.  That  first  row  on  the  Speaker's  right 
contains  the  Ministers.  The  diminutive  Lord 
John  sits  by  the  side  of  the  gigantic  Graham, 
and  near  Lord  Palmerston,  a  man  who  shares 
with  Joseph  Hume  the  honor  of  being  the 
father  of  the  House,  and  who  still  carries  his 
years  well.  Joseph  Hume  is  still  as  fresh 
and  gay  as  a  foor-y ear-old,  and  if  Dodd  be 
an  authority  he  did  not  take  his  seat  till  1811, 
while  in  1809  we  find  Palmerston  in  office. 
Further  from  the  Speaker,  and  nearer  the 
stranger's  gallery,  sit  Gladstone — Moles- 
worth — Wilson — the  law  officers  sitting  still 
further  removed  from  us.  Fronting  them 
are  the  Opposition,  and  that  Jewish-looking 
individual,  with  a  white  vest,  that  renders 
him  the  observed  of  all  observers,  is  the 
leader  of  the  great  Protectionist  party,  whose 
battles  he  has  fought — whose  councils  he 
has  guided-^whose  chiefs,  at  one  time,  he 
placed  upon  the  Treasury  bench  itself.  Up 
m  the  gallery  no  one  is  watched  so  anxiously 
as  he.  Lord  Palmerston  is  the  next  best 
8tared-at  man  in  the  House ;  and  then  the 
diminutive  Lord  John.  But  we  all  like  to 
look  at  Disraeli.  So  far  as  the  Opposition 
are  concerned,  the  debate  generally  Ian- 
grQishes  till  Disraeli  rises  to  speak.  His  cus- 
tom is  to  fit  motionless  as  a  mummy  all 
night,  with  his  chin  buried  in  his  bosom,  and 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  except  when  he 
takes  them  to  bite  or  examine  the  state  of 
his  nails — a  nervous  action  which  I  believe 
he  unconsciously  performs.  His  speeches 
are  fine  displays ;  he  has  a  voice  that  one 
may  hear  in  every  part  of  the  House.  There 
b  a  daring  saucy  look  in  his  face,  which  at 
once  excites  your  interest.  He  is  not  a  large 
man,  but  he  looks  well  put  together,  with 
his  head  in  the  right  place ;  but  he  never 
seems  in  earnest,  or  to  have  a  great  principle ; 
be  is  an  admirable  actor,  and  blends  the  use- 
ful necessary  business  talk  with  the  orna- 
mental and  the  personal,  as  no  other  man  in 
the  House  does.  Generally  he  looks  glum, 
and  talks  to  no  one  except  to  Bateson,  one  of 


the  Opposition  whippers-in,  and  Lord  Henry 
Lennox,  his  private  secretary,  who,  however, 
prefers  mostly  gossiping  in  the  lobby  to.  the 
war  of  words  carried  on  in  the  house.  There 
are  times  also  when  Disraeli  looks  more 
cheerful.  On  that  memorable  November 
morninff  when  he  was  ousted  from  place — 
when  his  party  were  ingloriously  driven  from 
the  Eden  in  which  they  had  long  hoped  to 
repose,  back  into  the  bleak  and  desert  world, 
the  ex-Chancellor,  came  out  of  the  lobby 
gay  and  frt:sh  as  if  the  majority  had  been 
with  him,  not  against  him  ;  there  was  an  un- 
wonted gaiety  in  his  walk,  and  sparkle  in  bis 
eye,  but  the  excitement  of  the  contest  was 
hardly  oven  The  swell  of  the  storm  was 
still  there.  Still  rang  in  his  ears  the  thun- 
ders of  applause — audible  to  us  even  in  the 
lobby,  which  greeted  his  daring  retorts  and 
audacious  personalities.  By  the  side  of 
Disraeli  sits  that  respectable  Chairman  of 
Quarter  Sessions,  Sir  John  Packington — 
near  him  the  gentle  Walpole,  of  whom  it 
I  may  be  said  that  he  never  took  a  joke  ;  the 
ready-tongued  and  clever  Sir  Frederick  Tbes- 
iger,  and  other  party  lights.  On  the  bench 
behind  sits  the  grey-haired  Spooner,  still 
eager  in  his  crusade  against  Maynooth ;  and 
behind  him  we  have  a  regular  row  of  far- 
mers' friends.  That  tall  nobleman,  in  sport- 
ing costume,  with  indistinct  utterance,  with 
vehement  but  monotonous  action,  is  the  Mar- 
(^uis  of  Granby.  Next  to  him  is  the  lu- 
gubrious representative  of  Cambridge  fens 
and  flats — near  by  are  other  remnants  of  the 
forlorn  Association  for  the  Protection  of 
British  Industry  and  Capital.  On  the  same 
side  of  the  House,  but  below  the  gangway, 
sit  the  Iri&h  ultra-Komanists  and  Tenant 
Leaguers — a  band  formidable  from  their 
obstinacy  and  audacity.  There  they  sit, 
Maguire,  the  Irish  Disraeli  Gavan  Duffy  ojf 
the  Nation — Lucas  of  the  Tablet — deter- 
mined to  side  with  no  party — ^to  support  no 
Government  that  will  not  give  to  Ireland  all 
they  want  for  her — determined  to  make 
Ireland  what  she  has  ever  been,  a  stumbling- 
block  in  the  way  of  all  who  rule. 

Behind  the  gangway,  but  on  the  ministe- 
rial side  of  the  House,  sit  the  Manchester 
School.  Its  chiefs  are  never  heard  without 
attention.  Cobden  and  Bright  never  open 
their  mouths,  but  the  bouse  listens.  Ob- 
scurer Radicals,  Lord  Dudley  Stuart,  Mr. 
W.  Willianis,  and  others,  may  be  on  their 
legs  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  without  a  sound 
being  heard.  The  extreme  men  all  sit  to- 
gether. That  pale,  thinking,  determined 
man,  with  spectacles,  is  £d ward  Miall,  of  Uie 


289 


THE  HOUSE  OF  COBIMON& 


[Oct^ 


JVbnconformiat — the  leader  and  the  light — 
the  tutamen  et  dectis  of  the  more  advanced 
and  intelligent  section  of  English  Koncon- 
formists.  Below  him  sits  that  Church  Re- 
former, Sir  Benjamin  Hall.  High  up  on  the 
Ministerial  benches,  but  near  the  gangway, 
sits  smiling  Joseph  Hume,  the  best  tempered 
man  and  most  frequent  speaker  in  the  House. 
Fortunately,  Joseph  does  not  speak  long ;  if 
he  did,  he  would  be  very  tiresome  indeed. 
Tom  Duncombe,  the  pet  of  the  great  un- 
washed— a  class  that  we  trust  will  materially 
diminish,  since  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exche- 
quer has  taken  the  duty  off  soap,  sits  imme- 
diately behind ;  and  near  him  you  see  a  short 
mountain  of  a  man,  wi«h  large,  thoughtful 
head,  long,  grey  hair^  and  curious  Quaker 
hat.  That  is  William  Johnson  Fox — the 
"  Publicola"  of  the  Weekly  Dispatch— the 
"  Norwich  Weaver  Boy,"  of  the  League — an 
orator  whose  orations  at  the  Anti-Corn-Law 
meetings  at  Coven t  Garden,  are  still  remem- 
bered as  efforts  of  eloquence  unparalleled  in 
these  modern  times. 

But  we  have  been  already  some  time  in 
the  House.  Hours  have  come  and  gone — 
day  has  faded  into  night.  Suddenly,  from 
the  painted  glass  ceiling  above,  a  mellow 
light  has  streamed  down  upon  us  all.  Rich 
velvet  curtains  have  been  drawn  across  the 
gorgeously  painted  windows,  and  if  we  had 
only  good  speeches  to  listen  to,  we  should 
be  very  comfor^ble  indeed.  Alas,  alas, 
•  there  is  no  help  for  us!  As  soon  as  "  Wishy" 
sito  down,  *'  Washy"  gets  up ;  and  members 
thin  off,  leaving  hardly  forty  in  the  House. 
Nor  can  we  wonder  at  this.  Men  must  dine 
once  in  the  twenty-four  hours,  and  members 
of  the  House  of  Commons  obey  this  univer- 
sal law.  Most  of  them  have  been  hard  at 
work  all  the  day.  You  are  confoundedly 
mistaken,  my  dear  sir,  if  you  think  that  as 
soon  as  you  have  taken  your  seat  in  the 
Hous^,  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  make  a 
brilliant  speech,  and  to  spend  the  rest  of  your 
time  cantering  in  Rotten  Row — gossiping  in 
the  window  of  your  favorite  Club — or  being 
lionized  in  Belgravia.  Never  did  mother's 
son  make  a  more  egregious  blunder.  The 
rule  is-— 

Work,  work,  work, 

Till  the  brain  begins  to  swim. 

Possibly,  as  you  have  gone  by  the  steamer 
from  your  chambers  in  Fig  Tree  Court, 
Temple,  to  Cremome,  you  have  seen  rows  of 
windows  extending  along  the  whole  river- 
front of  the  New  House  of  Parliament.    One 


of  those  rows  of  windows,  at  least,  denotes 
the  great  fact  of  the  existence  of  a  corridor 
of  committee-rooms.  These  oommittee-rooms 
generally  open  at  eleven  or  twelve  o'clock, 
and  the  chances  are  that  in  one  or  Qther  of 
them  you  will  be  caught  and  confined  daily 
till  the  hour  of  prayer  happily  arrives.  There 
you  must  sit  examining  witnesses  and  plana 
— listening  to  counsel  very  learned  and  very 
dull.  Occasionally  counsel  are  facetious, 
generally  they  are  quite  the  reverse  :  and  I 
assure  you  that  Jfanana,  in  the  "Moated 
Orange,'*  never  was  so  weary,  or  so  wished 
that  she  were  dead,  as  you  will,  after  you 
have  been  a  day  or  two  on  the  "  Bullock- 
Smithy  Waterworks  Committee  Bill."  Con- 
sequently, between  the  hours  of  eight  and 
ten,  the  House  gets  very  thin  indeed,  and 
the  oratory  is  of  that  kind  generally  known 
as  "  small  beer."  About  ten  again  the 
House  gets  full,  and  the  great-guns  rise ;  but 
still  you  must  not  leave — there  may  be  a  di* 
virion.  You  must  stay  there  till  one  or  two, 
as  the  case  may  b6 :  so  that,  after  all,  an 
honorable  M.  P.  has  not  a  very  easy  life. 
Committees  all  day,  and  debates  all  night — 
I  wonder  that  some  of  the  old  fogies  in  the 
House  don't  give  it  up  and  retire;  they  can't 
be  ambitious  now — at  their  time  of  life  they 
cannot  expect  a  place,  or,  with  their  failing 
powers. 

The  applause  of  listening  senates  to  command. 

That  dream  must,  long  have  left  them.  I 
suppose  it  is  custom  that  compels  them  to 
haunt  the  house ;  they  have  got  used  to  it, 
and  they  could  not  otherwise  exist.  But  it 
is  terrible  work  after  all ;  just  as  country  life 
becomes  beautiful,  just  as  out-door  existence 
becomes  preferable  to  that  within,  just  as  the 
warm  voluptuous  breath  of  the  sunny  south 
makes  you  feel  young  in  spite  of  grey  hairs 
and  increasing  obesity,  an  M.  P.  is  condemned 
to  spend  the  livelong  day  and  night  in  the 
heated  atmosphere  of  St.  Stephen's  HalU 
Of  itself,  without  bad  speeches,  this  i^ould 
be  a  heavy  task.  It  is  true  that  lately  the 
ventillation  of  the  House  has  been  much  im- 
proved, but  still,  if  Punch  be  an  authority, 
when  an  irritated  cabman,  for  occasionally 
cabmen  do  lose  their  temper,  would  call  his 
brother  jarvey  a  fool,  he  simply  terms  him 
the  ''  gentleman  wot  wentilates  the  House  of 
Commons."  But  time  is  wearing  away.  We 
will  suppose  the  House  has  become  full ;  the 
great  men  have  had  their  say ;  the  debate,  as 
far  as  the  government  is  concerned,  is  con- 
cluded, generally  by  Lord  John,  who  is  in  a 


1853.] 


FBOM  THE  STRANaKRS'  GALLERY. 


237 


capital  state  of  preservation,  and  standing 
nearly  erect — little  men  always  do — with  his 
hands  tucked  up  in  the  arm-boles  of  his  coat, 
is  lively,  and  leaves  the  House  to  divide  in 
good  spirits.  His  lordship  is  admirably  fitted 
for  an  age  of  compromise  and  coalition.  The 
liberality  of  his  premises  is  only  equalled  by 
the  niggardly  deductions  he  draws  from  them. 
The  boldest  Reformers  admire  his  principles, 
the  narrowest  Conservatives  are  scarcely 
■hocked  by  his  conclusions ;  so  that  he  suits 
oU  parties.  Lord  John  resumes  his  seat 
amidst  loud  calls  of  divide,  divide  I  The  di- 
vision bell  rings — peers  and  diplomatists  and 
strangers  are  turned  out — members  come 
rushing  in  from  the  library  and  smoking- 
room.  The  mysteries  of  the  lobby  are  only 
for  the  initiated.  If  the  division  is  large,  we 
may  have  to  wait  half  an  hour  for  the  result, 
generally  announced  with  tremendous  cheers. 
Up  in  the  waiting-room,  we  have  no  idea  how 
the  division  goes.  All  that  we  learn  from 
the  Oallery  keeper  is,  that  there  was  an  im- 
mense majority,  but  he  cannot  exactly  say  on 
which  side  it  was.  Altogether,  the  arrange- 
ment seems  very  senseless  and  absurd.  The 
strangers  are  surely  not  in  the  way  of  the 
members,  and  the  publication  of  the  division 
list,  precludes  for  an  instant  the  idea  that  it 
b  done  to  insure  secrecy.  The  arrangement 
18  merely  an  unnecessary  inconvenience  which 
the  House  keeps  up  from  its  love  of  antiqua- 
ted forms.  Surely  now  that  people  are  ad- 
mitted into  the  House,  they  might  be  allowed 
to  stop  while  they  are  there.  They  are  cer- 
tainly as  quiet  and  orderly  as  the  gentlemen 
that  sit  below.  Not  that  fault  should  be 
found  with  members ;  they  are  generally  well 
behaved,  and  hear  even  unutterable  bores 
with  attention.  It  is  seldom  they  put  a  man 
down,  or  are  boisterous  and  rude.  Of  course, 
however,  this  remark  is  not  to  be  understood 
as  applying  to  all  the  representatives  from 
the  sister-isle.  And  now  the  division  is  an- 
nounced, and  the  House  adjourns.  Out 
bound  honorable  M.  P.'s,  as  schoolboys  out 
of  tchool.  Glad  enough  are  they  the  thing 
18  over,  and  lighting  their  cigars — ^it  is  aston* 
ishing  what  smokers  honorable  gentlemen 
are — not  unreluotantly  do  they  wend  their 
way  home.  Following  their  example,  we  ex- 
change the  noisy  and  heated  House  for  the 
chill  and  silent  night — but  we  cannot  omit  to 
observe  first  how  much  the  press  has  altered 
the  character  of  the  oratory  of  the  House. 
Whilst,  for  instance,  Smithers  was  speaking 
—the  House  was  then  very  thin — nobody 
Eatened  to  Smithers — yet  went  on  Smith- 
en  stuttering — reading  from  M.S.  notes- 


screeching  at  the  top  of  his  voice^-sawing 
the  air  with  his  arms,  in  the  manner  of  Mr. 
Frederick  Peel — no  one  listens  to  Smithers — 
occasionally  a  good-natured  friend  mildly 
ejaculates  an  approving  "hear,"  btit  gene- 
rally Smithers  sits  down  as  he  rises,  without 
any  particular  mark  of  approval  at  all — Why 
then  does  Smithers  speak? — why  because 
thC'  press  is  there — to  treasure  up  every 
word — to  note  down  every  sentence — to  let 
the  British  nation  see  what  Smithers  said. 
This  of  course  is  a  great  temptation  to  Smith- 
ers to  speak  when  there  is  no  absolute  neces- 
sity that  Smithers  should  open  his  mouth  at 
all.  Yet  this  has  its  advantages^-on  the 
morrow  honorable  gentlen^en  have  the  whole 
debate  before  them,  cqolly  to  peruse  and 
study,  and  if  one  grain  of  sense  lurked  in 
Smithers'  speech,  the  reader  ^ets  the  benefit. 
At  times  also,  were  it  not  for  the  press,  it 
would  be  almost  impossible  to  transact  the 
business  of  the  country.  For  instance,  we 
refer  to  Mr.  Wilson's  proposals  for  Customs 
Reform.  On  the  occasion  to  which  we  refer, 
Mr.  Wilson  spoke  for  nearly  four  hours.  Mr. 
Wilson  we  helieve  to  be  an  excellent  man  and 
father  of  a  family,  but  he  certainly  is  a  very 

Soor  speaker.  Never  was  there  a  duller  and 
rearier  speech.  Few  men  could  sit  it  out. 
In  the  gallery  there  were  a  few  strong-minded 
females  who  heard  every  word — what  cannot 
a  strong-minded  woman  do  ? — but  M  P.'s 
gossiped  in  the  lobby — or  dined — or  smoked 
— or  drank  brandy  and  water — in  short  did 
anything  but  listen  to  Mr.  Wilson ;  and  yet 
this  was  a  grave,  serious,  government  mea- 
sure.  Why  then  did  not  members  listen  1 
Because  there  was  no  need  for  them  to  do 
80.  The  Times  would  give  it  them  all  the 
next  morning ;  and  so  it  mattered  little  how 
empty  of  listeners  was  the  House,  provided 
the  reporters  were  there  and  did  their  duty. 
It  is  to  the  Reporters'  Gallery  members 
speak,  not  to  the  House.  Thus  it  is  orators 
are  so  plentiful  in  spite  of  the  freezing  at- 
mosphere of  the  House.  Ordinarily  no  one 
listens— no  one  expects  to  be  convinced — 
no  one  seeks  to  convince^  The  House  is  po- 
lite, but  it  has  no  enthusiasm.  Orators,  like 
George  Thompson,  are  quite  out  of  place  in 
it.  Such  a  man  as  Henry  Vincent  would  be 
a  laughing-stock.  The  House  would  go  into 
convulsions  every  time  his  apoplectic  face  ap- 
peared. The  House  consists  of  middle-aged 
gentlemen  of  good  parts  and  habits,  and  they 
like  to  do  business  and  to  be  spoken  to  in  a 
business-like  way.  Next  to  business-like 
speakers,  the  House  likes  joking.  Hen6e  it 
is  Tom  Duncombe  and  Lord  Palmerston  are 


29S 


THE  HOUSE  OF  OOMMONS;  FROM  THE  SmAKOSRS^  GAILERT. 


[Oct. 


such  favorites.  Hence  it  is  that  Colonel  Sib- 
thorp  and  Henry  Drammond  get  so  readily 
the  ear  of  the  House.  The  House  cares  little 
for  declamation.  It  would  rather  be  without 
it.  It  considers  it  a  waste  of  time.  Figures 
of  arithmetic  are  far  more  popular  than  fig- 
ures of  speech.  The  latter  are  for  school- 
boys and  youth  in  its  teens — the  former  are 
for  men.  Business  is  one  thing — rhetoric  is 
another. 

D' Israeli  began  his  career  as  a  rhetorician; 
and  failed.  Wisely,  he  altered  his  plan. 
H^  learnt  to  keep  account^, — to  talk  prose — 
to  understand  business,  and  he  has  been  al- 
ready Chanisellor  of  the  Exchequer.  One 
other  thing  also  noteworthy  is  the  general 
good  character  of  the  House  and  fairness  of 
Its  constitution.  All  opinions  are  found  in  it. 
If  Mr.  Gladstone  represents  High  Churoh, 
Sir  Benjamin  Hall  represents  Low  Church — 
Mr.  Miall  extreme  Dissent,  and  Mr.  W.  J. 
Fox  Dissent  that  is  not  orthodox  nor  ex- 
treme, but  tolerant  and  latitudinarian.  The 
heroes  of  the  An ti- Corn-Law  League  are 
there,  and  there  also  are  the  country  squires 
who  consider  them  as  the  fruitful  cause  of 
mischief.  Protestant  Spooner  walks  into  the 
same  lobby  with  Lucas  of  the  *'  Tablet ;"  and 
Quaker  Bright  sits  side  by  side  with  mighty 
men  of  war.  Teetotal  Hey  worth  finds  him- 
self in  the  same  discussion  with  Bass,  famed 
for  bitter  ale.  The  result  is  not  exactly  what 
any  man  desires,  but  what  is  perhaps  best 
under  the  circumstances — what;  perhaps,  best 
represents  the  general  feeling  of  the  country. 
We  know  it  is  fashionable  to  think  otherwise 
— to  represent  the  House  as  rotton  to  its  core, 
and  as  misrepresenting  the  opinions  of  the 
times.  For  our  part,  we  believe  it  does 
nothing  of  the  kind.  It  is  a  much  better  re- 
presentative than  a  fortiori  we  might  expect. 
Aristocrats,  you  say,  are  there — ^yes,  but  they 
are  men,  most  of  them,  of  untainted  honor — 
of  lofty  aim— of  comprehensive  views— and 
the  general  fusion  and  ventilation  of  opinion 
and  clash  of  intellect  elicit  action  most  con- 
genial with  the  intelligence  of  the  age.  Take 
any  of  the  extreme  men,  for  instance.  What 
could  they  do?  Are  they  the  representa- 
tives of  the  mass  of  opinion  ?  Is  the  country 


grepared  to  lock  up  the  National  Church,  as 
[r.  Miall  would  recommend — to  dissolve  the 
Union,  as  Gavan  Duffy  would  desire — to  put 
down  all  our  armaments,  as  Mr.  Bright  would 
think  proper — to  grant  the  five  points  of  the 
Charter,  as  poor  Mr.  Fergus  O'Connor  con- 
tended? Most  certainly  not.  Yet  these  pien 
are  in  the  House,  and  rightly  in  the  House, 
and  help  to  preserve  the  balance  which  it  is 
so  essential  to  maintain.  With  them  away, 
the  opinions  of  the  people  would  not  be  fairly 
represented.  At  the  same  time,  it  must  be 
remembered,  that  they  represent  but  sections, 
and  we  must  not  fall  into  the  error  of  mis- 
taking a  part  for  the  whole.  In  the  House, 
then,  it  is  wisely  arranged  that  the  represen* 
tatives  of  extreme  opinions  shall  meet.  Thus 
justice  is  done  to  all.  Thus  mutual  tolera- 
tion is  learned.  Thus  the  mental  vision  of  all 
becomes  enlarged.  We  make  these  remarks 
because  we  think  we  see  a  tendency  to  run 
down  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  repre- 
sentative institutions  of  which  it  is  a  type. 
By  Britons  this  feeling  should  net  be  enter* 
tained.  That  assembly  contains  the  grandest 
intellects  of  which  our  oountry  can  boast.  In 
its  earliest  days  it  rocked  the  cradle  of  our 
liberties,  and  still  it  guards  them,  though  the 
stripling  has  long  become  a  giant  At  our 
elections  there  is  deep-seated  demoralization 
— but  still  that  demoralisation  has  its  bounds, 
which  it  cannot  pass,  and  the  high-minded 
and  the  honorable  form  the  majority  in  the 
House  of  Commons ;  and  if,  gentle  reader,  it 
laughs  at  your  favorite  idea,  it  only  does  so 
because  that  idea  is  a  poor  squalling  brat,  not 
a  goddess  with  celestial  mien  and  air.  A 
time  may  come  when  it  may  be  that,  and  then 
it  will  not  knock  at  the  door  of  the  House  in 
vain.  Till  then,  the  House  may  be  forgiven 
for  not  thinking  of  it.  The  House  is  not 
bound  to  take  notice  of  it  till  then.  Law 
Reform — Parliamentary  Reform — Financial 
Reform — Customs  Reform — Education— CoU 
onies — Convicts — India — these  are  the  topics 
with  which  the  House  has  now  painfully  to 
grapple.  Your  favorite  idea  must  wait  a  little 
longer.  In  the  meantime,  if  it  be  a  good  one 
we  wish  it  well — if  it  be  a  true  one  we  shall 
surely  hear  of  it  again. 


1858.] 


M.  AHFEBX  Df  WASHnrGPION; 


8S0 


Translated  from  the  Rerue  de  deux  Mondes,   for  the  Eclectic   Magaiiae. 

M.  AMPERE  IN  WASHINGTON. 


'Washington  is  a  striking  proof  of  this 
trutb,  that  we  cannot  will  to  create  a  great 
town.  To  prepare  a  site  worthy  of  the  po- 
litical Capital  of  the  United  States,  they 
hewed  down  the  trees  which  sanounded  it, 
and  traced  the  line  of  an  immense  street,  at 
one  end  of  which  they  erected  the  Capitol, 
where  the  Congress  sits,  whilst  at  the  other 
they  built  the  "  White  House,"  for  the  Presi- 
dent's residence  is  so  called.  They  then  laid 
out  other  streets  in  every  direction,  so  that 
they  then  contemplated  the  establishment  of 
a  place  which  would  hold  two  hundred  thou- 
sand souls,  whereas  Washington  holds  at  the 
most  but  fifty  thousand.  Moore  indulged  in 
a  spirit  of  raillery,  at  a  town  in  its  infancy, 
where  could  be  seen  squares  in  swamps,  and 
obelisks  amongst  trees.  The  population  is 
sparsely  scattered  over  a  place  badly  laid 
out,  which  has  given  rise  to  the  remark,  that 
at  Washington  there  may  be  seen  houses 
without  streets,  and  streets  without  houses. 

The  first  view  of  this  town  made  me  sad. 
In  the  midst  of  a  country  covered  with  snow, 
through  which  the  Potomac  slept  like  a 
frozen  serpent,  the  brown  turrets  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institute,  a  scientific  establish- 
ment of  a  singular  order  of  architecture, 
raised  themselves  up  in  the  midst  of  a  hazy 
atmosphere.  The  streets  were  whitened  by 
winter,  and  in  the  midst  of  these  icy  regions, 
tbe  grotesque  figures  of  the  blacks  were  to 
be  seen  in  strange  contrast  with  the  color  of 
the  snow,  far  away  from  their  country,  for 
slavery  exists  m  the  District  of  Columbia, 
subject  to  the  immediate  authority  of  Con- 
gress. Slavery  is  at  the  door  of  the  Palace 
of  Liberty  I 

I  was  happy  to  find  the  French  Minister 
at  Washington,  M.  de  Sartiges,  an  old  ac- 
quaintance of  Rome  and  Athens ;  since  Minis- 
ter Plenipotentiary  in  Persia,  he  now  repre- 
sents the  urbanity  of  the  French  and  the 
intelligence  of  the  Parisians  in  the  midst  of 
the  coldness  of  the  Americans,  and  they 
seem  to  be  on  very  good  terms  wiUi  each 
other.  As  for  myself,  being  received  under 
hb  hospitable  roof,  I  found  that  France,  and 


particularly  a  France,  as  amiable  as  that  of 
the  Embassy,  was  good  to  be  met  with  in 
every  country.* 

*<  Lei  U8  go  to  the  Capitol  to  pray  to  the  Ooda.^* 

The  Capitol  is  a  remarkable  monument. 
Well  situated  on  a  slight  eminence,  it  over- 
looks the  course  of  the  river,  and  a  vast  plain 
terminated  by  some  hills.     Souvenirs  aside, 
this  horizon  does  not  come  up  to  the  Roman 
horizon ;  it  has  more  extent  than  grandeur, 
two  things  that  are  not  synonymous,  althouif  h 
they  sometimes  confound  them  here.     On 
the  opposite  side  of  the  town  are  placed  some 
sculptures  of  different  merit ;  America,  dis- 
covered  by  Columbus  (and  which  is  said 
rather  jokingly),   is  apparently   discovered 
because  it  is  naked  ;  and  Greenough's  statue 
of  Washington.     Another  work   from    the 
same  sculptor  will  soon  be  placed  there ;  it 
is  a  group  remarkable  for  its  design  and  exe- 
cution, which  represents   the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  controlling  and  governing  the  indigenous 
inhabitants  of  tbe  country.     I  saw  this  group 
in  Mr.  Greenough's  study  in  Florence,  and  it 
appeared  to  me  that  it  would  be  a  fit  orna- 
ment for  the  American  Capitol.     Tbe  central 
dome  of  the  Capitol  appeared  to  me  to  be 
too  low,  and  too  he^vy  for  the  extent  of  the 
lateral  buildings.     The  hall  in  the  interior 
placed  under  the  cupola  is  very  fine.     On 
the  one  side  sits  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, and  on  the  other  the  Senate.     Tbe 
columns  of  the  vestibule,  through  which  you 
enter  to  the  hall  of  sitting  of  the  last  named 
body,  present  a  singular  and  rather  graceful 
attempt  at  native^  architecture ;  they  are  or- 

*  I  was  mndh  pleased  with  the  oonvereationB  of 
K.  Beileao,  now  first  Secretary  of  the  French  Lega- 
tion at  Waehington,  after  having  been  the  first  to 
distiDguieh  himaelf  at  the  Poly  teohnic  School,  which 
is  not  of  frequent  oocorrenoe  with  a  diplomatist 
M.  Boileaa  has  been  applying  hlnuelf  to  acientifio 
labors  in  Pennsylvania  and  the  exploration  of  its 
mines;  his  oonyersations  on  this  subject  recom- 
pensed me  for  tbe  loss  I  sustained  in  not  being  able 
to  see  the  mining  oountry.  I  could  not  do  so  from 
the  advanced  state  of  the  season. 


240 


M.  AMPERE  IN  WASHIKOTON. 


[Oct, 


namented  with  wheat- stalks  grouped  in  a 
bunch.  The  capitals  are  formed  of  thorns 
and  leavesvof  the  same  plant.  At  no  great 
distance  from  them  they  have  used  the  to- 
bacco leaf  to  decorate  other  columns,  which 
does  not  produce  such  a  pleasing  effect. 
However,  it  is  very  natural  to  borrow  deco- 
rations for  the  architecture  of  a  country  from 
its  vegetation.  The  Egyptians  did  the  same 
with  the  lotus  and  the  prtpyrus,  the  Greeks 
with  the  acantkuit,  the  French,  the  English 
and  the  Germans,  in  the  middle  ages,  with 
the  clover  and  the  cabbage-leaf.  Neverthe- 
less, they  ought  to  avail  themselves  sparingly 
of  these  imitations  from  local  nature,  and 
when  they  do  so,  employ  them  with  taste. 
It  seems  to  me  that  cigars  offer  too  good  a 
use  for  the  tobacco-leaf  to  rob  them  of  what 
properly  belongs  to  them. 

I  found  neither  in  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives nor  the  Senate  that  carelessness  in 
their  dress  nor  vulgarity  in  their  manners,  of 
which  I  had  heard  so  much  said  ;  but  many 
of  the  speakers  used  great  violence  in  their 

festiculation,  and  broke  out  into  immoderate 
ts  of  laughter,  followed  by  an  intonation 
much  too  low — on  the  whole  there  was  not 
enough  simplicity.  The  audience  generally 
preserved  great  calmness,  and  the  assembly 
did  not  seem  to  partake  much  of  the  warmth 
of  the  speakers.  These  were  ordinarily  very 
quiet,  only,  during  a  discussion  aboUt  Kos- 
suth, there  was  a  little  agitation  amongst  the 
Representatives.  The  members  applauded. 
I  heard  some  one  say,  who  was  standing  near 
me,  we  have  a  French  Home  to-day.  This 
was  intended  to  imply  a  certain  agitation  in 
the  assembly  and  amongst  the  members,  but 
the  French  Chambers,  which  have  seen  many 
disorders  and  tumults,  have  witnessed  nothing 
like  some  of  the  scenes  which  have  been 
enacted  in  the  Capitol  at  Washington.  It 
was  not,  thanks  be  to  heaven,  the  habitual 
tone  of  the  proceedings  in  Congress,  and,  for 
my  part,  I  saw  nothing  of  the  kind.  We 
must  remember  that  the  United  States  con- 
tains parts  of  the  country  which  are  very 
little  civilized.  A  man  who  arrives  from  the 
extremities  of  the  West,  is  a  little  in  this 
country  like  a  Frenchman  who  would  come 
to  Paris  from  the  mountains  of  Corsica. 
Should  we  conclude,  from  the  violent  habits 
of  this  man,  that  the  vendjetta  is  one  of  the 
customs  of  the  French?  An  abuse  of  more 
ordinary  occurrence  was  the  length  of  the 
speeches.  There  were  some  extraordinary 
anecdotes  on  this  subject.  Now,  in  imitation 
of  some  of  the  republics  of  antiquity,  and  the 
first  Puritan  preachers,  it  has  been  ordered. 


that  the  duration  of  the  speeches  shall  not 
exceed  one  hour.  It  is  not  the  same  in  tfa« 
Senate,  where  oratorical  displays  are  confined 
to  no  particular  limit,  and  where  are  found 
at  the  present  day  the  most  eminent  orators 
of  the  Union. 

The  time  when  the  most  important  contro- 
versies took  place  has  passed  away,  when 
Mr.  Calhoun  with  his  manly  front,  ardent 
gesture,  and  pressing  though  sometimes 
factious  dialectic,  contended  against  the  full 
and  sonorous  voice,  the  proud  attitude  and 
majestic  bearing  of  Mr.  Webber ;  when  Mr. 
Clay,  the  Aristides  of  this  Republic,  came  to 
oppose  the  energy  of  his  language  and  the 
integrity  of  his  politics  and  his  life  against 
the  violence  of  parties.  Mr.  Clay  is  now 
dying  at  Washington.  Mr.  Calhoun  is  oo 
more;  and  Mr.  Webster  is  Minister,  and  as 
such  is  not  allowed  to  be  a  member  of  Con< 
gress ;  but  in  default  of  these  great  heroes 
of  the  past,  I  heard  some  men  whose  names 
begin  to  be  mentioned  as  candidates  for  tha 
future  Presidency,  amongst  others,  Messrs. 
Houston  and  Douglas,  both  of  the  Demo- 
cratic party. 

Mr.  Houston  comes  ffom  Tennessee.  lu 
his  youth,  he  le€t  this  State  to  |[q^  and  spend 
some  years  amongst  the  Thdiatt^,  at)d,  after- 
wards, became  the  principal  agent  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  Texas.  Whilst  he  was  waging 
war  against  the  Mexicans,  General  Houston 
had  the  good  fortune  to  conquer  Santa  Anna 
and  make  him  prisoner.  He  is  a  man  who 
is  celebrated,  from  the  audacjty  of  his  charac- 
ter. Some  fear  to  find  in  him  a  second,  Jack- 
son, and  a  supporter  of  the  war-party ;  others 
assure  me  that  the  hardy  chieftain,  the  semi- 
barbarian  of  other  days,  will  now  make  a  very 
good  President.  All  that  I  can  say,  is,  that 
I  witnessed  in  the  Senate  the  great  control 
that  Mr.  Houston  could  exercise  over  himselC 
la  one  of  his  speeches,  he  had  excited  Mr. 
Footers  anger,  the  Governor  of  Mississippi, 
whom  I  heard  several  times,  always  with 
much  violence.  The  latter,  in  his  reply,  used 
an  extreme  bitterness  of  language,  accusing 
Mr.  Houston  of  the  wish  to  divkie,  and  by 
that  means  destroy,  the  democratic  party,  and 
thus  further  his  personal  views,  by  making 
an  alliance  with  the  free  soilers,  in  order  to 
reach  the  Presidency.  The  attack  could  not 
have  been  more  vehement  or  more  direct. 
Mr.  Houston  replied  with  much  calmness, 
with  that  placidity,  a  little  disdainful  in  an 
old  soldier,  who  did  not  wish  to  pick  a  quarrel 
on  that  day  at  least.  He  complained  of  ao* 
cusations  being  thrown  out  against  him,  and 
then  disavowed,  saying,  that  when  he  attacked 


1359.] 


IL  AMPERE  IN  WASHIKOTON. 


241 


any  one  he  did  it  openly,  and  in  a  good-bu- 
mored  way ;  he  finislied  by  narrating,  and  he 
did  it  very  well,  the  story  of  a  parson,  who 
was  a  troublesome  gnest.  "  They  went  to 
find  him  in  heaven,  he  was  not  there,  then  in 
purgatory,  the  guardian  of  the  place  received 
the  visitors  very  politely  and  replied :  '  Him, 
whom  you  are  looking  for,  you  will  not  find, 
he  threw  all  purgatory  into  disorder,  but  he 
broke  his  chains,  and  I  have  heard  nothing 
further  of  him.*"  The  little  merit  of  this 
tale  was  relieved  by  the  pleasing  raillery 
"with  which  it  wns  spoken  by  the  formidable 
Texian  Chief,  who  had  been  provoked  a  great 
deaK  and  replied  so  calmly  and  sarcastically 
to  a  wounded  adversary.  The  latter,  taking 
tfae  anecdote  in  earnest,  in  reference  to  the 
tihsm  with  which  the  madman  was  confined 
hi  purgatory,  exclaimed,  "  Mr.  Houston  will 
not  enchain  me."  In  the  debate,  the  latter, 
speaking  of  the  oligarchy  of  South  Carolina, 
a  State  m  which  the  Legislature,  and  not  the 
majority  of  the  people,  elect  the  President  of 
the  Union  and  the  Oovernor,  elicited  a  reply 
^m  a  member  from  that  section,  who  rose 
in  an  excited  manner  and  exclaimed,  "  that 
no  one  had  the  right  to  censure  the  particular 
Constitution  of  a  State,  that  it  was  like  re- 
ligion, and  who  would  take  upon  himself  to 
censure  Louisiana  or  Maryland  for  being 
Catholic?  after  religion,  then  comes  law. 
The  whole  of  this  discourse  was  a  vigorous 
protestation  of  the  warmest  sentiment,  the 
most  irritable  of  all  the  political  feelings  of 
the  people  in  this  country,  viz.,  the  independ- 
ence, the  individuality  of  separate  States. 
After  a  few  bitter  i'emarks  against  Texas  and 
its  representative,  the  excited  orator  sat  down 
and  refused  the  advances  which  Mr.  Houston 
made  to  him.  Evidently,  the  latter  wae  very 
glad  to  show,  for  the  sake  of  his  Presidential 
canvass,  that  he  was  not  a  passionate  man, 
88  the  first  part  of  his  career  might  have  in- 
dicated, ana  perhaps  his  adversaries  would 
have  been  delighted  to  elicit  from  him  some 
expression  of  anger,  that  might  have  reflected 
ob  his  character ;  but  he  did  not  give  them 
this  satisfadtion,  and  the  Achilles  of  Texas 
ranirifested  the  calmness  of  Ulysses,  modera- 
ting his  angrer  and  saying,  "Even  support 
that,  oh!  my  heart,"  whilst  the  insults  of 
pretenders  were  strewed  thick  and  fast 
around  htm. 

On  the  first  of  January,  I  went  to  pay  a 
visit  to  the  President.  Free  access  is  afforded 
to  all  who  go  there.  There  is  quite  a  large 
crowd,  and  persons  push  against  each  other, 
ai  they  do  at  an  extraordinary  meeting  of 
the  Institute,  .not  n^ore  sa.    Although  no 

VOL.  ZXX.    NO.  IL 


particular  dress  is  prescribed,  I  saw  no  one 
who  was  not  well  clad.  I  read  in  some 
travels  in  the  United  States,  that' this  recep- 
tion was  a  frightful  mixture,  and  amongst 
other  instances  of  the  disorder  that  was  said 
to  prevail,  the  author  mentioned  that  a  father 
had  placed  two  of  his  daughters  on  an  eleva- 
tion near  the  chimney  place,  so  that  they 
might  have  a  better  view  of  the  scene. 
Nothing  of  this  kind  struck  me.  Once 
escapea  from  the  crowd  outside,  and  under 
the  vestibule,  we  are  introduced  into  the  first 
saloon,  from  whence  we  enter  the  apartment, 
where  we  find  the  President  standing.  We 
shake  him  by  the  hand,  salute  the  President's 
lady,  and  pass  into  a  third  saloon,  which  is 
very  large,  and  where  we  walk  about  for 
some  time.  I  remained  there  an  hour,  and 
observed  nothing  which  was  not  marked  by 
the  strictest  decorum.  It  was  no  one's  fault 
but  altogether  my  own,  if  in  the  crowd  out- 
side some  one  took  my  purse  oat  of  my 
pocket.  I  mention  this  trifling  incident  only 
to  notify  strangers,  to  take  every  precaution 
who  go  to  court,  happening  to  be  in  Washing- 
ton on  the  first  of  January. 

Kossuth  has  arrived.  He  reached  his  hotel 
without  any  display.  There  is  nothing  further 
said  about  the  enthusiastic  reception  he  met 
with  in  New  York,  about  the  crowd  who 
remained  a  whole  day  and  a  part  of  the 
night  under  his  windows.  I  have  just  passed 
before  his  hotel  and  saw  n6  one  there.  Kos- 
suth's popularity  has  considerably  diminished. 
The  Americans  see  more  and  more  that  it 
would  be  ridiculous  to  depart  from  that 
neutral  policy  which  has  distinguished  their 
government  since  the  days  of  Washington, 
to  mix  themselves  up  with  the  affairs  of 
Europe  in  relation  to  Hungary.  I  perceive 
that  one  of  the  chief  elements  of  that  enthu- 
siasm that  prevailed  in  New  York,  was  the 
want  of  excitement,  of  striking  manifesta- 
tions, which  are  the  only  agreeable  amuse 
meats  of  the  people  in  a  country  where 
amusements  are  not  of  frequent  occurrence. 
This  noise  was  without  affect  and  without 
danger.  As  a  clever  person  said  to  me,  it 
was  limited  to  letting  out  the  steam,  which, 
as  we  know,  causes  no  explosion  of  the 
boilers,  but  prevents  it.  Even  at  New 
York,  the  authorities  told  Kossuth,  a  few 
days  800,  that  they  would  cease  to  pay  his 
bill  and  that  of  his  suite  at  the  hotel. 

In  Congress,  where  the  debate  is  about 
him,  there  is  some  agitation,  and  the  mem- 
bers applaud  some  of  the  speakers  who  hurl 
defiance  at  Europe;  but  there  are  cries  of 
wdtrl  ordtrl  and  everything  is  soon  quiet. 

16 


342 


M.  AHPBKB  m  WASHINGTON. 


[OcU 


An  orator  began  to  speak,  and  said,  ^'Be- 
cause we  shew  hospitality  to  an  illustrious 
stranger,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  participate 
in  his  sentiments,  or  espouse  his  opinions. 
Thus,  in  this  House,  we  are  very  courteous 
one  towards  the  other,  without  being  for  that 
of  the  same  opinion.  This  courtesy  does  not 
prove,  for  instance,  that  we  partake  of  the 
abominable  sentiments  of  the  abolitionists. 
This  gentleman,  who  sits  next  to  me,  lives 
on  very  good  terms  with  his  neighbours,  and 
nevertheless  they  do  not  think  as  he  does." 

After  having  pronounced  this  speech,  so 
moderate  if  we  search  the  bottom  of  the 
question,  but  incidentally  so  aggressive  on  a 
point,  which  excited  so  much  the  real  pas- 
sions of  the  assembly,  the  speaker  advanced 
towards  me.  For  the  purpose  of  hearing 
the  debate,  I  thrust  myself  into  the  space 
allotted  to  the  members  of  Congress,  and  I 
thought  be  appraiched  me  to  direct  me  to 
leave,  bat  instead  of  this,  be  obligingly 
offered  me  his  place.  He  came  back  several 
times  to  vote,  and,  when  he  had  done  so,  he 
retired.  I  was  really  confused  with  so  much 
condescension,  and  was  very  grateful.  I 
therefore  figured  during  the  remainder  of 
that  day's  session  amongst  the  legislators, 
fearing  only  that  when  they  raised  their 
hands  to  vote,  in  not  raising  mine  I  might  be 
reckoned  amongst  the  majority  or  minority. 
It  was  even  the  more  important  that  it  should 
not  be  so,  ior  by,  probably,  preconcerted 
tactics,  the  number  of  votes  on  a  proposition 
eonceming  Kossuth  was  equal  to  the  number 
against  the  motion. 

It  is  evident  there  is  some  understanding 
in  order  to  avoid  too  much  discussion  about 
Kossuth,  always  preserving  for  him  that 
respect  which  his  misfortunes  and  his  talents 
command,  with  a  due  regard  to  the  popularity 
he  still  maintains  in  the  Union,  and  his  posi- 
tion, which  Congress  is  bound  to  respect,  as 
the  guest  of  the  United  States.* 

*  Since  my  departare,  I  have  beard  of  the 
reception  the  Senate  gave  him.  This  caused 
them  some  embarrassment.  M.  de  La  Fayette, 
who  was  received  in  a  similar  manner,  had  been 
complimented  officially,  and  had  replied,  which 
was.  perfectly  satisfactory  to  all  parties.  It  was 
feared  thai  Kossuth  wished  to  speak  also,  and 
that  his  discourse  might  compromise  the  Senate. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  want  of  consideration  towards 
the  nation's  guest  would  have  caused  almost  uni- 
versal displeasure.  To  get  over  the  difficulty,  the 
following  plan  was  conceived.  He  had  hardly 
taken  his  seat  ia  the  Assembly  on  the  invitation 
of  the  Speaker,  when  a  Senator  rose  and  said, 
that  a  great  number  of  his  colleagues  desired  to 
become  personally  acquainted  with  the  illustrious 


I  was  told  that  this  day's  session  of  the 
Senate  would  be  interesting ;  it  was  so  in  fact, 
but  less  on  account  of  wnat  was  said,  than 
of  the  motive  which  made  the  speakers  take 
the  floor.  Most  of  the  speeches  I  heard 
were  professions  of  faith  in  favor  of  the 
compromise,  that  is  to  say,  the  Legislative 
enactment  which  tends  to  conciliate  the 
north  and  the  south.  Messrs.  Foote  and 
Houston,  the  antagonists  in  the  parliamentary 
combat  of  the  other  day,  spoke  in  this  sense : 
To-day,  General  Cass  followed  their  example 
— Mr.  Douglas,  a  Senator  from  Illinois  made  a 
similar  protestation  aod  explained  to  the 
Senate  that  he  had  not  voted  for  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law,  He  entered  into  details  alto- 
gether personal  on  this  matter — called  away 
'by  buainess  to  New  York,  he  thought  he 
would  have  returned  in  time  to  vote — con- 
trary to  his  expectation  and  notwithstanding 
he  made  every  endeavor,  he  arrived  too  late 
— he  then  went  to  Chicago,  where,  with  some 
danger  to  himself,  he  braved  the  excited 
state  of  public  opinion  there  against  the  Com- 
promise, and  made  the  Town  Council  of 
Chicago  alter  their  resolutions.  Why  did 
Mr.  Douglas  insbt  so  much  in  explaining  all 
these  details  as  to  the  course  he  had  adopted 
on  this  occasion  ?  It  is  because  he  aspires  to 
the  Presidency,  and  that  all  the  candidates 
for  this  high  office  think  it  incumbent  on  them 
to  establish  that  they  are  for  the  compromise* 
This  general  desire  to  adopt  this  conciliatory 
programme  shows  how  much  this  opinion  ia 
that  of  the  majority  of  the  electors ;  to  ren- 
der their  chances  possible,  each  approaches 
and  approves  of  it ;  and  it  is  only  by  placing 
themselves  on  this  platform,  io  use  American 
parliamentary  language,  that  he  can  hope  to 
be  President  the  following  year. 

Mr.  Douglas  is  one  of  those  men  in  Con- 
gress, whose  discourse  and  appearance  struck 
me  the  most.  Small,  black,  thick-set,  his 
words  are  full  of  vigor,  his  action  simple  and 
manly.  He  had  to  speak  about  himself,  and 
did  it  with  warmth  and  courtesy.  A  few 
words  at  the  conclusion  of  his  speech  ap- 
peared to  me  to  be  inspired  by  a  true  politi- 
oal  sentiment  Respecting  this  compromise^ 
which  every  person  extols,  he  said  with 
reason,  it  seems  to  me,  **  Yes,  let  us  remain 
faithful  to  it,  but  if  we  really  wish  to  serve 
the  cause  of  conciliation,  let  us  not  speak 
about  it  too  much  or  too  lightly — wait  until 
it  is  attacked,  it  will  then  be  time  to  rise  and 
defend  it.    Until  then,  let  us  be  afraid  of  in* 

champion  of  liberty,  the  Hungarian  bero»  dtc,  h% 
moved  that  the  hoase  rise. 


1858.] 


M.  AMPERE  IN  WABHINOTON. 


24S 


juriag  it>  ia  desiriDg  to  serve  it  too  much." 
This  was  at  ODce  clever  and  sincere,  able  and 
true.  Mr.  Douglas,  who  is  called  the  Little 
Oiant  of  Illinois,  on  account  of  his  figure  and 
his  talent,  appeared  to  me  to  be  one  of  those, 
who  had  most  to  expect  from  the  future.  He 
may  attain  power,  when  the  West,  which  has 
not  yet  been  represented,  wishes  to  have  a 
President  in  its  turn.  Mr.  Douglas'  mind 
appears  to  me,  like  his  words,  vigorous  and 
ardent,  which  lenders  him  a  very  faithful 
representative  of  the  energettc  population, 
which  is  growing  up  between  the  forests  and 
the  prairies,  and  which  already,  rich  and 
powerful,  combine  amongst  themselves  the 
adaptibiltty  for  labor  of  the  settler,  and  the 
bravery  of  the  pioneer.* 

Here,  perhaps,  may  be  the  place  to  say 
something  of  what  divides  the- two  great 
political  parties  of  the  United  States — the 
Whigs  and  the  Deoaocrats.  In  the  first  place,  it 
must  be  acknowledged  that  these  two  parties 
represent,  in  some  respects,  the  universal  an- 
tagonism be  ween  thjs  conservatives  and  inno- 
vators of  every  couatry.  Yet  I  do  not  believe 
it  is  this  which  constitutes  the  parties.  Thus, 
the  Democrats,  who  are  progressive  as  re- 
gards their  economical  doctrines,  since  they 
are  advocates  for  free  trade,  are  conserva- 
tives, and  even  procrastinators,  respecting 
slavery,  to  which  the  greatest  number 
amongst  them  is  less  opposed  than  the  ma- 
jority of  Whigs.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
cannot  say  that  one  party  is  more  favorable 
to  liberty  than  the  other;  which  is  a  very 
dtfferent  question  from  the  first.  In  fact, 
there  is  everywhere  in  European  society  a 
controversy  between  intelligence  and  the  in- 
terests of  the  past,  and  intelligence  and  the 
interests  of  the  present.  This  quarrel,  which 
is  sometimes  jsonfounded  with  that  between 
liberty  and  despotism,  is,  nevertheless,  essen- 
tially distinct ;  for  it  often  happens  in  Europe 
that  the  intelligence  or  spirit  of  the  past  fa- 
vors local  and  individual  liberty,  and  that  of 
the  present  tends  to  depress  it.  Tradition, 
represented  by  the  Church,  Royalty,  and  the 

*  In  nmning  over  tome  Aets  of  Googreis, 
I  fell  upon  one  whioh  related  to  11  Ystteoiare,  a 
nAme  whioh  ought  to  be  pronoonoed  with  grati- 
tude by  everjr  Frenohman  and  American.  It  was 
he  who,  by  his  peneyereooe,  snooeeded  in  establish- 
ing between  France  and  the  United  States  an  inter- 
ehange  of  booki^  by  whioh  means  we  possess  at 
Paris  a  more  complete  collection  of  works  on  this 
country  than  they  have  themselves.  At  nearly 
every  step  I  took  in  America,  I  met  with  tesUmo- 
niflls  of  the  gratitnde  of  Americans  for  M.  Vatte- 
mare.  I  wish  to  place  here  the  expression  of  my 
own. 


Aristocracy^  has,  on  several  occasions,  de- 
fended the  independence  of  associations  or 
individuals  ;  and  innovation,  under  the  form 
of  an  assembly  or  a  despot,  has  oppressed 
this  independence.     With  much  more  reason 
in  the  United  States,  the  controversy  need 
never  be  between  the  past  and  the  present : 
for  tradition  is  there  the  mother  of  liberty, 
and  ihe  spirit  of  innovation  is  not  opposed  to 
it.     Moreover,   England,   having   communi- 
cated to  its  colonies,  something  of  the  genius 
of  its  hierarchy — the  Whigs,  to  whom  these 
habits  have  descended,  draw  towards  them 
those  who  have  some  affinity   with    them, 
whilst  the  Democrats  seem  to  exercise  more 
empire  over  those  who  are  drawn  towards 
them  by  a  spirit  of  equality  ;  but,  according 
to  my  view,  this  is  nothing  but  an  accessory, 
be  principal  line  of  demarcation  between 
he  Whigs  and  the  Democrats  of  the  United 
tates  is  that — which  separates  two  tenden- 
cies inherent  to  all  society — the  tendency 
to  make  the  authority  of  government  prevail 
over  the  different  fractions  of  the.social  body, 
or  of  individuals,  and  the  contrary  tendency. 
These  two  directions,  which  American  poli- 
tics took,  were  very  closely  defined  between  the 
two  parties  which  opposed  each  other  during 
the  period  which  followed  the  establishment 
of  independence — the  Federalists*  and  the 
Eepiiblicane,     These  two  parties  have  been 
succeeded  by  two  others,  which,  at  the  bot- 
tom,  have  inherited^one,  the    Whigs,  the 
spirit  of  the  Federalists,  and  the  other,  the 
Democrats,   the  spirit  of  the  Eepublicans ; 
the  first  in  general  being  in  favor  of  giving 
the  government  of  the  Union  more  authority 
over  the  citizens  of  different  States,  and  the 
others  to  restrain  that  authority.  Even  in  the 
bosom  of  the  particular  States,  everything  < 
that  tends  to  fortify  authority  and  the  law 
is  supported  by  the  Whigs,  add  everything 
that  renders  authority  less  stable,  and  the 
law  kss  strong,  meete  with  favor  amongst 
the  Democrats. 

The  politics  of  the  two  parties  proceeds 
from  these  two  principles.  Thus  the  Demo- 
crats are  in  general  warmer  than  the  Whigs 
in  defending  the  right,  which  the  slave  States 
maintain  not  to  permit  any  interference  in 
their  internal  organization,  for  it  relates  to  a 

*  We  must  not  be  deceived  by  the  terms.  The 
American  Federalists  were  those  who  tried  to  make 
the  unity  of  government  prevail  in  a  certain  mea- 
sore,  and  the  FederaUet  wss  written  to  combat  the 
excess  of  that  whioh  we  are  accustomed  to  call  in 
France  federalitm.  The  Federalists  of  America 
were  thus  named  because  their  adyersaries  were  in 
lisvor  of  a  confederation,  even  less  strongly  bound 
together  and  governed. 


244 


M.  AMPERE  IK  WASHINGTOK. 


[Oct, 


question  of  individaal  independeDce.  .  The 
Democrats  are  opposed  to  protection,  of  which 
the  Whigs  are  partizans,  because  it  is  repug- 
nant to  them  to  acknowledge  the  right  of 
Congress  to  legislate  on  commercial  matters, 
which. might  have  the  effect  of  being  favora- 
ble or  opposed  to  the  particular  interests  of 
the  States.  For  the  same  reason,  the  Demo- 
crats have  constantly  endeavored  to  restrain 
the  power  of  Congress  relating  to  the  modes 
of  communication  to  be  established  in  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  Union.  It  is  always  the 
principle  opposed  to  that  of  centralization, 
often  pushed  to  excess  in  a  country  as  little 
centralized  as  that  of  the  United  States. 
The  same  distrust  of  authority,  whatever  it 
may  be,  will  always  make  the  Democrats 
lean  in  each  State  towards  all  those  measures 
which  will  limit  power.  Thus  the  ascendancy 
of  the  democratic  party  has  nearly  every 
where  transferred  the  election  of  Judges 
from  the  hands  of  the  Governor  into  those  of 
the  Legislature;  then  from  the  hands  of  the 
legislature  into  -  those  of  the  electors. .  It 
tends  to  render  all  public  offices  elective,  and 
to  restrict  their  duration.  It  tends  to  estab- 
lish everywhere  a  system  of  rotation,  which 
by  unceasingly  renewing  the  administration, 
prevents,  at  the  price  of  stability,  the  danger 
that  might  occur  from  the  abuse  of  power  or 
its  duration.  ^  This  is  the  way  the  Whigs  and 
the  Democrats  of  the  present  day  attach 
themselves  by  principle  to  the  two  opposite 
tendencies,  whereof  the  federalists  and  the 
republkans  were  the  energetic  representa- 
tives. But  we  must  add,  that,  in  fact,  these 
differences  are  much  less  felt  than  they  were 
then,  that  the  two  present  parties  have  more 
of  instinct  than  of  opposite  doctrines,  and 
that  personal  ambition  enters  very  much  in 
their  controversies.  The  greatest  number  of 
offices  becoming  vacant  every  time  either  of 
the  two  parties  carries  the  day,  it  is  endeav- 
ored to  make  the  chiefs  of  the  party  succeed 
so  that  they  may  obtain  office  with  them. 
There  is  nothing  between  the  Whigs  and  the 
Democrats  that  resembles  the  hatred  which 
exists  in  Europe  between  the  conservatives 
and  the  revolutionists ;  for  in  the  United 
States  there  is,  more  or  less,  but  one  ques- 
tion. No  one  wishes  to  destroy  the  Constitu- 
tion, every  one  wishes  to  act  up  to  it;  no  one 
desires  to  go  beyond  it ;  no  one  is  in  favor  of 
either  monarchy  or  anarchy.  It  is  this  which, 
I  believe,  cons^tutes  the  difference  between 
the  parties  in  America  and  in  Europe — the 
latter  are  nearly  always  the  secret  partizans 
of  the  past,  which  their  adversaries  detest,  or 


of  the  future  which  they  are  afraid  of.  at  least 
we  can  suspect  them  to  be  so. 

In  the  United  States,  the  watits  and  con- 
dition of  the  present  arouse  political  passions; 
no  one  harbors  the  most  distant  thought  of 
a  revolution  or  a  counter-revolution ;  no  one 
attributes  such  a  design  to  his  adversaries. 
It  thus  happens  that  notwithstanding  the 
turbulent  spirit  of  the  speeches,  and  the  vio- 
lence of  journals,  there  is  no  real  hatred  be- 
tween the  parties  excepting  on  one  point, 
slavery,  and  with  respect  to  that  there  is  re- 
ally something  to  preserve  or  destroy.  This 
slavery  question  is  of  such  importance  that  it 
makes  a  schism  between  the  two  great 
American  parties,  and  causes  alliances  to  be 
entered  into  between  the  different  factions 
of  which  it  is  composed.  Thus,  at  the  present 
day,  a  portion  of  the  Democrats  have  sepa- 
rated themselves  from  the  rest,  and  have 
allied  themselves  with  the  enemies  of  slavery ; 
and  amongst  the  Whigs  some  wish  to  elect 
to  the  Presidency  the  same  candidate  as  the 
Abolitionists  of  the  North,  whilst  others 
prefer  Mr.  Webster,  the  candidate  of  the 
Southern  States. 

It  is  not  in  one  day,  that  a  certain  equi- 
librium can  establish  itself  between  th^se  two 
forces,  of  which  one  tends  to  make  the  power 
of  Congress  prevail,  and  the  other  to  main- 
tain the  independence  of  the  particular  States. 
A  few  months  after  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, Congress  established,  or  rather 
proclaimed  an  American  Federation.  The 
insufficiency  of  this  first  Constitution  was 
manifest  throughout  the  war,  and  It  was 
necessary  to  confei^  a  sort  of  temporal  y  did- 
tatorship,  and  without  danger,  on  General 
Washington.  At  the  peaee,  the  inconven- 
iences of  the  Confederation  became  yet  more 
evident,  for  the  necessity  of  the  common  de- 
fense was  not  enjoined  on  them-— no  solid 
lien  existed  between  the  States,  and  the  cen- 
tral government  had  no  means  of  making 
itself  obeyed.  In  fact.  Congress  could  do 
nothing  more  than  recommend  to  the  different 
States  to  permit  it  to  raise  taxes  to  pay  the 
public  debt,  or  to  make  treaties,  and  when 
the  States  would  not  lend  tbemselves  to  it, 
it  was  impossible  to  continue  a  negotiation, 
as  it  happened  with  that  which  had  been 
begun  with  Spain  relating  to  the  navigaUon 
of  the  Mississippi. 

It  was  necessary  to  obviate  this.  A  oon« 
▼ention  oomposed  of  delates  from  the  dif- 
ferent States  met  in  Philadelphia  and  formed 
the  present  Constitution.  This  Constitution 
was  afterwards  submitted  to  representative 


1853.J 


IL  AHPBRE  IK  WAflmNaTOK. 


246 


conveations  named  in  eacb  State,  which,  one 
after  the  other,  accepted  it,  after  long  debates ; 
those  of  the  Virginia  convention  have  be- 
come celebrated.  In  reading  the  speeches 
which  were  pronounced  on  this  occasion,  we 
are  astonished  to  see  eminent  men  haunted 
and  troubled  by  the  chimerical  idea,  that 
from  this  Constitution,  the  most  liberal  the 
world  has  ever  seen,  there  might  arise  a 
tyranny  in  the  shape  of  a  Congress,  and  even 
a  tyrant  under  the  name  of  a  President ;  but 
these  exaggerated  fears  explain  themselves, 
when  we  think  that  the  States  called  to  de- 
liberate had  lived  until  then  in  a  state  of 
entire  independence,  the  one  from  the  other, 
and  governed  themselves.  Yet,  all  finished 
by  adopting  the  project  of  the  Constitution 
proposed  in  Philadelphia,  and  instead  of  a 
federation  without  a  head,  and  a  Congress 
without  arms,  voted  with  closed  doors  by 
some  men  in  a  time  of  war,  the  United  States 
had  a  Constitution  accepted  by  the  delegates 
of  the  whole  people,  that  is  to  say,  by  uni- 
versal Buffraffe  in  two  degrees,  which  is  the 
best  form  ofiiniversal  suffrage. 

With  Washington,  the  pohtics  of  the  Fed- 
eralists prevailed  in  the.midst  of  the  greatest 
external  difficulties,  sustained  by  the  firmness 
and  good  sense  of  the  President,  and  the 
talen  t  and  energy  of  Hamil  ton.  John  Adams 
succeeded  Washington.  Then  came  Jeffer- 
son, who  had  been  in  opposition  under 
Washington.  A  different  man  from  the  old 
Anglo-American  race,  and  very  much  like  a 
Frenchman  of  the  eighteenth  century,  with  a 
mind  well  cultivated,  but  less  stable,  he 
maintained,  under  the  name  of  nullification, 
the  right  of  the  States  to  reverse  the  author-  ^ 
ity  of  Congress,  and  thus  planted  the  germs 
of  a  controversy  which  has  been  since  repro- 
duced, to  the  great  danger  of  the  Union. 
To  Jefferson  succeeded  Madison,  one  of  the 
founders,  in  the  Federalist,  of  the  govern- 
mental politics,  which  assumed  that  name; 
but  he  afterwards  had  a  tendency  towards 
the  opposite  party,  following  Jefferson  with 
some  reserve,  of  whom  he  was  the  admirer 
and  friend.  He  wrote  the  letters  of  Helvid- 
ius  against  Hamilton,  his  old  co-laborer  in 
the  Federalist,  to  dispute  the  right  of  the 
President  to  declare  war ;  he  combated  the 
Sedition  and  the  Alien  acts,  conservative 
measures  which  Washington  had  obtained 
from  Congress ;  he  admitted  the  dangerous 
right  of  nulUficaiion,  and  afterwards  became 
the  idol  of  the  democratic  party,  by  declaring 
war  against  England  and  carrying  it  through 
successfully.  Monroe,  who  came  after  Madi- 
son, had  also  opposed,  to  a  certain  point,  the 


politics  of  the  Federalists,  He  belonged  to 
the  democratic  party ;  a  man  belonging  to 
this  party  could  alone  reach  the  Presidency, 
when  the  war  with  England  and  the  success 
of  the  struggle  had  ensured  their  triumph. 
Monroe's  second  term  saw  the  Federalist 
party  e^^pire,  at  least  under  its  own  name. 
It  was  then  that  those  who  belonged  to  it 
began  to  adopt  the  designation  of  Whigs. 
These  denominations  of  American  parties  are 
singular.  The  word  Federalist  expressed 
there  precisely  the  contrary  of  what  it  meant 
in  France  during  the  Revolution,  and  the 
Whigs  are  the  Tories  of  America. 

The  Democrats  and  the  Whigs,  who  had 
since  contended  unceasingly  against  each 
other,  did  not  carry  on  a  very  violent  war 
under  the  peaceful  presidency  of  Monroe ;  he 
himself  had  been  a  Democrat  in  opposition, 
and  was  even  still  so,  a  short  time  after  his 
election  to  the  Presidency,  when  for  instance 
he  combatted  against  the  right  of  Congress 
to  establish  internal  modes  of  communication 
and  schools ;  he  was  so  to  the  end  without 
violence  and  without  bitterness,  for  he  de- 
clared«  that  the  Constitution  should  be 
amended  in  this  respect,  and  he  finished  by 
acknowledging  the  right  of  Congress  to  ap- 
propriate the  necessary  sums  for  objects  of 
public  utilty.  The  epoch  of  his  administra- 
tion was  a  truce  betwern  the  violent  quarrels 
of  the  parties,  whese  passions  were  no  long- 
er aroused  by  the  necessity  of  establishing 
a  constitution,  and  the  counter-shock  of  Eu- 
ropean.struggles. — This  period  is  called  the 
era  of  gdod  feelings,  halcifon  days.  The  Dem- 
ocrats in  their  security,  and  in  the  presence 
of  adversaries,  who  appeared  disarmed,  con- 
curred in  measures,  which  they  have  since 
warmly  combatted-^the  re-establishment  of 
a  central  Bank  and  a  protective  Tariff.  Un- 
der Quincy  Adams,  the  son  of  the  second 
President,  an  old  Democrat  become  a  moder- 
ate Whig,  the  United  States  continued  to 
develop  themselves  and  prosper  without 
great  political  agitation  within,  and  great  af- 
^irs  without ;  but  the  agitation  re-appeared 
on  the  advent  of  General  Jackson. 

Jackson  was,  as  I  have  said,  the  President 
of  the  Democratic  party.  With  the  ardor 
of  a  man  of  the  forests,  the  inflexibility  of  a 
man  of  the  camp,  the  prestige  of  a  victori- 
ous general,  Jack&on  made  himself  against 
Congress,  the  soldier  and  the  champion  of 
the  popular  passions.  Sustained  by  these 
passions,  he  prevented  Congress  from  renew- 
ing the  charter  of  the  United  States  Bank, 
which  the  Democrats  regarded  as  a  means 
of  tyranny  in  the  hands  of  the  State,  a  dan- 


246 


M.  AMPERE  IN  WASHmGTOK. 


[Octi 


gerous  privilege  m  the  hands  of  the  .rich,  hut 
which  Washington  had  founded  and  Madison 
liad  respected. 

After  the  majestic  figure  of  Washington, 
and  ?ery  far  beneath  it,  appears  the  rather 
barbarous  figure,  yet  grand,  and  originally 
energetic    of   Jackson.     No  President  has 
since  become  a  personage.     They  have  fallen 
into  the  common  and  the  insignificant.     Old 
General  Harrison  did  no  more  than  appear 
on  the  scene  and  died  at  the  end  of  a  few 
months  from  the  fatigue  of  shaking  hands, 
the  laborious  inauguration  of   his  popular 
power.     Tyler,  a  Democrat,   named   by  a 
combination  of  Whigs   against   the  South, 
made  his  escape  from  them  and  fell,  after  his 
first  Presidency,  having  no  person  for  an 
ally.    With  Van  Buren  the  great  question  of 
slavery  agitated  the  Union,  and  the  Texas 
affair  opened  that  route  for  ambitious  enter- 
prise, which  »  another  danger  for  it.     The 
Democratic  party  changed  its  nature;  its 
principle  of  the  independence  of  the  States 
was  not  a  principle  of  invasion,  far  from  it, 
for  the  politics  of  war  and  of  conquest  must 
always  fortify  the  central  power.     In  ren- 
dering itself  bellicose,  it  became  unfaithful 
to  this  principle ;  it  adopted  the   ordinary 
passions  of  Democratic  parties  in  other  coun- 
tries, and  began  to  be  revolutionary,  not  from 
within,  but  without.     A  new  order  of  things 
established  itself,  or  rather  an  element  of  dis- 
order introduced  itself  into  American  poli- 
tics.    At  that  moment,  the  most  eloquent, 
the  greatest,  the  wisest  amongst  the  citizens 
of  the  United  States,  the  most  indefatigable 
representative  of  the  primitive  spirit  of  the 
Republic,  him,  in  whom  there  seemed  to  pass 
something  of  the  soul  of  Washington,  Mr. 
Clay,  was  on   the   point  of  being  elected 
President,  but,  sad  sign  of  the  times,  instead 
of  Mr.  Clay,  they  named  Mr.  Polk,  an  ob- 
scure and  mediocre  pretender.     Thanks  to 
the  vagaries  of  destiny,  it  was  under  this 
chance   President,  that  the  United   States' 
territory  was  considerably  increased,  by  its 
extension  to  the  North- West  with  Oregon, 
and  to  the  South  by  the  conquest  of  Mexico, 
of  which  the  results  were  immense,  not  only 
because  it  put  two  more  states  into  the  Un- 
ion, of  which,  one  was  California,  but  because 
it  powerfully  seconded  two  sentiments,  which 
began  to  develop  themselves — the  taste  for 
war,  and   the  ambition   for  conquest,  new 
elements  from  which,  if  they  do  not  take 
care,  the  ruin  of  the  United  Stares  might 
follow. 

The  first  effect  of  the  new  impulse  given 
to  American  politics,  was  the  election  of  a 


President,  who  owell  his  nomination  to  the 
part  he  had  taken  in  the  expedition  to  Mex- 
ico, General  Taylor.    His  death,  which  oc- 
curred during  his  Presidency,  placed  power 
in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Filmore,  who  has  shown 
himself  very    worthy   of  the    unexpected 
station.     Modest,  prudent  and  honest,  Mr. 
Fillmore  will  perhaps  be  the  best  candidate 
for  the  approaching  election ;  but  it  is  gener- 
ally believed,  that  neither  he  nor  Mr.  Web- 
ster, the  elegant  orator  and  Whig,  like  Mr. 
Fi{lmore,  will  be  named,  and  that  the  Dem- 
ocrats, who  have  nearly  all  carried  the  day 
in  the  particular  elections  of  the  States,  will 
succeed  also  in    the   Presidential  election. 
The  current  of  public  opinion  is  bearing  them 
onwards.  We  have  just  seen,  that,  since  the 
days  of  Jefferson,  they  have  nearly  always 
held  the  reins  of  government.     It  ought  to 
be  so,  for  they  represent  more  than  their  ad- 
versaries the  sentiments  and  the  defects  of 
the  majority.    The  Whigs  moderate  them, 
the  Democrats   push    them  forward.     The 
Government  of  the  United  States  is  like  a  lo- 
comotive, starting  on  a  rail-road — it  began 
its  course  with  commendatory  slowness,  they 
soon  heated  the  furnace,  and  the  movement 
was  accelerated — they  now  apply  all  their 
steam  and  make  rapid  headway ;  but  it  often 
happens  in  this  country,  that  the  boiler  ex- 
plodes, and  the  locomotive  is  blown  into  the 
air.     Let  the  Americans  beware. 

For  a  certain  number  of  years,  two  diffi- 
culties will  predominate  over  all  others ;  one 
is  the  preservation  of  the  Union  between  the 
Northern  and  Southern  States,  different  in 
character,  opposed  by  their  interests  particu- 
larly in  what  concerns  the  Tariff  question, 
because  the  South  is  agricultural  and  the 
North  industrial,  and  separated  in  fine  by 
the  terrible  question  of  slavery.  The  other 
difficulty  is  to  avoid  the  dangers,  which 
might  arise  from  the  extension  of  territory, 
towafds  which  the  new  spirit  and  the  temp- 
tation of  their  superiority  are  hurrying  the 
United  States. 

The  first  of  these  difficulties,  that  which 
concerns  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  seems 
adjourned ;  good  sense  prevails  over  passion 
and  the  majority  rallies  itself  around  concil- 
iatory measures,  which  are  called  the  Com- 
promise, 

The  second  is  the  most  menacing,  particu- 
larly in  what  concerns  Havana  and  Mexico, 
for  the  internal  situation  of  these  two  coun- 
tries favors  more  the  ambitious  desires,  which 
they  excite.  The  inconveniences  of  too  ex- 
tended an  empire  are  evident.  The  form  of 
government  of  the  United  States  certainly 


1858.] 


M.  AMPERE  m  WASHINGTON. 


24? 


offers  some  security  affainst  these  dangers, 
each  state  governing  itself,  and  hence  the 
agglomeration  of  a  large  nnmber  of  popula- 
tions within,  the  limits  of  the  Union  being 
less  difficult  to  maintain,  than  if  these  popu- 
lations were  governed  by  the  central  power. 
It  is  said  also  with  reason,  that  the  rapidity 
of  communication  abridges  distances,  draws 
near  and  confounds,  thus  to  say,  the  most 
distant  points,  and  that  it  matters  little, 
whether  countries  are  geographically  sepa- 
rated, when  their  inhabitants  can  visit  each 
other  in  a  few  days,  and  write  to  each  other 
in  a  few  minutes.  In  fine,  it  is  added,  that 
the  most  different  populations  are  rapidly  ab- 
sorbed by  that  incredible  power  and  fusion 
and  assimilation,  which  American  institutions 
possess,  and  which  they  owe  to  the  principle 
of  liberty.  Nevertheless,  these  securities  are 
not  sufficient  to  convince  many  enlightened 
minds  of  the  dangers  which  might  arise 
from  a  rapid  and  disproportionate  increase. 
The  central  .government,  whatever  may  be 
its  limits,  must  exercise  a  very  great  authority 
in  certain  circumstances.  Bat  can  it  make 
itself  felt  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains  and 
across  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  ?  Notwithstand* 
iog  railroads,  steam-boats  and  the  electric 
telegraph,  it  will  always  be  rather  far  from 
Washington  to  Tehuantepec.  The  European 
races,  which  furnish  the  most  to  emigration, 
become  incorporated,  it  is  true,  in  the  nation- 
ality of  the  United  States  ;  but  would  it  be 
the  same  with  the  Southern  populations  of 
mixed  blood,  indolent  habits,  and  enervated 
and  depraved  by  detestable  governments? 
The  difficulties,  which  Congress  experiences 
from  the  Mormons  at  the  present  day,  may 
make  them  anticipate  others,  and  their  dis- 
dainful repulsion  of  all  those  that  do  not  be- 
long to  them,  shows,  that  the  power  of  ab- 
sorption should  have  its  limits.  When  cer- 
tain persons  foresee  in  the  future  a  possible 
division  of  the  United  States  into  three  con- 
federations, one  at  the  North,  another  at  the 
South,  and  a  third  at  the  West,  is  it  not  to 
increase  much  the  chances  of  dissolution, 
by  immeasurably  extending  the  territory  of 
the  Union  ?  In  fine,  what  is  much  more  se- 
rious, this  invading  policy,  does  it  not  favor 
instincts  disastrous  to  the '  preservation  of 
liberty  ?  Does  it  not  tend  to  transport  the 
insatiable  love  of  gain  from  the  private  ranks 
of  society,  where  unfortunately  it  has  already 
too  much  empire,  into  the  public  morals,  the 
genera]  life  of  the  country?  The  United 
States  constituted  themselves  under  the  dis- 
cipline of  severe  virtues ;  may  they  fear  to 
perish  by  the  relaxation  of  principles,  which 


prepared  their  independent  existence,  gave 
them  strength  in  the  controversy,  and  foun- 
ded their  Contitution  after  victory.  Their 
power  has  been  in  the  sentiment  of  right ; 
they  will  be  lost  on  the  day  in  which  they 
shall  fail  to  remember  their  origin. 

These  forewarnings  from  a  friendly  voice 
will  have  more  authority  from  more  cele- 
brated lips ;  and  I  am  going  to  allow  an 
Apostolic  man  to  speak,  one  whose  venerat- 
ed name  is  held  in  respect  by  all, — the  elo- 
quent Unitarian  writer,  Channing,*  who  de- 
served to  be  called  the  Fenelon  of  America. 
Channing  said  in  1837,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  expedition  against  Texas,  and  the  pro- 
jects against  Mexico — 

"  Did  this  country  know  itself,  or  were  it  dis- 
posed to  profit  by  self-knowledge,  it  would  feel 
the  necessity  of  laying  an  immediate  curb  on  its 
passion  for  extended  territory.  It  would  not  irust 
Itself  to  new  acquisitions.  It  would  shrink  from 
the  temptation  to  conquest.  We  are  a  restless 
people,  prone  to  encroachment,  impatient  of  the 
ordinary  laws  of  progress.  .  .  .  We  boast  of  our 
rapid  growth,  forgetting  that,  throughout  nature, 
noble  growths  are  slow.  .  .  .  Perhaps  there  is 
no  people  on  earth,  on  whom  the  ties  of  local  at- 
tachment sit  80  loosely.  Even  the  wanderiiig 
tribes  are  bound  to  one  spot,  the  graves  of  their 
fathers ;  but  the  homes  and  graves  of  our  fathers 
detain  us  feebly.  The  known  and  familiar  is  often 
abandoned  for  the  distant  and  untrodden;  and 
sometimes  the  untrodden  is  not  the  less  eagerly 

desired  because  belonging  to  others It  is 

sometimes  said  that,  nations  are  swayed  by  laws 
as  unfailing  as  those  which  govern  matter,  that 
they  have  their  destinies ;  that,  by  a  like  neces- 
sity, the  Indians  have  melted  before  the  white 
man,  and  the  mixed,  degraded  race  of  Mexico 
must  melt  before  the  Anglo-Saxon.  Away  with 
this  sophistry !  There  is  no  necessity  for  crime. 
There  is  no  fate  to  justify  rapacious  nations  any 
more  than  to  justify  gamblers  and  robbeni  in  plun« 
der.  We  boast  of  the  progress  of  society,  and  this 
progress  consists  in  the  substitution  of  reason  and 
moral  principle  for  the  sway  of  brute  force.  It  is 
irue,that  more  civilized,  must  always  exert  a  great 
power  over  less  civilized,  communities^ in  their 
neighborhood.  But  it  may,  and  should  be,  a  power 
to  enlighten  and  improve,  not  tq  crush  and  de* 
stroy.  We  talk  of  accomplishing  our  destiny. 
So  did  the  late  conqueror  of  Europe,  and  destiny 
consigned  him  to  a  lonely  rock  in  the  ocean,  the 

Erey  of  an  ambition  which  destroyed  no  peace  but 
is  own." 

''  Channing  then  shows  the  inconveniences 
of  a  large  empire  for  the  safety  and  pros- 
perity of  the  United  States. 

'*  It  will  almost  of  necessity  involve  us  in  hos- 

«  A  Letter  on  the  ADn«zation  of  Texas  to  the 
United  States^  by  William  Channing. 


248 


M.  AHFBBE  IK  WASHmOTON. 


[Oct, 


tility  with  European  powers.  .  .  .  VulDerable  at 
so  many  points,  we  shall  need  a  vast  military 
force.  Great  armies  will  require  great  revenues, 
and  raise  up  great  chieftains.  Are  we  tired  of 
freedom,  that  we  are  prepared  to  place  it  under 
such  gjiardians  7  Is  the  republic  bent  on  dying 
by  its  own  hands  7  Does  not  every  man  feel, that, 
with  war  for  our  habit,  oar  institutions  cannot  be 

S reserved  7  .  ...  I  am  not  inclined  to  draw  a 
ark  picture  of  our  moral  condition I  am 

far,  very  far,  from  despair.  Among  dark  omens,  I 
see  favorable  influences,  remedial  processes,  coun- 
teracting agencies.  I  well  know  that  the  vicious 
part  of  our  system  makes  more  noise  and  show 
than  the  sound.  I  know  that  the  prophets  of  our 
ruin  to  our  institutions  are  to  be  found  most  fre- 
quently in  the  party  out  of  power,  and  that  many 
dark  auguries  must  be  set  down  to  the  account  of 
disappointment  and  irritation.  I  am  sure,  too, 
that  imminent  peril  would  wake  up  the  spirit  of 
our  fathers,  in  many  who  slumber  in  these  days  of 
ease  and  security.  I  think,  that,  with  all  our  de- 
fects, there  is  a  wider  diffusion  of  intelligence, 
moral  restraint,  and  self-respect  amon^  us,  than 
through  any  other  community.  Still,  I  am  com- 
pelled to  acknowledge  an  extent  of  corruption 
among  us  which  menaces  freedom  and  our  dearest 
interests ;  and  a  policy  whicfh  will  give  new  and 
enduring  impulse  to  corruption,  which  will  multi- 
ply indefinitely  public  and  private  crime,  ought  to 
oe  reprobated  as  the  sorest  calamity  we  can  in- 
cur. Freedom  is  fighting  her  battles  in  the  world 
with  sufficient  odds  against  her.  Let  us  not  give 
new  chances  to  her  foes." 

Let  us  turn  away  from  this  alarming  pros- 
pect to  throw  a  coup  d*ml  on  several  scien- 
tific establishments  of  real  interest;  the 
Smithsonian  Institute,  the  Patent  Office, 
where  are  to  be  found  models  of  all  the  ma- 
chines invented  in  the  United  States,  and  an 
Ethnographical  Museum ;  in  fine,  the  Ob- 
servatory, and  the  establishment  where  the 
marine  and  terrestrial  charts  of  the  sea-shore 
of  the  United  States  are  engraved. 

The  Smithsonian  Institute,  which  bears  the 
name  of  the  person  by  whose  munificence  it 
was  founded,  is  an  establishment  on  an 
extensive  scale.  It  has  already  rendered 
service,  and  will  hereafter  greatly  contribute 
to  the  cause,  of  science  in  the  United  States. 
Its  funds  are  applied  to  several  distinct  ob- 

i'ects ;  there  is  a  Library  and  a  course  of 
jectures.  The  principal  end  of  the  Institu- 
tion is  to  'publish  its  scientific  labors,  em- 
bodying new  facts  and  doctrines.  In  the  two 
first  volumes  of  the  collections  that  have 
been  published  by  the  Institute,  appeared 
Messrs.  Davies  and  Squiers  researches  on 
the  curious  antiquities,  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  and  Mr.  Hitchcock's  labors  on  fossil 
remains,  which  have  permitted  him,  from  the 
vestiges  preserved  through  centuries,  to 
classify  rather  a  large  number  of  the  lost 


species.  The  Institate  does  act  confine  itself 
to  publishing  the  results  of  its  scientific  re- 
searches, it  provokes  new  ones — ^it  has  or- 
ganized a  system  of  meteorological  observa- 
tions  throughout  nearly  the  whole  extent  of 
the  United  States.  Already,  from  a  hundred 
and  fifty  different  points,  monthly  reports  are 
transmitted  to  it. 

Mr.  Hare,  a  distinguished  physician,  has 
given  the  Institute  a  very  excellent  collection 
of  physical  instruments.  In  a  repoct  which 
I  have  at  hand,  I  find  the  following :  <*  It 
would  not  be  conformable  to  the  organiza- 
tion which  this  establishment  has  received, 
to  restrict  the  use  of  the  instruments  to  those 
persons  who  are  members  of  it.  We  permit 
their  use  to  all  those  who  know  how  to  avail 
themselves  of  them.  It  might  happen  that 
the  instruments  would  be  lost  or  broken,  but 
the  diffusion  and  progress  of  science  which 
will  result  from  this  course  being  followed* 
will  amply  compensate  for  the  expense  which 
might  ensue."  This  was  liberally  conceived, 
and  reminds  me  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks's  re- 
mark, who  also  opened  his  physical  cabinet 
to  ^hose  who  wi^ed  to  make  use  of  it.  One 
day  the  keeper  came  to  him  in  a  very  angry 
mood  to  apprize  him  that  one  of  the  most 
costly  instruments  had  been  broken  by  a 
young  man.  Sir  Joseph  smiled,  and  replied 
as  follows :  ''  It  is  necessary  that  young  men 
should  break  machines  to  know  how  to  use 
them." 

The  collection  of  Natural  History  was  in- 
creased in  one  year  to  ten  thousand  speci- 
mens, chiefly  of  fishes  and  reptiles.  Amonffst 
the  latter,  appeared  that  curious  species 
called  Salamandroides,  which  partake  of  the 
nature  of  two  classes  of  animals,  having  feet 
like  reptiles  and  scales  like  fish.  I  was  told 
the  collection  contained  upwards  of  a  hun- 
dred specimens,  indigenous  to  America,  and 
which  have  not  yet  been  described.  It  is  to 
be  regretted,  that  such  an  excellent  institu- 
tion should  be  located  in  such  a  singular 
edifice.  It  is  a  new  example  of  that  smga- 
lar  architecture  which  is  so  prolific  of  towers 
and  spires  out  of  all  taste ;  and  the  use  of 
them  is  more  to  be  regretted,  as  they  cost 
high,  and  the  interest  of  nearly  the  whole 
sum,  which  was  bequeathed,  was  employed 
for  the  building,  whereas  this  sum  would 
have  been  much  better  expended,  if  a  more 
simple  building  had  been  erected,  and  a 
larger  number  of  works  been  published.  They 
acted  in  the  same  manner  as  they  did  with 
respect  to  the  Girard  College^  and  they  have 
not  raised  a  monument  equal  to  the  palace 
of  Philadelphia. 


1853.] 


M.  AMPERE  IN  WASHHraTOir. 


249 


I  hi%^  already  had  occasion  to  speak  of 
the  fnelan^e  of  styles  in  use  amongst  the 
Americans  for  their  architecture.  I  found 
here  a  work  on  the  suhject  with  reference  to 
the  Smithsonian  Institute,  in  which  the  sys- 
tem is  exposed.  Mr.  Owen,  the  author*  having 
constituted  this  eclectism  as  the  law  of  Ameri- 
can architecture,  he  inquires  what  ought  to 
be  the  other  conditions  of  this  architecture? 
Arguing  from  the  nature  of  the  country  and 
the  people,  he  arrives,  by  an  ingenious  mpde 
of  reasoning,  at  singular  results.  In  the 
first  place,  the  author  establishes  the  princi* 
pie  that  architecture  is  an  utilitarian  art, 
that  there  is  no  abstract  excellence  in  it, 
because  there  is  no  necessity  for  absolute 
uniformity.  We  ought  not  to  be  surprised 
at  this  positive  theory  in  an  esthetic  discourse 
written  in  the  United  States.  ''What  should 
we  do,"  says  he,  "  in  our  utilitarian  age,  with 
religious  buildings  constructed  on  such  a 
vast  scale,  that  these  might  be  built,  as  at 
Luxor,  a  village  above  them  with  its  inhabir 
tants."* 

Thus,  observe  there,  the  vast  religious 
monuments  suppressed  ;  it  is  suflScient,  if 
there  be  place  enough  in  each  church  for 
the  seats  of  the  congregation.  The  author 
adds  in  altogether  a  practical  sense;  "The 
treasures  which  the  Egyptians  expended  in 
the  burial  of  their  dead,  we  like  to  appro- 
priate, which  is  certainly  more  reasonable,  to 
the  comfort  of  the  living."  The  Egyptians, 
.according  to  Herodotus,  argued  thus,  life 
being  fleeting,  we  need  build  but  fragile 
bouses,  and  as  death  is  forever,  it  requires 
eternal  tombs.  The  Americans  do  not  think 
so.  The  Egyptians  were  the  people  of 
death,  they  are  the  people  of  life.  Mr. 
Owen  again  says,  *'  the  architecture  of  the 
United  States,  which  has  arisen  at  once  in 
distant  and  dififi^rent  climates,  must  adopt 
DO  uniform  type,  but  make  itself  remarkable 
by  its  variety."  I  do  not  think  it  ought  tp 
be  thus.  The  Americans  reproduce  every- 
where oil  the  contrary,  the  same  type  of 
construction  ;  they  have  something  like  a 
stereotyped  tower,  which  they  carry  with 
them  as  they  would  a  tent,  and  which  they 
put  up  in  the  East  and  the  West,  in  the 
iS'orth  and  the  South.  In  fine,  from  the 
liberty  which  prevails  in  the  United  States^ 
the  author  concludes  that  their  monuments 
should  have  no  forced  inexorable  correspond- 


*  It  ii  not  at  Luxor  that  a  yillage  has  b^en  oon- 
•tmctfid,  or  the  platform  of  aa  E^ptian  temple. 
It  is  on  the  opposite  aide  of  the  JNue^  at  Medinet* 
Abou. 


ence  of  parts,  but  that  there  should  be  a 
certain  independence  in  style,  corresponding^ 
no  doubt,  with  the  prmciples  o  f  self-govern' 
ment. 

I  do  not  believe  in  this  architecture  of 
liberty ;  and  whatever  may  be  the  tendency 
of  the  States  not  to  become  subordinate  the 
one  to  the  other,  I  believe  there  will 
always  be  subordinate  parts  in  architecture, 
and  I  wish  that  the  absence  of  centralization 
should  not  be  traduced  in  art  by  an  incoher- 
ence which  would  lose  it. 

I  Wiis  happf  to  meet  Mr.  Henry,  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Smithsonian  Institute,  a  gentle- 
man who  has  followed    up   the  science  of 
electro-magnetism  in  America  with   much 
success.    The  theory  of  electro-magnetism 
created  by  my  father,  inspires  me  with  a 
very  natural  interest  in  all  those  who  follow 
in  his  footsteps.    I  had  much  pleasure  in 
finding  at  Washington  a  judicial  deposition 
made  by  Mr.  Henry,  on  the  occasion  of  a 
trial  respectfng  Mr.  Morse's  discovery  of  the 
electric    telegraph,   in   which   he   rendered 
homage  to  the  memory  of  my  father.     In 
this  deposition,  Mr.  Henry  traced  the  history 
of  electro- magnetic  discoveries,  without  which, 
as  we  know,  the  electric  telegraph  would  be 
impossible ;  but  what  is  not  very  generally 
known,  is,  that  my  father  predicted  the  ap- 
plication of  electro- magnetism  to  the  trans- 
mission of  telegraphic  signs,  long  before  any 
person  had  undertaken  to  realize  this  admi- 
rable discovery,  and  which  belongs  as  much 
to  him  as  the  idea  of  steam  navigation  be- 
longs to  Papin.     Mr.  Henry  never  knew  my 
father  personally,  and  did  not  expect  to  see  • 
his    son    in   Washington.     Judicially  .sum- 
moned in  Mr.  Morse's  affair,  after  having 
mentioned  the  experience  of  CErsted,  AragOj 
and  Davy,  and  the  discovery,  on  which  my 
father  based  his  theory  of  dynamic  electricitVi 
a  theory,  at   the   present  day,  universally 
adopted,  Mr.  Henry  added,  "Ampere  de- 
duced this  theory  from  results,  which  expe- 
rience has  since  confirmed;  he  proposed  a 
plan  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Paris 
for  the  application  of  electro-magnetism  to 
the  transmission  of  news  to  great  dbtances. 
Thus  the  discovery  of  the  electric  telegraph 
was  nxade  by  Ampere,  as  soon  as  it  was  poS" 
sihUr 

Here,  in  fact,  is  what  we  read  in  my  fa- 
ther's first  memoir  on  the  action  of  the  elec- 
tric current  on  the  magnetic  needle.  "Aa 
many  needles  as  letters,  which  would  be 
moved  by  conductors,  which  would  be  made 
to  communicate  successively  with  metallic 
disks,  with  the  assistance  of  a  kind  of  finger- 


260 


M.  AMPERE  IK  WA8HINGT0K. 


[Oct 


board,  which  woald  be  lowered  at  will,  might 
give  rise  to  a  telegraphic  correspondence, 
which  would  be  communicated  to  distances, 
and  be  as  prompt  as  writing  or  speech,  in 
transmitting  thought."  The  telegraphic 
system  has  been  altered  and  improved,  but 
it  is  impossible,  not  to  acknowledge,  that  the 
discovery  of  the  electric  telegraph  is  to  be 
found  there. 

It  was  on  a  question  of  practice,  that  the ' 
trial  in  which  Mr.  Morse  was  engaged,  turned. 
In  the  history  of  scientific  labors,  of  which 
Mr.  Morae's  proceeding  was  but  the  applica- 
tion, Mr.  Henry  had  to  speak  of  himself; 
he  did  it  appropriately,  and  in  perfect  sin- 
cerity ;  but  he  had  the  right  to  refer  to  the 
fact,  that  as  in  America  it  was  thought,  that 
the  force  of  electro-magnetism  diminished 
rapidly  in  proportion  with  the  distances,  it 
was  he  who  showed,  that  they  might  remedy 
this  inconvenience,  long  before  the  applica- 
tion of  Mr.  Morse's  attempts,  which,  without 
these  improvements,  would  not  have  been 
practicable. 

The  establishment,  known  under  the  name 
of  the  Patent  Office,  consists  of  two  parts. 
The  models  of  all  those  machines  which  have 
obtained  patents  are  placed  in  one  of  them, 
with  a  description  in  writing  of  the  machines, 
accompanied  by  drawings.  These  are  at  the 
disposition  of  all  those  who  wish  to  study 
them.  In  the  other' part  of  the  establish- 
ment is  a  collection  of  arms,  clothing,  and 
instruments,  &c.,  belonging  to  the  savages  of 
America  and  the  Islands  of  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
and  also  certain  things  which  ought  not  to 
be  in  the  Museum,  which  I  shall  soon  men- 
tion. 

They  are  very  liberal  in  granting  patents. 
The  American  government  grants  them  at 
rates  much  below  what  the  principal  Eu- 
ropean governments  do ;  but,  after  having 
began  by  refusing  foreigners  the  right  of  ob- 
taining patents,  they  now  grant  them  at 
rates  higher  than  those  paid  by  natives,  which 
does  not  appear  to  me  to  be  very  reasonable, 
for  it  is  the  interest  of  a  country  that  foreign- 
ers should  bring  them  the  profit  of  their  in- 
ventions. Moreover,  even  in  America,  they 
protest  against  this  abuse,  and  ascribe  it  to 
the  evil  tendency  of  what  is  there  called  na- 
tivism. 

The  Americans  have  already  given  to  the 
world  a  certain  number  of  important  inven- 
tions, and  of  all  kinds.  To  industry  they 
have  given  the  machine  to  separate  cotton, 
discovered  by  Whitney,  and  of  which  the  re- 
sults have  been  immense ;  to  agriculture,  the 
reaping  machine;  to  war,  the  revolvers — 


those  pistols  and  mns,  by  means  of  which 
you  can  load  and  fire  twelve  times  without 
mterruption ;  and  to  medicine,  chloroform. 
They  were  the  first  to  establish,  on  an  exten- 
sive scale,  steam  navigation,  and  the  electric 
telegraph  for  the  communications  of  com- 
merce and  of  thought.  Agriculture,  as  well 
industry,  has  promoted  the  inventive  spirit 
of  the  Americans.  In  one  year,  they  granted 
patents  to  two  thousand  and  forty- three  in- 
ventors  of  agricultural  instruments. 

The  models  of  machines  in  the  Patent 
Office,  ought  to  be  better  exposed,  as  they 
are,  for  instance,  in  the  Conservatory  of  Arts 
and  Professions  in  Paris.  At  Washington 
they  are  thrown  into  cupboards,  from  which 
they  are  taken  if  any  one  wishes  to  study 
them  ;  but  they  have  no  general  effect,  and 
one  might  be  curious  enough  to  look  at  the 
machines,  without  having  the  desire  to  give 
them  a  particular  study.  If  I  could  judge 
from  the  only  one  of  the  models  which 
I  had  the  opportunity  of  comparing  with 
what  it  professed  to  represent — the  model  of 
the  Reaping  Machine — I  should  say  they 
are  too  small,  and  do  not  convey  an  accurate 
idea  of  what  the  original  is. 

The  collection  in  the  Patent  Office  contains 
a  large  number  of  interesting  objects,  but 
disposed  without  much  order.  We  see  there 
a  promiscuous  collection  of  fossil  bones,  min- 
erals, stuffed  knimals,  and  fishes  placed  in 
the  cupboards,  where  they  are  almost  as  in- 
visible as  if  they  were  in  the  bottom  of  the 
sea.  Jackson's  coat  figures  amongst  these 
various  curiosities.  I  admit  that  I  have 
little  taste  for  the  cast-off  garments  of  cele- 
brated persons.  It  has  been  said,  that  to  a 
valet  de  chambre  no  person  is  a  great  man, 
but  in  presence  of  an  old  coat,  pompously 
exposed  to  public  attention  the  spectator  finoa 
himself  treated  somewhat  like  a  valet  de  chamr 
bre,  and  half  disposed  to  enthusiasm.  Let  Nel- 
son's uniform  pass,  which  he  wore  when  he 
received  his  death- wound,  and  ,which  is 
shewn  at  Greenwich,  and  the  generous  blood 
with  which  it  is,  I  shall  not  say,  soiled,  but 
adorned,  casts  aside  every  vulgar  idea.  There 
must  be  blood,  to  make  a  relic  of  a  coat. 

What  I  could  not  understand  was,  that 
amongst  the  specimens  of  which  the  Museum 
was  composed,  there  were  some  articles 
that  ought  not  to  have  found  a  place  there. 
Amongst  others,  one,  which  represented  a 
woman  who  was  confined,  with  her  hair  di- 
shevelled and  falling  to  her  feet,  whilst  a  little 
monster,  represenUng,  as  I  thought,  the 
cottehemar,  was  seated  on  her  breast.  Every 
one  might  have  seen  such  articles  at  the 


185S.] 


M.  AMFBRE  IN  WASHINGTON. 


251 


hair-dressers*  doors  in  Paris,  which  serre  for 
DO  other  purpose,  than  as  an 'advertisement 
of  a  merchant  of  pomatum  to  shew  how  far 
his  excels  that  of  others  in  producing  for  the 
ladies,  an  abundant  head  of  hair.  I  saw, 
with  much  surprise,  a  similar  object  of  art 
in  the  Ethnographical  Museum  atWashington. 

The  Observatory  at  Washington  has,  like 
that  of  Cambridge,  been  the  theatre  of  some 
astronomical  observations  of  a  certain  im- 
portance. In  1846,  after  the  discovery  of 
the  Neptune  planet,  Mr.  Walker,  an  attach^ 
of  this  establishment,  found  out,  that  this 
planet  had  been  seen  in  1795,  by  Lalande, 
who  took  it  for  a. star ;  which  furnished  ob- 
servations dating  fifty  years  back,  and  gave 
Mr.  Walker  an  occasion  to  determine  the 
elements  of  its  orbit.  The  same  year,  Mr. 
Maury,  the  Director  of  the  Observatory,  dis- 
covered, the  first,  this  singular  fact,  that  the 
Comet  of  Biela  was  divided  into  two  parts. 
Heaven  has  its  revolutions  like  the  earth, 
and  the  stars  break  like  empires. 

In  this  Observatory,  may  be  seen  Dr. 
Locke's  electric  clock,  an  ingenious  applica- 
tion of  electro-magnetism  to  astronomical 
observations,  which,  combined  with  the  elec- 
tric telegraph,  allows  of  an  astronomer,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Maury's  expression,  observing 
in  Washington,  to  make  the  noise  of  his  e- 
lectric  clock  heard  at  St.  Louis,  and  to  di- 
vide (thanks  to  the  instrument)  minutes  into 
hundredth  parts,  with  the  greatest  exacti- 
tude. The  fine  hydrographical  works  of  Mr. 
Maury  are  known  throughout  Europe, — M. 
de  Humboldt,  the  patriarch  of  science,  has 
rendered  them  brilliant  justice.  "I  beg  of 
you,"  he  writes  to  a  correspondent,  "to  ex- 
press to  Mr.  Maury,  the  author  of  the  fine 
Charts  on  the  Winds  and  Currents  of  Air, 
my  heartfelt  acknowledgments  and  esteem. 
It  is  a  great  undertaking,  as  important  for 
the  practical  navigator,  as  for  the  progress 
of  meteorology  in  general.  It  has  been  con- 
sidered here,  as  well  as  in  Germany,  by  all 
persons  who  interest  themselves  in  physical 
geography."  The  marine  Charts  executed 
under  the  directions  of  Mr.  Maury,  which  he 
calls  Charts  of  winds  and  currents  of  air, 
are  certainly  one  of  the  finest  and  most  use- 
ful results  of  nautical  science. 

Convinced  that  according  to  the  old  mode, 
navigators  pursued  routes  which  were  not 
the  best,  Mr,  Maury  asked  the  Captains  of 
American  vessels  in  1842,  to  note  all  the 
circumstances  on  their  loff- books  which  might 
influence  navigation,  and  to  let  him  know 
the  result  of  their  observations.  At  first, 
but  a  few  complied  with  his  suggestions,  but 


some  comparisons  between  some  old  log- 
books deposited  in  the  Marine  Office  having 
enabled  Mr.  Maury  to  abridge  the  Voyage 
from  Baltimore  to  Rio  'Janeiro  twenty-seven 
days,  several  mariners  acceded  to  his  request, 
and  there  are  now  nearly  a  thousand  vessels, 
on  which  the  necessary  observations  are  taken 
both  night  and  day.  Mr.  Maury  has  also  suc- 
ceeded m  reducing  the  average  time  of  a  voy- 
age to  California,  from  a  hundred  and  eighty- 
seven  days  to  a  hundred  and  fourteen,  that 
is  to  say,  to  abridge  it  nearly  one  third. 

Besides  this  practical  application,  Mr, 
Maury's  studies  have  directed  him  towards 
the  consideration  of  the  nature  of  winds  and 
rains,  currents,  and  the  regions  inhabited  by 
the  different  species  of  whales,  on  all  of 
which  subjects  he  has  thrown  new  light. 
So  he  has  also  discovered,  that  the  trade- 
winds  of  the  South  East  blow  with  more 
force  than  those  of  the  Western  Hemisphere, 
and  he  attributes  this  difference  to  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Great  Deserts  of  Africa,  which 
retard  these  winds,  by  raising  up  great 
masses  of  the  atmosphere  to  fill  the  void 
produced  by  the  ardor  of  their  sun.  Ac- 
cording to  his  theory,  these  burning  plains 
act  like  a  furnace,  in  absorbing  the  winds  of 
the  sea,  to  replace  the  air,  which  raises  it- 
self up  in  a  column  above  this  over-heated 
soil ;  "  so  that,"  adds  Mr.  Maury,  developing 
the  general  results  of  this  influence  of  Africa 
and  Southern  America  on  the  winds,  "if  the 
foot  of  man  had  never  penetrated  these  two 
Continents,  it  might  be  affirmed,  that  the 
climate  of  the  one  was  damp,  and  that  its 
vallies  were,  in  a  great  part,  covered  with  an 
abundant  vegetation,  which  protects  its  sur- 
face against  the  rays  of  the  Sun,  whilst  the 
plains  of  the  other,  were  arid  and  naked.*' 

"  These  researches  appear  to  be  already 
sufficent  to  justify  the  assertion,  that  without 
the  great  Desert  of  Sahara,  and  the  other 
arid  plains  of  Africa,  the  southern  coasts  of 
this  Continent,  in  the  region  of  the  trade- 
winds,  would  be,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
a  district  deprived  of  rains,  sterile  and 
uninhabited.  Such  considerations  warmly 
captivate  the  mind.  They  teach  us  to  re- 
gard the  Great  Deserts,  the  basin  of  the 
Mediterranean,  and  arid  plains,  as  compen- 
sations in  the  grapd  system  of  atmospheric 
circulations,  like— continues  Mr.  Maury,  in 
employing  a  comparison,  which  betokens  the 
astronomer, "  the  counter- weight  of  the  Tel- 
escope, which  appears  to  us  to  be  an  incon- 
venience, but  which  is  necessary,  to  give  the 
machine  an  equable  and  regular  motion.*' 

Other  labors,  which  have  reference  to  ma- 


9(2 


M.  AMFSBB  IK  WASHIKGTQir. 


[Oct, 


rine  hydrography,  and  whioh  do  the  United 
States  the  greatest  honor,  hy  the  manner  in 
which  ..they  are  executed,  are  those  which 
have  for  their  object  a  more  perfect  know- 
ledge of  the  sea  shore  and  coasts  of  the 
United  States.  At  the  head  of  these  works, 
as  we  have  said  in  the  statement  before  the 
Academy  of  Sciences,  is  placed  Mr.  Bache, 
"  to  the  great  advantage  of  science  in  gene- 
ral, and  of  geography  in  particular." 

I  passed  a  day  in  going  over  the  establish- 
ment which  Mr.  Bache  directs,  whose  inde- 
fatigable complaisance  left  me  nothing  to  de- 
sire to  satisfy  my  cariosity,  which  was  warm- 
ly excited  by  every  thing  I  saw.  A  large 
house  which  he  inhabits,  contains  everything 
that  relates  to  the  making  of  the  charts, 
which  he  has  executed,  and  over  which  he 
exercises  the  minutest  supervision,  after  hav- 
ing taken  a  personal  part  in  this  coast  sur- 
vey, of  which  he  is  the  soul,  and  to  which 
his  name  will  always  be  attached.  In  run- 
ning over  the  different  parts  of  this  fine  es- 
tablishment, where  every  thing  is  conducted 
with  perfect  regularity  and  activity,  we  watch 
the  successive  steps,  by  which  the  charts  are 
prepared,  and  see  them  in  progress,  from  the 
making  of  the  paper  to  their v final  comple- 
tion. They  are  engraved  by  means  of  the 
electro- type.  The  brass,  deposed  by  the 
galvanic  current,  forms  projections,  which 
serve  to  produce  hollow  spaces.  If  they 
wish  to  alter  anything  in  the  engraving,  they 
erase  these  projections  ;  there  is  then  a  blank 
space  left  on  the  chart,  which  is  filled  up  at 
pleasure. 

Every  thing  is  executed  with  the  greatest 
precision,  and  the  most  minute  care.  Thus, 
in  the  ordinary  charts,  and  even  those  French 
Marine  Charts,  which  Mr.  Bache  proclaims 
to  be  admirable,  it  happens,  sometimes,  that 
the  movement  of  the  press-  alters  the  lines 
and  defaces  the  drawmg.  Mr.  Sexton,  a 
workman,  of  whom  Herschel  said,  *'  He  was 
the  first  working  mechanic  in  the  world," 
wished  to  remedy  this  inconvenience  by 
means  of  an  hydraulic  press,  which  would 
rest  with  a  certain  degree  of  uniformity  on 
the  paper.  I  saw  a  slight  attempt  at  it, 
which  succeeded.  With  respect  to  the  elec- 
tro-type, which  is  used  for  the  engravings, 
another  American,  M.  Mathiot,  has  been  able 
by  heating  the  battery,  to  augment  the  quan- 
tity of  brass  deposed  in  the  proportion  of  one 
to  three,  and  he  expects  to  increase  it  to  six 
times  the  quantity.  The  brass,  thus  deposed, 
has  a  good  deal  of  tenacity,  and  does  not 
crystallize,  the  crystalization  rendering  it  fra- 
gile.   These  improvements  are  the  fruits  of  in- 


dividual efforts  provoked  by  the  ardent  desire 
and  the  confidence  of  doin^  better,  a  desire 
and  confidence,  which  manifest  themselves 
energetically  in  .all  the  scientific  labors  of  the 
Americans. 

On  the  marine  Charts,  the  swiftness  of  the 
current  is  indicated  by  the  breadth  of  the 
lines,  its  direction  by  arrows,  which  point  in 
the  line  of  the  currents,  and  the  rapidity  of 
descent,  by  a  darker  tint  to  the  shadows ; 
thus  the  eye  seizes  at  one  glance,  all  that  it 
is  necessary  for  the  mariner  to  know.  The 
execution  of  these  charts  was  an  immense 
task.  It  was  necessary  to  combine  the  great 
labor  of  terrestrial  triangulation  with  a  labor 
even  still  greater,  that  of  knowing  everything 
that  determined  the  course  of  tlie  currents 
of  the  sea.  The  first  is  executed  by  Civil 
Engineers  and  land  officers,  and  the  second, 
by  the  United  States  Marine  service. 

Ninety  Charts  have  already  been  engaged, 
and  it  is  necessary  to  have  two  hundred  and 
fifty  more.  In  fifteen  years,  the  work  for 
the  Eastern  coasts  will  be  terminated. — It  is 
impossible  to  calculate  at  what  period  the, 
whole  will  be  achieved,  for  we  do  not  know, 
what,  in  a  few  years,  will  be  the  extent  of 
the  sea  coasts  of  the  United  States.  Cpn«> 
gress,  which  is  impatient  to  see  the  end  of 
this  vast  worky  asked  Mr.  Bache,  how  many 
years  it  would  take  to  achieve  his  labors  ? 
The  latter  replied — for  how  many  states  ? 
and  he.  was  right,  for,  during  this  dialogue, 
a  vote  of  Congress  added  "^xas  to  the  Un- 
ion, and  it  has  since  become  necessary  to 
think  about  Oregon  and  California. 

To  these  hydrographic  and  geodesic  la- 
bors, may  be  added  other  studies.  They 
mark  out  all  the  spots,  on  which  it  is  neces- 
sary to  erect  light-houses ;  they  show  what 
obstacles  must  be  made  to  disappear,  as  that 
rock  in  the  harbor  of  New  York,  which  M. 
Maillefert,  a  Frenchman,  is  at  this  moment 
engaged  in  blowing  up.  Magnetic  observa- 
tions are  also  connected  with  the  operations 
of  the  Coast  survey,  and  particular  Charts 
indicate  the  temperature  of  the  seas  in  dif* 
ferent  seasons.  In  fine,  it  is  a  vast  enter- 
prize,  remarkably  well  conducted,  and  the 
utility  of  which,  for  navigation,  is  considera- 
ble. ''  There  is  hardly  any  portion  of  our 
shores,  which  has  not  added  important  dis- 
coveries to  our  observation,"  said  Mr.  Bache, 
in  a  Keport  of  1850.  I  shall  cite  but  one 
example,  which  I  heard  from  him.  The  bar, 
which  obstructed  the  entry  of  the  Port  of 
Mobile,  was  displaced  by  the  currents. 
They  did  not  know  it,  and  they  always  avoid- 
ed this  bar,  which  exists  no  longer.    They 


1858.] 


M.  AMPERE  IN  WABHIKOTON. 


258 


now  know,  that  this  obstacle  is  no  more  to 
be  dreaded.  If,  on  the  contrary,  a  new  bar 
should  form  itself,  tbey  would  know  it  by 
the  soundings,  the  results  of  which,  are  care- 
fully preserved,  as  a  useful  collection  in  a 
double  point  of  view,  for  hydrography  and 
geology. 

The  Smithsonian  Institute,  the  Patent  Of- 
fice, the  works  at  the  Observatory,  and  Mr. 
Maury's  and  Mr  Bache's  labors  constitute,  as 
we  have  seen  at  Washington,  points  of  at- 
traction amongst  8cienti6c  men,  which  are 
not  without  their  importance,  and  eveti  gran- 
deur. We  must  do  justice  to  them  in  the 
impartial  appreciation  of  the  civilization  of 
the  United  States. 

I  had  the  honor  to  be  invited  to  dine  at 
the  President's  with  Kossuth,  the  speakers  of 
the  two  legislative  Assemblies,  Mr.  Webster 
and  other  Ministers,  and  many  of  the  Pre- 
tenders to  the  approaching  Presidency.  I 
witnessed  there  a  new  scene  in  that  drama 
of  Kossuth's  arrival  in  America,  of  which,  I 
had  seen  in  New  York,  a  few  weeks  ago, 
such  a  brilliant  exposition,  and  apparently, 
so  full  of  promise.  Public  sentiment,  as  it 
progressed,  has  become  much  colder;  it 
langaishes,  and  almost  presages,  rather  a  flat 
denouement.  They  have  not  yet  reached 
that  point.  .Besides,  the  President,  and  the 
political  men,  whom  he  invited  oa  that  day, 
honored  Kossuth  as  an  illustrious  exile,  whose 
delivery  was  brought  about  through  them, 
who  chose  the  hospitality  of  their  country, 
and  they  respect  themselves  too  much  to  be 
wanting  in  regard  towards  him.  He  was 
placed  on  the  right  hand  side  of  Mrs.  Fill- 
more, and  Mrs.  Kossuth  to  the  right  of  the 
President ;  but  besides  this,  neither  before, 
during,  nor  after  dinner,  was  the  slightest  al- 
lusion made  to  the  cause  of  Hungary.  I 
noticed  nothing  but  politeness  towards  the 
man,  but  no  loud  expression  of  sympathy  for 
his  cause,  although  certainly  this  sympathy 
was  in  every  heart,  nothing,  in  short,  which 
might  encourage  him  to  hope  for  the  politi- 
cal intervention  of  the  United  States  in  the 
afihirs  of  Europe.  Kossuth,  who  has  the 
bad  taste  to  love  fantastic  costumes,  wore  a 
cloak  of  black  velvet,  and  appeared  to  me 
much  less  imposing  in  this  dress,  than  when 
resting  on  his  awoitl,  he  harangued  the  pub- 
lic m  the  Hall  of  the  Castle  Garden,  at  I^ew 
York.  Perhaps,  I  myself,  was  under  the 
impression  of  the  general  coldness,  which  pre- 
vailed around  me.  It  is  one  thing  for  a  man 
to  be  received  as  a  hero,  by  an  enraptured 
crowd,  when  he  has  not  already  told  them, 
what  he  asks  for,  and  when  he  appears  only 


as  a  martyr  of  liberty,  and  another,  when 
that  man  shows  himself  to'be  chimerical  in 
his  pretesnions,  indexterous  in  his  speeches, 
notwithstanding  his  eloquence,  and  when  the 
good  sense  of  the  people,  who  received  him 
with  transports,  detaches  from  his  forehead 
that  bright  crown,  which  their  enthusiasm 
had  invested  him  with.  Kossuth,  closely 
observed  in  this  saloon,  where  he  was  not 
sought  after,  and  in  which  all  discussion  on 
politics  was  avoided,  when  he  was  obliged, 
to  say  something,  to  discuss  the  study  of 
history  and  of  langua^s.  Kossuih,  discon- 
tented, uneasy  and  fallen,  appeared  to  me,  I 
adniit,  very  different  from  Kossuth  radiant 
and  triumphant. 

If  we .  can  be  divided  in  some  respects 
about  the  Magyar  tribune,  it  is  impossible 
for  us  all  not  to  be  interested  in  Madame 
Kossuth,  the  courageous  and  faithful  com- 
panion of  the  exile,  and  on  whose  account 
we  could  desire,  that  the  success  of  her  hus- 
band in  America,  might  last  longer.  She 
addressed  a  charming  reply  to  a  lady,  who 
advocated  in  New  York  the  emancipation  of 
woman.- — *'  My  life  has  been  so  agitated,  said 
Madame  Kossuth,  that  I  have  not  had  time 
to  study  the  question,  of  which  you  speak 
to  me ;  but  having  the  happiness  to  be  the 
wife  of  a  man,  who  inspires  so  much  of  the 
admiration  amongst  others,  which  I,  myselif, 
feel  for  him,  you  will  find  it  natural,  that  I 
never  thought  of  disputing  his  authority 
with  him." — In  short,  the  dinner  was  very 
agreeable.  The  Whig  and  Democratic  can- 
didates for  the  Presidenpy,  amongst  whom 
were  Mr.  Fillmore  himself,  Mr.  Webster, 
General  Cass,  and  General  Scott,  seemed  to 
live  on  very  good  terms  with  each  other. 
The  abolitionist,  Seward,  chatted  gaily  with 
the  partizans  of  the  Compromise.  The  din- 
ner was  not  quite  as  good  as  those  given  by 
M,  de  Sartigee,  but  it  was  not  too  republi- 
can, and  every  thing  wore  the  seal  of  simplic- 
ity in  the  manners  of  Mr.  Fillmore,  which 
was  worthy  of  one,  who  might  be  considered 
the  type  of  what  an  American  President 
should  be. 

Now  that  I  have  seen  Canada,  the  north 
and  west  of  the  United  States,  Boston,  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Washington,  the  schools, 
the  prisons,  the  hospitals,  the  elections,  pop- 
ular fites.  Congress  and  the  President,  I 
wish  to  see  other  things.  The  cold  weather, 
which  surprized  me,  and  which  it  was  not  at 
all  my  intention  to  experience,  warns  me  to 
go  and  look  for  a  milder  climate,  first,  in  the 
Southern  part  of  the  Union,  at  Charleston 
and  New  Orleans,  and  afterwards  in  H^ 


254 


THE  SELF-CONYIOTBIX 


[Oct, 


yana,  and  perhaps  in  Mexico.  It  is  a  coun- 1 
try,  which  it  is  not  so  easy  to  reach*  and  ta 
travel  in,  as  the  United  States ;  but  it  is  said 
to  be  curious  from  its  antiquities,  admirable, 
for  the  natural  beauties  which  it  presents, 
and  unique,  for  the  diversity  of  the  climate 
within  its  borders.  I  find  a  further  tempta- 
tion in  the  acquaintance  I  made  here  with 
M.*  Cnlderon,  who  was  Minister  of  Spain  in 
Mexico,  before  he  fulfilled  that  capacity  in 
Washington,  and  with  his  clever  wife,  who 
bears  his  name,  and  has  written  a  very  inter- 
esting work,   entitled   "Life    in    Mexico." 


M.Calderon's  obliging  disposition  has  induced 
him  to  furnish  me  with  letters  of  recommen- 
dation, which  will  ensure  me  a  favorable  Re- 
ception, from  the  honorable  name  he  left  be- 
hind him  in  that  country  ;  but  Mexico  is  ra- 
ther far  from  Paris,  whither  I  am  obliged  to 
return  in  four  months,  to  re-open  my  aca- 
demical course.  All  this  is  very  tempting, 
and  very  difficult — we  shall  see.  In  the  in« 
terval,  I  leave  to-morrow  for  the  South, 
a  section  which  is  the  termination  of  a  voyage, 
that  allures  me,  and  draws  me  irresistibly 
towards  it 


-»♦- 


•**• 


From  Colburn't  New  Montkly. 


THE    SELF-CONVICTED.* 


« 


BT  THE   AUTHOR  OF   "  THB   UNHOLT  WISH. 


tt 


I. 


It  was  a  wild,  boisterous  evening  at  the 
commencement  of  winter.  The  wind,  howl- 
ing in  fearful  gusts,  swept  the  earth  as  with 
a  whirlwind,  booming  and  rushing  with  a 
force  seldom  met  witn  in  an  inland  county. 
The  rain  descended  in  torrents,  pattering 
against  the  window-panes,  especially  against 
those  of  a  solitary  farm-house,  situated  sev- 
eral miles  from  the  city  of  Worcester.  In 
fact,  it  seemed  a  battle  between  the  wind 
and  the  rain  which  should  treat  the  house 
most  roughly ;  but  the  wind  was  the  worst. 
It  roared  in  the  chimneys,  it  shook  the  old 
gables  on  the  roof,  burst  open  the  chamber 
casements,  and  fairly  unseated  the  weather- 
cock from  its  perch  on  the  bam.  The  ap- 
pearance of  the  dwelling  would  seem  to  de- 
note that  it  belonged  to  one  of  the  middle 
class  of  agriculturists.  There  was  no  finery 
about  it,  inside  or  out,  but  plenty  of  sub- 
stance. A  large  room,  partaking  partly  of 
•the  parlor,  partly  of  the  nail,  and  somewhat 

*  The  ooearrenoee  about  to  be  related  in  this  tale 
of  the  **  Self-Convioted,"  took  plaoe  many  vears  ago 
in  Woroeetenhire.  An  anthor^B  lioense  nas  been 
talcen.with  the  details^  and  the  names  are  ohanged ; 
but  the  chief  htU  are  perfectly  anthenUa 


of  the  kitchen,  was  the  general  sitting-room ; 
and  in  this  apartment,  on  this  same  turbulent 
Friday  evening;  sat,  knitting  by  fire-light,  a 
middle-aged  lady,  homely,  but  very  neat,  in 
her  dress. 

''Eugh!"  she  shuddered,  as  the  wind 
roared  and  the  rain  dashed  against  the  win- 
dows, which  were  only  protected  by  inside 
shutters,  '*  what  a  night  it  is  I  I  wish  to 
goodness  Robert  would  come  home." 

Laying  down  her  knitting,  she  pushed  the 
logs  together  on  the  hearth,  and  was  resum- 
ing her  employment  when  a  quiet,  sensible- 
looking  girl,  apparently  about  one  or  two- 
and- twenty,  entered.  Her  features  were  not 
beautiful,  but  there  was  an  air  of  truth 
and  good- nature  pervading  them  extremely 
pleasing. 

**  Well,  Jane,"  said  the  elder  lady,  looking 
up,  "  how  does  she  seem  now  ?" 

"  Her  ankle  is  in  less  pain,  mother,"  was 
the  reply,  "  but  it  appears  to  me  that  she  is 
getting  feverish.     I  gave  her  the  draught'* 

"  A  most  unfortunate  thing !"  ejaculated 
Mrs.  Armstrong.  "Benjamin  at  home  ill, 
and  now  Susan  must  get  doing  some  of  his 
work,  that  she  has  no  business  to  attempt 
and  falls  down  the  loft  poor  girl,  and  sprains 
her  ankle.    Why  could  she  not  have  trusted 


1858.] 


THE  SELF-OOKYIOIED. 


255 


(o  Wilson  ?  I  do  believe/'  broke  off  Mrs. 
Armstrong,  abruptly,  and  suspending  ber 
knitting  to  listen,  "  that  your  father  is  com- 
ing. The  wind  howls  so  one  can  scarcely 
hear,  but  it  sounds  to  me  like  a  horse's 
hoofs." 

"  I  do  not  think  it  is  a  horse/'  returned 
Jane ;  "  it  is  like  some  one  walking  round  to 
the  house-door." 

*'  Well,  child,  your  ears  are  younger  than 
mine ;  it  may  be  as  you  say." 

"  I  hope  it  b  not  Darnley !"  cried  Jane, 
inYoluntarily. 

**  Jane,"  rebuked  her  mother,  "  you  are 
Tery  obstinate  to  persist  in  this  dislike  of  a 
neighbor.  A  wealthy  young  man,  with  a 
long  lease  of  one  of  the  best  farms  in  the 
county  over  his  head,  is  not  to  be  sneezed  at. 
What  is  there  to  dislike  in  James  Darnley  ?" 
*'  I — I  don't  know  that  there  is  anything 
particular  to  dislike  in  him,"  hesitated  Jane, 
"  but  I  cannot  see  what  there  is  to  like." 

"  Don't  talk  foolishly,  but  go  and  open 
the  door,"  interposed  Mrs.  Armstrong; 
"  you  hear  the  knocking." 

Jane  made  her  way  to  the  house -door, 
and,  withdrawing  the  chain  and  bolt,  a  rush 
of  wind,  a  shower  of  rain,  and  a  fine- looking 
young  man,  sprang  in  together.  The  latter 
clasped  Jane  round  the  waist,  and-^if  the 
truth  must  be  told — brought  his  lips  into 
contact  with  hers. 

"  Hush,  hush,  Ronald,",  she  whispered  ; 
**  my  mother  is  in  the  hall  alone — what  if 
she  should  hear  1" 

"  I  will  fasten  the  door,"  was  all  the  an- 
swer she  got ;  and  Jane  disengaged  herself, 
and  walked  towards  the  hall. 

"Who  is  it?"  asked  Mrs.  Armstrong,  as 
her  daughter  reappeared.     "  Mr.  Darnley  ?" 
"  It  is  Ronald  Payne,"  answered  Jane,  in 
a  timid  voice. 

"Oh!"  said  Mrs.  Armstrong,  in  a  very 
short  tone.  "  Get  those  shirts  of  your  fa- 
ther's, Jane,  and  look  to  the  buttons ;  there 
they  lie,  on  the  sideboard.  And  light  the 
candles ;  you  cannot  see  to  work  by  fire- 
light." 

"  How  are  you,  Mrs.  Armstrong  ?"  in- 
quired the  young  man,  in  a  cheerful  tone,  as 
he  entered  and  seated  himself  on  the  oppo- 
ute  side  of  the  large  fireplace.  "  What  an 
awful  night !  I  am  not  deficient  in  strength, 
but  it  was  as  much  as  I  could  do  to  keep  my 
feet  coming  across  the  land." 

"  Ah  1"  said  Mrs.  Armstrong,  plying  her 
knitting-needles  with  great  energy,  "you 
would  have  been  better  at  home." 
"  Home  is  dull  for  me  now,"  was  the  an- 


swering remark  of  Ronald  Payne.  "  Last 
winter  my  poor  mother  was  alive  to  bear  me 
company,  but  this,  I  have  no  one  to  care 
for.* 

"  Go  up -stairs,  Jane,  and  see  if  Susan  has 
dropped  asleep,"  interrupted  Mrs.  Arm- 
strong, who  did  not  seem  to  'be  in  the  most 
pleasant  humor ;  "  and  as  you  will  have  the 
beds  to  turn  down  to-night,  you  can  do  that." 
Jane  rose,  and  departed  on  her  errand. 
"  And  lonely  my  home  hi  likely  to  be," 
continued  Ronnid,  "  until  I  follow  good  ex- 
amples and  marry." 

"  It  would  be  the  very  thing  for  you,  Mr, 
Payne,"  replied  the  lady ;  "  why  don't  you 
set  about  it  ?" 

"  I  wish  I  dare.  But  I  fear  it  will  toke 
time  and  trouble  to  win  the  wife  I  should 
like  to  have." 

"  There's  a  deal  of  trouble  in  getting  a  wife 
— a  good  one ;  as  for  the  bad  ones,  they  are 
as  plentiful  as  blackberries.  There  have 
been  two  or  three  young  blades  lately  want- 
ing to  be  after  Jane,"  continued  the  shrewd 
Mrs.  Armstrong,  "  but  I  put  a  stop  to  them 
at  once,  for  she  is  promised  already." 
"  Promised  I"  echoed  Ronald. 
"  Of  course,  she  is.  Her  father  has  pro- 
mised her  to  Mr.  Darnley ;  and  a  good  match 
it  will  be." 

"  A  wretched  sacrifice,"  exclaimed  Payne, 
indignantly.     "  Jane  hates  him." 

"  How  do  you  know  that  ?"  demanded 
Mrs.  Armstrong,  sharply. 

"  I  hate  him  too,"  continued  the  excited 
Ronald.  "  I  wish  he  was  a  thousand  miles 
away." 

And  the  conversation  continued  in  this 
strain  until  Jane  returned,  when  another  loud 
knocking  at  the  house-door  was  heard  above 
the  wind. 

"  Allow  me  to  open  it,"  cried  Mr.  Payne, 
starting  up  i  and  a  second  stranger  entered 
the  sitting-room. 

"  How  are  you,  Mr.  Darnley  ?  I  am  very 
glad  to  see  you,"  was  the  cordial  salutation 
of  Mrs.  Armstrong."  Come  to  the  fire ;  and, 
Jane,  go  and  draw  a  tankard  of  ale.  Susan 
has  managed  to  sprain  her  ankle  to-night, 
and  cannot  stir  a  step,"  she  explained.  ''An 
unlucky  time  for  it  to  happen,  tor  our  in-door 
man  went  home  ill  three  days  ago,  and  ,18 
not  back  yet.  Did  you  ever  know  such 
weather?"* 

"Scarcely,"  returned  the  new  comer. 
"  As  I  rode  home  from  the  fair,  I  thought 
the  wind  could  not  be  higher,  but  it  gets 
worse  every  hour." 

«  You  have  been  to  the  fair,  then  ?" 


256 


THE  SEU-COKYICTED, 


[Oct, 


"  Yes.  I  had  a  heavy  lot  of  stock  to  sell. 
I  saw  Mr.  Armstrong  there ;  he  was  buying, 
I  think.;' 

''  I  wish  he  would  make  haste  home,"  was 
Mrs.  Armstrong's  answer.  '*  It  is  not  a  de- 
sirable night  to  be  out  in." 

"  A  pretty  prospect  for  going  to  Worces- 
ter market  to-morrow  !"  observed  Darnley. 
"But  need  you  go?" 
'*  I  shall  go,  if  it  rains  cats  and  dogs,"  was 
the  gentleman's  reply.  "  My  business  to- 
day was  to  sell  stock — to-morrow,  it  will  be 
to  buy." 

Jane  flntered  with  the  silver  tankard,  its 
contents  foaming  above  its  brim  like  a  moun- 
tain of  snow,  and  placed  it  on  a  smal^  round 
table  between  the  two  young  men.  They 
sat  there,  sipping  the  ale  occasionally,  now 
one,  now  the  other,  but  angry  words  passed 
continually  between  them.  Darnley  was 
fuming  at  the  evident  preference  Jane  ac- 
corded to  his  rival,  and  Payne  fretted  and 
chafed  at  Darnley's  suit  being  favored  by 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Armstrong.  They  did  not 
quite  come  to  a  quarrel,  but  it  was  little  short 
of  it,  and,  when  they  left  the  house  together, 
it  was  in  anything  but  a  cordial  humor. 

"Jane,  what  can  have,,  become  of  your 
father?"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Armstrong,  as  the 
door  closed  upon  the  two  young  men;  "it  is 
hard  upon  ten  o'clock.  How  late  it  will  be 
for  him  to  go  to  Wilson's  :  he  will  have,  as 
it  is,  to  call  him  up,  for  the  man  must 
have  been  in  bed  an  hour  ago." 

Now  it  is  universally  known  that  farmers 
in  general,  even  the  mo$t  steady,  have  an 
irresistible  propensity  to  yield  to  one  temp- 
tation— that  of  taking  a  little  drop  too  much 
on  a  fair  or  market,  night.  Mr.  Armstrong 
was  not  wholly  exempt  from  this  failing, 
though  it  was  rare  indeed  that  he  fell  into 
the  snare.  For  a  twelvemonth,  at  the  least, 
had  his  family  not  seen  him  the  worse  for 
liquor,  yet,  ai^  ill-luck  would  have  it,  he  came 
in  on  this  night  stumbling  and  staggering, 
his  legs  reeling  one  way,  and  his  head  flying 
the  other.  How  he  got  home  was  a  mystery 
to  Mrs.  Armstrong,  and  to  himself  also  when 
he  came  to  his  senses.  As  to  making  him 
comprehend  that  an  accident  had  befallen 
Susan,  and  that,  in  consequence,  he  was 
wanted  to  go  and  tell  on«i  of  the  out-door 
men  to  be  at  the  house  early  in  the  morning, 
it  was  not  to  be  thought  of.  All  that  could 
be  done  with  him  was  to  get  him  up-stairs 
— a  feat  that  was  at  length  accomplished. 

"This  is  a  pretty  business,  Jane !"  cried 
the  indignant  Mrs.  Armstrong.  "  You  will  be 
obliged  to  milk  the  cows  in  the  morning  now."  I 


"Milk  the  cows!"  returned  Jane,  aghast 
at  the  suggestion. 

"  What  else  can  be  done  ?    Neither  you 

rnor  I  can  go  to  tell  Wilson  at  this  time  of 
night,  and  in  such  a  storm  :  and  .  ^e  cows 
must  be  milked.     You  can  milk,  I  suppose?" 

"  Oh,  mother!"  was  Jane's  remonstrance. 

"  I  ask  if  you  can  milk  ?"  repeated  Mrs. 
Armstrong,  impatiently — she  was  by  far  too 
much  put  out  to  speak  otherwise. 

"  I  have  never  tried  since  I  was  a  child," 
was  Jane's  reply.  "I  sometimes  used  to 
do  it  then,  for  pastime." 

"  Then,  my  dear,  you  must  do  it  once  for 
use.  It  would  be  a  mercy,"  continued  the 
excited  lady,  "if  all  the  public-houses  and 
their  drinkables  were  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea." 

Jane  Armstrong  was  a  girl  of  sound  sense 
and  right  feeling.  Unpalatable  as  the  em- 
ployment was,  she  nevertheless  saw  that  it 
was  her  duty,'  under  the  present  circum- 
stances, to  perform  it ;  so  she  quietly  made 
up  her  mind  to  the  task,  and  requested  her 
mother  to  call  her  at  the  necessary  hour  in 
the  morning. 

They  were  highly  respectable  and  respect- 
ed people,  Robert  Armstrong  and  his  wife, 
though  not^fil^vihg  in  the  sphere  exclusive  to 
gentlefolks.  ~i  Jane  iiadr  b^en  brought  up  weli 
rerfeCli^  con versattt  with  all  household  ^du- 
ties, her  education  in  other  respects  would 
scarcely  have  disgraced  the  first  lady  in  the 
county — for  it  must  be  remembered  that 
education  then  was  not  what  it  is  now — and 
her  parents  could  afford  to  spend  monej 
upon  their  only  child.  Amply  she  repaid 
them,  by  her  duty  and  affection.  One  little 
matter  only  did  they  disagree  upon,  and  that 
not  openly.  Very  indignant  was  Mrs.  Arm- 
strong at  Ronald  Payne's  presuming  to  look 
up  to  her,  and  exceedingly  sore  did  she  feel 
with  Jane  for  not  checking  this  presumption. 
But  she  could  urge  nothing  against  Ronald, 
excepting  that  he  was  a  poor,  rather  than  a 
rich,  man,  and  that  the  farm  he  rented  was 
regarded  as  an  unproductive  one.  His  pre- 
tensions created  a  vegr  ill-feeling  towards 
him  in  Mrs.  Armstrong's  mind,  for  she  be- 
lieved that,  but  for  him,  her  daughter  would 
consent  to  marry  the  wealthy  James  Darn- 
ley, and  so  become  mbtress  of  his  splendid 
farm. 

Before  it  was  light  the  next  morning,  Jane 
left  the  house  with  her  milk-pail:  only  the 
faintest  glimmering  of  light  was  appearing  in 
the  east.  There  was  no  rain,  and  the  wind 
had  dropped  to  a  calm ;  but  it  was  a  cold, 
raw  morning.    Jane  wrapped  her  woollen 


1863.] 


THE  SELF-CONVICTKD. 


257 


sbawl  closely  round  ber,  and  made  good 
speed. 

The  field  in  which  the  cow-sheds  were 
situated  was  bounded  on  the  left  by  a  lonely 
lane,  leadinfir  from  the  main  road.  It 
branched  off  in  yarfous  directions,  passing 
some  of  the  farm-houses.  Jane  had  reached 
the  field,  and  was  putting  down  her  milk- 
pail,  when  a  strange  noise  <^n  the  other  side 
of  tbe  hedge  caused  her  to  start,  and  listen. 
A  violent  struggle,  as  for  life  or  death, 
was  taking  place.  A  voice  that  was  cer- 
tainly familiar  to  her  twice  called  out  "Mur- 
der!" with  a  shriek  of  agony;  but  heavy 
blows,  seemingly  from  a  club  or  other  formid- 
able weapon,  soon  silenced  it,  and  some 
one  fell  to  the  earth  amidst  moans  and 
groans  of  anguish, 

"Lie  there,  and  be  still !"  burst  forth  an- 
other voice,  rising  powerfully  over  the  cries. 
'*  What !  you  are  not  finished  yet !  I  have 
laid  in  wait  for  ye  to  a  pretty  purpose,  if  ye 
be  to  escape  me  now.  One  I  two !  three !'' 
and  Jane  shuddered  and  turned  sick  as  she 
listened,  for  each  sentence  was  followed  by 
a  blow  upon  the  prostrate  form.  The  voice 
was  totally  strange  to  Jane— one  that  she 
had  never  heard  in  her  life — and  shocking 
blasphemy  was  mingled  with  the  words. 

Ere  silence  supervened,  Jane,  half  stupe- 
fied with  horror  and  fear,  silently  tore  her 
thick  shoes  off  her  feet,  leaving  them  where 
they  were,  in  her  agitation,  and  stole  away 
on  the.  damp  path,  gathering  her  clothes 
about  her,  so  that  not  a  sound  should  betray 
her  presence  to  those  on  the  other  side.  As 
she  widened  the  distance  between  herself 
and  that  fearful  scene,  her  speed  increased  ; 
she  flew,  rather  than  ran,  and  entered  her 
father  and  mother's  bedroom  to  fall  sense- 
less on  the  floor. 

Later  in  the  morning,  when  broad  day- 
light had  come,  a  crowd  stood  around  the 
murdered  man.  The  face  was  bruised  and 
bloody,  and  the  head  had  been  battered  to 
death ;  but  there  was  no  difficulty  in  recog- 
nising the  features  of  James  Darnley.  His 
pockets  were  turned  inside  out;  they  had 
been  rifled  of  their  contents,  and  a  thick, 
knotted  stick,  covered  with  brains  and  hair, 
lay  by  his  side.  It  was  supposed  he  had  a 
heavy  sum  about  him  in  his  pockets,  but  all 
had  been  abstracted. 

And  now  came  a  question,  first  whispered 
amongst  the  multitude,  but  indignant  voices 
repeated  it  louder  and  louder — 

**Who  is  the  murderer?" 

"  Ronald  Payne,"  was  the  answer,  deliber- 
ately uttered  by  a  bystander.    *'  I  have  just 

Yd.:  XXX.    NO.  U. 


heard  it  from  Mrs.  Armstrong's  own  lips. 
They  were  at  her  house  last  night  quarrel- 
ling and  contending,  and  she  knows  he  is  the 
murderer." 

"  Ronald  Payne !"  echoed  the  crowd,  with 
one  universal  accent  of  surprise  and  incredu- 
lity. 

"As  God  is  my  Judge,"  cried  the  unhap- 
py young  man,  for  he  was  also  present,  '*  I 
am  innocent  of  this  deed  !" 

"  You  have  long  been  upon  ill  terms,"  re- 
torted the  before-mentioned  bystander — and 
it  may  be  remarked  that  he  was  an  acquaint- 
ance of  Payne's ;  had  never  borne  anything 
but  kind  feeling  towards  him ;  yet  now,  so 
gratifying  is  it  to  tbe  vain  display  and  pride 
of  human  nature  to  be  mixed  up  with  one  of 
these  public  tales  of  horror,  he  suddenly  be- 
came nis  vehement  accuser.  *^  Mrs.  Arm- 
Ftrong  says  that  you  left  her  house  bickering 
with  each  other,  and  she  heard  you  assert, 
before  he  was  present,  that  you  hated  him, 
and  you  wished  he  was  a  thousand  miles 
away." 

"That  is  all  true,"  answered  Ronald,  turn- 
ing his  clear  eye  to  the  crowd,  who  now 
began  to  regard  him  with  doubt.  "  We 
taere  bickering  one  with  the  other  at  Mrs. 
Armstrong's  last  night ;  not  quarrelling,  but 
talking  at  each  other ;  but  no  ill  words  pass- 
ed between  us  after  we  left  the  house.  We 
walked  peaceably  together,  and  I  left  him 
at  his  own  door.  I  never  saw  him  after- 
wards till  I  saw  him  here  with  you,  lying 
' dead." 

Words  of  doubt,  hints  of  suspicion,  ran 
through  the  multitude,  headed  by  the  contu- 
macious bystander,  and  Ronald  Payne's 
cheeks,  as  he  listened,  burned  like  fire. 

"  How  can  you  think  I  would  have  a  hand 
in  such  an  awful  deed  I"  he  indignantly  ex- 
claimed. "Can  you  look  in  my  face,  and 
believe  me  one  capable  of  committing  mur- 
der ?" 

^  '*  Faces  don't  go  for  nothing,  sir,"  inter- 
posed the  constable,  Samuel  Dodd,  who  had 
come  bustling  up,  and  heard  the  accusation 
nmde;  "we  dont  tak^'em  into  account jn 
these  matters.  I  am  afeared,  sir,  it  is  my 
duty  to  put  the  ancuffs  on  you.^' 

"  Handcuffs  on  me  V*  exclaimed  Ronald, 
passionately. 

"  You  may  be  wanted,  at  the  crowner's 
quest,  and  perhaps  at  another  tribune  after 
that.  It  is  more  than  my  office  is  worth  to 
let  you  be  at  large." 

"  Do  you  fear  I  should  attempt  to  run 
away  ?  retorted  Ronald. 

Such  steps  have  been  heered  on,  sir," 
11 


« 


258 


THE  BELF-COHYIGTED/  ""* 


[Oct, 


answered  the  constable ;  '*  and  my  office  is 
give  me,  you  see,  to  pervent  such. ' 

The  idea  of  resistance  rose  irresistibly  to 
the  mind  of  Ronald  Payne,  but  his  better 
judgment  came  to  his  aid,  and  he  yielded  to 
fhe  constable,  who  was  calling  on  those 
around  to  help  to  secure  him  in  the  king's 
name — ^good  old  George  III. 

"  I  resign  thyself  to  circumstances,"  was 
his  remark  to  the  officer,  '*  and  will  not  op- 
pose your  performing  what  is  your  apparent 
duty.  Yet,  oh  I  believe  me,"  he  added, 
earnestly,  ^*  I  am  entirely  innocent  of  this 
foul  deed — as  innocent  as  you  can  be.  I 
repeat,  that  I  never  saw  James  Darnley  after 
I  left  him  at  his  own  house  last  night ;  and, 
far  from  quarrelling  during  our  walk  home, 
we  were  amicably  talking  over  farming  mat- 
ters." 

When  the  constable  had  secured  his  pris- 
oner in  the  place  known  as  the  "  lock-up," 
he  made  his  way  to  Mr.  Armstrong's,  in- 
tensely delighted  at  all  the  excitement  and 
stir,  and  anxious  to  gather  every  possible 
gossip  about  it,  true  or  untrue.  Such  an 
event  had  never  happened  in  the  place,  since, 
he  was  sworn  in  constable.  In  Farmer 
Armstrong's  hall  were  gathered  several  peo- 
ple, Sir  John' Seabury,  the  landlord  of  that 
and  the  neighboring  farms,  standing  in  the 
midst. 

Sir  John  was  an  affable  man,  and,  as  times 
went,  a  liberal  landlord.  It  happened  that 
he  was  then  just  appointed  high  sheriff  of 
Worcestershire  for  the  ensuing  year,  his 
name  having  been  the  one  pricked  by  the 
king. 

When  the  constable  entered,  all  facjss 
were  turned  towards  him.  Several  voices 
spoke,  but  Sir  John's  rose  above  the.  rest. 

"  Well,  constable,  what  news  ?" 

"  He's  in  the  lock-up,  sir,"  was  Mr.  Sam 
Dodd's  reply  ;  "  and  there  he'll  be,  safe  and 
sound,  till  the  crowner  holds  his  quest." 

"  WhT)  is  in  the  lock-up?"  asked  Sir  John, 
for  the  parties  now  present  were  not  those 
who  had  been  at  the  taking  of  Payne  :  they 
had  flocked,  one  and  all,  to  the  "  lock-up," 
crowd-like,  at  the  heels  of  the  constable  and 
his  prisoner.  And  Sir  John  Seabury,  having 
but  just  entered,  had  not  heard  of  Mrs.  Arm- 
strong's suspicion. 

"  Him  what  did  the  murder,  sir/'  was  the 
constable's  explanatory  answer,  who  had 
reasoned  himself  to  the  conclusion,  as  rural 
constables  were  apt  to  do  in  those  days,  that, 
because  some  slight  suspicions  attached  to 
Payne,  he  must  inevitably  have  committed 
it.     '*  And  he  never  said  a  word,"  eiulted 


Mr.  Dodds,  "  but  he  held  out  his  hands  for 
the  ancuffs  as  if  he  knowed  they'd  fit:  he 
only  declared  he  warn't  guilty,  and  walked 
along  with  his  head  up*  like  a  lord,  and  not  a 
bit  o  shame  about  him,  saying  that  the  truth 
would  come  out  sooner  or  later.  It's  a  sight 
to  see,  gentlemen,  the  brass  them  murderers 
has,  and  many  on  'em  keeps  it  up  till  they's 
a-ridin'  io  the  drop." 

*'  How  was  it  brought  home  to  him  ? — 
who  is  it  ?"  reiterated  the  baronet 

*'  It's  young  Mr.  Payne,"  answered  the 
officer,  wiping  his  face,  and  then  throwing 
the  handkerchief  into  his  hat»  which  stood  on- 
the  floor  beside  him. 

^<  Mr.  Payne  1"  repeated  Sir  John  Seabury 
Jn  astonishment,  whilst  Jane,  never  for  a  mo- 
ment believing  the  words,  but  startled  into 
anger,  stood  forward,  and  spoke  with  trem- 
bling lips : 

''What  are  you  talking  about,  constable  ? 
what  do  you  mean  ?" 

*'  Mean  miss !  Why  it  were  young  Mr. 
Payne  what  did  the  murder,  and  I  have  took 
him  into  custody." 

"  The  constable  says  right,"  added  Mrs. 
Armstrong.  **  There  is  not  a  doubt  about 
it.  He  and  Darnley  were  disputing  here  all 
last  evening,  and  they  left  with  illrfeelinff 
between  them  :  who  else  can  have  done  it  ? ' 

But  she  was  interrupted  by  Miss  Arm- 
strong ;  and  it  should  be  explained  that  Jane, 
having  just  risen  from  the  bed  where  they 
had  placed  her  in  the  morning,  had  not^  until 
this  moment,  known  of  the  accusation  against 
Payne.  She  turned  to  Sir  John  Seabury, 
she  appealed  to  her  father,  she  essayed  to 
remonstrate  with  her  mother,  her  anger  and 
distress  at  length  finding  vent  in  hysterical 
words. 

<'  Father !  Sir  John  !  there  is  some  terrible 
mistake ;  mother !  how  can  you  stand  by  and 
listen?  I  told  you  the  murderer  was  a 
stranger — I  told  you  so  :  what  do  they  mean 
by  accusing  Ronald  Payne  ?" 

Jane  might  have  held  her  tongue,  for  in- 
stilled suspicion  is  a  serpent  that  gains  quick 
and  sure  ground ;  and  perhaps  there  was 
scarcely  one  around  her  who  did  not  think 
it  probable  that  Payne  was  the  guilty  man. 
They  listened  to  Jane's  reiterated  account  of 
the  mommg's  scene  she  had  been  an  ear- 
witness  to— to  her  assertion  that  it  was  im- 
possible Ronald  Payne  could, have  been  the 
murderer ;  but  they  hinted  how  unlikely  it 
was  that,  in  her  terror,  she  was  capable  of 
recognizing,  or  not  recognising  voices,  and 
she  saw  she  was  not  fully  believed. 

She  found  herself,  subsequently,  she  hardly 


1858.] 


THE  SKIP-CONVICrrED. 


259 


knew  bow,  in  their  best  parlor — a  bandsome 
room,  and  handsomely  furnbbed — alone  with 
Sir  John  Seabury.  She  had  an  indefinite 
idea  afterwards,  that,  in  passing  the  door,  she 
had  drawn  him  in.  He  stood  there  with  his 
eyes  fixed  on  Jane,  waiting  for  her  to  speak. 

«  Oh,  Sir  John  !  Sir  John  !"  she  replied, 
dinging  to  his  arm  in  the  agitation  of  the 
moment  as  she  might  cling  to  that  of  a 
brother,  "  I  see  I  am  not  believed  :  yet,  in- 
deed I  have  told  Che  truth.  It  was  a  stranger 
who  murdered  Mr.  Darnley." 

**  Certainly  the  voice  of  one  we  are  inti- 
mate with  is  not  readily  mistaken,  even  in 
moments  of  terror/'  was  Sir  John  Seabury's 
reply. 

"  It  was  an  ill  voice,  a  wicked  voice ;  a 
voice  that,  independently  of  any  accessory 
drcottistaDces,  one  could  only  suppose  be- 
longed to  a  wicked  man.  But  the  language 
it  used  was  awful ;  such  that  I  had  never 
imagined  could  be  uttered." 

''And  it  was  a  voice  you  did  not  re- 
cognize ?" 

'*  It  was  a  voice  I  could  not  recognize,'* 
returned^ Jane,  "  for  I  had  never  until  then 
heard  it." 

Sir  John  looked  keenly  at  her.  **  Is  this 
ramour  correct  that  they  have  been  now 
hinting  at,"  he  whispered — "  you  heard  it  as 
well  as  I — that  there  was  an  attachment  be- 
tweon  you  and  Ronald  Payne?  and  that 
there  was  ill-feeling  between  him  and  Darn- 
ley  in  consequence  ?" 

**  I  see,  even  you,  do  not  beHeve  me,"  cried 
Jane,  bursting  into  tears.  ''There  is  an 
attachment  between  us  :  but  do  you  think  I 
would  avow  such  an  attachment  for  a  mur- 
derer ?  The  man  whom  I  heard  commit  the 
deed  was  a  stranger,"  she  continued  ear- 
niestly,  "  and  Ronald  Payne  was  not  near  the 
spot  at  the  hour." 

'*  There  is  truth  in  your  face.  Hiss  Arm- 
strong," observed  Sir  John.,  gazing  at  her. 

"  And  truth  at  my  heart,    she  added. 

And  before  he  could  prevent  her,  she  had 
slipped  towards  the  ground,  and  was  kneel- 
ing on  the  carpet  at  the  feet  of  Sir  John. 

*'  As  truly  as  that  I  must  one  day  answer 
before  the  bar  of  God,"  she  said,  clasping 
her  hands  together,  "  so  have  I  spoken  now : 
and  according  to  my  truth  in  this,  may  God 
deal  then  with  me !  Sir  John  Seabury,  do 
you  believe  me  ?" 

**  I  do  believe  you,  my  dear  young  lady," 
be  answered,  the  conviction  of  her  honest 
truth  forcing  itself  upon  his  mind.  "  And 
however  this  unfortuntite  business  may  turn 
out  for  Ronald  Payne,  in  my  mind  he  will 


be  from  henceforth  an  innocent  and  a  wrong- 
ed man." 

"  Can  your  influence  not  release  him  ?" 
inquired  Jane  :  "  you  are  powerful." 

"  Impossible.  I  could  do  no  more  than 
yourself.     He  is  in  the  hands  of  the  law." 

"But,  you  can  speak  to  his  character,  at 
the  coroner's  inquest  ?"  she  rejoined.  "  You 
know  how  good  it  has  always  been." 

Sir  John  kindly  eiplained  to  her  that  all 
testimonials  to  character  must  be  offered  at 
the  trial,  should  it  be  Payne's  fate  to  be 
committed  for  one. 

When  further  inquiries  came  to  be  institu- 
ted, it  was  found  that  Darnley  had  been 
roused  from  his  slumbers,  and  called  out  of 
his  house,  about  half  an  hour,  perhaps  less, 
before  the  murder  was  committed.  The  only 
person  deposing  to  this  fact  was  this  house- 
keeper— a  most  respectable  woman,  who 
slept  in  the  room  over  her  master.  She  de* 
clared  that  she  had  been  unable  to  sleep  in 
the  early  part  of  the  night,  feeling  nervous 
at  the  violence  pf  the  wind ;  that,  towards 
morning  she  dropped  asleep,  and  was  awak- 
ened by  a  noise,  and  by  some  one^  shouting 
out  her  master's  name.  That  she  then  heard 
her  mastter  open  his  window,  and  speak  with 
the  person  outside,  whoever  it  was ;  and  that 
he  almost  immediately  afterwards  went  down 
stairs,  and  out  at  the  house  door. 

"Who  was  it?"  asked  all  the  curious 
listeners,  "and  what  did  he  want  with 
Darnley  ?" 

The  housekeeper  did  not  know.  She 
thought  the  voice  was  that  of  a  stranger — 
at  any  rate,  it  was  one  she  did  not  recognize. 
And  she  could  not  say  what  he  wanted,  for 
she  had  not  heard  the  words  that  passed : 
in  fact,  she  was  but  half  awake  at  the  time» 
and  had  thought  it  was  one  of  the  farm 
servants. 

The  coroner's  inquest  was  held,  and  the 
several  facts  already  related  were  deposed  to. 
Mrs.  Armstrong's  evidence  told  against, 
Jane's  for,  the  prisoner.  No  article  belong- 
ing to  the  unfortunate  James  Darnley  had 
been  found,  save  a  handkerchief,  and  that  wa$ 
fcuni  in  the  pocket  of  Ronald  Payne,  He 
accounted  for  it  in  this  way.  He  left  his 
own  pocket-handkerchief,  he  said,  a  red  silk 
one,  by  accident  that  night  on  the  table  at 
Mrs.  Armstrong's — and  this  was  proved  to 
be  correet;  that  when  he  and  Darnley  got 
out,  the  wind  was  so  boisterous  they  could 
not  keep  their  hats  on.  Darnley  tied  his 
handkerchief  over  his;  Payne  would  have 
done  the  same,  but  could  not  find  it,  so  he 
had  to  hold  his  hat  on  with  hi&hand.    That 


260 


THE  SELF-COHVICIED. 


fOct 


when  Darnley  entered  ^  his  house,  he  threw 
the  handkerchief  to  his  companion,  to  use  it 
for  the  like  purpose  the  remainder  of  his  way, 
he  having  further  to  go  than  Darnley.  And, 
finally,  Payne  asserted  that  he  had  put  the 
handkerchief  in  his  pocket  upon  getting  up 
that  morning,  intending  to  return  it  to  Darn- 
ley as  soon  as  he  saw  him. 

Tihe  handkerchief  was  produced  in  court. 
Xl  WAt^  a  white  lawn,  large,  and  of  fine  tex- 
l^rt ,  m.^rked  in  full  '*  James  Darnley.'* 

'<  j^'Ie  Nvas  always  a  hit  of  a  dandy,  poor 
fellow  "  whispered  the  country  rustics,  scan- 
nine  ih*®  ^hite  handkerchief,  "especially 
when  he   went  a- courting."       ^    ^  ^.    . 

RonaML  Pftyi^®»  '^  <^°®  proof  of  his  inno- 
cence, atfttiec '  that  he  was  in  bed  at  the  time 
the  murder  ti  ^  cormmitted.  A  man  servant 
of  his,  whoMeL*^  ^^  *'^®  ^*™®  ^^^  ^  himself, 
also  deposed  to  t^^s '»  *n^  s^*^  ^^^^  »  laborer 
came  to  the  house  with  ^^^  "^ws,  that  a  man 
had  been  found  Mle  d,  before  his  master  came 
down  stairs.  But  u^^on  being  asked  whether 
his  master  could  not  Jiave  Jeft  his  bed-room 
and  the  hause  in  the  ni  jbt,  and  have  subse- 
quenUy  returned  to  it,  wit**iOut  his  knowledge, 
he  admitted  such  might  h.ive  been  the  case, 
though  it  wiw  next  to  a  "  maral  impossibility 
— auch  were  his  words— for  it  to  have  been 
lone  without  his  hearing.  «. ,-  , 

But  what  was  the  verdict?— ''  WUfiil  mtir- 
der  €^inst  some  persmor  j^mom  wiknown; 
for  the  jury  and  the  coroner  did  not  find  the 
evidence  sufficiently  strong  to  commit  Payne 
for  trial.  So  he  left  the  court  a  discharged 
but  twC,  as  the  frequent  saying  runs, 


man 


wiihottt  a  stain  upon  his  character.  Although 
tb£  vewiiet,  contrary  to  ffeneral  expectation, 
was  in  his  favor,  the  whole  neighborhood  be- 
lieved him  guilty.  And  from^  that  moment, 
so  vioient  is  popular  opinion,  whether  for 
good  or  for  ill,  he  was  exposed  to  nearly  all 
the  penalties  oif  a  guilty  man.  A  dog  could 
flcarcely  have  bean  treated  worse  than  he 
was ;  and,  sofar  as  talking  against  him  went, 
Mrs.  Armstrong  headed  the  malcontents. 


II. 


So  matters  went  on  till  the  m6nth  of  Feb- 
ruary. In  the  quiet  dusk  of  one  of  its  eve- 
nings, Jane  Armstrong  crfept  away  from  her 
house,  and,  taking  a  direction  opposite  to  that 
where  the  muroer  was  committed,  walked 
qmckly  along  till  her  father's  orchard  was  in 
view.  Crossing  the  stile  of  this,  she  turned 
to  the  right,  and  there  stood  Ronald  Payne. 

"  This  is  kind  of  you,  Jane,"  he  said,  as  he 
seated  her  upon  the  stump  of  a  felled  tree, 


and  placed  himself  beside  her.    **  God  bless 
you  for  this !" 

<*  It  is  but  a  little  matter,  Ronald,  to  be 
thanked  for,"  she  replied.  "  Perhaps  it  is 
not  exactly  what  I  ought  to  do,  coming  se- 
cretly to  meet  you  here,  but "       * 

"  It  is  a  great  matter,  Jane,"  he  interrupt- 
ed, bitterly.  "  I  am  now  a  proscribed  man ; 
a  thing  for  boys  to  hoot  at.  It  requires 
some  courage,  Jane,  to  meet  a  murderer." 

"I  know  your  innocence,  Ronald,"  she 
answered,  as,  in  all  confiding  affection,  she 
leaned  upon  his  bosom,  while  her  tears  fell 
fast.  "  Had  you  been  tried — condemned — 
executed,  I  would  still  have  testified  unceas- 
ingly to  your  innocence." 

"  I  sent  for  you  here,  Jane,"  he  resumed, 
*'  to  tell  you  my  plans.  I  am  about  to  leave 
this  country  for  America;  perhaps,  I  may 
there  walk  about  without  the  brand  upon 
my  brow." 

"Oh«  Ronald!"  she  ejaculated,  "is  this 
your  fortitude !  Did  you  not  promise  me  to 
bear  this  affliction  with  patience,  and  to.  hope 
for  better  days?" 

"  Jane,  I  did  so  promise  you,"  replied  the 
unhappy  young  man ;  "  and,  if  it  weren  ot  for 
that  promise,  I  should  have  gone  long  ago : 
but  things  get  worse  every  day,  and  I  can  ;io 
longer  bear  it.  I  believe  if  I  remained  here 
I  should  go  mad.  See  what  a  life  mine  is! 
I  am  buffeted — trampled  down — spit  upon 
— shunned — jeered— deserted  by  my  fellow- 
creatures  ;  not  by  one,  but  by  all :  save  you, 
Jane,  there  is  not  a  human  being  who  will 
speak  with  me.  /would  not  so  goad  another, 
were  he  even  a  known  murderer,  whilst  lam 
but  a  suspected  one.  I  have  not  deserved 
this  treatment,  God  knows  I  have  not !"  and, 
suddenly  breaking  off,  he  bent  down  his  head, 
and,  giving  way  to  the  misery  that  oppressed 
him,  lor  some  moments  sobbed  aloud  like  a 
child. 

''Ronald,  dearest  Ronald,"  she  entreated, 
« think  better  of  this  for  my  sake.     Trust 

in " 

''It  is  useless,  Jane,  to  urge  me,"  he 
interrupted.  "I  cannot  remain  in  Eng- 
land." 

Again  ahe  tried  to  combat  his  resolution: 
it  seemed  useless :  but,  unwilling  to  giye  up 
the  point,  she  wrung  a  promise  from  him 
that  he  would  well  reconsider  the  matter 
during  the  following  night  and  day;  and, 
agreeing  to  meet  him  on  the  same  spot  the 
next  evening,  she  parted  from  him  with  his 
kisses  warm  upon  her  lips. 

"Where  can  Jane  b^?"  exclaimed  Mrs. 
Armstrong,  callmg  out,  and  looking  up  and 


1868.] 


THE  SELF-COKYICTED. 


261 


down  the  house  in  search  of  her.  "  Rohert, 
do  you  know  ?" 

Mr.  Armstrong  knew  nothing  about  it. 

The  ladj  went  into  the  kitchen,  where  the 
two  in-door  servants  were  seated  at  their  tea. 

''Susan — Benjamin,  do  you  know  anything 
of  Miss  Jane?" 

''She  is  up  there  in  the  orchard  with 
young  Mr.  Payne,  ma*am,"  interposed  Ned, 
the  carter's  boy,  who  stood  by. 

"How  do  you  know?*'  demanded  Mrs. 
Armstrong,  wrathfuUy. 

"  Because  I  brought  her  a  message  from 
him  to  go  there.  So  I  just  trudged  up  a 
short  while  agone,  and  there  I  see  'em.  lie 
was  a-kissin'  of  her,  or  something  o'  that." 

"My  daughter  with  himP*  cried  Mrs. 
Armstrong,  her  face  in  a  flame,  whilst  Susan 
overbalanced  her  chair  in  her  haste  to  admin- 
ister a  little  wholesome  correction  to  the 
bold-speaking  boy — "  my  daughter  with  a 
murderer  I" 

"  That's  why  I  went  up,"  chimed  in  the 
lad,  dodging  out  of  Susan  s  way.  "I  feared 
he  might  be  for  killin'  Miss  Jane  as  he  killed 
t'other,  so  I  thought  I'd  watch  *em  a  bit." 

Away  flew  Mrs.  Armstrong  to  her  hus- 
band, representing  the  grievance  with  all  the 
exaggeration  of  an  angry  woman.  Loud, 
stinging  denunciations  from  both  greeted 
Jane  upon  her  entrance,  and  she,  miserable 
and  heartbroken,  could  offer  no  resistance  to 
the  anger  of  her  incensed  parents.  It  was 
very  seldom  Mr.  Armstrong  gave  way  to 
I»Bsion,  never  with  Jane,  but  he  did  that 
night ;  and  she,  terrified  and  sick  at  heart, 
promised  compliance  with  his  commands 
never  to  see  Ronald  Payne  again. 

Here  was  another  blow  for  the  ill-fated 
young  man.  Whether  he  had  wavered  or 
not,  after  his  previous  interview  with  Jane, 
must  remain  unknown,  but  he  now  deter- 
mined to  leave  England,  and  without  loss  of 
time.  He  went  to  Sir  John  Seabury,  and 
gave  up  the  lease  of  his  farm.  It  was  said 
that  Sir  John  urged  liim  to  stop  and  battle 
out  the  storm;  but  in  vain.  He  disposed 
privately  of  his  stock  and  furniture,  and  by 
the  first  week  in  March  he  was  on  his  way 
to  Liverpool. 

It  was  on  the  following  Saturday  that  Jane 
Armstrong  accompanied  her  father  and 
mother  to  Worcester.  She  seemed  as  much 
like  a  person  dead  as  alive,  and  Susan  said, 
in  confidence  to  a  gossip,  that  young  Mr. 
Payne's  untoward  fate  was  breaking  her 
heart.  The  city,  in  the  afternoon,  wore  an 
aspect  of  gaity  and  bustle  far  beyond  that 
of  the  customary  market-day,  for  the  judges 


were  expected  in  from  Oxford  to  hold  the 
assizes :  a  grand  holiday  then,  and  still  a 
grand  show  for  the  Worcester  people.  Jane 
and  the  mother  spent  the  day  with  some 
friends,  whose  residence  was  situated  on  the 
London- road,  as  it  is  called,  the  way  by 
which  the  judges  entered  the  city.  It  has 
been  mentioned,  that  the  high  sheriff  for  that 
year  was  Sir  John  Seabui;}* ;  and,  about  three 
o'clock,  he  went  out  with  bis  procession  to 
meet  the  judges,  halting  at  the  little  village 
of  Whittinston  until  they  should  arrive. 

It  may  have  been  an  hour  or  more  after 
its  departure  from  the  city  that  the  sweet, 
melodious  bells  of  the  cathedral  struck  out 
upon  the  air,  giving  notice  that  the  cavalcade 
had  turned  and  was  advancing ;  and,  in  due 
time,  a  flourish  of  trumpets  announced  its 
approach.  The  heralds  rode  first,  at  a  slow 
and  stately  pace,  with  their  trumpets,  pre- 
ceding a  aouble  line  of  javelin  men,  in  the 
sumptuous  liveries  of  the  Seabury  family, 
th^ir  javelins  in  rest,  and  their  horses,  hand- 
somely caparisoned,  pawing  the  ground.  A 
chaise,  thrown  open,  followed,  containing  the 
governor  of  the  county  jail,  his  white  wand 
raised  in  the  air ;  and  then  came  the  sheriflf's 
carriage,  an  equipage  of  surprising  elegance, 
the  Seabury  arms  shining  forth  on  the  panels, 
and  its  four  stately  steeds  prancing  and 
chafing  at  the  deliberate  pace  to  which  they 
were  restrained. 

It  contained  only  one  of  the  judges,  all- 
imposing  in  his  flowing  wig  and  scarlet  robes. 
The  Oxford  assizes  not  having  terminated 
when  he  left,  he  had  hastenea  on  to  open 
court  at  Worcester,  leaving  his  learned 
brother  to  follow.  Opposite  to  him  sat  Sir 
John  Seabury,  with  his  chaplain  in  his  gown 
and  bands:  and  as  Jane  stood  with  her 
mother  and  their  friends  at  the  open  window, 
the  eye  of  their  affiEkble  young  landlord  caught 
hers,  and  he  leaned  forward  and  bowed  :  but 
the  smile  on  his  face  was  checked,  for  he  too 
surely  read  the  worn  and  breaking  spirit  be- 
trayed by  Jane's.  Some  personal  friends  of 
the  sheriflf  followed  the  carriage  on  horse- 
back ;  and,  closing  the  procession,  rode  a 
crowd  of  Sir  John's  well-mounted  tenants, 
the'  portly  person  of  Mr.  Armstrong  conspic- 
uous in  the  midst.  But  when  Mrs.  Arm- 
strong turned  towards  her  daughter  with  an 
admiring  remark  on  the  pageantry,  Jane  was 
sobbing  bitterly. 

Mrs.  and  Miss  Armstrong  left  their  friends' 
house  when  tea  was  over,  on  their  way  to 
the  inn  used  by  Mr.  Armstrong  at  the  oppo- 
site end  of  the  town.  They  were  in  High- 
street,  passing  the  Guildhall,  Jane  walking 


268 


THE  SELF-OOJN  VKTi'KD. 


[Oct. 


dreamily  forwards,  and  her  mother  gazing  at 
the  unasual  groups  scattered  aboat  it, 
though  all  signs  of  the  recent  cavalcade  had 
faded  awaj,  when  Master  Sam  Dodd,  the 
constable,  met  them.  He  stood  still,  and 
addressed  Jane. 

"  I  think  we  have  got  the  right  roan  at 
last,  Miss  Armstrong.  I  suppose  it  will  turn 
out,  after  all,  that  you  were  right  about 
younfir  Mr.  Payne.? 

"  What  has  happened  ?*'  faltered  Jane. 

''We  have  took  a  man,  Miss,- on  strong 
suspicions  that  he  is  the  one  what  cooked 
Mr.  Darnley.  We  have  been  upon  the 
scent  this  week  past.  You  must  be  in  readi- 
ness, ladies,  for  you'll  be  wanted  on  the  trial, 
and,  it  will  come  on,  on  Tuesday  or  Wednes- 
day. You'll  get  your  summonses  on  Mon- 
day morning." 

'*  Good  heart  alive,  constable !"  ci^ed  the 
startled  Mrs.  Armstrong,  *'you  don't  mean 
to  say  that  Ronald  Payne  is  mnocent  !'* 

"why,  ma'am,  that  have  got  to  be  proved. 
For  my  part,  I  think  matters  would  be  best 
left  as  they  is,  and  not  rake  'em  up  again : 
he  have  been  treated  so  very  shameful,  if  it 
should  turn  out  that  he  warn't  guilty." 

It  was  even  as  the  constable  said.  A  man 
had  been  arrested  and  thrown  into  the  county 
jail  at  Worcester,  charged  with  the  wilful 
murder  of  James  Darnley. 


III. 

Late  on  Tuesday  evening,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Armstrong,  with  their  daughter,  drove  into 
Worcester,  to  be  in  readiness  for  the  next 
day's  trial.  It  was  a  dull,  rainy  evening, 
and  Jane  leaned  back  in  the  carriage,  almost 
careless  as  to  what  the  following  day  would 
bring  forth,  since  Ronald  Payne  had  gone 
away  for  ever. 

At  about  five  minutes  past  nine  in  the 
morning,  the  presiding  judge  took  his  seat 
on  the  bench.  The  crowded,  noisy  court 
was  hushed  to  silence,  the  prisoner  was 
brought  in,  and  the  trial  began. 

The  chief  fact  against  the  accused  was, 
that  the  pocket-book,  with  its  contents,  known 
to  have  been  in  Darnley's  possession  on  the 
ill-fated  morning,  had  been  traced  to  the  pris- 
oner. The  bank-notes  he  had  changed 
away,  and  a  silver  pencil-case  that  wos  in  it 
he  had  pledged.  All  this  he  did  not  deny  ; 
but  he  asserted  that  he  had  found  the  pocket 
book  hid  in  the  hedge,  close  to  the  spot, 
when  he  had  been  prowling  about  there  a 
few  hours  subsequent  to  the   murder.     It 


might  be  as  he  said,  and  the  counsel  chattered 
wisely  to  each  other,  saying  there  was  no 
evidence  to  convict  him. 

The  last  witness  called  was  Jane  Arm- 
strong ;  and  her  sensible,  modest,  and  lady- 
like appearance  prepossessed  every  one  in 
her  favor.  She  gBLve  her  testimony  clearly 
and  distinctly.  The  deadly  struggle  she  had 
heard ;  the  groans  of  the  victim,  and  his 
shrieks  of  murder ;  the  words  uttered  by 
the  assailant;  the  blows  which  had  been 
dealt,  and  the  fall  of  the  murdered  man — aH 
was  separately  deposed  to.  Still,  the  crime 
was  not  brought  home  to  the  prisoner.  Jane 
thought  her  testimony  was  over,  and  was 
waiting  for  her  dismissal  from  the  witness- 
box',  when  the  counsel  for  the  prosecution 
addressed  her. 

'*  Look  around  you,  young  lady ;  can  you 
point  out  any  one  present  as  the  murderer  ?'* 

She  looked  attentively  round  the  court, 
but  as  she  had  not  seen  the  murderer  on  that 
dark  morninff,  the  effort  was  vun ;  but, 
though  she  felt  it  was  fruitless,  she  once  more 
gazed  minutely  and  carefully  at  the  sea  of 
faces  around  her — at  the  prisoner's  amongst 
the  rest;  and  turning  again  to  the  judge, 
she  shook  her  head. 

At  this  moment  a  voice  was  heard,  rising 
harshly  above  all  the  murmur  of  the  court. 
Jane's  back  was  towards  the  speaker,  and 
she  did  not  know  from  whom  it  came,  but 
the  tones  thrilled  upon  her  ear  with  horror, 
for  she  reco^ized  them  instantaneously. 
They  were  addressed  to  the  judge. 

"  My  lord,  she's  going  to  swear  away  my 
life." 

"  That's  the  man  !"  uttered  Jane,  with 
the  startling  earnestness  of  truth — "  I  know 
him  by  his  voice." 

The  prisoner — for  he  had  been  the  speaker 
— quailed  as  he  heard  her,  and  an  ashy  pale- 
ness  overspread  his  face.  The  judge  gazed 
sternly,  but  somewhat  mournfully,  at  him, 
and  spoke  words  that  are  remembered  in 
Worcester  unto  this  day. 

"  Prisoner,  yon  have  hung  yourself y 

The  trial  proceeded  to  its  close.  A  ver- 
dict of  Wilful  Murder  was  returned  against 
the  prisoner,  and  the  judge,  placing  on  his 
head  the  dread  black  cap,  pronounced  upon 
him  the  extreme  sentence  of  the  law. 

Before  he  suffered,  he  confessed  his  guilt, 
with  the  full  particulars  attending  it.  It 
may  be  remembered,  that  on  the  stormy 
evening  when  the  chief  actors  in  this  history 
were  introduced  to  the  reader,  the  unfortu- 
nate James  Darnley  spoke  of  having  just 
returned  from  a  neighboring  public  fair.     At 


1863.] 


THS  SELF-GONYICrEa 


268 


ihis  fur,  it  seemed,  he  had  entered  a  public- 
house,  and  finding  there  some  farmers  of  his 
acquaintance,  he  sat  down  with  them  to  drink 
a  glass  of  ale.  In  the  course  of  conversa- 
tion he  spoke  of  the  stock,  cattle,  &c.,  he 
had  just  sold,  and  the  sum  he  had  received 
for  it,  the  money  beinff  then — ;he  himself 
gratuitously  added — in  his  breeches-pocket. 
He  mentioned  also  his  intended  Journey  to 
Worcester  market  the  following  day,  and 
that  there  his  business  would  be  to  buy. 

The  wretched  man,  afterwards  his  mur- 
derer, was  present  amongst  various  other 
strangers,  which  a  fair  is  apt  to  collect  to- 
gether, apd  he  formed  the  diabolical  project 
of  robbing  him  that  night;  but  by  some 
means  or  other  the  intention  was  frustrated. 
How,  was  never  clearly  ascertained,  but  it 
was  supposed,  through  Damley's  leaving  for 
home  at  an  unusually  early  hour,  that  he 
night  be  in  time  to  pay  a  visit  to  the  house 
of  Miss  Armstrong.  The  villain,  however, 
was  not  to  be  so  baulked.  Rightly  judging 
that  Damley  would  not  remove  his  money 
from  his  breeches- pocket,  as  he  would  require 
it  at  Worcester  market  the  following  day,  he 
made  his  way  to  his  victim's  house  in  the 
early  dark  of  the  ensuing  winter'  morning, 
and  called  him  up.  A  strange  proceeding, 
the  reader  will  say,  for  one  with  the  inten- 
tions he  held.  Yes.  There  stood  James 
Darnley  shivering  at  his  chamber  window, 
suddenly  roused  out  of  his  bed,  from  a  sound 
sleep,  by  the  knocking;  and  there,  under- 
neath, stood  one  in  the  dark,  whose  form  he 
was  unable  to  distinguish  ;  but  it  seemed  a 
friendly  voice  that  spoke  to  him,  and  it  told 
a  plausible  tale — that  Darnley's  cows  had 
broken  from  their'enclosure  and  were  stroll- 
ing away,  trespassing,  and  that  he  would  do 
well  to  rise  and  hasten  to  them. 

With  a  few  cordial  thanks  to  the  unknown 
Warner,  and  a  pithy  anathema  on^  his  cows, 
Darnley  thrust  on  his  knee-breeches — the 
breeches,  as  his  destroyer  had  foreseen — and 
his  farm-jacket,  went  down  stairs,  and  de- 
parted hastily  on  his  errand.  The  reader 
need  be  told  no  more. 

This  was  the  substance  of  his  confession ; 
and  on  the  appointed  day  he  was  placed  on 
a  cart  to  be  drawn  to  execution.  At  that 
period,  the  gallows  consecrated  to  Worcester 
criminals  was  erected  on  Red-hill,  a  part  of 
the  London-road,  situated  about  midway 
between  Worcester  and  Wbittington,  and 
here  he  was  executed.  An  exhibition  of  the 
sort  generally  attracts  its  spectators,  but 
such  an  immense  assemblage  has  rarely  been 
collected  in  Worcester,  whether  before  or 


since,  as  was  gathered  together  to  witness 
the  show  on  the  day  of  execution. 

In  proportion  as  the  tide  had  turned  against 
Ronald  Payne,  so  did  it  now  set  in  for  him. 
The  neighborhood,  one  and  all,  took  shame 
to  themselves  for  their  conduct  to  an  inno- 
cent man,  and  it  was  astonishing  to  observe 
how  quick  thsy  were  in  declaring  that  they 
must  have  be^n  fools  to  suspect  a  kind- 
hearted,  honorable  man  could  be  guilty  of 
murder.  Mrs.  Armstong's  self-reproaches 
were  keen :  she  was  a  just  woman,  and  she 
knew  that  she  had  treated  him  with  bitter 
harshness.  Sir  John  Seabury,  however,did  not 
waste  words  in  condolence  and  reproaches, 
as  the  others  did :  he  despatched  a  trusty 
messenger  to  Liverpool,  in  the  hope  of  catch- 
ing Payne  before  he  embarked  for  a  foreign 
land,  and,  as  vessels  in  those  times  did  not 
start  every  day  as  steamers  do  in  these,  he 
was  successful. 


IV. 


It  was  a  beautiful  afternoon  in  the  middle 
of  March  :  the  villagers  were  decked  out  as 
for  a  holiday ;  garlands  and  festoons  denoted 
that  there  was  some  unusual  cause  for  re- 
joicing, and  the  higher  class  of  farmers  and 
their  wives  were  grouped  together,  convers- 
ing cheerfully.  Jane  Armstong  stood  by  her 
mother,  a  happy  flush  upon  her  pleasing 
countenance.  It  was  the  hour  of  the  ex- 
pected return  of  Ronald  Payne,  and  a  rustic 
band  of  music  had  gone  forth  to  meet  the 
stage-coach. 

Everybody  was  talking,  nobody  listening, 
the  buzz  of  expectation  rose  louder  and 
louder,  and  soon  the  band  was  heard  return- 
ing, half  of  it  blowing  away  at  *'  See  the  Con- 
quering Hero  comes,  the  other  half  (not  hav- 
ing been  able  to  agree  amongst  themselves) 
drumming  and  whistling  '*God  save  the 
King."  before  the  audience  had  time  to 
comment  on  the  novel  effect  of^this  new 
music,  horses'  heads  were  seen  in  the  dis- 
tance, and  not  the  heavy  coach,  as  had  been 
expected,  but  the  open  barouche  of  Sir  John 
Seabury  came  in  sight,  containing  himself 
and  Ronald  Payne. 

Ronald  was  nearly  hugged  to  death. 
Words  of  apology  and  congratulation,  of  ex- 
cuse and  good-will,  of  repentance  and  joy, 
were  poured  into  his  ear  by  all,  save  Jane; 
and  she  stood  away,  the  uncontrollable  tears 
coursing  down  her  face.  It  was  plain,  in  a 
moment,  that  he  bore  no  malice  to  any  of 
them :  his  brow  was  as  frank  as  ever,  his 
eye  as  merry,  his  hands  as  open  to  clasp 


264 


DE  QUINGET,  THE  ENGUBH  OPiPf  EATER. 


[OcU 


theirs-p-he  was  the  same  old  Ronald  Payne  of 
months  ago. 

"  Ronald  Payne  !*'  exclaimed  Mrs.  Arm- 
strong, standing  a  little  before  the  rest,  "  I 
was  the  first  to  accuse  you,  I  was  the  fore- 
most to  rail  at  and  shun  you ;  let  me  be  the 
most  eager  to  express  my  painful  regret, 
and  so  far — which  is  all  I  can  do — make 
reparation.  For  the  future,  you  shall  not 
have  a  more  sincere  friend  than  myself." 

"  And  allow  me,  Mr.  Payne,  to  be  the 
second  to  speak,"  added  Sir  John,  "  although 
I  have  no  apology  to  make,  for  I  never  be- 
lieved you  guilty,  as  you  know ;  but  all  these 
good  people  did,  and  it  is  of  no  use,  you  are 
aware,  to  run  against  a  stream.  As  some 
recompense  for  what  you  have  suffered,  I 
hereby  offer  you  a  lease  of  the  farm  and 
lands  rented  by  the  unfortunate  James  Darn- 
ley.  It  is  the  best  vacant  farm  on  my  estate. 
And — a  word  yet :  should  you  not  have  suf- 
ficient ready  money  to  stock  it,  I  will  be  your 
banker."  • 

Ronald  Payne  grasped  in  silence  the  offered 
hand  of  his  landlord.  His  heart  was  too  full 
to  speak,  but  a  hum  of  gratification  from 
those  around  told  that  the  generosity  was 
appreciated. 

"But,  Mrs.  Armstrong/*  continued  Sir 
John,  a  merry  smile  upon  his  countenance, 
**  is  there  no  other  recompense  you  can  offer 
him  ?" 

Jane  was  now  standing  amongst  them,  by 
Ronald's  side,  though  not  a  word  had  yet 


passed  between  them.  His  eyes  fondly 
sought  hers  at  the  last  words,  but  her  glow- 
ing countenance  was  alike  turned  from  him 
and  from  Sir  John  Seabury. 

*'  Ay,  by  all  that's  right  and  just,  there  is. 
Sir  John  I"  burst  forth  good  Farmer  Arm- 
strong. "  He  deserves  her,  and  he  shall 
have  her;  and  if  my  wife  still  says  no,  why 
I  don't  think  she  is  any  wife  of  mine." 

Sir  John  glanced  at  Mrs.  Armstrong, 
waiting  no  doubt  for  her  lips  to  form  them- 
selves into  the  negative;  but  they  formed 
themselves  into  nothing  save  an  approving 
smile  cast  towards  Ronald  Payne. 

"  And  with  many  thanks,  grateful  thanks 
— which  I  am  sure  he  feels---for  your  gener- 
ous offer  of  being  his  banker,  Sir  John," 
continued  Mr.  Armstrong,  "  you  must  give 
me  leave  to  say  that  it  will  not  now  be 
needed.  My  daughter  does  not  go  to  her 
husband  portionless." 

"You  must  let  me  have  notice  of  the 
time,  Miss  Armstrong,"  whispered  Sir  John, 
as  he  leaned  forward  and  took  her  hand, 
"  for  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  dance  at 
your  wedding." 

But  the  secret  was  not  confined  to  Sir 
John  Seabury.  The  crowd  had  compre- 
hended it  now  ;  and  suddenly,  as  with  one 
universal  voice,  the  air  was  rent  with  shouts, 
''Long  live  Ronald  Payne  and  his  fair  wife 
when  he  shall  win  her  I  Long  life  and 
happiness  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ronald  Payne !" 


■♦♦• 


"#•• 


De  QuiNor,  the  English  opium-eater,  is  a 
Manchester  man,  though  from  Manchester 
and  all  that  pertains  to  it,  materially  and  in- 
tellectually, multifarious  influences  have  long 
separated  him.  His  home  (and  Christopher 
North's)  is  now  in  fair  Lasswade,  by  the  flow- 
ing Esk,  where,  the  victim  of  'nervous  distrac- 
tion which  renders  all  labor  exacting  any 
energy  of  attention  inexpressibly  painful,' 
he  has  managed  to  see  through  the  press, 
and  even  to  preface,  a  first  volume,  just  ap- 
pearing, of  Selections,  Grave  and  (?ay,  from 
Writings  published  and  unjmblished,  and  con- 
taining his  autobiography  to  the  threshold  of 
its  great  era,  the  discovery  of  opium.  'Dur- 
ing the  fourteen  last  years,'  writes  the  old 
man  eloquent, '  I  have  received  from  many 


quarters  in  England,  in  Ireland,  in  the  British 
colonies,  and  in  the  United  States,  a  series  of 
letters  expressing  a  far  profounder  interest  in 
papers  written  by  myself  than  any  which  I 
could  ever  think  myself  entitled  to  look  for ;' 
— hence  a  republication  was  always  determin- 
ed on,  which  would  never  have  been  made  in 
England,  however,  had  not  the  preliminary 
trouble  of  collecting  from  far  and  wide  the 
scattered  papers  been  ,taken  by  the  Boston 
(U.  S.)  firm  of  Ticknor  k,  Co.  who  deserve 
honorable  mention  for  having,  De  Quincy 
says,  '  made  me  a  sharer  in  the  profits  of  the 
publication,  called  upon  to  do  so  by  no  law 
whatever,  and  assuredly  by  no  expectation  of 
that  sort  upon  my  part.' — Critic, 


1853.] 


THE  00niVTK9S  HAHir-HABK. 


265 


From  the  Dablin  ITnivertity  Magasine. 


THE  dOUNTESS  HAHN-HAHN.* 


Thb  book  which  stands  at  the  head  of  our 
Vst,  entitled  *'  Yon  Babylon  nach  Jerusalem," 
appeared  in  Germany  soon  after  the  conver- 
sion of  Countess  Hann-Hahn  to  the  Romish 
Churchy  if  conversion  that  can  be  called 
which  is  not  the  substitution  of  one  faith  for 
another,  but  the  first  comprehension  of  relig- 
ion under  any  form.  That  the  authoress 
bad  hitherto  never  felt  the  power  and  beauty 
of  Christianity  would  be  made  clearly  evident 
by  this,  her  last  work,  if  the  readers  of  her 
former  books  could  ever  have  doubted  it. 
To  those  acquainted  with  the  mind  and 
character  of  Countess  Hahn,  it  was  no  sur- 
prise that  Catholicism  had  charmed  her  into 
Its  magic  circle.  The  stern,  unbending 
Lutberanism  of  Germany  had  no  attactions 
for  her  imaginative  spirit,  her  enthusiastic 
nature  was  repulsed  by  the  prosaic  form  in 
which  religion  was  put  before  her.  With 
thb  feeling  we  can  have  much  sympathy. 
Protestantism  in  Germany  exists  in  the 
original  form  in  which  Luther  moulded  it,  in 
that  age  when  the  errors  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  drove  him  first  to  question  her  infalli- 
bility,  and  then  to  overturn  her  authority, 
while  in  its  place  he  erected  his  own  dogmas 
as  the  standard  of  belief.  Herein,  it  seems 
to  us,  lies  the  root  of  a  deep-seated  evil, 
which  casts  its  shadow  over  the  whole  of 
Protestant  Germany.  Luther  fought  the 
good  fight.  Who  shall  venture  to  deny  him 
the  merit  due  to  the  leader  in  the  glorious 
Reformation?  He  was,  however,  but  the 
leader  ;  like  Mouses,  he  was  destined  to  free 
the  children  of  God  from  the  bondage  of 
superstition  and  idolatry,  and  bring  them 
within  sight  of  the  land  of  promise,  but  not 
to  conduct  them  through  it.  Since  his  time 
the  Germans  have  been  content,  for  the  most 

*  1.  **  YoD  Babylon  nach  JenualenL''  Yon  Ida 
Onfin  Hahn-Hahn. 

2.  "  Babylon  and  Jemsalem.''  EinSendBcbreiben 
mit  einer  naohaohrift^  an  Ida  Oriifin  Hahn-Hahn. 

8.  "WoistBabeL"  Sandaehreiben  an  Ida  Orafin 
Hshn-Hahn.  Yon  Dr.  Aug.  Kbiard,  Pro£  der  vel 
Theologie  vx  Erlangen. 


party  to  accept  religfion  as  he  taught  it» 
without  recognizing  the  truth,  that  reform, 
to  be  efifective,  must  be  progressive — ad- 
vancing with  the  mind  of  man,  and  keeping 
pace  with  the  requirements  of  a  higher  state 
of  civilization.  To  stand  still  is  impossible  ; 
and  while  Catholic  Germany  has  tacitly 
acknowledged  this,  and  admitted  some  modi- 
fications of  ceremonies,  and  permitted  certain 
relaxations  in  her  severest  doctrines  to  8ui$ 
the  temper  of  the  times,  Lutheranism  inflejL- 
ibly  adheres  to  its  ancient  rigid  creeds  and 
forms.  It  is  true,  that  a  new  Church  has 
sprung  up,  calling  itself  the  "  Reformed ;" 
but  while  introducing  some  differences  in 
point  of  belief,  it  does  not  strike  at  the 
fundamental  evil  of  the  Lutheran  Church, 
since  it  fails  to.  recognise  the  vital  principle 
of  the  Reformation — viz.,  the  right  of  private 
judgment  as  opposed  to  the  authority  of  any 
Church.  The  spirit  of  reform  has  been 
checked  ;  the  soul  of  man,  progressing  in  all 
else,  has  been  fettered  to  old  doctrines  and 
formulas,  and  thus  religion  has  become  a 
cold,  empty  form — its  life-giving  power  has 
gradually  died  out,  and  the  German  mind» 
alive  to  all  other  heart-stirring  and  intellect- 
ual influences,  has  either  turned  from  Chris- 
tianity into  the  byways  of  indiflferentism, 
rationalism,  and  infidelity,  or  striking  into  the 
opposite  extreme,  has  yielded  itself  a  volun- 
tary slave  to  the  most  rigid  pietism.  Roman 
Catholicism,  meanwhile,  with  her  wide  com- 
prehension of  the  wants  of  human  nature, 
and  her  power  of  meeting  them,  has  kept  the 
flame  of  devotion  burniuK  bright  and  clear 
upon  her  altars,  and  weak  or  ardent  souls, 
repulsed  by  Protestant  coldness,  have  been 
allured  to  worship  there,  from  the  solace  and 
repose  they  found  within  the  nurturing  bosom 
of  the  *'  Mother  Church" 

It  had  already  been  predicted  that  Coun- 
tess Hahn-Hahn  would  end  her  days  aa  a 
Roman  Catholic  devotee,  if  not  a  nun ;  nor 
are  we  bigoted  enough  to  grudge  her  the 
consolation  she  has  found  by  thus  surrender- 
ing herself  to  the  guidance  of  what  aha 


866 


THE  OOUnnSB  HAHN-HAHV. 


[Oct, 


deems  an  infallible  Churoh  ;  if  her  choice  of 
a  religion  be  sincere  (and  we  are  not  pre- 
pared to  doubt  it)»  we  have  nought  to  say 
against  it;  this  question  she  alone  has  to 
settle  with  God  and  her  own  conscience. 
We  believe  that  pure  and  noble  spirits 
are  trained  for  immortality  in  the  Roman 
Catholic,  as  in  all  other  Churches,  although 
truth  comes  to  us  in  another  form.  With  her 
faith,  therefore,  we  have  nothing  to  do  ;  but 
with  her  book,  much. 

It  is,  perhaps,  the  natural  tendency  of  the 
human  mind  to  disparage  that  creed  which 
it  has  abandoned ;  none  are  more  furiously 
bigoted  than  converts ;  but  it  has  ever  seemed 
to  us  that,  natural  as  such  feelings  may  be, 
they  are  inconsistent  with  the  true  humility 
,  which  Christianity  inculcates ;  and,  certainly, 
of  this  humility  not  a  trace  exists  in  the  books 
now  under  our  notice.    It  will  not  be  deemed 
a  want  of  charity  in  us  to  accept  Countess 
Hahn's  own  account  of  her  former  irreligious 
state  as  the  correct  one.     We  believe,  with 
herself,  that  religion  never  influenced  her 
character  until  the  present  time ;  that  receiv- 
ing her  impressions  of  it  from  the  Church  to 
which  she  professed  to  belong,  her  soul  lay 
dead  to  the  beauty  of  Christianity ;  that  the 
simple,  holy  teachings  of  our  Saviour — that 
the  touching  history  of  his  life,  his  death,  and 
his  resurrection — his  example,  his  spirit  of 
self-sacrifice,  were  all   unable  to  touch  or 
purify  her  heart.     We  believe  that,  far  from 
being  a  Protestant,  she  was  a  believer  in 
nothing,  and  that  revelation  was  a  sealed 
book  to  her — she  was  of  the  world,  worldly. 
Her  earlier  works  rise  up  in  judgment  against 
her,  and  condemn  her  as  an  egotist,  a  seeker 
after  the  shadows  of  things,  while  the  reali- 
ties of  life  and  glory  of  heaven  were  alike 
veiled  from  her. 

She  begins  her  book  with  the  words  "  I 
believe  !*'  and  the  *'  I"  which  thus  stands 
foremost  on  the  page,  pervades  every  line  of 
the  work.  As,  in  her  former  writings,  we 
feel  its  presence,  so  does  it  follow  us  still ; 
nor  does  it  shrink  from  entering  the  very 
presence  of  the  living  God.  But  the  ^'  I"  of 
this  book,  she  tells  us,  is  not  the  '*  I"  of  olden 
times ;  and  in  order  to  exalt  her  present,  she 
▼ilifles  her  former  self,  in  words  which,  though 
little  inclined  to  rank  ourselves  amongst  her 
admirers,  we  should  not  have  ventured  to 
employ.  We  have  ever  regarded  such  osten- 
tatious self-depreciation  with  suspicion,  be- 
lieving it  to  be  one  of  the  most  dangerous 
and  subtle  forms  of  human  vanity ;  while  the 
old  *'  I"  is  reviled  like  a  demon,  it  is  hoped 
that  the  new  **V*  may  shine  fqrth  as  an 


angel — the  darker  the  back-ground  the  more 
brilliantly  do  the  colors  of  the  portrait  strike 
on  the  eye.  True  humility  thinks  and  speaks 
but  little  of  itself — loves  the  quiet  sacrifices 
of  daily  life  better  than  notice  and  praise  of . 
man — dwells  but  little,  if  ever,  on  its  achieve- 
ments— ^bnt  steadily  pursues  its  course,  going 
direct  to  the  aim  it  has  set  before  it,  be  it  the 
welfare  of  its  fellow-creatures,  the  glory  of 
God,  the  annihilation  of  evil  passions,  or  the 
conquest  of  self.  Such  is  not  Countess 
Hahn's  humility. 

She  speaks  with  horror  of  her  former 
aims ;  says  that  she  sacrificed  to  three  idols 
— love,  truth,  and  fame — and  in  turn  reviles 
each  as  base  and  unworthy  to  influence  a 
human  being.  Perhaps,  regarding  them  as 
Countess  Hahn  alone  knew  them,  we  should 
be  little  disposed  to  deny  her  proposition ; 
we  can,  perhaps,  even  less  than  herself  give 
our  allegiance  to  her  false  deities ;  and  we 
agree  with  her  that  they  were  idols  of  day, 
nor  do  we  wonder  that  her  portion  in  them 
was  "  dust  and  ashes."  Love,  as  she  knew 
it,  was  but  a  passion— of  the  earth,  earthy. 
Hear  her  own  words,  and  judse  if  this  be 
love  as  it  exists  in  pure  and  noUe  hearts : — 

"  For  the  beloved  object  we  are  ready  to  endure, 
to  suffer,  to  mourn,  to  sacrifice  all  thinfi^s,  to  re- 
sign all  to  make  him  happy ;  and  from  this  long- 
ing and  striving  arises  so  sweet,  refined,  and  per- 
fame-breathing  an  egotism  that,  like  the  aroma  of 
the  lily  or  the  luscious  blossoms  of  the  oraoge- 
flower,  it  stupifies  and  intoxicates ;  and  when  the 
illusion  remains  unbroken,  enervation  and  ex- 
haustion are  engendered,  until  the  heart,  heavy 
and  weary,  finally  sinks  into  a  state  of  melan- 
choly." 


That  the  fruits  of  such  unholy  passion 
should  be  "  dust  and  ashes"  cannot  surprise 
us ;  but  true  love  bears  another  and  a  better 
harvest — a  harvest  unto  eternal  life.  In  it 
we  recognize  a  spark  of  divinity — an  influence 
that  raises  and  purifies  the  human  soul,  ren- 
dering it  a  temple  worthy  of  God  himself. 

Of  truth  (her  second  idoH  her  ideas  are 
so  vague,  that  we  seek  in  vain  amongst  her 
wordy  sentences  for  one  sinele  clear  idea ; 
nor  can  we  wonder  that  truth  fled  the  steps 
of  one  seeking  it  in  the  spirit  she  did.  Her 
text  is,  that  since  truth  exists  alone  in  the 
{Roman)  Catholic  Church,  all  who  seek  it 
elsewhere  do  but  squander  their  time,  abuse 
their  talents,  and  injure  their  character — ^be- 
coming arrogant,  self-satisfied,  proud  of  their 
own  intellects,  while  they  remain  for  ever 
wanderers  in  darkness  and  ignorance.  This 
is  such  a  flagrant  begging  of  the  question, 


1858.] 


THE  COUliTEaB  HAHN-HAHK. 


20) 


that  we  are  little  disposed  to  discuss  tbe  mat- 
ter further.  The  truth,  as  it  is  in  Jesus,  is 
accessible  to  all.  In  it  the  soul  of  man  finds 
liberty  of  thought,  and  soars  untrammelled 
to  the  God  and  Father  of  us  all  I 

Equally  erroneous  appear  to  ua  Countess 
E[ahn-Hahn*s  ideas  of  fame ;  her  opinions  on 
this,  as  on  all  subjects,  betray  a  bitterness  of 
mind  which  ever  accompanies  the  real  ego- 
tist. She  judges  from  her  own  experience 
as  an  author,  and  declares  thai  the  desire  of 
fame  is  base  and  unworthy.  The  desire  for 
an  immortality  of  fame  in  high  and  noble  na- 
tures is  a  natural  and  legitimate  feeling  of  the 
human  heart ;  with  such  it  is  a  lofty  senti- 
ment, standing  apart  from  self ;  a  holy,  heav- 
en-inspired wish  to  benefit  mankind ;  to 
erect  in  the  hearts  of  men  a  monument  which 
may  endure  while  the  world  lasts ;  a  desire 
lo  live  in  the  memory  of  the  wise  and  good 
of  our  own  and  succeeding  ages.  This  is  no 
base  or  selfish  aim,  but  one  to  which  true 

genius  will  ever  aspire.  Hilton  knew  that 
e  wrote  for  future  times;  Newton's  soul 
must  have  seen  and  rejoiced  in  the  glory  with 
which  coming  generations  would  deliffht  to 
furround  his  name ;  but  to  an  immortality  of 
fame  like  this  the  authoress  of  "Countess 
Faustina,"  '*Die  Beiden  Frauen,"  "Der 
Bechte,"  &c.,  <kc.,  could  scarcely  hope  to 
aspire !  She  is  right  in  saying,  "  I  worked 
with  perishable  means,  and  with  earthly 
tools;"  she  might  have  idded,  for  worldly 
ends  and  earthly  fame. 

The  author  of  the  pamphlet  which  stands 
second  on  our  list  ('^Baoylon  and  Jerusa- 
lem") has  in  it  addressed  an  admirable  ap- 
})eal  to  Countess  Hahn-Hahn.  We  quote 
rom  it  willingly,  since  its  tone  is  vigorous 
and  keen,  while  at  the  same  time  it  never 
oversteps  the  boundaries  of  Christian  charity. 
It  is  the  ablest  amongst  many  answers  which 
^  You  Babylon  nach  Jerusalem"  has  called 
forth.  It  appeared  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to 
the  Countess,  and  is  written  in  a  truthful, 
earnest,  benevolent,  and  gentlemanly  spirit ; 
we  give  the  last  attribute,  because  in  '*  Wo 
ist  Babel,"  another  letter,  addressed  by  a  pro- 
fessor of  theology,  to  Countess  Hahn-Hahn, 
she  is  attacked  in  a  manner  so  coarse  and 
ungentlemanly^  that  however  much  we  may 
concur  in  his  opinions,  we  shrink  from  allying 
ourselves  to  anything  so  vulgar.  Wrong  as 
Countess  Hahn  has  been,  open  as  her  life  is 
to  reproach,  and  paltry  as  this  last  produc- 
tion of  her  pen  seems  to  us,  she  is  still  a 
womao,  and  as  such,  has  a  clain^  upon  the 
respect  and  consideration  of  all  wno  call 
themselves  gentlemen.  It  is  sad  that  beneath 


the  gown  of  the  churchman  we  do  not  always 
fiqd  the  feelings  and  heart  of  a  Christian  I 
But  to  our  theme : — 

"  The  greater  part  of  your  book,  however,  lady, 
is  occupied  with  proving  how  great  and  noble 
even  your  errors  are ;  how  all  the  while  that  you 
were  wandering  in  darkness,  you  were  yet  so 
near  the  truth,  so  near  the  Church ;  how  nothing 
common  or  little,  nothing  imperfect,  could  have 
power  over  you,  as  over  the  herd  of  vulgar  minds ; 
now  you  had  ever  been  one  of  the  elect.  So  that, 
though  now  aspersing  your  former  life,  though 
acknowledging  your  enormous  errors,  yet  you 
contemplate  them  with  a  certain  self-elation  and 
pride.  This  spirit  of  arrogance  and  self-occupa- 
tion [the  German  word,  aelbst-hespitgelung,  self- 
mirroring,  is  more  expressive]  pervades,  alas! 
your  whole  book,  making  itself  felt  in  every  pa^ ; 
and  in  this  lies  the  sad  and  painfal  impression' 
which  it  leaves  upon  the  mind.  Not  your  stratase 
and  ignorant  attacks  on  Protestantism  and  the 
Reformation,  unworthy  as  these  too  oAen  are  of 
your  better  MU  since  they  are  but  the  repetition 
of  the  commonest  arguments ;  not  your  exalting 
a  Church  to  which  I  myself  do  not  belong ;  but 
this  never-ceasing  idolatry  of  yourself;  this  it  is 
which  grieves  me  in  your  book." 

The  writer  further  remarks : 

*'  The  extract  which  you  give,  honored  Coun- 
tess, from  your  journal  (August  26th  1846),  affords 
us  a  deep  insight  into  your  inner  self.  Vou  say, 
*  my  heart  is  an  altar,  upon  which  an  eternal 
flame  burns  in  honor  of  the  godlike,  but  to  the 
glory  of  God.  Can  it  be  that  1  shall  live  to  find 
that  I  have  kindled  this  eternal  lamp  before  false 
gods?  Will  the  true  God  displace  these  false 
deities?  or  must  my  life  be  spent  in  the  worship 
of  idols?'  Your  ladyship  acknowledged  the 
worthlessness  of  your  deities ;  you  knew  that  the 
altar  was  raised  to  *  the  unknown  god,'  and  you 
yet  persevered  in  sacrificing  upon  it  to  your  idols. 
Even  so  it  19,  and  this  is  truly  human !  We  have, 
perhaps,  done  likewise ;  but  you  do  not  allude  to 
this  passage  in  the  spirit  of  humble  repentance,  of 
deep  and  bitter  grief;  on  the  contrary,  you  quote 
it  with  evident  satisfaction,  with  self-elation,  with 
pride,  that  you  had  even  then  attained  to  such  a 
neight;  the  first  and  most  important  thought  this 
remembrance  awakens  in  your  mind,  is  notthe 
feeling  of  guilt  that  you  had  worshiped  false  gods, 
but  a  seif-gratulation  that  even  then  the  altar  of 
your  heart  was  dedieated  '  to  tbe  godlike.' " 

Of  the  Bible  she  thus  speaks : — 

• 

*'  Old  and  New  Testament,  Prophets,  Psalms, 
Epistles,  I  read  again  and  again,  finding  them  all 
beautiful  and  soul-inspiring.  I  was  too  warm- 
hearted and  imaginative  to  fall  back  into  the 
desert  waste  of  rationalism ;  yet  was  there  as  yet 
no  trace  of  Christian  faith  io  me.  TheHoly  Scrip- 
tures are  a  noble  fragment  which  Protestantism 
bore  away  from  the  Church  from  which  it  seceded. 


MB 


THK  COmmSSB  HAHH-HAHK. 


[Oct, 


Reprding  them  as  eticb,  the  eager  mdI  in  qaest 
of  knowledge  can  never  deem  itself  in  possession 
of  the  whole  truth,  with  the  Bible  alone,  since  the 
objective  confirmation  of  the  truth  is  wanting ; 
and  this  we  need  for  the  security  of  our  faith.  It 
may  not  be  clear  to  the  soul  that  it  has  but  a 
fragment  upon  which  to  feed,  still  less  clear  may 
it  be  where  to  seek  materials  for  its  completion, 
yet  it  pines  for  the  whole,  and  eagerly  sets  to 
work  to  seek  it  ...  .  My  Lord !  and  my 
God !  Thou  knowest  how  I  have  sought  it !  I 
have  wandered  from  the  cataracts  of  the  Nile  to 
the  crotto  of  Stafla ;  from  Cintra's  heighte  to  the 

girden  of  Damascus ;  over  the  Alps,  and  the 
yrenees,  and  Lebanon ;  over  sea  ana  across  the 
Arabian  desert,  from  the  banks  of  the  Shannon  in 
green  Erin  to  the  shores  of  holy  Jordan ;  I 
have  housed  beneath  the  Bedouin's  tent  and  in 
the  palaces  of  the  lunUe  voile  of  Europe !  I  have 
learned  all  that  was  to  be  gained  from  every  posi- 
tion and  relation  of  life  amonffst  differing  peoples 
and  nations.  I  have  moved  amidst  the  most 
striking  contrasts!  In  London,  for  example,  I 
went  from  Rag  Fair  to  be  presented  to  her  Royal 
Highness  the  Duchess  of  Kent.  I  strove  to  study 
mankind  in  all  its  phases ;  to  explore  the  heights 
and  depths  of  civilization  ;  the  various  degrees  of 
culture  attained  by  different  nations ;  the  con- 
nexion of  education  with  religion,  national  chafac 
ter,  art,  and  morals.  I  desired  to  pass  in  review 
before  my  mind  the  whole  history  ofman,  and  face 
to  face  study  iU  features.  I  longed  to  understand 
—•what  ?  *  Mankind,'  I  said  to  myself*  Perhaps 
I  desired  to  know  myself,  but  that  was  impossible, 
since  I  possessed  no  positive  law  strong  enough 
to  serve  as  rule  and  standard  by  which  impartial- 
ly  to  judge  phantasms  and  emotions  both  within 
and  around  me.  I  lived  at  the  mercv  of  my  own 
caprices,  feeding  on  fragments,  and  was,  in  this 
respect,  a  genuine,  product  of  Lutberanism !  " 

Lutberanism  would  with  scorn  disclaim 
the  "product"  thus  falsely  attrihuted  to 
her !  Had  Countess  Hahn,  indeed,  sought 
with  earnest  heart  and  steady  head,  that  she 
professes  to  have  desired,  it  would  have  heen 
revealed  to  her  without  these  restless  wan- 
derings and  strivings,  which  betoken  merely 
the  spirit  discontented  with  itself,  ever  crav- 
ing new  excitement,  and  indulging  itself  in 
the  search  after  novel  emotions  and  strange 
adventures.  Had  she  but  listened  to  "  the 
still  small  voice"  within,  and  in  meek  humility 
prostrated  herself  before  #od,  beseeching  for 
help  and  guidance,'  her  heart  would  have 
been  spared  many  a  pang,  and  her  soul 
would*  long  ago  have  cast  its  burthen  of 
doubts  and  fears  upon  Him  who  calls  to  all 
the  weary  and  heavy  laden,  "  Come  unto 
me,  and  I  will  give  you  rest."  But  to  this 
voice  she  stopt  not  to  listen;  pursued  her 
headlong  course,  pressed  to  her  heart  the 
'*  idols"  which  crumble  in  her  hand,  and  sate 
down  at  length,  a  broken  and  despairing 


creature,  amidst  their  ''dust  and  ashes." 
The  worst  feature  in  the  book,  to  our  mind, 
is,  that  while  the  author  so  frankly  confesses 
her  errors,  and  with*  such  mock- humility 
delights  in  vilifying  herself,  she  artfully  turns 
all  the  blame  from  herself,  and  seeks,  by 
accusing  the  religion  she  deserts  of  all  her 
vices  and  short-comiogrs,  to  exculpate  her- 
self. Protestantism,  In  her  eyes,  is  alone 
chargeable  with  all  her  errors!  Does  the 
voice  of  conscience  never  whisper  to  her 
soul,  that  she,  and  she  alone,  is  responsible 
for  her  fauUs,  and  that  it  is  as  false  as  it  is 
mean  to  cast  her  burthen  upon  a  religion 
which  she  declares  was  never  influential  in 
forming  her  character?  if  not  in  forming, 
then  surely  not.in  destroying ! 

Qently  would  we  desire  to  touch  her  pri- 
vate history  ;  but  what  she  herself  reveals  to 
us  becomes  public  property,  and  without 
some  knowledge  of  the  facts  6(  her  private 
life,  her  book  is  unintelligible.  Married 
young  to  ona  she  could  not  love,  she  recoiled 
from  and  spumed  the  chains  which  bound 
her  to  a  being  she  despised  ;  she  sued  for  a 
divorce  (so  easily,  alas!  obtained  in  Ger- 
many), and  the  unhappy  tie  was  broken. 
She  revelled  in  her  freedom,  was  courted, 
admired,  flattered  ;  her  time  was  divided  be- 
tween writing  novels  and  travelling.  She 
speaks  thus  of  herself  in  that  time : — 

"  Pride  was  the  groundwork  of  my  character, 
and  through  pride  the  angels  fell  with  Lucifer. 
This  pride  gave  me  a  boundless  desire  for  inde- 
pendence of  all  external  influences  of  men  and 
things  ;  I  would  be  slave  to  none,  to  the  preja- 
dices,  opinions,  views  of  no  one ;  I  would  neither 
play  the  hypocrite,  nor  flatter  to  gain  praise  or 
avoid  reproach  ;  T  sought  to  free  myself  from  the 
trammels  of  custom,  effeminacy,  and  factitioot 
wants.  .  .  To  stand  on  my  own  foundation 
was  my  delight.  When  a  storm  came,  I  bowed, 
and  let  it  pass  over  me  ;  but  I  rose  again  and 
often  repeated  to  myself  *God  is  for  me ;  I  can  do, 
and  endure  all.' " 

Thus  she  lived,  until  at  length  she  met,  in 
a  Russian  nobleman,  the  man  to  whom  she 
surrendered  her  freedom.  She  loved  with 
all  the  fire  and  abandonment  of  her  passion- 
ate nature ;  she  was  bound  by  the  settlement 
of  divorce  to  forfeit  her  fortune  if  she  married 
again.  She  resigned  neither  her  wealth  nor 
her  lover.  And  now  began  her  days  of 
happiness,  if  sin  and  happiness  can  go  hand 
in  hand.  Her  struggling  heart  had  found  a 
resting-place,  and  death  alone  disturbed  her 
seeming  peace.  Her  heart  had  wasted  ail 
its  treasures  on  this  idol,  and  broke  when  it 
was  snatched  from  her.    During  a  long  and 


1858.] 


THK  CX)UirrBBS  HAHN'HAmr. 


299 


painful  illness  sbe  nursed  ber  lover,  with  a 
tenderness  and  devotion,  which  could  not  be 
surpassed — he  died,  and  the  world  lay  in 
ruins  around  her. 

^  Until  tbia  mnikient,"  she  says,,  **  I  had  con- 
qaered  all  sorrows,  while  I  sheltered  myself  be* 
hind  the  shield  and  helmet  of  my  pride  and  self- 
confidence;  now  these  were  uselens;  the  shaft 
had  reached  my  heart,  had  penetrated  to  the  in- 
moet  depths  of  my  soul ;  for  great  as  had  been  my 
pride,  my  love  had  been  greater  .  .  .  What 
then  paiiaed  in  my  soaT,  what  preparation  for 
future  progress  was  then  taking  place,  cannot  be 
accurately  described  in  words  ;  a  black  torrent  of 
grief  overwhelmed  me  with  the  force  of  a  cata- 
ract ;  my  powers  were  all  stunned  and  paralyzed." 


She  speaks  in  accents  of  despair  of  her 
loss.   Prostrate  in  the  dust,  but  not  humbled, 
she  sinks  beneath  the  stroke,  and  when  feel- 
ing resumed  her  sway,  and  she  looked  out 
into  the  world  again,  she  found  all  barren 
and  empty;    her  altars   vacant,  her  idols 
crumbled  beneath  her  feet     Then  in  bitter- 
ness of  soul  did  she  feel  that  God  was  not  for 
her.     He  whom  she  had  never  sought  in  the 
days  of  her  vamglory  and  pride,  was  now  a 
stranger  to  her,  and  she  was  indeed  alone  in 
the  cold  world  she  had  loved  so  well.     In 
such  a  state  of  mind  it  is  no  wonder  that  she 
turned  more  and  more  from  the  Church  to 
which  she  still  professed  to  belong.    A  deep 
want  had  made  itself  felt  in  her  soul,  which 
nothing  she  had  yet  found  could  supply  ;  a 
voice  was  crying  from  within  for  help  in  her 
utmost  need,  and  from  the  Protestant  Church 
came  no  response,  for  her  heart  was  steeled 
against  its  influences.  She  knew  religion  as  yet 
only  under  its  cold  Lutheran  form,  and  her  book 
reveals  to  us  how  gradually  Romanism  began 
to  interest  her ;  its  power,  the  grandeur  of  its 
spiritual  machinery,  the  mighty  influence  ob- 
tained by  it  over  the  human  mind ;  the  anti- 
quity of  the  Church,  the  very  existence  of  a 
Church  as  a  standard  of  authority  in  matters  of 
faith,  the  unity  of  belief  amongst  its  disciples, 
all  had  their  share  in  attracting  Countess  Hahn- 
'Hahn  to  the  Romish  faith.     Art,  employed 
as  it  is  by  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  service 
of  religion,  the  heavenly   works  of   those 
artists,  who,  ere  they  took  the  pencil  in  their 
hand,  offered  up  their  souls  in  prayer ;  whose 
very  works  were  prayers,  imbued  with  the 
holiest  feelings  of  devotion ;  these  too  had 
their  influence.     Before  the  divine  creations 
of  Fra  Angelico  and  the  oldest  masters  of 
the   Italian  schools,  she  stood  enraptured. 
She  says : — 

**  There  were  times  when  their  paintings  seemed 


to  be  more  beautiful  than  those  of  Raphael  him- 
self, the  deep  piety,  parity,  and  holiness  which 
beamed  from  them,  the  intensity  of  belief  and  de- 
votion which  hovered  like  a  glory  round  their 
heads,  spoke  to  my  soul,  and  I  felt  thel  thev  were 
the  offspring  of  a  mighty  religioua  element." 

The  imposing  ceremonies  of  the  Romish 
Church  had  little  power  over  her  mind  ;  on 
the.  contrary,  when  seen  in  nil  their  pomp  at 
Rome,  during  the  Easter  week,  they  left  a 
painful  impression  upon  her.  She  says — *'  I 
found  that  holy  things  were  touched  un- 
holily."  Her  interest  in  Catholicism  was 
aroused  by  far  different  causes,  as  we  have 
seen,  and  others  still  remain  to  be  noticed. 
She  mentions  the  effect  produced  upon  her 
mind  by  a  sojourn  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
countries  of  the  Rhine,  where  Catholicism 
assumed  a  new  form  to  her ;  there  it  was  the 
religion  of  the  people,  not  of  courts  and 
grandees.  Oppressed  with  sorrow,  her  heart 
was  keenly  alive  to  the  external  influences  of 
religion,  and  here  they  met  her  at  every 
step : — 

"  A  crucifix  by  the  way-side ;  a  chapel  over- 
shadowed by  fine  old  trees;  a  shnne  upon  the 
heights,  the  constant  resort  of  pilgrim  feet ;  noble 
cathedrals  in  the  towns,  convents  or  t6eir  ruins 
amidst  a  lovely  country,  and  the  frequent  sounds 
of  church  bells,  all  this  soothed  while  it  roused 
me,  because  I  felt  for  the  first  time  that  religion 
was  a  reality,  which  could  speak  to  the  heart  of 


man. 

Allowed  by  the  ever-open  doois  of  churches 
and  road-side  chapels  (oh,  why  are  our  Pro- 
testant places  of  worship  closed  during  six 
days,  as  if  religion  belonged  alone  to  the 
seventh !)  she  often  entered  to  pray,  and 
found  that  her  heart  rose  to  its  Creator  with 
a  fervor  it  had  never  known  before.  Still 
she  was  no  Catholic ;  the  leaven  was  at 
work,  but  the  full  time  was  not  yet  come. 

Amidst  the  ruins  of  Kom-Ombos,  in  Upper 
Egypt  she  muses  on  the  rise  and  fall  of 
empires  and  religions,  and  asks  her  soul  if 
Christianity,  too,  will  pass  away  like  other 
religions : — 

"  Will  it  be  with  Christianity  as  it  is  with  Kom- 
9mbos  and  its  temples, — its  foundations  be  under- 
mined by  the  majestic,  irresistible  stream  of  time ; 
its  pillars  and  its  halls  shaken  by  the  waving 
sand  which  covers  all  from  which  life  has  depart- 
ed 7  No;  that  thought  is  horrible — ^never !  never ! 
I  fled  for  refuge  to  the  holy  Apostle  Peter,  and 
exclaimed  with  him,  *  Lord  whither  shall  I  so  ? 
Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life.'  Sucn  a 
longing  seized  my  soul  to  found  the  perishable 
things  of  this  world  on  the  basis  of  eternity,  that 


270 


THE  G017NTE6S  HAHN-HAHN. 


I0ct» 


I  perceived  not  how  senseless  it  was  to  ase  the 
words  of  Peter  without  accepting  his  belief;  that 
belief  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  the  Re* 
deeoier  of  the  world,  to  whom  we  can  only  come 
through  the  revelation  which  that  Church  teaches, 
which  is  built  upon  St.  Peter,  which  has  the  full- 
ness of  truth,  and  therefore  alone  possesses  the 
power  of  making  blessed." 


Such  logical  deductions  need  no  riefutation ; 
**  Guarda  e  passa.'* 

We  would  gladly  give  ber  account  of  the 
expulsion  of  the  Jesuits  from  Naples,  a.  d. 
1848,  as  a  specimen  of  Countess  Hahn's 
graphic  powers  of  description,  but  our  space 
forbids  such  digressions. 

We  must  notice  as  another  actuating  in- 
fluence in  tbe  change  effected  in  her  mind 
and  heart,  the  views  she  takes  of  conventual 
life.  In  the  Catholic  Church,  she  found 
olaims  made  upon  man  to  sacri6ce  worldly 
gains  and  present  ease  to  religion  :  this  fell 
m  with  the  requirements  of  her  nature  and 
peculiar  circumstances.  Hers  was  not  a 
spirit  to  seek  contentment  in  tbe  secret 
places  of  tbe  earth ;  ber  heart,  wearied  with 
the  vanity  and  emptiness  of  tbe  world,  and 
ornsbed  by  the  hst  heavy  blow  which  had 
fallen  upon  it,  longed  for  some  new  sphere 
of  exertion  and  excitement.  The  existence 
in  the  Catholic  Church  of  those  asylums  for 
snob  shipwrecked  human  souls  attracted  her; 
her  exaggerated  feelings  caused  her  to  invest 
convents  and  monasteries  with  a  halo  which 
we  fear  seldom  belongs  to  them.  The  Capu- 
chins and  Mendicant  orders  of  friars  bad  as 
great  influence  over  ber  feelinsrs  as  the  Jesuits 
possessed  over  her  mind ;  in  the  one  case  she 
was  attracted  by  the  semblance  of  humility 
and  self-sacriflce,  in  the  other  allured  by  the 
high  intellectual  and  concentrated  power  of 
the  order  of  Jesus.  A  few  words  quoted 
from  her  books  will  show  ber  feelings  on  this 
subject : — 

•*  Oh !  ye  poor  priests,  ye  poor  monks !  Ye 
think  that,  ritrht  or  wrong,  the  Saviour  meant 
what  he  said,  *  follow  me.'  Poor  like  him,  who 
bad  not  where  to  lay  his  head,  self-denying  as 
He  who  turned  from  the  pleasures  of  the  world  ; 
obedient  like  Him  who  obeyed  even  unto  death 
on  the  cross ;  ye  have  through  your  love  to  him 
comprehended  his  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  and  have^ 
made  it  your  own.  In  one  single  day  of  your* 
lives  we  find  more  depth,  more  love,  more  faith, 
more  beauty,  more  value,  than  in  the  united  lives 
of  all  the  Reformers  taken  together." 

« 

A  pretty  arrogant  assertion  that !  Strip 
oflT  tbe  poetical  garment  in  which  our  ideal- 
ising Counted  delights  to  invest  these  classes 
of  men,  and  the  truth  would  be  presented  in 


a  melancholy  and  humiliating  contrast.  Let 
but  the  walls  of  monasteries  and  convents 
reveal  the  tales  of  sin  and  self-indulgence 
they  too  often  witness,  and  tbe  sympathies 
even  of  the  Countess  Hahn  would  turn  from 
these  profligate  and  idle  cumberers  of  the 
ground ! 

In  tbe  monastery  on  Mount  Carmel, 
ber  gradually-increasing  inclinations  towards 
Catholicism  first  took  a  definite  form.  We 
find  her  expatiating  on  the  beauty  of  the  East 
— luxuriating  in  the  free,  unfettered,  uncon- 
ventional life  in  her  tents ;  and,  amidst  many 
poetical  imaginings,  such  as  tbe  following, 
we  find  a  longing  after  the  repose  and  sim- 
plicity of  a  cloister  life : — 

** .  .  .  Enough !  I  fonnd  in  the  whole 
character  of  the  East,  something  so  ennoblinff 
that,  beside  it  all  European  civilization  seemed 

mean  and  insignificant '    .    . 

There  (on  Mount  Carmel),  I  first  experienced  a 
P^rief  not  to  belong  to  the  Catholic  Church  *,  there, 
m  the  piljfrim-house,  where  I  was  received  with 
such  hospitality,  I  saw  what  was  the  life  of  these 
humble-minded  men,  who  had  come  from  Spain 
and  Italy — had  studied  Oriental  languages>  in 
order  to  teach  little  children,  and  shelter  pilgrims. 
Now  that  I  saw  the  Catholic  Church  in  all  her 
glory — ^that  is  to  say  in  love  and  poverty — now 
did  I  begin  indeed  to  love  her.  A  wonderful 
holiness  hovers  around  this  spot — a  peace  wholly 
ideal,  such  as  in  no  other  place  I  had  yet  found. . . 
I  knew  the  Church  as  yet  neither  in  her  founda- 
tion, which  is  the  Redeemer,  nor  in  her  dogmas, 
which  he  taught ;  nor  in  her  ideat>,  in  which  time 
and  eternity  are  blended ;  1  knew  but  her  ex- 
ternal surface,  yet  it  did  my  heart  good,  for  she 
spoke  to  that  ideal  of  heavenly  love  which  I 
have  ever  borne  about  within  my  soul,  like  a 
veiled  and  holy  picture;  and  so  I  began  to  love 
her." 

Returning  from  tbe  East,  a.d.  1844,  where 
she  bad  spent  ber  days  amidst  the  ruins  of 
cities  and  empires,  floating  along  tbe  Nile  in 
dreamy  indolence,  or  travelling  across  the 
calm  and  silent  desert,  she  found  the  activity 
and  luxury  of  European  life  press  heavily 
upon  her.  The  beavingsof  tbe  nations,  in  their 
efforts  to  obtain  freedom,  were  beginning  to 
be  felt,  and,  aristocrat  to  the  hearths  core. 
Countess  Hahn-Hahn  recoiled  from  all  ide;^ 
of  progress.  She  looked  upon  the  struggle 
taking  place  with  a  b'lrqing  heart,  shut  her 
eyes  upon  the  political  and  social  evils  they 
were  intended  to  redress,  shrank  terrified 
from  the  threatened  convulsions,  seeing  in 
them  hopelessly-destructive  anarchy  alone. 
To  find  the  clue  to  such  mighty  movements 
was  beyond  her  power,  and  her  spirit  sinking 
beneath  the  pressure,  she  fell  into  despair. 


1858.] 


THE  OOXJVTJBA  HAH5-HAHK. 


371 


1 


Hear  now  what  roused  her  from  this  leth- 

**  From  this  torpor  I  was  saved  by  a  circom- 
staoce  which  caased  a  wonderful  sensation  in 
Northern  Germany — ^the  exhibition  of  the  holy 
coat  at  Treves!  People  comprehend  it  not. 
*  What  did  it  mean  7* — what  portend  ?  How 
astonishing  and  incomprehensible,  that  tbonsands 
and  tens  of  thoasands  wandered  op  the  Rhine 
and  down  the  Rhine,  as  pilgrims  to  the  shrine ; 
and  these,  not  from  the  lower  classes  alone,  bat 
from  the  higher  and  enlightened  !  .  .  .  I  was 
amazed  like  the  rest  at  this  religious  excitement, 
to  which  Protestants  had  not  the  faintest  clue ; 
bat  instead  of  ridiculing  it  as  they  did,  it  refresh- 
ed my  spirit.  Whether  it  were  indeed  the  hol^ 
coat,  I  knew  not ;  but  as  I  wrote  at  the  time,  *  it 
is  the  same  faith  which  in  former  days  cast  the 
sick  woman  at  the  feet  of  Christ,  that  by  tonch- 
ing  the  hem  of  his  garment,  she  might  be  healed.' 
My  instinct  was  ever  right,  and  my  reasoning 
false." 

False,  ind>  ed,  poor  weak-minded  woman  ! 
When  such  things  had  power  to  sway  your 
opmions,  we  can  but  pity  and  be  silent. 

Two  years  later,  we  find  her  still  restlessly 
seeking  peace  in  outward  things,  travelioff 
to  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland;  and 
while  political  influences  were  now  at  work, 
io  conjunction  with  others,  to  lead  her  to 
her  final  goal,  she  speaks  of  the  state  of 
England,  where,  she  says,  the  death-worm 
is  diligently  at  work ;  and  in  proof  of  this 
her  profound  wisdom  cites  the  "  corn  bill," 
whicn  had  just  passed  the  two  houses  of 
Parliament.  "The  corn  bill,"  she  says,  "is 
a  work  of  the  death-worm  ;  it  will  change 
entirely  the  ancient  centre  of  gravity  by 
which  this  land  has  become  strong  within, 
and  mighty  without."  We  are  the  last  peo- 
ple who  desire  to  exclude  women  from  a 
share  in  political,  as  in  all  other  discussions ; 
we  would  only  require  that  ignorance  should 
know  how  becoming  silence  is. 

In  the  English  Church  Countess  Hahn 
finds  only  "noble  cathedrals  standinflr  empty," 
*^ married  bishops,"  and  her  "ideal  van- 
ishes." She  examioea  the  outside  merely, 
bat  is  compelled,  perhaps  unwittingly,  to 
acknowledge  that  "  the  English  have  need  of 
faith,  and  a  veneration  for  religion  as  God's 
law."  She  visits  Scotland,  the  puritanical 
strictness  and  simphcity  of  whose  Church 
foand  little  favor  m  her  eyes,  and  passes 
thence  to  Ireland — 

**  Here  did  T  once  again  behold  the  Charch  in 
beanty,  in  poverty,  oppression,  and  martyrdom, 
and  in  her  priests  I  found  holy  and  temperate 
men,  filled  with  apostolic  charity  and  love." 


Agmn,  she  looks  to  the  surface  alone.  In 
all  her  blame  of  England's  vnisgovernment  of 
this  unhappy  country  we  join  her  unhesita- 
tingly, but  there  break  we  off,  and  leave  her 
to  her  own  exaggerated  ideas  as  to  the  merits 
of  the  priests  and  people  of  Ireland  ;  poeti- 
cal fancies  all,  and  false  as  poetical. 

After  this  journey,  the  Countess  returned 
to  Germany,  more  hopelessly  unhappy  than 
ever.  "I  was  like  one  swimming  in  the 
wide  ocean,  dreaming  of  a  harbor  of  refuge, 
and  ever  exclaiming,  '  It  is  not  here,  it  is  not 
here  !  these  waves  can  never  bear  me  thith- 
er I' "  She  visits  Italy  again,  and  speaks  of 
her  journey  as  a  melancholy  one.  Weary 
and  dispirited,  she  returned :  the  revolution- 
ary spirit  had  for  an  hour  conquered  ;  princes 
trembled  on  their  thrones,  and  nobles  stood 
helpless  and  confounded  around ;  Austria 
had  been  beaten  on  the  plains  of  Italy,  and 
monarchy  tottered  in  the  high  places  of  the 
earth.  The  proud  nature  of  the  Countess, 
too  weak  to  grapple  with  the  times,  writhed 
in  tortures  beneath  them : — 

"  1  lived  like  the  salamander,  in  the  fire  of  an 
inextinguishable  hatred  of  democracy  and  t/« 
leaders, '  (A  truly  Christian  sentiment !)  ^  Spring 
came  (1849) ;  over  that  May  death  spread  a 
mourning  veil  so  thick  and  black  that  for  a  long 
time  I  neither  felt  nor  saw  anything,  neither  in 
heaven  above,  nor  on  the  earth  beneath,  neither 
within  me,  nor  around  me.  Every  Sunday,  1  went 
to  Dresden  to  mass,  and  then  I  wept  sf  if  I  were 
melting  away  in  tears ;  it  was  as  though  a  spring 
breeze  were  dissolving  the  ice  in  my  breast,  as  if 
a  warm  hand  laid  itself  upon  my  benumbed  heart. 
Whitb^r  was  this  leading  me  ?  I  knew  not  then,' 
now  I  see  it  all  clearly.  *  With  eternal  love  do  I 
love  thee;  therefore,  am  I  merciful  unto  thee, 
and  draw  thee  to  myself  " 

She  opened  the  Bible,  as  was  often  her 
habit,  to  see  on  what  passage  her  eyes  would 
first  alight.  They  fell  upon  these  words  in 
the  sixtieth  chapter  of  Isaiah — ''Arise! 
shine  I  for  thy  light  is  come»  and  the  glory 
of  the  Lord  is  risen  upon  thee."  This  acci- 
dent so  forcibly  impressed  her  mind,  that  she 
sate  unconscious  of  time,  her  head  buried  in 
her  handsy  gazing  upon  the  open  book.  ''  A 
ray  of  morning  light  glided  mto  the  black, 
iron  night  of  my  soul ;  faint,  and  pale,  and 
deep,  below  the  horizon  it  began  to  dawn." 
After  this  she  writes  thus : — 

"  I  can  no  longer  make  illusions  to  my  soul, 
•a^lng.  Try  this — prove  that !  perhaps  now  the 
world  may  yet  have  something  hidden  for  thee ! 
The  cry  of  experience  is  sounding  within  me. 
No— no !  it  has  nothing !  Then  what  remains  ? 
God?" 


272 


AN  EVKNINO  WTTB  JASBOK. 


[Oct, 


Her  feelings  bad  led  her  now  within  the 
portals  of  the  Catholic  Church ;  the  strongest 
fortress  of  her  nature  had  yielded,  and  it 
needed  little  more  to  complete  the  victory. 
Her  weak  reason,  ever  the  slave  of  her  im* 
agination  and  heart,  was  easily  convinced  of 
the  truth  of  what  she  already  loved.  She 
sent  for  three  books,  which  were  to  deter- 
mine her  future  faith  :~^Luther's  greater  and 
lesser  **  Catechism,"  "  Bockel's  Confession  of 
the  Evangelical  Reformed  Church,"  and  the 
*' Canons  and  Decrees  of  the  Council  of 
Trent."  Thus  she  imagined  to  place  herself 
at  the  fountain-head  of  the  three  different 
religions,  and  that  she  should  speedily  find 
from  which  flowed  the  water  of  life.  She 
began  with  the  Catholic  book,  and  exclaims : 

**  Yes  !  this  was  what  I  aoaght ;  here  I  found 
at  last  all  that  my  soul  had  pined  for  so  long — 
here  was  the  perfecdon  of  repose,  united  with 
eternal  excitement." 

Her  part  was  taken  ;  nor  was  it  to  be  ex- 
pected that  she  would  listen  with  calm  im- 
partiality to  the  arguments  of  creeds,  which 
since  her  youth  she  had  neglected.  She 
thus  writes  to  a  Roman  Catholic  friend : — 


%  **  I  am  like  the  swallow  which  deserta  the  fall- 
inff  house ;  I  quit  for  ever  the  tottering  building 
(of  Protestantism) ;  I  need  a  house  for  eternity ;  I 
now  know  where  to  find  it  ...  .  And 
now  1  am  returned — from  Babylon  to  Jerufalem, 
from  a  foreign  land  to  my  home,  from  loneliness 
to  communion,  from  division  to  unity,  from  dis- 
quietude to  peace,  from  lies  to  the  truth,  from  the 
world  to  God  V\ 

And  here  we  take  leave  of  Countess  Habn- 
Hahn.  That  her  book  Vas  had  the  smallest 
influence  over  sensible  minds  it  is  di^cult  to 
conceive,  and  yet  we  hear  that  convms  have 
been  added  to  the  Romish  Church  >jr  its 
perusal.  That  RomM^C^tholicismjvuisl  and 
will  gain  ready  lisCed«»iir  j^C^ermady,  is,  we 
fear,  a  sad  truth.  To  the^^ooh  thirsting  for 
religion,  for  a  living,  active  faith,  this  Church 
offers  a  ready,  asylum  from  the  chilling  cold- 
ness of  Luther^usm :  and  unless  greater  re- 
forms are  quic^  introduced,  and  a  more 
vital  spirit  breathed  into  the  dull  mass,  we 
ma^  look  for  nUny  followers  in  the  way 
whush  has  led  Countess  Hahn-Hahn  "  from 
Babylon  to  Jerusalem)^" 


I  ■  ^  1 1 


/y. 


Prom    Chambfri'  Bdiabvrfh  JohibaI. 


AN  EVENING  WITH  JASMIN. 


I  HAD  heard  of  Jasmin,  the  barber- poet  of 
Agen,  years  ago ;  and  had  read  his  works  too, 
which  is  more  than  every  one  can  say.  I 
had  also  had  always  a  great  curiosity  to  see 
him,  and  was  therefore  very  glad  to  receive 
an  invitation  to  a  "  soiree  coez  Madame  la 

Marquise  de  B ,"  where  ''Jasmin  s'y 

trouvera  "  (will  be  there)  were  the  magnetic 
words  which  were  to  attract  the  great  world. 
He  was  to  read  some  of  his  published  poems 
— hh  Papilldtos,  or  Curl-papers,  with  their 
literal  translation  in  French  ;  for  Jasmin 
writes  in  the  Gascon  dialect,  the  old  Laoffue 
d'Oo  of  the  troubadours— -which  is  a  kind  of 
mixture  of  French  and  Italian,  only  that  it 
b  more  sonorous,  rich,  and  masculine  than 
either :  as  noble  and  stately  as  the  Spanish, 
with  more  grace  and  more  tenderness.    Ac- 


cordingly, at  a  little  past  nine  I  presented 
myself  at  the  hotel  of  Madame  la  Marquise, 
whose  salons  even  at  this  early  hour  I  found 
filled  to  overflowing  with  many  of  the  old 
nobility  of  France.  As  she  herself  expressed 
it :  "  It  was  a  St.  Qermain's  night*'  High- 
sounding  names  were  there — pages  of  his- 
tory every  one  of  them — and  intellect  and 
beauty  ;  all  assembled  to  do  honor  to  the  hair* 
dresser  of  a  small  provincial  town  on  the  Ga- 
ronne,who  wrote  in  patob,  and  wore  no  gloves: 
a  practical  illustration  of  the  honor  paid 
in  France  to  intellect,  and  of  the  affectionate 
kind  of  social  democracy  which  is  so  beauti- 
ful there.  Indeed,  among  very  many  virtues 
in  French  society,  none  is  so^  deltghtful, 
none  so  cheering,  none  so  mutually  improv- 
ing, and    none    more    Christian,  than   the 


1853.] 


AN  EVSNINO  WITH  JASMHT. 


278 


kiDdly  intefcM^rBa,  almost  equality,  of  all 
ranks  of  socielj,  and  the  comparatively  little 
importance  attached  to  the  wealth  or  condi- 
tion Wh^re. there  is  intellect  and  power. 

At  half^st  nine  precisely,  a  short,  stout, 
dark- haired  man,  with  laree  bright  eyes,  and 
a  mobile  animated  face — 'his  button- hole  de- 
corated with  the  red  ribbon  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor,  and  an  enormous  ring  on  the  fore- 
finger of  a  not  very  clean  hand — made  his 
way  through  the  rich  attire  and  starry  wealth 
of  jewels,  to  a  small  table  placed  in  one  cor- 
ner of  the  large  saloon,  whereon  were  books 
— his  own  Curl-papers — a  carafe  of   fresh 
water,  two  candies  and  a  vase  of  flowers. 
The  ladies  ranged  themselves  in  a  series  of 
brilliant  semicircles   before  him;    the  men 
blocked  up  the  doorways,  and  peered  over 
each  other's  shoulders ;  he  waved  his  hands, 
like  the  leader  of  an  orchestra  indicating  a 
subdued  movement,  and  a  general  silence 
sealed  all  those  fresh  noisy  lips,  like  a  sudden 
sleep  falling  on  a  grove  of  perroquets.     One 
haughty  little  brunette,  not  long  from  her 
convent,  gitfgled  audibly ;  but  Jasmin's  eye 
transfixed  her,  and  the  poor  child  sat  re- 
buked and  dumb.     Satisfied  now,  the  hero 
of  the  evening  again  waved  his  hands,  ffave 
a  preliminary  cough,  tossed  back  his  hair, 
suddenly  "struck  an  attitude,'*  and  began 
his  poem.     The  lion  roared  and  roared  in 
real  earnest. 

He  read  first  a  piece  which  contained  noth- 
ing very  particular,  excepting  an  appeal 
for  help  towards  the  building  of  a  church. 
The  church  had  been  built  and  endowed 
years  ago,  but  by  the  manner  in  which  Jas- 
min read  his  poem,  you  might  have  believed 
it  a  case  of  the  most  urgent  present  distress. 
He  clasped  his  hands,  he  looked  up  to  heav- 
en, he  half  knelt  in  the  fervor  of  his  be- 
seeching application,  tears  started  into  his  eyes, 
and  hU  voice  shook  with  emotion,  and  then 
he  lauffhed  joyously  like  a  child,  looking 
round  tor  applause,  as  he  repeated  lines  or 
phrases  that  pleased  him,  crying :  *'  How 
charming ! — how  graceful ! — how  beautiful ! 
— magnificent  I — what  a  phrase  !"  at  every 
moment.  Though  I  recognised  the  poem  as 
one  published  just  ten  years  ago,  yet  I  fan- 
cied that  he  must  have  transferred  its  appli- 
cation ;  and  that,  in  all  probability,  a  church 
was  now  watting  to  be  built,  for  which  he 
adapted  his  former  appeal — he  was  so  urgent, 
so  passionate,  so  earnest  in  his  manner.  But 
I  was  mistaken,  and  so  were  many  others, 
whose  hands  I  saw  in  their  pockets — silver, 
and  in  one  instance,  a  piece  of  gold,  and  in 
another  two  sous  shining  between  their  fin- 

YOL^xxx.  Kaa 


eers.      It  was  simply  the  warmth  of  his 
imagination  that  affected  him.    He  now  read 
the  Gascon  version ;  and,  to  my  amazement 
and  amusement,  at  every  word  where  he  had 
clasped  his  hands  together  in  the  French,  he 
clasped  his  hands  together  in  the  Gascon ; 
where  he  had  looked  up  to  heaven  before,  he 
looked  up  to  heaven  again ;  where  he  had 
concentrated  all  his  fingers  in  one  point  on 
his  forehead,  he  concentrated  just   in   the 
same  point  again;   where  he  had  thrust  his 
hand  into  his  waistcoat  before,  he  did  so  once 
more ;  the  tears  gushed  where  they  were 
gushed  before,  and  smiles  irradiated  his  face 
at  the  same  words  where  smiles  had  irradi- 
ated his  face.     Excepting  for  the  sound  of 
the  syllables,  Gascon  and  French  were  the 
same  in  the  stereotyped  emotions  they  called 
up.     And  this  not  only  to-night,  but  every 
night  wherein  he  gives  his  readings,  without 
the  slightest  variation  in  a  single  particular. 
Those  in  the  salon  had  seen  him  before,  as- 
sured me  that  not  a  glance,  a  smile,  a  ges- 
ture, was  changed.     Once  hear  Jasmin  read 
a  certain  poem,  and  ten  years  afterwards  you 
have  precisely  the  same  **  effects."  A  strange 
kind  of  enthusiasm,  to  say  the  least  of  it, 
which  can  survive  the  duplicate  repetition  of 
years,  and  come  out  as  fresh  as  if  new  born. 
I  was,  however,  unwilling  to  judge  the 
poet  either  hastily  or  by  hearsay-^— in  both 
cases   necessarily   unjust — and    therefore   I 
waited  for  his  second  display. 

**  Ladies,  prepare  your  pocket-handker- 
chiefs," he  cried  after  a  moment's  pause.  **  I 
am  going  to  make  you  all  weep.  You  hnve 
not  pocket-handkerchiefd  enough  with  you — 
they  are  too  thin.  8ee,  I  have  brought  two 
foulards.^* 

A  young  bride  suggested  that  Madame  la 
Marquise  should  send  round  a  salver  with  a 
supply  of  this  necessary  article.  Jasmin 
looked  enchanted,  and  excUimed :  "  Tr^s 
bien  !  trds  bien  !  charmant !"  many  times. 
But  the  hint  was  not  adopted. 

It  must  be  distinctly  understood,  that  all 
Jasmin  said  and  did  was  with  the  most  per- 
fect good  faith  and  unbroken  gravity. 

He  began  his  poem  without  the  supple- 
mental handkerchitffs.  It  was  La  Semaine 
rf  «n  Ftfo— The  Week  of  a  Son— which  a 
foot-note  tells  us  is  '*  historical,  the  ciicum- 
stance  having  recently  occurred  in  our  part 
of  the  country."  The  poem  is  divided  into 
three  parts.  In  the  first,  a  young  boy  and 
girl,  Abel  and  Jeanne,  kneeling  in  the  moon- 
light before  a  cross  by  the  wayside,  pray  to 
the  Sainte  Vierge  to  cure  their  father. 
''Mother  of  God,  Virgin  compassionate, 
18 


214 


AN  EVENING  WITH  JASIUN. 


[Oct., 


send  down  tbuie  angel,  and  cure  our  sick 
father.  Our  mother  will  become  happy 
again  ;  and  we,  virgette  Mere — Little  Virgin 
Mother — we  will  love  thee  yet  more  if  we 


can. 


The  Virgin  hears  the  prayer,  for  a  woman, 
Btill  young,  opening  the  door  of  a  dark  house, 
cries  joyously  :  "  Poor  little  ones,  death  has 
left  us.  The  poison  of  the  fever  is  counter- 
acted ;  your  father's  life  is  saved.  Come, 
little  lambs,  pray  to  God  with  me !" 

Then  they  all  three. pray  by  the  side  of  an 
old  four-post  bedstead — literally,  "  entre 
quatre  colonnes  d'un  vieux  lit  en  serge  " — 
where  sleeps  the  good  father  Hilaire,  for- 
merly a  brave  soldier,  but  now  a  mason's 
servant.     This  ends  the  first  part. 

The  second  part  opens  with  a  brief  descrip- 
tion of  morning,  where  the  sun  shines 
through  the  glass  of  the  casement  "  mended 
with  paper."  Abel  glides  into  his  father's 
room,  who  commands  him  to  go  to  the  house 
of  his  preceptor  to- day,  to  learn  to  read  and 
write  ;  for  Abel,  *'  more  pretty  than  strong," 
is  to  be  komme  de  lettres,  as  his  little  arms 
would  fail  him  if  he  were  to  handle  the  rough 
stones  of  his  father's  trade.  And  here  Jas- 
min caressed  his  own  arm,  and  made  as  if  it 
were  a  baby's  smiling  and  speaking  in  a 
mignon  voice,  wagging  his  head  roguishly. 
Father  and  son  embraced  each  other  four 
times,  and  for  four  days  all  goes  '*  a  Halle- 
luia."  But  on  the  fourth,  Sunday,  a  brutal 
command  that  "  the  father  returns  to  his 
work  to-morrow,  else  his  place  shall  be  given 
10  another,'^  casts  dismay  and  consternation 
among  them  all.  Hilaire  declares  that  he  is 
cured,  rises  from  his  bed,  and  falls  prostrate 
through  weakness.  It  will  take  a  week  yet 
to  re-establish  him.  A  flash  of  lightning 
darts  through  the  soul  of  Abel.  He  dries 
his  tears,  assumes  the  air  of  a  man,  strength 
is  in  his  little  arms,  a  blush  is  on  his  face, 
"  behold  him  as  he  goes  out,  and  behold  him 
as  he  enters  the  house  of  the  brutal  master 
of  the  masons."  When  he  returns  he  is  no 
longer  sorrowful ;  *'  honey  was  in  his  mouth, 
and  his  eyes  were  smiling." 

''  My  father,  repose ;  gain  strength  and 
courage  ;  thou  hast  the  whole  week.  Then 
thou  raayst  labor.  8ome  one  who  loves  thee 
well  will  do  thy  work  for  thee,  and  thou  shalt 
still  keep  thy  place  1" 

The  third  part. — "  Behold  our  Abel,  who 
works  no  longer  at  the  desk,  but  in  the  work- 
shop." In  the  evening,  become  again  a  peHi 
rnonneur,  he,  the  better  to  deceive  his  father, 
speaks  of  papers  and  writings,  "and  with  a 
wink  replies  to  the  winks  of  his  mother " 


("Et  d'un  din  d'oeil  r6pond  anxolins  d'yeax 
de  sa  mere  1")  Three  days  pass  thus ;  the 
fourth,  Friday,  the  sick  man  cured  leaves  his 
house  at  mid-day.  '*  But,  fatal  Friday,  God 
has  made  thee  for  sorrow  !" 

The  father  goes  to  the  work  -  place. 
Though  the  hour  for  luncheon  has  not  yet 
arrived,  yet  no  one  is  seen  up  above ;  and,  0 
good  God  !  what  a  crowd  of  people  at  the 
foot  of  the  building  I  Masters,  workmen, 
neighbours,  all  are  there,  assembled  in  haste 
and  tumuh.  A  workman  has  fallen.  Hi- 
laire presses  forward,  to  see  Abel  lie  bleed- 
ing on  the  ground.  The  poor  child  dies, 
murmuring:  ''Master,  I  have  not  not  been 
able  to  finish  the  work,  but  in  the  name  of 
my  poor  mother,  for  one  day  wanting,  do  not 
replace  my  father  1"  The  place  was  pre- 
served for  Hilaire ;  his  wages  even  were 
doubled — too  late.  One  morning  trouble 
-closed  his  eyelids  ;  and  the  good  father,  stiff 
in  death,  went  to  take  another  place — in  the 
tomb  by  the  side  of  his  son. 

The  incident  is  in  itself  so  touching,  and 
part  of  the  poem  is  so  beautifully  written, 
that  we  cannot  find  it  in  our  heart  to  say 
how  Jasmin  wept  and  sobbed,  both  in  French 
and  Gascon  ;  how  he  buried  his  face  in  his 
hands,  and  took  a  peculiar  intonation  at  ex- 
actly the  same  place  in  each  rendering ;  how 
the  same  smile  and  the  same  agony  became 
wonderful  rather  than  inspiriting,  when  re- 
peated so  faithfully  ;  and  how  much  more 
like  the  most  elaborate  acting  than  like  na- 
ture it  appeared.  There  were  some  men  who 
wept,  and  many  women  who  cried  :  "  Char- 
mant !  tout-a-fait  charmant!"  but  without 
weeping  ;  and  the  lady  of  the  house  was 
very  grateful,  and  the  ecclesiastics  smooth 
and  patronising.  And  Jasmin  sat  like  an 
enthroned  demigod,  and  quafied  his  nectar 
and  sniffed  his  ambrosia,  smiling  benignly. 

It  was  all  very  amusing  to  a  proud,  stiff, 
reserved  "Britisher"  like  myself;  for  how 
greyheaded  men  with  stars  and  ribbons  could 
cry  at  Jasmin's  reading,  and  how  Jasmin, 
himself  a  man,  could  sob  and  wipe  his  eyes 
and  weep  so  violently,  and  display  such  ex- 
cessive emotion,  surpassed  my  understanding, 
probably  clouded  by  the  chill  atmosphere  of 
the  fogs  in  which  every  Frenchman  believes 
we  live.  They  were  like  a  number' of  chil- 
dren set  free  from  school  playing  at  human 
life.  But  I  saw  they  all  thought  me  as  cold 
as  stone  and  as  hard  as  iron  :  they  looked  it. 
For  I  did  not  cry  like  the  rest ;  and  though 
I  was  more  attentive  to  the  poet  than  many 
of  them  were,  yet  I  knew  it  was  a  critical 
rather  than  a  responsive  attention,  and,  as 


1858.] 


AN  EVENING  WITH  JASMIN. 


276 


such,  would  naturally  be  expressed  in  my 
countenance. 

The  third  poem  which  the  coiffeur,  now 
calmed  and  smiling, read, was  Ma  Bigno — My 
Vine.    This  is  an  exceedingly  graceful  poem, 

Jerhaps  as  graceful  and  perfect  as  anything 
afimin  has  done.  Lacking  true  simplicity, 
while  to  all  appearance  the  very  soul  of  it — in 
reality  totally  destitute  of  such  simplicity  as 
is  expressed  by  unconsciousness,  but  fresh 
and  hearty,  and  with  a  certain  youthfulness 
of  feeling  that  gives  it  a  great  charm — a 
charm  lost  when  Jasmin  reads  ;  for  then  the 
strained  smile,  the  exceeding  self-satisfaction, 
the  consciousness  of  ndiveti  and  simplicity, 
spoil  the  whole  thing,  and  give  it  the  same 
false  air  as  paint  and  tinsel  of  a  theatre  give 
to  a  young  child — one  feels  a  want  of  har- 
mony somewhere,  and  one  chafes  at  the  na- 
ture which  parades  itself  boastingly,  and 
calls  to  all  the  world :  "  See  how  charming 
I  am  !" 

The  subject  of  My  Vine  is  very  simple. 
It  is  an  epistle  to  Madame  Louis  Veill  at 
Paris,  setting  forth  the  pleasures  of  a  small 
piece  of  ground  which  Jasmin  has  bought  at 
Agen  ;  a  piece  of  ground  long  desired,  and 
now  bought  with  the  money  gained  by  his 
poems,  and  christened  a  Papilldto  /  His  de- 
scription of  his  fruit-trees,  his  birds,  his 
flowers,  his  vines,  all  warm  with  sun,  spark- 
ling, bright,  and  luscious,  is  about  the  best 
specimen  of  this  kind  of  writing  we  have 
seen  anywhere.  It  is  a  living  picture ;  you 
see  the  fruit  glowing  in  the  sun,  the  fruit 
which  Madame  Louis  Veill  is  *'  to  pluck  from 
the  branch,"  after  "  taking  off  her  shining 
glove,"  and  **  plant  in  it  her  white  teeth. 
"  Like  us  you  will  almost  drink  it  (the  peach) 
without  taking  off  its  fine  skin,  for  from  the 
skin  to  the  almond  ii  melts  in  the  mouth — 
it  is  honey  I" 

The  poem  ends  with  a  confession  on  the 
part  of  the  poet  of  sundry  robberies  com- 
mitted in  this  same  place  when  a  lad,  of 
apple-trees  broken,  hedges  forced,  and  vine- 
ladders  scaled,  winding  up  with  these  words: 
"  Madame,  you  see  I  turn  towtirds  the  past 
without  a  blush ;  will  you  ?  What  I  have 
robbed  I  return,  and  return  it  with  usury. 
I  hare  no  door  for  my  vine ,  two  thorns  bar 
its  threshold :  when  by  a  hole  I  see  the  nose 
of  marauders,  instead  of  arming  myself  with 
a  caoe,  I  turn  away  and  go,  so  that  they 
may  retnm.  He  who  robbed  when  be  was 
young,  in  his  old  age  allows  himself  to  be 
robbed."  An  amiable  sentiment,  sure  to  be 
popular  among  the  rising  generation  of 
Agen ! 


This  was  the  last  thing  the  poet  read,  and 
then  his  social  ovation  began.  Ladies  sur- 
rounded him,  and  men  admired  him  ;  a  ring 
was  presented,  and  a  pretty  speech  spoken 
by  a  pretty  mouth,  accompanied  the  pre- 
senta^on ;  and  the  man  of  the  people  was 
flattered  out  of  all  proportion  by  the  brave 
haughty  old  noblesse.  To  do  Jasmin  justice, 
although  naturally  enough  spoiled  by  the 
absurd  amount  of  adulation  he  has  met  with, 
he  has  not  been  made  cold -hearted  or  worldly. 
He  is  vain,  vain  as  a  petted  child,  but  true 
and  loyal  to  his  caste.  He  is  still  the  man 
of  the  people,  content  to  be  so,  and  not  seek- 
ing to  disguise  or  belie  his  profession.  In 
fact,  he  always  dwells  on  his  past  more  or 
less,  and  never  miss^  an  opportunity  to  re- 
mind his  audience  that  he  is  but  a  plebeian 
after  all.  He  wears  a  white  apron,  nnd 
frizzes  hair  to  this  day  when  at  Agen  ;  and, 
chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  member 
of  academies  and  institutes  without  number, 
feted,  praised,  flattered  beyond  anything  we 
can  imagine  in  England,  crowned  by  the 
king,  and  the  then  heir  of  the  throne,  with  gilt 
and  silver  crowns,  decked  with  flowers  and 
oak- leaves,  and  all  conceivable  species  of 
coronets,  he  does  not  ape  the  gentleman,  but 
clips,  curls,  and  chatters  as  dimply  as  here- 
tofore, and  as  professionally.  He  is  the 
dandy  coiffeur  if  you  will,  but  still  the 
coiffeur.  And  (here  is  no  little  merit  in  this 
steady  attachment  to  his  native  place,  no 
little  good  sense  in  this  adherence  to  his  old 
profession.  In  the  last,  I  acknowledge  a 
great  deal  of  that  public  consciousness  which 
is  in  all  he  says  and  does ;  but  pompous  as 
his  steadfastness  may  be,  and  conscious  and 
displayed  and  egotistical,  it'  is  so  far  manlier 
and  nobler  than  that  weak  form  of  vanity 
shewn  in  a  slavish  imitation  of  the  great  and 
a  cowardly  shame  of  one's  native  state. 

So  that,  on  the  whole,  though  not  going 
the  extreme  lengths  of  his  admirers,  without 
speaking  of  him  as  "  more  than  an  artist — 
more  than  a  poet,"  with  Justin  Dapuy,  or 
as  beyond  the  great  men  of  antiquity,  and 
equal  to  the  inspired  prophets,  with  Charles 
Nodier  and  others,  yet  we  honor  in  him  a 
true  poet  and  a  true  man,  brave,  affectionate, 
mobile,  loving,  whose  very  faults  are  all 
amiable,  and  whose  vanity  takes  the  form  of 
nature.  And  if  we,  of  the  cold  north  can 
scarcely  comprehend  the  childish  passionate- 
ness  and  emotional  unreserve  of  the  more 
sensitive  south,  at  least  we  can  profoundly 
respect  the  good  common  to  as  all — the  good 
which  lies  underneath  that  many-coloref* 
robe  of  manners  which  ohanges  with  evr 


276 


HISTORY  OF  A  CONTEIBUTOK 


[Oct, 


hamlet ;  the  good  which  speaks  from  heart 
to  heart,  and  quickens  the  pulses  of  the  blood, 
wheCher  shewn  in  old  Rome  or  Greece,  or  in 
oar  own  time,  and  land ;  the  fi;ood  which 
binds  as  all  as  brothers,  and  makes  but  one 
family  of  universal  man ;  and  this  good  we 


gladly  and  lovingly  recognise  in  Jasmin,  and 
while  rallying  him  for  his  foibles,  respectfully 
love  him  for  his  virtues,  and  tender  him  a 
hand  of  sympathy  and  admiration  as  a  6ne 
poet,  a  gooa  citizen,  and   a   true-hearted 


man. 


N-»«- 


HISTORY    OF  A    CONTRIBUTOR. 


About  thirty  years  ago,  a  popular  maga- 
zine rejoiced  in  a  Contributor  whose  name 
was  destined  to  acquire  a  wider  currency 
than  the  work  he  adorned  by  his  pen.  His 
literary  manner  was  almost  a  novelty  at  that 
time.  Lig'ht,  gossiping,  vain,  egotistical,  yet 
fresh  and  clever,  his  papers  on  arts  and  art- 
ists seemed  the  very  beau^ideal  of  magazine 
writing.  His  vanity,  however,  sometimes 
mastered  his  good- nature,  for  be  did  not  al- 
ways like  the  clever  productions  of  other 
people.  Still,  he  was  in  the  main  a  good  sort 
of  fellow ;  and  his  brother  contributor,  Charles 
Lamb,  describes  him  under  his  nom  de  guerre 
as  "kind,  light-hearted,  Janus  Weather- 
cock." Janus  had  besides  mystery  to  rec- 
ommend him — and  not  the  mystery  that  at- 
taches to  anonymity,  initials,  or  nom-a  de 
guerre,  for  he  appeared  in  propria  personSi, 
and  was  as  well  known  as  Mr.  Brown,  or  Mr. 
Smith,  or  any  of  the  rest  of  us.  His  haunts, 
too,  were  public  enough  ;  for  he  was  a  Park- 
lounger,  a  frequenter  of  semi-fashionable 
parties,  a  devotee  of  the  Opera,  a  fastidious 
critic  of  the  ballet,  and  a  constant  attender 
of  the  private  views  of  the  Exhibitions.  He 
was  attracted,  in  short,  by  everything  that 
was  elegant  and  reBned ;  and  his  handsome 
person,  good-natured  con6dence  of  manner, 
and  half- military  braided  frock,  were  them- 
selves objects  of  attraction  wherever  he 
went.  What  was  mysterious  about  him  was, 
that  nobody  knew  anything  about  his  ante- 
cedents. There  he  was — •*  Our  Contribu- 
tor"— ^a  fine,  dashing,  foppish,  affected, 
clever  fellow,  an  easy  graceful  writer,  and  an 
accomplished  artist.  But  who  was  he? 
What  had  he  been  ?  Where  had  he  resided  ? 
No  one  could  answer  these  questions ;  and 
Janus  treated  any  expression  of  curiosity  that 
was  ventured  with  a  good-natured  half-sar- 
castic superiority,  which  increased  the  inter- 
est that  surroonded  him. 


About  the  year  1825,  he  ceased  to  con- 
tribute to  the  magazine ;  and  from  that  time 
he  may  be  said  to  have  pursued  a  public  ca- 
reer, in  which  thousands  of  eyes  were  upon 
him — not  one  of  which  however,  was  able  to 
penetrate  the  cloud  of  mystery  in  which  be 
continued  to  live,  move,  and  have  his  being. 
**  From  this  period,"  says  an  author,  the 
leading  points  of  whose  narrative  we  give, 
''  the  man  whose  writings  were  replete  with 
an  intense  luxurious  enjoyment — whose  or- 
ganization was  so  exquisite  that  his  love  of 
the  beautiful  became  a  passion,  and  whose 
mind  ^as  a  significant  union  of  the  ideal 
with  the  voluptuous — was  dogged  in  his 
footsteps  by  death.  It  was  death  to  stand 
in  his  path — it  was  death  to  be  his  friend — 
it  was  death  to  occupy  the  very  house  with 
him  1  Well  might  his  associates  join  in  that 
portion  of  the  Litany  which  prays  to  be  de- 
livered  from  battle,  from  murder,  and  from 
sudden  death,  for  sudden  death  was  ever  by 
his  side."*  Surely  there  is  mystery  enough 
here  for  a  Radcliffian  romance  or  a  Coburg 
melo-drama!  What  connection  had  he  with 
that  spectral  Death  which  was  ever  in  his 
company  ?  Was  he  an  actor  or  a  looker-oo 
at  the  successive  tragedies  ?  Does  the  au- 
thor allude  to  crimes  or  coincidences?  Or 
is  his  object  merely  to  produce  a  perora- 
tion ? 

The  contributor,  however,  proceeded  in 
1829,  with  his  wife — for  he  was  married  to 
a  young  and  attractive  woman — to  visit  hiB 
uncle.  What  then  ?  Why,  then  his  uncle 
died,  and  he  inherited  his  fortune.  This  was 
nothing  extraordinary,  for  uncles  always  die 
at  one  time  or  other;  and  in  the  present 

^  AnsMh^  AnaedoU;  und  Legends:  a  Ckrcmidi 
of  lAfe-iUtuTance,  By  John  Franois.  LoDgmao: 
1868.  ThiB  is  a  alight^  aneedoUoal  hUtory  of  life- 
•asnranoe,  and  ia  a  very  readable  and  anpretending 
TolaBiai 


1868.] 


HISTORr  OF  A  CONTRIBUTOR. 


211 


case  the  heir  sacceeded  only  to  what  he  had 
agood  right  to  expect,  the  uncle  having  been 
his  life-long  friend,  to  whose  kindness  he 
owed  even  his  education.  But  a  fortune  was 
a  mere  temporary  convenience  to  J  anus.  He 
bad  already,  as  report  said,  inherited  and 
spent  several;  and  this  one  soon  followed 
the  others.  Next  year  the  sOkall  domestic 
circle  was  enlivened  by  two  young  ladies, 
stepf- sisters  to  his  wife,  who  came  on  a  visit. 
One  of  them,  who  was  destined  to  make 
some  noise  in  the  world,  was  called  Helen 
Frances  Phoebe  Abercrombie,  and  is  de- 
scribed as  being  at  the  time  **  a  buxom  girl 
of  one-and  twenty."  This  young  lady,  in 
company  with  her  step-sister,  began  all  on  a 
sudden  to  haunt  the  insurance  offices.  She 
seemed  to  be  seized  with  a  mania  for  insuring 
her  life ;  and  the  two  attractive  visitors  were 
seen  constantly  flitting  from  the  Hope  to  the 
Provident,  from  the  Eagle  to  the  Imperial, 
from  the  Alliance  to  the  Pelican,  to  the  great 
surprise  and  rejoicing  of  the  clerks.  Some- 
times the  Contributor  appeared,  but  rarely : 
his  taste  was  probably  too  re6ned  for  bus- 
iness.  Miss  Abercrombie,  however,  found  no 
difficulty  in  getting  herself  insured  at  the 
PaUadium  for  £3000.  The  singularity  of 
the  affair  was,  that  this  buxom  girl  insured 
her  young  life  for  only  three  years ;  but  her 
further  proceedings  m  this  way  were  quite 
unaccountable — for  the  next  insurance  she 
effected,  for  the  same  sum,  was  for  only  two 
years.  The  Provident,  the  Pelican,  the  Hope, 
and  the  Imperial,  came  in  for  their  share  on 
the  same  terms ;  and  in  the  course  of  six 
months  the  goodly  sum  of  £18,000  depended 
upon  her  surviving  for  this  inconsiderable 
space. 

But  the  mnnia  was  not  appeased.  £2000 
was  proposed  to  the  Eagle ;  £5000  to  the 
Globe;  and  £5000  to  the  Alliance,  which 
would  have  made  the  whole  sum  £30,000. 
The  offices,  however,  were  by  this  time 
alarmed.  At  the  Globe  some  searching 
questions  were  asked ;  but  the  young  lady 
could  not  tell  why  she  insured,  and  she  was 
even  so  foolish  to  declare  that  she  bad  not 
applied  at  any  other  office.  This  was  so  ex- 
travagant a  falsehood — for  her  proceedings 
had  by  this  time  become  matter  of  notorie- 
ty— that  her  proposal  was  at  once  rejected. 
At  the  Alliance,  the  secretary  was  still  more 

Eressing  as  to  her  reasons ;  and  when  this 
ad  the  effect  only  of  irritating  the  applicant, 
he  sketched,  for  her  consideration,  the  case 
of  a  young  lady  who  had  been  murdered  for 
the  sake  of  the  insurance  money.  The  hint 
was  treated  by  Miss  Abercrombie  with  dis- 


dain ;  but  her  applications  being  now  with- 
out result,  the  visits  which  had  fallen  like 
sunshine  on  the  dull  routine  of  official  life, 
were  discontinued,  and  the  poetry  of  the  in- 
surance-desk was  at  an  end. 

The  Contributor,  in  the  meantime,  being 
in  the  lull  between  one  fortune  and  another, 
appeared  to  be  settling  down  in  the  trough 
of  the  sea.  He  was  in  desperation  for  money ; 
and  the  literary  exquisite,  who  had  described 
as  a  proceeding  of  consequence  his  exchan- 
ging his  ''smart,  tight- waisted,  stiff-collared 
coat,  for  an  easy  chintz  gown  with  pink  rib- 
bons," and  alluded  with  gusto  to  his  *'  com- 
placent consideration  of  his  rather  elegant 
figure  as  seen  in  a  large  glass  placed  oppo- 
site the  chimney- mirror,"  had  recourse  to  his 
pen  in  that  dangerous  walk  of  compoition 
termed  plagiarism  in  literature,  but  in  bus- 
iness— forgery.  He  executed  a  power  of  at- 
torney in  the  name  of  certain  trustees  of 
stock  in  the  Bank  of  England,  the  interest 
only  of  which  was  receivable  by  himself  and 
his  wife ;  and  he  thus  obtained  possession  of 
a  part  of  the  principal.  The  thing  was 
easy ;  and  he  tried  it  again — again — again — 
and  yet  again,  till  the  ^hole  fund  was  ex- 
hausted. This  new  fortune  was  no  more 
lasting  than  the  others.  Down  he  sunk  in 
the  trough  again,  till  his  very  furniture  was 
in  pledge,  and  he  removed  to  ready-furnished 
apartments  in  Conduit  Street,  with  his  wife 
and  her  two  step-sisters. 

Miss  Abercrombie  now  stated  to  her  ac- 
quaintances that  she  was  going  abroad.  Pre- 
paratory to  this  step,  it  was  proper  to  make 
her  will ;  and  accordingly,  she  left  everything 
to  her  unmarried  sister,  appointing  Janus 
her  sole  executor,  who  would  thus,  after  her 
death,  have  the  entire  control  of  her  proper- 
ty. The  insurance  in  the  Palladium  for 
£.3000  she  assigned  to  him  personally ;  and 
having  thus  solemnly  arranged  her  affairs, 
she  went  out  with  her  sister  and  brother-in- 
law  to  the  theatre.  The  evening  proved 
wet ;  but  they  walked  home  together,  and 
supped  on  lol^ters  and  porter.  That  night 
she  became  unwell,  and  in  a  day  or  two  was 
attended  by  a  physician,  who  treated  the 
complaint  lightly.  "  On  the  14th  Decem- 
ber,*' says  our  author,  "she  had  completed 
her  will,  and  assigned  her  property.  On 
the  21st  she  died.  On  that  day  she  had 
partaken  of  a  powder  which  Dr.  Locock  did 
not  remember  prescribing ;  and  when  her 
sister  and  brother-in-law — who  had  left  her 
with  the  intention  of  taking  a  long  walk — re- 
turned, they  found  that  she  was  dead.  The 
body  was  examined ;  but  there  was  no  rea^ 


219 


HiaTORY  OP  A  CONTRIBUTOR. 


[Oct, 


on  to  attribute  the  death  to  any  other  cause 
than  pressure  on  the  brain/' 

The  impoverished  Contributor  had  now 
the  disposal  of  JD  18,000;  but  it  was  neces- 
sary, in  the  first  place,  to  get  the  money 
mto  his  possession.  The  claims  he  made 
upon  the  various  offices  were  resisted  ;  and, 
on  being  called  upon  to  prove  an  insurable 
interest,  he  suddenly  left  the  country.  In 
1835,  however,  he  commenced  an  action 
against  the  Imperial,  and  the  trial  of  the 
question  came  on.  The  plea  of  the  office 
was  deception  on  the  part  of  the  assured  ; 
but  the  counsel  did  not  confine  himself  to  the 
record.  His  allegations — made  in  a  civil 
court — petrified  the  jury,  and  the  judge 
shrank  aghast  at  the  character  drawn  of  the 
man.  The  jury,  however,  being  unable  to 
agree  on  the  verdict,  were  discharged ;  al- 
though in  the  following  December  the  com- 
pany gained  a  verdict  The  affairs  of  Janus 
had  likewise  come  to  a  crisis  in  another  way : 
the  forgeries  on  the  Bank  of  England  had 
been  discovered  ;  and  he  found  it  convenient 
to  remain  in  France,  where  he  chanced  to  be 
at  the  time. 

A  cloud  of  mystery  once  more  rests  for 
some  time  upon  the  elegant  and  effeminate 
Contributor,  till  we  find  him  at  Boulogne, 
where  he  resided  with  an  English  officer. 
This  gentleman  he  introduced  to  the  benefits 
of  insurance.  He  insured  his  host's  life  in 
the  Pelican  for  £.5000 ;  and  in  a  few  months 
the  man  died.  These  shocking  coincidences 
appear  to  have  terrified  even  Janus  himself; 
at  any  rate,  he  now  left  Boulogne,  and  trav- 
eled through  France  under  a  feigned  name. 
This  informality  was  discovered;  he  was  ap- 
prehended by  the  French  police  ;  and  a  quan- 
tity of  strichnia  being  found  in  his  posses- 
sion, he  was  imprisoned  for  six  months  in 
Paris.  Strichnia  is  a  vegetable  poison,  which 
is  obtained  by  chemical  distillation  in  the 
form  of  minute  white  crystah;  and  so  pow- 
erful is  it,  that  half  a  grain  blown  into  the 
throat  of  a  rabbit  has  been  known  to  cause 
death  in  a  few  minutes. 

The  adventurer  returned  to  London  after 
his  release,  probably  on  some  pressing  bus- 
iness, as  it  was  not  his  intention  to  tru^t  him- 
self there  longer  than  forty-eight  hours. 
He  succeeded  in  getting,  unrecognized,  into 
an  hotel  in  the  neighborhood  of  Covent  Gar- 
den ;  and  closing  the  blind,  sat  down  to 
breathey  or  ruminate.  Whatever  his  reflect- 
ions may  have  been,  they  were  disturbed  by 
a  noise  in  the  street;  and,  with  the  unac- 
countable fatality  which  usually  besets  crim- 
inals, even  when  hunted  for  their  lives,  and 


when  their  whole  soul  might  be  supposed  to 
be  occupied  with  the  necessity  for  conceal- 
ment, he  drew  back  the  blind.  It  was  only 
for  a  moment ;  but  that  moment  was  enough. 
A  passer-by  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  hand- 
some face  at  the  window,  and  immediately 
gave  notice  to  Forrester  the  officer,  and  the 
Forger  was  apprehended. 

This  was  a  curious  point  in  the  man's  his- 
tory, and  one  that  will,  no  doubt,  be  taken 
advantage  of  some  time  or  other  by  the 
novelist.  It  was  for  forgery  he  was  tried — 
for  nothing  more.  The  Home  Secretary  was 
well  aware  of  the  circumstances  connected 
with  the  fate  of  Helen  Abercrombie ;  con- 
sultations were  held  by  the  parties  interest- 
ed ;  the  opinions  of  the  law-officers  of  the 
crown  were  taken ;  and  Janus  was  tried  for 
forgery.  Of  this  crime  he  was  found  guilty, 
and  condemned  to  transportation  for  life. 

In  Newgate,  his  personal  Canity  became 
the  vanity  of  position.  He  piqued  himself 
on  the  magnitude  of  his  crime,  and  on  the 
respect  it  excited  amonff  the  petty  larceny 
rogues  who  surrounded  nim.  *'They  think 
I  am  here  for  £.10,000,"  said  he,  **and  they 
respect  me."  lie  gloried  in  being  exempted 
from  the  task  imposed  upon  all  the  other 
convicts— of  sweeping  the  yard.  Drawing 
down  his  wristbands,  as  if  still  admiring  in 
the  glass  his  chintz  gown  and  pink  ribbons, 
he  exclaimed  to  a  friend :  "  I  am  a  convict 
like  themselves,  but  no  one  dares  offer  me 
the  broom  !"  A  friend  ?  Yes :  Janus  was 
only  a  forger — in  everything  else  he  was  the 
victim  of  a  series  of  extraordinary  coinci- 
dences. He  claimed  for  himself — for  so  the 
Contributor  wrote  from  Newgate — *'a  soul 
whose  nutriment  was  love,  and  its  offspring 
art,  divine  song,  and  still  holier  philosophy. 
But,  nevertheless,  he  was  now  guilty  of  an 
imprudence  which  damaged  a  good  deal  the 
prestige  that  still  accompanied  him.  The 
claim  of  Helen  Abercrombie's  sister  was 
urged  upon  the  insurance  offices ;  and  it  oc- 
curred to  him,  that  if  he  took  the  part  of 
the  latter,  by  giving  such  information  as 
would  vitiate  the  rights  of  the  heir,  they 
might  have  interest  enough  with  govern- 
ment to  obtain  some  mitigation  of  his  punish- 
ment. The  communication  he  made  to  them 
with  this  view  was  so  far  effectual,  that  it 
saved  the  insurance  offices  from  the  necessi- 
ty of  paying  the  policies ;  but  with  regard  to 
Janus  himself,  the  result  was  somewhat  dif- 
ferent from  his  anticipations.  On  the  docu- 
ment being  forwarded  to  the  Secretary  of 
Stale,  an  order  was  immediately  sent  to  put 
the  forger  in  irons,  and  forward  him  instantly 


1868.] 


HISTORY  OF  A  OONTKIBUTOB. 


979 


to  the  convict-ship.  This  was  bard  upon  the 
elegant  Contributor;  for  there  is  oo  distinc- 
tion among  men  in  irons.  "  Tbey  think  me  a 
desperado!  said  he;  '^mc!  the  companion 
of  poets  and  philosophers,  artists  and  musi- 
cians !  Tou  will  smile  at  this — no ;  I  think 
you  will  feel  for  the  man,  educated  and  reared 
as  a  gentleman,  now  the  mate  of  vulgar  ruf- 
fians and  country  bumpkins  T* 

The  Contributor  had  now  found  a  level 
from  which  it  was  impossible  to  rise.  His 
vanity  lost  its  buoyancy,  his  mind  its  elastic- 
ity. He  rose  no  more  from  the  trough  of 
the  siea.  "  Pale,  abject,  cowering,  all  the 
bravery  rent  from  his  garb,  all  the  gay  inso* 
lence  vanished  from  his  brow,  can  that  hol- 
low-eyed, haggard  wretch  be  the  same  man 
whose  senses  opened  upon  every  joy,  whose 
nerves  mocked  at  every  peril  ?"  So  writes 
the  author  of  Lueretia  of  our  adventurer, 
whom  he  describes  under  the  name  of  Ga- 


briel Varney.  Of  the  history  of  the  man 
himself,  we  have  only  further  to  relate,  that 
in  due  time  he  reached  the  antipodes,  and 
that  he  died  miserably  in  an  hospital  at 
Sydney. 

Not  many  years  have  elapsed  since  the 
actual  time  of  these  events,  hut  still  a  suffi- 
cient number  to  blot  them  from  the  memory 
of  all  but  a  few ;  and  perhaps,  without  fur- 
ther explanation,  some  of  our  readers  might 
suppose  that  in  the  preceding  columns  we 
have  treated  them  to  a  romance — and  a  very 
improbable  one.  J^nus  Weathercock,  how- 
ever, is  an  extraordinary  fact.  His  real  name 
was  Thomas  Griffith  Wainwright ;  and  he 
belonged  to  the  staff  of  the  London  Ma^- 
zine,  with  Charles  Lamb,  Barry  Cornwall, 
William  Hazlitt,  Allan  Cunningham,  and 
others,  more  or  less  distinguished,  for  his- 
fellow  contributors.  ^ 


The  Children  of  Great  Posts. — It  is 
impossible  to  contemplate  the  early  death  of 
Byron's  only  child  without  reflecting  sadly 
on  the  fates  of  other  families  of  our  greatest 
poets.  Shakspeare  and  Milton  each  died 
without  a  son,  but  both  left  daughters,  and 
both  names  are  now  extinct.  Snakspeare's 
was  soon  so.  Addison  had  an  only  child,  a 
daughter,  a  girl  of  some  five  or  six  years  at 
her  father's  death.  She  died  unmarried,  at 
the  age  of  eighty  or  more.  Farquar  left 
two  grirls  dependent  on  the  friendship  of  his 
friend  Wilks,  the  actor,  who  stood  nobly  by 
them  while  he  lived.  They  had  a  small  pen- 
sion from  the  Government ;  and  having  long 
outlived  their  father,  and  seen  his  reputation 
unalterably  established,  both  died  unmMrried. 
The  son  and  daughter  of  Coleridge  both  died 
childless.  The  two  sons  of  Sir  Walter  Scott 
died  without  children,  one  of  two  daughters 
died  unmarried,  and  the  Scotts  of  Abbots- 
ford  and  Waverly  are  now  represeuted  by 
the  children  of  a  daughter.  How  little 
could  Scott  foresee  the  sudden  failure  of 
male  issue !  The  poet  of  the  *'  Faerie  Queene" 


lost  a  child  when  very  young,  by  fire,  when 
the  rebels  burned  his  house  in  Ireland.  Some 
of  the  poets  had  sons  and  no  daughters. 
Thus  we  read  of  Chaucer's  son,  of  Dry  den's 
sons,  of  the  sons  of  Burns,  of  Allan  Ram- 
say's son,  of  Dr.  Young's  son,  of  Campbell's 
son,  of  Moore's  son,  and  of  Shelley's  son. 
Ben  Jonson  survived  all  his  children.  Some 
— and  those  among  the  greatest — died  un- 
married ;  Butler,  Cowley,  Congreve,  Otway, 
Prior,  Pope,  Gay,  Thomson,  Cow  per,  Aken- 
side,  Shenstone,  Collins,  Gray,  Goldsmith. 
Mr.  Rogers  still  lives — ^single.  Some  were 
unfortunate  in  their  sons  in  a  sadder  way 
than  death  could  make  them.  Lady  Love- 
lace has  left  three  children — two  sons  and  a 
daughter.  Her  mother  is  still  alive,  to  see 
perhaps  with  a  softened  spirit  the  shade  of 
the  father  beside  the  early  grave  of  his  only 
child.  Ada's  looks  in  her  later  years — years 
of  suffering,  borne  with  gentle  and  womanly 
fortitude — have  been  happily  caught  by  Mr. 
Henry  Phillips — whose  father's  pencil  has 
preserved  to  us  the  best  likeness  of  Ada's 
father. — Aihenaum, 


280 


MABIA  ANTOnVSTTEL 


[Oct, 


From    Elisa    Cook'i    Joarnal. 


MARIE   ANTOINETTE. 


FROM  THE  FRENCH. 


BoRK  at  Yienna,  in  ibe  year  1756,  a 
daughter  worthy  of  that  empress  who  made 
the  faithful  Hungarians  cry  out,  "  We  will 
die  for  our  king,  Mnrie  Theresel"  Marie 
Antoinette  commenced  in  a  storm  that  royal 
life  which  was  to  end  amid  a  volcanic  erup- 
tion. When  she  espoused  Louis  XVI.,  then 
Dauphin  of  France,  she  was  already  the 
most  beautiful  princess  in  the  world.  This 
beauty  increased  up  to  the  period  in  which 
Lamartine  has  painted  these  admirable  traits. 
"  She  was  tall,  slender,  and  graceful — a  true 
daughter  of  the  Tyrol." 

It  was  known  with  what  enthusiasm  Marie 
Antoinette  was  welcomed  in  France.  Public 
flattery  exhausted  itself  in  ingenious  emblems 
of  adoration.  She  was  pronounced  more 
beautiful  than  the  ancient  Venus,  more 
graceful  than  the  Atalanta  of  Marly;  all 
poets  sung  her  praises ;  all  painters  placed 
her  portrait  amid  blooming  roses.  The  entire 
nation  was  on  its  knees  before  her.  When 
she  appeared  in  the  balcony  of  the  Tuileries, 
the  crowd  uttered  a  unanimous  exclamation  of 
intoxication  and  delight,  and  the  old  Mar- 
shal de  Brissac  cried  out  with  truth,  -"^  You 
see,  madam,  these  are  so  many  lovers." 
The  wife  smiled  at  this  word,  which  was 
one  day  to  be  spoken  in  her  dishonor;  the 
dauphiness  loved  this  multitude,  which  was 
to  howl  beneath  the  scaffold  of  the  queen. 
Catastrophes  were  mingled  in  the  marringe 
festivities,  as  if  to  announce  the  fatal  dinou- 
ment  The  concourse  of  people  was  such, 
that  some  amphitheatres  giving  way,  women 
and  children  were  crushed  to  death  on  the 
squares.  The  young  couple  seized  the  op- 
portunity to  lavish  their  beneSts.  The  casket 
of  the  dauphiness,  her  jewels,  her  heart, 
flew  to  the  relief  of  the  wounded,  the 
widows,  and  orphans.  Who  would  have 
thought  that  her  misery  was  to  surpass  all 
these  miseries,  and  not  one  of  those  whom 
she  consoled  would  come  to  her  aid  ? 

The  virtue  of   Marie  Antoinette  shone 


throuffh  the  scandals  of  the  latter  part  of 
the  reign  of  Louis  XV.  like  a  spotless  star 
above  a  stagnant  marsh.  Then  the  dauphin- 
ess became  queen ;  she  purified  the  court ; 
and  the  f^tes,  more  innocent,  were  but  the 
more  joyous.  This  period  was  all  happiness 
for  Marie  Antoinette.  Her  husband  was  be- 
loved and  herself  adored. 

It  was  on  the  5th  of  October,  1789,  that 
Marie  Antoinette  for  the  first  time  met  the 
revolted  people  face  to  face.  The  court  and 
the  assembly  of  the  state  were  still  at  Ver- 
sailles, and  famished  Paris  was  demanding 
the  king.  He  committed,  as  well  as  the 
queen,  a  great  fault,  in  being  present  at  an 
orgie  of  the  guards  du  corps,  in  which  the 
new  national  cockade  was  insulted  and 
trampled  upon. 

At  this  fatal  intelligence,  the  faubourg^, 
which  had  already  taken  the  Bastile,  rose  as 
one  man  to  seize  the  person  of  royalty.  The 
idea  of  bringing  Louis  XYI.  back  to  Paris 
originated  with  the  women,  who  loved  him 
still,  and  called  him  k  bon  papa,  but  who, 
dying  with  hunger  without  him,  thought  his 
presence  would  give  them  bread.  **  We 
have  no  bread  in  Paris,"  said  they  in  their 
coarse  language,  "  let  us  seek  the  baker  at 
Versailles !"  A  little  girl  beat  the  generak 
on  a  huge  drum,  the  whole  army  of  market- 
women  followed,  augmenting  from  street  to 
street.  On  the  way  they  pillaged  the  Hotel 
de  Yille,  attacked  the  cavalry  with  stones, 
and,  continually  crying  for  bread,  amid  a 
pelting  rain,  travelled  five  leagues  on  foot 
to  Versailles. 

Louis  XVI.  received  them  with  his  ordi- 
nary kindness,  and  gave  them  an  order  for 
provisions ;  but  he  postponed  the  signature 
of  the  declaration,  and  made  preparations 
for  resistance.  The  people,  divining  the  in- 
fluence of  the  queen,  broke  out  into  furious 
threats  against  her,  and  surrounded  her  in 
her  ch&teau  with  her  husband.  The  rain 
I  was  still  falling — they  were  struggling  in  the 


1853.J 


MARIA  ANTOINETTE. 


281 


mire.  It  was  a  horrible  scene!  Louis 
XVI.  trembling  for  the  life  of  his  wife,  at  last, 
at  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening,  signed  the  decree. 

The  nation  was  Htill  amiable,  it  still  re- 
spected virtue,  beauty,  infancy  ;  on  the  20th 
of  June,  the  10th  of  August,  the  2d  of 
September,  it  had  become  a  nation  of  mad- 
men and  cannibals. 

One  evening  in  June.  1701»  the  door  of  the 
Tuileries,  already  guarded  like  a  prison,  open- 
ed to  a  younff  and  handsome  Swede,  whom 
a  chivalric  adoration  attached  to  Marie  An- 
toinette. It  was  the  Comte  de  Persen,  for- 
merly a  frequenter  of  fetes  at  Trainon,  and 
now  confiding  in  a  desperate  plan.  The 
king  and  queen  urged  to  extremity,  an- 
nounced to  him  that  they  were  about  to 
leave  France,  and  placed  their  escape  under 
the  guidance  of  his  devotion  and  skill. 
Fersen  joined  with  himself  three  sure  friends, 
MM.  de  Valory,  de  Moustier,  and  de  Maldan. 
They  were  to  disguise  themselves  as  valets, 
mount  the  box  of  the  carriages,  and  risk  their 
heads  to  save  the  heads  of  royalty.  All 
was  thus  arranged  for  the  journey  to  the 
German  frontier. 

On  the  night  of  the  2l8t,  the  king  and 
queen  retired  to  rest  as  usual ;  but  when 
the  unquiet  city  was  half  asleep,  both  rose 
and  dressed  in  simple  travelling  costumes. 
Madame  Elizabeth,  that  angel  of  devotion, 
joined  them  with  the  dauphin  and  Madame 
Royale  (afterwards  the  Duchess  of  Angou- 
leme).  They  left  the  palace  by  stealth; 
they  traversed  the  Carrousel ;  the  queen 
perceived  there  in  the  shade  M.  de  Lafayette 
the  too  confident  guardian  of  royalty ;  the 
king  came  out  at  last,  accompanied  by  the 
Comte  de  Fersen.  They  met  on  the  Quai 
des  Theatins.  Louis  XVI.  and  his  son  de- 
layed half  an  hour ;  it  seemed  half  a  century ! 
They  arrived  at  last.  The  party  entered 
two  coaches  and  pursue*  I  on  a  gallop  the 
road  to  Chalons. 

The  passport  was  thus  worded  :  "  By  the 
king's  order,  pass  Madame  La  Baronne  de 
Korif,  on  her  way  to  Frankfort  with  two 
children,  a  maid,  vaiet'de-chambre,  and  three 
domestics :  signed,  the  Minister  of  Foreign 
Afikirs,  Montmorin." 

The  Baroness  de  Eorf  was  Marie  Antoin- 
ette ;  the  two  children  were  the  dauphin 
and  Madame  Royale  ;  the  woman  and  valet- 
de-chambre,  were  Madame  Elizabeth  and 
Louis  XVI. 

They  reached  Chalons.  They  pursued 
their  journey,  and  the  fugitives  exclaimed, 
"  We  are  saved !"  A  man  recognized  them. 
It  was  the  young  Drouet,  whose  name  will 


be  eternally  tarnished  with  the  blood  of  fou' 
victims.  He  had  never  seen  Louis  XVI.  bu^ 
he  noticed  his  resemblance  to  the  effigy  on 
coin.  He  divined  all.  He  immediately  gave 
the  alarm,  mounted  his  horse,  and  galloped 
to  Varennes. 

At  half-past  eleven  in  the  evening,  the 
royal  family  entered  Varennes.  Drouet  had 
already  been  there  a  long  time.  The  hussars 
had  not  yet  arrived,  having  been  delayed  an 
hour  by  a  misunderstanaing.  Now,  one 
hour  was  life  or  death,  safety  or  the  scafi!bld. 
The  three  disguised  gentlemen  sought  the 
officers  from  house  to  house.  The  king  and 
queen,  alarmed,  themselves  alighted  and 
wandered  through  the  streets.  They  inter- 
rogated the  passers-by,  like  unfortunate 
wanderers  in  quest  of  a  lodging.  Useless 
trouble  and  vain  humiliation !  They  regain- 
ed their  carriages,  and  by  bribes  and  en- 
treaties induced  the  the  postilions  to  remount 
their  horses.  They  resumed  their  journey, 
traversed  the  city,  and  became  reassured. 
Everything  slumbered  in  obscurity  except 
Drouet  and  his  friends.  They  were  laying 
in  wait  for  the  monarchy  under  the  shade  of 
an  old  feudal  tower.  It  approached.  They 
dashed  forward,  stopped  the  horses,  and 
ordered  the  travellers  to  descend.  The 
gentlemen  seized  their  arms,  and  consulted 
the  king  with  a  look.  The  king  prohibited 
their  using  them.  He  preferred  to  risk  the 
lives  of  his  own  family,  rather  than  shed  one 
drop  of  the  blood  of  his  people.  The  man, 
who  yesterday  commanded  30,000,000  of 
subjects,  obeyed  the  voice  of  an  unknown, 
and  followed  Drouet  to  the  house  of  a  grocer, 
named  Sausse.  The  tocsin  sounded,  the  city 
was  aroused,  the  magistrates  summoned. 
Royalty  was  imprisoned  in  a  grocer's  shop. 
Louis  XVI.  at  first  denied  his  name :  but  see- 
ing himself  recognised  by  all,  he  took  the 
hands  of  M.  Sausse,  and  s;ud  to  him,  "Yes, 
I  am  your  king :  I  confide  to  you  my  fate, 
and  that  of  my  wife,  my  sister,  my  children. 
Allow  us  to  depart ;  I  will  not  quit  France ; 
I  will  but  seek  liberty  in  some  loyal  city. 
Save  with  me  France  and  Europe  !  As  a 
father,  I  entreat  you ;  as  a  king,  I  command 
you."  The  queen,  Madame  Elizubeth,  the 
dauphin  threw  themselves  on  their  knees,  and 
united  their'tears  to  the  supplications  of  the 
monarch.  At  sight  of  so  much^  greatness 
humbled  before  their  insignificance,  the  mayor 
and  grocer  were  troubled,  and  hesitated. 
Their  hearts  might  have  yielded,  but  their 
selfishness  trembled  at  the  account  they 
would  have  to  render.  "  All  is  then  lost  I 
cried  the  queen ;  and  rising  indignantly,  she 


,232 


UABIA  ASTOUSfSTTK 


[Oct 


retired  to  a  room,  with  her  children,  to  weep. 
Meanwhile  Louis  XVI.  was  still  agitated,  and 
still  hoped.  AI.  de  Bouill^,  who  was  wait- 
ing at  Sterni  with  his  troops,  might  perhaps 
be  warned  in  time,  and  come  to  wrest  him 
from  his  jailers,  who  dare  not  lay  hands  on 
him.  Hours  rolled  away  and  no  assistance 
appeared.  The  queen  and  her  children 
were  reposing  on  beds  without  having  un- 
dressed. Horrible  night,  which  prepared 
Marie  Antoinette  for  the  vigil  before  the 
scaffold  !  When  she  rose  the  next  morning 
her  beautiful  blonde  hair  had  become  white  1 

At  half-past  seven  an  aide-de-camp  of 
Lafayette  arrived  from  Paris,  bearing  an 
order  of  arrest  from  the  Constituent  Assem- 
bly, and  the  royal  family,  surrounded  by 
3,000  guards,  set  out  for  Paris. 

The  royal  family  re-entered  Paris  on  the 
25th  of  June,  at  seven  in  the  evenibg. 

Placed  henceforth  under  the  suryeillance 
of  the  people,  Marie '  Antoinette  saw  her 
slightest  gesture  watched,  and  even  the  bed- 
chamber open  by  night  to  the  National 
Guards. 

On  the  20th  June,  1792,  the  whole  pop- 
ulation of  the  faubourgs,  women  and  children, 
bearing  the  declaration  of  the  rights  of  man ; 
mechanics  in  their  shirt  sleeves,  armed  with 
pikes  and  canes,  displaying  torn  culottes  for 
starldards,  invaded  the  Tuileries,  forced  the 
door  of  the  cabinet  of  Louis  XVI.  and  said 
to  hira,  '•  Monsieur,  you  are  a  traitor  1  you 
must  die  or  sign  these  decrees,"  (they  were 
the  decrees  against  the  priests  and  in  favor 
of  the  federalists ;)  then  they  placed  on  his 
head  a  red  cap,  a  glass  of  wine  at  his  mouth, 
and  sought  the  Austrian  everywhere  to  kill 
her.  Al  last  the  tocsin  of  the  10th  of  August 
sounded  the  last  hour  of  expiring  royalty. 
At  midnight,  Danton  gave  the  signal  of  as- 
sault at  ihe  clubs  and  at  the  faubourgs. 
.  Louis  XVI.  entrenched  himself  in  the  Tuil- 
eries with  his  last  defenders.  The  queen, 
Madame  Elizabeth,  the  children  and  women, 
passed  the  night  in  mortal  terrors,  rising 
every  moment  to  listen  to  the  sinister  bells 
and  the  approaches  of  the  popular  ocean. 
Already  masters,  in  fact,  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville, 
the  insurgents  attacked  the  Tuileries  to  the 
songs  of  the  Ca  ira  and  the  Marseillaise, 
Louis  XVI.  had  no  longer  any  safety  but  in 
the  Constituent  Assembly ;  thither  he  re- 
paired with  his  family  and  his  ministers. 
At  the  steps  of  the  terrace  of  the  Feuillants, 
a  group  of  the  insurgents  perceived  the 
cortege  and  barred- the  way.  **No,  no!" 
cried  they,  brandishing  their  pikes,  **'  they 
shall  no  longer  deceive  the  nation.     Abdi- 


cation or  death."  They  obtained  a  passage 
by  declaring  that  the  deputies  were  waiting 
for  the  king.  A  sapper  raised  the  young 
dauphin  in  his  arms,  carried  him  thus  before 
the  queen,  and  opened  the  way  to  the  As- 
sembly collected  at  the  Manage. 

Louis  sat  down  with  his  family  beside  the 
president,  Vergniaud  :  *"  Gentlemen, "  said 
he,  "I  am  come  hither  to  prevent  a  great 
crime.  I  have  thought  that  I  could  no  longer 
be  in  safety  but  in  your  midst."  And  he 
took  a  place  with  his  family  in  the  box  of  the 
logograph.  He  was  present,  aa  a  spectator, 
s^t  his  own  trial.  The  secretaries  took  their 
notes  near  him.  The  dauphin  was  seated  on 
a  straw  chair.  Marie  Antoinette  concealed 
herself  in  the  shade  of  a  corner.  This  mar- 
tyrdom lasted  fourteen  hours. 

Louis  XVI.  and  the  queen  then  saw  the 
spoils  of  the  monarchy  brought  into  the 
saloon,  vestments  and  ornaments,  silver  and 
jewels.  Then  they  heard  the  Assembly  pro- 
claim this  last  decree :  Royalty  is  suspended 
in  France.  The  royal  family  will  remain 
under  the  guardianship  of  the  legislative  corps. 

The  dethroned  and  captive  princes  were 
conducted  to  a  dilapidated  lodging  in  the  old 
monastery  of  Les  Feuillants.  An  officer  bore 
thither,  in  his  arms,  the  sleeping  dauphin. 
The  king  retired  without  undressing ;  the 
queen  threw  Irerself  beside  her  children; 
Madame  Elizabeth  passed  the  night  in  prayer 
at  their  door. 

On  the  night  of  the  19th  of  August,  some 
municipal  officers  entered  the  chamber  of  the 
queen,  and  tore  from  her  the  last  friends  of 
her  captivity.  They  were  replaced  by  a 
brutal  jailer  and  his  wife  named  Tison,  by  the 
saddler  Rocher,  as  ferocious  in  heart  as  in 
countenance,  and  by  Simon  the  shoemaker, 
the  infamous  executioner  of  Louis  XVII. 
Clery,  alone,  the  valet- de-chambre  of  the 
king,  obUiined  leave  to  remain  near  his  master, 
and  to  immortalize  his  devotion. 

The  captivity  in  the  Temple  lasted  nearly 
two  months.  It  was  frightful,  without  doubt, 
for  Marie  Antoinette  and  for  the  king  ;  bat 
they  were  resigned  to  it,  since  they  suffered 
together.  This  last  consolation  was  taken 
from  them  towards  the  end  of  September. 
They  had  just  supped  in  the  chamber  of 
Louis  XVI.  when  six  municipal  officers  en- 
t<^red.  They  read  to  the  prisoners  a  decree 
of  the  Commune,  which  .ordered  their  im- 
mediate separation,  and  the  removal  of  the 
king  into  the  great  tower. 

On  the  llth  of  December,  1792,  the 
gloomy  silence  of  the  Temple  was  disturbed 
by  a  great  tumult  of  men,  of  horses,  and  of 


1863.] 


MARIE  AlVTOmETTE. 


288 


firing.  The  Convention  were  coming  to  load 
Louis  XVI.  to  his  trial.  Who  can  describe 
the  anguish  of  the  wife  during  her  husband's 
trial  ?  The  speech  of  Desere  reached  Marie 
Antoinette  ;  then  she  learned  the  death-war- 
rant and  the  order  of  execution  in  twenty- 
four  hours. 

There  remained  but  one  doubt  and  one 
hope  :  would  tiie  king  be  allowed  to  embrace 
her  and  bless  her  before  his  execution  ?  And 
when  it  was  announced  to  her  that  she  would 
see  her  husband,  she  felt  that  agony  itself 
has  its  joys,  and  the  beatings  of  her  heart 
counted  the  seconds  uutil  the  morrow. 

On  the  20th  of  January,  at  seven  o'clock, 
Louis  XVI.,  calm  as  a  philosopher,  prepared 
for  the  reception  of  his  family.  He  request* 
ed  that  his  jailers  might  not  be  within  hear- 
ing, but  watch  through  a  glazed  door. 

The  queen  descended,  supporting  her  son 
anddaughter,  and  leaning  herself  on  Madame 
Elizabeth.  The  king  opened  his  arms,  and 
pressed  them  all  at  once  to  his  heart.  He 
seated  bis  wife  on  his  right  hand,  his  sister 
on  his  left,  Madame  Koyale  at  his  feet,  the 
dauphin  on  his  knees.  Thus  grouped  and 
mingled  in  one  embrace,  they  formed  but  one 
body  as  well  as  one  soul. 

The  fatal  moment  arrived :  Louis  XVI. 
rose,  pressed  his  family  once  more  to  his 
breast,  and  promised  to  see  them  again  the 
next  day — before  the  eternal  separation.  He 
resolved  not  to  keep  this  promise,  left  as  a 
last  gleam  in  this  night  of  despair.  He  led 
or  rather  bore  to  the  stairs  the  queen  hang- 
ing on  his  neck,  Madame  Roy  ale  in  his 
arms,  the  dauphin  clinging  to  his  knees, 
Madame  Elizabeth  entwmed  with  them  all. 
He  bade  them  adieu  thrice,  loosed  their 
clasping  hands  and  re-entered,  while  the 
mother  and  aunt  supported  the  fainting  prin- 
cess. 

The  next  morning  at  nine  o'clock,  Marie 
Antoinette  heard  the  roU  of  sixty  drums,  the 
echoing  of  artillery,  the  tread  of  a  whole 
army,  announce  the  departure  of  her  hus- 
band for  execution.  The  gratings  of  her 
windows  did  not  allow  of  her  receiving  the 
Jast  look  which  the  king  cast  upon  the  tower, 
where  he  left  his  family  more  unfortunate 
than  himself.  The  fatal  night  had  been  di- 
vided between  faintings,  sobs,  and  prayers, 
Marie  Antoinette  calculated  the  time  and  the 
distance,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  divine  the 
exact  moment  in  which  the  hea4  of  Louis 
XVL  would  fall. 

The  removal  of  Marie  Antoinette  to  the 
Conciergerie  took^place  on  the  2nd  of  Au- 
gust, 1798. 


I  Fouquier  Unville  came,  on  tbe  Idth  of 
October,  to  signify  to  Marie  Antoinette  her 
act  of  accusation.  "  Her  criihe  was  to  have 
been  a  queen,  the  wife  and  mother  of  a  king, 
and  to  have  abhorred  the  revolution  that 
wrested  from  her  her  crown,  her  husband, 
her  children,  and  her  life."  She  replied  not 
a  word,  and  repaired,  amid  a  battalion  of 
gendarmes,  to  the  tribunal  of  her  judges. 

She  defended  with  courage  and  even  with 
self-sacrifice  the  memory  of  her  husband ; 
but  the  decree  had  been  already  pronounced. 
Hermann  coldly  resumed  the  accusation  and 
declared  Marie  Antoinette  condemned  by  the 
people.  Ohauveau  Legarde  and  Tron^on 
Ducondray  addressed,  to  deaf  judges,  a  de- 
fence which  has  been  heard  by  posterity. 
Then  the  jury  pretended  to  deliberate,  and 
pronounced  the  penalty  of  death,  amid  the 
cruel  plaudits  of  the  multitude.  The  queen 
returned  to  listen  ^to  her  sentence,  without 
suffering  a  word  or  gesture  to  escape  her. 
"  Have  you  apy  observation  to  make  ?" 
asked  Hermann.  She  shook  her  head,  and 
rose  of  herself  to  walk  to  execution,  tri- 
umphing in  her  supreme  majesty  over  the 
ignoble  applause  which  followed  her  to  the 
very  depths  of  her  cell. 

It  was  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.  The 
first  rays  of  dawn  were  shedding  a  livid  light 
in  the  dungeons  of  the  Conciergerie.  Con- 
ducted to  the  funeral  cell  where  the  con- 
demned await  execution,  the  queen  obtained 
from  the  concierge  a  pen,  ink,  and  paper,  and 
wrote  to  her  sister-in-law. 

Marie  Antoinette  slept,  like  Louis  XVI., 
some  hours  of  her  last  night.  The  18th  of 
October,  at  daybreak,  the  daughter  of  Ma- 
dame Bault  came  to  dress  her  and  to  arrange 
her  hair.  She  laid  aside  the  color  of  mourn- 
ing for  that  of  inoooence,  putting  on  a  white 
dress,  a  white  handkerchief,  and  wearing  no 
sign  of  widowhood  but  a  black  ribbon  bound 
around  her  temples.  How  many  times  dur- 
ing the  preparation  of  this  toilet  for  the  scaf- 
fold, must  she  have  thought  of  those  in  which 
formerly  twenty  of  her  women  adorned  her 
for  the  f^tes  of  Versailles  and  of  Trianon  I 

An  immense  throng  awaited  the  passage 
of  the  victim,  ranged  in  two  tumultuous  lines, 
stationed  at  the  windows,  on  the  roofs,  in  the 
trees,  from  the  door  of  the  Conciergerie  to 
the  Place  de  la  Revolution.  The  women 
especially,  to  their  eternal  disgrace,  wished 
to  see  the  Austrian  die,  and  had  invaded 
even  the  court  of  the  prisons. 

At  eleven  o'clock,  the  gendarmes  and  the 
executioner  came  to  seek  Iheir  prey.  The 
queen  embraced  Mademoiselle  Bault,  cut  off 


284 


MARES  AinOINETTE. 


[Oct. 


herself  a  part  of  her  abundant  hair,  gave  her 
hands  to  be  bound  by  the  executioners,  and 
began  her  walk  with  a  mnjestic  step,  without 
hesitation,  ngitation,  or  paleness.  No  human 
power  could  prevent  her  dying  as  she  had 
lived,  Queen  of  France.  Only  "a  gesture  of 
horror  escaped  her,  when  she  was  ordered  to 
ascend  the  cart  of  the  condemned.  She  had 
expected  to  be  spared,  like  Louis  XYI.  this 
horrible  vehicle  of  assassins.  She  resigned 
herself  to  it  promptly,  cast  down  her  eyes,  and 
ascended  this  last  throne.  The  sworn  priest 
took  his  place  behind  her,  though  she  repuls- 
ed his  assistance.  The  crowd  shouted :  '*  Vive 
la  Republique  !  Down  with  tyranny  !  Death 
to  the  AustrianJ  Room  for  the  widow  Capet!" 
The  cart  set  out  surrounded  with  naked 
sabres  and  bayonets.  A  martyrdom  greater 
for  the  queen  than  the  clamor  of  the  people 
was,  that  she  could  not,  having  her  hands 
tied,  save  herself  from  the  jolting  of  the  ve- 
hicle, and  maintain  the  dignity  of  her  de- 
meanor. "Ah  !  ah  !"  cried  the  women,  with 
infamous  sneers,  "  you  have  no  longer  your 
fine  cushions  of  the  Trianon !"  Another  trial 
yet  for  the  woman ;  the  wind,  which  pierced 
the  autumnal  mist,  disarrayed  her  humble 
toi|et,  bore  her  hair  from  her  bonnet,  and 
blew  it  against  her  eyes,  reddened  by  the 
cold.  She  sometimes  bit  her  lip,  as  if  to 
suppress  a  cry  of  suffering. 


At  the  entrance  to  the  Place  de  la  Revo- 
lution, she  saw,  on  one  side,  the  Tuilenes, 
where  her  brow  had  received  the  diadem, 
and,  on  the  other,  the  red  scaffold,  where  her 
head  was  soon  to  fall.  Two  tears  rolled 
from  her  eyes  over  her  captive  hands. 

On  arriving  at  the  foot  of  the  platform, 
she  ascended  with  a  firm  step:  "Pardon  me, 
sir,"  said  she  gently  to  the  executioner, 
whose  foot  she  had  accidentally  touched. 
She  knelt  and  prayed  a  few  moments.  Then 
she  rose  and  looked  towards  the  towers  of 
the  temple.  "Adieu  again,  my  dear  chil- 
dren," murmured  she,  "I  go  to  rejoin  your 
father."  These  were  her  last  words.  She 
threw  herself  on  the  block,  as  if  impatient  to 
die.  The  executioner  hesitated  to  cut  short 
such  [a  life.  Hb  hand  trembled  as  he  de- 
tached the  axe.  It  fell  aj  last,  and  the  head 
of  the  queen  bounded  far  from  her  body. 
The  assistant  of  the  executioner  seized  it  by 
the  hair,  and  .holding  it  high  in  the  air,  made 
the  tour  of  the  scaffold,  sprinkling  it  with 
blood.  A  cry  of  Vive  la  Republique!  re- 
echoed from  one  end  of  the  place  to  the 
other. 

The  next  day  might  have  been  read,  and 
may  still  be  read,  on  the  register  of  inter- 
ments of  La  Madeleine: — **For  the  bier  of 
ike  widow  Capet,  seven  franca  T* 


Milton's  Rib-bons. — Mention  is  made  of 
Cromwell's  skull ;  so  it  may  not  be  out  of 

Slace  to  tell  you  that  I  have  handled  one  of 
niton's  ribs.  Cowper  speaks  indignantly, 
of  the  desecration  of  our  divine  poet's  grave, 
on  which  shameful  occurrence,  some  of  the 
bones  were  clandestinely  distributed.  One 
fell  to  the  lot  of  an  old  and  esteemed  friend, 
and  between  forty -five  and  fifty  years  ago, 
at  his  house,  not  many  miles  from  London, 
I  have  often  examined  the  said  rib-bone. 
That  friend  is  long  since  dead ;  but  his  son, 


now  in  the  vale  of  years,  lives,  and  I  doubt 
not,  from  the  reverence  felt  for  the  author 
of  Paradise  Lost^  that  he  has  religiously  pre- 
served the  precious  relic.  It  might  not  be 
agreeable  to  him  lo  have  his  name  publish- 
ed ;  but  from  his  tastes,  he — being  a  person 
of  some  disUnction  in  literary  pursuits — is 
likely  to  be  a  reader  of  I^otes  and  Queries, 
and  if  this  should  catch  his  eye,  he  may  be 
induced  to  send  you  some  particulars.  I 
know  he  is  able  to  place  the  matter  beyond 
a  doubt. — Notes  and  Queries, 


1863.] 


LITERART  MISCELLANIES 


285 


LITERART    MISCELLANIES. 


Tbm  iBBue  of  the  Britith  press  daring  the  last 
month,  haye  not  been  yery  important  The  fol- 
lowing liat  oomprisee  moat  oi  thoee  in  which 
American  readera  will  haye  an  interest : — 

History  of  the  Byzantine  Empire  from  716  to 
1607,  by  George  Finiay.  This  is  highly  spoken  oC 
The  Literary  Gazette  says: — **Mr.  Finlat  has  un- 
dertaken to  write  the  history  of  a  period,  the 
attraotiye  interest  of  which  is  Car  inferior  to  its 
aeioal  importance.  With  patient  aesidaity  and 
laborious  research  Mr.  Finlay  has  compiled  the 
annals  of  this  unpromising  epoch,  and  has  filled  up 
the  masterly  outline  sketched  by  the  historian  of 
the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  In 
oopions  detail,  be  describes  the  revolutions  of  the 
throne,  the  successions  of  families^  the  personal 
characters  of  the  Greek  princes^  the  mode  of  their 
life  and  death,  the  maxims  and  influence  of  their 
domestic  government^  and  the  tendency  of  their 
reign  to  accelerate  or  suspend  the  down&ll  of  the 
Eastern  Empire.  Certainly  more  is  made  to  appear 
in  Byzantine  history  than  Gibbon  would  lead  us  to 
expect^  and  then  Voltaire  describee  when  he  speaks 
of  it  as  *'a  worthless  repertory  of  deolauiations 
and  miracles  diagraceful  to  the  human  ipind.** 

Two  translations  of  ProC  De  Felice's  History  of 
Protestantism  in  France  have  been  issued.  The 
Literary  Gazette  speaks  of  it  as  a  work  of  ability 
and  learning,  written  in  a  style  of  moderation  and 
candor. 

An  edition  .of  Dr.  Yinet*s  Homiletics,  or  Theory 
of  Preaching  has  been  published.  It  has  been  pro- 
nounced the  most  complete  and  systematic  work 
that  has  yet  appeared  on  the  subject,  all  points  of 
pulpit  eloquence  being  discussed,  from  the  sub- 
stance and  spirit  of  the  matter  of  discourse^  down 
to  the  details  of  style  and  of  elocution.  Yinet  was 
was  a  divine  who  had  the  highest  ideas  of  the 
dignity  and  responsibility  of  the  ministerial  office, 
and  he  directed  the  efforts  of  his  powerful  and 
aeoompUshed  mind  with  intelligent  zeal  to  the 
training  of  students  for  the  sacred  office  of  the 
Christian  pastorate.  The  illustrations  of  his  lec- 
tures are  taken  from  the  stores  of  classical  learning 
as  well  as  from  the  literature  of  theology  and  the 
records  of  ecclesiastical  history.  A  more  import- 
ant and  practical  manual  of  study  could  not  be 
placed  in  the  hands  of  those  who  have  to  fill  the 
office  of  the  Christian  ministry." 

The  second  volume  of  the  new  edition  of  the 
Eneyelopcedia  Britanniea  is  completed,  bringing 
the  alphabetical  dictionary  down  to  the  article 
Anatomy.  Many  of  the  pi»ers  are  the  same  as 
in  former  editions  of  the  work ;  but  on  subjects  the 
knowledge  of  which  is  progressive,  pains  have  been 
taken  to  bring  the  information  up  to  the  period  of 
publication.  Thus,  the  articles  on  Agriculture  and 
Agricultural  Chemistry  contain  a  summary  of  the 
modem  improyents  and   researohea  which  have 


been  conspicuous  in  this  department  The  first 
volume  contains  the  Preliminary  Dissertations  by 
Dugald  Stewart^  Plajfair,  Sir  J.  Leslie,  Sir  James 
Biaointosb,  and  Archbishop  Whately. 

Progress  of  Russia  in  the  West,  North,  and  South. 
By  David  Urqubart  The  Critie  says:— "This 
author,  with  his  accustomed  freshnesis  vigor,  and 
originality,  has  wrought  out  a  drama  of  modem 
history,  full  of  dark  plots  and  stirring  incidents, 
and  tragical  catastrophes — the  materials  collected 
in  the  course  of  personal  communication  with  the 
chief  actors  in  many  of  the  events  related  the  living 
testimony  of  the  present  ezpkins  the  past,  since 
Russia  became  in  Europe  a  plague-spot  and  a 
power.  No  diversity  of  opinion  can  arise  with 
regard  to  the  value  of  this  record,  although,  to 
quote  a  memorable  sentence,  *  Unless  a  man  knows 
what  ought  to  be  done  he  can  never  know  what 
has  been  done :  information  can  be  of  service  only 
to  those  who  can  class  it,  be  it  science,  be  it 
conduct' " 

Hebrew  Politics  in  the  Times  of  Sargon  and 
Sennacherib :  an  Inquiry  into  the  Historical  Meaning 
and  purpose  of  the  Prophecies  of  Isaiah,  with  some 
Notice  of  their  Bearing  on  the  Social  and  Political 
Life  of  England.  By  Edward  Strachey. — The  ob- 
ject of  this  work  is  principally  to  show  *'  what  the 
prophets  were  to  the  Jews,  and  what  they  are  to 
UP,  by  a  methodical  examination  of  what  the  great- 
est of  them  said  and  did,  during  a  chief  crisis  of 
his  country's  history.  The  meaning  of  facts  came 
to  light  in  the  collision  of  the  Awyrian  Empire 
with  the  Hebrew  Commonwealth,  as  they  did  when 
Xerxes  invaded  Greece,  or  Napoleon,  overran 
Europe ;  and  if  we  will  take  the  book  of  Isaiah, 
and  follow  its  guidance,  we  may  expect  to  see  its 
facts  in  their  own  proper  light"  In  carrying  out 
this  examinatidh  of  the  book  of  Isaiah,  the  author 
avails  himself  as  frequently  as  possible  of  the  recent 
discoveries  at  Nirorod  and  Khorsabad. 

The  British  Cabinet  in  1868.  'The  object  of  this 
volume  is  stated  by  the  Athenentm,  to  be  "to  give 
an  account  of  the  characters  and  careers  of  *  Her 
Majesty's  Ministers.'  A  very  interesting  book 
might  be  written  on  such  a  subject ;  but  the  ex- 
ecution of  this  one  falls  below  the  expectations 
raised  by  its  title.  It  is  a  mere  compilation,  neither 
exhibiting  wide  research  nor  dealing  in  graphic 
writing." 

Dr.  Chalmers's  Correspondence,  which  has  been 
recently  published  by  Dr.  Hanna,  and  republished 
by  the  HARPxaa,  is  highly  spoken  of.  But  the 
Critic  thinks  the  volume  **  a  mistake,  so  far  as  re- 
gards the  increase  of  Dr.  Chalmers's  reputation; 
and  it  will,  we  fear,  be  viewed  as  a  mistake  by  the 
purchaser.  Considering  the  many  public  individ- 
uala  with  whom  Chalmers  was  brought  into  con- 
tact when  at  the  zenith  of  his  &me — ^3ie  queetions 
of  ecdeaiastical  and  political  moment  to  wh* 


286 


LITERART  MISCELLANIES. 


[Oct, 


doctrine  which  pervades  the  volumes  is  simply 
attention  was  directed — and  especially  his  cham- 
pionship of  the  *Free  Kirk'  movement — we  are 
astonished  at  the  ordinary  and  commonplace  mate- 
rials of  which  the  volume  is  made  up.  A  portion 
is  composed  of  merely  brief  notes;  another  section, 
of  letters  of  religious  counsel  and  advice,  excellent 
in  themselves,  but  containing  nothing  of  a  very 
novel  or  striking  nature.  A  small  modicum  only 
can  be  specified  as  interesting  to  the  general  reader, 
and  of  that  we  shall  proceed  to  furnieh  some  speci- 


mens. 


Life  in  Sweden,  by  Selina  Bunbury,  2  vols.  The 
AthenfPMm  reckons  Miss  Bunbury  inthe  categorv 
of  •*  odd  female  travellers."  **She  is  not  so  much 
wanting  in  good  nature  as  wanting  in  taste.  She 
possesses  the  power  of  observation  in  larger  pro- 
portion than  the  faculty  of  selection.  A  sledge 
accident  which  confined  tier  to  the  house,  made  her 
the  object  of  affectionate  ministration  on  the  part 
of  Miss  Bremer — to  whose  thoughtful  and  delicate 
benevolance  every  one  who  has  written  concern- 
inff  the  Swedish  novelist  bears  concurrent  tes- 
tiSony." 

Albert  Smith's  spirited  work,  the  Ascent  of  Mont 
Blanc,  neatly  reprinted  by  Mr.  PuTNAif,isthus8poken 
of  by  the  Literafy  Gazette:  **Mont  Blano  is  cer- 
uinly  Mr.  Albert  Smith's  grand  Mi;  the  earlier 
efforts  of  his  fancy  were  not  by  many  degrees  so 
happy.  The  Ballet-girl  was  untrue  to  nature  (the 
young  ladies  themselves  said  so);  who  ever  heard 
of  oysters  and  porter  in  the  coulisses  of  IL  M.  T. 
The  popularity  of  the  Book  of  /Snobs  among  the 
very  class  satirised  was  the  very  best  evidence 
that  it  was  considered  a  very  flattering  portrait 
than  otherwise :  Jack  Johnson  was  too  fast  and  too 
immoral,  while  Mr.  Ledbury  was  too  slow.  The  sad 
truth  became  evident,  and  Mr.  Albert  Smith  was  the 
first  to  recognize  it — DIcken  is  inimitable ;  none 
but  he,  with  that  strons  yet  delicate  hand,  and  that 
calm,  piercing,  love-laden  eye,  can  shoot  with  un- 
erring aim  the  shafts  of  a  hit  that  goes  straight 
home  to  the  popular  heart;  uuenvenomed  shat'ts, 
but  rather  honey-tipt,  barbs  not  wounding  as  the 
steel  that  kills,  but  as  the  healing  lancet  that  lets 
the  ill- humor  out  and  lets  the  pure  health  in.  Mr. 
Albert  Smith  resolved  upon  hitting  out  something 
new  for  himself — he  did  so;  he  dueovered  Mount 
Blane." 

A  new  edition  of  Pope's  Works  has  been  com- 
menced, under  the  editorship  of  Robert  Carruthers. 
Mr.  C.*s  qualities  as  an  editor  are  thus  spoken  of  by 
the  Examiner: — "No  part  of  the  poetry  is  yet  be- 
fore us  in  this  edition,  but  Mr.  Carruthers  shows 
UB,  hy  the  judicious  tone  and  manner  of  his  bio- 
graphical sketch,  that  he  is  likely  to  prove  a  very 
good  editor.  He  gives  an  outline  of  the  fa^ts^ 
neither  carping  like  Bowles  nor  panegyrising  like 
Rosooe,  but  criticising  the  statements  of  both  bio- 
graphers with  much  discreetnesi^  contributing  even 
a  new  illustration  now  and  then,  and  making  ex- 
cellent oceasional  use  of  the  poet's  lettere.  Such  of 
the  latter  as  are  thus  extracted  we  have  read  with  re- 
newed pleausure,  and  we  must  repeat,  what  more 
than  once  we  have  said  in  this  journal,  that  Pope's 
letten,  notwithstanding  an  artificiality  of  tone  in 
some  of  them,  and  a  too  great  elaboration  and 
nioetT  of  expression,  are  for  the  most  part  thor- 
oughly true  m  feeling  as  well  as  masterly  in  wit 
and  style. 


Miss  Norris's  Life  of  Madame  De  Stael,  which  \ 
has  received  rough  usage  from  the  press,  obtains 
from  a  recent  reviewal  in  the  Literary  Oazettt,  a 
more  lenient  treatment: — *'  Various  faults  appear 
in  the  work,  but  on  these  we  are  disposed  to  look 
leniently,  as  the  authoress  disarms  cnticism  by  her 
own  frank  apologies.  Few  writers  have  succeeded 
so  well  in  a  first  youthful  effort^  and  the  principles 
and  talents  displayed  in  the  work  deserve  approval 
and  encouragement  Of  the  life  and  times  of 
Madame  de  Staei,  Miss  Norris  has  written  a  concise 
and  interesting  narrative." 

The  Lamp  and  the  Lantern.  By  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Hamilton,  which  has  been  handsomely  imprinted 
by  Messrs  Carter  and  Brothebs,  New  York,  is 
thus  lauded  by  the  ^Literary  Gazette :  "  Dr.  Hamil- 
ton is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  sermon-writers 
of  the  present  day.  His  discourses  have  little  of 
the  technicality  of  styly,  or  formality  of  construc- 
tion, which  we  usuall  7  associate  with  this  species  of 
composition.  He  deals  little  in  argument  and  modi 
in  illustration.  This  is  too  often  a  mark  of  super- 
ficial preaching,  but  in  Dr.  Hamiltons  sermons  the 
profuse  ornament  covers  a  substantial  body  of  doc- 
trinal and  practical  truth.  From  history  and  lite- 
rature, from  science  and  art^  this  accomplished 
divine  draws  illustrations  and  enforces  applications 
of  sacred  truth.  When  we  say  that  the  diction  is 
often  over^omate,  and  the  allusions  sometimea 
ludicrously  homely,  we  describe  the  chief  faults  of 
the  writer's  style.  The  work  is  likely  to  prove  as 
popular  as  other  volumes  by  the  same  author.  An 
ima^nation  so  fertile  and  information  so  varied 
need  not  fear  exhaustion,  and  we  should  be  glad  to 
find  Dr.  Hamilton  more  frequently  publishing 
books  which  are  at  once  pleasant  in  their  style  and 
profitable  in  their  matter.'* 

The  Fall  of  the  Roman  Republic  A  shorty 
History  of  the  Last  Century  of  the  Commonwealth.' 
By  Charles  Merivale,  B.D.  The  Literary  Gazette 
says,  "In  this  volume  Mr.  Merivale  has  given  a 
sketch  of  the  most  stirring  and  interesting  eentnir 
of  Roman  history.  As  a  book  for  educational  use  it 
is  supeior  to  anything  that  has  yet  been  written  on 
tliat  period  of  Roman  history.  Those  who  wish 
more  fully  to  study  the  history,  and  especially  the 
political  philosophy,  of  the  last  days  of  the  Roman 
Commonwealth,  we  recommend  to  pass  from  the 
short  sketches  of  Merivale  to  the  copious  disquisi- 
tions of  Ferguson." 

Private  Trials  and  Public  Calamities;  or  the 
Early  Life  of  Alexander  des  Escheralles.  This  is 
characterized  by  the  Spectator,  as  *'a  natural  and 
interesting,  if  not  striking  account  of  the  family 
and  social  distress  inflicted  by  the  French  Revolu- 
tion." 

Mount  Lebanon;  a  ten  Teats'  residence  from 
1842  to  1852,  describing  the  Manners,  Customs  and 
Religion  of  its  inhabitimts,  with  a  full  account  of 
the  Druse  Religion  and  historical  records  of  the 
Mountain  Tribes  by  CoL  Chnrchill,  Staff  OfiSoeron 
the  British  expedition  to  Syria.  8  Vols.  The 
Athenenim  pronouncesthese  volumes  "  very  curious 
and  interesting.  All  the  essential  matter  which 
they  contain  might  have  been  presented  in  a  more 
condensed  form,  and  might  have  been  far  bettor 
arranged ;  but  for  the  faults  of  the  work  in  these 
respects  there  is  some  excuse  in  the  abundance  of 
the  details,  many  of  them  personally  collected, 
which  the  author  had  to  communicate  respecting  a 
country  so  little  known  as  the  Lebanon.  The  political 


1853.J 


LITERART  MKCELLANIES. 


287 


this : — ^that  TarVey  is  fast  breaking  up  from  internal 
canaes,  even  if  let  alone;  that  Syria  ia  a  moet  im- 
portant part  of  the  Turkish  dominions,  that  at  pre- 
sent the  Russians  and  the  French  are  the  two  Eu- 
ropean powers  that  have  the  strongest  hold  of  this 
part  of  the  East — Russia  as  the  protector  of  the 
Greek,  and  France  of  the  Latin  Christians;  but  that 
it  would  be  well  for  the  East  if  Great  Britain, 
America,  and  Protestantism  were  to  8te{v  in  more 
ostetisiblj  and  act  a  more  direct  and  yehement 
pwrt." 

The  Life  and  Martyrdom  of  Savonarola,  illustra- 
tive of  the  History  of  Church  and  State  Connection. 
By  R  R.  Madden.  2  vols.  The  Atherueum  thinks 
that  "Savonarola  has  undoubtedly  been  ill  used. 
He  was  persecuted  by  the  Medici,  and  burnt  by  the 
Pope.  He  has  been  largely  admired  by  fanatics, 
and  aa  largely  abused  by  men  of  letters.  Bayle 
haa  touched  him  with  his  merciless  scalpel, — Roecoe 
has  urged  against  him  every  scrap  of  scandal  and 
every  suggestion  of  a  fault  treasured  up  by  his 
ancient  enemies  of  Florence.  A  host  of  other 
writera  have  spurted  their  ink  upon  his  name,  and 
as  if  all  this  were  not  enough  for  the  poor  monk  to 
bear-^Mr.  Madden  has  undertaken  his  defenoe. 
The  book  will  be  a  welcome  one  to  many  English 
readers,  as  containing  a  full  account  of  a  remarka- 
ble person  whose  name  ia  perhaps  better  known  in 
this  eoontry  than  that  of  any  other  Romish  martyr. 
But  it  ia  in  DO  sense  a  good  *'  Life."  The  materials 
collected  are  rich  and  interesting :  thej  are  want- 
ing, however,  in  art  and  orderly  disposition." 

Life  in  the  Clearings  versus  the  Bush.  By  Mrs. 
Moodie,  author  of  "Houghing  in  the  Bueb."  The 
papers  are  getting  tired  of  Mis.  Moodie.  The 
Atheneeum  find  the  "made-up  tone  and  style  of  the 
magazine,  the  annual,  and  the  pic-nic  volume  in 
Mra.  Moodie's  new  efifort  to  turn  Canada  into  a 
pocket  Mldorado.  We  go  on  through  scraps  of 
verse,  sketches  of  character,  a  tiifle  altered  and  im- 
proved  for  exhibition,  cuttings  from  the  local 
papers  concerning  famous  criminals  and  their  in- 
famous dee  Is — glibly  and  spiritedly  it  is  true,  but 
with  a  sense  of  unreality — a  pervading  asHurance 
that  we  are  dealing  with  a  professional  authoress — 
such  as  prevents  our  giving  to  this  work  a  recep- 
tion aa  cordial  as  that  which  we  gave  to  its  prede- 
oesBOT — and  such  as  warrants  our  hoping  that  Mrs. 
Moodie  will  not  further  bring  the  "  sweepings''  of 
her  experience  to  market  now  that  the  real,  valua- 
ble trtiths  in  her  wallet  have  been  all  purchased, 
paid  for,  and  sent  home." 

Mr.  Prime's  "Old  House  by  tSe  River,"  by  the 
author  of  "  The  Owl  Creek  Letters,"  originally  pub- 
liahed  by  the  Habpers,  is  noticed  by  the  Athenaeum, 
**  The  Old  House  by  the  River,'  is  a  series  of  small 
sentimentsl  tales^  in  which  the  writer  w<ould  seem 
to  have  taken  Professor  Wilson  for  his  model,  and 
treats  us  to  a  series  of  pathetic  death-soene^  i&c,  the 
like  of  which  we  do  not  recollect,  save  in  Cbristo- 
pher  North's  *'Lighto  and  Shadows  of  Scottish 
Life.''  This  oharaeter  will  suffice  for  the  guidance 
of  thoee  who  desire  to  rank  this  volume  aright 
among  the  fictions  of  America.  Though  the  style 
of  ancb  pathos  be  not  the  purest  quality,  or  of  the 
moat  powerful  order,  the  sentiment  cannot  be  com- 
plained of  aa  wholly  insincere,  to  judge  by  the  im- 
preasion  produced  on  ourselves." 

Mr.  Braee'a  Home  Life  in  Germany,  originally 
published  by  Mr.  SaBiBMSB,  haa  been  republished 


in  liOndon.  A  long  reviewal  in  the  Literary 
Gazette  closes  by  "cordially  recommending  both 
this  and  the  previous  volue  by  Mr.  Brace,  ou  Hun- 
gary, as  books  of  descriptive  travel  by  an  intelli- 
gent observer,  and  a  right-minded  and  genial- 
hearted  writer." 

Mr.  Hawthorne's  Tangle  wood  Tales,  published 
by  Tick  NOB,  Reed  and  Fields,  of  Boston,  have  been 
republished  in  London.  The  Critic  says  of  the 
work,  "  this  is  really  a  pleasant  little  book — ^a  book 
for  the  sea-side,  the  river,  and  the  rail — a  book  for 
old  boys  as  well  as  young  boys,  when  the  old  boy 
gets  weary  of  his  newspaper  and  the  last  Quarterly." 

For  students  of  Greek  literature  a  useful  manual 
is  prepared  of  the  Homeric  Dialect,  its  leading 
Forms  and  Peculiarities,  by  Jsmes  Skerrett  Baird, 
T.C.D.  The  variations  of  the  epic  language  which 
distinguish  the  Homeric  poems  are  pointed  out  in 
a  dear  and  systematic  manner,  and  useful  tales 
and  paradigms  are  included  in  the  work  from  the 
best  German  writers  on  Uie  dialecta.  Mr.  Baird 
intends  to  publish  similar  treatises  on  the  other 
dialects,  to  facilitate  the  study  of  the  Greek  classic. 

The  Vices ;  or,  Lectures  to  Young  Men,  by  the 
Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  is  thought  by  the  Liter' 
ary  Gazttte  to  contain  "  warnings  and  counsels  by 
a  man  who  knows  much  of  the  world,  and  who  is 
actuated  by  sincere  and  earnest  anxiety  for  the 
welfare  of  the  young.  Some  of  the  statements  are 
especially  addressed  to  American  readers^  but  roost 
of  the  principles  and  practical  bints  are  applicable 
to  young  men  under  all  circumstances." 

Stray  Leaves  from  Shady  Places.  By  Mrs. 
Newton  Crosland  (late  Camilla Toulmiu).  "Mrs. 
Croeland  has  collected  in  this  delightiul  volume,  the 
tales  which  she  has  had  contributed  to  the  various 
magazines  and  annuals.  They  well  deserve  to  be 
rescued  from  the  oblivion  of  periodicals  They  are 
all  wholesome  in  their  teachings;  the  texts  are 
taken  from  real  life ;  they  have  a  definite  end  and 
aim,  in  the  improvement  of  men  and  of  society." 

The  death  of  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the 
British  soldiers^  Lieutenant  General  Sir  Charles  J. 
Napier,  occurred  on  the  20th  ult,  in  the  seventy- 
first  year  of  his  age.    From  the  year  1704  to  the 
year  1849,  he  had  been  almost  constantly  engaged 
m  military  service.    In  1798  he  was  engaged  in  the 
suppression  of  the  Irish  rebellion,  and  again  in 
patting  down  the  insurrection  of  1808.    In  the 
Peninsula  he  oommanded  the  60th  throughout  the 
campaign,  terminating  with  the  battle  of  Corn  una, 
and  was  made  prisoner  after  receiving  no  fewer 
than  five  wounds^  viz:  leg  broken  by  a  musket 
shot^  a  sabre  cut  on  the  hcM,  a  wound  in  the  back 
with  a  bayonet^  ribs  broken  by  a  amnon  shot,  and 
several  severe  contusions  from  the  butt-end  of  a 
musket    In  the  latter  end  of  1809  he  returned  t^ 
the  Peninsula,  where  he  remained  till  1811,  and 
was  present  at  the  action  of  the  Coa,  where  he  had 
two  horses  shot  under  him ;   at  Busaco,  where  he 
waa  shot  through  the  face,  and  had  his  jaw  broken 
and  eye  injured ;  at  the  battle  of  Fuentes  d*Onor ; 
at  the  second  siege  of  Badajos^  and  li  great  number 
of  skirmishes.    In  1818  he  served  in  a  floating  ex- 
pedition on  the    coast  of   the    United  States  of 
America,  and  landed  a  great  number  of  times  at 
Craoey  Island  and  other  placet.    He  served  also  in 
the  campaign  of  1816,  and  was  present  at  the  storm, 
ing  of  Cambray.  He  commanded  the  foroe  emplo^ 


288 


LTTERABT  lOBGELLAKIEa 


[Oct,  1863.] 


ed  in  Soinde,  and,  on  the  Ifth  of  Febnuuy,  1848, 
ivith  only  2,800  BritiBh  troopi^  attaeked  and  de- 
feated, after  a  desperate  action  of  three  hours 
duration,  22,000  of  the  enemy  etronglj  potted  at 
Meeanee.  Qn  the  2l0t  of  February,  Hydrabad 
surrendered  to  him;  and  on  the  24th  of  March, 
-with  5,000  men,  he  attacked  and  signally  defeated, 
20.000  of  the  enemy  posted  in  a  yery  strong  and 
difficult  position  at  Dnbba,  near  Hydrabad,  thns 
completing  the  entire  subjusation  of  Scinde.  Early 
in  1846,  with  a  force  consietmg  of  about  6,000  men 
of  all  arms,  he  took  the  field  against  the  mountain 
and  desert  tribes  situated  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Indus  to  the  north  of  Shikarpore,  and,  after  an 
arduous  campaign,  effected  the  total  destruction  of 
these  robber  tribes.  In  1849  Sir  Charles  was  ap- 
pointed commander-in-chief  of  the  forces  in  India, 
out  this  position  he  did  not  long  retain. 

The  Earl  of  Carlisle  is  about  to  make  an  excursion 
to  Egypt,  yia  Constantinople;  not^  it  is  understood, 
in  any  political  capacity,  but  in  order  to  make  him- 
self personally  acquainted  with  these  interesting 

countries. Mrs.  Howard,  it  is  said,  neyer  was  in 

the  United  States^  but  was  the  daughter  of  a  baker 
and  pastry-cook,  in  Drury  Lane,  London,  Some 
years  since,  Miss  Howard  married  an  attorney's 
clerk,  named  Gurley,  from  whom  she  separated  in 
a  few  montha  Louis  Napoleon  saw  her  on  the 
stage,  and  became  enamored  of  her ;  hence  the  con- 
nection between  them. 

The  Leicester  Mercury  has  an  account  of  a 
general  tea-gathering  of  the  working-classes  of  that 
town  held  to  celebrate  the  name  of  Eliza  Cook,  by 
recitations,  ibei,  from  her  worka  A  fuU-siaed  por- 
trait of  the  fay^rite  authoress  was  placed  oyer  the 
chair,  encircled  with  a  wreath  of  roses^  intertwined 
in  a  yery  tasteful  manner  with  yarious  other 
flowers.  In  the  course  of  the  eyeniug  between 
thirty  and  forty  recitations  and  singings^  all  from 
Miss  Cook's  work%  were  giyen  by  about  a  dosen 
working  men. 

Thackeray's  new  serial,  to  be  entitled  The  New- 
eomes,  is  on  the  yerge  of  publication. 

Mr.  Lookhart,  the  editor  of  the  Quarterly  Review^ 
Bon-inlaw  and  biographer  of  Sir  Walter  Scott^ 
author  of  Valeriue^  and  translator  of  the  Ancient 
Spanish  Ballads,  one  of  the  deyerest  men  there 
were  in  Britain  has  been  compelled  to  depart  for 
Italy  for  health.  In  noticing  his  absence  the  Critic 
saySk  *'  They  say  that  his  departure  from  England  is 
coincident  with  his  departure  from  the  editorship 
of  the  Quarterly  Beview,  If  so,  'tis  pity :  pity  'tis, 
'tis  true.  Our  last  man  of  high  talent  then  has 
departed  from  the  Quarterlies.  The EdinbtirghhBa 
now  for  editor  Mr.  Comewall  Lewis;  the  North 
BritUh,  Professor  Fraser;  the  British  Quarterly , 
Dr.  Yaughan ;  the  Westminster^  the  tres  Juncti  in 
uno  of  Chapman,  in  the  Strand,  Bray  of  Coyentry 
(what  an  appropriate  name  I  what  an  appropriate 
locale  I)  and  **  Miss  Eyans^*'  translatreee  of  Strauss's 
Zife  of  Christ,  These  are  thy  trimestrial  Gods,  O 
Israel." 

Dr.  Waagen's  work  on  the  Treasures  of  Art  in 
England^  will  form  one  of  the  early  publications  of 
the  ensuing  season. 

A  new  work  by  M.  Prondhom,  entitled  Philoso- 
phy of  Progress^  or  the  Program,  is  announced  to 
appear. 

Cheyalier  Bunaen's  Stppolytus  figures  in  the  laat 


I  batch  of  works  denounced  as  "  damnable  and  dan- 
gerous** by  the  Congregation  of  the  Index  at  Rome. 

A  new  Life  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  is  announced, 
and  a  carefully  compiled  Catalogue  of  his  worki^ 
from  the  pen  of  Mr.  Cotton,  of  Ply mpton,  in  Deyon- 
shire. 

The  Parlamento  of  Turin  of  the  4th  announced 
that  two  manuscript^  of  sreat  importance  haye 
been  found  among  Gioberti's  papers :  one  being  a 
complete  work  on  Ontology,  and  the  other  a  work 
on  Catholic  Reform,  a  subject  which  had  engrossed 
Gioberti's  attention  during  the  latter  daysof  his 
life,  and  which  he  used  to  diseusa  with  his  intioiate 
friends^  the  Archbishop  of  Pari%  Montanelli,  and 
Lamennaia 

The  new  Duke  of  Saxe  Weimar  has  ordered  the 
castle  of  Wartburg,  in  which  Luther  was  secreted 
after  being  placed  under  the  ban  of  the  empire,  and 
in  which  he  worked  at  his  tranelation  of  the  Bible^ 
to  be  decorated  with  appropriate  mural  paintanga 

Professor  Encke,  the  Astronomer,  has  been  ap- 
pointed Rector  of  the  Uniyersity  of  Berlin. 

Mr.  Leone  Leyi  has  had  the  honor  to  receiye 
from    the  Kbg  of  Prussia  the  Gold  Medal  for 
Science,  in  appreciation  of  his  work  on  the  Com 
mereial  Law  of  the  Wotld, 

German  journals  announce  that  Professor  Ger- 
yinus  has  been  depriyed  of  his  title  of  Professor  by 
a  ministerial  decision : — he  has  also  been  interdicted 
from  giying  lectures. 

A  new  English  expedition  for  Uie  exploration  of 
the  Niger  is  contemplated.  It  will  be  directed  to 
the  promotion  of  ciyilization  in  Africa,  and  the 
opening  up  of  new  sources  of  commerce. 

A  deputation,  headed  by  the  Earl  of  Rosse,  Presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Socieiy,  had* an  interyiew  with 
the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  at  his  official  residence  in 
Downing  street,  to  recommend  the  establishment  of 
a  telescope  of  great  optical  power  in  the  southern 
hemisphere,  for  the  purpose  of  increasing  our 
knowledge  of  the  nebule  of  that  region  of  the 
heayena 

The  tomb  of  the  Tradescants  in  Lambeth  church- 
yard has  been  restored.  These  eminent  naturalists 
and  antiquarians,  who  resided  in  South  Lambeth, 
and  whose  quaint  old  mansion  is  still  preserved,  on 
the  left  side  of  the  road  from  London  that  leads  to 
Stock  well,  died  in  the  period  1688  1652.  The 
tomb  in  St.  Mary's  churchyard  was  originally 
erected  in  1662. 

Alexander  yon  Humboldt  spades  highly  of  the 
projected  oceanic  canal  between  the  Pacific  and  the 
Atlantic.  '*  It  will  render  the  whole  globe  more 
easy  to  be  travelled  oyer;  this  little  globe,  of 
which  Christopher  Columbus,  in  one  of  his  letters 
to  the  Queen  of  Spain,  said,  'El  mundo  espoca'^' 

M.  Arago,  whose  health  has  so  far  improyed  that 
he  is  able  to  peruse  the  correspondence  of  the 
Academy  of  Sciences,  has  just  announced  that  a 
new  and  verj  fine  comet  was  discoyered  in  the 
eyening  of  the  19th  simultaneously  by  seyeral 
obseryers. 

The  Industrial  Exhibition  at  Moscow  had  been 
closed  after  attaining  gr^at  suc<*e8S ;  668  exhibitors 
had  contributed,  and  the  Exhibition  its<'lf  bad  been 
yisited  by  86,000  persons  altogether,  ^he  arrange- 
ments of  the  whole  had  been  made  by  a  German 
architect  of  the  name  of  Ricbter. 


ECLECTIC   MAGAZINE 


FOREIGN  LITERATURE,  SCIENCE,  AND  ART. 


lOTEfllBER,   1S58. 


ftUEEN  ELIZABETH,  AND  THE  EAKl  OF  ESSEX.* 


Cvptain  Devereux  has  done  good  service  in 
the  cause  of  hiatorical  Irulh,  bj  ae^kin^  out 
those  hidden  Ireasurei  of  unpublished  MS3. 
which  enable  the  lover  of  history  to  judge  of 
facts  and  interpret  the  feelings  of  historical 
persODHgcs  by  their  own  nritings  rather  than 
by  the  s peculations  of  modern  bistorinns;  and 
certflinly  the  iD»jority  of  the  letleis  of  Eliu,- 
beth  and  of  Lord  Edsez,  noif  for  the  first  lime 
offered  to  the  public,  place  this  character  and 
cooducl  of  both  in  a  most  unfitvorable  point 
of  view. 

There  is  a  natural  tendency  in  every  biog- 
rapher, no  less  lo  palliate  the  fsults  and  mag- 
Dify  the  virtues  of  his  hi^ro,  thitn  to  exagger- 
ate the  errors  and  vices  of  those  nho  were 
opposed  lo  him  ;  and  from  this  species  of 
hero-worship  Csplnin  Devereui  is  certainly 
Dot  exempt,  either  in  bis  estimate  of  the  sec- 
ond Lord  Eiisei's  qusliiies,  or  in  hi»  view  of 
the  conduct  and  motives  of  his  enemies. 


iUrtaf       .. 
in  Ihe  Rtignt  of  Siaabeth,  Jama  /.,  and  OharUi 
I.     ISM— IMS.      Bj  the  Honorabla   Walik* 
BocaomEa   Divnuvx,   B.  N.      1   vols.,  B   to, 
London:  I  BBS. 
VOU  XXX.    HO.  Ut 


There  is  a  degree  of  dignity  attached  to  the 
name  of  certain  failings,  and  under  sucb 
names  the  more  repugnant  qualities  may  be 
often  so  disguised  as  to  become  scarcely  less 
attraciive  than  meritu  ;  thus  Lord  Eiisex  la  de- 
scribed as  buying  been  haughiy.  proud,  im- 
Eetuous,  imprudent,  (avish  ;  but  on  the  other 
and  to  have  been  generous,  brave,  and  siu- 
cere;  and  for  such  characters  there  is  never 
any  lack  of  sympathy  and  admiralinn  ;  but, 
in  truth,  his  conduct  throughout  life  affords 
but  Utile  ground  for  extenuation  and  still  less 
for  praise.  Devoid  of  all  the  more  ennobling 
qualiljes  that  spring  from  genuine  loyalty,  he 
was  mean  or  violent  as  best  suited  his  pur- 
pose or  temper;  be  could  fawn  and  flatter, 
but  would  neither  serve  nor  obey  ;  arrogant 
without  independence  ;  rapacious  and  extra- 
vagant, impetuous  but  insincere;  impatient 
of  control,  and  petulent  if  opposed;  he  was 
rather  insubordinate  than  higli-splriti^d,  and 
greedy  of  favors,  without  gratitude  for  gifts ; 
he  was  at  once  a  courtier  and  a  rebel.  Even 
the  wild  spirit  of  adventure  which  gave  a  ro- 
mamio  coloring  (o  bis  daring  exploits  by  sea 
and  land,  resembled  rather  that  of  the  pirate 
IB 


200 


QHEEN  EUZABETH,  AND  THE  EABL  OF  ESSEX. 


[Not., 


and  the  buccaneer  than  such  as  should  ani- 
mate a  loyal  subject  in  the  service  of  his  coun- 
try ;  and  though  his  great  personal  courage 
and  the  splendor  of  his  position  as  favorite 
of  the  Queen,  may  have  dazzeled  the  multi- 
tude and  influenced  the  court,  and  thus  ac- 
count for  the  popularity  he  enjoyed  during 
his  life  ;  it  is  difficult  to  understand  the  inter- 
est attached  to  his  name  even  in  later  times, 
but  from  the  circumstance  that  his  execution 
did  not  receive  the  sanction  of  public  feeling. 
Like  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  his  guilt  was  un- 
doubted, yet  both  have  been  treated  as  vic- 
tims of  the  cruel  despotism  of  Elizabeth  ;  the 
guilt  of  high  treason  has  been  forgotten  in 
one  case  in  sympathy  for  the  exiled  and  im- 
prisoned Queen ;  and  in  the  other,  in  disgust, 
that  where  the  hand  had  pampered  and 
spoiled,  it  should  have  implacably  enforced 
the  right  to  punish. 

Robert,  Earl  of  Essex,  was  about  nine 
years  of  affe  when  he  succeeded  to  the  title 
and  much  impaired  estates  of  his  father.  In 
1677  he  was  entered  at  Trinity  College,  and 
the  Christmas  vacation  of  that  year  was 
passed  at  the  Court.  In  1581  he  took  his 
degree  (M.  A.),  and  the  following  year,  at  the 
age  of  fifteen,  he  wrote  to  his  guardian,  Lord 
Burleifi^h,  to  ask  forgiveness  for  having  passed 
the  bounds  of  frugality.  (P.  171.)  Three 
years  later  (1585),  he  accompanied  his  step- 
father, the  Earl  of  Leicester,  to  the  Low  Coun- 
tries ;  when  not  satisfied  with  the  command 
of  General  of  the  Horse  to  which  he  was  ap- 
pointed, he  wished  to  equip  a  band  of  his 
own ;  and  in  a  strong  letter  of  remonstrance 
from  his  grandfather.  Sir  Francis  Enollys, 
*' against  this  causeless  and  needless  expense," 
he  is  also  reminded  of  the  impoverished  state 
^of  his  inheritance,  his  father  not  having  left 
him  "  sufficient  lands  to  maintain  the  poorest 
Eari  in  England."  (Vol.  1.  p.  178.)  So  early 
in  life  had  the  love  of  display  and  the  habits 
of  extravagance  begun  to  appear  in  the  future 
favorite. 

In  December  158?,  Lord  Essex  became 
Master  of  the  Horse  (p.  1 94),  and  was  in  the 
full  sunshine  of  royal  favor  and  bounty ; 
but  his  prodigality  outrant  he  Queen's  liber- 
ality, and  her  kindness  was  repaid  by  con- 
tempt of  her  authority.  In  April  1589,  an 
expedition  was  fitted  out  under  the  command 
of  Sir  John  Norreys  and  Sir  Francis  Drake  to 
assist  the  King  of  Portugal  to  regain  posses- 
sion of  his  throne;  Essex  desired  to  join  it 
— the  Queen  refused  her  consent,  and  to  that 
refusal  Essex  was  bound  to  have  submitted 
both  as  a  royal  subject  and  as  the  paid  officer 
of  the  eonrt ;  but  m  defiance  of  tne  Queen's 


prohibition,  he  secretly  fled,  leaving  behind 
him  not  less  than  forty  letters  addressed  to 
the  Council  and  others,  in  which  he  expressed 
his  resolution  not  to  be  stayed  by  any  com- 
mandment excepting  death.  (  Vol.  1 .  p.  1 96.) 
He  proceeded  to  Plymouth  with  extraordi- 
nary haste,  and  unknown  to  Sir  J.  Norreys 
and  Sir  Francis  Drake,  went  on  board  one  of 
the  Queen's  ships  (the  Swiftsure),  which, 
without  authority,  he  placed  at  his  own  dis- 
posal and  proceeded  to  Falmouth.  From 
that  port  he  set  sail  about  the  pame  time  as 
Norreys  and  Drake  from  Plymouth,  and  in 
about  a  month  after  fell  in  with  their  fleet. 
These  commanders  in  vain  endeavoured  to  in- 
duce Essex  to  obey  the  commands  of  the 
Queen  and  Council ;  he  persisted  in  refusing 
to  return  to  England,  the  winds  rather  favor- 
ed his  resolution  to  remain,  and  as  soon  as 
the  troops  were  landed  in  Portugal,  he  suc- 
ceeded in  taking  a  leading  part  in  the  expe- 
dition. We  naturally  look  for  some  motive 
to  account  for  such  acts  of  subordinatioD, 
and  that  motive  is  explained  by  himself  in 
a  letter  to  his  grandfather  (p.  206.),  wherein 
he  states  that  his  debts  amount  to  22,000/. 
or  23,000/. ;  that  her  Majesty's  goodness  to 
him  had  been  so  great,  that  he  could  ask  no 
more  of  her,  that  he  had  already  offended 
her  with  solicitations,  and  that  his  object  is 
to  repair  himself  by  this  adventure  ;  th^t  if 
he  sped  well,  he  will  *<  adventure  to  be  rich, 
if  not,  he  will  never  live  to  see  the  end  of  his 
poverty.'' 

That  Essex  showed  courage  and  activity 
when  engaged  in  the  object  he  had  thus  in 
view,  is  a  merit  which  has  distinguished  the 
lawless  leader  of  many  a  lawless  band ;  but 
it  is  difficult  in  the  teeth  of  his  own  letter  to 
acquiesce  in  the  chivalrous  turn  which  Cap- 
tain Devereux  has  given  to  this  daring  at- 
tempt to  repair  the  dissipated  fortunes  of  a 
rapacious  courtier  by  calling  it  **  a  romantic 
spirit  of  knight-errantry"  (p.  194);  and  a 
desire  to  succor  a  distressed  prince,  and  to 
annoy  Spain,  which  exactly  suited  his  temper 
(p.  195.).  Elizabeth  formed  a  just  estimate 
of  his  misconduct  towards  herself  in  the  re- 
proof contained  in  her  letter  of  recall,  when 
she  addressed  him  in  the  following  words : 
— "Essex,  your  sudden  and  unduitiful  depart- 
ure from  our  presence  and  your  place  of  at- 
tendance, you  may  easily  conceive  how  oflen- 
sive  it  is  and  ought  to  be  to  us.  Our  great 
favors  bestowed  on  you  without  deserts,  hath 
drawn  you  thus  ta .neglect  and  forget  your 
duty*"  (P.  205.)  Had  Essex  shown  equal 
independence  of  the  wishes  and  authority  of 
Elizabeth  on  the  subject  of  his  marriage  he 


1S53.] 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH,  AND  THE  EARL  OF  ESSEX. 


291 


might  Lave  been  better  entitled  to  those  chiv- 
alrous attributes  lavished  od  Inm  by  his  bi- 
ographer; but  the  "generous,"  "proud," 
"high-spirited,"  and  "romantic"  Essex  did 
not  scruple  to  keep  his  marriage  with  the  wid- 
ow of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  secret  till  her  reputa- 
tion demanded  its  avowal,  and  then,  "  for  her 
Majesty's  better  satisfaction  was  pleased  that 
his  wife  should  live  very  retired  in  her  mo- 
ther's house."  (P.  212.)  Lady  Essex  is  des- 
cribed as  "  an  accomplished  person,  of  a  re- 
fined taste  in  literature,  and  one  whose  society 
must,  during  his  long  period  of  confinement 
and  anxiety,  have  afforded  the  greatest  conso- 
lation to  her  husband ;"  and  yet  it  is  said 
that  '*  the  names  of  at  least  four  ladies  of  Ihe 
Court  were  coupled  with  his"  (p.  475.);  and 
that  hb  faithless  conduct  so  seriously  affected 
the  happiness  of  Lady  Essex  that  it  not  only 
on  one  occasion  blighted  her  maternal  hopes, 
bat  drew  from  Lady  Bacon  a  friendly  exhor- 
tation, not  again  to  risk  a  similar  misfortune, 
but  "  to  make  great  account  of  God's  bless- 
ing to  them  both,  and  not  to  make  her 
heart  sorrowful  to  the  hindrance  of  her 
young  fruit."  (P.  407.)  Nor  was  Lady 
Essex  the  only  sufferer  from  her  husband's 
infidelity ;  for  the  objects  of  bis  attention  were 
sure  to  provoke  the  suspicions  of  Elizabeth, 
and  they  were  made  to  feel  in  acts  of  petty 
spite  the  power  of  a  jealous  Queeo. 

**  On  the  nth  of  Febnary  we  hear  that  *  it  is 
spied  ODt  by  some  that  my  lord  of  Essex  is 
anin  fallen  in  love  with  his  fairest  B.;  it  cannot 
choose  but  come  to  her  Majesty's  ears,  and  then 
he  is  undone.'    Lady  Essex,  who  was  with  child 
at  this  time,  was  observed  to  be  much  disqoited, 
having  either  been  informed  of  or  suspecting  it. 
The  lady  in  question  was  Mrs.  Brydges,  a  maid 
of  honor  and  celebrated  beauty,  who  had  been 
in   some  disprnice  the  preceding  April  on  this 
account    The  Queen  had  treated  her  and  Mrs. 
Russell  with  words  and  blows  of  anger ;   they 
were  pot  oat  of  the  Coffer  Chamber,  and  took 
refuge  in  Lady  Stafford's  house  for  three  nights, 
when,  promising  to  avoid  the  like  offence  in 
future,  they  were  restored  to  their  wonted  wait- 
ing.   One  reason  as^iened  for  the  royal  displea- 
sure is  sufficiently  ludicrous,  that  the  ladies  had 
taken  physic — without    leave  I  presume;   the 
other  was  that  they  had  gone  one  day  privately 
through  the  privy  galleries  to  see  the  playing  of 
ballon,  or  foot-ball.    [It  appears  that  for  some 
days  subsequent  to  the  visit  of  his  ladye-love  to 
the  ballon-plaving,  Essex  was   confined  '  with  a 
great  heat  in  his  mouth,'  caused  by  over-excite- 
ment in  playing  this  game.]  ....  Lady  Mary 
Howard   neglected   to    ^bear    Her   Highnesses 
mantle,  and  other  furniture,'  at  the  hour  that  the 
Queen  walked  in  the  garden ;  she  was  absent 
from  meals  and  prayers ;  and,  on  one  occasion, 
was  not  ready  to  carry  the  cup  of  grace  during 


dinner  into  the  Privy  chamber,  and,  when  re- 
buked, gave    such   unseemly    answer  as  bred 
great  choler  in  the  Queen,  whose  mind  was  at  ' 
that  time  very  much  occapied  with  Irish  affairs, 
so  that  she  seldom  talked  of  familiar  matters  to 
her  women,  and  chided  them  severely  for  small 
neglects.    But  the  cause  of  Lady  Mary's  offence 
was  likely  to  increase  her  Mit^tress's  anger,  for  it 
appeared  that  she  had  *  much  favor  and  marks 
of  love'  from  the  young  Earl,  which  she  en- 
coursged,  notwithstanding  that  the  Queen  ex- 
horted all '  her  women  to  remain  in  virgin  state 
as  moch  as  may  be.'    Lady  Mary  was  advised 
to  shun  the  Earl,  and  not  entertain  his  company 
nor  be  careful  in  altering  her  person  to  win  his 
love,  which  she  seemed  more  careful  about  than 
the  Queen's  goodwill.     Elizabeth  herself  took 
the    following  method  of  correcting    the  latter 
fault  in  Iiady  Mary,  all  that  could  be  said  'of 
youth  and  enticing  love'  in  mitigation  of  her 
offence  having  rather  a  contrary  effect.    Lady 
Mary  had  a  velvet  dress  with  a  rich  border,  pow- 
dered with  gold  and  pearl,  which  moved  many  to 
envy,  and  among  the  rest  the  Queen  herself,  who 
thought  it  surpasued  her  own    in  beauty  and 
richness.      So  one  day  she  sent  privately  for 
Lady   Mary's  dress,   put  it  on,  and  came  out 
among  the  ladies;  the  Queen  being  a  great  deal 
taller  than  Lady  Mary,  the  dress   vnis  ridiculous 
on  her;  she  asked  all  the  ladies  how* they  liked 
her  new  fancied  suit ;  at  length  she  came  to  the 
poor  girl  herself,  and  asked  her  if  she  did  not 
think  it  too  short  and  unbecoming,  to  which 
Lady  Mary  was  forced  to  agree.      *  Why  then,* 
said  the  Queen,  *  if  it  become  not  me  as  being 
too  short,  I  am  minded  it  shall .  never  become 
thee,  as  being  too  fine,  so  it  fitteth  neither  well.' 
The  dress   was  accordingly  put  by,  and  never 
worn  till  after  the  Queen's  aeath,  when  he,  to 
gratify  whose  eyes  it  had  been  perhaps  originally 
made,  was  no  longer  there  to  admire  its  fair 
wearer."    (Vol.  i.  p.  476.) 

That  Essex  ill  repaid  his  wife's  constancy 
and  affectoin  was  not  only  shown  by  his 
attentions  tp  others,  but  in  the  want  of 
tenderness  he  appears  to  have  evinced  at  the 
close  of  his  life  towards  both  her  and  his 
children.  After  his  condemnation,  we  find 
Lady  Lssex  the  humble  and  earnest  suppli* 
cant  to  Cecil,  "  for  the  hindering  of  that  fatal 
warrant  for  execution,  which  if  it  be  once 
signed,  she  would  never  wish  to  breathe  one 
hour  after."  (Vol.  ii.  p.  176.)  But  "  Lord 
Essex  never  saw  his  wife  and  son,  nor  took  a 
last  farewell  of  them  or  any  of  his  friends, 
nor  had  expressed  a  wish  to  see  them."  (Vol. 
ii.p.  178.) 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  nature  of 
the  feelings  with  which  Elizabeth » regarded 
Essex,  it  is  obvious  by  the  letters  contamed  in 
these  volumes  that  w4)ilst  he  addressed  her 
in  terms  of  adulaUon,  neither  his  personal 
devotion  nor  his  loyalty  were  sincere.    Af' 


292 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH,  AND  THE  EARL  OF  EBdEX. 


[Not., 


passing  two  hours  on  his  knees  to  obtain  the 
commnnd  of  an  auxiliary  force  in  Normandy, 
he  writes  to  the  Queen  on  the  second  day 
only  after  his  departure  "  a  lamentation  on 
the  misery  of  absence."     (Vol.  i.  p.  219.) 

His  object  in  life  appears  to  have  been  to 
obtain  from  the  Crown  all  that  his  vanity,  his 
ambition,  and  his  extravagance  demanded ; 
and  whilst  he  querulously  resented  the  small- 
est check  to  his  success,  the  Queen  was  con- 
stantly chafed  by  the  sense  of  his  insolence 
and  rapacity  ;  and  it  is  to  be  presumed  that 
DO  tender  regret  for  his  death  could  obliterate 
the  recollection  of  these  offences,  when  we 
find  that  in  1602,  she  talked  to  M.  de  Beau- 
mont of  Essex,  "  with  sighs  and  almost  tears, 
but  added,  qu'il  se  content^t  de  prende  plaisir 
de  lui  d^plaire  i  toutes  occasions,  et  de 
ro^priser  sa  personne  insolemment,  comme  il 
faisoit,  et  qu*il  se  gard&t  bien  de  toucher  a 
son  sceptre."  (Vol.  ii.  p.  204.)  So  constant 
indeed  were  the  quarrels,  and  so  bitter  the 
mutual  reproaches  that  passed  between  the 
Queen  and  her  favorite,  that  the  difficulty  is 
rather  to  understand  how  he  came  to  be  so 
often  reinstated  in  her  good  graces,  than  that 
bis  days  should  have  ended  on  the  scaffold. 

The  following  extracts  are  but  a  sample  of 
the  tone  of  those  letters  which  form  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  his  correspondence  con- 
tiuned  in  these  volumes : — 

Essex  to  Sir  R.  CecylL 

**  Sir  Robert, — You  will  bear  with  me  for  mv 
short  writing  the  last  time.  I  was  punished  with 
a  fever,  and  my  heart  broken  with  the  Queen's 
unkindness.  Since  the  writing  of  my  last  I  lost 
my  brother  in  an  unfortunate  skirmish  before 
Rouen.  I  call  it  unfortunate  that  robbed  me  of 
him  who  was  dearer  to  me  than  ever  [  was  to 
myself.  We  killed  divers  of  them,  and  lost  but 
two,  whereof  he  was  one.  When  I  went  I  was 
so  weak  I  was  carried  in  a  litter.*  This  cursed 
mishap  took  me  at  great  disadvantage,  when  I  had 
neither  strength  of  body  nor  mind  to  overcome 
my  grief.  Upon  my  return  to  Argues,  with  a  fit 
of  ague  on  my  back,  I  received  the  Queen's  letter 
of  the  3d  of  this  month,  together  with  my  L. 
your  father's  packet.  When  I  read  them  I  thought 
I  should  never  see  the  end  of  my  affliction.  I 
want  words  to  express  my  just  grief.  1  was 
blamed  as  negligent,  undutiful,  rash  In  going, 
slow  in  returning,  indiscreet  in  dividing  the  horse 
from  the  foot,  faulty  in  all  things,  because  I  was 
not  fortunate  to  please.  Whereas,  if  I  did  not 
•end  as  oflen  as  it  was  possible  to  have  passage, — 
if  I  did  not  refuse  to  march  until  1  knew  trie  rati- 
fication was  signed  (for  so  I  was  commanded), — 
!f  I  had  not  tfie  assent  of  my  K.  ambassador,  Mr. 
Killiffrew,  and  all  the  chief  officers  of  the  army, 
besides  the  King's  scndld^  with  such  earnestness, 
as  he  said  it  imported  both  the  States,-— if  I  did 


not  return  with  as  much  speed  a?  might  be,  sav- 
ing that  at  Gisors  I  left  the  ordinary  wny,  because 
I  knew  I  was  laid  for  by  all  the  forces  both  at 
Normandy  and  Picardy, — if  I  left  not  the  foot  in 
safety  where  they  had  no  use  of  hprse, — have  me 
condemned  in  all ;  but  if  this  be  all  true,  as  upon 
my  soul  it  is  true,  judge  uprightly  between  the 
Queen  and  me,  whether  she  1^  not  an  unkind 
lady,  and  I  an  unfortunate  servant.  I  wish  to  be 
out  of  my  prison,  which  1  account  my  life;  hot 
while  I  must  needs  live,  I  will  seek  to  have  my 
service  graciously  accepted  by  Her  Majestv,  and 
my  poor  reputation  not  overthrown.'* — (Vol.  i.  p. 
233.) 

Essex  to  the  Queen. 

**Your  Majesty's  unkindness  accompanied  the 
loss  of  my  brother,  and  your  heavy  indignation  1 
s#e  follows  your  unkindness ;  and  now  Ifind  that 
Your  Majesty's  indignation  threatens  the  ruin 
and  disgrace  of  him  that  hath  lost  his  dearest  and 
only  brother,  spent  a  great  part  of  bis  substance, 
ventured  his  own  life  and  many  of  his  friends  in 
seeking  to  do  Your  Majesty's  service.  But  I 
have  offended  and  must  suffer."    (Vol.  i.  pi  241.) 

At  other  times  he  addressed  her  in  terms 
of  such  adulation  and  submission,  as  the  fol- 
lowing letters: — 

Essex  to  the  Queen, 

"  Receive,  I  humbly  beseech  Your  Majesty,  the 
unfeigned  submission  of  the  saddeat  soul  on  earth. 
I  have  offended  in  presumption,  for  which  my  hum- 
ble soul  doth  sigh,  sorrow,  languish,  and  wish  to 
die.  I  have  offended  a  Sovereign  whose  displeas- 
ure is  a  heavier  weight  upon  me  fhan  if  all  the 
earth  besides  did  overwhelm  me.  To  redeem  this 
ofience,  and  recover  Your  Majesty's  gracious 
favor,  1  would  do,  I  protest,  whatsoever  is  possible 
for  flesh  and  blood ;  and  for  proof  of  my  true 
sorrow,  if  Your  Majesty  do  not  speedily  receive 
me,  I  hope  you  shall  see  the  strong  effects  of 
vour  disfavor  in  the  death  and  destiny  of  Your 
Majesty's  humblest  vassal,  E^ex."* 

Essex  to  the  Queen, 

"  Vouchsafe,  dread  Sovereign,  to  know  tliere 
lives  a  man, — ^though  dead  to  the  world,  and  in 
himself  exercised  with  continued  torments  of 
mind  and  body, — ^that  doth  more  true  honor 
to  your  thrice  blessed  day  than  all  those  that 
appear  in  your  sight  For  no  soul  had  ever  each 
an  impression  of  your  perfections,  no  alteration 
showed  such  an  effect  of  your  power,  nor  no 
heart  ever  felt  such  a  joy  of  your  triumph.  For 
they  that  feel  the  comfortable  influence  of  Your 
Majesty's  favor,  or  stand  in  the  bright  beams  of 
your  presence,  rejoice,  partly  for  Your  Majesty's, 
chiefly  for  their  own  happiness. 

''Only  miserable  Essex,  full  of  pain,  fall  of 
sickness,  full  of  sorrow,  languishing  in  repentance 
for  his  offences  past,  hateful  to  himself  that  he  is 

/YoLii.pb83. 


1853.] 


qV  ilEN  ELIZABETH,  AND  THE  EAEL  OF  ESSEX. 


293 


yet  alive,  and  importunate  on  death,  if  your  sen- 
tence be  irrevocable,  he  joys  only  for  Vour  Maj- 
esty's ffreat  happiness  and  happy  greatness;  and 
were  the  rest  of  his  days  never  so  many,  and  sore 
to  be  as  happy  as  they  are  like  to  be  miserable, 
he  would  lose  them  ail  to  have  this  happy  seven- 
teenth dav  many  and  many  times  renewed  with 
f^Iory  to  Your  jlajesty,  and  comfort  of  all  your 
faithlul  subjects,  of  whom  none  is  accursea  but 
Your  Majesty's  humblest  vassal,         Essex."* 

Bat  his  letters  were  at  onoe  fulsome  and 
false,  and  not  all  the  gifts  and  honors  lavished 
upon   him    could    preserve  his    allegiance 
intact,  or  prevent  bis  carrying  on  intrigues 
with  the  King  of  Scotland,  and  making  his 
house  the  rendezvous  of  Puritan  preachers 
and   malcontents    of    various    descriptions, 
who  held  doctrines  subversive  of  the  Queen's 
authority  (vol.  ii.  p.  135.);  his  professions 
of  submission,  loyalty,  and  affection,  when  a 
suitor  for  favors,  did  not  withhold  him  from 
acting  in  defiance  of  the  Queen's  commands, 
nor  could  all  the  expressions  of  regret  and 
despair  at  having  incurred  her  dbpleasure, 
deter  him  from  planning  acts  of  violence  to 
reinstate  himself    in   power.     The  Earl  of 
Southampton   being    in  disgrace  with    the 
Queen,  was  notwithstanding  appointed  by 
him  Greneral  of  the  Horse  in  Ireland  (Vol.  ii. 
p.  42.)  ;  when  ordered  to  be  circumspect  in 
the  use  of  his  power  of  making  knights  in 
Ireland,  be  created  no  less  than  eighty- one, 
and  notwithstanding  that  he  had  received  an 
order  not  to  come  over  to  England  without 
license,  he  suddenly  abandoned  his  command, 
and  forced  himseli  into  the  Queen's  presence. 
(Vol.  ii.  p.  123.)     The  arbitrary  spirit  of 
Elizabeth  was  not  likely  to  make  her  very 
tolerant  of  such  acts  of  resistance  and  disre- 
spect, nor  did  her  partiality  blind  her  to  the 
objects  of  self-interest  which  dictated  some 
of  his  most  repentant  and  devoted  letters. 
She  told  Bacon,  that  "  he  had  written  her 
some  very  dutiful  letters,  and  that  she  had 
been  moved  by  them  ;  but  when  she  took  it 
to  be  the  abundance  of  his  heart,  she  found 
it  to  be  but  a  preparation  to  a  suit  for  the 
renewing  of  his  farm  of  sweet  wines."    (Vol. 
ii.  p.  125.)     Essex  professed  to  kiss  her  fair 
hands  and  the  rod  with  which  she  corrected 
him, — that  he  would  retire  into  a  country 
solitude,  and  say  with  Nebuchadnezzar,  *'  Let 
my  dwelling  be  with  the  beasts  of  the  field, 
let  me  eat  grass  as  an  ox,  and  be  wet  with 
the  dew  of  heaven,  till  it  shall  please  her 
Majesty  to  restore  me  to  my  understanding." 
To  which  the  Queen,  on  receiving  his  appli- 
cation for  this  favor,  replied,  with  more  truth 

•  VoL  ii.  p.  128. 


than  delicacy  or  tenderness,  "  that  the  more 
one  feeds  corrupt  and  diseased-  bodies  the 
more  one  hurts  them ;  and  that  the  ungov- 
ernable beast  must  be  stinted  of  bis  proven- 
der." ' 

Captain  Devereux  has  laid  much  stress  on 
the  enmiQr  and  intrigues  of  those  who  were 
opposed  to  Essex  ;  but  in  tracing  liis  "  Life 
and  Correspondence,"  it  is  easy  to  peiceive 
the  fact  that  be  was,  tliroughout  his  short 
and  chequered  career,  his  own  worst  enemy. 
It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  Captain 
Devereux  was  not  permitted,  as  he  states  in 
his  Preface,  to  have  access  to  the  MSS.  at 
Hatfield,  which  would  probably  have  better 
explained  the  relations  subsisting  at  different 
times  between  Essex  and  Robert  Cecil ;  but 
we  must  also  remark  that  the  evidence  of  that 
powerful  and  effective  hostility  of  the  Cecils 
to  Essex,  so  often  alluded  to,  is  hardly  sub- 
stantiated in  the  facts  adduced  in  these 
volumes.  Lord  Burleigh  appears  to  have 
been  the  friend  of  his  father,  and  to  have 
shown  a  kindly  interest  in  his  welfare,  and  so 
far  from  wishing  to  estrange  him  from  the 
favor  of  the  Queen,  he  even  incurred  her 
bitter  displeasure  for  pleading  in  his  favor; 
and  on  one  of  those  occasions,  when  Essex 
had  absented  himself  from  Court,  he  wrote 
to  him  to  urge  him  to  return  and  make  his 
peace. 

To  state  that  enmities  and  cabals,  quarrels 
and  reconciliations,  were  constantly  occurring 
between  all  who  were  rivals  for  power,  is 
saying  no  more  than  that  the  Court  of  Eliza- 
beth was  composed  of  men  moved  by  the 
passions  common  to  human  nature,  and  who 
were  seeking,  in  the  personal  favor  of  the 
sovereign,  the  means  of  gratifying  their  own 
ambition. 

Essex  andJElaleigh  were  constantly  opposed 
to  each  other,  and  though  Captain  Devereux 
often  alludes  to  the  influence  exercised  by 
the  latter  to  the  prejudice  of  Essex,  it  is  clear 
that  Essex  was  equally  unfriendly  to  Raleigh, 
and  addressed  the  Queen  in  terms  of  great 
bitierness  and  hostility  towards  him.  (Vol. 
i.  p.  186.) 

Captain  Devereux  has  endeavored  to 
prove,  in  spite  of  the  authority  of  Camden 
and  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  the  appointment  of 
Lord  Essex  to  Ireland  was  not  only  unsolicit- 
ed by  Essex,  but  that  **  he  had  from  the  first 
a  strong  aversion  to  the  service,  and  accepted 
the  office  of  Deputy  most  unwillingly."  (Vol. 
ii.  p.  2.)  Essex's  own  letter  to  the  Queen 
(Vol.  i.  p.  496,)  tends  to  confirm  Camden's 
view,  for  by  that  it  appears  that  after  absent- 
ing himself  from  Court,  and  refusing  to  take 


204 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH,  AKD  THB  EABL^OF  ESSEX. 


[Not. 


bis  place  at  the  Council,  he  was  aroused  to  | 
post  up  and  offer  to  attend  when  the  unhappy  1 
news  from  Ireland  arrived,  and  that  he  ap- 
prehended how  much  Her  Majesty  would  be 
frieved  to  hear  of  her  armies  beaten  iind  her 
ingdoms  conquered  by  the  son  of  a  smith." 
The  choice  of  a  Lord  Deputy  of  Ireland 
was  a  question  of  great  importance;     Cam- 
den states,  that  the  Queen  and  most  of  the 
Council  were  in   favor  of   Charles  Blount, 
Earl  of  Montjoy ;  but  essex  strenuously  op- 
posed his  appointment,  and  at  the  same  time 
pointed  to  the  necessity  of  such  qualities  for 
the  duties  of  that  office  as  to  be  "  a  broad 
sign  that  he  thought  none  so  proper  as  him- 
self" for  their  fulfilment,  and  he  had  an  ob- 
jection ready  against  any  person  whom  the 
Queen   might    name.      Captain    Devereux, 
strangely  enough,  assigns  as  a  possible  reason 
for  his  opposition  to  Lord  Montjoy's  appoint- 
ment, the  unwillingness  of  his  sister,  Lady 
Rich,  to  part  with  her  lover ;  but  without 
attributing  any  great  strictness  of  morality  to 
Essex,  he  was  hardly  likely  to  have   treated 
the  susceptibility  of  Lady  Rich  on  the  point 
of  separation  from  her  lover  with  more  tender* 
ness  than  he  evinced  towards  his  other  sister, 
whose  husband,  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  he 
appointed   to  be   General   of  the  Horse  in 
Ireland.^  The  Essex's  enemies  wished  to  be 
rid  of  him  was  both  of  natural  and  true,  and 
perhaps  without  any  great  gifts  of  prophecy, 
they  might  foresee  that  his  fame  was  likely 
to  be  diminished  rather  than   increased   by 
the   undertaking  in   question ;   but  if  their 
cle^irsightedness  but  them   upon  this  track, 
the  blindness  of  Essex  soon  furnished  them 
with  a  powerful  coadjutor  in  himself.     Cam- 
den's account  of  the  opposite  motives   and 
feelings   by   which   he  and  his  adversaries 
were  drawn  to  act  in  unison  on  this  occasion, 
is  very  clear  and  consonant  both   with  pro- 
bability and  facts.     "  They  were,"  says   he, 
speaking  of  his  enemies,  "  in  the  meantime 
using  all  arts  to  undermine  him,  as  knowing 
well  that  the  vehemency  of  his  spirit  would 
conspire  with  their  endeavours  to  ruin  and 
undo  him,  and  that  there  was  not  any  like- 
lier method  to  trip  up  the  heels  of  an  aspir- 
ing man  than  to  push  him  upon  an  office  he 
was  altogether  unfit  for  ;  to  be  short,  as  quick 
and  penetrating  a  person  as  he  was,  he  either 
did  not,  or  would  not,  perceive  the  bottom  of 
their  aims,  as  long  as  he  thought  no  employ- 
ment too  big  for  his  grasp,  and  his  friends  or 
flatterers  supported  him  in  that  opinion."  ^ 

Whatever  hesitation  was  shown  by  Essex 

- —  —  — 

Camden, ''  Life  of  Elizabeth,"  p.  614. 


either  in  accepting  this  office,  or  in  proceed- 
ing to  the  execution  of  its  duties,  was  occa- 
sioned by  his  repeated  demands  for  further 
supplies,  or  greater  powers;  and  in  one  of 
Elisabeth's  many  letters  of  severe  reproof  to 
him  when  in  Ireland,  the  expressions  she  uses 
tend  to  prove,  that  she  regarded  the  task  he  had 
undertaken  was  one  for  which  he  considered 
himself  better  fitted  than  others,  and  was  in 
accordance  with  his  own  wishes.  "  How 
often,"  says  she, "  have  you  told  us,  that  others 
that  preceded  you  had  no  judgment  to  end 
the  war."  "  You  had  your  asking,  you  had 
your  choice  of  times,  you  had  power  and 
authority  more  ample  than  ever  any  had  or 
ever  shall  have."     (Vol.  ii.  p.  63.) 

Amongst  the  most  interesting  historical 
questions  to  which  the  '^  Life  of  Lord  Essex'* 
must  again  give  rise,  is  the  degree  of  blame 
to  be  attached  to  Lord  Bacon  on  the  score 
of  ingratitude   to  his   early   patron.      The 
knowledge  of  the  course  which  Bacon  finally 
adopted   towards  Lord    Essex    has    tinged 
Captain  Devereux's  view  of  his  motives,  and 
he  has  certainly  antedated  with  insufficient 
proof  the  period  at  which  Bacon  seemed  to 
forget  the  kindness  he  had  received  from 
his  friend.     He  ventures  too  freely  on  sur- 
mises of  the  feelings  by  which  Bacon  waa 
actuated,  and  thus  attributes  a  decay  of  his 
intimate  friendship  with  the  Earl  of  Essex 
from  the  summer  of  1597  to  the  ineffectual 
attempts  made  by  Essex  to  further  bis  inter- 
ests in  his  suit  to  the  rich  widow.  Lady  Hat- 
ton  ;  adding,  '*  that  he  had  probably  con- 
templated, and  was  prepared  to  execute,  when 
occasion  should  offer,  that  base  desertion  of 
his  generous  and  unsuspecting  friend,  which 
has  cast  a  shade  of  infamy  on  his  memory 
that  not  all  the  reverence  felt  for  his  splendid 
intelleet,  nor  all  his  great  services  to  mankind 
have  been  able  to  remove."     (Vol.  ii.  p.  21.) 
Bacon  ascribes  the  cessation  of  intimate 
relations  between  himself  and  Essex  to  the 
effects  of  his  constant  efforts  to  repress  the 
soaring  ambition  of  the  favorite ;  he  urged 
him  to  stand    upon    two   feet,  and  fly  not 
upon  two  wings ;   and  their  differences  of 
opinion   upon  points  so   material,  "  bred/* 
says  he,  "  m  process  of  time,  a  discontinuance 
of  privateness  (as  it  is  the  manner  of  men 
seldom  to  communicate  where  they  think 
their  courses  not    approved)   between   his 
lordship  and  myself,  so  as  I  was  not  called 
nor  advised  with  for  some  year  and  a  half 
before  his  lordship  going  into  Ireland  as  in 
former  time." 

A  difficult,  not  to  say  impossible,  task  re- 
mains to  the  enthusiastic  admirers  of  Bacon 


186a.] 


QUBEir  EIiIZABBTH,  AMD  THE  BARL  OF  ESSEX. 


295 


to  justify  or  eveii  to  excuse  the  conduct  he  | 
pursued  when  called  upon  to  decide  between 
his  feelings  of  gratitude  for  past  obligations 
to  Essex,  and  what  he  might  consider  bis  duty 
to  the  Queen,  which  was,  in  fact,  identical 
with  his  own  interest.  Mr.  Basil  Montagu 
labored  hard  to  prove  that  Bacon  sacriGced 
himself  and  his  friend  in  order  that  the  com- 
munity at  large  might  reap  the  benefit  of  his 
professional  advancement ;  an  explanation  of 
his  conduct  ably  and  humorously  exposed 
some  years  ago,  by  Mr.  Macaulay,  in  his 
"  Essay  on  Loni  Bacon." 

Mr.  Basil  Montagu,  however,  afforded  a 
sufficient  commentary  on  his  own  theory  by 
saying,  "  that  bacon  saw,  if  he  did  not  plead 
against  Essex,  all  his  hopes  of  advancement 
mighty  withont  any  benefit  to  his  friend,  be 
destroyed  ;*'  and  doubtless  it  was  a  sincere 
rjBgard  for  his  own  advancement,  but  very 
little  checked  by  the  consideration  of  what 
might  benefit  his  friend,  that  ultimately  de* 
termined  the  part  he  took.  Still  Bacon's 
conduct  was  rather  mean  than  perfidious ;  he 
was  grateful,  but  he  was  not  magnanimous — 
he  unceasingly  acknowledged  his  obligations 
to  Essex,  and  for  long  repaid  those  obligations 
by  attachment  and  advice — he  risked  the 
Queen's  displeasure  for  his  sake,  and  even 
endured  her  coldness  and  reproaches  for  his 
attempts  to  serve  him, — but  to  be  absolutely 
ruined  for  the  doubtful  benefit  of  one  whom 
neither  counsel  nor  experience  could  guide  or 
amend,  was  beyond  the  stretch  of  his  grateful 
and  self-sacrificing  friendship. 

Captain  Devereux  has  quoted  two  letters 
from  Bacon  to  Lord  Essex.^-one  written 
during  the  absence  of  Sir  Robert  Cecil  in 
France,  and  the  other  after  Essex's  nomina- 
tion to  the  Government  of  Ireland, — in  order 
to  prove  that  Bacon  was  amongst  the  num- 
ber of  those  who  encouraged  an  undertaking 
which  was  most  unwillingly  accepted  by 
Essex,  and  which  would  obviously  lead  to 
his  ruin.  There  is  no  date  affixed  to  the 
first  of  tliese  letters ;  but  as  Cecil  returned 
from  his  mission  in  May,  1598,  it  must  have 
been  written  at  the  least  ten  months  before 
the  time  when  Essex's  commission  as  Lord 
Lieutenant  was  signed.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  but  that  Bacon  in  that  letter  appeared 
anxious  to  draw  Essex's  attention  to  Irish 
matters,  "as  one  of  the  aptest  particulars 
that  can  come  upon  the  stnge  for  his  Lord- 
ship to  purchase  honor  upon  ;"  but  even  then 
he  concluded  his  epistle  with  this  useful  cau- 
tion :  "  I  know  your  Lordship  will  carry  it 
(the  business,)  with  that  modesty  and  respect 
towards  aged  dignity,  and  that  good  corres- 


pondence towards  my  dear  ally  and  your 
good  friend  now  abroad,  as'  no  inconvenience 
may  grow  that  way." 

Ample  time  had  elapsed  after  the  writing 
of  this  letter  and  the  time  of  Essex's  appoint- 
ment, for  Bacon  to  have  changed  his  opinion 
as  to  Ireland  being  the  fittest  stage  for  his 
Lordship  to  purchase  honor  upon,  and  by  no 
means  therefore  disproves  the  truth  of  his  own 
account  of  the  matter  in  his  '^  Apology/'  when 
he  says,  "  I  did  not  only  dissuade  but  protest 
against  his  going,  telling  him  with  as  much 
vehemency  and  asseveration  as  I  could,  that 
absence  in  that  kind  would  exulcerate  tbe 
Queen's  mind,  whereby  it  would  not  be  pos- 
sible for  him  to  carry'' himself -so  as  to  give 
her  sufficient  contentment,  nor  for  her  to 
carry  herself  so  as  to  give  him  sufficient  coun- 
tenance ;  which  would  be  ill  for  her,  ill  for 
him,  and  ill  for  the  State.  And  because  I 
would  omit  no  arj^ument,  I  remember  I  stood 
also  upon  the  difficulty  of  the  action  ;  many 
other  reasons  I  used,  so  as  I  am  sure  I  never 
in  any  thing  in  my  lifetime  dealt  with  him  in 
like  earnestness  by  speech,  by  writing,  and 
by  all  the  means  I  could  devise.  For  I  did 
as  plainly  see  his  overthrow  chained,  as  it 
were  by  destiny,  to  that  journey,  as  it  is  pos- 
sible for  a  man  to  ground  a  judgment  upon 
future  contingents.  But,  my  lord,  howsoever 
hi:»  ear  was  open,  yet  his  heart  and  resolution 
were  shut  against  that  advice,  whereby  his 
ruin  might  have  been  prevented.* 

Bacon,  writing  in  defence  of  his  own  coo- 
duct,  may  of  course  be  suspected  of  taking 
an  advocate's  liberty  in  favor  of  his  client ; 
but  it  can  hardly  be  supposed  that  he  went 
the  length  of  asserting  so  broad  a  falsehood, 
as  that  he  not  only  dissuaded  but  protested 
against  his  going,  had  he,  as  Captain  Deve- 
reux supposes,  used  all  his  influence  "to 
induce  the  unwilling  Essex  to  take  a  more 
favorable  view  of  it.  The  second  letter  of 
Bacon,  quoted  by  Captain  Devereux  in  sup- 
port of  this  opinion,  was  written  after  Lord 
Essex's  app(>intment  was  settled ;  there  was 
no  longer,  therefore,  question  of  advice  as  to 
the  acceptance  of  so  perilous  an  undertaking, 
and  the  letter  is  one  of  compltment,  congrat- 
ulation, and  encouragement ;  still  the  warn- 
ings and  advice  contained  in  that  letter  cor- 
respond with  the  warnings  he  describes  him- 
seli  as  having  used  to  dissuade  him  from 
accepting  the  post,  and  show  that,  whilst 
encouraging  him  to  hope  for  success,  and 
pointing  out  the  best  means  to  secure  it, 
he  continued  fully  alive  to  the  dangers  to 


^  Bacon's  Worki^  voL  vL  p.  246. 


296 


QUEEN  EUZABETH,  AND  THE  EARL  OF  ESSEX. 


[Not., 


whicb  Essex  would  be  exposed  from  his  rash 
and  insubordinate  i^ature. 

"  Now,  although  it  be  true,"  says  he  on  this 
occasion,  "  that  these  things  which  I  have 
writ  (being  but  representation  unto   jour 
Lordship  of  the  honor  and  appearance  of 
success  in  the  enterprise)  be  not  much  to  the 
purpose  of  my  direction,  yet  it  is  that  which 
18  best  to  me,  being  no  man  of  war,  and  igno- 
rant in  the  particulars  of  State ;  for  a  man 
may,  by  the  eye,  set  up  the  white  right  in  the 
midst  of  the  butt,  though  he  be  no  archer. 
Therefore  I  will  only  add  this  wish,  according 
to  the  English  phrase,  which  termeth  a  well- 
wishing  advice  a  wish,  that  your  Lordship,  in 
this  whole  act4on,  looking  forward,  set  down 
this    position,  that  merit  is  worthier  than 
fame ;  and  looking  back  hither,  would  remem- 
ber this  text,  that  '*  obedience  is  better  than 
sacrifice.     For  designing  to  fame  and  glory 
may  make  your  Lordship,  in  the  adventure  of 
your  portion,  to  be  valiant  as  a  private  soldier, 
rather  than  as  a  general ;  it  may  make  you 
in  your  commandments  rather  to  be  gmcious 
than  disciplinary ;  it  may  make  you  press 
action,  in  the  respect  of  the  great  expectation 
conceived,  rather  hastily  than  seasonably  and 
safely;  it  may  make    you   seek   rather   to 
achieve  the  war  by  force,  than  by  mixture  of 
practice ;  it  may  make  you  (if  God  shHl^send 
you  prosperous  beginnings)  rather  seek  the 
fruition  of  the  honor,  than  the  perfection  of 
the  work  in  hand.     And  for  your  proceeding 
like  a  good  protestant  (upon  warrant,  and  not 
upon  good  intention),  your  Lordship  knoweth, 
in  your  wisdom,  that  as  it  is  most  fit  for  you 
to  desire  convenient  liberty  of  instruction,  so 
it  is  no  less  fit  for  you  to  observe  the  due 
limits  of  them,  remembering  that  the  exceed- 
ing of  them  may  not  only  procure  (in  case  of 
adverse  accident)  a  dangerous  disavow,  but 
also  (in  case  of  prosperous  success),  be  sub- 
ject to  interpretation,  as  if  all  was  not  re- 
ferred to  the  right  end."* 

It  might  have  happened  that  Bacon,  blind- 
ed by  partiality,  might  have  sincerely  thought 
it  well,  for  the  fame  of  his  early  patron,  to 
undertake  the  difficult  task  of  reducing 
Ireland  to  a  state  of  loyalty  and  obedience, 
and  that  he  might,  therefore,  have  advised  his 
acceptance  without  the  sinister  motive  attrib- 
uted by  Camden  to  the^  enemies  of  Essex,  of 
wishing  «*  to  trip  up  his  heels,"  by  pushing 
him  upon  an  office  he  was  altogether  "  unfit 
for;"  but  Bacon  was  too  clear-sighted  to 
mistake  where  lay  the  real  interest  of  his 
friend.    He  *'  vehemently  dissuaded  him  from 

•  Baoon's  Worki»  vol.  xil  pp.  22,  28. 


seeking  greatness  by  a  military  dependence, 
or  by  a  popular  dependence,  as  that  which 
would  breed  in  the  queen  jealousy,  in  himself 
presumption,  and  in  the  State  perturbation.* 
And,  when  listening  to  the  queen's  complaints 
of  Essex's  proceedings  in  Ireland,  which  she 
spoke  of  as  "  unfortunate,  without  judgment," 
contemptuous,  and  not  without  some  private 
end  of  his  own,  he  endeavored  to  persuade 
her  to  place  him  where  he  was  best  fitted  to 
shine  without  risk  of  offence  to  Her  Mnjesty, 
or  of  danger  to  the  State.  "  If  you  had  my 
Lord  of  Essex  here,"  said  he,  "  with  a  white 
staff  in  his  hand,  as  my  Lord  of  Leicester  had, 
and  continued  him  still  about  you  for  society 
to  yourself,  and  for  an  honor  and  ornament 
to  your  attendance  and  Court  in  the  eyes  of 
your  people,  and  in  the  eyes  of  foreign 
ambassadors,  then  were  he  in  his  right  ele- 
ment; for  to  discontent  him  as  you  do,  and 
yet  to  put  arms  and  power  into  his  hands, 
may  be  a  kind  of  temptation  to  make  him 
prove  cumbersome  and  unruly."f 

On  Essex's  abrupt  return  without  4eave 
from  Ireland,  he  lighted  at  once  at  the  Court 
gate,  ''  and  though  so  full  of  dirt  and  mire 
that  his  very  face  was  full  of  it,"  he  rushed 
into  the  Queen's  bedchamber,  where  he  found 
the  Queen  newly  up,  the  hair  about  her  face : 
he  kneeled  unto  her,  kissed  her  hands,  and 
had  some  private  speech  with  her,  which 
seemed  to  give  him  great  contentment."^ 

Whether  the  Queen,  surprised  for  the 
moment  by  the  unexpected  pleasure  of  seeing 
him  again  at  her  feet,  really  gave  him  cause 
for  thin  contentment,  or  that  his  vanity  mis- 
construed her  reception,  or  that  he  deemed  it 
only  politic  to  affect,  as  he  said,  to  have  found 
a  sweet  calm  at  home  after  he  had  suffered 
much  trouble  and  storm  abroad,  it  is  certain 
that,  before  the  day  was  over,  he  had  little 
reason  to  congratulate  himself  on  the  effect  of 
his  daring  intrusion.  Not  many  hours  elapsed 
before  the  Queen's  recollection  of  what  was 
due  to  her  own  dignity,  or  the  sense  of  Essex's 
defalcation  of  duty,  or  the  representation  of 
her  Ministers  as  to  his  conduct,  aroused  her 
displeasure  ;  it  appears  that,  after  dinner,  he 
found  her  much  changed — she  treated  him 
with  coldness — the  Lords  were  appointed  to 
hear  bira  in  council  that  afternoon,  and  be- 
tween eleven  and  twelve  o'clock  that  nfght 
he  was  ordered  by  the  Queen  to  keep  his 
chamber.  Bacon  was  still  the  friend  of 
Essex ;  and,  according  to  his  own  statement, 

*  Bmod'b  "Apology,''  voL  vL  p.  246. 

!  Bacon's  Worka^  voL  vi.  p.  50. 
Acoount  given  by  Rowland  White  in  ''Sidney 
Memoir." 


1858.] 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH,  AIO)  THE  EARL  OF  ESSE^ 


297 


offered bim  such  advice  on  the  course  he  should 
pursue  as  would  have  been  best  calculated  to 
reinstate  him  in  favor  with  the  Queen  ;  first, 
not  to  treat  the  peace  with  Tyrone  as  a  mat-' 
ter  of  glory,  but  of  unfortunate  necessity ; 
next,  not  to  force  upon  the  Queen  the  neces- 
sity of  sending  him  back  to  Ireland,  but  to 
leave  it  to  her  decision ;  and,  above  all,  to 
seek  access,  importune,  opportune,  seriously) 
sportingly,  every  way ;  but  though  Essex 
listened  willingly,  "  he  spake,"  says  Bacon, 
"very  few  words,  and  shaked  his  head  some- 
times as  if  he  thought  I  was  in  the  wrong ; 
but  sure  I  am  he  did  just  contrary  on  every 
one  of  these  three  points."*  It  was  deter- 
mined, after  much  doubt  as  to  the  course  of 
proceeding,  that  Essex's  conduct  should  be 
mvestigated,  not  by  public  accusation  but  by 
a  declaration  in  the  Star  Chamber.  Captain 
Devereux  admits  that,  during  the  time  of 
Essex's  confinement,  the  Queen  had  frequent- 
ly consulted  Bacon  respecting  his  case,  "  and 
*that  he  had  made  many  efforts  to  persuade 
Elizabeth  to  relax  the  severity  of  her  treat- 
ment. He  endeavored,  by  such  arguments 
as  wer^  best  calculated  to  make  an  impres- 
sion on  her  mind,  to  dissuade  her  from  the 
declaration  in  the  Star  Chamber  in  Novem- 
ber, telling  her  that  the  Earl  possessed  the 
pity  of  the  people,  and  that  such  a  course 
would  lead  them  to  say  that  my  Lord  was 
wounded  in  the  back,  and  that  justice  had 
her  balance  taken  from  her,  which  consisted 
ever  in  an  accusation  and  defence ;  but  his 
arguments  were  for  the  time  unheeded  by  his 
irntated  mistress."  This  assembly  oC  Privy 
Councillors,  Judges  and  Statesmen,  was  held 
on  the  80th  of  November,  when  they  declar- 
ed, without  Essex  being  heard  in  his  own 
defence,  the  nature  of  his  misconduct.  Bacon 
would  not  attend,  and  afterwards  excused 
himself  to  the  Queen  on  the  plea  of  indispo- 
sition. 

Bacon  continued  to  warn  the  Queen  of  the 
danger  of  bringing  the  cause  of  so  eloquent 
and  well-spoken  a  man  into  any  public  ques- 
tion, and  advised  her  "to  restore  the  Earl  to 
his  former  attendance,  with  some  addition  of 
honor  to  take  away  discontent;"  but  she 
rejected  his  advice.  After  Easter,  she  con- 
fessed to  Bacon  that  she  found  his  words 
were  true  respecting  the  proceedings  in  the 
Star  Chamber — that  instead  of  doing  good 
they  had  only  kindled  factious  fruits ;  and 
that  she  was  therefore  determined  now  to 
proceed  against  the  Earl  in  the  Star  Cham- 
ber by  an  information  ore  tenus,  to  have  him 

*  Bacon's  "Apology,"  voL  vi  p.  264. 


brought  to  an  snswer,  although  what  she 
did  should  not  be  ad  destrucHonem  but  only 
ad  castigationem — not  to  render  him  unable 
to  serve  her  after.     Bacon  and  others  of  the 
learned  Counsel  were  hereupon  sent  for  by 
some  of  the  principal  Councillors,  to  notify 
Her  Majesty's  pleasure  to  them,  when  he  was 
"openly  told  by  one  of  them  that  Her  Maj- 
esty had  not  yet  resolved  whether  she  would 
have  him  forborne  in  the  business  or  no." 
Bacon  then  addressed  a  letter  to  the  Queen, 
praying  "  that  she  would  be  pleased  to  spare 
him  in  Lord  Essex's  cause,  out  of  the  consid- 
eration she  took  of  his  obligations  to  that 
Lord,  and  that  he  should  reckon  it  one  of 
her  greatest  favors ;"  at  the  same  time  as- 
suring  her   that  ''no   particular  obligation 
whatsoever  to  any  subject  could  supplant  or 
weaken  the  entireness  of  duty  that  he  did 
owe  and  bear  to  her  and  her  service."     But 
Elizabeth  was  not  one  to  admit  the  claims  of 
friendship  and  gratitude  to  interpose  or  in- 
terfere with  the  execution  of  her  will ;  and 
Bacon  states  that  the  next  news  he  heard 
was,  that  "  Her  Majesty's  pleasure  was,  we 
all  should  have  parts  in  the  business*."     Ba- 
con remonstrated  with  the  Lords  on  the  part 
allotted  to  him ;  but  the  Queen's  plea  ure 
was  imperative,  and  Bacon,  as  he  himself 
acknowledges,  "little  satisfied  in   his  own 
mind,"  submitted.     Whether   his   mode  of 
conducting  the  part  thus  forced  upon  him 
was,  as  both  he  and  his  eulogist  Mr.  Bazil 
Montagu    pretend,   ingeniously   friendly   to 
Lord  Essex,  or  was  unnecessarily  hostile,  as 
Captain  Devereux  implies  (vol.  ii.  p.  II.), 
may  remain  matter  of  discussion  and  dispute 
between  those  who,  on  one  side,  see  nothing 
in  Bacon's  conduct  but  that  of  the  kind  and 
constant  friend,  and  those  who,  on  the  other 
side,  view  Essex  as  the  object  of  his  heart- 
less ingratitude.    The   result  of  this  trial, 
which  took  place  on  the  5th  of  June,  1600, 
was  "  that  the  Earl  of  Essex  should  be  sus- 
pended from  his  offices,  and  continue  a  pris- 
oner in  his  own  house  till  it  pleased  Her 
Majesty  to  release  him."     According  to  Ba- 
con, he  immediately  used  his  utmost  endeav- 
ours with  -the  Queen  lo  bring  Lord  Essex 
back  again  into  Court  and  into  favor,  iCnd 
tried  to  satisfy  her  that  the  course  she  had 
now   taken   was    successful,  and    therefore 
should  be  no  further  pursued.    Elizabeth, 
satisfied  with  herself,  reiterated  her  saying 
that  the  proceedings  should  be  ad  repara- 
tionem  and  not  ad  ruinam,  and  there  was 
every  appearance  of  her  intending  to  relent, 
when  she  was  again  offended  by  the  indis- 
creet zeal  of  some  of  Essex's  ^  partisans  in 


298 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH,  AUD  THE  SABZi  OF  ESSEX. 


[Not. 


endeayonring  to  justify  his  conduct.  Bacon 
again  interposed  in  his  behalf ;  and  in  the 
beginning  of  July,  Essex  was  ordered  to  be 
liberated  from  his  keeper,  but  not  to  quit 
London. 

On  the  9th  of  July*  Bacon  addressed  a 
letter  to  Essex,  assuring  him  of  his  affection 
and  good  offices ;  and  though  Captain  Dev- 
ereux  comments  upon  Essex's  reply  to  this 
letter  was  one  ^*  which  merits  particular  atten- 
tion»  so  dignified,  so  gentle,  so  free  from  re- 
proach, or  rather,  in  its  very  gentleness,  so 
full  of  reproach,"  we  cannot  but  think  that 
the.  more  simple  solution  of  the  absence  of 
reproach  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  none 
was  intended,  Essex  having  been  secretly 
well  informed  of  Bacon's  constant  advocacy 
in  his  behalf  with  the  Queen.  The  style  of 
the  correspondence  may  be  formal,  and  from 
some  of  the  expressions  it  appears  to  bear 
out  Mr.  Basil  Montagu's  supposition  that  it 
was  intended  to  be  seen  by  the  Queen,  but 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Essex  in- 
tended or  Bacon  understood  any  deep  hidden 
reproach  in  a  letter  which  Bacon  describes  as 
"  a  courteous  and  loving  acceptation  of  his 
good  will  and  endeavors."! 

Bacon's  tender  of  good  offices  was  made 
and  accepted  in  good  Faith,  and  was  speedily 
called  into  action.  He  not  only  watched  his 
opportunities  of  working  on  the  Queen  in 
Lord  Essex's  favor,  and  then  apprising  him 
of  what  had  passed,  and  advising  the  best 
course  for  him  to  take,  but  he  gave  him  the 
further  assistance  of  his  pen,  in  writing  at  his 
desire  and  for  his  benefit,  a  supposed  corre- 
spondence between  his  own  brother  Anthony 
Bacon  and  Essex,  which  was  to  be  shown  to 
the  Queen,  and  also  a  letter  from  Essex  di- 
rect to  the  Queen,  all  of  which  letters  were 
thought  calculated  to  plead  best  for  his 
restoration  to  favor.  At  the  end  of  August, 
Essex  was  liberated,  but  not  allowed  to  re- 
turn  to  Court,  and  be  retired  into  the  coun- 
try, hoping  soon  to  obtain  the  further  grace 
of  a  renewal  of  his  patent  of  monopoly  of 
sweet  wines,  which  was  nearly  expired.  To 
the  renewal  of  this  patent  he  looked  as  the 
critical  event  which  was  to  determine  whether 
he  should  be  reinstated  in  his  former  credit 
at  Court.  He  sought  it  with  the  most  abject 
professions  of  devotion  and  humility ;  but  he 
overshot  the  mark,  and  the  Queen  was  of- 
fended at  the  ill-adjusted  veil  which  could 
not  conceal  the  intended  object  for  which  it 

*  Life  of  Bacon,  vol  zvL  Bacon's  Works.  Note 
4  D.  In  Captain  Devcreox's  work  the  date  of  the 
Letter,  is  July  19. 

f  Life  of  Baoon,  vol.  xvi  p.  8L 


was  assumed.    The  patent  was  refund,  and 
the  humble,  contrite  Essex  indulged  at  once 
in  a  tone  of  petulant  and  insulting  complaint. 
The  man  who  had  addressed  letters  of  adu- 
lation and  penitence  to  his  "  most  dear  and 
admired  Sovereign  ;"  who  spoke  of  himself 
on  the  occasion  of  the  anniversary  of  tha 
Queen's  accession  as  "  the  miserable  Essex* 
full  of  pain,  full  of  sickness,  full  of  sorrow, 
languishing  in  repentance  for  his  offences 
past,  hatenil  to  himself  that  he  is  yet  alive, 
and  importunate  on  death  if  her  sentence  be 
irrevocable"  (vol.  ii.  p.  128.)  ;  the  man  who 
wrote  to  Her  Majesty,  saying,  "  I  look  up  to 
you  on  earth  as  my  only  physician,  yet  look 
for  no  physic  till  you,  in  your  deepest  wis- 
dom and  precious  favor,  shall  think  the  crisis 
past  and  the  time  fit  for  a  cure"  (vol.  ii.  p. 
116.)  ;  now  that  he  was  denied  the  favor  he 
expected,  scrupled  not  to  declare,  that  **  he 
could  not  serve  with  base  obsequiousness* 
that  he  was  thrust  down  into  private  life  and 
wrongfully  committed  to  custody,  and  this 
by  an  old  woman  no  less  crooked  in  mind 
than  in  body."*    The  breach  that  Bacon  had 
so  sedulously  endeavored  to  heal  between 
the  Queen  and  her  turbulent  favorite  became 
wider  and  wider ;  her  indignation  was  roused 
by  Essex's  ingratitude,  and  whilst  she  re- 
solved to  humble  him  more  effectually  by 
prolonging  his  banishment  from  Court,  Essex 
House  became  the  resort  of  every  malcontent* 
and  he  had  actually  gone  so  far  as  to  hold 
out  the  threat  of  entering  the  royal  presence 
by  force.     "  I  sometimes  think  of  running,'* 
says  he^  in  one  of  his  letters  to  the  Queen, 
**  and  then  remember  what  it  will  be  to  come 
in  armor  triumphing  into  that  presence  out 
of  which  both  by  your  own  voice  I  was  com- 
manded, and  by  your  own  hands  thrust  out." 
(Vol.  ti.  p.  129.)    The  Queen  now  visited  her 
anger  on  the  friend  who  had  so  constantly 
endeavored  to  persuade  her  to  restore  the 
refractory  Essex  to  her  grace  and  presence ; 
and,  to  use  Bacon's  own  words,  '*  for  the 
space  of  three  months,  which  was  between 
Michaelmas  and  New  Year  tide  following, 
the  Queen  would  not  so  much  as  look  on  me* 
but  turned  away  from  me  with  express  and 
purposelike  discountenance    whenever    t&he 
saw  me ;  and  at  such  time  as  I  desired  to 
speak  with  her  about  law  business,  ever  sent 
me  forth  very  slight  refusals."! 
At  the  end  of  the  three  months  Bacon 


*Qaoted  in  "Life  of  Baoon,"  Bacon's  Worker 

IVoL  xvi.  p.  85. 
f  Bacon's  "Apology,''  Bacon's  Works^  vol  vL  p. 
27  L 


1Q53.] 


QUBEK  EUZABEIH,  AND  TH£  SABL  OF  ESSEX. 


2S9 


asked  an  audience  of  the  Queen,  and  after  an 
explanation  and  many  gracious  expressions 
on  her  part  towards  him,  he  departed,  "  rest- 
ing/' as  he  says,  "  determined  to  meddle  no 
more  in  the  matter,  as  I  saw  that  it  would 
overthrow  me,  and  not  be  able  to  do  him  any 
good."  It  is  from  the  moment  of  this  deter- 
mination that  the  conduct  of  Bacon  towards 
Lord  Essex  becomes  matter  of  fair  discussion, 
as  to  whether  the  sense  of  those  obligations 
he  had  so  often  acknowledged  should  have 
carried  him  on  to  act  the  part  of  his  friend, 
at  whatever  risk  to  himself ;  or,  if  not,  how 
far  the  instinct  of  self-interest  justified  his 
being  passive  to  serve  or  active  to  ruin  his 
former  patron.  Bacon  had  committed  him- 
self over  and  over  again  to  the  Queen  by 
confident  assurances  of  Essex's  attachment 
and  repentance;  and  Essex  must  have  de- 
ceived him  by  insincere  professions  of  loyalty, 
or  the  cautious  Bacon  would  never  have 
ventured  to  be  the  constant  advocate  for  his 
re-estabiishment  in  her  favor.  His  conduct, 
after  the  refusal  of  the  patent,  must  have 
convinced  him  that  he  had  been  surety  for 
one  who  was  not  to  be  trusted  ;  his  omission 
to  make  any  further  efforts  to  serve  the 
interests  of  a  man  who  marred  the  effect  of 
every  friendly  exertion,  is  hardly  worthy  of 
the  severe  censure  with  which  it  has  been  the 
babit  of  some  writers  to  load  the  memory  of 
Bacon,  and  to  treat  hinfi  as  if  be  had  been 
one  of  those  summer  friends  who  had  basked 
in  the  sunshine  of  the  favorite's  fortune  till 
night  came  on,  and  then,  without  cause  or 
provocation,  turned  upon  him  and  hastened 
his  destruction.  Thus  far  Bacon's  course  in 
"meddling  no  more  in  the  matter"  was 
purely  defensive,  but  unhappily  it  did  not 
rest  there.  It  is  unnecessary  to  enter  into 
the  details  of  the  last  well-known  fatal  act  of 
rebellious  violence  which  led  to  Essex  being 
again  placed  on  his  trial.  In  the  plan,  and 
in  the  execution  of  his  conspiracy,  no  less 
than  during  his  trial,  he  showed  throughout 
the  same  selfish  ambition,  the  same  impa- 
tience of  authority  and  irresolution  of  pur- 
pose, the  same  faithlessness,  and  also  the 
same  personal  courage,  that  had  so  often 
marked  the  conduct  of  the  rebel  courtier 
throughout  his  career. 

Bacon  says  he  never  saw  the  Queen  from 
the  day  on  which  he  resolved  to  meddle  no 
more  in  the  business,  till  the  8th  of  Februa- 
ry, which  he  terms  the  day  of  my  Lord  of 
Essex's  misfortune;  and  for  that  which  he 
afterwards  performed  at  the  bar  in  his  public 
service^  he  was  bound,  says  he,  by  the  rules 
of  duty  to  do  it  honestly  and  without  pre- 


varication— but. that  for  putting  himself  into 
it,  he  protested  before  God  he  never  moved 
either  the  Queen  or  any  person  living  con- 
cerning his  being  in  the  service  either  of  evi- 
dence or  examination,  but  that  it  was  laid 
upon  him  with  the  rest  of  his  fellows.*  It 
may  be  perfectly  true  that  Bacon  only  under- 
took to  perform  the  task  laid  upon  him,  and 
it  is  more  than  probable,  even  if  we  had  not 
his  word  for  it,  that  he  did  not  seek  the  ser- 
vice on  which  he  was  employed ;  but  did  he 
then,  as  before,  request  to  be  spared  in  ray 
Lord  Essex's  cause  on  account  of  his  obliga- 
tion towards  him?  He  had  promised  to 
meddle  no  more  in  his  favor  ;  might  he  not, 
therefore,  have  the  more  reasonably  asked  of 
the  Queen  the  favor  to  be  excused  from  tak- 
ing part,  even  professionally,  against  one  to 
whom  he  owned  former  obligations?  The 
Queen  might  have  refused ;  but  it  is  clear, 
by  Bacon  s  own  statement,  that  he  made  no 
attempt  to  preserve  his  neutrality;  when 
once  engaged  in  the  service,  he  was  certainly 
bound  by  the  rules  of  duty  to  do  it  honestly 
and  without  prevarication,  and  for  that  verv 
renson  he  should  have  risked  even  the  Queen  s 
displeasure  sooner  than  be  placed  in  a  posi- 
tion, where  it  might,  and  indeed  must,  be- 
come his  duty  to  share  in  being  the  legal  in- 
strument of  death  to  a  former  friend.  There 
was  no  excuse  to  be  urged  of  danger  to  the 
Queen  or  to  the  State.  Essex's  guilt  was  too 
clear  to  require  the  exercise  of  any  great 
legal  skill  to  ensure  conviction.  Bacon's 
services  could  not  have  been  necessary  to  the 
public  safety.  .  Essex  had  fairly  forfeited  the 
confidence  and  tired  out  the  good  will  and 
affection  of  his  best  friends — but  he  had  not 
canceled  the  claims  which  former  obligations 
had  given  him  on  the  gratitude  of  Bacon, 
and  that  tongue  should  never  have  been  em- 
ployed to  point  and  fix  his  guilt,  that  pen 
should  never  have  been  used  to  perpetuate 
the  remembrance  of  it.  Essex's  miserable 
defence  in  extenuation  of  his  treason,  that  his 
enemies  were  seeking  his  life,  and  that  he 
fled  into  the  city  for  favor  and  defence,  was 
rebutted  by  Bacon,  who  very  aptly  compared 
him  to  the  self-wounded  Pisistratus,  *<  who 
ran  crying  into  Athens,  that  his  life  was 
sought  and  like  to  have  been  taken  away, 
thinking  to  move  the  people  to  have  pity  on 
him  by  such  counterfeit  danger  and  harm, 
whereas  his  aim  was  to  take  the  government 
of  the  city  into  his  hands. "f 

Essex,  with  singular  baseness,  retorted  upon 
«.^»^— .^■— »^—^^— ^—  * ^—^■^~  '  ■      ■  — ^»— ■»— ^» 

•  "  Apology,"  voL  vi.  p.  274. 
t  HarL  MS.  No.  6864.  fol  18& 


800 


QtTEEN  ELIZABETH,  AND  THE  EARL  OF  ESSEX. 


[Nov., 


Bacon  by  tbe  most  palpable  breach  of  confi- 
deDce :  he  at  once  betrayed  the  assistance  he 
had  received  from  him  in  the  composition  of 
those  letters  written  at  his  own  desire,  and  by 
which  he  had  profited  during  bis  recent  dis- 
grace with  the  Queen.  He  thought  that 
Bacon  was  in  his  power,  and  in  defiance  of 
every  feeling  of  honor,  he  used  that  power 
not  even  to  oenefit  himself,  but  to  endanger 
one  who  had  been  his  friend  for  a  service 
which  he  had  desired  and  accepted.  Bacon 
was  probably  well  justified  in  asserting  in 
return,  that  he  had  #pent  more  hours  in  vain 
in  studying  bow  to  make  him  a  good  servant 
to  h«r  Majesty  than  he  had  done  in  anything 
else,  and  that  for  the  letters  they  would  not 
blush  for  anything  contained  in  them ;  but 
his  further  retort  was  most  ungenerous :  he 
compared  his  conduct  to  that  of  Henry  Duke 
of  Guise,  and  bis  attempt  in  the  city  to  the 
day  of  the  barricades, — allusions  which  were 
peculiarly  calculated  to  aggravate  the  Queen's 
displeasure,  and  to  withhold  the  exercise  of 
her  clemency,  by  which  alone  it  was  possible 
for  his  life  to  be  spared.  Nor  is  there  any 
proof  afforded  even  by  himself  that  Bacon 
made  any  real  effort  after  Essex's  condemna- 
tion to  move  the  Queen  to  spare  his  life.  It 
would  seem  but  natural  to  suppose,  that  after 
satisfying  the  Queen  how  far  his  loyalty  had 
outstripped  his  friendship  and  gratitude  to  his 
early  patron,  he  might  have  safely  pleaded 
for  mitigation  of  the  fatal  sentence ;  but 
whilst  in  his  *'  Apology"  he  takes  credit  to 
himself  for  the  effgrts  he  made  for  others 
concerned  in  the  plot,  he  acknowledges,  that 
during  his  interview  with  the  Queen,  "  he 
durst  not  deal  directly  for  my  lord  as  things 
then  stood."  Bacon's  views  of  Essex's  char- 
acter had  evidently  undergone  considerable 
change ;  he  had  regarded  him  as  rash,  im- 
petuous, and  turbulent,  but  trusted  to  his 
being  undesigning,  fickle,  and  yielding ;  he 
found  him  intriguing,  false,  and  fierce;  he 
saw  he  was  incorrigible,  he  felt  he  was 
dangerous,  and  with  the  instinct  of  fear  he 
became  cruel.  He  saw  in  Essex  a  friend  who 
would  betray  and  a  foe  who  would  destroy : 
self-preservation  predominated  over  every 
other  feeling,  and  Bacon  hardened  his  heart 
from  cowardice  at  the  moment  when  it 
should  have  been  softened  by  pity.  Essex 
had  nothing  to  allege  that  could  disprove  an 
act  of  open  rebellion,  but  he  indulged  in  the 
malignant  pleasure  of  making  accusations 
that  might  injure  those  whom  he  regarded 
as  his  enemies.  Not  contented  with  this  un- 
generous breach  of  confidence  towards  Bacon, 
which  exposed  him  to  danger  for  services 


rendered  to  himself,  he  also  accused  Cecil  of 
having  said  that  the  Infanta  of  Spain  was 
the  rightful  heir  to  the  Crown  of  England. 
Cecil  indignantly  refuted  the  charge.  **  For 
wit,  wherewith  you  certainly  abound,"  said 
he,  addressing  the  Earl  of  Essex,  *'  I  am  your 
inferior ;  I  am  inferior  to  you  in  nobility,  yet 
noble  I  am ;  a  military  man  I  am  not,  and 
herein  you  go  before  me :  yet  doth  my  inno- 
cency  protect  me ;  and  in  this  court  I  stand 
an  npright  man,  and  you  a  delinquent:"  he 
demanded  the  authority  for  this  accusation, 
and  Essex  unhesitatingly  compromised  his 
brother-in-law,  Lord  Southampton,  by  say- 
ing that  he  had  heard  it  as  well  as  himself. 
Cecil  then  called  upon  Southampton  to  name 
his  authority,  and  was  told  it  was  Mr.  Comp- 
troller. Cecil  desired  Sir  William  Knollys 
might  be  sent  for,  when  **  it  appeared  that  a 
book  treating  of  the  succession  of  the  Infanta 
had  been  read  in  his  presence,  and  some  re- 
marks made  on  it,  but  that  Sir  Robert  Cecil 
had  never  used  such  an  expression  to  the 
Comptroller"  (vol.  ii.  p.  156).  Essex  might 
possibly  have  believed  that  Cecil  had  used 
such  expressions,  but  it  was  clear  he  had 
been  at  no  pains  to  ascertain  the  truth  of  the 
matter,  and  yet  put  forth  without  scruple  an 
idle  tale  that  in  no  way  bore  upon  his  own 
vindication,  but  wl  ich  might  have  proved  the 
ruin  of  the  man  whom  he  had  regarded 
sometimes  as  a  friend,  sometimes  as  an  ene- 
my, and  always  as  a  rival  when  in  power. 
It  was  fortunate  for  Cecil  that  he  was  able 
to  disprove  at  once  an  aspersion  so  well  cal- 
culated to  rouse  the  Queen's  jealous  alarms. 
Essex  was  condemned,  and  received  his  sen- 
tence with  the  firmness  that  marked  every 
occasion  in  his  life  when  personal  courage 
was  required  to  support  him.  He  desired  to 
have  the  same  preacher  that  he  had  with  him 
since  his  troubles  began  (vol.  ii.  p.  163.),  and 
accordingly  he  was  visited  in  prison  by  his 
chaplain,  Mr.  Ashton.  Mr.  Ashton  reproved 
him  severely  for  his  crimes,  and  expressed 
his  doubts  as  "  to  any  person  having  been 
either  his  adviser,  persuader,  or  approver" 
(vol.  ii.  p.  167,).  Irritated  by  this  reproach, 
Essex  at  once  confessed  his  plan,  and  ended 
at  his  own  desire  by  betraying,  in  presence 
of  the  Lord  Keeper,  the  Lord  Treasurer, 
Lord  Admiral,  and  Secretary,  the  names  of 
all  whom  he  had  induced  to  follow  him,  or 
who  from  love  of  him  had  joined  in  his  dar- 
ing conspiracy  (vol.  ii.  p.  169.).  Captain 
Devereux  dilates  much  on  the  cruel  and 
Jesuitical  conduct  of  Mr.  Ashton  towards 
Lord  Essex ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think 
he  forfeited  his  confidence;  as  it  appears 


1858.] 


QUEEN  EUZABETH,  AND  THE  EA^L  OF  ESSEX. 


801 


that  by  Lord  Essex's  own  desire,  he  was  still 
in  altendance  on  him  the  very  morning  of 
his  execution,  and  even  to  the  scaffold. 

However  unfavorable  may  be  the  impres- 
sion left  on  the  mind  of  the  reader,  after  pe- 
rusing the  life  of  this  unfortunate  viciioi  of 
over  indulgence  and  of  unsparing  justice,  he 
must  close  the  book  with  equal  dii>satisfiic- 
tion  at  all  that  it  reveals  respecting  the  dis- 
position of  the  Queen.  Ingratitude  and 
treason  cannot  be  excused  by  the  personal 
faults  of  H  benefactor  or  a  sovereign ;  but  it 
must  be  confessed  that  Elizabeth's  character 
and  conduct  may  be  pleaded  in  extenuation 
of  the  errors  if  not  of  the  crimes  of  Essex. 
Arbitrary,  capricious,  and  vain,  she  tolerated 
and  encouraged  adulation  she  must  have 
known  was  insincere ;  her  approbation  and 
rewards  were  bestowed  rather  by  favor  than 
accorded  to  merit,  whilst  a  sense  of  justice 
seldom  checked  her  ebullitions  of  temper  or 
guided  the  exercise  of  her  power.  That 
Essex  served  her  ill  was  to  the  shame  of  one 
who  so  often  and  so  largely  reaped  the 
benefits  of  her  partiallity. ;  but  who  can  say 
that  she  personally  deserved  the  devoted 
service  which  she  expected  from  all^  and 
which  was  so  conscientiously  rendered  by 
many  ?  Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  the 
Queen,  who  could  receive  with  reproachful 
coldness  the  officers  who  had  done  honor  to 
her  arms  in  foreign  lands,  and  who  could 
degrade  herself  by  indulging  in  violent  and 
coarse  abuse  of  her  tried  and  faithful  ser- 
vants,— who  could  treat  Burleigh  with  in- 
dignity and  reject  him  as  a  coward  and  a  mis- 
creant when  opposed  to  her  schemes  of  avarice 
(vol.  i.  p.  389), — is  it  to  be  wondered  at,  that 
she  should  have  failed  to  fix  the  fickle  affections 
and  light  allegiance  of  a  youth  dazzled  by 
the  splendor  of  his  position  and  corrupted 
by  the  unearned  distinctions  he  enjoyed  ? 

The  story  of  the  ring  said  to  have  been 
sent  by  Lord  Essex  to  the  Queen  through 
the  Countess  of  Nottingham,  is  discussed  at 
some  length  in  this  work.  Captain  Deve- 
reux  inclines  to  accept  it  as  an  historical  fact ; 
but  notwithstinding  this,  and  the  popular 
belief  in  its  truth,  and  the  existence  of  the 
Tarious  rings 'which  have  been  so  carefully 
pre:>erved  as  the  idenlical  ring,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  assent  to  its  authenticity  without 
better  proof  than  has  adduced  in  its  support. 
The  anecdote  is  mentioned  by  Clarendon  in 
a  work  entitled  "  Disparity  between  the  Elarl 
of  Easex  and  the  Duke  of  Buckingham," 
written  by  him,  as  he  states,  in  his  younger 
days,  nna  ia  which  he  mentions  it  only  to 


discredit  it  as  "a  loose  report  which  hath 
crept  in.'*  At  a  later  period  this  same  story 
figures  in  Mr.  Francis  Osborn's  *' Memoirs  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,"  published  in  1658 ;  and 
in  M,  Aubrey  de  Maurier's  "  Memoirs,"  pub- 
lished in  1688,  as  having  been  told  to  Prince 
Maurice  by  Sir  Dudley  Carleton,  Ambassa- 
dor in  Holland  under  James  I. ;  and  again, 
some  years  later.  Lady  Elizabeth  Spelman 
related  the  same  to  the  E  irl  of  Cork ;  to  him 
she  also  gave  the  MS.  memoirs  of  her  great 
grandfather.  Sir  Robert  Carey  (Earl  of  Mon- 
mouth) ;  and  by  him  they  were  published 
in  1759.  There  is  a  slight  variation  in 
the  story,  as  told  by  Aubrey  de  Maurier  and 
by  Lady  Eliznbeth  Spelman.  M.  de  Maurier 
states  that  '*  Le  Comte  dans  la  premiere  ex- 
tr6mit6,  eut  recours  k  la  femme  de  TAmiral 
Howard  sa  parente,  et  lafit  supplier  par  une 
personne  conGdente  de  batlier  cette  bague  a 
la  reine  en  main  propre ;  mais  son  mari.  Tun 
des  ennemis  capitaux  du  Comte,  k  qui  elle  le 
dit  imprudemment,  I'ayant  emp^cli^e  de 
s'acquitter  de  sa  commission,  elle  oonsentit  a 
sa  mort." 

Lady  Elizabeth  states  that  the  Eirl  of 
Essex,  unwilling  to  trust  any  who  were  about 
him, ''called  a  boy  whom  he  saw  passing 
beneath  his  window,  and  whose  appearance 
pleased  him,  and  engaged  him  to  carry  the 
ring,  which  he  threw  down  to  him,  to  the 
Lady  Scrope,  a  sister  of  Lady  Nottingham, 
and  a  friend  of  the  Earl,  who  was  also  in 
attendance  on  the  Queen,  and  to  beg  her  to 
present  it  to  Her  Majesty.  The  boy,  by 
mistake,  took  it  to  Lady  Nottingham,  who 
showed  it  to  her  husband,  in  order  to  take' 
his  advice.  The  Enrl  forbade  her  to  carry 
it  to  the  Queen,  or  return  any  answer  to  the 
message,  but  desired  her  to  ret-iin  the  ring." 
The  variation  between  the  two  stories  is  not 
very  material ;  the  principal  facts  are  the 
same  in  each, — that  the  queen  had  given  a 
ring  to  Essex,  which  was  to  serve  him  in 
time  of  need  ;  that  he  employed  the  Coun- 
tess of  Nottingham  to  transmit  it  to  the 
Queen  ;  that  she  consulted  her  husband,  who 
forbade  her  to  do  so;  and  that  on  her  deaths 
bed  she  made  a  full  confession  to  the  Queen 
of  all  the  facts,  alleging  her  husband's  prohi- 
bition as  her  excuse.  The  whole  of  the  evi- 
dence in  support  of  the  facts,  therefore,  is 
the  mention  of  it  by  Osborn  fifty-five  years 
after  the  death  of  Elizabeth  \  the  subsequent 
narration  of  it  in  M.  de  Manner's  Memoirs  ; 
Lord  Clarendon's  authority  to  confirm  the 
fact  that  *'  such  a  loose  report  had  crept  into 
discourse  ;"  and  the  narrative  of  Lady  Elizi- 


302 


QUEEK  ELIZABETH,  AND  THE  EABL  OF  ESSEX. 


[Not, 


beth  Spelnoan,  the  great-granddaughter  of 
the  Earl  of  Monmouth,  and  the  great-great 
niece  of  the  Countess  of  Nottingham. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  cotempo- 
raneous  account  of  the  fact.  A  most  detailed 
account  of  the  Queen's  last  illness, — of  her 
sighs,  depression  of  spirits,  and  of  her  death- 
bed,— were  recorded  by  the  cotemporary 
pen  of  Camden,  in  the  letters  of  M.  de  Beau- 
mont, the  French  Ambassador,  and  in  the 
Memoirs  of  the  Earl  of  Monmouth,  both  the 
latter  having  been  eye-witnesses  to  what  they 
related. 

Camden  alludes  to  the  Queen's  melan- 
choly, and  says  that  Essex's  friends  were  in- 
clined to  attribute  the  change  in  her  spirits 
to  his  loss,  and  also  gives  other  reasons  as 
equally  supposed  to  have  produced  this 
effect.  M.  de  Beaumont  mentions  the  Queen 
having  excused  herself  from  granting  him  an 
audience  on  account  of  the  death  of  the 
Countess  of  Nottingham,  for  which  she  had 
wept  extremely,  and  shown  an  uncommon 
concern.* 

The  Earl  of  Monmouth  describes  her 
melancholy  humor,  and  his  fruitless  endea- 
vors to  cheer  her,  but  no  allusions  to  the 
cause  being  in  any  way  connected  with  Essex 
or  Lady  Nottingham ;  but  the  following 
passage  shows,  that  so  far  from  anything 
having  occured  to  disturb  her  friendly  rela- 
tions with  Lord  Nottingham,  he  was  actually 
sent  for,  as  the  only  person  whose  influence 
would  be  sufficiently  powerful  to  induce  her 
to  obey  her  physicians : — "  The  Queen  grew 
worse  and  worse,  because  she  would  be  so, 
none  about  her  being  able  to  persuade  her 
to  go  to  bed.  My  Lord  Admiral  was  sent 
for  (who,  by  reason  of  my  sister's  death,  that 
was  his  wife,  had  absented  himself  some  fort- 
night from  Court)  ;  what  by  fair  means,  what 
by  force,  he  got  her  to  bed.'*f 

Now,  whatever  might  be  the  supposed  in- 
dignation of  Elizabeth  againsi  her  dying 
cousin,  Lady  Nottingham,  it  is  clear  that,  as 
the  real  offender  was  Lord  Nottingham,  he 
would  naturally  have  more  than  shared  in 
her  displeasure ;  and  it  is  very  improbable 
that  a  fortnight  after  the  Queen  had  shaken 
the  helpless  wife  on  her  death- bed,  the  hus- 
band, by  whose  authority  the  offence  was 
committed,  should  have  continued  in  undi- 
minished favor.  The  relationship  between 
Lady  Elizabeth  Spelman  and  the  Countess 
of  Nottingham  might  give  some  weight  to 
her  as  an  authority  for  this  story,  had  there 

*  Biroh's  Queen  Elizabeth,  vol.  ii.  p.  606. 
t  Memoin  of  Earl  of  Monmoath,  p.  140. 


been  any  reason  to  suppose  that  it  had  been 
handed  down  as  a  family  tradition ;  but  this 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  the  case,  for  it 
was  evidently  unknown  to  her  great-grand- 
father, the  Earl  of  Monmouth,  the  brother  of 
Lady  Nottingham  and  of  Lady  Scrope.  The 
existence  of  the  ring  would  do  but  little  to 
establish  the  truth  of  the  story,  even  if  but 
one  had  been  preserved  and  cherished  as  the 
identical  ring ;  but  as  there  are  two,  if  not 
three,  which  lay  claim  to  that  distinction, 
they  invalidate  each  others  claims.  One  is 
preserved  at  Hawnes,  in  Bedfordshire,  the 
seat  of  the  Bev.  Lord  John  Thynne ;  another 
is  the  property  of  C.  W.  Warren,  Esq, ;  and 
we  believe  a  third  is  deposited  for  safety  at 
Messrs.  Drummond's  Bank.  The  ring  at 
Hawnes  is  said  to  have  descended  in  unbro- 
ken succession  from  Lady  Frances  Devereuz 
(afterwards  Duchess  of  Somerset)  to  the  pre- 
sent owner : — 


'-*li2sr£?J?5Si'"«*^'''  }=pwiiii«E.ri.f  H.rtfcK 


Ilary>-H«nf7  Ikri  of  WladiMtsr 


I  Thyna»f  flfst  Thwaiit  Wtjnuntli 


Fwnc— '  te  Robtii  Wonlt/  ot  AppvUmeamb* 


FraiieM*-Jolia  OMtont,  Karl  OrkoTUI* 

LoBlM)— TkoouM,  Moood  ViMooal  WcTmcmtli,  whoie  Mcood  wa,  Bniy 
Fiaduiok  ThToa*,  bMUM  hMt  to  hte  omI*,  Jbnl  QnuiriM.* 


The  stone  in  this  ring  is  a  sardonyx,  on 
which  is  cut  in  relief  a  head  of  Elizabeth, 
the  execution  of  which  is  of  a  high  order. 
(Vol.  ii.  p.  183.)  That  the  ring  has  de- 
scended from  Lady  Frances  Devereux  affords 
the  strongest  presumptive  evidence  that  it 
was  not  the  ring.  According  to  the  tradition, 
it  had  passed  from  her  father  into  Lady  Not- 
tingham's hands.  According  to  Lady  Eliza- 
beth Spelman,  Lord  Nottingham  insisted 
upon  her  keeping  it.  In  her  interview  with 
the  Queen,  the  Countess  might  be  supposed 
to  have  presented  to  her  the  token  she  had 
so  fatally  withheld;  or  it  might  have  re- 
mained in  her  family,  or  have  been  destroyed; 
but  the  most  improbable  circumstance  would 
have  been  its  restoration  to  the  widow  or 
daughter  of  the  much  injured  Essex  by  (he 
offending  Earl  of  Nottingham.  The  Duchesa 
of  Somerset  left  a  "  long,  curious,  and  minute 
will,  and  in  it  there  is  no  mention  of  any 
such  ring."  (Vol.  ii.  p.  183.)  ~  If  there  » 
good  evidence  for  believing  that  the  curious 
ring  at  Hawnes  was  ever  in  the  possession  of 

•  VoL  ii  p.  188. 


1853.] 


XAKLT  CHMSTIAN  LTTERATUBE  OF  BTRIA. 


803 


the  Earl  of  Essex,  one  might  be  tempted  to 
sappose  that  it  was  the  likeness  of  the 
Queen  to  which  he  alludes  in  his  letters  as 
his  "fair  angel." 

It  was  when  setting  out  on  his  expedition 
to  Spain  (1597)  that  he  thus  expresses  his 
passionate  gratitude  to  the  Queen  for  the 
gift  of  her  likeness : — "  Most  dear  Lady, — 
For  Your  Majesty's  high  and  precious  favors 
....  but  above  all  other,  for  Your  Majesty 
bestowing  on  me  that  fair  angel  which  you 
sent  to  guard  me ;  for  those,  1  say,  I  neither 
can  write  words  to  express  my  humble 
thankfulness,  nor  perform  service  fit  to  ac- 
knowledge such  duty  as  for  these  I  owe. 
Sandwich,  June  25th."  (Vol.  i.  p.  414.) 
And  again :  "If  I  could  express  my  soul's 
humble,  infinite,  and  perfect  thankfulness  for 
so  high  favors  as  Your  Majesty's  Qve  dear 
tokens,  both  the  watch,  the  thorn,  and,  above 
all,  the  angel  which  you  sent  to  ffuard  me, 
for  Your  Majesty's  sweet  letters  indited  by 
the  spirit  of  spirits ;  if  for  this,  I  say,  I  could 
express  my  thankfulness,  I  would  strain  my 
wits  to  perform  it.  Portland  Road,  0th 
July."     (Vol.  i.  p.  41  O.J 

At  the  time  of  Essex  s  disgrace,  after  the 
proceedings  in  the  Star  Chamber,  and  when 
still    under  restraint    at   Essex  House,  he 


again  alludes  to  this  precious  gift  from  the 
Queen : — 

"  To  mediate  for  me  to  Your  Majesty,  I  neither 
have  nor  would  have  any ;  but  to  encourage  me 
to  be  an  unfortunate  petitioner  for  myself,  I  have 
a  lady,  a  nymph,  or  an  angel,  who,  when  all  the 
world  frowns  upon  me,  cannot  look  with  other 
than  gracioas  eyes,  and  who,  as  she  resembles 
Your  Majesty  moft  of  all  creatures,  so  I  know 
not  by  what  warrant  she  doth  promise  more 
grace  from  Your  Majesty  than  I  without  your 
own  warrant  dare  promise  to  myself.' 

«  April  4, 1000." 

Had  Essex  possessed  at  this  time  any  ring 
or  token  which,  by  presenting,  could  have 
entitled  him  to  a  restoration  to  favor,  it 
seems  most  improbable  that  he  should  have 
kept  it  back,  and  yet  alluded  to  this  likeness 
of  the  Queen,  whose  gracious  eyes  encour- 
aged him  to  be  a  petitioner  for  himself. 
The  whole  tone  of  this  letter  is,  in  fact,  al- 
most conclusive  against  the  possibility  of  his 
having  in  his  possession  any  gift  of  hers  en- 
dowed with  such  rights  as  that  of  the  ring 
which  the  Countess  of  Nottingham  is  sup- 
posed to  have  withheld. 

•Vol.  il>96. 


From    the    North   British    Review. 


EARLY    CHRISTIAN    LITERATURE    OF    STRIA.* 


Dr.  Arnold  has  somewhere  remarked  that 
histories,  instead  of  being  too  much  prolong- 
ed, are  too  brief  and  superficial.  The  re- 
mark expresses,  we  are  sure,  the  intense  feel- 

*1.  8^eet  Metrical  HymnB  and  HomUieB  of  E^h- 
raem  Sjfrttt,  Translated  from  the  Original  ayr* 
ta«,  %oith  an  Introduction  and  Hittorical  and 
Philolooical  Notee.  By  the  Bev.  Hkmrt  Bur- 
enw,  PL  D.  of  GotUogen,  a  Presbyter  of  ths 
Chnroh  of  Eoglaud,  Translator  of  the  Festal  L^t> 
ters  of  Athaoaaiua,  from  an  Ancient  Syrilus  Yer- 
■ioD.    London,  1858. 

S.  Bardeeenee  Onpeticue,  Syroruntprimiu  Hymno' 
loffue,  Commentatio  Hiatoricc^  ^neologiea  quam 
aeripeit  Augustus  Hahn.    Lipeiae,  1819. 

S.  Vitit  to  the  Monasteriet  of  the  Levant.  Bj  the 
Hon.  RoBCBT  CuazoM,.  Jan.  Fourth  Edition. 
London,  1868. 


ing  of  many  in  these  times,  to  whom  the 
study  of  the  past  is  a  deep  moral  necessity, 
and  who  long  for  a  history  which  shall  be 
more  than  a  mere  syllabus  of  names,  and  dates, 
and  external  events, — which  shall  connect 
these  with  the  human  hearts  and  intellects 
whence  they  have  received  life.  As  regards 
a  history  of  the  Church,  the  matter  seems  to 
stand  thus«  We  have  something  more  than 
its  grand  outlines  in  the  well-known  works 
of  Mosheim,  Gieseler,  and  Neander :  yet  even 
the  amplest  and  richest  of  these  books  leaves 
behind  it  a  feeling  of  dissatisfaction,  if  it  be 
intelligently  .and  •  earnestly  read.  Our  con- 
ceptions are  painfully  dim,  when  we  are 
eaffer  to  obtain  <«  close  and  familiar  know- 
ledge of  the  eTery*day  movements  of  the 


804 


EARLT  CHBffiTIAK  LTTfiRATURE  OF  STRU. 


LNOT., 


Christian  community.  Our  readtnf(  has  also 
awakened  a  keen  craving  for  information 
more  minute  and  life-like.  We  thus  are 
grateful  for  supplemental  books, — like  Ne- 
ander's  Tertullian,  and  Julian  and  Chrysos- 
torn,  or,  indeed,  for  any  conributions  which 
may,  in  some  measure,  help  us  to  imagine 
the  actual  Christianity  of  the  past  and  the 
distant — fitted,  as  the  picture  often  is,  to  ex- 
pand the  sympathies,  and  abate  prejudices. 

One  marked  characteristic  of  recent  re- 
search into  other  forms  of  Christian  life,  is 
the  special  attention  now  given  to  the  vener- 
able but  sadly  decrepit  Christian  communi- 
ties of  the  East,  whose  formularies  exist  in 
languages  cognate  with  the  ancient  Hebrew. 
For  ages  these  have  been  considered,  it  may 
be,  as  objects  of  curioiity  and  m>urnful  re- 
trospect, but  also  as  remote  from  the  hopes 
and  living  interests  of  modern  Chiistian  civ- 
ilization. Happily,  this  indi£ference  is  begin- 
ning to  di&appear.  The  works  of  Curzon, 
Layard,  Badger,  Fletcier,  and  many  others, 
have  made  Englishmen  in  some  measure 
familiar  with  the  interesting  communities  on 
the  mountains  and  in  the  vallies  of  Syria 
and  Egypt.  The  generation  which  has  dis- 
closed the  long  buried  monuments  of  Nine- 
veh, and  in  which  the  eyes  of  the  politicians 
of  the  world  are  keenly  directed  to  the  East, 
has  brought  into  high  relief  the  present 
forms  and  feeble  vitality  of  the  Christian  insti- 
tutions of  Ethiopia  and  Syria. 

Among  the  Oriental  Churches,  those  of 
Syria  should  always  hold  a  first  place  in  the 
affections  of  Christendom.  The  New  Test- 
ament, it  is  true,  in  wise  adaptation  to  the 
wants  of  coming  ages,  was  given  to  the 
world  in  Greek.  But  we  remember  that 
our  Lord  and  his  disciples  spoke  in  the  dia- 
lect of  Syria;*  that  although  the  Sacred 
penman  wrote  in  Greek,  it  was  in  Syriac 
that  they  heard  their  Masters's  utterances, 
and  first  preached  the  coming  of  the  **  King- 
dom of  Heaven."  In  Syria,  too,  Christiani- 
ty obtained  its  earliest  triumphs,  and  the 
disciples  were  called  Christians  first  at  An- 
tioch. 

The  works  placed  at  the  head  of  this  art- 

*From  various  causee,  especially  their  captivity 
in  Babylon,  the  Hebrews  lost  their  dialee^  and 
adopted  tbe  Aramscau  or  Syriac^  thus  beooming,  in 
thede^liob  of  iiatioaal  gr«alneaL  more  assimilated 
with  the  surrouodiog  peoples  It  was  the  lauguage 
of  Syria  therefore,  and  not  a  oorroptioQ  of  Hebrew, 
as  is  souetimes  supposed,  that  was Ternacular  to  our 
lord  and  his  apostles.  The  Hebrew  was  still  the 
sacred  tongue ;  but  the  lAognage  of  ordinary  life 
waa,  provinuialiscDs  excepted,  that  used  at  Da- 
mascus^ Antiooh,  and  Kdesaai 


icle  offer  an  occasion  for  presenting  some  in- 
formation— new  and  curious  even  to  the 
student — concerning  the  life  and  literature 
of  this  section  of  ancient  Christendon.  Syr- 
iac Literature,  in  its  existing  monuments, 
embraces  the  whole  period  from  the  date  of 
the  invaluable  Syriac  version  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, known  as  the  Peschito,  until  the  pres- 
ent age.  It  bursts  upon  us  at  the  earlier 
epoch  in  all  the  effulgence  of  a  sanctified  in- 
tellect, and  then  gradually  declines  to  the 
misty  and  scarcely  animated  productions  of 
modern  ecclesiastics.*  Then  the  language 
was  spoken  by  nations  of  great  political  in- 
fluence and  refinement,  and  was  made  to  ex- 
press every  shade  of  thought  and  passion ; 
but  now  it  has  ceased  to  be  an  organ  of  a 
people,  and  only  lives  in  Church  formularies, 
and  occasional  controversial  or  diplomatic 
productions.  A  patois^  in  which  fragments 
of  Syriac  are  discoverable  among  the  over- 
laying Arabic,  may  still  be  found  in  retired 
religious  communities ;  but  with  these  rare 
exceptions,  the  language  has  long  been  a 
dead  one.f  The  era  of  its  triumph  and 
glory  may  be  said  to  have  declined  soon 
after  the  death  of  Ephrakm,  in  the  year 
872  ;  but  it  continued  to  exert  an  important 
influence,  especially  in  translations,  down  to 
the  time  of  Bar  Hebraeus,  or  Abulpharag,  in 
the  thirteenth  century. 

We  might  devote  an  article  to  the  Syriac 
version  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments 
alone,  of  which  the  excellences,  though 
generally  acknowledged,  are  far  too  little 
understood.  The  fact  that  Syrific  is  so 
closely  allied  to  Hebrew,  wo\i\d  prima  facie, 
confer  importance  on  a  version  of  the  Old 
Testament  into  the  cognate  tongue,  apart 
from  the  acknowledged  fidelity  of  the  Pes- 
chito translation.  How  much  more  docs 
the  fact  that  our  Lord  and  His  apostles 
spoke  in  Syriac,  confer  value  on  the  trans- 
lation of  the  New  Testament,  made  at  a 
time  wiien  the  language  was  vernacular  to 

*  Joseph,  a  Syrian  patriareh,  who  died  in  1714, 
wrote  a  treatise  on  the  Nestorian  Controversy ,  re- 
Bpecting  the  person  of  Christ. 

t  Siooe  writing  the  previous  sentences,  we  have 
received  from  a  gentleman,  lately  retuuned  from 
Persia,  a  Number  of  a  Magazine,  printed  and  pub- 
lished by  the  American  missionaries  in  Oroomiah, 
in  that  country.  We  have  be^n  agreeably  surpris- 
ed to  find,  that  although  there  is  a  ^reat  admixture 
of  words  of  Persian  and  Arabic  origin,  the  Striae 
is  sufficiently  prominent  to  give  to  the  language  its 
character.  The  work  is  in  quarto,  and  is  entitled, 
"lUysof  Light."  It  consists  of  missionary  and 
midcellaneou:»  articles  on  religious  subjeota.  We 
rejoice  in  this  happy  symptom . 


1853.] 


EARLT  CHRiaTIAK  LITERATURS  OF  STRIA. 


306 


those  who  executed  it?  It  is  not  improba-; 
ble  that,  in  this  8?riac  Tersion,  we  have,  in 
many  cases,  the  exact  words  employed  in  their 
public  miTusirations  by  our  Lord  and  Bis 
apostles.  And  yet  this  precious  monument 
of  ancient  piety  and  learning  was  not  known 
in  Europe  unlil  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  when  Ignatius,  the  patriarch  of 
Antioch,  sent  Moses  of  Merdin  to  obtain  the 
aid  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  in  printing  it. 
Compared  with  the  Greek  original  and  the 
Latin  Vulgate  its  criticism  is  but  recent,  and 
therefore  scanty  and  imperfect.* 

In  order  to  convey  to  our  readers  some 
idea  of  the  remains  of  the  past,  to  which  so 
high   a   value  is  justly  attached,  we   may 
describe  briefly  a  Syriac  manuscript,  which 
we  had  lately  an  opportunity  of  inspecting 
in  the  British  Museum.     After  glancing  at  I 
other  objects  in  that  grand  national  reposi- 
tory, we  made  our  way  to  the  manuscript 
department,  where  the  written  lore  of  past 
ages,  which  once  slumbered  in  darkness  and 
was  the  prey  of  worms,  shakes  itself  from 
the  dust,  and  puts  on  the  garb  of  Russia 
binding,    under     the     supervision    of     Sir 
Frederick    Madden.      The    resurrection   of 
these  faded  parchments  has,  in  many  cases, 
raised    human   thought  from   the  charnel* 
house,  and  given  immortality  td  what  was 
long  considered  dead.     This  is  the  temple 
of  their  fame,   in  whose  niches  that  which 
remains  of  the  poet,  the  philosopher,  the 
historian,  or  the  divine,  is  now  enshrined. 
This  is  the  palace  of  the  former  great  ones 
of  the  world  of  mind,  where,  in  silent  state, 
each   shall   sit,  probably  until    the  day  of 
doom,  disturbed  only  by  the  curious  student 
or  desultory  visitor.     But  let  us   spend  a 
short    time  with   these  spectres  of   other 
years. 

We  begin  with  the  venerable  relics  which 
have  more  than  their  antiquity  to  recom- 
mend them— the  manuscripts  which  God 
has  made  the  depositories  of  the  documents 


*  No  want  is  more  prearing  in  relation  to  Bibli- 
eal  learning  than  a  good  critical  edition  of  the 
Byriac  Scriptures,  formed  by  the  aid  of  the  numer- 
oa«  ancient  MSS.  which  are  now  known  to  exist. 
We  believe  each  a  task  is  contemplated  by  the  Rev. 
W.  Gureton,  and  earnestly  hope  he  may  be  able  to 
complete  iL  To  say  nothing  of  the  stores  of  the 
Vatican,  there  are  materials  in  oar  own  Museum  of 
the  Highest  value  in  relation  to  such  a  recension. 
Manuscripts  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  have  been 
brooght  from  Egypt  at  the  expense  of  our  Oovern- 
ment»  and  are  waiting  for  some  practised  hand  to 
nnlock  their  treasurea  Criticism,  on  the  Greek 
side,  has  pretty  neariy  exhausted  its  stores,  and  it 
may  therefore  bp  hoped  that  attention  will  now  be 
turned  to  thb  rich,  but  soaroely  cultivated  field. 

VOL.  XXX.   NO.  m. 


on  which   our  faith  as   Christians  is  built. 
This  is  a  Syriac  manuscript  from  the  collect- 
ion of  Rich,  named  after  that  successful  ex- 
plorer of  Oriental  treasures.      To  preserve 
it  from  injury,  it  is  enclosed  in  a  Qase,  which, 
when  opened,  presents  a  compact  volume 
of  the   size  which  we   moderns  call   royal 
octavo^  and  about  two  inches  and  a  half  in 
thickness.     It  is  bound  in  Russia,  its  contents 
being  lettered  on  the  back.     This  is  a  copy 
of   the  version  of   the  New  Testament  in 
Syriac,  which  we  have  already  mentioned ; 
it  is  described  in  the  catalogue  as  exceeding- 
ly old,  the  inscription  of  its  transcriber  fixing 
its  completion  in  the  year  of   the  Greeks 
1079,  or  A.D.  768,  making  its  present  age 
nearly  eleven  centuries.     A  man  may  well 
feel  awed  when  opening  a  production  written 
by  hands  so  long  since  shrouded  in  the  tomb, 
in  regions  far  away,  and  relating  'to  topics 
so  sublime.    The  material  is  the  finest  vellum, 
more   or   less  discolored   by   age  ;   indeed, 
much  more  so  than  some  of   the  Nitrian 
manuscripts  a  century  or  two  earlier.     The 
writing  is  in  double  columns,  and  like  most 
ancient  documents,  is  exceedingly  correct, 
clerical    errors    being  coropaiatively    rare. 
The  ink  is  very  thick  in  consistence,  more 
like  a  pigment,  making  the  letters  stand  out 
somewhat  in  relief;  and,  except  where  damp 
has  injured  it,  the   writing  is  quite  intelli- 
gible, as  though  written  bi^t  yesterday.    The 
titles  of  the  separate  books,  and  the  headings 
of  the  ecclesiastical  divisions,  are  written  m 
red  and  green  ink,  of  so  good  a  color  that 
they  give  the  page  a  gay  appearance.     The 
beginning  of  the  volume,  as  far  as  the  third 
chapter  of  Matthew,  is  lost ;  but  the  deficiency 
has  been  supplied,  in  a  larger  character,  by 
a  more  modern  writer.     A  note  informs  us 
that  the   work   was   finished   more  than   a 
thousand  years  ago  by  a  certain  Sabar  Jesu, 
in  the  monastery  of  Beth  Cocensi. 

0  Sabar  Jesu!    we  mentally    exclaimed, 
on  whose  handiwork  we  are  now  looking, 
who   wer^  thou  ?    what  was  thy  history  ? 
whtft   drove    thee   from  the   world  to   the 
company  of  monks,  and  what  was  the  extent 
of  thy   literary  labors?      This   age   knows 
nothing  of  thee  but  thy  name,  thus  inscribed 
by  thyself  in  red  letters  at  the  close  of  thy 
great  undertaking.     Thy  course  was  silent 
and  contemplative,  for  a  work  like  this  could 
only  be  wrought  in  the   solitary   cell,   and 
with  concentrated  attention.     We   will  "not 
say,  On  thy  soul  may  God  have  mercy,  as  thy 
fellow -scribes  so  often  write  at  the  close  of 
their  tasks;  but  we  will  hope  that,  while 
giving    to    after  ages    this  monument  of 
SO 


306 


EARLY  CHRISTIAir  LITERATUBB  OF  SYRIA. 


[Nor., 


Cbristiaa  truth,  thou  didst  feed  upon  it  io 
thine  own  spirit !  Sabar  Jesu,  thou  wast 
different  in  thy  language,  thy  dress,  and  thy 
habits,  from  the  men  of  this  generation,  but 
thou  wast  a  Christian,  and  didst,  we  hope, 
drink  of  the  same  living  waters  as  supply 
our  wants,  and  we  therefore  gladly  call  thee 
brother.  We  trust  thou  art  now  at  rest,  and 
wilt  stand  in  thy  lot  at  the  end  of  the  days  ! 

£de8sa  appears  to  have  been  renowned 
for  its  literature  very  early  in  the  Christian 
era.  Tradition  ascribes  its  conversion  to 
Thomas  the  Apostle.  There  are  reasons  for 
thinking  that  these  translations  of  the  Bible 
were  made  there ;  but  it  is  certain  that  the 
place  was  celebrated  for  its  schools  of  learn- 
mg.  Asseman  states,*  that  "  in  the  city  of 
Edessa  there  was  a  school  of  the  Persian 
nation,  established  by  some  one  unknown, 
in  which  Christian  youths  were  taught  sacred 
literature."  Indubitable  proofs  are  furnish- 
ed by  Dr.  Burgess,  of  a  very  early  literary 
vitality  in  this  celebMrated  city.  Here  Barde- 
sanes  flourished  in  the  second  century,  and 
here  Ephraem  preached  and  wrote  in  the 
fourth.  Much  curious  information  respect- 
ing Bardesanes,  especially  in  relation  to  the 
Syriac  Hymnology,  is  found  in  the  scarce 
tract  named  at  the  head  of  this  paper.  He 
was  a  Gnostic  Christian,  who»  by  the  charms 
of  oratory,  and  by  musical  adaptations  to 
hymns  and  other  metrical  compositions, 
bewitched  the  people  with  his  heresies.  His 
works  have  perished,  except  some  fragments 
found  in  the  writings  of  Ephraem ;  but, 
from  the  testimony  borne  by  ancient  writers, 
he  must  have  been  a  man  of  rare  genius,  able 
greatly  to  influence  the  public  mind. 

It  was  in  opposition  to  the  influence  exerted 
by  the  memorv  and  the  writings  of  Barde- 
sanes, that  Ephraem,  the  Deacon  of  Edessa, 
as  the  '*  champion  of  Christ,  put  on  his  arms, 
and  proclaimed  war  against  the  forces  of  bis 
enemies."  Thus  originated  a  noble  mon- 
ument of  Christian  literature,  in  the  form  of 
a  set  of  polemical  homilies*  which  have  come 
down  to  us  in  the  original  Syriac.  They 
are  entitled,  in  the  Roman  edition,  Semwnes 
Pokmki  adversu$  HaereseM,  They  contain 
an  account  of  the  heresies  which  disturbed 
the  Eastern  Church  in  the  first  four  centu- 
ries, more  copious,  perhaps,  than  is  extant  in 
any  other  record. 

It  thus  appears  that  from  the  time  of 
the  formation  of  the  Pescbito  versions  to 
Ephraem,  the  Syriac  language  was  employed 
as  an  important  instrument  for  afiecting  the 


•  Bibliatk€€m  OrUnUai$t»,  torn.  ir.  p.  69. 


public  mind.  We  have  no  doubt  that  many 
works  of  genius  appeared  in  the  long  in- 
terval, as  well  as  tliose  of  Bardesanes.  But 
we  must  look  to  Ephrasm  as  the  great 
master  of  Syriac  literature,  for  in  his  time 
the  language  was  in  its  complete  manhood. 
How  much  he  wrote  it  is  impossible  to  say ; 
but  his  surviving  compositions  are  volumi- 
nous, and  have  yet  for  the  most  part,  to 
be  introduced  to  the  public.  It  is  doubted 
by  some  whether  he  understood  Greek :  it  is 
certain  that  he  did  not  write  in  it ;  and,  con- 
sequently, his  works  extant  in  that  language 
are  only  translations.  Yet  it  is  by  these 
versions  that  he  is  generally  estimated  as  an 
author,  his  genuine  Syriac  writings  having 
been  neglected,  in  the  too  prevalent  ignorance 
of  that  language.  Great  facility  is  given 
for  the  study  of  them  by  the  magnificeot 
edition  published  at  Rome  by  the  Assemans 
in  the  early  part  and  about  the  middle  of 
the  last  century.  In  six  large  folios,  nearly 
all  the  confessed  works  of  thb  celebrated 
Father  of  the  Church  have  been  collected, 
and  edited  with  a  critical  sis^acity  and  elab- 
orate care  which  must  ever  confer  honor 
on  the  editors.  Three  volumes  contain  the 
Greek  translations,  and  three  the  Syriac 
originals — ^the  latter  being  in  nearly  all  cases 
productions  different  from  the  former.  Of 
these  three  volumes,  about  one  and  a-half  are 
occupied  with  a  Commentary  on  the  Old 
Testament,  which  deserves  more  attention 
than  it  has  yet  received.  The  other  volume 
and  a-half  contain  hymns  and  homilies  on 
every  variety  of  topic  concerning  Christian 
life  and  doctrine.* 

The  Syriac  writers  after  Ephraem  are  very 
numerous,  but  none  possess  his  genius.  They 
are  all  referred  to,  with  notices  of  their  lives 
and  characteristic  catalogues  of  their  known 
writings,  in  that  marvellous  production  of 
learned  industry,  the  Bihliotheea  OrieniaUi 
of  J.  S.  Asseman.  This  work,  like  the  edition 
of  Ephraem  just  referred  to,  we  owe  to  the 
patronage  of  the  Popes,  and  the  treasures  of 
the  Vatican — would  that  two  such  potent 
instruments  were  always  as  usefully  em- 
ployed ! — both  turned  to  account  by  the 
master  minds  of  the  Assemans  and  their  co- 
adjutors. It  may  be  confidently  said  that 
this  work  contains  literary  wealth  not  likely 
to  be  soon  exhausted ;  and  that  Syriac  Lite- 
rature « is  more  indebted  to  it  than  to  any 
work  besides,  the  editions  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 


*  It  is  from  thift  portion  of  Ephraem's  writings 
that  Dr.  Burgen  has  selected  the  pieces  trandated 
in  his  Tolome.  He  has  aocomptmed  the  traiiBla- 
tions  with  some  valuable  notes. 


1858.] 


KABLY  OHRISTIAir  LITERATURE  OF  SYRU. 


SOY 


tares  excepted.  As  a  catalogue,  it  indi- 
cates where  materials  for  illustrating  the 
Syrian  Church,  its  language  and  literature, 
are  to  be  found  ;  but  it  does  far  more  than 
this.  It  gives  lengthened  extracts  from  the 
writers  enumerated ;  to  such  an  extent,  in- 
deed, that  Syriac  lexicography  would  be 
marvellously  enriched  if  these  stores  alone 
were  properly  examined  and  applied.  There 
18  only  one  deduction  to  make  from  the 
praises  we  are  able  to  bestow  on  both  these 
works — the  edition  of  Ephraem  and  the 
Bibliotheca — they  are  necessarily  very  ex- 
pensive, and  consequently  not  always  avail- 
able to  those  who  might  make  good  use  of 
them. 

We  have  said  enough  to  show  that  Syriac 
Literature  is  very  extensive  in  its  existing 
monuments,  and  that  it  supplies  abundant 
materials  for  a  laborious  scholarship  yet  to 
work  upon.  But  we  must  now  turn  to  an 
aspect  of  it  singularly  interesting  and  re- 
markable, as  exhibited  to  us  in  the  volume  of 
Dr.  Burgess.     We  quote  his  words : — 

**  When  the  student  comes  in  contact  with  the 
Syrian  f  hnrch  Literature,  either  in  man  a  script 
or  printed  books,  he  is  attracted  by  the  singular 
fact,  that  much  of  it  is  in  a  metrical  form.    We 
lay  stress  on  the  word  etuderUt  because  a  super- 
ficial  investigation  will  leave  the  phenomenon 
unnoticed,  as   has   indeed  happened  to  men  of 
learning.    Both   in    manuscripts    and    printed 
books  the  metrical  verses  of  this  literature  are 
generally  written  as  prose,  only  a  point  indicating 
Sie  close  of  a  rythm,  and  that  not  always ;  so 
that  such  works  may  be  consulted  occasionally, 
as  books  of  reference,  without  their  artificial  con- 
struction being  perceived.    But  apart  from  all 
marks  of  distinction,  as  soon  as  these  composi- 
tions are  read  and  studied  in  their  individual 
completeness,  their  rythmical  character  beoomeR 
evident,  sometimes  from  the  poetical  style  of  what 
Is  thus  circumscribed  by  tnese  prosoclical  meas- 
ures, bat  always  from  the  moalding  and  fashion* 
ine  which  the  language  has  to  undergo  before  it 
wul  yield  up  its  freedom  to  the  fetters  of  verse. 
This  then  is  the  sphere  of  our  present  undertak- 
ing, and  it  will  be  our  duty  to  trace  up  this  met- 
rical literature  to  its  origin  as  far  as  historical 
light  will  ^uide  us :  to  say  something  on  the  laws 
by  which  its  composition  appears  to  be  regulated ; 
to  glance  at  its  existing  monuments ;  and  then, 
more  especially,  to  treat  of  the  works  of  Ephraem, 
the  great  master  of  this  literature,  a  few  of  whose 
compositions  are  now  brought  before  the  English 
public." — Pp.  xxii.,  xxiii. 


Now,  when  it  is  known  that  all  the  extant 
writings  of  Ephraem  in  SyHae,  with  the  ex* 
ception  of  his  Commentary  on  the  Old  Tes* 
tament,  are  composed  in  this  metrical  form, 


and  that  in  the  Roman  edition  they  occupy 
a  folio  volume  and  a  half,  it  may  excite  sur- 
prise that  this  extraordinary  feature  should 
not  have  had  more  attention,  and  engaged 
scholars  in  the  dilligent  study  of  it.*  If  this 
vast  amount  of  composition  had  consisted 
merely  of  hymns,  iis  neglect  would  have 
been  less  surprising;  but  it  includes  every 
description  of  subject,  from  discourses  of 
great  length  to  the  short  hymn  properly  so 
designated.  We  have  here  polemical  treatises 
on  doctrine,  religious  poems,  meditations, 
and  prayers. 

It  would  be  considered  an  extraordinary 
circumstance  in  the  case  of  any  Greek  or 
Latin  author,  whose  works  are  printed,  thai 
the  metrical  fortn  of  his  writtings  should  noi 
be  recognized  ;  and  yet  this  is  what  haa 
happened  to  Ephraem.  It  is  a  fact  whieb 
speaks  loudly  of  the  jjttle  attention  given 
to  Syriac  learning.  Nor  is  this  a  natter 
of  mere  literary  curiosity.  It  concerns  the 
whole  Christian  and  ministerial  life  of  these 
communities  of  Syria  and  their  pastors,  and 
reveals  views  of  early  Christianity  moat  in- 
teresting and  curious.  As  far  as  we  can 
judge  from  existing  documents^  all  Ephraem*^ 
pulpit  effbrte  were  metrical,  and  his  hearers 
were  instructed  from  time  to  time  with  com- 
positions of  rare  felicity  of  invention  and 
strength  of  argument,  clothed  in  a  form 
highly  poetic. 

The  metrical  writings  of  Ephraem  have^ 
for  the  most  part,  far  more  than  the  exter- 
nal and  adventitious  form  of  poetical  com- 
position;   they    are    essentially    poetic    in 
their  conception  and  execution.    We  can- 
not now  present  proof   of  this;    but  our 
readers  may  judge  for  themselves,  by  the 
few  pieces  which  Dr.  Burgess  has  translated. 
We  cannot  compare  him   with  any  of  his 
predecessors,  from  the  want  of  any  of  their 
remains,    but  he    is  favorably    contrasted 
with  those  who  come  after  him.     For  the 
greater  part,  the  latter  are  circumscribed  by 
the  few  topics  especially  related  to  them  aa 
Churchmen,  and  can  lay  no  claim  to  general 
literary  knowledge  and  genius.     But  Ephm* 
em,  while  confining  himself  very  much  to 
Biblical  thoughts,  is  copious  in  his  fancy^ 
and  has  a  considerable  creative  imagination. 
The  external  form  of  Ephraem*s  versifi- 
cation is  varied,  but  in  all  cases  the  rhythm 
is  reckoned  by  syllables — not  by  feet,  as  is 

*  The  editors  of  the  Syriao  works  of  Ephraem  ar* 
not  to  blame  for  tbii^  for  they  have  in  their  preiiM«a 
pointed  oat  all  the  metrical  pieoei^  and  expatiated 
on  their  usual  various  merita 


808 


EARLY  0HRI8TIAN  LITERATUBB  OF  STRIA. 


generally  the  case  in  the  Greek  and  Roman 
verse.  The  Sjriac  metres  are  six  in  num- 
ber, consisting  respectively  of  four,  five,  six, 
seven,  eight,  and  twelve,  syllables.  Each  of 
these  is  found  in  strophes  or  stnnzas  of  va- 
rious lengths,  from  three  or  four  to  twenty 
or  thirty  verses.  Many  pieces  are  com- 
posed of  different  verses.  Ephraem  appears 
to  have  exercised  much  ingenuity,  in  giving 
the  charm  of  variety  to  his  compositions  in 
accommodation  to  the  popular  taste  of 
Edessa.  Sometimes  his  pieces  have  rhymes, 
but  these  are  of  rare  occurrence;  some- 
times they  have  similar  endings  in  the 
lines-  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  while  the 
great  number  of  forms  and  metres  in  our 
modern  hymn-books  is  a  ground  of  objec- 
tion with  some  persons  on  the  score  of 
taste,  the  hynms  of  the  Syrians  of  the  fourth 
century,  go  far  beyond  them  in  their  ca- 
pricious and  fanciful  arrangements.  If,  as 
18  to  be  presumed,  these  were  all  accom- 
modations to  musical  times,  we  have  pre- 
sented to  us  a  Christian  service,  endeavour- 
ing by  every  possible  variety  to  keep  up 
the  attention  and  life  of  the  worshipers. 

But  there  is  another  notable  feature  of 
these  com  positions,  which  is  thus  referred  tQ 
by  Dr.  Burgess : — 

*'  Historical  evidence  is  quite  conclusive  as  to 
the  popularty  of  the  practice  of  alternate  sing- 
ing in  the  early  Syrian  Church,  and  as  to  the 
important  use  made  of  it  both  by  Bardesanes 
and  Ephraem,  as  an  instrument  for  moulding 
and  fashioning  the  public  mind.  And  its  in- 
fluence is  founded  in  nature,  exciting  as  it  does 
an  interest  in  a  public  service,  and  keeping 
alive  an  enthusiasm  in  more  private  musical 
performances.  •  .  .  There  arc  at  least  two 
distinct  forms  of  this  practice  manifest  in  the 
works  of  Ephraem.  The  first  has  the  charac- 
ter of  the  dialogue,  or  rather  of  the  amcebaBic 
poems  of  Theocritus  and  Virgil ;  when  two  per- 
sons, or  more,  carry  on  a  conversation  on  a  to- 
pic   forming^  the    subject  of  the    composition. 

.  .  .  But  the  second  form  of  the  respon- 
sive chant  is  more  common ;  it  consists  of  a  cho- 
rus at  the  end  of  each  strophe,  formed  either  by 
a  repetition  of  a  portion  of  the  poem,  by  a  pray- 
er, or  by  a  doxology." — P.  liv. . 

When  we  ask  the  very  natural  question, — 
"Who  invented  these  metres,  or  first  intro- 
duced metrical  compositions  into  Christian 
worship  ?  we  get  no  reply,  the  whole  mat- 
ter being  involved  in  obscurity,  in  the  first 
and  second  centuries.  Tradition  assigns 
the  invention  to  Bardesanes.  Harmonius, 
the  son  of  Bardesanes,  is  said  to  have  been 
educated  in  Greece,  and  afterwards  to  have 
improved  upon  his  father's  discovery,   by 


[Nov., 

the  introduction  of  Greek  metres.  We  in- 
cline to  think  that  the  Syrians  very  early 
introduced  into  their  language  the  metrical 
forms  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  literature ; 
but  whether  the  Church  originated  the  prac- 
tice of  metrical  writing,  or  adopted  it  and 
improved  upon  it,  is  probably  still  an  open 
question. 

In  the  liturgies  and  service  books  of  the 
Syrian  Christians  many  hymns  are  inter- 
spersed, and  it  is  from  these  shorter  pieces 
that  the  current  opinion  respecting  the  char- 
acter of  the  metrical  writings  has  been 
formed.  Certainly,  if  Ephraem  Vhad  only 
written  these  shorter  pieces,  they  would 
have  been  worthy  of  attention;  but  the 
value  of  the  metrical  literature  is  greatly 
enchanced  by  its  being  the  vehicle  of  dis- 
courses on  controversies,  and  doctrines,  as  well 
as  matters  of  Christian  practice,  A  set  of 
homilies,  thirteen  in  number,  on  the  Nativi- 
ty, occupy  forty  folio  columns  of  Syriac, 
and  may  be  properly  considered  as  a  con- 
tinuous work,  although  thus  divided  for 
convenience. 

Our  readers  may  perhaps  expect  a  speci- 
men of  the  Literature  we  have  been  describ- 
ing, and  we  select  the  first  hymn  from  the 
volumn  before  us.  It  is  in  Tetrasyllabic 
metre  in  the  Syriac,  and  consequently  terse 
and  compressed  in  its  composition. 

OR  THE  DEATH  OF  A  CHILD. 

"  Oh  my  Son,  tenderly  beloved ! 
Whom  grace  fashioned 
In  his  mother's  womb, 
And  divine  goodness  completely  formed. 
He  appeared  in  the  world 
Suffering  like  a  fiower ; 
And  Death  put  forth  a  heat 
More  fierce  than  the  sun, 
And  scattered  its  leaves 
And  withered  it,  that  it  ceased  to  be. 
I  fear  to  weep  for  thee, 
Because  I  am  instructed 
That  the  Son  of  the  King  hath  removed  thee 
To  ttis  bright  habitation. 

<*  Nature  in  its  fondness 
Disposes  me  to  tears, 
Because,  my  son,  of  thy  departure. 
But  when  I  remember  the  bright  abode 
To  which  they  have  led  thee, 
I  fear  lest  I  should  defile 
The  dwelling-place  of  the  King 
By  weeping,  which  is  adverse  to  it ; 
And  lest  I  should  be  blamed 
For  coming  to  the  region  of  bliss 
With  tears  which  belong  to  sadnete ; 
I  will  therefore  rejoice, 
Approaching  with  my  onmixed  offering. 


1858.J 


BARLT  GHBiaiXAN  XiITERATlTRE  OF  8TRIA. 


300 


"  The  sonnd  of  thy  sweet  notes 
Once  moved  me  and  caught  mine  ear. 
And  caused  me  much  to  wonder ; 
Again  my  memory  listens  to  it, 
And  is  effected  by  tho  tones 
And  harmonies  of  thy  tenderness. 
But  when  my  spirit  groans  aloud 
On  account  of  these  things, 
My  judgment  recalls  me, 
And  listens  with  admiration 
To  the  voices  of  those  who  live  on  high ; 
To  the  sonpr  of  the  spiritual  ones 
Who  cry  aloud,  Hosannah ! 
At  thy  marriage  festival.*' 

To  appreciate  tho  genius  of  this  Syrian 
divine  it  is  necessary  to  compare  his  hymns 
with  those  of  the  early  Latin  and  Greek 
Churches.  This  may  be  conveniently  done, 
as  far  as  the  latter  are  concerned,  by  con- 
sulting Daniel's  Thetaurtu  Hymnologicua.'^ 
A  great  difference  will,  with  a  few  excep- 
tions, be  at  once  perceptible  in  the  freedom 
and  general  literary  expansiveness  of 
Ephraem,  contrasted  with  the  narrow  and 
mere  doctrinal  productions  of  the  Greek 
Upd  Latin  hymn  writers.  The  Greek  and 
Latin  hymns  are  mostly  only  adapted  for 
eccle&iastical  use,  while  a  great  number  of 
Ephraem's  pieces  have  an  mterest  as  exten- 
sive as  human  nature.  This  characteristic 
is  doubtless  attributable. in  part  to  his  free- 
dom from  the  fetters  of  religious  conven- 
tionalism and  theological  polemic.  It  is 
true  the  controversies  respecting  heresies 
had  distracted  the  Church  before  this  time, 
but  they  had  not  resulted  in  the  hard  stereo- 
typing of  the  mind  in  the  prescribed  formu- 
las which  soon  afterwards  took  the  place  of 
a  free  exposition  of  Scripture,  and  obstructed 
the  development  of  religious  life. 

This  remark  suggests  some  examination  of 
the  relation  of  the  early  religious  life  and  lit- 
erature of  Syria  to  the  forms  of  Christianity 
which  now  prevail  in  that  country.  If  our 
readers  wish  to  pursue  the  sad  comparison 
at  greater  length  than  our  space  will  now 
permit,  we  refer  them  to  the  volume  of  Dr. 
Burgess  and  the  Bardesanes  of  Hahn  for  the 
former  period  ;  and  for  the  modem  Church- 
es, to  the  other  works  placed  at  the  head  of' 
this  article.  By  these  aids  very  different 
are  the  pictures  we  get  of  the  working  of 
Christianity  in  nearly  the  same  places — but 
at  eras  separated  by  fifteen  centuries.  How, 
comes  it  that  in  the  one  epoch  there  is  little 
ardent,  impassioned,  and  practical  *  in  the 
other,  only  a  slight  movement  in  the  debil- 


*  In  three  volumes.    Halle  &  Leipaic,  1841-1846. 


itated  members,  and  a  hectic  flush  upon  the 
brow? 

In  ancient  times,  there  were  doubtless 
fixed  ritual  arrangements  by  which  the  Syr- 
iac  Churches  were  governed,  but,  whatever 
they  were,  they  were  not  so  cumbrous  or 
stringent  as  to  destroy  the  freedom  and  para- 
lyze the  action  of  the  religious  life.  The 
ecclesiastical  system  then  existing  allowed 
a  latitude  in  the  conception  of  new  methods 
of  Christian  operation  and  in  carrying  these 
into  action.  While  moving  within  the  or- 
bit  of  a  Church  system,  Ephraem  was  not 
rigidly  con6ned  to  any  linear  course  in  it, 
but  could  move  right  and  left  ns  his  con- 
science might  guide  him,  or  as  the  profit  of 
the  people  might  seem  to  demand.  The 
public  service  of  that  age  seems  to  have  ad- 
mitted a  variety  of  form ;  its  boundary 
lines  were  sufficiently  elastic  to  allow  of 
novelties  in  the  external  accompaniments  of 
worship.  For  example,  on  the  occasion  of 
a  death,  Ephraem  was  wont  to  compose  a 
piece  appropriate  to  each  special  instance, 
and  which,  as  the  case  might  demand,  la- 
mented the  premature  decay  of  the  flower 
of  infancy  and  youth,  the  mysterious  re- 
moval of  the  head  of  a  household,  or  the  de- 
scent into  the  tomb  of  ripe  old  age,  each 
instance  suggesting  fitting  Biblical  topics 
and  consolations.  The  great  variety  of  this 
class  of  his  writings  shows  us  that  every 
opportunity  was  embraced  of  turning  the 
sorrows  of  the  bereaved  to  the  best  account 
— hb  Syriao  pieces  on  death,  as  far  as  pub- 
lished, amounting  to  eighty-five.  Great 
public  events  were  in  a  similar  way  sugges- 
tive of  materials  for  public  worship.  Sev- 
eral homilies  exist,  written  in  the  times  of 
pestilence,  from  which  Syria  suffered  so 
much.  And  this  freedom  to  adopt  new 
modes  of  teaching  was  not  confined  to  oc- 
casional services,  it  evidently  pervaded  the 
ordinary  performance  of  divine  worship. 
Putting  all  these  signs  and  motives  of  vig- 
orous life  together,  we  are  at  no  less  for  a 
reason  why,  in  the  fourth  centnry ;  the  Church 
at  Edessa  flourished. 

But,  as  time  rolled  on,  system  and  me- 
chanical routine  gradually  took  the  place  of 
spontaneous  movement;  age  by  age  cus- 
tom became  stronger  in  its' influence,  and 
at  length  assumed  the  office  of  a  supreme 
arbiter  in  the  Church.  Some  centuries  after 
Ephraem,  his  successors  were  satisfied  with 
his  thoughts,  and  ceased  to  put  forth  their 
own.  Imperceptibly,  yet  surely,  like  the 
gathering  frosts  of  winter,  conventionalisms 
and  church  laws  bound  all  free  aspirations 


810 


BABLY  CHRISnA}^  IITEBATUBB  OF  S7BIA. 


[Nov. 


9 

in  their  icy  chains^  until  the  Syrian  Ch arches 
became  what  they  now  are.  The  times 
changed,  but  men  did  not  change  their 
modes  of  action  with  them.  The  language 
of  Ephraem  ceased  to  be  a  living  one,  and 
yet  continued  to  be  the  vehicle  of  the 
hymns  and  liturgies  of  the  church.  No 
active  spirit  appeared,  to  accomodate  the 
utterances  of  Divine  truth,  to  new  and  diffe- 
rent circumstances ;  and  even  if  genius  had 
conceived  the  design,  it  was  immediately 
repressed  by  the  doctrine,  that  what  was 
new  could  not  be  sanctioned  because  it  was 
irregular.  When  we  read  the  works  written 
by  modern  travellers  who  have  visited  these 
Churches,  we  learn  that  they  now  pride 
themselves  on  their  orthodoxy  and  zeal  for 
ecclesiastical  forms  and  traditions,  or  main- 
tain the  direct  succession  of  their,  ministers 
from  the  apostles.  A  sorry  substitute  for 
the  want'of  apostolic  life  and  doctrine  ? 

It  seems  that  no '  restoration  of  earnest 
Christianity  can  be  expected  among  these 
ancient  Syriac  Churches,  until  the  barrier  of 
conventionalism  is  thrown  down,  and  their 
religious  teachers  labor  among  them  as 
Ephraera  did  at  Edessa,  adapting  their  teach^ 
ings  and  operations  to  existing  wants  and 
circumstances.  Various  efforts  have  been 
made  by  the  Episcopal  Churches  of  the 
West  to  vivify  their  brethren  in  the  East, 
but  it  is  plain  that  too  much  attention  has 
been  given 'to  their  antiquities,  and  too  little 
to  their  practical  religions  wants.  If  it  is 
true  that  a  superstitums  attachment  to  that 
which  is  old,  has  led  to  the  low  state  of 
these  communities,  it  must  be  desirable*  to 
correct  rather  than  cherish  that  feeling,  and 
to  move  stagnant  thought  by  opening  up 
new  channels.  In  this  way  the  American 
missionaries  among  the  Neslorians  in  Persia, 
referred  to  by  Mr  Badger,  have  acted,  and 
apparently  with  signal  success.  The  Bible 
is  translated  into  their  modern  tongue  ;  mo- 
dem religious  books  are  distributed  ;  schools 
established,  and  the  gospel  preached  in 
the  living  language  of  the  people.  Mr. 
Badger's  work,  we  may  add,  is  deeply  inte- 


resting throughout ;  but  he  is,  in  our  opi- 
nion, much  too  hard  on  the  American  mis- 
sionaries, and  disposed  too  little  to  value 
their  labors,  because  they  are  not  Episco- 
palians. We  presume  the  lively  volume  of 
Mr.  Curzon  has  been  seen  by  most  of  our 
readers.  It  contains  valuable  information 
concerning  the  Eastern  forms  of  Christianity, 
and  humorously,  yet  affectingly,  describes 
the  living  death  of  the  Syrian  and  other 
monastenes  in  these  regions. 

We  conclude  with  an  expression  of  hope, 
that  the  field  to  which  we  have  introduced 
our  readers^  may  soon  bo  occupied  by  dili- 
gent laborers.  Dr.  Burgess,  in  particular 
has  devoted  himself,  apparently  amid  many 
difficulties,  to  a  department  of  literature  in 
which  he  has  few  companions.  He  is  an 
enthusiastic  Syriac  scholar.  His  book  is  a 
real  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  the 
christian  life  and  literature  of  the  East  io 
the  fourth  century  ;  presented  too  in  a  man- 
ner well  fitted  even  for  popular  reading.  In 
these  hymns  and  metrical  homilies  of  the 
Edessan  teacher — many  of  them  fit  utte- 
rances of  the  tenderest  and  liveliest  emo- 
tions of  a  christian, — we  see  vividly  how 
Christianity,  after  its  three  centuries  of  tre- 
mendous struggle,  had  conquered  its  way  to 
the  world's  heart,  and  became  the  moving 
principle  of  their  life  to  thousands  in  the 
regions  of  Syria.  We  are  grieved  to  think, 
with  Dr.  Burgess,  that  there  are  some  good 
people  among  us  who  look  with  suspicion, 
at  least,  on  literary  labors  like  bis, — fitted 
as  these  labors  are  to  remove  exclusive- 
ness  by  an  incursion  among  past  and  dis- 
tant forms  of  religious  thought  and  worship. 
Surely  those  who  tremble  at  the  resuscita- 
tion of  an  Ephraem  or  a  Chrysostom,  can- 
not be  easy  among  the  more  daring  foes  of 
these  irreverent  days.  In  truth,  every  his- 
toric light  struck  out  between  the  time  we 
live  in  and  the  time  of  the  humiliation  of 
the  Son  of  Ood,  throws  some  part  of  its  ra- 
diance on  the  great  objects  presented  in  the 
New  Testament,  and  may  help  us  to  grasp 
these  more  firmly  as  historic  facts. 


1658.] 


SIR  THOMAS  NOOK  TALFOUBD. 


911 


From     (he    New    Ifonthly    Xagasine. 


SIR  THOMAS  NOON  TALFOURD. 


To  win  gdden  opioioos  (we  speak  not  of 
fees)  from  all  sorts  of  men,  in  and  out  of 
Westminster  Hall,  as  Mr  Serjeant  and  Mr. 
Justice,  is  good.  To  win  renown  in  litera- 
ture— such  renown  as  comes  not  of  sounding 
brass  and  tinkling  cymbal — is — iwell,  out 
with  it ! — better.  To  win  tbe  loving  esteem 
of  all  one's  associates,  as  a  man  with  heart 
large  enough  for  them  all,  is  best.     This 

food,  better,  best,  hath  Sir  Thomas  Noon 
alfourd.  His  it  is  to  enjoy  at  once  the 
three  degrees  of  comparison — the  positive 
forensic,  the  comparative  literary,  and  the 
superlative  humane.  A  case  in  Rule  of  Three 
with  a  splendid  quotient.  To  "  take  a  rule" 
of  that  sort,  is  not  allowed  to  many.  But 
Sir  Thomas  has  it  all  his  own  way — "  rule 
absolute."  And  probably,  were  his  good 
wishes  for  his  brethren  as  efiScacious  as  they 
are  cordial  and  general,  there  would  be  hard- 
ly an  instance  of  "  rule  refused."  But  there 
is  no  surplusage  of  instances  of  combined 
literary  and  forensic  success.  To  him  who 
would  be  at  once  a  great  lawyer  and  a  great 
poet,  and  would  bind  up  together  in  his  book 
of  life  the  studies  of  Blackstone  and  the 
dreams  of  Coleridge, — to  him  £i]5erience, 
harsh  monitor,  whispers,  or  if  need  be 
screams,  Divide  and  conquer.  Eminence  in 
both  departments  is  of  tbe  rarest.  Scott  re- 
tained his  clerkship  at  the  Court  of  Session, 
but  who  ever  heard  of  the  Wizard  of  tbe 
North  as  a  law  authority  ?  Jeffrey  is  one  of 
the  select  inner  circle  to  which  Talfourd  be- 
longs. Wilspn  and  Lockhart — "  oh  no,  we 
never  mention  them"  in  wig  and  gown.  Sir 
Archibald  Alison  and  Professor  Aytoun,  Mr. 
Procter  and  Serjeant  Kinglake,  Lords  Broug- 
ham and  Campbell,  Mr.  Ten  Thousand-a- 
Year  Warren  and  a  few  others,  are  not  all 
unexceptionable  exceptions  to  prove  the  rule. 
And  yet  there  has  ever  been,  more  or  less, 
a  hankering  after  the  Muses  and  the  Maga- 
lines  on  the  part  of  Messieurs  of  the  long 
jobe.*     Very  natural,  too,  if  only  by  a  law 

*  For  example  (though  one  swallow  proves  not 
•aminer,)  the  French  lawvers  of  the  sixteenth  oen- 
tory.     A  biographer  of  Etienne  PasquieJ,  aiter  | 


of  reaction ;  but  very  hazardous,  notwith- 
standing ;  and  alarmingly  symptomatic  of  a 
fall  between  two  stools.  Odo  thing  at  a 
time  the  ambiguously  ambitious  avocat  may 
do  triumphantly ;  but  to  drive  Pegasus  up 
and  down  an  act  of  parliament,  whatever 
may  de  done  with  a  coach-and-six,  is  no 
every-day  sight,  no  anybody's  feat.  Lord 
Eldon,  when  plain  Jack  Scott,  keeping  his 
terms  at  Oxford,  obtained  the  prise  of  Eng- 
lish composition,  "  On  the  Advantages  and 
Disadvantages  of  Foreign  Travel ;"  and  it 
has  been  remarked,  we  believe  bv  Mr.  Justice 
Talfourd  himself,*  that  since  the  subject  of 
this  essay  was  far  removed  from  John's  New- 
castle experience,  and  alien  from  his  studies, 
and  must  therefore  have  owed  its  success 
either  to  the  ingenuity  of  its  suggestions,  or 
to  the  graces  of  its  style ;  and  that  as,  in 
after-life  the  prize  essayist  was  never  dis- 
tinguished for  felicity  of  expression  or  fer- 
tility of  illustration,  and  acquired  a  style  not 
only  destitute  of  ornament,  but  unwieldy  and 
ponderous;  this  youthful  success  suggests 
the  question,  '*  Whether  in  devoting  all  his 
powers  to  the  study  of  the  law,  he  crushed 
the  faculty  of  graceful  composition  with  so 
violent  an  eflTort,  that  Nature,  in  revenge, 
made  his  ear  dull  to  the  music  of  language, 
and  involved,  though  she  did  not  darken,  bis 
wisest  words?"  Happily  no  such  qucere 
affects  the  career  of  the  author  of  "  Ion." 
He,  indeed,  is  not  Lord  High  Chancellor; 
which  makes  a  difference.  But  neither  did 
the  great  Eldon  write  a  triumphant  tragedy ; 
and  that  again  makes  a  difference  in  the 
Puisne  Judge's  favor.  Fancy  lK>rd  El- 
don editing  the  Reliques  of  Ella,  or  meas- 
uring Macready  for  blank  verse  ;  and  if  that 
is  not  extravagant  enough,  then  fancy  your- 

relating  his  dilmt  as  avocat  at  the  barreau  de  Paris 
proeeeds  to  eay ;  "  Et  en  m^me  tempfli  pour  ooonper 
aes  loisin^  il  Be  livra  a  la  po^sie  a  la  composition 
lit^raire,  earaetire  qui  dittingtti  at  generation 
d^avocatSf  et  Pasqaier  entre  lea  aatres." 

*  Unleas  we  err  m  attribnting  to  his  pen  the 
very  pleasant  notice  of  the  Lives  of  Lord  Eldua 
and  Lord  Stowell,  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for 
December,  1844. 


312 


filR  THOMAS  NOON  TALFOUBD. 


[Not., 


self  reading  the  one,  or  squeezing  into  the 
pit  to  see  the  other. 

Sir  Thomas  was  not  far  gone  in  his  teens 
when  he  woo'd  and  won  publicity,  it  is  said, 
by  a  "  poem"  on  the  liberation  of  Sir  Fran- 
cis Burdett  from  durance  vile.     While  still  a 
schoolboy  at  Reading,  he  published  a  volume 
of  '*  poems,'*  including  a  sacred  drama  on 
the  ^*  Offering  of  IsaMc"  (inspired  by  that 
admiration  of  Mistress    Hannah    More,   of 
which  lingering  traces  survive,  in  the  pre- 
face to  "  Ion,")  '*  An  Indian  Tale,"  and  some 
verses  about  the   Education  of  the  Poor, 
suggested  by  a  visit  to  Reading  of  Joseph 
Lancaster.     School-days  over,   he  came  to 
London,  and  fagged  under  the  famous  Chitty, 
in  whose  Criminal  Law  he  aided  and  abetted. 
Then  we  find  him  fertile  in  the  production  of 
pamphlets,  on  toleration,  on  penal  institut- 
ions, <fec.,  and  taking  a  gallant  stand  on  the 
side  of  Wordsworth,  at  a  time  (1815)  when 
to  do  80  was  to  be  in  a  scouted  and  flouted 
minority.     Anou  be  is  on  the  list  of  con- 
tributors  to  the  periodical  literature  of  the 
day — to  the  Retrospective  Review ^  the  En- 
cyclopcedia  Metropolitana^  and  the  Ixmdon 
Magazine.     T|iis  kind  of  work  he  engaged 
in  for  love  and  money.     Himself  is  our  au- 
thority for  making  lucre  a  part  of  his  motive : 
for  when  old  Godwin  toddled  into  the  young 
advocate's  chambers,  the  very  morning  after 
an  introduction  at  Charies  Lamb's,  and  then 
and  there  "  carelessly  observed  that  he  had 
a  little  bill  for  150/.  falling  due  on  the  mor- 
row, which  he  had  forgotten  till  that  morn- 
ing, and  desired  the  loan  of  the  necessary 
amount  for  a  few  weeks," — the  flattered  and 
regretful  Tafourd  "  was  obliged,  with  much 
confusion,"  he  tells  us,  '*  to  assure  my  dis- 
tinguished visitor  how  glad  I  should  have 
been  to  serve  him,  but  that  I  was  only  just 
starting  as  a  special  pleader,  was  obliged  to 
write  for  magazines  to  help  me  on,  and  had 
tiot  such  a  sum  in  the  world."*     The  articles 
contributed    to  the   Encyclopcedia  are   the 
most  notable  of  his  labors  nt  this  period,  and 
well  deserved  their  recent  republication  in  a 
compact,  collected  form.f     Foremost  among 
these  is   his   history   of   Greek   Literature. 
Here  he  contrives  to  press  a  large  amount  of 
information  into  very  narrow  limits-^as  they 
seem,  at  least,  when  compared  with  those 
defined  for  himself,    on  the  same  classical 
ground,  by  Colonel  Mure.     We  are  told  all 
that  is  known,  and  of  course  a  trifle  more, 


*  FiDftl  Memorials  of  Chiirles  Lamb, 
f  Id  the  seriee  of  reprints  by  Measn.  GrifBo,  in 
orown  octavo,  oommenoed  in  1849. 


about  such  early  birds  as  Linus — be  he  sin- 
gular, dual,  or  plurimal — and  Orpheus,  who 
brought  Wisdom  into  Greece,  and  married 
her  to  immortal  verse,  and  by  his  music  sub- 
dued I' Inferno  itself,  *'  creating  a  soul  under 
the  ribs  of  death" — and  Musseus,  priest  of 
the  mysteries  of  Orpheus,  and  perhaps  his 
son.  Homer  is  amply  discussed — large  place 
being  given  to  what  Hartley  Coleridge  calls 
the  Wolfish  and  Heinous  point  of  view,  and 
due  stress  laid  on  the  good  old  conservative 
creed,  which  believes  m  the  strict  individu- 
ality of  the  bard.  To  divide,  the  stanchly 
orthodox  feel,  is  to  destroy : — *'  that  fame 
which  has  so  long  resisted  time,  change,  and 
mortal  accident,  would  crumble  into  ruins — 
an  immense  blank  would  be  left  to  the  im- 
agination, an  aching  void  in  the  heart — the 
greatest  light,  save  one,  shining  from  the 
depth  of  time,  would  be  extinguished,  and  a 
glory  pass  away  from  the  earth."  Homer, 
therefore,  is  assumed  to  be,  not  a  class,  but  a 
mnn ;  not  an  abstract,  impersonal  Un-Self 
and  Co.,  but  our  familiar  childhood  honored 
Homer's  own  Self;  the  man  we  came  to 
know  in  connexion  with  Donnegan's  obsolete 
lexicon,  and  Pope's  sonorous  verse ;  the  well- 
known  blind  old  man  of  Scio's  rocky  isle — 
who  was  born  in  one  of  the  seven  states 
hexametrically  immortalised. 

Smyrna,    Rhodas,    ColophoUi    Salamis,    Chios, 
Argos,  Athense, 

and  not  in  all  seven  at  once,  not  in  seventy 
times  seven,  as  the  German  theory  would  im- 
ply.— Hesiod  is  designated  the  most  unequal 
of  poets;  sometimes  daringly  and  ardently 
imaginative,  at  other  times  insufierably  low^ 
creeping,  tame,  and  prosaic ;  in  his  didactic 
poetry,  rising  occasionally  into  a  high  and 
philosophical  strain  of  thought,  but  common- 
ly giving  mere  trite  maxims  of  prudence, 
and  the  most  common-place  worldly  cunning ; 
without  any  of  Homer's  refined  gallantry,  and, 
indeed,  something  very  like  a  misogynist  and 
a  croaker. — The  three  great  tragic  poets  of 
Greece  are  ably  portrayed,  though  without, 
perhaps,  any  very  original  criticism  or  sub- 
tle discrimination  :  the  "  intrepid  and  fiery**  • 
i£schylus,  on  whose  soul  mighty  imagina- 
tions trooped  so  fast,  that,  in  the  heat  of  his 
inspiration,  he  stopped  not  to  accurately  de- 
fine or  clearly  develop  them — like  his  own 
Prometheus,  stealing  fire  from  heaven  to  in- 
spire and  vivify  his  characters — however 
mighty  his  theme,  always  bringing  to  it  a 
kindred  emotion,  but  never  losing  his  state- 
liness  in  his  passion,  never  denuding  his  ter- 
rors of  an  unearthly  grandeur  and   awe. 


1858.] 


SIR  THOMAS  NOON  TALF0T7BD. 


813 


Sophocles :  always  perfect  master  of  him' 
self  and  his  subject ;  conscious  of  the  pre- 
cise measure  of  his  own  capacities;  main- 
taining undisturbed,  his  majestic  course,  in 
calm  and  beautiful  progression ;  in  every- 
thing lucid  and  clear,  never  forgetting  the 
harmony  and  proportion  of  the  whole,  m  the 
variety  and  complexity  of  the  parts — his 
philosophy  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute — 
his  wisdom  made  visible  in  the  form  of  beauty. 
Euripides :  appealing  less  to  the  imagination 
than  to  the  sensibilities  and  the  understand- 
ing— ^loving  to  triumph  by  involving  us  in 
metaphysical  subtleties,  or  by  disolving  us  in 
tears,  and*  scarcely  ever  laboring  to  attain 
the  grreat  object  of  the  other  tragedians,  a 
representation  of  serene  beauty; — ^a  mind 
more  penetrating  and  refined  than  eihalted ; 
holding  up  to  nature  a  mirror  rather  micro- 
scopic than  ennobling  ;  intent  on  depicting 
situations  the  most  cheerless  and  externally 
desolate,  so  that  "Electra  appears  tottering 
not  only  beneath  the  weight  of  affliction,  but 
of  a  hugh  pitcher  of  water ;  and  Menelaus 
mourns  at  once  the  mangled  honor  of  his 
wife  and  the  tattered  condition  of  his  gar- 
ments." To  the  same  Unct/clbpcedia,  Sir 
Thomas  contributed  the  notices  of  the  Lyric 
Poets  of  Greece,  of  Thucydides,  sections  of 
the  history  of  Greece  and  of  Rome,  the  Arts 
and  Sciences  of  the  Ancients,  &c. 

*He  stood  well,  too,  on  the  once  brilliant 
staff  of  the  London  Magazine,  that  bright- 
starred,  thickly-starred,  ill-starred  rival  of 
Old  Ebony.  Remembering  how  noble  an 
army  of  coadjutors  it  once  maintained,  we 
may  well  concur  in  Hood's  saying,  that  per- 
haps no  ex-periodical  might  so  appropriately 
be  apostrophised  with  the  Irish  funeral  ques- 
tion, ''Arrah,  honey,  why  did  you  die?*' 
"  Had  you  not,"  he  continues  (and  as  poor 
John  Scott's  successor  he  speaks  feelingly), 
**  an  editor,  and  elegant  prose  writers,  and 
beautiful  poets,  and  broths  of  boys  for  criti- 
cism and  classics,  and  wits  and  humorists, — 
Elia,  Gary,  Procter,  Cunningham,  Bowring, 
Barton,  Hazlitt,  Elton,  Hartley,  Coleridge, 
Talfourd,  Soane,  Horace  Smith,  Reynolds, 
Poole,  Clare,  and  Thomas  Benyon,  with  a 
power  besides?  Hadn't  you  Lions'  Heads 
with  Traditional  Tales?  Hadn't  you  an 
Opium-eater,  and  a  Dwarf,  and  a  Giant,  and 
a  learned  Lamb,  and  a  Green  Man  ?  Arrah, 
why  did  you  die  ?"*    To  that  longer-lived 


•  HwHra  Own  (1846).  The  pathetic  Why  in  ihw 
inqnest  touching  the  **  dear  deceased"  Beems  to  find 
its  aoBwer  io  the  miBmaDagement  of  new  proprie- 
tori^  and  the  fklling  off  of  old  contribttton.    ThoB 


Magazine  which  the  reader  now  holds  in  his 
hand,  was  Mr.  Talfourd  also  a  steady  con- 
tributor ;  and  he  has  amusingly  recorded  his 
sense  of  the  utter  unfitness  of  the  then 
Editor  (Campbell)  for  his  office — alleging 
that  he  regarded  a  magazine  as  if  it  were  a 
long  affidavit,  or  a  short  answer  in  Chancery, 
in  which  the  absolute  truth  of  every  senti- 
ment and  the  propriety  of  every  jest  were 
verified  by  the  editor's  oath  or  solemn 
affirmation ;  that  he  stopped  the  press  for  a 
week  at  a  comma,  balanced  contending  epi- 
thets for  a  fortnight,  and  at  last  grew  rash  in 
his  despair,  and  tossed  the  nearest,  and  often 
the  worst  article,  "  unwhipp'd  of  justice,"  to 
the  impatient  printer.  Both  the  great  Quar- 
terlies, we  believe,  may  also  claim  the  name 
of  Trilfourd  on  their  respective  lists  of  criti- 
cal allies. 

But  though  periodical  literature  hajl  pro- 
vided his  labors  with  a  "  local  habitation,"  a 
"name"  of  prominent  import  and  illumina- 
ted letters  was  first  secured  to  him  by  the 
production  of  "Ion."  The  play  was  pri- 
vately printed  in  1834,  and  reviewed  in  the 
Quarterly ;  its  performance  at  Covent  Gar- 
den in  1836  was  one  of  the  memorabilia  of 
the  modern  staore.  Mitss  Mitford  has  told  us 
of  one  brilliant  gathering  congregated  to 
watch  the  fortunes  of  the  tragedy  on  its 
opening  night;  and  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  has 
pictured  the  dazzling  coup  d^ml  of  the 
theatre,  where,  "  ever  and  aye,  hands,  stung 
with  tear- thrilled  eyes,  snapping  the  silence,* 
burst  in  crashing  thunders ' — and  where  the 


we  read  in  a  letter  of  Lamb's  to  Wordsworth 
(1822) :  "  Onr  chief  reputed  aaaiBtante  have  for- 
saken U8.  The  Opinm-eater  crowed  us  once  with  a 
dazzling  path,  and  hath  as  suddenly  left  us  dark- 
ling :-^nd  again,  to  Bernard  Barton  (1828):  The 
London,  I  fear,  falls  off.  I  linger  among  its  creak- 
ing rafters,  like  the  last  rat ;  it  will  topple  down  if 
they  don^t  get  some  buttresses.  They  have  pulled 
down  three ;  Hazlitt,  Procter,  and  their  best  stay, 
kind,  light  hearted  Wainwright,  their  Janus."  (Of 
the  last-mentioned  [Janus  Weathercock],  Justice 
Talfourd  disclosed  a  lamentable  history  in  the 
Final  Memcriaig.)  Thomas  Hood  thus  sketches 
the  catastrophe  of  the  declining  Maeazine  :  "  Worst  > 
of  all,  a  new  editor  tried  to  put  the  JBelles  Letters  in 
Utilitarian  envelopes;  whereupon  the  circulation 
of  the  Miscellany,  like  that  of  poor  Le  Fevre,  got 
slower,  slower,  slower, — and  slower  still, — and  then 
stopped  for  ever  1  It  was  a  sorry  scattering  of  those 
old  Londoners  I  Some  went  out  of  the  country^ 
one  (Clare)  went  into  it  Lamb  retreated  to  Cole- 
brook.  Mr.  Cary  presented  himself  to  the  British 
Museum.  Reynolas  and  Barry  took  to  engrossing 
when  they  should  pen  a  stanza;  and  Thomas  Ben- 
yon ga^  up  literature." 

*  All  this,  by  the  way,  is  rather  difficult  to  con- 
strue, Mr.  Hunt 


814 


Sm  THOHAB  NOON  TALFOUBB. 


[Not., 


proud,  glad-hearted  dramatist  might,  amid 
thick-clustered  intellectaal  bevies, 

see  his  high  compeersi 

Wordsworth  and  Landor — see  the  piled  array, 
The  many-visafifed  heart,  looking  one  way, 
Come  to  drink  beauteous  truth  at  eyes  and  ears. 

Of  "  loQ  "  we  may  say,  as  its  author  has 
said  of  the  "Ion"  of  Euripides,  that  tha 
Bimplicity  and  reverence  inherent  in  th^  mind 
of  its  hero  are  no  less  distinct  and  lovely  than 
the  picture  of  the  scenery  with  which  he  is 
surrounded.  His  feelings  of  humble  grati- 
tude to  the  power  which  has  protected  him — 
his  virtue  unspotted  from  the  world — and 
his  cleaving  to  the  sacred  seclusion  which 
has  enwrapped  him  from  childhood,  are 
beautifully  drawn.  The  picture  seems  sky- 
tinctured,  of  an  etheria]  purity  of  coloring.* 

life  hath  flowed 

From  its  mysterious  urn  a  sacred  stream, 
In  whose  calm  depth  the  beautiful  and  pure 
Alone  are  mirrorM. 

Love  is  the  germ  of  his  mild  nature,  and 
hitherto  the  love  of  others  hath  made  his 
life  one  cloudless  holiday.  But  a  curse 
smites  the  city — pestilence  stalks  there  by 
noonday,  and  its  arrows  fly  by  night,  and 
there  is  not  a  house  in  which  there's  not  one 
dead — 

'sv  f  *  h  «'up9opo;  ^£0^ 
Sxti-^^g  ^Xauvei,  Xoijxof  ^X^itf^'Of,  iroXiv.J 

And  with  this  crisis  in  the  history  of  Argos 
opens  a  crisis  in  the  nature  of  Ion — his  soul 
responding  mysteriously  to  the  public  afflic- 
tion, and  conscious  of  strange  connexion  ^ith 
k:  his  bearing  becomes  altered;  his  smile, 
gracious  as  ever,  wears  unwonted  sorrow  in 
its  sweetness ;  "  bis  form  appears  dilated ; 
in  those  eyes  where  pleasure  danced,  a 
thoughtful  sadness  dwells;  stern  purpose 
knits  the  forehead,  which  till  now  knew  not 
the  passing  wrinkle  of  a  care."  All  this  is 
touchingly  and  tenderly  brought  out;  and 
indeed  the  whole  tragedy  is  touching  and 
tender.  Beautiful  passages,  feelingly  thought- 
ful, and  in  a  dulcet  strain  of  rhythmical  ex- 
pression, enrich  its  scenes.  But  that  it  has 
massive  power,  as  some  allege,  or  that  it  is 
an  outburst  of  ardent  genius,  or  that  it  is 
true,  first  and  last,'to  the  spirit  of  the  ancient 
Greek  drama,  and  is  indeed  the  one  solitary 
and  peerless  specimen  in  modem  times  of 


*  Tragio  Poets  of  Greece, 
t  CEdip.  Tyt.  27-8. 


that  wondrous  compoeition — when  we  hear 
this  sort  of  thing  dogmatically  reiterated,  we 
are  stolidly  infidel.  The  very  atmosphere  of 
AtUoa,  is  it? — we  cannot  "swallow"  it, 
then.     Byron  tells  us  how  John  Keats 

— —  without  Greek 
Contrived  to  talk  about  the  gods  of  late. 
Much  as  they  might  have  been  supposed  to  speak. 

The  author  of  "  Ion,"  totth  Greek,  has  made 
his  Argives  talk  as  the  real  *'  old  folks  "  may 
be  supposed  not  to  have  talked.     Medon  and 
Agenor,  Ion  and  Irus,  are  a  whit  too  good  to 
be  true,  and  a  little  too  metrical,  smooth,  and 
polished,   to  be   vigorously  effective.     We 
will  not  go  so  far  as  to  assert  with  a  recent 
writer  (famous  in  the  Anti-Church  and  State 
circuit,  and   not  unknown  on  the  *'  floor  of 
The   House")  that  ancient  civilization  not 
only  exhibits  little  benevolence,  and  wants 
tenderness,   but    also    shows  none  of    the 
healthier  moral  sensibilities — ^^that  ''it  is  not 
humane — nor  can  it  be  pretended  that  the 
most  intimate  converse  with  it  through  the 
medium  of  its  literature  tends  to  elicit  or  to 
cultivate  our  more  generous  sympathies  ;"* 
but  we  may  pretty  safely  ignore  in  the  ven- 
erable Argive  heathens  the  benevolence,  ten- 
derness, healthy  moral  sensibilities,  humani- 
ties, and  generous  sympathies,  which  their 
histnonic  doubles  on  the  boards  of  Cov§nt 
Garden  displayed  so  winsomely.     Evidently 
they  have  had  the  schoolmaster  abroad  and 
the  missionary  among  them.  They  have  been 
handsomely  evangelized,  and  gone  through 
the  cirriculum   of  a  polite  education.     Ion 
especially  is  good  and  wise  enough  to  deserve 
benefit  of    clergy,   whatever    parricidal   or 
suicidal  freak  he  may  indulge  in.     He  has 
plainly  read  the  Bible  and  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,   and   moulds    his   manners    and 
eloquence  accordingly.     But,   after  all,   it 
goes   against  the  grain  to  affect  levity  in 
speaking  of   one   so  finely   and    delicately 
wrought  as  this  royal  orphan  of  the  temple, 
some  of  whose  words  so  penetrate  the  soul. 
Witness  his  logic  on  the  immortality  of  man: 

CU.  O  unkind ! 

And  shall  we  never  see  each  other  ? 

Ion  (after  a  pause).  Yes! 

I  have  ask'd  that  dreadful  question  of  the 

hills 
That  look  eternal ;  of  the  flowing  streams 
That  1  acid  flow  for  ever;  of  the  stars, 
Amid  whose  fields  of  azure  my  raised  spirit 
Hath  trod  in  glory ;  all  were  dumb ;  but  now 

*  Bases  of  BeUefl    By  Edward  MiaU,  M.P.    P. 
{  41-2. 


1868.J 


SIR  THOMAS  IfOON  TALFOUBD. 


815 


While  I  thus  gaze  upon  thy  living  face, 
I  feel  the  love  that  kindles  through  its  beauty 
Can  never  wholly  perish;  we  smU  meet 
Again,  Clemanthe ! 

Witness,  too,  his  description  of  love  tri- 
umphing over  death  in  the  plague-blighted 
homes  of  Argos,  and  his  appeal  from  AdraS' 
tus  the  ruthless  tyrant  to  Adrastus  the 
sportive  child,  and  his  compact  with  his  old 
playmate  Phocion,  when  the  latter  would 
ante- date  the  coming  sacrifice.  The  frame- 
work of  the  tragedy  is  not,  perhaps,  very 
artfully  constructed,  nor  the  exigencies  of 
stage  effect  carefully  studied,  nor  the  subor- 
dinate actors  individualized  in  tiny  memora- 
ble degree:  but,  on  the  whole,  ''Ion"  is 
surely  a  fine  play,  and  a  moving — a  thing  of 
beauty,  and  therefore  a  joy  forever.  Or  if 
**  for  ever  "  will  not  stand  as  a  logical  sequent 
to  Buch  an  aesthetic  and  Keatsian  antece- 
dent— if  literary  immortality  be  too  infinite 
a  conclusion  to  aeduce  from  such  a  premise — 
let  us  at  least  give  the  will,  which  is  penes 
naa,  for  the  deed,  which  is  not;  and  take  up 
our  parabola,  and  say,  in  eastemly  devout- 
nesB,  0  Ion,  live  for  ever!  and  may  thy 
shadow  never  be  less ! 

"  The  Athenian  Captive  *'  is  thought  by 
some,  in  the  face  of  that  stubborn  thing, 
fact,  to  be  a  better  play  than  "  Ion."  It  is 
generally  allowed  to  be  inferior  in  poetry  and 
style.  Passages  and  lines  there  are,  how- 
ever, of  strength  and  beauty — more  than 
most  barristers  could  find  brains  and  time  to 
insert  in  the  product  of  a  Christmas  vaca- 
tion. The  description  of  Ismene's  death 
reralls  that  of  Lady  Randolph  in  Home's 
now  unacted  drama ;  the  lines  that  tell  how 
the  frenzied  queen,  at  the  cave's  mouth, 

To88*(j  her  arms 
Wildly  abroad ;  then  drew  them  to  her  breast, 
As  if  she  clasped  a  vision'd  infant  there — 

add  reflex  energy  and  pathos  to  her  own  fine 
utterance, 

*  Listen !  I  was  pluck*d 
From  the  small  pressure  of  an  only  babe . — 

and  her  destiny  is  wrought  out  with  highly 
impressive  art,  "  as  fits  a  matron  of  heroic 
line" — her  majestic  form  lost  finally  in 
clouds  and  mystery,  departed  like  GSdipus, 
where  none  may  follow  or  inquire.  Tkocu 
declaims  with  glowing  rhetoric,  and  plays 
the  high-soul'd  warrior  almost  grandly-— 
cleaving  in  captivitv  to  "  the  loveliness,  the 
might,  the  hope  of  Athens  " — one  that  is 
'Toe  to  Corinth — not*  a  traitor,  nor  one  to 


league  with  treason" — ^whose  bearing  and 
speech  under  the  pressure  of  thraldom  are 
shaped,  "  with  a  difference,"  after  those  of 
the  Miltonic  Agonistes.     '^  Glencoe  "  is  more 
peremptorily    repudiated,  as    a    Highland 
tragedy,  by    North    Britishers,    than    the 
"  Athenian  Captive  "  and  ''  Ion,"  as  Greek 
tragedies,  by  Hellenizing  Southrons.     Lord 
Jeffrey  permitted  it  to  be  inscribed  to  him, 
but  his  countrymen  protest  against  the  stage 
massacre,  as  "murder  most  foul  and  most 
unnatural,"  committed  on  their  unapproach- 
able territory ;  so  perilous   is  it  to  meddle 
with  the  national  property  of  a  people  char- 
licterized,  according  to  £lta,  by  such  "  Im- 
perfect Sympathies"  with  the  rationale  of 
homage  ab  extra.      Thus,  one  Edinburgh 
critic — Professor  Ay  toun,  was  it  not  ? — was 
spokesman  for  a  phalanx  of  others,  all  armed 
to  the  teeth,  when  he  declared  that  a  more 
lamentable  failure  than  this  attempt  to  found 
a  tragedy  on  the  woful  massacre  of  Olen- 
coe — "a  grosser  jumble  of  nonsense  about 
ancestry  and  chieftainship  " — was  never  per- 
petrated.     As  though  even  in    Glencoe's 
ashes   lived    their  wonted   fires, — nemo  me 
impuhe  lacesset  being  practically  synonymous 
with  noli  me  tangere — for  **  off  at  a  tangent " 
of  the  tenderest  quality  flies  the  gentu  irri" 
tabile,  and  '*  take  that,  you  pock- pudding  !" 
(illustrated  by  the  administration  of  a  **  con* 
ker  ")  is  the  reward  of  any  such  "  ordeal  by 
touch."     We  fear  that  had  this  particular 
tragedy  been  a  stage  triumph,  it  would  have 
been  "  damned "  with  something  else  than 
"faint  praise,"  across  the  Tw'eed.     But  even 
sturdy  Cis-Tweedites  are  constrained  to  own 
that  "  Glencoe  "  »«  flat  and  feeble,  and  that 
no  mountain  breeze  freshens  it,  no  mountain 
catar<«ct  chants  a  wild  obligato  to  the  stern 
theme,  no  swelling  pibroch  utters  its  wail,  no 
heather-legged  son  of  somebody  shows  us 
where  we  are,  to  the  oblivion  of  an  accom- 
r^lished  Londener  in  his  study,  inspired  by 
Macready  as  model  of  Celtic  heroism,  and 
content  with  the  stage  of  the  Little  Theatre  ' 
in  the  Haymarket,  as  a  tolerable  approxima- 
tion to  the  romantic*  fastness  of  the  Mac- 
donalds. 

Thus,  by  public  judgment,  both  from  the 
closet  and  from  the  playhouse.  Sir  Thomas 
Talfourd's  second  dramatic  venture  was  pro- 
nounced a  decline  from  the  first,  and  still 
more  decidedly  the  third  from  the  second. 
He  is  said  to  have  now  "on  the  stocks" 
another  tragedy,  which  we  hope  to  greet  as 
an  emphatic  reaction  from  this  scale  of 
descents.  May  it  take  precedence  as  unques- 
tioned of  the  existing  trilogy,  as  Mr.  Justice 


316 


NEO-PLATONISM— HTPATLL 


[Nov, 


on  the  bench  does  of  Mr.  Serjeant  at  the 
bar. 

In  his  "  Vacation  Rambles  **  we  find  the 
hearty  glee  of  a  fagged  counsel  at  escaping 
from  work,  not  iodeed  to  take  his  ease  at  his 
ino,  but  to  bustle  about  guililess  o(  horse- 
hair corona]  and  defiant  of  common  law — 
steaming  from  Havre  to  Rouen,  whizzing 
along  the  St.  Germain  Railway,  playing  the 
gourmand  at  Meurice's,  and  the  critic  at 
tiie  Parisian  theatres  and  the  galleries  of  the 
Louvre,  pilgriraizing  to  Geneva  and  the 
Alps — Mont  Blanc  reminding  him,  as  he  saw 
it,  of  "  nothing  so  much  in  nature  or  art  as 
a  gigantic  twelfth-cake,  which  a  scapegrace 
of  Titan's  'enormous  brood,'  or  'younger 
Saturn,'  had  cut  out  and  slashed  with  wild 
irregularity."  His  frank  expression  of  so 
unsentimental  a  thought,  is  one  characteris- 
tic of  this  book  of  rambles ;  another  is,  the 
zest  with  which  he  so  frequently  records  his 
appreciation  of  creature  comforts — such  as 
the  "  we  sat  down  to  an  excellent  breakfast," 
on  ''a  large  cold  roast  fowl,  broiled  ham, 
eggs,  excellent  coffee,  and  a  bottle  of  good 
Rhenish,"  followed  "about  two  o'clock  "  by 
an  "admirably  dressed  little  dinner,"  made 
up  of  "  a  thin  beefsteak,  thoroughly  broiled 
(or  fried,  as  the  case  might  be),  with  a  sauce 
of  parsley  and  butter,  and  a  cold  crearo- 
ohicken-salad,  d^c,  d^c.,''  "  accompanied  by 


a  bottle  of  Asmanshauser  wine."  Even  in 
the  family  bivouac  at  the  Grands  Mulcts,  we 
are  conducted  through  the  details  of  the 
dinner,  joyously  protracted  "till  it  merged 
in  supper  " — though  the  Head  of  the  Fam- 
ily feelingly  says,  '^  I  regret  to  confess  that 
I  could  not  eat  much  myself ;  but  I  looked 
with  a  pleasure  akin  to  that  with  which  the 
French  king  watched  the  breakfast  of  Quen- 
tin  Durward,  on  the  activity  of  my  younger 
friends  " — who  with  Homeric  intensity  tore 
asunder  the  devoted  chickens,  and  left  the 
bones  there,  to  be  matter  of  speculation  to 
aspiring  geologists  and  scientific  associations 
in  future  ages. 

The  "Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Lamb," 
and  the  "  Final  Memorials,"  are  household 
treasures.  Exception  may  be  taken  to  occa- 
sional passages — but  the  net  result  is  de- 
lightful, as  every  memorial  of  Elia  must  be— 
that  "cordial  old  man/*  whose  lot  it  was  to 

— ^!eave  behind  him,  freed  from  griefs  and  years, 
Far  worthier  things  than  tears* 

The  love  of  friends  without  a  single  foe : 
Unequalled  lot  below ! 

^Addrened  by  Mr.  Lander  to  "The  Sifter  of 
Elia^ — whom,  mouming,  he  would  fain' comfort 
with  the  reminder — **  yet  awhile  1  again  ahall  Elia's 
smile  refreah  thy  hearty  where  heart  can  aehe  no 
more. 


■  I  ^  >» 


NEO-PLATONISM  — HTPATIA.* 


From    the    British   Quarterly    Review 


WITH    A    PORTRAIT    OF    MR.    KINGSLET. 


Sir  Thomas  Browne  compares  heresies  to 
the  river  Arethusa,  which  loses  its  current, 
and  passes  under  ground  in  one  place,  to  re- 
appear in  ^bother.  He  talks,  in  his  quaint 
fashion,  of  a  certain  metempsychosis  of  ideas, 
according  to  which  the  soul  of  one  man  appears 
to  pass  into  another,  and  opinions  find,  after 
sundry  revolutions,  "men  and  minds  like 
those  that  first  begat  them."  No  philosopher 
has  yet  arisen  fully  to  follow  out  the  hint  of 

*  Hypatia ;  or,  New  Foes  with  an  old  face.  By 
Cbarlb  KiNosLXT,  Jun.  2  vola.  J.  W.  Parker, 
and  Son. 


that  fanciful  old  physician  to»whose  egotistic 
yet  genial  soliloquizing  we  still  hearken  in  the 
pHges  of  ^he  JRelipio  Medici.  A  synic  might 
perhaps,  regard  Adelung*s  History  of  Hu- 
man  Folly  as  already  occupying  nearly  all 
the  ground  embraced  by  such  a  study.  Has 
not  Shakspeare  said — 

One  touch  of  nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin. 
That  all  with  one  consent  praise  new-born  gauds, 
Though  they  be  framed  and  fashioned  of  things 
past? 

True, — as  Shakspeare  always  is —  yet  what 


18fi8.] 


NBO-PLATONIBM— HYPATUl 


817 


8  fascinating  theme  does  the  verj  rebuke 
disclose.      Such  an  inquiry   into   the   pro* 
cesses   by   which  antiquity  has  been   thus 
attired  in  the  show  of  novelty, — into  the  his- 
tory of  that  mysterious  interpenetration  of 
old  and  new, — into  the  laws,  if  laws  there 
be,  according  to  which  dead  thoughts  are 
periodically  raised   to  life,  and  the  past  is 
summoned  to  play  its  part  under  the  freshly- 
painted  mask  of  the  present,  might  well  task 
the  largest  powers,  would  be  replete  with 
interest  and  instruction.     It  is  interesting,  in 
the  fairy  land  of  fiction,  to  watch  the  transit 
of  the  classic  into  the  romantic  fable, — to  see 
Jason    and   Medea   reappear  as   venturous 
knight  and  sage  princess, — to  find  the  Fates 
transformed  into  duennas  keeping  watch  over 
Proserpine,   and  to  recognize    Cerberus  in 
that  hideous  giant  horrible  and  high,  who 
guards  the  melancholy  castle  of  Kin?  Pluto. 
It  is  yet  more  so,  in  the  high  provmces  of 
taught,  to  trace  the  transmigration  of  error 
W>r  of  truth  into  forms  familiar  to  a  later  age, 
and  to  observe  the  resumption,  as  in  a  new 
element,  of  conflicts  apparently  decided  long 
since.     What  tradition  long  reported  con- 
cerning that  terrible  engagement  between 
the  utmost  strength  of  the  Roman  and  the 
Hun,  philosophy  exhibits  as  true  respecting 
the  more  subtile  struggles  of  human  opinion. 
It  was  said  that,  on  the  night  after  the  bat- 
tle,— ^above    the    vast    plains    of    Ch4.lon6, 
stretching  with  their  heaps  of  dead  miles 
away  into  the  darkness  on  either  hand — the 
ghosts  of  the  slain  warriors  arose,  and,  mar- 
shalled, in  the  upper  air,  renewed,  with  un- 
earthly arms  and  hate,  the  strife  which  death 
had  interrupted.    Thus  has  the  antagonism 
of  rival  modes  of  thought  perpetuated   its 
contest,  while  the  early  champions  or  pro- 
pounders  of  either  principle  are  sleeping  the 
sleep  of  death  below.     **  Non  enim  hominum 
interitu  sententicB  quoque  occidunt.** 

A  comparative  survey  of  the  modifications 
of  opinion  such  as  we  propose,  would  fur- 
nish many  a  valuable  lasson.  It  would  illus- 
trate, in  its  course,  that  substantial  identity 
of  human  nature  which  makes  one  kindred 
of  all  times  and  countries.  It  would  point 
out  those  common  wants  and  common  hopes 
which,  under  every  superficial  difference,  are 
the  foundations  of  man's  nature,  somewhat 
as  science  finds  the  inorganic  crust  of  the 
earth  unaltered  by  varieties  of  clime,  and 
trap  and  basal  t»  porphyry  and  granite,  every- 
where the  same,  whether  crested  by  the 
branching  palm,  or  mantled  shaggily  by 
stunted  firs.  It  would  separate  between 
the  original  and  the  stolen  property  of  mo- 


dem speculation,  and  bring  about  such  a 
general  gaol-delivery  of  plagiarisms  as  might 
well  remind  us  of  those  grotesque  mediaeval 
pictures  of  the  last   judgment,   in   which 
the  fishes  appear  bearing  in  their  mouths 
the  heads,  arms,  and  legs  of  the  drowned 
men  they  have  devoured.     It  would  show 
how  often  the  prophetic  words  of  the  con- 
fessors and  the  martyrs  of  reform  in  religion 
or  in  science — which  seemed   to   be   shed 
like  an    untimely  product  on   the  earth — 
to  be  scattered  by  winds,  and  trodden  into 
mire  by  the  hoof  of  beasts,  have  been  in  re- 
ality conserved,  and  made  to  utter  their  voice 
in  another  form  to  another  generation,  even 
as  the  withered  leaves  in  the  fabled  island  of 
the  Hebrides  were  said  to  be  changed  into 
singing-birds  as  soon  as  they  had  fallen  to 
the  ground.     Such  an  inquiry  would  occupy 
a  space  in  the  kingdom  of  mind  as  compre- 
hensive as  that  of  physical  geography  in  the 
kingdom  of  nature.     It  would  be  the  meta- 
physical "  Cosmos"  of  the  mysterious  micro- 
cosm— man.     As  the  botanist  can  trace  the 
course  of  certain  races  of  the  human  family 
by  the  presence  of  particular  plants,  which 
are  only  found  where  they  have  trodden,  sa 
would  our  investigator  pursue  the  history  of 
a  certain  order  of  mind  by  those  modifica- 
tions of  mental  product,  and  those  practical 
and  moral  fruita  which  uniformly  spring  up 
in  its  train.     As  the  zoologist  has  al  ways  de- 
rived,  from  the  examination  of  monstrous 
and  aberrant  forms,  material  to  extend  his 
knowledge  of  the  regularly-developed  organ- 
ism, so  the  mis-shapen  creations  of  mental 
extravagance  or  disease  would  throw  light 
for  the  philosopher  .on  the  sources  of  man's 
danger,  on  the  true  power  and  province  of 
man's  mind.  •  As  the  votary  of  science  learns 
to  distinguish  between  the  physiological  and 
the  morphological  import  of  the  organs  of  a 
plant,  when  he  finds  the  same  vital  function 
which  belongs  to  the  leaf  in  one  species,  car- 
ried on  by  the  stem  in  another, — so  would  it 
be  with  our  inquirer,  if  possessed  of  a  saga- 
city equal  to   his  undertaking.     He  would 
find  the  intellectual  life  of  successive  periods 
fostered,  now  by  one  class  of  men,  and  now 
by  another, — that  no  order  or  institution  can 
be  declared  the  necessary  organ  by  which 
society  shall  breathe  or  feed, — and  that  he 
must  often  look  for  the  vitality  of  an  age, 
not  in  the  professed  centre  of  its  culture,  but 
in  some  portion  of  its  growth  which,  to  a  su- 
perficial eye,  would  appear  only  an  unsightly 
excrescence,  or  an  unimportant  appendage. 
He  would  learn,  too,  to  anticipate,  from  the 
revival  of  old  errors,  the  revival  of  old  re- 


818 


NBO-PIiATONISM— HTPATIA. 


[Nov., 


actions  appropriately  modified,  and  would 
contemplate  with  wonder  that  beneficent  pro- 
vision by  which  the  most  baneful  opinions 
appear,  almost  invariably,  accompanied  by 
their  antidotes — the  excess  of  the  evil  pro- 
voking a  healthful  antagonism,  so  that  the 
poison  and  the  medicine  grow  side  by  side, 
as  the  healing  trumpet-tree  is  said  always  to 
raise  its  purple  blossoms  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  deadly  manchineel. 

From  the  somewhat  enigmatical  title  of  Mr. 
Kingsley's  tale,  we  had  looked  for  a  contri- 
bution, which  we  felt  sure  would  be  of  value, 
in  the  direction  now  indicated.  It  appeared 
to  be  his  purpose  to  indicate  the  substantial 
identity  of  the  past  and  the  present  strife 
waged  between  that  wisdom  of  this  world  ac- 
counted foolishness  by  Ood,  and  that  preach- 
ing of  the  cross  so  often  accounted  foolish- 
ness by  man.  The  past  conflict  he  has  de- 
picted fully,  and  with  admirable  skill.  But 
Its  parallel  with  the  present  antagonism  of 
similar  parties  is  but  generally  hinted  at  in  a 
summary  remark  or  two  on  his  last  page. 

This  reticence  may  have  proceeded  from 
aesthetic  or  from  prudential  considerations. 
Cyril  of  Alexandria,  with  his  bitter  worldly 
heart  and  oily  sanctimonious  phrase,  with  his 
capacity  for  business  and  for  hatred,  alike 
enormous,  is  a  shadow  among  shadows.  But 
the  bishop  of  Exeter,  into  whose  body  the 
soul  of  Cyril  has  unquestionably  transmigrat- 
ed, is  a  living  reality  in  lawn.     It  might  not 
be  pleasant  to  approach  too  nearly  that  eccle- 
siastical mud  volcano,  which,  always  growl- 
ing and  simmering,  may  explode  in  an  instant 
with  such  terrific  force  its  bespattering  bap- 
tism of  abuse.    Again,  Mr.  Newman,  like 
Porphyry,  aspires  to  be  a  religious  man  with- 
out being  a  Christian,  and  in  behalf  of.  an 
ambitious  and  unintelligible  religious  senti- 
ment assails  the  Old  Testament  and  miscon- 
ceives the  New.     Like  lamblichus,  too,  many 
of  our  sceptical  spiritualists  are  credulous 
votaries  of  the  tbeurgic  pretensions  of  our 
time.     They  find  the  gospels  incredible,  but 
they  have  surrendered  to  the  Pough  Keepsie 
Seer.     Their  leason  rises  in  disdain  against 
the  claims  of  an  apostle,  but  falls  prostrate 
before  an  American  rapping.     Their  faith  re- 
sembles that  of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  refused  to 
credit  the  report  of  the  earthquake  at  Lisbon, 
but  could  lM9lieve  in  the  Cock-lane  ghost. 
These  spiritual  manifestations  of  our  own  day 
are  the  counterpart  of  those  pretended  marvels 
which  deluded  the  Alexandrian  adepts  who 
were  too  wise  to  receive  the  faith  of  the  Na- 
sarene.     If  Mr.  Kingsley  had  pursued  hb 
parallel*  therefore,  he  would  have  had  work 


enough  upon  his  hands,  ^e  two  foes  he 
had  so  faithfully  portrayed  would  have  united 
against  him.  The  bigots  would  have  assailed 
him  on  the  one  side,  and  the  infidels  on  the 
other.  In  the  hands  of  adversaries  so  em- 
bittered, his  reputation  could  scarcely  have 
escaped  the  fate  of  his  heroine  Hypatia. 

But  no  one  acquainted  with  the  spirit  of 
Mr.  Kingsley 's  writings  will  readily  believe 
that  he  has  in  any  undue  measure  the  fear 
of  man  before  his  eyes.  He  is  more  likely 
to  have  paused  where  he  has  done,  from  de- 
ference to  what  he  deented  the  dictate  of 
taste,  than  from  any  cautious  heed  to  the 
presentiments  of  timidity.  He  considers, 
probably,  the  history  he  has  revived  as  a 
parable,  which,  like  all  parables  good  for 
anything,  carries  its  main  lesson  on  the  sur- 
face. He  would  urge,  with  some  truth,  in 
his  justification,  that  the  moral  of  a  story 
should  be  suggested  rather  than  obtruded, — 
that  a  romance  is  not  the  place  for  a  homily, 
— that  the  painter  is  only  indirectly  the 
preacher, — that  those  who  have  ears  to  hear 
will  hear  with  advantage,  and  those  who  have 
not  will  never  be  prosed  into  wisdom.  Still 
we  think  that  some  farther  application  of  the 
results  brought  out  by  this  study  of  the  past 
should  have  been  attempted.  A  concluding  i 
chapter,  embracing  some  such  thoughtful 
and  suggestive  summary,  and  indicating  the 
real  analogies  and  distinctions  between  the 
old  conflict  and  the  new,  would  greatly  have 
enhanced  the  value  of  the  book. 

In  point  of  style,  Mr.  Kingsley  differs  wide- 
ly from  Mr.  Maurice  and  Mr.  Trench,  with 
whom,  in  matters  of  opinion,  he  appears  to 
possess  much  in  common.     Mr.  Maurice  is 
easy  and  natural ;  his  flowing  language  car- 
ries the  reader  with  him  right  pleasantly,  and 
there  is  a  pellucid  simplicity  about  the  sen- 
tences severally  which  is  not  a  little  charming. 
But  the  effect  of  the  whole  is  marred  by  a 
want  of  definiteness.     Much  is   suggested, 
little  is  established.     An  ingenious  succession 
of  side-lights  are  thrown  upon  the  subject, 
but  in  some  way  they  perplex  each  other. 
We  miss  that  vigorous  and  telling  summary 
of  results,  without  which  we  may  be  dazzled  or 
amused,  but  are  left  uninstructed  after  all  as 
to  the  contemplated  conclusion  of  the  whole. 
.  Mr.  Trench,  again,  is  less  defective  in  this 
respect,  though  acccustomed  sometimes  to  in- 
vest his  theme  with  an  unnecessary  abstrac- 
tion, and  apt  to  handle  it  in  a  large  aerial 
manner,  imposing  enough,  but  unsatisfactory 
to  such  as  desire  to  see  eloquent,  philosophical 
generalizations  always  well  supported  by  the 
evidence  and  detail  of  facts.    The  style  of 


1863.] 


]inS0-FLATONISM--HTPATIA. 


819 


Mr.  Trench,  where  his  subject  allows  him  full 
scope,  is  stately,  rich,  and  full — a  kind  of  ec- 
clesiastical antique, — now  breathing  out  some 
pensive  imagination — 

"  To  the  Dorian  mood 
Of  flutes,  aud  soft  recorder," 

and  now  again  rising  into  grandeur,  colored 
by  the  many  slanting  hues  of  his  cathedral 
window — Fancy.  It  is  characterized  more 
by  beauty  than  by  power,  yet  it  posesses  so 
much  of  the  former  as  never  to  be  wholly  des- 
titute of  the  latter.  Its  appeal  is  that  of 
taste  and  learning  to  a  circle  comparitively 
limited. 

Mr.  Kittgsley,  on  the  other  hand,  addresses 
a  larger  auditory  in  another  tone.  His  vehe- 
ment and  daring  nature  has  marked  out  a 
course  for  itself.  He  is  thought  to  have  been 
even  too  oblivious,  at  times,  of  the  smooth- 
shaven  proprietie8-H>f  the  starched  and 
white-neckclothed  nicety  of  ecclesiastical  con- 
ventionalism. In  fact,  he  would  seem,  at  one 
time,  to  have  taken  the  Carlyle  fever,  and  to 
have  had  it  very  badly  indeed.  But  the  sick- 
ness did  not  with  him  as  with  poor  Sterling,  de- 
velop into  a  life-long  disorder.  Mr.  Eingsley 
got  over  his  Carlyle-period  as  other  strong 
minds  have  survived  their  Werter  and  Byron 
periods — their  era  of  affectation  and  sentiment- 
ality— that  time  of  life  wherein,  as  of  old, — 

**  Young  gentlemen  would  be  as  sad  as  night, 
Only  tor  wantoness." — 

So  Mr.  Kingsley  recovered,  and  now  exhibits 
a  mental  constitution  whose  vitals  the  disease 
has  left  untouched.  In  all  he  has  written,  the 
freshness  and  vigor  of  an  independent  and  pow- 
erful mind  are  apparent.  Even  where  we  think 
him  wrong  we  cannot  but  respect  his  motive, 
and  honor  his  conscientiousness  and  courage. 
The  excellences  of  his  style  are  his  own,  its 
faults  those  of  the  school  in  which  he  appears 
first  to  have  studied.  There  is  observable  in 
many  parts  of  his  writings  a  strain  and  vio- 
lence hardly  compatible  with  the  highest  order 
of  power — a  certain  self-conscious  and  spas- 
modic effort  which  cannot  dare  to  be  calm 
and  natural,  which  fears  repose  as  though  it 
were  dullness  and  death  inevitable.  He  loves 
abrupt  transitions,  dashes,  intervening  chains 
of  dots,  and  has  used,  but  too  freely,  stage 
property  of  this  sort,  for  the  purpose  of  effect. 
But  bis  sins  in  this  respect  are  venial  compar- 
ed with  those  of  Mr.  Carlyle.  Already  he  is 
outgrowing  such  faults ;  and  Hypatia,  while 
thoroughly  characterestic  of  the  author  of 
Teast,  and  Alton  Locke,  manifests  a  patient, 
thoughtful    comprehensiveness,    to    which 


neither  of  those  very  clever  books  can  lay 
claim.  The  vices  to  which,  undt^r  such  influ- 
ence, Mr.  Kingsley  was  most  exposed — those 
of  exaggeration  and  one-sidedness,  he  appears 
now  to  have  almost  completely  escaped.  It 
may  not  be  flattering  to  Mr  Carlyle,  but  we 
believe  it  to  be  true,  that  by  far  the  larger 
proportion  of  the  best  minds,  whose  early 
youth  his  writings  have  powerfully  influenced, 
will  look  back  on  the  period  of  such  subjec- 
tion as  the  most  miserably  morbid  season  of 
their  life.  On  awaking  from  such  delir- 
ium to  the  sane  and  Kealthful  realities  of 
manful  toil,  they  will  discover  the  hollowness 
of  that  sneering,  scowling,  wailing,  declama- 
tory, egotistical,  and  bombastic  misanthrophy, 
which,  in  the  eye  of  their  unripe  judgment, 
wore  the  air  of  a  philosophy  so  profound. 

It  is  but  justice  to  Mr.  Kingsley  to  bear  in 
mind  what,  so  circumstanced,  he  refrains  from 
doing,  as  well  as  what  he  does.  He  does  not 
imagine  that,  to  speak  to  the  universal  heart, 
he  has  only  to  '*  thou"  the  reader,  to  apostro- 
phize him  as  *•  brother,"  or  loudly  to  cry,  "  O, 
man!"  He  does  not  believe  that  a  short- 
winded  Emersonian  sentence  is  great  of  neces- 
sity with  oracular  majesty.  He  does  not 
regard  it  as  indicative  of  vast  superiority,  to 
call  his  fellow-laborers  in  the  historic  field  or 
his  fellow-men,  anywhere,  dry-as-dust,  pud- 
ding-heads, imbecile,  choughs,  beetles,  apes, 
and  ostriches.  He  does  not  reckon  a  certiun 
vituperative  volubility  among  the  supernatural 
priviliges  of  the  inspired  priesthood  of  letters^ 
He  does  not  believe  that  either  originality  or 
depth  can  be  secured  by  the  virtue  inherent 
in  capital  letters.  He  does  not  serve  up  pages 
liberally  besprinkled  with  Silencies,  Eterni- 
ties, and  Apysses,  as  a  condiment  attractive 
to  the  jaded  appetite,  which  loathes  every- 
thing natural.  He  does  not  fill  with  the  com- 
monest verity  some  monstrous  and  unwieldy 
sentence,  till  it  seems  a  discovery  of  appalling 
import,  while  the  whole  may  be  compared 
to  a  ffiant  in  a  midsummer  pageant,  *<  march- 
ing,' as  saith  an  old  writer,  **  as  though  it  were 
alive,  and  '  armed  at  all  points,'  but  within 
stuffed  full  of  browne  paper  and  '  tow,'  which 
the  shrewd  boyes,  under  peeping,  do  guileful- 
ly, discover,  and  tume  to  a  greate  deribion." 

The  strength  so  conspicuous  in  Mr.  Rings- 
ley's  writings  is  power  of  that  kind  which  re- 
sults from  the  consecration  of  great  gifts  to  a 
great  purpose.  His  convictions  pre  strong, 
his  aim  is  worthy.  He  is  not  one  of  the 
many  clever  men  of  our  time  whose  aeuteness 
and  whose  talents  are  rendered  almost  futile 

1'  by  a  lack  of  earnest  conviction.     Now  Mr. 
Kingsley  doee  believe  strongly;  as  Austin 


S20 


NBO-PLATONISM— HYPATIA, 


[Nov. 


Caxton  would  say — he  nerer  forgets  "the 
safifroQ-bas.'*     What  he   believes'  he  most 
apeak,  and  what  he  says  he  must  make  men 
hear.     He  is  not  to  be  precluded  by  his  pro- 
fession from  the  use  of  any  legitimate  means 
which  shall  secure  attention  to  his  message. 
If  men  will  not  hear  his  truth  in  essays,  ser- 
mons, big  books,  they  shall  receive  it  in  the 
drama,  the  tale,  the  historical  romance.     In 
addition  to  ^his  intensity  and  concentrative- 
ness,  this  faculty  of  gathering  up  in  a  present 
purpose  all   the  energy  he   possesses,   Mr. 
Kingsley  is  endowed,  in  no  small  measure, 
with  that  gift  of  language  which  communi- 
cates to  other  minds  the  creations  and    the 
feelings  that  people  his  own.    There  are  only 
certain  words  which  will  do  this.    The  facul- 
ty which  detects   and   righily  places  them 
makes  a  man  a  painter  with  the  pen.     Such 
terms  and  epithets  are  the  vincula  between 
the  unseen  world  of  an  author's  mind  and 
the  actual  world  constituted  by  his  public. 
They  are  the  magic  formulae,  the  ruins  and 
spelU words  by  which  marvels  are  wrought  in 
the  poet's  *' heaven  of   invention."     In  his 
slightest  touches  Mr.  Kingsley  dbplays  the 
arSst.     He  discerns  at  a  glance  those  features 
of  an  object  which  must  be  brought  out  to 
realize  the  whole  to  the  eye. 

This  power  of  selection  as  to  what  shall  be 
described,  and  this  choice  of  what  is  perhaps 
the  one  only  epithet  in  the  language  which 
could  vividly  and  accurately  indicate  it,  is  the 
secret  of  that  life  and  force  which  disUnguish 
hb  delineations.  Thus  there  is  so  much  chilly 
verisimilitude  about  his  description  of  the 
burning- field  on  a  foggy  morning,  with  which 
"  Y^ast'*  opens,  as  to  make  a  susceptible  read- 
er quite  damp  and  uncomfortable.  It  is 
like  Constable  s  picture  of  rain,  which  made 
Fuseli  open  his  umbrella.  In  like  manner,  to 
read  of  those  Goths  in  sunny,  dusty,  broiling 
Alex/indria,  singing  of  northern  snows,  is  verily 
like  the  refreshment  of  an.ice  in  the  dog-days. 
And  so  throughout,  those  who  will  give 
themselves  up  fairly  to  the  enjoyment  of  Mr. 
Kingsley's  pages  may  be  carried  within  an 
hour  to  the  remotest  extremes  of  climate, 
physical  or  moral ;  they  may  travel  from 
Hyperborean  frosts  to  burning  Abyssinia — 
from  mental  territories  of  ice-bound  skeptic  to 
the  dangerous  heats  of  brain-sick  fanatacism. 
Bui,  apart  from  this  descriptive  faculty, 
there  is  another  attribute  to  which  Mr.  Kings- 
ley  owes  no  small  proportion  of  his  deserved 
8ucce^s;  this  quality  is  sympathy.  Without 
this  insight  of  the  heart  an  acute  and  com- 
prehensive mind  may  accomplish  nos  a  little 
as  a  philosopher,  but,  as  an  artist,  must  be 


powerless.     It  is  much  to  be  able  to  enter- 
tain two  ideas  at  the  same  time — at  least, 
such  capacity  would  seem  to  be  more  rare 
among  us  than  could   be  wished,  judging 
from  the  desperate  haste  with  which  we  aee 
men  daily  rushing  from  extreme  to  extreme, 
and  stultifying  themselves  by  arguing  from 
abuse  against  use.     But  higher  yet  is  his  ert- 
dowment  who  possesses  a  heart  m  some  mea- 
sure open  to  all  mankind — who  can  enter  into 
the  hopes  and  fears,  the  sorrows  and   the 
temptation  of  minds  the  most  opposite.    We 
admire  the  calmness  which  can  so  deliberately 
estimate  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of 
either  side  in  the  battle  between  truth  and 
error.     We  pay  our  tribute  of  praise  to  the 
graphic  skill  which  realizes,  with  equal  truth, 
the  religious  stillness  of  the  desert,  and  the 
tumultous  horror  of  the  amphitheatre — which 
exhibits,  with  such  ease  and  clearness,  almost 
as  it  were  in  passing,  that  strange  compound, 
yclept  Alexandrian  philosophy,  and  can  com- 
press into  a  sentence  the  system  of  Lucretius, 
till  we  seem  to  see  the  forlorn  world  as  he 
saw  it— an  aimless  'and  everlasting  gravita- 
tion of  ifinumerable  atoms.     But  most  of  all 
do  we  Bve  that  true  hearted  kindliness,  the 
tenderness  of  the  strong,  which  gently  and  re- 
verently lifts  the  veil  from  the  dark  and  mourn- 
ful sanctuary  of  hearts  that  have  found  no 
God — that  tremble  bewildered  between  their 
devotion  and  their  doubt — that  seek,  but  seek 
amiss,  or  that  are  seen  in  one  place  defying 
the  use  of  search,  and  in  another  discovering 
a  deity  only  to  be  crushed  with  terror.     It  is 
from  the  heart  alone  that  any  writer  could 
have  limned  those  changing  features  of  the 
soul  that  we  behold  working,  now  in  aspira- 
tion, and  now  in  despair,  in  the  history  of 
Hypatia,  of  Ab^  Ezra,  and  Pelagia.     The 
same  sympathizing  spirit  can  detect  traits  of 
nature  not  wholly  alien ;  yet  from  the  fellow- 
feeling  of  fellow -sinners,  in  Cyril,  in  Eudso- 
mon,  m  Miriam, — in  the  scheming  prelate,  in 
the  frivilous,  and  selfish  sciolist,  in  the  fierce 
and  abandoned  procuress.     Even  in  the  case 
of  Peter  the  Reader,  cowardly,  mean,  and 
blood-thirsty  as  the  man  is,  a  retrospetive 
word  or  two  shows  us  that  he  too  had  his 
affections  once,  was  not  thus  evil  always,  and 
had  been  open  to  the  touch  of  pity.    Thus  the 
geologist  may  point  to  the  watermarks  on 
the  fragment  of  hardened  rock  revealing  a 
primieval  history,  and  recMlling  the  time  when 
it  was  a  bright  and  yielding  sand,  traversed 
by  the  silver  ripples  of  some  pool,  or  frith, 
that  shone  and  murmured  amid  the  soltudes 
of  the  unpeopled  world.  i 

Hypatia  exhibits,  as  a  work  of  art,  a  mani- 


1853.] 


NEO-PLATONISM— HYPATIA, 


321 


fest  advance  on  the  former  production?  of  Mr. 
Kingsley.  The  same  power  in  the  delinea- 
tion of  character,  the  same  passion  and  pathos, 
intermingled  now  with  humor  and  now  with 
sarcasm,  which  characterized  his  earlier  writ- 
ings, are  equally  manifest  in  the  present  story , 
with  a  result  more  satisfactory,  a  truer  unity 
of  design,  more  judgment,  and  apparently 
more  careful  thought  in  the  management  of 
incident  and  dialogue.  As  a  whole,  the  work 
is  more  successful  in  a  province  confessedly 
more  difficult. 

Mr.  Kingsley  never  gives  such  scope  to  his 
isdignation  as  when  speaking  of 'that  worst 
thing — the  corruption  of  the  best.  His  se- 
verest lash  is  reserved  for  the  smiling  malig* 
nity  and  the  sleek  villaniea  of  Pharisees  and 
zealots.  He  is  at  home  in  detecting  and 
holding  up  to  abhorrence  the  secret  Atheism 
that  lurks  in  the  heart  of  all  intolerance,  the 
iniquity  of  that  unbelief  which  sins  in  the 
name  of  holiness  and  attempts  the  work  of 
Ood  with  the  tools  of  the  devil.  He  is  the 
Bworn  enemy  of  all  those  pretences  under 
which  men  would  part  off  the  religious  from 
the  civil  world,  and  override  the  sanctions  of 
morality  for  the  promotion  of  an  ecclesias- 
tical interest.  But,  unlike  many  loud-voiced 
denouncers  of  "  wind-bags,"  '*  red-tape-isms," 
and  shams,"  he  tells  us  what  he  loves,  quite 
as  plainly  as  what  he  hates,  what  he  believes 
88  clearly  as  what  he  disbelieves.  He  does 
not  with  incessant  bark  assail  every  effort  phi- 
lanthropy actually  makes,  and  after  snapping 
at  the  legs  of  every  messenger  of  mercy, 
wttbdray  mto  his  tub — ^the  cynic  prophet  of 
negations  He  has  something  positive  to  an- 
nounce and  to  commend. .  He  does  not  see  in 
the  mass  of  mankind  a  flat  and  dreary  deluge 
of  common-place — an  aggregate  of  transitory 
waves  lifted  np  into  a  momentary  being, 
raised  for  a  transitory  glance  at  sun  and  moon, 
and  then  subsiding  into  unfathonable  night 
He  believes  in  a  gospel  which  the  poor  hear 
gladly.  Through  all  the  gathered  clouds  of 
error,  amidst  the  countless  misbegotten  phan- 
toms of  darkness  that  blot  her  glory,  he  be- 
holds in  history  the  Church  of  Christ — the 
Jerusalem  which  is  from  above,  and  is  happy 
in  the  sight  of  the  gleaming  g^ld  and  sapphire, 
darting  ever  and  anon  a  ray  through  the  va- 
pors from  the  mouth  of  the  pit  While 
bringing  out  in  unsparing  relief  the  ill-omened 
features  of  that  corruption  which,  in  the  fifth 
century,  had  already  maimed  and  defiled  the 
church,  he  does  not  fail  to  indicate  aright  the 
secret  of  her  real  power.  One  great  lesson 
is  plainly  tan|fht-  by  his  book.  Christianity 
— in  spite  of  its  doctrinal  disputes,  so  subtile 

YOI^XXX.   Kcm. 


and  so  envenomed,  on  questions  utterly  in- 
soluble,— in  ^pite  of  those  wrangling,  perse- 
cuting factions,  whose  inveterate  hatred  em- 
broiled East  ^nd  West,  Roman  and  Barbarian, 
Greek  and  Goth,  throughout  the  lengtli  and 
breadth  of  the  tottering  empire, — in  spite  of 
the  trumpery  of  miracle- mongering,  ecstasies, 
and  exorcisms, — of  the  fanaticism  and  the 
stupor,  the  fury  and  the  filth,  of  oriental 
monasticism — Christianity  had,  in  his  view, 
nevertheless,  an  answer  for  the  deepest  crav- 
ings of  man's  heart,  which  philosophic  cul- 
ture, could  not  in  its  dreams  surmise,  and  was 
busy  with  a  benevolence,  and  glorious  with  a 
self-devotion,  that  attested  daily  a  celestial 
origin — a  divine  commission. 

Hypatia  is  no  one-sided  apology  for  Chris-- 
tianity  ;  it  is  a  faithful  representation  of  the 
thinkings  and  doings  of  men  called  Christtans 
at  Alexandria,  in  their  conflict  with  the  van- 
ishing theories  and  the  too  substantial  evils 
of  the  dying  giant  heathendom.  The  intel- 
lectual opposition  they  encountered  was  com- 
paratively feeble ;  the  moral,  gigantic.  PAf<ui 
philosophy  had  made,  now  and  then,  an  em>rt 
to  stay,  with  the  arms  of  rhetoric  and  dialec-  • 
tics,  the  vices  of  the  time.  But  the  weapons 
belonged  to  one  element,  and  the  adversaries 
aimed  at  t6  another.  The  immorality  which 
peopled  the  atmosphere  of  old  Hellas  mocked 
the  efforts  of  the  sages,  add  seemed  to  say 
from  the  high  place  of  the  powers  of  the  air — 

*'  the  elements 
Of  whom  yonr  swords  are  tempered,  may  as  well 
Wound  the  loud  wind8,or  with  bemock'd  at  stabs 
Kill  the  still-closing  waters,  as  diminish 
One  dowle  that's  in  my  plume." 

Then  came  Christianity,— winning  her  first 
purifying  successes  in  a  world  noisome  with 
the  accumulated  and  legitimized  impurity  of 
many  ages, — appealing  to  the  heart,  to  sanc- 
tions, to  motives,  to  hopes,  drawh  from  the 
highest,  and  tending  thitner.  But  the  strug- 
gle soiled  ere  long  her  garments ;  the  spirit 
of  the  world  she  had  overcome  entered  into 
her,  and  the  arts  of  the  conquered  became 
the  lesson  of  the  conqueror. 

Accordingly  we  find  the  Alexandrian 
church,  in  the  fifth  century,  already  accom- 
plished in.  the  questionable  practices  of  that 
secularity  she  professed  to  sway  and  aspired 
to  reform.  The  sectarianism,  the  ignorance, 
the  pride,  the  clerical  place-hunting,  the 
bigotry,  the  sanctimonious  pretence  of  fash- 
ion or  of  coarseness,  the  unholy  passions 
baptised  by  Christian  names, — all,  in  short, 
that  which  makes  up  in  our  own  day  the 
common  stock  objection  of  the  irreligious  to 

tl 


dS2 


NEO.PLATONISM—flTPATU. 


[Nor., 


ChristiaDity,  was  as  odi;'>u8ljr  apparent  then 
as  now.  Not  small  will  be  the  service  of 
Mr.  Kingsley's  story  if  it  awakens  in  some 
wavering  minds  the  inquiry — **  Has  not 
Christianity  now  believers  like  Augustine, 
Marjorious,  and  Victoria,  as  well  as  its  Cyrils 
and  its  Peters;  and  its  message  to  the  weary 
skeptical  Raphaels  of  the  nineteenth  centur} 
even  as  to  him  of  the  fifth  ?" 

The  opening  chapter  of  the  tale  introduces 
us  to  the  dwelling-place  of  a  colony  of  monks 
among  the  ancient  ruins  and  the  burning 
sand  hills  near  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  about 
three  hundred  miles  above  Alexandria.  A 
young  monk,  named  Philammon,  seized  with 
the  desire  of  viewing  for  himself  the  great 
world  without,  abtains  from  his  anxious  su- 
periors permission  to  depart,  and  on  a  sum- 
mer's night  glides  down  the  river  in  bis  little 
skifif  towards  the  famous  metropolis.  Once 
arrived  there,  each  day  amazes  with  a  new 
wonder  the  innocence  of  the  youthful  an- 
chorite. He  views  with  admiration  the  state, 
the  discipline,  the  numbers,  of  the  Christian 
world  at  Alexandria.  With  all  the  zeal  of 
novelty,  he  gives  himself  to  his  share  in  the 
benevolent  labors  of  his  monastic  brethren. 
But  he  learns,  to  his  astonishment,  that 
Christianity  is  not  the  only  power  at  work. 
The  state  is  not  Christian,  though  at  Con- 
stantinople the  emperor  professes  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  Strange  speculations,  lofty  and 
fascinating,  maintain  their  place,  denounced 
as  hellish  by  his  brother  monks,  but  having, 
in  the  very  mystery  and  prohibition,  a  potent 
charm  for  a  mind  longing  after  knowledge, 
and  strong  in  an  untried  faith.  Hypatia,  a 
woman,  young,  beautiful,  and  wise,  fills  her 
lecture-ball  day  after  day  with  the  fashion, 
the  talent,  and  the  wealth  of  the  city,  as  she 
expounds  this  lofiy  and  time- honored  phi- 
losophy. He  thirsts  for  the  opportunity  of 
some  great  achievement :  might  not  he,  Phi- 
lammon, hear  and  judge,  rise  up  and  refute, 
and  bring  the  wanderer  home  into  the  fold  of 
Christ  ?  The  attempt  is  made.  Philammon 
is  treated  by  Hypatia  with  forbearance ;  by 
the  ooarse  jealousy  of  his  brethren  he  is 
heaped  with  wrong  and  insult.  He  takes 
refuge,  from  a  church  so  much  worse  than 
he  had  thought  it,  with  a  philosophy.so  much 
better,  and  becomes  the  pupil  of  Hypatia. 
But,  in  the  sequel,  he  discovers  that  what  is 
refined  in  heathendom,  cannot  be  practically 
separated  from  what  is  brutal  and  licen- 
tious,— that  philosophy,  even  in  the  person 
of  its  best  and  holiest  representative,  is  pow- 
erless to  purify  and  slow  to  pity,  and  the 


prodigal  returns  repentant  to  his  forsaken 
home. 

Such  is  the  mere  threadwork  of  a  story, 
in  the  course  of  which  the  author  contrives 
to  bring  his  readers  in  contact  with  most  of 
the  motley  phases  t>f  life  that  made  up  the 
sum  of  Alexandrian  existence,  and  to  afford 
them  the  advantage  Philammon  enjoyed,  of 
hearing  for  themselves  both  sides.  llie  ad- 
vancing action  presents  to  view  Orestes,  the 
prefect — an  indolent  debauchee,  a  fair  type 
of  many  a  provincial  ruler  in  tho6e  days  of 
feebleness  and  expediency ;  Hypatia,  the 
priestess  of  philosophy,  mourning  over  the 
extinct  '*  Promethean  beat,"  for  ever  depart- 
ed from  the  shrines  at  which  she  worships  ; 
the  giant  (^oths,  stalking  terribly  among  the 
donkey-riding  Alexandrians,  drinking,  loung- 
ing, singing  of  Asgard  and  the  northern  he- 
roes, and  ready  to  sell  their  doughty  sword- 
strokes  to  any  cause  not  compromising  their 
rude  ideas  of  honor — finely  contrasting,  in 
their  savage  dignity,  with  the  mass  of  that 
pauper  populace,  so  cowardly  and  cunning, 
and,  at  times,  so  turbulent  and  fierce,  hun- 
gering after  shows  and  largesses,  after  bread 
without  work,  and  blood  without  danger; 
the  monks,  swarming  everywhere,  blindly 
rancorous,  and  blindly  beneficent,  disciplined 
like  an  army  by  the  stern  and  methodical 
Cyril,  every  now  and  then  raising  a  riot, 
hunting  down  a  heretic,  and  persecuting  the 
Jews,  yet  constantly  employed  in  nursing 
the  sick,  succoring  the  distressed,  and  toiling 
in  benign  attendance  on  those  social  mala- 
dies which  imperial  misgovemment  produced, 
perpetuated,  and  left  the  church  to  cure  as 
best  she  might. 

Synesius  is  a  specimen  of  a  remarkable 
class  of  men  not  unfrequently  met  with  dur- 
ing the  transition  period  of  the  fifth  century. 
The  opinions  he  represents  are  familiar  in 
their  outlines  to  every  student  of  the  times, 
but  it  is  peculiarly  gratifying  to  have  pre- 
sented to  us  so  fresh  and  graphic  a  por- 
traiture of  the  daily  habits  and  mode  of  life 
of  one  of  the  most  interesting  individuals  of 
the  species.  Synesius  is  a  kind  of  Christian 
Orpheus — a  writer  of  mystical  hymns  that 
read  like  a  rhapsodical  strain  from  Apuleius 
intermingled  with  echoes  from  the  psalter. 
He  accepts  a  Christian  episcopate,  but  he 
cannot  repudiate  the  lessons  of  Pappus,  and 
of  Hleron.  The  doctrine  of  the  resurrection,, 
in  its  literal  acceptation,  is  too  cacnal  for  his 
ethereal  Platonism.  He  cannot .  surrender 
the  pre-existence  of  the  soul,'  or  admit  the 
destruction  of  the  world.    He  holds  fast  the 


1863.] 


NB0-PALT0NI8M— HTPATIA. 


828 


dogma  of  emanation,  invokes  the  Father  as 
Plato's  primordial  Unity,  and  the  Son  as  the 
Platonic  Demiurge.  He  aspires  to  heaven 
as  the  region  of  the  ideal — the  native  realm 
of  Intelligible  Archetypes.  He  must  be  al- 
lowed to  philosophize  at  home,  while  he  Hn- 
nounces  the  popular  religion  out  of  doors. 
The  inconsistency  he  reconciles  to  his  con- 
science by  reflecting  that  the  eye  of  the 
vulgar  is  weakly,  that  too  much  light  might 
produce  the  effect  of  falsehood,  that  an 
element  of  fable  is  indispensable  in  the  in- 
struction pf  the  multitude.  The  old  aristo- 
cratic intellect ualism  of  the  heathen  world 
reigns  in  him  to  the  last ;  but  a  kind  heart 
often  gets  the  better  of  philosophic  pride, 
and  he  has  much  more  of  the  Christian  in 
him  than  the  name. 

Such  was  the  position  of  the  historical 
Synesius  in  the  controversy  between  philoso- 
phy and  faith,  and  the  Synesius  of  Mr. 
Kingsley's  fiction  is  a  truthful  and  vigorous 
conception  of  the  character  as  exhibited  in 
those  remains  which  time  has  preserved  to 
us. 

The  best  surviving  remnants  of  Roman 
civilization  were  the  class  of  educated  coun- 
try gentlemen.  They  are  found  in  the  fifth 
century  throughout  the  western  empire  re- 
siding on  their  estates,  the  petty  lords  of  the 
neighborhood,  men  of  large  property  and 
cultivated  taste.  They  have  fine  libraries, 
houses  beautifully  furnished,  often  a  private 
theatre  where  some  rhetorician  performs  his 
comedy  before  the  patron,  himself  a  writer 
of  odes  and  epigrams,  and  perhaps  no  in- 
different composer  of  music.  Their  time  is 
given  to  the  chase,  to  elegant  banquets,  to 
Hterary  conversaziones.  Looking  with  dis» 
dain  as  philosophers  on  the  degeneracy 
around  them,  and  with  indifference  as  men  of 
wealth  on  the  ordinary  objects  of  ambition, 
they  take  little  part  id  public  affairs.  Indif- 
ferent on  religious  matters,  they  make  no 
effort  to  revive  the  old  faith,  or  to  oppose  the 
new.  Give  them  their  books,  and  their 
hounds,  their  generous  wines,  and  their  little 
circle  of  dilettanti,  a  pleasant  friend  to  rattle 
the  dice  with  them,  or  a  lively  party  at  ten- 
nis, and  they  are  happy.  They  will  chat  the 
morning  through  under  the  vines  without 
touching  once  on  a  theme  of  moment  to 
church  or  state,  to  gods  or  men.  The  news 
of  battle  and  revolt,  of  lost  provinces,  and 
changing  empu'e,  they  will  vote  a  bore,  and 
forget  it  presently,  as,  with  a  jest,  or  a  yawn 
they  return  to  a  new  drama,  or  the  last  im- 
promptu, to  a  critical  conjecture,  or  a  dis- 
puted etymology. 


Meanwhile  the  earnest  business  of  life 
goes  on  without  these  trifling  egotists,  and 
power  is  daily  passing  into  other  hands. 
Men  find  the  Christian  bishop  everything 
which  such  luxurious  idlers  are  not.  They 
detest  business ;  he  toils  in  a  whirl  of  it, 
from  morning  to  night.  They  stand  aloof 
from  the  people ;  he  lives  among  them,  visits, 
preaches,  catecMzes,  Kettles  disputes,  has  an 
ear  for  every  applicant,  finds  time  for  every 
duty.  While  they  are  given  up  to  ^elf- 
enjoyment,  he  is  the^  ad  miration  of  the  coun- 
try round  for  his  austerity  and  active  self- 
denial.  While  they  are  occupied  by  fits  and 
starts  with  the  curious  indolence  of  a  rhetori- 
cal philosophy,  he  is  proclaiming  a  living 
truth  to  the  multitude.  He  teaches  the 
wakeful  earnest  husbandry  of  life,  while  they 
are  dreaming  it  away  with  questions  which, 
to  the  working  many,  are  not  worth  a  straw. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that,  in  process  of 
time,  these  two  characters  would  frequently 
unite  in  the  same  person.  The  more  thought- 
ful, active,  or  benevolent  among  the  members 
of  this  imperial  squirearchy  would  discern, 
ere  long,  that  through  the  church  alone 
could  they  take  any  effective  part  in  the  real 
work  of  their  day.  Some  embracing  more, 
and  others  less  of  the  popular  Christian  doc- 
trine, they  entered  the  episcopal  or  priestly 
office,  and  exercised  an  influence  they  could 
n^ver  otherwise  have  acquired.  While  thus 
far  identifying  themselves  with  the  new  order 
of  things,  they  did  not,  however,  relinquish 
all  their  old  tastes  and  pleasures.  The  man 
of  the  world  and  Che  man  of  wit,  the  devotee 
of  pagan  philosophy  and  the  Wooer  of  the 
classic  muse,  were  still  apparent  bepeath  the 
robes  of  the  bishop.  Such  was  Synesius  in 
Cyrene,  Sidonius  Apollinaris  in  Oaul,  and 
many  more. 

But  leaving  these  occupants  of  the  frontier 
line,  let  us  visit  the  camp  of  the  enemy,  and 
endeavor  to  realize  the  character  and  purpose 
of  the  last  antagonist  arrayed  by  antiquity 
against  the  youthful  faith  of  the  Cross. 

First  of  all,  as  to  what  Neo-Platonism 
really  was,  and  then  as  to  the  cause  of  its 
feebleness  and  utter  failure  when  tested  in 
conflict,  even  with  the  Christianity  of  the 
fifth  century.  Let  us  hear  a  part  of  the 
lecture  Mr.  Kingsley  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
Hypatia.  She  has  read  aloud,  from  the 
Iliad,  the  well  known  parting  of  Hector  and 
Andromache,  and  then  gives  the  following 
spiritualized  exposition  of  the  passage,  treat- 
ing it,  in  the  style  of  her  school,  not  as  a  tale 
of  human  passion,  but  as  a  philosophical 
allegory.    "  Such/'  she  says,  "  is  the  myth." 


324 


NEO-PLATONISM— HTPATIA. 


[Nov., 


"  Do  you  fancy  that  in  it  Homer  meant  to  hand 
down  to  the  admiration  of  ages  Huch  earlhly 
commonplaces  an  a  mother's  brute  affection,  and 
the  terrors  of  an  infant  ?  Surely  the  deeper  in- 
sight of  the  philosopher  may  be  allowed,  without 
the  reproach  of-fancifulness,to  see  in  it  the  adum- 
bration of  some  deeper  mystery. 

"  The  elect  soul,  for  instance — is  not  its  name 
Astyanax,  king  of  the  city;  by  the  fact  of  its 
ethereal  parentage,  the  leader  and  lord  of  all 
around  it,  though  it  knows  it  not  ?  A  child  as 
yet,  it  lies  upon  the  fragrant  bosom  of  its  mother, 
Nature,  the  nurse  and  yet  the  enemy  of  man. 
Andromache,  as  the  poet  well  names  tier,  because 
she  fights  with  that  bein^r,  when  grown  to  man's 
estate,  whom  as  a  child  she  nourished.  Fair  is 
she,  yet  unwise  ;  pampering  us,  after  the  fashion 
of  mothers,  with  weak  indulgences;  fearing  to 
send  us  forth  into  iHe^great  realitiea  of  specula- 
tion, there  to  forget  her  in  the  pursuit  of  glory ; 
she  would  have  us  while  away  our  prime  within 
the  harem,  and  play  for  ever  rouna  her  kneee. 
And  has  not  the  elect  soul  k  father,  too,  whom  it 
knows  not?  Hector, he  who  is  without — uncon- 
fined,  unconditioned  by  Nature,  yet  its  husband  ? — 
the  all-pervading  plastic  soul,  informing,  organiz- 
ing, whom  men  call  Zeus  the  lawgiver,  i£ther, 
the  fire,  Osiris  the  lifegiver ;  whom  here  the  poet 
had  set  forth  as  the  defender  of  the  mystic  city, 
the  defender  of  harmony,  and  order,-and  beauty, 
throughout  the  universe  ?  Apart  sits  his  great 
father — Priam,  the  first  of  existences,  father  of 
many  sons,  the  Absolute  Reason ;  unseen,  tre- 
mendous, immovable,  in  distant  glory  ;  yet  him- 
self amenable  to  that  abysmal  unity  which  Homer 
calls  Fate,  the  source  of  all  which  Is,  yet  iri  Itself 
Nothing,  without  predicate,  unnameable.  # 

'^  From  It  and  for  It,  the  universal  Soul  thrills 
through  the  whole  creation,  doing  the  behests  of 
that  Reason  from  which  it  overflowed,  unwilling- 
ly, into  the  storm  and  crowd  of  material  appear^ 
ances;  warring  with  the  brute  forces  of  gross 
matter,  crushing  all  which  is  foul  and  dissonant 
to  itself,  and  clasping  to  its  bosom  the  beautiful, 
and  all  wherein  it  discovers  its  own  reflex ;  im- 
pressing on  it  Its  signature,  reproducing  from  it 
Its  own  likeness,  whether  star,  or  demon,  or  soul 
of  the  elect : — and  yet,  as  the  poet  hints  in  an- 
thropomorphic language,  haunted  all  the  while  by 
a  sadness — weighed  down  amid  all  its  labors  by 
the  sense  t)f  a  fate — by  the  thought  of  that  First 
One  from  whom  the  Soul  is  origmally  descended ; 
from  whom  it,  and  its  Father,  the  Reason  before 
it,  parted  themselves  when  they  dared  to  think 
and  act,  and  assert  their  own  free  will. 

"And  in  the  meanwhile,  alas!  Hector,  the 
father,  fights  around,  while  his  children  sleep  and 
feed  ;  and  he  is  away  in  the  wars,  and  they  know 
him  not — know  not  that  they,  the  individuals,  are 
but  parts  of  him,  the  universal.  And  yet  at  mo- 
ment?—oh  !  thrice  blessed  they  whose  'celestial 
parentage  has  made  such  moments  part  of  their 
appoint^  destiny — at  moments  flashes  on  the  hu- 
man child  the  intuition  of  the  anutterable  secret. 
In  the  spangled  glonr  of  the  summer  njght^in 
the  roar  of  the  Nile-flood,  sweeping  down  fertility 
in  every  wave—in  the  awful  depths  of  the  temple 


shrine — ^in  the  wild  melodies  of  old  Orphic  singers, 
or  before  the  images  of  those  gods,  of  whose  per- 
fect beauty  the  divine  theosophists  of  Greece 
caujrht  a  fleeting  shadow,  and  with  the  sudden 
might  of  artistic  ecstacy  smote  if,  as  by  an  en- 
chanter's wand,  Into  an  eternal  sleep  of  snowy 
stone — ^in  these  there  flashes  on  the  inner  eye,  a 
vision  beautiful  snd  terrible,  of  a  force,  an  energy, 
a  soul,  an  idea,  one  and  yet  milliomfold,  rushing 
through  hU  created  things,  like  the  wind  across  a 
lyre,  thrilling  the  strings  into  celestial  harmony — 
one  life-blow!  through  the  million  veins  of  the 
universe,  from  one  great  unseen  heart,  whose 
thunderous  pulses  the  mind  hears  far  away,  beat- 
ing for  ever  in  the  abysmal  solitude,  beyond  the 
heavens  and  the  galaxies,  beyond  the  spaces  and 
the  times,  themselves  but  veins  and  runnels  from 
its  all-teeming  sea. 

"  Happy,  thrice  happy  they  who  once  have 
dared,  even  though  breathless,  blinded  with  tears 
of  awful  joy,  struck  down  upon  their  knees  in 
utter  helplessness,  as  they  feel  themselves  but 
dead  leaves  in  the  wind  which  sweeps  the  uni- 
verse— happy  they  who  have  dared  to  eaze,  if 
but  for  an  instant,  on  the  terror  of  that  glorious 
pageant ;  who  have  not,  like  the  young  Astyanax, 
clung  shrieking  to  the  breast  of  mother  nature, 
scared  by  the  heaven-wide  flash  of  Hector's  arms 
and  the  glitter  of  his  rainbow-crest !    Happy, 
thrice  happy !  even  though  their  eyeballs,  blasted 
by  excess  of  light,  wither  to  ashes  in  their  sockets ! 
Were  it  not  a  noble  end  to  have  seen  Zeus,  and 
die  like  Semele,  burnt  up  by  his  glory  ?    Happy, 
thrice  happy !  though  their  mind  reel  from  the 
divine  intoxication,  and  the  hogs  of  Circe  call 
them  henceforth  madmen  and  enthusiasts.     En- 
thusiasts they  are;  for  Deity  is  in  them, and  tliey 
in  It.    For  the  time,  this  burden  of  individuality 
vanilshes,  and  recognizing  themselves  as  portions 
of  the  Universal  Soul,  they  rise  upward,  through 
and  beyond  that  Reason  from  whence  the  soul 
proceeds,  to  the  fount  of  all — the  ineffable  and 
Supreme  One — and  seeing  It,  they  become  by 
that  act,  portions  of  Its  essence.    They  speak  no 
more,  but  ft  speaks  in  them,  and  their  whole  be- 
ing, transmuted  by  that  glorious  sunlight  into 
whose  rays  they  have  dared,  like  the  ea^le,  to 
gaze  without  shrinking,  becomes  an  harmonious 
vehicle  for  the  words  of  Deity,  and  passive  itself, 
utters  the  secrets  of  the  iinmortal  gods.    What 
wonder  if   to  the  brute  mass  they  seem   like 

dreams?    Be  it  so Smile   if  you  will. 

But  ask  me  not  to  teach  you  things  unspeakable, 
above  all  sciences,  which  the  wora-battle  of  dia- 
lectic, the  discursive  struggles  of  reason  can  never 
reach,  but  which  must  be  seen  only,  and  when 
seen,  confessed  to  be  unspeakable.  Hence,  thou 
disputer  of  the  Academy ! — hence,  thou  sneering 
Cynic ! — hence,  thou  sense- worshiping  Stoic, 
who  fanciest  that  the  soul  is  to  derive  her  know- 
ledge from  those  material  appearances  which  she 
herself  creates!  ....  hence — ;  and  yet,  no; 
stay  and  sneer,  if  you  will.  It  is  bat  a  little  time 
— ^a  few  days  longer  in  this  prison-house  of  oar 
degradation,  and  each  thing  shall  return  to  its 
own  fountain;  the  blood-drop  to  the  abysmal 
heart,  and  the  water  to  the  river,  and  the  river  to 


1^59.] 


NBO-FLATOinBll*.HTPATIA. 


325 


the  sbining  sea;  and  thd  dew  drop  which  fell 
from  heaven  shall  rise  to  heaven  again,  shakincr 
off  the  dust-grains  wfiich  weighed  it  down,thawe3 
from  the  earth-frost  which  chained  it  here  to  herb 
and  sward,  apward  and  upward  ever  through  stars 
and  sans,  through  gods,  and  through  the  parents 
of  the  gods,  purer  and  purer  through  successive 
lives,  till  it  enters  The  Nothing,  which  is  The 
AH,  and  find  its  home  at  last." — Vol.  i.  pp.  185 — 
189. 

The  foregoing  extract  is  a  fair  exposition 
of  the  prominent  characteristics  in  the  teach- 
ing of  the  more  spiritual  section  of  the  New- 
Platoniat  school.  The  reader  will  have 
marked  its  subtile  pantheism,  its  soaring 
mysticism,  its  strained'  and  fancifal  interpre- 
tation of  the  worshiped  creations  of  the 
past.  Like  Swedenborgianism,  such  a  sys- 
tem furnished  a  certain  kmd  of  intellectual 
ingenuity  with  constant  employment.  This 
chase  after  hidden  meanings  is  as  illimitable 
as  it  is  worthless. 

The  idea  which  presided  at  the  foundation 
of  Alexandria  was  the  establishment  of  a  great 
Hellenic  empire  which  should  uiiite  opposing 
races.  Greece  and  Egypt  were  to  be  renewed 
together  at  the  mouth  of  the  Nile.  The  wis- 
dom of  Ptolemy  Soter  and  of  Philadelphus 
labored  to  teach  the  pride  of  the  Greek  and 
the  fanaticism  of  the  Egyptian  their  first  les- 
son in  toleration.  But  it  is  not  to  the  Museum 
of  Alexandria,  with  all  its  munificent  endow- 
ments, that  philosophy  owed  those  last 
glories  which  illumined,  but  could  not  avert 
her  fall.  Plotinus  taught  at  Rome,  Proclas 
at  Athens.  The  apartments  of  the'  Royal 
Institute  were  tenanted,  for  the  most  part, 
by  men  like  Theon, — mathematicians,  critics, 
and  literati,  who  spent  their  days  in  laborious 
trifling, — who  could  collect  and  methodize, 
minutely  commentate,  or  feebly  copy,  but 
who  could  originate  little  or  nothing, — who 
were  alike  indifferent  and  unequal  to  the 
mighty  questions  on  which  hung  the  issue  of 
the  conflict  botween  Greek  conservatism  and 
and  the  new  religion.  Such  men  chained 
philosophy  to  the  past  and  starved  it — they 
offered  up  t\ie  present  as  a  funeral  victim  at 
the  obsequies  of  antiquity,  and  science,  in 
their  hands,  perished,  like  the  camel  which 
the  ancient  Arabs  lied  to  the  tomb  of  a  dead 
hero  and  left  to  lingei;  and  expire  on  the 
desert  sand. 

For  full  five  centuries,  from  the  days  of 
Philo  to  the  days  of  Proclus,  Alexandrian 
philosophy,  half  rationalist,  half  mystical, 
endeavored  to  reconcile  the  East  and  the 
West  by  one  never-failing  expedient— allegor- 
ical interpretation.  The  book  of  Genesis 
was  to  Philo  what  the  Iliad  was  to  Hypatia. 


In  his  treatise,  De  Confusione  Linpuarum, 
Philo  declares  that  the  sky  the  Babel- builders 
sought  to  reach  with  the  top  of  their  tower, 
is  the  mind,  in  which'  dwell  the  "  divine 
Powers."  Their  futile  attempts,  he  says, 
represents  the  presumption  of  those  who 
place  sense  above  intelligence,  and  think  to 
storm  the  Intelligible  World  by  the  engine 
of  the  sensuous.  Waller  said  that  the  troopers 
of  the  parliament  ought  to  be  both  faithful 
men  and  good  riders, — the  firdt,  lest  they 
should  run  away  with  their  horses, — the  sec- 
ond, lest  their  horses  should  run  nway  with 
them.  Philo  fulfilled  the  former  condition 
in  his  advocacy  of  what  he  deemed  the  truth. 
No  disputatious  Greek  could  cavil  at  the 
books  of  Moses  without  finding  himself  foiled 
at  his  own  dialectic  weapons  by  the  learned 
Jew.  In  the  latter,  he  fails,  and  the  wmgs 
of  his  hippogryph.  Allegory,  bear  him  far 
away  into  the  dimmest  realms  of  Phadtasy. 

PJato  pronounces  Love  the  child  of  Poverty 
and  Plenty — the  Alexandrian  philosophy  was 
the  offspring  of  Reverence  And  Ambition.  It 
combined  an  adoring  homage  to  the  departed 
genius  of  the  age  of  Pericles,  with  a  passion- 
ate credulous  craving  after  a  supernatural 
elevation.  Its  literary  tastes  and  religious 
wants  were  alike  imperative  and  irreconcila- 
ble. In  obedience  to  the  former  it  disdained 
Christianity ;  impelled  by  the  latter,  it  tra- 
vestied Plato.  But  for  that  proud  servility 
which  fettered  it  to  a  glorious  past,  it  might 
have  recognized  in  Christianity  the  only  sat- 
isfaction of  its  higher  longings.  Rejecting 
that,  it  could  only  establish  a  philosophic 
church  on  the  foundation  of  Plato's  school, 
and  forsaking  while  it  professed  to  expound 
him,  embrace  the  hallucinations  of  intuition 
and  of  ecstasy,  till  it  finally  vanishes  at  Athens 
amid  the  incense  and  the  hocus-pocus  of 
theurgic  incantation.  Neo-Platonism  begins 
with  theobophy ;  that  is,  a  philosophy,  the 
imagined  gift  of  special  revelation,  the  prod- 
uct of  the  inner  light.  But  soon,  finding 
this  too  abstract  and  unsatisfactory,  impatient 
of  its  limitations,  it  seeks  after  a  sign  and  be- 
comes theurgic.  As  it  degenerates,  it  presses 
more  audaciously  forward  through  the  veil 
of  the  unseen.  It  must  see  visions,  dream 
dreams,  work  spells,  and  call  down  deities 
demi-gods,  and  demons,  from  their  dwellings 
in  the  upper  air.  The  Alexandrians  were  ec- 
lectics, because  such  reverence  taught  them 
to  look  back  ;  mystics,  because  such  ambition 
urged  them  to  look  up.  They  restore  phi- 
losophy, after  all  its  weary  wanderings,  to  the 
place  of  its  birth ;  and,  in  its  second  child- 
hood, it  is  cradled  in  the  arms  of  those  old 


320 


KEO-PLAVONISM— HTPAHA. 


IKov., 


poetic  faiths  of  the  past,  from  which,  in  the 
pride  of  its  youth,  it  broke  away, 

The  mental  history  of  the  founder  best  il* 
lustrates  the  origin  of  the  school.  Plotinus, 
in  A.  D.  233,  commences  the  study  of  philos- 
ophy in  Alexandria,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
eight.  His  mental  powers  are  of  the  concen- 
trative  rather  than  the  comprehensive  order. 
Impatient  of  negation  he  has  commenced  an 
earnest  search  after  some  truth  which,  how- 
eyer  abstract,  shall   yet  be   positive.      He 

gores  over  the  Dialogues  of  Plato  .and  the 
[etaphysics  of  Aristotle,  day  and  night.  To 
promote  the  growth  of  his  "  soul -wings,"  as 
Plato  counsels,  he  practices  austerities  his 
mHster  never  would  have  sanctioned.  He 
attempts  to  live,  what  he  learns  to  call,  the 
*'  angelic  life,"  the  ''  life  of  the  disembodied 
in  the  body."  He  reads  with  admiration  the 
life  of  ApoUonius  of  Tyana,  by  Philostratus, 
which  has -recently  appeared.  He  can  pro- 
bably credit  most  of  the  marvels  record.ed  of 
that  strange  thaumaturgist  who,  two  hundred 
years  ago,  had  appeared — a  revived  Pythag- 
oras, to  dazzle  nation  after  nation  through 
which  he  passed,  with  prophecy  and  miracle 
— who  had  travelled  to  the  Indus  and  the 
Ganges,  and  brought  back  the  supernatural 
powers  of  Magi  and  Gymnosophists,  and  who 
was  said  to  have  displayed  to  the  world  once 
more  the  various  knowledge,  the  majestic 
sanctity,  and  the  superhuman  attributef^,  of 
the  sage  of  Crotona.  This  portraiture  of  a 
philosophical  hierophont — a  union  of  the 
philosopher  and  the  priest  in  an  inspired  hero, 
tires  the  imagination  of  Plotinus.  In  the 
New-Pythagoreanism  of  which  ApoUonius 
was  a  representative,  Orientalism  and  Platon- 
ism  were  alike  embraced.  Perhaps  the 
thought  occurs  thus  early  to  Plotinus— could 
I  travel  eastward  I  might  drink  myself  at 
those  fountain-heads  of  tradition,  whence 
Pythagoras  and  Plato  drew  so  much  of  their 
wisdom.  Certain  it  is,  that  with  this  purpose 
he  accompanied,  several  years. subsequently, 
the  disastrous  expedition  of  Gordian  against 
the  Parthians,  and  narrowly  escaped  with 
life. 

At  Alexandria,  Plotinus  doubtless  hears 
from  Orientals  there  some  fragments  of  the 
ancient  eastern  theosophy — doctrines  con- 
cerning the  principle  of  evil,  the  gradual  de- 
velopment of  the  divine  essence,  and  creation 
by  intermediate  agencies,  none  of  which  he 
finds  in  his  Plato.  He  cannot  be  altogether 
a  stranger  to  the  lofty  theism  which  Philo 
marred,  while  he  attempted  to  refine,  by  the 
help  of  his  "  Attic  Moses."  He  observes  a 
tendency  on  the  part  of  philosophy  to  fall 


back  upon  the  sanctions  of  religion,  and  on 
the  part  of  the  religions  of  the  day  to  mingle 
in  a  Deism  or  a  Pantheism,  which  might 
claim  the  sanctions  of  philosophy.  The  signs 
of  a  growing  toleration  or  indifferentism  meet 
him  on  every  side.  Rome  has  long  been  a 
Pantheon  for  all  nations,  and  gods  «nd  pro- 
vinces together  have  found  in  the  capitol  at 
once  tlier  Olympus  and  their  metropolis.  He 
cannot  walk  the  streets  of  Alexandria  without 
perceiving  that  the  very  architecture  tells  of 
an  alliance  between  the  religious  art  of  Egypt 
and  of  Greece.  All,  except  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians, join  in  the  worship  of  Serapis.  Was 
not  the  very  substance  of  which  the  statue 
of  that  God  was  made,  an  amalgam  ? — fit 
symbol  of  the  syncretism  which  paid  him 
homage.  Once  Serapis  had  guarded  the 
shores  of  the  Euxine,  now  he  is  the  patron 
of  Alexandria,  and  in  him  the  attributes  of 
Zeus  aud  of  Osiris,  of  Apis  and  of  Plato,  are 
adored  alike  by  East  and  West.  Men  are 
learning  to  overlook  the  external  dififerences 
of  name  and  ritual,  and  to  reduce  all  religions 
to  one  general  sentiment  of  worship.  For 
now  more  than  fifty  years,  every  educated 
roan  has  laughed,  with  Lucian*s  satire  in  his 
hand,  at  the  gods  of  the  popular  superstition. 
A  century  before  Lucian,Plutarch  had  shown 
that  some  of  the  doctrines  of  the  barbarians 
were  not  irreconcilable  with  the  philosophy 
in  which  he  gloried  as  a  Greek.  Plutarch 
had  been  followed  by  Apuleius,  a  practical 
eclectic,  a  learner  in  every  school,  an  initiate 
in  every  temple,  at  once  skeptical  and  credu- 
lous, a  sophist  and  a  devotee. 

Plotinus  looks  around  him,  and  inquires 
what  philosophy  is  doing  in  the  midst  of  influ- 
ences such  as  these.  Peripateticism  exists 
but  in  slumber,  under  the  dry  scholarship  of 
Adrastus  and  Alexander  of  Aphrodisium, 
the  commentators  of  the  last  century.  The 
New  Academy  and  the  Stoics  attract  youth 
still,  but  they  are  neither  of  them  a  philoso- 
phy so  much  as  a  system  of  ethics.  Specu- 
lation has  given  place  to  morals.  Philosophy 
is  taken  up  as  a  branch  of  literature,  as  an 
elegant  recreation,  as  a  theme  for  oratorical 
display.  Plotinus  is  persuaded  that  philoso- 
phy should  be  worship — speculation,  a 
search  after  God — no  amusement,  but  a 
prayer.  Skepticism  is  strong  in  proportion 
to  the  defect  or  weakness  of  everything 
positive  around  it.  The  influence  of  JSnesi- 
demus  who,  two  centuries  ago,  proclaimed 
universal  doubt,  is  still  felt  in  Alexandria. 
But  his  skepticism  would  break  up  the  foun- 
dations of  morality.  What  is  to  be  done? 
Plotinus  sees  those  who  are  true  to  specula- 


1858.] 


NBO-PLATOKIBM— HTPATIA. 


327 


tion  surrendering  ethics,  and  those  who  hold 
to  morality  abandoning  speculation. 

In  his  perplexity,  a  mend  takes  him  to  hear 
Ammonias  Saccas.  He  finds  him  a  powerful, 
broad-shouldered  man,  as  he  might  naturally 
be,  who  not  long  before  was  to  be  seen  any 
day  in  the  sultry  streets  of  Alexandria,  a 
porter,  wiping  his  brow  under  his  burden. 
Ammonitts  is  speaking  of  the  reconciliation 
that  might  be  effected  between  Plato  and 
Aristotle.  This  electicism  it  is  which  has 
given  him  fame.  At  another  time  it  might 
have  brought  on  him  only  derision,  now 
there  is  an  age  ready  to  give  the  attempt  an 
enthusiastic  welcome. 

Let  us  venture,  as  Mr.  Kingsley  has  done 
with  Hypatia,  to  make  him  speak  (or  him- 
self, and  imagine,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  the 
probable  tenor  of  his  lecture. 

"What,"  he  cries,  kindling  with  his 
theme,/' did  Plato  leave  behind  him,  what 
Aristotle,  when  Greece  and  philosophy  had 
waned  together?  The  first,  a  chattering 
crew  of  sophists:  the  second,  the  lifeless 
dogmatism  of  the  sensationalist.  The  self- 
styled  followers  of  Plato  were  not  brave 
enough  either  to  believe  or  to  deny.  The 
successors  of  the  Stagyrite  did  little  more 
than  reiterate  their  denial  of  the  Platonic 
doctrine  of  ideas.  Between  them  morality 
was  sinking  fast.  Then  an  effort  was  made 
for  its  revival.  The  attempt  at  least  was 
good.  It  sprang  out  of  a  just  sense  of  a 
deep  defect.  Without  morality  what  is  phi- 
losophy worth  ?  But  these  ethics  must  rest 
on  speculation  for  their  basis.  The  Epicu- 
reans and  the  Stoics,  I  say,  came  forward  to 
supply  that  moral  want.  Each  said,  we  will 
be  practical,  intelligible,  utilitarian.  One 
school,  with  its  hard  lesson  of  fate  and  self- 
denial  ;  the  other,  with  its  easier  doctrine  of 
pleasure,  more  or  less  refined,  were  rivals  in 
their  profession  of  ability  to  teach  men  how 
to  live.  In  each  there  was  a  certain  truth, 
but  I  will  honor  neither  with  the  name  of 
a  philosophy.  They  have'  confined  them- 
selves to  mere  ethical  application — they  are 
willing,  both  of  them,  to  let  fir^t  principles 
lie  unstirred.  Can  skepticism  fail  to  take 
advantage  of  this  ?  While  they  wrangle, 
both  are  disbelieved.  But,  sirs,  can  we  abide 
in  skepticism  ? — it  is  death.  You  ask  me, 
what  I  recommend  ?  I  say,  travel  back 
across  the  past.  Out  of  the  whole  of  that 
by-gone  and  yet  undying  world  of  thought 
construct  a  system  greater  than  any  of  the 
sundered  parts.  Repudiate  these  partial 
scholars  in  the  name  of  their  masters. 
Leave  them  to  their  disputes,  pass  over  their 


systems,  already  tottering  for  lack  of  a  foun- 
dation, and  be  it  yours  to  show  how  their 
teachers  join  hands  far  above  them.  In  such 
a  spirit  of  reverent  enthusiasm  you  may 
attain  a  higher  unity,  you  mount  in  specula- 
tion, and  from  that  height  ordain  all  noble 
actions  for  your  lower  life.  So  you  become 
untrue  neither  to  experience  nor  to  reason, 
and  the  genius  of  eclecticism  will  combine, 
yea,  shall  I  say  it,  will  surpass  while  it  em- 
braces, all  the  ancient  triumphs  of  philoso- 
phy !" 

Such  was  the  teaching  which  attracted 
Longinus,  Herennius,  and  Origen  (not  the 
father).  It  makes  an  epoch  in  the  life  of 
Plotinus.  He  desires  now  no  other  instruc- 
tor, and  is  preparing  to  become  himself  a 
leader  in  the  pathway  Ammonius  has  pointed 
out.  He  is  convinced  that  Platonism,  exalt- 
ed into  ^n  enthusiastic  illuminism,  and 
gathering  about  itself  all  the  scattered  truth 
upon  the  field  of  history ;  Platonism,  mys- 
tical and  catholic,  can  alone  preserve  men 
from  the  abyss  of  skepticism.  6ne  of  the 
old  traditions  of  Finland  relates  how  a 
mother  once  found  her  son  torn  into  a  thou- 
sand fragments  af  the  bottom  of  the  River 
of  Death.  She  gathered  the  scattered  mem- 
bers to  her  bosom,  and  rockin?  to  and  fro, 
sang  a  magic  song,  which  made  him  whole 
again,  and  restored  the  departed  life.  Such 
a  spell  the  Alexandrian  philosophy  sought 
to  work — thus  to  recover  and  re-unite  the 
relics  of  antique  truth  dispersed  and  drowned 
by  time. 

Plotinus  occupied  himself  only  with  the 
most  abstract  questions  concerntbg  knowledge 
and  being.  Detail  and  method — all  the 
stitching  and  clipping  of  eclecticism,  he  be- 
queathed as  the  handicraft  of  his  successors. 
His  fundamental  principle  is  the  old  petitio 
principii  of  idealism.  Truth,  according  to 
him,  is  not  the  agreement  of  our  apprehen- 
sion of  an  external  object  with  the  object 
itself — it  is  rather  the  agreement  of  the 
mind  with  itself.  The  objects  we  contem- 
plate and  that  which  contemplates,  are  iden- 
tical for  the  philosopher.  Both  are  thought ; 
only  like  can  know  like ;  all  truth  is  within 
us.  By  reducing  the  soul  to  its  most  ab- 
stract simplicity,  we  subtilize  it  so  that  it 
expands  into  the  infinite.^  In  such  a  state 
we  transcend  our  finite  selves,  and  are  one 
with  the  infinite ;  this  is  the  privileged  con- 
dition of  ecstasy.  These  blissful  intervals, 
but  too  evanescent  and  too  rare,  were  re- 
garded as  the  reward  of  philosophic  asceti- 
cism— the  seasons  of  refreshing,  which  were 
to  make  amends  for  all  the  stoical  austerities 


328 


NB(VPLATOHIBM--HYPATIA. 


[Not., 


of  the  steep  ascent  towards  the  abstraction 
of  the  primal  unity. 

Thus  the  NeoPlatonists  became  ascetics 
and  enthusiasts;  Plato  was  neither.  Where 
Plato  acknowledges  the  services  of  the  ear- 
liest philosophers — the  imperfect  utterances 
of  the  world's  first  thoughts, — Neo-PIaton- 
ism  (in  its  later  period^  at  least)  undertakes 
to  detect,  nbt  the  similarity  merely,  but  the 
identity  between  Pythagoras  and  Plato,  and 
even  to  exhibit  the  Plalonism  of  Orpheus, 
and  of  Hermes.  Where  Plato  is  hesitant  or 
obscure,  Neo-Platonism  insert^  a  meaning  of 
its  own,  and  is  confident  that  such,  and  no 
other,  was  the  master's  mind.  Where  Plato 
indulges  in  a  fancy,  or  hazards  a  bold  asser- 
tion, Neo-Placonism,  ignoring  the  doubts 
Plato  may  himself  express  elsewhere,  spins 
it  out  into  a  theory,  or  bows  to  it  as  an  infal- 
lible revelation.  Where  Plato  has  the  doc- 
trine of  Reminiscence,  Neo-Platonism  has 
the  doctrine  of  Ecstasy.  In  the  Reminis- 
cence of  Plato,  the  ideas  the  mind  perceives 
are  without  it.  Here  there  is  no  mysticism, 
only  the  misiake  incidental  to  metaphysicians 
generally  of  giving  an  actual  existence  to 
mere  mental  abstraction^.  In  Ecstasy,  the 
ideas  perceived,  are  within  the  mind.  The 
mystic,  according  to  Plotinus,  contemplates 
the  divine  perfections  in  himself;  and,  in  the 
ecstatic  state,  individuality  (which  is  so  much 
imperfection),  memory,  time,  space,  phenom- 
enal contradictions  and  logical  distinctions  all 
vanish.  It  is  not  until  the  rapture  is  past, 
and  the  ndind,  held  in  this  strange  solution, 
is,  as  it  were,  precipitated  on  reality,  that 
memory  is  again  employed.  Plotinus  would 
say  that  Reminiscence  could  impart  only  infe- 
rior knowledge,  because  it  implies  separation 
between  the  subject  and  the  object.  Ec- 
stasy is  superior — is  absolute,  being  the 
realization  of  their  identity.  True  to  this 
doctrine  of  absorption,  the  pantheism  of 
Plotinus  teaches  him  to  maintain  alike,  with 
the  Oriental  mystic  at  one  extreme  of  time, 
and  with  the  Hegelian  at  the  other,  that  our 
individual  existence  is  but  phenomenal  and 
transitory.  Plotinus,  accordingly,  does  not 
banish  reason,  he  only  subordinates  it  /to 
ecstasy  where  the  Absolute  is  in  question. 
It  is  not  till  the  last  that  he  calls  in  super- 
natural aid.  The  wizard  king  builds  his 
tower  of  speculation  by  the  hands  of  human 
worknien  till  he  reaches  the  top  story,  and 
then  summons  his  genii  to  fashion  the  battle- 
ments of  adamant,  and  crown  them  with 
starry  fire. 

Plotinus,  wrapt  in  his  proud  abstraction, 
cared  nothing  for  fame.     An  elect  company 


of  disciples  made  for  a  time  his  world  ;  ere 
long,  his  dungeon-body  would  be  laid  in  the 
dust,  and  the  divine  spark  within  him  set 
free,  and  lost  in  the  Universal  Soul.  Por- 
phyry entered  his  school  fresh  from  the 
study  of  Aristotle.  At  first  the  audacions 
opponent  of  his  master^  he  soon  became  the 
most  devoled  of  his  scholars.  With  a  tem- 
perament more  active  and  practical  than  that 
of  Plotinus,  with  more  various  ability  and 
far  more  facility  in  method  and  adaptation, 
with  an  erudition  equal  to  his  fidelity,  blame- 
less in  his  life,  pre-eminent  in  the  loftiness 
and  purity  of  his  ethics,  he  was  well  fitted  to 
do  all  that  could  be  done  towards  securing 
for  the  doctrines  he  had  espoused  that  repu- 
tation and  that  wider  influence  to  which 
Plotinus  was  so  indifferent.  His  aim  was 
twofold.  He  engaged  ia  a  conflict  hand  to 
hand  with  two  antagonists  at  once,  by  both 
of  whom  he  was  eventually  vanquished.  He 
commenced  an  assault  on  CbrLstianity  with- 
out, and  he  endeavored  to  check  the  prog- 
ress of  superstitious  practice  within  the 
pale  of  paganism.  His  doctrine  concerning 
ecstasy  is  less  extravagant  than  that  of  Plo- 
tinus. The  ecstatic  state  does  not  involve 
with  him  the  loss  of  conscious  personality. 
He  calls  it  a  dream,  in  which  the  soul,  dead 
to  the  world,  rises  to  an  activity  that  par- 
takes of  the  divine.  It  is  an  elevation  above 
human  reason,  human  action,  human  liberiy, 
yet  no  temporary  annihilation,  but  rather  an 
ennobling  restoration  or  transformation  of 
the  individual  nature.  In  his  well-known 
letter  to  Anebon,  he  proposes  a  series  of 
questions  which  indicate  that  thorough  skep- 
ticism concerning  the  pretensions  of  theurgy 
which  so  much  scandalized  lamblichus.  The 
treatise  of  the .  latter,  De  Mysteriis,  is  an 
elaborate  reply,  under  the  name  of  Abam- 
mon,  to  that  epistle. 

Thus  much  concerning  the  doctrine  of  the 
theosophic  or  spiritualist  section  of  the  Neo* 
Platonists.  lamblichus  is  the  leader  and 
representative  of  the  wonder-working  and 
theurgic  branch  of  the  school.  With  this 
party  a  strange  mixture  of  charlatanry  and 
asceticism  takes  the  place  of  those  lofty  but 
unsatisfying  abstractions  which  absorbed 
Plotinus.  They  are,  in  some  sort,  the  lineal 
descendants  of  those  d^uprai  of  whom  Plato 
speaks — itinerant  venders  of  expiations  and 
of  charms — the  Grecian  prototypes  of  Chau- 
cer's Pardonere.  Yet  nothing  can  exceed 
the  power  to  which  they  lay  claim.  If  you 
believe  lamblichus,  the^  theurgist  is  the  vehi- 
cle  and  instrument  of  Deity,  ail  the  subor 
dinate  potencies  and  dominions  of  the  uppe 


1868.] 


KBO-PLATOKIBM-HTPATIA< 


829 


world  are  at  his  beck,  for  it  is  not  a  man  but 
a  God  who  mutters  the  words  of  might,  and 
chants  the  prayer  which  shakes  celestial 
thrones  and  makes  the  heavens  bow.  When 
the  afflatus  is  upon  him»  fiery  appearances 
are  seen,  sweetest  melodies  tremble  through 
the  air,  heavy  with  incense,  or  deep  discor- 
dant sounds  betray  some  terrible  presence 
tamed  by  the  master's  art.  There  are  four 
great  orders  of  spiritual  existence  peopling 
the  unseen  world — ^gods,  demons  or  heroes, 
demi-gods,  and  souls.  The  adept  knows  at 
once  to  which  class  the  glorious  shape  which 
confronts  him  may  belong — for  they  appear 
always  with  the  insignia  of  their  office,  or  in 
a  form  consonant  with  the  rank  they  hold  in 
the  hierarchy  of  spiritual  natures.  The  ap- 
pearances of  gods  are  uniform  (iJbovofiid)},)^ 
those  of  demons  various  in  their  hue 
(roixiXa).  Often  when  a  god  reveals  him- 
self, he  hides  sun  and  moon,  and  appears,  as 
he  descends,  too  vast  for  earth.  Each  order 
has  gifts  of  its  own  to  bestow  on  those  who 
summon  them.  The  gods  confer  health  of 
body,  power  anc}  purity  of  mind :  the  prin- 
cipalities which  govern  the  sublunary  ele- 
ments impart  temporal  advantages.  At  the 
same  time  there  eiist  evil  demons — anti- 
gods,  who  are  hostile  to  the  aspirant,  who 
afflict,  if  they  can,  both  body  and  mind,  and 
hinder  our  escape  from  the  world  of  appear- 
ance and  of  sense. 

It  is  not  a  little  curious  to  observe  the  pro- 
cess by  which  a  more  refined  and  intellectual 
mysticism  gives  way  to  a  more  gross,  and 
theosophy  is  superseded  by  theurgy,  in  Neo- 
Platonism,  Gnosticism,  and  Romanism  alike. 
At  first,  ecstasy  is  an  indescribable  state — 
any  form  or  voice  would  mar  and  materialize 
it — the  vague  boundlessness  of  this  exalta- 
tion, of  that  expanse  of  bliss  and  glory  in 
which  the  soul  seems  to  swim  and  lose  itself, 
is  not  to  be  even  hinted  at  by  \he  highest 
utterance  of  mortal  speech.  But  a  degener- 
ate age,  or  a  lower  order  of  mind,  demands 
the  detail  and  imagery  of  a  more  tangible 
marvel.  The  demand  creates  supply,  and 
the  mystic,  deceiver  or  deceived^  or  both, 
most  commonly  begins  to  furnish  out  for  him- 
self and  others  a  full  itinerary  of  those  regions 
of  the  unseen  world  which  he  has  scanned 
or  traversed  in  his  moments  of  elevation.  He 
describes  the  starred  baldrics  and  meteor- 
swords  of  the  serial  panoply — tells  what  for- 
lorn shapes  have  been  seen  standing  dark 
a^inst  a  far  depth  of  brightness,  like  stricken 
pmes  on  a  sunset  horizon — what  angelic 
forms,  in  gracious  companies,  alight  about 
the  haunts  of  men,  thwarting  the  evil,  and 


opening  pathways  for  the  good — what  genii 
tend  what  mortals,  and  under  what  astral  in- 
fluences they  work  weal  or  woe — what  dwell- 
ers in  the  middle  air  cover  with  embattled 
rows  the  mountain  side,  or  fill  some  vast  am- 
phitheatre of  silent  inaccessible  snow-^how 
some  encamp  in  the  valley,^  under  the  pen- 
nons of  the  summer  lightning,  and  others  find 
a  tented  field  where  the  slow  wind  unmlls 
the  exhalations  along  the  marsh,  or  builds  a 
canopy  of  vapours — all  is  largely  told — what 
ethereal  heraldry  marshals  with  its  blazon 
the  thrones  and  dominions  of  the  un^en 
realm — what  giant  powers  and  principalities 
among  them  darken  with  long  shadow,  or 
illumine  with  a  winged  wake  of  glory  the 
forms  of  following  myriads,  their  ranks  and 
races,  wars  and  destiny,  as  minutely  register- 
ed as  the  annals  of  some  neighbor  province, 
as  confidently  recounted  as  though  the  seer 
had  nightly  slipped  his  bonds  of  flesh,  and 
made  one  in  their  council  or  their  battle. 

Thus  the  metaphysical  basis  and  the  mag- 
ical pretensions  of  Alexandrian  mysticism 
are  seen  to  stand  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  each 
other!  Porphyry  qualifies  the  intuitional 
principle  of  his  master,  and  holds  more  so- 
berly the  theory  of  illumination.  lamblichus, 
the  most  superstitious  of  all  in  practice,  di- 
minishes still  further  the  province  of  theoso- 
phy. He  denies  what  both  Plotinus  and  Por- 
phyry maintained,  that  man  has  a  faculty  inac- 
cessible to  passion,  and  eternally  active.  Just 
in  proportion  as  these  men  surrendered  their 
lofty  ideas  of  the  innate  power  of  the  mind 
did  they  seek  to  indemnify  themselves  by 
recourse  to  supernatural  assistance  from  with- 
out. The  talisman  takes  the  place  of  the 
contemplative  reverie.  Philosophic  abstrac- 
tion is  abandoned  for  the  incantations  of  the 
cabalist;  and  as  speculation  droops  super- 
stition gathers  strength. 

Such  are  the  leadmg  features  of  that  phi- 
losophical religionism  which  attempted  to 
rival  Christianity  at  Alexandria,  and  which 
strove  to  cope,  in  the  name  of  the  past,  with 
the  spiritual  aims  and  the  miraculous  cre- 
dentials of  the  new  faith.  What  were  the 
immediate  causes  of  its  failure  ?  The  attempt 
to  piece  with  new  cloth  the  old  garment  was 
necessarily  vain.  Porphyry  endeavored  to 
refute  the  Christian,  and  to  reform  the  pagan 
by  a  single  stroke.  But  Christianity  could 
not  be  repulsed,  and  heathendom  would  not 
be  renovated.  In  vain  did  he  attempt  to 
substitute  a  single  philosophical  religion, 
which  should  be  universal,  for  the  manifold 
and  popular  polytheism  of  his  day.  Christian 
truth  repelled  his  attack  on  the  one  side,  and 


880 


NEO-PLATONIHM— HYPATIA. 


[Nov., 


idolatrous  superstition  carried  bis  defences  on 
the  other.  The  Neo-Platonists,  moreover, 
volunteered  their  services  as  the  champions 
of  a  paganism  which  did  but  partially  ac- 
knowledge their  advocacy.  The  philosophers 
were  often  objects  of  suspicion  to  the  em- 
peror,  always  of  dislike  to  the  jealousy  of  the 
heathen  priest.  In  those  days  of  emperor- 
worship  the  emperor  was  sometimes  a  devour- 
ing deity,  and,  like  the  sacred  crocodile  of 
Egypt,  more  dangerous  to  his  worshipers 
than  to  his  foes,  would  now  and  then  break- 
fast on  a  devotee.  The  Neo-Platonists  de- 
fended paganism  not  as  zealots,  but  as  men 
of  letters.  They  defended  it  .because  the 
old  faith  could  boast  of  great  names  and  great 
achievements  in  speculation,  literature,  and 
art,  and  because  the  new  appeared  barbarian 
in  its  origin,  and  humiliating  in  its  claims. 
They  wrote,  they  lectured,  they  disputed  in 
favour  of  the  temple,  and  against  the  church, 
not  because  they  worshipped  idols,  but  be- 
cause they  worshipped  Plato.  They  ex- 
claimed against  vice,  while  they  sought  to 
conserve  its  incentives,  so  abundant  in  every 
heathen  mythology,  fondly  dreaming  that 
they  could  bring  a  clean  thing  out  of  an  un- 
clean. Their  great  doctrine  was  the  unity 
alid  immutability  of  the  abstraction  they 
called  God  ;  yet  they  took  their  place  as  the 
conservators  of  polytheism.  They  saw  Chris- 
tianity denouncing  every  worship  except  its 
own  ;  and  they  resolved  to  assert  the  oppo- 
site, accrediting  every  worship  except  that 
Christianity  enjoined.  They  failed  to  observe 
in  that  benign  intolerance  of  falsehood,  which 
stood  out  as  so  novel  a  characteristic  in  the 
•  Christian  faith,  one  of  the  credentials  of  its 
divine  origin.  They  forgot  that  lip-homage 
paid  to  all  religions  is  the  virtual  denial  of 
each.  They  strove  to  combine  religion  and 
philosophy,  and  robbed  the  last  of  its  only 
principle,  the  first  of  its  only  power.  In 
their  hands  speculation  lost  its  scientific  pre- 
cision, and  deserted  its  sole  consistent  basis 
in  the  reason  ;  for  they  compelled  philosophy 
to  receive  a  fantastic  medley  of  sacerdotal 
inventions,  and  to  labor,  blinded  and  dis- 
honored, an  enfeebled  Samson  in  the  prison- 
house  of  their  eclecticism,  that  these  might 
be  woven  together  into  a  flimsy  tissue  of  pan- 
theistic spiritualism.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
religions  lost  in  the  process  whatever  sanctity 
or  authoritativeness  may  once  have  been 
theirs.  This  endeavor  to  philosophii^  super- 
stition could  only  issue  in  the  paradoxical  prod- 
uct of  a  philosophy  without  reason,  and  a 
superstition  without  faith.  Lastly,  the  old 
aristocratic  exclusiveness  of  Hellenist  culture 


could  hold  its  own  np  longer ^affainst  the  en- 
croaching confusions  of  the  time — least  of 
all  against  a  system  which  preached  a  gospel 
to  the  poor.  In  vain  did  heathen  philosophy 
borrow  from  Christian  spirituality  a  new  re- 
finement, and  receive  some  rays  of  light  from 
the  very  foe  she  sought  to  foil.  In  every 
path  of  her  ambition,  she  was  distanced  by 
the  excellence,  yea,  by  the  very  faults  of  her 
antagonist.  Did  Neo-Platonism  take  the 
higher  ground,  and  seek  in  ecstasy  union  with 
the  divme,  many  a  Christian  ascetic  in  the 
Thebaid  laid  claim  to  a  union  and  an  ecstasy 
more  often  enjoyed,  more  confidently  assert- 
ed, m6re  readily  believed.  Did  she  descend 
a  step  lower,  to  find  assurance  for  herself  or 
win  repute  with  others,  to  the  magical  devo- 
tion and  materialized  mysticism  of  theurgic 
art,  here,  too,  she  was  outdone,  for  the 
Christian  Church  could  not  only  point  to 
miracles  in  the  past,  which  no  one  ventured 
to  impugn,  but  was  growing  richer  every  day 
in  relics  and  exorcisms,  and  in  every  species 
of  saintly  marvel.  Every  Christian  martyr 
bequeathed  a  progeny  of  nyracles  to  the  care 
of  succeeding  generations.  His  bones  were 
the  dragons'  teeth,  which,  sown  in  the  grave, 
sprang  up  the  armed  men  of  the  church  mili- 
tant— the  supernatural  auxiliaries  of  the  faith 
for  which  he  died ;  and  bis  sepulchre  became 
the  corner-stone  of  a  new  church.  Pagan 
theurgy  found  its  wand  broken,  and  its  spells 
baffled,  by  the  more  potent  incantations  of 
Christian  faith  or  Christian  superstition.  A 
barbaric  art,  compounded  of  every  ancient 
jugglery  of  priestcraft,\contended  as  vainly 
against  the  roused  elements  of  that  human 
nature  which  Christianity  had  stirred  to  its 
depths,  as  do  the  savage  islanders  of  the 
Southern  Sea  against  the  hurricane,  when, 
sitting  in  a  dusky  circle  on  the  beach,  they 
try,  with  wild  noises,  to  sing  down  the  .leap- 
ing surf,  ftnd  to  lull  the  shrieking  winds, 
that  cover  them  with  flying  spray.  Philoso- 
phy, which  had  always  repelled  the  people, 
possessed  no  power  to  seclude  thepi  from 
the  Christianity  which  sought  them  out.  It 
is,  perhaps,  too  much  to  say  that  it  never 
attracted  minds  from  the  lower  walks  of  life, 
but  when  it  did  so,  the  influence  it  exercised 
was  not  really  ameliorating  or  even  diffusive. 
Mr.  Kingsley  has  correctly  exemplified,  ia 
the  character  of  Eudssmon,  the  operation  of 
philosophy  on  the  vulgar  mind.  This  little 
man,  who  keeps  the  parasolff  in  the  porch  of 
Hypatia's  lecture- room,  has  picked  up  sundry 
scraps  of  philosophy.  He  is,  accordingly, 
just  as  disdainful  of  the  herd  about  him,  as 
the  real  philosophers,  whom  he  apes,  would 


1858.] 


KEOPLATONISM— HTPATIA. 


881 


necessarily  be  of  himself.  His  frivolous  and 
selfish  pedantry  is  a  perpetual  satire  on  phil- 
oeophic  pre^nsion.  His  philosophy,  .leaving 
his  heart  even  as  it  was,  imparts  only  a  ri- 
diculous inflation  to  his  speech,  and  enables 
him  to  beat  his  wife  with  a  high-sounding 
maxim  on  his  lips.  He  resembles  Andrew, 
the  serving-man  of  the  great  scholar  in  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  play  of  the^/</«r^ro^Aer, 
who  so  delights  to  astound  and  mystify  the 
cook  with  his  learned  phrases  and  marvelous 
relations  of  the  scientific  achievements  of  his 
master : — 

*'  These  are  but  scrapings  of  bis  understanding, 

Gilbert, 
With' gods  andfoddesaes,  and  such  stranfje  people. 
He  treats  and  deals  with  in  so  plain  a  fashion, 
As  thoti  dost  with  thy  boy  that  draws  thy  drink, 
Or  Ralph,  there,   with    his    kitchen-boys  and 

scalders/' 

Such  is  the  style  in  which  Budsemon  dis-. 
courses  to  the  wondering  Philammon,  fresh 
from  the  desert,  on  the  wisdom  and  the  vir- 
tues of  Hypatia.  This  windy  fare  of  conceit 
and  vanity,  with  a  certain  dog- like  devotion 
to  his  mistress,  is  all  that  the  transcendental 
diet  of  philosophy  has  vouchsafed  him. — 
Neither,  in  reality,  were  the  young  wits  and 
dandies  of  Alexandria  much  more  effectually 
nourished  in  virtue  than  this  humble  door- 
keeper at  the  gates  of  wisdom.  Bitterly  did 
Hypatia  complain  that  her  pupils  remained 
dead  to  those  pure  aspirations  which  exalted 
her  own  nature.  They  listened,  admired,  and 
were  amused ;  idleness  had  found  a  morning's 
entertainment;  they  talked  of  virtue,  but 
they  practised  vice.  While  Hypatia,  like 
Queen  Whims,  in  Rabelais'  Kingdom  of  Quin- 
iesaence,  fed  only  on  categories,  abstractions, 
second  intentions,  antitheses,  metempsycho- 
ses, transoendant  prolepsies,  "  and  such  other 
light  food,"  her  admirers,  like  Pantagruel  and 
his  friends,  did  more  than  justice  to  all  the 
substantial  materials  of  gluttony  and  drunk- 
enness. In  short,  the  very  struggles  made 
by  heathendom  in  the  effort  to  escape  its 
doom,  served  only  to  disclose  more  fatally  its 
weakness,  and  to  show  to  all  that  the  doom 
was  merited.  In  one  of  the  stories  of  the 
Oesta  Bofjutnorum,  we  are  told  of  a 'warden 
at  a  city  gate  who  was  empowered  to  receive 
a  penny  from  every  passenger  who  was  one- 
eyed,  hunchbacked,  or  afflicted  with  certain 
diseases.  A  humpbacked  man  appeared  one 
day,  who  refused  to  pay  the  toll ;  the  warden 
laid  hands  on  him  ;  in  the  scuffle  his  cap 
fell  off,  his  clothes  were  torn,  it  was  dicover- 
ed  that  he  had  but  one  eye,  and,  finally,  that 


he  was  a  sufferer  under  each  of  the  diseases 
amenable  to  the  fine,  so  that  he  was  mulcted, 
at  last,  in  five  pennies  instead  of  one.  Such 
has  been  the  history  of  systems,  political  or 
religious;  which  have  attempted,  when  their 
time  was  come,  to  resist  the  execution  of  the 
sentence.  They  have  persisted  in  pretending 
to  teach  when  they  had  nothing  to  impart, 
in  arrogating  an  authority  already  disowned, 
or  in  obtruding  a  service  which  the  world 
required  no  longer ;  and  the  more  protracted 
and  obstinate  such  endeavors,  the  more 
signal  has  been  their  overthrow,  the  more 
conspicuous  the  sickly  feebleness  of  their 
corruption,  the  heavier  the  penalties  they 
have  been  compelled  at  last  to  pay. 

The  career  of  Neo-Platonism,  as  we  have 
now  attempted  to  describe  it,  is  faithfully 
traced  by  Mr.  Kingsley  in  the  character  of 
Hypatia,  in  her  aspirations,  her  mental  strug- 
gles, her  bitter  disappointment.  He  might 
have  exhibited  the  philosophical  aspects  of 
the  time,  as  it  were,  side  by  side  with  the 
story,  in  the  way  of  long  speeches  and  occa- 
sional disquisitions.  He  might,  on  the  other 
hand,  have  made  Hypatia  an  abstraction — 
an  impersonation  of  the  school  she  represents. 
Either  course  would  have  been  easier  than 
the  one  he  has  chosen — would  have  been,  in 
fact,  the  danger  of  an  inferior  workman.  In 
the  first  case,  the  book  would  have  lacked 
interest;  in  the  second,  nature.  But  Mr. 
Kingrgley  has  contrived,  with  no  little  art,  to 
render  the  incidents  of  the  story  themselves 
indicative  of  the  character  and  fortunes  of 
the  philosophy  he  has  to  depict, — to  make 
Hypatia  human  and  real,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  to  eihibit  in  her  individual  history  the 
strength,  the  weakness,  and  the  inevitable 
issue  of  that  philosophic  and  pagan  element 
which,  in  fhe  fifth  century,  leavened  so  large 
a  section  of  the  social  system.  In  this  re- 
spect, his  tale  may  be  read  as  history,  and 
those  best  acquainted  with  the  period  he 
handles,  will  be  the  last  to  accuse  his  por- 
traiture of  untruthfulness.  High,  indeed,  is 
the  office  of  the  novelist,  who  endeavors  not 
merely  to  recall  the  dress  and  manners  of  a 
by -gone  age,  but  to  pierce  into  the  heart  of 
society,  and  show  us  how  the  various  classes 
of  mankind  were  looking  at  those  great  ques- 
tions concerning  good  and  evil,  right  and 
wrong,  which  are  the  same  in  their  moment 
for  all  time.  Such  an  instructor  widens  the 
door  of  knowledge,  and  introduces  to  the  les- 
sons of  the  past  that  large  number  who,  in 
our  hurrying,  headlong  days,  have  neither 
the  time,  the  culture,  nor  the  curiosity  to 
seek  them  in  the  original  records.    Our  liter- 


382 


KEOFLAT0N1BM--.HTPATU. 


[Nov., 


ature  is  less  rich  in  each  prodactions  than  it 
should  be,  and  we  trust  it  will  receive  farther 
contributions  from  the  same  hand  to  which 
we  owe  Hjpatia. 

To  turn  now  from  heathenism — divided  be- 
tween a  fanciful  spiritualism  and  a  grovelling 
superstition — between  a  thoughtful  skepti- 
cism and  A  thoughtless  indiflference^-doomed 
alike  in  its  belief  and  in  its  disbelief, — to  its 
successful  rival,  the  Church.  Christianity,  in 
the  fifth  century,  was  disfigured  by  a  wide- 
spread corruption,  but  Paganism  was  in  no 
condition  either  to  rival  its  excellencies  or  to 
take  advantage  of  its  faults.  Only  too  many 
of  the  follies  associated  with  heathen  worship 
were  conserved  by  incorporation  in  that 
church  which  made  a  ruin  of  every  heathen 
shrine.  There  is  an  Indian  valley  in  which 
it  is  said  that  gigantic  trees  have* pierced  and 
rent  the  walls  of  a  long-deserted  idol  temple. 
That  resistless  vegetation,  with  its  swelling 
girth  and  gnarled  arms,  has  anticipated  the 
work  of  time ;  but  it  haa  been  itself  distorted 
while  it  has  destroyed.  Large  slabs  and 
fragments  of  stone  are  encased  in  the  wodd, 
and  the  twisted  bark  discovers  here  and  there, 
among  the  shadows  of  the  leaves,  groups  of 
petty  gods  which  its  growth  has  partially  in- 
closed. Thus  did  it  happen  with  the  mighty 
tree  that  sprang  from  the  grain  of  mustard- 
seed,  when  by  degrees  it  had  received  into 
its  substance,  or  embraced  in  its  development, 
many  an  adornment  from  those  chambers  of 
imagery  which  its  youthful  vigor  had  riven 
and  overthrown.  The  heathen  philosopher 
might,  with  some  show  of  justice,  retort  on 
the  Christians  the  charge  of  idolj^try,  when 
he  saw  them  prostrate  before  an  image,  and 
confident  in  the  miraculous  virtues  of  a  relic 
or  a  tomb.  But  the  reproach  availed  him 
nothing,  for  the  power  of  conviction  lay  with 
the  adversary  after  all.  He  might  accuse 
the  Christian,  as  Mr.  Martineau  accuses  Pa- 
ley,  of  representing  the  Deity  as  a  retired 
mechanist, — a  creator  withdrawn  from  the 
work  of  his  own  hands  to  a  far-off  heaven ; 
but  the  evil  was  not  amended  by  depriving 
the  Divine  Nature  of  personality,  and  diffusing 
it  pantheistically  throughout  the  universe. 
The  dispute  between  the  heathen  and  the 
Christian,  on  that  question,  amounted  to  this 
— Did  God  create  the  universe  by  willing  or 
by  being  it?  (r^  /SouXsifdai,  or  r^jsfvai.)  If 
the  latter,  man  has  a  criminal  for  a  Deity ;  if 
the  former,  (as  the  Church  said),  the  mystery 
might  be  fathomless,  but  religion  was  at  least 
pos^ble.  The  Neo-Platonist  might  point  to 
parallels,  answering  plausibly  at  least,  to 
many  features  of  the  Christian  doctrine,  in  the 


old  religions  of  mankind.  But  the  labor  was 
as  idle  then  as  now,  for  this,  at  any  rate,  the 
adversary  of  our  faith  could  not  and  cannot 
deny,  that  Christianity  was  the  first  to  seek 
out  and  to  elevate  the  forgotten  and  degraded 
masses  of  mankind. 

A  survey  of  such  parallels  is  of  service  only 
as  indicative  of  the  adaption  of  Christianity  to 
those  obscure  longings  of  the  ancient  world, 
which  are  better  understood  by  us  than  by 
themselves.  The  likeness  observable  between 
some  of  their  ideas  and  those  contained  in  the 
Christian  revelation,  is  that  of  the  dim  and 
distorted  morning  shadow  to  the  substance 
from  which  it  is  thrown.  We  see  that  their 
religious  notions  were  not  the  nutrimeat  their 
souls  really  needed,  but  substitutes  for,  or  an- 
ticipations of,  such  veritable  food.  The  pel- 
lets of  earth,  eaten  by  the  Otomacs  and  the 
negroes,  are  no  proof  that  clay  caa  afford 
nourishment  to  man's  system.  They  are  the 
.  miserable  resources  of  necessity ;  they  deaden 
the  irritability  of  the  stomach,  and  allay  the 
gnawings  of  hunger,  but  they  can  impart  no 
sustenance.  The  religious  philosophies  of 
the  old  world  could,  in  like  manner,  asaua^e 
a  painful  craving  for  a  time,  but  they  cocQd 
not  reinforce  the  life-blood,  and  resusciate,  as 
healthful  food,  the  faint  and  emaciated  frame. 
Over  against  all  points  of  similarity  is  to  be 
set  this^  strikro^  contrast — for  that  forlorn 
deep,  the  popular  mind,  Christianity  had  a 
message  of  love  and  power,  while  heathen 
wisdom  had  none.  The  masses  of  antiquity 
resemble  the  cairn- people  of  northern  super- 
stition— a  race  of  beings,  said  to  dwell  among 
the  tombs,  playing  sadly  on  their  harps,  la- 
menting their  captivity,  and  awaiting  wistfully 
the  great  day  of  restitution.  They  call  on 
those  who  pass  their  haunts,  and  ask  if  there 
is  salvation  for  them.  If  man  answers  yes, 
they  play  blithely  all  the  night  throuffb ;  if 
he  says,  **  You  have  no  Redeemer,  they 
dash  their  harps  upon  the^ stones,  and  crouch, 
silent  and  weeping,  in  the  gloomy  reoesses  of 
their  cavern.  Such  a  dark  and  ignorant  »gh- 
ing  to  be  renewed,  was  heard  from  time  to 
time,  from  those  tarrying  spirits  in  pri>on, 
among  the  untaught  multitudes  of  ancient 
time.  They  questioned  philosophy,  and  at 
her  cold  denial  shrank  away,  and  hid  them- 
selves again  in  their  place  of  darkness.  They 
questioned  Christianity,  and  at  her  hopeful 
answer  they  began 'to  sing. 

Once  more,  the  enemy  of  the  Cross  was 
reduced  in  that  time^  as  in  our  own,  to  the 
inconsistency  of  extending  the  largest  charity 
possible  to  every  licentious  and  cruel  faidi 
that  had  led  man's  wandering  ferther  yet 


1863.] 


imO-PLATOiriBM— HYFAHA. 


383 


astray,  while  he  refuses  even  common  candor 
to  the  belief  of  the  Christian  in  his  Saviour. 
Similarly,  Mr.  Parker  must  speak  with  ten- 
derness of  those  multifarious  types  of  the 
religious  sentiment  which  have  identified  hom- 
icide with  worship  and  deity  with  lust ;  but 
when  he  comes  across  an  evangelical — fare- 
well calm  philosophy,  and  welcome  bitterness 
and  bile  1  Mr.  ^Parker  might  reply,  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  as  Theon  would  have  re- 
plied in  the  fifth — "  But  those  Chtistians  are 
so  intolerant,  and  will  have  it  that  every  thing 
unchristian  is  ungodly;  they  will  not  suffer 
us  to  place  their  religion  among  the  other 
creations  of  man's  devotional  aspiration,  and 
to  install  it  in  the  Pantheon  of  our  philoso- 
phic empire  with  the  rest."  Of  course  not, 
Christianity  could  exist  on  no  other  terms.  It 
refused,  in  the  days  of  the  Cassars,  to  be 
stabled  in  the  Capitol  among  the  hybrid  and 
the  bestial  forms  which  made  that  centre  of 
the  world  the  gallery  of  its  religious  mon^^ 
trosities.  It  declared  that,  as  the  true  re- 
ligion, it  was  the  only  one ;  that  its  claim 
was  fatal  to  all  other? ;  and  it  disdained  to 
receive,  in  company  with  a  thousand  false- 
hoods, the  divided  patronage  of  imperial 
policy.  Just  as  that  emperor- worship  of 
declining  Kome  would  fain  have  set  the 
adoration  of  man  in  the  place  of  that  of 
God — would  readily,  in  its  catholic  state- 
craft, have  accepted  the  homage  of  Chris- 
tianity as  of  all  other  creeds — substitutiDg 
human  sanctions  for  divine ;  so  our  modern 
sentimental  Deism  would  herd  Christianity 
with  all  other  faiths  in  a  common  philosophic 
pasture,  and  make  religion  the  worship  of 
man  rather  than  of  God.  The  difference  in 
our  time  is,  that  the  human  authority  is  not 
now  to  be  centered  in  any  Divus  Cassar,  or 
perpetuated  by  the  gaudy  celebration  of  an 
apotheosis ;  it  is  to  be  divided  among  an 
elect  priesthood  of  letters.  It  is  asserted, 
not  by  the  sword  but  by  the  pen ;  not  by  the 
municipal  organization  of  an  empire,  but  by 
the  body  corporate  of  publishers;  and  the 
Infinite  is  to  speak,  not  through  the  carrier 
of  a  sceptre  and  wearer  of  the  purple,  but 
through  an  author  in  his  study  or  a  professor 
in  his  chair. 

Mr.  Kingsley  has  drawn  no  veil  over  the 
gross  abuses  which  rendered  the  church  of 
the  fifth  century  so  mournful  a  departure 
from  the  simplicity  of  more  stormy  times. 
He  brings  out  to  view  the  spiritual  pride,  the 
wasteful  asceticism,  the  coarse  fanaticism,  of 
the  church  in  the  desert ; —  the  intrigue  and 
the  faction,  the  ambition  and  the  covetous- 
ness,  of  the  church  in  the  city.    Tet,  amidst 


it  all,  both  in  the  wilderness  and  in  the  capital, 
we  are  permitted  to  catch  glimpses  of  a 
piety  strong  in  its  'simple-mindedness,  how- 
ever narrow  ; — of  a  principle,  working  in  the 
lives  of  numbers,  so  holy,  so  benign,  as  still 
to  vindicate  the  promised  presence  of  the 
Highest  with  his  people.  Great  as  the  actu- 
al corruption  may  have  been,  the  evils  it  dis- 
placed were  greater  yet.  Many  of  the  faults' 
with  which  Christianity  was  chargeable  wece 
accounted  such  only  by  her  own  standard. 
They  were  short-comings  in  a  virtue,  hitherto, 
not  simply  unattained,  out  undesired.  They 
were  stains  upon  her  garment,  only  visible 
by  the  light  she  herself  had  brought  into 
the  world. 

It  now  remains  for  us  briefly  to  trace  the 
influence  of  the  Neo-Platonism  of  Alexandria 
on  the  Christianity  by  which  it  was  vanquish- 
ed—to mark  the  workings  of  its  principle 
within  the  church,  and  afterwards  the  revival 
of  its  spirit  in  opposition  to  it. 

The  Platonism  of  the  Middle  Ages,  be  it 
remembered,  was  not  so  much  the  doctrind 
of  Plato  as  of  Plotinus,  The  old  Greeks 
were  lost  to  the  monlistic  world,  aid  were 
^  known  only  through  the  Alexandrians,  who 
corrupted  the  philosophy  they  professed  to 
interpret.  Neo-Platonism  was  studied 
through  the  medium  of  Augustine  on  the 
one  side,  and  the  Pseudo-Dionysius  on  the 
other ;  was  transmitted  principally  by  writerQi 
like  Apuleins  and  Boethius.  To  th^  monk- 
ish scribes  of  the  scriptorium,  the  sesthetio 
culture,  so  precious  in  the  eyes  of  Plato,  the 
natural  science  so  elaborately  investigated 
by  the  Stagyrite,  were  matters  of  indiffer- 
ence. The  Christian  writers  only  assimilated 
from  antiquity  what  seemed  to  fall  within 
the  province  of  the  church.  The  ecclesiasti- 
cal world  took  Augustine's  word  for  it,  that 
Plotinus  had  enunciated  the  real  esoteric 
doctrine  of  Plato.  They  believed,  on  the 
authority  of  the  Neo-Platonists,  that  Aristotle 
and  Plato  were  not  the  enemies  which  had 
been  supposed.  They  viewed  the  school  of 
Aristotle  as  the  forecourt,  leading  to  the 
mystic  shadows  of  that  grove  of  Hecademus, 
wherein  Plato  was  supposed  to  discourse  of 
heaven  and  obscurely  to  adore  the  ChrisUan's 
God. 

Realism  and  Asceticism  were  the  common 
ground  of  the  Christian  and  the  Neo-Platon- 
ist.  The  same  enthusiasm  for  abstractions, 
the  same  contempt  for  the  body  and  the 
world  of  sense,  animated  the  philosophy  of 
the  old  world  and  the  theology  of  the  new. 
A  spiritual  aristoeracy  was  substituted  in 
Europe  for  the  intelleotital  aristOGraey  of 


384 


NBO-PLATONISM— HYPATIA. 


[Nov., 


Greece.  The  exclusive  spirit  of  the  sage, 
with  his  chosen  group  of  esoteric  followers, — 
of  the  hierophftDt,  with  his  imposing  ritual 
and  his  folding  gates  of  brass,  excluding  the 
profane,  passed  from  paganism  into  the 
Christian  priesthood.  The  church,  too,  learnt 
to  glory  in  a  treasured  potency  and  secret 
doctrine,  which  must  be  veiled  from  the  vul- 
gar eye, — professed  to  speak  but  in  the  sym- 
bolism of  painting,  of  sculpture,  of  cere- 
mony, to  the  grosser  apprehensions  of  the 
crowd,  and  transformed  the  £ucharist  into  an 
Eleusinian  mystery. 

In  the  eastern  church  the  Neo-Platonists 
had  their  revenge.  With  a  fatal  sway  they 
ruled  from  their  urns,  when  dead,  that  Chris- 
tianity which  had  banished  them  while  living. 
It  was  not  long  after  the  death  of  Proclus, 
about  the  time  when  the  factions  of  Con- 
stantinople were  raging  most  furiously— 
when  rival  ecclesiastics  headed  city  riots 
with  a  rabble  o£  monks,  artisans,  and  bandit 
soldierly  at  their  heels — when  the  religious 
world  was  rocking  still  with  the  ground-swell 
which  followed  those  stormy  synods  in  which 
Palestine  and  Alexandria,  Asia  and  Byzan- 
tium, tried  their  strength  against  each  other, 
that  a  certain  nameless  monk  was  busy  in  his 
cell  fabricating  sundry  treatises  and  letters 
which  were  to  find  their  way  into  the  church 
under  the  all- but  apostolic  auspices  of  Dio- 
nysius  the  Areopagite.  These  writings  are 
an  admixture  of  the  theosophy  of  Proclus 
with  the  doctrines  of  the  church :  writings 
in  which  the  heathen  bears  to  the  Christian 
element  the  same  proportion  as  the  sack  to 
the  bread  in  Falstaff 's  account.  The  panthe- 
istic emanation- doctrine  of  the  New  Plato- 
nists ;  the  evolution  of  the  universe,  through 
successive  orders  of  existence,  from  the 
primal  Nothing  called  God  ;  and  the  return- 
ing tendency  of  all  being  towards  that  point 
of  origin  (the  r^oo^o;  and  sieKfTpo^ri),  are  dog- 
mas reproduced  without  any  substantial 
alteration.  The  ideal  hierarchy  of  Proclus 
does  service,  with  a  nominal  change,  as  the 
celestial  hierarchy  of  Dionysius.  The  Divine 
Word  is  removed  from  man  by  a  long  inter- 
vening chain  of  heavenly  principalities  and 
ecclesiastical  functionaries, — becomes  little 
more  than  an  unintelligible  museum  of  arche- 
types, and  is  rather  the  remote  Illuminator 
than  the  present  Saviour  of  mankind.  The 
tendency  of  the  whole  system  was  to  repre- 
sent the  clerical  order  as  an  exact  antitype 
of  the  ideal  or  celestial  kingdom  of  God  in 
heaven.  Its  aim  was  obviously  to  centre  all 
truth  and  all  power  in  the  symbolism  and 
the  offices  of  the  Greek  church.    Hence  the 


success  of  the  imposture.  It  was  the  tri- 
umph of  sacerdotalism.  Under  the  name  of 
Dionysius,  Proclus  was  studied  and  commen- 
tated by  many  generations  of  dreaming 
monks.  Under  that  name  he  conferred  om- 
nipotence on  those  Christian  priests  whom 
he  had  cursed  in  his  heart,  while  reading 
lectures  and  performing  incantations  at 
Athens.  Under  that  name  he  contributed 
most  largely  to  those  influences  which  held 
the  religious  world  of  the  east  in  a  state  of 
stagnant  servitude  for  nine  hundred  years. 

In  the  West  these  doctrines  have  a  very 
different  history.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact, 
that  the  ideas  of  the  Alexandrian  thinkers 
have  operated  powerfully,  under  various 
forms,  both  to  aggravate  and  to  oppose  the 
corruptions  of  Christianity.  In  the  ninth 
century  John  Scotus  Erigt*na  found  time  to 
translate  Dionysius  into  Latin,  while  the 
Northmen  were  pillaging  and  burning  up  the 
S^ine,  gibbeting  prisoners  by  scores  under 
the  eyes  of  the  degenerate  descendants  of 
Charlemagne,  and  while  monks  and  priests 
were  everywhere  running  away  with  relics, 
or  jumping  for  safety  into  sewers.  But  the 
spirits  of  Plotinus  and  of  Proclus  were  now 
to  become  the  ghostly  tutors  of  a  vigorous 
race  of  minds.  The  pantheistic  system  con- 
structed by  Erigena  on  the  old  Alexandrian 
basis  was  original  and  daring.  The  seeds  be 
sowed  gave  birth  to  a  succession  of  heretics 
who  were  long  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the 
corrupt  hierarchy  of  France.  Even  where 
this  was  not  the  case,  Platonism  and  mysti- 
cism together  formed  a  party  in  the  church, 
the  sworn  foes  of  mere  scholastic  quibbling, 
of  an  arid  and  lifeless  orthodoxy,  and,  at  last, 
of  the  more  glaring  abuses  which  had  grown 
up  with  ecclesiastical  pretension.  The  Alex- 
andrian doctrine  of  emanation  was  abandon- 
ed, its  pantheism  was  softened  or  removed, 
but  its  allegorical  interpretation,  its  exalta- 
tion, true  or  false,  of  the  spirit  above  the 
letter — all  this  was  retailed,  and  became  the 
stronghold  from  which  the  ardent  mystic  as- 
sailed the  formal  schoolman,  and  the  more 
enlightened  advocate  of  the  religious  life 
exposed  the  hollo wness  of  mere  orthodoxy 
and  ritualism.  Thus  many  a  thought  which 
had  its  birth  at  Alexandria,  passing  through 
the  last  writers  of  the  empire  or  the  fathers 
of  the  church,  was  received,  after  a  refining 
process,  into  hearts  glowing  with  a  love  that 
heathendom  could  never  know,  put  to  higher 
and  more  beneficient  uses,  and  made  to  play 
its  part  again  upon  the  stage  of  time  in  a 
ffuise  of  which  its  author  could  not  even 
dream. 


•• 


1868.] 


NEO-PLATONIBM— HYPATIA. 


885 


In  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 
Neo-PIatonism  was  revived  in  Italy  by  a 
class  of  men  possessing  much  more  in  com- 
mon with  its  original  founders.  At  that 
period  not  a  trace  of  the  old  conflict  be- 
tween Paganism  and  Christianity  was  found 
surviving  in  the  south  of  Europe.  The 
church  had  become  heathen,  and  the  super- 
stition of  polytheism  was  everywhere  visible 
in  her  religious  practice.  The  temples  were 
now  churches;  Christian  legends  took  the 
place  of  the  old  mythology ;  saints  and 
angels  became  to  the  mass  what  the  ancient 
gods  had  been,  and  were  honored  by  similar 
offeringrs ;  the  carnival  represented  the  satur- 
nalia, and,  in  short,  so  far  had  the  old  faith 
and  the  new  become  united,  that  no  ancient 
Roman  returning  from  his  grave,  and  behold- 
ing the  shrines,  the  processions,  the  images, 
the  votive  tablets,  the  lamps,  the  flowers, 
could  have  failed  for  a  moment  to  recognize 
the  identity  of  the  Eternal  City.  Now  this 
world  of  Christianized  heathendoni  was 
represented,  in  philosophy  and  letters,  by 
men  who  had  inherited  both  the  doctrines 
an(i  the  spirit  of  Neo-Platonism ;  by  men  to 
whom  the  earnest  religious  movement  of  the 
north  presented  itself  as  the  same  mysterious, 
barbaric,  formidable  foe  which  primitive 
Christianity  had  been  to  the  Alexandrians. 
Thus  the  old  conflict  between  pagan  and 
Christian — the  man  of  taste  and  the  man  of 
faith — ^the  man  who  lived  for  the  past,  and 
the  man  who  lived  for  the  future — was  re- 
newed, in  the  sixteenth  century,  between  the 
Italian  and  the  German. 

The  Neo-Platonist  Academy  of  Florence 
was  not  a  whit  behind  the  Alexandrians  in 
the  worship  they  paid  to  Plato.  He  was 
extolled  from  the  pulpit,  as  well  as  from  the 
chair,  as  the  stronghold  of  Christian  evi- 
dence. He  was  declared  replete  with  Mes- 
sianic prophecy.  Ficinus  maintained  that 
lessons  from  Plato  should  make  a  part  of  the 
church  service,  and  that  texis  should  be 
taken  from  the  Parmenides  and  the  Pbilebus. 
The  last  hours  of  Socrates,  the  cock  ofiered 
to  ^sculapius,  the  cup  of  poison,  and  the 
parting  words  of  blessing,  were  made  typical 
of  the  circumstances  attending  the  Saviour's 
passion.  Before  the  bust  of  Plato,  as  be- 
fore the  image  of  a  saint,  a  lamp  burned 
night  and  day  in  the  study  of  Ficinus.  The 
hymns  of  Orpheus  were  sung  to  the  lyre 
once  more,  to  lull  those  passions  which 
apostolic  exhortation  had  done  so  little  to 
subdue.  Gemisthas  Pletho  blended  with 
the  philosophy  of  Plato  the  wisdom  of  the 
East  and  the  mythology  of  Greece,  in  the 


spirit  of  the  Alexandrian  eclectics.  Like 
them,  he  dreamed  of  a  universal  religion, 
which  should  harmonize,  in  a  philosophic 
worship,  all  human'  creeds.  Cusanus  reno- 
vated the  mystic  numbers  of  Pythagoras, 
discovered  new  mysteries  in  the  Tetractys, 
and  illustrated  spiritual  truth  by  the  acute 
and  the  obtuse  angle.  But  Ficinus  did  not 
restore  the  Athenian  Plato,  nor  Nicholas  of 
Cusa,  «the  Samian  Pythagoras.  The  Plato 
of  the  first  was  the  Plato  of  Plotinus ;  the 
Pythagoras  of  the  second  was  the  Pythago- 
ras of  Hierocles.  Pico  of  Mirandola,  the 
Admirable  Crichton  of  his  time,  endeavored 
to  combine  scholasticism  with  the  CabaU, 
to  reconcile  the  dialectics  of  Aristotle  and 
the  oracles  of  Chaldsea;  and  produced,  in 
his  Heptaplus,  an  allegorical  interpretation 
of  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  Creation, 
which  would  have  seemed  too  fanciful  in  the 
eyes  of  Hypatia  herself.  Patritius  sought 
the  sources  of  Greek  philosophy  in  Zoroas- 
ter and  Hermes,  translated  and  edited  the 
works  which  Neo  Platonists  had  fabricated 
under  their  names,  and  wrote  to  Gregory 
XIV.,  praying  that  Aristotle  might  be  ban- 
ished the  schools,  and  Hermes,  Asclepius, 
and  Zoroaster  appointed  in  his  place,  as  the 
best  means  of  advancing  the  cause  of  reli- 
gion, and  reclaiming  the  heretical  Germans. 

Protestantism  was  too  slrong  for  these 
scholars,  just  as  Christianity  had  been  too 
strong  for  the  Alexandrians.  Their  feeble- 
ness sprang  from  the  very  same  cause ;  their 
whole  position  was  sirikingly  similar.  They 
were  the  philosophic  advocates  of  a  religion 
in  which  they  had  themselves  lost  faith. 
They  attempted  to  reconcile  a  corrupt  phi- 
losophy and  a  corrupt  religion,  and  made 
both  worse.  Their  love  of  literature  and 
art  was  confined  to  a  narrow  circle  of  court- 
iers and  literati ;  and  while  the  Lutheran 
pamphlets,  in  the  vernacular,  set  all  the 
north  in  a  flame,  the  philosophic  refinements 
of  the  Florentine  dilettanti  were  aristocratic, 
exclusive,  and  powerless.  Their  intellectual 
position  was  fatal  to  sincerity,  their  social 
condition  equally  so  to  freedom.  The  des- 
potism of  the  Roman  emperors  was  more 
easily  evaded  by  a  philosopher  of  ancient 
tiroes  than  the  tyranny  of  a  Visconti  or  a 
D'Este,  by  a  scholar  at  Milan  or  Ferrara.  It 
was  the  fashion  to  patronise  men  of  letters, 
but  the  natural  return  of  subservience  and 
flattery  was  rigorously  exacted.  The  Ita- 
lians of  the  fifteenth  century  had  long  ceased 
to  be  familiar  with  the  worst  horrors  of  war ; 
and  Charies  VIIL,  with  his  ferbcions  French- 
men, appeared   to   them   another   Attila. 


886 


NBO-PLATONlSM— HYTATLA. 


[Nov. 


Each  Italian  dtate  underwent,  on  its  petty 
scale,  the  fate  of  imperial  Rome,  and  the 
Florentine  Academy  could  not  survive  for  a 
twelvemonth  its  princely  master,  Lorenzo  de 
Medici.  The  philosophic  and  religious  con- 
servatism of  Florence  was  thus  as  destitute 
of  real  vitality,  of  all  self-sustaining  power, 
as  its  prototype  at  Alexandria.  The  Floren- 
tine Platonists,  moreover,  did  not  exhibit 
that  austerity  of  manners  which  gave  Plo- 
tinus  and  Porphyry  no  little  authority  even 
among  those  to  whom  their  speculations  were 
utterly  unintelligible.  Had  Romanism  been 
unable  to  find  defenders  more  thoroughly  in 
earnest,  the  shock  she  then  received  must 
have  been  her  death-blow ;  she  must  have 
perished,  as  Paganism  perished.  But,  wise 
m  her  generation,  she  took  her  cause  out  of 
the  hands  of  a  religious  philosophy,  commit- 
ted it  to  the  ascetic  and  the  enthusiast,  and, 
strong  in  resources  heathendom  could  never 
know,  passed  her  hour  of  peril,  and  proved 
that  her  hold  on  the  passions  and  terrors  of 
mankind  was  still  invincible.  The  Platonists 
of  Alexandria  and  of  Florence  both  were 
twilight  men  ;  but  the  former  were  men  of 
the  evening,  the  latter  men  of  the  morning 
twilight.  The  passion  for  erudition,  which 
followed  the  revival  of  letters,  might  be 
wasted,  south  of  the  Alps,  on  trifles  ;  it  was 
consecrated  to  the  loftiest  service  in  the 
north.  The  lesson  conveyed  in  the  parallel 
we  have  attempted  to  draw,  is  a  grave  one ; 
twice  has  the  effort  been  made  to  render  the 
abstractions  of  a  philosophized  religion  a 
power  among  mankind — in  each  case  without 
success.  The  attempt  to  refine  away  what 
is  distinctive  of  a  revelation,  real  or  imagin- 
ary, and  to  subtilise  the  residuum  into  a  sen- 
timental theism,*  has  always  failed.  Such  a 
system  must  leave  the  indifferent  many  as 
they  were,  and  superstition  is  unchecked.  It 
must  excite  the  disdain  of  the  earnest  few, 
as  a  profane  and  puerile  trifling  with  the 
most  momentous  questions  which  can  occupy 
the  mind  of  man.  As  its  inconsistencies  be- 
come apparent,  it  will  always  be  found  to 
strengthen  the  hands  of  the  parties  it  pro- 
fesses to  oppose.  It  must  urge  the  higher 
class  of  minds  into  a  thorough  and  impartial, 
instead  of  a  one-sided  skepticism,  emd  so 
reinforce  the  ranks  of  consistent  and  abso- 
lute unbelief.  It  must  abandon  minds  of  a 
lower  order  to  all  those  religious  corruptions 
which  lull  the  conscience,  and  gratify  the 
passions.  It  has  done  nothing  to  reform  the 
world ;  and,  never  strong  enough  long  to 
oppose  a  serious  obstacle  to  progress,  it  has 
been  suffered  repeatedly  to  die  out  of  itself. 


Such  examples  in  the  past  should' much 
diminish  the  dread  which  many  feel  of  that 
would-be  religious  skepticism  among  oar- 
selves  which  essays  to  emasculate  the  truths 
of  revelation,  much  as  the  Alexandrian  and 
Florentine  Platonists  proposed  to  etherealize 
the  myths  of  polytheism  and  the  doctrines 
of  Christianity  into  a  vague  sentiment  of 
worship. 

While  the  theosophy  of  the  Alexandrian 
school  enjoyed  a  revival  in  the  hands  of  men 
of  letters,  its  theurgy  was  destined  to  impart 
an  impulse  to  the  occult  science  of  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries.  It  is  not 
a  little  interesting  to  trace  the  same  mental 
phenomena  at  the  entrance  of  the  European 
world  on  the  middle  ages,  and  at  its  exit 
from  them.  We  see  the  same  syncretism 
which  confounded  the  Oriental  and  Hellenic 
conceptiohs  together,  the  same  endeavor  to 
hold  converse  by  theurgy,  and  by  white 
magic  with  the  unseen  world.  As  Plotinus 
returns  with  Ficinus  to  the  regions  of  day, 
so  lambliohus  revives  with  Paracelsus  and 
Cornelius  Agrippa.  The  ancient  and  the 
modern  cabbalists  established  tdeir  theurgy 
on  a  common  basis.  Plotinus  and  Campan- 
ella  both  agree  on  this  point,  that  the  world 
is,  as  it  were,  one  living  organism,  all  the 
parts  of  which  are  related  by  certain  sympa- 
thies and  antipathies,  so  that  the  adept  in 
these  secret  affinities  acquires  a  mastery  over 
the  elements.  It  »was  by  this  principle, 
according  to  Agrippa,  that  art  made  nature 
her  slave.  As  r  rod  us  required  of  the 
theurgist  an  ascetic  purity,  so  Caropanella 
makes  it  an  essential  that  the  cultivator  of 
occult  science  be  a  good  Christian — onepos* 
sessing  no  mere  historic,  but  an  '*  intrinsic  '* 
faith,  a  man  qualified  alike  to  hold  commerce 
with  holy  spirits,  and  to  baffle  the  arts  of 
the  malign. 

The  spirits  called  by  lamblicbus  lords  of 
the  sublunary  eleftients  are  equivalent  to  the 
astral  spirits  of  Christian  theurgy ;  and  those 
powers  which  are  said  by  him  to  preside 
over  matter  and  impart  material  gifts,  an- 
swer to  the  elementary  spirits  of  the  Rosi* 
crucians.  Iambi ichus  and  Proclus  were  firm 
believers  in  the  efficacy  of  certain  unintelli- 
gible words  of  foreign  origin,  which  were  on 
no  account  to  be  Hellenised,  lest  they  should 
lose  their  virtue.  Cornelius  Agrippa  enjoins 
the  use  of  similar  magical  terms,  which  he 
declares  more  potent  than  names  which  have 
a  meaning,  and  of  irresistible  power,  when 
reverently  uttered,  because  of  the  latent 
divine  energy  they  contain.  The  "Shem- 
hamphorason"  of  Jewish  tradition,  and  the 


1863.] 


NEO-PIATONISM— HYPATIA. 


387 


"  Agla"  of  the  cabaliste,  are  examples.  The 
great  point  of  distinction  between  the  theur- 
gy of  the  earlier  and  of  the  later  period  is 
sufficiently  obvious.  In  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries  theurgy  came  in  to  eke  out  an  un- 
satisfactory philosophy,  and  to  prop  a  falling 
religion.  In  the  sixteenth  century  a  similar 
intrusion  into  the  unseen  world  was  the  off- 
spring of  a  newly  recovered  freedom.  It 
received  its  direction  and  encouragement,  in 
part  from  the  revived  remains  of  ancient 
tradition,  but  it  was  pursued  with  a  patience, 
an  originality,  and  a  boldness,  which  showed 
that  the  impulse  was  spontaneous,  not  de- 
rived. These  magical  essays  were  the  gam- 
bols of  the  intellect  let  loose  from  its  long 
scholastic  durance. 

In  modem  Germany,  the  philosophy  of 
Schelling  rests  in  substance  on  the  founda- 
tion of  Plotinus — the  identity  of  subject  and 
object.  It  is  generally  admitted,  that  his 
intellectual  intmtion  is  a  refined  modification 
of  the  Neo-Platonist  ecstacy.  But  it  is  in 
some  members  of  the  so-called  romantic 
school  that  the  fallacious  principle  ^f  the 
Alexandrians  is  most  conspicuous.  Freder- 
ick Schlegel  did  his  best  to  make  it  appeai* 
that  the  great  want  of  Christian  literature 
was  a  mythology  like  that  of  the  Greeks. 
His  philosophy  seeks  to  throw  over  all  Hfe 
and  history  the  haze  of  a  poetic  symbolism. 
He  was  symbol-mad;  and,  very  naturally, 
became  a  Roman  Catholic  deist,  to  indulge 
his  taste  that  way  to  the  utmost.  He  wrote 
bitter  diatribes  against  the  Reformation.  He 
depreciated  Luther  as  the  mere  translator  of 
the  Bible.  He  extolled  Jacob  Behmen  as 
the  gifted  seer  who  revealed  to  mortal  gaze 
its  utmost  mysteries.  He  evolved  as  much 
Christianity  as  he  cared  to  conserve  from  the 
fancies  of  the  Indian  Brahmins.  Such  a 
fantastic  religio-philosophy  as  this,  is  the  re- 
sult for  which  experience  bids  us  look  wher- 
ever men  attempt  thus  to  combine  a  poetical 
theosophy  with  popular  superstition.  Freder- 
ick Schelgel  was  never  ^n  authority,  and 
the  little  influence  he  once  exerted  is  rapidly 


passing  away.  This  destructive  conservatism 
— this  superstitious  skepticism — this  sub- 
tilized materialism,  is  a  contradiction  too 
monstrous  to  be  kept  alive  by  any  amount  of 
mere  cleverness.  * 

The  dialogue  Mr,  Kingsley  has  imagined 
between  Orestes  and  Hypatia  is  prophetic. 
If  ever  the  skeptical  intuitionalism  of  our 
times  should  have  the  opportunity  of  trying 
on  any  considerable  scale,  the  efficacy  of  its 
principles,  that  prophecy  would  be  fulfilled. 
It  would  then  appear  that  the  masters  in  this 
school  are  capable  of  pandering  to  the  pas- 
sions of  the  multitude  as  Orestes  did.  Their 
theories  would  be  as  impotent  to  influence 
the  general  mind  as  the  speculations  of 
Hypatia  concerning  the  myths  of  Greece. 
The  same  proud  selfishness  would  display 
itself.  The  mass  of  mankind,  *'  without  in- 
tuitions,"— the  multitude  who  never  hear  the 
mystic  voice  of  the  **  over-soul,"  or  open  the 
avenues  of  their  nature  to  the  influxes  of 
the  All,  would  be  left  of  necessity  to  them- 
selves. Their  existence  is  but  transitory ; 
their  vices  the  shadows  of  the  great  picture 
of  the  universe — a  necessary  foil,  whereby 
to  exhibit  the  super-Christian  virtues  of  the 
philosophic  few.  They  will  soon  be  resolv- 
ed into  the  aggregate  of  souls  which  make 
up  the  heart  and  motive  power  of  all  matter 
— so,  why  should  they  not  live  as  heretofore  ? 
This  people,  that  knoweth  not  our  transcen- 
dental law,  are  accursed.  This  spiritualise 
pantheism  would  not  indeed  restore,  under  its 
old  names,  the  Olympus  of  Greece,  as  the 
Alexandrians  strove  to  do.  But  it  would 
come  to  the  same  thing  upon  their  leaguing, 
as  they  would  be  forced  to  do,  with  some 
form  or  other  of  that  baptized  paganism  we 
call  popery.  These  religions  for  the  few, 
however,  with  their  arrogant  refinement  and 
idle  subtlety,  have  playt'd  the  |>art  of  priest 
and  Levite  too  often.  That  faith  which  has 
proved  the  Good  Samaritan  and  true  neigh- 
bor to  suflering  humanity  can  alone  finally 
secure  its  homage  and  its  love. 


VOL.  XXX  NO.  m. 


2a 


388 


A  GOSSIP  ABOUT  LAUREATESL 


[Nov., 


From    Bent]ey*s  Mitcellany^- 


A    GOSSIP     ABOUT    LAUREATES 


The  laurel  is  the  fig-tree  of  the  poet.     Ho 
sits  uoder  its  shadow  with  a  double  assar- 
aDce  of  fame  and  protection.     What  a  book 
might   be  written   on   laurels !     How  inti- 
mately they  are  mixed  up  with  the  history  of 
poetry,  the  romance  of  love,  and  the  annals 
of  crime.     The  ancients  crowned  their  poeta 
with  bays,  which,   says   old   Selden,  ''are 
supposed  not  subject  to  any  hurt  of  Jupiter's 
thunderbolts,  as  other  trees  are."     Petrarch 
regarded  the  laurel  as  the  emblem  of  his 
mistress,  and  is  said  to  have  been  so  affected 
by  the  sight  of  one  on  landing  from  a  voy- 
age, that  he  threw  himself  on  his  knees  before 
it.     From  this  leaf,  too,  which  has  formed 
the  coronal  of  the  Muses  through  all  time, 
subtlest  poison  is  distilled,  and  the  assassina- 
tions  committed   by  the  agency   of  laurel- 
water  would  make  a  curious  companion- vol- 
ume  to  the  lives  of  the  laureates.     Thus 
there  is  an  adjusting  element  in  the  laurel  to 
avenge  as  well  as  to  reward,  and  the  love 
which  finds  its  glory  in  the  bays  may  also 
extract  its  vengeance  from  them.     We  need 
not  go  beyond  the  poets  themselves  for 
illustrations  of  the  two  principles  of  good 
and  evil — the  life  and  death — typified  in  the 
laurel.     Their  noblest  works  exhibit  the  one ; 
their  abuse  of  their  power,  their  littlenesses, 
their  satires,  envy  and  detraction  betray  the 
other.     We  have  two  familiar  examples  in 
Dryden  and  Pope.     If  the  "  Religio  Laici,** 
and  the  "  Annus  Mirabilis,*'  the  "  Essay  on 
Man,"  and  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock"  contain 
the  living  principle,  may  we  not  carry  out 
the  metaphor  by  saying,  that  "  Mac-Fleck- 
noe"  and  the  "Dunciad"  were  written  in 
laurel-water  ?     Frussic  acid  could  not  have 
done  its  work  more  effectually  than  the  ink 
which  traced  these  anathemas.     The  laurel 
that  confers  immortality  also  carries  death  in 
its  leaves. 

This  is  a  strange  matter  to  explore.  There 
is  a  warning  in  it  that  dulls  a  little  of  the 
brightness  of  all  poetical  .glories.  Suppose 
we  assemble  under  a  great  spreading  laurel- 
tree,  all  the  poets  who  have  worn  the  bays  in 
England  and  drank  or  compounded  their 
tierces  of  wine  from  Ben  Jonson  to  Tenny-  | 


I  son* — let  us  hear  what  confessions  they  have 
to  make,  what  old  differences  to  re-open  or 
patch  up,  what  violated  friendships  to  re- 
knit,  mingled  with  reproaches  and  recrimin- 
ations— 

"  Digesting  wars  with  heart-uniting  loves." 

It  will  be  as  good  as  a  scene  at  the  **  Mer- 
maid," with  a  commentary  running  through 
to  point  a  mocal  that  was  never  thought  of 
when  the  Browns  and  Draytons  met  over 
their  sack.     First  of  all,  here  is  Ben  Jonson 
telling  us  how  he  escaped  having  his  ears 
cropped,  and  his  nose  slit  (rather  more  cer- 
emoniously than  the  like  office  was  perform- 
ed on  Sir  John  Coventrjr)  for  having  assisted 
in  casting  odium  on  the  Scotch  ;  and  how  by 
a  begging  petition  to  Charles  I.,  he  got  the 
pension  of  a  hundred  marks,  worth  about 
thirteen  shillings  and  four  pence  each,  raised 
to  so  many  pounds,  with  a  tierce  of  wine  in 
perpetuity  added  to  them,  for  the  benefit 
and  delectation  of  his  successors.     Upon  this, 
Dryden,  taking  a  large  pinch  of  snuff,  ob- 
serves, that  his  successors  had  little  to  thank 
him  for  ;  that  nothing  could  exceed  the  mean- 
ness of  Charles  II.,  who  rewarded  men  of 
letters  by  empty  praise,  instead  of  keeping 
them  out  of  jails  by  a  little  timely  munifi- 
cence :  that  he  had  said  as  much  in  a  famous 
panegyric  of  his  upon  that  monarch's  mem- 
ory, insinuating  his  contempt  for  the  shab- 
biness  of  the  deceased  sovereign,  in  a  line 
which  the  stupid  people  about  the  court  took 
for  an  extravagant  compliment ;  and  that,  as 
for  the  tierce  of  Canary,  it  was  well  known 
that  James  II.,  who  had  as  much  sympathy 
for  poets  and  poetry  as  one  of  his  own  Flem- 
ish coach -horses,  had  robbed  him  of  it  when 
he  wore  the  laurel,  although  he  changed  his 
religion  with  the  change  of  kings,  and    cele- 
brated high  mass  in  the  "  Hind  and  Panther," 
with  a  thousand  times  more  splendour  than 

*  For  whose  historiee,  traced  chronologically,  the 
reader  is  referred  to  a  recent  volame  of  pleaaant 
literary  biography,  called  *'  The  Lives  of  the  Lau- 
reates.'^' By  W.  S.  Austin,  Jan.,  B.A.,  and  John 
Balph,  M.A. 


1853.] 


A  GOSSIP  ABOUT  LAUREATES. 


839 


ever  it  was  celebrated  in  the  private  chapel 
at  Whitehall. 

It  cannot  be  supposed  that  Shad  well  will 
sit  by  quietly,  and  hear  such  remarks  as  these 
in  silence  ;  accordingly,  no  sooner  has  Dryden 
cncluded  (no  one  will  venture  to  speak  while 
Dryden  is  speaking,  out  of  that  old  habit  of 
deference  with  which  he  used  to  be  treated 
at  Will's  Coffee-house)  than  Shadwell,  roll- 
ing his  great  globular  body  right  round  to 
the  table,  and  looking  with  rather  an  impa- 
tient and  impudent  stare  at  Dryden,  reminds 
him  of  the  obligations  he  owed  to  James  II., 
who,  if  he  deprived  him  of  his  tierce  of 
Canary,  increased  his  pension  ;  and  as  there 
is  no  longer  any  reason  for  being  delicate 
about  such  subjects,  he  adds,  that  the  whole 
world  believes  that  he  changed  his  religion 
for  the  sake  of  that  petty  one  hundred  pounds 
a-year.  At  all  events,  that  the  coincidence 
of  the  conversion  and  the  gratuity  looked 
very  much  like  one  of  those  astrological  con- 
junctions from  which  men  like  Dryden  him- 
self, drew  ominous  inferences ;  and  that  even 
Dr.  Johnson,  who,  considering  his  own  strong 
opinions  on  religion,  was  singularly  generous 
to  Dryden's  memory,  could  not  resist  observ- 
ing, that  "  that  conversion  will  always  be 
suspected,  which,  apparently,  concurs  with 
interest ;  and  he  that  never  finds  his  error  till 
it  hinders  his  progress  towards  wealth  and 
honor,  will  not  be  thought  to  love  Truth  for 
herself.'*  The  theme  is  too  tempting  for 
Shad  well  to  stop  here ;  it  revives  the  ancient 
grudge  in  all  its  original  bitterness,  and  he 
cannot  help,  for  the  ghost  of  him,  closing  up 
with  a  touch  of  his  ancient  dare-devil  humor 
to  the  effect  that,  for  his  part,  he  can  not  say 
he  was  much  Surprised,  when  he  heard  of 
Dryden's  j^erversion ;  that  he  had  seen  it 
plainly  enough  all  along,  even  so  far  back  as 
the  trial  of  Shaftesbury ;  that,  in  fact,  be 
believed  all  religions  were  the  same  to  a  man 
who,  within  the  compass  of  a  few  months, 
had  prostituted  his  pen  to  Puritanism,  Pro- 
testantism, and  Popery ;  that  the  true  solu- 
tion of  the  case  was  to  be  found  in  the 
charge  long  before  brought  against  him,  and 
that  he  was  now  more  than  ever  convinced, 
that,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  Dryden 
was  neither  more  nor  less  than  an  atheist. 

This  does  not  disturb  Dryden  much, 
although  it  shocks  the  ghostly  company  of 
laureates  sitting  round  about,  some  of  whom 
belong  to  a  more  polite  age,  and,  intimate  as 
they  are  with  these  Billingsgate  conflicts  in 
books,  are  not  prepared  to  be  personally 
mi  led  up  in  one  of  them.  But  Dry  den's 
calmness,  and  that  slow  confident  smile  of 


contempt  with  which  he  surveys  the  rotun- 
dity of  Shadwell's  person,  as  if  he  were 
again  taking  its  measure — 

"  Round  as  a  globe,  and  liquored  every  chink !" 

re-assures  them.  If  Dryden  is  not  hurt  at 
being  called  an  atheist,  why  should  they  ? 
Every  man  looks  to  himself  in  this  world,  and 
human  frailty  still  haunts  the  inspirations  of 
these  laureled  shades.  Dryden  is  going  to 
say  something — he  takes  another  huge  pinch, 
and,  tapping  bis  box  with  the  air  of  a  con- 
queror, repeats  the  terrible  name  of  "  Og  I" 
two  or  three  times,  with  increasing  emphasis 
at  each  repetition.  Concerning  the  term 
Atheist,  he  says,  he  disposed  of  that  long 
ago,  and  flung  it  back  with  interest  upon  the 
"  buffoon  ape    who 

**  Mimicked  all  sects,  and  had  his  own  to  choose." 

He  was  quite  content  to  rest  upon  the 
controversy,  as  he  left  it  in  the  great  convo- 
cation of  beasts  he  had  brought  together 
under  the  auspices  of  the  British  lion,  and 
whenever  such  reeling  asses  as  Shad  well 
should  show  themselves  able  to  comprehend 
the  mass  of  theological  learning  he  had  heap- 
ed up  in  weighty  couplets  for  the  use  of  dis- 
putants in  all  time  to  come,  he  would  be 
ready  to  answer  any  indictment  they  might 
concoct  against  him.  In  the  meanwhile,  he 
would  recommend  Shad  well  to  control  his 
tongue,  and  try  to  look  sober,  and  niend  his 
manners.  Rochester  had  done  him  greater 
mischief  by  praising  his  wit  in  conversation 
than  he  had  ever  done  him  by  exposing  his 
stupidity  in  print ;  and  one  thing  was  quite 
certain,  that  whatever  Shadwell  might  have 
suffered  in  reputation  from  Dryden's  pen,  to 
that  same  pen,  charged  as  it  was  with  con- 
tempt, he  was  solely  indebted  for  his  eleva- 
tion to  the  laurel.  Shadwell  should  remem- 
ber that,  and  not  be  ungrateful.  If  he,  Dry- 
den, had  not  singled  him  out  as  the  True 
Blue  Protestant  poet,  and  given  him  that  ap- 
pellation at  a  time  when  it  was  likely  to  stick. 
King  William  would  never  have  degraded 
the  office  which  he,  and  Ben,  and  Will  Dav- 
enant  had  held,  to  confer  it  upon  a  fellow 
who,  whatever  his  drunken  companions  of 
the  tavern  might  think  of  him,  was  never  a 
poet,  as  he  had  long  ago  told  him,  of  God's 
own  making. 

Now,  as  Shadwell  had  always  been  re- 
markable in  the  flesh  for  intemperance  of  all 
sorts,  and  was  as  "  hasty"  in  his  temper  as 
in  his  plays,  of  which  he  usually  composed  an 
act  IB  four  or  five  days,  we  may  easily  imagine 


•340 


A  GOSSIP  ABOUT  LAUREATEa 


[Nov., 


how  he  would  retort  uponDryden  after  such 
a  speech  as  this.  The  most  vulnerable  part 
of  Dryden's  character  was  his  jealousy  of 
other  poets,  and  Shad  well,  naturally  enough, 
indemnifies  himself  for  all  such  abuse,  by 
ascribing  it  to  envy.  He  refreshes  Dry  den's 
memory,  by  recalling  the  praises  he  used  to 
lavish  upon  him  before  they  quarreled.  Did 
he  not  once  say  in  a  prologue,  that  Shad  well 
was  the  jj^reatest  of  all  the  comedy  writers, 
and  second  to  only  Ben  himself  (who,  by  the 
way,  was  the  only  man  Shadwell  would  con- 
sent to  be  second  to) ;  and  he  would  now  tell 
him  to  his  face,  that  the  real  spring  of  the 
malignity  with  which  he  afterwards  pursued 
him,  was  his  success  in  the  theatre.  He 
never  could  forgive  him  his  success.  He 
hated  every  man  that  succeeded.  How  used 
he  to  treat  poor  Crowne  ?  Was  it  not  no- 
torious that  when  a  play  of  Crowne's  failed 
(which,  he  confessed,  was  no  uncommon  oc- 
currence), Dryden  would  shake  hands  cor- 
dially with  him,  and  tell  him  that  his  play 
deserved  an  ovation,  and  that  the  town  was 
not  worthy  of  such  a  writer;  but  when 
Crowne  happened  to  succeed,  he  would  hardly 
condescend  to  acknowledge  him.  He  could 
not  help  admitting  that  Crowne  had  some 
genius ;  but  then  he  would  account  for  it  by 
saying,  that  his  father  and  Crowne*s  mother 
were  very  well  acquainted.  Who  was  Dry- 
den's  father?  He  never  knew  he  had  a 
father.  He  doubted  the  fact.  He  might 
have  had  a  dozen,  for  all  he  knew,  but  he 
never  heard  of  any  one  in  particular. 

This  sort  of  scurrilous  personality  is  not 
agreeable  to  Nahum  Tate.  He  has  not  for- 
gotten his  share  in  the  Psalms,  and  thinks 
that  it  becomes  him  to  put  a  stop  to  a  dis- 
cussion which  borders  on  licentiousness.  He 
does  not  pretend  to  say  who  Dryden's  father 
was  :  but  he  knows  both  Dryden  and  Shad- 
well  well,  and  bears  an  allegiance  to  the 
former  (who  rendered  him  the  greatest  honor 
his  miserable  life  could  boast)  that  will  not 
suffer  him  to  hear  Dryden  lampooned  in  this 
fashion  with  impunity.  If  Dryden  was  en- 
vious of  rivals,  it  was  a  failing  incidental  to 
all  men  ;  but  he  could  tell  Shadwell  that  his 
contempt  was  larger  than  his  envy,  as  Shad- 
well might  discover,  if  he  would  sit  down 
quietly  and  dispassionately,  and  read  the 
second  part  of  "  Absalom  and  Ahitkophel," 
once  more.  He  might  recommend  the  per- 
usal of  that  book  with  perfect  propriety, 
because  it  was  well  known  to  all  writers  and 
critics  that  the  particular  passages  which  re- 
lated to  Shadwell,  and  his  friend  El kanah 
Settle,  were  not  written  by  him.     Perhaps 


the  internal  evidences  would  be  sufficient  to 
show  that.  He  did  not  set  up  for  a  poet, 
although  he  did  write  all  the  rest  of  the 
j)oem,  and  made  an  alteration  of  Shakspeare's 
"  Lear,"  which  still  keeps  the  stage  in  pref- 
erence to  the  original  itself.  It  must  be 
admitted  that  it  wa^  quite  consistent  with  a 
modest  appreciation  of  his  own  merits,  to 
plume  himself  a  little  on  those  incidents  in  a 
career  to  which  posterity  attached  a  value 
his  grudging  contemporaries  denied.  It  was 
something,  he  thought,  to  be  honestly  proud 
of,  that  his  Psalms  are,  to  this  hour,  used  in 
the  Church  of  England,  and  that  the  name 
of  Nahum  Tate  is  likely  to  go  down  to  the 
end  of  time,  or  at  least  as  long  as  the 
English  language  lasts,  in  every  parish  church 
and  playhouse  in  the  kingdom.  He  might 
be  a  very  bad  poet.  It  was  not  for  him  to 
say  anything  on  that  point.  But  be  should 
be  glad  to  be  informed  what  other  English 
poet,  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  present 
hour,  could  boast  of  ministering  so  variously 
and  so  constantly  to  the  profit  and  pleasure 
of  the  English  people — on  the  Sunda}6  in 
the  organ-loftf  helped  out  by  a  genera]  cho- 
rus of  the  congregation,  and  all  through  the 
week  on  the  stage,  for  he  supposed  there 
was  hardly  a  day  in  the  week  in  which 
"  King  Lear,"  as  he  improved  it,  was  not 
played  somewhere  ?  Yet  how  was  he,  who 
had  left  these  imperishable  legacies  to  pos- 
terity, treated  by  his  own  generation  ?  It 
was  true  he  succeeded  Shadwell  in  the 
laureateship.  Laureateship  1  Starvation ! 
Talk,  indeed,  of  pensions  and  tierces  of  Can^ 
ary ;  talk  of  duns  and  bailifiTs.,  When  the 
Earl  of  Dorset  died,  he  ought  to  have  died 
too,  for  he  had  lived  literally  on  the  chanty 
of  that  pious  nobleman,  and  when  he  lost 
his  patron  he  was  left  to  starve.  Was  he 
not  obliged  to  fly  from  his  creditors  and  take 
refuge  in  the  Mint,  where,  to  the  shame  of 
the  age,  he  died  of  want?  To  be  sure,  that 
is  tf  common  fate  amongst  the  poets,  and  he 
ought  not  to  complain  of  a  dispensation 
under  which  so  many  better  men  had  suflfer- 
ed ;  but  that  was  the  least  of  it.  Once  he 
was  dead  he  might  have  been  left  to  his  re- 
pose. The  jibe  and  the  sarcasm,  however, 
followed  him  to  his  grave,  What  had  be 
done  to  Pope,  who  was  only  lisping  verse 
when  he  was  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  that 
he  should  hold  him  up  to  universal  ridicule  ? 
And  how  had  it  happened  that  every  pre- 
tender to  verse  or  criticism,  history  or  biog- 
raphy— not  one  in  a  hundred,  perhaps,  of 
whom  had  ever  read  a  line  of  the  Psalms — 
should  with  one  accord  fix  upon  his  name  as 


1853.] 


A  GOSSIP  ABOUT  LAUREATEa 


341 


the    common  mark   for    their  ignominious 
ribaldry  ? 

Nicholas  Rowe  hears  these  lementations 
with  an  appearance  of  some  uneasiness.  He 
was  always  believed  to  have  been  rather  of 
a  religious  turn,  and  there  is  a  misapprehen- 
sion abroad  concerning  the  succession  to  the 
laureateship,  which,  as  an  honest  man,  he 
desires  to  correct.  And  so,  drawing  his 
hand  somewhat  solemnly  over  his  chin,  and 
turning  his  handsome  face  mildly  towards 
our  ruffled  Nahum,  he*  call  to  his  recollection 
the  time  and  circumstances  of  his  death. 
He  tells  him  that  Dr.  Johnson,  who  has 
made  several  mistakes  of  a  graver  kind,  ex- 
presses some  fears  that  he,  l^icholas  Rowe, 
obtained  the  laurel  by  "  the  ejection  of  poor 
Nahum  Nate,  who  died  in  the  Mint,  where 
he  was  forced  to  seek  shelter  by  extreme 
poverty."  Nothing  could  be  more  erroneous. 
Upwards  of  a  fortnight  elapsed  after  that 
melancholy  event  before  he  was  appointed. 
He  hoped  his  friend  Nahum  would  do  him 
justice  with  posterity  on  that  point.  It  really 
made  him  very  uncomfortable;  for,  ghost  as 
he  was>  he  looked  back  with  a  justifiable 
satisfaction  to  a  life  of  irreproachable  integ- 
rity,^ and  he  wished  it  to  be  understood  that 
Mr.  Tate  enjoyed  all  the  honors  and  ad- 
vantages, whatever  they  were,  of  the  office  of 
Court  Poet  up  to  the  moment  of  his  demise. 
He  was  sorry  that  the  translator  of  the 
Psalms  should  have  had  so  much  occasion 
for  putting  their  divine  philosophy  into 
practice.  Want  was  a  hard  thing.  He 
could  not  account  for  Mr.  Tate's  distresses. 
It  was  no  business  of  his  to  intrude  upon  the 
private  sorrows  of  a  brother  poet ;  but  he 
knew  that  Mr.  Tate  had  his  pension,  or  ought 
to  have  had  it,  to  the  fast  hour  of  his 
chequered  struggle.  For  his  own  part,  he 
had  nothing  to  complain  of,  except  that  the 
full  tide  of  prosperity  flowed  in  upon  him 
rather  late  in  life.  He  enjoyed  three  unin- 
terrupted years,  however,  of  high  and  palmy 
existence,  which  was  more,  he  suspected, 
tjian  many  poets  could  count  up  through 
their  variegated  lives,  and  at  the  close  he 
was  honored  with  tributes  which  enabled  him 
to  rest  satisfactorily  in  a  fine  tomb.  He  must 
say  that  he  did  not  agree  with  his  predecessor 
in  the  slur  he  flung  upon  Pope.  Mr.  Tate 
might  have  personal  reasons  for  taking 
posthumous  offence  at  the  *'  Dunciad."  Of 
course  people  will  sometimes  be  carried  away 
by  their  feelings  ;  but  Pope  was  a  great  poet, 
and  a  judicious  critic,  and  had  written  an 
epitaph  for  a  certain  monument  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  which  he  could  not  help  es- 


teeming as  one  of  the  most  exquisite  things 
in  the  whole  range  of  funereal  literature. 
In  that  epitaph,  Pope  stated  that  he,  the 
author  of  "Jane  Shore,"  was, 

**  Blessed  in  his  genius — in  his  love  too  blest." 

He  always  thought  that  line  a  remarkable 
specimen  of  condensed  expression.  It  said 
nearly  everything  of  him  that  he  could  have 
wished  to  be  said;  and  had  he  written  it 
himself,  which  he  had  not  the  presumption 
to  suppose  he  could  have  done,  there  was 
only  oue  slight  improvement  he  would  have 
desired  to  make.  It  was  true  to  the  letter ; 
but  it  did  not  tell  the  whole  truth.  Pope 
forgot  that  he  had  been  married  a  second 
time.  The  line  did  not  bring  out  the  full 
flavor  of  that  double  happiness.  The  merest 
verbal  alteration  would  adapt  it  felicitously 
to  the  true  state  of  the  case ;  thus : — 

**  Blessed  in  bis  genius — ^in  bis  love  twice  blest  !*' 

That  would  have  been  a  complete  biography. 
At  the  same  time,  he  had  no  doubt  that  Pope 
avoided  any  allusion  to  his  first  wife,  from  a 
feeling  of  delicacy  towards  the  second,  at 
whose  expense  the  monument  was  built.  He 
might  have  thought  it  scarcely  decorous  to 
record  upon  the  marble  erected  by  one  lady 
the  fact  that  the  gentleman  who  slept  below 
had  been  previously  blest  by  another  lady. 
Of  the  laureateship,  as  an  asylum  for  the  last 
suffering  poet  of  an  age,  or  as  a  reward  for 
the  most  distinguished,  he  did  not  feel  that 
it  became  him  to  say  much.  Mr.  Tate  was 
better  qualified  to  speak  on  that  subject,  as 
he  held  the  bays  longer  than  anybody  else, 
having  been  upwards  of  three-and- twenty, 
years,  or  thereabouts,  singing  in  the  purlieus 
of  the  palace.  What  sort  of  songs  Mr.  Tate 
sang,  he  confessed  he  did  not  know.  He 
never  read  any  of  them.  They  might  have 
been  very  numerous,  and  of  an  excellence  as 
unique  as  the  Psalms.  He  could  only  speak 
to  his  own  discharge  of  those  arduous  duties ; 
and  here  he  could  conscientiously  declare 
that  he  never  omitted  a  legitimate  occasion 
of  glorifying  the  throne  by  the  exercise  of 
whatever  little  Pindaric  skill  he  could  devote 
to  the  service  of  the  House  of  Hanover. 

The  eulogy  on  Pope  could  not  fail  to  pro- 
duce a  sensation  amongst  the  laureled  hear- 
ers. There  is  hardly  a  man  amongst  them 
of  this  period  who  had  not  suffered  at  his 
hands ;  and  none  had  greater  reason  to  resent 
Rowe's  praises  than  the  versifier  who  suc- 
ceeded him  in  office.  The  outside  world  has 
never  heard  of  the  Reverend  Lawrence  Eus- 


842 


A  GOSSIP  ABOUT  LAUREATES. 


[N07., 


den — yet  here  he  sits  amongst  the  group  of 
laureates,  lookins^  as  pert  and  panegyrical  as 
any  of  them.     What  manner  of  poet  he  was, 
may  be  best  described  by  such  critical  terms 
as  fustian,  rhodomontade,  stuff,  rubbish,  and 
the  like.     He  seems  to  have  been  expressly 
intended  by  nature  for  the  dignity  which  a 
friendly  Lord  Chamberlain  imposed  upon  him 
in  an  access  of  delirium,  just  as  an  intoxica- 
ted Viceroy  of  Ireland  once  conferred  knight- 
hood on  some  sweltering  boon -companion. 
He  wrote  hard  for  the  office  before  he  ob- 
tained it.     All  the  spontaneous  verses  of  his 
that  have  pome  down  to  us,  are  laureateous 
in  character.     They  are  coronation  and  birth- 
day odes  in  disguise — divine  right  rhymes, 
of  the  true  entire  possibilities  of  pork  stamp 
— they  go  the  whole  extremities  of  Court 
adulation — have  a  prophetic  aroma  of  the 
Canary  in  them — and  point  him  out  for  the 
office  long  before  he  could  have  dreamt  of 
leaping  into  \t.     For  twelve  dreary  years  he 
showerM  down  his  official  lyrics  upon  an 
ungrateful  public.     The  critics  hissed  hij), 
the  poets  shunned   him,   lords  and  ladies 
bore   his  flatteries  as  well  as  they  could. 
They  were  obliged  to  do  duty  in  that  as  in 
other  horribly  fatiguing  things.     It  was  like 
standing  behind  the  Queen's  chair  at  the 
Opera  all  night.    What  could  be  done  ?     He 
was  a  parson  and  poet-laureate,  a  combina- 
tion which  courtiers  could  not  openly  resist. 
It  does  not  appear  whether  he  drank  the 
whole  tierce  of  Canary  himself,  or  compro- 
mised it  for  a  pipe  of  port,  or  a  puncheon  of 
whiskey ;  but  probability  is  in  favor  of  the 
last  supposition,  for  he  is  known  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  as  we  are  informed  by  his 
lait  biographers  (and,  we  presume,  they  are 
the  last  he  will  ever  have),  to  have  given 
himself  up  to  drinking  and  Tasso.     He  lived 
in  a  state  of  conspicuous  obscurity.    Poet 
laureate!  as  he  was  for  that  long  dismal  term 
of  a  dozen  years,  and  writing  hard  as  he  did 
all  sorts  of  eulogistic  extravagancies,  there  is 
nothing  known  whatever  of  his  life,  beyond 
the  two  least  important  items  in  it — his  birth 
and  his  death. 

He  makes  a  motion  as  if  he  were  about  to 
say  something,  and  the  dreaded  name  ot 
Pope  is  already  hovering  on  his  lips,  when 
every  one  of  the  laureates  turns  his  back 
upon  him.  Even  Pye  looks  aside  with  the 
air  of  a  high-born  gentleman,  for  bad  a  poet 
as  he  is,  he  is  Horace  and  Virgil,  and  a 
hundred  Homers  compared  with  Lawrence 
Eusden.  Colley  Qibber  breaks  in  on  the 
awkward  pause,  aad  feels  it  necessary  to 
apologize  for  having  allowed  himself  to  be 


appointed  successor  to  the  last-named  indi- 
vidual.    But  he  assures  his  friends  that  it 
was    purely  a   political  appointment.    He 
avows  frankly  that  poetry  was  not  his  forte. 
He  hopes  he  is  too  good  a  judge  to  be  mis- 
led by  any  egotism  of  that  sort.     He  never 
was  a  poet,  and  he  knows  it  quite  as  well  as 
they  can  tell  him.     He  is  fully  aware  of  his 
strength  and  his  weakness.     He  thinks  that 
he  has  substantial  claims  upon  posterity  as  a 
dramatic   writer.     Changes    of    habits  and 
manners  operate  fatally  on  the  permanence 
of  comedy ;  but  he  had  as  little  reason  to 
complain  of  neglect  as  greater  writers.  What 
had  become  of  Etherege  and  Wycherley? 
Was  Congreve  or  Vanbrugh  ever  heard  of 
now  ?     Why  should  he  murmur  at  a  fate  in 
which  they  participated  ?     One  thing  he  had 
done,  which  would  make  him  remembered 
as  long  as  books  were  read.     He  need  not 
say  that  he  alluded  to  the  Apology  for  his 
life.     Perhaps  they  might  say  he  had  done  a 
better  thing  in  living  the  life  that  called  for 
such  an  apology.    Of  course.    He  must  have 
lived  it,  or  he  could  not  have  had  the  mate- 
rials to  work  upon.     That  toas  a  book — an 
enduring  book.  It  outlived  the  libels  of  Pope. 
It  was  better  known,  more  read,  and  cer^ 
tainly  contained  more  agreeable  reading  than 
the    "  Dunciad."     At  least,   that   was  his 
opinion.    He  did  not  pretend  to  say  that  his 
appointment  to  the  laureateship  was  alto- 
gether a  proper  appointment ;  but  he  could 
not  help  remarking  that  he  considered  an 
actor  equal  to  a  parson  any  day.     He  was 
not  so  bad  an  actor  as  Eusden  was  a  parson; 
and  the  amount  of  merit  a  man  discovered  in 
whatever  he  undertook  to  do  was  the  stan- 
dard by  which  he  should  be  relatively  tested. 
It  would  be  invidious  to  make  any  compari- 
son with  his  predecessor  on  the  score  of  po- 
etry.    He  had  always  acted  candidly  in  his 
controversies,  and  even  when  Pope  hunted 
him  with  malevolent  falsehoods,  he  answered 
him  openly  and  honestly.     He  would  take 
no  advantage  of  Mr.  Eusden ;  but  as  it  was 
clearly  impossible  that  any  person  who  had 
been  decently  educated,  or  who  had  enough 
of  capacity  to  put  two  lines  of  correct  Eng- 
lish into  a  couplet,  could  sink  the  office  lower 
than  it  had  been  sunk  by  that  gentleman,  he 
believed  there  was  no  great  vanity  in  taking 
credit  to  himself  for  not  having  left  it  in  a 
more  degraded  state  than  he  had  found  it. 

Mr.  Wiliiam  Whitehead,  and  the  Reverend 
Thomas  Warton,  who  were  next  in  succession 
to  the  laurel,  may  be  excused  for  exhibiting  a 
little  dissatisfaction  at  Mr.  Cribber's  observa- 
tions.    Whitehead,  the  most  industrious  of 


1858.] 


AS  AWKWARD  STAGEL 


843 


all  the  makers  of  odes,  and  Warton,  the  most 
refined*  have  special  reasons  of  their  own  for 
dissenting  from  most  of  these  remarks. 
Whitehead  thinks  Mr.  Cihber  a  little  vulgar. 
It  is  easly  understood  why  he  should  be 
rather  sensitive  on  the  matter  of  gentility. 
No  men  are  so  genteel  as  men  of  obscure 
birth — the  thing  tbey  ought  to  be  most 
proud  of,  when  they  have  lifted  themselves 
as  Whitehead  did,  by  the  force  of  their  merits 
into  high  positions.  Bat  Whitehead  is  evi- 
dently nervous  on  this  point.  He  wishes  it 
to  be  seen  that  he  is  a  gentleman,  and  would 
have  it  known  that  he  visits  lords.  Let  us  for- 
give hhn  the  foible.  He  makes  so  large  a 
demand  on  our  forbearance  in  other  respects 
that  we  can  afford  to  tolerate  his  weakness 
in  a  trifle  of  this  nature.  If  we  could  as 
easily  pardon  his  forty-eight  odes  as  we  can 
overlook  his  ambition  to  be  thought  well  of 
in  good  society,  it  would  be  more  to  the  pur- 
pose of  his  fame.  But  Whitehead  is  no 
longer  to  be  fouod  among  the  British  Poets. 
He  is  like  a  racer  that  has  fallen  away  out 
of  sight,  and  his  place,  in  the  language  of 
the  turf,  is — no- where.  Not  so  Warton. 
He  stands,  like  a  granite  statue,  on  bis  His- 
tory of  Poetry.  But  his  pedestal,  solid  as  it 
was  when  it  was  first  set  up,  is  crumbling 
rapidly  under  his  feet.  The  opening  of  a 
thousand  new  sources  of  knowledge  since  his 
time  has  developed  to  us  at  once  the  extent 
of  his  industry  and  the  inadequacy  of  its  re- 
sults. It  b  no  longer  a  history  to  which  stu- 
dents can  repaur  with  safety;   but  it  will 


always  be  regarded  with  respect  as  a  pioneer 
labor  which  has  faciliated  the  onward  prog- 
ress of  subsequent  research.  Warton  might 
might  justly  object  to  the  indifferent  tone  in 
which  Cibber  speaks  of  the  laureateship. 
He  had  himself  adorned  the  office  with 
graceful  chaplets,  disclosing  much  ingenuity, 
learning  and  taste.  He  does  not  choose  to 
be  confounded  with  the  poetasters  and 
parasites  who  brought  it  into  scandal  and  dis- 
repute. He  knows  bow  many  men  of  rank 
in  the  republic  of  letters  refused  to  be  laurea- 
ted,  and  could  not  be  prevailed  upon  to  drink 
the  Canary.  But  A«  had  accepted  the  crown, 
and  tapped  the  tierce,  and  redeemed  the 
honor  of  poetic  royalty.  Ho  says  as  much 
to  the  bards  around  him ;  and  says  it  with 
an  impassioned  voice,  that  calls  up  a  similar 
vindication  from  his  successor. 

To  him  Pye — as  the  Epic  writers  have  it. 
But  what  Pye  said  may  be  unhesitatingly  con- 
signed to  oblivion  with  his  own  Epic,  which 
nobody  born  within  the  last  thirty  years  ever 
heard  of,  and  the  name  of  which  shall  not 
be  disentombed  by  us. 

For  any  further  information  concerning  the 
Laureates — going  as*far  back  as  old  Drayton, 
whose  fine  head,  in  the  only  portrait  that  is 
known  of  him,  is  always  encircled  by  a  wreath 
— we  refer  the  curious  reader  to  the  volume  of 
biographies  just  published  by  Messrs.  Austin 
and  Ralph.  It  is  a  book  full  of  biographicsl 
particulars,  and  critical  suggestions,  and  will 
amply  repay  the  hour  consumed  in  its 
perusal. 


-»♦■ 


-♦♦■ 


An  Awkward  Stage. — ^There  is  an  amusing 
story  which  I  believe  that  renowned  collector, 
Mr.  Joseph  Miller,  or  his  successors,  have 
incorporated  into  their  work.  Sir  Bichard 
Steel,  at  a  time  when  he  was  much  occupied 
with  theatrical  affairs,  built  himself  a  pretty 
private  theatre,  and,  before  it  was  opened  to 
his  friends  and  guests,  was  anxious  to  try 
whether  the  hall  was  well  adapted  for  hear- 
ing. Accordingly  he  placed  himself  in  the 
mobt  remote  part  of  the  gallery,  and  begged 
the  carpenter  who  had  built  the  house  to 
speak  from  the  stage.  The  man  at  first  said 
that  he  was  unaccustomed  to  public  speaking, 


I  and  did  not  know  what  to  say  to  his  honor ; 
but  the  good-natured  knight  called  out  to 
him  to  say  whatever  was  uppermost ;  and, 
after  a  moment,  the  carpenter  began,  in  a 
voice  perfectly  audible :  "  Sir  Richard  Steel  T* 
he  said,  ''  for  three  months  past,  me  and  my 
men  has  been  a  working  in  this  theatre,  and 
we've  never  seen  the  color  of  your  honor's 
money :  we  will  be  very  much  obliged  if 
you'll  pay  it  directly,  for  until  you  do  we 
won't  drive  in  another  nail."  Sir  Richard 
said  that  his  friend's  elocution  was  perfect, 
but  that  he  didn't  like  his  subject  much. 
Thackeray. 


844 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS. 


[Nov., 


From  Colburn'B  New  Monthly. 


GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS. 


Nothing  had  we  heard  of  "  Nile  Notes" 
or  its  author,  when  our  eye  was  •*  fixed  "  by 
a  collection  of  mottoes  imprinted  on  the  fly- 
leaf. Anon  we  were  fain  to  construe  **  Nile 
Notes'*  as  signifying  promissory  notes,  issued 
by  a  capitalist  of  substance,  and  paying 
something  more  than  simple  interest.  The 
traveler  who  had  chosen  epigraphs  of  such 
a  kind,  was  himself  likely,  We  inferred,  to  in- 
dite a  noticeable  autograph.  The  bush  he 
had  hung  out  was  so  unlike  the  dry  scrubby 
stump  commonly  in  use,  that,  in  spite  of  the 
of  the  adage,  we  drew  up  at  his  door,  in  the 
assurance  of  finding  good  wine  within.  In- 
deed, so  fond  is  our  admiration  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  and  so  susceptible  our  ear  to  the 
musical  pomp  of  his  rhetoric,  that  we  should 
probably  have  been  won  to  read  "Nile 
Notes"  bad  its  title-page  glistened  with  none 
other  motto  than  the  old  knight's  stately, 
sonorous,  mystically  solemn  sentence :  **  Ca- 
nopus  is  afar  off;  Memnon  resoundeth  not  to 
the  sun;  and  Nilus  heareth  strange  voices," 
— ^a  sentence,  by  the  way,  which  reminds  us 
of  a  lady-friend,  that  she  ^as  often,  in  read- 
ing Sir  Thomas,  '^felt  a  sense*  from  the 
organ-like  grandeur  of  his  style,  before  she 
fully  comprehended  it."  Then  again,  there 
are  mottoes  from  the  Arabian  Nights,  and 
from  Death's  Jest  Book,  and  the  Sphinx 
Unriddled,  and  Browning*s  Paracelsus,  and 
Werne's  White  Nile,  and — not  unaptly,  for 
Mr.  Curtis  sometimes  mouths  it  in  almost 
imitative  parade — from  Ancient  Pistol  him- 
self, who 

Sings  of  Africa  and  golden  joys. 

Nor  did  a  perusal  of  "Nile  Notes"  break 
its  word  of  promise  to  the  hope.  It  made 
us  acquainted  with  a  writer  sometimes  labor- 
ed and  whimsical,  but  on  the  whole,  rich  in 
in  fancy,  and  lavish  of  his  riches — master  of 

'  •  Aa  in  Wordsworth's  sablime  dream  of  the  Arab, 
in  whose  shell  the  poet 

*' Heard  that  instant  in  an  unknown  tongue^ 

Which  yet  he  understood,  articulate  sounds^ 
A  loud  prophetic  blast  of  harmony." 

Prelude,    Book  V, 


a  style  glowing  with  the  brilliancy  of  the  re- 
gion he  depicts,  and  attuned  to  Memnonian 
resonances  and  the  ''strange  voices"  of  Nilus. 
The  stars  of  midnight  are  dear  to  him ;  to 
his  spirit  there  is  matter  in  the  ''  silence  and 
the  calm  of  mute  insensate  things ;"  his 
ear  loves  to  lean  "  in  many  a  secret  place ;" 
and  albeit  a  humorist  and  a  "  quiz,"  with  the 
sharp  speech  at  times  of  a  man  of  the  world, 
and  a  dash  of  the  cynic  in  his  composition, 
he  is  no  stranger  to  that  vacant  and  pensive 
mood  when  past  impressions,  greater  and 
deeper  than  he  knew,  **  flash  upon  that  in- 
ward eye  which  is  the  bli^s  of  solitude.'' 

Sarcasm  and  rhapsody  are  so  interfused  in 
"  Nile  Notes,"  that  one  division  of  readers 
admires  or  abhors  just  those  particular  chap- 
ters or  pages  which  another  division  abhors 
or  admires.  Lydia  Languish  is  in  ecstasies 
with  the  sentimental  paragraphs,  '<  love-laden 
with  most  subtle  sweetness,  or  "  fringed  with 
brilliant  and  fragrant  flowers,"  and  breath- 
ing an  atmosphere  of  ^'silent,  voluptuous 
sadness."  Major  Pendennis  reads  the  satiri- 
cal expositions  of  knavish  dragomen  and 
travelling  Cockaigne,  and  swears  the  How- 
adji  is  a  fellow  after  his  own  (Major  P.'s) 
heart  (jxt)  ysvotrol),  and  that  there's  no  non- 
sense about  the  man,  no  bosh  in  him,  sir. 

Knavish  dragomen  and  their  knight-errant 
viciims  are  sketched  amusingly  enough  among 
these  Nile  Notables.  So  are  the  crew  of  the 
76^^;  its  old  grey  Egyptian  captain,  who 
crouched  all  day  long  over  the  tiller  with  a 
pipe  in  his  mouth,  and  looked  like  a  heap  of 
blankets,  smouldering  away  internally,  and 
emitting  smoke  at  a  chance  orifice  ;  brawny, 
one-eyed  Seyd,  a  clumsy  being  in  the  ape 
stage  of  development — slightly  sensual,  and 
with  ulterior  views  upon  the  kitching  drip- 
pings— and  alas,  developing  backwards,  be- 
coming more  baboonish  and  less  human  every 
day  ;  Saleh  or  Satan,  a  cross  between  the 
porcupine  and  the  wild  cat ;  together  with  a 
little  old-maidish  Bedouin,  '^  who  told  won- 
derful stories  to  the  crew,  and  prayed  end- 
lessly," and  other  grisly  mariners,  all  bad 
workers,  and  lazy  exceedingly — familiarity 


1853.] 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS. 


345 


with  whom  bred  decided  contempt,  and  con- 
vinced the  Howadji,  in  spite  of  his  prepos- 
sessions to  the  contrary,  that  there  is  fallacy 
in  the  fashion  which  lauds  the  Orient,  and 
prophesies  a  renewed  grandeur  ("  as  if  the 
East  could  ever  again  be  as  bright  as  at 
sunrise") — and  that  if  you  would  enjoy 
Egypt,  you  must  be  a  poet,  not  a  philosopher 
(the  Howadji  is  a  cross  of  both) — must  be 
a  pilgrim  of  beauty,  not  of  morals  or  politics, 
if  you  would  realize  your  dream.  '*  The 
spent  summer  re- blooms  no  more,"  he  says ; 
"  the  Indian  summer  is  but  &  memory  and  a 
delusion.  T{ie  sole  hope  of  the  East  is 
Western  inoculation.  The  child  must  suckle 
the  age  of  the  parent,  and  even  ''Medea's 
wondrous  alchemy"  will  not  restore  its  pecu- 
liar prime.  If  the  East  awakens,  it  will  be 
no  longer  in  the  turban  and  red  slippers,  but 
in  hat  and  boots.  The  West  is  the  sea  that 
advances  for  ever  upon  the  shore — the  shore 
cannot  stay  it,  but  becomes  the  bottom  of  the 
ocean.  .  .  .  Cairo  is  an  English  station 
to  India,  and  the  Howadji  does  not  drink 
sherbet  upon  the  Pyraiuids,  but  champagne." 
And  thus  he  anticipates  a  speedy  advent  of 
the  day  when,  under  the  sway  of  England  or 
of  Russia  (after  the  lion  and  the  polar  bear 
have  "shivered  the  desert  silence  with  the 
roar  of  their  struggle"),  Father  Ishraael  shall 
be  a  sheikh  of  honor,  but  of  dominion  no 
longer,  and  sit  turbaned  in  the  chimney  cor- 
ner, while  his  hatted*  heirs  rule  the  house — 
and  the  children  cluster  around  him,  fasci- 
nated with  his  beautiful  traditions,  and  curi- 
ously comparing  their  little  black  shoes  with 
his  red  slippers. 

What    an   open    eye,    nevertheless,   our 

*  Lamentable  will  it  be  if  the  Hat  lasts  a  para 
moQiit  fashion  until  that  time  of  day — and  a  shame 
it  will  be  to  the  arbiters  of  taste,  to  every  living 
"  Glass  of  Fashion  and  Mould  of  Form,"  if  that 
moBstrona  device  of  ngliness  and  discomfort  be 
allowed  to  displace  the  Turban.  It  will  seem,  if 
Turban  be  rejected  for  Hat^  that  the  heads  of  men 
are  thickened,  rather  than  their  thouguts  widened, 
by  the  process  of  the  snne.  For  we  hold  with  the 
lively  author  of  "  .^thetics  of 'Dressy'*  that  the  Hat 
is  one  of  the  strangest  vestimental  anomalies  of  the 
nineteenth  century: — ''What  a  covering!  what  a 
termination  to  the  capital  of  that'  pillar  of  the 
creation,  Man  I  what  an  ungraceful,  mis-shapen, 
useless  and  uncomfortable  appendage  to  the  seat  of 
reason — the  brain-box  I  Does  it  protect  the  head 
from  either  heat,  cold,  or  wet  ?  Does  it  set  off  any 
natural  beauty  of  the  human  cranium  f  Are  its 
lines  in  harmony  with,  or  in  becoming  contrast  to, 
the  expressive  features  of  the  face  f  Is  it,''  <fec,  <&c. 
In  the  single  article  of  head-gear  we  should  have 
hotly  sympathized  with  that  D'Israelitish  youth,  of 
whom  Charles  Lamb  asked,  in  the  parting  scramble 
for  hats,  what  be  had  done  with  his  turban  f 


tourist  has  for  the  sublime  and  beautiful  in 
.Egyptian  life,  or  life  in  death,  may  be  seen 
in  every  section  of  his  sketch-book.  Witness 
his  description  of  the  temples  at  Aboo  Sim- 
bel,  and  the  solemn  sbssion  there  of  kingly 
cplossi — figures  of  Kameses  the  Great, 
**  breathing  grandeur  and  godly  grace" — the 
stillness  of  their  beauty  '*  steeped  in  a  placid 
passion,  that  seems  passion lessness" — the 
beautiful  balance  of  serene  wisdom,  and  the 
beautiful  bloom  of  eternal  youth  in  their 
faces,  with  no  trace  there  of  the  possibility 
of  human  emotion* — a  type  of  beauty  alone 
in  sculpture,  serene  and  god-like.  Witness, 
too,  his  picture  of  the  tombs  of  the  kings  at 
Thebes  —  of  the  Memnonium  —  of  Karnak, 
*' older  than  history,  yet  fresh,  as  if  just 
ruined  for  the  romantic,"  as  though  Gam- 
byses  and  his  Persians  had  marched  upon 
Memphis  only  last  week — and  of  the  Sphinx, 
grotesque  darling  of  the  desert,  '*  its  bland 
gaze  serious  and  sweet,"  a  voice  inaudible 
seeming  to  trail  from  its  *'  thinned  and  thin- 
ning lips,"  declaring  its  riddle  still  unread, 
while  its  eyes  are  expectantly  settled  towards 
the  East,  whence  they  dropped  not  "  when 
Cambyses  or  Napoleon  came." 

Young  America  is  much  given  to  Carlylish 
phraseology,  and  Mr.  Curtis  deals  largely  on 
his  own  account  in  this  questionable  line. 
This  is  one  of  the  "  conceits"  which  preju- 
dice many  against  him.  He  loves  to  repeat, 
in  the  Latter-day  Pamphleteer's  fashion, 
certain  compound  epithets,  indifferently  felic- 
itous  at   times,   of    his   own   coinage  —  as 

*  Mr.  Curtis's  impression  of  Egyptian  sculpture 
remind  us  of  a  passage  in  the  English  Opium- 
eater's  writings,  in  reference  to  the  Memnon's  head, 
which,  then  recently  brought  from  Egvpt,  stru<^ 
him  as  "simply  the  sublimest  sight  which  in  this 
sight-seeing  world  he  had  seen.''  Regarding  it 
as  not  a  human  but  as  a  symbolic  head,  he  read 
there,  he  tells  us,  "First:  the  peace  which  passeth 
all  understanding.  Secondly:  the  eternity  which 
baffles  and  confounds  all  faculty  of  computation ; 
the  eternity  which  had  been,  the  eternity  which 
wan  to  be.  Thirdly :  the  diffusive  love,  not  such 
as  rises  and  falls  upon  waves  of  life  and  mortality, 
not  such  as  sinks  and  swells  by  undulations  of 
time,  but  a  procession-^an  emanation  from  some 
mystery  of  endless  dawn.  You  durst  not  call  it  a 
smile  that  radiated  from  the  lips,  the  radiation  was 
too  awful  to  clothe  itself  in  adumbrations  or  memo- 
rials of  flesh  .  .  .  The  atmosphere  was  the 
breathlessness  which  belongs  to  a  saintly  trance; 
the  holy  thing  seemed  to  live  by  silence."^  Surely 
the  Memnon's  head  must  have  been  a  sublime  and 
oft-recurring  presence  in  the  Opium-eater's  dreams 
—and  a  national  set-off,  we  would  hope,  against 
the  horrors  of  being  kissed,  with  cancerous  kisses, 
by  crocodiles  (see  "  OonfesBionB''X  ^°d  lost  witii 
unutterable  slimy  things,  amongst  reeds  and  Nilotio 
mud. 


846 


GEORGE  WHJJAM  COTBTia 


[Nov. 


"  Bunyan  PiloUr,"  '« Poet  Harriet"  {scil  Miss 
Martineau),  '*  beaming  elderly  John  Bull," 
"Rev.  Dr.  Duck,"  "Mutton  Suet,"  and 
"  Wind  and  Rain."  This  habit  of  "  calling 
names"  has  set  many  a  matter-of-fact  reader 
against  him.  More,  however,  have  taken 
exception  to  his  prolonged  description  of  the 
dancing-girls  of  Esue — a  voluptuous  theme 
on  which  'tis  pity  that  chapter  after  chapter 
should  find  him  ^*  still  harping,"  with  volun- 
tary and  variations  not  attuned  to  healthy 
English  taste.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to  pro- 
nounce him  all  levity  and  quicksilver — to 
deny  him  a  heart  that  can  ache  with  deep 
feeling,  or  a  brain  that  can  throb  with  gener- 
ous and  elevated  thought.  Capricious  he  is, 
and  eccentric,  waywardly  independent  in 
outspoken  habits — dashingly  reckless  in  his 
flights  of  fancy,  and  quaintly  exaggerated  in 
his  parts  of  speech  ;  but  tbey  must  have  read 
him  very  superficially,  or  in  some  translation 
of  their  own,  who  overhear  not  amid  his 
fantasies,  a  still  sad  music  of  humanity,  an 
earnestness,  a  sober  sadness,  a  yearning  sym- 
pathy with  Richter's  trinity,  the  Good,  the 
Beautiful  and  the  True. 

The  Howadji  of  the  Nile  Notes  appeared 
next,  and  in  continuation,  as  the  *'  Wanderer 
in  Syria."  He  tells  us  that,  of  the  Eastern 
tours  without  number,  of  learned  and  poetic 
men,  with  which  he  is  acquainted,  the  most 
either  despairing  of  imparting  the  true 
Oriental  flavor  to  their  works  (thinking  per- 
haps, that  Eastern  enthusiasm  must  needs 
exhale  in  the  record,  as  the  Neapolitans  de- 
clare that  the  ZachrymcB  Chruti  can  have 
the  genuine  flavor  only  in  the  very  Yesuvian 
vineyard  where  it  grows)— or  hugging  some 
forlorn  hope  that  the  reader's  imagination 
will  warm  the  dry  bones  of  detail  into  life — 
do  in  effect  write  their  books  as  bailiffs  take 
an  inventory  of  attached  furniture  : — "  Item. 
One  great  pyramid,  four  hundred  and  ninety- 
eight  feet  high. — Item.  One  tomb  in  a  rock, 
with  two  bushels  of  mummy  dust. — Item. 
Two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  over  a  desert. — 
Item.  One  grotto  at  Bethlehem,  and  con- 
tents,— to  wit:  ten  golden  lamps,  twelve 
silver  ditto,  twenty  yards  of  tapestry,  and  a 
marble  pavement."  Let  no  student  of  sta- 
tistics, therefore, — let  no  auctioneer's  cata- 
logue-loving soul, — let  no  consulting  actuary, 
addicted  to  tables  and  figures — let  no  politi- 
cal economist,  no  census- taking  censor,  no 
sturdy  prosaist,  look  for  a  kindred  spirit  in 
thb  Howadji,  or  for  memoires  pour  servir, 
serviceable  memorabilia,  in  his  picturesque 
pages.    His  avowed  object  is,  not  to  state  a 


fact,  but  to  impart  an  impression.  His  creed 
is  that  the  Arabian  Nights  and  Hafiz  are 
more  valuable  for  their  practical  communi- 
cation of  the  spirit  and  splendor  of  Orien- 
tal life,  than  all  the  books  of  Eastern  travel 
ever  written.*  And  he  affirms  the  existence 
of  an  abiding  charm  in  those  books  of  travel 
only,  which  are  faithful  records  of  individual 
experience,  under  the  condition,  always,  that 
the  individual  has  something  characterisUc 
and  dramatic  in  his  organization — heroic  in 
adventure,  or  of  graceful  and  accurate  culti- 
vation— with  a  nature  en  rapport  with  the 
nature  of  the  land  he  vbits. 

From  Cairo  to  Jerusalem,  and  from  Jeru- 
salem to  Damascus,  the  Wanderer  meanders 
(not  maunders)  on,  in  his  "  brilliant,  pictur- 
esque, humorous,  and  poetic"  manner.  The 
people  he  discusses  are,  some  of  them,  the 
same  as  those  known  in  "Nile  Notes" — 
though  they  "  come  out"  with  less  power, 
and  with  fewer  salient  points.  A  new,  and 
mark  worthy  acquaintance  we  form  in  the  in- 
stance of  MacWhirter.  And  who  is  Mac 
Whirter?  A  bailie  from  the  Salt-market? 
or  a  bagman  from  a  Paisley  house  ?  or  a 
writer  from  Charlotte- square?  or  a  laird 
from  the  wilds  of  Ross  ?  or  a  red- whiskered 
half- pay  of  the  Scots*  Greys  ?  Nay  ;  Mac 
Whirter  is  our  Howadji's  "ship  of  the 
desert,"  poetically  speaking;  or,  in  plain 
prose,  his  camel : — the  great,  scrawny,  sandy, 
bald  back  of  whose  head,  and  his  general 
rusty  toughness  and  clumsiness,  insensibly 
begot  for  him  in  his  rider's  mind  this  Carlyl- 
ish  appellative.  An  immense  and  formida- 
ble brute  was  MacWhirter — held  in  semi- 
contempt,  semi-abhorrence  by  the  Howadji, 
as  indeed  the  camel  species  at  large  seems  to 
be ;  for  he  regards  them  as  "  strange  demoni- 
ac animals,"  and  describes,  apparently  with 
a  shudder,  their  amorphous  and  withered 
frame,  and  their  level-lidded,  unhuman,  and 
repulsive  eyes.  The  name  "ship  of  the 
desert,"  he  accepts,  however,  and  dilates  up- 
on, as  suggestively  true.  The  strings  of 
camels  perpetually  passing  through  the 
streets  of  Cairo,  threading  the  murmurous 
city  life  with  the  desert  silence,  he  likens  to 
mariners  in  tarpaulins  and  pea-jackets,  who 
roll  through  the  streets  of  seaports  and  as- 
sert the  sea.     And  in  the  desert  itself,  not 

*  Of  which  books  he  pronounces  Eothen  certainly 
the  beat^  as  being  brilliant^  picturesque,  humorous 
and  poetic.  Yet  he  complains  of  even  E<ythen  that 
its  author  is  a  cockney,  who  never  puts  off^  the 
Englishman,  and  is  suspicions  of  his  own  enthuidaaiD, 
which,  therefore,  sounds  a  little  exaggerated. 


1858.] 


GEOROE  WILLIAM  CUKTIS. 


847 


only  is  the  camel  the  means  of  navigation, 
but  his  roll  is  like  that  of  a  vessel,  and  his 
long,  flexible  neck  like  a  pliant  bowsprit.* 

The  Howadji  found  MacWhirter's  neck  too 
long  and  flexible  by  half,  when,  in  his  first 
desert  days,  he  thought  to  alter  the  direction 
of  the  beast  by  pulling  the  halter  (instead  of 
touching  the  side  of  his 'neck  with  a  stick,) 
and  found,  to  his  consternation,  that  he  only 
drew  the  long  neck  quite  round,  so  that  the 
'*'  great  stupid  head  was  almost  between  his 
knees,  and  the  hateful  eyes  stared  mockingly 
at  his  own/'  The  weariness  and  tedium  of 
this  kind  of  locomotion  are  vividly  described 
— its  continuous  rock,  rock — ^jerk,  jerk — till 
you  are  sick  of  the  thin,  withered  slip  of  a 
tail  in  front,  and  the  gaunt,  stiff  movement 
of  the  shapeless,  tawny  legs  before  you — 
while  the  sluggish  path  trails  through  a  de- 
file of  glaring  sand,  whose  sides  just  con- 
temptuously obstruct  your  view,  and  exasper- 
ate you  because  they  are  low  and  of  no  fine 
outline.  Wearied  and  fevered  in  the  desert 
of  Arabia,  the  sun  becomes  Mandragora,  and 
you  sleep.  And  lo  !  the  pomp  of  a  wintry 
landscape  dazzles  your  awaking :  the  sweeps 
and  drifts  of  the  sand-hills  among  which  you 
are  winding,  have  the  sculpturesque  grace  of 
snow.  Up  rises  a  seeming  lake,  circled  with 
low,  melancholy  hills,  bare,  like  the  rock- 
setting  of  mountain  tarns :  and  over  the 
whole  broods  the  death  of  wintry  silence. 
The  Howadji's  picture  of  Jerusalem,  the 
••  Joy  of  the  whole  Earth,"  is  comparatively 
tame.  The  Bethlehem  grotto  forms  a  high- 
colored  piece— "  gorgeous  with  silver  and 
golden  lamps,  with  vases  and  heavy  tapes- 
tries, with  marbles  and  ivories — dim  with  the 
smoke  of  incense,  and  thick  with  its  breath. 
In  the  hush  of  sudden  splendor  it  is  the 
secret  cave  of  Ala-ed-deen,  and  you  have 
rubbed  the  precious  lamp."  The  Jordan 
winds  imposing  through  these  pages — the 
*'  beautiful,  bowery  Jordan" — its  swift,  turbid 
stream  eddying  through  its  valley  course, 
defying  its  death  with  eager  motion,  and 
with  t^e  low  gurgling  song  of  living  water : 
fringed  by  balsam  poplars,  willows,  and 
oleanders,  that  shrink  from  the  inexorable 
plain  behind  it,  and  cluster  into  it  with  trem- 
bling foliage,  and  arch  it  with  green,  as  if 
tree  and  river  had  sworn  forlorn  friendship 
in  that  extremity  of  solitude.      The  Dead 


*  Tbe  marine  analogy  in  question  was  strengthen- 
ed and  fixed  for  ever  by  one  of  Mr.  Curtis's  fellow-  | 
,  pilgrims,  a  German,  who,  he  tells  ns,  "  with  the  air 
of  a  man  who  had  not  slept,  and  to  whom  the 
Weet-Oestlicher  Divan  was  of  small  acconnt,  went 
off  in  the  grey  dawn,  sea-si^  upon  his  oameL 


Sea  lies  before  us  like  molten  lead ;  lying 
under  the  spell,  not  of  Death,  but  of  Insan- 
ity— for  its  desolation  is  not  that  of  pure 
desert,  and  that  is  its  awfulness.  The  Vale 
of  Zabulon  comes  in  triumphant  relief; 
flowers  set,  like  stars,  against  the  solemn 
night  of  foliage;  the  broad  plain  flashing 
with  green  and  gold  state- livery  of  the  royal 
year  ;  the  long  grasses  languidly  overleaning 
winding  watercourses,  indicated  only  by  a 
more  luxuriant  line  of  richness ;  the  bloom- 
ing surfaces  of  nearer  hills,  and  tbe  distant 
blue  mistiness  of  mountains,  walls,  and  bul- 
warks of  the  year's  garden,  melting  in  the 
haze,  sculptured  in  the  moonlight,  firm  as 
relics  of  a  fore-world  in  the  celestial  amber 
of  cleai*  afternoons.  We  coast  the  Sea  of 
Galilee — embosomed  in  profound  solitude 
and  mountainous  sternness;  and  scrutinize 
its  population — the  men  in  sordid  rags,  with 
long  elfish  earloeks,  a  wan  and  puny  aspect, 
and  a  kind  of  driveling  leer  and  cunning  in 
the  eye — "  a  singular  combination  of  Boz's, 
Fagin  and  Carlyle's  Apes  of  the  Dead  Sea  ;'^ 
— the  women,  however,  even  comely,  with 
fair  round  faces  of  Teutonic  type,  and  clad 
in  the  *^  coarse  substantiality  of  tbe  German 
female  costume."  Longingly  and  lingeringly 
we  gaze  on  Damascus,  the  "Eye  of  the 
East" — whose  clustering  minarets  and  spires 
as  of  frosted  flame,  glitter  above  the  am- 
brosial darkness  of  endless  groves  and  gar- 
dens ;  the  metropolis  of  Romance,  and  the 
well-assured  capital  of  Oriental  hope  ;  on  the 
way  to  no  Christian  province,  and  therefore 
unpurged  of  virgin  picturesqueness  by  West- 
em  trade.  Each  Damascus  house  is  a  para- 
dise— each  interior  a  poem  set  to  music,  a 
dream  palace,  such  a  pavilion  as  Tennyson 
has  built  in  melody  for  Haroun  El  Raschid. 
In  this  way  doth  the  Howadji  etch  his 
Wanderings  in  Syria. 

His  characteristic  enthusiasm,  skepticism, 
sentiment,  and  satire  might  be  illustrated 
from  many  a  passage.  Thus,  in  Gaza,  city 
which  he  had  vaguely  figured  to  himself 
when,  a  child,  he  listened  wondering  to  the 
story  of  Samson,  Sunday  came  to  him  "  with 
the  old  Sabbath  feeling,  with  that  spirit  of 
devotional  stillness  in  the  air  which  broods 
over  our  home  Sundays,  irksome  by  their 
sombre  gravity  to  the  boy,  but  remembered 
by  the  man  with  sweet  sadness."  Thus  he 
pleads  for  youth's  privilege  to  love  the  lotus, 
and  thrive  upon  it ;  saying,  "  Let  Zeno  frown. 
Philosophy,  common  sense,  and  resignation, 
are  but  synonyms  of  submission  to  the  in- 
evitable. I  dream  my  dream.  Men  whose 
hearts  are  broken,  and  whose  faith  falters. 


S48 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS. 


[Nov., 


discover  that  life  is  a  warfare,  and  chide  the 
boj  for  loiteriDg  along  the  sea-shore,  and 
loving  the  stars.     But  leave  him,  inexorable 
elders,   in   the  sweet  entanglement  of  the 
'  trailing   clouds   of  glory*   with   which  he 
comes  into  the  world.     Have  no  fear  that 
they  will  remain  and  dim  his  sight.     Those 
morning  vapors  fade  away — you  have  learned 
it.     And  they  will  leave  him  chilled,  philo- 
sophical and  resigned,  in  '  the  light  of  com- 
mon day* — ^you  have  proved  it.     But  do  not 
starve  him  to-day,  because  he  will  have  no 
dinner  to-morrow."     And  these  eldern  sages 
are  reminded,  that  the  profoundest  thinkers 
of  them  all  have  discovered  an  inscrutable 
sadness  to  be  the  widest  horizon  of  life,  and 
that   the  longing  eye  is  more  sympathetic 
with  Nature,  than  the  shallow  stare  of  prac- 
tical skepticism  of  truth  and  beauty.     The 
•*  mixed  mood*'  of  our  Wanderer — at  once 
pointedly  indicative,  tenderly  optadve,  vague- 
ly infinitive — passes  through  a  strange  con- 
jugation :  sometimes  he  sneers,  sometimes  is 
almost  caught  suppressing  a  sob,  often  a 
sigh.     He  IS  sarcastic  upon  tourist  Anglo- 
Catholics  at  the  Calvary  Chapel,  "  holding 
candles,  and  weeping  profusely^* — and  upon 
the  Mount  Zion  Protestant  mission,  by  which 
'*  the  tribes  of  Israel  are  gathered  into  the 
fold  at   the   rate    of  six,  and  in  favourable 
years,  eiglit  converts  per  annum.'*     He  is 
pathetic  on  the  solicitude  of  Mary,  at  the 
fountain  of  El  Bir,  when  she  discovered,  on 
her  bomeward  route,  that  the  child  of  Jesus 
had  tarried  in  Jerusalem — ^and  it  is  her  mourn- 
ful figure  that  there  haunts  his  imagination 
— Madonna,  elected  of  the  Lord  to  be  the 
mother   of  the  Saviour,   and   yet,   blessed 
above  women,  to  taste  little  maternal  joy,  to 
feel  that  He  would  never  be  a  boy,  and,  with 
such  sorrow  as  no  painter  has  painted,  and 
no  poet  sung,  to  know  that  even  already  He 
must  be  about  His  Father*8  business.     He  is 
serious  on   the   sanctity   of  Jerusalem — in 
whose  precincts  the  image  of  its  Great  King 
in  the  mind  perpetually  rebukes  whatever  is 
not  lofty  ana  sincere  in  your  thoughts,  and 
sternly  requires  reality  of  all  feeling  exhibit- 
ed tliere  ;  for,  though  in  Rome  you  can  toler- 
ate tinsel,  because  the  history  of  the  Faith 
there,  and  its  ritual,  are  a  kind  of  romance, 
it  is  intolerable  in  Jerusalem,  where,  in  the 
presence  of  the  same  landscape,  and  within 
the  same  walls,  you  have  a  profound  personal 
feeling  and  reverence  for  the  Man  of  Sorrows. 
And  closely  in  keeping  with  his  tone  of 
thought  is  the  finale — the  Nunc  Dimittis  he 
calls  it — of  his  Wanderings,  when  he  pictures 
himself  homeward  bound,  receding  oyer  the 


summer  sea,  and  watching  the  majesty  o^ 
Lebanon  robing  itself  in  purple  darkness,  and 
lapsing  into  memory,  until  Night  and  the 
Past  have  gently  withdrawn  Syria  from  his 
view — then  sighing  that  the  East  can  be  no 
longer  a  dream,  but  a  memory — feeling  that 
the  rarest  romance  of  travel  is  now  ended — 
grieving  that  no  wealth  of  experience  equals 
the  dower  of  hope,  because 

What's  won  is  done,  Joy's  soul  lies  in  the  doing — 

and,  as  a  snow-peak  of  Lebanon  glances 
through  the  moonlight  like  a  star,  fearing 
lest  the  poet  sang  more  truly  than  he  knew, 
and  in  another  sense, 

The  youth  who  farther  from  the  East 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended. 
Until  the  man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

And  so  the  Howadji  leaves  us.  Is  not  his 
leave-taking  sorrowfully  significant?  Con- 
tinually— whether  truly  or  not — he  reasons 
thus  with  life. 

Who  would  not  have  predicated  an  Eastern 
fantasy — Eastern  in  subject  and  in  tone — of 
his  ''  Lotos-eating :  a  Summer  Book  ?*'  All 
his  known  antecedents  warranted  the  expec- 
tation of  something  far  removed  from  that 
great  New  World  that  "  spins  for  ever  down 
the  ringing  grooves  of  change,'*  and  of  which 
all  true  Lotos-eaters  would  testify,  saying, 

We  have  had  enough  of  action,  and  of  mo- 
tion we, 
Roird  to  starboard,  roll'd  to  larboard,  while  the 
surge  is  seething  free, 

in  our  go-a-head  career,  and  therefore 

Give  us  long  rest  or  death,  dark  death,  or  dream- 
ful ease. 

But  this  "  Summer  Book"  is  in  fact,  a  record 
of  Mr.  Curtis*s  summer  tour  among  the  hills 
and  lakes  of  his  native  land.  The  Lotos- 
eater  is  a  shrewd  and  satirical,  as  well  as 
poetical  observer,  who  steams  it  up  the  Hud- 
son, and  ridicules  the  outer  womanhood  of 
the  chambermaid  at  Catskill,  and  reveals  how 
the  Catskill  Fall  is  turned  on  to  accommodate 
parties  of  pleasure,  and  criticises  dress  and 
manner  and  dinner  at  Saratoga,  ojid  is  skep- 
tical where  others  are  enthusiastic  at  Lake 
George,  and  impatiently  notes  the  polka- 
dancing  and  day-long  dawdling  of  Newport, 
with  its  fast  horses,  fast  men,  and  fast  women, 
— its  whirl  of  fashionable  equipages,  its  con- 


1858.J 


OEOBOE  WILUAM  CURTIS 


349 


fused  din  of  "  hop"  music,  scandal,  flirtation, 
serenades,  and  supreme  voice  of  the  sea 
breaking  through  the  fog  and  dust.  Not 
that  the  prevaihng  tone,  however,  is  ironical. 
On  the  contrary,  his  own  poetical  habit  of 
thought  and  feeling  colors  and  warms  every 
page,  and  sustains  its  predominance  by  fre- 
quent citations  from  his  favourite  minstrels. 
Thus  we  find  him  again  and  again  quoting 
whole  pieces  from  Herrick,  and  introducing 
Uhland's  Rhine  ballad,  "  Take,  0  boatman, 
thrice  thy  fee" — and  Heine's  tenderly-phrased 
legend  of  Lorelei — and  tid-bits  from  Words- 
worth's Yarrow,  and  Tennyson's  Princess, 
and  Longfellow's  Waif,  and  Keats'  Nightin- 
gale, and  Waller's  •'  Go,  lovely  Rose  !  *  and 
Charles  Lamb's  "  Gipsy's  Malison,"  and 
George  Herbert,  and  Shelley,  and  Browning, 
and  Charles  Kingsley,*  and  (for  is  not  he  also 
among  the  poets?)  Thomas  de  Quincey. 
Being  no  longer  on  Eastern  ground,  the 
author's  style  is,  appropriately  enough,  far 
more  subdued  and  prosaic  than  when  it  was 
the  exponent  of  a  Howadji ;  yet  of  brilliant 
and  rhapsodical  passages  there  is  no  lack. 
His  characteristic  vein  of  reflection,  too,  pur- 
sues its  course  as  of  old — and  the  blood 
thereof,  which  is  the  life  thereof,  will  repay 
extraction.!    American  as  he  is,  to  the  core, 

*  The  lines,  namely,  in  **  Alton  Ijooke,"  beginning 

"  O  Mary,  go  and  call  the  cattle  home," 

which  certainly  have  a  pictorial  power,  and  a  wild 
suggestive  music,  all  their  own — and  of  which  Mr. 
Curtis  jasUy  says :  ^*  Who  that  feels  the  penetrating 
pathos  of  the  song  bat  sees  the  rain-shroud,  the 
straggling  nets,  and  the  lonelinesB  of  the  beach  ? 
There  is  no  modem  verse  of  more  tragic  reality." 

f  We  are  here  too  stinted  for  room  to  apply  the 
lancet  with  effect  But  in  illustration  of  the  aphor- 
istic potentiality  (*ug  *sifog  *6(<£iv)  of  the  Lotos- 
eater,  we  may  refer  to  his  wise  contempt  for  an  in- 
discriminate eulogy  of  traveling,  as  though  it  in- 
volved an  opus  operatum  grace  and  merit  of  its 
own— saying,  "  A  mile  horizontally  on  the  surfi&ee 
of  the  earth  does  not  carry  yon  one  inch  towards 
ite  centre,  and  yet  it  is  in  the  centre  that  the  gold 
mines  are.  A  man  who  truly  knows  Shakspeare 
only,  is  the  master  of  a  thousand  who  have  squeez- 
ed the  circulating  libraries  dry/' 

The  following,  again,  has  the  trne  Emerson  stamp: 
"Any  great  natural  object — a  cataract,  an  alp,  a 
storm  at  sea — are  seed  too  vast  for  any  sudden 
flowering.  They  lie  in  experience  moulding  life. 
At  length  the  pure  peaks  of  noble  aims  and  the 
broad  flow  of  a  generous  manhood  betray  that  in 
some  happy  hour  of  youth  you  have  seen  the  Alps 
and  lYiagara.'' 

One  more,  and  a  note- worthy  excerpt:  *'  He  is  a 
tyro  in  the  observation  of  nature  who  does  not 
know  that,  by  the  sea,  it  is  the  sky-cape,  and  not 
the  landscape,  in  which  enjoyment  liesi  If  a  man 
dwelt  in  the  vidnity  of  beautiful  inland  scenery,  yet 
dear  the  sea,  his  horse's  head  would  be  turned  d^y 


he  by  no  means  contends  that  the  home- 
scenery  he  depicts  is  entitled  to  "  whip  crea- 
tion." Indeed,  both  implicitly  and  explicitly 
his  creed  in  this  respect  is  a  little  indepen- 
dent of  the  stars  and  stripes.  He  has  been 
in  Italy  and  Switzerland,  and  has  not  for- 
gotten either.  The  Hudson  is  dear  to  him, 
but  so  is  the  Khine.  "  The  moment  you 
travel  in  America,"  he  says,  "  the  victory  of 
Europe  is  sure" — and  he  thinks  it  ill-advised 
to  exhort  a  European  to  visit  America  for 
other  reasons  than  social  and  political  obser- 
vation, or  buffalo  hunting — afiirming  the  idea 
of  the  great  American  lakes,  or  of  her  mag- 
nificent monotony  of  grass  and  forest,  to  be 
as  impressive  and  much  less  wearisome  than 
the  actual  sight  of  .them.  In  presence  of 
Trenton  Falls  and  Niagara,  he  cannot  restrain 
longing  allusions  to  the  thousand  Alpine  cas- 
cades of  Switzerland  that  flicker  through  his 
memory,  "slight  avalanches  of  snow- dust 
shimmering  into  rainbow-dust" — and  to  the 
Alpine  peaks  themselves,  those  "  ragged 
edges  of  creation,  half- blent  with  chaos," 
upon  which,  "inaccessible  for  ever,  in  the 
midst  of  the  endless  murmur  of  the  world, 
antemundane  silence  lies  stranded,  like  the 
corse  of  an  antediluvian  on  a  solitary  rock- 
point  in  the  sea" — those  solemn  heights  to- 
wards which  painfully  climbing,  you  may  feel, 
"  with  the  fascination*  of  wonder  and  awe, 
that  you  look,  as  the  Chinese  say,  behind  the 
beginning."  Why  does  not  Mr.  Curtis  give 
us  his  travels  in  Switzerland  ?  AH  his  Alp- 
ine references  have  an  Alpine  inspiration  that 
makes  us  wish  for  more.f     And  albeit  his 

to  the  ocean,  for  the  sea  and  sky  are  exhaustlees  in 
interest  as  in  beauty,  while,  in  the  comparison,  you 
soon  drink  up  the  little  drop  of  satisfaction  in 
fields  and  treeSb" 

*  Akin,  perhaps,  to  that  of  Wordsworth's  "  Step- 
ping Westwards.** 

f  Elsewhere  he  sketches  the  view  of  the  Righi 
—celestial  snow-fields^  smooth  and  glittering  as  the 
sky — ^rugged  glaciers  sloping  into  unknown  abysses, 
Kiagaran  cataracts  frozen  into  foam  for  ever — the 
range  of  the  Jura,  dusky  and  far,  and  the  faint  flash 
of  the  Aar  in  the  morning  mist — while  over  the 
hushed  tumult  of  peaks  thronging  to  the  utmost 
east,  came  the  sun,  sowing  those  sublime  snow- 
fields  with  glorious  day.  And  again,  of  his  im- 
pressions from  the  Faulhom,  the  highest  inhabited 
point  in  Europe,  he  says:  "  And  as  I  looked  across 
the  valley  of  Grindelwald,  and  saw  the  snow-fields 
and  ioe-precipioes  of  all  the  Horns, — never  trodden 
and  never  to  be  trodden  by  man, — shioiDg  cold  in 
the  ifaoonlight^  my  heart  stood  still  as  I  felt  that 
hose  awful  peaks  and  I  were  alone  io  the  solemn 
solitude.  Then  I  felt  the  sigDificanoe  of  Switzerland, 
and  knew  the  sublimity  of  mountains."  This  **  sig- 
nificance" is  noted  hpropos  of  the  Catskill  view, 
where  he  feels  the  want  of  that  true  mountain  sub- 
limity, the  presence  of  lonely  snow-peaks. 


350 


THE  OCCUPIED  PROVINCES. 


[Nov. 


temptation  may  be  to  indulge  in  a  little  rhap- 
sody, and  to  dazzle  with  diamond-dust,  yet 
has  he  too  keen  a  sense  of  the  ludicrous^ 
and  too  confirmed  a  tendency  to  sarcasm,  to 
lose  himself  in  mystic  rapture.  Even  at 
sunrise  on  the  Kighi,  be  has  more  than  **  half- 
an-eye"  for  the  cloaked  and  blanketed  cock- 
neys beside  him — "  as  if  each  had  arisen,  bed 
and  all,  and  had  so  stepped  out  to  enjoy  the 
spectacle*' — and  finds  the  exceeding  absurd- 
ity of  the  crowd  interfere  with  the  grandeur 
of  the  moment. 

The  chapters  devoted  to  Saratoga  and  New- 
port, remind  us  in  many  a  paragraph  of  both 
Hawthorne  and  Thackeray.  The  watering- 
places'  talk  is  of  blooming  belles,  who  are 
grandmothers  now,  and  of  brilliant  beaux, 
bald  now  and  gouty :  mournful  midnight 
gossips !  that  will  not  let  you  leave  those 
whose  farewells  yet  thrill  in  your  heart,  in 
the  eternal  morning  of  youth,  but  compel 
you  to  forecast  their  doom,  to  draw  sad  and 


strange  outlines  upon  the  future — to  paint 
pictures  of  age,  wrinkles,  ochre- veined  hands, 
and  mob-caps — until  your  Saratoga  episode 
of  pleasure  has  sorobred  into  an  Egyptian 
banquet,  with  your  old,  silently-smoking,  and 
meditative  habitui  for  the  death's-head.  Sa- 
vors this  not  of  "Edward  Fane's  Rosebud" 
and  of  "  Vanity  Fair  ?" 

A  history  of  that  community  whereby 
hangs  a  tale  of  "  Blithedale  Romance,"  has 
been  suggested  to  Mr.  Curtis  by  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  who  says,  "  Even  the  brilliant 
Howadji  might  find  as  rich  a  theme  in  his 
youthful  reminiscences  of  Brook  Farm,  and 
a  more  novel  one, — close  at  hand  as  it  lies, — 
than  those  which  he  has  since  made  so  dis- 
tant a  pilgrimage  to  seek,  in  Syria,  and  along 
the  current  of  the  Nile."  Such  a  history, 
by  such  a  historian,  might  be  a  curious  par- 
allel, or  pendant,  to  the  record  of  Miles 
Coverdale. 


From    Sharpens    Magazine 


THE  OCCUPIED  PROVINCES— MOLDAVIA  AND  WALLACE! A. 


Moldavia,  so  called  from  the  river  Mol- 
dan,  which,  escaping  from  the  gorges  of  the 
Kappacks,  flows  by  Jassy,  and  becomes  a 
tributary  of  the  Danube ;  and  Wallachia,  a 
name  signifying  abounding  in  cattle,  from  the 
immense  quantities  of  animals  of  every  kind 
found  there  by  the  ancients,  was  formerly 
inhabited  by  the  Dacians.  Sober,  laborious, 
and  fond  of  war,  the  courage  of  this  people 
often  bordered  on  temerity,  their  devotion  on 
fanaticism.  They  believed  that  death  was 
only  the  passage  to  another  world,  and  that, 
on  quitting  this  life,  they  would  rejoin  their 

freat  legislator,  ZamolxiS)  who,  after  his 
eath  (490  b.c),  had  become  the  object  of 
their  worship.  During  his  early  life,  Pythag- 
oras had  been  his  instructor;  but,  having 
incensed  that  philosopher,  and  being  obliged 
to  fly,  Zamolxis  went  to  Phcenicia,  to  finish 
his  studies  in  geometry ;  to  Chaldea,  to  ac- 
quire a  knowledge  of  astronomy;  and  to 
Egypt,  to  perfect  himself  in  the  science  of 
medicine. 


On  his  return  to  Dacia,  he  aimed  at  the 
sovereignty ;  his  superior  attainments  being 
the  foundation  of  his  hopes.  By  the  pre- 
diction of  an  oracle  he  gained  the  confidence 
of  the  people  and  the  favor  of  the  great. 
He  assembled  the  chief  men  of  the  country 
into  a  vast  hall  of  Ionic  construction,  which 
he  had  erected  for  the  purpose,  and  there 
taught  them  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis, 
revealed  to  them  another  state  of  existence, 
and  assured  them  that  they  should  not  die, 
but  enjoy  a  future  and  eternal  happiness  in 
another  world.  His  success  was  great,  and 
to  manifest  their  veneration  for  his  wisdom, 
the  Dacians  eventually  raised  him  to  the 
throne.  Being  recognized  as  sovereign,  bis 
ambition  proposed  another  step.  In  the 
eyes  of  his  subjects  he  already  passed  for  a 
person  of  divine  origin.  He  aspired  to  be 
accounted  one  of  their  gods — an  honor 
which  his  intrigues  accomplished  for  him. 

Under  Decaeneus,  the  successor  of  Za- 
molxis, the  Dacians  felt  the  iron  hand  of  the 


1853.] 


THE  OCCUPIED  PROVINCES. 


351 


Roman  legions.  Victorj  had  been  often 
against  them.  They  made  a  last  invocation 
to  their  tutelary  god,  and  sought  a  savage 
and  a  bloody  augury.  Having  cut  down  the 
branches  of  an  olive-tree,  they  soaked  them 
in  the  consecrated  oil,  and  then  burnt  them. 
With  care  they  collected  the  cinders,  and 
with  them  formed  a  circle,  within  the  area 
of  which  stood  the  chief  of  the  aruspices. 
In  the  meantime,  a  deep  fosse  had  been  dug 
around,  and  covered  over  with  planks  in 
many  places.  Then  came  the  victim.  A 
youth  of  twenty,  selected  for  his  beauty, 
was  seized  by  twelve  lance-bearers  by  the 
feet,  the  head,  and  the  arms,  and,  being  hurl- 
ed into  the  air,  was  received  in  his  descent 
on  the  point  of  their  spears.  The  sacrifice 
being  accomplished,  Decseneus  descended  to 
consult  it ;  but  a  terrible  avenge  which  en- 
sued, between  them  and  the  Romans,  in 
which  the  latter  were  victorious,  proved  the 
fallacy  of  whatever  hopes  the  soothsayers 
may  have  inspired  them  with.  Yet  they 
were  not  crushed;  and  a  series  of  battles 
and  struggles,  sometimes  for  independence, 
sometimes  for  existence,  continued  for  four 
centuries,  until  the  reign  of  Trajan.  This 
prince  determined  to  subdue  or  exterminate 
this  troublesome  people.  Accordingly,throw- 
ing  that  celebrated  bridge,  of  which  history 
is  so  proud,  across  the  mighty  stream  of  the 
Danube,  he  sent  over  a  formidable  army,  and, 
by  the  might  of  his  arms,  transformed  the 
rude  and  inhospitable  Dacia  into  a  Roman 
province. 

His  next  care  was  to  colonize  the  district 
with  Roman  citizens,  and  in  this  he  was  suc- 
cessful. Thousands  were  constantly  trans- 
ported from  Italy  to  take  up  their  abode  in 
this  newly -acquired  territory,  and  to  culti- 
vate its  soil.  Hence  the  Moldo-Wallachians 
bear  a  strong  resemblance  to  this  great  peo- 
ple. With  very  little  admission  of  Sclavonic 
blood  into  their  veins,  they  have  preserved 
their  ancient  origin.  Both  male  and  female 
possesses  fine  figures.  The  same  majestic 
forms  frequently  found  here  and  there,  such 
as  we  yet  see  on  the  triumphal  arches  raised 
by  the  Latin  emperors,  attest  their  descent 
from  the  old  masters  of  Europe ;  and,  not- 
with<«tanding  four  centuries  of  conflict,  of 
oppression,  and  of  degeneracy,  of  which 
they  have  been  the  victims,  they  still  retain 
thus  far  the  characteristic  features  of  their 
ancestors.  Yet  it  is  not  thus  with  all  his 
people.  All  the  population  has  not  this 
beauty ;  many  are  of  diminutive  stature,  and 
meagre  in  appearance,  but  these  probably 
are  a  type  of  the  Dacians. 


The  extent  of  the  modem  Moldo-Walla- 
chia  has  long  been  undetermined.  Obliged 
to  fly  before  the  barbarian  hordes  which 
during  the  ninth  and  thirteenth  centuries  in- 
vadea  and  ravaged  their  country,  the  inhabi- 
tants retired  within  the  narrow  limits  of  the 
present  district  of  Craiowa.  Even  here, 
however,  they  were  not  unmolested ;  so  that, 
enfeebled  by  the  continual  attacks  made 
upon  them,  and  wishing  to  escape  from  the 
iron  yoke  of  a  cruel  enemy,  they  forsook 
their  homes,  crossed  the  steep  chain  of  the 
Carpathians,  and  placed  themselves  under 
the  protection  of  the  King  of  Transylvania. 

Here,  however,  far  from  losing  their  gener- 
ic character,  they  formed  two  colonies, 
elected  chiefs  under  the  title  of  JSanns,  and 
eagerly  engaged  themselves  in  all  the  exer- 
cises of  war,  and  in  organising  a  military 
company,  in  the  hopes  of  some  day  repos- 
sessing their  native  country.  The  moment 
for  this  did  not  long  delay  itself.  Seconded 
by  the  government,  under  whose  generous 
auspices  they  had  been  enabled  to  preserve 
their  nationality  and  keep  up  an  army,  the 
two  Banns  placed  themselves  at  the  head  of 
their  troops,  which  were  numerous  and  well- 
trained,  and  repassed  the  Carpathians.  Young, 
ardent,  intrepid,  and  devoted  to  their  cause, 
they  fearlessly  attacked  the  Tartars,  and 
drove  them  from  the  soil.  Having  accom- 
plished this,  they  partitioned  the  country  be- 
tween them,  the  one  taking  Moldavia  and 
the  other  Wallachia ;  and  from  that  day, 
Moldo-Wallachia  has  had  its  limits  more 
certainly  defined.  The  successors  of  the 
two  Banns,  or  Governors,  directed  all  their 
efforts  to  the  establishment  of  their  power 
and  their  authority,  and  succeeded  so  far  as 
to  give  to  their  empire  a  geographical  posi- 
tion. 

However,  they  were  not  long  to  remain 
tranquil.  At  the  close  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  Bajazet  the  First,  flushed  with  his 
recent  conquests  in  Anatolia  and  Greece,  or- 
dered his  general,  Soliman,  to  cross  the  Dan- 
ube with  an  army,  and  to  await  his  arrival, 
as  he  intended  to  join  the  expedition  in  per- 
son, on  the  banks  of  the  Pruth.  This  was 
done  :  the  Danube  was  crossed.  The  army 
encamped  on  the  banks  of  the  Pruth.  Ba- 
jazet himself  appeared,  but  it  was  only  in 
time  to  save  his  army,  by  his  presence,  from 
utter  annihilation.  Stephen,  Bann  of  Mol- 
davia, surnamed  the  great,  from  his  heroic 
bravery  and  remarkable  intelligence,  enraged 
at  the  insolence  with  which  the  Turks  came 
to  brave  him  in  his  own  dominions,  hastily 
collected  his  army,  attacked  the  intruders. 


S62 


THE  OCCUPIED  PBOVINOES. 


[No?. 


and  in  the  first  onset  of  enthusiasm  dispersed 
them.  The  vanquished  Bajazet  hesitated 
only  until  the  flower  of  his  reserves,  whom  he 
recalled  from  the  heart  of  Asia,  could  arrive ; 
then,  throwing  a  bridge  of  boats  across  the 
Danube,  he  passed  that  stream.  Every  step 
he  took  into  the  ill-fated  country  was  tracked 
with  fire  and  slaughter;  nor  did  he  check 
the  havoc  till  he  came  upon  the  Sereth.  On 
its  right  bank  he  met  the  victorious  Stephen, 
ready  to  give  him  battle.  His  cohorts  were 
young  and  valiant ;  their  recent  success  had 
increased  their  confidence  in  their  prowess ; 
each  soldier  felt  himself  qualified  to  be  a 
general,  each  general  a  hero.  The  battle 
commenced :  on  each  side  the  contest  was 
maintained  with  a  fierceness  which  history 
has  seldom  to  relate.  Stephen  was,  how- 
ever, beaten  and  routed.  Obliged  to  quit 
the  field,  he  marched  all  night  towards  the 
fortified  town  of  Nemeviez,  where  he  had 
left  his  family.  At  break  of  day  he  ap- 
peared before  its  gates,  and  taking  his  buf- 
falo's horn,  mounted  in  gold,  which  he  al- 
ways carried  attached  to  an  ornamented  bald- 
riCf  he  blew  a  loud  blast.  At  the  sound,  his 
aged  mother,  who  recognised  the  signs], 
hastened  to  the  ramparts,  the  better  to  see 
her  son,  and  welcome  him  as  victor  ;  but  she 
had  no  sooner  seen  him  covered  with  blood 
and  dust,  his  plume  dishevelled,  and  his 
arms  reversed,  than,  divining  the  truth,  she 
ordered  the  warders  to  let  fall  the  portcullis 
and  raise  the  bridge.  Then  she  turned  to 
the  defeated :  **•  Is  it  thou,'*  she  addressed 
him»  "  thai  I  see  in  this  state,  my  son,  a  hero 
always  successful,  always  crowned  with  lau- 
rels, to-day  vanquished  and  covered  with 
shame  ?  Fly,  unworthy,  fly  from  my  pres- 
ence 1  and  if  ever  thou  desirest  again  to  see 
my  face,  let  it  be  only  with  the  spoil  of  thine 
enemies.  Return  to  the  combat:  I  would 
rather  that  thou  shouldst  die  at  the  foot  of 
duty,  than  live  to  reproach  thyself  with  a 
life  saved  at  the  expense  of  our  honor.'' 

The  efifect  of  these  words  "was  electrical. 
The  dejected  Stephen  obeyed  the  command, 
collected  the  remnants  of  his  army,  filled 
them  once  more  with  hope  and  cour8ge,  fell 
unexpectedly  upon  the  general,  Soliman, 
who  had  pursued  the  retreat,  and  defeated 
him  with  a  loss  of  30,000  men.  Following 
up  his  victory,  Stephen  was  quickly  under 
the  walls  of  Bucharest,  the  head-quarters  of 
Bajazet  himself,  and,  but  for  a  fatal  generos- 
ity, might  have  taken  him  prisoner.  How- 
ever, he  compelled  him  to  retire  behind  the 
Danube;  but  the  Turks  were  indefatigable. 
They  recrossed  the  river  at  every  opportu- 


nity ;  the  arm  of  Stephen  was  no  longer 
there  to  protect  the  desolated  proviDces,  and 
fifty  years  later  the  whole  country  was  sub- 
jugated by  Mahomet  the  Second,  who  com- 
pleted his  conquest  by  the  erection  of  strong 
fortresses,  to  overawe  and  crush  any  attempt- 
ed rebellion. 

The  territory  thus  acauired — that  is,  Mol- 
davia and  Wallachia — is  about  480  miles 
long  and  300  in  breadth.  It  is  bordered  by 
Bessarabia,  Podolia,  the  Carpathian  moun- 
tains and  the  Danube.  Situated  between 
the  44th  and  48th  degrees  of  latitude,  it  en- 
joys a  climate  for  the  most  part  exceedingly 
agreeable.  The  winter  is  ushered  in  with  a 
shrewd  and  biting  wind,  which  creates  frost 
and  snow  and  ice,  but  is  happily  of  short 
duration.  This  is  succeeded  by  spring  time, 
which  appears  in  March.  Then  the  transi- 
tion from  one  season  to  the  other  is  so  sud- 
den as  to  produce  the  most  magical  effects. 
The  plants,  even  the  most  common,  burst 
from  the  soil  with  the  rapidity  of  mushrooms ; 
the  whole  vegetable  kingdom  feels  the  im- 
pulse of  the  ciiange.  In  three  or  four  days 
the  trees  are  green  with  foliage,  the  buds 
peeping  forth,  and  the  flowers  in  bloom. 
Every  thing  in  nature  quits  its  lately  torpid 
character  ^nd  wake§  to  animation  and  enjoy- 
ment. In  the  summer,  and  especially  during 
the  months  of  June,  July,  August  and  Sep- 
tember, the  weather  is  excessively  hot ;  the 
sun,  after  midday,  acquires  a  force  that 
makes  it  dangerous  to  encounter  its  rays; 
the  atmosphere  is  like  a  furnace.  The  nights, 
however,  are  delightfully  cool,  and  give  a 
season  of  charming  freshness  to  everything; 
then  those  who  could  not  venture  out  in  the 
day  walk  forth  to  inhale  the  tepid  breezes  of 
evening.  The  storms,  which  during  the 
great  heat  are  frequent,  present  a  spectacle 
the  most  magnificent  that  can  be  imagined ; 
but,  when  the  autumn  takes  her  place,  a 
richer  season  is  enjoyed  than  perhaps  the 
spring  itself  afforded,  and  in  spite  of  rains, 
black  mud,  and  mist,  the  praises  of  these 
delightful  months  are  everywhere  resounded. 

For  a  long  time  Moldo- Wallachia  could 
boast  of  a  population  of  several  millions,  and 
its  armies  were  often  composed  of  a  hundred 
thousand  men ;  but,  by  little  and  little,  the 
expulsion  of  the  barbarians,  the  retreat  of 
their  allies,  and  the  successive  alterations  of 
its  boundaries  have  greatly  reduced  the  num- 
ber. Some  have  also  attributed  this  decline 
to  the  plagues,  the  fevers,  and  the  endemic 
maladies  which  they  affirm  afflictt  he  country. 
But  this  is  not  altogether  true.  The  air  of 
the  two  provinces  is  pure,  and  the  sky  open 


1858.] 


THE  OCCUPIED  PROVINCES. 


858 


and  cloudless.  Among  the  mountains,  bow- 
eTer,  there  is  a  disease  which  they  suppose 
to'  arise  from  the  impure  state  of  the  waters ; 
it  consists  in  a  large  soft  tumor,  which  comes 
upon  the  neck,  like  the  knotty  excrescences 
that  grow  upon  the  trunks  of  oaks ;  but  even 
this  disease  has  its  remedy  in  an  herb,  which 
grows  in  the  same  districts,  and  the  proper 
application  of  which  has  proved  an  unfailing 
specific.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  this 
malady  is  not  peculiar  to  the  Moldo-Walla- 
chians  alone,  but  is  common  to  the  inhabitants 
of  many  mountainous  regions.  The  cretins  of 
the  Yalois,  and  the  goitreuz  of  Styria,  seem 
to  suffer  from  a  similar  complaint. 

A  more  probable  cause  of  this  decline  may 
be  found  at  hand.  The  wars  between  the 
Russians  and  the  Turks,  or  the  occupation  of 
these  provinces  by  the  former,  will  afiford  a 
satisfactory  solution.  Whether  it  be  a  war,  or 
whether  it  be  an  occupation,  these  unfortunate 
people  suffer  nearly  the  same.  But,  add  to  this, 
the  barbarous  treatment  which  the  Mahom- 
etans have  exercised  towards  their  rayah 
population,  and  we  shall  not  be  surprised  at 
the  depopulated  condition  of  the  country.  Like 
beasts  of  burthen,  in  the  last  war,  they  were 
employed  to  carry  on  their  backs  the  heavy 
munitions — ^a  labor  which  was  enforced  with 
brutal  inhumanity.  They  were  compelled  to 
march,  thus  burthened,  from  morning  to  night, 
through  heat  or  cold,  through  snow,  or  rain. 
The  forests,  the  mountains,  the  marshes,  the 
arid  plains,  sandy,  parched  up  by  a  torrid  sun 
— nothing  was  allowed  to  interfere  with  their 
drudgery.  The  privations,  too,  occasioned  by 
insufficiency  of  food,  decimated  them  by  thou- 
sands before  the  eyes  of  their  brutal  oppressors; 
and  of  those  who  survived  the  immediate 
effects*  of  this  fatigue  and  exhausiion,  the 

freater  portion  returned  to  their  cabins,  faint, 
eart-wom  and  maimed  for  life. 
Christians,  according  to  the  ritual  of  the 
Greek  Church,  the  Wallachians  are  generally 
devout,  and  conform  themselves  to  the  dog- 
mas of  the  Council  of  Nice.  Their  festivals 
are  ilumerous — more  so,  perhaps,  than  those 
in  the  Catholic  Calendar,  but  Easter,  and  the 
festival  of  the  Assumption,  are  the  principal. 
They  fast  twice  in  the  week,  reject  images 
from  the  churches,  retaining  only  pictures  of 
the  saints,  and  display  great  pomp  in  their 
reUgious  ceremonies.  They  repudiate  the 
the  doctrine  of  purgatory,  adopt  the  confes- 
sional, under  some  restrictions  which  are  not 
accepted  in  the  Latin  Church,  and  make  the 
sign  of  the  cross  with  the  thumb,  the  forefin- 
ger,  and  another,  united,  as  an  emblem  of  the 
Trmity.  On  the  day  of  a  festival,  a  Walla^ 
VOL.  XXX.   NO.  m. 


chian  closes  his  door  and  gives  himself  up  to 
the  duties  of  religion,  which  often  consist  of 
the  most  ascetic  practices.  He  is  very  super- 
stitious; does  he  leave  his  home,  does  he  pass 
a  church,  is  he  on  foot  or  on  horseback,  meets 
he  a  stranger,  or  does  he  walk  alone,  he 
crosses  himself  three  times,  habitually  using 
the"  Miserere  met  Domine. "  In  this  respect, 
as  well  as  inwhatever  concerns  the  saints,  noth- 
ing can  check  his  fanaticism.  Under  its 
influence  a  robber  will  steal,  even  while  on 
his  knees,  from  his  neighbor,  and  feel  no 
scruple;  or  he  will  kill  a  man  imploring 
divine  mercy,  palliating  his  guilt  and  easing 
his  conscience  with  the  idea  that  his  victim 
could  die  at  no  better  time.  The  captain  of 
a  band — a  famous  brigand — seeing  his  lieu- 
tenant licking  a  pat  of  butter  in  a  bouse  into 
which  they  had  broken,  to  plunder  and,  if 
necessary,  to  murder  the  inmates,  dislocated 
his  jaw  with  the  blow  of  his  fist,  exclaiming, 
by  the  way  of  justification,  "Do  you  not 
know  it  is  Friday  ?  Have  you  not  the  fear  of 
God  before  your  eyes  ?" 

All  the  Wallachians,  as  may  readily  be  con- 
ceived, are  very  credulous.  Men  and  women 
believe  in  apparitions,  good  and  evil  genii, 
mysterious  revelations,  visions,  and  charlatan- 
ism ;  they  believe  and  fear,  and  remain  in 
their  fears  and  their  belief,  without  the  power 
or  the  will  to  emancipate  themselves  from  this 
unnatural  thraldom  of  the  spirit. 

Yet  the  Moldo-Wallachian  is  not  without 
fine  qualities ;  of  remarkable  intelligence,  of  a 
quick  spirit,  engaging,  fanciful,  and  of  a  flexi- 
bility of  character  little  common,  he  labors 
with  zeal  when  the  opportunity  and  the 
temptation  incite  him — that  is,  among  the 
less  oppressed  classes.  This*  aptitude  forms 
a  strong  contrast  with  the  Orientals,  his 
neighbors.  Disposed  always  to  yield  to 
impulse,  he  marches  rapidly  on  the  high-road 
to  progress.  In  1810  an  impulse  was  given 
to  education  in  the  country.  The  venerable 
Metropolitan,  Ignatius,  founded  at  Bucharest 
a  college,  whither  were  invited  professors  of 
every  kind,  and  the  national  language,  foreign 
languages,  mathematics,  chemistry,  phys- 
ic, drawing,  besides  a  regular  course  of 
general  studies,  were  taught  with  the  most 
happy  results.  After  two  years,  however, 
this  establishment  fell  to  the  ground,  but  was 
shortly  after  succeeded  by  another,  which 
sprang  from  its  ashes,  and  the  regulations  of 
which  were  very  severe.  Organised  upon 
the  Lancastrian  principle,  it  gives  instruction 
to  a  great  number  of  youths,  and  will  one 
day  if  properly  conducted,  prove  of  the  high- 
est service  to  the  country.    High  spirit,  good 


364 


THE  OOGUPIED  PROVINOBSL 


[Not., 


sense,  and  great  aptitude,  mark  the  characters 
of  the  students.  When  they  have  finished 
their  education  in  this  place,  many  are  not 
unfrequently  sent  to  the  universities  of  other 
countries  to  complete  their  studies. 

The  clergy  of  Moldo-Wallachia  allow  their 
beards  and  moustachios  to  grow  until  they 
have  acquired  a  venerable  length,  and  in  this 
respect  retain  the  custom  of  the  ancient  patri- 
archs. They  wear  a  kind  of  full  toga,  and  on 
their  heads  a  small  skull-cap,  which,  during 
the  performance  of  any  religious  ceremony 
they  exchange  for  a  mitre,  sometimes  white 
and  sometimes  black,  ornamented  with 
precious  stones.  They  are  divided  into  two 
bodies — the  priests  secular  and  the  priests 
married ;  and  again  subdivided  into  four 
classes — the  archbishops,  bishops,  abbots, 
and  monks.  They  receive  for  their  chief 
the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  who,  in  his 
turn  is  subject  to  a  synod  composed  of  the 
Metropolitan  or  Archbishop,  who  resides  at 
Bucharest,  and  three  other  bishops  of  the 
Greek  Church  in  Turkey. 

The  ceremony  of  marriage  is  very  lightly 
esteemed  in  Moldo-Wallachia.  The  people 
often  marry  without  a  civil  contract,  the  bene- 
diction of  the  priest  having  taken  place  sanc- 
tions the  fact.  In  the  middle  classes,  the 
signatures  of  four  witnesses,  parents  or  friends, 
is  sufficient ;  amongst  the  nobility,  another 
custom  mantains :  it  is  in  their  case  necessary 
to  solicit  the  signature  of  the  Metropolitan 
and  Hospodar,  or  Governor ;  but  this  is  re- 
garded merely  as  a  mark  of  distinction,  and 
can  always  be  claimed  as  a  prerogative  by 
these  privileged  classes.  It  is  consequently 
never  refused. 

When  the  ceremony  takes  place  in  a  church, 
it  is  accompanied  with  a  most  lugubrious 
pomp.  The  bride,  young  or  old,  is  hermeti- 
cally enveloped  in  a  thiek  veil  of  silk  or  cot- 
ton, rich  with  gold  or  silver,  according  to  her 
rank  ;  upon  her  head  she  wears  a  bunch  of 
black  feathers,  like  the  plumes  of  funeral 
horses ;  she  is  invested,  like  an  ancient  vesta], 
in  a  kind  of  purple  tunic,  and  for  four-and- 
twenty  hours  before  the  hour  of  the  wedding 
she  remains  thus  enveloped. 

On  the  morning  of  the  ceremony,  four 
bridesmaids,  her  most  intimate  friends,  come 
and  conduct  her,  two  by  the  hands  and  two  by 
her  girdle,  in  the  most  profound  silence  to 
the  church,  where,  as  soon  as  she  has  crossed 
the  threshold,  the  bridegroom  meets  her. 
She  then  distributes  alms  to  the  poor,  and 
kneels  down  to  kiss  the  slab  of  the  portal. 
The  two  advance,  when  this  is  done,  towards 
the  altar  slowly,  their  eyes  downcast  and 


their  hands  joined.  When  the  religions  por- 
tion— which  is  not  long — is  over,  they  return 
home,  and,  amongst  the  common  people,  a 
season  of  festivity,  dancing,  and  smging  en- 
sues. With  the  nobles,  hbwever,  it  not 
unfrequently  happens  that  the  husband 
mantaias  that  reserve  which  half-civilized 
autocrats  falsely  suppose  to  be  dignity,  and 
as  soon  as  he  re-enters  his  house,  without  a 
word  throws  himself  upon  his  divan,  and 
smokes  his  pipe. 

The  Molao-Wallachians,  when  wealthy — 
which,  unhappily,  is  confined  to  very  few — 
are  less  choice  in  their  dishes  than  in  .the 
service  of  their  table.  They  are  exceedingly 
hospitable,  give  instances  of  the  most  gener- 
ous self-denial  amongst  their  friends,  and 
never  swerve  from  an  obligation  when  volun- 
tarily imposed.  Many  of  the  opulent  nobles, 
or  boyarg,  admit  foreigners  who  have  no 
fortune  to  their  table,  considering  themselvea 
sufficiently  repaid  by  the  pleasure  of  their 
conversation  ;  yet  many  of  them  can  neither 
read  nor  write.  When  a  person  is  invited, 
he  arrives  a  few  minutes  before  the  time 
appointed,  enters,  salutes,  speaks  or  not,  as  he 
pleases,  and  awaits  the  announcement  of  dinner. 
The  dinner  served  up,  the  guest,  be  he  an 
habitue  of  the  house  or  a  new  comer,  follows 
slowly  the  family,  sits  down  at  the  table,  and 
eats.  Then  commences  the  conversation,  and 
this  is  kept  up  with  great  animation  during 
the  whole  process  of  mastication. 

The  luxury  of  the  aristocracy  is  very  great, 
and  resembles  that  of  the  Orientals.  They 
live  in  spacious  houses,  and  keep  up  the  moat 
magnificent  parade.  They  have  generally 
eight  or  ten  slaves  in  attendance.  An  eye- 
witness has  facetiously  observed  upon  this 
extravagance,  "  There  is  one  to  fill  his  pipe, 
another  to  light  it,  another  to  bring  it,  and 
another  to  se.e  his  master  smoke  it ;  there  is 
one  to  fetch  him  a  glass  of  water,  another 
spreads  out  a  napkin,  a  third  will  unfold  his 
handkerchief;  ^ve  others  are  required  to 
dress  him,  to  shave  and  comb  his  beard,  to 
wash  his  hands,  anoint  his  hair ;  fifty  others 
are  engaged  in  various  arrangements  of  the 
house,  the  kitchens,  the  carriages,  the  horses, 
the  harness,  the  gardens,  &c.,  without  count- 
ing those  which  are  required  to, look  after 
the  slaves  themselves." 

This  picture  is  unhappily  too  true.  Placed 
as  they  are  between  Russia  and  Turkey  the 
Moldo-Wallachian  provinces  have  always  suf- 
fered severely  from  the  evils  of  misgovem- 
ment,  and  in  every  misgoverned  state  it  is  the 
peasantry  that  feel  the  bitterness  of  oppression. 
There  is  not  a  people  more  weighed  down  and 


1853.] 


JOHN  HORNE  TOOES;  AIO)  THB  STATE  TBIAI^  OF  1794 


865 


broken  than  the  peasants  of  Moldo-Wallaohia. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  Turks  they  are  nothing  more 
than  giaoursy  or  infidels,  accursed  by  the  law 
of  their  Prophet,  and  therefore  without  the 
pale  of  pity.  They  are  rep^arded  with  distrust, 
as  a  race  inclined  to  alternate  in  loyalty 
between  the  eastern  and  western  banks  of  the 
Pruth.  They  are  feared  by  their  feeble  mas- 
ters, lest  they  should  revolt  to  the  Russians, 
and  oppressed,  that  their  spirit  and  their 
power  may  be  crushed  together.  We  must 
not,  therefore,  be  surprised  that  the  peasan- 
try— a  large  majority  of  the  Wallachians — 
are  degraded,  and  in  the  same  state  of  bon- 
dage that  the  Poles  were  in  under  their 
tyrannical  aristocracy.  The  hoyars,  or  nobles, 
possess  all  the  land  ;  enterprise  is,  therefore, 
deadened.  The  peasant  thinks  not  of  provi- 
ding for  the  morrow,  for  the  fruits  of  his 
labot  go  to  enrich  those  who  have  no  right  to 


receive  it ;  he  lives  from  day  to  day,  and  his 
misery  is  thus  effectually  perpetuated. 

There  is  another  class,  the  zagans,  which 
are  the  reod  slaves  of  the  country.  They 
consist  of  about  150,000,  of  which  the  State 
possesses  a  third ;  the  others  are  distributed 
amongst  the  monasteries  and  the  nobles. 
Some  have  the  enormous  number  of  5,000  or 
6,000  in  their  houses,  and  upon  their  estates. 
They  employ  them  in  works  the  most  labori- 
ous and  ignoble ;  they  sell  them  or  change 
them  at  certain  periods  of  the  year  at  so  much 
a  head,  according  to  the  age,  strength,  or  sex 
of  the  individual;  and  such  is  sometimes  the 
cruel  treatment  to  which  they  are  subject, 
that  these  unfortunate  beings  purposely  maim 
themselves,  to  escape  being  oppressed  to 
death  by  toil,  or  commit  suicide,  to  escape 
some  anticipated  punishment. 


i^4- 


■♦♦■ 


From  Tait'8  Magaiine. 


JOHN  HORNE  TOOKE.  AND  THE  STATE  TRIALS  OF  1794 


When  the  French  Revolution  of  1789 
burst,  like  the  eruption  of  a  volcano,  upon 
the  nations  of  Europe,  carrying  dismay  and 
terror  into  the  despotic  dynasties  of  ages,  and 
causing  them  to  totter  on  their  thrones,  whilst 
It  inspired  their  subjects  with  hope  in  the  fu- 
ture, the  rising  spirit  of  freedom  extended 
itself  to  the  United  Kingdom,  and  produced 
here,  an  enthusiasm  more  than  commensurate 
with  the  actual  condition  of  the  country.  So 
^eat  and  general,  indeed,  was  the  political 
intoxication  of  the  people,  that  few  were  able 
to  exercise  a  sober  judgment  upon  an  event 
which  was  truly  described  as  ''  a  thing  with- 
out precedent,  and  therefore  without  prognos- 
tic." It  required  the  mind  of  a  Burke  to 
take  thatjenlarged  view  of  the  matter,  which 
alone  could  lead  to  a  just  estimate  of  the  mo- 
mentous importance  and  extent  of  that  event. 
A  nobleman  was  congratulating  that  astute 
statesman  on  the  negotiations  of  Lisle,  and  the 
probable  termination  of  the  Revolution.  "  The 
Kevolution  over !"  he  replied.  "  To  be  sure  I !" 
*'  Why,  my  Lord,  it  w  not  begun.  As  yet,  you 
have  only  heard  the  first  music ;  you'll  see 


the  actors  presently ;  but  neither  you  nor  I 
shall  live  to  witness  the  end  of  the  drama  1" 

It  is  now  sixty  years  since  this  prediction 
was  uttered,  and  the  "drama"  is  not  yet 
closed.  A  series  of  "  acts"  have  at  intervals 
been  performed  on  the  Gallic  political  stage, 
which,  although  each  has  been  denominated 
"  a  Revolution,"  are  but  a  reiteration  of  the 
sam3  struggle  of  freedom  with  d^potism. 
And  such  is  the  vitality  of  the  ancient  system 
of  government  in  Continental  Europe,  that 
although  repeatedly  shaken  to  its  very  found- 
ations, it  will,  in  all  probability,  require  a  fur- 
ther series  of  such  "acts"  to  bring  the 
"drama"  to  a  close,  and  establish  rational 
freedom  amongst  its  yearning  peoples. 

Situated  as  England  was,  it  was  impossible 
that  she  could  wholly  escape  the  revolutiona- 
ry enthusiasm  which  prevailed  in  France.  It 
is  true,  the  theory  of  the  British  constitution 
was  infinitely  more  favorable  to  liberty,  than' 
that  of  any  other  nation  in  Europe ;  but  then 
it  had  never  been  fully  carried  out  in  all  its 
length  and  breadth.  Whilst  the  Utter  was 
scrupulously  and  ostentatiously  proclaimed, 


356 


JOHN  HORNE  TOOKE;  AND  THE  STATE  TRIALS  OP  1794. 


[Not, 


its  spirit  was  evaded,  and  a  wide  margin 
was  allowed  for  a  monarch,  despotically  in- 
clined, to  exercise  his  tendencies.  Whether 
the  reigning  monarch  of  that  period  was  such 
a  man,  we  do  not  take  upon  ourselves  to  as- 
sert. Certain  it  is,  however,  that  George  the 
Third  did  not  possess  a  mind  f-ufficienlTy  en- 
larged or  instructed  to  comprehend  the  great 
principles  of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  in  their 
full  extent ;  and  that  he  entertained  too  high 
opinions  of  his  monarchical  rights  and  pre- 
rogatives, and  too  great  a  jealousy  of  the  peo- 
ple, to  think  with  complacency  of  those  re- 
forms, which  the  abuses  that  have  crept  into 
the  constitution  imperatively  called  for.  Thus, 
he  formed  his  government  upon  his  own 
views ;  and,  by  the  most  stringent  measures, 
endeavored  to  crush  that  spirit  of  freedom 
which  was  widely  diffused  amongst  his  sub- 
jects, in  common  with  the  other  peoples  of 
Europe. 

We  would  not,  however,  compare  the  con- 
dition of  the  British  people  at  that  period, 
with  that  of  any  of  the  continental  nation^^ 
Whatever  defects  might  have  crept  into  the 
working  of  the  constitution  by  the  lapse  of 
ages,  enough  of  liberty  existed  to  enable  the 
people,  without  a  physical  struggle,  to  reform 
them;  in  which  respect,  their  condition  was 
infinitely  superior  to  that  of  their  neighbors. 
On  all  occasions,  when  the  principles  of  the 
constitution  have  been  boldly  asserted,  the 
free  institutions  of  the  country  have  enabled 
the  people  successfully  to  combat  with  the 
Crown ;  and  every  flagrant  attempt  to  abridge 
or  to  fetter  the  liberty  of  the  subject,  was 
sure,  in  the  end,  to  result  in  the  extension 
and  confirmation  of  that  liberty.  Such  was 
the  case  in  regard  to  the  state  trials,  which 
took  place  in  the  United  Kingdom  from  1792 
to  1796 ;  and  it  is  to  the  events  which  then 
and  previously  transpired,  that  we  propose 
to  direct  the  attention  of  the  reader,  as  illus- 
trative  both  of  the  spirit  which  actuated  the 
government  of  that  period,  and  of  the  power 
of  constitutional  principles  alone  to  counter- 
act and  disarm  it. 

The  first  opening  of  the  revolutionary 
"drama"  in  France,  took  place  in  1789 ;  and 
being  the  spontaneous  uprising  of  a  great  na- 
tion for  the  assertion  of  its  just  and  natural 
rights,  it  met  with  the  countenance  and  sup- 
port of  ail  great  and  good  men  in  the  civil- 
ized worid.  To  it  the  King,  Louis  XVI.,  was 
compelled  to  become  a  party;  and  it  would 
have  been  well  for  him,  his  family,  and  his 
people,  had  he  determined  cordially  to  unite 
with  the  latter  in  effecting  those  reforms 
which  the  nation  demanded.    His  insincerity 


and  duplicity  ruined  all ;  and  the  aecond  act 
succeeded — a  horrible  tragedy,  appalling 
and  bewildering  to  the  nations  around,  and 
causing  the  entire  disruption  of  the  whole 
framework  of  society  in  that  which  consti- 
tuted its  theatre. 

The  French  Revolution  baa  been  justly 
ascribed  by  political  writers,  to  the  part  taken 
by  the  government  of  France  in  the  rup- 
ture between  Great  Britain  and  her  Amer- 
ican colonies.  The  sanction  thus  given  to 
the  principle  of  popular  resistance  to  con- 
stituted authority,  confirmed  by  the  early 
recognition,  by  Louis  XVI.,  of  the  infant 
Transatlantic  Republic,  in  order  to  spite 
her  rival,  were  acts  little  short  of  suicidal. 
By  them  the  seeds  of  liberty  were  sown 
broad- cast  amongst  the  French  people,  and 
soon  gave  rise  to  a  desire  for  constitutional 
reform  perfectly  irresistible.  A  simulta- 
neous spirit,  as  we  have  before  observed,  per- 
vaded a  large  portion  of  the  British  people, 
amongst  whom  the  American  war  had  never 
been  popular;  and  about  the  year  1780,  so- 
cieties began  to  be  formed  for  the  purpose  of 
obtaining  parliamentary  reform,  embracing, 
as  fundamental  principles,  annual  parlia- 
ments and  universal  suffrage. 

The  first  association  for  this  purpose  was 
founded  by  the  celebrated  Major  Cartwright, 
and  was  called  "The  Society  for  Constitu- 
tional Information."  It  numbered  amongst 
its  members  and  supporters  some  of  the  most 
eminent  political  characters  of  that  or  any 
other  age.  The  Duke  of  Richmond  acted  as 
chairman,  whilst  Pitt,  Fox,  Sheridan,  Erskme, 
Grey,  Tooke,  Earl  Stanhope,  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell, the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  Earls  Camden  and 
Surrey,  Lord  Mahon,  the  Lord  Mayor  of 
London,  and  a  host  of  others,  comprising 
members  both  of  the  aristocracy  and  of  the 
two  Houses  of  I^egislature  were  enrolled  on 
its  lists.  Many  of  these  withdrew  from  the 
society  before  the  stirring  scenes  of  the  French 
Revolution  were  enacted.  Amongst  the  first 
of  these  was  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  who, 
having  accepted  the  post  of  Master  of  the 
Ordnance,  was  afterwards  one  of  the  fore- 
most in  prosecuting  his  former  colleagues — 
the  members  of  the  society. 

The  object  of  the  institution  was  the  diffa- 
sion  of  correct  political  information,  in  refer- 
ence to  the  principles  of  the  British  Constitu- 
tion, in  order  to  prepare  the  minds  of  the 
people  on  the  subject  of  Parliamentary  Re- 
form ;  a  perfectly  legal  object,  and  constitu- 
tionally pursued  by  the  association  to  the 
end  of  its  existence.  A  plan  for  this  object 
was  drawn  up  by  the  Duke  of  Richmond  ; 


1858.] 


JOHN  HOBNB  TOOKE;  Aim  THE  STAIK  TRIALS  OF  1794 


867 


and  on  three  several  ocoasrons  brought  be- 
fore the  House  of  Commons  by  Mr.  Pitt — 
namely,  in  1782,  1783,  and  1785.  At  the 
last  named  period  he  had  become  a  minister  of 
the  Crown,  but  on  all  these  occasions  the  mo- 
tion was  lost.  It  may  be  as  well  here  to 
state,  what  the  measure  proposed  by  Pitt, 
and  concocted  by  him  and  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, amounted  to,  as  it  will  best  illustrate 
their  conduct  and  character,  in  subsequently 
prosecuting  with  so  much  vindictiveness,  the 
men  whom  they  were,  at  this  time,  pursuing 
the  very  object  which  constituted  the  ground 
of  future  prosecution. 

The  Duke  of  Richmond  was  both  one  of 
the  first,  and  one  of  the  most  active,  zealous, 
and  efficient  members  of  the  association,  un- 
til he  received  his  official  appointment.    The 
subject  appears  to  have  occupied  his  mind 
almost  exclusively ;  and  finding  that  there 
was  a  wide  range  of  opinion  upon  it,  amongst 
the  members,  some  being  in  favor  of  a  mod- 
erate ;  and  others  of  a  sweeping  measure  of 
ireform,  his  Grace  drew  up  a  specific  plan, 
which  appears  to  have  met  the  approbation 
of  the  majority.    It  embraced  annual  parlia- 
ments, and  universal  su£frage  in  the  broadest 
acceptation  of  the  term.     Bis  language,  ex- 
pressed in  a  letter  published  at  the  time,  was 
as     follows: — "  From  that    quarter,"   the 
House  of  Commons,   "  I  have  nothing  to 
hope.     It  is  from  the  people  at  large  that  I 
expect  any  good  ;  and  I  am  convinced  that 
the  only  way  to  make  them  feel  that  they 
are  really  concerned  in  the  business,  is  to 
contend  for  their  full,  clear,  and  indisputable 
rights  of  universal   representation.     When 
the  people  are  fairly  and  equally  repi*esented 
in  Parliament,  when  they  have  annual  oppor- 
tunities  of  changing  their    deputies,  and, 
through  them,  of  controling  every  abuse  of 
Government,  in  a  safe,  easy,  and  legal  way, 
there  can  be  no  longer  occasion  for  recurring 
to  those  ever  dangerous,  though  sometimes 
necessary   expedients   of  an    armed   force, 
which  nothing  but  a  bad  Government  can 
justify."*      It  was  well  remarked  by  Mr. 
firsktne,  on  the  subsequent  trial  of  John 
Home  Tooke,  that  "  if  this  letter,  which, 
coming  from  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  was 
only  a  spirited  remonstrance  against  corrupt 
ministers,  had  been  read  in  evidence  as  the 
letter  of  any  of  the  state  prisoners,  the 
whole  mass  would  have  been  transmuted  in- 
stantly into  high  treason  against  the  King  !'' 

*  Letter  of  the  Dake  of  Riohmood  to  Colonel 
SharmaD,  at  that  time  the  commander  of  the  Volun* 
teers  of  Ireland,  (a  self-constituted  military  body,) 
bat  without  any  oommiasion  from  the  Crown. 


The  efforts  of  the  Constitutional  Society  to 
bring  the  subject  of  Reform  before  the  House 
of  Commons,  although  unsuccessful,  were  the 
means  of  diffusing  a  knowledge  of  its  impor- 
tance and  nec<)ssity  throughout  the  kingdom. 
Similar  societies  were  formed  in  most  of  the 
cities  and  large  towns,  such  as  Southwark, 
Manchester,  Norwich,  Sheffield,  Birmingham, 
Leeds,  &o.  These  kept  up  an  intimate  cor- 
respondence with  the  central  one  in  London ; 
but  the  difference  of  opinion  which  existed 
amongst  the  members,  led  to  the  secession  of 
some  of  the  earliest  and  warmest  friends  of 
parliamentary  reform,  who  could  not  go  the 
length  of  annual  parliaments  and  universal 
suffrage  ;  believing  that,  however  sincere  the 
advocates  of  those  changes  might  be  in  de- 
siring to  engraft  them  on  the  constitution, 
they  would  ultimately  lead  to  the  destruction 
of  the  monarchy,  and  the  existing  order  of 
things.  Amongst  the  first  of  the  seceders 
were  Charles  c^mes  Fox,  William  Pitt,  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk,  and  several  other  eminent 
men.  The  Duke  of  Richmond  also  left  early, 
upon  his  appointment  as  a  cabinet  minister. 

This  decline  of  the  Constitutional  Associa- 
tion was  not  on  account  of  any  exceptions 
taken  to  its  proceedings  by  the  Government, 
nor  were  these  considered  dangerous  to  the 
constitution  or  the  authorities  of  the  country. 
That  event,  however,  soon  occurred  which, 
whilst  it  gave  a  fresh  stimulus  to  this  society, 
caused  the  founding  of  others  in  various  parts 
of  the  kingdom,  some  of  which  certainly  went 
dangerous  lengths  in  their  ideas  and  plans  of 
reform,  and  thus  brought  both  upon  them- 
selves and  those  who  were  more  moderate 
and  constitutional  in  their  views,  the  ven- 
geance of  the  Government,  many  members  of 
which  bad  themselves  been  the  chief  instru- 
ments in  raisipg  the  spirit  of  the  people, 
which  they  now  sought  to  crush  by  a  vin- 
dictive and  relentless  prosecution. 

The  French  Revolution,  which  commenced 
in  1789,  was  hailed  by  the  friends  of  liberty 
in  England,  as  the  commencement  of  a  new 
era  in  the  history  of  mankind.  And  cer- 
tainly, if  ever  a  government  needed  a  change 
it  was  that  of  France ;  if  ever  a  monarchy 
had  forfeited  all  claim  to  the  suffrages  of  a 
people,  and  rendered  itself  unworthy  of  their 
support,  it  was  the  dynasty  of  the  Capets. 
Despotism  the  most  grinding ;  corruption  the 
most  venal ;  profligacy*the  most  unblushing ; 
and  extravagance  the  most  unbounded,  char- 
aoteriased  the  Court  and  administration  of  the 
Bourbons;  poisoning  the  very  fountains  of 
virtuous  and  well-ordered  society,  from  the 
domestic  circle  to  the  bench  of  justice.    The 


358 


JOHN  HORNE  TOOKi;  AKD  THE  STATE  TRIAIfl  OP  1794 


[Nov., 


lives,  tbe  liberties,  the  properties  of  the  sub- 
ject, were  liable  to  be  sacrificed  at  any  mo- 
ment, under  authority,  for  a  mercenary  con- 
sideration. And  the  pernicious  example  of 
the  Court  gave  a  tinge  to  the  various  grada- 
tions of  society,  down  to  the  very  lowest 
class. 

It  is  not  our  design  to  give  a  history  of 
the  French  Revolution,  but  rather  to  exhibit 
its  reflex  action  upon  the  British  people,  who 
felt  the  shock  in  a  far  greater  proportion,  it 
must  be  confessed,  than  the  circumstances  of 
the  country  warranted.  The  question  of 
Reform,  it  is  true,  had  been  mooted  by  the 
highest  authority,  so  far,  at  least,  as  rank, 
talent,  and  influence  were  concerned;  but, 
by  this  time,  a  large  number  of  the  most  in- 
fluential friends  of  that  measure  had  receded 
from  tbe  movement,  on  account  of  the  difii- 
culty  of  keeping  some  of  the  members 
within  constitutional  bounds.  Several  of  the 
seceders  had  also  become  cabinet  ministers, 
amongst  whom  were  William  Pitt  and  the 
Duke  of  Richmond,  both  of  whom  were  now 
the  determined  enemies  of  the  Constitutional 
Association,  and  those  other  societies  which 
bad  arisen  out  of  the  circumstances  of  the 
times. 

It  was  not,  however,  till  the  second  phase 
of  the  French  Revolution  had  taken  place, 
when  the  vacillating  conduct  of  Louis  XVI. 
had  brought  upon  the  royal  family  and  the 
aristocracy  those  horrible  disasters  which 
alarmed  and  distracted  the  whole  of  Europe, 
that  the  corresponding  movements  in  the 
United  Kingdom  began  to  engage  the  serious 
attention  of  the  Government.  Without  ques- 
tion, a  large  party  had  drank  deep  into  the 
republican  spirit,  from  the  same  fountain 
which  had  supplied  the  Jacobins  of  France, 
namely,  the  example  of  the  American  colo- 
nies, whose  independence  had  settled  into 
that  form  of  government.  We  shall  not  stop 
to  enquire  what  effect  such  a  change  would 
have  produced  with  us,  or  how  far  the  theory 
of  republicanism  is  or  is  not  superior  as  an 
abstract  principle  to  that  of  monarchy.  But 
of  this  we  are  sure,  that  none  of  the  Euro- 
pean countries  or  peoples  are  prepared  for 
such  a  change ;  and  France,  above  all  others, 
is  unfitted  for  the  adoption  of  republican  in- 
stitutions. Every  attempt  to  effect  such  a 
change  there,  has  ended  in  the  establishment 
of  a  military  despotism,  and  the  consequent 
extinction  of  liberty. 

It  is  possible  that  from  the  different  char- 
acter of  the  British  people  they  would  have 
exhibited  a  more  rational  development  of  the 
republican  principle,  had  they  at  that  period 


been  able  to  effect  the  change.  But  the  fac^ 
is,  a  large  majority,  especially  of  the  middle 
class,  of  the  British  nation,  were  warmly  at- 
tached to  royalty,  and  to  the  constitution, 
and  had  no  wish  whatever  for  a  change  of 
government,  however  desirous  they  were  to 
have  a  reform  in  the  House  of  Commons.  It 
was,  therefore,  with  grief  that  they  saw  revo- 
lutionary clubs  established,  and  republican 
principles  openly  avowed  by  the  members  of 
those  clubs,  which  not  only  laid  them  open 
to  the  vengeance  of  the  Government,  but  in- 
volved all,  even  the  more  constitutional  soci- 
eties, in  the  same  denunciation,  and  the  same 
vindictive  prosecution. 

The  five  years  which  followed  the  death 
of  Louis  and  the  destruction  of  the  French 
monarchy,  reflected  lasting  disgrace  upon  the 
administration  of  William  Pitt  It  was  a 
reign  of  terror  in  England,  as  well  as  in 
France,  with  this  difference,  that,  in  the  lat- 
ter case,  the  frightful  atrocities  were  com- 
mitted by  a  band  of  lawless  miscreants,  who 
soon  after,  in  their  turns,  expiated  their 
crimes  at  the  guillotine;  whilst  here  the 
Government  were  the  butchers,  who  attacked 
indiscriminately  the  guilty  and  the  innocent 
— ^the  ferocious  republican  and  the  moderate 
reformer.  Hundreds  of  blank  warrants,  ready 
signed,  were  sent  down  to  the  different  cities 
and  towns  where  reform  associations  were 
established,  to  be  filled  up  at  the  leisure  and 
discretion  of  the  infamous  myrmidons  of  the 
Government,*  who,  anxious  to  show  their 
zeal  and  loyalty,  made  no  scruple  of  de- 
nouncing some  of  the  most  estimable  charac- 
ters in  the  kingdom.  No  discrimination  was 
made,  but  the  same  charge  of  high  treason 
was  brought  against  men  as  loyal  as  the 

*  At  Norwich,  for  instance,  hetween  one  and  two 
handred  such  warranta  were  Bent  to  Clover,  who 
acted  in  the  double  oapaeity  of  barrack-master  and 
spy.  A  curious  eiroumBtanoe  occurred  at  this  pe- 
riod, in  connection  with  this  man,  which,  as  it  will 
illustrate  the  character  of  the  times,  and  hfts  never 
been  in  prints  w©  will  relate.  Clover  had  received 
a  letter  from  W.  Wyndham,  then  secretary  at  war, 
charging  him  to  keep  a  sharp  look-out  upon  th« 
Reformers,  and  particularly  to  watoh  the  conduct 
of  the  Hi^,  Mark  Wilkes^  who  appeared  to  be  a 
leader.  This  letter  was  accidentally  dropped  in 
the  street  by  Clover ;  and  being  pipked  up  by  a 
friend  of  Wilkes,  was  instantly  taken  to  him.  He 
at  once  took  it  to  March  the  printer,  and  ordered 
500  copies  to  be  struck  otL  Clover,  having  been 
informed  of  this,  went  in  a  towering  rage  to  demand 
his  letter  from  the  printer ;  but  Wilkes  happening 
to  be  in  the  shop,  after  giving  him  a  gooa  rating^ 
which  he  was  quite  capable  of  doing,  increased  his 
order  to  6,000  copies,  which  were  struck  off,  and 
circulated  through  the  city.  Clover  never  recov- 
ered his  character  after  this  blow. 


1853.J 


JOHN  HOBNE  TOOKB,  Am>  THE  STATE  TRIAIfi  OF  1794. 


859 


minister  himself,  and  who  had  but  followed 
the  former  precept  and  example  of  Pitt  and 
the  Duke  of  Richmond,  both  of  whom  were 
now  seeking  tlleir  blood.  « 

Amongst  the  most  respectable  of  these 
men  was  John  Home  Tooke,  who,  after  the 
secession  from  the  Reformers  of  the  Duke  of 
Richmond,  acted  as  chairman  at  the  meetings 
of  the  Constitutional  Society.  This  gentle- 
man was  by  profession  a  clergyman,  but  had 
no  appointment.*  He  had  passed  the  middle 
age,  and  being  in  a  weak  state  of  health, 
would  gladly  have  retired  entirely  from  pub- 
lic life,  and  shut  himself  up  in  his  house  and 
garden  at  Wimbledon,  where  he  resided.  A 
sense  of  duty  to  his  country  alone  led  him  to 
continue  holding  his  post  in  the  movement 
of  the  day ;  and  his  presence  at  the  meet- 
ings of  the  Association  was  often  the  means 
of  keeping  the  more  rash  and  ardent  mem- 
bers within  bounds.  He  was,  in  fact,  by  the 
influence  his  character  and  station  afforded 
him,  the  moderator  of  the  party;  and  all 
documents  of  importance  belonging  to  the 
association,  or  emanating  from  it,  were  sub- 
mitted to  him  for  approval  or  correction. 

In  the  meantime,  arrests  had  taken  place 
in  Ireland  and  Scotland,  where  many  parties 
had  been  tried  on  the  charge  of  high  treason. 
In  several  cases  convictions  were  obtained, 
and  some  had  suffered  the  extreme  penalty 
of  the  law.  Others  had  been  sentenced  to 
transportation  for  long  periods,  amongst 
whom  were  Palmer,  Skirving,  Muir,  Marga- 
rot,  and  Gerrald,  in  Scotland.  The  cases  of 
these  men  excited  the  deepest  sympathy 
with  all  classes,  except  that  of  the  perse- 
cutors. No  one  who  knew  their  previous 
characters,  believed  them  guilty  of  the  crimes 
laid  to  their  charge ;  and  the  infamous  char- 
acter of  some  of  the  witnesses  brought  against 
them,  excited  the  indignation  of  all  honest 
men.  *  Transportation  to  New  South  Wales 
(or  Botany  Bay)  was  no  sinecure  at  that 
period;  and  such  were  the  hardships  and 
cruelty  these  men  ^were  subjected  to,  that, 
we  believe,  not  one  of  them  lived  to  return 
to  his  native  land.  It  was,  in  fact,  believed, 
that  the  Government  directed  them  to  be 
treated  with  such  severity,  as  to  break  down 
their  spirit  and  constitution  at  the  same  time. 

Tooke  bad  once  been  returned  a  member  of 
Parliament  for  some  boroagb,  but  his  political 
opinions  rendered  him  so  obnoxious  to  the  Govern- 
ment that,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  him,  they  put  in 
force  an  order  or  rale  of  the  House,  before  seldom 
enforced,  that  no  person  in  holy  orders  should  be 
eligible  to  serve  in  Parliament  In  consequence  of 
tibia  resolution  he  was  compelled  to  vacate  his  seat 


This  conduct  of  the  Government,  far  from 
daunting  the  London  reformers,  excited  them 
to  greater  activity,  accompanied  with  more 
vigilance  and  caution.  They  passed  votes  of 
sympathy  and  commiseration  with  the  suffer- 
ers, and  memorialized  the  kinsr  for  a  mitiga- 
tion of  their  sentences.  A  oeaf  ear,  how- 
ever, was  turned  to  their  representations,  and 
it  was  very  evident  that  not  only  would  their 
memorial  not  be  attended  to,  but  that  the 
memorialists  themselves  would  thenceforth 
be  marked  men,  and  that  their  turn  would 
soon  come  to  stand  at  the  bar,  on  the  same 
sweeping  charge  of  conspiring  the  death  of 
the  king. 

At  this  period,  Home  Tooke  was  looked 
up  to  as  the  head  of  the  Constitutional  As- 
sociaUon  in  London.  Moderate  in  his  views, 
and  a  sincere  lover  of  the  constitution  in 
Church  and  State,  of  which  he  repudiated 
all  wish  to  change  the  form,  whilst  he  boldly 
and  fearlessly  advocated  a  correction  of  its 
abuses,  he  rallied  round  him  reformers  of  all 
shades  of  opinion,  holding  the  more  violent 
in  check,  and  stimulating  the  lukewarm  to 
more  decided  action. 

Every  Sunday,  his  house  at  Wimbledon 
Common  was  open  to  all  comers  who  could 
bring  a  recommendation  from  any  leading 
man  of  the  party.  At  these  political  reunions, 
which  were  sometimes  numerous,  public 
affairs  were  discussed  with  the  greatest  free- 
dom, under  the  impression  that  no  spies  or 
traitors  could  possibly  obtain  admittance, 
and  that  consequently  self-interest  would 
prevent  what  took  place  from  transpiring. 
Such,  however,  proved  not  to  be  the  case. 

On  one  of  these  weekly  occasions,  a  young 
man  of  the  name  of  John  Wharton  was  in- 
troduced, as  having  recently  been  returned 
a  member  of  Parliament  in  the  Reform  in- 
terest, for  the  borough  of  Beverley,  in  York- 
shire. He  was  represented  as  possessing 
considerable  talent,  and  capable  of  introduc- 
ing a  measure  in  Parliament  with  good  effect. 
The  following  passage  in  the  liie  of  John 
Home  Tooke,  by  a  contemporary,  will  ex- 
plain this  man's  character : — 

Among  the  immense  number  of  spies  and  in- 
formers now  employed,  were  several  of  a  hlsrher 
order,  some  of  whom  were  solely  actuated  by 
zeal,  while  others,  who  would  have  spurned  the 
idea  of  pecuniary  gratification,  were  influenced 
by  the  hope  of  office  and  appointments.  One  of 
these  latter  had  for  some  time  attached  himself  to 
Mr.  Tooke,  and  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  Wimble- 
don. His  situation  and  character  were  calculated 
to  shield  him  from  suspicion ;  but  his  host,  who 
was  too  acute  to  be  so  easily  duped,  soon  saw 
through  the  flimsy  veil  of  his  pretended  discontent ; 


360 


JOHN  HORNB  TOOKE;    AND  THE  STATE  TBHAIB  OF  1794 


[Not, 


as  he  bad  many  personal  friends  in  various  de- 
partments of  Government,  he  soon  discovered  the 
views,  connections,  and  pursuits  of  his  gnest ;  but 
instead  of  upbraiding  him  for  his  treachery  and 
dissimulation,  and  treating  him  with  contempt,  as 
most  other  men  in  his  situation  would  have  done, 
he  determined  to  foil  him,  if  possible,  at  bis  own 
weapons. 

He  accordinely  pretended  to  admit  the  spv  into 
his  entire  confidence,  and  completed  the  delusion 
by  actually  rendering  the  person  who  wished  to 
circumvent  him,  in  his  turn,  a  dupe.  Mr.  Tooke 
began  by  dropping  hints  relative  to  the  strength 
and  zeal  of  the  popular  party,  taking  care  to  mag- 
nify their  numbers,  praising  their  unanimitv,  and 
commending  their  resolution.  By  degrees  be  de- 
scended to  particulars ;  and  at  length  communi- 
cated confidentially,  and  under  the  most  solemn 
promise  of  secresy,  the  alarming  intelligence  that 
some  of  the  Guards  were  gained,  and  that  an 
armed  force  was  organized,  and  that  the  nation 
was  actually  on  the  eve  of  a  revolution. 

After  a  number  of  interviews,  he  at  length 
affected  to  own  that  he  himself  was  at  the  head 
of  the  conspiracy,  and  boasted,  like  Pompey  of 
old,  that  be  could  raise  legions  by  merely  stamp- 
ing bis  foot  on  the  ground. 

Although  no  name  is  mentioned  in  this  ac- 
count, there  is  not  a  doubt,  from  what  fol- 
lowed, that  Wharton  is  the  party  referred 
to.  We  think  it,  however,  doubtful  whether 
Tooke  was  so  well  acquainted  with  the  de- 
testable mission  with  which  Wharton  was 
entrusted,  as  the  account  would  lead  us  to 
believe.  At  any  rate,  it  appears  that  the 
whole  party  was  completely  mystified  as  to 
the  real  cause  of  the  important  events  which 
took  place  soon  after  the  introduction  of 
Wharton  to  Mr.  Tooke's  weekly  meetings. 
These  events  were,  the  arrest  of  Mr.  Tooke 
and  eleven  other  members  of  the  Coustitu- 
tional  Association,  of  the  details  of  which  we 
shall  now  give  a  summary  account. 

One  of  the  first  persons  arrested  in  London 
was  Thomas  Hardy,  the  secretary  of  the 
association.  The  character  of  this  man,  like 
that  of  Tooke,  was  beyond  suspicion,  either 
in  point  of  moral  or  political  integrity.  He 
was  a  shoe-maker;  but  in  intelligence  was  far 
superior  to  the  generality  of  tradesmen,  for 
which  cause  he  was  -chosen  for  the  office. 
Upon  his  arrest,  the  following  letter  was  ad- 
di^ssed  to  Mr.  Tooke ; 

"Dear  Citizen, — ^This  morning,  at  six 
o'clock,  Citizen  Hardy  was  taken  away  by 
an  order  from  the  Secretary  of  State's  office. 
They  seized  everything  they  could  lay  their 
hands  on.  Query :  Is  it  possible  to  get 
ready  by  Thursday  ? 

'•  Yours, 

**  JsRH.  JorcB." 


This  letter  was  stopped  and  opened  at  the 
post-office,  where  it  was  considered  of  so 
much  importance,  that  it  was  sent  to  the 
Secretary  of  State.    The  last  clause  of  it, 
which  merely  referred  to  the  preparing  of 
extracts  from   the    "  Red   Book,"    of   the 
emoluments  which  Mr.  Pitt  and  his  family 
derived  from  the  public,  was  believed  to  have 
reference  to  a  general  rising ;  and  the  Gov- 
ernment were  instantly  on  the  alert.     Mr. 
Tooke's  movements  were  narrowly  watched, 
and  his  carriage  was  followed  to  town.    He 
dined,  the  next  day,  at  a  friend's  house  m 
Spital  Square,  and  had  the  honor  of  a  patrol 
of  horse  soldiers  to  guard  the  house.    All 
this  was  merely  amusing  to  Tooke,  who  was 
quite  unconscious  of  having  committed  any 
overt  act  that  would  lead  to  his  arrest.    In 
this   he   was   mistaken;   for  Mmisters  had 
taken  the  alarm,  and  early  in  the  morning  of 
the  16  th  of  May,  1794,  he  was  seized  in  his 
house  at  Wimbledon,  by  virtue  of  a  warrant 
from  the  Secretary  of  State,  on  a  charge  of 
high  treason,  and  at  once  conveyed  to  the 
Tower. 

Here  he  was  confined,  a  close  prisoner,  for 
several  months,  not  being  allowed  pen,  ink, 
and  paper,  nor  was  any  one  permitted  to 
visit  him,  or  hold  intercourse  with  him  by 
letter  or  otherwise,  except  his  jailer.  His 
health  sinking  under  this  treatment,  an  ap- 
plication made  to  the  Privy  Council,  and  an 
order  was  consequently  issued  for  the  admis- 
sion of  Doctors  Pearson  and  Cline,  as  often 
as  the  state  of  Tooke's  health  rendered  it 
necessary,  and  also  of  his  nephew. 

There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  misappre- 
hension respecting  the  precise  charge  upon 
which  Mr.  Tooke's  arrest  took  place;  it 
being  generally  supposed  that  the  letter 
given  above,  which  was  written  in  an  amhigu- 
ous  way,  was  the  moving  cause.  Mr.  Tooke 
himself  was  for  a  long  time,  as  we  have  be- 
fore observed,  exceedingly  mystified  on  the 
subject,  not  being  aware  of  the  existence  of 
the  letter,  and  quite  unconscious  of  any  act 
that  could  be  construed  into  treason  by  the 
laws  of  England.  Still  he  did  not  know  how 
far  he  miffht  have  been  compromised  by,  and 
implicated  in,  the  acts  of  others,  who  were 
less  cautious  than  himself.  The  real  cause, 
however,  was  subsequently  made  known  to 
him  in  a  manner  which  precluded  its  being 
niade  public  during  the  life  of  the  principed 
pSLTiy  concerned,  only  three  persons  being 
privy  to  it.  On  the  death  of  the  personage 
referred  to,  which  took  place  about  the  year 
1806,  the  secret  became  known  to  a  few  per- 
sons, amongst  whom  was  the  writer  of  this 


1868.J 


JOHN  HORHE  TOOKE,  AND  THE  STATE  TRIAIB  OF  1794. 


S61 


sketch,  to  whom  it  was  related  tby  an  emi- 
nent divine ;  and  the  c<)rrectness  of  it  was 
confirmed  to  him  in  the  year  1820,  by  John 
Thelwall,  one  of  Home  Tooke's  associates, 
and  imprisoned  with  him  on  the  same  charge 
of  high  treason.  The  details  of  this  account 
we  shall  now  present  to  the  reader. 

Upon  the  arrest  and  committal  of  Tooke 
and  his  friends — twelve  in  number — the  asso- 
ciation dissolved  itself,  as  did  also  those  in 
the  coutitry.  But  in  every  place  the  mem- 
bers were  marked  men,  ana  warrants  were 
sent  down,  as  we  have  already  stated,  to  be 
instantly  executed,  in  case  Tooke  and  the 
other  prisoners  were  convicted.  Happily  the 
efforts  of  the  Crown  to  effect  its  sangumary 
purpose  were  frustrated  by  the  friendship  for 
Tooke  of  an  individual  in  high  life.  It  is 
possible  that  the  honest  jury  who  tried  him 
might  have  acquitted  him,  independent  of  this 
act  of  friendship  ;  certain  it  is,  however,  that 
by  it  the  Crown  was  disarmed,  and  the  only 
distinct  act  of  delinquency  was  omitted  to  be 
urged  against  him  through  the  following 
stratagem. 

One  evening  after  Tooke's  nephew/ who 
usually  vjsited  him  every  day,  had  left  him, 
a  stranger  was  announced  by  the  turnkey. 
Tooke  desired  he  might  be  shown  m,  when 
a  tall  man,  muffled  up  in  a  wrapping  cloak, 
and  with  his  hat  slouched  over  his  face,  en- 
tered the  room,  and  saluted  him  courteously. 
When  the  turnkey  had  retired,  the  stranger 
addressed  Mr.  Tooke  to  this  effect :  '*  You 
are  no  doubt  surprised  at  my  visit,  but  1  beg 
to  say  that  it  is  a  perfectly  friendly  one,  in 
proof  of  which  1  am  about  to  put  my  life  in 
your  hands  in  order  to  save  yours.  1  am  a 
member  of  his  Majesty's  Privy  Council,  and 
my  object  in  coming  is  to  inform  you  of  the 
real  cause  of  your  arrest,  and  of  the  danger 
to  which  you  are  exposed.  It  will  be  in 
your  recollection  that  at  your  dinner  party 
on  Sunday  last,  a  motion  was  proposed,  to 
be  brought  before  Parliament,  for  increasing 
the  pay  of  the  navy  ;  and  that  when  it  was 
objected  by  one  of  the  company  that  this 
would  breed  a  mutiny,  you  remarked,  *that*8 
exactly  what  we  want,^*     This   observation 

*  The  circtimstaQceB  respectiDg  this  affair  were  as 
follows :  At  a  previous  meeting  at  Tooke's  house, 
it  was  determined  that  Wharton  should  bring  for- 
ward in  the  House  of  Commons  a  motion  bearing 
on  the  subject  of  Reform.  This  was  done,  and  the 
motion  being  seconded,  it  was  simply  met  by  the 
previous  question  being  moved,  which  was  put  to 
the  vote  and  carried,  without  any  one  speaking 
against  the  motion  on  the  part  of  the  Miiiiatry. 
This  was  considered  rather  singular,  but  as  Whax^ 
ton  acquitted  himself  very  creditably  on  the  occa- 


was  carried  to  the  Minister  by  Wharton,  the 
member  for  Beverley,  who  was  of  the  party, 
and  your  arrest  was  the  consequence. 

"  In  the  Privy  Council  held  today,  Whar- 
ton has  been  examined,  and  it  was  after- 
wards debated  in  what  way  his  evidence 
should  be  adduced  against  you ;  whether  the 
informer  should  be  called  by  the  Crown,  or 
whether  they  should  allow  you  to  call  him, 
and  so  convict  you  out  of  the  mouth  of  your 
own  witness  ?  The  council  broke  up  with- 
out deciding  this,  question,  which  will  be 
brought  before  it  again  to-morrow.  1  will, 
therefore,  be  here  again  to- morrow  evenmg, 
to  let  you  know  their  decision." 

"The  scoundrel,"  said  Tooke,  when  the 
stranger  had  concluded :  "  1  always  suspected 
him  of  not  being  over  hearty  in  the  cause,  but 
1  could  not  have  believed  him  guilty  of  so 
atrocious  a  breach  of  confidence.  However, 
we  must  endeavour  to  out-roanoeuvre  them 
yet."  After  a  short  conversation  the  stranger 
took  his  leave. 

The  next  mommg,  Tooke  sent  for  his 
solicitor,  and  in  confidence  communicated  to 
him  what  he  had  learned,  but  without  di- 
vulging the  way  in  which  he  obtained  his  in- 
formation. He  then  directed  him  to  go  to 
Wharton  and  serve  him  with  a  subpoena,  and 
to  beg  of  him  not  to  absent  himself  from  the 
court  at  the  trial ;  that  he  considered  him  the 
most  important  witness  in  his  favor ;  and,  in 
short,  that  he  depended  on  him  more  than  all 
the  rest ;  and  it  was,  therefore,  of  the  utmost 
consequence  to  him  that  he  should  be  present 
on  the  occasion. 

This  was  done  the  same  day ;  and  in  the 
evening,  Tooke's  incognito  visitor  again  made 
his  appearance,  and  stated  that  Wharton  had 
detailed  to  the  Privy  Council  what  had  passed 
with  the  solicitor.  Upon  which  it  was  unani- 
mously agrtied,  that  Tooke  should  be  allowed 
to  call  him  as  his  witness,  and  that  then  the 
counsel  for  the  Crown  should  obtain  the  most 
direct  and  tmequivocal  evidence  against  the 
prisoner  by  a  cross-examination. 

sioD,  not  much  importance  was  attached  to  the  oir- 
oomstance. 

On  a  subsequent  meeting  at  Tooke's,  it  was  pro- 
posed that  another,  and  more  pointed  motion  should 
DC  brought  forward  by  Whaiton.  During  the  de- 
bate as  to  the  nature  of  it,  one  of  the  guests  pro- 
posed that  it  should  be  a  motion  for  increasing  the 
pay  of  the  navy.  "  Ko,"  said  another,  **  that  would 
create  a  mutiny  amongst  the  seamen."  "Well," 
eaid  Tooke,  "that's  just  what  is  wanted."  The 
meeting  broke  up  without  coming  to  any  decision ; 
and,  before  the  next  Sunday,  the  arrest  of  Tooke 
and  his  friends  had  put  a  stop  to  their  farther  pro- 
ceedings. 


962 


JOHK  HOBHB  TOOKE;  AHD  THE  8TATB  TRIAIfi  OF  1794 


LKor 


Tooke  now  felt  ccnnpleiely  at  ease,  and  be- 
gan making  hift  arrangements  for  his  defence. 
It  is  said  that  he  had  determined  to  defend 
himself ;  but  his  solicitor,  after  a  long  argu- 
ment with  him  on  the  subject,  concluded  by 
sajingy  "Well  sir,  yon  must  act  as  you 
please ;  but  if  you  do,  you  will  certainly  be 
nanged."  "Then,"  replied  Tooke  instantly, 
"  I'S  be  hanged  if  I  do !  "  and  directed  him 
to  ^ve  the  brief  to  Henry  Erekine. 

The  number  of  witnesses  subpoenaed  on 
both  sides  amounted  to  some  hundreds. 
Those  for  the  defence  consisted  chiefly  of  the 
higher  ranks  of  society,  with  whom  Tooke 
had  been  on  terms  of  intimacy  all  his  life : 
they  included  his  quondam  associates  in  the 
cause  of  Reform,  not  forgetting  William  Pitt 
(the  Prime  Minister),  and  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond (the  Master  of  the  Ordnance),  with 
many  other  distinguished  personages,  who, 
like  them,  had  not  only  abandoned  their 
former  principles,  but  were  now  the  vindic- 
tive persecutors  of  those  who  acted  with 
freater  consistency.  Wharton  appears  to 
ave  been  subpoenaed  by  both  the  prosecu- 
tor and  the  prisoner,  as  his  name  appears 
— for  the  first  and  last  time  in  the  proceed- 
ings— amongst  the  witnesses  for  the  Crown, 
on  whose  behalf,  however,  he  was  not  called, 
as  was  previously  arranged. 

The  trial  commenced  under  favorable  cir- 
cumstances in  many  respects.  The  whole  of 
the  twelve  prisoners^  were  included  in  the 
same  bill  of  indictment,  sent  up  to  the 
grand  jury;  but  they  claimed  to  be  tried 
separately,  which  was  granted.  Hardy  had 
previously  been  tried  and  acquitted,  there 
not  being  a  shadow  of  evidence  that  could  be 
relied  on,  to  bring  home  to  him  the  charge 
of  treason.  Erskme,  who  had  so  success- 
fully conducted  his  defence,  was  himself  a 
staunch  reformer  ;  and  although  he  had  se- 
ceded from  the  association,  wns  well  enough 
acquainted  with  Tooke's  principles  and  asso- 
ciates,  to  know  both  the  weak  points  of  the 
charge  against  the  prisoners,  and  the  strong 
ones  in  their  defence.  When  these  advan- 
tages are  coupled  with  the  powerful  elo- 
quence, the  great  legal  acumen  and  know- 
ledge, the  ardent  love  of  freedom,  and  the 
undaunted  courage  by  which  Erskine's  char- 
acter was  marked,  it  will  be  manifest  that 


*  Their  namM  were  Thomas  Hardy,  John  Home 
Tooke,  J.  A.  Bonney,  Stewart  Eyd,  Jeremiah  Joyce, 
Thomas  Wardle,  Thomas  Holcroft^  John  Richter, 
Matthew  Moore,  John  Thelwell,  Riehard  Hodgson, 
and  John  Baxter. 


the  chances  were  greatly  in  fiavor  of  the 
prisoners. 

But,  independent  of  this,  the  pnbfie  nmid 
began  to  take  the  alarm,  as  to  whither  the 
vindictive  proceedings  of  the  Crown  were 
tending.  .The  prosecutions  in  Scotland  were 
harsh  in  the  extreme,  and  made  no  discrimina- 
tion between  the  respectable  and  moderate 
reformer  and  the  furious  democrat ;  and  the 
same  tragical  results — for  lives  had  been 
taken  both  in  Scotland  and  Ireland — were 
now  sought  to  be  obtained  in  London  and 
the  English  provinces.  Nor  would  it  stop 
here  if  the  Crown  proved  successful  in  the 
present  prosecution.  It  had  determined  to 
"  run  a  muck"  at  all  reform  and  reformers, 
and  by  a  multitude  of  warrants  make  a  com- 
plete sweepstake  of  the  most  respectable  of 
the  latter,  thereby  hoping  to  strike  terror 
into  the  inferior  ranks.  The  writer  of  this 
sketch  happens  to  be  but  too  well  acquainted 
with  the  truth  of  this  assertion,  upwards  of 
fifty  of  his  own  relatives  and  friends  in  a  pro* 
vincial  city  having  been  amongst  the  pro- 
scribed, every  one  of  whom  would  have  been 
arrested  and  tried  on  a  charge  of  high 
treason,  had  Home  Tooke  been  convicted ; 
the  warrants  for  their  arrest  (among  others) 
being  in  the  hands  of  the  local  authorities, 
ready  to  be  executed  at  a  moment's  warning. 
It  was  therefore  the  general  feeling — doubt- 
less extending  itself  to  the  jury-panel — that 
nothing  but  the  most  direct  and  unequivocal 
evidence  of  guilt  would  justify  an  adverse 
verdict  against  the  prisoners.  Consequently 
the  principle  of  constructive  treason,  upon 
which  alone  it  was  hoped  to  obtain  a  convic- 
tion, was  kicked  out  of  court  with  disgust 
and  abhorrence,  as  unworthy  of  a  free  coun- 
try and  of  the  institution  of  Trial  by  Jury. 

An  incident  occurred  at  the  outset  of  the 
proceedings  which  displays  the  fearlessness 
of  Tooke's  character.  When  called  upon  to 
plead  and  to  say  how  he  would  be  tried,  he 
eyed  the  court  for  some  seconds  in  a  signifi- 
cant manner,  which  few  men  were  better 
able  to  assume ;  and  shaking  his  head,  em- 
phatically replied, — *'I  would  be  tried  by 
God  and  my  country ;  but " 

It  is  impossible  to  give  any  adequate 
analysis  of  this  memorable  trial,  the  favor- 
able result  of  which  to  the  prisoners  proba- 
bly saved  the  lives  of  hundreds,  if  not  thou- 
sands, of  respectable  citizens.  It  must  suffice 
us  to  state  that  the  evidence  for  the  Crown, 
whilst  it  displayed  great  imprudence  in  some, 
and  folly  in  others,  of  the  Reformers,  did  not 
bring  home  a  particle  of  guUt  to  the  prisoner. 


1858.] 


JOHN  HOSNB  TOOKE,  AND  THE  STATE  TRIAIS  OF  1794. 


363 


This  the  counsel  for  the  Crown  did  not  re- 
card,  feeling  himself  sure  of  eliding  enough 
K>r  a  conviction  upon  the  cross-examination 
of  Wharton,  who  stood  there  in  court  as  the 
bosom-friend  of  the  man  he  was  about  to 
betray  to  the  executioner.  The  chief  part  of 
the  charge  consisted  of  a  multitude  of  writ- 
ten and  printed  documents,  which  it  was 
attempted  to  identify  or  connect  with  Tookq, 
as  a  leading  member  of  the  Constitutional 
Association.  It  was  proved,  however,  that 
when  such  papers  were  put  into  hb  hands 
for  inspection,  he  invariably  altered  and 
softened  down  sucb  expressions  or  sentences 
as  appeared  to  him  to  have  a  revolutionary 
tendency;  and  even  the  witnesses  for  the 
Crown  were  compelled  to  admit  that  the 
Puke  of  Richmond's  plan  of  reform  was  the 
basis  of  Tooke's  own  plan,  and  that  the  lat- 
ter never  went  beyond  it,  or  sought  to  obtain 
it  by  other  than  constitutional  means.  Thus 
the  case  for  the  Crown  was  closed  without 
bringing  home  to  the  prisoner  anything  what- 
ever stronger  than  constructive  guilt  of  the 
most  inconclusive  kind. 

For  the  defence,  a  hundred  witnesses  were 
collected  in  court,  including  the  most  illus- 
trious names  that  adorn  the  history  of  that 
eventful  period.  Charles  Fox,  William  Pitt, 
Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan,  the  Duke  of 
Richmond,  Lord  John  Russell,  the  Duke  of 
Bedford,  with  a  host  of  similar  celebrities, 
were  called  up  on  this  occasion  and  spoke  to 
the  general  respectability  of  the  prisoner; 
and  most  of  them  expressed  their  disbelief 
that  he  could  possibly  be  guilty  of  the 
crimes  laid  to  his  charge.  Pitt  committed 
himself  most  grossly  by  his  repeated  "  non 
mi  ricordo"  replies,  when  questioned  upon 
facts  that  occurred  when  he  was  himself  a 
member  of  the  Constitutional  Association ; 
so  that,  at  last,  Tooke  called  up  another 
witness  (we  believe  it  was  Fox)  to  confront 
him,  when  he  at  once  recoverea  his  recollec- 
tion and  admitted  the  fact  in  question. 
Tooke  turned  to  the  court  and  said :  "  My 
lord,  the  honorable  gentleman  appears  to 
have  a  very  convenient  memory,  which  re- 
tains nothing  he  wishes  to  forget ! " 

But  where  was  the  traitor  Wharton? 
Waiting  to  complete  the  purchase  of  the 
Minister's  favor,  by  the  betrayal  of  the  man 
who,  he  believed,  depended  upon  him  more 
than  any  other  for  a  successful  defence.    As 


the  reader  will  have  surmised,  he  toaa  not 
called  at  all,  but  stood  like  a  guilty  thing 
enduring  the  indignant  glances  of  the  prisoner, 
conveying  the  conviction  that  the  latter  was 
fully  aware  of  his  treachery.  In  fact,  so 
little  apprehension  had  Tooke  of  the  result  of 
the  tnal,  that  not  more  than  from  ten  to 
fifteen  of  hb  witnesses  had  been  called,  when 
he  signified  to  his  attorney  that  he  wished 
the  defence  to  be  closed,  being  quite  satb- 
fied  that  it  should  rest  upon  the  evidence 
already  adduced.  The  counsel  for  the  Crown 
objected  to  thb  in  vain,  conscious  that  it  was 
upon  Wharton  alone  that  their  hope  of  a 
conviction  now  rested.  Tooke  was  inflexible, 
and  the  case  on  both  sides  being  closed,  the 
Judge  summed  up,  in  a  speech  which  occu- 
pied a  whole  day  in  delivering ;  in  the  course 
of  which  he  remarked  that  notwithstanding 
the  high  character  the  prisoner  sustained  by 
the  evidence  of  the  illustrious  persons  who 
had  been  called  for  in  the  defence,  as  well  as 
those  for  the  Crown,  there  were  suspicious 
points  in  his  conduct  which  he  would  have 
been  glad  to  have  had  cleared  up  hj  further 
evidence.  Why  the  prisoner  had  declined 
calling  those  witnesses  who  by  their  more  in- 
timate acquaintance  with  his  proceedings 
could  have  done  ^this,  was  best  known  to 
himself;  but  certainly  it  would  have  been 
desirable  to  have  had  those  pomts  satisfac- 
torily explained. 

After  the  charge  of  the  judge,  the  verdict 
occupied  but  a  few  minutes,  the  jury  being 
unanimous  in  declaring  the  prisoner  "  Not 
Guilty"  Before  leaving  the  court,  Tooke 
addressed  Wharton:  '*  Thou  base  scoundrel," 
said  he,  "  go  home  to  your  Yorkshire  den, 
and  hide  your  head  there,  for  you  are  unfit  ' 
to  mix  in  the  world  with  honest  men." 

The  result  of  this  memorable  trial  was 
most  fortunate  for  the  country.  Thelwall 
and  Holcroft  were  put  to  the  bar  the  next 
day,  but  no  evidence  was  brought  against 
them,  and  they  were  acquitted.  All  ulterior 
proceedings  of  the  Government  against  the 
Reformers  were  stayed,  and  the  people  were 
again  enabled  to  breathe  freely,  under  the 
conviction,  that  however  despotically  in- 
clined the  Government  ipay,  at  ti^es,  show 
themselves,  there  is  a  power  in  the  constitu- 
tion, and  in  the  institutions  of  the  country, 
to  counteract  it,  and  to  re-establish  its  liber- 
ties by  the  very  means  taken  to  destroy  them. 


504 


THE  LIFE  AND  POETRY  OF  HILTON. 


fNoT., 


From  Hogg's  Instractor. 


THE   LIFE  AND   POETRY   OF   MILTON 


A  POET  can  only  be  appreciated  during 
his  lifetime,  and  receive  the  honor  due  to  the 
nobility  of  his  nature,  and  the  ffreatness  of 
his  genius,  when  he  arises  in  a  primitive  age, 
or  in  a  period,  like  the  present,  of  general 
enlightenment  and  comparative  repose.  In 
a  middle  era  of  change  and  conflict,  he  is  cer- 
tain to  remain  in  obscurity,  to  be  visited  only 
by  a  few  faint  rays  of  approving  sympathy, 
and  even  to  be  maligned  by  many  who  may 
have  been  opposed  to  him  in  the  warfare  of 
public  life.  Homer,  we  may  well  imagine, 
would  hear  soft  voices  waxing  eloquent  in 
his  praise,  when  he  wandered  over  the  Chian 
Isle,  and  he  would  be  regarded  as  only  a  lit- 
tle lower  than  the  gods  by  the  men  whose 
hearts  rose  to  the  swellings  of  his  voiceful 
strain.  There  was  little  danger  of  the  Scan- 
dinavian scald,  of  the  Grecian  or  Celtic  bard, 
being  doomed  to  live  an  inglorious  life,  and 
to  be  buried  in  an  unknown  grave.  Nor  can 
we  conceive  it  possible  that,  at  the  present 
day,  another  Milton  or  a  second  Shakspere 
could  arise,  without  receiving  a  warm  and 
general  welcome,  and  bei'bg  rapturously 
crowned  with  the  laurel  wreath.  A  recent 
instance  has  strikingly  shown  that,  utilitarian 
as  this  age  is  called,  and  mechanical  as  are 
its  mightiest  movements,  the  old  love  for 
poetry,  and  the  primitive  reverence  for  the 
poet,  still  remain  as  divine  and  enduring  in- 
stincts in  the  human  heart.  But  it  fared  far 
otherwise  with  Milton,  in  that  strange  seven- 
teenth century,  when  the  powers  of  light  and 
of  darkness  were  struggling  for  the  ascen- 
dency in  the  land.  He  had  fallen  on  evil 
days  and  evil  tongues ;  and,  while  extensive- 
ly known  as  a  scholar,  a  schismatic,  and  a 
fierce  controversialist,  he  only  found,  as  a 
poet,  an  audience  fit,  though  few.  This  neg- 
lect of  the  great  poet  should  not  be  attributed 
altogether  to  his  connection  with  Cromwell, 
to  his  defence  of  regicide,  or  to  his  ultra 
views  in  political  and  ecclesiastical  affairs.  It 
was  also  owing,  in  a  large  measure,  to  the 
general  laxity  and  insincerity  of  the  times 
succeeding  the  Restoration.  How  was  it  pos- 
sible that  the  power,  the  majesty,  the  beauty, 


and  the  consecration  of  ^  Paradise  Lost," 
could  be  felt  and  appreciated  at  a  period 
when  the  court  was  a  pool  of  pollution,  when 
the  church  owned  no  head  higher  than  the 
second  Charles,  and  when  Puritanism  waa 
persecuted  and  laughed  to  scorn  as  the  latest 
and  most  contemptible  form  of  fanaticism  ? 
Johnson  ^attempted  to  attribute  the  neglect 
of  Milton  to  the  paucity  of  readers  and  the 
ignorance  of  the  age.  But  he  approached 
nearer  the  truth  when  he  said,  ^'  Wit  and 
literature  were  on  the  aide  of  the  court ;  and 
who  that  solicited  favor  or  fashion,  would 
venture  to  praise  the  defender  of  the  regi* 
cides  ?''  Wordsworth,  in  one  beautiful  line, 
describes  the  real  relation  in  which  this 
mighty  poet  stood  to  the  men  of  an  era  that 
must  ever  remain  as  a  foul  blot  upon  the 
page  of  English  history — 

I 
*<  His  sonl  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart" 

Milton  might  mourn  over  the  blindness  that 
shut  out  from  his  view  the  glories  of  earth 
and  heaven ;  but  he  fronted  in  majestic  pa* 
tience  the  indifference  and  neglect  of  the 
times,  content  to  possess  for  the  present  a 
small  select  circle  of  auditors,  and  looking 
calmly  forward  to  the  coming  ages,  when 
his  genius  would  be  seen  in  its  full-orbed 
beauty,  and  felt  in  the  plenitude  of  its  power. 
The  world- poet  can  see,  through  the  dark* 
ness  of  his  own  day,  the  far-future  of  his 
fame  spanning  and  brightening  like  a  rain- 
bow arch  above  the  path  of  the  rolling  years. 
He  knows  that  the  anointing  oil  of  inspinir 
tion  has  not  been  poured  out  upon  him  in 
vain.  He  is  conscious  of  the  greatness  of 
his  thoughts  and  the  value  of  his  work,  al- 
though he  dwells  in  darkness,  and  is  with 
*'  dangers  compassed  round."  He  rests  sat- 
isfied in  the  conviction,  that  the  great  soul 
of  the  world  is  just,  and  that  men  of  con- 
genial spirit  are  yet  to  arise,  who  will  unfold 
all  the  glories  ol  his  song,  and  teach  the  un- 
born generations  to  reverence  his  name.  The 
very  obscurity  in  which  he  lives  will  draw 
more  tenderly  towards  him  the  heart  of  the 


1858.] 


THE  LIFE  AND  POETRY  OF  MILTOF. 


806 


future,  and  serve  as  a  shadowy  back-ground 
to  make  the  bloom  and  brightness  of  his 
genius  more  distinctly  Tisible.  All  this,  we 
need  scarcely  remark,  is  truly  applicable  to 
Milton.  The  broad  light-halo  that  now  en- 
circles his  name  has  been  a  very  gradual  ac- 
cumulation. The  poet  who  had  listened  to 
celestial  colloqi^ies  sublime  in  the  heaven  of 
heavens,  who  had  walked  with  Michael  over 
the  crystal  pavement  of  the  upper  world, 
wmged  with  Raphael  through  the  azure 
deeps  of  air,  and  stood  with  Adam  in  Eden, 
looking  towards  sunrise  with  wonder  in  his 
eye  and  praise  upon  his  lips,  had  a  mien  too 
noble,  and  a  step  too  majestic,  to  be  called  a 
congenial  companion  by  the  last  century  wits 
of  the  school  of  Yoltaire,  and  poets  who 
burned  incense  to  Boileau.  Even  Addison, 
whose  heart  overflowed  with  the  love  that 
can  alone  purify  the  inward  sight,  proved 
himself  as  incompetent  to  mate  with  the 
grandeurs  of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  as  to  relish 
and  describe  the  sublimities  of  Alpine  scen- 
ery. And,  when  perusing  Johnson's  life  and 
critical  estimate  of  the  poet,  we  are  moved 
alternately  to  smiles  ana  sneers,  and  feel  at 
one  moment  inclined  to  pity,  and  at  another 
to  pillory  the  strong-minded,  but  pedantic 
and  prejudiced  old  Jacobite. 

With  the  present  century,  a  giant  race  of 
literary  men  arose,  whose  spirits  responded 
to  the  cathedral  chant  of  Milton's  divine  song. 
They  admired  the  noble  and  magnaninjous 
nature  and  conduct  of  the  man,  while  they 
adored  the  creations  of  the  poet.  They 
strove  earnestly,  also,  to  scatter  the  envious 
shadows  that  had  so  long  eclipsed  the  full 
glory  of  his  genius.  But  this  task  was  not 
accomplished  in  a  day ;  for  Channing  asserts, 
in  his  eloquent  criticism,  written  after  the  dis- 
covery and  publication  of  the  "  Treatise  on 
Christian  Doctrine,"  that  the  mists  which  the 
prejudices  and  bigotry  of  Johnson  had  spread 
over  the  bright  name  of  Milton,  were  not 
even  then  altogether  dissipated,  although  fast 
hastening  away.  The  able  and  brilliant  crit- 
icisms produced  in  recent  times  by  some  of 
the  most  eminent  of  living  authors,  have 
tended  still  more  to  remove  any  remaining 
prejudices  from  the  minds  of  men,  and  to 
develop  more  fully  the  intellectual  and  moral 
qualiiies  of  this  mighty  poet.  These  various 
dissertations  have  been  followed  by  the  ad- 
mirable edition  of  the  poetry  of  Milton  now 
before  us,  containing  a  life  and  critical  esti- 
mate of  the  genius  and  works  of  the  poet, 
from  the  pen  of  George  Gilfillan.*    It  was 

*  Miltonlb  PoeUeal  Work&    With  Life,  Critical 


assuredly  full  time  that  the  editions  of  New- 
ton, Hawkins,  Todd,  Warton,  and  others, 
should  be  superseded  by  something  more  in 
accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  times,  and 
more  honorable  to  the  taste  and  intellect  of 
the  poet's  native  land.  The  great  thoughts 
and  rolling  lines  of  Milton  require  a  wide 
page,  and  a  typography  correspondingly 
large.  They  lose  half  of  their  power  when 
compressed  into  a  small  poctet  edition,  as  a 
great  painting,  like  David  Scott's  **  Vasco  de 
&ama,"  fails  to  move  the  heart  when  dwindled 
down  into  a  small  chalk  engraving.  The 
publisher  selected  an  editor  who  has  shown 
how  eminently  qualified  he  was  for  discharg- 
ing that  important  duty.  He  had  a  difficult 
and  responsible  task  to  perform  ;  but  he  has 
risen  boldly  up  to  the  full  measure  and  sta- 
ture of  his  theme.  In  sounding  the  depths 
and  measuring  with  a  golden  reed  the  heights 
of  Milton's  mmd,  he  does  not  *'  reel,  or  blench, 
or  tremble,  di^lay  weakness,  or  indicate 
terror."  It  is  the  Addisons  and  Wartons 
who  look  up  with  a  timid  gaze,  and  walk 
with  a  trembling  step.  There  is  very  little 
in  either  of  the  volumes  that  the  most  fastid- 
ious or  carping  critic  could  desire  to  alter 
or  erase.  The  life  is  calm,  accurate,  and  sub- 
dued, written  in  a  fine  spirit  and  a  fitting 
style,  and  blooming  out  at  intervals  into 
brief  passages  of  much  beauty.  Every  fact 
and  date  connected  with  the  career  of  a  poet 
like  Milton  is  interesting,  but  that  interest 
can  be  greatly  increased  by  the  style  and 
spirit  in  which  the  narrative  is  told.  The 
passages  describing  the  appearance  of  the 
young  poet  on  bis  departure  for  Italy  ;  the 
meeting  of  Milton  and  Galileo  in  one  of  the 
cells  of  the  Inquisition  at  Florence  ;  and  the 
brief  reflections  on  the  ascension  of  the  "  ma- 
jestic man-child  to  God  and  to  his  throne/' 
are  the  products  of  a  richly-gifted  mind. 

The  critical  estimate  contamed  in  the  sec- 
ond volume  strikes  a  bolder  string,  and  is  the 
outflow  of  a  loftier  mood.  It  demanded  the 
free  and  firm  exercise  of  the  highest  powers 
of  the  mind.  The  man  who  woula  enter 
thoroughly  into  the  spirit  of  Milton,  so  as  to 
present  us  with  a  faithful  daguerreotype  of 
his  genius,  must  live  ever  in  the  great  Task- 
master's eye,  and  under  the  shadow  of  the 
Infinite ;  must  possess  a  lofty  moral  nature, 
love  liberty,  and  reverence  truth ;  must  be 
native  and  endued  to  the  sublime,  and  cling 
to  the  bosom  of  the  beautiful.     The  critic 


Diaeertation,  ftnd  Explanatory  Notes,  by  the  Rev. 
Gkobgs  GiLFiLX4Air.  2  voIb.  Edinburgh:  James 
NichoL 


866 


THB  LIFE  Am)  FOETRT  OF  MILTON. 


[Not., 


destitate  of  any  of  these  qaalificatioDs,  oaanot 
possibly  perceive  and  give  due  promiaence 
to  those  characteristics  in  the  constitution  of 
the  poet's  soul  which  he  does  not  himself  pos- 
sess. He  will  therefore  produce  a  defective 
criticism,  and  be  unable  to  reflect,  from  the 
mirror  of  his  mind,  a  complete  image  of  the 
poet.  If  he  be  destitute  of  a  large,  mag- 
nanimous nature,  he  will  fail  to  perceive  the 
grandeur  of  Milton's  character ;  if  he  be  filled 
with  no  deep  passion  for  the  sublime*  he  will 
fail  to  perceive  the  grandeur  of  Milton's 
genius.  That  great  poet  approached  nearer 
to  the  ideal  man — to  roundness  and  entire- 
ness  of  being — than  any  other  of  the  intel- 
lectual sons  of  Anak  in  ancient  and  modem 
times.  He  may  not  have  possessed  subtlety, 
insight  into  character,  and  dramatic  power 
equal  to  Shakspere,  although  "Paradise 
Lost"  displays  all  these  characteristics  in  a 
very  eminent  degree ;  but  he  had,  instead,  a 
more  reverential  spirit — a  loftier  mould  of 
mind.  A  corresponding  completeness  is  ac- 
cordingly required  in  the  critic  who  would 
present  us  with  a  perfect  portnuture  of  the 
poet  who  passed,  like  a  permitted  guest,; 
through  the  crowds  of  quiring  cherubim. 
But  this  form  and  fashion  of  man  is  very 
rarely  to  be  found  in  this  lower  sphere,  since 
the  gods  ascended  from  the  earth,  and  the 
contributions  of  variously-constituted  minds 
must  therefore  supply  the  deficiencies  of  the 
individual  soul.  Macaulay  expatiates,  with 
much  brilliance  and  enthusiasm,  on  the  power, 
the  beauty,  and  luxuriance  of  Milton's  genius, 
but  has  less  sympathy  with  the  higher  qual- 
ities of  his  moral  nature;  and  Channin?  sup- 
Sties  that  defect.  Coleridge — who  m  his 
Ihamouni-hymn  seemed  to  have  found  again 
the  harp  of  the  blind  old  bard — brings  forth 
certain  characteristics  prominently  to  view. 
De  Quincey,  Wilson,  and  others,  develop,  in 
different  ways,  other  phases  and  peculiarities 
of  the  poet's  genius :  and  thus,  by  compar- 
ing together  these  various  contributions,  a 
very  searching  and  comprehensive  criticism 
may  be  obtained.  In  the  products  of  such  a 
capacious  genius,  every  critic  is  certain  to 
find  his  own — to  find  something  with  which 
he  can  deeply  sympathise.  By  the  combin- 
ation, then,  of  such  a  variety  of  minds,  a 
more  perfect  image  of  the  poet  will  be  pre- 
sented than  one  man,  who  bordered  even  on 
Miltonic  completeness,  could  possibly  have 
produced. 

Now,  without  entering  into  a  comparison 
between  Gilfillan  and  any  of  the  eminent 
critics  mentioned  above,  we  may  confidently 
assert*  that  he  has  produced  as  rich  and  com- 


plete a  critical  estimate  of  Milton's  powers 
and  place  in  literature  as  any  yet  given  to 
the  world.  He  has  seized  at  once  upon  the 
prominent  peculiarities  of  the  poet's  genius, 
and  presented  them  in  bold,  forcible,  and 
beautiful  language.  He  has  a  thorough  ap- 
preciation of  all  the  great  qtialities  that  com- 
bined to  form  the  ofod-like  mind  of  Milton. 
The  criticism  contains  many  brilliant  and  pow- 
erful passages,  and  many  original  thoughts. 
We  doubt  if  any  other  living  literary  man 
could  have  been  competent  to  enter  with  so 
much  sympathetic  rapture  into  the  spirit  of 
the  poet,  or  to  follow  with  such  a  steady 
wing  the  dark,  downward  course  of  the 
master-fiend.  The  training  he  has  under- 
gone admirably  adapted  him  for  the  work  be 
has  accomplished  with  so  much  success.  It 
was  only  the  man  who  had  followed  into  the 
wilderness  the  footsteps  of  the  Bible  bards, 
who  had  gazed  with  Ezekiel  on  the  terrible 
crystal,  the  eyed  wheels,  and  the  fourfold- 
visaged  Four,  or  mingled  with  John  amid  the 
tumultuous  glories  of  the  Apocalypse,  who 
could  tread  aright  the  path  that  Milton  so 
majestically  trod.  The  entire  estimate  may 
be  called  the  pillared  porch  of  a  mighty 
temple,  that  is  filled  with  the  incense  of  ad- 
oration and  the  rolling  organ-peals  of  praise. 

In  further  commenting  upon  Milton,  we 
shall  take  occasion  to  introduce  one  or  two 
quotations  from  the  editor's  dissertation  to 
corroborate,  if  that  indeed  be  necessary,  our 
high  estimate  of  its  power  and  beauty.  We 
propose'  to  dwell,  in  the  remainder  of  this 
paper,  on  the  heroism  and  devotedness  of 
Milton's  life,  to  regard  the  highest  effort  of 
his  poetry  as  the  necessary  result  and  reflec- 
tion of  his  life  and  times,  and  to  conclude 
with  a  critique  on  a  few  of  the  characters 
and  characteristics  of  his  poetry. 

It  was  finely  said  by  the  poet  himself,  that 
the  man  who  would  sing  aright  the  high 
praises  of  heroic  men  or  famous  cities,  ought 
himself  to  be  a  true  poem.  Milton  was  one 
of  the  few  who  fulfilled  this  lofty  condition  : 
"  he  was  a  composition  and  pattern  of  the 
best  and  honorablest  things ;"  and  his  life  was 
no  dreamy  idyl,  no  pleasant  musical  masque, 
but  a  grand  and  severe  epic.  His  life,  like 
his  poetry,  is  a  study  for  every  man  who 
would  wish  to  be  great  and  good,  and  to 
leave  the  stamp  of  his  soul  upon  his  age. — 
Like  one  of  his  own  giant  angels,  Milton  shed 
a  radiant  light  around  him  wherever  he  mov- 
ed. The  longer  we  meditate  on  the  many 
high  moral  and  intellectual  qualities  he  pos- 
sessed— on  the  earnestness  with  which  he 
engaged  in  the  struggle  of  life ;  on  the  fear- 


1853.] 


THB  UFB  AND  POSTET  OF  MUTOH. 


367 


lessness  with  which  he  met  and  repelled  the 
enemies  of  liberty  and  the  assMlants  of  truth ; 
and  on  the  power  he  possessed  of  rising  su- 
perior to  circumstances,  and  retaining  the 
purity  of  his  prime  in  a  tainted  political  atmos- 
phere— we  see  the  less  to  condemn,  and  the 
more  to  admire.  Among  the  many  qualities 
he  manifested  in  so  unusual  a  degree,  there 
are  none  more  interesting  or  apparent  than 
his  self-denial  and  his  self-devotion  to  the 
cause  of  liberty.  During  bis  college  career, 
and  when  dreaming  the  dream  of  '*  Comus" 
among  the  beautiful  woods  and  fields  of  Hor- 
ton,  he  would  doubtless  revel  in  the  anticipa- 
tion of  spending  a  studious  life,  and  of  de- 
voting himself  to  the  cultivation  of  poetry. 
Besides  the  strong  native  tendencies  of  his 
heart,  and  the  applause  his  early  contributions 
had  already  received  from  the  discriminating, 
his  consciousness  of  possessing  poetical 
capabilities  of  no  ordinary  kind  would  at 
once  shape  the  course,  and  determine  the  end 
of  his  life.  When  he  left  the  meditative 
seclusion  of  Horton  for  Italy,  it  was  on  a 
poetical  tour  that  he  was  bent :  it  was  not 
80  much  to  study  the  manners  of  other  people 
and  the  political  constitution  of  other  coun- 
tries, as  to  feed  the  fire  of  ffenius  that  was 
burning  in  his  heart ;  to  visit  the  land  that 
had  been  consecrated  by  the  muse  of  Dante, 
of  Petrarch,  and  of  Tasso ;  to  gaze  into  the 
glancing  eyes  of  the  daughters  of  the  south  ; 
to  drink  in  poetry  from  the  woody  Apennine 
and  hills  of  Fesole,  from  the  moonlight 
Colosseum,  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's,  the 
friezes  of  Michael  Angelo,  the  softer  crea- 
tions of  Raphael,  and  the  masterpieces  of 
Italian  art.  He  went  away  flushed  from 
"  Conuis''  and  **'  Lycidas,''  and  had,  in  all 
probability,  little  expectation  or  desire  of 
ever  being  aught  than  a  poet.  Indeed,  it  is 
almost  impossible  that  we  can  connect  the 
conception  of  a  state  secretary,  a  polemic,  and 
a  lexicographer,  with  the  appearance  of  the 
bright  Apollo  when  he  set  out  for  Italy, 
'*  with  youth  aqd  manhood  mingling  on  his 
brow,  with  his  long  auburn  hair,  with  his 
beautiful  Grecian  face,  with  a  mild,  majestic 
enthusiasm  glowing  in  his  eyes,  with  cheek 
tenderly  flushed  by  exercise  and  country  air, 
with  a  f6rm  erect  and  buoyant  with  hope, 
with  a  body  and  soul  pure  and  uncontaminat- 
ed,  and  bearing,  like  the  ancient  gods,  a  mu- 
sical instrument  in  his  hand.''*  But,  incon- 
gruous as  this  union  may  appear,  it  was 
nevertheless  destined  that  the  great  heart  of 
the  poet  should  stifle  its  divinest  instincts 

*  Oimilan's  lafe. 


during  a  long  course  of  years.  The  first  de* 
cided  act  of  his  self-denial,  and  the  first  stem 
step  that  showed  the  noble  and  determined 
course  he  would  pursue  in  after  years,  was 
his  stopping  short  at  Naples  on  his  way  to 
Sicily  and  Greece,  when  he  heard  of  the 
commotions  that  were  shaking  his  native  land. 
That  this  resolution  was  not  taken  without 
a  severe  pang,  may  readily  be  believed,  when 
we  reflect  that  to  Milton  the  Ilissus  was  a 
sacred  stream,  and  Parnassus  a  holy  hill; 
and  we  may  picture  him  for  one  moment 
trembling  in  the  balance,  while  the  mighty 
spirits  of  the  past — the  memories  of  Mara- 
thon and  *'  old  Plataea's  day" — invited  him 
on  before,  and  the  voices  of  his  countrymen, 
now  struggling  for  their  liberties,  called 
loudly  upon  him  from  behind.  Regarded  as 
the  index  of  the  part  he  was  to  play  in  pub- 
lic life  during  the  coming  years,  a  weight  of 
interest  hangs  upon  this  noble  act  of  self- 
denial.  He  seems  at  this  juncture  to  have 
formed  the  resolution  to  throw  himself  man- 
fully into  the  coming  struggle,  to  crush  down 
for  the  present  the  (A-iginal  tendencies  of  his 
heart,  and  to  fight  for  the  triumph  of  truth, 
ere  he  sung  of  the  awful  beauty  of  her  brow. 
Shortly  after  his  return  to  England,  and 
when  the  warm  blood  of  youth  was  yetx 
blushing  in  his  cheek,  he  began  that  wonder- 
ful series  of  prose  dissertations,  defences  and 
attacks,  which  he  continued,  with  little  inter- 
mission, till  the  period  of  his  death.  In  the 
composition  of  these  prose  works,  however, 
his  poetical  powers  were  not  suffered  to  re- 
main altogether  dormant.  The  life  within 
him  was  too  exuberant  to  be  confined — the 
fire  was  too  mighty  to  be  restrained.  We  find, 
accordingly,  in  his  first  treatise  of  "  Refor- 
mation in  England,"  some  of  the  finest  swells 
of  prose- poetry  in  our  language,  wound  up 
by  a  prayer  to  the  Tripersonal  Godhead, 
surely  the  most  solemn  and  sublime  that 
ever  ascended  from  mortal  lips  to  the  throne 
of  God.  This  irrepressible  outburst  of  the 
internal  fire  attains  its  climax  in  the  **  Areo- 
pagitica,"  which  is  above  all  Greek  and 
Roman  fame,  which  equals  in  eloquence  any 
of  the  great  Pandemonium  speeches  in 
'*  Paradise  Lost,"  and  is  beyond  all  com- 
parison the  richest,  the  stateliest,  the  most 
fervid  and  conclusive  oration  preserved  in  any 
language  under  heaven.  Still,  as  it  is  natu- 
ral to  suppose,  Milton  did  not  feel  altogether 
at  home  in  the  composition  of  such  a  variety 
of  prose  dissertations.  The  poetical  thoughts 
that  rose  up  ever  and  anon  from  the  depths 
of  his  heart,  would  upbraid  him  when  ex- 
pressed in  other  than  a  poetical  form.    How* 


3«6 


THE  UFE  AND  POETRY  OF  HUTPK 


[Nor., 


erer  earnestly  he  might  pen  his  treatises  on 
reformation,  education,  and  prelatical  epis- 
copacy, his  **  Tetrachordons"  and  "Colas- 
terions/'  he  could  not  but  feel  that  his  highest 
thoughts  were  unuttered,  and  the  deepest 
fountains  of  his  heart  were  unstirred.  The 
frequent  feelings  that  possessed  him  on  this 
point,  may  be  gathered  from  his  own  con- 
fessions in  the  remarkable  introduction  to  the 
second  book  of  **  The  Reason  of  Church 
Government  urged  against  Prelacy."  After 
announcing  his  long-cherished  intention  to 
write  an  heroic-poem,  "  not  to  be  obtained 
by  the  invocation  of  dame  Memory  and  her 
syren  daughters,  but  by  devout  prayer  to 
that  eternal  Spirit  who  can  enrich  with  all 
utterance  and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  his 
seraphim  with  the  hallowed  fire  of  his  altar 
to  touch  and  purify  the  lips  of  whom  he 
pleases,"  he  proceeds  to  say — "  Although  it 
nothing  content  me  to.  have  disclosed  thus 
much  beforehand,  but  that  I  trust  hereby  to 
make  it  evident  with  what  small  willingness 
I  endure  to  interrupt  the  pursuit  of  no  less 
hopes  than  these,  and  leave  a  calm  and 
pleasing  solitariness,  fed  with  cheerful  and 
confident  thoughts,  to  embark  in  a  troubled 
sea  of  noises  and  hoarse  disputes,  but  from 
beholding  the  bright  countenance  of  truth  in 
the  quiet  and  still  air  of  delightful  studies J^ 
Yet  twenty-four  years  elapsed,  after  his  in- 
tention was  thus  publicly  proclaimed,  ere 
the  MS.  of  **  Paradise  Lost,"  which  had 
been  begun  two  years  before  the  Restoration, 
was  put  into  the  hands  of  young  £11  wood,  the 
Quaker.  The  only  distinct  poetical  links  that 
connected  the  young  Apollo  of  Horton  with 
the  blind  old  poet  of  *'  Paradise  Lost"  and 
**  Regained,"  were  those  divine  sonnets  which 
oozed  out  from  his  heart  even  in  the  very 
heat  of  his  conflict,  when  a  great  grief,  or  a 
joy,  or  a  glow  of  admiration  had  stirred  his 
spirit  into  song.  Many  an  unrecorded  silent 
struggle  must  have  shaken  the  strong  heart 
of  the  poet,  as  year  after  year  passed  on,  and 
the  great  work  of  his  life,  on  which  his  hopes 
and  affections  were  intently  set,  had  still  to 
be  begun.  None  of  the  world- poets,  who 
are  usually  placed  on  the  same  platform  with 
Milion,  or  any  poet,  indeed,  of  whom  a  re- 
cord remains,  have  led  lives  so  useful  and 
eventful,  fought  such  a  noble  fight  for  the 
general  good,  stifled  so  long  the  deep  tenden- 
cies of  their  natures  at  the  command  of  con- 
science, or  exhibited  so  much  versatility  of 
fenius.  Homer  only  haunted  old  battle- 
elds,  and  heard  the  voice  of  his  majestic 
verse  echoed  by  the  surge  of  the  still  older 
sea.    Dante,  indeed,  in  Ms  life,  as  well  as  in 


his  poetry,  bore  a  closer  resemblance  to  Ifil- 
ton,  for  he  served  his  country  both  as  a 
soldier  and  a  statesman ;  but  his  own  per- 
sonal sorrows  subsequently  occupied  him 
more  than  the  welfare  of  his  country  or  of 
the  world  :  he  was  scorched  by  suffering  in- 
to song  ;  and,  in  his  prose  work,  **  De  Mon- 
>ircKia,"  he  supported  those  very  principles 
which  the  English  poet  struggled  to  overturn 
during  the  whole  course  of  his  life.  Shaks- 
pere,  again,  seemed  to  have  no  great  ambi- 
tion or  desire  to  take  an  active  part  in  public 
life  ;  the  times  in  which  he  lived  were  not  so 
stirring  as  those  of  his  great  successor ;  and 
the  pressure  of  civil  care  was  never  so  great 
as  to  restrain  the  activity  of  his  genius.  Mil- 
ton, then,  by  the  combined  greatness  and 
versatility  of  his  powers,  and  more  especially 
by  the  peculiarity  of  the  struggles  he  uoder- 
went,  must  be  regarded  as  standing  apart 
from  all  other  poets  in  ancient  or  in  modem 
times.  When  we  think  of  the  poet  who  had 
written  "  Lycidas"  and  "  L' Allegro,"  and 
who  yet  fumed  at  producing  a  strain  that 
might  echo,  not  unworthily,  the  '*  sevenfold 
chorus  of  hallelujahs  and  harping  sympho- 
nies" of  the  Apocalypse — when  we  think  of 
him  sinking  for  a  time  his  high  aims  and  as- 
pirations, and  engaging  in  sJl  the  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  controversies  of  his  age,  bear- 
ing with  calm  composure  torrents  of  the 
vilest  abuse,  and  writing  himself  blind  in  the 
defence  of  liberty — now  buffeting  a  bishop, 
and  anon  slaying  Salmasius,  one  oi  the  great- 
est scholars  of  Europe,  we  do  not  know 
whether  most  to  admire  his  power  and  in- 
trepidity, or  his  self-denial  and  determmed 
devotion  to  truth. 

But  the  struggles  through  which  he  pass- 
ed, and  the  stormy  life  he  led,  were  not 
without  their  beneficial  influence  upon  the 
mind  and  heart  of  Milton.  They  nerved  hts 
arm,  consolidated  his  powers,  made  him  feel 
his  own  weight,  and  imparted  a  statuesque 
strength  and  diraity  to  all  his  movements. 
He  entered  the  lists  beautiful  as  Uriel,  with 
a  golden  tiara  of  sunny  rays  circling  his  head, 
and  his  long  locks  waving  round,  '*  illustrious 
on  his  shoulder's  fledge  with  wings,"  and 
came  forth  majestic  as  Michael  from  the 
combat  with  the  rebel  angels,  clad  in  a 
panoply  of  adamant  and  gold,  bearing  in 
his  right  hand  a  sword  tempered  from  the 
armory  of  God,  and  on  his  head  an  eagle- 
crested  helm,  that  flashed  back  the  noon- 
day sun.  When  his  outward  trials  had  some- 
what subsided,  and  when  he  had  retired  into 
private  life,  we  see  this  "  noble  and  puissant 
poet  rousing  himself  like  a  strong  man  after 


1853.] 


THE  LIFE  AND  POETRY  OF  MILTON. 


869 


sleep,  and  shaking  his  invincible  locks ;  we 
see  him  as  an  eagle  renewing  his  mighty 
youlh,  and  kindling  his  undazzled  eyes  at  the 
full  mid- day  beam  ;  purging  and  unsealing 
bis  long-abused  sight  at  the  fountain  itself  of 
heavenly  radiance/'  Had  it  been  possible  for 
Milton  to  have  stood  aloof  from  his  age, 
to  have  looked  with  a  still  stoical  eye  upon 
the  struggles  in  which  his  countrymen  were 
engaged,  while  he  devoted  himself  assiduous- 
ly to  study,  and  courted  the  company  of  the 
Muses,  he  would  never,  we  are  persuaded, 
have  been  able  to  produce  such  a  colossal 
creation  as  "  Paradise  LosL"  The  self-denial 
he  so  wonderfully  exercised,  produced  at  last 
its  own  divine  fruit.  The  humblest  drudger- 
ies in  which  a  poet  may  engage,  cannot  crush 
out  the  living  spirit  of  poetry  from  his  heart ; 
and  the  higher  kind  of  toil  that  engrossed  the 
attention  of  Milton  during  the  best  years  of 
his  manhood,  tended  rather  to  sublimate  than 
to  subdue  his  genius.  The  war  which  he 
waged  with  tyranny  in  the  court  and  the 
church  was,  in  fact,  as  necessary  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  production  of  "  Paradise  Lost," 
as  Byron's  miseries  and  misanthropy  were 
absolutely  requisite  to  the  composition  of 
"  Manfred**  and  **  Cain.*'  Milton's  great  epic 
was  the  natural  result  and  the  sublimated 
reflection  of  his  life  and  times.  To  the 
choice  of  such  a  subject  as  ihe  one  there- 
in presented,  he  would  in  no  small  degree 
be  impelled  by  his  deep  interest  in  the 
conflict  that  was  still  ragmg  over  the  land, 
and  of  which  he  had  been  no  inactive  specta- 
tor. In  his  Satan,  we  may  perceive  the  em- 
bodiment and  culmination  of  the  evil  spirit 
of  tyranny  that  was  then  stalking  haughtily 
abroad,  and  striving  both  by  wiles  and  open 
warfare  to  obtain  the  sceptre  of  univer&al 
dominion.  When  describing  the  defeat  of 
the  mighty  paramount  by  the  •*  thunder- 
clasping  hand**  of  the  unconquerable  Son, 
his  dov^nfall  from  the  radiant  batilements  of 
heaven  into  the  gulfs  of  hell,  and  his  further 
descent  from  the  proud  prince  of  darkness  to 
the  cringing,  lying,  and  fettered  fiend,  he  also 
shadowed  out  the  gradual  decline  and  final 
destruction  of  tyranny,  that  might  enjoy  a 
temporary  triumph,  but  was  certain  at  last  to 
be  overthrown  by  a  mightier  arm.  In  the 
great  work,  then,  of  the  blind  and  despised 
old  poet,  the  courtly  and  priestly  tyrants 
bf  that  time  might  have  read  their  own 
doom,  and  beheld  a  representation  of  their 
own  downfalL 

The  characteristics  of  Milton*s  genius  have 
80  frequently  been  expounded,  and  are  now 
80  generally  known,  that  we  are  spared  the 

VOL.  XXX.    NO.  UL 


necessity  of  entering  upon  any  minute  analy- 
sis. "  Wholeness,  sublimity,  and  siraplicity," 
in  Mr.  Gilfillan's  summary  estimate,  may  be 
regarded  as  comprehending  its  leading  fea- 
tures and  qualities.  Wholeness  includes  the 
consecration,  as  well  as  the  multiforraily,  of 
his  genius.  We  prefer  rather  to  exhibit  the 
greatness  and  power  of  the  poet)  by  dwelling 
br  efly  on  some  of  the  pants  and  characters 
of  "  Paradise  Lost.'*  Of  that  mighty  epic, 
as  a  whole,  so  full  of  the  power,  the  rapture, 
and  the  glory  of  genius,  we  have  not  words 
to  express  our  admiration.  It  might  have 
been  written  by  one  of  the  giant  angels  who 
had  engaged  in  the  terrible  conflict  with  the 
apostate  spirits — who  had  accompanied  the 
burning  chariot  of  the  sun  in  its  conquering 
career — and  who  had  witnessed  all  the  scenes 
and  events  that  are  there  so  wonderfully  de- 
scribed. In  its  large  utterance,  its  rush  of 
power  and  tumult  of  glory,  in  its  descriptions 
of  heaven  and  hell,  its  reverential  spirit  and 
ascriptions  of  praise,  it  bears  a  striking  re- 
semblance to  that  *'  high  and  stately  trage- 
dy," the  Apocalypse  of  St.  John.  To  form 
an  estimate  of  the  power  of  the  poet,  and  take 
a  comprehensive  glance  of  the  majesty  of  the 
poem,  we  have  but  to  think  of  the  number- 
less inimitable  passages  and  pictures  with 
which  it  abounds  ;  of  Satan  rearing  aloft  his 
mighty  stature  from  the  rolling  billows  of 
the  lake  of  fire ;  the  mustering  of  the  infer- 
nal squadrons  at  the  call  of  their  Command- 
er, and  the  unfurling  of  their  ten  thousand 
meteor- banners ;  the  rising  like  an  exhalation 
of  the  Temple  of  Pandemonium  with  its 
i»oric  pillars  and  golden  architraves;  the 
speeches  of  the  princes  of  hell  in  their  coun- 
cil-hall, so  eloquent  and  grand,  that  every 
demon  seemed  more  than  a  Demosthenes : 
the  gryphon-like  flight  of  the  master-fiend 
through  the  wild  abyss  of  chaos  and  ancient 
night ;  the  glorious  apparition  of  Uriel  stand- 
ing in  the  sun  ;  Satan's  sublime  address  to 
that  luminary  on  the  top  of  Niphates  Mount ; 
the  descriptions  of  Eden,  with  its  palmy  hills 
and  crisped  brooks  ;  of  Adam,  with  his  hya- 
cinthine  locks,  and  Eve  with  her  dishevelled 
tresses;  the  morning  hymn  of  our  first  pa- 
rents in  their  innocence,  and  swelling  up  at 
intervals  over  all  tlie  hallelujah  chorus  of 
heaven  :  the  flight  of  the  faithful  and  dread- 
less  Abdiel  from  the  ranks  of  the  rebels  to 
the  Mount  of  God ;  the  terrible  avatar  of 
the  avenging  Son  in  his  chariot  of  careering 
fire ;  the  uprising  of  the  world  from  the  un- 
apparent  deep,  and  the  song  of  acclamation 
that  concluded  the  creation- work,  and  fol- 
lowed the  triumphal  ascent  of  the  Son;  the 
24 


870 


THE  LIFE  AND  POETRY  OP  MILTON. 


[Not., 


aspect  of  the  infernal  serpent,  with  his  crested 
head  and  neck  of  verdant  gold  rising  above 
the  maze  of  surging  spires ;  and  Michael, 
from  the  mountain-top,  unfolding  to  Adam, 
in  successive  magnificent  pictures,  the  future 
history  of  the  world  and  all  our  wo.  By 
thus  grouping  together  so  many  unequaled 
passages,  we  obtain  a  more  perfect  idea  of 
the  power  and  glory  of  "Paradise  Lost" 
than  extended  analysis  could  supply. 

In  his  representation  of  angels  and  fiends, 
Milton  has  most  strikingly  manifested  his 
epic  as  well  as  his  dramatic  power.    He  was 
partly  indebted  to  the  Bible  for  his  sublime 
conceptions  of  the  former,  and  more  espe- 
cially to  those  descriptions,  in  the  Apoca- 
lypse, of  the  Son  of  Man,  when  he  walked 
among  the  seven  candlesticks,  girt  with  a 
golden   girdle — of  the   mighty  angel    who 
came  down  from  heaven,  clothed  with  a  cloud, 
and  with  a  rainbow  round  his  head,  whose 
face  shone  like  the  sun,  and  whose  feet  were 
as  pillars  of  fire — and  of  the  coming  forth  of 
the  Faithful  and   True,  to  judge  and   make 
war,  with  eyes  like  flames  of  fire,  and  many 
crowns  on  his  head,  clothed  with  a  vesture 
dipped  in  blood,  and  followed  by  the  armies 
of  heaven,  riding  upon  horses  white  as  their 
own  glittering  garments.     The  poet,  how- 
ever, has  not  permitted  these  descriptions  to 
mar  the  originality  of  his  own  conceptions, 
and  his  apostate  spirits  are  new  visions  under 
the  sun.     His  angels  appear  in  different  as- 
pect and  attire,  according  to  the  nature  of 
the  duties  in  which  they  may  be  engaged, 
and  to  their  various  ranks  various  offices  are 
assigned ;  but,  for  the   most  part,  they  are 
presented  before  us  not  as  stripling  cherubs, 
with  curls  under  their  coronets  playing  on 
either  cheek,  but  as  strong,  fire-armed  arch- 
angels, with  helmets,  instead  of  crowns  of 
amaranth,    covering    their    radiant    brows. 
Their  outward  aspect,  and  the  armor  they 
wear,  fittingly  represent  the  invincibility  of 
their  courage,  the  sternness  of  their  virtue, 
and  the  strength  of  their  devotion  to  Ood. 
The  appearance  of  the  fallen  cherubs  also 
corresponds  to  the  attitude  of  hostility  to 
Heaven  they  have  assumed,  and  to  the  re- 
morse, the  despair,  the  pride,  and  the  pas- 
sions that  agitate  their  breasts.     By  their 
might  and  eloquence,  by  the  dignity  of  their 
fallen  majesty  and  the  rays  of  old  glory  that 
still  linger  around  their  brows,  they  irresist- 
ibly command  our  pity  and  our  awe.     They 
have  fallen  from  the  heights  of  moral  purity, 
but  their  intellect  still  retains  its  full  power ; 
the  faces  that  once  shone  in  circles  around 
the  Throne  have  been  blapkened  by  the  thun- 


der-scars, but  the  thoughts  that  wander 
through  eternity  still  light  them  with  the 
glimmering  glow  as  of  a  moonlit  tarn;  and 
they  still  retain  the  knowledge  they  had 
gained  through  ages  of  contemplation  and 
research.  The  heroes  of  Homer,  in  strength, 
in  stature,  in  eloquence,  and  arms,  sink  into 
insignificance  beside  the  peers  of  Pandemo- 
nium :  Achilles  is  no  match  for  Beelzebub, 
nor  Ajax  for  Belial,  and  Agamemnon,  king 
of  men,  dwindles  into  a  shadow's  shade  be- 
side the  mighty  monarch  of  hell.  Homer's 
heroes  are  mere  fighting  masses  of  mitter, 
with  little  about  them  to  attract  our  admira- 
tion, except  their  determined  self-reliance 
and  their  defiance  of  death;  but  Milton's 
devils  are  mighty  and  melancholy  forms, 
their  materialism  is  shaded  off  and  sublimised 
into  a  spiritual  structure,  and  the  boldness 
of  their  bearing  in  opposition  to  Omnipo- 
tence clothes  them  with  a  garment  of  gran- 
deur. 

The  sublimity  which  attaches  in  various 
degrees  to  all  the  infernal  peers,  attains  its 
climax  in  the  person  of  Satan.  Much  of  the 
sublimity  of  his  character  and  person  arises 
from  the  contrast  we  are  ever  compelled  to 
institute  between  his  first  and  fallen  estate. 
The  troubled  glory,  as  of  a  thundrous  sun- 
set, that  streams  from  his  haughty  brow,  the 
proud  sparkle  of  his  eyes,  the  regal  port  and 
step  of  majesty,  irresistibly  recall  the  time 
when  he  sat  on  his  royal  seat  on  the  Moun- 
tain of  the  Congregation,  or  when  he  rode 
in  his  sun- bright  chariot, 

**  Idol  of  majesty  divine, 
Enclosed  with    flaming    cherubim    and  golden 
shields." 

The  poet  employs  the  grandest  images  to  di- 
late the  dimensions  and  magnify  the  power 
of  the  superior  fiend.  Beelzebub  may  be  de- 
scribed as  rising  like  a  pillar  of  state,  or  as 
standing 

<*  With  Atlantean  shoulders,  fit  to  bear 
The  weight  of  mightiest  monarchies  ;'* 

but  Satan's  superior  stature  stretches  to  the 
sky,  and  he  stands,  "  like  Teneriffe  or  Atlas, 
unremoved."  When  he  lies  floating  many  a 
rood  on  the  billows  of  hell,  he  is  compared 
to  the  mythological  monsters  of  ancient  fa- 
ble, or  to  the  leviathan,  whose  enormous 
bulk  diminishes  the  great  ocean  to  a  stream. 
When  he  appears  in  shape  and  gesture 
proudly  eminent  among  his  companions  in 
exile,  he  is  compared  to  the  sun  under 
eclipse,  which  sheds  down  disastrous  twi- 
I  light,  '*  and,  with  fear  of  change,  perplexes 


1853.] 


THE  UPE  AND  POETRY  OF  MILTON. 


871 


monarchs."  When  glaring  upon  the  grizzly 
Terror  at  the  gate  of  hell,  he  burned  like  a 
comet  that  shakes  pest\)ence  and  war  from 
its  horrid  hair.  And  when  foundering  on 
through  chaos,  "  half  on  foot,  half  flving," 
he  resembled  a  gigantic  gryphon,  speeding 
with  extended  wings  through  the  waste  wil- 
derness. How  well  Milton  has  succeeded  in 
rearing  up  a  shape  more  terrible  and  grand 
than  any  since  conceived  and  described,  may 
readily  bo  perceived  when  we  compare  his 
creation  with  those  of  other  poets  who  have 
in  some  measure  striven  to  follow  in  his 
steps.  By ron'sv  Lucifer  is  an  argumentative 
fiend,  not  a  majestic  and  fire* armed  arch- 
changel.  He  might  be  quite  competent 
to  mislead  a  morbid,  moody  man  like  Cain  ; 
but  he  is  not  the  proud  and  determined  de- 
mon who  would  have  led  the  embattled  ser- 
aphim to  war.  He  is  even  inferior  to  Mil- 
ton's inferior  fiends,  and  possesses  neither  the 
wily  wisdom  of  Beelzebub,  the  fierceness  of 
Moloch,  the  winning  eloquence  of  Belial, 
nor  the  worldly  wisdom  of  Mammon.  He 
would  have  preferred  to  remain  in  hell,  and 
reason  of  fate,  free-will,  foreknowledge  abso- 
lute, rather  than  undertake  the  voyage  that 
Satan  undertook  through  the  unexplored  re- 
gions of  Chaos  and  Old  Night.  He  possess- 
es spiritual  politeness,  instead  of  defiant 
pride  ;  he  is  more  the  loquacious  fiend  than 
the  demon  of  action.  The  great  round  orb 
of  Satan's  shield  would  grind  him  into  pow- 
der ;  and  hell  would  never  grow  blacker  at 
his  frown.  He  is  more  beautiful  than  terri- 
ble— more  to  be  pitied  than  feared.  The 
Lucifer  of  Byron  resembles  the  Mephistoph- 
eles  of  Goethe.  They  are  not  so  much  the 
direct  antagonists  of  God — demons  who 
would  boldly  defy  the  Almighty  to  his  face 
— as  sneering,  wily,  low-thoughted  sceptics. 
The  Lucifer  of  "  Festus  **  is  a  higher  crea- 
tion than  that  of  Byron  or  Goethe.  He  has 
more  power,  more  grandeur,  more  subtlety 
of  thought  and  eloquence  of  speech ;  but  he 
is  still  vastly  inferior  to  the  Satan  of  Milton. 
The  relation  in  which  he  stands  to  God,  con- 
sciously'and  obediently  working  out  the  Di- 
vine will,  removes  the  shade  of  darkness 
from  his  brow,  and  diminishes  the  sublimity 
of  his  character.  He  appears  also  in  some- 
what ludicrous  lights,  when  he  becomes  a 
street  preacher,  and  falls  in  love  with  a 
mortal  maiden.  The  poet  who  has  succeed- 
ed best  in  bringing  back  Satan  in  his  old 
l^iltonic  glory  and  gloom  is  Thomas  Aird, 
in  the  "  Devil's  Dream."  His  description 
of  the  "  Grizzly  Terror,"  who  had  an  aspect 
]ike  the  hurrying  storm,  as  be  winged  his 


way  over  the  darkened  earth  and  the  Syrian 
wilderness ;  whose  eyes  were  filled  with 
shadows  of  care  and  sorrow ;  whose  brow 
gleamed  like  a  "  mineral  hill,  where  gold 
grows  ripe  ;"  and  from  whose  head  the 
clouds  streamed  like  a  tempest  of  hair, 
would  not  have  been  unworthy  of  the  poet 
of  "Paradise  Lost." 

We  have  already  said  that  much  of  the 
sublimity  attaching  to  Satan  arises  from  the 
contrast  we  are  compelled  to  make  between 
his  first  and  his  fallen  condition.  Milton,  in 
many  places  throughout  "Paradise  Lost," 
introduces  contrasts  with  the  strangest  and 
most  touching  effect.  When  the  "  superior 
fiend  "  had  reached  the  shore  of  the  sea  of 
liquid  fire,  he  employed  his  gigantic  spear 

**  To  support  uneaey  steps 
Over  the  burning  marble ;  not  like  those  steps 
On  heaven's  oawrg." 

We  have  another  striking  example  in  the 
speech  of  Beelzebub,  that  concluded  the 
long  debate  in  the  infernal  council-hall. 
He  applauds  the  "synod  of  gods"  for  the 
great  thinc;s  they  have  resolved,  and  rejoicea 
in  the  hope  of  soon  being  lifted  up    , 

"  Nearer  our  ancient  seat ;  perhaps  in  view 
Of  those  bright  confines,  whence  with 

neighboring  arms 
And  opportune  excursion,  we  may  chance 
Re-enter  heaven ;  or  else  in  tome  mild  zone 
Dwellj  not  unvisiied  of  heavens  fair  light, 
secure  ;  and  at  the  hnghteniug  orient  beam 
Purge  off  this  gloom;  the  soft  delicious  air^ 
7b  heal  the  scar  of  those  corrosive  fires, 
ShaU  breathe  her  bakn.'' 

To  feel  the  full  touching  power  of  these 
beautiful  iines,  we. have  only  to  ttiink  where 
and  by  whom  they  were  spokeli,  and  to 
whom  they  were  addressed.  It  id  as  if  a 
soft  air  from  heaven  bad  suddenly  breathed 
over  the  brows  that  were  burned  and  black- 
ened by  the  torrid  clime  and  fiery  vault  of 
hell.  The  words  of  Beelzebub  resembled 
those  dewy  lips  in  the  "  Devil's  Dream " 
that  kissed  the  fiend  "  till  his  lava  breast  was 
cool."  Aird,  also,  in  that  grand  poem  to 
which  we  have  already  referred,  has  impart- 
ed to  it  in  some  places  a  ghastly  beauty,  and 
proved  his  power  as  a  poet  by  introducing 
similar  touches  of  contrast.  Of  a  melan- 
choly form  weltering  among  the  *' salted 
fires"  of  the  Second  Lake,  he  presents  ua  a 
terrible  picture  in  these  two  lines — 

**And  backward,  in  sore  agony  the  being 
stripped  its  locks, 


212 


MADEMOISBLLE  CLAIRON. 


[Nor., 


As  a  maiden,  tn  her  beauty* a  primes  her 
dasped  tressea  strokes. '^^ 

We  could  have  wished  to  enlarge  on  many 
more  of  the  beauties  and  characteristics  of 
"  Paradise  Lost;"  but  our  remarks  have  al- 
ready extended  so  far,  that  we  are  compelled 
abruptly  to  conclude.  Of ''  Paradise  Regain- 
ed**— that  pure,  noble  and  finely  classical 
poem — we  would  rather  speak  at  the  begin- 
ing  than' the  conclusion  of  an  article.  Mr 
GilfiUan  says  truly  of  it, — "  If  compartively 
a  fragment,  what  a  true,  shapely,  beautiful 
fragment  it  is!  Its  power  so  quiet,  its 
elegance  so  unconscious,  its  costume  of  lan- 
guage so  Grecian,  its  general  tone  so  Scrip- 
turally  simple,  while  its  occasional  speeches 
and  descriptions  are  so  gorgeous  and  so 
faultless.  The  views  from  the  mountain, 
the  storm  in  the  wilderness,  the  dreams  of 
Christ  when  he  wasan-hungered,  soexquisitely 
true  to  his  waking  character — are  in  the 
poet's  very  highest  style,  and  one  or  two  of 
them,  indeed,  have  a  gloss  of  perfection 
about  them,  as  well  as  an  ease  and  freedom 
of  touch,  rarely  to  be  found  in  his  large 
poem.  In  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  he  is  a  giant 
tossing  mountains  to  heaven  with  far-seen 
struggle,  and  in  evident  trial  of  strength.  In 
the  "  Paradise  Regained,"  he  is  a  giant  gen- 
tly putting  his  foot  on  a  rock,  and  leaving  a 
mark  inimitable,  indelible,  visible  to  all  after 
time.  It  is  a  foolish  and  ignorant  objection 
to  this  poem  to  say,  that  M  ilton  has  degra- 
ded the  devil  in  *'  Paradise  Regained,"  and 


shorn  him  of  all  his  sublimity  and  strength. 
It  was  Ihe  devil  who  degraded  himself — the 
history  of  his  decline  and  fall  is  progressing 
— and  we  are  witnessing  the  miserable  discom- 
fiture of  the  proud  friend  who  dared  defy  the 
Omnipotent  to  arms.  Moreover,  if  his  regal  port 
be  gone,  and  the  faded  splendor  be  still  more 
wan,  his  eloquence  continues  powerful  to  the 
last ;  and  some  of  his  speeches  in  "  Paradise 
Regained,*'  are  superior  to  many  in  "Para- 
dise Lost."  When  opium  began  to  operate 
with  a  palsying  effect  upon  the  intellectual 
faculties  of  De  Quincey,  he  says,  if  he  felt 
moved  by  any  thing  in  books,  it  was  by  "  the 
grand  lamentations  of  Samson  Agonistes,  or 
the  great  harmonies  of  the  satanic  speeches 
in  "  Paradise  Regained." 

We  regret  that  we  must  close  this  paper 
without  particularizing  those  divine,  rich,  and 
delicate  first-fruits  of  the  poet's  genius — 
"Comus,"  "Arcades,"  '^Lycidas,"  "L* Alle- 
gro," and  "  II  Penseroso ;  the  "  Hymn  on 
the  Nativity,"  that  seems  set  to  the  far- 
swelling  music  of  the  morning  stars  \  the  son- 
nets, so  condensed,  so  manly,  and  clear ;  or 
"Samson  Agonistes,"  that  gloomy  temple 
of  unadorned  architecture  ever  echoing  with 
a  melodious  wail.  But  we  have  performed 
our  duty  for  the  present,  if  we  have  pointed, 
"  with  however  feeble  a  finger,  to  fountains 
of  song  which  no  impurity  defiles,  and  which 
are  as  fresh  and  full  this  hour  as  when  they 
were  first  opened  by  the  hand  of  the  master- 
spurit." 


■♦♦- 


From    Prater's    Hagasine. 


MADEMOISELLE    CLAIRON 


If  there  are  certain  existences  more  com- 
plicated, more  romantic,  more  improbable,  in 
a  word,  than  any  imaginary  romance  ever 
spun  from  the  prolific  brain  of  modern  nov- 
elist, we  may  cite  in  the  very  first  rank  those 
of  the  French  actresses  of  the  past  century. 
In  this  golden  age  of  frivolity  the  fair  daugh- 
ters of  Thespis  knew  how  to  live;  they 
might  be  likened  to  the  grasshoppers  of  the 
sunny  hour,  which  sing  and  dance  through 
the  live-long  summer's  day,  without  reflect- 
ing that  November  will  come;  November, 
with  its  cheerless  days,  its  dreary,  endless 


nights,  its  fogs,  and  rains,  and  frosta.  The 
present  race  of  actresses  are  of  an  entirely 
different  stamp  ;  they  have  learned  by  heart 
La  Fontaine's  fable,  and  more  than  one 
among  them,  like  the  ant,  thinks  only  of  win- 
ter during  her  golden  days  of  spring.  Like 
all  moralists,  La  Fontaine  has  preached 
falsely,  so  farasthe  stage  is  concerned ;  there 
it  is  not  the  ant,  but  rather  the  erasshopper, 
whose  example  is  taught  and  followed,  w^^ile 
the  disciples  of  the  fabulist  form  only  the 
exception  to  the  general  rule. 
I      It  would  reqmre  the  pencil  of  a  WaUean 


1853.] 


MADBHOIBELLB  CLAIfiON. 


873 


or  a  Vanloo  faithfully  to  depict  tbe  careless 
frankness  of  Mademoiselle  Clairon — that 
queen  of  the  French  stage — who  stripped 
off  all  the  petals  from  the  flowers  of  life 
with  regal  ardor,  who  was  charming  even  in 
her  follies,  and  who,  after  having  lived  for 
years  as  the  spoilt  and  prodigal  child  of  for- 
tune, taking  money  with  one  hand  to  scatter 
it  with  the  other,  died  at  length  as  a  sage, 
poor,  aged,  solitary,  and  forgotten. 

A  few  years  before  her  death  Mademoi- 
selle Clairon  wrote  her^'  M^moires,''  Mi- 
moires  d^outre  Tombe,  since  they  were  not 
intended  to  appear  till  after  her  death.  A 
faithless  friend,  however,  having  published  a 
German  translation  of  these  reminiscences. 
Mademoiselle  Clairon  in  consequence,  on  the 
28th  Thermidor,  year  VI.  of  the  Republic, 
wrote  as  follows  to  the  editor  of  the  Pub- 
liciste : — '*  Since  my  book  has  appeared  in  a 
foreign  country,  the  fear  of  failing  in  the 
gratitude  and  respect  I  owe  to  the  public 
and  to  my  nation  determines  me  to  print 
myself  this  essay.  Signed,  La  Citoyenne 
Clairon." 

By  following  the  career  of  the  celebrated 
actress  in  her  Mimoires,  in  the  newspapers 
and  Journals  of  the  day,  and  in  the  various 
published  letters  of  the  time,  it  is  easy  to 
discover,  word  for  word,  her  strange  and 
ever'shifting  life,  such,  in  short,  as  love  and 
chance  had  .made  it.  Let  this  article,  then, 
be  regarded  only  as  a*patient  study  over 
which  fancy  will  not  once  come  to  shake  the 
golden  dust  from  off  her  radiant  wings.  But 
who  knows  if,  in  studying  the  life  of  a  French 
actress,  there  is  not  more  philosophy  to  be 
gleaned  than  in  the  history  of  a  queen  con- 
sort of  France.  For  whether  the  queen  of 
the  theatre  or  the  queen  of  France  is  the 
more  royal,  who  will  venture  to  determine  ? 

Mademoiselle  Clairon  (Claire,  Hippolyte, 
Leyris  de  la  Tude)  was  born  at  Cond6,  in 
Hainault,  in  the  year  1723.  We  will  leave 
her  to  relate,  in  her  own  words,  the  circum- 
stances attending  her  birth,  which  circum- 
stances, it  must  be  allowed,  were  highly  sig- 
nificant of  her  future  career : — "  It  was  the 
custom  of  tbe  little  city  in  which  I  was  born, 
for  all  parties  to  meet  together  during  the 
carnival  time  at  the  houses  of  the  wealthiest 
citizens,  in  order  to  pass  the  entire  day  in 
dancing  and  other  amusements.  Far  from 
disapproving  of  these  recreations,  tbe  cur6 
partook  of  them  in  company  with  his  parish- 
ioners, and  travestied  himself  like  the  rest. 
During  one  of  these  fSte  days  my  mother, 
who  was  but  seven  months  advanced  in 
pregnancy,  suddenly  brought  me  into  the 


world,  between  two  and  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon.  I  was  so  feeble  that  every  body 
imagined  a  few  moments  would  terminate  my 
career.  My  grandmother,  a  woman  of  emi- 
nent piety,  was  anxious  that  I  should  be 
carried  at  once  to  the  church,  in  order  that 
I  might  there  receive  the  right  of  baptism. 
Not  a  living  soul  was  to  be  found  either  at 
the  church  or  the  parsonage.  A  neighbor 
having  informed  the  party  that  all  the  city 
was  at  a  carnival  entertainment  at  the  house 
of  a  certain  wealthy  citizen,  thither  w^  I 
carried  with  all  possible  despatch.  Mon- 
sieur le  Cure,  dressed  as  harlequin,  and  his 
vicar  as  Giles,  imagining  from  my  appearance 
that  not  a  moment  was  to  be  lost,  hastily  ar- 
ranged upon  a  sideboard  everything  neces- 
sary for  the  ceremony,  stopped  the  fiddle  for 
a  moment,  muttered  over  me  the  consecrated 
words,  and  sent  me  back  to  my  mother  a 
Christian — at  least  in  name." 

It  is  amusing  to  see  Mademoiselle  Clairon, 
in  her  old  age,  philosophizing  over  her  past 
life,  and  giving  utterance,  upon  the  sayings 
and  doings  of  her  early  years,  to  certain 
profoundly  serious  reflections.  As  an  old 
woman,  she  is  as  scntentiously  grave  as  she 
was  inconsiderately  gay  in  her  youth ;  she 
lends  an  attentive  ear  to  the  whispered  remi- 
niscences of  her  heart,  and  she  writes ;  she 
demands  the  secret  of  her  life,  and  she  en- 
deavors to  reply.  After  eleven  reflections, 
each  worthy  of  Socrates,  she  comes  to  this, 
the  twelfth  one:  '<In  order  to  fulfill  the 
duty  imposed  upon  me  by  reason,  to  be  in  a 
state  of  judging  myself,  must  I  not  go  back 
to  the  principal  of  all  ?  What  am  I  ?  What 
have  I  done  ?  What  have  I  been  in  a  condi- 
tion to  effect  ?  Providence  deposited  me  in 
the  bosom  of  a  poor  bourgeuise,  free,  feeble, 
and  ignorant;  my  misfortune  preceded  my 
birth." 

From  this  point  starts  old  Hippolyte  Clai- 
ron, with  all  the  gravity  of  Jean  Jaques 
Rousseau,  to  relate,  in  good  set  terms,  the 
history  of  her  past  existence.  In  this  nar- 
rative of  her  life  we  ever  find  philosophy 
predominating ;  we  feel  that  she  had  too 
frequently  "nssisted,"  as  the  French  have  it, 
at  the  suppers  of  the  encyclopaedists.  Her 
naanner  of  writing  recalls,  also,  her  manner 
of  acting;  she  preserves  throughout  the 
solemn,  pompous  accent  of  the  stage;  in 
short,  from  the  title  to  the  conclusion  of  these 
singular  memoirs,  which,  far  from  displaying, 
rather  masks  the  writer,  we  discover  not  a 
single  ingenuous  expression,  nor  hear  a  single 
cry  which  seems  to  spring  from  the  heart. 

We  are  already  acquainted  with  the  cir- 


914 


MADEMOISELLE  CLAIKON. 


[Nov. 


cumsUnces  attending  the  birth  of  Mademoi- 
selle Clairon.  Her  mother,  it  would  appear, 
had  tiot  only  the  misfortune  to  be  poor,  she 
was  also  ill-tempered,  bigoted,  and  super- 
stitious; a  rigidly  strict  Roman  Catholic, 
she  endeavored  to  beat  religion  into  her 
daughter,  and  would  torment  her  youthful 
mind  with  pictures  of  hell,  and  its  endless 
torments.  Poor  little  Hippolyte,  although 
now  a  girl  of  eleven  years  of  age,  had  never 
been  allowed  to  play  about  out  of  doors  with 
children  of  her  own  age ;  she  was  a  little, 
pale,  thin,  Cinderella-like  creature,  debarred 
of  all  the  amusements  suited  to  her  years, 
her  sole  distractions  being  limited  to  the 
perusal  of  two  books — the  catechism  and  a 
prayer-book. 

Madame  Clairon,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  her 
daughter  during  certain  hours  of  the  day, 
was  accustomed  to  shut  her  up  by  herself 
in  an  unfurnished  room  at  the  top  of  the 
house,  where  she  would  leave  her,  with  strict^ 
injunctions  to  ply  her  needle  diligently.  But 
Hippolyte,  who  was  bom  a  queen,  as  others 
are  born  servants,  could  never  by  any  chance 
keep  a  needle  between  her  fingers.  What, 
then,  was  she  to  do  in  her  prison  ?  **  Sup- 
pose I  open  the  window  ?"  thought  she. 
She  made  the  attempt,  but  was  unsuccessful 
— she  could  not  reach  the  fastening  ;  in  de- 
spair, she  climbed  upon  a  stool,  and  pressed 
her  face  close  to  one  of  the  panes :  as  she 
was  on  the  fourth  story,  her  view  was  limited 
to  the  roofs  and  chimney-pots  and  garret- 
windows  of  the  opposite  houses.  All  at  once 
a  large  window  in  front  of  her  was  thrown 
open,  and  a  magical  spectacle  struck  her 
childish  eyes  :  it  so  happened  that  the  cele- 
brated Mademoiselle  Dangeville  lived  in  the 
opposite  house,  and  she  was  at  this  precise 
hour  taking  a  dancing  lesson.  "  I  was  all 
eyes,"  writes  Clairon  in  her  MSmoires  ;  "  not 
one  of  her  graceful  movements  escaped  me. 
She  was  surrounded  by  the  members  of  her 
family.  The  lesson  over,  every  one  applaud- 
ed, and  her  mother  tenderly  embraced  her. 
This  contrast  between  her  lot  and  ray  own 
filled  me  with  grief,  and  my  fast-flowing  tears 
shut  out  the  scene  from  my  view.  I  de- 
scended mournfully  from  my  perch,  in  order 
to  give  full  vent  to  my  sorrow ;  and  when 
the  throbbing  of  my  heart  had  in  Eome  mea- 
sure subsided,  and  I  was  able  to  regain  my 
position,  all  had  disappeared." 

At  first  she  could  scarce  believe  the  evi- 
dence of  her  senses ;  she  imagined  that,  all 
was  a  dream  ;  she  pondered  in  her  mind  ivhat 
she  had  seen,  and  was  sad  and  happy  at  the 
same  time,  in  the  thought  that  there  were 


danghters  in  the  world  who  were  not  beaten 
and  locked  up  in  garrets  by  their  mothers, 
with  no  companions  save  a  catechism  and  a 
prayer-book.  At  these  thoughts  her  tears 
would  flow  afresh  ;  but  soon,  without  wish- 
ing it,  she  began  involuntarily  to  copy  what 
she  had  seen,  and  she  would  dance  and  jump 
about  her  little  chamber,  in  humble  imitation 
of  the  sylph-like  motions  of  the  beautiful 
Mademoiselle  Dangeville.  From  this  time 
forth  her  prison- chamber  became  a  paradise 
for  her.  She  would  get  herself  locked  up, 
on  some  pretext  or  other,  every  day ;  and  as 
soon  as  the  key  was  turned  in  the  door,  she 
would  climb  joyfully  up  to  her  post  of  obser- 
vation at  the  window,  and  remain  there  a 
motionless,  silent,  but  enthusiastic  spectator 
of  the  dancing  lesson  of  her  fair  neighbor. 

One  evening,  when  there  was  some  com- 
pany at  her  mother's,  she  said  to  a  gentle- 
man who  was  chatting  with  her — *'  Tell  me, 
sir,  are  there  women  who  pass  their  lives  in 
dancing  ?"  "  Yes^"  replied  he,  "  actresses. 
But  why  do  you  ask  ?"  She  then  related  to 
him  mysteriously  what  she  had  lately  seen 
from  her  garret  window.  "  I  understand," 
said  the  visitor,  "  you  have  seen  Mademoi- 
selle Dangeville,  who  lives  opposite."  The 
gentleman  turned  then  to  her  mother :  "Mad- 
ame Clairon,"  said  he,  "  I  must  take  your 
daughter,  Hippolyte,  with  me  to  the  theatre 
to-night."  "To  the  theatre!*'  exclaimed 
Madame  Clairon,  in'  horror,  "  you  might  as 
well  ask  me  to  let  her  go  to  the  kingdom  of 
darkness  at  once."  "  Pardon  me,  madam, 
the  mischief  is  already  done ;  you  have  your- 
self unwittingly  taken  your  daughter  to  the 
theatre  by  shutting  her  up  in  the  garret, 
from  the  window  of  which  she  has  seen 
Mademoiselle  Dangeville  rehearsing  over  the 
way."  Scarcely  had  the  visitor  ceased 
speaking,  when  little  Hippolyte,  carried  away 
by  the  force  of  her  reminiscences,  bounded 
into  the  middle  of  the  room,  and  reproduced, 
with  a  fidelity  absolutely  astonishing,  the 
pirouettes  and  entrechats  of  her  fair  original. 
Loud  was  the  applause ;  and  even  her  moth- 
er, who  never  laughed  with  her  daughter, 
could  not  keep  her  countenance.  It  wiis  ar- 
ranged that  Hippolyte  should  goto  the  theatre 
the  following  night. 

It  was  at  the  Comedie-Fran^aise  that  Mad- 
emoiselle Clairon  made  her  entry  into  the 
world.  For  her  the  theatre  was  the  universe 
entire  ;  so  great  was  her  joy,  so  excessive  her 
delight,  so  lively  her  astonishment,  that,  as 
she  herself  expressed  it,  she  was  afraid  of 
going  mad.  Three  weeks  afterwards,  this 
little  girl,  who  was  then  but  twelve  years  of 


1863.] 


MADEMOISELLE  OLAIBON. 


375 


age»  made  her  dehUt  on  the  stage  of  the 
Theatre  Italien,  under  the  protection  of  De- 
shais.  Bat  the  famous  Thomassin,  who  had 
daughters  to  bring  forward,  ere  long  opposed 
the  increasing  success  of  our  miniature  debu- 
tante ;  and,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  a  cabal 
was  actually  formed  against  the  child,  in 
order  to  obtain  her  dismissal  from  the 
"  Italiens,"  where  her  delicate  beauty  and 
artless  grace  were  the  themes  of  universal 
admiration.  On  leaving  the  **  Italiens/'  she 
obtained  an  engagement  in  the  company  di- 
rected by  La  Noal,  at  Rouen,  to  sing  and 
dance,  and  play  all  the  characters  suited  to 
her  age. 

After  relating  circumstantially  this  fir&t 
period  of  her  life,  our  philosophical  actress 
pauses  for  reBection,  and  writes  at  the  head 
of  a  page — Rboapitulation.  We  should 
fail  in  our  duty  as  historians,  were  we  to  omit 
reproducing  a  portion  of  this  curious  page. 
"  So  far,"  she  writes,  "  I  have  nothing  to  re- 
proach myself  with :  I  knew  nothing,  I  could 
do  nothing ;  I  blindly  obeyed  a  destiny  of 
which  I  have  seen  myself  all  my  life  at  once 
the  spoiled  child  and  the  victim.!'  We  are 
accordingly  to  understand  from  this  that 
Mademoiselle  Clairon  could  not  escape  those 
frequent  deviations  from  the  path  of  rectitude 
of  which  her  career  exhibits  so  many  de- 
plorable examples.  According  to  her  view 
of  the  matter,  destiny — that  convenient  scape- 
goat of  the  worldly-minded,  the  extravagant, 
and  the  gay — led  her,  despite  herself,  into 
all  the  faults  and  follies  of  which  she  in  after 
life  WHS  guilty. 

At  Rouen,  Mademoiselle  Clairon  had  her 
laureate  and  her  libellist  united  in  the  person 
of  an  individual  by  name  Gaillard.  As  she 
herself  expresses  it,  he  possessed  in  nn  emi- 
nent degree  the  art  of  rhyming  and  supping- 
oat,  two  indispensable  qualifications  m  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  salary  of  our 
heroine  having  been  raised  to  about  a  thou- 
sand crowns  a-year,  her  mother,  Madame 
Clairon,  began  to  ape  the  airs  of  a  mistress 
of  the  house ;  she  instituted  a  supper  every 
Thursday  night,  to  which  were  admitted  all 
the  wealthy  admirers  of  her  daughter.  Gail- 
lard used  to  season  the  gi(jiot8  with  madrigals, 
in  which  Venus  and  Ve^ta  were  treated  in 
the  light  of  ragged  adventuresses  when  com- 
pared to  Mademoiselle  Hippolyte  Clairon. 
Gaillard,  however,  did  not  content  himself 
with  singing  the  praises  of  the  pretty  ac- 
tress ;  he  dared  to  love  her.  After  sighing 
for  about  six  months,  he  succeeded  in  gain- 
ing over  an  old  duenna,  who,  for  a  considera- 
tion, put  him  up  to  all  the  turnings  and 


windings  of  the  house.  One  mommg,  while 
Mademoiselle  Clairon  was  studying  in  bed, 
Gaillard  penetrated  to  the  chamber  door,  and 
exclaimed,  in  impassioned  accents,  that  he 
was  going  to  cast  himself  on  his  knees  before 
her.  Our  actress,  highly  incensed  that  any 
one  should  dare  to  appear  in  her  presence  at 
such  an  unseemlv  hour,  without  more  ado 
sprang  out  of  bed,  and  armed  with  her  anger 
and  a  trusty  poker,  unceremoniously  drove 
the  audacious  madiigalist  not  only  out  of  the 
room,  but  out  of  tlie  house  also.  Gaillard, 
indignant  at  being  thus  treated  by  an  actress 
whose  adventures  were  already  matter  of 
public  notoriety,  wrote  his  famous  book — a 
book,  it  must  be  admitted,  utterlv  destitute 
of  either  style,  wit,  or  vigor — entitled,  HiS'- 
taire  de  Mademoiselle  Fretillon,  Gaillard 
was  amply  and  cruelly  avenged  for  his  igno- 
minious treatment  at  the  hands  of  Made- 
moiselle Clairon,  for  this  disgraceful  libel 
saddened  her  fairest  years.  His  victim,  how- 
ever, was  herself  in  turn  avenged,  for  so 
violent  was  the  outcry  raised  by  the  public 
against  the  author  of  the  pamphlet,  that 
Gaillard  was  compelled  to  seek  safety  in  a 
hasty  flight  from  tne  kingdom. 

It  would  take  a  **  forty- author  power"  to 
follow  our  heroine  through  all  the  scenes, 
adventures,  and  follies  of  her  early  years,  a 
faithful  narration  of  which  would  fill  at  least 
a  dozen  volumes,  and  would  moreover,  we 
fear,  but  little  edify  our  readers.  From 
Rouen,  Mademoiselle  Clairon  proceeded  to 
Lillei  and  from  thence  to  Ghent,  from  which 
last-named  town  she  was  obliged  to  make  a 
nocturnal  flight,  in  order  to  escape  from  the 
power  of  a  British  Geneml,  who  wanted, 
right  or  wrong,  to  marry  her,  and  carry  her 
off  with  him  to  England.  At  Dunkirque, 
whither  she  had  sought  shelter  from  her 
ardent  lover,  she  received,  through  the  com- 
mandant of  the  place,  an  order  to  appear  on 
the  Parisian  stage.  Much  had  been  spoken 
of  Fretillon,  and  the  gentlemen  of  the  cham- 
ber judged  in  their  wisdom  that  so  pretty  a 
girl  should  belong  by  right  to  the  Parisians 
only.  At  the  Opera  she  accordingly  appear- 
ed as  Venus  in  the  opera  of  Hesione,  Al- 
though an  indifferent  musician,  she  was  much 
applauded,  for  in  those  days  people  applaud- 
ed beauty  as  well  as  talent. 

Shortly  afterwards  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
quitted  the  Opera,  and  made  her  first  appear- 
ance at  the  Comedie-Fran^aise  in  the  part  of 
PKedre,  In  the  provinces  she  had  played 
chiefly  the  soubrettes,  and  at  the  Comedie- 
Fran9aise  she  was  engaged  to  double  Mad- 
emoiselle Dangeville.    Previous,  however,  to 


376 


MADEMOISELLE  CLAIRON. 


[Nov., 


signing  her  engagement,  she  declared,  to  the 
great  surprise  of  the  comedians,  that  it  was 
her  intention  to  perform  the  great  tragic 
parts  ;  to  this  request  the  comedians  assented, 
stipulating  merely  that  she  should  sing  and 
dance  in  the  musical  pieces.  They  were  all 
thoroughly  convinced  that  she  would  be 
hissed  on  her  debute  and  hence  be  compelled 
to  sing  and  dance  only.  It  so  happened 
that  during  her  provincial  career  she  had 
played  four  or  five  tragic  parts.  Marshal  Sar- 
razin  having  accidentally  seen  her  play  the 
character  of  Eriphile,  at  Rouen,  had  pre- 
dicted that  she  would  one  day  be  the  orna- 
ment of  the  French  stage.  She  was  anxious 
most  probably  to  show  the  world  that  Sar- 
razin's  judgment  was  a  correct  one.  Pre- 
vious to  her  debut  the  comedians  had  in- 
dulged in  many  a  hearty  laugh  at  whnt  they 
deemed  the  absurd  pretensions  of  the  proud 
Hippolyte.  She  disdained  to  rehearse  her 
pan ;  and  on  the  morning  of  her  debut  she 
sent  a  message  to  the  theatre  to  say  that  she 
was  ready  to  appear,  and  only  awaited  the 
rising  of  the  curtain.  All  Paris  flocked  on 
that  evening  to  the  Comedie-Frangaise  in  the 
expectati(jn  of  having  a  good  laugh  at  little 
Fretillon ;  but  scarcely  had  she  given  utter- 
ance to  the  first  few  lines  of  her  part  when 
the  entire  audience  rose  enthusiastically ;  it 
was  no  longer  little  Clairon,  the  charming 
Fretillon  who  played  the  soubrettes,  it  was 
Fhedre  herself,  in  all  her  sovereign  splendor, 
in  all  the  majesty  of  passion.  "  How  tall 
she  is  !"  "  How  beautiful  she  is  !"  were  the 
exclamations  heard  on  all  sides.  From  this 
time  forth  Mademoiselle  Clairon  was  sur- 
named  Melpomene,  and  became  the  idol  of 
the  Parisians. 

The  Comedie-Fran^ais  was  at  that  period 
so  well  administered,  it  possessed  such  intel- 
ligent protectors,  that  even  the  first  subjects 
of  the  troop  could  scarcely  live  on  th'ir 
salaries.  "  We  were  poor,"  writes  Made- 
moiselle Clairon,  •*  and  unable  to  await  the 
payment  of  what  was  due  to  us,  and  every 
week  we  would  vainly  solicit  M.  de  Boulogne, 
then  Comptroller- General,  for  the  paym«-nt 
of  the  arrears  of  the  kinir's  pension."  But 
no  one  paid  them,  and  Louis  XV.  less 
than  all  the  rest.  Thus  we  find  tnat  Made- 
moiselle Clairon — the  star  of  the  Tneatre 
Fran^aise^-owed  to  her  beauty,  and  not  lo 
her  talents,  the  Indian  robes  and  diamonds 
which  she  wore.  As  she  was  fond  of  chang- 
ing both  her  finery  and  her  lovers,  it  would 
frequently  happen  that  she  would  be  left 
without  either  lovers  or  finery.  One  day 
Marshal  Richelieu  called  upon  her  to  request 


the  honor  of  her  presence  at  one  of  his  fete$. 
She  refused.  "  Why  ?"  demanded  the  Mar- 
shal. "  I  have  no  dress  to  wear  1"  Riche- 
lieu burst  out  laughing.  "  You  have  dresses 
of  all  countries,  of  all  tat^tes,  and  all  fancies." 
**  No  more,  I  can  assure  you,  than  one  single 
dress  besides  the  one  you  now  see  on  my 
back.  Our  scanty  receipts  have  compelled 
me  to  sell  everything  valuable  lusould  spare, 
and  what  remains  is  in  pawn ;  I  can  only 
show  myself  on  the  stage." 

Like  all  true  talents.  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
had  more  than  one  enemy  who  denied  her 
influence  over  the  public.  The  critic  Freron 
declared  that  her  stentorian  tones  deafened 
the  ears  without  moving  the  heart.  Grimm, 
who  came  to  France  during  the  height  of  the 
actress's  triumph,  spoke  of  the  squeakings  of 
her  voice.  "Squeakings,  if  you  please," 
said  Diderot,  "  but  these  squeakings,  as  you 
call  them,  have  become  the  accents  of  pas- 
sion." 

It  was  about  this  period  that  Mademoiselle 
Clairon  hired,  at  the  rate  of  12,000  livres  a 
year,  the  little  house  in  the  Rue  des  Marais, 
formerly  inhabited  by  Racine.  "  They  tell 
me,"  she  writes  in  her  Memoire  "  that 
Racine  dwelt  there  for  forty  years  with  all 
his  family ;  that  it  was  there  he  died ;  and 
that,  after  his  time,  it  was  there  lived  and  died 
the  touching  Adrienne  Lecouvreur.  The 
walls  alone  of  this  house,"  I  said  to  myself, 
''  ought  to  suffice  to  make  me  feel  the  sub- 
limity of  the  poet,  and  enable  me  to  reach 
the  talent  of  the  actress.  It  is  in  this  sanc- 
tuary that  I  ought  to  live  and  die."  All  the 
poets  of  the  day  visited  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
in  "  this  sanctuary,"  which  we  very  much 
fear  was  on  several  occasions  somewhat  pro- 
faned. The  quite  family  dinner  which  Racine 
had  showed  his  good  sense  and  taste  in  pre- 
ferring to  the  dinner  spread  on  the  king's 
table,  was  now  replaced  by  the  licentious 
petit  souper  ;  and  the  gay  but  frequently  im- 
pure, and  even  blasphemous  chanson,  was 
now  heard  in  spots  consecrated  by  the  genius 
of  Racine,  where  the  poet  had  so  frequently 
let  fall  his  Alexandrines  as  from  a  golden  harp. 

Mademoiselle  Clairon,  however,  had  be- 
come the  heroine  of  the  Comedie-Fran9aise. 
She  had,  if  not  eclipsed,  at  least  in  some 
measure  cast  into  the  shade  Mademoiselles 
Dumesnil,  Gaussin,  and  Dangeville.  She 
maintained  h^r  sceptre  until  1762.  This,  it 
must  be  said,  was  the  golden  era  of  the 
French  stage,  for  in  addition  to  these  four 
celebrated  actresses,  such  names  could  be 
cited  as  Mol^,  Grandval,  Bellecour,  Lekain, 
Preville,  and  Brizard.    Mademoiselle  Clairon, 


1858.] 


MADEMOISELLE  OLMRON. 


3Y7 


with  her  solemn  air  and  majestic  gait,  was 
the  presiding  genius  of  this  brilliant  republic 
— a  republic  of  kings  and  qneens.  Others, 
it  might  be  said,  possessed  either  more  talent 
or  more  beauty,  but  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
possessed  renown. 

She  reigned  fifteen  years. 

In  the  year  1762,  although  now  approach- 
ing her  decline,  Mademoiselle  Clairon  was 
still  spoken  of  as  a  theatrical  marvel.  We 
find  the  following  lines  referring  to  her  in 
Bachaumont*8  Mtmoires  Secrets,  under  the 
date  of  January  20th :  *'  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
is  still  the  heroine  ;  the  mere  announcement 
of  her  name  is  sufficient  to  draw  a  crowded 
house  ;  so  soon  as  she  appears  the  applause 
is  enthusiastic ;  her  acting  is  a  finished  work 
of  art.  She  has  great  nobility  of  gesture  in 
the  head  ;  it  is  the  Melpomene  arranged  by 
Phidias."  The  same  journalist  afterwards 
passes  the  entire  troop  in  review  with  exqui- 
bite  delicacy  of  touch.  Take,  for  example, 
this  note  on  Mademoiselle  Dumesnil :  "  This 
actress  drinks  like  a  coachman  ;  and  on  the 
night  she  plays,  her  lackey  is  always  in  at- 
tendance in  the  coulisses,  bottle  in  hand,  to 
slake  her  insatiable  thirst." 

In  place  of  a  lackey  and  a  bottle  of  wine, 
Mademoiselle  Clairon  had  in  the  coulisses  an 
entire  court  of  dissipated  marquises,  licen- 
tious abbes,  and  chirping  poets.  Marmontel, 
one  evening,  during  a  tavern  supper,  found 
her  sublime.  Marmontel  was  then  a  young 
scholar,  rhyming  tragedies,  which  the  actors 
deigned  to  play  and  the  public  to  applaud, 
out  of  respect  for  Voltaire,  who  had  grant- 
ed him  a  certificate  of  genius.  He  supped 
silently  beside  the  eminent  actress,  think- 
ing much  more  of  composing  a  part  for 
her  than  of  speaking  to  her  of  love.  '*  What 
ails  you  ?"  said  Clairon  to  him  all  at  once  ; 
*'  you  are  sad  ;  I  hope  you  are  not  oflfer- 
ing  me  such  an  affront  as  to  be  compos- 
infr  a  tragedy  during  our  supper  ?'*  Mar- 
montel had  the  wit  to  reply  thnt  he  was  sad 
because  he  was  in  love.  **  Child,''  replied 
Clairon,  "  is  that  the  way  you  receive  tiie 
gifts  of  your  good  genius?"  '*  Yes,  be- 
cause I  love  you."  Well,  then,  fall  on  your 
knees ;  I  will  raise  you,  and  we  will  love  each 
other  as  long  as  we  can."  History  does 
not  inform  us  how  long  this  attnchment 
lasted,  but  it  was  not  of  very  considerable 
duration.  Marmontel  has  related  with  the 
utmost  complaisance,  all  the  details  of  his 
follies  with  La  Clairon,  in  that  whimsical 
book  of  his  entitled  *•  Memoires  (Tun  Phre 
pour  seruir  a  I*  instruction  de  »es  Enfana, 

The  Marquis  de  Ximenes  was  also  one  of 


the  adorers  of  the  great  comedian ;  they 
loved  like  the  Arcadian  shepherds  and  f^hep- 
herdesses,  but  a  single  mot  put  Cupid  to 
flight  forever.  Some  one  happened  to  say 
one  night  in  the  green-room  of  the  Comedie 
Fran^ise,  that  the  Marquis  de.  Ximenes  had 
turned  Clairon's  head.  "  Yes,"  replied  she, 
arriving  at  that  instant,  *'  on  the  other  side" 
The  Marquis's  love  was  not  proof  against  this 
insult ;  the  following  day  he  returned  the 
portrait  of  his  inamorata,  with  these  words 
written  in  pencil  beneath  it ;  "  This  crayon 
drawing  is  like  human  beauty ;  it  fades  in 
the  sunshine.  Do  not  forget  that  your  sun 
has  long  risen." 

Mademoiselle  Clairon  was  not  celebrated 
in  France  alone ;  all  the  foreign  theatres 
summoned  her  by  the  voice  of  kings  and 
queens.  Garrick  came  to  Paris  expressly  to 
see  her  play  in  Cinna.  So  delighted  was  he 
with  the  talent  of  the  actress,  that  h^  caused 
a  design  to  be  engraved  representing  Made- 
moiselle Clairon  arrayed  in  all  the  attributes 
of  tragedy ,  her  arm  resting  upon  a  pile  of 
books  on  which  might  be  read  the  names  of 
Comeille,  Racine,  Crebillon,  and  Voltaire. 
By  her  side  stood  Melpomene,  crowning  her 
with  laurel.  Beneath  the  design  were  in- 
seribed  these  four  lines,  composed  by  Gar- 
rick himself: 

J*ai  pr^dit  que  Clairon  illustrerait  la  scene, 
Et  men  espoir  n*a  point  ete  d^cn, 
LongtempB  Clairon  couronna  Melpomene, 
Meipoindne  lui  rend  ce  qu*elle  en  a  re9u. 

These  lame  verses  quickly  made  the  cir- 
cuit of  the  fashionable  world.  The  enthusi- 
astic admirers  of  the  actress  were  not,  how- 
ever, contented  with  this  homage  paid  by 
one  sovereign  of  the  stage  to  another ;  they 
instituted  the  order  of  the  medallion  ;  medals 
were  struck,  bearing  Garrick's  device,  and 
with  these  they  decorated  themselves  as 
proudly  as  though  they  had  borne  the  Grand 
Cordon  itself. 

Our  heroine  had  now  attained  the  culmi- 
nating point  of  her  renown.  She  ruled  with 
despotic  sway,  not  only  the  stage,  but  the 
world  of  fashion ;  and  in  speaking  of  Madame 
de  Pompadour,  the  reigning  favorite,  she 
even  dared  to  say  that  "  she  owed  her  roy- 
alty to  chance,  while  /  owe  mine  to  the 
power  of  my  genius."  In  vain  did  her  nu- 
merous enemies  strive  to  oppose  her  triumphs 
by  all  the  means  in  their  power ;  she  had 
only  to  show  herself  in  order  to  bnffle  all 
their  machinations.  '*In  the  world,"  wrote 
Diderot,  "  those  who  wished  to  ridicule  her 
could  not  refrain  from  admiring  her  majestic 
eloquence."     She  carried  her  sceptre,  too 


378 


MADSlfOIHELLE  CLAIfiOlf . 


[Not. 


with  a  high  hand.  One  day,  when  she  was 
playint^  at  the  Theatre  FraD9aise,  on  the  oc- 
casion of  a  free  performance,  given  by  order 
ot  the  king  to  the  Parisians,  she  came  on  the 
stage  bi^tween  the  two  pieces,  and  threw 
handfuls  of  money  into  the  pit.  The  worthy 
Patisians  were  gulled  by  this  piece  of  theat- 
rical quackery,  and  cried  with  enthusiasm, 
as  they  scrambled  for  the  silver,  Vive  le 
Eoi !  Vive  Mademoiselle  Clairon  !  She  had 
braved  Madn me  de  Pompadour;  she  dared 
to  brave  the  kine  himself,  under  the  impres- 
sion that  the  public  would  revolt  rather  than 
lose  her.  At  her  table  she  received  the  cream 
of  Parisian  society — such  as  Mesdamea  de 
Chabrillant,  d'Aguillon,  de  Villeroy,  de  la 
Yallidre,  de  Forcalquier,  <&c.;  she  was  also  a 
frequent  guest  at  the  tables  of  Madame  du 
Deffant  and  Madame  Geoffrtn,  who  deigned 
occasionally  to  gather  the  pearls  of  her  wit. 
The  celebrated  Russian  princess,  Madame  de 
Galitzin,  amazed  at  the  talent  of  Mademoi- 
selle Ciairon,  desired  to  leave  her  a  regal 
souvenir  of  her  admiration.  "  What  will  you 
have,  Clairon?'*  asked  she,  one  evening  at 
supper.  "  My  portrait,  painted  by  Vanloo/' 
replied  the  actress.  The  painter,  flattered 
by  this  preference,  was  anxious  that  the  por- 
trait should  be  worthy  at  the  same  time  of 
Madame  de  Galitzin,  Mademoiselle  Clairon, 
and  himself;  he  painted  the  actress  as  Medea^ 
holding  in  one  hand  a  torch,  and  in  the  other 
a  poinard  still  reeking  with  the  blood  of  her 
children.  Louis  XV.  expressed  a  wish  to 
see  this  picture :  and  if  we  are  to  believe  one 
of  the  newspapers  of  the  time,  he  paid  a  visit 
one  morning  for  this  express  purpose  to  the 
atelier  of  Vanloo.  His  Majesty  highly  com- 
plimented both  the  artist  and  his  models. 
"  You  are  fortunate,"  said  he  to  Carl  Van- 
loo, "  in  having  such  a  sitter  ;"  and  turning 
to  Mademoiselle  Clairon — "  You  are  fortu- 
nate. Mademoiselle,  in  having  such  a  painter 
to  immortalize  your  features.  It  is  my  ear- 
nest wish  to  bear  a  share  in  this  work ;  I  am 
the  only  person  who  can  put  a  frame  on  this 
picture  wot  thy  of  it,  and  I  desire  that  it  may 
be  as  beautiful  a  one  as  possible  ;  and  fur- 
ther, it  is  my  wish  that  this  portrait  be  en- 
graved.'* The  frame  cost  five  thousand  liv- 
res,  and  the  engraving  ten  thousand. 

In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  endeavored 
to  chronicle  the  rise  and  progress  of  our  he- 
roine's grandeur;  we  must  now,  as  faithful 
historians,  relate  the  history  of  her  decline 
and  fall.  Mademoiselle  Clairon  counted 
among  her  enemies  Laharpe  and  Freron ; 
Lahai  pe,  because  she  had  obstinately  refused 
to  play  in  his  tragedies ;  Freron,  because  she 


had  preferred  Voltaire  to  him.  Laharpe 
avenged  himself  with  his  tongue,  Freron  with 
his  pen.  About  this  period,  a  certain  ac- 
tress, by  name  Mademoiselle  Doligny,  was 
attracting  notice  at  the-Theatre  Frangaise; 
Freron  protected  her;  he  judged  that  the 
moment  was  a  favorable  one  to  delineate  her 
portrait  in  contradistinction  to  that  of  Made- 
moiselle Clairon,  and  he  did  so  accordingly. 
The  first,  in  the  opinion  of  the  journalist, 
was  a  model  of  grace  and  sensibility ;  the 
second,  an  abandoned  woman,  destitute  alike 
of  heart,  soul,  or  intellect.  In  Freron's  jour- 
nal. Mademoiselle  Clairon  was  not  alluded  to 
b^  name,  but  she  had  the  bad  taste  to  recog- 
nize herself  in  the  portrait  drawn  by  the 
critic.  Filled  with  shame  and  rage,  she  hur- 
ried to  the  gentlemen  of  the  chamber,  and 
threatened  to  withdraw  from  the  theatre  un- 
less instant  justice  was  executed  upon  that 
horrible  Freron.  All  Paris  was  in  commo- 
tion ;  the  king  hastily  summoned  a  meeting 
of  his  privy  council,  and  a  warrant  was  sign- 
ed far  the  committal  of  Freron.  The  police- 
officers,  according  to  order,  came  to  seize  his 
person.  What  could  he  oppose  to  the  strong 
arm  of  the  law  ?  Our  critic  imagined  a  vio- 
lent fit  of  the  gout ;  he  uttered  cries  of  an- 
guish, and  declared  that  he  could  not  move 
a  finger  without  suffering  tortures.  This 
momentous  affair  occurred  on  the  14th  of 
February,  1775;  in  a  journal  of  the  16th, 
we  find  the  following  notice :  '^  The  quarrel 
between  Freron  and  Mademoiselle  Clairon, 
aliojs  the  pamphleteer  Aliboron,  and  Queen 
Cleopatra,  makes  a  great  noise  both  at  court 
and  in  the  city.  Monsieur  I'Abb^  de  Voi- 
senon,  having,  at  the  solicitation  of  some 
friends  of  the  former,  written  a  very  pathetic 
letter  to  M.  le  Due  de  Duras,  gentleman  of 
the  chamber,  the  latter  replied  to  the  abbd, 
whom  he  highly  esteemed,  that  it  was  the 
only  favor  he  believed  it  his  duty  to  refuse 
him,  that  this  request  could  be  granted  only 
at  the  personal  solicitation  of  Mademoiselle 
Clairon."  Glorious  times  these,  truly,  when 
a  journalist,  a  man,  moreover,  possessed  of 
more  than  one  title  to  respect,  should  be 
threatened  with  imprisonment  for  expressing 
an  opinion  about  an  actress,  or,  what  was  an 
alternative  much  more  humiliating,  that  he 
should  owe  his  pardon  to  the  actress  whom 
he  had  offended.  Sooner  than  submit  to 
such  degradation,  Freron  declared  that  he 
would  suffer  a  thousand  deaths.  Strange  as 
it  may  appear,  this  ridiculous  affair  was  not 
only  debated  before  the  king,  but  was  car- 
ried to  the  feet  of  the  queen  also.  Marie 
Leczinska,  who  loved  to  show  clemency,  or- 


1863.] 


MADBMOISEIXE  Cl4AIR0ir. 


SfO 


dered  that  Freron  should  be  pardoned,  bat 
Mademoiselle  Clairon  would  not  abide  by 
the  queen's  decision ;  she  declared  to  the 
gentlemen  of  the  chamber  that  if  Freron  were 
not  punished,  she  would  certainly  withdraw 
from  the  theatre.  Awful  was  the  commo- 
tion. Mademoiselle  Clarion  demanded  an 
audience  of  M.  le  Due  de  Choiseul,  prime 
minister,  which  was  graciously  acceded. 
"  Justice  1"  cried  she,  with  her  stage  accent, 
as  soon  as  the  minister  appeared.  "  Made- 
moiselle,'' replied  the  duke,  with  mock  grav- 
ity, **  we  both  of  us  perform  upon  a  great 
stage ;  but  there  is  this  difference  between 
U8 :  that  you  can  choose  your  parts,  and  you 
have  only  to  show  yourself  to  be  applauded ; 
whilst  I,  on  the  contrary,  have  not  this  priv- 
ilege, and  what  is  still  worse,  as  soon  as  I 
make  my  appearance  I  am  hissed  ;  let  me  do 
my  best  or  my  worst,  it  is  all  the  same ;  I 
am  criticised,  ridiculed,  abused,  condemned, 
yet  for  all  that  I  remain  at  my  post,  and  if 
you  take  my  advice  you  will  do  the  same. 
Let  us  then,  both  of  us,  sacrifice  our  private 
resentments  to  the  good  of  our  country,  and 
serve  it,  each  in  our  own  way,  to  the  best  of 
our  power.  And,  besides,  the  queen  hav- 
ing pardoned,  you  can,  without  compromis- 
ing your  dignity,  imitate  her  majesty's  clem- 
ency." 

In  a  journal  of  the  2l8t  of  February  we 
read  as  follows : — "  The  queen  of  the  stage 
has  held  a  meeting  of  her  friends,  presided 
over  by  the  Due  de  Duras,  at  which  it  was 
determined  that  M.  de  Saint  Florentin  should 
be  threatened  with  the  immediate  desertion 
of  the  entire  troop  unless  speedy  justice  were 
done  to  the  modem  Melpomene  for  the  inso- 
lence of  Freron.  This  line  of  conduct  has 
greatly  disturbed  M.  de  Saint  Florentin,  and 
this  minister  has  written  to  the  queen,  stat- 
ing that  the  affair  has  become  one  of  the 
vastest  importance ;  that  for  a  length  of  time 
matter  of  such  serious  import  has  not  been 
discussed  at  court  (!)  that  in  fact  the  court 
is  divided  into  two  factions  on  the  question, 
and  that,  despite  his  profoimd  respect  for 
the  commands  of  her  Majesty,  he  much  fears 
he  will  be  compelled  to  obey  the  original 
orders  of  the  king."  In  the  end,  however, 
Freron  was  saved  from  imprisonment  by  a 
combination  of  three  circumstances,  viz.,  the 
gout  which  he  had  not,  the  clemency  of 
Marie  Leczinska,  but  chiefly  because,  miVa- 
hile  dlctUy  Mademoiselle  Clairon  herself  was 
sent  to  For  I'Eveque ! 

In  the  annals  of  the  French  stage  there 
are  few  stories  more  supremely  ridiculous 
than  that  of  the  comedians  in  ordinary  to 


the  king,  who,  at  the  moment  of  commenc- 
ing the  performance,  refused  to  play  because 
his  Majesty  had  added  to  the  troop  an  indi- 
vidual whom  they  judged  unworthy  of  being, 
a  member  of  their  aristocratic  body.  Made- 
moiselle Clairon  was  at  the  head  of  this  re- 
volt also,  but  her  star  was  beginning  to  pale 
in  the  theatrical  firmament,  her  crown  of  roses 
was  beginning  to  show  its  thorns.  On  this  oc- 
casion, the  pit,  exasperated  to  the  highest  point 
at  not  having  its  accustomed  entertainment, 
angrily  shouted  aloud  La  Clairon  d  VkopitaU 
Her  fate  was  sealed !  The  pit  of  a  theatre  is  for 
the  actors  the  Praetorian  guard.  This  mo- 
mentous event  occurred  on  the  15th  of  April, 
1775;  on  the  ensuing  day  the  papers  con- 
tained the  following  announcement :  "  As- 
tonishing fermentation  in  Paris !  A  special 
Privy  Council  has  been  held  at  the  house  of 
M.  de  Sartines,  at  which  it  was  determined 
that  the.  culprits  in  the  late  theatrical  emeuie 
should  be  sent  to  For  I'fiveque.  Mademoi- 
selle Clairon  receives  the  visits  of  the  court 
and  city."  That  very  day,  however,  she 
went  to  For  I'Eveque  before  that  rascal  Fre^ 
ron,  to  use  her  own  expression  to  the  Intend- 
ant  of  Paris.  Next  morning  Sophie  Arnould 
related  the  story  of  her  capture  in  almo9t 
these  words :  **  Fretillon  was  in  the  height 
and  glory  of  her  receptions,  playing  the 
grand  lady  to  the  admiration  of  all,  when  an 
unannounced  visitor  made  his  appearance,  in 
the  shape  of  a  police  officer,  who  very  un- 
ceremoniously desired  her  to  follow  him  to 
For  TEv^que,  by  order  of  the  king.  '  I  am 
submissive  to  the  commands  of  his  Majesty,' 
said  she,  with  her  usual  pompous  stage  ac- 
cent ;  *  my  property,  my  person,  my  life  are 
in  his  hands ;  but  my  honor  will  remain  in- 
tact, for  even  the  king  himself  cannot  touch 
that.'  'Very  true.  Mademoiselle,'  replied 
the  alguazil, '  for  where  there  is  nothing,  the 
king  necessarily  loses  his  rights.' " 

At  For  I'Eveque,  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
found  not  a  cell,  but  an  apartment,  which 
her  friends,  the  Duchesses  of  Villeroy  and 
de  Duras,  and  Madame  de  Sauvigny,  had 
furnished  for  her  with  great  magnificence. 
We  read,  in  a  journal  of  the  20th  of  April : 
''Mademoiselle  Clairon  converts  into  a  tri- 
umph a  punishment  which  was  intended  as 
a  humiliation.  A  crowd  of  carriages  besiege 
the  gates  of  the  prison ;  she  gives,  we  un- 
derstand, divine  suppers ;  in  short,  is  leading, 
at  For  TEv^que,  a  life  of  princely  luxury. ' 
This  method  of  imprisoning  actresses  was 
not,  it  must  be  admitted,  a  very  cruel  one. 
One  might  say  they  kept  open  house,  for 
there  they  received  their  lovers  and  friends* 


380 


MAD2M0IBELLE  CLAIRON. 


[Nov., 


and  supped  from  night  till  morning;  and 
then,  as  the  finishing  stroke  to  this  luxurious 
captivity,  so  soon  as  their  incarceration  be- 
came a  little  wearisome,  there  was  always  to 
be  found  some  accomodating  physician,  who 
would  seriously  declare  that  their  lives  were 
in  danger.  So  it  was  in  this  instance  ;  for, 
after  a  week's  feasting.  Mademoiselle  Clairon 
was  authorized,  thanks  to  the  certificate  of 
the  jail  doctor,  to  return  to  her  own  house, 
where  she  was  directed  to  consider  herself  a 
prisoner  for  the  space  of  thirteen  days  more. 

A  deputation  from  the  king  And  the  gen- 
tlemen of  the  chamber,  shortly  afterwards 
wailed  upon  her,  to  solicit  her  re-appearance 
on  the  stage  of  the  Comedie  Fran^aise,  but 
she  had  still  at  heart  the  terrible  words,  La 
Clairon  d  Vhopital,  "  It  is  not,"  she  said, 
"  the  king  who  ought  to  solicit  my  re-appear- 
ance at  a  theatre  he  never  visits ;  it  is  the 
public ;  I  await  the  orders  of  the  public." 
But  the  fickle  public  had  had  time,  during 
the  short  absence  of  its  former  sovereign,  to 
choose  another  queen :  it  chose  two,  indeed 
— Mademoiselle  Dubois  and  Mademoiselle 
Raucourt — queens  of  a  day,  it  is  true,  but 
still  sufficiently  regal  to  dethrone  the  ancient 
one.  Mademoiselle  Clairon,  dreading  forget- 
fulness  like  death,  no  longer  willing  to  ap- 
pear before  a  public  that  had  adored  her  for 
twenty  years  only,  had  horses  put  to  her 
carriage  one  day,  and  took  her  departure 
from  Paris.  "  I  am  ill,"  she  said  ;  "  I  am 
going  to  consult  TroDchin ;"  but  it  was  to 
Voltaire  she  went,  and  the  little  theatre  of 
Ferney  ere  long  rang  with  her  stentorian  ac- 
cents. 

She  returned  to  Paris  in  the  winter,  and 
found  winter  every  where :  in  her  deserted 
house,  among  her  forgetful  friends,  and  also 
among  her  scattered  lovers.  She  resumed, 
however,  her  former  train  of  life,  but  the 
grain  of  sadness  sown  in  her  heart  had 
germinated.  In  vain  did  she  summon  the 
ilite  of  Parisian  society  to  her  exquisite  petits 
soupers;  in  vain  did  she  receive  the  oaths 
and  protestations  of  M.  de  Valbelle,  and  line 
her  carriage  with  silk,  in  an  attempt  to  vie 
in  luxury  with  the  brilliant  Guimard.  She 
suffered  deeply,  for  she  had  lost,  at  the  same 
time,  both  her  youth  and  her  glory ;  she 
was  fated  to  live,  from  henceforth,  upon  two 
tombs. 

We  will  pass  over  in  silence  that  portion 
of  our  heroine's  life  which  she  spent  at  the 
court  of  the  Margrave  of  Anspach,  a  petty 
German  prince,  fashioned  upon  the  model  of 
Louis  XV.,  who  was  accustomed  to  leave  to 
bis  mistresses  the  care  of  his  dominions,  and 


who  had  offered  her  his  heart  and  a  share 
of  his  palace.  Though  her  position  at  the 
Margrave's  court  was  an  equivocal  one 
enough,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  during  her 
sojourn  there  she  did  a  great  deal  of  good : 
debts,  old  and  new,  were  gradually  liquidat- 
ed, taxes  reduced,  agriculture  usefully  pro- 
tected, and  the  city  of  Anspach  adorned 
with  a  monumental  fountain;  white  the 
Clairon  Hospital;  one  of  her  last  gifts  to  the 
community,  put  the  crowning  grace  to  her 
numerous  benefactions,  and  rendered  her 
name  universally  beloved,  by  the  poorer 
classes  especially.  Bom  thirteen  years  be- 
fore the  Margrave,  she  might  almost  have 
been  his  mother,  and  he,  indeed,  used  to 
give  her  this  title;  but  court  intrigue  was 
brought  into  play  to  dethrone  the  gray-haired 
Egeria,  and  after  a  reign  of  seventeen  years, 
she  quitted  forever  the  scene  of  her  diplo- 
matic labors,  and  returned,  once  more,  to 
Paris,  poorer,  by  a  great  deal,  than  when 
she  had  left  it.  The  illustrious  actress,  who 
formerly  had  a  coach  and  four,  and  had  seen 
all  Pari:)  at  her  feet,  now  fell  into  the  ex- 
treme of  poverty.  But  such  is  ever  the  end 
of  those  charming  butterflies  which  shine 
only  in  the  morning  of  life.  Mademoiselle 
Guimard,  for  example,  who,  in  the  spring 
time  of  her  success,  when  she  had  in  her 
magnificent  hotel  a  private  theatre  and  a 
winter  garden,  had  refused  the  hand  of  a 
prince,  was  very  glad,  in  after  life,  to  marry 
her  dancing-master.  Sophy  Arnould,  again, 
after  having  spent  her  early  years  in  almost 
unexampled  luxury  and  profusion,  went,  un- 
complainingly, when  her  winter  had  set  in,  to 
seek  shelter  and  a  morsel  of  bread  at  the 
hands  of  her  hairdresser.  Mademoiselle 
Clairon,  who  had  lived  as  a  queen  and  a 
sultana,  who  never  deigned  to  hold  a  needle 
in  her  fingers,  and  had  seen  all  the  grand 
seigneurs  of  an  entire  generation  humbly 
kissing  the  dust  at  her  feet,  found  herself,  at 
the  age  of  sixty- five,  reduced  to  the  necessi- 
ty of  mending,  with  her  own  hands,  her  rag- 
ged dresses,  of  making  her  own  bed,  and 
sweeping  out  every  morning  the  dust  of  her 
poor  and  solitary  chamber.  But,  ever  a 
woman  of  stroog  mind,  she  bore  her  poverty 
bravely  ;  she  turned  philosopher,  like  all  the 
rest  of  them,  in  those  days,  and,  when  some 
old  friend  or  acquaintance  chanced  to  call, 
she  would,  in  conversation,  live  all  her  bright 
days  o'er  again. 

By  degrees,  however,  she  met  with  some 
friends,  and  managed  to  scrape  together 
some  small  portion  of  her  scattered  wealth. 
A  worthy  hourgeoiH  family  took  her  under 


1858.] 


MADEMOISELLE  GLAIRON. 


S8l 


their  protection,  and  a  few  rays  of  wintry 
sunshine  illumined  her  declining  years.  En- 
tirely engrossed  with  her  philosophy,  she 
wrote  much,  and  more  than  one  of  her  works 
is  worthy  of  being  placed  beside  those  of  J. 
J.  Rousseau.  In  addition  to  her  Mimoires, 
Mademoiselle  Clairon  wrote  a  prodigious 
number  of  letters ;  the'  Comte  de  Valbelle 
had  received  for  his  own  share  alone  the 
enormous  quantity  of  fifteen  hundred.  The 
loss  of  this  correspondence  is  much  to  be 
regretted,  if  we  may  judge  of  it  by  the  style 
of  the  small  number  of  letters  which  remain, 
wherein  the  most  captious  criticism  can 
scarcely  discover  a  fault,  either  as  regards 
expression,  sensibility,  or  purity  of  style  and 
language. 

Her  Mimoires,  however,  have  had  the 
widest  circle  of  readers,  and  yet  even  this 
book,  which  was  given  to  the  world  by  the 
actress  as  a  faithful  narrative  of  her  life,  is 
far  from  being  the  accurate  mirror  she  evi- 
dently intended'  the  public  to  suppose. 
Whether  through  delicacy,  or  through  a 
fear  of  speaking  the  whole  truth,  she  has 
concealed  many  acts  of  her  life,  and  glided 
hastily  and  superficially  over  others.  What 
made  the  most  noise,  however,  in  her  book, 
was  the  celebrated  history  of  her  ghost. 
She  relates  circumstantially  in  her  Mimoires 
the  various  malicious  pranks  played  upon 
her  for  some  years  by  the  ghost  of  a  young 
Breton,  whom  she  had  pitilessly  left  to  die 
of  love.  In  this  recital,  given  by  our  author- 
ess to  the  world  with  the  utmost  seriousness 
and  good  faith,  we  can  easily  recognuse  the 
natural  effect  of  those  visions  which  modem 
physiology  has  so  clearly  explained  and  ac- 
counted for ;  and  as  she  quoted  witnesses  at 
the  same  time,  we  doubt  not  that  her  friends 
had  humored  her  weakness,  either  for  the 
purpose  of  pleasing  her,  or  for  their  own 


amusement.  She  wrote,  moreover,  fifty 
years  after  the  event,  and  could  at  best  only 
translate  the  feeble  impressions  of  an  irre- 
flective  youth.  This  tale,  besides,  would 
not,  we  are  firmly  persuaded,  have  ever  seen 
the  light,  had  not  narratives  of  spirits  and 
apparitions  been  at  that  period  all  the  rage 
in  the  fashionable  circle  of  Paris. 

An  actress  who  dies  a  devotee  always  re- 
sembles in  our  idea  a  boatman  pulling  lusti- 
ly toward  an  unknown  shore,  upon  which  he 
ever  keeps  his  back  most  pertinaciously  turn- 
ed. The  actress  rows  all  her  life  among 
shoals  and  quicksands,  even  in  the  heyday 
of  her  youth  nourishing  a  most  unaccounta- 
ble and  petrel-like  love  of  storms  and  tem- 
pests ;  but  when,  in  the  evening  of  her  days, 
she  finds  that  her  poor,  frail  bark,  in  its 
shattered  and  leaky  condition  will  no  longer 
sustain  her,  but  is  ready  at  every  wave  to 
sink  and  leave  her  to  her  fate,  she  returns,  if 
there  is  yet  time,  and  falls  a  kneeling  sup- 
pliant on  the  shore.  But  Mademoiselle 
Clairon  had  another  method  of  thinking; 
she  did  not  wish  to  die  a  devotee  on  the  plea 
that  she  dared  not  offer  to  her  Maker  a  heart 
profaned  during  half  a  century  by  every  hu- 
man passion.  One  day  a  priest  having  set 
before  her  the  example  of  Mary  Magdalen, 
she  replied  that  Mary  Magdalen  had  repent- 
ed in  her  youth,  she  could  still  sacrifice  at 
the  foot  of  the  cross  many  worldly  thoughts, 
and  hopes,  and  passions.  She  persisted, 
then,  in  dying  as  a  philosopher ;  believing  in 
God  as  the  philosophers  did :  by  the  mind 
that  reasons,  not  by  the  heart  which  feels, 
and  believes,  and  loves.  How  true  it  is 
that  '*  the  world  by  wisdom  knows  not  God." 

She  died  on  the  11th  Pluviose,  in  the 
year  XI.  of  the  Republic  one  and  indivisible, 
m  the  parish  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas.  May 
she  rest  in  peace ! 


882 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HAYDON. 


[Not., 


From    the    Biographical    Uagasine 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HAYDON 


Haydon  has  left  ample  memorials  of  him- 
self. His  journals  fill  seven  and  twenty 
folio  volumes ;  and  his  autobiography  is 
completed  for  the  first  thirty-four  years  of 
his  life.  His  actions  and  sufferings  are  fully 
recorded — his  intentions  and  feelings — what 
he  thought  of  himself  and  what  he  thought 
of  the  world.  'If  cotemporaries  have  been 
unjust,  posterity  can  judge.  **  Every  man/* 
says  he,  "  who  has  suffered  for  a  principle, 
and  would  lose  his  life  for  its  success — ^who 
in  his  early  days  has  been  oppressed,  with- 
out ever  giving  the  slightest  grounds  for  op- 
pression, and  persecuted  to  ruin,  because  his 
oppression  was  unmerited — who  has  incur- 
red the  hatred  of  his  enemies  exactly  in  pro- 
portion as  they  became  convinced  they  were 
wrong — every  man,  who,  like  me,  has  eaten 
the  bitter  crust  of  poverty,  and  endured  the 
penalties  of  vice  and  wickedness,  where  he 
merited  tho  rewards  of  virtue  and  industry 
— should  write  his  own  life."  Autobiogra- 
phies have  at  least  this  advantage — whatever 
motives  actuate  the  penman,  whatever  color- 
ing he  may  give  to  facts,  they  cannot  but  be 
characteristic.  If  full  of  self-laudation,  or 
written  in  artful  duplicity,  in  envy,  in  anger, 
these  faults  are  easily  discoverable,  and  so 
are  excellencies,  by  light  from  other  sources. 
No  man  could  long  deceive  a  people  by  his 
writings  respecting  himself;  and  the  very 
attempt  with  its  accessories  would  soon  be 
regarded  as  significant  of  character. 

Benjamin  Robert  Hatdon  was  born  at 
Plymouth,  January  24th,  1786.  His  father 
was  a  bookseller  in  the  town,  a  lineal  de- 
scendant of  one  of  the  oldest  families  in  De- 
von, which  had  been  ruined  and  dispersed  by 
a  chancery  isuit.  Like  his  ideal  partner  in 
misfortune,  Jarndyce  of  Bleak  House,  he 
seems  to  liavc  been  peculiarly  concerned 
about  the  changes  of  the  wind ;  and  west, 
south,  north,  or  east,  whatever  the  quarter, 
it  was  recorded  in  his  journal,  wliere  the 
most  important  and  trivial  notes  were  alike 
in  general  concluded  by  a  "wind  W.  N.W." 
or  some  similar  inscription.  Young  Benja- 
min was  a  self-willed  and  passionate  child; 
but  the  charms  that  in  after  life   soothed  | 


many  a  troubled  moment,  were  not  without 
power  over  the  scarce- fledged  nursling.  One 
day,  when  he  was  raving  in  ungovernable 
rage  his  mother  entered  the  room  with  a 
book  of  engravings  in  her  hand ;  it  was  a 
last  resource,  and  proved  effectual,  for  the 
"  pretty  pictures"  suenced  him,  and  he  be- 
came BO  interested  as  to  be  unwilling  to  part 
with  them  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  When 
six  years  old,  he  began  to  go  daily  to  school. 
This  was  a  period  of  great  excitement 
throughout  the  nation  and  the  world. 
All  eyes  were  directed  to  France,  and  the 
fearful  tragedy  acting  there  thrilled  the  age 
with  anxious  interest.  The  kin^  was  behead- 
ed, and  strange  discussions  and  prophesy ings 
were  heard  on  every  hand.  Even  the  inno- 
cence of  childhood,  was  .affected.  French 
prisoners  crowded  Plymouth,  and  guillotines 
made  by  them  of  their  meat  bones,  were  sold 
at  the  prisons,  and  became  the  favorite  play- 
thing of  the  day.  It  was  Benjamin*s  delight 
to  draw  this  instrument  of  terror,  with  Louis 
taking  leave  of  the  people  in  his  shirt- sleeves, 
which  he  copied  from  a  print.  The  pencil, 
indeed,  had  become  his  constant  companion, 
and  he  even  ventured  to  wield  it  in  infantine 
caricature.  He  was  now  sent  to  the  gram- 
mar school,  then  under  the  guardianship  of 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Bid  lake,  a  man  of  versatile 
taste,  of  talent  a  patron  in  general,  kind- 
hearted,  yet  eccentric,  fond  of  country  excur- 
sions, a  mimic  painter,  a  musician,  a  poet, 
but  fond  of  the  rhyming  dictionary,  and  ac- 
customed to  scan  with  his  fingers.  Observing 
Haydon's  love  of  art,  he  invited  him  with  a 
school-fellow  to  attend  him  in  his  painting- 
room  ;  but,  alas  for  the  old  gentleman  !  this 
was  a  fine  opportunltv  for  boyish  mischiev- 
ousness.  As  he  turned  round  and  walked  to 
a  distance  to  study  the  effect  of  his  touches, 
his  observant  pujiils  would  rub  out  or  dis- 
figure what  he  had  done,  to  his  great  per- 
plexity and  their  infinite  amusement.  On 
one  occasion  Benjamin's  mate  was  dispatched 
with  orders  to  cut  off  the  skirt  of  an  old 
coal  to  clean  the  palette  with  ;  but  whether 
he  deemed  it  a  joke  or  made  a  mistake,  the 
skirt  of  ihe  best  Sunday  coat  was  sacrificed. 


1853.] 


BEKJAMIN  ROBERT  HATDON. 


883 


The  next  Sunday,  the  doctor  sallied  forth  as 
Ubual  in  his  great  coat,  hut  on  removing  it  in 
the  vestry  to  put  on  the  surplice,  what  was 
his  horror  when  the  clerk  excldmed  in  sur- 
prise, "  Sir,  sir,  somebody  has  cut  off  the 
skirt  of  your  coat !" 

The  head  man  in  the  binding  office  of  his 
father  was  a  Neapolitan  who  used  to  talk  to 
him  of  the  wonders  of  Italy,  of  Raphael  and 
the  Vatican,  and  who,  baring  his  muscular 
arm,  would  say,  •'  Don't  draw  de  landscape ; 
draw  de  feegoore,  master  Benjamin."     Most 
of  the  hdf  holidays  were  spent  with  him, 
when  he  went  through  a  catechism  of  some 
hundreds  of  questions.      By  and  by,  master 
Benjamin  did  begin  to  draw  **  dt  feegooreP  to 
read  anatomical  books,  to  meditate  in  the 
fields,  to  discover  that  he  had  an  intellectual 
head,  and  to  fancy  himself  a  genius  and  an 
historical  painter ;  and  then,  with  true  school- 
boy fickleness,  he  threw  aside  his  brushes  for 
the  cricket  bat,  or  in  riding,  or  swimming,  or 
some    less   creditable    sport,  gaily    passed 
the  days  away.      At  length,   the  measles 
came ;  and  in  this  extremity  the  neglected 
drawing  book  was  welcomed  as  a  fiend  that 
had  been  wronged,  and  with  a  secret  resolu- 
tion of  future  constancy.     In  the  summer  of 
that  year,  he  drew  from  nature  for  the  first 
time ;  and  from  that  date  every  leisure  hour 
was   spent  in   devotion   to,  the   art.     Time 
rolled  on  rapidly  enough ;  and  now  watching 
the  evolutions  of  volunteer  corps  that  were 
swarming  around,  *now  sketching  with  Dr. 
Bidlake  m  some  sequastered  vale,  Benjamin 
had  nothing  of  which  to  complain.      His 
habits,  however,  were  lax,  and  it  was  evident 
that  the  discipline  of  a  boarding  school  would 
prove  a  proper  corrective.      He  was  accord- 
ingly sent  to  Plympton  Grammar  School, 
where  Sir  Joshua  had  been  brought  up ;  and 
here,  instead  of  murdering  Homer,  and  Vir- 
gil, he  was  compelled  to  do  homage  to  Phse- 
drus  for  a  while ;  an  humiliation  unwelcome, 
but  profitable,  for  Virgil  and  Homer  came 
again  in  their  turn  and  for  the  last  six  months 
he  was  head  boy  of  the  establishment.     As 
he  was  designed  for  the  counting  house,  he 
was  forbidden  to  learn  drawing ;  but  his  al- 
lowance of  money  was  spent  m  caricatures, 
which  he  copied  ;  and  such  was  his  skill,  that 
in  play -hours  the  boys  were  found  round  him, 
sketching  as  he  directed.  One  time  they  saw 
a  hunt  on  the  hills,  and  when   they   came 
home,  his  admirers  and  pupils  furnishing  him 
with  burnt  sticks,  he  drew  it  all  about  the 
hall  so  well,  that  it  was  permitted  to  remain 
for  some  weeks. 

From  Plympton  he  was  sent  to  Exeter,  to 


be  perfected  in  merchants'  accounts;  but 
there  he  did  little,  save  take  a  few  lessons  in 
crayon-drawing  from  his  master's  sons,  and 
distinguish  himself  by  doing  everything,  and 
anythmg,  rather  than  his  duty.  At  the  end 
of  six  months,  he  returned  to  Plymouth,  and 
was  apprenticed  to  his  father  for  seven  years ; 
and  here  began  that  "  ceaseless  opposition 
which  he  encountered  through  life."  He 
would  be  a  painter ;  the  certain  independence 
that  the  business  eventually  offered,  was  un- 
worthy of  regard  beside  the  object  of  his  am- 
bition. Repugnance  to  work  daily  increased  ; 
the  ledger  and  the  counter,  and  the  shop  and 
the  customer,  and  the  town  and  the  people, 
were  all  hated.  He  rose  early,  and  sar  up 
late;  he  ridiculed  the  prints  in  the  window  ; 
insulted  purchasers;  strolled  by  the  sea, 
whose  heaving  waves  and  boundless  freedom 
were  in  harmony  with  the  struggles  and  aa- 
pirations  of  his  own  breast.  His  fond  father 
pointed  out  to  him  his  prospects  and  the  ab- 
surdity of  letting  so  fine  a  propeity  go  to 
ruin,  for  he  had  no  younger  brother.  "  Who 
has  put  this  stuff  in  your  head  ?"  "  Nobody ; 
I  always  have  had  it."  "  You  will  live  tore- 
pent."  **  Never,  my  dear  father,  I  would 
rather  die  in  the  trial."  Friends  were  called 
in,  aunts  and  uncles  consulted,  but  still  his 
language  was  the  same.  At  this  crisis  he 
was  taken  ill,  and  in  a  short  time  was  suffer- 
ing from  chronic  inflammation  of  the  eyes. 
For  six  weeks  he  was  blind ;  at  last  he  fan- 
cied he  saw  something  glittering,  put  out  his 
hand,  and  struck  it  against  a  silver  spoon. 
That  was  a  day  of  joy  ;  he  had  another  at- 
tack, but  his  sight  recovered,  though  never 
perfectly.  "  What  folly  !  How  can  ytm 
think  of  being  a  painter  ?  Why,  you  can't 
see,"  was  said.  "  I  can  see  enough,"  was 
the  reply  ;  and  see  or  not  see,  a  painter  Til 
be  ;  and  if  I  am  a  great  one  without  seeing, 
I  shall  be  the  first.  Health  returned,  and 
nothing  daunted,  Benjamin  formed  a  plan  of 
procedure.  Searching  for  books  on  art, 
he  met  with  '*  Reynolds'  Discourses ;"  and 
reading  one,  was  so  aroused  by  the  stress  it 
laid  on  honest  industry,  and  the  conviction  it 
expressed  that  all  men  were  equal,  and  that 
application  made  the  difference,  that  he 
eagerly  bore  them  home  as  a  prize,  and  read 
them  all  before  breakfast  the  next  morning. 
His  destiny  seemed  fixed ;  he  left  his  cham- 
ber, and  came  down  to  table  with  Reynolds 
under  his  arm ;  at  once  declared  his  inten- 
tions, and,  with  resistless  energy,  demolished 
every  objection.  His  mother  burst  into  tears, 
his  father  was  in  a  passion,  and  the  houi<e  in 
an  uproar.     " Everybody," sajrs  he,  "that 


884 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HAYDON 


INoF., 


called  duriDg  the  day  was  had  up  to  bait  me ; 
but  I  Httacked  them  so  fiercely,  that  they 
were  glad  to  leave  me  to  my  own  reflections. 
In  the  evening,  I  told  my  mother  my  resolu- 
tion calmly,  and  left  her."  He  now  hunted 
Plymouth  for  anatomical  works,  and  seeing 
'<  Albinus"  among  the  books  in  the  catalogue 
of  a  sale,  determined  to  go  and  bid  for  it ; 
and,  as  the  price  was  beyond  his  reach,  then 
to  appeal  to  his  father's  mercy.  It  was 
knocked  down  to  him  at  £2  10s.  He  went 
home,  induced  his  mother  to  intercede  for 
him,  and  at  last  had  the  happiness  of  hurry- 
ing off  the  book  to  his  solitude,  of  ga^ng  up- 
on the  plates  as  his  own,  of  copying  them 
out,  and,  by  such  means,  acquainting  himself 
thoroughly  with  the  muscles  of  the  body. 
His  energy  was  indefatigable ;  and  the 
thought  of  London,  as  the  scene  of  honor 
and  independence,  urged  him  unceasingly  on- 
ward over  every  obstacle.  "  My  father,"  he 
wrote,  "  had  routed  me  from  the  shop,  be- 
cause I  was  in  the  way  with  my  drawings ; 
I  had  been  diiven  from  the  sitting-room,  be- 
cause the  cloth  had  to  he  laid  ;  scolded  from 
the  landing  place  because  the  stairs  must  be 
swept ;  driven  to  my  attic,  which  now  be- 
came too  small ;  and  at  last  I  took  refuge  in 
my  bed -room.  One  morning  as  I  lay  awake 
very  early,  the  door  slowly  opened,  and  in 
crept  my  dear  mother,  with  a  look  of  sleep- 
less anxiety."  She  sat  down  on  his  bedside, 
took  his  hand,  and  affectionately  expostula- 
ted with  him.  '*  I  was  deeply  affected  ;  but 
checking  my  tears,  I  told  her,  in  a  voice 
struggling  to  be  calm,  that  it  was  of  no  use 
to  attempt  to  dissuade  me.  I  felt  impelled  by 
someihing  I  could  not  resist.  '  Do  not,'  said 
I,  '  my  dear  mother,  think  me  cruel.  I  can 
never  forget  your  love  and  affection,  but  yet 
I  cannot  help  it — 1  must  be  a  painter.'  Kis- 
sing me  with  wet  cheeks  and  trembling  lips, 
she  said  in  a  broken  voice,  '  She  did  not 
blame  me ;  she  applauded  my  resolution,  but 
she  could  not  bear  to  part  with  me.'  1  then 
begged  her  to  tell  my  father  that  it  was  use- 
less to  harrass  me  with  further  opposition.  She 
rose,  sobbing  as  if  to  break  her  heart,  and 
slowly  left  my  room,  borne  down  with  af- 
fliction. The  instant  she  was  gone,  I  fell 
upon  my  knees,  and  prayed  God  to  forgive 
me  if  I  was  cruel,  but  to  grant  me  firm- 
ness, purity,  and  piety,  to  go  in  the  right 
way  for  success." 

At  length,  when  all  remonstrances  had 
failed,  and  resistance  was  evidently  useless, 
it  was  agreed  he  should  leave,  and  his  friends 
gave  him  twenty  pounds  with  which  to 
start  upon  the  world.     His  books  and  colors 


were  packed ;  his  place  taken  on  the  mail ; 
London  and  High  Art  were  the  objects 
of  his  musing ;  but  his  heart  throbbed  al- 
ternately with  feelings  of  duty  and  affec- 
tion, and  of  ambition  and  hope.  The  even- 
ing drew  near,  the  guard^s  horn  rang  through 
the  streets,  and  the  moment  of  farewell 
was  come.  Where  was  his  mother  ?  He 
rushed  up  stairs,  but  his  call  was  answered 
only  by  violent  sobs.  She  was  in  her  bed- 
room, and  could  not  speak  or  even  see  him. 
"God  bless  you,  my  dear  child,"  was  all 
he  could  distinguish.  He  slowly  returned, 
his  heart  too  lull  to.  find  utterance  for  it- 
self; the  guard  was  impatient,  he  shook 
hands  with  his  father,  got  in,  the  wheels 
again  rolled  round,  and  his  carreer  foi^  life, 
come  weal  or  woe,  was  fairly  begun. 

This  was  on  the  14  th  of  May,  1804  ; 
and  on  the  following  day  Havdon  found 
himself  in  the  Strand ;  in  the  midst  of  that 
vast  and  ever-growing  city,  which  is  con- 
tinually  attracting  to  itself  the  genius  of  the 
land — which  history  has  consecrated  by 
ten  thousand  associations — where  oratory 
has  spoken  in  its  most  persuasive  tones — 
and  poetry  penned  its  sublimest  senti- 
ments— where  art  and  science,  and  com- 
merce and  civilization,  and  religion,  have 
won  their  noblest  triumphs — where  hu- 
manity has  illustrated  all  that  it  has  ever 
achieved,  all  that  it  is  or  can  be — where 
it  has  collected,  in  "most  admired  disor- 
der," the  mightiest  and  the  weakest,  the 
richest  and  the  poorest,  the  man  of  cul- 
ture and  the  slave  of  ignorance,  idiotcj 
that  is  scorned,  and  intellect  that  a  world 
reveres.  There  stood  Haydon,  as  the  tide 
of  life  swept  by,  alone,  and  the  experience 
of  eighteen  years  his  only  counselor ;  but 
resolved  to  be  a  great  pcunter,  to  honor 
his  country  by  rescuing  his  chosen  art  from 
every  stigma  cast  upon  it.  Passing  the 
new  church  in  the  Strand,  he  asked  what 
building  that  was,  and  when,  in  mistake,  it 
was  answered,  "  Somerset  House,"  "  Ah," 
thought  he,  "  there's  the  Exhibition,  where 
I'll  be  soon."  Having  found  his  lodgings, 
washed,  dressed,  and  breakfasted,  away  he 
started  to  see  the  exhibition  ;  and,  springing 
up  the  steps  of  the  church,  and  mistaking 
the  beadle,  with  his  cocked  hat  and  laced 
coat,  for  an  official  at  the  door,  he  offered 
him  money  for  admission.  The  beadle 
laughed,  and  pityingly  told  him  where  to  go, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  he  had  mounted  the 
stairs,  and  reached  the  great  room  of  what 
in  truth  was  Somerset  House.  He  looked 
round  for  historical  pictures,  criticised^  and 


1853.] 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HAYDON. 


885 


then  marched  oflf,  inwardly  saying,  "  I  don't 
fear  you.*'      The  next  thing  was  to  6nd  a 
plaster  shop.     This  was  easily  done ;  and  he 
purchased  Laocoon's  head,  some  arms,  hands 
and  feet ;  and  returned  home  to  unpack  Al- 
binus,  darken  his  room,  and  prepare  for  work. 
Before  nine  the  next  morning,  he  had  com- 
menced ;   and  for  three  months  from    that 
time  his  books,  casts,  and  drawings  were  all 
he   eaw.      His  enthusiasm    was    unbound- 
ed.     When   he   awoke,   he  arose,  at  three, 
four,  or  five,  and  drew  at  anatomy    until 
eight,  in  chalk  from  his  casts  from  nine  to 
one,  and  from  half- past  one  till  five — then 
walked,  dined,  and  to  anatomy  again  from 
seven  to  ten  and  eleven.     Ho  was  once  so 
long  without  speaking,  that  his  gums  became 
sore  from  the  clenched  tightness  of  his  teeth. 
After  months  passed  in  this  way,  he  began 
to  think  of  Prince  Hoare,  the  companion  of 
Kelly,  Holcroft,  and  others  of  similar  charac- 
ter, to  whom  he  had  a  letter  of  introduction. 
Prince  had  studied  in  Italy,  and  knew  some- 
thing of  painting ;  and   when   Haydon  ex- 
plained to  him  his  principles,  and  showed 
aim   his  drawings,  he  was  pleased  with  his 
ardor,  and  gave  him  letters  to  Northcote  and 
Opie.     Northcote  was  a  Plymouth  man,  and 
Haydon  accordingly  sought  him  first.     He 
was  shown  into  a  dirty  painting-room,  where 
stood  a  diminutive   figure  in   an  old  blue 
striped  dressing-gown,  his  spectacles  pushed 
up  on   his  forehead.    "  Looking  keenly  at 
me,"  writes  Haydon,  "  with  his  little  shining 
eyes,  he  opened  the  letter,  read  it,  and  with 
the  broadest  Devon  dialect,  said,  •  Zo  you 
mayne  tu  bee  a  peinter,  doo-ee  ?    What  zort 
of  peinter?'     *  Historical  painter,  sir.'  'Hees- 
toncal  peinter!    why,  ye'll   sUrve  with    a 
bundle  of  straw  under  yeer  head  !'  "  North- 
cote reprobated  the  study  of  anatomy  :  Opie 
advised  perseverance  in  it,  but  recommendeH 
his  becoming  a  pupil  of  some  particular  man. 
Haydon  reflected,  and  then  resolved  to  pro- 
ceed as  he  had  begun.      On  Northcote  he 
frequently  called,  and  by  him  he  was  intro- 
duced to  Smirke,     Smirke  bad  been  elected 
keeper  of  the  Academy,  but  the  king  refused 
to  sanction  his  appointment  when  told  he 
was  a  democrat.   Fuseli  was   then  chosen, 
and  to  this  imaginative  and  successful  psunt- 
cr.  Hay  dun  soon  found  easy  access.    He  was 
invited  to  call  uii  him  with  his  drawings,  and 
went,  thoroughly  nervous  at  the  thought  of 
an  intervifw  vviih  one  whom,  from  a  boy,  he 
revered,  and  whom  every  circumstance   of 
later  days  had  tended  to  make  an  object  of 
mysterious  awe.  He  entered  the  house  of  the 

yOI*  XXX    NO.  HI 


"  terrible  Fuseli."  He  heard  his  footsteps, 
and  saw  a  little  bony  hand  slide  round  the 
edge  of  the  door,  followed  by  a  little  white- 
headed,  lion-faced  man,  in  an  old  flannel  dres- 
sing-gown, tit'd  round  hrs  Waist  with  a  piece 
of  rope,  and  upon  his  head  the  bottom  of 
Mrs.  Fuseli's  work-basket!  All  fears  van- 
ished, Hs  he  addressed  him  in  the  kindest 
way,  and  expres>ed  his  satisfaction  at  what 
he  saw.  Fuseli  concluded  with  : — "  I  am 
keeper  of  de  Academy,  and  hope  to  see  you 
dere  de  first  nights."  Haydon  attended  in 
1S05,  after  the  Christmas  vacation,  and  was 
gratified  by  receiving  the  first  evening  a  pub- 
Kc  token  of  Fuseli's  approval.  The  second 
day  he  went  at  eleven,  and  before  it  was 

Jassed  had  formed  an  acquaintance  with 
ackson,  who  became,  as  he  was  one  of  the 
earliest,  so  one  of  his  warmest  friends.  Jack- 
son's besetting  sin  was  indolence  ;  and  when 
with  March,  the  first  term  ended,  he  was 
walking  into  the  country  to  study  land- 
scape or  clouds,  or  rushing  to  sales  to  see 
fine  pictures ;  Haydon,  however,  was  still  in- 
tent on  High  Art;  he  lost  not  a  day,  bat 
worked  out  his  twelve  or  fourteen  hours,  as 
he  felt  disposed. 

Just  at  this  time  came  a  letter  from  home, 
announcing  the  serious  illness  and  probable 
death  of  his  father.  In  two  days  he  was  at 
Plymouth,  his  father  exhausted  but  recover- 
ing. And  now  came  back  upon  him  in  full 
force  the  persuasions  and  expostulations  of 
former  times ;  yet  the  very  night  of  his  arri- 
val, midst  bones  and  muscles  procured  from 
the  hospital,  he  sat  down  to  his  studies  in 
inflexible  determination ;  and  day  by  day,  de- 
spite interrupiions,  scoldings,  reproaches,  he 
pursued  his  task,  and  slowly  progressed  in 
knowledge  and  skill.  But  still  he  was  un- 
happy, for  with  all  his  enthusiasm,  he  was 
not  insensible  to  those  tender  and  dutiful 
emotions  of  the  soul  which  are  more  enno- 
bling to  their  possessor  than  refinement  or 
delicacy  of  taste.  That  man  is  incomparably 
above  all  others  who  appreciates  correctly 
the  beautiful  both  in  nature  and  in  morals. 
One  morning  he  strolled  forth  to  muse  on 
Mount  Edgcumbe,  the  early  sun  adorning 
the  scene  with  its  softened  glories,  and  here 
he  brought  his  struggles  to  an  end.  He  re- 
turned, told  his  father  that  if  he  wished  it  he 
would  stay,  but  only  on  a  principle  of  duty, 
as  most  certainly  he  should  event  unlly  leave 
him.  His  father  was  affected,  and  replied 
that  his  mind  abo  was  made  up— to  gratify 
his  invincible  passion,  and  support  him  till 
he  could  support  himself.  Haydon  was 
t6 


386 


BENJAKIN  ROBERT  HATDOV. 


[Not. 


overjoyed,  wrote  to  Fuscli  and  Jackson,  and 
in  a  few  weeks,  with  the  good  wishes  of  all 
his  family  and  friends,  prepared  to  start  a 
second  time.  Jackson  had  written — '*  There 
is  a  raw,  tall,  pale,,  queer  Scotchman  come, 
an  odd  fellow,  out  there  is  something  in  him ; 
he  is  called  Wilkie." 

Haydon  was  soon  in  town.  The  term  had 
commenced,  his  friends  welcomed  him  back, 
and  the  next  day  he  went  to  draw.  An 
hour  after  he  entered  the  room,  Wilkie  came. 
Was  he  going  to  be  an  historical  painter  ? 
thought  Haydon,  and  he  grew  fidgetty. 
They  glanced  over  each  other's  drawings, 
but  not  a  word  passed  between  them,  'iiie 
next  day  Wilkie  was  absent,  but  the  day 
fallowing  that  he  was  there,  asked  Haydon 
a  question,  which  was  answered  ;  they  be- 
gan to  talk,  to  argue,  and  went  out  to  dine 
together.  This  was  the  beginning  of  a  cor- 
dial intimacy.  Unlike  each  other  in  many 
points  of  character,  sometimes  rather  rivals 
than  friends,  and  often  quarrelling  for  a 
while,  they  nevertheless  maintained  to  the 
end  of  life  a  mutual  regard  that  was  too  deep 
to  be  shaken  by  transient  feeling  or  varying 
circumstances.  They  visited  one  another, 
took  meals  together,  and  went  in  company 
to  places  of  resort.  Barry  was  l^ing  in 
state  at  the  Adelphi,  with  his  paintmgs  for 
his  escutcheon.  Wilkie  had  tickets  of  ad- 
mission, and  the  two  students  determined  to 
go.  But  a  black  coat  was,  of  course,  an  es- 
sential at  a  funeral  ceremony.  Wilkie  had 
not  one,  so  he  borrowed  one  of  Haydon,  neither 
adverting  to  their  difference  of  figure.  The 
Academy  was  the  place  of  meeting,  whence 
all  the  artists  were  to  go  together.  They 
waited,  and  at  the  eleventh  hour  Wilkie  ar- 
rived ;  he  caught  Haydon's  eye,  and  held  up 
his  finger  entreating  silence,  as  if  painfully 
conscious  of  his  awkward  position — the 
sleeves  half  way  up  his  arms,  his  broad 
shoulders  stretching  and  cracking  the  seams, 
and  the  waist  buttons  most  marvellously  ex- 
alted above  the  humble  station  their  maker 
designed  them  to  occupy !  Wilkie,  how- 
ever, had  a  commission — there  was  a  good 
time  coming — and  many  a  hearty  laugh 
could  he  afford  over  this  misfortune.  The 
Exhibition  of  1806  arrived.  "The  Village 
Politicians "  was  finished,  and  capitally 
hung.  On  the  private  day  people  crowded 
about  it ;  and  folks  read  in  the  news,  ''  A 
young  man,  by  the  name  of  Wilkie,  a  Scotch- 
man, has  a  very  extraordinary  work."  Jack- 
son and  Haydon  hastened  to  congratulate 
their  friend.  "  I  roared  out,"  writes  the  lat- 
ter,  *'  Wilkie,  my  boy,  your  name's  in  the 


paper !"  "  Is  it  rea-al-ly  ?"  said  David.  I 
read  the  puflf;  we  huzzaed,  and  taking 
hands,  all  three  danced  round  the  table  un- 
til we  were  tired !  By  those  who  remember 
the  tone  of  Wilkie's  *  rea-al-ly,'  the  following 
will  be  relished.  Eastlake  told  me  that  Cal- 
cott  said  once  to  Wilkie,  *  Do  you  not  know 
that  every  one  complains  of  your  continual 
rea-al-Iy  V  Wilkie  mused  a  moment, 
looked  at  Calcott,  and  drawled  out,  'Do 
they  rea-al-ly?'  'You  nr.urt  leave  it  oflE.' 
'  1  will  rea-al-ly.'  '  For  Heaven's  sake  don't 
keep  repeating  it,'  said  Calcott ;  '  it  annoys 
me.  Wilkie  looked,  smiled,  and  in  the  most 
unconscious  manner  said,  '  Rea-al-ly.' " 

One  of  the  trio  then  had  won  distinc^on ; 
his  table  was  covered  with  the  cards  of  peo- 
ple of  all  ranks ;  and  his  companions  were 
eager  to  obtain  similar  honors.  Lord  Mul- 
grave  was  Jackson's  patron,  and  when  the 
season  ended,  he  and  Wilkie  were  amongst 
the  fashionable  departures.  They  were  in- 
vited to  Mulgrave  Castle  to  meet  8ir  George 
Beaumont,  the  friend  of  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds, and  a  party,  to  paint  and  spend  the 
time  delightfully.  Haydon,  too,  went  out  of 
town,  to  the  rippling  shore ;  but  in  the 
midst  of  his  luxurious  ramblings  came  a  let- 
ter from  Wilkie,  dated  Mulgrave  Castle, 
Sept.  9,  1806.  He  read,  and  how  were  his 
spirits  elated  on  discovering  that  it  contained 
a  commission  for  a  grand  historical  picture ; 
Dentatus  the  subject.  In  imagination  ail 
trouble  was  forever  gone,  and  the  Plymouth 
folk,  when  they  heard,  believed  his  fortune 
unmistakeably  made.  Ere  the  expiration  of 
the  month,  he  was  back  to  town,  again 
amidst  its  mighty  whirl,  and  surrounded  by 
every  variety  of  pabsion  and  thought — ^its 
very  smoke,  *'  the  sublime  canopy  that 
shrouds  the  City  of  the  World,"  inspiring 
him  with  energy  no  other  spectacle  could 
produce.  The  canvas  was  ordered  for  his 
first  picture,  of  "  Joseph  and  Mary  resting 
on  the  road  to  Egypt;"  and  "on  Oct.  18, 
1806,"  he  says,  "setting  my  palette,  and 
taking  brush  in  hand,  1  knelt  down  and 
prayed  God  to  bless  my  career,  to  grant  me 
energy  to  create  a  new  era  in  art,  and  to 
rouse  the  people  and  patrons  to  a  just  esti- 
mate of  the  moral  value  of  historical  paint- 
ing." Religiousness  was  a  predominant  ele- 
ment in  Haydon's  character.  Night  and 
morning  he  bowed  the  knee  before  the  Dei- 
ty ;  and  during  the  day,  in  the  fervor  of 
conception,  occasionally  asked  a  blessing  on 
his  designs.  But  it  was  a  fahe  and  fatal  re- 
ligion, the  essence  of  which  was  selfishness-— 
a  religion  which  invested  its  victim  with  a  de- 


1363.] 


BEETJAION  BOBERT  HAYDON. 


887 


ceitful  glare,  and,  where  "Glory  to  God  in 
the  highest,"  should  have  heen  engraven, 
cherished  ambition  and  pride.  Its  tendency 
was  to  beget  belief  in  a  *'  divinity  within  ;*'  a 
result  productive  perhaps  of  energy  and  de- 
cision, but  fraught  with  multiibrm  dangers, 
and  usually  consummated  by  disasters  tre- 
mendously awful.  Haydon's  object  was 
glorious,  his  art  had  often  borne  the  epithet 
divine,  he  perceived  the  sublimity  of  truth — 
his  imagination  supplied  the  place  of  lowly 
faiih,  and  his  ardent  feelings  bore  him 
upward  in  lofty  aspiration  ;  but  whatever  the 
form  of  his  petitions,  their  aim  was  in  reality 
the  glory  of  his  art  as  connected  with  him- 
self. The  grandest  principles  in  the  universe 
were  thus  disregarded,  and  the  will  of  the 
crealure  enthroned  where  Heaven  only  had 
the  right  to  reign,  and  while  He  even  was 
called  to  witness  and  to  consecrate  the  usur- 
pation. Haydon's  religion  in  his  better  mo- 
ments was  a  fine  enthusiasm,  which  struck  in 
harmony  all  the  sweetest  chords  of  his  na- 
ture ;  at  other  times,  it  was  a  romantic  su- 
perstition, fascinating  yet  inconsistent ;  but  it 
was  always  a  religion  rather  of  ignorance 
than  knowledge,  of  admiration  than  obe- 
dience. 

In  November,  Sir  George  and  Lady  Beau- 
mont paid  the  artist  a  visit,  and  invited  him 
to  dine  with  him  a  few  days  after.  The  hour 
arrived,  and  after  dressing,  Hnd  brushing,  and 
shaving,  and  so  forth,  and  many  an  anxious 
study  before  the  glass,  he  sallied  forth  ac- 
companied by  Willie,  to  make  his  debut  in 
high  life.  The  ordeal  was  easily  passed,  the 
conversation  was  enjoyed,  no  blunders  were 
made,  and  yet  all  was  not  satisfaction ;  he 
was  paid  attention  to  as  a  novelty,  before  he 
had  done  anything  to  deserve  it.  In  Febru- 
ary, Lord  Mulgrave  arrived  in  London,  and 
invitations  of  this  sort  sooii  became  quite  the 
fashion  ;  and  at  dinner  it  was — when  all  of 
superior  rank  had  gone  off — "  Historical 
painters  first — Haydon,  take  so  and  so." 

The  Exhibition  of  1 807  brought  him  before 
the  world ;  and  his  first  picture  was  considered 
an  extraordinary  work  for  a  student.  This 
gave  encouragement  to  him,  and  he  imme- 
diately made  arrangements  for  the  commence- 
ment of  Dentatus.  Before  their  completion 
he  was  summoned  again  to  Plymouth  by  the 
illness  of  his  father,  who  once  more  recovered. 
He  found  his  mother  unwell,  the  victim  of  a 
dsease  in  the  heart.  She  had  resolved  to 
return  with  him  to  consult  a  physician  in 
London,  when  death  overtook  her  at  an  inn 
by  the  wayside.  Oh  !  the  pang  of  separa- 
tion from  a  MoTBKa.    "  It  is,"  said  the  sod. 


"as  if  a  string  of  one*s  nature  had  been 
drawn  out  and  cracked  in  the  drawing,  leaving 
the  one-half  of  it  shrunk  back,  to  torture  you 
with  the  consciousness  of  having  lost  the 
rest."  He  saw  her  buried  in  the  family  vault, 
stole  from  the  mourners  thither,  and  stretch- 
ing himself  upon  the  coffin,  lay  long  and  late, 
musing  on  the  dead  ;  then  on  his  knees  by 
her  Side  he  prayed  for  a  blessing  on  his 
actions,  and  rose  prepared  for  the  battle  of 
life. 

The  following  months  found  him  in  Marl- 
borough street,  occupied  upon  Dentatus. 
Wilkie  proved  a  capital  companion ;  they 
shared  their  criticisms,  their  amusements, 
their  dinners  together.  JBut  now  came  an 
epoch  in  Haydon's  life.  They  had  obtained 
an  order  to  see  the  Elgin  Marbles,  and  went 
to  Park  Lane  without  delay.  There,  in  a 
dirty  pent  house,  lay  before  them  the  relics 
of  the  most  tasteful  people  the  world  ever 
produced.  Haydon's  anatomical  studies  ren- 
dered him  able  at  once  to  appreciate ;  he 
saw  the  essential  detail  of  actual  life  com- 
bined with  the  most  heroic  style  of  art,  and 
then,  when  no  one  wofild  believe  him,  declared 
that  these  "  would  prove  the  finest  things  on 
earth — that  they  would  overturn  the  faKe 
beau-ideal,  where  nature  was  nothing,  and 
would  establish  the  true  beau-ideal,  of  which 
nature  alone  is  the  basis."  He  was  in  a  fever 
of  excitement,  went  home,  dreamed  of  the 
marbles,  arose,  talked  of  them  every-where, 
and  at  last  secured  an  order  to  draw  from 
them,  on  condition  his  drawings  were  not  en- 
graved. For  three  months  he  had  uninter- 
rupted admission,  and  often  was  he  there, 
morn,  noon,  and  night,  ten,  fourteen,  or 
fifteen  hours  at  a  time.  The  study  of  these 
noble  specimens  of  antique  sculpture  at  this 
juncture  was  of  great  value.  On  their  "ever- 
lasting principlet^,"  the  picture  of  Dentatus 
was  carefully  painted ;  as  this  approached 
completion,  people  of  rank  thronged  to  see  it, 
and  were  lavish  in  encomiums — a  great  his- 
torical painter  had  at  last  arisen !  In  March, 
1809,  it  was  finished,  after  fifteen  months  of 
actual  toil.  With  what  exultation  was  it 
taken  down  !  With  what  care  was  it  taken 
to  the  Academy !  Leigh  Hunt  was  with  the 
artist,  torturing  him  all  the  way :  **  Wouldn't 
it  be  a  delicious  thing  now,  for  a  lamp-lighter 
to  come  round  the  comer,  arid  put  the  two 
ends  of  his  ladder  into  Dentatus'^  eyes  ?  Or, 
suppose  we  meet  a  couple  of  dray  horses 
playing  tricks  with  ,a  barrel  of  beer,  knocking 
your  men  down  and  trampling  your  poor  Den- 
tatus to  a  mummy  ?"  Hay  don  was  so  nervous 
that,  in  his  anxiety,  he  tiipped  up  a  cora^' 


388 


BKNJAHIN  ROBERT  HATDON. 


FNOT., 


man,  and  as  near  as  possible  sent  Dentatus 
into  the  gutter.  However,  it  reached  its 
destination,  and  then  came  the  hanging. 
Academicians  thought  differently  of  its  merits 
to  those  without ;  it  was  hung  ultimately  in 
the  ante-room,  where  deoent  light  was  want- 
ing for  a  great  work.  This  was  a  bitter  dis- 
appointment. The  more  polite  regretted  (?) 
the  picture  could  not  be  placed  where  it  de- 
served to  be  ;  but  this  mode  of  condemna- 
tion was  mortifying  in  the  extreme.  After 
so  many  flatteries,  to  find  one*s  painting  room 
deserted ;  after  such  brilliant  anticipations 
of  imofiediate  success  to  find, 

'^  What  seemed  corporal,  melted 
As  breath  into  the  wina" — 

who  could  calmly  bear  it  ?  Haydon  sank,  a 
curse  seemed  resting  over  him,  but  it  was 
only  for  a  moment.  Lord  Mulgrave,  then  of 
the  Admiralty,  seemed  to  feel  for  him,  and 
procured  him  the  benefit  of  a  trip  in  a  cutter 
from  Portsmouth  to  Plymouth,  for  the  sake 
of  change.  Wilkie  went  with  him,  and  once 
more  among  old  scenes  and  faces,  his  spirits 
revived,  and  he  could  forget  the  past  in  the 
amusements  of  the  present.  They  tariied 
by  the  sea  for  five  weeks,  then  visited  Mr. 
Canning's  mother  at  Bath,  and  after  a  few 
days  in  London,  set  out  again  for  Coleorton, 
the  seat  of  Sir  George  Beaumont,  where 
they  passed  a  fortnight  as  pleasantly  as  it 
^as  possible  for  painters  to  do,  reveling  in 
their  art,  with  the  productions  of  Claude, 
Rembrandt,  and  Rubens  about  them  as  sour- 
ces of  inspiration — pictures  now  the  4lite  of 
our  national  collection. 

'*  Macbeth  was  the  subject  of  the  next 
sketch,  for  which  Sir  George  had  given  a 
commission,  but  an  unfortunate  disagreement 
or  mbundersianding  as  to  the  size  arose  be- 
tween the  patron  and  the  painter.  An  un- 
pleasant correspondence  ensued,  which  the 
latter,  relying  on  the  justice  of  his  own  state- 
ments, had  the  indelicacy  to  show.  The 
fiacts  were  soon  generally  known,  and  the 
exposure  brought  matters  to  a  crisis;  but 
if  Haydon*s  pnde  was  gratified,  his  interests 
were  injured.  He  enlarged  the  canvas  as  he 
felt  inclined,  and  Sir  George  allowed  him  to 
go  on  with  the  picture  for  him,  on  the  con- 
dition that  if  he  did  not  like  it,  he  should  not 
be  obliged  to  take  it,  but  be  considered  en- 
gaged for  a  smallf  r  one.  Meantime  he  began 
to  feel  the  want  of  money ;  his  father  had 
generously  supplied  him  hitherto,  but  as  yet 
no  means  of  return  had  presented  themselves 
save  portrait^paintiog,  which  he  despised  as 


infringing  on  his  time  and  leading  him  from 
his  design — the  improvement  of  Hi^h  Art. 
Just  at  this  period  the  directors  of  the  Brit- 
ish Gnllery  offered  a  prize  of  one  hundred 
guineas  for  the  best  historical  picture.  Lord 
Mulgrave's  permission  was  obtuined,  and 
Dentatus  sent  to  the  institutibn.  It  was 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  great* room,  and 
May  I7th,  1810,  Haydon  was  declared  the 
victor  almost  unanimously.  He  now  resumed 
woik  with  fresh  vigor,  taking  casU>  from 
nature,  dissecting,  poring  over  the  Elgin 
Marbles  beside  **  ihe  lantern  dimly  burning," 
and  then  ilhistratinc  in  his  own  figures  the 
principles  he  had  learnt.  His  resolutions, 
however,  were  suddenly  shocked  by  a  letter 
from  his  father,  sajring  that  he  could  not 
longer  maintain  him.  What  was  to  be  done  ? 
His  expenses  were  necessarily  many,  but  his 
habits  were  not  extravagant.  His  diligence 
was  undoubted  ;  would  that  his  success  i\as 
equally  so  I  But  he  had  won  the  prise  for 
Dentatus,  why  not  with  Macbeth  win  the 
threO'  hundred  guineas  now  offered  by  the 
same  Institution  ?  Thus  reasoning,  he  bor- 
rowed, and  here  began  obligation  and  trouble. 
This  one  step  involved  him  in  perplexity  the 
remainder  of  his  years.  He  should  have 
stooped  to  anything  rather  than  have  thrown 
him>elf  on  contingencies.  We  have  no  right 
to  draw  on  tlie  future  for  the  debts  of  the 
present.  The  future  supplies  incentives,  and 
to  attempt  the  trnnsfurmation  of  these  into 
means  is  as  ruinous  as  it  would  be  absurd 
to  substitute  hope  for  experience. 

Haydon  this  year  put  down  his  name  for 
admission  to  the  Academy,  but  had  not  a 
single  vote.  Nothing,  however,  could  check 
his  enthusiasm.  Thoughts  streamed  through 
his  mind  day  and  night.  He  read  Shakspenre 
and  the  poets  to  bring  his  fancy  into  play, 
that  his  whole  being  might  be  in  harmony 
with  the  subject  engaging  his  attention. 
This  thoroughness  of  feeling  was  one  charac- 
teristic of  the  man :  when  painting  Dentatus 
he  had  pondced  over  the  glowing  concep- 
tions of  Homer,  Virgil,  and  Dante,  and  now 
he  was  resolved  that  Macbeth  should  want 
neither  the  6re  of  imagination  nor  the  chas- 
tened excellencies  of  judgment.  This  picture 
was  completed  by  the  end  of  1811  ;  Sir 
George  Beaumont  declined  purchasing,  but 
offered  the  artist  £100  as  a  compensation  for 
his  trouble  in  commencing  ii,  or  to  paint 
another  picture  of  a  different  size,  bo  h  which 
offers  he  refused.  It  was  exhibited  at  the 
Institution  ;  and  he  was  waiting  with  an.xiety 
the  awaid  of  the  picniiums,  wiien  to  his  in* 
dignation  he  learnt  that  they  were  withdrawn 


1868.] 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HATDON. 


880 


to  Assist  in  the  purchase  of  an  indifferent 
picture  which  had  appeared  on  the  scene, 
and  was  voted  by  the  jealous  Academi  nans, 
and  every  coterie  that  owned  their  influence, 
to  be  the  only  historical  painting  England 
had  produced!  Haydon  had  in  a  measure 
brought  upon  himself  this  unpleasant  result. 
Just  at  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  Mac- 
beth before  the  public,  he  had  made  an 
attack  in  the  **  Examiner''  on  Pnyne  Knight, 
a  powerful  patron  and  the  prince  of  the 
dilettanti;  and  not  content  with  exposing 
aome  of  his  sophisms,  had  the  following 
iveek  assailed  the  Academy  itself.  This  step 
was  decidedly  impolitic ;  it  incensed  many, 
and  made  violent  opponents  of  those  who 
would  at  least  have  been  indifferent  Had 
he  thus  thrown  down  the  gauntlet,  actuated 
by  a  pure  love  of  art,  however  disastrous  the 
consequences,  his  boldness  must  have  been 
applauded.  There  are  no  patents  of  nobility 
in  the  regions  of  art,  no  ipse  dixit  can  create 
a  connoisseur  or  a  genius,  nor  can  circum- 
stantials long  uphold  a  despotism  there. 
But  he  was  exasperated  by  neglect,  tormented 
by  debt,  fearful  of  the  future  ;  he  wrote,  and 
"  walked  about  the  room  as  if  revenged  and 
better." 

Affairs  were  becoming  desperate.  Never- 
theless the  canvas  came  home  for  another 
picture  —  the  Judgment  of  Solomon.  En- 
thusiasm and  energy,  combined  with  a  con- 
sciousness of  power  that  inspired  hope,  led 
him  onward.  He  commenced;  but  having 
lost  500  guineas,  the  price  for  Macbeth,  and 
300,  the  expected  prize,  it  was  necessary  to 
pause  and  reflect.  He  was  £600  in  debt. 
Should  he  sell  all  and  retire  into  obscurity  ? 
That  were  apparent  cowardice.  No,  he 
would  never  yield!  People  of  fashion  had 
entirely  deserted  him;  Wilkie  even  had 
ffrown  cool  through  fear  of  the  issue ;  but  the 
Hunts  remained  firm,  and  there  were  friends 
of  another  class  at  hand.  The  resolution  was 
taken  to  make  the  most  of  his  actual  situa- 
tion. Here  let  us  transcribe  his  own  graphic 
words : — **  I  went  to  the  house  where  I  had 
always  dined  intending  to  dine  without  pay- 
ing that  day.  I  thought  the  servants  did 
not  offer  me  the  same  attention.  I  thought 
I  perceived  the  company  examine  me;  I 
thought  the  meat  was  worse.  My  heart 
sank  as  I  said  falteringly  '  I  will  pay  you  to- 
morrow V  The  girl  smiled  and  seemed  in- 
terested. As  as  I  was  escapin^r  with  a  sort 
of  lurking  horror,  she  said,  'Mr.  Haydon, 
Mr.  Haydon,  my  master  wishes  to  see  you.' 
Thought  I  Mt  is  to  tell  me  he  can't  trust!' 
In  I  walked  like  a  culprit.     'Sir,  I  beg  your 


pardon  but  I  see  by  the  papers  you  have  been 
ill-used  ;  I  hope  you  won't  be  angry — T  mean 
no  offence ;  but — you  won't  be  offended — I 
just  wish  to  say,  as   you   have  dined  here 
many  years  and  always  paid,  if  it  would  be 
a  convenience  during  your  present  work,  to 
dine  here  until  it  is  done — you  know — ^so  that 
you  may  not  be  obliged  to  spend  your  money 
here,  when  you  may  want  it — I  was  going  to 
say  you  need   be  under  no  apprehension — 
hem  1  for  a  dinner.'     My  heart  really  filled. 
I  told  him  I  would  take  his  offer.     The  good 
man's  forehead  was  perspiring,  and  he  seemed - 
quite  relieved.     From  that  hour  the  servants 
eyed  me  with  a  lustrous  regret,  and  redoubled 
their  attentions.     The  honest  wife  said,  if  1 
were  ever  ill  she  would  send  me  broth  or  any 
such  little  luxury,  and  the  children  used  to 
cling  round  my  knees  and  ask  me  to  draw  a 
face."     And  now  there  was  the  landlord,  al- 
ready a  creditor  for  £200.    Haydon  returned, 
and  called  him  up.     '*  I  said,  '  Perkins,  I'll 
leave  you  if  you  wish  it,  but  it  will  be  a  pity, 
will  it  not,  not  to  finish  such  a  beginning?' 
Perkins  looked  and  muttered,  '  It's  a  grand 
thingr—how  long  will  it  be  before  it  is  done, 
sir?      *Two    years.*      'What,    two  years 
more,  and    no  rent?'      'Not    a    shilling.' 
He  rubbed  his  chin  and  muttered,  '  I  should 
not  like  ye  to  go— it's  hard  for  both  of  us ; 
but  what  I  say  is  this,  you  always  paid  me 
when  you  could,  and  why  should  vou  not 
again  when  you  are  able  ?'      '  That's  what 
I  say.'     '  Well,  sir,  here  is  my  hand,'  (and  a 
great  fat  one  it    was,)  'I'll  give   you  two 
years  more,  and  if  this  does  not  sell,'  (affec- 
ting to  look  very  severe,)  '  why,  then,  sir, 
we'll  consider  what  is  to  be  done ;  so  don't 
fret,  but  work.'  "  And  Hayden  did  work,  aa 
vigorously  as  though  nothing  had  happened, 
till  his  health  began  to  fail.     This  was  an  in- 
terruption, but  a  short  excursion  from  town 
speedily  restored  him.     1812  passed  away 
and  not  a  person  of  rank  came  nigh  him ;  but 
he  found  some  congenial  spirits,  whose  society 
was  far  more  valuable  and  valued  than  all  he 
had  lost.   Wilkie,  Jackson  and  the  Hunts  had 
remained  faithful   throughout,  and  to  these 
were  added  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Barnes  of  the 
"  Times,"  and  others.  Necessities  were  grow- 
ing meanwhile ;  his  watch  had  long  gone,  and 
now  he  began  to  part  with  his  clothes  and 
with  book  after  book ;  yet  he  was  constant 
at  his  work ;  and  thus  passed  another  year. 
In  it  he  lost  his  father;   when  the  letter 
came  that  announced  his  death,  he  was  paint- 
ing a  head,  and  so  intensely  occupied  that  the 
news  made  no  impression  for  the  time.  When 
he  had  done,  he  saw  and  felt  his  loss.    A* 


800 


BENJAMIN  BOBBET  HATBON. 


[Not., 


the  end  of  February,  1814,  the  Solomon  was 
finmbed ;  and  sent  to  the  Water- Color  So- 
ciety for  exhibition.  First  came,  on  the 
private  day,  Payne  Knight  and  the  Princess 
of  Wales;  iJuy  condemned.  Then  came  the 
nobility  and  then  the  mass.  It  had  not  been 
fairly  open  to  the  public,  without  distinction, 
half  an  hour,  before  £500  were  offered  for  it. 
This  was  refused,  but  the  same  party  in  a 
few  hours  agreed  to  the  price,  600  guineas. 
The  third  day  Sir  George  Beaumont  and  Mr. 
Hoi  well  Carr  came,  deputed  to  buy  it  for  the 
Gallery;  but  it  was  too  late,  "sold*'  was 
put  up.  Sir  George  was  delighted.  And 
•hook  bands  with  the  painter  before  a  crowd- 
ed room.  In  walked  Lord  Mulgrave  and 
General  Phipps :  "  Haydon,  you  dine  with  us 
to  day,  of  course"  He  bowed.  Who  has 
bought  it  ?  was  now  the  question.  *'  0,  a 
couple  of  Devonshire  friends,"  was  said  with 
a  sneer.  *'  That  may  be/'  he  replied  ;  **  but, 
as  Adrian  said,  is  a  Devonshire  guinea  of  less 
value  than  a  Middlesex  one  ?  does  it  smell  V* 

The  tide  of  fortune  seemed  to  have  turned, 
and  suddenly  reached  its  full.  Visitors  came 
in  shoals.  The  victory  was  complete;  and 
what  was  equally  gratifying,  the  money  was 
in  hand.  £500  went  easily  the  first  week, 
and  then  not  half  the  debts  were  paid — it 
was  sufficient  to  establish  credit. 

Paris  was  now  the  most  interesting  place 
on  earth,  -llie  allied  armies  were  there,  and 
Napoleon  was  on  the  way  to  Elba.  Wilkie 
and  Haydon  secured  passports,  and  alike 
from  sincere  gratulations  and  shallow  flatter- 
ies, hurried  away  to  the  Louvre.  A  month 
or  two  in  the  capital  of  France  passed  speed- 
ily by.  Everywhere  there  were  signs  of 
memorable  struggles,  everywhere  objects  of 
excitement  and  mterest;  the  whole  scene 
was  full  of  details  worthy  the  artist's  re- 
gard, and  then  there  were  the  cartoons  of 
Raffaetle  and  the  rich  collections  of  art  that 
victor  armies  had  gathered. 

Haydon,  on  returning  to  England,  found 
that  the  British  Institution  had  voted  him 
100  guineas  as  a  mark  of  admiration  for  the 
Judgment  of  Solomon  ;  and  shortly  after,  in 
honor  of  the  same,  he  received  the  freedom 
of  his  native  town.  Not  one  commission, 
however,  followed  all  this  6clat.  Stimulated 
by  the  past  and  full  of  aspiration  for  the  fu- 
ture, he  commenced  his  Entry  into  Jerusa- 
lem :  succeeding  months  found  him  occupied 
upon  it  in  his  accustomed  manner.  In  June, 
the  victory  of  Waterloo  caused  a  slight  in- 
terruption. He  was  greatly  excited,  for  with 
all  bis  devotion  to  painting,  his  mind  was 
too  vigilant  and  excursive  to  be  uninterested 


by  transactions  around.  Soldiers  were 
amongst  his  models,  &Qd  many  a  conversa- 
tion did  he  have,  and  many  an  anecdote  did 
he  glean,  respecting  this  famed  fight.  Ru- 
mors in  the  interim  begun  to  circulate  in  dis- 
paragement of  the  Elgin  Marbles,  in  behalf 
of  which  he  had  always  proved  himself  a 
zealous  advocate.  In  November,  he  obtained 
permission  to  take  casts  from  some  of  them, 
still  ardent  in  admiration.  The  same  month 
Canova  visited  both  him  and  them,  and  Hay- 
don was  delighted  to  hear  him  say,  "ces 
statues  produiront  nn  ffrand  changement  dans 
les  arts."  His  opinion,  boldly  expressed, 
and  his  sympathy  in  general,  were  very  ac- 
ceptable to  the  still  struggling  artist.  In 
December  came  a  letter  from  Wordsworth, 
whose  friendship  ho  bad  won,  and  with  it 
three  sonnets,  one  specially  relating  to  him- 
self, and  concluding — 


« 


And  oh,  when  nature  shrink^  as  weU  she  may. 

From  long-lived  pretBure  of  obecnre  dietreae^ 
Still  to  be  strenaoos  for  the  bright  reward, 

And  in  the  soul  admit  of  no  decay, 
Brook  no  continuance  of  weak-mlndedni 

Great  is  the  glory,  for  the  striie  ia  bard." 


In  February  of  the  next  year,  the  Com- 
mittee met  which  had  been  appointed  by 
Government  to  survey  the  Elgin  Marbles. 
Haydon  was  not  called  for  examination  ; 
Lord  Elgin's  friends  were  soon  dismissed, 
and  witnesses  inimical  to  the  Marbles  ques- 
tioned at  length.  Pay  lie  Knight  had  said 
that  they  were  Roman,  of  the  time  of  Adrian, 
and  then,  driven  from  his  position,  declared 
them  the  work  of  mere  journeymen.  The 
impetuous  Haydon  was  annoyed ;  he  retired 
to  his  painting-room,  dashed  down  his 
thoughts,  and  the  result  was  a  spirited  arti- 
cle, appearing  both  in  the  "  Examiner"  and 
"  Champion,  — "  On  the  Judgment  of  Con- 
noisseurs being  preferred  to  that  of  Profes- 
sional men.  The  Elgin  Marbles,  dec.'*  There 
was  much  truth  in  this  paper ;  he  showed 
that  it  was  the  union  of  nature  with  ideal 
beauty  that  ranked  these  marbles  above  all 
other  works  of  art ;  but  he  was  severe  upon 
the  patrons  and  nobility,  upon  Mr.  Knight  in 
particular.  "  It  has  saved  the  Marbles," 
said  Lawrence,  "but  it  will  ruin  you."  The 
Committee  proceeded,  and  the  result  every- 
body knows. 

Notwithstanding  public  applause  and  re- 
cent success,  the  artist's  neces^ities  became 
dreadful  and  harassing.  He  had  anticipated 
the  fruit  of  his  labor,  and  was  treading  a 
perilous  path.  He  was  without  commissions, 
employment,  or  money;  but  his  will  was 


1853.] 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HAYDON. 


391 


fixed ;  Le  must  borrow  at  any  per  centage ; 
nothing  should  prevent  his  devotion  to  art, 
or  stay  his  attempts  to  raise  the  taste  of  the 
country.  This  was  the  infatuation  of  an 
earnest  spirit,  but  it  was  not  unmixed  with 
pride.  He  had  taken  pupils  with  a  desire 
to  form  a  school  of  paintmg,  but  it  was  as 
their  instructor  and  friend,  and  without  the 
thought  of  gain,  for  he  took  not  a  shillin^^ 
from  them.  Amongst  these  were  the  Land- 
seers,  Eastlake,  Bewicke,  Harvey,  Chatfield, 
and  Lance,  all  afterwards  eminent. 

About  this  time  commenced  a  periodica] 
work  entitled  "The  Annals  of  Art."  Of 
this  the  editor  gave  him  full  use,  and  quarter 
after  quarter  his  favorite  views  were  there 
vigorously  advocated,  and  the  Academy  and 
all  foes  as  vigorously  assaulted  by  any  and 
every  weapon.  He  had  already  not  a  few 
distinguished  friends.  Horace  Smith,  Shel- 
ley, and  Keats  were  additions  to  the  circle. 
From  Keats  he  received  a  sonnet,  com- 
mencing, 

•'  Gi:eat  spirits  now  on  earth  are  sojournir.g," 
and  of  course  he  was  one. 


C( 


-whose  stedfastness  would  never  take 


A  meaner  sound  than  Raffaelle's  whispering?.*' 

There  is  a  capital  account  of  a  dinner  in 
the  painting  room  at  Lisson  Grove,  with  the 
unfinished  Jerusalem  towering  up  as  a  back- 
ground. Wordsworth,  Keats,  and  Lamb 
were  the  attractions  of  the  party.  "  In  the 
morning  of  this  delightful  day,"  writes  Hay- 
don,  "  a  gentleman,  a  perfect  stranger,  had 
called  on  me.  He  said  he  knew  my  friends, 
had  an  enthusiasm  for  Wordsworth,  and 
begged  I  would  procure  him  the  happiness 
of  an  introduction.  He  told  me  he  was  a 
comptroller  of  stamps,  and  often  had  cor- 
respondence with  the  poet.  I  thought  it  a 
liberty ;  but  still,  as  he  seemed  a  gentleman, 
I  told  him  he  might  come.  When  we  retired 
to  tea,  we  found  the  comptroller.  In  intro- 
ducing him  to  Wordsworth,  1  forgot  to  say 
who  he  was.  After  a  little  time  the  comp- 
troller looked  down,  looked  up,  and  said  to 
Wordsworth,  "  Don't  you  think,  sir,  Milton 
was  a  great  genius  ?"  Keats  looked  at  me  ; 
Wordsworth  looked  at  the  comptroller. 
Lamb,  who  was  dozing  by  the  fire,  turned 
round  and  said,  *'  Pray,  sir,  did  you  say 
Milton  was  a  great  genius  V  "  No,  sir,  I 
a.sked  Mr.  Wordsworth  if  he  were  not?" 
*•  Oh,"  said  Lamb,  "  then  you  are  a  silly 
fellow."  *'  Charles,  my  dear  Charles,"  said 
Wordsworth ;  but  Lamb,  perfectly  innocent 


of  the  confusion  he  had  created,  was  off 
again  by  the  fire.  After  an  awful  pause,  the 
comptroller  said,  "  Don't  you  think  Newton 
a  great  genius  ?"  I  could  not  stand  it  any 
longer.  Keats  put  his  head  into  my  books. 
Ritchie  squeezea  in  a  laugh.  Wordsworth 
seemed  asking  himself,  "  Who  is  this  ?" 
Lamb  got  up,  and  taking  a  candle,  said 
"  Sir,  will  you  allow  me  to  look  at  your  phre- 
nological development  ?"  He  then  turned 
his  back  on  the  poor  man ;  and  at  every 
question  of  the  comptroller  he  chaunted 

**  Diddle  diddle  dumpling,  my  son  John 
Went  to  bed  with  bis  breeches  on." 

The  man  in  office,  finding  Wordsworth  did 
not  know  who  he  was,  said  in  a  spasmodic 
and  half' chuckling  anticipation  of  assured 
victory,  "  I  have  had  the  honor  of  some  cor^ 
respondence  with  you,  Mr.  Wordsworth." 
•'With  me.  sir?"  said  Wordsworth.  "Not 
that  I  remember."  **  Don't  you,  sir  ?  I'm  a 
comptroller  of  stamps."  There  was  a  dead 
silence  ;  the  comptroller  evidently  thinking 
that  was  enou^^h.  While  we  were  waiting 
for  Wordsworth's  reply.  Lamb  sung  out, 

^  Hey  diddle  diddle. 
The  cat  and  the  fiddle  !" 


"  My  dear  Charles,"  said  Wordswcrth- 
**  Diddle  diddle  dumpling,  my  eon  John," 


chaunted  Lamb ;  and  then  rising  exclaimed, 
"  Do  let  me  have  another  look  at  that  gentle- 
man's organs."  Keats  and  I  hurried  Lamb 
into  the  painting  room,  shut  the  door,  and 
gave  way  to  inextinguishable  laughter. 
Monkhouse  followed,  and  tried  to  get  Lamb 
away.  We  went  back,  but  the  comptroller 
was  irreconcilable.  We  soothed  and  smiled, 
and  asked  him  to  supper.  He  stayed,  though 
his  dignity  was  sorely  affected.  However, 
being  a  good-natured  man,  we  parted  all  in 
good  humor,  and  no  ill  effects  followed." 

In  1817,  when  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas 
was  in  England,  Haydon  was  introduced  to 
him  by  a  Russian  artist.  The  place  of  meet- 
ing was  in  the  British  Museum,  before  the 
Elgin  Marbles,  at  which  **  the  distinguished 
historical  painter"  was  especially  delighted ; 
and,  as  it  happened,  he  had  ample  opportu- 
nity to  explain  and  extol  these  i^orks  studied 
by  him  in  a  damp  and  dusky  penthouse,  but 
now  deemed  worthy  of  a  visit  by  a  royal 
pei"sonage.  In  the  beginning  of  the  succeed- 
mg  year,  perhaps  partially  as  a  consequence 
of  this  interview,  he  was  chosen  by  the  im- 
perial Academy  of  St.  Petersburgh  to  sel^ 


SOS 


BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HATIK)N. 


[Nov., 


easts  for  Russia,  and  to  appoint  whom  he 
pleased  to  transmit  them.  Jn  the  autumn  of 
the  same  year  he  was  informed,  through  a 
friend  at  the  Foreign  Office,  that. if  he  had  a 
mind  to  go  to  Italy  free  of  expense,  he  could 
be  accommodated  with  a  bag  of  dispatches 
for  Naples,  which  would  allow  him  to  take 
his  own  time.  He  had  suffered  much  for 
High  Art  in  England ;  public  interest  was 
now  excited  ;  ihmgs  seemed  coming  to  a 
crisis  ;  he  reflected,  and  then  determined  not 
to  leave  the  battlefield  while  the  fight  hung 
in  the  balance. 

In  1820,  after  six  years  of  painful  effort, 
the  Jerusalem  was  finished.  The  Egyptian 
Hall  was  secured  for  its  exhibition ;  it  was 
removed,  put  up  and  ready  for  glazing  ;  then 
came  a  halt — there  was  no  money  to  buy 
hangings  and  begin  fittings*.  This  difficulty 
was  surmounted  to  be  followed  by  another 
species  of  excitement.  The  first  day  was 
successful.  Mrs.  Siddons  entered  with  her 
tragic  and  majestic  step,  and  pronounced 
decidedly  in  favor;  and  when  the  people 
found  admittance,  the  enthusiasm  reached 
its  height.  Sir  Walter  Scott  came  to  town 
just  then  ;  he  saw  the  picture  and  approved. 
Haydon  was  invited  to  meet  him  at  a  dinner, 
and  thus  began  their  intercourse.  The  clear 
profit  of  this  exhibition  amounted  to  £1,208 
12s.,  every  shilling  of  which  had  been  paid 
away.  But  now,  when  creditors  knew  that 
money,  was  at  hand,  the  least  delay,  though 
thoroughly  explained,  was  followed  by  a 
lawyer  s  letter. 

It  was  proposed  to  purchase  the  painting 
by  subscription:  but  the  attempt  ultimately 
failed.  Haydon  therefore  resolved  on  an 
excursion  into  Scotland  into  the  very  midst 
of  the  Blackwood  Tories  ;  and  away  he  went, 
sending  round  his  picture  by  sea.  His  re- 
ceipts there,  were  about  £3,000.  He  was 
thoroughly  well  treated,  too,  by  ScoLt,  Wil- 
son, Kaeburn,  and  such  like  men.  They 
hunted,  dined,  and  talked  together,  and  the 
pseudo-cockney  returned  flushed  with  tri- 
umph. And  yet  withal  he  w;is  still  in  debt ; 
and,  what  made  matters  worse,  he  had  for 
some  time  been  deeply  in  love  with  a  charm- 
ing young  widow  with  two  children,  and 
every  month  made  him  more  eager  to  be 
married. 

John  Scott,  the  editor  of  the  *'  Champion" 
and  of  the  "  London  Magazine,"  and  Keats, 
were  the  first  of  his  friends  that  died ;  the 
former  was  shot  in  a  duel.  About  the  same 
time  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Belzoni, 
by  whose  good  sense  and  unconquerable 
spirit  he  was  much  struck.     There  was  al- 


ways a  deep  sympathy  between  him  and 
such  characters :  in  their  daring  and  extra- 
ordinary undertakings,  their  struggles  and 
successes,  he  saw  himself  reflected,  or  dis- 
covered incitements  to  renewed  exertion. 
Thus  Nelson  was  almost  an  idol  with  him : 
and  "  Victory  or  Westminster  Abbey"  often 
his  own  motto  ;  and,  indeed,  in  determination, 
in  impetuosity  and  frankness  of  nature  they 
resembled  each  other.  Napoleon  was  an- 
other whose  genius  excited  him;  all  me- 
moirs relating  to  him  were  fascinating  in  the 
extreme.  Readmg  them,  he  said,  "  was  like 
dram-drinking.  To  go  to  other  things  after- 
wards is  like  passing  from  brandy  to  water." 

Through  1821,  he  worked  at  his  new  pic- 
ture of  Lazarus,  as  circumstances  permitted ; 
but  difficulties  thickened  around,  he  frequent- 
ly had  not  a  shilling,  and  how  to«  escape 
arrest  was  a  problem  not  easily  solved.  At 
length,  in  June,  the  moment  long  expected 
and  often  skilfully  postponed,  arrived,  and 
he  was  arrestt-d.  Ihe  bailiff  was  requested 
to  walk  into  the  painting  room  while  his  vie- 
dm  prepared  to  go.  He  did  so,  and  when 
Haydon  came  down,,  he  found  him  perfectly 
agitated  before  Lazarus.  **  Oh,  sir,'  said  he, 
"  I  won't  take  you.  Give  me  your  word  to 
meet  me  at  twelve  at  the  attorney's,  and  I 
will  take  it."  He  did  so,  went,  explained  the 
matter,  and  appointed  the  evening  finally  to 
arrange.  **  But  you  must  remain  in  the 
officer's  custody,"  said  the  attorney.  *'  Not 
he,"  said  the  bailiff;  "let  him  give  me  his 
word,  and  I'll  take  it,  though  I  am  liable  to 
pay  the  debt."  The  word  was  given,  and 
this  man,  who  had  never  seen  him  before, 
left  him  free  till  night,  when  all  was  settled ; 
such  was  the  influence  of  the  painting  upon 
him. 

The  next  month,  Mary,  his  betrothed,  was 
in  town,  and  Haydon  all  joy.  They  went  to 
the  coronation  together,  and  in  October  their 
marriage  took  place.  This  change  of  rela- 
tionship exerted  a  deUghtful  influence  over 
the  artist's  life.  It  soothed  his  irritations, 
gave  buoyancy  to  his  hopes,  tempered  his 
ambition  ;  and  now,  where  the  enjoyment  of 
his  art  had  been  his  only  refuge,  he  had  an- 
other and  unfailing  one  in  the  love  of  his 
wife.  Happy  would  it  have  been  for  him 
could  he  have  thrown  off  the  burdens  of  the 
past ;  they  still  hung  heavily  about  him;  and 
if  his  Mary's  affection  could  lighten,  she  alas ! 
must  now  share  his  troubles.  For  a  while 
he  went  quietly  on  with  his  picture,  but  not 
many  months  passed  before  it  was  again  re- 
quisite to  use  every  means  for  the  satisfac- 
tion of  creditors.    Days  were  lost.in  battling 


185S.] 


BSNJAMIH  BOBKBT  HATIX)N. 


398 


and.  pleading  with  them,  in  ninniDg  from 
lawyer  to  lawyer,  in  begging  aid  from  one 
friend  and  another.    In  December,  1822,  his 
obligations  to  efifort  were  increased  by  the 
birtb  of  a  son.     In  the  January  succeeding, 
Lazarus  was  finished,  and  forthwith  exhibited ; 
its  success  was  considerable,  and   receipts 
corresponded ;  but  these  were  already  en- 
eulphed  ;  all  expedients  were  failing,  and  at 
length,  on  the   13th  of  April,  an  execution 
was  put  in  on  the  picture.    On  the  22nd.  he 
begins    an    entry   in   his  journal,   beaded, 
"  King's    Bench,"   thus :    *'  Well,  I  am   in 
prison.     So  were  Bacon,  Raleigh,  and  Cer- 
vantes.   Vanity  !    Vanity !     Here's  a  conso- 
lation!"    He  appears  to  have  had  peculiar 
views  of  his  relation  to  creditors,  to  have  be- 
lieved that,  as  the  champion  of  High  Art, 
people  were  almost  bound  to  support  him ; 
that  he  was  a  martyr  to  ingratitude,  forget- 
ting that  no  man  is  at  liberty  to  tax  society 
for  his   opinions,  however  correct  or  enno- 
bliDg.     While  here  he  received  information 
of  his  election  as  a  member  of  the  Imperial 
Academy  of  Russia,  an  honor  strangely  con- 
trasting with  his  present  position.     All  at- 
tempts at  arrangement  failing,  he  had  to  face 
the  insolvent  court,  and  not  one  out  of  150 
creditors  appearing  against  him,  he  was  dis- 
charged on  the  2oth  of  July.     Meantime 
friends  bad  given  tokens  of  substantial  sym- 
pathy—Walter  Scott,  Miss  Mitfoid,  Sir 'Ed- 
ward Codrington,  Brougham,  &c.     The  last 
named  presented  from  him  a  petition  to  the 
House  of  Commons,  praying  for  public  en- 
couragement to  historical  painting,  and  the 
employment  of  distinguished  artists  (himself, 
of  course,  included)  in  the  decoration  of  na- 
tional buildings.    This  was  the  6rst  step  in  a 
long   career  of  unsuccesful   agitation.     No 
sooner  was  he  free,  than  he  again  urged  upon 
Sir  Charles  Long  this  measure,  and  the  pro- 
priety of  beginning  by  decorating  the  great 
room  of  the  Admiralty.     He  laid  before  him 
a  plan,  but  in  vain.     From  this  date  he  was 
incessant  in  his  application  to  parties  in  pow- 
er— to   Mr.  Vansittart,   Mr.  Robinson,  the 
Duke  of  Wellington,  Lord  Grey,  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  Lord  Melbourne.     Much  of  his  journal 
is  occupied  with  this  correspondence ;  no  soi  t 
of  reply  could  dishearten  him.     He  pertina- 
ciously continued  his  assaults,  too  pertina- 
ciously, perhaps,  when  we  reflect  that  his 
own  interests  and  his  own  vanity  were  not 
unfrequeutly  the  impelling  principles.     He 
maintained  that  the  character  of  a  nation  was 
elevated  by  the  influence  of  art,  and  that 
never  would  art  in  England  assume  its  true 
and  high  position  till,-by  the  public  employ- 


ment .of  artists,  they  were  rendered  indepen- 
dent of  a  capricious  patronage,  and  of  party 
jealiiusies.  These  doctrines  he  was  the  first 
to  advocate,  and  though  unpalatable  then» 
their  truth  has  since  been  recognized,  and  in 
the  new  Houses  of  Parliament  his  designs 
have  been  partially  realized. 

He  now  found  it  absolutely  necessary  to 
curb  his  inclination  for  the  heroic,  and  paint 
portraits  and  smaller  subjects.  Few  sitters, 
however,  came ;  and  when  they  did,  the  oc- 
cupation was  very  distasteful.  His  great 
pictures  had  been  sold  to  creditors  for  prices 
far  below  their  value ;  and  want  stared  him 
in  the  face.  1824  came.  His  journal  opened 
with  the  motto — 

**  Nor  stony  tower,  nor  walla  of  beaten  brass. 
Nor  airless  dungeon,  nor  strong  links  of  iron, 
Can  be  retentive  to  the  strength  of  apirit." 

But  before  the  year  was  passed,  there  were 
entries  that  told  of  the  inward  struggle,  like 
this : — "  Alas  I  I  have  no  object  in  life  now 
but  my  wife  and  children,  and  almost  wish  I 
had  not  them,  that  I  might  sit  still,  and  med* 
itate  on  human  ambition  and  human  gran- 
deur till  I  died.  I  really  am  heartily  weary 
of  life.  I  have  known  and  tasted  all  the 
glories  of  fame,  and  distinction,  and  triumph ; 
all  the  raptures  of  love  and  affection,  all  the 
sweet  feelings  of  a  parent.  And  what  then  ? 
The  heart  sinks  inwardly,  and  longs  for  a 
pleasure  palm  and  eternal,  majestic,  un- 
changeable. I  am  not  yet  forty,  and  can 
tell  of  a  destiny  melancholy  and  rapturous, 
bitter  beyond  all  bitterness,  afflicting  bt^yond 
all  affliction,  cursed,  heart-burning,  heart- 
breaking, maddening.  .  .  .  The  melan- 
choly demon  has  grappled  my  heart,  and 
crusjied  its  turbulent  beatings  in  its  black, 
bony,  clammy,  clenching  fingers."  In  Octo- 
ber, Mr.  Kersey,  his  legal  adviser  yet  warm 
friend,  came  to  his  aid,  and  offered  him  a 
year's  peace  at  four  per  cent,  and  under 
certain  conditions  as  to  the  dimensions  and 
prices  of  the  pictures  painted  in  the  interim. 
Thus  in  a  measure  freed  from  embarrassment, 
he  became  comparatively  happy.  Commis- 
sions that  would  once  have  been  refused, 
were  now  welcomed,  and  he  worked  regular- 
ly on.  Towards  the  end  of  1825.  another 
subject  approached  completion,  Pharaoh  dis- 
mi^sing  the  Israelites.  But,  December  18th, 
he  records  his  ''  fits  " — fits  of  work,  fits  of 
idleness,  fits  of  reading,  fits  of  walking,  fits 
of  Italian,  fits  of  Greek,  fits  of  Latin,  fits  of 
Napoleon,  <fec.  &c. :  "  My  dear  Mary's  lovely 
face  is  the  only  thing  that  has  escaped  a  fit 


904 


BENJAMIN  BOBKRT  HAYDON. 


[Not., 


that  never  varies."  In  February,  1826,  he 
sent  another  petition  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. In  April,  his  Venus  and  Anchises 
was  also  finished,  and  this,  after  some  delib- 
eration, he  resolved  to  send  to  the  Academy 
for  exhibition.  He  would  concede  nothing, 
yet  longed  for  reconciliation ;  and,  encour- 
aged by  the  gratification  this  first  step  gave 
to  many,  afterwards  went  round  to  curry 
favor  with  the  principal  members.  In  May, 
he  received  fiom  Lord  Egremont  a  commis- 
sion to  paint  Alexander  taming  Bucephalus ; 
and  this  was  followed  in  November,  by  an 
invitation  to  his  lordship's  seat  at  Petworth, 
which  was  accepted,  ana  the  visit  thoroughly 
enjoyed.  Yet  he  finished  the  year  '*  more 
harrassed  that  ever;"  and  on  the  31st  of 
December  wrote,  "  For  want  of  a  veiit,  my 
mind  feels  like  a  steam-boiler  withoui  a  valve, 
boiling,  struggling,  and  suppressing^,  for  fear 
of  injuring  the  interests  of  five  children  and  a 
lovely  wife." 

1827   opened  with  an   execution  in  the 
house,  and  an  arrest  was  only  averted  by 
the  prompt  interference  of  friendship.  Never- 
theless, before  the  end  of  June,  Hay  don  was 
again  in  the  Ring's  Bench  prison.     While 
there,  he  saw  the  mock  election,  a  subject  of 
which  he  afterwards  made  good  use.     In 
Julvy  a  public  meeting  was  called  for  the  ex- 
ammation  of  his  affairs,  when  it  appeared 
that  his  embarrassments  in  part  arose  from 
anxiety  to  discharge  those  debts  from  which 
the  law  had  exonerated  him,  and  that  he 
was  in  general  entitled  to  sympathy.    The 
consequence  was  his  release.    Working  more 
expeditiously  than  of  yore,  he  bt  ought  his 
picture  of  the  Mock  Election  to  a  finish  by 
the  end  of  the  year:  This  the  king  ultimately 
)urchased.     He  next  painted  a  kindred  sub- 
ect — the  Chairing  of  the  Member ;  and  then 
Sucles  was  placed  upon  the  easel,  a  classical 
and  beautiful  design.     At  the  end  of  1828, 
he  was  actively  engaged  in  writing  on  the 
old  topic — public  patronage  for  art — and  re- 
quested permission  to  dedicate  a  pamphlet 
upon  it  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  but  even 
this  token  of  approbation  he  could  not  obtain. 
Punch  was  the  subject  of  his  next  picture — 
he  had  alighted  on  a  comic  vein ;  and  then 
he  began  Xenophon  and  the  Ten  Thousand 
at  the  first  sight  of  the  sea.     Portraits  and 
smaller  pictures  he  painted  whenever  oppor- 
tunity  offered;    but,    notwithstanding,   his 
wants  were  still  pressing.     Many  a  day  was 
spent  in  running  to  and  fro ;  and  many  an 
exorbitant  demand  was    met,  to  prevent  a 
third  aiTest.     Expenses,  too,  by  these  pro- 
ceedings were  greatly  increased.    He  nad 


borrowed  of  the  future,  and  now,  as  years 
rolled  on,  it  was  exacting  from  him  com- 
pound interest  at  an  ever-growing  and  enor- 
mous rate.  From  September  1829  to  May 
1830,  he  paid  as  much  as  £93  law  costs  con- 
nected with  the  settlement  of  small  bills. 
In  the  month  last  named  the  King's  Bench 
prison  again  closed  its  doors  behind  him. 
Then  came  the  trial,  and  then  another  ac- 
quittal. 

It  is  mournful  to  follow  the  man  through 
the  details  of  his  latter  years  ;  to  see  his  dis- 
tress which,  great  as  it  was,  could  not  quench 
his  ardor  as  an  artist ;  to  find  him  craving 
employment  of  the  great,  and,  when  refused, 
writing  letters  to  one  and  another,  begging 
for  money.     In  1831  he  painted  Napoleon 
Musing,  for  Sir  Robert  Peel.     Wordsworth 
sent  him  a  sonnet  upon  it,  but  the  exhibition 
was  a  failure,  owing  to  political  excitement  at 
the  time.     In  this,  however,  Haydon  largely 
shared,  he  even  wrote  letters  to  the  "  Times,  * 
on  the  subject  of  Reform;  whatever  influ- 
ence he  had   was  given  to  the  cause.     In 
18S2  he  was  thrown  into  contact  with  the 
leaders  of  the  Trades  Unions  at  Birmingham ; 
and  made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  raise 
a  subscription  for  a  picture  of  their  meeting 
at  Newhall  HiU.    This  failed;  but  he  was 
commissioned  by  Earl  Grey  to  paint  a  picture 
of  the  Reform  Banquet  in  Guildhall.    This 
work  kept  him  long  employed,  elevated  his 
hopes,  and  gave  him  opportunities,  which  be 
dia  not  neglect,  of  impressing  his  views  of 
art  upon  many  of  influence  and  power.    All 
the  leading  men  of  the  Liberal  party  sat  to 
him,  and  he  felt  not  a  little  flattered  by  the 
access  thus  gained  to  ministers  and  noble- 
men.   This  period  was  outwardly  one  of  the 
gayest  of  his  life.     Dinners,  routs,  charade 
parties,  <&c.,  enlivened  the  months ;  but  while 
visiting  at  mansions,  and  conversing  freely 
with  fashionables,  he  had  behind  the  scene 
the  same  troubles  to  encounter.     Pecuniary 
matters  were  harrassing  in  the  extreme,  eie- 
cutions  often  threatened.     Sir  Richard  Steele 
turned  the  bailiffs  in  his  house  into  footmen ; 
Haydon  sometimes    made    them   serve  as 
models  while  he  painted. 

In  1834,  the  burning  of  the  Houses  of 
Parliament  gave  him  fresh  room  to  hope  that 
an  opportunity  would  be  given  for  the  public 
employment  of  artists.  He  renewed  his 
appeals.  He  was  too  especially  gratified  by 
the  appointment  of  Mr.  Ewart's  select  com- 
mittee of  inquiry  into  the  means  of  extending 
a  knowledge  of  the  arts  and  principles  of 
design,  including  an  inquiry  into  the  cons^titu- 
tion  of  the  Royal  Academy,  and  the  effects 


1868.] 


BENJAMIN  KOBERT  HAYDOK. 


305 


produced  by  it.  There  can  be  do  doubt  but 
that  his  efforts  were  mainly  instrumental  in 
bringing  about  this  result ;  and  with  the  day 
of  examination  came  the  long-coveted  mo- 
ment for  impressing  his  opinions  on  others 
disposed  to  listen.  Prospects  in  thb  direc- 
tion seemed  to  brighten.  He  now  commenced 
lecturing,  and  thus  another  channel  was 
opened  for  communication  with  the  public 
on  his  favorite  art.  That  things  at  home 
were  still  dark,  this  extract  from  his  journal/ 
referring  to  the  night  of  his  first  effort,  is 
evidence  sufficient — "  I  took  my  dress  coat 
out  of  pawn,  to  lecture  at  the  Mechanics' 
Institution."  But  the  fact  was  publicly 
announced  by  his  being  for  the  fourth  time 
thrown  into  the  Bench,  in  September,  1836. 
As  before,  however,  he  was  liberated  by  the 
Court.  Law  costs  are  the  millstones  that 
sink  a  man,  once  in  a  sea  of  debts,  deeper  and 
deeper.  Here  is  an  illustration:  Haydon 
incurred 

From  1820  to  1823,  law  costo,      £377  0  0 
From  1823  to  1830,     ditto,  460  0  0 

From  1830  to  1836,      ditto,  303  8  6 


Altogether  £1,130  8  6 

We  have  already  referred  to  his  great 
error  of  anticipation ;  perhaps  also  there  was 
a  degree  of  improvidence,  yet  his  large  and 
growing  family,  and  the  kind  of  provision 
their  station  seemed  to  require,  should  be  in 
justice  remembered. 

Through  1837  he  was  principally  em- 
ployed in  lecturing  in  London,  Liverpool, 
Manchester,  Birmingham,  and  other  large 
towns.  These  lectures  gave  him  the  means 
of  support,  and  were  everywhere  well  re- 
ceived. They  have  since  been  published. 
His  enthusiasm,  his  easy  delivery,  and  pic^ 
turesque  expression,  and  the  skill  with  which 
he  would  sketch  an  illustration  when  needed, 
gave  him  power  over  his  audience,  while  his 
well  known  name  and  unmerited  sufferings 
enlisted  their  sympathy.  These  tours  ac- 
complished much  towards  the  elevation  of 
the  general  taste  and  feeling  in  matters  of 
art ;  as  one  consequence,  schools  of  design 
were  proposed,  and  several  established.  The 
chief  point  in  Haydon*8  theory  was  the  mak- 
ing the  figure  the  basis  of  all  study. 

From  Liverpool  he  received  two  com- 
missions, one  of  400  guineas,  for  a  picture 
of  Christ  blessing  little  Children;  and  the 
other,  for  a  picture  of  Wellington  revisiting 
Waterloo.  This  last  subject  had  been  once 
begun,  but  relinquished  on  account  of  the 


Duke  refusing  to  lend  his  clothes.  Some 
considerable  delay  occurred  now  through  the 
pressure  of  public  business  upon  his  Grace, 
but  of  this  Haydon  made  use  by  crossing  to 
the  Continent  and  visiting  Waterloo  for  the 
purpose  of  informing  and  arousing  his  imagi- 
nation. Soon  after  came  an  invitation  to 
Walmer,  where  he  passed  several  most 
agreeable  days  in  company  with  the  hero 
whom  he  had  always  revered.  The  Duke 
sat  to  him  as  he  pleased,  but  would  not  see 
the  picture,  which  he  deemed  to  be  solely  a 
concern  of  •'  the  Liverpool  gentlemen." 
Wordsworth  wrote  a  sonnet  on  this,  as  he 
had  done  on  Napoleon.  These  things  cheer- 
ed the  buffeted  painter ;  but  nothing  more 
than  the  success  with  which,  about  this  date, 
he  delivered  his  lectures  at  Oxford — "  a  day- 
dream of  my  youth." 

In  1841,  his  picture  of  the  Anti- Slavery 
Convention,  which  had  introduced  him  to 
Clarkson  and  others,  was  finished.  He  was 
comparatively  free  from  pecuniary  harass ; 
but  other  grievances  were  at  hand.  This 
year  the  Fine  Arts  Committee  for  the 
decoration  of  the  new  Houses  of  Parliament 
'  sat  and  examined  witnesses ;  but  he  was  not 
summoned.  He  felt  this  severely ;  it  gave 
him  a  presentiment  of  coming  disappoint- 
ment. Another  blow  was  the  death  of  Sir 
David  Wilkie,  for  whom  he  still  entertained 
a  strong  affection.  Amongst  the  paintings 
completed  in  the  following  year  were  the 
Battle  of  Poictiers,  the  Maid  of  Saragossa, 
Curtius  leaping  into  the  Gulf,  Alexander  the 
Great  encountering  and  killing  a  Lion,  and 
Wordsworth  on  Helvellyn,  on  which  last 
Miss  E.  B.  Barrett  (now  Mrs.  Browning)  sent 
him  a  sonnet.  Through  1842,  the  Fine  Arts 
Commission  was  sitting.  In  April  then* 
notice  was  issued  of  the  conditions  for  the 
cartoon  competition,  by  which  it  was  intend- 
ed to  test  the  capabilities  of  artists  for  the 
decoration  of  the  New  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment. Haydon  exulted  in  this  advance  to- 
wards the  achievement  of  the  great  object 
of  all  his  labors ;  but  not  without  painful 
forebodings  that  the  victory  was  not  for  him. 
He  ascribed  the  adverse  tendency  of  things 
exclusively  to  his  enemies ;  but  to  others  it 
was  evident  that  his  obstinate  self-assertion 
and  incessant  intrusion  of  his  views  upon 
public  men  and  bodies  were  in  part  the 
cause;  and  that,  moreover,  the  power  of 
earlier  days  was  not  so  vii^ib!e  in  his  paintings 
now,  for  mainifold  anxieties  had  shaken  tne 
man.  He,  however,  at  once  began  to  exer- 
cise himself  in  fresco ;  and  by  the  time  ap- 
pointed, June,  1843,  he  had  safely  lodged 


896 


BBNiAMIK  KOBERT  HAYDON. 


LNoY. 


two  cartoons  in  Westminster  Hall,  where 
thirty  years  before  he  had  drawn  a  gigantic 
limb  on  tlie  wall  with  the  end  of  his  umbrella, 
and  said  to  Eastlake,  bis  companion,  **  This 
is  the  place  for  art."  His  subjects  were — 
the  Curse  pronounced  against  Adam  and 
Eve,  and  ihe  Black  Prince  entering  London 
in  triumph  with  the  French  King  prisoner. 
In  July  the  prizes  were  declared,  and  Hay- 
don's  hopes  as  regarded  himself  in  that  quar- 
ter for  ever  blighted.  That  in  the  very 
triumph  of  those  principles  to  which  his 
energies  had  through  life  been  devoted,  he 
himself  should  fall  disgraced, 

"  This  was  the  most  unkindest  cut  of  all.'* 

It  caused  a  severe  pang,  but  he  recovered, 
and  resolved  to  retrieve  his  character  before 
an  impartial  public ;  arrests  threatened,  still 
he  lectured,  still  he  painted;  and  then  he 
commenced  a  series  of  cartoons  to  illustrate 
what  is  the  best  government.  These  were 
to  be  six  in  number ;  the  first  showing  the 
injustice  of  democracy — "The  Banishment 
of  Aristides  with  his  Wife  and  Children;" 
the  second  showing  the  heartlessness  of  des- 
potism— ^'  Nero  playing  his  lyre  while  Rome 
is  burning  ;*'  the  third  and  fourth  exhibiting 
the  consequences  of  Anarchy  and  the  cruel- 
ties of  Revolution ;  the  fifth  and  sixth  the 
blessings  of  Justice  and  Freedom  under  a 
limited  Monarchy.  This  had  for  many  years 
been  a  cherished  conception ;  the  plans  had 
been  before  many  a  minister ;  and  now  he 
determined,  since  patronage  failed,  to  execute 
it  independently  and  prove  his  competence 
to  the  world.  The  two  first  of  the  series 
were  completed,  and  on  Easter  Monday, 
1846,  the  exhibition  opened  at  the  Egyptian 
Hall.  To  show  the  overweening  confidence 
his  habits  of  prayer  and  thouijrht  had  begot- 
ten, we  may  extract  from  his  diary,  dated 
May  25th,  1845,  written  when  he  began 
these  pictures : — "  O  God !  I  am  again  with- 
out any  resource ;  but  in  thy  mercy  enable 
me  to  bear  up  and  vanquish,  as  I  have  done, 
all  difficulties.  Let  nothing  however  des- 
perate or  overwhelming  stop  me  from  the 
completion  of  my  six  designs.  On  these  my 
country  8  honor  rests,  and  my  own  fame  on 
earth.  Thou  knowest  how  for  forty-one 
years  I  have  struggled  and  resisted— enable 
me  to  do  so  to  the  last  gasp  of  my  life.'' 

The  exhibition  proved  a  complete  failure. 
On  the  private  day,  only  Jerrold,  Bowring, 
Fox  Maule,  and  Hobhouse  went.  It  rained ; 
but  twenty-six  years  before  rain  would  not 
have  prevented.     On  the  Monday  he  writes : 


it 


Receipts,  1849,  .^1  Is.  6d.  Aristides. 
Receipts,  1820,  £10  Ids.  Jsrusalem. 

In  God  I  trust.     Amen.'* 


Each  day  told  a  similar  story.  The  exhi- 
bition closed.  May  23rd,  we  read  :  *'  There 
lie  Aristides  and  Nero,  imasked  for,  unfelt 
for,  rolled  up.  Aristides,  a  subject  Raphael 
would  have  praised  and  complimented  me 
on  !  and  £ill  lis.  5d.  loss  by  showing  it!" 
This  was  a  fearful  blow ;  he  seemed  con- 
demned and  despised  at  %vqtj  tribunal.  Em- 
barrassments were  thickening,  yet  he  tried  to 
proceed  with  the  third  of  bis  series.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  came  generously  to  his  assist- 
tance,  but  the  battle  was  nearly  over.  Here 
are  the  closing  entries  of  his  journal : — 

"  June  20th. — ^O  God  bless  us  all  through 
the  evils  of  this  day.     Amen. 

"  21st. — Slept  horribly.  Prayed  in  sor- 
row, and  got  up  in  agitation. 

22od. — God  forgive  me.     Amen. 

FINIS 

of 
B.  R.   HAYDON, 
'  Stretch  me  no  longer  on  this  rough 
world.' — Lear, 
End  of  Twenty -sixth  volume.^ 


•«« 


t» 


This  last  entry  was  made  between  half- 
past  ten  and  a  quarter  to  eleven  on  the 
morning  of  Monday,  the  22nd  of  June,  1846. 
Before  eleven,  the  hand  that  penned  it  was 
cold  in  death.  He  had  been  out  early  in  the 
morning,  and  came  back  apparently  fatigued. 
At  ten,  he  entered  his  painting -room,  soon 
after  saw  his  wife,  embraced  her  fervently, 
and  returned  to  bis  room.  About  a  quarter 
to  eleven  a  report  of  fire-arms  was  heard, 
which  was  supposed  to  proceed  from  the 
troops  then  reviewing  in  the  neighborhood. 
About  an  hour  after,  his  daughter  entered 
the  painting-room ;  and  there  before  her  lay 
her  father— dead,  in  front  of  his  unfinished 
picture  of  Alfred  and  the  first  British  Jury — 
his  white  hairs  stained  with  blood,  a  half- 
open  razor,  smeared  with  gore  beside  him,  in 
his  throat  a  fearful  gash,  and  a  bullet  wound 
in  his  skull  ! 

The  coroner's  jury  found  that  the  suicide 
was  in  an  unsound  state  of  mind  when  he 
committed  the  act.  His  debts  amounted  to 
£3,000  ;  but  the  assets  were  considerable. 

On  his  table  were  found  "  these  last 
thoughts  of  B.  R.  Haydon,  half-past  ten  : — 

*'  No  man  shoud  use  certain  evil  for  prob- 
able good,  however  great  the  object.  Evil 
is  the  prerogative  of  the  Deity. 


1868.] 


THE  DUKFB  DTTilCMMA. 


897 


"  I  create  g^ood — I  create — J,  the  Lord, 
do  theee  things. 

^*  Wellington  never  used  evil  if  the  good 
wajs  not  certain.  Napoleon  had  no  such 
scruples  ;  and,  I  fear,  the  glitter  of  his  ge- 
nius  rather  dazzled  me  ;  but  had  I  been  en- 
couraged, nothing  but  good  would  have 
come  from  me,  because,  when  encouraged, 
I  paid  everybody.  God  forgive  the  evil  for 
the  slike  of  the  good.     Amen." 

So  perished  Benjamin  Robert  Haydon,  in 
the  61st  year  of  his  age.  His  story  tells  its 
own  moral.  As  an  artist,  he  was  powerful 
m  execution,  and  bold  in  design — more  sue- 
cessfttl  in  the  diffusion  of  correct  sentiments  j 


than  in  the  attainment  of  reward^  As  a 
writer,  he  was  clear,  graphic,  and  vigorous  ; 
as  a  speaker,  enthusiastic  and  earnest.  As  a 
man,  he  was  conscious  of  genius,  and  there- 
fore self-reliant  ;  imaginative  and  resolute, 
and  therefore  anguine.  His  principles  were 
in  general  pure,  and  his  objects  lofty  ;  but 
he  knit  too  closely  the  glory  of  himself  with 
the  glory  of  his  art.  He  was  frank  and  gen- 
erous, yet  depreciated  his  opponents.  His 
religion  whs  fuel  to  his  ambition,  when  it 
should  have  been  the  harmonizer  of  his  pas- 
sions. He  lacked  the  sublime  consolations 
of  a  holy  faith,  and  hence  his  terrible  and 
m<5urnful  end. 


»»< 


Vrom  Blmckwood'i  Mftgftiine. 


THE    DUKE'S   DILEMMA. 


*  A  CHRONICLE  OF  NIESENBTEIN. 


Thb  close  of  the  theatrical  year,  which  in 
France  occurs  in  early  spring,  annually 
brings  to  Paris  a  throng  of  actors  and  ac- 
tresses, the  disorganized  elements  of  provin- 
cial companies,  who  repair  to  the  capital  to 
contract  engagements  for  the  new  season. 
Paris  is  the  grand  centre  to  which  all  dra- 
matic stars  converge  —  the  great  bazaar 
where  managers  recruit  their  troops  for  the 
summer  CHmpaign.  In  bad  weather  the 
mart  for  this  human  merchandise  is  at  an 
obscure  coffee-house  near  the  Rue  St. 
Honor6 ;  when  the  sim  shines,  the  place  of 
meeting  is  in  the  garden  of  the  Palais  Royal. 
There,  pacing  t(f  and  fro  beneath  the  lime- 
trees,  the  high  contracdng  parties  pursue 
their  negociations  and  make  their  bargains. 
It  is  the  theatrical  Exchange,  the  histrionic 
Bourse.  There  the  conversation  and  the 
company  are  alike  cuiioiis.  Many  are  the 
strange  discussions  and  original  anecdotes 
that  are  there  heard ;  many  the  odd  figures 
there  paraded.  Tragedians,  comedians,  dingers, 
men  and  women,  young  and  old,  flock  thither  in 
quest  of  fortune  and  a  good  engagement. 
The  threadbare  coats  of  some  say  Tittle  in 
favor  of  recent  success  or  present  prosperi- 


ty ;  but  only  hear  them  speak,  and  you  are 
at  once  convinced  that  they  have  no  need  of 
broadcloth  who  are  so  amply  covered  with 
laurels.  It  is  delightful  to  hear  them  talk 
of  their  triumphs,  of  the  storms  of  applause, 
the  rapturous  bravos,  the  boundless  enthusi- 
asm, of  the  audiences  thev  lately  delighted. 
Their  brows  are  oppressed  with  the  weight 
of  their  bays.  The  south  mourns  their  loss : 
if  they  go  west,  the  north  will  be  envious 
and  inconsolable.  As  to  themselves — north, 
south,  east,  or  west — they  care  little  to 
which  point  of  the  compass  the  breeze  of 
their  destiny  may  waft  them.  Thorough 
gypsies  in  their  habits,  accnstomed  to  make 
the  best  of  the  passing  hour,  and  to  take 
small  care  for  the  future  so  long  as  the  pre- 
sent is  provided  for,  like  soldiers,  they  heed 
not  the  name  of  the  town  so  long  as  the 
quarters  be  good. 

It  was  a  fine  morning  in  April..  The  sun 
shone  brightly,  and,  amongst  the  numerous 
loungers  in  the  garden  of  the  Palais  Royal 
were  several  groups  of  actors.  The  season 
was  already  far  advanced  ;  all  the  companies 
were  formed,  and  those  players  who  had  not 
secured  an  engagement  hud    but  a   po^ 


898 


THK  DUJUTB  DTLRMMA. 


[Nov., 


chance  of  finding  one.  Their  anxiety  was 
legible  upon  their  countenances.  A  man  of 
about  fifty  years  of  age  walked  to  and  fro, 
8  newspaptfr  in  his  hand,  and  to  him,  when 
he  passed  near  them,  the  actors  bowed — re- 
spectfully and  hopefully.  A  quick  glance 
was  his  acknowledgement  of  their  salutation, 
and  then  his  eyes  reverted  to  his  paper,  as  if 
it  deeply  interested  him.  When  he  was  out 
of  hearings  the  actora,  who  had  assumed 
their  most  picturesque  attitudes  to  attract 
his  attention,  and  who  beheld  their  labor 
lost,  vented  their  ill-humor. 

"Balthasar  is  mighty  proud,"  md  one; 
'*  he  has  not  a  word  to  say  to  us." 

•'  Perhrtps  he  does  not  want  anybody," 
remarked  another ;  "  I  think  he  has  no 
theatre  this  year." 

"  lliat  would  be  odd.  They  say  he  is  a 
clever  manager." 

"He  may  best  prove  his  cleverness  by 
keeping  aloof.  It  is  so  difficult  nowadays  to 
do  goc^  in  the  provinces.  The  public  is  so 
fastidious ;  the  authorities  are  so  shabbv,  so 
unwilling  to  put  their  hands  in  their  pocKets. 
Ah !  my  dear  fellow,  our  art  is  sadly  fallen." 

Whilst  the  discontented  actors  bemoaned 
themselves,  Balthasar  eagerly  accosted  a 
young  man  who  just  then  entered  the  garden 
by  the  passage  of  the  Perron.  The  coflfee- 
house  keepers  had  already  begun  to  put  out 
tables  under  the  tender  foliage.  The  two 
men  sat  down  at  one  of  them. 

"  Well,  Florival,"  said  the  manager,  "does 
my  o£fer  suit  you  ?  Will  you  make  one  of 
US  ?  I  was  glad  to  hear  you  had  broken  off 
with  Ricardin.  With  your  qualifications  you 
ought  to  have  an  engagement  in  Paris,  or  at 
least  at  a  first-rate  provincial  theatre.  But 
you  are  young,  and,  as  you  know,  mnnagers 
prefer  actors  of  greater  experience  and  es- 
tablished reputation.  Your  pnrts  are  gener- 
ally taken  by  youths  of  five  and  forty*  with 
wrinkles  and  grey  hairs,  but  well  versed  in 
the  traditions  of  the  stage — with  damaged 
voices  but  an  excellent  style.  My  brother 
managers  are  greedy  of  great  names ;  yours 
still  has  to  become  Known — as  yet  you  have 
but  your  talent  to  recommend  you.  I  will 
content  myself  with  that ;  content  yourself 
with  what  I  offer  you.  Times  are  bad,  the 
season  is  advanced,  engagements  are  hard  to 
find.  Many  of  your  comrades  have  gone  to 
try  their  luck  beyond  seas.  We  have  not 
so  far  to  go ;  we  shall  scarcely  overstep  the 
boundary  of  our  ungrateful  country.  Ger- 
many invites  us;  it  is  a  pleasant  land,  and 
Rhine  wine  is  not  to  be  disdained.  I  will 
tell  you  how  the  thing  came  about.     For 


many  years  past  I  have  mansffed  theatres  in 
the  eastern  departments,  in  Alsaiia  and  Ijor- 
raine.  Last  summer,  having  a  Utile  leisure, 
I  made  an  excursion  to  Baden-Baden.  As 
usual,  it  was  crowded  with  fashionables. 
One  rubbed  shoulders  with  princes  and  trod 
upon  highnesses'  toes;  one  could  not  walk 
twenty  yards  without  meeting  a  sovereign. 
All  these  crowned  heads,  kings,  granddukes, 
electors,  mingled  easily  and  affably  with  the 
throng  of  visitors.  Etiquette  is  banished 
from  the  baths  of  Baden,  where,  without 
laying  aside  their  titles,  great  personages 
enjoy  the  liberty  and  advantages  of  an  in- 
cognito. At  the  time  of  my  visit,  a  compa- 
ny of  veiy  indifferent  German  actors  were 
playinff.  two  or  three  times  a  week,  in  the 
little  theatre.  They  played  to  empty  bench- 
es, and  must  have  starved  but  for  the  assist- 
ance afforded  them  by  the  directors  of  the 
gambling-tables.  1  often  went  to  their  per- 
formances, and  amongst  the  scanty  specta- 
tors I  soon  remarked  one  who  whs  as  assidu- 
ous as  myself.  A  gentleman,  very  plainly 
dressed,  but  of  agreeable  countenance  and 
aristocratic  appearance,  invariably  occupied 
the  same  stall,  and  seemed  to  enjoy  the  per- 
formaoce,  which  proved  that  he  was  easily 
pleased.  One  night  he  addressed  to  me 
some  remark  wit4i  respect  to  the  play  then 
acting ;  we  got  into  conversation  on  the  sub- 
ject of  dramatic  art ;  he  saw  that  I  was 
specially  competent  on  that  topic,  and  after 
the  theatre  he  asked  me  to  take  refreshment 
with  him.  I  accepted.  At  midnight  we 
parted,  and,  as  I  wms  going  home,  1  met  a 
gambler  whom  1  slightly  knew.  *  I  con- 
gratulate you,'  he  said ;  '  you  have  friends 
in  high  places !'  He  alluded  to  the  gentle- 
man with  whom  I  had  passed  the  evening, 
and  whom  I  now  learned  whs  no  less  a  per- 
sonage than  his  Serene  Highness  Prin-.e  Le- 
opold, sovereign  ruler  of  the  Grand  Duchy 
of  Niesenstein.  I  had  had  the  honor  of 
passing  a  whole  evening  in  famili  ir  inter- 
course with  a  ci-owned  head.  Next  day, 
walking  in  the  park,  I  met  his  Highnes-:.  I 
made  a  low  bow  snd  kept  at  a  respectful 
distance,  but  the  Grand  Duke  came  up  to 
me  and  asked  me  to  walk  with  him.  Before 
accepting,  I  thought  it  right  to  inform  him 
who  I  was.  '  1  guessed  as  much,'  said  the 
Prince.  •  From  one  or  two  things  that 
last  night  escaped  you,  I  made  no  doubt  you 
were  a  theatrical  manager.'  And  by  a  ges- 
ture he  renewed  his  invitation  to  accompany 
him.  In  a  long  conversation  he  informed  me 
of  his  intention  to  establish  a  French  theatrp 
in  his  capital,  for  the  performance  of  come 


1858.] 


THE  DUKE^  DULBMMA. 


899 


dj,  drama,  vaudeville,  and  comic  operas, 
lie  was  then  building  a  large  theatre, 
which  would  be  ready  by  the  end  of  the 
winter,  and  he  offered  me  its  manage- 
ment on  very  advantageous  terms.  I 
had  no  plans  in  France  for  the  present 
year,  and  the  offer  was  too  good  to  be  re- 
fused. The  Duke  guaranteed  my  expenses 
and  a  gratuity,  and  there  was  a  chance  of 
very  large  profits.  I  hesitated  not  a  mo- 
ment ;  we  exchanged  promises,  and  the  af- 
fair was  concluded. 

"  Accordingto  our  agreement,!  am  to  be 
at  Karlstadt,  the  capital  of  the  Grand  Duchy 
of  Niesenstein,  in  the  first  week  in  May. 
There  is  no  time  to  lose.  My  company  is  al- 
most complete,  but  there  are  still  some  im- 
portant gaps  to  fill.  Amongst  others,  I 
want  a  lover,  a  light  comedian,  and  a  first 
Binger.  I  reckon  upon  you  to  fill  these  im- 
portant posts." 

"  I  am  quite  willing,"  replied  the  actor, 
*'  but  there  is  still  an  obstacle.  You  must 
know,  my  dear  Balthasar,  that  I  am  deeply 
10  love — seriously,  this  time — and  I  broke 
off  with  Ricai'din  solely  because  he  would 
not  engage  her  to  whom  I  am  attached." 

'^  Oho  I  she  is  an  actress?" 

"  Two  years  upon  the  stage ;  a  lovely  girl, 
full  of  grace  and  talent,  and  with  a  charm- 
ing voice.  The  Opera  Comique  has  not  a 
singer  to  compare  with  her." 

"And  she  is  disengnged  ?" 

"  Yes,  my  dear  fellow  ;  strange  though  it 
aeems,  and  by  a  combination  of  circumstan- 
ces which  it  were  tedious  to  detail,  the  fasci- 
nating Delia  is  still  without  an  engagement. 
And  I  give  you  notice  that  henceforward  I 
attach  myself  to  her  steps  ;  where  she  goes, 
I  go ;  I  will  perform  upon  no  boards  which 
ahe  does  not  tread.  I  am  determined  to  win 
her  heart,  to  make  her  my  wife." 

"  Very  good  1"  cried  Balthasar,  rising  from 
his  seat ;  "  tell  me  the  address  of  this  prodi- 
gy:  I  run,  I  fiy,  I  make  every  sacrifice ;  and 
we  will  start  to-morrow." 

People  were  quite  right  in  saying  that 
Bathasar  was  a  clever  manager.  None  bet- 
ter knew  how  to  deal  with  actors,  often  ca- 
pricious and  diflicult  to  guide.  He  possess- 
ed skill,  taste,  and  tact.  One  hour  after  the 
conversation  in  the  garden  of  the  Palais 
Koyal,  he  had  obtained  the  signatures  of 
Delia  and  Florival,  two  excellent  acquisitions, 
destined  to  do  him  infinite  honor  in  Germa- 
ny. That  night  his  little  company  was  com- 
plete, and  the  next  day,  after  a  good  dinner, 
it  started  for  Strasburg.    It  was  composed 

follows: 


Balthasar,  manager,  was  to  play  the  old 
men,  and  take  the  heavy  business. 

Florival  was  the  leading  man,  the  lover, 
and  the  first  singer. 

Rigolet  was  the  low  comedian,  and  took 
the  parts  usually  played  by  Arnal  and  Bouff6. 

Similor  was  to  perform  the  valets  in  Mo- 
liSre*s  comedies,  and  eccentric  low  comedy 
characters. 

Anselmo  was  the  walking  gentleman. 

Lebel  led  the  band. 

Miss  Delia  was  to  display  her  charms  and 
talents  as  prima  donna, and  in  genteel  comedy. 

Mi&s  Foligny  was  the  singing  chambermaid. 

^iss  Alice  was  the  walking  lady,  and 
made  herself  generally  useful. 

Finally,  Madame  Pastorale,  the  duenna  of 
the  company,  was  to  perform  the  old  women, 
and  look  after  the  young  ones. 

Although  so  few,  the  company  trusted  to 
atone  by  zeal  and  industry  for  numerical  de- 
ficiency. It  would  be  easy  to  find,  in  the 
capital  of  the  Grand  Duchy,  persons  capable 
of  filling  mute  parts,  and,  in  most  plays,  a  few 
unimportant  characters  might  be  suppressed. 

The  travelers  reached  Strasburg  without 
adventure  worthy  of  note.  There  Balthasar 
allowed  them  six-and-tbirty  houi-s'  repose, 
and  took  advantaee  of  the  halt  to  write  to 
the  Grand  Duke  Leopold,  and  inform  him  of 
his  approaching  arrival ;  then  they  again 
started,  crossed  the  Rhine  at  Kehl,  and  in 
thirty  days,  after  traversing  several  small 
German  states,  reached  the  frontier  of  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Niesenstein,  and  stopped  at 
a  little  village  called  Krusthal.  From  this 
village  to  the  capital  the  distance  was  only 
four  leagues,  bui  means  of  conveyance  were 
wanting.  There  was  but  a  single  stage- 
coach on  that  line  of  road ;  it  would  not 
leave  Krusthal  for  two  days,  and  it  held  but 
six  persons.  No  other  vehicles  were  to  be 
had ;  it  was  necessary  to  wait,  and  the  ne- 
cessity was  anything  but  pleasant.  The  actors 
made  wry  face?  at  the  prospect  of  passing 
forty-eight  hours  in  a  wretched  village.  The 
only  persons  who  easily  made  up  their  minds 
to  the  wearisome  delay  were. Delia  and  Flo- 
rival. The  first  singer  was  desperately  in 
love,  and  the  prima  donna  was  not  insensible 
to  his  delicate  attentions  and  tender  discourse. 

Balthasar,  the  most  impatient  and  perse- 
vering of  all,  went  out  to  explore  the  vil- 
lage. In  an  hour's  time  he  returned  in  tri- 
umph to  his  friends,  in  a  light  cart  drawn 
by  a  strong  horse.  Unfortunately  the  cart 
held  but  two  persons. 

"I  will  set  out  alone,"  said  Balthasar, 
**  On  reaching  Karlstadt,  I  will  go  to  th^ 


400 


THE  DUEE7S  DILElfMA. 


[Not., 


Grand  Duke,  explain  our  position,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  he  will  immediately  send  carriages 
to  convey  you  to  his  capital." 

These  consolatory  words  were  received 
with  loud  cheers  by  the  actors.  The  driver, 
a  peasant  lad,  cracked  bis  whip,  and  the 
stout  Mecklenberg  horse  set  out  at  a  small 
trot.  Upon  the  way,  Balthasar  questioned 
his  guide  as  to  the  extent,  resources,  and 
pros  pet  ity  of  the  Grand  Duchy,  but  could 
obtam  no  satisfactory  reply ;  the  youngr  peas- 
ant was  profoundly  ignorant  upon  all  these 
subjects.  The  four  leagues  were  got  over 
in  something  less  than  three  hours,  which 
18  rather  rapid  traveling  for  Germany.  •  It 
was  nearly  dark  when  Balthasar  entered 
Karlstad t.  The  shops  were  shut,  and  there 
were  few  persons  in  the  streets ;  people  are 
early  in  their  habits  in  the  happy  lands  on 
the  Rhine*8  right  bank.  Presently  the  cart 
stopped  before  a  good-sized  house. 

''You  told  me  to  take  you  to  our  prince's 
palace,"  said  the  driver,  •*  and  here  it  is." 
Balthasar  alighted  and  entered  the  dwelling 
unchallenged  and  unimpeded  by  the  sentry 
who  passed  lazily  up  and  down  its  front. 
In  the  entrance  hall  the  manager  met  a  por- 
ter, who  bowed  gravely  to  him  as  he  passed  ; 
he  walked  on  and  passed  through  an  empty 
anteroom.  In  the  tirst  apartment,  appropri- 
ated to  gentlemen-in-waiting,  aids-de-camp, 
equerries,  and  other  dignitaries  of  various 
degree,  he  found  nobody ;  in  a  second  sa- 
loon, lighted  by  a  dim  and  smoky  lamp,  was 
an  old  gentleman,  dressed  in  black,  with 
powdered  hair,  who  rose  slowly  at  his  en- 
trance, looked  at  him  with  surprise,  and  in- 
quired his  pleasure. 

"  I  wish  to  see  his  Serene  Highness,  the 
Grand  Duke  Leopold,"  replied  Balthasar. 

"  The  pnnce  does  not  grant  audience  at 
this  hour, '  the  old  gentleman  drily  answered. 

"  His  Highness  expects  me,"  was  the  con- 
fident reply  of  Balthasar. 

"  That  is  another  thing.  I  will  inquire  if 
it  be  his  Highnesses  pleasure  to  receive  you. 
Whom  shall  I  announce  ?" 

"  The  manager  of  the  Court  theatre." 

The  gentleman  bowed,  and  left  Balthasar 
alone.'  The  pertinacious  manager  already 
began  to  doubt  the  success  of  his  audacity, 
when  he  heard  the  Grand  Duke's  voice,  say- 
ing, *'  8hr)w  him  in." 

He  entered.  The  sovereign  of  Niesenstein 
was  alone,  scaled  in  a  large  arm-chair,  at  a 
table  covered  with  green  cloth,  upon  which 
were  a  confused  medley  of  letters  and  news- 
papers, an  inkstand,  a  tobacco-hag,  two  wax- 
ligbts,  a  sugar-bahin,  a  sword,  a  plate,  gloves,  I 


a  bottle,  books,  and  a  goblet  of  Bohemian 
glass,  artistically  engraved.  His  Highness 
was  engrossed  in  a  thoroughly  national  occu- 
pation ;  he  was  smoking  one  of  those  long 
pipes  which  Germans  rarely  lay  aside  ex- 
cept to  eat  or  to  sleep. 

The  manager  of  the  Court  theatre  bowed 
thrice,  as  if  he  had  been  advancing  to  the 
foot-lights  to  address  the  public ;  then  he 
stood  still  and  silent,  awaiting  the  prince's 
pleasure.  But,  although  he  said  nothing, 
his  countenance  was  so  expressive  that  the 
Grand  Duke  answered  him. 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "  here  you  are.  I  recol- 
lect you  perfectly,  and  I  have  not  forgotten 
our  agreement.  But  yon  come  at  a  very 
unfortunate  moment,  my  dear  sir  I" 

"  I  crave  your  Highness 's  pardon  if  I  have 
chosen  an  improper  hour  to  seek  an  audi- 
ence," replied  Balthasar,  with  another  bow. 

"  It  is  not  the  hour  that  I  am  thinking  of," 
answered  the  prince  quickly.  "  Would  that 
were  all !  See,  here  is  your  letter ;  I  was 
just  now  reading  it,  and  regretting  that,  io- 
stead  of  writing  me  only  three  days  ago, 
when  you  were  half-way  here,  you  had  not 
done  so  two  or  three  weeks  before  starting." 

"  I  did  wrong." 

'*  More  so  than  you  think,  for,  had  yov 
sooner  warned  me,  I  would  have  spared  yoa 
a  useless  journey." 

"Useless!"  exclaimed  Balthasar  aghast, 
"  Has  your  Highness  changed  your  mind  ?" 

"  Not  at  all ;  I  am  still  passionately  fond 
of  the  drama,  and  should  be  delighted  to 
have  a  French  theatre  here.  As  far  as  that 
goes,  my  ideas  and  tastes  are  in  no  way  alter- 
ed since  last  summer ;  but,  unfortunately,  I 
am  unable  to  satisfy  them.  Look  here," 
continued  the  prince,  rising  from  his  arm- 
chair. He  took  Balthasar's  arm  and  led  him 
to  a  window :  '*  I  told  you,  last  year,  that  I 
was  building  a  magni6cent  theatre  in  my 
capital." 

'*  Your  Highness  did  tell  me  so." 

"  Well,  look  yonder,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  square ;  there  the  theatre  is  !" 

"Your  Highness,  I  see  nothing  but  an 
open  space  ;  a  building  co-nrnenced,  and  as 
yet  scarcely  risen  above  the  foundalion." 

"  Precisely  so  ;  that  is  the  theatre." 

''Your  Highness  told  me  it  would  be  com- 
pleted before  the  end  of  winter." 

*'  I  did  not  then  foresee  that  I  should 
have  to  stop  the  works  for  want  of  cash 
to  pay  the  workmen.  Such  is  my  present 
position.  If  I  have  no  theatre  ready  to 
receive  you,  and  if  I  cannot  take  you  and 
your  company  into  my  pay,  it  is  because  I 


1853.] 


THE  BVKSS  DILEMMA. 


401 


have  not  the  means.  The  coffers  of  the 
State  and  my  privy  purse  are  alike  empty. 
You  are  astounded! — Adversity  respects  no- 
body— not  even  Grand  Dukes.  But  I  sup- 
port ils  assaults  with  philosophy  :  try  to  fol- 
low my  example  ;  and,  by  way  of  a  begin- 
ning,* take  a  chair  and  a  pipe,  fill  yourself  a 
glass  of  wine,  and  drink  to  the  return  of  ray 
prosperity.  Since  you  suffer  for  my  misfor- 
tunes, I  owe  jou  an  explanation.  Although 
I  never  had  much  order  in  my  expenditure, 
I  had  every  reason,  at  the  time  I  first  met 
with  you,  to  believe  my  finances  in  a  flourish- 
ing condition.  It  was  not  until  the  com- 
mencement of  the  present  year  that  I  dis- 
covered the  contrary  to  be  the  case.  Last 
year  was  a  bad  one;  hail  ruined  our  crops 
and  money  was  hard  to  get  in.  The  salaries 
of  my  household  were  in  arrear,  and  my  of- 
ficers murmured.  For  the  first  time  I  order- 
ed a  statement  of  my  affairs  to  be  laiQ  be- 
fore me,  and  I  found  that  ever  since  my  ac- 
cession I  bad  been  exceeding  my  revenue. 
My  first  act  of  sovereignty  had  been  a  con- 
siderable diminution  of  the  taxes  pnid  to  my 
predecessors.  Hence  the  evil,  which  hAd 
annually  augmented,  and  now  I  am  ruined, 
loaded  with  debts,  and  without  means  of  re- 
pairing the  disaster.  My  privy-councillors 
certainly  proposed  a  way  ;  it  was  to  double 
the  taxes,  raise  extraordinary  contributions — 
to  squeeze  my  subjects,  in  short.  A  fine  plan, 
indeed !  to  make  the  poor  pay  for  my  im- 
providence and  disorder  !  Such  things  may 
occur  in  other  States,  but  they  shall  not  in 
mine.  Justice  before  everything.  I  prefer 
enduring  my  difficulties  to  making  my  sub- 
jects suffer. ' 

••  Excellent  prince  T'  exclaimed  Balthasar, 
touched  by  these  generous  sentiments.  The 
Grand  Duke  smiled. 

"  Do  you  turn  flatterer  ?"  he  said.  "  Be- 
ware !  it  is  an  arduous  post,  and  you  will 
h^ve  none  to  help  you.  I  have  no  longer 
wherewith  to  pay  flatterers;  my  courtiers 
have  fled.  You  have  seen  the  emptiness  of 
my  anterooms ;  you  met  neither  chamberlain 
nor  equerry  upon  your  entrance.  All  those 
gentlemen  have  given  in  their  resignations. 
The  civil  and  military  officers  of  my  house, 
secretaries,  aides-de-camp,  and  others,  left  me, 
because  I  could  no  longer  pay  them  their 
wages.  I  am  alone  ;  a  Tew  faithful  and  pa- 
tient servants  are  all  that  remain,  and  the 
moat  important  personage  of  my  court  is 
now  honest  Sigismund,  my  old  valet- de- 
chambre. 

These  last  words  were  spoken  in  a  melan- 
choly tone,  which  pained  Balthasar.      The 

VOL.  XXX    Ko.  m. 


eyes  of  the  honest  manager  glistened.     The 
Grand  Duke  detected  his  sympathy. 

'*  Do  not  pity  me,"  he  said  with  a  smile. 
"  It  is  no  sorrow  to  me  to  have  got  rid  of  a 
wearisome  etiquette,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
of  a  pack  of  spies  and  hypocrites,  by  whom 
I  was  formerly  from  morning  till  night  be- 
set." 

The  cheerful  frankness  of  the  Grand  Duke's 
manner  forbade  doubt  of  his  sincerity.  Bal- 
thasar congratulated  him  on  his  courage. 

"  I  need  it  more  than  you  think  !"  replied 
Leopold,  "  and  I  cannot  answer  for  having 
enough  to  support  the  blows  that  threaten 
me.  The  desertion  of  my  courtiers  will  be 
nothing,  did  I  owe  it  only  to  the  bad  state  of 
finances  :  as  soon  as  I  found  mvself  in  funds 
again  I  could  buy  others  or  take  back  the  old 
ones,  and  amuse  myself  by  putting  my  foot 
upon  their  servile  necks.  Then  they  would 
be  as  humble  as  now  they  are  insolent.  But 
their  defection  is  an  omen  of  other  dangers. 
As  the  diplomatists  say,  clouds  are  at  the 
political  horizon.  Poverty  alone  would  not 
have  sufficed  to  clear  my  palace  of  men  who 
are  as  greedy  of  honors  as  they  are  of  mon- 
ey ;  they  would  have  waited  for  better  days  ; 
their  vanity  would  have  consoled  their  avar- 
ice. If  they  fled,  it  was  because  they  felt  the 
ground  shake  beneath  their  feet,  and  because 
they  are  in  league  with  my  enemies.  I  can- 
not shut  my  eyes  to  impending  dangers.  I 
am  on  bad  terms  with  Austria*;  Metternich 
looks  askance  at  me ;  at  Vienna  I  am  con- 
sidered too  liberal,  too  popular:  they  say 
that  I  set  a  bad  example ;  they  reproach  me 
with  cheap  government,  and  with  not  making 
my  subjects  sufficiently  feel  the  yoke.  Thus 
do  they  accumulate  pretexts  for  playing  me 
a  scurvy  trick.  One  of  my  cousins,  a  colonel 
in  the  Austrian  service,  covets  my  Grand 
Duchy.  Although  I  say  prand,  it  is  but  ten 
leagues  long  and  eight  broad ;  but,  such  as 
it  is,  it  suits  me ;  I  am  accustomed  to  it.  I 
have  the  habit  of  ruling  it,  and  I  should  miss 
it  were  I  deprived  of  it.  My  cousin  has  the 
audacity  to  dispute  my  incontestible  rights ; 
this  is  a  mere  pretext  for  litigation,  but  he 
has  carried  the  case  before  the  Aulic  Coun- 
cil, and  notwithstanding  the  excellence  of  my 
right  I  still  may  lose  my  cause,  for  I  have  no 
money  wherewith  to  enlighten  my  judges; 
My  enemies  are  powerful,  treason  surrounds 
me ;  they  try  to  take  advantage  of  my  finan- 
cial embarrassments,  first  to  make  me  bank- 
rupt and  then  to  depose  me.  In  this  critical 
conjuncture,  I  should  be  only  too  delighted 
to  have  a  company  of  players  to  divert  my 
thoughts  from  my  troubles — but  I  have  nei- 
26 


402 


THE  BUEE^  DILEBftMA 


[Not., 


ther  theatre  nor  money.  So  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  keep  you,  my  dear  manager,  and, 
believe  me,  I  am  as  grieved  at  it  as  you  can 
be.  All  I  can  do  is  to  give  you,  out  of  the 
little  I  have  left,  a  small  indemnity  to  cover 
your  traveling  expenses  and  take  you  back  to 
France.  Come  and  see  me  to-morrow  morn- 
ing ;  we  will  settle  this  matter,  and  you  shall 
(ale  your  leave." 

fialthasar's  attention  and  sympathy  had 
been  so  completely  engrossed  by  the  Grand 
Duke's  misfortunes,  and  by  his  revelations  of 
his  political  and  financial  difficulties,  that  bis 
own  troubles  had  quite  gone  out  of  his 
thoughts.  When  he  quitted  the  palace  they 
came  back  upon  him  like  a  thunder*  cloud. 
How  was  he  to  satisfy  the  actors,  whom  he 
had  brought  two  hundred  leagues  away  from 
Paris?  What  could  be  say  to  them,  how 
appease  them  ?  The  unhappy  manager  pass- 
ed a  miserable  night.  At  aay break  he  rose 
and  went  out  into  the  open  air,  to  calm  his 
agitation  and  seek  a  mode  of  extrication  from 
his  difficulties.  During  a  two  hours'  walk  he 
had  abundant  time  to  visit  every  corner  of 
Earlstodt,  and  to  admire  the  beauties  of  that 
celebrated  capital.  He  found  it  an  elegant 
town,  with  wide  straight  streets  cutting  com- 
pletely across  it,  so  that  he  could  see  through 
it  at  a  glance.  The  houses  were  pretty  and 
uniform,  and  the  windows  were  provided  with 
small  indiscreet  mirrors,  which  reflected  the 
passers-by  and  transported  the  street  into  the 
drawing-room,  so  that  the  worthy  Earlstadt- 
ers  could  satisfy  their  curiosity  without  quit- 
ting their  easy  chairs;  an  innocent  recrea- 
tion, much  affected  by  German  burghers.  As 
regarded  trade  and  manufactures,  the  capital 
of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Niesenstein  did  not 
seem  to  be  very  much  ocupied  by  either.  It 
was  anything  but  a  bustling  city  ;  luxury  had 
made  but  little  progress  there  ;  and  its  pros- 
perity was  due  chiefly  to  the  moderate  de- 
sires and  phlegmatic  philosophy  of  its  inhab- 
itants. 

In  such  a  country  a  company  of  actors 
had  no  chance  of  a  livelihood.  There  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  return  to  France,  thought 
Balthasar,  after  making  the  circuit  of  the 
city:  then  he  looked  at  his  watch,  and,  deem- 
ing the  hour  suitable,  he  took  the  road  to  the 
palace,  which  he  entered  with  as  little  cere* 
mony  as  upon  the  preceding  evening.  The 
faithful  Sigisraund,  doing  duty,  asgentleman- 
in- waiting,  received  him  as  an  old  acquaint- 
ance, and  forthwith  ushered  him  into  the 
Grand  Duke's  presence.  His  highness  seem- 
ed more  depressed  than  upon  the  previous 
day.     He  was  pacing  the  room  with  long 


I  strides,  his  eyes  cast  down,  his  arms  folded. 
In  his  hand  be  held  papers,  whose  perusal  it 
apparently  was  that  had  thus  discomposed 
him.  For  some  moments  he  said  nothing; 
then  he  suddenly  stopped  before  Baltbasir. 

"  You  find  me  less  calm,"  he  said,*"  than 
I  was  last  night.  I  have  just  received  un- 
pleasant news.  I  am  heartily  sick  of  these 
perpetual  vexations,  and  gladly  would  I  re- 
sign this  poor  sovereignty,  this  crown  of 
thorns  they  seek  to  snatch  from  me,  did  not 
honor  command  me  to  maintain  to  the  last 
my  legitimate  rights.  Yes,"  vehemently  ex- 
claimed the  Grand  Duke,  '*at  this  momenta 
tranquil  existence  is  all  I  covet,  and  I  would 
willingly  give  up  my  Grand  Duchy,  my  title, 
my  crown,  to  live  quietly  at  Paris,  as  a  pri- 
vate gentleman,  upon  thirty  thousand  francs 
a-year." 

•"  I  believe  so,  indeed  !*'  cried  Balthasar, 
who,  in  his  wildest  dreams  of  fortune,  had 
never  dared  aspire  so  high.  His  artless  ex- 
clamation made  the  prince  smile.  It  need- 
ed but  a  trifle  to  dissipate  his  vexation,  and  to 
restore  that  upper  current  of  easy  good 
temper  which  habitually  floated  upon  the 
surface  of  his  character. 

"  You  think,"  he  gaily  cried,  "  that  some, 
in  my  place,  would  be  satisfied  with  less,  and 
that  thirty  thousand  francs  a-year,  with  inde- 
pendence and  the  pleasures  of  Paris,  compose 
a  lot  more  enviable  than  the  governmeni  of 
all  the  Grand  Duchies  in  the  world.  My 
own  experience  tells  me  that  you  are  right; 
for,  ten  years  ago,  when  I  was  but  hereditary 
prince,  I  passed  six  months  at  Paris,  rich, 
independent,  careless;  and  memory  declares 
those  to  have  been  the  happiest  days  of  my 
life." 

"  Well !  if  you  were  to  sell  all  you  have, 
could  you  not  realise  that  fortune  ?  Besides, 
the  cousin,  of  whom  you  did  me  the  honor 
to  speak  to  me  yesterday,  would  probably 
gladly  insure  you  an  income  if  you  yiMded 
him  your  place  here.  Bnt  will  your  High- 
ness permit  me  to  speak  plainly  ?" 

"  By  all  menns." 

**  The  tranquil  existence  of  a  private  gen- 
tleman would  doubtless  have  many  charms  for 
you,  and  you  say  so  in  all  sincerity  of  heart ; 
but,  upon  the  other  hand,  you  set  store  by 
your  crown,  though  you  may  not  admit  it  to 
yourself.  In  a  moment  of  annoyance  it  is 
easy  to  exaggerate  the  charms  of  tranquility, 
and  the  pleasures  of  private  life;  but  a  throne, 
however  rickety,  is  a  seat  which  none  willingly 
quit.  That  is  my  opinion,  formed  at  the 
dramatic  school:  it  is  perhaps  a  reminiscence 
of  some  old   part,  but   truth  is  sometimes 


185d.J 


THE  DUKirS  DILEMMA. 


408 


found  upon  the  stage.  Since,  therefore,  all 
things  considered,  to  stay  where  you  are  is 
that  which  best  beconaes  you,  you  ought 

But  I  crave  your  Highnesses  pardon, 

I  am  perhaps  speaking  too  freely  ? " 

"  Speak  on,  my  dear  manager,  freely  and 
fearlessly ;  I  listen  to  you  with  pleasure.  I 
ought — you  were  about  to  say  ? " 

*<  Instead  of  abandoning  yourself  to  despair 
and  poetry,  instead  of  contenting  yourself 
with  succumbing  nobly,  like  some  ancient 
Roman,  you  ought  boldly  to  combat  the 
peril.  Circumstances  are  favorable;  you 
nave  neither  ministers  nor  state  councillors  to 
mislead  you,  and  embarrass  your  plans. 
Strong  in  your  good  right,  and  in  your  sub* 
jecta'  love,  it  is  impossible  you  should  not 
find  means  of  retrieving  your  finances  and 
strengthening  your  position." 

"  There  is  but  one  means,  and  that  is — a 
good  marriage." 

"Excellent!  I  had  not  thought  of  it. 
Tou  are  a  bachelor  I  A  good  marriage  is 
salvation.  It  is  thus  that  greart  houses  men- 
aced with  ruin,  regain  their  former  splendor. 

You  must  marry  an  heiress,  the  only 
daughter  of  some  rich  banker." 

"  You  forget — it  would  be  derogatory.  / 
am  free  from  such  prejudices,  but  what  would 
Austria  say  if  I  thus  condescended?  It 
would  be  another  charge  to  bring  against  me. 
And  then  a  banker's  millions  would  not  suf- 
fice; I  must  ally  myself  with  a  powerful 
family,  whose  influence  will  strengthen  mine. 
Only  a  few  days  ago,  I  thought  such  an  alli- 
ance within  my  grasp.  A  neighboring  Prince, 
Maximilian  of  Hanau,  who  is  in  high  favor  at 
Vienna,  has  a  sister  to  marry.  The  Princess 
'Wilhelmina  is  youn^,  handsome,  amiable,  and 
rich ;  I  have  already  entered  upon  the  pre- 
liminaries of  a  matrimonial  negotiation,  but 
two  despatches  received  this  morning,  destroy 
all  my  hopes.  Hence  the  low  spirits  in 
which  you  find  me." 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Balthasar,  "your  High- 
ness too  easily  gives  way  to  discouragement. 

"Judge  for  yourself.  I  have  a  rival,  the 
Elector  of  saxe-Tolptlhausen  ;  his  territories 
are  less  considerable  than  mine,  but  he  is 
more  solidly  established  in  his  little  electorate 
than  I  am  in  my  grand-duchy." 

"Pardon  me  your  Highness;  I  saw  the 
Elector  of  saze-Tolpelhau8en  last  year  at 
Baden  Badvn,  and  without  flattery,  he  cannot 
for  an  instant  be  compared  with  your  High- 
ness. You  are  hardly  thirty,  and  he  is  more 
than  forty  ;  you  have  a  good  figure,  he  is 
heavy,  clumbsy,  and  ill-made;  your  counten- 
ance is  noble  and  agreeable,  his  common  and 


»i 


displeasing;  your  hair  is  light  brown,  his 
bright  red.  The  Princess  Wilhelmina  is  sUre 
to  prefer  you." 

"  Perhaps  so,  if  she  were  asked  ;  but  she 
is  in  the  power  of  her  august  brother,  who 
will  marry  her  to  whom  he  pleases.*. 

"That  must  be  prevented." 

"  How  ?" 

"  By  winning  the  young  lady's  affections. 
Love  has  so  many  resources.  Every  day  one 
sees  marriages  for  money  broken  offhand  re- 
placed by  marriages  for  love." 

**  Yes  one  sees  that  in  plays — 

"  Which  afford  excellent  lessons." 

"  For  people  of  a  certain  class,  but  not  for 
princes." 

*'  Why  not  make  the  attempt  ?  If  I  dared 
advise  you,  it  would  be  to  set  out  to-morrbw, 
and  pay  a  visit  to  the  prince  of  Haynau." 

"  tlnnecessary.  To  see  the  prince  and  his 
sister,  I  need  not  stir  hence.  One  of  these 
despatches  announces  their  early  arrival  at 
Karlstad t.  They  are  on  tlieir  way  hither. 
On  their  return  from  a  journey  into  Prussia, 
they  pass  through  my  territories  and  pause 
in  my  capital,  inviting  themselves  as  my 
gUests  for  two  or  three  days.  Their  visit  is 
my  ruin.  What  will  they  thmk  of  me  when 
they  find  me  alone,  deserted,  in  my  empty 
palace?  Do  yon  suppose  the  Princess  will 
be  tempted  to  share  my  dismHl  solitude? 
Last  year  she  went  to  Saxe-Tolpelhausen. 
The  Elector  entertained  her  well,  and  made 
his  court  agreeable.  He  could  place  cham- 
berlains and  aides-de-camp  at  her  orders, 
could  give  concerts,  balls,  and  festivals.  But 
I — what  can  /do?  What  a  humiliation? 
And,  that  no  affront  may  be  spared  to  me, 
my  rival  proposes  negotiating  his  marriage  at 
my  own  court !  Nothing  less,  it  seems,  will 
satisfy  him  1  He  has  just  sent  me  an  ambas- 
sador, Baron  Pippinster,  deputed,  he  writes, 
to  conclude  a  commercial  treaty  which  will 
be  extremely  advantageous  to  me.  The 
treaty  is  but  a  pretext.  The  Baron's  true 
mission  is  to  the  Prince  of  Hanau.  The 
meeting  is  skilfully  contrived,  for  the  secret 
and  unostentatious  conclusion  of  the  matri- 
monial treaty.  This  is  what  I  am  condemn- 
ed to  witness  I  I  must  endure  this  outrage 
and  mortification,  and  display  before  the 
Prince  and  his  sister,  my  misery  and  pov- 
erty. I  would  do  any  thing  to  avoid  such 
shame !" 

•*  Means  might,  perhaps,  be  found,"  said 
Balthasar,  after  a  moment's  reflection. 

"  Means  ?  Speak,  and  whatever  ihey  be, 
I  adopt  them." 

"The  plan  is  a  bold  one!"    continr 


404 


THE  DUKEB  DILEHMA. 


[Nov., 


Balthasar,  speaking  half  to  the  Grand  Dake, 
Rod  ha)f  to  himself,  aa  if  pondering,   and 
weighing  a  project. 
"  No  matter !     I  will  risk  everything." 
"  You  would  like  to  conceal  your  real  po- 
sition, to  re- people  this  palace,  to  have  a 
court?" 
"  Yes."      • 

"  Do  you  think  the  courtiers  who  have  de- 
serted you  would  return?" 

"  Never.  Did  I  not  tell  you  they  are  sold 
to  my  enemies  ?" 

'*  Could  you  not  select  others  from  the 
higher  classes  of  your  subjects  ?" 

"  Impossible  I  There  are  very  few  gen- 
tlemen amongst  my  subjects.  Ah  !  if  a  court 
could  be  got  up  at  a  day's  notice  !  though  it 
were  to  be  composed  of  the  humblest  citizens 

of  KarlsUdt " 

«  I  have  better  than  that  to  offer  you." 
"  You  have  ?     And  whom  do  you  offer  ?" 
cried  Duke  Leopold,  greatly  astonished. 
*<  My  actors." 

"  What  1  you  would  have  me  make  up  a 
court  of  your  actors  ?" 

*'  Yes,  your  Highness,  and  you  could  not 
do  better.  Observe,  that,  my  actors  are  ac- 
customed to  play  all  manner  of  parts,  and 
that  they  will  be  perfectly  at  their  ease  when 
performing  those  of  noblemen  and  high  offi- 
cials. I  answer  for  their  talent,  discretion, 
and  probity.  As  soon  as  your  illustrious 
guests  have  departed,  and  you  no  longer 
need  their  services,  they  shall  resign  their 
posts.  Bear  in  mind,  that  you  have  no 
other  alternative.  Time  is  short,  danger  at 
your  door,  hesitation  is  destruction." 

"  But  if  such  a  trick  were  discovered!" 

*<  A  mere  supposition,  a  chimerical  fear. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  you  do  not  run  the 
risk  I  propose,  your  ruin  is  certain." 

The  Grand  Duke  was  easily  persuaded. 
Careless  and  easy-going,  he  yet  was  not 
wanting  in  determination,  nor  in  a  certain 
love  of  hazardous  enterprizes.  He  remem- 
bered that  fortune  is  said  to  favor  the  bold, 
and  his  desperate  position  increased  his  cour- 
age. With  joyful  intrepidity  he  accepted  and 
adopted  Balthasar's  scheme. 

"  Bravo  !"  cried  the  manager ;  "  you  shall 
have  no  cause  to  repent.  You  behold  in  me 
a  sample  of  your  future  courtiers  ;  and  since 
honors  and  dignities  are  to  be  distributed,  it 
is  wdth  me,  if  you  please,  that  we  will  begin. 
In  this  request  I  act  up  to  the  spirit  of  my 
part.  A  courtier  should  always  be  asking 
for  something,  should  lose  no  opportunity, 
and  should  profit  by  his  rivals'  absence  to 
obtain  the  best  place.     I  entreat  your  High- 


ness to  have  the  goodness  to  name  me  prime 
minister/' 

"  Granted  1"  g^ily  replied  the  prince. 
"Your  Excellency  may  immediately  enter 
upon  your  functions." 

''  My  Excellency  will  not  fail  to  do  so,  and 
begins  by  requesting  your  signature  to  a  few 
decrees  I  am  about  to  draw  up.    But  in  the 
first  place,  your  Highness  must  be  so  good 
as  to  answer  two  or  three  questions,  that  I 
may  understand  the  position  of  affairs.    A 
new-comer  in  a  country,  and  a  novice  in  a 
minister's  office,  has  need  of  instruction.    If 
it  became  necessary  to  enforce  your  com- 
mands, have  you  the  means  of  so  doing  ?" 
"  Undoubtedly." 
"  Your  Highness  has  soldiers  ?" 
"  A  regiment." 
"  How  many  men  ?" 
*'One  hundred  and   twenty,  besides  the 
musicians." 

"  Are  they  obedient,  devoted  ?" 
"  Passive  obedience,  unbounded  devotion ; 
soldiers  and  officers  would  die  for  me  to  the 
last  man." 

"It  is   their  duty.      Another  question: 
Have  you  a  prison  in  your  dominions  ?" 
"  Certainly." 

*'  I  mean  a  good  prison,  strong  and  well- 
guarded,  with  thick  walls,  solid  bars,  stem 
and  incorruptible  jailors  ?" 

"  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
Castle  of  Zwingenberg  combines  all  those  req- 
uisites. The  fact  is,  I  have  made  very  little 
use  of  it ;  but  it  was  built  by  a  man  who  un- 
derstood such  matters — by  my  father's  great- 
grandfather, Rudolph  the  Inflexible." 

**  A  fine  surname  for  a  sovereign  !  Your 
inflexible  ancestor,  I  am  very  sure,  never 
lacked  either  cash  or  courtiers.  Your  High- 
ness has,  perhaps,  done  wrong  to  leave  the 
state  prison  untenanted.  A  prison  requires 
to  be  inhabited,  like  any  other  building  ;  and 
the  first  act  of  the  authority  with  which  yon 
have  been  pleased  to  invest  me,  will  be  a 
salutary  measure  of  incarceration.  I  pre- 
sume the  Castle  of  Zwingenberg  will  accom- 
modate a  score  of  prisoners  ?" 

"  What !  you  are  going  to  imprison  twenty 
persons  ?" 

*•  More  or  less.  I  do  not  yet  know  the 
exact  number  of  the  persons  who  composed 

Jrour  late  court.  They  it  is  whom  I  propose 
odging  within  the  lofty  walls  constructed  by 
the  Inflexible  Rudolph.  The  measure  is  in- 
dispensable." 

"  But  it  is  illegal  I" 

*'  I  crave  your  Higbness's  pardon ;  you 
use  a  word  I  do  not  understand.     It  seems 


Id68.] 


THE  DUKETS  DTTiKMMA. 


405 


to  me  that,  in  every  good  German  govern- 
ment, that  which  is  absolutely  necessary  is 
necessarily  l^gal.  That  is  my  policy.  More- 
over, as  prime  minister,  I  am  responsible. 
"What  would  you  have  more?  It  is  plain 
that,  if  we  leave  your  courtiers  their  liberty, 
it  will  be  impossible  to  perform  our  comedy  ; 
they  will  betray  us.  Therefore  the  welfare 
of  the  state  imperatively  demands  their  im- 
prisonment. Besides,  you  yourself  have  said 
that  they  are  traitors,  and  therefore  they  de- 
serve punishment.  For  your  own  safety's 
sake,  for  the  success  of  your  project — which 
will  insure  the  happiness  of  your  subjects — 
write  the  names,  sign  the  order,  and  inflict 
upon  the  deserters  the  lenient  chastisement 
of  a  week's  captivity.** 

The  Grand  Duke  wrote  the  names,  and 
signed  several  orders,  which  were  forthwith 
intrusted  to  the  most  active  and  determined 
officers  of  the  regiment,  with  instructions  to 
make  the  arrests  at  once,  and  to  take  their 
prisoners  to  the  Castle  of  Zwingenberg,  at 
three-quarters  of  a  league  from  Karlstadt. 

"  All  that  now  remains  to  be  done  is  to 
send  for  your  new  court,**  said  Balthasar. 
*'Has  your  Highness  carriages?'* 

*'  Certainly !  a  berlin,  a  barouche,  and  a 
cabriolet." 

"And  horses?'* 

''  Six  draught  and  two  saddle.'* 

"  I  take  the  barouche,  the  berlin,  and  four 
horses ;  I  go  to  Krusthal,  put  my  actors  up 
to  their  parts,  and  bring  them  here  this  even- 
ing. We  instal  ourselves  in  the  palace,  and 
shati  be  at  once  at  your  HTghne68*s  orders.'* 

•*  Very  good  ;  but,  before  going,  write  an 
answer  to  Baron  Pippinstir,  who  asks  an 
audience." 

"  Two  lines,  very  dry  and  official,  putting 
him  oflf  till  to-morrow.  We  must  be  under 
arms  to  receive  him.  .  .  .  Here  is  the 
note  written,  but  how  shall  I  sign  it  ?  The 
name  of  Balthasar  is  not  very  suitable  to  a 
German  Excellency.** 

"  True,  you  must  have  another  name,  and 
a  title  ;  I  create  you  Count  Lipandorf." 

"  Thanks,  your  Highness.  I  will  bear  the 
title  nobly,  and  restore  it  to  you  faithfully, 
with  my  seals  of  office,  when  the  comedy  is 
played  out." 

Count  Lipandorf  signed  the  letter,  which 
Sigismund  was  ordered  to  take  to  Baron  Pip- 
pinstir ;  then  he  started  for  Krusthal. 

Next  morning,  the  Grand  Duke  Leopold 
held  a  levee,  which  was  attended  by  all  the 
officers  of  his  new  court.  And  as  soon  as 
he  was  dressed,  he  received  the  ladies,  with 
infinite  grace  and  affability. 


Ladies  and  officers  were  attired  in  their 
most  elegant  theatrical  costumes ;  the  Grand 
Duke  appeared  greatly  satisfied  with  their 
bearing  and  manners.  The  first  compliments 
over,  there  came  a  general  distribution  of 
titles  and  offices. 

The  lover,  Florival,  was  appointed  aide- 
de-camp  to  the  Grand  Duke,  colonel  of  hus- 
sars, and  Count  Reinsberg. 

Rigolet,  the  low  comedian,  was  named 
grand  chamberlain,  and  Baron  Fidibus. 

Similor,  who  performed  the  valets,  was 
master  of  the  horse  and  Baron  Kockembnrg. 

Anselmo,  walking  gentleman,  was  pro- 
moted to  be  gentleman-in-waiting  and  Chev- 
alier Grillenfanger. 

The  leader  of  the  band,  Lebel,  was  ap- 
pointed superintendent  of  the  music  and 
amusements  of  the  court,  with  the  title  of 
Chevalier  Arpeggio. 

The  prima  donna.  Miss  Delia,  was  created 
Countess  of  Rosenthal,  an  interesting  orphan, 
whose  dowry  was  to  be  the  hereditary  office 
of  first  lady  of  honor  to  the  future  Grand 
Duchess. 

Miss  Foligny,  the  singing  chambermaid, 
was  appointed  widow  of  a  general  and  Bar- 
oness AUenzau. 

Miss  Alice,  walking  lady,  became  Miss 
Fidibus,  daughter  of  the  chamberlain,  and  a 
rich  heiress. 

Finally,  the  duenna,  Madame  Pastorale, 
was  called  to  the  responsible  station  of  mis- 
tress of  the  robes  and  governess  of  the  maids 
of  honor,  under  the  imposing  name  of  Bar- 
oness Schicklick. 

The  new  dignitaries  received  decorations 
in  proportion  to  their  rank.  Count  Balthas- 
ar von  Lipandorf,  prime  minister,  had  two. 
stars  and  three  grand  crosses.  The  aide-de- 
camp, Florival  von  Reinsberg,  fastened  five 
crosses  upon  the  breast  of  his  hussar  jacket. 

The  parts  duly  distributed  and  learned, 
there  was  a  rehearsal,  which  went  off  excel- 
lently well.  The  Grand  Duke  deigned  to 
superintend  the  getting  up  of  the  piece,  and 
to  give  the  actors  a  few  useful  hints. 

Prince  Maximilian  of  Hanau,  and  his 
august  sister  were  expected  that  evening. 
Time  was  precious.  Pending  their  arrival, 
and  byway  of  practising  his  court,  the  Grand 
Duke  gave  audience  to  the  ambassador  from 
Saxe-Tolpelhausen. 

Baron  Pippinstir  was  ushered  into  the  Hall 
of  the  Throne.  He  had  asked  permission  to 
present  his  wife  at  the  same  time  as  his  cre- 
dentials, and  that  favor  had  been  granted  him. 

At  sight  of  the  diplomatist,  the  new  cour- 
tiers, as  yet  unaccustomed  to  rigid  decorum. 


409 


THBBUKSB  J>JLEMilUL 


[Not., 


had  difficulty  in  keeping  their  conntenaoces. 
The  Baroa  was  a  man  of  fifty,  prodigiously 
tall,  singularly  thin,  abundantly  powdered, 
with  legs  like  hop-poles,  clad  in  knee  breeches 
and  white  silk  stockings.  A  long  slender 
pigtail  danced  upon  his  flexible  back.  He 
had  a  face  like  a  bird  of  prey — little  round 
eyes,  a  receding  chin,  and  an  enormous 
hooked  nose.  It  was  scarcely  possible  to 
look  at  him  without  laughing,  especially 
when  one  saw  him  for  the  first  time.  His 
apple-green  coat  glittered  with  a  profusion 
of  embroidery.  His  chest  being  too  narrow 
to  admit  of  a  horizontal  development  of  his 
decorations,  he  wore  them  in  two  columns, 
extending  from  his  collar  to  his  waist.  When 
he  approached  the  Grand  Duke,  with  a  self- 
satisfied  simper  and  a  jaunty  air,  his  sword 
by  his  side,  his  cocked  hat  under  his  arm, 
nothing  was  wanting  to  complete  the  cari- 
cature. 

The  Baroness  Pippinstir  was  a  total  con- 
trast to  her  husband.  She  was  a  pretty 
little  woman  of  five-and-twenty,  as  plump  as 
a  partridge,  with  a  lively  eye,  a  nice  figure, 
and  an  engaging  smile.  There  was  mischief 
in  her  glance,  seduction  in  her  dimples  and 
the  rose*s  tint  upon  her  cheeks.  Her  dress 
was  the  only  ridiculous  thing  about  her.  To 
come  to  court,  the  little  Baroness  had  put  on 
all  the  finery  she  could  muster ;  she  sailed 
into  the  hall  under  a  cloud  of  ribbons,  spark- 
ling with  jewels  and  fluttering  with  plumes — 
the  loftiest  of  which,  however,  scarcely  reach- 
ed to  the  shoulder  of  her  lanky  spouse. 

Completely  identifying  himself  with  his 
part  of  prime  minister,  Balthasar,  as  soon  as 
this  oddly -assorted  pair  appeared,  decided 
upon  his  plan  of  campaign.  His  natural 
penetration  told  him  the, diplomatist's  weak 
point.  He  felt  that  the  Baron,  who  was  old 
and  ugly,  must  be  jealous  of  his  wife,  who 
was  young  and  pretty.  He  was  not  mistaken. 
Pippinstir  was  as  jealous  as  a  tiger-cat.  Re- 
cently married,  the  meagre  diplomatist  had 
not  dared  to  leave  his  wife  at  Saxe-Tolpel- 
hausen,  for  fear  of  accidents ;  he  would  not 
lose  sight  of  her,  and  had  brought  her  to 
Karlstad  t  in  the  arrogant  belief  that  danger 
vanished  in  his  presence. 

After  exchanging  a  few  diplomatic  phrases 
with  the  ambassador,  Balthasar  took  Colonel 
Florival  aside  and  gave  him  secret  instruc- 
tions. The  dashing  officer  passed  his  hand 
through  his  richly-curling  locks,  adjusted  his 
splendid  pelisse,  nnd  approached  Baroness 
Pippinstir.  The  ambassadress  received  him 
graciously;  the  handsome  colonel  had  al- 
ready attracted  her  attention,  and  soon  she 


was  delighted  with  his  wit  and  gallant 
speeches.  Florival  did  not  lack  imagination* 
and  his  memory  was  stored  with  well-turned 
phrases  and  sentimental  tirades,  borrowed 
from  stage- plays.  He  spoke  half  from  in- 
spiration, half  from  memory,  and  he  was 
listened  to  with  favor. 

The  conversation  was  carried  on  in  French 
— for  the  best  of  reasons. 

**  It  is  the  custom  here,"  said  the  Grand 
Duke  to  the  ambassador ;  "  French  is  the 
only  language  spoken  in  this  palace ;  it  is  a 
regulation  I  had  some  difficulty  in  enforcing, 
and  I  was  at  last  obliged  to  decree  that  a 
heavy  penalty  should  be  paid  for  every  Ger- 
man word  spoken  by  a  person  attached  to  my 
court.  That  proved  effectual,  and  you  will 
not  easily  catch  any  of  these  ladiea  and  gen- 
tlemen tripping.  My  prime  minister.  Count 
Balthasar  von  Iiipandorf,  is  the  only  one  who 
is  permitted  occasionally  to  speak  his  native 
language.'' 

Balthasar  who  had  long  managed  theatres 
in  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  spoke  German  like  a 
Frankfort  brewer. 

Meanwile,  Baron  Pippinstir's  uneasiness 
was  extreme.  Whilst  his  wife  conversed  in 
a  low  voice  with  the  young  and  facinating 
aide-de-camp,  the  pitiless  prime  minister  held 
his  arm  tight,  and  explained  at  great  length 
his  views  with  respect  to  the  famous  com- 
mercial treaty.  Caught  in  his  own  snare, 
the  unlucky  diplomatist  was  in  agony;  he 
fidgeted  to  get  away,  his  countenance  ex- 
pressed grievous  uneasiness,  his  lean  legs 
were  convulsively  agitated.  But  in  vain  did 
he  endeavor  to  abridge  his  torments,  the  re- 
morseless Balthasar  relinquished  not  his 
prey. 

Sigismund,  promoted  to  be  steward  of  the 
household,  announced  dinner.  The  ambas- 
sador and  his  lady  had  been  invited  to  dine, 
as  well  as  all  the  courtiers.  The  aide-de- 
camp was  placed  next  to  the  Baroness,  the 
Baron  at  the  other  end  of  the  table.  The 
torture  was  prolonged.  Florival  continued 
to  whisper  soft  nonsense  to  the  fair  and  well- 
pleased  Pippinstir.  The  diplomatist  could 
not  eat. 

There  was  another  person  present  whom 
Florival's  flirtation  annoyed,  and  that  person 
was  Delia,  Countess  of  Rosenthal.  After 
dinner,  Balthasar,  whom  nothing  escaped, 
took  her  aside. 

"  You  know  very  well,"  said  the  minister, 
*'  that  he  is  only  acting  a  part  in  the  comedy. 
Should  you  feel  hurt  if  he  declared  his  love 
upon  the  stage,  to  one  of  your  comrades? 
Here  it  is  the  same  thing ;  all  this  is  but  a 


1858.] 


THE  DUKE'S  DTTiKMMA. 


407 


play ;  when  the  curtain  falls,  he  will  return 
to  you." 

A  courier  annouuced  that  the  Prince  of 
Hanau  and  his  sister  were  within  a  league  of 
Earlbtadt.  The  Grand  Duke,  attended  by 
Count  Reinsberg  and  some  officers,  went  to 
meet  them.  .It  was  dark  when  the  illustri- 
ous guests  reached  the  palace ;  they  passed 
through  the  great  saloon,  where  the  whole 
court  was  assembled  to  receive  them,  and  re- 
tired at  once  to  their  apartments. 

"  The  game  is  tairly  begun,"  said  the  Grand 
Duke  to  his  prime  minister ;  "  and  now,  may 
Heaven  help  us!'' 

•'  Fear  nothing,"  replied  Balthasar.  "  The 
fflimpse  I  caught  of  Prince  Maximilian's  phys- 
iognomy satisfied  me  that  everything  will  pass 
off  perfectly  well,  and  without  exciting  the 
least  suspicion.  As  to  Baron  Pippinstir,  he 
is  already  blind  with  jealousy,  and  Florival 
will  give  him  so  much  to  do,  that  he  will  have 
no  time  to  attend  to  his  master's  business. 
Things  look  well." 

Next  morning,  the  Prince  and  Princess  of 
Hanau  were  welcomed,  on  awakening,  by  a 
serenade   from   the   regimental  band.     The 
weather  was  beautiful ;  the  Grand  Duke  pro- 
posed an  excursion  out  of  town ;  he  was  glad 
of  an  opportunity  to  show  his  guests  the  best 
features  of  his  duchy — a  delightful  country, 
and  many  picturesque  points  of  view,  much 
prized  and  sketched  by  German  landscape 
painters.     The  proposal  agreed  to,  the  party 
set  out,  in  carriages  and  on  horseback,  for  the 
old  Castle  of  Raubel'zell — magnificent  ruins, 
dating  from  the  middle  ages,  and  famous  far 
and  wide.  At  a  short  distance  from  the  castle, 
which  lifted  its  gray  turrets  upon  the  summit 
of  a  wooded  hill,  the  Princess  Wilhelmina  ex- 
pressed a  wish  to  walk  the  remainder  of  the 
way.  Every  body  followed  her  example.  The 
Grand  Duke  offered  her  his  arm  ;  the  Prince 
gave  his  to  the  Countess  Delia  von  Rosenthal ; 
and,  at  a  sign  from  Balthasar,  Baroness  Pas- 
torale  von   Schicklick    took   possession    of 
Baron  Pippinstir;  whilst  the  smiling  Baron- 
ess accepted  Florival's  escort.     The  young 
people  walked  at  a  brisk  pace.     The  unfor- 
tunate Baron  would  gladly  have  availed  of 
his  long  legs  to  keep  up  with  his  coquetish 
wife  ;  but  the  duenna,  portly  and  ponderous, 
hung  upon  his  arm,  checked  his  ardor,  and 
detained  him  in  the  rear.     Rrespect  for  the 
mistress  of  the   robes   forbade  rebellion  or 
complaint. 

Amidst  the  ruins  of  the  venerable  castle, 
the  distinguished  party  found  a  table  spread 
with  an  elegant  collation.  It  was  an  agree- 
able surprise,  and  the  Grand  Duke  had  all 


the  credit  of  an  idea  suggested  to  him  by 
his  prime  minister. 

The  whole  day  was  passed  in  rambling 
through  the  beautiful  forest  of  Rauberzelf. 
The  Princess  was  charming ;  nothing  could 
exceed  the  high  breeding  of  the  courtiers,  or 
the  fascination  and  elegance  of  the  ladies; 
and  Prince  Maximilian  warmly  congratulated 
the  Grand  Duke  on  having  a  court  composed 
of  such  agreeable  and  accomplished  persons. 
Baroness  Pippinstir  declared,  in  a  moment 
of  enthusiasm,  that  the  court  of  Saxe  Tol- 
pelhausen  was  not  to  compare  with  that  of 
Niesenstein.  She  could  hardly  have  said 
anything  more  completely  at  variance  with 
the  object  of  her  husband's  mission.  The 
Baron  was  near  fainting. 

Like  not  a  few  of  her  countrywomen,  the 
Princess  Wilhelmina  had  a  strong  predilic- 
tion  for  Parisian  fashions.  She  admired 
everything  that  came  from  France ;  she  spoke 
French  perfectly,  and  greatly  approved  the 
Grand  Duke's  decree,  forbidding  any  other 
language  to  be  spoken  at  his  court.  More- 
over, there  was  nothing  extraordinary  in  such 
a  regulation ;  French  is  the  language  of  all 
the  northern  courts.  But  she  was  greatly 
tickled  at  the  notion  of  a  fine  being  inflicted 
for  a  single  German  word.  She  amused  her- 
self by  tryiufir  to  catch  some  of  the  Grand 
Duke's  courtiers  transgressing  in  this  respect. 
Her  labor  was  completely  lost. 

That  evening,  at  the  palace,  when  con- 
versation began  to  languish,  the  Chevalier 
Arpeggio  sat  down  to  the  piano,  and  the 
Countess  Delia  von  Rosenthal  sang  an  air 
out  of  the  last  new  opera.  The  guests  were 
enchanted  with  her  performance.  Prince 
Maximilian  had  been  extremely  attentive  to 
the  Countess  during  their  excursion;  the 
young  actress's  grace  and  beauty  had  capti- 
vated htm,  and  the  charm  of  her  voice  com- 
pleted his  subjugation.  Passionately  fond 
of  music,  every  note  she  sang  went  to  his 
very  heart.  When  she  had  finished  one 
song,  he  petitioned  for  another.  The  amia- 
ble prima  dona  sang  a  duet  with  the  aide-de- 
camp, Florival  von  Reinsberg,  and  then,  be- 
ing further  entreated,  a  trio,  m  which  Similor 
— master  of  the  horse,  barytone,  and  Baron 
von  Kockemburg — took  a  part. 

Here,  our  actors  were  at  home,  and  their 
success  was  complete.  Deviating  from  his 
usual  reserve.  Prince  Maximilian  did  not  dis- 
guise his  delight;  and  the  imprudent  little 
Baroness  Pippinstir  declared  that,  with  such 
a  beautiful  tenor  voice,  an  aide-de-camp 
might  aspire  to  anything.  A  cemetry,  on  a 
wet  day,  is  a  cheerful  sight,  compared  to  the 


408 


THE  DUEE^  DTTiRMMA. 


[Nov^ 


Baron*8  eoantenance  when  fae  heard  these 
words. 

Upon  the  morrow,  a  hantiog  party  was 
the  order  of  the  day.  In  the  evening  there 
was  a  dance.  It  had  been  proposed,  to  in- 
vite the  principal  families  of  the  metropolis 
of  Niesenstein,  but  the  Prince  and  Princess 
begged  that  the  circle  might  not  be  in- 
creased. 

•*  We  are  four  ladies/'  said  the  Princess, 
glancing  at  the  prima  donna,  the  singing 
chambermaid,  and  the  walking  lady  ;  ''  it  is 
enough  for  a  quadrille.'* 

There  was  no  lack  of  gentlemen.  There  was 
the  Grand  Duke,  the  aide-de-camp,  the  grand 
chamberlain,  the  master  of  the  horse,  the 
gentleman-in- waiting,  and  Prince  Maximili- 
an's aide-de-camp.  Count  Darius  von  Sturm- 
haube,  who  appeared  greatly  smitten  by  the 
charms  of  the  widowed  Baroness  Allenzau. 

"  1  am  sorry  my  court  is  not  more  numer- 
ous," said  the  grand  Duke,  "  but,  within  the 
last  three  days,  I  have  been  compelled  to  di- 
minish it  by  one-half." 

"  How  so  ?"  inquired  Prince  Maximilian. 

"  A  dozen  courtiers,"  replied  the  Grand 
Duke  Leopold,  "whom  I  had  loaded  with 
favors,  dared  conspire  against  me,  in  favor 
of  a  certain  cousin  of  mine  at  Vienna.  I  dis- 
covered the  plot,  and  the  plotters  are  now  in 
the  dungeons  of  my  good  fortress  of  Zwin- 
genburg," 

•*  Well  done  1"  cried  the  Prince ;  "  I  like 
such  energy  and  vigor.  And  to  think  that 
the  people  taxed  you  with  weakness  of  char- 
acter! How  we  princes  are  deceived  and 
calumniated." 

The  Grand  Duke  cast  a  grateful  glance  at 
Batlthasar.  That  able  minister,  by  this  time, 
felt,  himself  as  much  at  his  ease  in  his  new 
office,  as  if  he  had  held  it  all  his  life ;  he  even 
began  to  suspect  that  the  government  of  a 
grand- duchy  is  a  much  easier  matter  than 
the  management  of  a  company  of  actors. 
Incessantly  engrossed  by  his  master's  inter- 
ests, he  manoBuvred  to  bring  about  the  mar- 
riage which  was  to  give  the  Grand  Duke 
happiness,  wealth,  and  safety  ;  but,  notwith- 
standing his  skill,  notwithstanding  the  tor- 
ments with  which  he  had  6lled  the  jealous 
soul  of  Pippinstir,  the  ambassador  devoted 
Hhe  scanty  moments  of  repose  his  wife  left 
him,  to  furthering  the  object  of  his  mission. 
The  alliance  with  the  Saxe-Tolpelhausen  was 
pleasing  to  Prince  Maximilian;  it  offered 
him  various  advantages;  the  extinction  of  an 
old  law  suit  between  the  two  states,  the  ces- 
sion of  a  large  extent  of  territory,  and,  6nally, 
the  commercial  treaty  which   the  perfidious 


Baron  had  brought  to  the  court  of  Niesen- 
stein,  with  a  view  of  concluding  it  in  favor  of 
the  principality  of  Hanau.  Invested  with 
unlimited  powers,  the  diplomist  was  ready 
to  insert  in  the  contract,  almost  any  condi- 
tions Prince  Maximilian  chose  to  dictate  to 
him. 

It  is  necessary  here  to  remark,  that  the 
Elector  of  Saxe-Tolpelhausen  was  desper- 
ately in  love  with  the  Princess  Wilhelmina.  * 

It  was  evident  that  the  Baron  would  carry 
the  day,  if  the  prime  minister  did  not  hit 
upon  some  scheme  to  destroy  his  credit,  or 
force  him  to  retreat.  Balthasar,  fertile  in 
expedients,  was  teaching  Florival  his  part  in 
the  palace  garden,  when  Prince  Maximilian 
met  him,  and  requested  a  moment's  private 
conversation. 

"  I  am  at  your  Highness's  orders,"  respect- 
fully replied  the  minister. 

"  I  will  go  straight  to  the  point.  Count  Li- 
pandorf,"  the  Prince  began.  "I  married 
my  late  wife,  a  princess  of  Hesse  Darmstadt, 
from  political  motives.  She  has  left  me  three 
sons.  I  now  intend  to  marry  again ;  but 
this  time,  I  need  not  sacrifice  myself  to  state 
considerations,  and  I  am  determined  to  con- 
sult my  heart  alone." 

"  If  your  Highness  does  me  the  honor  to 
consult  me,  I  have  merely  to  say  that  you 
are  perfectly  justified  in  acting  as  you  pro- 
pose. After  once  sacrificing  himself  to  his 
people's  happiness,  a  prince  has  surely  a 
right  to  think  a  little  of  his  own." 

"  Exactly  my  opinion  !  Count,  I  will  tell 
you  a  secret  I  am  in  love  with  Miss  von 
Rosenthal."  ^ 

"  Miss  Delia  ?" 

"Yes,  sir;  with  Miss  Delia,  Countess  of 
Rosenthal;  and,  what  is  more,  I  will  tell 
you,  that  /  know  every  ihingr 

"What  may  it  be  that  your  Highness 
knows  ?" 

**  I  know  who  she  is." 

"  Ha !" 

"It  was  a  great  secret  !'* 
"And  how  came  jour  highness  to  discover  it." 

"  The  Grand  Duke  revealed  it  to  me." 

"  I  might  have  guessed  as  much  !" 

"  He  alone  could  do  so,  and  I  rejoice  that 
I  addressed  myself  directly  to  him.  At  first, 
when  I  questioned  hiui  concerning  the  young 
Countess's  family,  he  ill  concealed  his  em- 
barrassment; her  position  struck  me  as 
strange ;  young,  beautiful,  and  alone  in  the 
world,  without  relatives  or  guardians — all 
that  seemed  to  me  singular,  if  not  suspicious* 
I  trembled,  as  the  possibility  of  an  intrigue 
flashed  upon  me ;  but  the  Grand  Duke,  to 


1853.] 


THE  BUKK^  DILEMMA* 


400 


dissipate  my  unfounded  suspicion,  told  me 
all." 

"  And  what  is  your  Highness's  decision  ? 
.     .     ,     After  such  a  revelation " 

*^  It  in  no  way  changes  my  intentions.  I 
shall  marry  the  lady." 

"  Marry  her  ?  .  •  .  But  no ;  your 
Highness  jests.'* 

*'  Count  Lipandorf,  I  never  jest.  What  is 
there,  then,  so  strange  in  my  determination  ? 
The  Grand  Duke's  rather  was  romantic,  and 
of  a  roving  disposition ;  in  the  course  of  his 
life,  he  contracted  several  left-handed  allian- 
ces— Miss  von  Rosenthal  is  the  issue  of  one 
of  those  unions.  I  care  not  for  the  illegiti- 
macy of  her  birth  ;  she  is  of  noble  blood,  of 
a  princely  race — that  is  all  I  require." 

'*Ye8,"  replied  Balthasar,  who  had  con- 
cealed his  surprise  and  kept  his  countenance, 
as  became  an  experienced  statesman,  and  a 
consummate  comedian.  "  Yes,  I  now  under- 
stand ;  aad  I  think  as  yoti  do.  Your  High- 
ness has  the  talent  of  bringing  everybody 
over  to  your  way  of  thinking." 

"The  greatest  piece  of  good  fortune," 
continued  the  Prince,  *'  is  that  the  mother 
remained  unknown ;  she  is  dead,  and  there 
is  no  trace  of  family  on  that  side." 

"  As  your  hifirhness  says,  it  is  very  fortu- 
nate. And,  doubtless,  the  Grand  Duke  is  in- 
formed of  your  august  intentions  with  respect 
to  the  proposed  marriage  ?" 

"  No ;  I  have,  as  yet,  said  nothing  either  to 
him  or  to  the  Couptess.  I  reckon  upon  you, 
my  dear  Count,  to  make  my  offer,  to  whose  ac- 
ceptance I  trust  there  will  not  be  the  slight- 
est obstacle.  I  give  you  the  rest  of  the  day 
to  arrange  everything.  I  will  write  to  Miss 
von  Rosenthal ;  I  hope  to  receive  from  her 
own  lips  the  assurance  of  my  happiness,  and 
I  will  beg  her  to  bring  me  her  answer  her- 
self, this  evening,  in  the  summer-house,  in 
the  park.  Lover-like,  you  see — a  rendez- 
vous, a  mysterious  interview  I  But  come. 
Count  Lipandorf,  lose  no  time  ;  a  double  tie 
shall  bind  me  to  your  sovereign.  We  will 
sign,  at  one  anfkthe  same  titne,  my  marriage 
contract  and  his.  On  that  condition  alone 
will  I  grant  him  my  sister's  hand ;  otherwise, 
I  treat,  this  very  evening,  with  the  envoy 
from  Saxe-Tolpelhausen." 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  after  Prince  Maxim- 
ilian had  made  his  overture,  Balthasar  and 
Delia  were  closeted  with  the  Grand  Duke. 

What  was  to  be  done?  The  Prince  of 
Hanau  was  noted  for  his  obstinacy.  He 
would  have  excellent  reasons  to  oppose  to 
all  objections.  To  confess  the  deception  that 
had  been  practised  upon  him  was  equivalent 


to  a  total  and  eternal  rupture.  But,  upon 
the  other  hand,  to  leave  him  in  his  error,  to 
suffer  him  to  marry  an  actress  !  it  was  a  se- 
rious matter.  If  ever  he  discovered  the 
truth,  it  would  be  enough  to  raise  the  entire 
German  Confederation  against  the  Grand 
Duke  of  Niesenstein. 

**  What  is  my  prime  minister's  opinion  ?*' 
asked  the  Grand  Duke. 

"A  prompt  retreat.  Delia  must  instantly 
quit  the  town;  we  will  devise  an  explana- 
tion of  her  sudden  departure." 

"  Yes ;  and  this  evening  Prince  Maximilian 
will  sign  his  sister's  marriage  contract  with 
the  Elector  of  Saxe-Tolpelhausen.  My  opin- 
ion is,  that  we  have  advanced  too  far  to  re- 
treat. If  the  prince  ever  discovers  the  truth, 
he  will  be  the  person  most  interested  to  con- 
ceal it.  Besides,  Miss  Delia  is  an  orphan — 
she  has  neilher  parents  nor  family.  I  adopt 
her — I  acknowledge  her  as  my  sister." 

"Your  Highness's  goodness  and  conde- 
scension— "  lisped  the  pretty  prima  donna. 

"  You  agree  with  me,  do  you  not.  Miss 
Delia?"  continued  the  Grand  Duke.  '*  You 
are  resolved  to  seize  the  good  fortune  thus 
offered,  and  to  risk  the  consequences?" 

**  Yes,  your  Highness." 

The  ladies  will  make  allowance  for  Delia's 
faithlessness  to  Florival.  How  few  female 
heads  would  not  be  turned  by  the  prospect 
of  wearing  a  crown !  The  heart's  voice  is 
sometimes  mute  in  presence  of  such  brilliant 
temptations.  Besides,  was  not  Florival  faith- 
less ?  Who  could  say  whither  he  might  be 
led  in  the  course  of  the  tender  scenes  he 
acted  with  the  Baroness  Pippinstir  ?  Prince 
Maximilian  was  neither  young  nor  hand- 
some, but  he  offered  a  throne.  Not  only  an 
actress,  but  many  an  high-bom  dame,  might 
possibly,  in  such  circumstances,  forget  her 
love,  and  think  only  of  her  ambition. 

To  her  credit  be  it  said,  Delia  did  not 
vield  without  some  reluctance  to  the  Grand 
buke's  arguments,  which  Balthasar  back- 
ed with  all  his  eloquence  ;  but  she  ended  by 
agreeing  to  the  interview  with  Prince  Maxi- 
milian. 

•'  I  accept,"  she  resolutely  exclaimed  ;  "  I 
shall  be  Sovereign  Princess  of  Hanau." 

"And  I,"  said  the  Grand  Duke,  "shall 
marry  Princess  Wilhelmina,  and  this  very 
evening,  poor  Pippinstir,  disconcerted,  and 
defeated,  will  go  back  to  Saxe-Tolpelhausen." 

"  He  would  have  done  that  in  any  case," 
said  Balthasar ;  "  for,  this  evening,  Florival 
was  to  have  run  away  with  his  wife." 

"That  is  carrying  things  rather  far,"  Delia 
remarked. 


410 


THE  BUSES  DILEBIMA. 


[Not. 


"Such  a  scandal  is  unnecessary/*  added 
the  Grand  Duke. 

Whilst  awaiting  the  hour  of  her  rendez- 
vous with  the  prince,  Delia,  pensive  and  agi- 
tated, WHS  walking  in  the  park,  when  she 
came  suddenly  upon  Florival,  who  seemed 
as  much  discomposed  as  herself.  In  spite 
of  her  newly*  born  ideas  of  grandeur,  she  felt 
a  pain  at  her  heart.  With  a  forced  smile, 
and  in  a  tone  of  reproach  and  irony,  she 
greeted  her  former  lover. 

"  A  pleasant  journey  to  you.  Colonel  For- 
ival,''  she  said. 

"  I  may  wish  you  the  same,"  replied 
Florival ;  "  for,  doubtless,  you  will  soon  set 
out  for  the  principality  of  Hanau  !*' 

'*  Before  long,  no  doubt.** 

"  You  admit  it,  then  ?'* 

"Where  is  the  harm?  The  wife  must 
follow  her  husband — a  princess  must  reign 
in  her  dominions." 

"  Princess  !  What  do  you  mean  ?  Wife ! 
In  what  ridiculous  promises  have  they  in- 
duced you  to  contide  ?' 

Fiorival's  offensive  doubts  were  dissipated 
by  the  formal  explanation  which  Delia  took 
malicious  pleasure  in  giving  him.  A  touch- 
ing scene  ensued  ;  the  lovers,  who  had  both 
gone  astray  for  a  moment,  felt  their  former 
name  burn  all  the  more  ardently  for  its  par- 
tial and  temporary  extinction.  Pardon  was 
mutually  asked  and  granted,  and  ambitious 
dreams  fled  before  a  burst  of  affection. 

"You  shall  see  whether  I  love  you  or 
not,"  said  Florival  to  Delia.  •*  Yonder  comes 
Baron  Pippinstir ;  I  will  take  him  into  the 
summer-house ;  a  closet  is  there,  where  you 
can  hide  yourself  to  hear  what  passes,  and 
then  you  shall  decide  my  fate." 

Delia  went  into  the  summer-house,  and 
hid  herself  in  the  closet.  There  she  over- 
heard the  following  conversation  : — 

"  What  have  you  to  say  to  me.  Colonel  ?" 
asked  the  Baron. 

"  I  wish  to  speak  to  your  Excellency  of  an 
affair  that  deeply  concerns  you." 

"  I  am  all  attention  ;  but  I  beg  you  to  be 
brief ;  I  am  expected  elsewhere.*' 

"  So  am  I." 

"  I  must  go  to  the  prime  minister,  to  re- 
turn him  this  draught  of  a  commercial  treaty, 
which  I  c  nnot  accept." 

"  And  I  must  go  to  the  rendezvous  given 
me  in  this  letter.*' 

"  The  Baroness's  writing !" 

"  Yes,  Baron.  Your  wife  has  done  me 
the  honor  to  write  to  me.  We  set  out  to- 
gether to-night;  the  Baroness  is  waiting  for 
me  in  a  post-chaise.*' 


"  And  it  18  to  me  you  dare  acknowledge 
this  abominable  project  ?** 

"  I  am  less  generous  than  you  think.  You 
cannot  but  be  aware  that,  owing  to  an  irregu- 
larity in  your  marriage  contract,  nothing 
would  be  easier  than  to  get  it  annulled. 
This  we  will  have  done ;  we  then  obtain  a 
divorce,  and  I  marry  the  Baroness.  You 
will,  of  course,  have  to  hand  me  over  her 
dowry — a  million  of  florins — composing,  if  I 
do  not  mistake,  your  entire  fortune." 

The  Baron,  more  dead  than  alive,  sank  in- 
to an  arm  chair.  He  was  struck  speech- 
less. 

"  We  might,  perhaps,  make  some  arrange- 
ment. Baron,*'  continued  Florivisl.  '*  I  am 
not  particularly  bent  upon  •  becoming  your 
wife's  second  husband.** 

"Ah,  sir!"  cried  the  ambassador,  "you 
restore  me  to  life  !'* 

"  Yes,  but  I  will  not  restore  you  the  Bar- 
oness, except  on  certain  conditions." 

"  Speak  f    What  do  you  demand  f  * 

"First,  that  treaty  of  commerce,  which 
you  must  sign  just  as  Count  Lipandorf  has 
drawn  it  up. 

"  I  consent  to  do  so." 

"  That  is  not  all ;  you  shall  take  my  place 
at  the  rendezvous,  get  into  the  post-chaise, 
and  run  away  with  your  wife ;  but,  first, 
you  must  sit  down  at  this  table,  and  write  a 
letter,  in  due  diplomatic  form,  to  Prince 
Maximilian,  informing  him  that,  finding  it 
impossible  to  accept  his  stipulations,  you  are 
compelled  to  decline,  in  your  sovereign's 
name,  the  honor  of  his  august  alliance.** 

''  But,  Colonel,  remember  that  my  instruc- 
tions   *' 

"  Very  well,  fulfil  them  exactly ;  be  a  du- 
tiful ambassador,  and  a  miserable  husband, 
ruined,  without  wife  and  without  dowry. 
You  will  never  have  such  another  chance. 
Baron!  A  pretty  wife,  and  a  million  of 
florins,  do  not  fall  to  a  man's  lot  twice  in  his 
life.  But  I  must  take  my  leave  of  you.  I 
am  keeping  the  Baroness  waiting.'* 

"I  will  go  to  her.  .  ,  .  Give  me  paper, 
a  pen,  and  be  sosood  as  to  fictate.  I  am 
so  agitated .* 

The  Baron  really  was  in  a  dreadful  fluster. 
The  letter  written,  and  the  treaty  signed, 
Florival  told  his  Excellency  where  he  would 
find  the  post-chaise. 

"  One  thing  more  you  must  promise  me," 
said  the  young  man,  "  aud  that  is,  that  you 
will  behave  like  a  gentleman  to  your  wife, 
and  not  scold  her  over-much.  Kemember 
the  flaw  in  the  contract.  She  may  find 
somebody  else  in  whose  favor  to  cancel  the 


186dO 


THE  DWSXA  DILRHMA. 


411 


document.     Suitors  will  not  be  wanting." 

"  What  need  of  a  promise  !"  replied  the 
poor  Baron.  "  You  know  very  well  that  my 
wife  does  what  she  likes  with  me  ?  I  shall 
have  to  explain  my  conduct,  and  ask  her 
pardon." 

Pippinstir  departed.  Delia  left  her  hid- 
ing-place, and  held  out  her  hand  to  Florival. 

**  You  have  behaved  well,"  she  said. 

"That  is  more  than  the  Baroness  will 
•ay." 

"  She  deserves  the  lesson.  It  is  your  turn 
to  go  into  the  closet  and  listen ;  the  Prince 
will  be  here  directly." 

^'  I  hear  his  footsteps."  And  Florival  was 
quickly  concealed. 

"  Charming  Countess !"  said  the  prince  on 
entering,  *'  1  come  to  know  my  fate." 

**  What  does  your  Highness  mean  ?"  said 
Delia,  pretending  not  to  understand  him. 

"  How  can  you  ask  ?  Has  not  the  Grand 
Duke  spoken  to  you  ?" 

**  No,  your  Highness." 

**  Nor  the  prime  minister  ?" 

"  Not  a  word.  When  I  received  your  let- 
ter, I  was  on  the  point  of  asking  you  for  a 
private  interview.  I  have  a  favor — a  service 
— to  implore  of  your  Highness." 

"  It  is  granted  before  it  is  asked.  I  place 
my  whole  influence  and  power  at  your  feet, 
charming  Countess !" 

"A  thousand  thanks,  illustrious  prince. 
You  have  ah-eady  shown  me  so  much  kind- 
ness, that  I  venture  to  ask  you  to  make  a 
communication  to  my  brother,  the  Grand 
Duke,  which  I  dare  not  make  myself.  I 
want  you  to  inform  him  that  I  have  been  for 
three  months  privately  married  to  Count 
Beinsberg." 

"  Good  heavens !"  cried  Maximilian,  falling 
into  the  arm-chair  in  which  Pippinstir  had 
recently  reclined.  On  recovering  from  the 
shock,  the  prince  rose  again  to  his  feet. 


"'Tis  well,  madam,*  he  said,  in  a  faint 
voice.     "Tis  well!" 

And  he  left  the  summerhouse. 

After  reading  Baron  Pippinstir's  letter^ 
Prince  Maximilian  fell  a-thinking.  It  was 
not  the  Grand  Duke's  fault  if  the  Countess 
of  Rosenthal  did  not  ascend  the  throne  of 
Hanau.  There  was  an  insurmountable  ob- 
stacle. Then  the  precipitate  departure  of 
the  ambassador  of  Saxe-Tolpelhausen  was  an 
affront  which  demanded  instant  vengeance. 
And  the  Grand  Duke  Leopold  was  a  most 
estimable  sovereign,  skilful,  energetic,  and 
blessed  with  wise  councillors;  the  Princess 
Wilhelmina  liked  him,  and  thought  nothing 
could  compare,  for  pleasantness,  with  his 
lively  court,  where  all  the  men  were  amia- 
ble, and  all  the  women  charming.  These 
various  motives  duly  weighed,  the  Prince 
made  up  his  mind,  and  next  day  was  signed 
the  mar.Hage-con tract  of  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Niesenstein  and  the  Princess  Wilhelmina  of 
Hanau. 

Three  days  later  the  marriage  itself  was 
celebrated. 

The  play  was  played  out. 

The  actors  had  performed  their  parts  with 
wit,  intelligence,  and  a  noble  dis^interested- 
ness.  They  took  their  leave  of  the  Grand 
Duke,  leaving  him  with  a  rich  and  pretty 
wife,  a  powerful  brother-in-law,  a  serviceable 
alliance,  and  a  commercial  treaty  which  could 
not  fail  to  replenish  his  treasury. 

Embassies,  fecial  missions,  banishment, 
were  alleged  to  the  Grand  Duchess  as  the 
causes  of  their  departure.  Then  an  amnesty 
was  published  on  the  occasion  of  the  mar- 
riage ;  the  gates  of  the  fortress  of  Zwingen«> 
berg  opened,  and  the  former  courtiers  re- 
sumed their  respective  posts. 

The  reviving  fortunes  of  the  Grand  Duke 
were  a  sure  guarantee  of  their  fidelity. 


418 


MOORE¥(  OPINIONB  OF  HIS  OOTEMPORARIEB. 


[Nor. 


From    the    New    Qaarterly   Review. 


MOORE'S  OPINIONS  OF   HIS  COTEMPOKARIES.* 


In  Boswe]r«  **  Life  of  Johnson,"  the  rao8t 
unpopular  personage  with  the  reader  is  un- 
doubtedly the  author  of  the  book.  In  Moore's 
journal  Moore  himself  threatens  to  become, 
at  the  end  of,  say  the  fortieth  volume,  a  con- 
firmed bore.  It  already  requires  a  constant 
struggle  to  keep  up  a  sentiment  of  respect 
for  a  man  who  is  unceasingly  obtruding  upon 
us  his  little  weaknesses.  When  the  poet  re- 
peats to  us  every  compliment  that  was  ever 
paid  to  him  by  a  person  of  quality  f ;  chroni- 
cles every  night  the  plaudits  that  attended 
upon  his  songs  ;  openly  rejoices  in  an  affec- 
tionate phrase  in  a  dedication  from  Lord 
John — not  because  it  was  the  warm  expres- 
sion of  a  man  worthy  of  his  friendship,  but 
because  it  was  *'  from  a  Russell  | ;" — indig- 
nantly denounces  an  unlucky  person  who  had 
dared  to  open  his  mouth  when  Moore  was 
singing ;  records  how  constantly  he  was  so 
*' locked,  barred,  and  bolted"  by  dinner  en- 
gagements that  he  had  not  a  day  to  give  to 
a  duchess ;  and  when  all  this  is  told,  retold, 
repeated,  and  re-repeated,  we  confess  that,- 
deeies  repetita,  it  does  not  please.  We  be- 
come conscious  of  a  chronic  state  of  vexation 
that  so  very  great  a  poet  will  take  such  enor- 
mous pains  to  work  into  us  the  conviction 
that  he  was  a  very  little  man.  We  could 
readily  forgive  him  the  fact  of  having  had  his 
head  turned  by  the  praises  of  all  the  fine 
folks  whom  he  amused,  but  we  cannot  so 
well  get  over  the  entire  absence  of  moral 
dignity  betrayed  by  his  writing  it  all  down 
for  the  benefit  of  posterity. 

*  Memoirs,  Journal^  and  Corretpondenee  of 
Thomas  Moore.  Edited  by  the  Right  Honorable 
liord  John  Rnaeell,  M.P.     Vols.  8  and  4. 

f  Here  is  one  example  from  a  thousand — "  Lady 
H.  read  me  a  letter  from  Lord  William  Raasell  at 
Spa,  in  which  he  mentione  that  the  Grand  Dacheae 
or  Russia  is  there,  and  that  she  always  carries  about 
with  her  two  copies  of  'Lalla  Rookb,*  most  splen- 
didly bound,  and  studded  with  precious  stones,  one 
of  whi<3h  he  had  seen." 

X  "Found  a  copy  of  Lord  John's  book,  just  ar- 
rived by  the  amhsssador's  courier  from  Longman's. 
He  calls  himself  in  the  dedication  *  my  attached 
friend.'  This  tribute  from  a  Rossell  gives  me  great 
pleasure."    Vol.  8.  p.  178. 


The  great  charm  of  the  volumes  is  the 
enormous  quantity  of  tlible-talk  they  contain. 

Madame  de  Coigny  has  a  very  bad  voice. 
She  said  once,  "  Je  n'ai  qu'une  voiz  contra 
moi ;  c'est  la  mienne." 

The  same  lady,  speaking  of  a  dear  friend 
who  had  red  hair,  *'  and  dl  its  attendant  ill 
consequences,"  and  of  whom  some  one  said 
she  was  very  virtuous,  remarked,  "  Qui,  elle 
est  com  me  Samson ;  elle  a  toutes  ses  forces 
dans  ses  cheveauz." 

Sheridan  used  to  tell  a  story  of  one  of  his 
constituents  saying  to  him,  "Oh  sir  !  things 
cannot  go  on  in  this  "way ;  there  must  be  a 
reform  in  Parliament ;  we  poor  electors  are 
not  properly  paid  at  all." 

Lord  John  mentioned  that  Sydney  Smith 
told  him  he  had  had  an  intention  once  of 
writing  a  book  of  maxims,  but  never  got  fur- 
ther Uian  the  following,  "That  generally 
towards  the  age  of  forty  women  get  tired  of 
being  virtuous,  and  men  of  being  honest.*' 

Bonaparte  said  to  one  of  his  servile  flat- 
terers who  was  proposing  to  him  a  plan  for 
remodelling  the  Institute,  "  Laissans  au 
moins  la  Kepublique  des  lettres,'* 

Voltaire,  listening  to  an  author  who  was 
reading  to  him  his  comedy,  and  said,  "  Ici  le 
chevalier  rit,"  exclaimed,  "  II  est  bien  heu- 
reux  1" 

We  have  a  little  string  of  beads,  gathered 
one  by  one,  by  Moore  from  a  note  book  of 
the  historic  Duke  of  Buckingham. 

**  I  can  as  little  live  upon  past  kindness  as  the 
air  can  be  wanned  with  the  sunbeams  of  yester- 
day." "  A  woman  whose  mouth  ia  like  an  old 
comb  with  a  few  broken  teeth  and  a  great  deal  of 
hair  and  dust  about  it"  *'  Kisses  are  like  grains 
of  gold  or  silver  found  upon  the  ground,  of  no 
value  themselves,  but  precious  as  shewing  that  a 
mine  is  ne<ir."  "That  man  has  not  only  a 
long  face,  but  a  tedi9us  one.*'  **One  can  no 
more  judge  of  the  true  Value  of  a  man  by  the  im- 
pression he  makes  on  the  public,  than  we  can 
tell  whether  the  seal  was  ffold  or  brass  by  which 
the  stamp  was  made."  **  Men's  fame  is  like  their 
hair,  which  grows  after  they  are  dead,  and  with 
just  as  little  use  to  them.  "  A  sort  of  anti- 
black-amoor,  every  part  of  her  white  but  her 


1858.] 


MOORSrS  OPINIONB  OF  HIS  COTEICFORARIBS. 


413 


teeth.'*  **  A  woman  whoee  face  wae  created  witb- 
oot  the  preamble  of  *  Let  there  be  light  7'  **  How 
few,  like  Danaa,  have  God  and  gold  together?" 

Moore  laments  "  that  Lord  John  shewed 
to  so  little  advantage  in  society  from  his 
extreme  taciturnity,  and,  still  more,  from  his 
apparent  coldness  and  indifference  to  what  is 
taid  by  others;"  and  adds,  "Several  to 
whom  he  was  introduced  had  been  much 
disappointed  in  consequence  of  this  manner. 
I  can  easily  imagine  that  to  Frenchmen 
such  reserve  and  silence  must  appear  •some- 
thing quite  oat  of  the  course  of  nature." 
But  a  great  many  of  the  best  anecdotes 
are  nevertheless  attributed  to  Lord  John. 
Thus— 

Lord  John  mentioned  of  the  late  Lord  Lans- 
downe  (who  was  remarkable  for  the  sententious) 
and  speech-like  pomposity  of  his  conversations 
that,  in  giving  his  opinion  one  day  of  Lord  , 
he  said,  **  I  have  a  high  opinion  of  his  lordship's 
character.  So  remarkable  do  I  think  him  for  the 
pore  and  unbending  integrity  of  his  principles, 
tliat  1  look  upon  it  as  impossible  that  ne  should 
ever  be  guilty  of  the  slightest  deviation  from  the 
line  of  rectitude,  unless  it  were  most  damnably 
worth  his  while." 

Again — 

Lord  John  told  us  of  a  good  trick  of  Sheridan's 
upon  Richardson.  Sheridan  bad  been  driving 
out  three  or  four  hours  in  a  hackney-coach,  when, 
seeing  Richardson  pass,  he  hailed  him,  and  made 
him  get  in.  He  instantly  contrived  to  Introduce  a 
topic  upon  which  Richardson  (who  was  the  very 
soul  of  disputatiousness)  always  differed  with  him, 
and  at  la«t,  affecting  to  be  mortified  at  Richard- 
son's arguments,  said,  "  You  really  are  too  bad. 
I  cannot  bear  to  listen  to  such  things.  I  will  not 
stay  in  the  same  coach  with  you,*'  and  according- 
ly got  down  and  led  him,  Richardson  hallooing 
out  triumphantlv  after  him,  '*Ah,  you're  beat, 
you're  beat."  Nor  was  it  till  the  heat  of  his  vic- 
tory had  a  little  cooled  that  he  found  out  he  was 
left  in  the  lurch  to  pay  for  Sheridan's  three  hours' 
coaching. 

Here  are  two  more  stories  of  Sheridan — 

Sheridan  told  me  that  his  father  being  a  good 
deal  plagued  by  an  old  maiden  relation  of  his  al- 
ways going  out  to  walk  with  him,  said  one  day 
that  the  weather  was  bad  and  rainy,  to  which 
the  old  lady  answered  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  had 
cleared  up.  **  Yes,"  says  Sheridan, "  it  has  clear- 
ed up  enough  for  one,  bat  not  for  two."  He 
mentioned,  too,  that  Tom  Stepney  supposed  al- 
gebra to  be  a  learned  language,  and  referred  to 
bis  father  to  know  whether  it  was  not  so,  who 
said,  ^  Certainly,  Latin,  Greek,  and  AlgebraJ' 
**By  what  people  was  it  spoken?"  "By  the 
Algebrians,  to  be  cure,"  said  Sheridan. 


Met  Kenny  with  Miss  Holcrofl,  one  of  his 
examen  domus,  a  fine  girl.  By-the-bye,  he  told 
me  yesterday  evening  (having  joined  in  our  walk^ 
that' Shaw,  having  lent  Sheridan  near  500/,  usea 
to  dun  him  very  considerably  for  it;  and  one  day, 
when  he  had  been  rating  Sheridan  about  the 
debt,  and  insisting  that  he  must  be  paid,  the  latter 
having  played  off"  some  of  his  plausible  wheed- 
ling upon  him,  ended  by  saying  that  he  was  very 
much  in  want  of  26f,  to  pay  ihe  expenses  of 
a  journey  he  was  about  to  take,  and  he  knew 
Shaw  would  be  good-natured  enough  to  lend  it  to 
him.  ''  'Pon  my  word,"  says  Shaw,  "  this  is  too 
bad ;  afler  keeping  me  out  of  my  money  in  so 
shameful  a  manner,  you  now  have  the  face  to  ask 
me  for  more ;  but  it  won't  do :  1  must  be  paid  my 
money,  and  it  is  most  disgraceful,"  &c.  &c. 
**  My  dear  fellow,"  says  Sheridan,  "  hear  reason  ; 
the  sum  you  ask  me  for  is  a  very  considerable 
one,  whereas  I  only  ask  you  for  five  and  twenty 
pounds." 

Sidney  Smilh  and  LtMreU  compared — Smith 
particularly  amusing.  Have  rather  held  out 
against  him  hitherto,  but  this  day  he  conquered 
me,  and  1  now  am  his  victim  in  the  laughing  way 
for  life.  His  imaginatk>n  of  a  dnel  between  two 
doctors,  with  oil  of  croton  on  the  tips  of  their 
fingers,  trying  to  touch  each  other's  lips  highly 
ludicrous.  What  Rogers  says  of  Smith  very 
true,  that  whenever  the  conversation  is  getting 
dull  he  throws  in  some  touch  which  makes  it  re- 
bound and  ritre  again  as  light  as  ever.  Ward's 
artificial  efforts,  which  to  me  are  always  painful, 
made  still  more  so  by  the  contrast  to  Smith's 
natural  and  overflowing  exuberance.  Luttrell, 
too,  considerably  extinguished  to-day ;  but  there 
is  this  difference  between  Luttrell  and  Smith, 
that  after  the  former  you  remember  what  good 
things  he  said,  and  after  the  latter  you  merely 
remember  how  much  you  laughed. 

Music  and  Painting — Sharpe  mentioned  a  cu- 
rious instance  of  Walter  Scott's  indifference  to 
f pictures,  wlien  he  met  him  at  the  Louvre,  not  wil- 
ing to  spare  two  or  three  minutes  for  a  walk  to 
the  bottom  of  the  gallery,  when  it  was  the  first 
and  the  last  opportunity  he  was  likely  to  have  of 
seeing  the  "  Transfiguration,"  &.c.  &c.  In  speak- 
ing of  music,  and  the  difference  there  is  between 
the  poetical  and  musical  ear,  Wordsworth  said 
that  he  was  totally  devoid  of  the  latter,  and  for  a 
long  time  could  not  distinguish  one  tune  from 
another.  Rogers  thus  described  Lord  Holland's 
feelings  for  the  arts,  **  Painting  gives  him  no 
pleasure,  and  music  absolute  pain." 

We  continue  our  gleanings. 

Coleridge — A  poor  author,  on  receiving  from 
his  publisher  an  account  of  the  proceeds  (as  he 
expected  it  to  be)  of  a  work  he  had  published,  saw 
among  the  items,  "  Cellarage,  £3  10s  6d."  He 
thought  it  was  a  charge  for  the  trouble  of  selling 
the  700  copies,  which  he  did  not  consider  unreas- 
onable; but,  on  inquiry,  found  it  was  for  the 
cellar-room  occupied  by  his  work,  not  a  copy  of 
which  had  stirred  from  thence. 

Sidney  Smith—*'  I  shall  see  Allen,"  says  Smith, 


414 


MOORFS  OPimOm  of  his  COrSMFORAItlEa 


**  some  day  with  his  tongue  hanging  out  speech- 
less,  and  shsll  take  the  opportunity  to  stick  a  few 
principles  into  hira." 

Miraheau — Once,  when  Mirabeaa  was  answer- 
ing a  speech  of  Maury,  he  put  him^^elf  in  a 
reasoning  attitude,  and  said,  *'  Je  m'en  vais  ren- 
fermer,  M.  Manry,  dans  un  circle  vicieux."  Upon 
which  Maury  started  up,  and  exclaimed,  **  Com- 
ment! veux  tu  m'cmbrasser  7" 

Jekyll—\n  talking  of  cheap  living  he  mentioned 
a  man  who  told  him  his  eating  cost  him  almost 
nothing,  "  for  on  Sunday,"  said  he,  •*  I  always  dine 
with  my  old  friend,  and  then  eat  so  much  th»it  it 
lasts  until  Wednewday,  when  I-buy  some  tripe, 
which  I  hate  like  the  very  devil,  and  which  accord- 
ingly makes  me  so  sick  that  1  cannot  eat  any 
more  until  Sunday  again.'* 

Rogers,  on  somelmdy  remarking  that  Payne 
Knight  had  got  very  deaf,  said,  "  'Tis  from  want 
of  practice.  Knight  was  always  a  very  bad 
listener.*^ 

Scro*^  Davids  called  some  person  who  had  a 
habit  of  puffing  out  his  cheeks  when  he  spoke 
and  was  not  remarkable  for  veracity,  "The 
iEolian  lyre." 

Hdl^rand — Bobus  SmitW,  one  day,  in  conver- 
sation with  Talleyrand,  having  brought  in  some- 
how the  beauty  of  his  mother.  Talleyrand  said, 
*•  C'ctait  done  votre  pere  qui  tieta\t  pas  bien." 

The  Prince  de  Poix  was  stopped  by  a  sentry, 
and  announced  his  name.  "  Prince  de  Poix !" 
answered  the  sentry,  "  quand  vous  seriez  le  Roi 
dea  Haricots  vnus  ne  panseriez  pas  par  ici." 

An  old  acquaintance — ^  Is  your  master  at 
home  ?"— ♦*  No,  Sir,  he's  out."  "  Your  mistress  ?" 
— "  No,  Sir,  she's  out."  -  Well,  I'll  just  go  in 
and  take  an  air  of  the  fire  till  they  come.'* — 
••  Faith,  Sir,  that's  out  too." 

Anotfier — A  fellow  in  the  Marshalsea  having 
beard  his  companion  brushing  his  teeth  the  last 
thing  at  night,  and  then,  upon  waking,  at  the 
same  work  in  the  morning — ^**  Ogh  !  a  weary 
night  you  must  have  had  of  it,  Mr.  Fitzgerald." 

Charge  the  Fourth  gave  a  drawing-room. — 
Rogers  said  that  he  was  in  himself  a  sequence — 
KinsTi  queen,  and  knave. 

When  E.  Nagles  came  to  George  the  Fourth 
with  the  news  of  Bonaparte's  death,  he  said,  "  1 
have  the  pleasure  to  tell  your  Majesty  that  your 
bitterest  enemy  is  dead."  "  No !  is  she,  by  Gad  ?" 
said  the  King. 

Oure  far  wve— Mrs.  Dowdeli's  husband  used 
to  be  a  great  favorite  with  the  Pope,  who  always 
called  him  "  Caro  Doodle."  His  first  addresses 
were  paid  to  Vittoria  Odescalchi,  but  he  jilted  her ; 
and  she  had  eix  masses  said  to  enable  her  soul  to 
get  over  its  love  for  him. 

Ibdleifrand—Xyne  day,  when  Davonst  excused 
himself  for  being  too  late  because  he  had  met  with 
a  "  Pekin"  who  delayed  him,  Talleyrand  bejrged 
to  know  what  ho  meant  by  that  word.  "  Nous 
appellons  Pekin,"flaye  Davonst,  **  tout  ce  qui  n'est 
pas  militaire."  "  Oh,  oui  c*est  commechez  nou«*," 
replied  Tiilteymnd,  *'  nous  appellons  iniiitaire  tout 
ce  qw!  n'e>t  pan  civil." 

Ad(im  Smith  and  Johnson — This  account  of 
the  meeting  between  Adam  Smith  am)  Johnson  is 


[Nov., 

given  by  Smith  himself.  Johnson  began  by  a^ 
tacking  Hume.  "I  saw,"  said  Smith,  '*  this  was 
meant  at  me',  so  I  merely  put  him  right  as  to  a 
matter  of  fact."  "  Well,  what  did  he  say  ?" 
"  He  said  it  was  a  lie.*'  "  And  what  did  you  say 
to  that  ?*'  **  I  told  him  he  was  a  son  of  a  t)-^." 
Good,  this,  between  two  sages. 

Shtridan  (when  there  was  some  proposal  to  lay 
a  tax  upon  milestones) — **  It  is  an  unconstitutional 
tax,  as  thev  are  a  race  that  cannot  meet  to  re- 
monstrate. 

Denon  told  an  anecdote  of  a  man  who,  having 
been  asked  repeatedly  to  dinner  by  a  person  whom 
he  knew  to  be  but  a  shabby  Amphitryon,  went  at 
last,  and  found  the  dinner  so  meagre  and  bad  that 
he  did  not  get  a  bit  to  eat.  When  the  dishes 
were  removing  the  host  said, "  Wei),  now  the  ice 
is  broken,  I  suppose  you  will  ask  me  to  dine  with 
you  some  day?''  '*  Most  willingly."  '^Name 
your  day,  then."  "  Aujourd«hui,  par  exemple," 
answered  the  dinnerless  guest.  Lord  Holland 
told  of  a  man  remarkable  for  absence,  who,  din- 
ing once  at  the  same  sort  of  shabby  repast,  fancied 
himself  in  his  own  house,  and  began  to  apologise 
for  the  wretchedness  of  the  dinner. 

Fielding  told  us  that  when  Gouvion  St.  Cyr,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  happened  to  go 
to  some  bureau  (for  a  passport,  1  believe)  and 
gave  his  name  Monsieur  de  St.  Cyr,  the  clerk 
answered,  *«  II  n'y  a  pas  de  De.  Eh  bien !  M. 
Saint  Cyr.  11  n'y  a  pas  de  Saint.  Diable !  M. 
Cyr,  done.  II  n'y  a  pas  de  Sire:  nous  avoDS 
decapite  le  tyran.' 

Cope  mentioned  a  good  specimen  of  Engliab- 
Frencb,  and  the  astonishment  of  the  French 
people  who  heard  it,  not  conceiving  what  it  could 
mean — **  Si  je  fais,  je  fais ;  mais  si  je  fais,  je  suis 
un  Hollandais."  "  If  1  do,  I  do ;  but  if  1  do,  Pm  a 
Dutchman." 

Scott  says,  "Lord  Byron  is  getting  fond  of 
money.  He  keeps  a  box,  into  which  he  occasion- 
ally puts  sequins ;  he  has  now  collected  about 
300,  and  his  great  deligiit  (Scott  tells  me)  is  to 
open  his  box  and  contemplate  his  store.'' 

Scoit  showed  me  a  woman  whom  Bonaparte 
pronounced  to  be  the  finest  woman  in  Venice, 
and  the  Venetians,  not  agreeing  with  him,  call 
her  **  La  Bella  per  Decreto,"  adding  (as  all  the 
decrees  begin  with  Considerando),  "  Ma  senza  il 
considerando." 

Ghosts— TiiWing  of  ghosts,  Sir  Adam  said  that 
Scott  and  he  had  seen  one,  at  least :  while  thev 
were  once  drinking. together,  a  very  hideous  fei. 
low  appeared  suddenly  between  them,  whom 
neither  knew  any  thing  about,  but  whom  both  saw. 
Scott  did  not  deny  il,  but  said  they  were  both 
"  fou,"  and  not  very  capable  of  judging  whether 
it  was  a  ghost  or  not  Scott  said  that  the  only 
two  men  who  had  ever  told  him  that  they  had 
actually  seen  a  ghost  afterwards  put  an  end  to 
themselves.  One  was  Lord  Castlereagh,  who 
had  himself  mentioned  to  Scott  his  seeing  the 
'•  radiant  boy."  It  was  one  night  when  he  was 
in  barracks,  and  the  face  briolitened  gradually 
out  of  the  fire-place,  and  appronclioc!  him.  Lord 
Casilereagh  stepped  forwards  lo  it,and  it  receded 
again,  and  faded  into  the  same  place. 


1853.] 


AN  EVENT  IN  THE  LIFE  OP  LORD  BTKON. 


415 


It  is  fifenerally  stated  to  have  been  an  apparition 
mttaclied  to  the  family,  and  coming  occasionally 
to  presage  honors  and  prosperity  to  him  before 
whom  it  appeared ;  but  Lord  Castlereagh  gave  no 
0och  account  of  it  to  Scott  It  was  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  made  Lord  Castlereagh  tell  the  story 


to  Sir  Walter,  and  Lord  C.  told  it  without  hesita- 
tion, and  as  if  believing  in  it  implicitly. 

These  two  volumes  are  a  complete  mine  of 
table  talk.  There  Is  abundance  of  the  same  ore  id 
the  place  whence  we  brought  these  specimens. 


-♦♦- 


-♦♦■ 


From  Colburn's  New  Monthly. 


AN   EVENT    IN   THE   LIFE    OP   LOKD    BTRON.* 


BY   THE  AUTHOR   OF   THE   "<JNHOLY   WISH." 


I. 

It  was  early  on  a  summer's  morning,  many 
years  ago,  that  a  party  of  five  or  six  persons, 
most  of  whom  were  in  the  bloom  of  youth, 
Btood  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic  Gulf, 
about  to  embark  in  a  four-oared  gondola, 
which  was  moored  to  its  banks.  Gondoliers 
— boatmen,  as  we  should  call  them — bustled 
around.  Some  inspected  the  oars,  some  were 
getting  the  gondola  in  rowing  order,  some 
were  standing  guard  over  the  provisions  and 
other  articles  about  to  be  stowed  away  in  it ; 
and  one,  whose  countenance  wore  a  peculiar 
expression,  chiefly  because  it  possessed  but 
one  eye,  stood  close  to  the  principal  group, 
waiting  for  orders. 

It  may  be  well  to  notice  this  group  before 
proceeding  further.  Foremost  and  most 
conspicuous  of  it,  was  a  man  of  distinguished 
appearance,  and  noble,  intelligent  features. 
He  looked  about  thirty  years  of  age,  but  be 
may  have  been  a  year  or  two  older,  or  young- 
er. His  personal  characteristics  need  not  be 
more  particularly  described,  since  his  fame 
has  caused  them  to  be  familiar  to  most  class- 
es.    It  was  Lord  Byron. 

A  little  away  from  him  stood  an  Italian 
woman,  young,  and  passably  lovely.     Her 

I        ■       M      ■  1  __M.  ■!■■■  ^--^_-- 

*  It  is  believed  by  the  author  of  these  pages,  that 
the  incident  they  relate  is  scarcely,  if  at  all,  known 
in  Eoglaod.  Yet  this  little  episode  in  the  cnreer 
of  Lord  Byron  is  »urelv  worthy  of  being  recorded 
in  the  poet*B  own  land,  and  in  his  native  tongue. 
It  is  pretty  generally  kaown  abroad,  not  only  iu 
Italy :  the  author  has  heard  it  spoken  of  more  than 
once,  and  has  also  met  with  it^  minutely  detailed, 
in  a  French  work.  It  occurred  during  the  poet's 
last  Bojoarn  abroad. 


features  were  not  classically  beautiful,  but 
the  dancing  blue  eyes  that  lighted  them  up, 
and  the  profusion  of  fair  ringlets  that  adorned 
them,  rendered  the  face  more  than  pleasing. 
There  is  no  necessity  for  mentioning  her 
name  here :  it  has  been  coupled  with  Lord 
Byron's  too  long,  and  too  publicly,  for  any 
familiar  with  the  records  of  his  life  to  be  at 
a  loss  to  supply  the  deficiency.  To  call  her 
Madame  la  Contessa,  will  be  sufficient  for  us. 
Her  brother,  the  Count  G.,  was  standing 
near  her :  but  where  was  the  old  lord,  her 
husband  ?  Never  you  inquire  where  a  lady's 
liege  lord  may  be,  when  referring  to  Italy; 
be  very  sure  that  it  is  anywhere  but  by  the 
side  of  his  wife.  Two  more  gentlemen  com- 
pleted the  assemblage :  one  was  ttie  Marquis 
P.;  the  other  a  Frenchman,  Monsieur  H. ; 
passing  acquaintances  of  Lord  Byron. 

They  had  been  staying  for  a  few  days  at 
one  of  the  inhabited  islands  of  the  Adriatic. 
It  had  been  a  suddenly-got-up  little  party  of 
pleasure,  having  started  one  fine  rooming  from 
Ravenna,  in  the  gondola,  and  had  proceeded 
by  easy  sails,  now  touching  at  one  point,  now 
at  another,  to  the  place  where  they  were  for 
the  moment  located.  Their  object  this  morn- 
ing was  to  gain  one  of  the  uninhabited  itsles, 
spend  the  aay  on  it,  and  return  back  in  the 
evening.  Some  of  these  little  solitary  islands 
were  luxuriant  and  beautiful,  well  worth  the 
trouble  of  a  visit,  when  within  reach. 

The  gondoliers,  the  same  who  had  accom- 
panied them  from  Ravenna,  continued  their 
preparations  for  departure,  but  so  dreamily 
and  lazily,  that  only  to  look  on  would  put  a 
Thames  waterman  into  a  fever.    Lord  Bvron 

ft 

was  accustomed  to  Italian  idleness  and  Ital- 


416 


AN  BVSNT  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON. 


[Not., 


ian  manners ;  neirertheless  he  would  Bome- 
times  get  impatient — as  on  this  morning. 
He  leaped  into  the  gondola. 

"  Do  you  think  we  shall  get  away  to-day 
if  you  go  an  at  this  pace  ?"  he  cried,  in  Ital- 
ian. "  And  who  is  going  to  be  subjected  to 
the  sun's  force  through  your  laziness  ?" 

"  The  sun's  force  is  not  on  yet,  signor," 
on  of  the  men  ventured  to  remonstrate. 

''  But  it  will  be  soon,"  was  the  answer  of 
his  lordship,  with  an  Italian  expletive  which 
need  not  be  translated  here.  "Cyclops, 
hand  in  that  fowling-piece:  give  it  me. 
Mind  the  lines — don't  you  see  you  are  get- 
ting them  entangled  ?  Madame  la  Contessa, 
what  has  become  of  your  sketch-book?" 

She  looked  at  him  with  her  gay  blue  ejes, 
and  pointed  to  the  book  in  question,  which 
he  held  in  his  hand.  He  laughed  at  his  mis- 
take, as  he  threw  it  down  beside  him  in  the 
boat. 

"  You  are  forgetful  this  morning,"  she  ob- 
served. 

« My  thoughts  are  elsewhere,"  was  his 
reply ;  "  they  often  are.  And  more  so  to- 
day than  ordinary,  for  I  have  had  news  from 
England." 

"  Received  news  to-day ! — here?"  was  the 
exclamation. 

^*  Yes.  I  left  orders  at  Ravenna  that  if 
any  thing  came  it  should  be  sent  on  here." 

At  length  the  party  embarked.  Count  G. 
took  his  place  at  the  helm,  and  the  four 
others  arranged  themselves,  two  on  either 
side. 

*'  Which  isle  is  it  the  pleasure  of  the  sig- 
nor  that  we  make  for  ?"  inquired  one  of  the 
gondoliers,  with  a  glance  at  Lord  Byron. 

He  was  buried  in  abstraction,  and  did  not 
answer,  but  the  Frenchman  spoke. 

"  Could  we  not  push  on  to  Cherso  ?" 

"  Cherso !"  reiterated  the  count,  opening 
his  eyes  to  their  utmost  width.  "  Much  you 
know,  my  dear  friend  of  the  localities  of 
these  islands.  It  would  take  us  twelve 
months,  about,  to  get  to  Cherso  in  this  gon- 
dola." 

"  They  were  telling  us  about  the  different 
merits  of  these  isles  last  night.  What  do 
you  say,  mi- lord  ?" 

''  I  care  nothing  about  it ;  only  settle  it 
between  yourselves,"  was  Lord  Byron's  list- 
less reply. 

**  Dio  I  but  you  are  polite,  all  of  you !" 
uttered  the  marquis.  **  La  Contessa  present, 
and  you  would  decide  without  consulting 
her  r 

•'  If  you  ask  me,"  rejoined  the  lady,  "  I 
should  say  the  wiser  plan  would  be  to  leave 


it  to  the  men.     They  are  much  better  ac- 
quainted with  the  isles  than  we  are." 

The  men  laid  on -their  oars,  and  looked  up. 

"Where  are  we  to  steer  to?" 

"  To  whichever  of  the  islands  within  reacli 
you  think  best,"  replied  Lord  Byron ;  and 
their  oars  again  struck  the  water. 

"  You  say  you  have  had  news  from  Eng- 
land," observed  Count  Q.  to  Lord  Byron. 
"  Good,  I  hope." 

*'  Nothing  but  newspapers  and  reviews/' 

"  No  letters  ?" 

"  None.  Those  I  left  in  England  ax^ 
strangely  neglectful  of  me.  Forgotten  thafe 
I  am  alive  perhaps.  Well — why  should  they 
remember  it  ?" 

"  The  letters  may  have  miscarried,  or  been 
detained." 

'*  May!  Out  of  sight,  out  of  mind,  G, 
Yet  there  are  some  one  or  two  from  whom  X 
was  fool  enough  to  expect  different  conduct.*' 

^'  What  do  the  newspapers  say  ?"  inquired 
the  signora. 

"  I  have  scarcely  looked  at  them.  There's 
the  avarage  dose  of  parliamentary  news,  I 
suppose ;  a  quaniutn  iuf.  of  police " 

"No,  no,'*  she  interrupted,  "you  know 
what  I  mean.  What  do  they  say  about  you 
— the  reviews?" 

<*  Complimentary,  as  usual,"  was  the  po- 
et's reply.  "  I  wonder,"  he  continued,  with 
a  smile,  half  of  sadness,  half  of  mockery, 
"  whether  my  enemies  will  ever  be  convinced 
that  I  am  not  quite  a  wild  beast." 

*'  You  are  bitter,"  exclaimed  the  countess. 

"  Nay,"  he  returned,  *'  I  leave  bitterness 
to  them.  It  is  the  epithet  one  of  them  hon- 
ors me  with,  'caged  hyena.'  Were  it  not 
for  a  mixture  of  other  feelings,  that  combine 
to  keep  me  away,  I  would  pay  old  England 
a  speedy  visit,  and  convince  them  that  a 
wild  beast  may  bite,  if  his  puny  tormentors 
go  too  far.  By  Heaven  !  I  feel  at  times  half 
resolved  to  go !" 

**  Would  you  take  such  a  step  ligh^y  ?*' 
inquired  the  countess. 

"  England  and  some  of  her  children  have 
too  deeply  outraged  my  feelings  for  me  light- 
ly to  return  to  them,"  he  replied. 

**  How  is  it  that  they  abuse  you  ?  How  is 
it  that  they  suffer  you,  who  ought  to  be 
England's  proudest  boast,  to  remain  in  ex- 
ile ?" 

"  Bemain  in  exile  1"  was  his  ejaculation : 
'*  they  drove  me  into  it." 

"  I  have  often  thought,"  was  her  next  re- 
mark, "that  they  could  not  know  you,  as 
you  really  are." 

**  None  have  known  me,"  was  his  answer. 


186d.J 


AN  EVENT  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON. 


41? 


**  It  is  the  fate  of  some  natures  never  to  be 
understood.  I  never  have  been,  and  never 
shall  be." 

Lord  Byron  could  not  have  uttered  a  truer 
word.  Some  natures  never  are  and  never  can 
be  understood.  The  deeply  imaginative,  the 
highly  sensitive,  the  intellect  of  dreamy 
power;  a  nature  of  which  these  combined 
elements  form  the  principal  parts,  can  never 
be  comprehended  by  the  generality  of  the 
world.  It  knows  its  own  superiority;  it 
stands  isolated  in  its  own  conscious  pride. 
It  will  hold  companionship  with  others,  ap- 
parently but  as  one  of  themselves,  in  care- 
lessness, in  sociality,  in  revelry  :  but  a  still 
small  consciousness  is  never  absent  from  it, 
whispering,  even  in  its  most  unguarded  mo- 
ments, that  for  such  a  nature  there  kever 
can  be  companionship  on  earth :  never  can  it 
be  understood,  in  life,  or  after  death.  And 
of  such  a  one  was  Lord  Byron's. 

The  lady  by  his  side  in  the  boat  that  day, 
remarking  that  his  own  countrymen  could 
not  have  understood  him,  perhaps  thought 
that  she  did  ;  in  fact,  the  observation  would 
seem  to  imply  it.  The  noble  poet  could 
have  told  her  that  she  knew  no  more  of  his 
inward  nature,  his  proud  sad  heart,  his 
shrinking  sensitiveness,  than  did  those  whose 
delusion  she  deplored.  Of  such  men — ^and 
God  in  his  mercy  to  themselves  has  vouch- 
safed that  they  shall  be  rare — there  are  two 
aspects,  two  natures ;  one  for  themselves, 
the  other  for  the  world :  and  they  know  that 
in  all  the  ways  and  realities  of  life,  they  are 
appearing,  involuntarily,  in  a  false  character. 
You  who  are  not  of  this  few,  who  have  been 
blessed  with  a  mind  fitted  to  play  its  prac- 
tical part  in  the  drama  of  life,  will  probably 
not  understand  this ;  neither  can  you  under- 
stand the  bitter  feeling  of  isolation  that  forms 
part  of  such  a  nature  at  knowing  it  can 
never  be  understood,  never  be  appreciated. 

Madame  la  Contessa,  in  answer  to  Lord 
Byron's  last  remark,  spoke  out  with  all  the 
heat  and  fervor  of  her  native  land.  '*  I  should 
bum  with  impatience,  I  should  scarcely  live 
for  fever,"  were  the  passionate  words,  **  until 
I  had  convinced  them  of  their  error,  and 
shown  them  that  you  are  one  to  be  loved 
and  prized,  rather  than  hated  and  shunned." 

A  sad  smile  passed  over  the  celebrated 
lips  of  Lord  Byron.  *'  It  is  not  my  fate," 
he  said,  in  a  tone  that  told  of  irony.  **  Love 
— as  you  call  it — and  I,  were  not  destined 
by  the  stars  to  come  into  contact.  Not  one 
human  being  has  ever  looked  upon  me  with 
an  eye  of  love." 

YOL.  XXX.    NO.  m. 


She  interrupted  him  with  a  deprecatory 
exclamation. 

**  Never,"  he  persisted  ;  and  if  she  could 
have  read  the  dark  feeling  of  desolation  that 
his  own  words  awoke  within  him,  she  would 
have  marvelled  at  his  careless  aspect,  and 
the  light  Italian  proverb  that  issued  from  his 
lips.  *^  Bacio  di  bocca  spesso  cuor  non 
tocca." 

"  But  these  wicked  men  in  England  who 
rail  at,  and  traduce  you,"  resumed  the  Count- 
eas,  "  why  don't  you  throw  it  back  on  their 
own  evil  hearts?  You  have  the  power 
within  you." 

•*  /  bide  my  time,*^  was  his  answer.  "If 
I  live,  they  may  yet  repent  of  the  wrong 
they  have  done  me." 

"  But  if  you  die,"  cried  the  Italian,  in  her 
passionate  impatience — "  if  you  die  an  early 

"  Then  God's  will  be  done  1"  he  answered, 
raising  his  straw  hat,  and  leaning  barehead- 
ed over  the  side  of  the  gondola,  as  he  looked 
down  at  the  water.  They  were  much  mis- 
taken, those  who  accused  Lord  Byron, 
amongst  other  heinous  faults,  of  possessing 
no  sense  of  religion. 

The  gondoliers  were  applying  themselves 
vigorously  to  their  oars,  and  the  party  gave 
their  minds  up  to  the  enjoyment  of  dreamy 
indolence,  as  they  quickly  glided  over  the 
calm  waters  of  the  Adriatic.  At  length 
they  reached  the  island,  one  especially  lauded 
by  the  men.  The  gondola  was  made  fast  to 
the  shore,  and  Lord  Byron,  stepping  out, 
gave  his  hand  to  the  countess.  It  was  in- 
deed a  lovely  place.  Scarcely  half  a  mile  in 
length,  and  uninhabited,  the  green  grass  was 
soft  as  velvet;  tall  bushes,  and  shrubs  of 
verdure,  were  scattered  there,  affording  a 
shade  from  the  rays  of  the  sun  ;  beautiful 
flowers  charmed  the  eye  ;  various  birds  flew 
in  the  air ;  a  small  stream  of  water,  abound- 
ing in  fish,  ran  through  the  land,  and  all 
seemed  loveliness  and  peace. 

The  gondoliers  proceeded  to  unload  the 
boat.  Two  good-sized  hampers,  one  contain- 
ing wine,  the  other  provisions,  lines  for  fish- 
ing, guns,  a  book  or  two,  the  contessa's 
sketch-book,  crayons,  <&o.,  were  severally 
landed.  Added  to  which,  there  were  some 
warmer  wrappings  for  the  lady,  lest  the 
night  should  come  on  before  their  return; 
and  there  was  also  a  large  cask  of  spring 
water,  for  although  the  island  they  landea 
on  contained  water,  some  of  the  neighbor- 
ing ones  did  not,  and  when  they  started,  the 
gondoliers  did  not  know  which  they  should 

27 


41S 


A^  EVENT  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON. 


[Nov. 


inalse  for.  The  cjondola  was  emptied  of  all, 
save  its  oars,  and  was  left  secured  to  the 
bank. 

*'  And  now  for  our  programme,"  exclaim- 
ed Lord  Byron.  '*  What  is  to  be  the  order 
of  the  day  ?*' 

"  I  shall  have  an  hour's  angling,"  observ- 
ed Count  G.,  beginning  to  set  in  order  the 
fishing-tackle.  **  By  the  body  of  Bacchus, 
though !  I  have  forgotten  the  bait." 

"just  like  you,  G. !"  laughed  Lord  Byron. 

"There  is  some  bait  here,"  observed  one 
of  the  gondoliers.  **  My  lord  had  it  brought 
down." 

'*  I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you,"  said  the 
count  to  Lord  Byron,  joyfully  taking  up  the 
bait.     "  I  remember  now  where  I  left  it." 

"  Ay,  I  have  to  think  for  all  of  you,"  was 
his  observation.  "Marquis,  how  do  you 
mean  to  kill  time  ?" 

"  In  killing  birds.  H.  and  I  propose  to 
have  a  shot  or  two.     Will  you  join  us?*' 

"  Not  I,"  answered  Lord  Byron  :  "  I  have 
brought  my  English  papers*  with  me.  You 
must  lay  thd  repast  in  the  best  spot  you  can 
find,"  he  continued  to  the  men.  "  We  shall 
be  ready  for  it  soon,  I  suppose." 

The  party  dispersed.  Count  G.,  with  one 
of  the  gondoliers,  to  the  stream  ;  the  mar- 
quis and  the  Frenchman  to  the  remotest 
parts  df  the  island,  fully  intending  to  kill  all 
they  came  in  sight  of;  the  countess  seated 
herself  on  a  low  bank,  her  sketch-book  on 
her  knee,  and  prepared  her  drawing  mater- 
ials ;  whilst  the  ill-starred  English  nobleman 
opened  a  review,  and  threw  himself  on  the 
grass  close  by. 

Do  not  cavil  at  the  word  "  ill-starred :" 
for,  ill -starred  he  eminently  was,  in  all,  save 
hb  genius.  It  is  true  that  compensates  for 
much,  but  in  the  social  conditions  of  life,  few 
have  been  so  unhappy  as  was  Lord  Byron. 
It  was  a  scene  of  warfare  with  himself  or 
with  others,  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave. 
As  a  child,  he  was  not  loved;  for  it  is  not 
the  shy  and  the  passionate  who  make  them- 
selves friends.  His  mother,  so  we  may 
gather  from  the  records  left  to  us,  was  not  a 
judicious  trainer;  now  indulging  him  in  a  rep- 
rehensible degree  ;  now  thwarting  him,  and 
with  fits  of  violence  that  terrified  him.  His 
greatest  misfortune  was  his  deformity,  slight 
as  it  was,  for  it  was  ever  present  to  his  mind 
night  and  day,  wounding  his  sensitiveness  in 
the  most  tender  point.  An  imaginative,  in- 
tellectual nature,  such  as  his,  is  always  a 
vain  one  :  not  the  vanity  of  a  little  mind,  but 
that  of  one  conscious  of  its  superiority  over 
the  general  multitude.    Kone  can  have  an 


idea  of  the  blight  such  a  personal  defect  will 
throw  over  the  mind  of  its  sufferer,  render- 
ing the  manners,  in  most  cases,  awkward  and 
reserved.  Before  his  boyhood  was  over, 
came  his  deep,  enduring,  unrequited  love  for 
Miss  Chaworth — a  love  which,  there  is  no 
doubt,  colored  the  whole  of  his  future  exist- 
ence, even  to  its  last  hour.  A  few  years  of 
triumph  followed,  when  all  bowed  down  to 
his  surpassing  genius  :  a  triumph  which,  how- 
ever gratifying  it  may  have  been  to  his  van- 
ity, touched  not  his  heart ;  for  that  heart  was 
prematurely  seared,  and  the  only  one  whose 
appreciation  could  have  set  it  throbbing,  and 
whose  praise  would  have  been  listened  for  as 
the  greatest  bliss  on  earth,  was,  to  him, 
worse  than  nothing.  Then  came  bis  mar- 
riage, and  that  need  not  be  commented  on 
here :  few  unions  have  brought  less  happi- 
ness. His  affairs  also  became  embarrassed. 
None  can  read  those  lines  touching  upon  this 
fact,  without  a  painful  throb  of  pity :  and,  be 
assured,  that  when  he  penned  them,  the 
greatest  anguish  was  seated  in  his  heart.  I 
forget  what  poem  the  lines  are  in,  neither  can 
I  remember  them  correctly,  but  they  run 
something  in  this  fashion — 

And  he,  poor  fellow,  had  enough  to  wound  Ltro. 

•  ■•••■  • 

It  was  a  trying  moment,  that  which  found  him 
Standing  alone  beside  his  desolate  hearth, 

Whilst  all  bis  household  god:?  lay  shiver'd  round 
him. 

They  may  be  in  "  Childe  Harold"— they 
may  be  in  "  Don  Juan" — they  may  be  in  a 
poem  to  themselves  :  no  matter  :  they  refer 
to  a  very  unhappy  period  of  his  chequered 
life.  Abandoned  by  those  he  may  have  ex- 
pected to  cherish  him ;  abused  and  railed  at 
by  the  public,  who  took  upon  themselves  to 
judge  what  they  knew  nothing  of;  stung  to 
the  quick  by  accusations,  most  of  which  were 
exaggerated,  and  some  wholly  false,  he  once 
more  went  into  exile.  A  foreign  land  be- 
came  his  home,  and  there,  far  from  all  he 
cared  for,  be  led  a  solitary  and  almost  isola- 
ted existence.  His  life  had  but  one  hope 
that  ever  cheered  it ;  but  one  event  to  look 
forward  to,  as  a  break  to  its  monotonous  out- 
line, and  that,  was  the  arrival  of  letters  and 
news  from  England.  Lord  Byron,  above  all 
others,  required  the  excitement  of  fame  to 
sustain  him :  his  vanity  was  constitutionally 
great,  and  he  had  been  brought,  in  many 
ways,  before  the  public.  Only  this  one  break 
— and  how  poor  it  was ! — to  fill  the  void  in 
his  life  and  heart  1    He  literally  yearned  for 


1858.] 


AN  EVENT  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  B7R0N. 


410 


EnclRnd — he  yearned  to  know  what  was 
said,  what  thought  of  him — he  yearned  for 
the  hour  that  should  set  him  right  with  his 
accusers.  It  has  been  £aid  that  he  met 
abu^e  with  contempt,  scorn  with  indiffer- 
ence :  yes,  but'only  to  the  world. 

That  an  hour  would  come  when  he  should 
be  compensated  for  his  harsh  treatment, 
when  England  ,would  be  convinced  he  was 
not  the  fiend  she  described  him,  Lord  Byron 
never  doubted.  But  those  dreams  were  not 
to  be  realized.  The  unhappy  nobleman  lived 
on,  in  that  foreign  country, a  stranger  amongst 
strangers.  There  was  nothing  to  bring  him 
eicitement,  there  was  no  companionship,  no 
appreciation:  it  was  enough  to  make  him 
gnaw  his  heart,  and  die.  He  formed  an  ac- 
quaintance with  one,  whom  the  world  was 
pleased  to  declare  must  have  brought  him  all 
the  consolation  he  required.  They  spoke  of 
what  they  little  understood.  It  may  have 
served  to  while  away  a  few  of  his  weary 
hours*  nothing  more :  all  passion,  all  power 
to  love,  had  passed  away  in  that  dream  of  his 
early  life.  A  short  period  of  this  unsatisfac- 
tory existence,  and  the  ill-fated  poet  went  to 
Greece — to  die.  As  he  had  lived,  in  exile 
from  his  own  land,  where  he  had  so  longed 
to  be,  so  did  he  die.  Could  he  have  fore- 
seen this  early  death,  he  probably  would 
have  gone  home  long  before — or  not  have 
quitted  it. 

And  there  he  reclined  on  the  grass  this 
day,  in  that  uninhabited  island,  poring  over 
the  bitter  attacks  of  the  critics  on  his  last 
work — drinking  in  the  remarks  t^ome  did  not 
scruple  to  make  upon  himself  personally,  and 
upon  the  life  he  was  le^iding.  The  lady 
there,  busy  over  her  tsketching,  addressed  a 
remark  to  him  from  time  to  time,  but  found 
she  could  not  get  an  answer. 

At  length  they  were  called  to  dine.  Ere 
they  sat  down,  all  articles,  not  wanted,  were 
returned  to  the  gondola.  Guns,  lines,  books, 
newspapers — every  thing  was  put  in  order, 
and  placed  in  the  boat,  the  sketch-book  and 
pencils  of  the  signora  alone  excepted. 

''What  sport  have  you  had?"  inquired 
Lord  Byron,  sauntering  towards  his  shooting 
friends. 

•*  Oh,  passable — very  passable." 

"  But  Where's  the  spoil  ?" 

"  Every  thing's  taken  to  the  gondola,"  re- 
plied the  marquis,  speaking  very  rapidly. 

"  I  saw,  borne  towards  the  gondola,  a  bag 
full  of— emptiness,"  observed  Count  G.  "I 
hope  that  was  not  the  spoil  you  bagged." 

"  What  fish  have  you  caught  ?"  retorted 
the  marquis,  who,  being  a  wretched  sports- 


man, was  keenly  alive  to  all  jokes  upon  the 
point. 

"  Not  one,"  grumbled  G.  "  I  don't  mind 
confessing  it.  I  have  not  had  a  single  bite. 
I  shall  try  a  different  sort  of  bait  next  time : 
thb  is  not  good." 

They  sat  down  to  table — if  a  cloth  spread 
upon  the  grass  could  be  called  such.  A 
party  carri  it  might  have  been,  for  all  the 
interest  Lord  Byron  seemed  to  take  in  it. 
He  often  had  these  moody  fits  after  receiving 
news  from  England.  But,  as  the  dinner  pro- 
gressed, and  the  generous  wine  began  to 
circulate,  he  forgot  his  abstraction  ;  his  spirits 
rose  to  excitement,  and  he  became  the  very 
life  of  the  table. 

'*One  toast  1"  he  exclaimed,  when  the  meal 
was  nearly  over — **  one  toast  before  we  re- 
sign our  places  to  the  gondoliers  1" 

'*  Let  each  give  his  own,"  cried  Count  G., 
*'and  we  will  drink  them  together." 

"  Agreed,"  laughed  the  party.  "  Marquis, 
you  begin." 

"  By  the  holy  chair !  I  have  nothing  to 
grive.  Well :  the  game  we  did  not  bag  to- 
day." 

A  roar  of  laughter  followed.  "  Now  H,  ?" 
*•  Fj  anco,  la  belle  France,  land  of  lands  1" 
aspirated  the  Frenchman,  casting  the  balls 
of  his  eyes  up  into  the  air,  and  leaving  visi- 
ble only  the  whites,  as  a  patriotic  French- 
man is  apt  to  do,  when  going  into  raptures 
over  his  native  country. 

"  II  diavolo,"  continued  young  G.,  in  his 
turn. 

**  Order,  order,"  cried  Lord  Byron.  ^  * 
"  I  will  give  it,"  growled  G.,  who  had  not 
yet  recovered  his  good  humor.     "  I  owe  him 
something  for  my  ill  luck  to-day.     II  diavo- 
lo." 

'*  And  you  ?"  said  Lord  Byron,  turning  to 
her  who  sat  on  his  right  hand. 

'*What!  am  I  to  be  included  in  your 
toast-giving  ?"  she  laughed.  **  Better  man- 
ners to  you  all,  then." 

"G.,  you  deserved  that.  We  wait  for 
you,  my  lord." 

"  My  insane  traduoers.  May  they  find 
their  senses  at  last."  And  Lord  Byron 
drained  his  glass  to  the  bottom. 

Tho  party  rose,  quitted  the  spot,  and  dis- 
persed about  the  island.  The  gentlemen  to 
smoke,  and  the  lady  to  complete  her  sketch, 
which  wanted  filling  in.  The  gondoliers  took 
the  vacated  place:?,  and  made  a  hearty  meal. 
They  then  cleared  away  the  things,  and 
placed  them  in  the  gondola,  ready  to  return. 
It  may  have  been  from  one  to  two  hours 
afterwards,  that  Lord  Byron  and  the  French- 


420 


AN  EVENT  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON. 


[Not, 


man  were  standing  by  the  side  of  the  con- 
lessa,  who  wns  dreamily  enjoying  the  calm- 
ness of  an  Italian  evening.  They  were  in- 
quiring whether  she  was  ready  for  departure, 
for  the  lime  was  drawing  on,  when  Count  G., 
her  brother,  appeared  in  the  distance,  run- 
ning, shouting,  and  gesticulating  violently, 
as  he  advanced  towards  them. 

**  Of  all  the  events,  great  and  small,  that 
can  hfippen  on  this  blessed  world  of  ours, 
what  can  have  put  an  Italian  into  such  a 
fever  as  that  ?"  muttered  Lord  Byron. 
"  What's  up  now  ?"  he  called  out  to  G. 

"  The  gondola  1  the  gondola  !  he  stuttered 
and  panted ;  and  so  great  was  his  excite- 
ment, that  the  countess,  unable  to  compre- 
hend his  meaning,  turned  as  white  as  death, 
and  seized  the  arm  of  Lord  Byron. 

"  Well,  what  of  the  gondola  ?"  demanded 
the  latter,  petulantly.  **  You  might  speak 
plainly,  I  think ;  and  not  come  terrifying  the 
countess  in  this  manner.  Is  it  sunk,  or 
blown  up,  or  what  ?" 

"  It's  worse,"  reared  the  count.  "  It  has 
gone  away — broken  from  its  moorings.  It 
is  a  league  and  a  half  distant  by  this  time." 

Lord  Byron  took  in  the  full  meaning  of 
his  words  on  the  instant,  and  all  that  they 
could  convey  to  the  mind — the  embarrass- 
ment of  their  position,  its  unpleasantness, 
and — ay — perhaps  its  peril.  He  threw  the 
arm  of  the  lady  from  him,  with  much  less 
ceremony  than  he  would  have  used  in  any 
calmer  moment,  and  flew  towards  the  shore, 
the  Frenchman  and  the  Italian  tearing  after 
him. 

Oh  yes,  it  was  quite  true.  There  was  the 
gondola,  nearly  out  of  sight,  drifting  ma- 
jestically over  the  Adriatic.  It  had  broken 
its  fastenings,  and  had  gone  away  of  its  own 
accord,  consulting  nobody's  convenience  and 
pleasure  but  its  own.  The  four  gondoliers 
stood  staring  after  it,  in  the  very  height  of 
dismay.     Lord  Byron  addressed  then. 

"  Whose  doing  is  this  ?  he  inquired. 
"  Who  pretended  to  fasten  the  gondola  ?'' 

A  shower  of  exclamations,  and  gestures, 
and  protestations  interrupted  him.  Of  course 
**  nobody"  had  done  it:  nobody  ever  does  do 
any  thing.  They  had  all  fastened  it;  and 
fastened  it  securely  ;  and  the  private  opinion 
of  some  of  them  was  given  forth,  that  no- 
body had  accomplished  the  mischief  save, 
il  diavolo. 

*'  Just  so,"  cried  Lord  Byron.  '*  You  in- 
yoked  him,  you  know,  G." 

"  It  would  be  much  better  to  consider 
what's  to  be  done,  than  to  talk  nonsense/' 


retorted  the   count,   who  was  not  of  the 
sweetest  temper. 

And  Lord  Byron  burst  into  an  uncon- 
trollable fit  of  laughter,  not  at  him,  but  at 
beholding  how  the  false  teeth  of  the  mar- 
quis chattered,  when  he  now,  for  the  first 
time,  was  made  acquainted  with  the  calamity. 

"  We  shall  never  get  away  again !  We 
shall  be  forced  to  stop  on  this  dreadful  isl- 
land  for  ever — and  with  nothing  to  eat !" 
groaned  the  marquis.  '*  Mi-lurd,  what  is  to 
be  done  ?" 

Lord  Byron  did  not  reply  ;  but  one  accus- 
tomed to  his  countenance  might  have  read 
the  deepest  perplexity  there ;  for  wild,  un- 
defined ideas  of  famine  were  flitting  like 
shadows  across  his  own  brain. 

Their  position  was  undoubtedly  perilous. 
Left  on  that  uninhabited  isle,  without  susten- 
ance or  means  of  escape,  the  only  hope  tbcj 
could  encourage  was,  that  some  vessel  might 
pass  and  perceive  them  :  perhaps  a  pleasure 
party,  like  their  own,  might  be  making  for 
the  islands.  But  this  hope  was  a  very  for- 
lorn one,  for  weeks  might  elapse  ere  that 
was  the  case.  They  had  no  covering,  save 
what  they  had  on  ;  even  the  wrappings  of 
the  countess  were  in  the  unlucky  gondola. 

"  Can  yoa  suggest  no  means  of  escape  ?" 
again  implored  the  marquis  of  Lord  Byron, 
to  whom  all  the  party,  as  with  one  accord, 
seemed  to  look  for  succor,  as  if  conscious 
they  were  in  the  presence  of  a  superior 
mind.  They  thought  that  if  any  could  de- 
vise a  way  of  escape,  it  must  be  he.  But 
there  they  erred.  They  had  yet  to  learn 
that  for  ail  the  practical  uses  of  every-day 
life,  none  are  so  entirely  helpless  as  these 
minds  of  inward  pride  and  power.  There 
was  probably  not  a  single  person  then  pres- 
ent, who  could  Bot,  upon  an  emergency, 
have  acted  far  more  to  the  purpose  then 
could  Lord  Byron. 

"There's  nothing  to  be  suggested,"  io- 
terrupled  one  or  two  of  the  boatmen.  *'  We 
cannot  help  ourselves:  we  have  no  means 
of  help.  We  must  watch  for  a  sail,  or  an 
oar,  passing,  and  if  none  see  us,  we  must 
stay  here  and  die." 

Lord  Byron  turned  to  the  men,  and  spoke 
in  a  low  voice.  "  Do  not  be  discouraged," 
he  said :  "  if  ever  there  was  a  time  when 
your  oft-quoted  saying  ought  to  be  practi- 
cally remembered,  it  is  now.  *'  Asutaio,  e 
Dio  I'asutero." 

The  first  suggestion  was  made  by  the  mar- 
quis. He  proposed  that  a  raft  should  be 
constructed,   sufficient  to  carry  one  person, 


1863.] 


AN  EVENT  m  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  B7&0N. 


421 


who  might  then  go  in  search  of  assistance. 
This  was  very  good  in  theory,  but  when  they 
came  to  talk  of  practice,  it  was  found  that  if 
there  had  been  any  wood  on  the  island  suit- 
able for  the  purpose,  which  there  was  not, 
they  had  neither  tools  nor  means  to  fashion 
it. 

"  At  all  events,"  resumed  the  marquis, 
"  let  us  hoist  a  signal  of  distress,  and  then, 
if  any  vessel  should  pass,  it  will  see  us/' 

"  It  may,  you  mean,"  returned  Lord  By- 
ron. "  But  what  are  we  to  do  for  a  pole  ? 
Suppose,  marquis*  we  tie  a  flag  to  you  ;  you 
are  the  tallest." 

*^  Where  are  you  to  6nd  a  flag  ?"  added 
the  count,  in  perplexity.  *'  All  our  things 
have  gone  off  in  that  cursed  gondola." 

"Dio  miol"  uttered  the  half- crazed  mar- 
quis. 

"I  once,"  said  Lord  Byron,  musingly, 
"  swam  across  the  Hellespont.  I  might  try 
my  skill  again  now,  and  perhaps  gain  one  of 
the  neighboring  isles." 

And  to  what  good  if  the  signor  did  at- 
empt  it  ?"  inquired  one  of  the  gondoliers, 
"  smce  the  immediate  isles  are,  like  this,  un- 
inhabited. That  would  not  further  our 
escape,  or  his." 

"  Can  none  of  you  fellows  think  of  any 
thing  ?"  asked  the  count,  impatiently,  of  the 
gondoliers,.  "You  should  be  amply  re- 
warded." 

"  The  signor  need  not  speak  of  reward," 
answered  Cyclops,  the  one-eyed  boatman : 
and  it  may  be  stated  that  *'  Cyclops"  was 
merely  a  name  bestowed  upon  him  by  the 
public,  suggested  by  his  infirmity.  "  We 
are  as  anxious  to  escape  as  he  is,  for  we 
h«ve  wives  and  families,  who  must  starve, 
if  we  perish.  Never  let  the  signor  talk 
about  reward." 

"  The  gondola  must  have  been  most  care- 
lessly fastened,"  growled  the  marquis. 

''  Had  it  sunk,  instead  of  floated,  we  should 
have  known  it  was  caused  by  the  weight  of 
your  birds,"  cried  Lord  Byron. 

"  There  was  not  a  single  bird  in  it,*'  re- 
joined the  marquis,  too  much  agitated,  now, 
to  care  for  his  renown  as  a  sportsman. 

"  Then  what  in  the  world  did  you  do  with 
them  ?  There  must  be  a  whole  battue  of 
dead  game  down  yonder." 

"  You  are  merry  !"  uttered  the  lady,  re- 
proachfully, to  Lord  Byron. 

"  What  is  the  use  of  being  sad,  and  show- 
ing it  ?  was  his  answer.  *'  All  the  groans 
extant  won't  bring  us  aid." 

The  night  was  drawing  on  apace,  and  the 
question  was  raised,  how  were  they  to  pass 


it?  The  gentlemen,  though  a  little  extra 
clothing  would  have  been  acceptable,  might 
have  managed  without  any  serious  inconven- 
ience ;  but  there  was  the  lady  I  They 
seated  her  as  comfortably  as  circumstances 
permitted,  under  shelter  of  some  bushes, 
with  her  head  upon  a  low  bank,  and  Lord 
Byron  took  ofl^  his  coat,  a  light  summer  one, 
and  wrapped  her  in  it.  She  earnestly  pro- 
tested against  this,  arguing  that  all  ought  to 
fare  alike,  and  that  not  one,  even  herself, 
should  be  aided  at  the  inconvenience  ot  an- 
other. And  the  last  argument  she  brought 
in  was,  that .  he  might  catch  his  death  of 
cold. 

**  And  of  what  moment  would  that  be  ?' 
was  his  reply.  **  I  should  leave  nobody  be- 
hind to  mourn  or  miss  me." 

Few  of  them,  probably,  had  ever  spent 
such  a  night  as  that.  Tormented  by  physi- 
cal discomfort  without,  by  anxious  suspense 
within,  for  the  greater  portion  of  them  there 
was  no  sleep.  Morning  dawned  at  last — 
such  a  dawn  !  It  found  them  as  the  night 
had  left  them,  foodless,  shelterless,  and  with 
hope  growing  less  and  less.  It  was  a  mer- 
cy, they  said  amongst  themselves,  that  there 
was  water  in  the  island.  And  so  it  was  ;  for 
an  unquenched  thirst,  under  Italia's  sun,  is 
grievous  to  be  borne. 

It  was  in  the  afternoon  of  this  day,  that  a 
loud,  joyful  cry  from  Cyclops  caused  every 
living  soul  to  rush  towards  him,  with  eyes 
full  of  brightness,  and  hearts  beating,  for 
they  surely  thought  that  a  sail  was  in  sight. 
And  there  were  no  bounds  to  the  anger  and 
sarcasm  showered  upon  poor  Cyclops,  when 
it  was  found  that  his  cry  of  joy  proceeded 
only  from  the  stupid  fact  of  his  having  found 
the  water- cask. 

"  You  are  a  fool,  Cyclops,"  observed  the 
Count  G.,  in  his  own  emphatic  language. 

'*  I  supposed  it  had  gone  off  in  the  gondo- 
la," apologised  Cyclops.  "  I  never  thought 
of  looking  into  this  overshadowed  little 
creek,  and  there  it  has  been  ever  since  yes- 
terday." 

''And  what  if  it  has?"  screamed  the 
Count.  **  Heaven  and  earth,  man !  are  you 
losing  your  senses  ?     We  cannot  eat  that." 

"  And  we  can't  get  astride  it  and  swim 
off  to  safety,"  added  the  marquis*  fully  join- 
ing in  his  friend's  indignation.  But  the  more 
practical  Frenchman  caught  Cyclops'  hand : 

'*  My  brave  fellow  1"  he  exclaimed,  "I  see 
the  project.  You  think  that  by  the  help  of 
this  cask  you  may  be  enabled  to  bring  us 
succor." 

**  I  will  try  it/'  uttered  the  man ;  and  the 


422 


AW  EVENT  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON. 


[Nor. 


others  comprehended,  with  some  difficulty, 
the  idea  that  was  agitating  Cyclops'  brain. 
He  though  he  could  convert  the  cask  into  a 
**  sort  of  boat,"  he  explained. 

"  A  sort  of  boat !"  ihey  echoed. 
"  And  I  will  venture  in  it,"  continued  the 
gondolier.     *•  If  I  can  get  to  one  of  the  in- 
habited Isles,  our  peril  will  be  at  an  end." 

"  It  may  cost  you  your  life,  Cyclops," 
said  Lord  Byron. 

"  But  it  may  save  yours,  signor,  and  that 
of  all  here.  And  for  my  own  life,  it  is  being 
risked  by  famine  now." 

"  You  are  a  noble  fellow !"  exclaimed 
Lord  Byron.  "If  you  can  command  the 
necessary  courage " 

"  I  toill  command  it,  signor,"  interrupted 
the  man.  **  Which  of  you  fellows,"  he  con- 
tinued, turning  to  the  gondoliers,  "  will  help 
me  to  hoist  this  cask  ashore  ?" 

"  Stay  I"  urged  Lord  Byron.  "  You  .will 
have  need  of  all  your  energy  and  strength, 
Cyclops,  if  you  start  on  this  expedition ; 
therefore  husband  them.  You  can  direct,  if 
you  will,  but  let  others  work." 

And  Cyclops  saw  the  good  sense'  of  the 
argument,  and  acquiesced. 

There  were  two  large  clasp-knives  among 
the  four  boatmen,  and,  by  their  help,  a  hole 
was  cut  in  the  cask,  converting  it  into — 
well,  it  could  not  be  called  a  boat,  or  a  raft, 
or  a  tub— converting  it  into  a  something 
that  floated  on  the  deep.  The  strongest 
sticks  that  could  be  found,  were  cut  as  sub- 
stitutes for  a  pair  of  oars ;  the  frail  vessel 
was  launched,  and  the  adventurous  Cyclops 
hoisted  himself  into  it. 

They  stood  on  the  edge  of  the  island,  no- 
bles and  gondoliers,  in  agonizing  dread,  ex- 
pecting to  see  the  cask  engulfed  in  the  wa- 
ters, and  the  man  struggling  with  them  for 
his  life.  But  it  appeared  to  move  steadily 
onwards.  It  seemed  almost  impossible  that 
so  small  and  frail  a  thing  could  bear  the 
weight  of  a  man  and  live.  But  it  did,  and 
pursued  its  way  on,  on ;  far  away  on  the 
calm  blue  sea.  Perhaps,  God  was  prosper- 
ing it. 

Suddenly,  a  groan,  a  screaja,  or  something 
of  both,  broke  from  the  lips  of  all.  The 
strangely-constructed  bark,  which  had  now 
advanced  as  far  as  the  eye  could  well  follow 
it,  appeared  to  capsize,  after  wavering  and 
struggling  with  the  water. 

"  It  was  our  last  chance  for  life,"  sobbed 
the  countess,  sinking  on  the  bank  in  utter 
despair. 

"  I  do  not  think  it  went  down,  signorina" 
observed  one  of  the  gondoliers,  who  was  re- 


markable for  possessing  a  good  eyesight 
"  The  waves  rose,  and  hid  it  from  our  view, 
but  I  do  not  believe  it  was  capsized." 

*'  I  am  sure  it  was,"  answered  several  de- 
spairing voices.  "  What  does  the  English 
lord  say  ?" 

"  I  fear  there  is  no  hope,"  rejoined  Lord 
Byron,  sadly.  "  But  my  sight  is  none  of 
the  best,  and  scarcely  carries  me  to  so  great 
a  distance." 


II. 


The  small,  luxuriant  island  lay  calm  and 
still  in  the  bright  moonlight.  The  gondo- 
liers were  stretched  upon  the  shore  sleep- 
ing, each  with  his  face  turned  to  the  water, 
.as  if  they  had  been  looking  for  help,  and  had 
fallen  asleep  watching.  Near  to  them  lay 
the  forms  of  three  of  their  employers ;  and, 
pacing  about,  as  if  the  mind's  restlessness 
permitted  not  of  the  body's  quietude,  was 
Lord  Byron ;  dreamily  moving  hither  and 
thither,  musing  as  he  walked,  his  brow  con- 
tracted, and  his  eye  dark  with  care.  Who 
can  tell  what  were  his  thoughts  —  the 
thoughts  of  that  isolated  man  ?  Stealthily 
he  would  pass  the  sleeping  forms  of  his  com- 
panions; not  caring  so  much  to  disturb 
their  rest,  as  that  he  might  have  no  witness- 
es of  his  hour  of  solitude.  Had  they  been 
sleepless  watchers,  the  look  of  sadness 
would  not  have  been  suffered  to  appear  on 
his  brow.  Not  far  off,  reclined  the  contes- 
sa,  her  head  resting  on  the  low  bank.  She 
had  fallen  asleep  in  that  position,  overcome 
with  hunger  and  weariness,  and  her  features 
looked  cold  and  pale  in  the  moonlight.  Lord 
Byron  hailed  as  he  neared  her,  and  bent 
down  his  face  till  it  almost  touched  hers, 
willing  to  ascertain  if  she  really  slept.  Not 
a  movement  disturbed  the  tranquilHty  of  the 
features,  and,  were  it  not  for  the  soft  breath- 
ing, he  might  have  fancied  that  life  had  left 
her.  There  was  no  sound  In  the  island  to 
disturb  her  sleep ;  all  around  was  still  as 
death  ;  when,  suddenly,  a  sea-bird  flew 
across  over  their  heads,  uttering  its  shrill 
scream.  Her  sleep  at  once  became  dis- 
turbed :  she  started,  shivered,  and  Anally 
awoke. 

"  What  was  that  ?"  she  exclaimed. 

"  Only  a  sea-bird,"  he  replied.  "  I  am 
sorry  it  disturbed  you,  for  you  were  in  a 
sound  sleep." 

**  And  in  the  midst  of  a  delightful  dream," 
she  answered,  "  for  I  thought  we  were  in 
safety.  I  dreamt  we  were  all  of  us  back 
again :  not  where  we  started  from  to  come 


1868.] 


AN  EVENT  IN  THE  UFE  OF  LORD  BTRON. 


428 


here,  bat  in  your  palace  at  Ravenna,  and 
there  seemed  to  be  some  cause  for  rejoicing, 
for  we  were  in  the  height  of  merriment.  And 
Cyclops  was  sitting  with  us  ;  sitting  with  us, 
as  one  of  ourselves,  and  reading — don*t  laugh 
when  you  hear  it — one  of  your  great  English 
newspapers." 

He  did  not  laugh.  He  was  not  in  a 
laughing  mood. 

**  Do  you  believe  in  dreams  ?"  she  con- 
tinued. ''  Do  you  think  this  one  is  an  omen 
of  good,  or  ill  ?     Will  it  come  true,  or  not  ?" 

He  smiled  now.  "  Those  sort  of  dreams 
are  no  omens,"  he  replied.  "It  was  induced 
only  by  your  waking  thoughts.  That  which 
you  bad  been  ardently  wishing  for,  was  re- 
pictured  in  the  dream. 

"  I  have  heard  you  say,"  she  continued, 
"that  what  influences  the  mind  in  the  day, 
influences  the  dreams  in  the  night.  Is  it 
so?" 

"  When  the  subject  is  one  that  has  con- 
tinued and  entire  hold  upon  us,  most  proba* 
bly  a  sad  one ;  never  absent  from  our  heart, 
lying  there  and  cankering  it ;  never  told  to, 
and  never  suspected  by  others:  then,  our 
dreams  are  influenced  by  our  waking 
thoufirhts." 

**  You  discovered  this,  did  you  not,  in 
early  life  ?"  she  asked. 

"  Ay,  ay  !"  he  answered,  turning  from  her 
sight,  and  dashing  the  hair  from  his  troubled 
brow.  Need  it  be  questioned  whose  form 
rose  before  him,  when  it  is  known,  though 
perhaps  by  few,  for  the  fact  was  never  men- 
tioned by  himself  but  once,  that  his  dreams 
/or  years  had  been  of  Mary  Ann  Chaworth. 

"  Oh,  but  it  will  be  horrible  to  die  thus  of 
famine  I"  she  exclaimed,  her  thoughts  revert- 
ing to  all  the  frightful  realities  of  their  posi- 
tion. 

"  Do  not  despair  yet,"  he  replied.  '*  While 
there  is  life,  there  is  hope.  That  truth  most 
indisputably  applies  to  our  position  here,  if 
it  ever  applied  to  any." 

He  resumed  his  restless  pacing  of  the 
earth,  leaving  the  countess  to  renew  her 
slumbers,  if  she  could.  And  stie  endeavored 
to  do  80,  repeating  to  herself,  by  way  of  con- 
solation, the  saying  which  he  had  uttered, 
"  L'ultima  che  si  perde  h  la  speranza." 

The  long  night  passed ;  the  first  hours  of 
morning  followed;  and,  still,  the  means  of 
escape  came  not.  They  had  been  more  than 
forty  hours  without  food,  and  had  begun  to 
experience  some  of  the  horrible  pangs  of 
famine.  The  only  one  of  all  the  party  now 
asleep,  was  Lord  Byron.  He  was  worn  out 
with  fatigue  and  vain  expectation.     The  re- 


mainder of  the  unfortunate  sufferers  stood  on 
the  edge  of  the  isle,  straining  their  eyes  over 
the  waters,  for  the  hundredth  time. 

Gradually,  very  gradually,  a  speck  ap- 
peared on  the  verge  of  the  horizon.  It 
looked,  at  first,  like  a  little  cloud,  bo  faint 
and  small  that  it  might  be  something,  or  it 
might  be  delusion.  The  gondolier,  he  with 
the  quick  sight,  pointed  it  out.  Then  an- 
other gondolier  discerned  it,  then  the  third, 
then  Count  G.  Finally,  they  all  distin- 
guished it.  Something  was  certainly  there  : 
but  what  ? 

A  long  time — or  it  seemed  long — of  ago- 
nized doubt ;  suspense  ;  hope  ;  and  they  saw 
it  clearly.  A  vessel  of  some  sort  was  bear- 
ing direct  towards  them.  The  lady  walked 
away,  and  aroused  Lord  Byron  from  his 
heavy  sleep. 

**  You  have  borne  up  better  than  any  of 
us,"  she  said,  "though  I  do  believe  your 
nonchalance  was  only  put  on.  But  you  must 
not  pretend  now  to  be  indifferent  to  joy." 

•*  Is  anything  making  for  the  island  ?"  he 
inquired.  But  he  spoke  with  great  coolness. 
Perhaps  that  was  **  put  on"  too. 

"  Yes.*    They  are  coming  to  our  rescue." 

"  You  are  sure  of  this  ?"  he  said. 

**  Had  I  not  been  sure,  you  should  have 
slept  on,"  was  her  reply.  "A  vessel  of 
some  description  is  bearing  direct  towards  us." 

He  started  up,  and,  giving  her  his  arm, 
proceeded  to  join  the  rest. 

It  was  fully  in  view  now.  And  it  proved 
to  be  a  galley  of  six  oars,  the  gallant  Cyclops 
steering. 

So  he  and  his  barrel  were  not  turned  over 
and  drowned  then  1  No  ;  the  distance  and 
their  fears  had  deceived  them.  The  current 
had  borne  himself  and  his  cask  towards  an 
inhabited  island,  lying  in  the  direction  of  Ra- 
gusa.  A  terrible  way  off,  it  seemed  to  him, 
but  the  adventurous  gondolier  reached  it 
with  time  and  patience,  greatly  astonishing 
the  natives  with  the  novel  style  of  his  em- 
barkation. Obtaining  assistance  and  pro- 
visions, he  at  once  proceeded  on  his  return, 
to  rescue  those  he  had  left  behind. 

The  galley  was  made  fast  to  the  shore — 
faster  than  the  gondola  had  been ;  and  Cy- 
clops, springing  on  land,  amidst  the  thanks 
and  cheers  of  the  starving  group,  proceeded 
to  display  the  coveted  refreshments.  A 
more  welcome  sight  than  any,  save  the  gal- 
ley, that  had  ever  met  their  eyes. 

**  Oh  God  be  thanked  that  we  have  not  to 
die  here  1"  murmured  the  countess  to  Lord 
Byron.  "  Think  what  a  horrible  fate  it  would 
have  been — shut  out  from  the  world  1" 


424 


ORIGINAL  ANECDOTES. 


[Nov., 


"  For  me  there  may  be  even  a  worse  in 
store,"  he  answered.  "  We  were  a  knot  of 
us  here,  and  should  at  least  have  died  to- 
gether. It  may  be  that  I  shall  yet  perish  a 
solitary  exile,  away  from  alL^' 

**  Do  put  such  ideas  away,"  she  retorted. 
'*  It  would  be  a  sad  fate,  that,  to  close  a  ca- 
reer such  as  yours." 

''Sad  enough,  perhaps:  but  in  keeping 
with  the  rest,"  was  his  reply,  a  melancholy 
smile  rising  to  his  pale  features,  as  he  handed 
her  into  the'boat,  preparatory  to  their  return. 

Up  to  a  very  recent  period,  there  was  an 
old  man  still  living  in  Italy,  a  man  who,  in 
hu  younger  days,  had  been  a  gondolier.    His 


name — at  any  rate,  the  one  he  went  by — was 
Cyclops.  It  was  pleasant  to  sit  by  his  side 
in  the  open  air,  and  hear  him  talk.  He 
would  tell  you  fifty  anecdotes  of  the  generous 
English  lord,  who  lived  so  long,  years  ago, 
at  Ravenna.  And  if  he  could  persuade  you 
to  a  walk  in  the  blazing  sun,  would  take  you 
to  the  water's  edge,  and  display,  with  pride 
and  delight,  a  handsome  gondola.  It  was 
getting  the  worse  for  wear  then,  in  the  way 
of  paint  and  gilding,  but  it  had  once  been 
the  flower  among  the  gondolas  of  the  Adri- 
atic. It  was  made  under  the  orders  of  Lord 
Byron,  and  when  presented  to  Cyclops  was 
already  christened — Thb  Cask. 


>i  ^  ti 


From  Bentley's   Hiscellanf. 


ORIGINAL   ANECDOTES. 


BT    A   DISTINGUISHED    FRENCH    AUTHORESS. 


Talleyrand. — At  a  small  private  party 
in  Paris,  one  evening,  some  difficulty  was 
found  in  making  up  a  whist  table  for  the 
Prince  de  Talleyrand.  A  young  diplomat 
present,  who  was  earnestly  pressed  by  the 
hostess,  excused  himself  on  the  grounds  of 
not  knowing  the  game.  "  Not  know  how  to 
play  whist,  sir?"  said  the  Prince,  with  a 
sympathizing  air;  "then,  believe  me,  you 
are  bringing  yourself  up  to  be  a  miserable 
old  man!" 

The  Vestris  Family. — ^The  pomposity  of 
the  elder  Vestris,  the  "diou  de  la  danse,*^ 
and  founder  of  the  choregraphic  dynasty, 
has  been  often  described.  In  speaking  of 
his  son,  Augustus,  he  used  to  say,  "  If  that 
boy  occasionally  touches  the  ground,  in  his 
pas  de  zepht/r,  it  is  only  not  to  mortify  his 
companions  on  the  stage." 

When  Vestris  p^re  arrived  from  Italy,  with 
several  brothers,  to  seek  an  engagement  at 
the  Opera,  the  family  was  accompanied  by 
an  aged  mother;  while  one  of  the  brothers, 
less  gifted  than  the  rest,  officiated  as  cook 
to  the  establishment.  On  the  death  of  their 
venerable  parent,  the  diou  de  la  danse,  with 
his  usual  bombastic  pretensions,  saw  fit  to 


give  her  a  grand  interment,  and  to  pro- 
nounce a  funeral  oration  beside  the  grave. 
In  the  mfdst  of  his  harangue,  while  appar- 
ently endeavoring  to  stifle  his  sobs,  he  sud- 
denly caught  sight  of  his  brother,  the  cook, 
presenting  a  most  ludicrous  appearance,  in 
the  long  mourning  cloak,  or  train,  which  it 
was  then  the  custom  to  wear.  "  Get  along 
with  you,  in  your  ridiculous  cloak!"  whis- 
pered he,  suddenly  cutting  short  his  elo- 
quence and  his  tears.  "  G-et  out  of  my 
sight,  or  you  will  make  me  die  with  laugh- 
ing." 

A  third  brother  of  the  same  august  family 
passed  a  great  portion  of  his  youth  at  Ber- 
lin, as  secretary  to  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia, 
brother  of  Frederick  the  Great.  He  used  to 
relate  that  Prince  Henry,  who  was  a  connois- 
seur of  no  mean  pretensions,  but  prevented 
by  his  limited  means  from  indulging  his  pas- 
sion for  the  arts,  purchased  for  his  gallery  at 
Rheinsberg  a  magnificent  bust  of  Antinous — 
a  recognized  antique.  Feeling  that  he  could 
not  have  enough  of  so  good  a  thing.  His 
Royal  Highness  caused  a  great  number  of 
plaster  casts  to  be  struck  ofl*,  which  he 
placed  in  various  positions  in  his  pleasure- 


1863.J 


ORIGINAL  ANEODOTE& 


425 


grounds.  When  he  received  visits  from  illus- 
trious foreigners,  on  their  way  to  the  court  of 
his  royal  brother,  he  took  great  pleasure  in 
exhibiting  his  gardens ;  explaining  their  beau- 
ties with  all  the  zest  of  a  cicerone.  '*  That 
is  a  superb  bust  of  Antinous/'  he  used  to 
say,  *^  Another  fine  Antinous, — an  unques- 
tionable antique,"  A  little  farther  on,  •*  An- 
other Antinous — a  cast  from  the  marble." 
''  Another  Antinous,  which  you  cannot  fail  to 
admire."  And  so  on,  through  all  the  three 
hundred  copies  ;  varying,  at  every  new  spec- 
imen his  phrase  and  intopation,  in  a  manner 
which  was  faithfully  and  most  amusingly 
portrayed  by  the  mimicry  of  his  ex- secretary. 
Vestris  used  to  relate  the  story  in  Paris,  in 
presence  of  the  Prussian  ambassador,  who 
corroborated  its  autheuticity  by  shouts  of 
laughter.  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia,  how- 
ever, in  spite  of  this  artistic  weakness,  dis- 
tinguished himself  worthily  by  his  talents 
and  exploits  during  the  Seven  Years'  War. 

Lamartinb. — An  eminent  Royalist,  still 
living,  unable  to  pardon  one  of  the  greatest 
modem  poets  of  France  for  having  contrib- 
uted, in  1848,  to  the  proclamation  of  the 
Republic,  observed,  on  noticing  his  subse- 
quent endeavours  to  calm  down  the  popular 
enthusiasm  he  had  so  much  assisted  to  excite, 
— "Ay,  ay!  an  incendiary  disguised  as  a 
fireman !'' 

The  Marquis  de  Ximbnks. — Some  forty 
years  ago,  one  of  the  most  assiduous  frequen- 
ters and  shrewdest  critics  of  the  "Theatre 
Francais"  was  a  certain  Marquis  de  Ximenes ; 
a  man  considerably  advanced  in  years,  who 
had  witnessed  the  greatest  triumphs  of  the 
French  stage,  in  tlfe  acting  of  Le  Kain, 
Mademoiselle  Clairon,  and  Mademoiselle 
Dumesnil,  and  whose  good  word  sufficed  to 
create  a  reputation.  He  had  all  the  traditi- 
ions  of  the  stage  at  his  fingers'  end,  and  few 
young  actors  ventured  to  undertake  a  stan- 
dard part  without  previously  consulting  the 
old  Marquis.  « 

When  Lnfond,*  the  tragedian,  made  his 
dibut,  he  was  extremely  solicitous  to  obtain 
an  approving  word  from  the  Marquis  do 
Ximenes.  One  night,  after  playing  the  part 
of  Orosmane  in  Voltaire's  tragedy  of  "  Zaire," 
with  undounded  applause,  the  actor,  not  con- 
tent with  the  enthusiasm  of  the  public,  ex- 
pressed to  the  friends  who  crowded  to  his 
dressing-room  with  congratulations,  his  anx- 
iety to  know  the  opinion  of  the  high-priest 
of  theatrical  criticism — "  I  must  hurry  down 

*  Who  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  admi- 
rable comediaui  Lafont^  so  popular  at  the  St  James's 
Theatre. 


to  the  Foyer^  said  he.  "  The  Marquis  is 
sure  to  drop  in  while  the  after-piece  is  per- 
formed ;  I  long  to  hear  what  he  says  of  my 
reading  of  the  part." 

On  entering  the  foyer^  the  old  gentleman 
was  seen  to  advance  towards  the  lion  of  the 
night ;  and  Lafond,  highly  flattered  by  this 
act  of  graciousness,  instantly  assumed  an  aur 
of  grateful  diffidence. 

*'  Monsieur  Lafond,"  said  the  Marquis,  in 
a  tone  audible  to  the  whole  assembly,  "  you 
have  this  night  acted  Orosmane  in  a  style 
that  Le  Kain  never  attained." 

"Ah  I  Monsieur  le  Marquis,"  faltered  the 
gratified  histrion. 

'*  I  repeat,  sir, — in  a  style  that  La  Kain 
never  attained. — Sir,  La  Kain  knew  betterJ*^ 

Before  Lafond  recovered  his  command  of 
countenance,  the  malicious  old  gentleman 
had  disappeared. 

Marie  Antoinette. — ^The  unfortunate 
Marie  Antoinette  was  one  of  the  kindest- 
hearted  of  human  beings,  as  mi^ht  be  proved 
by  a  thousand  traits  of  her  domestic  life. 
One  evening,  Monsieur  de  Chalabre,  the  ban- 
ker of  Her  Majesty's  faro-table,  in  gathering 
up  the  stakes,  detected  by  his  great  experi- 
ence in  handling  such  objects,  that  one  of  the 
rouleaux  of  fifty  louis  d'or,  was  factitious. 
Having  previously  noticed  the  young  man 
by  whom  it  was  laid  on  the  lable,  he  quietly 
placed  it  in  his  pocket,  in  order  to  prevent 
its  getting  into  circulation  or  proving  the 
means  of  a  public  scandal. 

The  movements  of  the  banker,  meanwhile, 
were  not  unobserved.  The  Queen,  whose 
confidence  in  bis  probity  had  been  hitherto 
unlimited,  saw  him  pocket  the  rouleau ;  and 
when  the  company  assembled  round  the  play- 
table  were  making  their  obeisances  previous 
to  retiring  for  the  night,  Her  Majesty  made 
a  sign  to  Monsieur  de  Chalabre  to  remain. 

**  I  wish  to  know,  sir,"  said  the  Queen,  as 
soon  as  they  were  alone,  ''  what  made  you 
abstract,  just  now,  from  the  play-table,  a 
rouleau  of  fifty  louis  ?" 

"A  rouleau,  Ma«lam?"  faltered  the 
banker. 

"  A  rouleau,"  persisted  the  Queen,  "  which 
is,  at  this  moment,  in  the  right-hand  pocket 
of  your  waistcoat." 

"  Since  your  Majesty  is  so  well  informed,'* 
replied  Monsieur  de  Chalabre,  "  I  am  bound 
to  explain  that  I  withdrew  the  rouleau  be- 
cause it  was  a  forced  one." 

"  Forged  1"  reiterated  Marie  Antoinette^ 
with  surprise  and  indignation,  which  were 
not  lessened  when  Monsieur  de  Chalabre 
produced  the  rouleau  from  his  pocket,  and. 


426 


ORIGINAL  ANECDOTEa 


[Nov. 


tearing  down  a  strip  of  the  paper  in  which 
It  was  enveloped,  proved  that  it  contained 
only  a  piece  of  lead,  cleverly  moulded  to 
simulate  a  rouleau. 

"  Did  you  notice  by  whom  it  was  put 
down  ?''  inquired  the  Queen.  And  when 
Monsieur  de  Chalabre,  painfully  embarrassed, 
hesitated  to  reply,  she  insisted  in  a  tone  that 
admitted  of  no  denial,  on  a  distinct  answer. 

The  banker  was  compelled  to  own  that  it 
was  the  young  Count  de  C ,  the  rep- 
resentative of  one  of  the  first  families  in 
France. 

"  Let  this  unfortunate  business  transpire 
no  further,  sir,"  said  the  Queen,  with  a  heavy 
sigh.  And  with  an  acquiescent  bow,  Mon- 
sieur de  Chalabre  withdrew  from  his  audi- 
ence. 

At  the  next  public  reception  held  in  the 
apartments   of    the   Queen,   the   Count  de 

C ,  whose  father    was    Ambassador 

from  the  Court  of  Versailles  to  one  of  the 
great*  power?  of  Europe,  approached  the 
play- table  as  usual.  But  Marie  Antoinette 
instantly  advanced  to  intercept  him. 

'*  Pardon  me  Monsieur  le  Comte,"  said  she 
*'  if  I  forbid  you  again  to  appear  at  my  faro- 
table.  Our  stakes  are  much  too  high  for  so 
young  a  man.  I  promised  your  mother  to 
watch  over  you  in  her  place,  during  her  ab- 
sence from  France,  and  preserve  you,  as  far 
as  lay  in*hiy  power,  from  mischance." 

The  Count,  perceiving  that  his  misdeeds 
had  been  detected,  colored  to  the  temples. 
Unable  to  express  his  gratitude  for  so  mild  a 
sentence  of  condemnation,  he  retired  from 
the  assembly,  and  was  never  again  seen  to 
approach  a  card- table. 

Charles  the  Tenth. — ^When  Martignac 
was  first  proposed  as  Prime  Minister  to 
Charles  the  Tenth  ;  "  No  !"  said  the  King, 
"  Martignac  would  never  suit  me.  He  is  a 
verbal  coquette,  who  holds,  above  all  things, 
to  the  graceful  symmetry  of  his  sentences. 
To  secure  a  well-turned  phrase,  he  would 
sacriGce  a  royal  prerogative.  A  minister 
should  not  hold  too  jealously  to  the  success 
of  his  prosody." 

La  Place.— La  Place,  the  celebrated  geom- 
etrician and  astronomer,  was  passionately 
fond  of  music ;  but  he  preferred  the  school 
to  which  he  had  been  accustomed  from  his 
youth.  During  the  feud  between  the  Gluck- 
ists  and  Piccinists,  he  sided  warmly  with 
Piccini ;  and  ever  afterwards  retained  a  strong 
partiality  for  Italian  music.  In  latter  years, 
he  rarely  attended  the  theatre ;  but  was 
tempted  by  the  great  reputation  of  the 
Freischutz,   produced  at  Paris  under   the 


name  of  the  "  Robin  des  Bois,"  to  witness 
the  performance.  As  a  peer  of  France,  the 
author  of  the  Mecanique  CeU&te  was  entitled 
to  a  seat  in  the  box,  set  apart,  at  the  Odeon, 
for  the  members  of  the  Upper  House  ; 
which,  unluckily,  happened  to  be  situated 
near  the  brass  instruments  of  the  orchestra. 
At  the  first  crash,  the  brows  of  La  Place 
were  seen  to  contract.  At  the  second  bray, 
he  rose  from  his  seat,  and  seized  his  hat. — 
**  Old  as  I  am,  thank  Ood  I  am  not  yet  deaf 
enough  to  endure  that !''  said  he  ;  and  quietly 
slipped  out  of  the  theatre. 

The  Comtesse  de  D .  —  Madame  la 

Comtesse  de  D ,  one  of  the  wittiest  wo- 
men in  Paris,  had  a  daughter,  who  by  fast- 
ing, and  an  over- strict  exercise  of  the  duties 
of  the  Catholic  religion,  seriously  injured  her 
health. 

'*  My  dear  child,"  said  her  mother,  "  you 
have  always  been  an  angel  of  goodness. 
Why  endeavor  to  become  a  saint  ?  Do  you 
want  to  sink  in  the  world  ?" 

The  Due  de  Berbi. — The  unfortunate 
Due  de  Berri  was,  in  private  life,  a  kindly- 
affectioned  man.  The  servants  of  his  house- 
hold were  strongly  attached  to  him,  for  he 
was  an  excellent  master.  He  used  to  encour- 
age them  to  lay  up  their  earnings  and  place 
them  in  the  savings  bank ;  and  even  supplied 
them  with  account-books  for  the  purpose. 
From  time  to  time,  he  used  to  inquire  of 
each  how  much  he  had  realized.  One  day, 
on  addressing  this  question  to  one  of  his 
footmen,  the  man  answered  that  he  had  no- 
thing left ;  on  which  the  Prince,  aware  that 
he  had  excellent  wages,  evinced  some  db- 
pleasure  at  his  prodigality. 

*'  My  mother  had  the  misfortune  to  break 
her  leg,  monseigneur,"  said  the  man.  "  Of 
course  I  took  care  to  afiford  her  proper  pro- 
fessional attendance." 

The  Prince  made  no  answer,  but  instituted 
inquiries  on  the  subject ;  when,  finding  the 
man's  statement  to  be  correct,  he  replaced 
in  the  savings  bank  the  exact  sum  his  serv- 
ant expended. 

Trifling  acts  of  beneficence  and  gracious- 
ness  often  secure  the  popularity  of  Princes. 
Garat,  the  celebrated  tenor,  was  one  of  the 
most  devoted  partisans  of  the  Due  de  Berri 
The  origin  of  his  devotion  was,  however,  in- 
significant. The  fSte,  or  name-day  of  the 
duke,  falling  on  the  same  day  with  that  of 
Charles  the  Tenth,  he  was  acccustomed  to 
celebrate  it  on  the  morrow,  by  supping  with 
his  bosom  friend,  the  Count  de  Yaudreuil. 
After  the  Restoration,  Madame  de  Yaudreuil 
always  took  care  to  arrange  an  annual /^^ 


1858.] 


ORIGINAL  ANEODOTBEL 


421 


such  as  was  most  likely  to  be  agreeable  to 
their  royal  guest.  On  one  occabidn,  know- 
ing that  his  Royal  Highness  was  particularly 
desirous  of  hearing  Qarat,  who  had  long  re- 
tired from  professional  life,  she  invited  him 
and  his  wife  to  come  and  spend  at  her  hotel 
the  evening  of  the  Saint  Charles.  Oarat, 
now  both  old  and  poor,  was  thankful  for  the 
remuneration  promised  :  and  not  only  made 
his  appearance,  but  sang  in  a  style  which  the 
Due  de  Berri  knew  how  to  appreciate.  He 
and  his  wife  executed  together  the  celebrated 
duet  in  '*  Orph^e,"  with  a  degree  of  perfec- 
tion which  created  the  utmost  enthusiasm  of 
the  aristocratic  circle. 

The  music  at  an  end,  the  Duke  perceived 
that  Garat  was  looking  for  his  hat,  prepara- 
tory to  retiring.  *'  Does  not  Garat  sup  with 
us  ?''  he  inquired  of  Madame  de  Vaudreuil. 
"  I  could  not  take  the  liberty  of  inviting  him 
to  the  same  table  with  your  Royal  Highness,*' 
replied  the  Countess.  "  Then  allow  me  to 
take  that  liberty  myself/'  said  the  Duke, 
good-humoredly.  "  You  are  not  hurrrying 
away,  I  hope,  Monsieur  Garat?"  said  he  to 
the  artist,  who,  having  recovered  his  hat, 
was  now  leaving  the  room.  "Surely  you 
are  still  much  too  young  to  require  such  early 
hours?  And  as  we  must  insist  on  detaining 
Madame  Garat  to  sup  with  us,  I  trust  you 
will  do  me  the  favor  to  remain,  and  take  care 
of  your  wife." 

From  early  youth,  the  Duke  had  been 
united  by  ties  of  the  warmest  friendship  with 
the  Count  de  la  Ferronays.  Nearly  of  the 
same  age,  the  intercourse  between  them  was 
unreserved;  but  the  Count,  a  man  of  the 
most  amiable  manners,  as  well  as  of  an  ex- 
cellent understanding,  did  not  scruple  to  af- 
ford to  his  royal  friend,  in  the  guise  of  pleas- 
antry, counsels  which  the  Duke  could  not 
have  done  more  wisely  than  follow  to  the 
letter.  Every  day  monseigneur  repeated  to 
his  friend  that  he  could  not  live  a  day  apart 
from  him.  Such,  however,  was  the  impetu- 
osity of  the  Due  de  Berri's  character,  that 
storms  frequently  arose  between  them  ;  and 
on  one  occasion  bis  Royal  Highness  indulged 
in  expressions  so  bitter  and  insulting,  that 
Monsieur  de  la  Ferronays  rushed  away  from 
him  to  the  apartments  he  occupied  on  the 
attic  story  at  the  Tuileries,  resolved  to  give 
in  his  resignation  that  very  night,  and  quit 
France  for  ever. 

While  absorbed  in  gloomy  reflections  aris- 
ing from  so  important  a  project,  be  heard  a 
gentle  tap  at  his  daor.  '*  Come  in !"  said 
he ;  and  in  a  moment  the  arms  of  the  Duo  de 
Berri  were  round  his  neck. 


"  My  dear  friend,"  sobbed  his  Royal  High- 
ness, in  a  broken  voice  ;  "  I  am-  afraid  that 
you  are  very  wretched !  that  is,  if  I  am  to 
judge  by  the  misery  and  remorse  I  have  my- 
self been  enduring  for  the  last  half  hour  1" 

An  atonement  so  gracefully  made  effected 
an  immediate  reconciliation. 

Louis  XVIII. — Monsieur,  afterwards  Louis 
XVIIL,  perceiving  that  his  brother,  the  Count 
d'Artois,  and  the  chief  members  of  the  youth- 
ful nobility,  distinguished  themselves  by  their 
skill  at  tennis,  took  it  into  his  head  to  become 
a  proficient  in  the  game ;  though  the  etnbon" 
point  which  he  had  attained  even  at  that 
early  age,  rendered  the  accomplishment  of 
his  wishes  somewhat  difficult  of  attainment. 

After  taking  a  considerable  number  of 
lessons  from  the  master  of  the  royal  tennis 
court  at  Versailles,  he  one  day  challenged  his 
royal  brother  to  a  match  ;  and  after  it  was 
over,  appealed  to  the  first  racquet  boy  for  a 
private  opinidn  of  his  progress.  '*  It  is  just 
this  here,"  said  the  gargon :  ••  if  your  Royal 
Highness  wasn't  quite  so  grassier,  and  had  a 
little  better  head  on  your  shoulders,  you'd 
do  nearly  as  well  as  Monseigneur  the  Count 
d'Artois.  As  it  is,  you  make  a  poor  hand 
of  it." 

Talma. — Talma  used  to  relate  that,  once, 
on  his  tour  of  provincial  engagements,  having 
agreed  to  give  four  representations  at  the 
Theatre  Royal  at  Lyons,  he  found  the  line  of 
p^re  noble  characters  filled  by  a  clever  actor, 
whom  Madame  Lobreau,  the  directress  of 
the  company,  unluckily  found  it  impossible 
to  keep  sober.  On  learning  that  this  indi- 
vidual was  to  fill  the  part  of  the  high  priest 
in  the  tragedy  of  Semiramis,  in  which  he  was 
himself  to  personify  Arsace,  Talma  waited 
upon  him  in  private,  and  spared  no  argument 
to  induce  him  to  abstain  from  drink,  at  least 
till  the  close  of  the  performance. 

A  promise  to  that  effect  was  readily  given ; 
but  alas  1  when  the  curtain  was  about  to 
draw  up,  to  a  house  crammed  in  every  part, 
the  high  priest  was  reported,  as  usual,  to  be 
dead  drunk !  Horror-struck  at  the  prospect 
of  having  to  give  back  the  money  at  the 
doors,  Madame  Lobreau  instantly  rushed  up 
(o  his  dressing-room,  and  insisted  on  his 
swallowing  a  glass  of  water  to  sober  him, 
previous  to  his  appearance  on  the  stage. 
The  unhappy  man  stammered  his  excuses ; 
but  the  inexorable  manageress  caused  him  to 
be  dressed  in  his  costume,  and  supported  to 
the  side-scenes,  during  which  operation. 
Talma  was  undergoing  a  state  of  martyrdom. 

At  length  the  great  Parisi'in  actor  ap- 
peared on  the  stage,  followed  by  the  high 


438 


ORIGINAL  ANEGDOTEa 


[Nov. 


priest,  and  was  as  usual  overwhelmed  with 
applause.  But  to  his  consternation,  when  it 
came  to  the  turn  of  the  high  priest  to  reply, 
the  delinquent  tottered  to  the  footlights,  and 
proceeded  to  address  the  pit. 

"  Gentlemen/'  said  he,  "  Madame  Lobreau 
is  stupid  and  barbarous  enough  to  insist  on 
my  going  through  my  part  in  the  state  in 
which  you  see  me,  in  order  that  the  perform- 
ance may  not  be  interrupted.  Now  I  appeal 
to  your  good  seose  whether  I  am  in  a  plight 
to  personify  Orsoes?  No,  no!  I  have  too 
much  respect  for  the  public  to  make  a  fool 
of  myself ! — Look  here,  Arsace  !"  he  con- 
tinued, handing  over  to  Talma  with  the  ut- 
most gravity  the  properties  it  was  his  cue  to 
deliver  to  him  in  the  fourth  act.  ''  Here's 
the  letter, — here's  the  fillet, — here's  the 
sword. — Please  to  remember  that  Madame 
Semiramis  is  your  lawful  mother,  and  settle 
it  all  between  you  in  your  own  way  as  you 
think  proper.  For  my  part,  I  am  going 
home  to  bed." 

A  class  of  men  who— luckily,  perhaps — 
have  disappeared  from  the  Parisian  world,  is 
that  of  the  mystifieateura,  or  hoaxers,  created 
at  the  period  of  the  first  revolution,  by  the 
general  break-up  of  society,  so  destructive  to 
true  social  enjoyment.  To  obviate  the  diffi- 
culty of  entertaining  the  heterogeneous  circles 
accidentally  brought  together,  it  became  the 
fashion  to  select  a  butt,  to  be  hoaxed  or  mys- 
tified by  some  clever  impostor,  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  rest  of  the  party.  Among  the 
cleverest  of  the  mystificateurs  were  three 
painters,  who  had  proved  unsuccessful  in 
their  profession — Musson,  Touzet,  and  Le- 
gros.  The  presence  of  one  of  these,  at  a 
small  party  or  supper,  was  supposed  to  en- 
sure the  hilarity  of  the  evening.  Sometimes 
the  hoaxer  was  satisfied  to  entertain  the  com- 
pany by  simple  mimicry,  or  by  relating  some 
humorous  adventure;  but  in  circles  where 
he  was  personally  unknown,  he  usually  as- 
sumed the  part  of  a  fictitious  personage — a 


country  cousin,  an  eccentric  individual,  or  a 
foreigner.  Musson,  the  best  of  his  class, 
exhibited,  in  these  impersonations,  the  viz 
comica  in  the  highest  degree. 

One  day,  having  been  invited  to  meet,  at 
dinner,  Picard,  the  dramatist,  to  whom  he 
was  a  stranger,  he  made  his  appearance  as  a 
rough  country  gentleman,  come  up  to  Paris 
to  see  the  lions.  Scarcely  were  they  seated 
at  table,  when  he  began  to  discuss  the  thea- 
tres, of  one  of  which  (the  Odeon)  Picard  was 
manager.  Nothing,  however,  could  be  more 
bitter  and  uncompromising  than  the  sarcasms 
leveled  at  the  stage  by  the  bumpkin  critic ; 
to  whom,  for  some  time,  Picard  addressed 
himself  in  the  mildest  tones,  endeavoring  to 
controvert  his  heterodox  opinions.  By  de- 
grees, the  intolerance  and  impertinence  of 
the  presumptuous  censor  became  insupport- 
able ;  and,  to  his  rude  attacks,  Picard  was 
beginning  to  reply  in  language  equally  vio- 
lent, to  vthe  terror  and  anxiety  of  the  sur- 
rounding guests,  when  their  host  put  an  end 
to  the  contest  by  suddenly  exclaiming, — 
*'  Musson,  will  you  take  a  glass  of  wine  with 
me  ?" — on  which,  a  burst  of  laughter  from 
Picard  acknowledged  his  recognition  of  the 
hoax  so  successfully  played  off  upon  him ; 
and,  contrary  to  the  proverb,  the  **  two  of  a 
trade"  shook  hands,and  became  friends  for  life. 

JuLBS  Janin. — In  the  height  of  the  quarrel 
between  the  Homoeopathists  and  the  Faculty 
of  Paris,  the  editor  of  a  medical  journal, 
having  somewhat  severely  attacked  the  dis- 
ciples of  Hahnemann,  was  called  out  by  one 
of  the  tribe.     "  Rather  hard,"  said  he,  "  to 
have  to  risk  ones's  life  for  pointing  out  the 
impoteoce  of  an  infinitesimal  dose  !" — "  No 
great  risk,  surely  1"  rejoined  Jules  Janin,  who 
was  present  at  the  discussion,  "  such  a  duel 
ou^ht,  of  course,  to  represent  the  principles 
of  nomoBopathic  science — the  hundredth  part 
of  a  grain  of  gunpowder  to  the  thousandth 
part  of  a  bullet  1" 


1853.] 


LTTEBABY  lOSClBLLANIBa. 


429 


LITERARY    MISCELLANIES. 


Thb  pablications  of  the  month  hare  not  been 
namerouB,  and  a  majority  of  these,  perhaps,  are  re- 
prints of  American  works. 

Mr.  Bbntlet  pabllshes  Mr.  Eliot's  **  History  of  the 
Early  ChrisUans^**  in  2  Tols.,  87o. 

Mr.  Chapmax,  Rev.  Dr.  Hickok's  "System  of 
Moral  Science  ;*'  Theodore  Parker's  "  Theism,  Athe- 
ism and  the  Popular  Theology'* — "Ten  Sermons  on 
Religion;*' "Poem by  Anna  Black welV And  "The 
Public  Function  of  Woman.** 

Clarke;  Bcbton  4e  Co.  republish  Mr.  Hildreth*s 
"  Theory  of  Politics^"  origioally  published  by  Hae* 
FEB  A  Brothxbs.  The  Literary  Gazette  speaks 
highly  of  it: 

"This  treatise  on  political  philosophy,  though 
amall  in  size,  is  rich  in  theoretical  and  practical 
truth.  Of  the  origin,  principles;  and  forms  of  goT- 
emment^  the  author  treats  with  clearness  and  force, 
illustrating  his  statements  by  historical  references 
ftnd  examples.  On  various  political  questions  there 
is  room  for  diversity  of  opinion,  and  Eoglish  read- 
ers will  make  allowance  for  what  they  wi&  consider 
American  prejudices.  But  there  are  some  subjects 
on  which  the  citizens  of  the  Slates  hare  attained  a 
position  far  ahead  of  the  people  of  older  countries; 
and  in  which  their  experience  may  be  profitably 
studied.  The  general  education  of  the  people,  and 
the  position  of  the  clergy  in  relation  to  the  civil 
institutions  of  the  country,  may  be  specified  as  ex- 
amples." 

KmoQT  <b  Co.  republish  Rev.  Mr.  Barnes' "  Notes 
Criiical,  Explanatory  and  Practical,  on  the  Book  of 
Daniel,"  edited  by  Dr.  Henderson.  It  was  origi- 
nally published  by  Ltavitt  &  Allen,  and  is  thus 
noticed  by  the  Literary  Gazette  : 

"Of  all  modern  commentators  on  the  Bible 
Albert  Bamea;  of  Philadelphia,  is  deservedly  the 
most  popular.  Several  English  editions  were  pub- 
lishea  of  the  early  volumes  of  his  *  Notes  on  the 
lYew  Testament  ;*  but^  for  the  author's  sake,  we  are 
glad  that  he  has  in  his  later  publications  taken  ad- 
vantage of  the  copyright  law,  and  the  present  work 
is  al«o  issued  under  his  direct  sanction.  The  Notes 
on  Daniel  form  a  valuable  companion  work  to  those 
on  the  Apocalypse,  and  are  marked  by  the  same 
learned  research,  oritica)  acumen,  and  sterling 
sense.  The  introduetorjr  dissertation  presents  an 
historical  and  critical  notice  of  the  book  of  Daniel 
Weakness  of  health  and  impaired  sights  induced  by 
his  literary  labors;  have  rendered  the  revision  of 
the  work  by  an  editor  necessary,  and  it  could  not 
have  fallen  into  more  capable  and  sympathizing 
handsL  Dr.  Henderson,  in  his  brief  prefatory  note, 
justly  praises  the  work  as  likely  to  prove  *an 
efficient  aid  to  ministers  in  their  preparation  for 
the  exercises  of  the  pulpit^  to  teachers  m  the  study 
of  their  scriptural  lessons;  and  to  the  Christian 
public  at  large  in  their  search  after  divine  truth.' " 

The  "Napoleon  Dynasty,  by  the  Berkley  Men,'' 
published  by  Lamport,  Blaxxman  A  Law,  has  been 


republished,  and  is  thus  regarded  by  the  critic  of 
^ne  Spectator : 

"Thu  American  compilation  is  done  upon  the 
principle  of  'stump  oratory,'  with  one  considerable 
exception.  The  stump  orator  is  doubtless  consist- 
ent with  himself;  the  matter  and  manner  are  con- 
gruous.   The  compiler  of  The  Napoleon  Dynasty, 

•  gfctting  up '  his  book  from  various  sources,  has  a 
mixture  of  styles,  French  rhetoric  or  French  senti- 
ment alternates  with  the  fustian  of  the  far  Wes!^ 
while  ocasionally  there  is  a  contrasting  flatness 
which  reminds  one  of  the  level  style  of  Ancient 
Pistol,  It  were  absurd  to  look  for  critical  care  or 
discrimination  from  the  so-called  Berkley  Men. 
There  are  facts  so  notorious^  or  at  least  so  easily  as- 
certainable, that  iaporance  respecting  them  is  inex- 
cusable. The  book  tells  us  that  Sir  Arthur  Wellei; 
ley  was  recalled  to  go  to  the  Peninsula  from  India- 

•  where  he  had  achieved  all  his  fame  hitherto,  by  a 
career  of  robbery  and  crime,  extortion,  murder, 
and  the  extinction  of  nations,  compared  with  which 
Napoleon  8  worst  aoU  of  usurpation  in  the  height  of 
his  ambition  paled  into  insignificance,'  Aa  Ac  Sir 
Arthur  Welleslejr  was  not  recalled  at  alL  but  re- 
turned from  Indu  (in  1806)  two  years  before  the 
French  invaded  Portugal  (1807)  and  nearly  three 
years  before  Bonaparte  seized  upon  Spain.  Stogie 
facts  such  as  these  involve  attentive  reading; 
and  though  all  the  drcumstances  would  contra- 
dict the  assertion,  with  a  man  of  any  knowledge  of 
public  events,  a  hasty  and  ignorant  compiler  might 
fall  into  such  a  blunder.  But  what  are  we  to  think 
of  Borodino  f — *  Each  foe  commanded  over  100,000 
men  and  500  cannon.  »  •  •  Each  army  withdrew 
at  night,  and  100,000  dead  men  were  left  on  the 
field  I'  The  idea  of  every  other  man  being  killed 
in  a  modem  battle  I  The  slaughter  at  Borodino 
was  indeed  terrible,  but  it  was  ^re  and-twenty  not 
one  hundred  thousand  men.  Enough  of  ignorance 
and  impudence  like  this.  In  competent  and  criti- 
cal hands,  the  lives  of  all  the  Bonaparte  Family 
would  be  a  fair  subject^  but  rather  curious  than  at- 
tractive." 

ScBiBiiKR  A  Co.  republish  Brantz  Mayer's  "  Mexi- 
00,"  which  is  esteemed  by  the  Athenceum  to  be  "  by 
far  the  most  complete  account  of  Mexico,  historical 
and  descriptive,  that  has  yet  been  published.  It  is 
nearly  half  a  century  since  the  work  of  Baron 
Humboldt  first  attracted  general  notice  to  the  anti- 
quities and  the  resources  of  this  region  of  the  new 
world." 

Rev.  Mr.  Laurie's  «  Life  of  Dr.  Grant"  has  been 
republished,  and  is  thus  noticed  by  the  AtheneBum: 

"America  is  famous  for  her  miasionariea;  and 
among  these  Dr.  Asahel  Grant  is  certainly  one  of 
the  moet  distinguished.  His  strength,  however, 
was  not  in  his  pen :  he  wrote  verbcMely  and  mag- 
niloquendy, — so  that  it  is  exceedingly  tiresome  to 
read  the  record  of  his  labors  and  his  travels. 
Otherwise,  the  story  of  an  earnest  lif«  spent  among 
a  littie-known  people;  under  conditions  touching 


480 


LTTBRABT  IHSGELLAXIEB. 


[Nov;, 


the  borders  of  romance,  abounds  in  interest  Dr. 
Qrant  deserves  a  better  biographer  than  himself.** 

Oatsall  has  renrintfed  Mrs.  Southworth's  "  Mark 
Sutherland/'  and  is  thus  characterized  in  a  long  no- 
tice in  the  Times : 

"To  judge  of  Mrs.  South worth*s  merit  as  a  novel- 
ist from  the  work  before  us^  she  possesses  an  un- 
common faculty  for  making  fiction  appear  like 
truth;  for  nobody  who  reads  *Mark  Sutherland' 
will  think  of  it  as  a  mere  Ule  that  is  told,  or,  while 
reading  it,  convince  himself  that  it  is  a  fiction  and 
not  a  fact,  so  natural  are  the  ideas  and  sentiments, 
and  so  natural  are  the  characters  and  conversation 
of  the  periK>nages  introduced." 

Mr.  Matthew's  "Moneypenny''  has  likewise  been 
reprinted,  and  is  thought  by  the  AthewBum  to  re- 
semble "  nothing  so  much  as  a  third  class  masquer- 
ade, in  which  we  find  Jack  Sheppards,  Indian 
queens,  melo-dramatic  women  of  mystery,  charm- 
ing young  beauties,  figuring  in  some  animated  and 
vulgar  dance,  neither  the  fun  nor  the  figure  of 
which  can  be  relished  by  persons  of  taste.  Mr. 
Cornelias  Matthews  has  made  a  better  appearance 
iu  former  literary  essays,  if  we  misUke  not;  but 
he  must  not  for  that  reason  escape  if  he  writes  a 
story  like  *  Moneypenny,'  in  which  all  that  is  not 
stupid  is  disagreeable." 

Adventures  in  Australia  in  1852  and  '8,  by  Rev. 
a  Berkley  Jones — is  just  out. 

Letters  of  the  Poet  Gray,  now  first  published, 
edited  by  Rev.  J.  Mitford. 

Leigh  Hunt's  "  Religion  of  the  Hearty  a  manual 
of  faith  aud  duty." 

Miss  Martineau's  translation  of  Comte's  "Posi- 
tive Philosophy,"  u  just  out>  in  2  vols.,  8vo. 

History  of  the  Insurrection  in  China,  with  Noti- 
ces of  the  Christianity,  Creed,  and  Proclamations 
of  the  Insurgents,  by  M.  M.  Callery  and  Yvan, 
translated  by  John  Oxenford.  This  is  regarded  as 
a  very  authentic  and  timely  work.  The  Literary 
Oazette  thinks  that  **  for  a  connected  account  of  the 
revolution  from  its  commencement  we  are  indebted 
to  the  labors  of  the  French  authors,  whose  work  is 
now  translated  by  Mr.  Oxenford.  M.  Callery  was 
formerly  a  miasionary,  and  afterwards  interpreter 
to  the  French  embassy,  to  which  Dr.  Yvan  was  at- 
tached as  physician.  Some  of  the  statements  in 
their  work  are  corrected  by  more  recent  informa- 
tion, but  on  the  whole  they  have  presented  a  faith- 
ful and  animated  narrative  of  the  insurrection.  A 
perusal  of  this  work  is  necessary  for  intelligently 
following  the  reports  which  are  likely  for  some 
time  to  be  transmitted  by  each  mail  from  China." 

The  Public  and  Domestic  Life  of  Edmund  Burke, 
by  Peter  Burke.  The  Spectator  thinks  this  work 
supplies  a  deficiency,  though  it  has  '*  not,  indeed, 
the  nice  felicity  ot  Washington  Irving's  Life  of 
Goldsmith,  nor  the  skilful  arrangement^  the  varied 
knowledge  of  the  age,  and  the  forceful  rhetoric  of 
Mr.  Forster's  biography  of  the  same  author:  neither 
has  it  any  striking  characteristics  of  its  own ;  but  it 
tells  in  a  readable  manner  what  there  is  to  be  told 
of  Burke's  private  and  literary  life,  as  well  as  of 
his  public  career.  The  leading  features  of  that  ca- 
reer are  exhibited  by  episodes^  and  impress  us  with 
the  greatness  of  Burke  as  a  guiding  mind  of  the  age, 
alwas  foremost  and  always  influential  even  in  nub- 


ordinate  office.  The  American  War,  official  reform, 
India,  its  gpovemment  and  abuses^  the  impeachment 
of  Hastings,  and  the  French  Revolution,  bear  wit- 
ness to  his  activity,  ftom  his  first  appearance  in  Par- 
liament to  his  final  retirement." 

'History  of  France,  from  the  Invasion  of  the 
Franks  under  Clovis  to  the  Accession  of  Louis 
Phillippe,  by  Emile  de  Bonnechose.  This  summary 
history  of  France,  written  during  the  reign  of  Louis 
Phillippe,  has  been  received  with  much  approba- 
tion in  France,  and  adopted  in  several  public  insti- 
tutions. In  a  certain  sense,  it  is  worthy  of  this 
favor.  It  gives  as  dear  a  narrative  of  events  as  is 
compatible  with  the  space  of  a  single  volume  how- 
ever bulky,  and  the  resumes  of  particular  periods 
are  sufficient,  if  not  very  new.  It  is  the  best 
"abridgement"  of  the  history  pf  France  extant. 

Essays  on  some  of  the  Forms  of  Literature,  by 
Thomas  I.  Lynch. — ^These  four  essays  contain  the 
substance  of  four  lectures  originally  delivered  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  Manchester.  The  subjects  are, — 
first,  Poetry,  its  Sources  and  Influence;  second. 
Biography,  Autobiography,  and  History ;  third. 
Fiction  and  Imaginative  Prose;  fourth.  Criticism 
and  Writings  of  the  Day.  The  Aiheju£ym^  in  notic- 
ing it^  says: 

**The  most  quintessential  of  lecturers  who  could 
characterixe  a  century  by  an  epithet^  demolish  a  false 
philosophy  by  an  epigram,  and  *  put  a  girdle  '  round 
a  whole  world  of  thought  and  fancy  in  the  *  forty  min- 
utes '  allotted  to  him  by  an  audience  eager  to  receive 
instruction  homcsopathically,  or  in  the  amallest 
imaginable  space,  would  be  puxzled  to  do  justice  to 
the  table  of  contents  drawn  out  above  within  the 
limits  accepted.  Mr.  Lynch  does  his  best  to  get 
through  his  task  by  trying  to  say  deep  things  in  a 
few  words ;  but  his  aepth,  if  really  profound,  is 
not  dear ;  hb  Blnglish,  though  poetical,  sometimes 
is  confused ;  and  his  illustrations,  intended  to  be 
novel  and  original,  are  often  injudiciously  selected.'* 

Popular  Errors  on  the  subject  of  Insanity  Ex- 
amined and  Exposed,  by  James  F.  Duncan,  M.D. 
The  Spectator  regards  this  **  a  well  considered  and 
sensibly- written  treatise  on  insanity,  chiefly  in  re- 
lation to  erroneous  opinions  which  are  entertained 
on  the  subject.  For  example,  suicide  is  examined, 
in  order  to  combat  the  prevailing  notion,  not  only 
entertained  by  the  general  public,  but  bhown  in  the 
verdict  of  juries^  that  self-destruction  is  a  proof  of 
mental  derangement,  as  well  as  to  draw  the  distinc- 
tion between  suicide  from  insanity  and  by  a  sane 
person.  Criminal  jurisprudence  as  connected  with 
mania  is  considered  at  length,  the  true  difiTerences 
between  sanity  and  insanity  being  pointed  out,  and 
a  suggestion  advanced  that  accountability  la  the 
main  iseue^  since  a^  lunatic  may  in  some  oases  be 
really  as  accountable  as  a  sane  man.  A  variety  of 
other  topics  are  handled  by  Dr.  Duncan,  from  all  of 
which  the  reader  will  receive  judicious  if  not  d- 
ways  new  ideaa^  as  regards  insanity  and  the  treat- 
ment of  the  insane." 

Sketches  in  Ultramarine,  by  James  Hannay,  em- 
braces a  series  of  papen  on  nautical  subjects^  some 
of  which  were  formerly  published  in  the  *'  United 
Service  Magazine."  **Some  of  his  sketchee,"  says 
the  Literary  Ocucette,  "  give  a  tolerable  idea  of  the 
naval  life  of  our  own  &y,  but  there  is  too  much 
straining  after  effect  in  the  literary  delineation. 
Some  of  the  best  scenes  are  spoiled  by  the  style  in 
which  they  are  described.*' 


1863.] 


LTTERARY  MISCELLAKIEBL 


431 


Tlie  Character  of  the  Dake  of  Wellington,  apart 
from  his  Military  Talents,  by  the  Earl  Gre^.  "Al- 
thonghy"  says  the  Oritie,  **  the  Earl  deems  it  an  act 
of  justice  tu  the  great  warrior  to  pat  together  some 
ofaaerTatioDs  upon  his  priyate  feelings  and  princi- 
ples. Hti  informs  us^  however,  that  he  had  no  pro- 
rasaional  or  private  connexion  with  the  Dake,  and 
that  only  from  dispatches  has  he  in  thi&  The  volume 
contains  nothing  that  every  body  did  not  already 
know  of  the  Duke.  It  will  be  a  source  of  gratiflca 
tion  to  have  in  a  compact  form  a  thousand  proof 
of  the  amiability  and  kindliness  of  a  general  who 
\  once  popularly  known  only  as  the  Iron-hearted.*i 


Sea  Nile,  the  Desert^  and  Nigritia,  described  bT 
Joseph  U.  Ghuri.  The  ^ihencenm  commences  its 
review  of  this  work  thus : 

"  Here  at  least  is  a  literary  novelty.  The  Nil^ 
and  the  Desert^  the  City  of  the  Kast^  the  mosque 
the  cataract  and  the  pyramid,  are  known  to  us  by  a 
thousand  interpretations: — but  how  few  of  these 
are  native  I  The  German  studejit  has  carried  with 
him  to  Philoe  the  scholarship  and  mysticism  of  Hei- 
dleberg;  the  French  novelist  has  reproduced  at 
Cairo  aud  Alexandria  the  gaieties  of  his  own  boule- 
Yard ;  the  American  Howadji,  uoconcious  of  the 
poetry  of  his  own  lakes  and  mountains^  of  the  inter- 
eat  attaching  to  the  past  greatness  and  forgotten 
avilizations  which  exist  around  him,  has  placed  his 
amaranth  on  gilded  minaret  and  solemn  pyramid ; 
the  English  tourist  has  been  poetical,  learned,  indif- 
ferant^  sneering,  and  statistical,  as  agreed  with  his 
digestion  or  chimed  in  with  the  prevailing  mood  of 
his  mind : — but  a  picture  of  the  East  by  an  Eastern 
is  a  rare  effort^  and  will  command  attention.  Signor 
Churl  is  a  Maronite  *  of  Mount  Lebanon.'  What  an 
address  to  give: — Signor  Churi  of  Mount  Le- 
hanonr* 

Miss  Bremer's  new  work,  "  The  Homes  of  the 
Kew  World:  Impressions  of  America" — the  first 
volume  of  which  the  Harpers  have  republished, 
does  not  seem  to  have  taken  well.  The  Critic  ex- 
claims: 

Thirteen  hundred  and  thirty  pages,  full  tale,  on 
America  I  In  the  present  instance,  had  a  thousand 
pages  been  deducted,  we  should  still  have  had  a 
pleasant^  instructive  volume.  If  by  some  literary 
cookery  the  three  volumes  could  have  been  boiled 
down  into  one,  Miss  Bremer's  new  work  would 
have  had  more  readers,  and  the  story  of  her  travels 
"Wonld  have  been  told  more  effectively.  For,  we 
must  say — and  we  say  it  very  reverently — that  in 
these  thi*ee  volumes  there  is  a  considerable  amount 
of  unmitigated  twaddle."  The  Spectator  calls  it 
personal,  and  thinks  there  was  no  excuse  for  its 
publication.  The  Athencgum  thinks  the  **  book  will 
not  increase  Mm  Bremer's  reputation.  The  topics 
of  which  it  treats^  and  the  manner  of  that  treat- 
ment^ are  not  suiteil  to  the  habits  and  character  of 
her  mind.  Nor  wera  the  circumstances  under 
which  Miss  Bremer  acquired  her  knowledge  of 
America,  and  of  what  she  calls  the  Homes  of  the 
Kew  World,  favorable  to  her  object  of  writing  a 
book."  ''A  considerable  part^  however,  of  each  of 
the  three  volumes  ought  never  to  have  been  print- 
ed,— perhaps  never  to  have  been  written.  We  al- 
lude to  those  numerous  passaij^es  occupied  wholly 
in  dilating  on  the  characters  and  capacities  of  the 
private  persons  with  whoni,  as  a  gtiest  prineipally, 
HiM  Bremer  became  aequainted.'' 


Akrrioan  Books. 

The  Meesra  Cartkr  have  recently  published 
several  Biblical  works  which  have  more  than  ordi- 
nary value.  A  compilation  of  Scripture  texts  espe- 
cially arranged,  entitled  **The  Law  and  Testi- 
mony,'* made  by  the  author  of  Wide,  Wide  World, 
is  an  invaluable  manual  for  the  readers  of  the  Sa- 
cred volume.  It  carefully  arranges  the  several  pas- 
sages of  Scripture  which  relate  a  given  subject  un- 
der one  head,  carefully  quoting  the  whole  passage, 
and  its  context^  and  designating  that  which  relates 
to  the  topic  in  hand  by  large  and  perspicuous  type. 
It  is  a  work  of  great  labor  and  evinces  a  nice  per- 
ception of  the  meaning  of  the  inspired  t«xt. 

The  Sufferings  and  Glory  of  the  Messiah,  is  A 
volume  of  expository  lectures,  by  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Brown,  on  the  18th  Psalm,  in  connection  with  Isa. 
62:  13,  Ac — an  admirable  specimen  of  expository 
and  preaching,  accurate  learning,  sound  judgment* 
and  ingenious  method,  characterise  all  of  Dr. 
Brown's  writings. 

A  new  work  of  Dr.  Cheevers,  entitled  '*The 
Powers  of  the  World  to  Come,"  treats  with  the  au- 
thor's accustomed  vividness  of  imagery  and  force  of 
expression,  the  great  themes  of  man's  future  life. 

A  new  and  very  neat  edition  of  the  immortal  Ex- 
position of  Matthew  Henry,  in  six  volumes—a  work 
which,  for  pith  and  copiousnera  of  thought^  quaint 
beauty  of  style  and  fervent  piety,  has  no  equal  in 
the  language. 

History  of  the  Westminster  Assembly  of  Divine^ 
by  Dr.  Hetherington,  succinctly  recounts  the  pro- 
ceedings and  characterizes  the  personages  of  the  fa- 
mous Calvinistio  Synod,  to  wnich  the  Catechism 
owes  its  origin. 

An  instructive  history  of  religious  enterprise  in 
Africa  is  furnished  in  a  little  work,  entitled  **  Abbe- 
okuta,  or  Sunrise  in  the  Tropics^"  Many  a  work  of 
large  pretensions  does  not  possess  the  real  merits  of 
this  unpretending  volume. 

Items. 

A  literary  pension  of  100/.  a  year  has  been  con- 
ferred on  Sir  Francis  Head,  the  popular  author  of 
"  Bubbles  from  the  Brunnen,"  and  other  popular 
works;  and  another  of  100/.  on  the  widow  ot  Mr, 
M.  Moir,  of  Musselburgh — well  known  in  the  world 
of  letters  as  the  **  Delto"  of  SlackwootPa  Magazine. 
A  pension  of  80/.  a  year  has  been  given  to  the  Rev. 
William  Hickey,  the  popular  agricultural  writer, 
under  the  well-known  name  of  '*  Martin  Doyle." 

A  University  for  Australia  has  been  founded  and 
endowed  by  the  local  legislature  at  Sydney ;  and 
the  latest  tidings  from  that  colony  speak  of  a  pro- 
ject being  on  foot  to  establish  a  new  college,  in  con 
nexion  with  the  University  there,  for  educating 
Ministera  of  the  English  Church. 

■ 

The  Scotsman  newspaper  reports  a  serious  ac# 
dent  to  Sir  William  Hamilton,  Professor  of  Logic 
from  a  fall.  The  hurt  is  not,  however,  supposed  to 
be  dangerous. 

The  first  Congress  of  Statists  haa  been  recently 
held  in  Brussels.    The  meetings  were  well  attended 
by  Eogli^  French,  Germans^  and  others^  and  eon 
■iderable  interest  was  excited  by  their  proceedings 
among  the  inhabitanto  of  that  gay  and  pieturesque 


432 


»  LITERART  MISCELLANIES. 


[Nov.,  1863.] 


capital.  Among  the  frequent  YiBitore  at  the  vari- 
ous Sections  were  King  Leopold  and  his  two  sons, 
the  Duke  of  Brabant  and  the  Duke  of  Flanders; 
and  the  diatinguiehed  members  of  the  Congress  were 
more  than  once  invited  to  partake  of  the  royal  hos- 
pitalities. 

Our  obituary  contains  the  name  of  Dr.  Lyming- 
ton,  of  Paisley,  Professor  of  Divinity  to  the  Re- 
formed Presbyterian  Synod. 

Science  and  the  Arts,  says  the  Journal  de9 
Dihats,  have  sustained  a  serious  loss  in  the  person 
of  M.  Depping,  the  Senior  Member  of  the  Society 
of  Antiquaries  in  France,  and  member  of  various 
other  Academiea  He  is  the  author  of  many  works, 
among  which  may  be  mentioned  a  "  Historv  of  the 
Commerce  of  Europe  with  the  Levant;''  "The 
Jews  in  the  Middle  Ages  f  a  "  History  of  Norman- 
dy under  William  the  Conquerer ;'*  and  "Adminis- 
trative Correspondence  under  Louis  the  Four- 
teenth.** 


At  a  r-ublio  dinner  lately  given  him,  Mr.  Row- 
land Hill,  the  Post  Office  Reformer,  gave  some  ac- 
count of  the  extent  of  i,he  reform  obtained  through 
his  exertions.  The  year  after  the  penny  post  stamp 
was  issued,  the  number  of  letters,  said  he,  doubled : 
last  year,  they  had  increased  to  nearly  five  times 
the  ante  reform  number.  The  net  income  for  the 
year  ending  the  6th  of  January,  1888,  amounted  to 
1,662,424/.  7».  7 id,  while  that  of  the  year  ending 
Mme  date  in  1868  was  1,090,419/.  18».  6li.  The 
gross  a/nount  of  income  for  the  year  1889  was 
2,846,278/.,  and  for  1868,  2,484,326/. 

Paganini,  who  died  so  many  years  back,  has  not 
yet  been  buried.  The  clergy  of  Nice  refused  him 
Christian  sepulture,  because  he  neglected  to  receive 
the  sacrament  in  his  last  moments.  W»  nej'hew 
and  heir  applied  to  the  ecclesiastical  douJ*  for  an 
order  for  them  to  proceed  to  the  burial.  After  im- 
mense delay,  his  application  was  rejected.  He 
therefore  appealed  to  the  archie pisoopal  court  of 
Genoa.  After  more  long  delay,  a  judgment  was 
given,  quite  recently,  to  the  effect  that  the  inter- 
ment should  take  place  in  the  ordinary  cemetery. 
But  against  this  decision,  the  ecclesiastical  party  has 
presented  an  appeal  to  a  superior  jurisdiction,  and 
Heaven  only  knows  when  it  will  be  decided.  In 
the  meantime  the  remains  of  the  great  violinist  are 
left  in  an  unconsecrated  garden. 

The  confession  of  Balthazar  Gerard,  the  assassin 
of  William  the  Taciturn,  Prince  of  Orange,  in  1684, 
has  just  been  added  to  the  archives  of  Belgium.  It 
is  a  very  interesting  historical  document  It  is  en- 
tirely in  the  handwriting  of  the  murderer,  occupies 
three  pages,  contoins  few  erasures,  and  gives  a  de- 
tailed account  of  the  motives  of  his  crime,  and  of 
the  measures  he  took  for  executing  it 

An  obeervatorv  is  about  to  be  built  at  Utrecht 
The  King  of  Holland  laid  the  first  stone  of  it  a  few 
days  ago. 

M  Thiers  is  on  the  point  of  finishing  his  history 
of  the  Consulate  and  Empire. 

M.  de  Remusat  has  resumed  the  editorship  of  the 
Revue  dea  Deux  Mondee. 

A  posthumous  work  of  Balzac  is  announced  to 
appear  in  the  Oonstitutionnel, 

Mr.  Thorp,  the  editor  of  variouB  Anglo-Saxon 


and  other  works  connected  with  early  Northern 
literature,  is  preparing  for  the  press  a  new  edition 
and  translation  of  Beowulf,  founded  on  a  ooUation 
of  the  Cottonian  MS. 

A  correspondent  of  the  Literary  Gazette  states 
that  Proudhon,  the  Socialist^  has  written  a  work  on 
political  philosophy,  but  in  all  Paris  he  <^nnot  find 
a  printer  who  has  the  courage  to  print  it  Yet  it 
is  said,  like  all  that  emanates  from  him,  to  be  ad- 
mirably written  and  profoundly  thought ;  it  is  said 
to  contain  nothing  objectionable  to  the  powers  that 
be ;  and  it  is  said  that  he  is  willing  to  submit  it^  to 
the  strictest  examination,  and  to  erase  anything 
that  can  by  any  possibility  be  considered  offensive. 
All  is  vain,  however;  notoneof  the  eighty  licensed 
printers  in  Paris  dare  touch  the  manuscript 

The  Paris  correspondent  of  the  Journal  of  Orwi- 
merce  says: — "The  Academy  of  Inscriptions  has 
just  issued  the  twenty-second  quarto  volume  of  the 
Ilistory  of  France,  a  work  begun  by  the  Benedic- 
tine Monks  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  and 
continued  by  members  of  the  Institute.  This^om« 
is  nearly  of  a  thousand  pages^  and  though  the 
twenty-second,  descends  no  later  than  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  disquisitions  are  erudite ;  the  eeleo- 
tions^  valuable,  rare,  or  curious;  and  the  contents, 
altogether,  adapted  to  the  import  and  scope  of  the 
tiUe." 

Alexander  Yon  Hnmboldt  accomplished  hii 
eighty-fourth  year  on  the  18th  nit  The  illustrious 
philosopher  is  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  health  and 
vigor. 

Among  the  papers  of  Mrs.  Gibbon,  the  aunt  of 
the  historian,  were  f^ilipd,  after  her  decease,  several 
letters  to  her  from  her  nephew,  Edward  Gibbon,  the 
historian,  and  his  friend  Lord  Sheffield,  from  which 
it  would  appear  that  the  religious  views  of  the  for- 
mer had,  at  least  from  the  year  1788,  undergone 
considerable  chaoge.  In  one  of  these  intereetinff 
letters-  Gibbon  says : — ^Whatever  you  have  been  tola 
of  my  opinions,  I  can  assure  you  with  truth,  that  I 
consider  religion  as  the  best  guide  of  youth,  and 
the  best  support  of  old  age ;  that  I  firmly  believs 
there  is  less  real  happiness  in  the  business  and 
pleasures  of  the  world,  than  in  the  life  which  yoa 
have  chosen  of  devotion  and  retirement" 

Monsieur  Gabriel  Surenne  has  just  returned  from 
a  literary  tour  in  France  and  England,  undertaken 
for  the  purpose  of  discovering  the  residences,  ceme- 
teries, and  various  historical  circumstances  in  con- 
nection with  the  royal  house  of  the  Bruoes,  from 
the  first  baron  to  the  eighth  inclusive.  His  anti- 
quarian researches  have  been  crowned  with  suooeaa 

The  discovery  of  the  lost  Regalia  has  caused 
much  satisfaction  in  Hungary.  The  crown,  sword, 
sceptre,  orb,  cross,  and  mantle,  were  buried  in  an 
island  of  the  Danube  for  security  during  the  war 
of  independence. 

Mr.  Parker,  the  celebrated  Oxford  publisher,  has 
recently  extended  his  agencies  in  the  principal  cities 
abroad,  for  the  purpose  of  making  the  numeron 
and  learned  works  issued  by  the  University  known 
on  the  continent. 

Mr.  W.  Brown,  M.P.  for  South  Lancashire,  has 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  town  council  of  Liver- 
pool the  munificent  gift  of  6000/.  for  the  erection 
of  a  free  library,  if  the  corporation  will  provide  a 
suitable  site,  in  a  central  part  of  the  town. 


[i/iuJiktJ^x^J: 


a^S^ 


• 

•       0 


A. 


^. 


r 


»0 


I 


*  LouU  XVIL,  8a  Vie,  tan  Jganie,  »a  Mori ; 
Capiiviti  de  la  Famille  RoyaU  au  Temple^  cuvrage 
tnrichi  <P  Avtoaraphet,  de  PorlraiUf  el  de  Plant, 
Pat  M.  a.  de  BMQohesne.    2  vols.      PariB.    1862. 

VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


Angoul^me,   who    were     inmates    of     the 
Temple,  and  in  the  MemoirU  Hiiipriquu  of 
M.  Eckard,  which  is  a  judicious  and  interest- 
28 


u/luJiLulux*^ 


A-,v'.. •-,■;■:'    /■'■v;'  ;.--:,'^  ' 


ECLECTIC  MAGAZIIE 


FOREIGN  LITERATURE,  SCIENCE,  AND  ART. 


DECEMBER.   1853. 


LODIS  XTII." 


Tea  deep  obecariLy  that  oovered  the  last 
eighteen  months  of  the  life  of  the  son  of 
Louis  XVI.,  and  the  mystery  io  which  his 
death  and  burial  were  so  strangely,  nad,  as 
it  seemed,  ao  studiously  involved,  gare  to  the 
general  sympathy  that  his  fate  naturally  ex- 
cited na  additional  and  somewhat  of  a  more 
romantic  interest.  Of  the  extent  of  this 
feeliog,  we  have  evidence  more  conclusive 
than  respectable  in  the  numerous  pretenders 
that  have  successively  appeared  to  claim 
identity  with  him.  We  really  forget  how 
many  there  have  heen  of  these  "  FauxBatt- 
j^ins,"  but  Four — of  the  names  of  Herva- 
gault,  Bruneau,  Naundorf,  and  Richemont — 
played  their  parts  with  a  degree  of  success 
that  con6rms  the  observation  that,  however 
great  the  number  of  Icnavet  in  the  world 
may  be,  they  are  always  sure  to  find  an 
ample  proportion  ot  fooli  and  dupei.  Not 
one  of  ifaoee  cases  appeared  to  us  to  have 
reached  even  the  lowest  degree  of  probabili- 
ty, nor  would  they  l>e  worth  menljoning,  but 
that  they  seem  to  have  stimulated  the  zeal 

*  Zouii  XVII..  SaVii,i>m  Agoni*.  ta  Mart  ; 
Ot^titili  Ja  la  Famillt  Boj/alt  ou  Temple,  oumgt 
tHrieki  J'  Autographet,  dt  Portrailt,  tt  dt  Flan*. 
Far  H.  A.  dfl  BaauDhesDe.    t  vols.      FWw.    ISCS. 

TOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


of  U.  A.  de  Beauchesne  to  coUeot  all  the 
evidence  that  the  fury  of  the  revoliitio&  and 
the  lapse  of  time  might  have  spared,  as  to 
the  authentic  circumstances  of  bis  life  and 
death  in  the  Tower  of  the  Tempk. 

M.  de  Beauchesne  states  that  a  great  part 
of  his  own  life  has  been  dedicated  to  this 
object.  He  has — he  tells  us — made  himself 
familiar  with  all  the  details  of  that  mediievel 
prison-house;  he  has  consulted  all  the  ex- 
tant records  of  the  public  offices  which  had 
any  connexion  with  the  service  of  the  Temple 
— he  has  traced  out  and  personally  oommu- 
nioated  with  every  surviving  indiridoal  who 
had  been  employed  there,  and  be  has  even 
sought  secondhand  and  hearsay  information 
from  the  ootogeDarian neighbors  and  acquain* 
tances  of  those  who  were  no  more.  This 
statement  would  lead  us  to  expect  more  of 
novelty  and  orieinalily  than  we  have  found 
— for,  in  truth,  M.  de  Beauchesne  baa  added 
little — we  may  almost  say  nothing  essential — 
to  what  bad  been  already  so  copiously  de- 
tailed in  the  respective  memoirs  of  ISli. 
Hue,  C16ry,  and  Turgy,  and  the  Dncheas  d' 
Angoul^me,  who  were  Inmates  of  the 
Temple,  and  in  the  MemoirU  SitUmguet  of 
M.  Eckard,  which  is  a  judicious  and  iaterect- 


434 


LOUIS  XVU. 


fDec.» 


ing  summary  of  all  the  fore-named  authori- 
ties. From  these  well-known  works,  M.  de 
Beauchesne  borrows  full  three-fourths  of  his 
volumes ;  though  he  occasionally  cites  them, 
he  does  not  acknowledge  the  extent  of  his 
obligations — particularly  to  M.  Eckard — as 
largely  as  we  think  he  should  have  done. 
An  ordinary  reader  is  too  frequently  at  a 
loss  to  distinguish  what  rests  on  M.  de  Beau- 
chesne's  assertions  from  what  he  copies 
from  others.  This  uncertainty — very  incon- 
venient in  a  historical  work — is  seiiously 
increased  by  his  style  of  writing,  which  is  so 
ampoule  and  rhetorical  as  sometimes  leaves 
us  in  doubt  whether  he  is  speaking  literally 
or  metaphorically ;  for  instance,  in  detailing 
the  pains  be  has  taken,  and  his  diligent  ex- 
amination of  persons  and  places  from  which 
he  could  hope  any  information,  he  ex- 
claims : — 

**  For  twenty  years  I  shut  myself  up  in  (hat 
Tower — I  lived  in  ii — traversed  all  its  stairs  and 
apartments,  nay,  pried  into  every  hole  and  corner 
about  it." — p.  4. 

Who  would  suppose  that  M.  de  Beau- 
chesne never  was  in  the  Tower  at  all — per- 
haps never  saw  it ! — for  it  was  demolished 
by  Bonaparte,  and  the  site  built  over,  near 
fifty  years  ago.  He  only  means  that  his 
fancy  has  inhabited  the  Tower,  <kc.,  in  the 
same  sense  that  he  afterwards  says, — 

**  I  have  repeopled  it — I  have  listened  to  the 
•ighs  and  sobs  of  the  victims — I  have  read  from 
the  writinffs  on  the  walls  the  complaints,  the  par- 
dons, the  farewells  ! — I  have  heard  the  echoes  re- 
peating these  wailings." — lb. 

Such  a  style  may  not  be,  we  admit,  incon- 
sistent  with  the  truth  of  his  narrative,  but  it 
renders  it  vague  and  suspicious,  and  contrasts 
very  disagreeably  with  the  more  interesting 
simplicity  of  the  original  works  to  which  we 
have  referred. 

M.  de  Beauchesne  flatters  himself  that  he 
is  neither  credulous  nor  partial.  We  think 
he  is  somewhat  of  both,  but  we  entertain  no 
doubt  of  his  sincerity.  We  distrust  his 
judgment,  but  not  his  good  faith.  Indeed, 
the  most  valuable  of  his  elucidations  are  the 
documents  which  he  has  copied  from  the 
revolutionar}'  archives,  and  which  speak  for 
themselves ;  and,  on  the  whole,  the  chief 
merit  that  we  can  allow  to  his  work  is,  that 
it  collects  and  brings  together — with  some 
additional  explanation  and  confirmation — all 
that  is  known — ^all  perhaps  that  can  be 
known — of  that  melancholy,  and,  to  France, 


disgraceful  episode  in  her  history — the  cap- 
tivity of  the  Temple,  and  especially  of  the 
life  and  death  of  Louis  XVII. 

Louts  Charles,  the  second  son  and  fourth 
child  of  Louis  XVI.  and  Marie  Antoinette, 
was  bom  at  Versailles  on  the  27th  of  March, 
1 785,  and  received  the  title  of  Duke  of  Nor- 
mandy. On  the  death  of  his  elder  brother, 
(who  was  born  in  1781,  and  died  in  1789,  at 
the  outset  of  the  Revolution)  he  became  heir- 
apparent  to  the  Throne,  but,  in  fact,  heir  to 
nothing  but  persecution,  misfortune  and 
martyrdom.  Less  partial  pens  than  M.  de 
Beauchesne's,  describe  the  child  as  extreme- 
ly handsome,  large  blue  eyes,  delicate  fea- 
tures, light  hair  curling  naturally,  limbs  well 
formed,  rather  tall  for  his  years,  with  a 
sweet  expression  of  countenance  not  wanting 
in  either  intelligence  or  vivacity — to  his  fami- 
ly, he  seemed  a  little  angel — to  the  Court  a 
wonder — to  all  the  world  a  very  fine  and 
promising  boy.  We  not  only  forgive,  but 
can  assent  to  M.  de  Beauchesne's  metaphori- 
cal lament  over  him  as  a  lily  broken  by  a 
storm  and  withered  in  its  earliest  bloom.* 

Within  two  hours  after  the  death  of  the 
first  Dauphin,  (on  the  4th  of  July,  1789) 
the  Revolution  began  to«xhibit  its  atrocious 
disregard  of  not  merely  the  Royal  authority 
but  of  the  ordinary  dictates  of  humanity 
and  the  first  feelings  of  nature.  The  Cham- 
ber of  the  Tiers  Etat  (it  had  not  yet 
usurped  the  title  of  National  Assembly) 
sent  a  deputation  on  business  to  -  the  King, 
who  had  shut  himself  up  in  his  private  apart- 
ment to  indulge  his  sorrows.  When  the 
deputation  was  announced,  the  King  answer- 
ed that  his  recent  misfortune  would  prevent 
his  receiving  it  that  day.  They  rudely  in- 
sisted on  their  right  of  audience  as  represen- 
tatives of  the  people :  the  King  still  request- 
ed to  be  spared  :  the  demagogues  were  ob- 
stinate— and  to  a  third  and  more  peremptory 
requisition,  the  unhappy  father  and  insulted 
monarch  was  forced  to  yield,  with,  however, 
the  touching  reproof  of  asking — "  Are  there, 
then,  no  fathers  among  them  V* 

A  month  later  the  Bastile  was  taken,  and 
on  the  6th  of  October,  another  insurrection 
stormed  the  Palace  of  Versailles,  massacred 
the  Guards,  and  led  the  Royal  family  in 
captivity  to  Paris.  We  pass  over  the  three 
years  of  persecution  which  they  had  to  en- 
dure in  the  palace  prison  of  the  Tuileries  (ill 

*  Thif  image  had  b«en  before  prodneed  on  e 
medal  struck  in  1S16,  bv  M.  Tirolier,  under  the 
auspices  of  M.  de  ChateaubriADd,  which  repreeeoted 
a  lUy  broken  by  the  atorm^  with  the  legend  (keidit 
ut /lo9,^2\tryy,  814. 


IB52.] 


LOUIS  xvn. 


435 


the  more  tremendous  insurrectioD  and  massa- 
cre of  the  10th  of  August  swept  away  even 
the  mockery  of  monarchy,  and  sent  them 
prisoners  to  the  Temple — an  ancient  fortress 
of  the  Knights  Templars,  built  in  1812,  into 
the  dungeons  of  which,  uninhabited  for  ages, 
and  less  fit  for  their  decent  reception  than 
any  common  prison,  they  were  promiscuously 
hurried. 

Of  this  edifice,  and  its  internal  divisions 
and  distributions  for  its  new  destiny,  M.  de 
Beauchesne  has  given  us  half-a-dozen  plans, 
somewhat  larger,  but  hardly  so  satisfactory 
as  we  already  possessed  in  Clary's  work.  It 
was  a  huge  and  massive  tower,  not  unlike 
"  the  tower  of  Julius,  London's  lasting 
shame,*'  and  stood  hke  it  in  a  large  inclosure 
of  inferior  and  more  modern  constructions. 
One  of  these,  though  called  the  Palace,  was 
in  truth  only  the  "  Hotel"  of  the  Pnor  of 
the  Order,  in  right  of  which  nominal  office  it 
had  been  for  several  years  the  abode  of  the 
penultimate  Prince  de  Conti,  and  is  frequent- 
ly mentioned  in  the  letters  of  Walpole  and 
Madame  du  Deffand,  and  all  the  memoirs  of 
the  time.  It  was  latterly  the  town  residence 
of  the  Comte  d'Artois.  Here  the  Royal 
family  arrived  at  seven  in  the  evening-  of 
Monday,  the  ^th  of  August,  and  supposed 
they  were  to  be  lodged — the  King  even  ex- 
amined the  apartments  with  a  view  to  their 
future  distribution ;  but  this  would  have  been 
too  great  an  indulgence,  and  when  bedtime 
came  they  were  painfully  surprised  at  being 
transferred  to  the  more  inconvenient,  rigor- 
ous, and  above  all,  insulting  incarceration  of 
the  Tower, 

The  Tower  was  so  surrounded  by  its  own 
appurtenances  and  by  the  neighboring  houses 
that  it  was  not  easily  visible  from  the  adjoin- 
ing streets,  and  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  of  its  new  inhabitants  (unless  perhaps 
the  King)  had  ever  set  eyes  upon  it.  M. 
Hue  tells  us  that  when  he  was  conducted  to 
it  that  night  to  prepare  a  bed  for  the  King, 
he  had  no  idea  what  it  was,  and  was  lost  in 
wonder  at  the  dark  and  gigantic  object,  so 
diU'erent  from  anything  he  had  seen  before. 

Though  appearing  to  be  one,  and  general- 
ly called  the  Tower,  it  was  composed  of 
two  distinct  parts.  The  greater  of  the  two 
was  a  massive  square,  divided  into  five  or  six 
stories,  and  above  150  feet  high,  exclusive  of 
a  lofty  pyramidal  roof,  and  it  had  at  each  of 
its  four  angles,  large  circular  turrets  with 
conical  roofs,  so  sharp  that  M.  Hue  at  first 
mistook  them  for  steeples.  This  tower  had 
been  of  old  the  keep — the  treasury  and  arse- 
nal of  the  knights,  and  was  accessible  only 


by  a  single  small  door  in  one  of  the  turrets, 
opening  on  a  winding  stone  staircase.  The 
door  was  so  low  that  when  the  Queen,  after 
the  King's  death,  was  torn  from  her  children, 
and  dragged  through  it  to  her  last  prison  in 
the  Conciergerie,  she  struck  her  forehead 
violently  against  it.  On  being  asked  if  she 
was  hurt,  she  only  said,  "  Nothing  can  hurt 
me  now,**  This  portion  of  the  tower  had  in 
latter  tiroes  merely  served  as  a  depository 
for  lumber.  The  second  division  of  the 
edifice,  called,  when  any  distinction  was  made, 
the  Little  Tower,  was  attached,  but  without 
any  internal  communication,  to  the  north  side 
of  its  greater  neighbor ;  it  was  a  narrow  ob- 
long, with  smaller  turrets  at  its  salient  angles. 
Both  the  towers  had  in  a  marked  degree  the 
dungeon  character  of  their  age,  but  the  lesser 
had  been  subdivided  into  apartments  for  the 
residence  of  the  Keeper  of  the  archives  of 
the  Order.  It  was  into  this  »ide  of  the  build- 
ing, scantily  supplied  by  the  modest  furniture 
of  the  archivist,  that  the  Royal  family  were 
offensively  crowded  during  two  or  three 
months,  while  internal  alterations — wholly 
inadequate  for  comfort  or  even  decency,  and 
ridiculously  superflous  as  to  security — were 
in  progress  in  the  large  tower,  destined  for 
their  ultimate  reception.  The  Gothic  dun- 
geon was  not,  however,  thought  sufficiently 
secure;  bars,  bolts,  and  blinds  additionally 
obscured  the  embrasure  windows — doors  of 
ancient  oak  were  made  thicker  or  reinforced 
with  iron,  and  new  ones  were  put  up  on  the 
corkscrew  stairs  already  difficult  enough  to 
mount.  The  Abb6  Edgeworth,  who  attend- 
ed the  King  in  his  last  moments,  thus  des- 
cribes the  access  to  his  apartment : — 

"  I  was  led  across  the  conrt  to  the  door  of  the 
tower,  which,  though  very  narrow  and  very  low, 
was  80  overcharged  with  iron  bolts  and  bars  that 
it  opened  with  a  horrible  noise.  I  was  conduct- 
ed up  a  winding  stairs  so  narrow  that  two  persons 
would  have  difficulty  in  getting  past  each  other.  At 
f>hort  distances  these  stairs  were  cut  across  by 
barriers,  at  each  of  which  was  a  sentinel — ^these 
sentinels  were  all  true  Bane  cuhtieBf  generally 
drunk — and  their  atrocious  acclamations,  re- 
echoed bv  the  vast  vaults  which  covered  every 
story  of  the  tower,  were  really  terrifying." 

Considerable  works  were  also  undertaken 
for  external  security.  The  Towers  were 
isolated  by  the  destruction  of  all  the  lesser 
buildings  immediately  near  them,  and  the 
walls  round  the  whole  inclosure  were  strength- 
ened and  raised.  The  execution  of  the  plans 
was  intrusted,  as  a  boon  for  his  revolutionary 
zeal,  to  a  mason  who  had  acquired  the  dis- 
tinctive appellation  of  the  Patriot  PaUay  by 


486 


LOUIS  XVIL 


[Dec., 


the  noisy  activity  which  he  displayed  in  the 
removal  of  the  ruins  of  the  Bastile,  for 
which  he  had  obtained  a  contract.  On  the 
subject  of  these  works,  a  remark  of  the 
young  Prince  is  related  by  M.  de  Beauchesne, 
which  may  be  taken  as  one  example  out 
of  many  of  the  caution  with  which  his  anec- 
dotes must  be  received.  When  told  that 
Pallay  was  the  person  employed  to  raise  the 
walls,  the  Prince  is  reported  to  have  observ- 
ed that  "  it  was  odd  that  he  who  had  become 
90  famous  for  levelling  one  prison  should  he 
employed  to  build  another***  The  observation, 
though  obvious  enough,  seems  to  us  above  a 
child  of  that  age,  and,  moreover,  we  find  it 
made  by  M,  Hue  as  his  own  in  a  note  in  his 
memoirs,  and  he  certainly  cannot  be  suspect- 
ed of  pilfering  a  bon  mot  from  the  Dauphin. 
The  selection  of  this  dungeon  for  the 
Royal  family,  and  the  wanton  and  almost  in- 
credible brutality  with  which  from  first  to 
last  they  were  all  treated  by  their  various 
jailers,  constitute  altogether  a  systematic 
aeries  of  outrages  which  we  have  never  seen 
eatisfactorily,  nor  even  probably,  accounted 
for.  The  heads  of  the  King,  Queen,  and 
Madame  Elizabeth  fell,  we  know,  in  the  des- 
perate struggle  of  Brissot,  Roland,  Danton, 
and  Robespierre  to  take  each  other's  and  to 
save  their  own*  But  why  these  royal  vic- 
tims, and  after  them  the  two  children,  should 
have  been  deprived  of  the  common  decen- 
cies and  necessaries  of  life — why  they  should 
have  been  exposed  to  the  most  sordid  wants, 
to  the  lowest  personal  indignities,  to  the  vul- 
gar despotism  of  people  taken  (as  it  were 
for  the  purpose)  from  the  lowest  orders  of 
society — that  is  the  enigma ;  and  this  is  our 
conjectural  explanation. 

The  National  Assembly  which  had  sent 
the  King  to  prison,  and  its  successor,  the 
Convention,  which  deposed  him,  seemed  to 
the  eyes  of  the  world  sufficiently  audacious, 
tyrannical,  and  brutal,  but  there  was  a  power 
which  exceeded  them  in  all  such  qualities, 
and  under  which  those  terrible  Assemblies 
themselves  quailed  and  trembled — the  com- 
mit is  worth  observing  that  at  the  taking  the 
Battile  on  the  14th  July,  1789,  there  were  found 
but  MX  or  seven  prisoners^  three  of  them  insane, 
who  were  afterwards  sent  to  madhooses ;  the  rest 
for  forgery  and  soandaloas  offences  unfit  for  pablie 
trial.  There  was  no  State  prisoner.  On  the  27  th 
of  the  same  month  of  July,  in  1794,  the  fifth  ifear 
^  liberty,  the  prisons  of  Pdris  contained  8913  pri- 
soners ;  to  this  number  must  be  added  2637,  who 
had  passed  in  the  preceding  year  from  the  prisons  to 
the  seaffold.  When  Bonaparte  demolished  the 
Temple,  which  he  had  previously  used  as  a  State 
prison,  there  were  seventeen  prisoners  removed  to 
Vmeennea 


mune  or  Common  Council  of  the  City  of 
Paris.     To  this  corporation,  which  arose  oat 
of  the  10th  of  August,  and  directed  the 
massacres  of  September,  the  Convention  as 
a   body  owed  its  existence,   and  its    most 
prominent  Members  their  individual  elections. 
Inflated  with  these  successes,  it  arrogated  to 
itself,  under  its  municipal  title,  a  power  in- 
sultingly independent  even  of  the  Assembly 
and  the   Government.     It  was  composed, 
with   rare  exceptions,  of    tradesmen   of   a 
secondary  order — men  only  known  even  in 
their  own  low  circles  by  the  blind  and  noisy 
violence  of  their  patriotism — by  a  rancorous 
enmity  to  all  that  they  called  aristocracy, 
and  by  the  most  intense  and  ignorant  preju- 
dices against  the  persons  and  characters  of 
the  royal  family.     To  the  tender  mercies  of 
these  vulgar,  illiterate,  and  furious  dema- 
gogues, that  family  was  implicitly  delivered 
over — they  it  was,  that,  contrary  to  the  origi- 
nal intention  of  the  ministers  and  the  Con- 
vention, assigned  the  Tower  of  the  Temple 
as  the  royal  prison — they  it  was  that  named 
from    amongst    themselves    all    the    oflScial 
authorities,  who  selected  them  for  their  bru- 
tality,  and   changed    them  with   the  most 
capricious  jealousy  so  as  to  ensure  not  mere- 
ly the  safe  custody  of  tha^prisoners,  bat  the 
wanton  infliction  of  every   kind  of  personal 
indignity.     And  to  such  a  degree  of  insolent 
independence   had   they  arrived,  that  even 
Committees  of  the  Convention  which  visited 
the  Temple   on  special  occasions  were  con- 
trolled,  contradicted,  rebuked,  and   set  at 
defiance  by  the  shoemakers,  carpenters,  and 
chandlers  who    happened  to    be    for    the 
moment  the  delegates  of  the  commune.    The 
parties  in  the  Convention  were  so  perilously 
struggling  for  the  destruction  of  each  other, 
that  they  had  neither  leisure  nor  courage  to 
grapple  with  the  Commune,  and  they  all, — 
and  especially  the  more  moderate,  already 
trembling  for  their  own   heads, — were  not 
sorry  to  leave  to  those  obscure  agents  the 
responsibility  and  odium  of  such  a  persecu- 
tion. 

"  Assensere  omnes ;  et  qnsB  sibi  quisqne  timebat, 
Unins  in  miseri  exitium  con  versa  tolere. 
Jamque  dies  infanda  aderat  I" 

But  the  infanda  dies — the  2l8t  January — 
in  which  they  all  thus  concurred,  did  not 
save  the  Girondins  from  the  Slst  October — 
nor  the  Dantonists  from  the  16th  Germinal 
— nor  Robespierre  from  the  Neuf  Thermidor  I 
To  the  usurped  but  conceded  supremacy 
of  the  Commune,  and  the  vulgar  habits  and 
rancorous  feeling  of  the  majority  of  its  mem- 


1853.J 


LOUIS  xyn. 


437 


ben,  maj,  we  suspect,  be  more  immediately 
attributed  the  otherwise  inexplicable  brutali- 
ties of  the  Temple. 

Every  page  of  the  works  of  Hue,  Clery, 
Madame  Royale,  and  M.  de  Beauchesne  ex- 
hibit proofs  of  the  wanton  outrages  of  the 
Commune  and  their  tools.  The  last  gives 
US,  from  the  archives  of  that  body,  an  early 
instance,  which  we  quote  the  rather  because 
it  was  not  a  mere  individual  caprice  but  an 
official  deliberation.  In  reading  it,  we  must 
keep  in  remembrance  the  peculiar  character 
of  the  prison. 

**  Commune  de  Farts,  29/A  Sep.  1702,  the 
fourth  year  of  Liberty  and  first  of  Equal- 
ity and  the  BepuMic. 

"Considering  that  the  custody  of  the  prisoners 
of  the  Temple  becomes  every  day  more  diffi- 
cult by  the  concert  and  designs  which  they 
may  form  amongst  themselves,  the  Council 
General  of  the  Commune  feel  it  their  imperi- 
ous duty  to  prevent  the  abuses  which  might 
facilitate  the  evasion  of  those  traitors :  they 
therefore  decree — 

**  1.  That  Louis  and  Antoinette  shall  be 
separated. 

2.  That  each  prisoner  shall  have  a  separate 
dungeon  {cackbt.) 

8.  That  the  valet  de  chambre  shall  be  plac- 
ed in  confinement. 

4.  That  the  citizen  Hubert  [the  infamous 
H6bert,  of  whose  crimes  even  Robespierre 
and  Danton  grew  tired  or  afraid]  shall  be 
added  to  the  five  existing  Commissaries. 

5.  That  the  decree  shsll  be  carried  into 
effect  this  evening — immediately — even  to 
taking  from  them  the  plate  and  other  table 
utensils  {argenterie  et  les  aeeessoires  de 
las  huoehe.)  In  a  word,  the  Council  Gen- 
eral gives  the  Commissaries  full  power  to 
do  whatever  their  prudence  may  suggest 
for  the  safe  custody  of  these' Ao^to^e^.'' 

Soup-spoons  and  silver  forks  a  means  of 
eecape !  In  virtue  of  this  decree  the  King 
was  removed  that  niyht  to  the  second  story 
(the  third,  reckoning  the  ground  floor)  of 
the  great  tower  (his  family  remaining  in  the 
smaller  one,)  where  no  furniture  had  been 
prepared  for  his  use  but  a  temporary  bed, 
while  his  valei-de- chambre  sat  up  in  a  chair. 
The  dispersion  of  the  rest  was  postponed; 
and  they  were  for  some  licpe  permitted,  not 
without  difficulty,  to  dine  with  the  King.  A 
month  later  the  ladies  and  children  were  also 
transferred  to  an  apartment  in  the  great  tow- 
er^  immediately  over  the  King's.     On  the 


«« 


tt 


4t 


<C 


26th  October  a  fresh  decree  directed  that  the 
prince  should  be  removed  from  his  mother's 
to  his  father's  apartment,  under  the  pretext 
that  the  boy  was  too  old  (seven  years  and 
six  months,)  to  be  left  in  the  hands  of  wom- 
en ;  but  the  real  object  was  to  afflict  and 
insult  the  Queen. 

For  a  short  time  after  the  whole  family 
had  been  located  in  the  great  tower,  though 
separated  at  night  and  for  a  great  portion  of 
the  day,  they  were  less  unhappy — they  had 
their  meals  together  and  were  allowed  to 
meet  in  the  garden,  though  always  strictly 
watched  and  habituslly  insulted.  They  bore 
all  such  outrages  with  admirable  patience, 
and  found  consolation  in  the  exercise  of  what- 
ever was  still  possible  of  their  respective 
duties.  The  King  pursued  a  regular  course 
of  instruction  for  his  son — in  writing,  arith- 
metic, geography,  Latin,  and  the  history  df 
France — the  ladies  carried  on  the  education 
of  the  young  princess,  and  were  reduced  to 
the  necessity  of  mending  not  only  their  own 
clothes,  but  even  those  of  the  King  and 
prince;  which,  as  they  had  each  but  one 
suit,  Madame  Elizabeth  used  to  do  after  they 
were  in  bed. 

This  mode  of  life  lasted  only  to  the  first 
week  in  December,  with  a  view  no  doubt  to 
the  infanda  dies,  a  new  set  of  Commissaries 
was  installed,  who  watched  the  prisoners  day 
and  night  with  increased  insolence  and  rigor. 
At  last,  on  the  11th  of  December,  the  young 
prince  was  taken  back  to  the  apartment  of 
his  mother — the  King  was  summoned  to  the 
bar  of  the  Convention,  and,  on  his  return  in 
the  evening,  was  met  by  an  order  for  his  to- 
tal separation  from  the  whole  of  his  family. 
The  absurdity  of  such  an  order  surprised, 
and  its  cruelty  revolted,  even  his  patience. 
He  addressed  a  strong  remonstrance  to  the 
Convention  on  the  barbarous  interdiction : 
that  Assembly,  on  the  1st  of  December,  came 
to  a  resolution  allowing  him  to  communicate 
with  his  family;  but  it  was  hardly  passed 
when  it  was  objected  to  by  Tallien,  who  au- 
daciously announced  that,  even  if  they  ad- 
hered to  the  vote,  the  commune  would  not 
obey  it.  This  was  conclusive,  and  the  debate 
terminated  in  a  declaration  "  that  the  King 
might,  till  the  definitive  judgment  on  his 
case,  see  his  children,  on  condition,  however, 
that  they  should  have  no  communication  with 
either  their  mother  or  (heir  aunt.*^  The  con- 
dition rendered  the  permission  derisory  as  to 
his  daughter,  and  the  King  was  so  convinced 
of  the  grief  that  a  renewed  separation  from 
her  son  would  cause  to  the  Queen,  that  he 
sacrificed  his  own  feelings,  and  the  decree 


488 


LOTTis  xvn. 


[Deo., 


became,  as  it  was  meant  to  be,  wholly  inop- 
erative. He  never  saw  any  of  his  family 
again  till  the  eve  of  his  death. 

To  what  we  already  knew  of  that  scene, 
M.  de  Beauchesne  has  added  an  anecdote  new 
to  us,  for  which  he  quotes  in  his  text  the 
direct  authority  of  the  Duchess  of  Angou- 
Utne : — 

**  My  father,  at  the  moment  of  parting  from  as 
forever,  made  us  promise  never  to  think  of  aveng- 
ing his  death.  He  was  well  satisfied  that  we 
sboold  bold  sacred  these  his  last  instructions ;  but 
the  extreme  youth  of  my  brother  made  him  desir- 
ons  of  producing  a  still  stronger  impression  on 
him.  He  took  him  on  his  knee  and  said  to  him, 
*  My  son,  you  have  heard  what  I  have  said ,  but 
as  an  oath  has  something  more  sacred  than  words, 
hoid  vp  your  hand,  and  swear  that  you  will  accom- 
plish the  last  wish  of  your  father.*  My  brother 
obeyed,  bursting  out  into  tears,  and  this  touching 
goodness  redoubled  ours.*' — p.  44§. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  anecdote 
represents  truly  the  sentiments  of  the  King — 
as  he  had  already  expressed  them  in  that 
portion  of  his  will  which  was  specially  ad- 
dressed to  his  son — but  we  own  that  the 
somewhat  dramatic  scene  here  described 
seems  hardly  reconcilable  with  the  age  of  the 
child  or  the  sober  simplicity  of  his  father's 
character.  Nor  are  we  satisfied  with  M.  de 
Beauchesne's  statement  of  his  authority ;  for, 
after  giving  it  in  the  text  as  directly  from  the 
lips  or  pen  of  the  Duchess  d'AngoulSme  her- 
self, he  adds  in  a  foot-note  a  reference  to 
**  Fragments  of  unpublished  Memoirs  of  the 
Duchess  of  Tourzel.'*  But  as  C16ry,  who 
was  an  anxious  eye-witness,  and  describes 
minutely  the  position  and  altitudes  of  all  the 
parties,  does  not  mention  any  such  demon- 
stration or  gesture,  we  suspect  that  this  cer- 
emony of  an  oath  is  an  embroidery  on  the 
plain  fact  as  stated  by  Madame  Royale. — 
Royal  Mem.,  p.  200.* 

The  next  day  Louis  XVI.  ceased  to  live. 
He  died  under  the  eyes  of  an  hundred  thou- 
sand enemies  and  of  but  one  solitary  friend 
— his  confessor;  yet  there  was  no  second 
opinion  in  this  hostile  crowd  as  to  the  cour- 
age and  dignity  of  hrs  deportment  from  first 
to  last,  and  it  is  only  within  these  few  years 
that  we  have  heard  insinuations,  and  even 
assertions  (contradictory  in  themselves,)  that 
he  exhibited  both  fear  and  fury — struggled 

*See  the  yolume  published  by  Murray  in  1823, 
under  the  title  of  ^Rotfol  Memoin^^  in  which  there 
is  ft  translation  of  theDaoheee  d'Angouleme's  meet 
ioteresting  '  Account  of  what  paued  in  the  Temple 
from  the  Impriaonment  of  the  Royal  Family  to  tlie 
Death  of  the  Dauphin,^ 


with  his  executioner,  and  endeavored  to  pro- 
long the  scene  in  the  expectation  of  a  res- 
cue. We  have  against  such  injurious  impu- 
tations the  sacred  evidence  of  that  single 
friend — the  official  testimony  of  the  Jacobin 
Commissioners,  who  were  appointed  to  su- 
perintend the  execution,  and  the  acquies- 
cence of  the  vast  assemblage  that  encircled 
the  scaflfold.  But  M.  de  Beauchesne  has  dis- 
covered at  once  the  souroe  of  this  calumny 
and  its  complete  refutation,  in  two  contem- 
poraneous documents,  so  curious  in  every 
way,  that  we  think  them  worth  producing  tn 
extenso,  though  the  fact  is  already  supera- 
bundantly established  without  them. 

In  a  newspaper,  called  Le  Thermomktre 
du  Jour,  of  the  Idth  February,  1793  {three 
weeks  only  after  the  execution),  there  appeared 
this  anecdote : — 

'^When  the  co7Tdamni  ascended  the  scaffold* 
(it  is  Sanson  the  executioner  himself  who  has 
related  the 'fact,  and  who  has  employed  the  term 
condamnS),  'I  was  surprised  at  his  assurance 
and  courage  ;  but  at  the  roll  of  the  drums  which 
drowned  his  voice  at  the  movement  of  my  assist- 
ants to  lay  hold  of  him,  his  countenance  suddenly 
changed,  and  he  exclaimed  hastily  three  times,  *  / 
am  lost*  {je  suis  perdu)!*  This  circumstance, 
corroborated  by  another  which  Sanson  equally 
narrated — namely,  that  Hhe  condamn4  had  sup- 
ped heartily  the  preceding  eveninff  and  breakfasted 
with  equal  appetite  that  morning — shows  that  to 
the  very  moment  of  his  death  he  had  reckoned 
on  being  saved.  Those  who  kept  him  in  this  de- 
lusion had  no  doubt  the  design  of  giving  him  an 
appearance  of  courage  that  might  deceive  the 
spectators  and  posterity — but  the  roll  of  the  drums 
dissipated  this  false  courage,  and  contemporaries 
and  posterity  may  now  appreciate  the  real  feel" 
ings  of  the  guilty  tyrant.*' — i.  479. 

We — who  now  know  from  the  evidence  of 
the  Abb6  Edgeworth  and  Cl^ry  how  the 
king  passed  that  evening,  night,  and  morn- 
ing, and  that  the  only  break  of  his  fast  was 
by  the  reception  of  the  Holy  Communion — 
are  dispensed  from  exposing  the  falsehood 
and  absurdity  of  this  statement ;  but  it  met 
an  earlier  and  even  more  striking  refutation. 

Our  readers  may  recollect  (Q.  R.,  Dec. 
1843,  V.  IB,  p.  250),  that  Sanson  (Charles 
Henry)  was  a  man  more  civilized  both  in 
manners  and  mind  than  might  be  expected 
from  his  terrible  occupation.  On  reading 
this  article  in  the  paper,  Sanson  addressed 
the  following  letter  to  the  editor,  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Thermomktre  of  the  21st: — 

'' Paris,  fiOth  Feb.  1793, 
Ist  year  of  the  French  BepubUe. 
"  CmzEN — A  short  absence  has  prevented  my 
sooner  replying  to  your  article  concerning  Louis 
Capet.    But  here  is  the  exact  troth  as  to  what 


1858.] 


LOUIS  XVII. 


489 


passed.  On  alighting  from  the  carriage  for  exe- 
CQtion,  he  was  told  that  he  must  take  off  his  coat. 
He  made  some  difficulty,  saying  that  they  might 
as  well  execute  him  as  he  was.  On  [our]  repre- 
sentation that  tliat  was  impossible,  he  himself  as- 
sisted in  taking  off  his  coat  He  again  made  the 
same  difficulty  when  his  hands  were  to  be  tied, 
but  be  offered  them  himself  when  the  person  who 
accompanied  him  [his  confessor]  had  told  him 
that  it  was  his  last  sacrifice  [the  Abb^  Eldgeworth 
had  suggested  to  him  that  the  Saviour  had  sub- 
mitted to  the  same  indignity].  Then  he  inquired 
whether  the  drums  would  go  on  beating  as  they 
were  doing.  We  answered  that  we  could  not 
tell,  and  it  was  the  truth.  He  ascended  the  scaf- 
fold, and  advanced  to  the  front  as  if  he  intended 
to  speak  ;  but  we  again  represented  to  him  that 
the  thing  was  impossible.  He  then  allowed  him- 
self to  l^  conducted  to  the  spot,  when  he  was  at- 
tached to  the  instrument,  and  from  which  he  ex- 
claimed in  a  loud  voice,  *  People,  I  die  innocent.^ 
Then  turning  round  to  us,  he  said,  '  Sir,  I  die 
innocent  of  all  that  has  been  imputed  to  me.  I 
wish  that  my  blood  may  cement  the  happiness  of 
the  French  people.' 

'^These,  Citiasen,  were  his  last  and  exact  words. 
The  kind  of  little  debate  which  occurred  at  the 
foot  of  the  scaffold  turned  altogether  on  his  not 
thinking  it  necessary  that  his  coat  should  be  taken 
off,  and  his  hands  tied.  He  would  also  have 
wished  to  cut  off  bis  own  hair.  [He  had  wished 
to  have  it  done  early  in  the  morning  by  Cl^ry, 
but  the  municipality  would  not  allow  him  a  pair 
of  scissors.] 

**  And,  as  an  homage  to  truth,  I  must  add  that 
he  bore  all  this  with  a  $ang  froid  and  firmness 
which  astonished  us  all.  I  am  convinced  that  he 
had  derived  this  strength  of  mind  from  the  princi- 
ples of  religion,  of  which  no  one  could  appear 
more  persuaded  and  penetrated. 

'*  You  may  be  assured,  Citizen,  that  there  is  the 
truth  in  its  fullest  light.  I  have  the  honor  to  be 
your  fellow  Citizen,--SAKSOK." 

This  remarkable  letter  ia  made  additionalty 
interesting  by  some  minute  errors  of  orthog- 
raphy and  grammar,  which  show  that  it  was 
the  unaidea  production  of  the  writer.  M. 
de  Beauchesne  adds  that  Sanson  never  as- 
sisted at  another  execution,  and  that  he  died 
vfitkin  six  months,  of  remorse  at  his  involun- 
tary share  in  the  royal  murder.  The  last 
particular  is  contrary  to  all  other  authorities, 
and  is  a  strong  con6rmation  of  the  suspicion 
forced  upon  us  that  M.  de  Beauchesne  is  in- 
clined to  exaggerate,  and,  as  he  thinks,  em- 
bellish the  incidents  of  his  story.  Sanson 
did  not  die  soon  after  the  King's  death,  nor 
even  retire  from  the  exercise  of  his  office  till 
1795,  when  he  obtained  the  reversion  for  his 
son  and  a  pension  for  himself  (Dubois,  Mhn, 
sur  tSanson),  Mercier  saw  and  describes 
him  in  the  streets  and  theatres  of  Paris  in 
1799  {youv.  Tab.,  e.  102),  and  Dubois  states 
him  to  have  died  on  the  4th  of  July,  1806. 


^  * .  de  Beauchesne  follows  np  this  certainly 
erroneous  statement  by  another,  which  we 
fear  is  of  the  same  class.  He  says  that  San- 
son left  by  his  will  a  sum  for  an  expiatory 
mass  for  the  soul  of  Louis  XVI.,  to  be  cele- 
brated on  the  21st  of  January  in  every  year ; 
that  his  son  and  successor,  Henry  Sanson, 
who  survived  till  the  22nd  August,  1840,  re- 
ligiously provided  for  its  performance  in  his 
parish  Church  of  St.  Laurent ;  and  when  the 
Revolution  of  1830  had  repealed  the  public 
commemoration  of  the  martyrdom,  the  pri- 
vate piety  of  the  executioner  continued  to 
record  his  horror  of  the  crime.  M.  de  Beau- 
chesne gives  no  authority  for  his  statement, 
which,  whatever  probability  it  might  have 
had  if  Sanson  had  made  his  will  and  died 
within  a  few  months  of  the  King's  death, 
surely  requires  some  confirmation  when  we 
find  the  supposed  testator  living  a  dozen 
years  later. 

We  are  now  arrived  at  the  reign  of  Louis 
XVII,  His  uncle,  the  Comte  de  Provence, 
assumed  the  regency  of  his  kingdom ;  the 
armies  of  Cond^  and  of  La  Vendue  proclaim- 
ed him  by  his  title ;  and  from  all  the  princi- 
pal courts  of  Europe,  with  which  France  was 
not  already  at  war,  the  republican  envoys 
were  at  once  dismissed.  In  short  he  was 
King  of  France  everywhere  but  in  France. 
There  he  was  the  miserable  victim  of  a  series 
of  personal  privation  and  ill -usage,  such  as 
never,  we  suppose,  were  before  inflicted  on  a 
child  of  his  age,  even  in  the  humblest  condi- 
tion of  life. 

After  the  death  of  the  Kin^,  the  family 
remained  together  in  the  Queen^  apartment, 
but  under  equal  if  not  increased  supervision 
and  jealousy.  M.  de  Beauchesne  has  found 
in  the  records  of  the  Commune  a  slight  but 
striking  instance  of  the  spirit  which  still  pre- 
sided over  the  Temple. 

"  Commune  of  Paris, 
Sitting  of  (he  25^  of  Jan,,  1793. 
**  The  female  citizen  Laurent,  calling  herself  the 
nurse  of  Madame  Premilre  [to  distinguish  the 
young  Princess  from  Afadame  Elizabeth],  has 
solicited  the  Council  to  be  allowed  to  see  her  child, 
now  confined  in  the  Temple,  and  offers  to  stay 
with  her  until  It  shall  be  otherwise  ordered.  The 
Council  General  passes  to  the  order  of  the  day, 
becau8e  it  knows  nobody  of  the  name  of  *  Madame 
PremiheJ  "— ii.  p.  12. 

The  only  indulgence  the  prisoners  receiv- 
ed was,  that  they  might  put  on  mourning. 
When  the  Queen  first  saw  her  children  in  it, 
she  said,  "  My  poor  children,  you  will  wear  it 
long,  but  I  for  ever ;"  and  she  never  after  left 


440 


LOUIS  XYIL 


Pec., 


her  own  prison-room,  even  to  take  the  air 
for  the  short  interval  allowed  them,  in  the 
garden,  because  she  could  not  bear  to  pass 
the  door  of  the  apartment  which  had  been 
the  King's. 

The  royal  prisoners  had  now  no  other  at- 
tendants but  a  low  man  of  the  name  of  Tison, 
and  his  wife,  who  had  been  oriffinallj  sent  to 
the  Temple  to  do  the  menial  and  rougher 
household  work.  Their  conduct  at  first  had 
been  decent ;  but  at  length  their  tempers  be- 
came soured  by  their  own  long  confinement 
(for  they  were  strictly  kept  close  also),  and 
especially  by  being  suddenly  interdicted  from 
reciving  the  visits  of  their  daughter,  to  whom 
they  were  much  attached.  These  vexations 
they  vented  on  their  prisoners.  Tison  was 
moreover,  as  might  be  expected  from  the 
selection  of  him  for  the  service  of  the  Tem- 
ple, a  zealous  Republican.  He  was  there- 
fore much  offended  at  the  sympathy  which 
two  of  the  municipals,  Toulan  and  Lepitre, 
showed  for  the  captives,  and  denounced  these 
persons  and  another  converted  municipal  of 
the  name  of  Michonis  as  having  undue  intel- 
ligence with  the  ladies;  and  though  thesb 
men  escaped  death  for  the  moment,  they 
were  all  subsequently  guillotined  on  these 
suspicions.  A  more  rigorous  set  of  Commis- 
saries were  now  installed  by  Hubert,  by  whom 
the  royal  family  were  subjected  to  new  in- 
terrogations, searches,  privations,  and  indig- 
nities. Their  condition  became  so  miserable 
that  even  the  Tisons  were  shocked  at  the 
mischief  their  denunciations  had  done,  and 
both  soon  showed  signs  of  repentance,  espe- 
cially the  woman,  who  actually  went  mad 
from  anxiety  and  remorse.  She  began  by 
falling  into  a  deep  and  restless  melancholy, 
accusing  herself  of  the  crimes  she  had  wit- 
nessed, and  of  the  murders  which  she  fore- 
saw of  the  Queen,  Mr  dame  Elizabeth,  and  the 
three  Municipals.  The  derangement  gradu- 
ally amounted  to  fury,  and  she  was  after 
some  delay  removed  to  a  madhouse.  One 
of  the  strangest  vicissitudes  of  this  long  tra- 
gedy was,  that,  while  the  unhappy  woman 
remained  in  the  temple,  the  Queen  and  Mad- 
ame Elizabeth  watched  over,  and  endeavored 
by  their  charitable  care  and  consolations  to 
sooth  the  malady  of  their  former  persecutor. 

The  spirit  of  the  new  Commissaries  will 
be  sufficiently  exhibited  by  one  anecdote. 
The  little  Prince  (not  yet  eight  years  old) 
had  been  accustomed  to  sit  at  table  on  a 
higher  chair.  One  of  these  men,  an  apos- 
tate priest,  Bernard*  by   name,  who  had 

*  He  was  gaillotined  with  Robespierre. 


been  selected  to  conduct  the  King  to  the 
scaffold,  saw  in  this  incident  a  recognition  of 
the  royalty  of  the  child,  and  took  the  first 
opportunity,  when  the  prisoners  were  going 
to  dinner,  of  seating  himself  on  that  very 
chair.  Even  Tison  was  revolted  and  had 
the  courage  to  remonstrate  with  Bernard, 
representing  that  the  child  could  not  eat 
comfortably  on  a  lower  chair ;  but  the  fellow 
persisted,  exclaiming  aloud,  *'  I  never  before 
saw  prisoners  indulged  with  chairs  and  ta- 
bles. Straw  is  good  enough  for  them.''  (p. 
40.)  And,  strangest  of  all,  after  what  we 
have  seen  cf  the  state  of  the  Temple,  new 
walls  and  works  were  made  externally,  and 
what  more  affected  the  prisoners,  wooden- 
blinds  {ahal- jours)  were  fixed  to  all  the  win- 
dows that  had  them  not  already. 

About  this  time  (7th  or  Sth  May),  the  boy 
fell  sick,  and  the  Queen  solicited  that  M. 
Brunier,  his  ordinary  physician,  should  be 
allowed  to  attend  him.  The  Commissaries 
for  several  days  not  only  disregarded,  but 
laughed  at  her  request.  At  last  the  case 
looked  more  serious,  and  was  brought  before 
the  Council  of  the  Commune,  where,  after 
two  days'  debate,  they  came  to  this  reso- 
lution : 

**  Having  considered  the  representation  of  the 
Commissaries  on  duty  in  the  Temple,  stating  that 
the  little  Capet  is  sick,  Resolved,  that  the  doctor 
ordinarily  employed  in  the  prisons  shall  attend 
the  little  Capet,  seeing  that  ii  would  be  eonirary 
to  the  principle  of  equality  to  allow  him  to  have 
any  oiher^ — ii.  p.  61. 

The  date  prefixed  to  this  resolution  is  wor- 
thy of  its  contents.  **  10  Mai,  1703  ;2dedela 
lUpuhlique^  \er  dela  Mort  du  Tyrant  It  is, 
our  readers  will  observe,  bad  French,  and, 
moreover,  nonsense,  but  its  import  on  snch 
an  occasion  is  but  too  mtelligible.  The  pris- 
on doctor,  M.  Thierry,  acted  like  a  man  of 
humanity  and  honor.  He  secretly  consulted 
M.  Brunier,  who  was  acquainted  with  the 
child's  constitution,  and,  for  the  three  weeks 
that  his  attendance  lasted,  the  Queen  and 
Madame  Elizabeth,  who  had  never  quitted 
the  child's  pillow,  had  every  reason  to  be 
satisfied  with  M.  Thierry. 

This  illness,  though  so  serious  that  Madame 
Royale  thought  her  brother  had  never  recov- 
ered from  it,  made  no  noise ;  for  all  other 
interests  were  at  the  moment  stifled  in  the 
great  struggle  between  the  Jacobhis  and  the 
Girondins,  which  ended,  on  the  celebrated 
dlst  of  May,  in  the  overthrow  of  the  latter. 
Hitherto  the  general  government — that  is, 
the  Convention — busy  with  its  internal  con- 
flicts— had,  as  far  as  we  are  informed,  left  the 


1853.] 


L0T7IS  xvn. 


441 


Temple  to  tbe  discretion  of  tbe  Commune — 
but  it  now  (9th  July)  intervened  directly, 
and  a  decree  of  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  directed  the  separation  of  "  the  son  of 
Capet"  from  bis  mother  and  bis  transfer  to 
tbe  hands  of  a  tutor  {insiituteur),  to  be  cho- 
sen still  by  the  municipals  (ii.  p.  67).  It 
was  10  o'clock  at  night — the  sick  child  was 
asleep  in  a  bed  without  curtains,  to  which  he 
had  hitherto  been  accustomed — but  his  mo- 
ther had  huuff  a  shawl  over  it.  to  keep  from 
his  eyes  the  hght  by  which  she  and  Madame 
Elisabeth  were  sittmg  up  later  than  usual, 
mending  their  clothes.  The  doors  suddenly 
opened  with  a  loud  crash  of  the  locks  and 
bolts,  and  six  Commissaries  entered— one  of 
them  abruptly  and  brutally  announcing  the 
decree  of  separation.  Of  the  long  scene  that 
ensued  we  can  only  give  a  summary.  Tbe 
Queen  was  thrown  into  an  agony  of  surprise, 
terror,  and  grief.  She  urged  all  that  mater- 
nal tenderness  could  suggest,  and  even  de- 
scended to  the  humblest  prayers  and  sup- 
plications against  the  execution  of  such  an 
unnatural  decree.  The  child  awoke  in  the 
utmost  alarm,  and  when  they  attempted  to 
take  him,  clung  to  his  mother — the  mother 
dung  with  him  to  the  posts  of  the  bed — vio- 
lence was  attempted,  but  she  held  on — 

*'  At  last  one  of  tbe  Commissaries  said,  *  It  does 
not  become  as  to  fight  with  women-— call  up  the 
guard.'  Madame  Elizabeth  exclaimed — ^'No, 
for  God's  sake,  no;  we  submit^— we  cannot  re- 
aist — bat  at  least  give  as  time  to  breathe — let  the 
child  sleep  here  the  rest  of  the  night  He  will  be 
delivered  to  you  to-morrow.'  No  answer.  Tbe 
Queen  then  prayed  that  he  might  at  least  remain 
in  the  Tower  where  she  might  atill  see  him.  One 
of  the  Commissaries  answered  in  the  most  brutal 
manner  and  tiUoyant  the  Queen — '  We  have  no 
account  to  give  you,  and  it  is  not  for  you  to  ques- 
tion the  intentions  of  the  natiun.  What?  you 
make  such  a  to-do,  because,  forsooth,  you  are 
separated  from  your  child,  while  our  children  are 
sent  to  the  frontiers  to  have  their  brains  knocked 
out  by  the  bullets  which  you  bring  upon  us.' 
The  ladies  now  began  to  dress  the  boy — but  never 
was  a  child  so  long  a  dressing — every  article  was 
successively  passed  from  one  hand  to  another — 
put  on  and  taken  off,  replaced,  and  drenched  with 
tears.  They  thus  delayed  the  separation  by  a  few 
minutes.  The  Commissaries  began  to  lose  pa- 
tience. At  last  the  Queen,  gathering  up  all  her 
strength,  placed  herself  in  a  chair  with  the  child 
standing  before  her — put  her  hands  on  his  little 
shoulders,  and,  without  a  tear  or  a  sigh,  said,  with 
a  grave  and  solemn  voice — ^'Mv  child,  we  are 
about  to  part  Bear  in  mind  alt  I  have  said  to 
you  of  your  duties  when  I  shall  be  no  longer  near 
you  to  repeat  it.  Never  forget  God  who  thus  tries 
you,  nor  your  mother  who  loves  you.     Be  good, 

£atient,  kind,  and  your  father  will  look  down  from 
eaven  and  bless  you.'     Having  said  this  she 


kissed  him  and  handed  him  to  the  Commissaries: 
one  of  whom  said — *  Come,  I  hope  you  have  done 
with  your  sermonizing— yon  have  abused  our  pa- 
tience finelv.'  *You  might  have  spared  your 
lesson;'  said  another,  who  dragrged  the  boy  out  of 
the  room.  A  third  added^-*  Don't  be  uneasy-*^ 
the  nation,  always  great  and  generous,  will  take 
care  of  his  education :' — and  the  door  closed  !" — 
ii.  71. 

That  same  night  the  young  King  was  hand- 
ed over  to  the  tutelage  and  guardianship  of 
the  notorious  Simon  and  his  wife,  of  whose 
obscure  history  M.  de  Beaucbesne  has  not 
disdained  to  unravel  the  details.  He  has 
traced  out  some  octogenarians  of  their  own 
— that  is,  the  lowest — class,  who  knew  them, 
and  from  these  and  other  sources  he  has  col- 
lected a  series  of  circumstances  ignoble  in 
themselves,  but  curious  in  their  moral  and 
political  import.  The  traditionary  details 
related  at  an  interval  of  fifty  years  by  the 
gossips  of  Madame  Simon  would,  not  obtain 
much  credit,  but  the  substance  of  the  sad 
story  is  confirmed  by  abundant  evidence. 
Anthony  Simon,  of  the  age  (in  1704)  of  58, 
was  above  the  middle  size — stout  built — of 
a  very  forbidding  countenance,  dark  com- 
plexion, and  a  profusion  of  hair  and  whiskers 
— by  trade  a  shoemaker,  working  in  his  own 
lodgings,  which  were  accidentally  next  door 
to  Marat  in  the  Rue  dea  Cordeliers,  after- 
wards de  V  Ecole  de  Midecine,  and  close  to 
the  Club  of  the  Cordeliers — of  which  he  was 
an  assiduous  attendant.  This  neighborhood 
impregnated  him  with  an  outrageous  degree 
of  civtim,  and  procured  his  election  into  the 
Commune,  whence  he  was  delegated  to  be 
Commissary  in  the  Temple.  There  the 
patronage  of  Marat,  his  own  zeal  in  harassing 
the  prisoners,  and  especially  his  activity  in 
seconding  the  denunciations  of  tbe  Tisons, 
procured  him  the  office  of  Tutor  to  tbe  young 
king.  His  wife,  Mary-Jane  Aladaroe,  was 
about  tbe  same  age — very  short,  very  thick, 
and  very  ill  favored.  She  had  been  but  a 
few  years  married,  and  too  late  in  life  to  have 
children,  which  exasperated  her  natural  ill 
temper.  Both  were  illiterate,  and  in  man- 
ners what  might  be  expected  in  such  people. 
Their  pay  for  the  guardianship  of  the  young 
Capet  was,  says  the  decree  of  the  Commune, 
to  be  tbe  same  as  that  of  the  Tisons  for  their 
attendance  on  Capet  senior,  500  francs  (20^) 
a  month.  This  was  significant — tbe  tutor  o{ 
the  young  King  was  to  have  the  same  wages 
as  the  household  drudges  of  the  whole  family. 
They  were  moreover  subjected  to  the  hard 
conaitions — Simon,  of  never  losing  sight  of 
hu  prisoner — and  both,  of  never  quitting  the 
Tower  for  a  moment  on  any  pretext  whatso- 


442 


LouiBxyn. 


[Dec, 


ever  without  special  permission,  which  was 
ODly  and  rarely  granted  to  the  wife.  It  was 
in  such  occasional  visits  to  her  own  lodgings 
that  she  had  those  communications  with  her 
neighbors  as  to  what  passed  in  the  interior 
of  the  Temple,  to  which  M.  de  Beauchesne 
attaches  more  importance  than  we  think  they 
deserve.  We  applaud  his  zeal  for  tracing 
out  and  producing  vaUat  quantum  every 
gleam  of  evidence  on  so  dark  a  subject ;  but 
we  should  have  little  confidence  in  this  class 
of  details.  We  know,  however,  from  Mad- 
ame Royale's  short  notes,  enous^h  of  the 
characters  of  the  Simons  and  of  the  system 
of  mental  and  bodily  torture  to  which  the 
poor  child  was  exposed,  to  believe  that  his 
common  appellations  were  "  animal^^ — "  w- 
j>«r," — " toad,^ — ** tool/' cub," garnished  with 
still  more  brutal  epithets,  and  sometimes  ac- 
companied by  corporal  punishment. 

At  half-past  10  on  the  night  we  have  just 
described,  the  youn?  King  and  his  astonish- 
ing tutor  were  installed  in  the  apartment  on 
the  third  story  of  the  tower,  which  had  been 
his  father^s,  but  which  was  now,  strange  to 
say,  additionally  strengthened  and  rendered 
still  more  gloomy  and  incommodious  for  the 
custody  of  the  son.  For  the  two  first  days 
he  wept  incessantly,  would  eat  nothing  but 
some  dry  bread — refused  to  go  to  bed,  and 
never  spoke  but  to  call  for  his  "  mother." 
He  could  not  comprehend  his  position,  nor 
why  he  was  so  treated,  but  on  the  third  day 
hunger  and  the  threats  of  Simon  reduced 
him  to  a  kind  of  silent  submission,  which 
however  did  not  mitigate  the  vexations  with 
which  the  tutor  soon  began  to  discipline  him 
into  what  he  called  equality,  and  which  the 
poor  child  found  to  mean  nothing  but  the 
most  degrading  servitude  to  his  task-master. 
Even  things  that  might  look  like  indulgences 
were  poisoned  by  the  malice  with  which  they 
were  accompanied :  for  instance,  Simon  gave 
him  one  of  those  vulgar  musical  toys  that 
the  little  Savoyards  and  boys  in  the  street 
were  used  to  play,  called  Jeto^a-harps,  with 
the  gracious  speech,  *'  Your  wolf  of  a  moth- 
er and  your  b of  an  aunt  play  on  the 

harpsichord — you  must  learn  to  accompany 
them  on  this,  and  it  will  be  a  fine  racket." 
The  child  resented  the  indignity  and  threw 
away  the  Jew's-harp.  This  was  rebellion 
against  a  constituted  authority,  and  he  was 
punished  even  with  blows — blows,  although 
it  is  proved  by  the  apothecary's  bills  in  the 
archives  of  the  Commune,  that  during  the 
whole  of  June  and  July  he  was  so  ill  as  to 
be  under  medical  treatment.  But  even  this 
did  not  yet  subdue  him,  and  he  continued. 


with  a  courage  and  intelligence  above  his  age 
— which  only  produced  new  violence — to  in- 
sist on  being  restored  to  his  "  mother."  A 
few  days  after  there  was  a  commotion  in 
Paris,  on  the  pretence  of  one  of  those  con- 
spiracies which  were  so  constantly  invented 
when  the  dominant  party  had  some  purpose 
to  answer.  The  present  object  was  to  throw 
more  odium  on  the  unfortunate  Qirondins ; 
but  the  prisoners  of  the  Temple  as  usual 
came  in  for  their  share.  Four  members  of 
the  Committe  of  SaretS  Oenirale  visited  the 
Temple,  of  whom  Drouet,  the  postmaster  of 
Ste.  Menehoud,  and  Chabot,  an  apostate 
monk,  were  the  chief :  they  held  a  long  and 
secret  conference  with  Simon,  which  conclu- 
ded in  the  following  dialogue ; — **  Citizent," 
asked  the  Guardian, 

"  What  do  you  decide  as  to  the  treatment  of  the 
wolf-cub  QouvaUau)  f  He  has  been  brought  up  io 
be  insolent— 'I  can  tame  him  to  be  sure,  but  lean" 
not  answer  that  he  will  not  sink  (crever)  under  it 
— so  much  the  worse  for  him — but  after  aU  wkat 
so  you  mean  to  do  with  him  f — to  banish  him  f — 
Answer,  iVb/  lb  JeiU  himf — No  I  Tb  poison 
himf — No!  But  vhcU  thenf — To  get  rid  of 
him!  {S'mdefairey 

The  wonderful  dialogue  is  vouched  by  the 
revelation  of  one  Senart,  who  himself  was 
secretary  to  the  Committee,  and,  after  the 
fall  of  Robespierre,  imprisoned  as  a  terrorist. 
Senart  had  added  on  hib  MS.  as  a  marginal 
note — "  He  wa^  not  killed — nor  banished — 
but  they  got  rid  of  him?^  The  process  was, 
as  we  shall  soon  see,  even  more  horrible  than 
the  design. 

From  the  son  the  Committee  went  down 
to  the  mother : — 

**  They  began  by  each  an  examination  of  the 
persons  and  the  apartment  as  thief-takers  would 
make  of  a  den  of  thieves — at  last  Drouet  [note 
the  choice  of  Drouet  as  the  spokesman  to  the 
Queen]  said,  *  We  are  come  to  see  whether  you 
want  anything.'  ^  I  want  my  c/it2c^/ said  the 
Qaeen.  *  Yoar  son  is  taken  care  of,'  replied 
Droaet ;  '  he  has  a  patriot  preceptor,  and  you  have 
no  more  reason  to  complain  of  his  treatment  than 
of  your  own.'  *  I  complain  of  nothing,  Sir,  but 
the  absence  of  my  child,  from  whom  I  have  never 
before  been  separated ;  he  has  been  now  five  days 
taken  from  me,  and  all  1  am  allowed  to  know 

*  The  Memoirs  pnbliBhed,  in  1824,  in  the  name 
of  Senart  (who  died  in  1797)  have  no  allneion  to 
this  matter ;  but  they  are  manifestly,  and,  indeed, 
confesBedlv,  garbled  by  the  origiiLal  editor.  M. 
Turgy,  who  saw  the  MS.,  haa  given  these  extracts 
that  M.  de  Beancheene  repeata.  Senart  was  a  great 
Booandrel ;  and  though  he  may  sometimes  tell  troth, 
we  look  upon  him  as  very  doubtful  authority — in- 
deed of  none,  ezoept  when,  as  in  this  case,  hia  evi* 
dence  may  tell  against  himsell 


1858.] 


LOUIS  XVIL 


448 


aboDt  him  is  that  he  is  ill  and  in  special  want  of 
my  care.  I  cannot  believe  that  the  Convention 
woald  not  acknowledge  the  justice  of  my  com- 
plaint.' " 

Drouet,  in  a  hypocritical  report  to  the  Con- 
rention  of  this  mis&ion,  stated  that  the  pri- 
soners admitted  that  they  were  in  want  of 
nothing,  and  totally  suppressed  the  complaint 
of  the  Queen. 

Henceforward  the  severity  of  Simon  grew 
more  savage,  and  every  untoward  event  from 
without,  and  especially  the  assassination  of 
his  friend  and  patron  Marat,  increased  his 
fury.  He  forced  the  boy  to  wait  on  him,  to 
clenn  his  shoes,  and  to  perform  the  most 
humiliating  offices.  On  one  point  only  the 
young  khig's  resistance  was  inflexible — he 
would  not  wear  the  red  cap  ;  for  he  probably 
remembered  his  having  been  forced  to  assume 
it  during  the  terrible  riots  of  the  20th  of 
June  the  year  before.  In  vain  Simon  scolded, 
threatened,  and  at  last  again  flogged  him, — 
nothing  would  subdue  him  into  wearing  the 
odious  cap.  At  last  the  woman's  heart  of 
Madame  Simon  melted,  and  she  persuaded 
her  husband  to  give  over  the  contest — she 
could  not  bear  to  see  the  child  beaten,  but 
she  was  willing  enough  that  he  should  be 
bullied  and  degraded.  His  light  hair  curling 
in  long  ringlets  had  been  a  peculiar  delight 
of  his  mother — they  must  be  removed — 
Madame  Simon  cut  them  close  all  round. 
This  very  much  disconcerted  him— it  tamed 
him  more  than  blows  could  do,  and  by  and 
bye,  under  the  fresh  inflictions  of  Simon,  he 
was  brought  to  endure  the  red  cap  with  the 
rest  of  the  Carmagnole  costume.  It  had  a 
piteous  effect  upon  which  even  Simon's  cruel- 
ty had  not  calculated.  To  prevent  the  ladies 
seeing  the  boy,  even  when  taking  the  air  on 
the  ]e«ids,  a  partition  of  boards  had  been 
erected ;  but  the  two  princesses  had  discover- 
ed a  chink  in  the  carpentry  through  which 
they  might  possibly  get  a  peep  of  him  as  he 
passed.  When  the  Queen  heard  of  this 
chance  she  overcame  her  repugnance  to  leave 
her  room,  and  employed  every  device  to  be 
near  the  partition  at  the  times  when  her  son 
might  be  expected  to  pass,  and  for  hours  and 
days  she  watched  at  the  chink.  At  last,  on 
Tuesday,  the  80th  of  July  (the  exact  date 
of  so  great  an  event  in  their  life  of  monoto- 
nous sorrow  was  noted),  she  caught  a  sight 
of  her  beloved  boy,  but  what  she  had  so 
long  desired  was  but  a  new  affliction — he 
was  not  in  mourning  for  his  father — he  had 
on  the  Carmagnole  jacket  and  red  cap,  the 
Uvery  of  the  Revolution,  and  it  happened 
still  more  unfortunately  that,  at  that  moment. 


Simon  was  out  of  humor,  and  the  Queen  waa 
near  enough  to  see  and  hear,  though  indis- 
tinctly, his  rude  treatment  and  detestable 
language.  She  was  thunderstruck,  and  re- 
'tired  hastily,  and  almost  fainting  with  horror, 
intending  never  to  subject  herself  to  such 
another  shock ;  but  maternal  tenderness  was 
stronger  than  indignation,  and  she  returned 
to  the  partition  on  that  and  the  two  or  three 
succeeding  days  to  watch  for  a  passing 
glimpse.  Her  grief  was  now  fearfully  in- 
creased by  learning,  though  very  vaguely, 
through  Tison,  who  had  returned  to  a  softer 
mood,  that  the  child's  health  was  not  improv- 
ed, and  that  his  mind  was  exposed  to  the 
worst  influences  of  his  atrocious  tutor. 

This  crisis,  however,  of  her  diversified 
agony  lasted  but  a  few  days.  In  the  mid- 
dle of  the  night  between  the  1st  and  2nd  of 
August  the  Commissioners  entered  the  apart- 
ment of  the  royal  ladies  to  announce  a  de- 
cree of  the  Convention  for  transferring  the 
Queen  to  the  Conciergerie — the  notorious 
antechamber  to  the  scaflbld.  The  Queen 
well  knew  she  was  going  to  death — she 
knew  she  left  her  son  in  the  hands  of  Simon 
— she  knew  she  should  never  again  see  her 
daughter ;  she  has  one  lingeriufi;  consolation 
— she  leaves  her  in  the  care  of  Madame  Eliza- 
beth, and  cannot  imagine  that  this  innocent, 
inoffensive,  and  saint-like  woman  could  be  in 
any  danger.  Even  in  that  hope  she  was  de- 
ceived— though,  happily  for  her,  she  died  in  it. 

The  same  day  that  the  Queen  was  sent  to 
the  Conciergerie,  Chaumette — the  organ  of 
the  Commune — directed  his  kind  recollection 
to  the  royal  boy,  and  sent  him  a  present  of 
toys,  amongst  which  the  most  remarkable 
was — a  little  guillotine.  Such  toys  the  police 
allowed  to  be  sold  iq  the  streets  of  Paris, 
and  the  toymen  had  a  stock  of  sparrows, 
with  whose  decapitation  they  amused  their 
customers.  This  well-timed  souvenir  of  his 
father's  fate  was  probably  intended  by  Chau- 
mette to  apprise  the  boy  of  the  lot  intended 
for  his  mother ;  it  happened  however  that 
day,  that  the  Commissioners  on  duty  at  the 
Temple  did  not  participate  in  Chaumette's 
benevolent  intentions,  and  one  of  them  was 
so  perverse  as  to  intercept  and  destroy  the 
amiable  plaything  before  it  reached  the 
child.  It  is  a  curious  sequel  to  this  anecdote 
that  Chaumette  was,  we  believe,  the  verj 
first,  of  the  Members  of  the  Council  of  the 
Commune,  who  had  practical  experience  of 
the  real  machine  of  which  he  so  much  ad- 
mired the  model — he  was  guillotined  on  the 
13th  of  April  following — a  month  before 
Madame  Elizabeth,  and  more  than  a  year 


444 


LOUIS  XYIL 


pee., 


before  tbe  death  of  the  child  whom  he  had  ' 
hoped  to  terrify  by  bis  ill-omened  present. 

In  the  mean  while  the  demoralization  of 
the  child  was  zealously  pursued  by  the  Si- 
mons— he  was  forced  to  drink,  taught  to 
swear,  and  sing  patriotic,  that  is,  indecent 
and  blasphemous  songs,  not  merely  with  the 
ultimate  object  of  ^*  getting  rid  of  him^^  but 
for  a  purpose  nearer  at  hand  and  still  more 
atrocious.  The  Queen's  trial  approached,  and 
Hubert  and  Chaumette  had  conceived  the  in- 
fernal idea  of  obtaining  from  the  child  evi- 
dence against  his  mother  so  monstrous  that 
our  pen  refuses  to  repeat  it.  After  obtain- 
ing— by  what  terror  or  violence  who  can 
tell  ? — the  signature  of  the  child  to  a  deposi- 
tion drawn  up  by  one  Daujon  under  Hubert's 
dictation,  they  had  the,  if  possible,  still  great- 
er infamy  of  questioning  Madame  Royale  on 
the  same  horror,  which  they  repeated  to 
Madame  Elizabeth.  We  copy  the  younger 
Madame's  own  account  of  this  extraordinary 
inquisition : — 

'  '*  They  qnestioned  me  about  a  thousand  terrible 
thingit  of  which  they  accused  my  mother  and 
aunt.  I  was  so  shocked  at  hearing  such  horrore, 
and  so  indignant,  that,  frightened  as  I  was,  I  could 
iKpt  help  exclaiming  that  they  were  infamous  false- 
hoods ;  bat  in  spite  of  my  tears,  they  still  pressed 
their  questions.  There  were  things  which  I  did 
not  comprehend,  but  of  which  I  understood  enough 
to  make  me  weep  with  indignation  and  horror. 
My  aunt's  examination  lasted  but  one  hour,  while 
mine  lasted  three ;  because  the  deputies  saw  they 
had  no  chance  of  intimidating  her  as  they  had 
hoped  to  be  able  lo  do  to  so  young  a  person  oy  the 
length  and  grossness  of  their  inquiries.  They 
were  however  mistaken :  they  forgot  that  the  life 
I  had  led  for  four  years  past,  and,  above  all,  the 
example  shown  me  by  my  parents,  had  given  me 
more  energy  and  strengtn  of  mind."— jRoya/ 
Mem.,  p.  248. 

It  was  under  these  auspices  and  influences 
that  the  Queen's  trial  commenced  on  the  14th 
October,  and  lasted  two  whole  days  and 
nights,  without  intermission.  She  bore  that 
protracted  agony  with  unparalleled  patience, 
presence  of  mind,  and  dignity.  Nothing  in 
the  slightest  degree  confirmatory  of  the 
political  charges  against  her  was  or  could  be 
produced.  But  then  at  length,  Hubert 
brought  forward  his  calumny,  equally  horri- 
ble and  superfluous,  for  the  fatal  result  was 
already  prepared.  She  disdained  to  notice 
it,  till  one  of  the  jury — not  what  we  in  Eng- 
land understand  by  ^jury,  but  the  perman- 
ent gang  of  judicial  assassins,  packed  and 
paid  to  deal  with  all  cases  that  should  be 
presented  to  them,  according  to  the  dictates 
of  the  public  accuser— one  of  the  jury,  we 


say,  observed  to  her  that  she  had  not  replied 
to  thjat  point.  On  this  challenge,  she  ele- 
vated, with  supreme  dignity,  her  head  and 
her  voice,  and,  turning  from  the  Court  to  the 
audience,  uttered  these  admirable  words  : — 
**/  did  fiot  tnutoer^  because  nature  refugee  to 
answer  such  a  charge  ;  but  I  appeal  against 
it  to  the  heart  of  every  mother  icho  hears  meJ^ 
And  subsequently,  when  the  counsel  who 
had  been  assigned  to  her  terminated  their 
short  and  interrupted  defence,  the  President 
asked  her  whether  she  had  adything  to  add. 
She  said  : — 

**  For  myself  nothing — for  your  conacieoces 
much  !  I  waa  a  Queen,  and  you  dethroned  me— 
I  was  a  wife,  and  you  murdered  my  husband — 
I  was  a  mother,  aud  you  have  torn  my  children 
from  me — I  have  nothing  led  but  my  blood ;  make 
baste  to  take  it'* — ^ii.  p.  167. 

M.  de  Beauchesne  does  not  give  us  his  au- 
thority for  the  allocution  which  we  do  not  re- 
member to  have  seen  elsewhere ;  if  really 
made,  this  last  waa  the  only  request  ever 
granted  her.  The  trial  was  concluded  at 
an  early  hour  on  the  third  morning,  and  at 
eleven  o'clock  on  that  same  forenoon  she  was 
led  to  the  Hcaffold.  We  cannot  refrain  from 
marking  the  fearful  retribution  which  follow- 
ed these  infamous  proceedings.  Within  nine 
months  from  the  death  of  the  Queen,  the  ac- 
cusers, judges,  jury,  prosecutors,  witnesses, 
all — at  least  all  whose  fate  is  known — per- 
ished by  the  same  instrument  as  the  illustri- 
ous and  innocent  victim. 

The  prisoners  of  the  Temple  knew  nothing 
of  the  Queen's  trial  and  death.  The  two 
princesses  were  in  close  confinement,  and  had 
no  attendant  whatever.  They  did  not  even 
see  their  gaolers.  Tison  himself  was  now  a 
prisoner.  They  were  in  fact,  alone  in  the 
world*  They  made  their  own  beds,  swept 
their  room,  and  learned  to  suffice  for  all  their 
menial  offices.  Their  food  was  delivered  to 
them  through  the  half-open  door,  and  they 
saw  nothing  but  the  hands  that  brought  it. 
They  were  sometimes  visited,  searched  in- 
sulted, by  the  members  of  the  Commune, 
else  they  never  saw  a  human  face.  It  was 
eighteen  months  before  Madame  Royale 
heard  of  her  mother's  fate.  Nor  did  she 
know  that  of  her  aunt  and  her  brother  till 
near  her  own  final  deliverance. 

About  ten  days  after  the  Queen's  death, 
26th  October,  the  boy  made  another  decla- 
ration : — 

"  That  one  day  while  Simon  was  on  duty  at  the 
Temple,  [in  his  former  character  of  Commissary] 
in  company  with  Johert,  Jobert  had  conveyed  two 


185d.J 


LOUIS  XVIL 


445 


notes  to  the  Queen  without  Siinon's  having  seen 
them  and  thai  this  triclc  (espieglerie)  made 
those  ladies  laugh  very  much  at  naving  deceived 
the  vigilance  of  Simon.  He  deponent  did  noi 
see  the  paper,  but  only  that  thove  ladies  had  told 
him  so. 

** Before  signing,  he,  I  ittie  Capet,  said,  that  his 
mother  was  afraid  of  his  aunt,  and  that  his  aunt 
was  the  best  manager  of  plots  (exicutaU  mietix 
leseomploU),*' 

This  is  the  deposition  to  which  the  last  of 
the  child's  signatures  was  affixed,  and,  in- 
aigniScant  as  ii  may  seem,  it  is  pregnant  with 
curious  circumstances,  which  deserve  some 
development,  though  they  have  escaped  the 
notice  of  M.  de  Beauchesne.  Simon,  when 
he  first  reported  this  statement  to  the  Com- 
mune, declined  to  mention  the  name  of  the 
colleague  accused  of  bringing  the  notes,  and 
he  requested  them  to  nominate  some  of  their 
own  body  to  take  the  boy's  deposition  from 
his  own  mouth — ^it  was  then  that  Jobert  was 
mentioned.  M.  de  Beauchesne  makes  no  ob- 
servation on  the  name,  but,  according  to  other 
evidence,  it  was  a  strange  one  to  find  in 
these  circumstances — for  Jobert  (unless  there 
were  two  commissaries  of  the  same  name,)  so 
far  from  being  likely  to  be  an  accomplice  of 
the  royal  ladies,  was  of  Simon's  own  dique  ; 
and  remained,  even  after  this  affair,  in  such 
full  confidence  with  his  party,  that  he,  like 
Simon  himself,  followed  Bobe9pierre  to  th$ 
scaffold  in  the  days  of  Thermidor.  The  story, 
therefore,  of  the  notes,  if  true  at  all,  was 
probably  a  device  of  Jobert  and  his  employers 
to  entrap  the  royal  ladies  into  some  difficulty 
— though  why  Simon  should  have  brought  it 
again  seems  hardly  explicable,  unless,  indeed, 
it  was  intended  as  a  prelude  to  the  subsequent 
proceedings  against  Madame  Elizabeth.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  it  is  evident  that,  even  if  the 
fact,  as  stated  by  the  child,  was  true,  the  ri- 
daction — the  form  and  phraseology  of  the 
deposition  could  not  have  been  his,  nor  could 
it  have  been  altogether  Simon's,  for  he,  cer- 
tainly, would  not  have  used  and  repeated  the 
ae mi- respectful  term  of  ^'  ces  dames*'  for  the 
Princesses — it  may,  therefore,  be  safely  con- 
cluded that  the  ridaetion  was,  to  some  ex- 
tent, at  least,  that  of  the  Magistrate  dele- 
gated by  the  Commune  to  conduct  the  in- 
quiry ;  and  it  seems,  by  another  of  those  won- 
derful vicissitudes  with  which  the  Revolution 
abounded,  that  it  was  the  poor  Magistrate 
who  fell  a  sacrifice  to  the  charge  directed 
against  Jobert.  This  Magistrate  (we  find 
from  the  prods  verbal  was  George  Fol- 
lope — aged  64 — an  eminent  apothecary  in 
the  Rue  St.  Honor^,  who,  though  reputed  a 
lealous  patriot,  and  as  such  elected  into  the 


Commune,  was  an  educated  and,  it  is  said,  a 
respectable  man;  aud  it  is  most  probable 
that  the  insignificance  of  the  deposition  itself, 
as  regarded  the  Princesses,  the  revelation  of 
the  name  of  the  patriot  Jobert,  and  the  use 
of  the  term  **  ees  dames**  may  have  been  attri- 
buted by  his  disappointed  and  angry  col- 
leagues to  his  integrity  and  decency.  Cer- 
tain it  is,  that  the  next — and  most  unexpect- 
ed— mention,  we  find  of  the  poor  old  apothe- 
cary is,  as  suffering  on  the  same  scaffold  with 
his  '^accomplices*'  Madame  Elizabeth  !  {Liste 
dee  condamnis.  No.  916,  10  May,  1794.) 

Another  deposition  especially  directed 
against  Madame  Elizabeth,  was  soon  after 
extorted  from  the  child— equally  ignorant, 
no  doubt,  of  the  consequences  of  the  words 
put  into  his  mouth,  as  in  the  former  case. 
Indeed,  the  imagination  of  such  a  charge  as 
it  was  brought  forward  to  support,  is  so 
grossly  absurd,  that  it  is  only  astonishing  it 
could  have  been  thought  of,  ev^n  in  that 
reign  of  insanity.  The  Princesses  were 
lodged  in  the  third  floor  of  the  great  Tower 
— the  boy  in  the  second — all  the  stories  were 
vaulted — there  was  no  communication  be- 
tween the  apartments,  nor  even  between  the 
persons  employed  in  the  service  of  either — 
and,  under  these  circumstances,  he  was 
made,  by  a  deposition,  dated  the  3rd  Decem- 
ber, 1793,  to  tell  this  story,  which  we  give 
in  the  exact  terms  which  he  is  supposed  to 
have  used : — 

*'  That  for  the  last  fortnight  or  three  weeks,  he 
had  heard  the  prisoners  [his  aunt  and  sis- 
ter] knocking  every  consecutive  day  between 
the  hours  of  six  and  nine  ;  that  since  the  day  be- 
fore yesterday,  this  noise  happened  a  little  later 
and  lasted  longer  than  the  preceding  days  ;  that 
this  noise  eceined  to  come  from  that  part  of  their 
room  where  the  fire-wood  was  kept ;  that  more- 
over, he  knows  {amnait)  from  the  sound  of  their 
footstep?,  (which  he  distinguishes  from  the  other 
noise,)  that,  during  ibis  time,  the  prisoners  leave 
the  place  where  (as  he  has  indicated)  the  wood  is 
kept,  and  move  into  the  embrasure  of  the  window 
of  their  sleeping-room,  which  makes  him  presume 
that  they  hide  away  something  in  these  embra- 
sures ;  he  thinks  it  may  be  forged  assignais  [! ! !] 
but  is  not  sure,  that  they  might  pass  them  through 
the  window  to  somebody •" — ii.  176. 

He  knows  the  noise  was  made  by  the 
prisoners,  and  not  by  any  one  else — he  can 
distinguish  through  the  solid  vaultings  of  the 
old  fortress  of  the  Templars,  the  steps  of  two 
young  women  from  the  noise  that  would  be 
made  in  the  fabrication  of  assignats,  a  thing 
and  a  process  of  which  he  probably  had 
never  heard — if  the  steps  are  directed  toward 
their  bedroom,  it  muat  be  to  bide  something 


446 


LOUIS  xvn. 


[Dee.t 


— ^he  thinks  forged  cusignatsf — he  thinks, 
too,  Ihey  might  convey  fbem  through  the 
barricaded  and  blockaded  window,  some  fifty 
or  sixty  feet  from  the  ground,  to  somebody — 
the  only  bodies  in  the  whole  wide  space 
around  the  tower  being  their  gaolers  and 
sentinels — ^and  all  this  the  spontaneous  ob- 
servations and  declarations  of  a  child  8  years 
and  6  months  old.  Such  a  tissue  of  non- 
sense was  never,  we  suppose,  before  put  to- 
gether— ^it  was  even  too  much  for  Simon, 
who  excused  himself  for  not  detecting  the 
noise,  by  alleging  that  he  was  **a  little  hard 
ofhearxng^'^ — and  his  wife  was  sharper — she 
heard  it  all — but  elu  never  mentioned  it, 
though  Simon  states  that  "  for  about  eight 
days  the  said  Charles  Capet  had  been  in  a 
torment  {ee  tourmentait)  to  make  this  decla- 
ration to  the  members  of  the  Council." 

We  may  here,  and  without  further  obser- 
vation, leave  to  the  wonder  and  indignation 
of  our  readers,  these  abominnble  depositions 
— still  extant  in  the  national  archives,  and  as 
characteristic  *  of  the  Republic — though  in 
80  different  a  style — as  even  the  Massacres 
and  the  Guillotine. 

Meanwhile,  the  brutalities  inflicted  on  the 
poor  child  continued  with  even  greater  rigor. 
One  or  two  instances  must  suffice.  Strictlv 
shut  up  in  one  dark  room,  with  no  distrac 
tion  or  amusement  whatsoever,  he  had  be- 
come so  pitiable  a  picture  of  lassitude  and 
despondency,  that  one  of.  the  persons  era- 
ployed  about  the  Tower  obtained  8imun*s 
consent  to  his  having  an  artificial  canary 
bird  which  was  in  the  Garde  Meuble,  and 
which,  by  an  ingenious  mechanism,  fluttered 
its  wings  and  sang  a  tune.  This  so  much 
pleased  him,  that  the  same  good-natured 
suggestion  was  made  as  to  some  real  canaries, 
tamed  and  taught  as  these  little  creatures 
sometimes  are.  Still  more  gratified,  he  made 
an  afifectionate  acquaintance  with  his  feather- 
ed friends.  But  this  was  too  aristocratical 
an  indulgence.  One  of  the  Commissaries  in 
particular  took  oflfence  at  it — the  machine 
and  the  living  favorites  were  all  sent  away, 
and  the  weeping  boy  was  left  again  in  soli- 
tude, or,  still  worse,  the  company  of  his  mo- 
rose guardians,  who  rarely  spoke  to  him,  and 
never  but  with  harshness  and  insult.  Anoth- 
er instance  is  more  seriously  revolting.  In 
the  midst  of  his  degradation,  he  had  some 
memory,  or,  perhaps,  dreamed,  of  his  former 
feelings  and  habits.  Simon  detected  him  one 
night  kneeling  in  his  bed,* with  his  hands 
jomed,  and  appearing  to  say  his  prayers. 
The  impious  wretch  did  not  know  whether 
the  child  was  asleep  or  awake,  but  the  su- 


perstitious attitude  threw  him  into  an  extra- 
ordinary fury  ;  he  seized  a  great  pitcher  of 
water — icy  cold — the  night  was  the  14th  or 
15lh  of  January — and  flung  it  over  him,  ex- 
claiming, "  I'll  teach  you  to  say  your  pater- 
nosters,  and  to  get  up  in  the  night  like  a 
Trappist.**  Nor  was  that  all ;  he  struck  him 
on  the  face  with  his  iron-heeled  shoe,  the  sole 
implement  of  punishment  he  had  at  hand, 
and  was  only  prevented  from  beating  him 
still  more  severely  by  the  interposition  of  his 
wife.  The  child,  shivering  and  sobbing,  en- 
deavored to  escape  from  the  soaking  mat- 
tress by  sitting  on  the  pillow,  but  Simon 
dragged  him  down,  and  stretched  him  on  the 
bed  swimming  with  water,  and,  covering  him 
with  the  wet  clothes,  forced  him  to  lie  in 
this  state  till  morning.  The  shock  and  suffer- 
ing which  the  ch^ld  endured  that  ni^ht 
seemed  to  have  a  permanent  and  enfeebling 
influence  both  on  his  mind  and  body  ;  it  en- 
tirely broke  his  spirit,  and  confirmed,  if  it  did 
not  produce,  the  ligering  malady  of  which  he 
died. 

But  the  authors  of  his  misery  were  hardly 
less  miserable  than  he.     They  were  equally 
prisoners,  condemned  to  the  same  seclusion 
from  all  society »  and  their  only  consolation 
was  visiting  their  own  annoyances  on  the  de- 
scendant of  so  many  kings.     But  even  of 
this   they   were   gradually   growing  weary, 
when  a  fresh  circumstance,  that  affected  the 
amour  propre  of  both   husband   and   wife, 
completed  their  disgust.     A  decree  of  the 
Commune  directed  that  the  woman  should 
not  make  her  occasional  visits  to  her  own 
lodgings,  nor  the  husband  go  into  even  the 
courtyard  or  garden  of  the  prison,  unattend- 
ed by  municipal  oQUcers.     When  he  asked 
once  to  go  home  for  some  private  purpose, 
he  was  told  he  could  only  do  so  accompanied 
by  two  of  these  functionaries.     This  shocked 
his  dignity ;  his   neighbors  thought  him  the 
guardian  of   the  young   king  and  a  great 
man ;    he  oould  not  bear  to  appear  amongst 
them   as  a   prisoner.     When    he  once   was 
summoned  to  give  evidence  before  the  Rev- 
olutionary  Tribunal   he  was   escorted  by  a 
couple   of  municipals.     When  he   solicited 
permission  to  attend,   with  his  colleagues  of 
the  commune,  a  national /i?te  in  honor  of  the 
retaking  Toulon,  he  was  harshly  refused,  and 
told  that  in  the  Temple  he  was  at  his  proper 
post.     At  last  he  bad  an  opportunity  of  es- 
caping from   his  intolerable   thraldom.     A 
"self-denying  ordinance"  of  the  Commune 
decided  that  no  person  receiving  a  public  sal- 
ary could  remain  a  ihember  of  that  body. 
Simon  gladly  availed  himself  of  the  option. 


1858.] 


LOUIS  xvn. 


447 


resigned  his  ofBce  in  the  Temple,  and  resum- 
ed his  functions  in  the  Commune,  only  to  die 
six  months  later  with  sixty  or  seventy  of  his 
colleagues  and  co-partners  in  crime  on  the 
**ec?uifaud  vengeur    of  Thermidor. 

On  the  19lh  Jan.  1794.  the  Simons  took 
their  departure.  The  wife  said  with  a  tone 
of  kindness, "  Capet,  I  know  not  when  I  shall 
see  you  again."  Simon  interrupted  her  with 
a  malediction  on  the  "toad.*^  But  was  the 
child's  condition  improved  ?  Alas,  no  I  His 
active  persecutors  were  gone,  but  he  was  left 
to  privations  worse  than  inflictions — to  cold 
— darkness — solitary  confinement — a  regimen 
which  even  the  strongest  bodies  and  the  most 
determined  spirits  have  been  found  unable  to 
endure. 

The  Committees  of  Government  decided 
that  Simon,  as  he  could  have  no  equal,  should 
have  no  successor.  Chaumette  and  Hebert, 
Btill  the  ruling  authorities  of  the  Temple,  ac* 
cepted  this  decision,  and  said  they  would  en- 
deavor to  obtain  from  the  force  of  things  (/a 
force  des  choses),  that  security  which  the 
absence  of  a  personal  superintendence  denied 
them.  This /orc«  of  things  was  thus  expoun- 
ded ;  he  was  confined  to  a  single  room  (where 
CI6ry  had  slept  during  the  King's  life)  ;  it 
had  one  window,  closely  barred  and  blinded 
by  an  abat-jour,  which  admitted  only  a  small 
degree  of  oblique  light,  and  was  never  open- 
ed for  air ;  the  door  was  removed  and 
replaced  by  a  half-door,  of  which  the  upper 
part  was  enlosed  by  iron  bars ;  a  portion  of 
those  iron  bars,  when  unlocked,  opened  like 
a  trap,  through  which  he  received  his  food 
and  passed  out  whatever  he  had  to  send 
away ;  the  room  had  no  other  means  of  being 
heated  than  a  pipe  which  was  led  through  a 
part  of  it  from  a  stove  in  another  apartment, 
the  lighting  of  the  fire  in  which  was  capricious 
and  precarious.  At  night  the  only  light  was 
a  lamp  hung  on  the  wall  of  the  ante-room 
opposite  to  the  iron  grating  of  the  door. 
Whether  by  accident,  or  as  a  kind  of  triumph, 
it  was  on  the  21st  of  January,  the  anniver- 
sary of  his  father's  death,  that  the  young 
king  was  transferred  to  this  dungeon — a 
prelude  to  his  own.  The  horrors  of  such 
a  condition — aggravated  by  the  weakness  of 
the  child,  who  could  do  nothing  to  alleviate 
his  wants — are  obscured  rather  than  illustra- 
ted by  M.  de  Beauchesne's  inflated  and  figura- 
tive eloquence.  When  the  boy,  on  being  shut 
up  for  the  first  time  in  this  solitary  duress,  made 
no  complaint  and  showed  no  change  of  tem- 
per, M.  de  Beauchesne  imagines  that 

'*  He  mtLj  have  felt  himself  beyond  the  reach  of 
men — free  m  his  prison — like  a  young  fawn  that 


had  escaped  to  the  hotlow  of  some  ecluied  valley  from 
the  pursuit  of  the  hounds  and  hunters,'^  ii.  p.  199. 

In  preference  to  such  a  stjle  of  narrative, 
our  readers  will  thank  us  for  substituting  the 
simple  and  much  more  impressive  sketch  of 
Madame  Soyale,  which  indeed  contains  in 
substance  all  that  M.  de  Beauchesne  has  so 
needlessly  amplified,  and  all  that  we  really 
know  of  this  interval : — 

**  Unheard  of  and  unexampled  barbarity!  to  leave 
an  unhappy  and  sickly  infant  of  eight  years  old  in 
a  great  room,  locked  and  bolted  in,  with  no  other 
resource  than  a  broken  bell,  which  he  never  rang, 
so  greatly  did  he  dread  the  people  whom  its  sound 
would  have  brought  to  liim  :  he  preferred  wanting 
any  thing,  and  every  thing,  to  calling  for  his'per- 
secutors.  His  bed  had  not  been  stirred  for  six 
months,  and  he  had  not  strength  to  make  it  him- 
self; it  was  alive  with  bugs,  and  vermin  still  more 
disgusting.  His  linen  and  his  person  were  cover- 
ed with  them.  For  more  than  a  year  he  had  had  no 
change  of  shirt  or  stockings;  every  kind  of  filth 
was  allowed  to  accumulate  about  him  and  in  his 
room  ;  and  during  all  that  period  nothing  of  that 
kind  had  been  removed.  His  window,  which  was 
locked  as  well  as  grated,  was  never  opened  ;  and 
the  infectious  smell  of  that  horrid  room  was  so 
dreadful  that  no  one  could  bear  it  for  a  moment. 
He  might  indeed  have  washed  himself,  for  he  had 
a  pitcher  of  water,  and  have  kept  himself  some- 
what more  clean  than  he  did ;  but,  overwhelmed 
by  the  ill  treatment  he  had  received,  he  had  not 
resolution  to  do  so,  and  his  illness  began  to  de- 
prive him  of  even  the  necessary  strength.  He 
never  asked  for  any  thing,  so  great  was  his  dread 
of  Simon  and  his  other  Keepers.  He  passed  his 
days  without  any  kind  of  occupation.  They  did 
not  even  allow  him  light  in  the  evening.  This 
situation  affected  his  mind  as  well  as  his  body, 
and  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  should  have  fallen 
into  a  frightful  atrophy.  The  length  of  time 
which  he  resisted  this  persecution  proves  how 
good  his  constitution  must  have  originally  been." 
--Royal  Mem.,  p.  266. 

But  while  death  was  thus  slowly  and 
silently  advancing  on  the  young  king,  the  in- 
satiable guillotine  was  rapidly  sweeping  away 
hundreds  of  guilty  and  thousands  of  innocent 
victims.  Indeed  we  might  call  them  all  in- 
nocent, for  there  was  not,  we  believe,  a  sin- 
gle one  of  them — no,  not  even  Danton  or 
Hebert — who,  however  culpable,  or  even  ex- 
ecrable, in  other  respects,  had  committed  any 
of  the  pretended  offences  for  which  they  suf- 
fered. Nay,  we  are  convinced  that,  of  the 
2637  executed  by  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal 
in  Paris  up  to  the  fall  of  Robespierre,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  half  a  dozen  who 
were  fairly  convicted  or  really  guilty  of  the 
fact  for  which  they  were  condemned.  Injus- 
tice was  proved  to  be  blinder  than  justice  is 
proverbially  supposed  to  be. 


448 


LOUIS  XVIL 


[Dec, 


But,  of  all  who  suffered  in  tbat  promiscu- 
ous massacre,  the  most  traoscendantly  inno- 
cent was  the  Princess  Elizabeth.  We  have 
never  been  able  to  discover  any  pretext  nor 
to  conjecture  any  motive  for  her  death. 
The  least  irrational  suspicion  that  we  have 
been  able  to  arrive  at  is  that  Robespierre  had 
really  formed  some  scheme  of  personal  am- 
bition upon  the  young  princess,  to  which  it 
was  hoped  to  intimidate  and  subjugate  her 
by  the  loss  of  her  aunt  This  is,  no  doubt, 
an  almost  incredible  project,  but  it  is  hardly 
stranger  than  Robespierre^s  contemporaneous 

Eroceedings,  and  it  derives  a  kind  of  color  (as 
[.  de  Beauchesne  remarks)  from  the  mysteri- 
ous visit  which  Robespierre  made  to  the 
Temple  in  which  he  saw  the  princess  {Roy- 
al Mem,  226) ;  and  it  seems  rendered  some- 
what less  improbable  by  the  slight,  but  not 
perhaps  insignificant,  fact,  that  in  the  original 
edition  of  Madame  Royale's  narrative  the 
mention  of  the  visit  was  suppressed — ^proba- 
bly from  a  dislike  to  preserve  any  trace  of 
an  insolence  against  which  all  the  best  feel- 
ings of  her  nature  must  have  revolted. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  the  motive, 
Madame  Elizabeth  was  executed  on  the  10th 
of  May.  She  died  as  she  had  lived,  like  a 
saint.  In  the  room  where  they  were  assem- 
bled in  the  prison  on  the  morning  of  their 
execution  she  exhorted  all  her  fellow-suf- 
ferers— 

**With  a  presence  of  mind,  an  elevation  of  sool, 
and  a  religious  enthoaiasm,  that  fortified  all  their 
minds.  In  the  cart  she  preserved  the  same 
firmness,  and  encouraj^ed  and  supported  the 
women  who  accompanied  her.*  At  the  scaf- 
fold they  had  the  barbarity  to  execute  her  the  last 
[though  she  fitood^rt/on  the  list  of  26].  All  the 
women,  as  they  left  the  cart  asked  leave  to  em- 
brace her.  She  kissed  them  all,  and,  with  her 
usual  composure,  said  some  words  of  comfort  to 
each.  Her  strength  did  not  fail  her  to  tlie  last, 
and  Fhe  died  with  all  the  resignation  of  the  purest 
^xeiy^— Royal  Mem.  p.  262. 

Madame  Royale  did  not  for  a  long  time 
know  the  fate  of  her  aunt ;  when  she  asked 
after  her  she  received  evasive  answers — "  she 
was  gone  elsewhere  for  change  of  air ;"  when 
she  entreated,  since  she  was  deprived  of  her 
aunt,  that  she  might  be  restored  to  her 
mother,  she  wns  told  they  would  consider  it. 

Of  the  visit  of  Robespierre  just  mentioned, 

*  There  were  executed  at  the  same  time  Madam 
de  Senozan,  the  venerable  sister  of  M.  de  Maleeherbe^ 
aged  eeveDty-six,  and  Mesdamee  de  Cmteol,  de 
TAiffle,  de  Montmorin,  de  Canizy,  de  Cercy,  and  de 
Serilly,  and  an  old  Ifadlle.  de  Buard.  Among  the 
men  were  four  gentlemen  of  the  Lomenie  fiuttHy, 
and  George  Fallope,  the  apothecary. 


Madame  Royale's  account  (in  the  later  edi- 
tions) is,  as  might  be  expected,  short  and 
dry — a  just  expression  of  what  her  pride  and 
her  piety  would  suffer  in  such  an  interview : — 

**  One  day  there  came  a  man  who  I  believe  was 
Robespierre.  The  officers  showed  him  great  res- 
pect. His  visit  was  a  secret.even  to  the  people 
m  the  Tower,  who  did  not  know  who  he  was ;  or, 
at  least,  would  not  tell  me :  be  stared  insolently  at 
me,  cast  bis  eves  on  my  hooks,  and,  after  jeiaiiig 
the  munipicaf  officers  in  a  search,  retired." — 
lb.  266. 

M.  de  Beauchesne  g^ves  the  exact  and  im- 
portant date^  and  adds  a  remarkable  circum- 
stance : — 

**  The  day  after  the  execution  of  Madame 
Elizabeth — that  is,  Ilth  May — Madame  Royale 
was  .visited  by  Robespierre.  She  did  not  ^speak 
one  word  to  him.  She  only  gave  him  a  paper,  in 
which  she  had  written — 

**  My  brother  is  ill,  I  have  written  to  ike  com- 
venOon  to  be  allowed  to  go  to  take  care  </  him. 
The  convention  has  notyel  aruwered  me.  1  repeat 
my  demand.** — ii.  21  St:: 

This  is  all  very  probable ;  and  the  cold  and 
dignified  style  of  the  note  is  such  as  we 
may  believe  Madame  would  have  used*:  but 
M.  de  Beauchesne  does  not  cite  his  author- 
ity either  for  the  date  or  the  note,  which 
surely,  considering  ^he  silence  of  Madame 
Royale  herself,  he  was  bound  to  do. 

Both  the  Royal  children  w^  now  in  sep- 
arate and  solitary  confinement;  and  here 
affain  we  prefer  the  simple  narrative  of  the 
elder,  sufferer  to  the  amplifications  of  M.  de 
Beauchesne: — 

"  The  guards  were  oftei^.drunk ;  but  they  gen- 
erally left  my  brother  Snd  me  quiet  in  our  respect- 
ive apartments  until  ^the  9th  Th^l^tdor.  My 
brother  still  pined  in  solitude  and  filth.  His 
keepers  never  went  near  him  but  to  give  him  his 
meals :  they  had  no  compassion  for  this  unhappy 
child.  There  was  one  or  the  guards  whose  gen- 
tle manners  encouraged  me  to  recommend  my 
brother  to  his  attention;  this  man  ventured  to 
complain  of  the  severity  with  which  the  boy  was 
treated,  but  be  was  dismissed  next  day.  For 
myself  I  asked  nothing  but  what  was  indispensa- 
ble, and  even  this  was  often  harshly  refused ;  but 
I,  at  least,  could  keep  myself  clean.  I  had  soap 
and  water,  and  carefulfv  swept  out  my  room 
every  day.  I  had  no  light ;  but  in  the  long  days 
[from  May  to  August]  I  did  not  feel  macn  this 
privation.  They  would  not  give  me  any  more 
books ;  but  I  had  some  religious  works  and  some 
travels  which  I  had  read  over  and  over." 

The  fall  of  Robespierre  (28th  July,  1794), 
which  opened  the  prison  doors  of  so  many 
other  innocent  victims,  did  not  liberate  the  two 
children  in  the  Temple,  though  it  alleviated 
in  some'respects  their  personal  sufferings.  On 


1853.] 


LOUIS  xvn. 


449 


the  10th  Thermidor,  Barras,  who  had  played 
a  chief  part  in  the  success  of  the  preceding 
'day  as  commander  in-chief  of  the  troops  em- 
ployed against  Robespierre,  vi>ited  the  Tem- 
ple, and  the  result  of  his  inspection  was  the 
appointment  of  a  single  guardian  in  lieu  of 
the  Commissaries  of  the  Commune — (most  of 
whom  indeed  were  that  day  and  the  next 
sent  to  the  scaffold) — ^and  to  this  oflSce  he 
named  one  Laurent,  a  private  acquaintance  of 
bis  own.     Laurent  was  aCV^o/e,  a  native  of 
St.  Domingo.     How  he  first   obtained    the 
confidence  of  Barras  is  not  stated :  he  was 
indeed  noted  in  his  district  for  his  patriotism, 
but  this  was  at  the  moment  no  great   nor 
even  very  favorable  distinction.     Can  it  have 
arisen  from  the  influence  of  Josephine,  herself 
a  Creole,  and  already  intimate  with  both  Tal- 
lien   and   Barras,   the  heroes  of   the   day? 
Laurent  at  least  did  not  disgrace  his  patrons : 
M.  de  Beauchesne  tells  us  he  was  a  man  of 
some  degree  of  education,  good  manners,  and 
humanity,  and  the  very  first  circumstances  of 
his  introduction  struck  him  with  astonishment. 
He  arrived  at  the  Temple  on  the  evening  of 
bis  appointment;  he  was  received  by  some 
municipals  who  were  still  in  authority ;  they 
closely  scrutinized  his  appointment,  and  de- 
tained him  so  long  that  it  was  not  till  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  that  he  was  conducted 
to  the  room  of  the  "  little  Capet."     They 
bad  explained  in  general  terms  the  way  in 
which  the  child  was  treated,  but  it  was  far 
frem  giving   him  any  idea  of  the  reality. 
When  he  entered  the  ante-room  he  was  met 
by  a  sickening  smell  which  escaped  through 
the  grated  door  of  the  inner  room.     One  of 
the  municipals,  approaching  the  grating,  call- 
ed in  a  loud  voice,  **  Capet !  Capet !"     Capet 
did  not  answer.     After  much  callirfg,  a  faint 
sound  announced  that  it  was  heard,  but  no 
movement  followed,  and   neither  calls   nor 
even  threats  could  induce  the  victim  to  get 
up   and  show  himself;  and  it  was  only  by 
the  light  of  a  candle  held  inside  the  bars,  and 
which  fell  on  the  bed  in  the  opposite  corner, 
that  Laurent  saw  the  body  that  was  thus  de- 
livered to  his  charge.     With  this  he  content- 
ed himself  that  night,  for  it  seems  that  neither 
he  nor  the  municipals  had  either  the  authority 
or  the  mechanical  means  to  open  that  door. 
Another  visit  next  morning  had  the  same  re- 
sults ;  the  child  would  neither  speak  nor  show 
himself ;  though  Laurent  had  addressed  him 
in  terms  of  kindness  and  persuasion.     Alarm- 
ed and  shocked  at  this  state  of  things,  Lau- 
rent   made   a    peremptory   appeal    to   the 
government  for  tin   immediate  examination 
into  the  condition  of  the  child.     The  request  I 
VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


was  granted,  and  accordingly  next  day,  the 
3 1st  of  July^,  several  members  of  the  com- 
mTttee  de  Surite  Girurale  came  to  conduct 
it: —  . 

"  They  cm  lied  to  him  through  the  grating— no 
answer.  Thoy  t  hen  ordered  the  door  to  be  opened ; 
it  seems  rhere  wpre  no  means  of  doing  it  A 
workman  waa  called,  who  forced  away  the  bars 
of  the  trap  so  as  to  get  in  his  head,  and  havinir 
thus  got  sight  of  the  child,  asked  him  why  he  did 
not  answer  7  Still  no  reply.  In  a  few  minates 
the  whole  door  was  broken  down,  (enlevSe,) 
and    the  visilors    entered.      Then  appeared    a 

spectacle  morehorrible  than  can  be  conceivert 

a  spectacle  which  never  again  can  be  seen  in  the 
annals  of  a  nation  calling  itself  civilized,  and 
which  even  the  murderers  of  Louis  XVL  could 
not  witness  without  mingled  pity  and  fright  In 
a  dark  room,  exhaling  a  smell  of  death  and  cor- 
rilption,  on  a  crazy  and  dirty  bed,  a  child  of  nine 
years  old  was  lying  prostrate,  motionless, 
and  bent  ap,  his  face  livid  and  furrowed  by 
want  and  suffering,  and  his  llmbe  half  covered 
with  a  filthy  cloth  and  trowsers  in  rags.  His 
features,  once  so  delicate,  and  his  counte- 
nance, once  so  lively,  denoted  now  the  gloomiest 
apathy—almost  insensibility— and  bis  Hue  eyes, 
looking  larger  from  the  meagreness  of  the  rest  of 
his  face,  had  lost  all  spirit,  and  taken,  in  their  dull 
immovability,  a  tinge  of  gray  and  green.  His 
head  and  neck  were  eaten  up  (rongie)  with  puru- 
lent sores ;  his  legs,  arms,  and  neck,  thin  and  an- 
gular, were  unnaturally  lengthened  at  the  expense 
of  hia  chest  and  body.  His  hands  and  feet  were 
not  human,  A  thick  paste  of  dirt  stuck  like 
pitch  over  his  temples ;  and  his  once  beautiful 
curls  were  full  of  vermin,  which  also  covered  his 
whole  body,  and  which,  as  well  as  bugs,  swarmed 
in  every  fold  of  the  rotten  bedding,  over  which- 

black  spiders  were  running At  the  noise  of 

forcing  the  door  the  child  gave  a  nervous  shudder, 
but  barely  moved,  hardly  noticing  the  strangers. 
A  hundred  questions  were  addressed  to  him  ;  he 
answered  none  of  them  :  he  cast  a  vague,  wander- 
injr,  and  unmeaning  look  at  his  visitors,  and  at 
this  moment  one  would  have  taken  him  for  an 
idiot.  The  food  they  had  given  him  was  still  un- 
touched  ;  one  of  the  commissioners  asked  him 
why  he  had  not  eaten  it  ?  Still  no  answer.  At 
last,  the  oldest  of  the  visitors,  whose  gray  hairs 
and  paternal  tone  seemed  to  make  an  impression 
upon  him,  repealed  the  question,  and  be  answered 
in  a  calm  but  resolute  tone,  ^^Because  I  want 
to  die!**  These  were  the  only  words  that  this 
cruel  and  memorable  inquisition  extracted  from 
4iim."— ii.  25. 

For  these  details,  M.  de  Beauchesne,  more 
stio,  gives  us  no  warrant,  but  they  are  con- 
firmed en  gros  by  the  Journal  of  Madame 
Royale;  and  there  is  another,  in  this  respect 
unexceptionable,  witness  to  the  main  points,  of 
whom  M.  de  Beauchesne  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  aware.  In  the  Memoires  de  Lombard 
we  find  Barras's  own  account  of  his  visit.    He 

19 


460 


LOUIS  xvn. 


[Dec., 


confesses  that  be  saw  the  boy,  and  found  him 
in  a  deplorable  state  of  filth,  disease,  and 
debility ;  it  was  slated  to  him  that  he  neither 
ate  nor  drank — he  woald  not  speak,' could 
not  stand,  and  laj(  bent  up  in  a  kind  of  cra- 
dle, from  which  it  was  torture  to  move  him. 
His  knees  were  so  swelled  that  his  trowscrs 
had  become  painfully  tight.  Barras*  had 
them  cut  open  at  the  sides,  and  found  the 
joints  "prodigiously  swollen  and  livid." 
Barras  concludes  this  picture  by  relating,  in 
a  tone  of  self-satisfaction,  that  be  immediate- 
ly ordered  the  attendance  of  a  medical  man, 
and,  "  after  having  scolded  the  commissary 
and  the  parponde  service  for  the  filth  in  which 
the  child  was  left,  be  retired!"  He  adds 
indeed,  that  he  returned  next  day,  and  saw 
the  doctor  (whose  name  he  had  forgotten) 
offer  the  little  patient  a  draught  which  he 
had  ordered,  but  which  the  child — though 
still  without  speaking — refused  to  take ;  the 
doctor  whispered  Barras  that  he  might 
possibly  have  heard  of  the  fate  of  his  father, 
mother,  and  aunt,  and  suspect  that  they  now 
wanted  to  get  rid  of  him,  (m  defaire  de  lui;) 
so,  "to  encourage  him,  the  doctor  poured 
out  the  draught  into  a  glass,  and  was  about 
ta  taste  it,  when  the  poor  child,  guessing  bis 
thoughts,,  hastened  to  seize  it,  and  drank  it 
off."  The  doctor  told  Barras  that  the  boy 
had  not  long  to  live ;  and  this,  said  Barras, 
"  was  the  last  I  saw  of  him."  {Mim,  de  Lorn- 
bard,  p.  147,  150.)  M.  de  Beauchesne's 
authorities  (whatever  they  are)  make,  we 
«ee,  no  mention  of  Barras's  having  seen  the 
boy,  nor  of  his  personal  interference,  which 
indeed  is  hardly  reconcilable  with  some  of 
the  details  we  have  just  given  ;  but  Barras's 
own  confession  corroborates  all  the  more  im- 
portant facts  of  the  case,  and  the  subsequent 
indifference  of  the  new  government  to  the 
state  of  the  child,  who  lingered  for  near  a 
year  later  in  a  condition  almost  equally  de- 
plorable. 

We  now  resume  M.  de  Beauchesne's  nar- 
rative. By  the  remonstrances  of  Laurent,  a 
little  air  and  li^ht  were  admitted  into  the 
room ;  a  woman  was  permitted,  though  after 
much  hesitation,  to  wash  and  comb  the  boy. 
One  of  the  municipals,  who  happened  to  be 
a  surgeon,  was  allowed  to  clean  and  dress 
the  sores  on  the  head  and  neck — an  opera- 
tion which,  as  well  as  that  of  the  comb,  was, 
from  long  neglect,  become  extremely  painful. 
The  vermin  were  expelled,  an  iron  bed  and 
clean  bedding  were  supplied,  a  suit  of  decent 
clothes  granted;  and  the  grated  door  was 
replaced  by  the  original  one.  These  were 
but  ameliorations  to  which  the  most  odious 


convicted  criminal  would  have  been  entitled  ; 
but  all  the  other  rigors  of  the  prison  were 
still  maintained.  The  child  was  kept  in  the 
solitary  confinement  of  his  one  cell.  The 
chief  authority  in  the  Temple  remained  in  the 
municipal  body,  who  seemed  afraid  that,  if 
they  deviated  from  the  severity  of  their  pre- 
decessors, they  were  likely  to  incur  their 
fate.  Laurent  himself  was  not  allowed  to 
see  the  boy  except  at  his  meal-times,  and 
always  then  in  presence  of  the  municipals; 
and  when  at  last  he  wearied  them  into  per- 
mission to  take  him  occasionally  to  the  leads 
of  the  tower  to  breathe  the  fresh  air,  it  was 
only  under  their  watch-dog  superintendence. 
Even  in  these  short  breaks  in  bis  solitude  he 
never  spoke,  and  seemed  to  take  little  notice 
of  what  was  passing.  There  was  one  excep- 
tion :  on  his  way  to  the  leads  he  had  to  go 
by  the  wicket  that  conducted  to  what  had 
been  his  mother* s  apartment :  he  had  passed 
it  the  first  time  without  observing  it,  but  on 
returning  he  saw  it,  started,  pressed  the  arm 
of  Laurent,  and  made  a  sign  of  recognition, 
and  ever  after  paused  at  the  place,  and  once 
showed  a  wish  to  enter  the  room,  which  the 
municipal  in  attendance  prevented  by  telling 
him  that  be  had  mistaken  the  door.  He 
knew,  of  course,  the  death  of  his  father,  but 
be  was  in  ignorance  of  that  of  his  mother, 
whom  he  still  believed,  as  we  shall  see,  to  be 
in  the  tower. 

During  this  period  Laurent  had  also  the 
custody  of  Madame  Roy  ale,  who  bears,  in 
her  Mdmoires,  testimony  to  the  decency  of 
his  manners,  and  kindness  of  his  treatment  of 
her,  and  to  his  well-meant  but  less  success- 
ful endeavors  to  alleviate  the  sufferings  of 
her  brother. 

At  last,  however,  the  quasi  solitary  con- 
finement to  which  Laurent  found  himself 
condemned  was  more  than  he  could  endure, 
and  he  solicited  to  be  allowed  an  assistant 
and  companion  in  his  duties.  This  was 
granted;  and,  by  some  secret  influence  of 
the  friends  of  the  royal  family,  the  son  of  an 
upholsterer  of  the  name  of  Qomin  was  asso- 
ciated en  second  to  Laurent  in  the  care  of  the 
children.  Qomin  was  a  person  of  mild  and 
timid  character,  who  had  great  difficulty  in 
reconciling  the  severe  orders  of  his  employers 
with  his  secret  sympathy  with  the  prisoners. 
Little  change,  however,  was  made  in  the 
regulations,  except  that  cleanliness  and  civil 
language  were  substituted  for  filth  and  insult. 
The  child  was  still  locked  up  alone,  except 
at  meals,  which  were  always  served  in  pres- 
ence of  the  two  guardians'  and  a  municipal, 
and  frequently  embittered  by  the  cynical  in- 


1658.] 


LOUKXVn. 


451 


suits  of  the  latter.  These  commissaries  were 
elected  in  turn  by  each  of  the  48  sections  of 
Paris,  and  were  relieved  every  24  hours ;  so 
that  the  regime  was  subject  to  a  great  vari- 
ety of  tempers  and  caprices,  of  which  good- 
oature  was  the  rarest.  The  breakfast,  at 
nine,  was  a  cup  of  milk  or  some  fruit ;  the 
dinner,  at  two,  a  plate  of  soup  with  a  "  ^m/aXl 
bit**  of  its  bouilli,  and  some  dry  vegetables, 
(generally  beans;)  a  supper  at  eight,  the 
same  as  the  dinner,  but  without  the  bouilli. 
He  was  then  put  to  bed  and  locked  up  alone, 
as  in  all  other  intervals  between  the  meals, 
till  nine  the  next  morning.  When  the  com- 
missary of  the  day  happened  to  look  good- 
humored,  the  guardians  would  endeavor  to 
obtain  some  little  adaucissemeni  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  child — such  as  his  being  taken 
to  the  leads,  or  getting  some  pots  of  nowers, 
which  delighted  him  with  the  memory  of 
happier  days,  and  in  which  he  took  more 
interest  than  in  any  thing  else.  One  day 
(the  14th  November,  1704)  there  came, 
with  a  stem  air,  loud  voice,  and  brutal  man- 
ners, a  person  by^  name  Del  boy — he  threw 
open  all  the  doors',  pried  every  where,  gave 
his  orders  in  a  rough,  imperious  tone,  that  at 
first  frightened  both  guardians  and  prisoner, 
but'  by  and  by  surpnsed  them  by  the  frank 
and  rational,  and  even  kind,  spirit  of  his  di- 
rections. When  he  saw  the  dinner,  he  ex- 
claimed— 

*< '  Why  this  wretched  food  ?  If  Ihey  were  still 
at  the  Tuileries,  I  would  assist  to  famish  them 
out:  but  here  they  are  our  prit^oner:*,  and  it  is 
unworthy  of  the  nation  to  starve  them.  Why 
these  window-blinds  ?  Under  the  rei^n  of  EouaU 
iiy  the  sun  at  least  should  shine  for  all.  Why  is 
he  separated  from  his  sJRter  ?  Under  the  reiffn  of 
Fraternity  why  should  they  not  see  each  ot.her  V 
Then  addressing  the  child  in  a  somewhat  gentler 
tone,  *  Should  vou  not  like,  my  boy,  to  play  with 
your  sister  7  if  you  forget  your  origin,  1  don't 
see  why  the  nation  should  remember  it.'  Then 
taming  to  the  guardians,  *  'Tis  not  his  fault  if  he 
is  his  father's  son — he  is  now  nothing  else  than 
an  unfortunate  child;  the  unfortunate  have  a  claim 
to  our  humanity,  and  the  country  shouki  be  the 
mother  of  all  her  children.  So  don*t  be  harsh  to 
him.' "— ii.  276. 

All  he  said  was  in  the  same  blustering, 
sententious  style,  "  combining,"  says  M.  de 
Beauchesne  in  his  rhetorical  way,  "  the  man- 
ners of  Diogenes  with  the  charity  of  F6n^- 
lon."  Another  of  Delboy*s  phrases  is  worth 
repeating.  In  discoursing  (as  we  presume) 
of  the  character  of  his  colleagues,  he  de- 
clumed  against 

— ^**  those  crafty  hypocrites  who  do  harm  to  oOieri 


loiihout  making  a  ntnse — these  are  the  kind  of 
fellows  who  invented  the  atr-gun." 

Such  a  voice  imd  never  before  been  heard 
in  the  Temple,  and  occasioned  a  serious  sen- 
sation, and  something  like  consternation ;  but 
it  at  last  encouraged  Gomin  to  ask  his  per- 
mission that  the  lamp  in  the  ante-room,  from 
which  the  only  light  of  the  child's  dungeon 
was  derived,  should  be  lighted  at  dark.  This 
WAS  inomediately  granted ;  and  Diogenes- 
Fen6ion  departed,  saying  to  the  astounded 
guardians  as  he  took  his  leave — 

"  *  Shall  wp  ever  meet  again  7  I  think  not :  our 
roads  are  not  likely  to  meet.  No  matter — good 
patriots  will  recognize  each  other;  men  of  sense 
may  vary  their  opinions — men  of  honor  never 
change  their  feelings  and  principles.  We  are  no 
Septewhriseurn.    Heahh  and  fraternity !' " — lb. 

The  reign  of  this  "  hourru  bienfaisant** 
lasted  but  a  few  hours,  and  (except  as  to 
lighting  the  lamp)  left  no  traces.  Laurent 
and  Gomin  were  afraid  to  make  any  change 
on  such  ephemeral  authority.  About  the 
same  time,  sentiments  like  those  which  Del- 
boy  had  blurted  out  in  the  prison  were  heard 
timidly  insinuated  in  society,  and  even  in 
more  than  one  newspaper.  This  only  exas- 
perated the  fears  and  malignity  of  the  Con- 
vention, and  its  speeches  and  decrees  seemed, 
as  to  the  treatment  of  the  child,  to  reveal  as 
strongly  as  before  the  resolution  ''  de  8*en  di- 
fairer 

The  daily  change  of  commissioners  pro* 
duced  an  alternation  of  gross  vexations  and 
slight  indulgences,  not  uninteresting,  bat 
which  our  space  does  not  allow  us  to  follow. 
One  or  two  instances  will  suffice  for  the  rest. 
On  the  23d  February,  1705.  the  commis- 
sary was  one  Leroux — a  "  terroriste  arrierf 
— who  adored  the  memory  of  Robespierre, 
and  hoped  for  the  revival  of  his  party.  He 
insisted  on  visiting  all  the  apartments,  and 
was  particularly  anxious  to  see  how  those 
"plucked  raitelets  looked  without  their  fea- 
thers." When  he  entered  Madame  Royale's 
room,  she  was  sitting  at  work,  and  went  on 
without  taking  any  notice  of  him.  "  What  I" 
he  cried,  "  is  it  the  fashion  here  not  to  rise 
before  the  people  ^  The  Princess  still  took 
no  notice.  The  brute  revenged  himself  by 
rummaging  the  whole  apartment,  and  re- 
tired, saying,  sulkily,  "£tlt  est  fi^re  eomme 
PAutrichienne"  When  he  visited  the  boy, 
it  was  only  to  insult  him.  He  called  him 
nothing  but  the  aon  of  the  tyrant — ridiculed 
his  alleged  illness,  and  when  Laurent  and 
Gomin  timidly  ventured  to  produce  Delboy*s 


403 


Loms  XVIL 


[Deo^ 


oharitable  maxim  *'  that  he  could  DOt  help 
being  the  son  of  his  father,"  they  were 
Filenced  by  doubts  as  to  their  own  patriotism. 
'*Ah,  the  children  of  tyrants  ure  not  to  be 
sick  like  other  people.  It  is  not,  forsooth, 
his  f.iult  that  he  was  born  to  devour  the 
sweat  and  blood  of  the  people !  It  is  not 
the  less  certain  that  such  monsters .  should 
be  strangled  in  their  cradle !"  (ii.  294.)  He 
then  established  himself  for  the  evening  in 
the  ante-room — called  for  cards  and  wine — 
the  wine  to  diink  toasts  "  to  the  death  of  all 
tyrants/'  and  the  cards  to  play  picquet  with 
Laurent.  His  nomenclature  of  the  figure 
cards  at  picquet  was  not  kings  but  tyrants 
— •'  Three  tyrants" — "  Fourteen  tyrants," 
The  queens  were  *' citoyennes"  and  the 
knaves  '' courtiers**  The  royal  boy  seemed 
not  to  understand,  at  least  not  to  notice, 
these  terms,  but  whs  much  interested  in  over- 
looking the  game,  and  hearing  for  the  first 
time  for  some  years  people  speaking  to  one 
another  of  something  else  than  his  own  suf- 
ferings. The  evening,  however,  ended  ill. 
Leroux's  Jacobinical  fury  was  inflamed  by 
drinking,  and  he  made  an  uproar  that  terri- 
fied the  child.  He  was  at  last  got  outr  of 
the  room,  and  conducted  to  his  bed  on  the 
lower  story.  But  this  accident  had  a  favor- 
able result.  Leroux  had  called  for  cards, 
and  thereby  authorized  their  introduction; 
and  the  child's  pleasure  in  seeing  them  in- 
duced Gomin,  between  Leroux's  departure 
and  the  coming  of  his  successor,  to  introduce 
two  packs,  with  which  the  little  prisoner 
amused  himself /or  the  rest  of  his  life  !  The 
next  commissary  happened  to  be  a  toyman ; 
he  took  pity  on  the  boy,  and  at  Oomin's 
suggestion  sent  him,  three  days  after,  two  or 
three  toys.  But  these  were  trifling  indul- 
gences ;  and  the  continued  interdiction  of  air 
and  exercise,  and  the  frequent  insults  and 
severities  of  the  capricious  commissaries, 
were  gradually  aggravating  the  illness  that 
had  for  some  time  past  seribusly  alarmed  the 
guardians,  though  the  commissaries  in  gen« 
end  only  laughed  at  it.  About  January  and 
February,  1 795,  his  malady  assumed  a  more 
rapid  and  threatening  character.  He  grew 
more  melancholy  and  apathetic ;  he  became 
very  reluctant  to  move,  and,  indeed,  was 
hardly  able  to  do  so ;  and  Laurent  and  Go- 
min were  forced  to  carry  him  in  their  arms. 
The  district  surgeon  was  called  in,  and  in 
consequence  of  his  opinion,  a  delegation  from 
the  Commune  examined  the  case,  and  re* 
ported  that 

"  the  little  Capet  had  tumors  at  all  his  joints,  and 
ef«pecially  at  his  knees — that  it  was  impossible  to 


extract  a  word  from  him*- that  he  never  would 
rise  off  his  chair  or  his  bed,  and  refused  to  take 
any  kind  of  exercise." 

On  this  report  a  sub-committee  of  the 
Committee  de  Surete-GSnirale  were  dele* 
gated  to  visit  the  child  ;  it  consisted  of  one 
Harmand  (of  the  Meuse),  who  on  the  King's 
trial  voted  for  banishment,  and  Mathieu  and 
Reverchon,  who  voted  for  death.  These  men 
found  such  a  state  of  things  that  they  thought 
(as  Harmand  himself  afterwards  confessed, 
appealing  also  to  his  colleagues  who  were 
still  living) 

"  that /or  (he  honor  of  the  nation,  who  knew  no* 
thing  of  these  horrors — for  that  of  the  Convention^ 
which  was,  in  truth,  also  ignorant  of  them — and 
for  that  of  the  guilty  municipality  of  Paris  itself, 
who  knew  all  and  was  the  cauf^e  of  all  the:»e  cru- 
elties— we  should  make  no  public  report,  but  only 
state  the  re^alt  in  a  secret  meeting  of  the  com- 
mittee."—ii.  309. 

So  strange  a  confession — ^that  public  func- 
tionaries suppressed  the  facts  they  had  been 
appointed  to  inquire  into  for  the  honor  of 
those  who  had  committed  &nd  sanctioned  the 
crimes — is  sufliciently  revolting,  but  it  is 
much  more  so  that  no  measures  whatsoever 
were  taken  to  correct  or  even  alleviate  the 
cruelties  that  they  had  reported.  Harmand 's 
account  of  the  affair  was  not  published  till 
after  the  Restoration,  (as  M.  de  Beauchesne 
notices  with  something  of  suspicion  as  to  its 
accuracy,)  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
he  then  modelled  it  so  as  to  excuse,  as  far  as 
he  could,  his  own  pusillanimity,  in  having 
made  no  effectual  attempt  to  remedy  the 
mischief  that  he  had  discovered.  The  only 
apology  that  can  be  made  for  him  is,  that  he 
was  Sent  in  a  few  days  after  on  a  mission  to 
the  armies,  and  it  is  possible,  and  even  likely, 
that  the  very  purpose  for  which  he  was  sent 
was  to  prevent  bis  taking  any  steps  in  the 
matter.  The  substance,  however,  of  his 
statement  is  fully  confirmed  by  the  evidence 
of  Gomin,  jthough  the  latter  disputed  aome 
small  and  really  insignificant  details.  The 
most  striking  circumstance  was  the  fixed  and 
resolute  silence  of  the  child,  from  whom  they, 
no  more  than  the  former  commissaries  ^f  the 
commune,  were  able  to  extract  a  single  word. 
This  silence  Harmand  datea  from  the  day  on 
which  he  was  forced  to  sign  the  monstrous 
deposition  against  his  mother — a  statement 
which  Gomin  denies,  and  on  his  authority 
M.  de  Beauchesne  distrusts  Harmand *s  gen- 
eral veracity.  We  think  unjustly.  For  though 
Gomin  might  contradict  the  unqualified  state- 
ment of  his  never  having  spoken  from  that 


1858.] 


LOUIS  xvn. 


458 


very  daj,  he  himself  bears .  testimony  that 
the  exceptions  were  so  rare  and  so  secret  as 
to  be  utterly  unknown,  except  to  the  two  or 
three  persons  whose  unexpected  kindness 
obtained  a  whisper  of  acknowledgment  from 
the  surprised  though  grateful  boy.  When 
Ooroin  first  entered  on  his  duties,  "Laurent 
foretold  that  he  would  not  obtain  a  word 
from  him,"  which  implies  that  he  had  not 
opened  his  lips  to  Laurent.  The  report  of 
the  commune  which  preceded  Harmand's 
yisit  also  states,  as  we  have  seen,  that  he 
would  not  speak ;  Harmand  and  his  colleagues 
found  the  same  obstinate  silence;  and  we 
therefore  do  not  see  that  Harmand's  accu- 
racy is  in  any  degree  impugned  by  G-omin's 
secret  knowledge  that  the  child,  though  mule 
to  all  the  rest  of  his  visitors,  had  spoken  to 
htm  and  to  one  or  two  others,  who  were 
afraid  to  let  it  transpire.  It  is,  no  doubt,  too 
much  to  say  that  this  "  mutisme**  began  im- 
mediately on  the  signature  of  the  deposition 
of  the  6ih  October,  because  there  seems  good 
reason  to  deny  that  he  had  any  share  in  that 
deposition  except  signing  it;  he  probably 
could  not  have  uddei  stood  its  meaning,  and 
unquestionably  could  know  nothing  of  the 
use  that  was  made  of  it — ^indeed,  it  is  certain 
that  he  never  knew  of  his  mother's  death. 
But  it  is  equally  certain  that,  from  some  un- 
specified date  after  that  event,  he  condemned 
himself  to  what  may  be  fairly  called  absolute 
silence.  If  he  had  any  idea  of  the  import  of 
the  depositions  which  had  been  fabricated  for 
him,  he  may  have  resolved  not  to  give  another 
opportunity  of  perverting  what  he  might 
happen  to  say ;  and  the  constant  and  cruel 
insults  which  he  had  to  undergo  as  the  "  son 
of  the  tyrant,**  the  "  rottelet,  *•  the  •king  of 
La  Vendee  "nnd  the  like,  may  have  awakened 
in  his  mind  some  sense  of  his  dignity.  Such 
considerations  we  can  imagine  to  have  dawned 
even  on  that  young  intellect ;  but  in  addition 
to,  or  even  exclusive  of,  any  metaphysical 
motives — the  murder  of  his  father,  which  he 
knew — the  thoughts  of  his  mother,  which,  as 
we  shall  see,  troubled  and  tormented  him — 
his  separation  from  his  sister  and  aunt — a 
vague  consciousness  that  he  had  done  some- 
thmg  injurious  to  them — and,  above  all,  the 
pain,  prison,  privations,  and  punishment — ^in 
short,  the  terror  and  torture  which  he  himself 
endured — sufficiently  account  for  the  atrophy 
both  of  mind  and  body  into  which  he  had 
fallen,  and  for  the  silence  of  the  dungeon,  so 
soon  to  become  the  silence  of  the  grave. 
And  it  is  certain  that  even  in  this  extremity 
he  had  more  memory  and  sensibility  than  he 
chose  to  show.     Gomin's  timidity,  not  to  say 


terror  of  compromising  himself,  rendered  his 
general  deportment  reserved  and  even  severe ; 
but  one  evening — Thursday,  12th  March, 
1796 — when  he  was  alone  with  the  child, 
(Laurent  and  the  municipal  of  the  day  being 
absent  at  their  club,)  he  showed  him  some 
unusual  marks  of  sympathy,  and  proposed 
something  to  gratify  him.  The  boy  looked 
up  suddenly  at  Gomin's  countenance,  and, 
seeing  in  it  an  expression  of  tenderness,  he 
rose  and  timidly  advanced  to  the  door,  his 
eyes  still  fixed  on  Gomin's  face  with  a  gase 
of  suppliant  inquiry.  •*  No,  no,"  said  Go- 
min,  "you  know  that  that  cannot  be."  "I 
tnuet  see  Ber /*' Bfiid  the  child.  "Oh,  pray, 
pray,  let  me  see  Her  once  again  before  I  die  /" 
Gomin  led  him  gently  away  from  the  door  to 
his  bed,  on  which  the  child  fell  motionless 
and  senseless ;  and  Gomin,  terribly  alarmed 
— and,  as  he  confessed,  as  much  for  himself 
as  his  prisoner — thought  for  a  time  that  he 
was  no  more.  The  poor  boy  had  long,  Go- 
min suspected,  been  meditating  on  an  oppor- 
tunity for  seeing  his  mother;  he  thought  he 
had  found  it,  and  his  disappointment  over<- 
whelmed  him.  This  incident  softened  still 
more  the  heart  of  Gomin. 

A  few  days  after»  there  was  another  sad 
scene.  On  the  23d  March,  the  commissary 
of  the  day,  one  Collot,  looking  steadfastly  at 
the  child,  exclaimed,  in  a  loud  doctoral  tone, 
"That  child  has  not  six  weeks  to  live!" 
Laurent  and  Gomin,  shocked  at  the  effect 
that  such  a  prophecy  might  have  on  the 
child,  made  some  mitigating  observations,  to 
which  Collot  replied,  with  evident  malignity, 
and  in  coarser  terms  than  we  can  translate, 
"I  tell  you,  citizens,  that  within  six  weeks 
he  will  be  an  idiot,  if  he  be  not  dead  1"  The 
child  only  showed  that  he  heard  it,  by  a 
mournful  smile,  as  if  he  thought  it  no  bad 
news;  but  when  Collot  was  gone,  a  tear  or 
two  fell,  and  he  murmured,  "Yet  I  never 
did  any  harm  to  any  body.**  (ii.  319.) 

On  the  29th  of  March  came  another  afflic- 
tion. Laurent's  tastes  and  feelings  were 
very  repugnant  to  his  duties  in  the  Temple, 
though  he  was  afraid  of  resigning,  lest  he 
should  be  suspected  of  incivisme ;  but  he 
had  now,  by  the  death  of  his  mother,  an 
excuse  for  soliciting  a  successor.  It  was 
granted,  and  he  left  the  Temple  with  the 
regret  of  every  body.  The  innocence  and 
gentle  manners  of  the  child  had  softened  his 
republicanism,  and  reconciled  him  to  the 
"  son  of  the  tyrant."  The  Prince  at  parting 
squeezed  his  hand  affectionately,  and  saw 
his  departure  with  evident  sorrow,  but  does 
not  8i;em  to  have  spoken^ 


454 


LOUIS  XVIL 


[Dee., 


One  Lasne  succeeded  him  ;  bis  nouaraation 
and  instalment  were  characteristic  of  the 
times.  He  received  a  written  notice  of  his 
appointment  and  a  summons  to  attend  at  the 
Commune  to  receive  his  credentials.  Not 
coming  at  once,  two  gendarmes — armed  po- 
lice— were  sent,  who  took  him  from  his  resi- 
dence and  conducted  him  straight  and  sud- 
denly to  his  new  post.  Lasne  had  served  in 
the  old  Gardes  Fran9aise9,  and  this  caused 
his  eleclion  as  captain  of  grenadiers  in  the 
St.  Antoine  battalion  of  the  National  Quards. 
He  was  now  by  trade  a  master  house-painter. 
He  was  an  honest  man,  of  the  moderate  re- 
publican party,  with  the  air  and  somewhat 
of  the  rough  manner  of  the  old  soldier.  It 
was  on  the  16th  February,  1837,  that  M.  de 
Beauchesne,  as  he  tells  us,  "  first  saw  Lasne, 
in  whose  arms  Louis  XVIL  had  died"-«-but 
the  public  had  an  earlier  acquaintance  with 
Lasne,  which  we  wonder  that  M.  de  Beau- 
chesne has  not  noticed.  He  was  a  principal 
witness  on  the  trial  of  the  Faux  Dauphin, 
Bichemont,*  in  October,  1880,  and  then 
gave  in  substance  the  same  account  of  his 
mission  in  the  Temple  and  of  the  death  of 
the  young  king  that  he  again  repeated  with- 
out any  material  addition  or  variation  to  M. 
de  Beauchesne. 

For  three  weeks  the  child  was  as  mute  to 
Lasne  as  he  had  been  to  the  others.  At  last 
an  accident  broke  his  silence.  Lasne,  having 
been  one  day  on  guard  at  the  Tuileries,  had 
happened  to  see  the  Dauphin  reviewing  a 
regiment  of  boys  which  had  been  formed  for 
his  amusement  and  instruction ;  and  in  one 
of  his  allocutions  (we  cannot  call  them  con- 
versations) to  the  silent  child,  he  happened 
to  mention  the  circumstance,  and  repeated 
something  that  had  occurred  on  that  day ; 
the  boy's  face  suddenly  brightened  up,  and 
showed  evident  signs  of  interest  and  pleasure, 
and  at  last,  in  a  low  voice,  as  if  afraid  of  be- 
ing overheard,  he  asked,  **And  did  you  see 
me  mth  my  sword  ?"  f 

Though  the  guardians  were  equally  re- 
sponsible for  both  the  prisoners,  Lasne  was 
especially  attached  to  the  boy,  and  Qomin  to 
Madame  Royale,  whom  at  last  he  accompa- 
nied on  her  release,  and  on  the  Restoration 
became  an  officer  of  her  household. 

Lasne,  a  busier  and  a  bolder  man  than 
Gomin,  soon  discovered  that  the  boy,  whom 

*  As  thia  page  is  paasing  through  the  preas,  we 
learn  the  death  of  thia  impostor,  in  some  obeoure 
corner  of  France. 

t  That  sword,  of  which  M.  de  Beauchesne  ^ives 
a  drawing,  still  exists  (or  did  lately)  in  the  Muse 
de  lUrtUlerie  at  Paris. 


he  could  barely  recognize  for  the  healthy  and 
handsome  child  whom  he  had  seen,  wilh  his 
sword,  at  the  Tuileries,  was  in  a  very  danger- 
ous state,  and  he  induced  his  colleague  to 
join  him  in  inscribing  on  the  register  of  the 
proceedings  of  the  Temple,  "Tlie  little  Capet 
is  indisposed,"     No  notice  being  taken  of  the 
entry,  they  repeated  it  in  a  day  or  two,  in 
more  positive   terms:   "The  little  Capet  is 
dangerously  ill"     Still    no    notice.     "We 
must  strike  harder,"  said  the  guardians ;  and 
now  wrote  that  "his  life  was  in  danger" 
This  produced  an  order  (dth  May,  1794) 
for  the  attendance  of  M.  Desault,  one  of  the  ' 
most  eminent  physicians  of  Paris.     Desault 
examined  the  patient,  but  could  not  obtain  a 
word  from  him.     He  pronounced,  however, 
that  he  was  called  in  too  late — that  the  case 
was  become  scrofulous,  probably  from  a  con- 
stitutional taint  of  the  same  disease  of  which 
the  elder  Dauphin  had  died  in  1780,  aggra> 
vated  by  the  hard  treatment  and  confinement 
of  so  many  years ;  and  he  had  the  courage 
to  propose  that  he  should  be  immediatdy 
removed  to  the  country,  where  change  of  air, 
exercise,  and  constant  attention,  afibrded  the 
only   chance   of    prolonging  his  life.     The 
Government,  who  desired  no  such  result, 
paid  no  attention  to  the  advice,  and  Desault 
had  nothing  left  but  to  order  friction  of  the 
tumors  at  the  joints,  and  some  trivial  potions 
which  it  was  found  for  a  long  time  impossible 
to  persuade  the  child  to  swallow:  whether 
he  wished  to  die,  or  was,  on  the  contrary, 
afraid  of  poison,  did  not  appear ;  but  to  re- 
move the  latter  idea,  if  it  existed,  both  Go- 
min  and  Lasne  tasted  the  medicine ;  and  at 
last,  at  Lasne*s  earnest  entreaties,  and  as  if 
it  were, to  oblige  him,  the  medicine  was  taken, 
and,  as  M.  Desault  himself  expected,  pro- 
duced no  change  in  the  disease ;  but  there 
was  an  improvement  in  his  moral  condition 
— the  care  and  kindness  of  the  benevolent 
doctor  opened   his    lips — he  answered  his 
questions,  and  received  his  attentions  with 
evident    satisfaction ;    but,   aware    that  his 
words  were  watched,  (the  doctor  was  never 
left  alone  with  him,)  the  little  patient  did  not 
venture  to  af^k  him  to  prolong  his  civilities, 
though   he  would  silently  lay  hold  of  the 
skirt  of  his  coat  to  delay  his  departure. 

This  lasted  three  weeks.  On  the  31st 
May,  at  nine  o'clock,  the  commissary  of  the 
day,  M.  Bellenger,  an  artist,  who  had  been 
before  the  Be  volution  painter  and  designer 
to  Monsieur,  and  who  still  retained  senti- 
ments of  respect  and  affection  for  the  royal 
family — M.  Bellenger  went  up  into  the  pa- 
tient's room  to  wait  for  the  doctor.     As  he 


1868.] 


LOUIS  XVIL 


465 


did  not  appear^  M.  Bellenger  produced  a 
portfolio   of    drawings   which    he   thought 
might  amuse  the  boy,  who»  still  silent,  only 
turned  them  over  heedlessly;  but  at  last, 
the   doctor  still    not  appearing,   Bellenger 
said,  ^'Sir,  I  should  have  much  wished  to 
have  carried  away  with  me  another  sketch, 
but  I  would  not  venture  to  da  so  if  it  was 
disagreeable  to  you.*'     Struck  with  the  un- 
usual appellation  of  ''Sir,**  and  Bellenger's 
deferential  manner,  his  reserve  thawed,  and 
he  answered,  "TFAa/  sketch  P^      ^'0/  your 
features  ;  if  it  were  not  disagreeable  to  you^  it 
tDOuld  give  me  the  greatest  pleasure,^*     ^It 
would  please  you?"  said  the  child,  and  a 
gracious  smile  authorized  the  artist  to  pro- 
ceed.    M.  Pesault  did  not  come  that  day — 
nor  at  the  usual  hour  the  next.     Surprised 
at  his  unusual  absence,  the  Commissary  on 
duty  suggested  the  sending  for  him.     The 
guardians  hesitated  to  take  even  so  innocent 
a  step  beyond  their  instructions ;  but  a  new 
commissary  arrived,   and   terminated   their 
doubts  by  announcing  that  "  it  was  needless 
— Jf.  Desault  died  yesterday"     A  death  so 
sudden,  and  at  such  a  critical  moment,  gave 
rise  to  a  thousand  conjectures ;   the  most 
general  was  that  M.  Desault,  having  given 
his  patient  poison,  was  himself  poisoned  by 
his  employers  to  conceal  the  crime.     The 
character  of  the  times  and  the  circumstances* 
of  the  case  gave  a  color  to  such  a  suspicion 
— but  there  was  really  no  ground  for  it.    De- 
sault was  a  worthy  man,  and  as  Madame 
Royale   has  simply  and   pathetically   said, 
"  the  only  poison  that  shortened  my  brother's 
days  was  filth,  made   more   fatal  by  hor- 
rible treatment,  by  harshness,  and  by  cruel- 
ty of  which  there  is  no  example."     {Roy. 
Mem.  278.'> 

The  child  now  remained  for  five  days 
without  any  medical  attendance;  but  on 
the  6th  June,  M.  Pelletan,  surgeon- in- chief 
of  one  of  the  great  hospitals,  was  named  to 
that  duty.  This  doctor — "sent,"  says  M. 
de  Beauchesne,  "for  form's  sake,  like  a 
counsel  assigned  to  a  malefactor" — had, 
however,  the  courage  to  remonstrate  loudly 
with  the  commissaries  on  the  closeness  and 
darkness  of  the  sick-room,  and  the  violent 


*  An  additional  cireamstance  of  snepioion  wai^ 
the  different  dates  ^cta//y  given  to  Desaidt'e  death. 
He  certainly  died  on  the  l^t  of  June ;  yet  the  Re- 
port of  the  Comiti  de  Santi  Oinirale  to  the  Con- 
▼ention  on  the  subject  states  that  Desanlt  died  on 
the  4th.  This  was,  no  donbt,  an  accidental  mistake ; 
bat  it  was  a  strange  one  in  so  formal  a  document — 
the  more  so,  beeanse  it  shortened  the  surprisingly 
short  interval  between  the  deaths  of  the  doctor  and 
his  patient  from  six  days  to  three. 


crash  of  bolts  and  bars  with  which  the  doors 
were  opened  and  shut,  to  the  manifest  dis- 
turbance and  agitation  of  the  patient.     "  If 
you  have  not  authority,"  he  said,  "  to  open 
the  windows  and  remove  these  irons,  at  least 
you  cannot  object  to  remove  him  to  another 
room."     The  boy  heard  him,  and,  contrary 
to  his  invariable  habit,  beckoning  this  new 
friend   to   come  near   him,   he   whispered, 
"2>on'^  speak  so  loud,  for  thet  might  hear 
you  overhead,  and  I  should  be  sorry  they 
knew  I  was  ill — it    would    alarm    them" 
^^They"  were  his  mother  and  aunt — who  he 
thought  were  still  living.   The  commissary — 
one  Thory  (a  baker) — whose  natural  sympa- 
thy was  thus  fortified  by  the  decided  requi- 
sition of  the  surgeon,  consented ;  and  a  room 
in  the  small   tower,  which  had  been   the 
drawing-room  of  the  archivist  of  the  Order, 
was  instantly  prepared  for  the  reception  of 
the  patient.     The  kind-hearted  Oomin  has- 
tened to  carry  him  in  his  firms — as  he  was  no 
longer  able  to  move  himself ;  the  movement 
caused  him  great  torture,  and  his  eyes,  so 
long  unaccustomed  to  the  full  light  of  day, 
were  painfully  dazzled ;  the  sight,  however, 
of  the   sun,  and  the  freshness  of  the   air 
through  a  large  open  window,  soon  revived 
and  delighted  him,  and  in  a  few  minutes  he 
turned  on  Gomin  a  look  of  ineffable  gratitude 
and  affection ;  but  evening  came,  and  from 
eight  o'clock  till  eight  next  morning  he  was 
again  looked  up  alone.     On  the  morning  of 
the  6th,  Lasne  rubbed  his  knees,  and  gave 
him  a  spoonfuPof  tisan,  and,  thinking  him 
really  better,  dressed  him,  and  laid  him  on 
the  bed.    Pelletan  arrived  soon  after.     He 
felt  the  pulse,  and  asked  him  whether  he 
liked  his  new  room.     "  OA,  yes!"  he  an- 
swered, "with   a  faint,  desponding  smile, 
that  went  to  all  their  hearts."     At  dinner- 
time, just  as  the   child   had   swallowed  a 
spoonful  of  broth,  and  was  slowly  eating  a 
few  cherries  from  a  plate  that  lay  on  his 
bed,  a  new  commissary,  of  the  terrible  name 
of  Hubert,  and  worthy  of  it,  arrived.     "  Eh  I 
how   is   this?"    said    he  to  the  guardians; 
"where  is  your  authority  for  thus  moving 
this  wolf  cub  ?"     "  We  had  no  especial  di- 
rections," replied  Gomin,  "  but  the  doctor 
ordered  it."      "How   long,"  retorted   the 
other,  "  have   barbers   {carabins)  been  the 
Government  of  the  Republic?    You  must 
have  the  leave  of  the  Committee — do  you 
hear  ?"      At  these  words  the  child  dropped 
a  cherry  from  his  fingers,  fell  back  on  the 
bed,  and  hid  his  face  on  the  pillow.     Then 
night  came,  and  again  he  was  locked  up 
alone,  abandoned  to  his  bodily  sufferings  and 


466 


LOUIS  XVU. 


[Dee.» 


to  the  new  terrors  which  Hubert's  threat  | 
had  evidently  excited. 

Pelletan  had  found  him  so  much  worse 
that  he  solicited  the  Committee  of  SHreU 
OMraU  for  an  additional  medical  opinion, 
and  M.  Dumangin,  first  physician  of  another 

freat  hospital,  was  next  day  (Sunday,  (Tth 
une)  sent  to  assist  him.  Before  they  ar- 
rived the  patient  had  had  a  fainting-fit,  which 
seemed  to  portend  immediate  death  ;  but  he 
recovered  a  little.  The  doctors,  after  a  con- 
sultation, decided  that  there  were  no  longer 
any  hopes — that  art  could  do  nothing — ^and 
that  all  that  remained  was  to  mitigate  the 
agonies  of  this  lingering  death.  They  ex- 
pressed the  highest  astonishment  and  disap- 
probation of  the  solitude  and  neglect  to 
which  the  boy  was  subjected  during  the 
whole  of  every  night  and  the  greater  part 
of  every  day,  and  insisted  on  the  immediate 
necessity  of  giving  him  a  sick-nurse.  The 
Committee,  by  a  decree  of  the  next  day,  (8th 
June,)  consented — as  they  now  safely  might 
without  any  danger  of  the  escape  of  their 
victim ;  but  on  the  night  of  the  7th  the  old 
rule  was  still  followed,  and  he  was  locked 
up  alone.  He  felt  it  more  than  usual — the 
change  of  apartment  had  evidently  revived 
his  hopes ;  he  took  leave  of  Gomin  with  big 
tears  running  down  his  cheeks,  and  said, 
"<Si(i7/  alone^  and  my  mother  in  the  other 
tower!'*  But  it  was  the  last  night  of  suf- 
fering. 

When  Lasne  came  in  the  morning  of  the 
8th  as  usual,  he  thought  him  better ;  the 
doctors,  who  arrived  soon  after,  thought 
otherwise;  and  their  bulletin,  dispatched 
from  the  Temple  at  11  a.m.,  announced  the 
danger  to  be  imminent.  Gomin  now  relieved 
Lasne  at  the  bedside;  but  remained  for  a 
long  time  silent,  for  fear  of  agitating  him, 
and  the  child  never  spoke  first ;  at  last  Go- 
min expressed  his  sorrow  at  seeing  him  so 
weak.  **Be  consoled,''  he  replied:  "I shall 
not  suffer  Umg'*  Overcome  by  these  words, 
Gomin  kneeled  down  by  the  bedside.  The 
child  took  his  hand  and  pressed  it  to  his  lips 
while  Gomin  prayed. 

"  And  now,"  says  M.  deJIBeauchesne,  **|having 
heard  the  last  words  uttered  by  the  father,  the 
mother,  and  the  aunt — admirable  and  Christian 
words — you  will  be  anxious  to  gather  op  the  last 
words  of  the  royal  child— cleariy  recollected  and 
related  by  the  two  witnesses  to  whom  they  were 
addressed,  and  by  me  faithfully  transcribed  from 
their  own  lips."— ii.  362. 

After  the  scene  just  described,  Gomin, 
seeing  him  stretched  out  quite  motionless 


and  silent,  said,  "I  hope  you  are  not  in 
pain."  **  Oh  yes^^'  he  replied,  "  still  in  pain^ 
but  less — the  music  is  so  fine**  There  was 
no  music — no  sound  of  any  kind  reached  the 
room.  "  Where  do  you  hear  the  music  ?" 
''Up  there:*  "How  long?**  "Since  you 
were  on  your  knees.  Don't  you  hear  it? 
Listen/  listen!'*  And  he  raised  his  hand 
and  opened  his  great  eyes  in  a  kind  of  ecs- 
tacy.  Gomin  continued  silent,  and  after  a 
few  moments  the  boy  gave  another  start  of 
convulsive  joy,  and  cried,  "/  hear  my  moth- 
er's voice  amongst  them !"  and  directed  his 
eyes  to  the  window  with  anxiety.  Gomin 
asked  once,  twice,  what  he  was  looking  for 
— he  did  not  seem  to  hear,  and  made  no 
answer. 

It  was  now  Lasne's  hour  to  relieve  Go- 
min, who  left  the  room,  and  Lasne  sat  down 
by  the  bedside.  The  child  lay  for  a  while 
still  and  silent ;  at  last  he  moved,  and  Lasne 
asked  if  he  wanted  any  thing.  He  replied, 
'*I)o  you  think  my  sister  could  hear  the  mu- 
sic?— How  she  would  like  it!'*  He  then 
turned  again  to  the  window  with  a  look  of 
sharp  curiosity,  and  uttered  a  sound  that  in- 
dicated pleasure ;  he  then — it  was  just  fif- 
teen minutes  after  two  p.m. — stud  to  Lasne, 
'*I  have  something  to  tell  you.**  Lasne  took 
his  hand  and  bent  over  to  hear.  There  was 
no  more  to  be  heard  ;  the  child  was  dead ! 

A  post-mortem  examination,  by  Pelletan 
and  Dumangin^  assisted  by  MM.  Jeanroy 
and  Lassus,  eminent  practitioners,  and  of 
royalist  opinions  and  connections,  attested 
not  only  the  absence  of  any  signs  of  poison, 
but  the  general  healthy  condition  of  the  in- 
testines and  viscera,  as  well  as  of  the  brain ; 
their  report  attributed  the  death  simply  to 
marasmus,  (atrophy,  decay,)  the  result  of  a 
scrofulous  disease  of  long  standing — such  as 
the  swelling  of  the  joints,  externally  risible, 
indicated ;  but  they  give  no  hint  of  the  causes 
that  might  have  produced,  and  did,  beyond 
question,  fatally  aggravate  the  disease. 

The  poor  child  was  fated  to  be  the  victim 
of  persecution  and  profanation  even  after 
death.  The  surgeon,  M.  Pelletan,  who  was 
intrusted  with  the  special  duty  of  arranging 
the  body  after  the  examination,  had,  on  the 
Bestaration,  the  astonishing  impudence  of 
confessing  that,  while  his  colleagues  were 
conversing  in  a  distant  part  of  the  room,  he 
had  secretly  stolen  the  heart,  and  conveyed 
it  in  a  napkin  into  his  pocket ;  that  he  kept 
it  for  some  time  in  spirits  of  wine,  but  that 
it  afterwards  dried  up,  and  that  he  threw  it 
into  a  drawer,  whence  again  it  was  stolen  by 


1853.] 


LOUIS  XYU 


457 


one  of  his  pupils,  who  on  his  death-bed 
(about  the  date  of  the  Restoration)  confessed 
it,  and  directed  his  father-in-law  and  his  wid- 
ow to  restore  the  theft ;  which  Pelletan,  in 
consequence,  received  from  them  in  a  purse, 
and  which,  "  having  handled  it  a  thousand 
times,  he  easily  recognized,"  and  placed  it  in 
a  crystal  vase,  on  which  were  engraved 
seventeen  stars.  A  disgusting  controversy 
arose  on  the  authenticity  of  Pelletan's  rel- 
ique ;  in  consequence  of  which,  Louis  XVIIL, 
who  had  at  first  intended  to  place  it  in  the 
royal  tombs  at  St.  Denis,  retracted  that  de- 
sign, chiefly,  it  is  said,  on  the  evidence  of 
Lasne,  who  strenuously  declared  that,  how- 
ever-inattentive the  other  doctors  might  have 
been,  be  had  never  taken  his  eyes  off  the 
body  or  Pelletan  during  the  whole  operation ; 
that  no  such  theft  could  have  been  accom- 
plished without  his  having  seen  it ;  that  he 
saw  nothing  like  it ;  and  that  Pelletan's  whole 
story  was  a  scandalous  imposture.  Besides 
this  powerful  and  direct  objection,  othere 
arose — from  the  neglect  with  which  Pelletan 
confessed  that  he  had  treated  a  deposit  which, 
since  he  had  taken  it,  he  ought  to  have  con- 
sidered so  sacred — ^from  the  vague  story  of 
the  second  theft  —  and,  finally,  from  the 
doubt  of  the  identity  of  the  object  returned 
by  the  widow  in  a  purse  with  that  which  the 
pupil  confessed  to  have  stolen.  The  apo- 
cryphal object  therefore  remains  with  the 
representatives  of  Pelletan ;  but  the  disgrace 
of  his  story,  whether  true  or  false,  is  fixed 
indelibly  on  his  memory. 

But  this  was  not  all.  The  very  grave  of 
the  poor  boy  became  matter  of  controversy. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  body  was  buried 
openly,  and  with  decent  solemnity — accom- 
panied by  several  municipal  authorities  and 
his  last  friend  Lasm — in  the  churchyard  of 


the  parish  of  8t.  Margaret,  in  the  Faubourg 
St.  Antoine:  but  when  Louis  XV III.  direct- 
ed an  inquiry  into  the  exact  spot,  with  a  view 
of  transferring  the  body  to  St.  Denis,  the 
evidence  was  so  various,  inconclusive,  and 
contradictory,  that — as  in  the  case  of  the 
heart — it  seemed  prudent  to  abandon  the  ori- 
ginal design,  and  the  remains  of  Louis  XVIL 
repose  undisturbed  and  undistinguished  in  a 
small  grassy  enclosure  adjoining  the  church, 
and  so  surrounded  by  houses  that  it  is  not 
marked  on  the  ordinary  maps  of  Paris.  It 
has  been  for  more  than  fifty  years  abandoned 
as  a  cemetery — forgotten  and  unknown  by 
the  two  last  generations  of  men  even  in  its 
own  neighborhood,  till  the  pious  enthusiasm 
of  M.  de  Beauchesne  revealed  it  to  us,  but 
now  we  suppose  never  to  be  again  forgotten 
— though  the  place  seems  altogether  dese- 
crated. We  cannot  understand — whatever 
good  reasons  there  might  be  for  abandoning 
a  search  after  the  individual  grave — why  the 
monarchs  and  ministers  of  the  Restoration 
did  not,  in  this  narrow,  secluded,  and  most 
appropriate  spot,  raise  some  kind  of  memo- 
rial to  not  only  so  innocent  but  so  inoffensive 
and  so  interesting  a  victim. 

M.  de  Beauchesne  hints  that  such  was  the 
frustrated  desire  of  the  Duchess  d'Aogou- 
leme.  Why  a  request  so  pious  and  so  modest 
should  have  been  rejected  by  Chose  ministere 
we  are  at  a  loss  to  conceive.  He  announces 
that  he  himself  designs  to  place  some  hum- 
ble memorial  within  the  enclosure.  We  doubt 
whether  he  will  be  permitted  to  do  so ;  but 
he  will  at  least  have  the  consolation  of  hay- 
ing in  this  work  dedicated  to  the  object  of 
his  reverence  and  affection  a  monument 
which  neither  the  rancor  of  revolutionists, 
the  neglect  of  soidisant  royalists,  nor  the  ter- 
rors of  the  new  despotism  can  ever  obliterate. 


468 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOB. 


Pec, 


From  Hogg's   Instructor. 


WAITBR    SAVAGE    lANDOB 


How  strangely  would  our  ideas  of  inlellec- 
tual  excelleDce  be  revolutionized,  did  we  esti- 
mate the  worth  of  books,  or  the  abilities  of 
literary  men,  by  their  popularity !  What  a 
rejection  would  there  be  of  the  most  clear- 
sighted sages,  and  the  most  elevated  spirits, 
who  have  been  our  pioneers  in  the  upland 
path  of  truth,  did  we  judge  of  them  as  their 
contemporaries  did ;  and  what  a  resurrection 
of  the  nameless  and  long- forgotten  would 
take  place,  were  the  trumpet-blast  of  fame 
to  sound  for  those  whose  brief  dance  of  ex- 
istence awoke  only  that  confused  hum  which 
b  emitted  in  the  sunshine  by  ephemeral 
things !  It  is  fitting  that  the  thinker  should 
be  among  the  last  of  those  who  are  crowned 
with  the  palm-wreath  of  true  honor,  for  the 
note  of  triumph  which  summons  him  to  re- 
ceive it  must  be  blown  with  no  bated  breath, 
nor  give  forth  an  uncertain  sound.  It  must 
ring  clearly  and  strongly,  even  though  it  be 
not  heard  tilt  long  after  that  thinker's  tomb 
has  crumbled,  and  it  must  proclaim  him  a 
teacher  of  no  mere  half  truths— one  whom 
the  world  could  not  well  have  spared,  ere  it 
has  set  him  among  its  benefactors.  Such 
being,  in  most  cases,  the  necessity  of  that 
mission  upon  which  the  writer  of  intellectual 
power  enters,  when  he  gives  utterance  to  the 
thought  within  him,  popularity  is  seldom  the 
result  of  his  labors,  in  the  sense  in  which  it 
is  won  by  the  efifbrts  of  the  more  superficial 
and  less  self-sustained.  He  looks  to  higher 
results,  and  is  borne  onward  by  seeing,  often 
in  the  far  future,  the  time  when  his  thoughts 
must  be  recognized,  and  he  with  them.  Some 
among  the  original  minds  of  all  ages  have 
been  so  influenced  by  these  things,  as  to  be 
betrayed  into  culpable  carelessness  of  the 
media  by  which  their  ideas  are  communicated. 
Content  to  find  a  fit  audience,  they  seem  reck- 
less of  how  few  may  compose  it,  and  may  al- 
most be  sdd  to  ignore  the  competency  of  a 
popular  tribunal.  Now,  it  appears  obvious 
that  the  diffusion  of  enlightenment  in  an  age 
like  our  own  is  not  such  a  mere  surface  thing, 
but  that  even  the  least  attractive  writers  will 
be  appreciated  in  quarters  where  they  may 
have  scarcely  expected  to  be  comprehended. 


Though  the  flood  of  ordinary  knowledge, 
breaking  its  old  boundaries,  leaves  but  a 
small  deposit  of  that  more  subtle  thought 
which  is  the  product  of  a  rich  and  8tr<Hig 
soil  on  the  broad  plain  of  general  intelligence, 
it  floats  into  nooks  and  crannies  much  that 
will  take  root  there  and  produce  a  fresh  and 
abundant  fruitage.  This  has  been,  and  will 
yet  to  a  much  greater  extent  be,  the  case 
with  such  writers  as  Walter  Savage  Lander. 
There  are  few  of  our  modern  authors  with 
whom  the  general  public  is  less  acquainted ; 
he  is  known  as  a  man  of  high  attainments,  of 
a  powerful  mind,  more  through  the  opinion 
of  the  men  of  letters  who  have  been,  or  still 
are,  his  contemporaries,  than  through  the 
verdict  of  even  those  who  constitute,  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  term,  the  reading  public 
He  has  been  careless  about  such  a  verdict, 
and  would  seem  to  have  preferred  the  indul- 
gence of  mere  caprice,  in  many  instances^ 
rather  than  do  aught  to  secure  it.  In  spite 
of  this,  however,  we  feel  constrained  to  say 
with  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  in  one  of  his  own  con- 
versations, "  that  life  has  not  been  spent  idly 
which  has  been  mainly  spent  in  conciliating 
the  generous  affections,  by  such  studies  and 
pursuits  as  best  furnish  the  mind  for  their 
reception."  It  will  matter  little  either  to  our 
author  himself  or  to  his  readers  in  fotttre 
times,  whether  he  received  the  praise  justly 
due  to  him  in  his  lifetime  or  not ;  his  has  been 
an  existence  well  spent,  if  the  devotion  of 
genius  to  the  cause  of  truth  and  the  cultiva- 
tion of  nobleness  is  a  thing  worthy  of  living 
and  laboring  for ;  and  it  wUl  be  of  little  con- 
sequence hereafter  whether  the  form  of  his 
labors  were  such  as  to  interest  the  mass  of 
mankind  or  not,  when  the  substance  of  them 
has  been  estimated  at  its  true  value.  That 
the  form  in  which  Mr.  Landor  has  chosen  to 
express  his  views  of  nature  and  of  human  life 
has  had  some  effect  upon  his  writings,*  so 

*  Imaginary  ConverBatioDB  of  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans. By  Waltkb.  Sayaok  Landob.  London: 
K  Moxom.     1853. 

The  Works  of  Walter  Savage  Landor.  In  Two 
Yolumeflb    Mozom.    1846. 

Italioo.    By  Walter  Savage  Landor. 


1858.] 


WALTER  SAYAGE  LAin>OR. 


469 


far  as  their  unpopularity  is  concerned »  we  do 
not  doubt.  To  those  who  are  at  little  pains 
to  look  beyond  mere  forms,  the  "  Imaginary 
Conversations"  do  not  properly  belong  either 
to  the  literature  of  fiction  or  to  that  of  a 
weightier  charncter,  while  they  partake  in 
some  degree  of  the  nature  of  both.  Profess- 
edly fictitious  in  design,  they  are  real  in  sub- 
stance ;  and  while  the  combination  of  dramatic 
force  with  practical  wisdom  cannot  but  be 
their  chief  charm  in  the  estimation  of  such  as 
can  appreciate  it,  that  combination  has  in  all 
probability  appeared  to  others  a  thing  neither 
real  nor  imaginary.  And  yet  the  **  dialogue," 
or  "  conversation/'  was  the  form  chosen  by 
some  of  the  wisest  of  those  who  have  left  the 
world  legacies  of  great  thoughts.  It  was  the 
form  which  Plato,  and  Socrates,  and  Cicero 
chose,  while  F^n^lon,  Paschal,  Fontenelle, 
and  many  others,  have  selected  it  as  their 
medium  of  expression,  conceiving  it  to  be  the 
most  natural  mode  of  communication  between 
man  and  man.  Mr.  Landor,  however,  has 
infused  the  dramatic  into  this  form,  and  his 
"  Conversations"  are  therefore,  to  some  ex- 
tent, different  from  those  with  which  the  stu- 
dent of  philosophy  is  familiar.  By  doing  so 
be  obtained  scope  for  his  fine  discrimination 
of  character  and  his  clear  perception  of  poetic 
truth,  not  less  than  for  the  expression  of 
powerful  and  suggestive  thought.  Nor  has 
he  failed  to  take  advantage  of  the  latitude 
which  this  original  style  of  writing  afforded. 
In  the  works  of  no  modern  writer  do  we  find 
more  of  that  pregnant  wisdom  by  which  great 
truths  are  suggested  as  well  as  taught,  or 
more  that  will  be  as  applicable  in  future  ages 
as  in  our  own  to  literature,  philosophy,  or 
human  life.  We  can  find  no  room  for  regret, 
then,  that  Mr.  Landor  has  not  taken  that 
place  among  the  imaginative  writers  of  the 
age  which  his  genius  would  have  enabled  him 
to  take  so  easily,  since  in  his  own  domain  he 
may  at  once  challenge  comparison  with  the 
highest  of  them,  while  holding  a  rank  among 
the  more  thoughtful  of  contemporary  authors 
at  least  equally  elevated.  He  has  outlived 
most  of  those  who  entered  upon  their  work 
witli  him,  and  we  greatly  mistake  if  through 
his  writings  he  does  not  long  outlive  many  of 
those  who  have  obtained  a  wider  popularity. 
Meanwhile  it  is  our  desire  to  look  at  him  a 
little  more  narrowly  as  he  stands  apart,  and, 
while  pointing  out  what  we  conceive  to  be 
the  distinguishing  characteristics  of  his  genius, 
to  extract  from  his  volumes  some  portions  of 
their  varied  riches.  In  doing  so,  we  shall 
have  to  consider  Mr.  Landor  in  the  threefold 
capacity  of  a  strikingly  original  prose  writer, 


a  dramatist,  and  a  poet,  in  so  far  as  the  latter 
term  is  commonly  understood  to  distinguish 
one  who  expresses  the  emotional  in  verse* 
from  him  who  portrays  human  character 
through  the  medium  of  dramatic  action.  The 
distinction  we  thus  make  for  the  sake  of  per- 
spicacity ought  by  no  means  to  be  considered 
an  arbitrary  one,  so  far  as  the  subject  is  con- 
cerned, for  throughout  all  Mr.  Landor's  prose 
works  the  poetic  and  dramatic  elements  are 
very  strongly  marked.  The  latter,  in  fact, 
may  be  said  to  constitute  the  basis  of  the 
"  Citation  and  Examination  of  William  Shak- 
spere."  There  are  few  of  the  thoughts  which 
this  singular  work  contains  to  which  the  most 
ardent  lover  of  the  great  dramatist  could  ob- 
ject, either  on  the  score  of  appropriateness 
or  dignity ;  sparkling  fancies,  wild  wagffenes, 
and  weighty  wisdom,  come  from  the  Tips  of 
the  young  deer- stealer,  in  the  presence  of  the 
pompous  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  with  a  natural 
freshness  and  originality,  such  as  to  give  them 
all  the  effect  of  characteristic  truth.  No 
other  writer  in  our  language  has  attempted 
this ;  and  where  men  of  whose  intellectual 
being  we  have  a  distinct  idea  have  been  in- 
troduced in  works  of  fiction,  the  failure  haa 
been  in  most  cases  very  manifest.  Mr.  Lan- 
dor's was  a  bold  attempt,  for  of  all  men  there 
could  certainly  be  none  whom  we  would  more 
reluctantly  trust  in  the  hands  of  a  novelist 
than  William  Shakspere.  Jealous  of  his 
dignity,  the  author  of  the  "  Citation"  has  put 
into  the  mouth  of  the  poet  things  which  he 
might  himself  have  expressed,  and  with  re- 
markable fidelity  has  resuscitated  the  man- 
nerism of  Shakspere's  age,  while  turning  to 
account  all  those  broad  outlines  of  contempo- 
rary character  which  he  has  left  us.  And, 
in  addition  to  its  artistic  excellence,  this  book 
has  a  high  moral  aim.  Its  humor  and  quaint- 
ness,  the  wealth  of  fancy,  and  the  subtle  and 
exquisite  touches  of  feehng,  which  it  contains, 
are  all  made  subservient  to  the  embodiment 
of  a  fine  idea  of  humanity,  and  to  an  exalted 
conception  of  life,  its  duties  and  responsibili- 
ties. Though  professedly  a  romantic  record 
of  an  incident,  or  supposed  incident,  in  the 
career  of  the  world's  poet,  and,  as  such,  an 
attempt  to  make  his  character  available  for 
the  purposes  of  fiction,  it  has  far  more  real 
practical  wisdom,  applicable  at  all  times,  than 
is  usually  to  be  found  in  that  class  of  works. 
Shakspere  is  made  to  slide  gradually  from 
the  position  in  which  he  originally  stands  be- 
fore the  self-satisfied  Knight  of  Charlecote, 
as  a  convicted  culprit,  to  one  of  high  import- 
ance, and  Sir  Thomas  again  and  again  ac- 
knowledges it,  by  involuntarily  succumbioir 


460 


ITALTSB  SAYAOE  LAKBOBi 


[Dec. 


to  the  influence  of  bis  eloquence,  and  by  ulti- 
mately resisting  the  crabbed  appeals  to  his 
dignity  put  forth  by  bis  ill-natured  chaplain, 
who  dislikes  the  *'  common  mutton-broth  di- 
Tinity"  of  the  young  poet.  He  is  softened 
by  the  humanity  of  a  gentler  nature,  and,  in 
reply  to  the  ill-tempered  suggestion,  that  the 
deer-stealer  be  at  once  committed,  takes  up 
the  language  of  a  pleader,  and  resigns  him- 
self to  the  guidance  of  his  prisoner,  who,  not- 
ing the  knight's  theological  turn  of  mind, 
plies  him  with  much  sound  wisdom  from  the 
discourses  of  a  certain  fictitious  Dr.  Glaston. 
None  of  our  readers,  we  think,  will  be  dis- 
pleased with  such  specimens  of  this  worthy 
divine's  prelections  as  the  following :  it  is  a 
brief  but  pregnant  discourse  on  the  duty  of 
the  spiritual  teacher : — 

'*  Let  ns  preacher?,  who  are  sufficiently  liberal 
in  bestowing  oar  advice  upon  others,  inquire  of 
ourselves  whether  the  exercise  of  spiritnal  author- 
ity may  not  be  sometimes  too  pleasant,  tickling 
our  breasts  with  a  plume  from  Satan's  wing,  ana 
taming  oar  beads  with  that  inebriating  poison 
which  be  hath  been  seen  to  instil  into  the  very 
chalice  of  our  salvation.  Let  us  ask  ourselves  m 
the  closet,  whether,  after  we  have  humbled  our- 
selves before  God  in  our  prayers,  we  never  rise 
beyond  the  doe  standard  in  the  pulpit ;  whether 
our  zeal  for  the  troth  be  never  overheated  by  in- 
ternal fires  less  holy;  whether  we  never  grow 
stiffly  and  sternly  pertinacious  at  the  very  time 
when  we  are  reproving  the  obstioacity  of  otherq ; 
and  whether  we  have  not  frequently  so  acted,  as 
if  we  believed  that  opposition  were  to  be  relaxed 
and  borne  away  by  self-sufficiency  and  intoler- 
ance. Believe  me,  the  wisest  of  us  have  oar 
catechism  to  learn ;  and  these  are  not  the  only 
qaestions  contained  in  it  Learned  and  ingenious 
men  may  indeed  find  a  sfilution  and  excuse  for 
all  these  propositions;  butthe^wise  unto  salvation 
will  cry,  '  Forgive  me,  O  my  God,  if,  called  by 
thee  to  walk  in  thy  way,  I  have  not  swept  this 
dust  from  thy  sanctuary.' " 

• 

If  any  objection  should  be  taken  to  one 
who  is  not  a  bishop  issuing  such  a  charge  as 
this  to  the  clergy,  we  shall  give,  by  way  of 
compensation,  an  equally  pungent  homily  on 
the  pride  of  ancestral  honors,  in  which  Shak- 
spere,  emboldened  by  the  favorable  hearing 
granted  to  him  in  the  justice-room  at  Charle- 
cote,  penetrates  into  the  very  citadel  of  the 
old  knight's  vanity,  under  the  cloak  of  the 
aforesaid  erudite  divine,  and  gives  us  a  fine 
commentary  on  the  king's  praise  of  Helena, 
the  poor  physician's  daughter: — 

"From  lowest  place,  where  virtuous  {things 
proceed. 
The  place  is  dignified  by  the  doer's  deed ; 


Where  great  additions  (titles)  swell,  and  virtoe 

none, 
It  is  a  dropsied  honor ;  good  alone 
Is  good  without  a  name." 

"  Let  not  the  highest  of  yoa  be  led  into  the  de- 
lusion (for  such  it  is)  that  the  founder  of  hU  fam- 
ily was  originally  a  greater  and  a  better  man  than 

any  here He  must  have  stood  low,  he 

must  have  worked  hard,  and  with  tools,  moreover, 
of  his  own  invention  and  fashioning.  He  waived 
and  whistled  off  a  thousand  strong  and  importu- 
nate temptations;  he  dashed  the  dice-box  from 
the  jeweled  hand  of  Chance,  the  cup  from  Plea- 
sure's, and  trod  under  foot  the  sorceries  of  each. 
The  very  high  cannot  rise  much  higher  on  earth ; 
the  very  low  may;  the  truly  great  roust  have 
done  it.  This  is  not  the  doctrine  of  the  silkenly 
and  lawnly  religion ;  it  wears  the  coarse  texture 
of  the   fisherman,    and    walks    uprightly    and 

straightforwardly  under  it According  to 

the  arithmetic  in  practice,  he  who  makes  the  most 
idlers  and  the  most  ingrates  is  the  most  worship- 
ful. But  wiser  ones  than  the  scorers  in  this 
school  will  tell  you  how  riches  and  power  were 
bestowed  by  Providence,  that  generosity  and 
mercy  should  be  exercised ;  for  if  every  gift  of 
the  Almighty  were  distributed  in  equal  portions 
to  every  creatnre,  less  of  such  virtues  would  be 
called  into  the  field;  consequently,  there  wouM 
be  less  of  gratitude,  less  of  submission,  less  of  de- 
votion, less  of  hope,  and,  in  the  total,  less  of  con- 
tent." 

Some  copies  of  verses  found  in  the  pocket 
of  the  vagrant  youth  led  Sir  Thomas  to  ex- 
patiate on  the  corruptness  of  the  preyailing 
taste,  and  even  to  venture  upon  the  recitation 
of  certain  "rhymed  matters"  of  his  own, 
wherein  a  "clear  and  conscientious  exposure" 
of  his  affairs  was  made  to  a  lady,  by  whom 
his  letter  was  returned  with  small  courtesy. 
"  Sir,"  replied  young  William,  "  I  am  most 
grateful  for  these  ripe  fruits  of  your  experi- 
ence ;  the  world  shall  never  be  troubled  by  ' 
any  battles  or  marriages  of  mine,  and  I  desire 
no  other  music  and  no  other  maypole  than 
have  lightened  my  heart  at  Stratford.''  Mol- 
lified almost  to  the  utmost,  the  pursy  knight 
is  fain  to  liberate  the  youth  at  once,  despite 
the  emmbling  of  his  chitplain  Silas,  and  only 
requires  an  oath  of  abjuration  in  the  matter 
of  Hannah  Hathaway — a  matter  which  so 
touches  theheart  of  Shakspere,  however,  that, 
greatly  to  the  indignation  of  Sir  Thomas,  he 
seizes  the  occasion  to  escape,  and  flies  the 
neighborhood.  "  Grant  the  country  be  rid 
of  him  for  ever,"  is  the  pious  ejaculation  of 
Sir  Thomas.  "What  dishonor  upon  his 
friends  and  his  native  townl  A  reputable 
wool-stapler's  son  turned  gipsy  and  poet  for 
life!" 

There  are  episodes  in  this  book  in  which 


1853.] 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LAKDQB. 


461 


the  writer  sometimes  reaches  the  highest 
point  of  pathos.  That  of  a  young  poet, 
EZthelbert,  though  wholly  unconDected  with 
the  main  incidents,  is  of  a  most  touching  na- 
ture, and  there  are  one  or  two  sentences  in 
it  which  seem  to  bring  out»  and  in  a  very  di- 
rect way  to  bear  upon,  Mr.  Landor's  own  idea 
of  poetic  fame : — 

"  From  the  higher  heavens  of  poetry  it  is  long 
before  (he  radiance  of  the  brightest  star  can  reach 
the  world  below.  We  hear  that  one  maa  finds 
out  one  beauty,  another  man  another,  placing  his 
observatory  and  iniitruments  upon  the  poet's 
grave.  The  worms  have  eaten  us  before  it  is 
rightly  known  what  we  are.  Be  it  so.  I  shall 
not  be  tired  of  waiting." 

Although  few  haye  as  yet  turned  their  eyes 
to  the  peculiar  beauties  of  Mr.  Landor's  writ- 
ings, some,  at  least,  have  done  so,  and  we 
trust  they  will  all  be  fully  revealed  ere  we 
have  to  look  towards  them  from  such  an  ob- 
servatory. 

If,  as  we  very  much  suspect,  the  book  U> 
which  we  have  just  been  referring  has  re- 
ceived but  little  of  the  attention  which  it 
merits  in  this  age  of  Shaksperianity,  it  is  not 
probable  that  the  "  Pentameron"  will  be 
much  known.  There  is  less  of  Mr.  Landor's 
power  of  depicting  character  evinced  in  it, 
but  far  more  of  his  scholarship,  of  his  exqui- 
site critical  perceptions,  and  his  intimate 
knowledge  of  what  may  be  called  the  under- 
currents of  history.  It  professes  to  be  the 
interviews  of  Giovanni  Boccaccio  and  Fran- 
cesco Petrarca,  and  the  conversations  which 
took  place  between  them  while  the  former 
lay  infirm  at  his  villelta  near  Certaldo,  after 
which,  as  the  imaginary  reporter,  Pievano 
Grigi,  avouches,  "  they  saw  not  each  othar  on 
our  side  of  Paradise.''  To  estimate  its  worth 
as  a  reflection  of  Italian  history  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  the  reader  must  needs  possess 
some  knowledge  of  the  events  which  form  in 
it  the  topics  of  familiar  colloquy ;  but  its 
chief  excellence  is  the  high-toned  eloquence 
and  the  discriminating  spirit  of  its  criticism. 
Dante,  and  the  "  Divina  Commedia,"  its  phi- 
losophy and  religion  as  typical  of  the  age  in 
which  it  was  composed,  are  the  principal  sub- 
jects of  discourse.  The  thought  is  elevated, 
as  it  might  well  be  on  such  themes,  while  in 
almost  every  page  there  are  passages  which 
stand  out  in  all  the  strength  of  strikwg  truths, 
and  are  luminous  with 

**  The  gleam  that  never  was  on  land  or  sea, 
The  consecration  and  the  poet's  dream." 

Nor  do  these  things  at  all  affect  the  air  of 


reality  which   pervades  it.     We  are  never 
allowed  to  suspect  that  such  high  converse 
savors  too  little  of  that  common  place  which 
attaches  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  to  all  men, 
and  to  their  weightiest  affairs.     The  Italian 
poets  are  introduced  to  us  in  the  freedom  of 
familiar  friendship,  and  on  such  occasions  as 
enable  us  to  sit  with  them  in  Boccaccio's 
shaded  chamber.     It  is  something  to  have 
realized  such  glimpses  of  great  men's  lives  as 
are  thus  given,  and  though  we  must  pass 
over  the  "  Pentaraeron"  without  a  single  quo- 
tation, it  is  among  the  most  complete  of  Mr. 
Landor's  works.     Properly  speaking,  it  has 
no  distinct   plan,  and  cannot  therefore  be 
classed   among    ordinary   works  of   fiction. 
There  is  no  action  in  it  whatever,  for  the  dia- 
logue  terminates  without  any  culmination, 
and  with  it  the  work,  which  is  in  no  sense 
progressive.     The  title-page   tells   us  it  is 
true  that,  after  the  interview  last  recorded, 
the   friends   "met  not  again  on   our  side 
of  Paradise;"  and  the  dream  of  Petrarca, 
with    the    narration   of    which    the    inter- 
view   closes,    may    be   taken    as    a    fore- 
shadowinff    of    his    death,    the    pretended 
translators   prefatory   remarks  being   used 
as  a  key  to  its  significance  in  other  than  a' 
general  sense ;  but,  apart  from  these  slight 
hints,  we  shut  the  book  with  the  feeling  of 
having  been  unexpectedly  called  away  from 
the  society  to  which  it  has  introduced  us. 
The  completeness  we  speak  of,  then,  applies 
strictly  to  the  development  of  the  two  cha- 
racters, and  in  that  sense,  the  ••  Pentameron," 
irrespective  of  its  value  as  the  medium  of 
expressing  lofty  and   beautiful  thoughts,  is 
admirable  as  a  sort  of  psychological  biogra- 
phy.    "  Pericles  and  Aspasia"  has  the  cha- 
racter of  a  novel  to  a  much  greater  extent 
than  any  of  Mr.  Landor's  oiher  works.     Al- 
though in  it,  as  in  all,  he  has  disdained  to  be 
guided   by  any  arbitrary  rule  of  action,  and 
seemsa  Imost  to  study  irregularity  of  form 
rather  than  compactness,  there  is  a  distinct 
progress  manifested.     The  history  of  a  life 
is  unfolded,  and   that,  too,  in  its  thoughts 
and  emotions  rather  than  its  actions,  for  the 
latter  are  made  subordinate  to  the  former. 
In  portraying  the  characters  of  Pericles  and 
Aspasia,  Mr.  Landor's  imagination  seeks  to 
get  at  the  prominent  points  of  individuality — 
to  identify  itself  with  the  inner  being  of  each, 
and  to  present  each  as  they  are  to  them- 
selves.    The  story  is  evolved  in  the  letters 
of  Ajspasia  to  her  friend  Cleone,  and  in  her 
correspondence  with  Pericles  and  Alcihiades. 
The  classical  spirit  of  our  author's  writings 
enables  him  to  invest  such  a  subject  »" 


462 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 


[Dec, 


this  with  something  like  its  native  air ;  and 
hence,  although  a  few  of  the  letters  might, 
without  the  shghtest  detriment  to  the  effect 
of  the  work  as  a  whole,  be  omitted,  they 
tend  to  make  the  characters  stand  out  in  all 
the  purity  and  distinctness,  the  largeness  of 
outline  and  the  nobility,  which  we  expect  to 
find  in  such  a  subject.  The  style  in  which 
the  book  is  written  is  essentially  classical. 
The  speeches  of  Pericles  read  like  pages  of 
the  old  Greek  historians,  and  the  account  of 
his  death  given  in  the  letter  of  Alcibiades  to 
Aspasia  is  full  of  the  most  delicate  feeling. 

But  Mr.  Landor  will  be  best  known  to  the 
men  of  days  to  come  by  his  "  Imaginary 
Conversations."    These  remarkable  and,  we 
may  add,  unique  productions  display  in  fuller 
measure   than  any   of  his   other  works  the 
strength  and  clearness  of  his  intellect,  and 
the  warmth  of  his  sympathies.     They  occupy 
the  largest  portion  of  the  two  volumes  in 
which  his  collected  writings  have  been  pub- 
lished, and  present  an  extraordinary  variety 
of  subjects.     Poets  converse  with  each  other 
on  poetry,  painters  and  distinguished  con- 
noisseurs on  art,  critics  and  philosophers  on 
.their  respective  studies  and  principles,  kings 
and  statesmen  on  the  polity  of  nations,  and 
Mr.  Landor  himself  with  imaginary  friends 
and  visitora  on  almost  every  theme  to  which 
a  scholar,  a  poet,  and  a  man  of  large  expe- 
rience may  be  expected  to  direct  his  atten- 
tion.    The  varied  character  of  these  dialogues 
renders  it  difficult  within  a  reasonable  space  to 
speak  of  them  in  other  than  general  terms  ; 
and  some  of  them  sv^  far  surpass  the  others 
in  characteristic  truth,  in  the  importance  of 
the   subjecte   discussed,  and  in   the  beauty 
and  force  of  the  langua^-e,  that  we  must,  of 
necessity,  make  a  selectioi..     In  not  a  few  of 
them  the  author's  own  pei^onality  obtrudes 
itself  very  distinctly  ;  and,  al  chough  the  pas- 
sages in  which  his  own  opinions  are  obviously 
inconsistent  with  those  of  the  parties  who 
are  professedly  the  speakers  can  very  seldom 
be  considered  beneath  the  dignity  of  the 
historic  company,  they  sometimes  comes  like 
a  living  man  of  the  modern  world  into  the 
society  of  the  shades.    These  interpolations,  if 
we  may  socall  them,  are  always   vigorous, 
and  they  occur  most  frequently  when  the 
theme  of  conversation  has  any  reference  to 
the  liberties  of  man.     Few  modem  authors 
have  written  with  greater  power,  or  with  a 
higher  spirit  of  wisdom,  on  the  abstract  prir- 
ciples  of  civil  and  religious  freedom,  than  Mr. 
Landor  has  done.     All  his  sympathies  are 
with  those  who  have  been  the  chartpions  of 
these  principles,  and  no  where  does  his  lan- 


guage assume  a  loftier  tone  than  when  it  is 
employed  to  express  their  aspirations  or  to 
speak  their  praises.     Acknowledging  no  de- 
grees  of  rank  save   those    which    wisdom 
makes,  in  his  eyes  dignity  is  only  such  in  its 
moral  sense.    In  the  "  conversation"  between 
Andrew  Marvel  and  Bishop  Parker,  one  of 
the  most  characteristic  and  best  sustained 
in  his  two  volumes,  this  is  finely  and  fully 
exemplified.    The  character  of  the  prelate, 
who  has  left  it  on  record  that  "Princes  may 
with  less  danger  five  liberty  to  men's  vices 
and  debaucheries  than  to  their  consciences,*' 
and  who  intruded  upon  the  privacy  of  John 
Milton  in  his  latter  days,  to  jeer  and  jibe  at 
him,  is  brought  out  in  a  masterly  style,  nor 
is  the  earnestness  and  mingled   humor  of 
Marvel  less   truthfully    expressed.      Those 
who  know  any  thing  about  the  ''Ecclesiastical 
Polity"  of  the  one  (they  cannot  be  numerous) 
or  the  writings  of  the  other,  especially  his 
"  Rehearsal  Transposed,"  will  appreciate  the 
striking  truth  of  this  '*  conversation,"  but  it 
can  scarcely  be  less  interesting  to  the  general 
reader.     The  character  and  works  of  Milton, 
the  career  of  Cromwell,  and  the  general  fea- 
tures of  the  Protectorate   are  the   themes 
of  discourse,  and  we  cannot,  perhaps,  give  a 
better  idea  of  Mr.  Landor's  prose  than  some 
of  the  passages  connected  with  the  discussion 
of  these  afford.     Here  are  some  beautiful 
thoughts  suggested  by  the  name  of  Milton, 
at  the  very  opening  of  the  **  conversation :" — 

^* Marvel — With  the  greatest  rulers  upon  earth, 
head  and  crown  drop  together,  and  are  overlook- 
ed. It  is  true  we  read  of  them  in  history ;  bat 
we  also  read  of  crocodiles  and  hyenas.  With 
great  writers,  whether  in  prose  or  poetry,  what 
falls  away  is  scarcely  more  or  other  than  a  ves- 
ture. The  features  of  the  man  are  imprinted  on 
his  works ;  and  more  lamps  burn  over  him  than 
are  lighted  in  temples  or  churches.  Milton,  and 
men  like  him,  bring  their  own  incense,  kindle  it 
with  their  own  fire,  and  leave  it  unconsumed  and 
unconsumable ;  and  their  music,  by  day  and  by 
night,  swells  along  a  vault  commensurate  with 
the  vault  of  heaven." 

And  again,  we  have  Marvel's  fine  reflections 
on  the  earthly  condition  of  the  "  blind,  old, 
and  lonely"  poet: — 

**I  am  confident  that  Milton  is  heedless  of  bow 
little  weighs  ne  is  held  by  tho^e  wno  are  of  none ; 
and  thf>'.  he  never  looks  towards  those,  somewhat 
ro<^'.e  eminent,  between  whom  and  himself  there 
nave  crept  the  waters  of  oblivion.  As  a  pearl 
rip  ns  in  the  obscurity  o9  its  shell,  so  ripens  in  the 
tomb  all  the  fame  that  is  truly  precious.  In  fame 
he  will  be  happier  than  in  friendship.  Were  it 
possible  tiiat  one  among  the  faithful  of  the  angels 
could  have  suffered  wounds  and  dissolution  in  his 


1853.] 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOB. 


463 


conflict  with  the  false,  I  shonld  scarcely  have  felt 
greater  awe  at  discovering  on  some  bleak  moun- 
tain the  bones  of  this  our  mighty  defender,  once 
shining  in  celestial  panoply,  once  glowing  at  the 
trumpet-blast  of  God,  but  not  proof  against  the 
desperate  and  the  damned,  than  I  have  felt  at  en- 
tering the  humble  abode  of  Milton,  whose  spirit 
already  reaches  heaven,  yet  whose  corporeal 
frame  hath  no  quiet  resting-place  here  below. 
And  shall  not  I,  who  loved  him  early,  have  the 
lonely  and  sad  privilege  to  love  him  still  ?  or  shall 
fidelity  to  power  be  a  virtue,  and  fidelity  to  tribu- 
lation* an  offence  7" 

These  are  noble  words,  and  worthy  of  the 
faithful   Marvel.    Although  the  author  of 
them  cautions  his  reader  against  attributing 
to  him  any  opinions  except  such  as  are  ex- 
pressed in  his  own  name,  it  is,  of  coarse, 
impossible  to  avoid  identifying  him  with  the 
greater  amount  of  positive  truth   which  is 
enunciated  in  them.     In  most  of  the  "  con- 
versations" of  which  the  topics  are  matters 
of  dispute,  or  in  which  historic  personages 
of  strongly  marked  character  take  a  part,  it 
18  by  no  means  difficult  to  perceive  to  what 
side  the  author's  sympathies  and  opinions 
tarn.    There  is  no  mistaking  the  characters 
who  have  won  his  admiration  or  provoked 
bis  censure.     He  magnifies  the  one   class  in 
the  words  they  utter ;  out  of  their  own  mouths 
he  condemns  the  other.    This  is  very  obvious 
in  the  case  of  Milton,  for  whom  Mr.  Landor 
has  a  reverence  almost  approaching  to  wor- 
ship ;  it  is  the  reverence  of  one  who  can  appre- 
ciate the  lofty  attributes  of  moral  greatness, 
however,  not  the  adulation   which  proceeds 
upon  a  vague  idea  of  individual  excellences 
in  the  object.    Thus  the  poet  of  "Paradise 
Lost"  is  introduced  to  us  in  the  noblest  com- 
panies.   With  Qalileo  in  his  Florentine  pri- 
son, he  discourses  eloquently  on  the  high 
themes  of  religious  freedom  and  liberty  of 
thought,   and   it  is  as   unquestionably  Mr. 
Landor's  idea  of  his  character  which  we  ob- 
tain from   the  lips  of    Marvel,  as  it  is  his 
opinion  of  his  poetry  which  we  find  expressed 
in  the  ^^  conversation"  entitled  *'  Southey  and 
Landor."     The  latter  will  be  less  likely  to 
gratify  the  general  reader  than  any  of  the 
dialogues  in  which  the  author  appears  in  his 
proper  personality.     It  is  too  literally  critical, 
and  dogs  the   poet  from   line  to  line,  and 
from  image  to  image,  with  a  closeness,  and, 
we  might  almost  say,  a  spirit  of  con  amore 
fault-finding,   which   leaves  no  satisfactory 
impression  upon  the  mind.     It  is  only  just, 
however,  to  say  that  Mr.  Landor  acts  to  a 
considerable  extent  on  the  defensive  through- 
out this  criticism,  and  maintains  his  views 
against  Southey  at  once  with  vigor  and  with 


success.     The  ''  conversation"  between  Sou- 
they  and   Porson   on  the  state  of  criticism 
generally  and  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth,  is 
of  a  somewhat  similar  character.     Here,  as 
in  the  other,  there  is  an  attack  and  a  defense, 
Southey  maintaining  the  excellences  of  his 
friend,  the  bard  of  Rydal,  against  what  we 
are   constrained   to  call  the  captiousness  of 
Porson.     We  may  be  allowed,  we  think,  to 
infer  that  Mr.  Landor*s  views  of  any  of  the 
subjects  discussed   by  such    speakers    are 
those  of  the  person  who  has  the  best  of  the 
argument.     That   the  dramatic  personation 
of   each   of  the  characters  introduced  to  us 
should  be  strictly  correct  is  more,  perhaps, 
than  any  one  is  entitled  to  expect ;  in  the 
main,  however,  they  are  so  far  correct  as  to 
give  us  a  very  vivid  impression  of  the  truths 
discussed,  as  these  may  be  conceived  to  have 
been  apprehended  by  each  party  in  the  re- 
spective dialogues.     And   herein,   we  think, 
consists  the  chief  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Landor's 
writings.     They  are  not  only  valuable  for 
the  body  of  truth  and  of  sound  opinion  which 
they  contain,  but  they  represent  these  to  us 
from  so  many  points  of  view,  that,  were  it 
possible  to  bring  into  a  focus,  all  the  various 
aspects  of  great  truths  presented  to  us,  we 
know  of  few    books  in   which   the  thinker 
would  find  so  much  profound  and  compre- 
hensive wisdom  as  our  author  has  given  m  a 
novel  and  not,  perhaps,  generally  attractive 
form,  hut  with  clear  philosophic  discernment, 
and  in  a  style  which  is  certainlv  not  sur- 
passed either  for  purity  or  pictorial  Deauty  by 
that  of  any  living  writer.    We  are  disposed 
to  think  that  the  finest  of  the  ^'  Imaginary 
Conversations "  are  those  in  which  the  au- 
thor has  been  affected  by  conventional  views 
of  character,  and  where  the  imagination  has 
acted,  as  it  were,  in  its  strictly  natural  man- 
ner.    To  illustrate   our  meaning,  *  we  may 
remark   that  in   some  cases    the    primary 
characteristic  of  a  certain  historic  personage 
introduced  is  lost  sight  of  altogether  in  the 
"conversation."     Thus,  the  one  between  Da- 
vid Hume  and  John  Home,  though  containing 
much  that  we  should  be  very  reluctant  to 
part  with,  might  have  been  spoken  by  any 
orthodox  believer  and  any  speculative  thinker 
of  their  day  or  our  own.     Apart  from  an 
occasional  incidental  allusion   to  particular 
circumstances  connected  with  the  one  or  the 
other,   there  is  nothing    which    links    the 
thought  expressed  to  the  character  of  the 

Eerson  who  expresses  it.     Again,  when  Mr. 
landor  and   the   Abb^  Delille  discuss  the 
characteristics  of  the  Prench  poets,  the  f^ 
mer  is  allowed  to  monopolize  the  ta^ 


464 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LAinX)B. 


[Dec., 


most  improbable  circumstance  in  the  pre- 
sence of  the  ffarrulous  abb6.  The  best  spe- 
cimen, or,  at  least,  one  of  the  best  specimens, 
of  what  may  be  called  the  "Modern  Conver- 
sations," is  the  one  in  which  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  and  Sir  Robert  Inglis  respectively 
deliver  their  opinions  on  the  idolatry  of  the 
Hindoos,  and  the  circumstances  connected 
with  the  gates  of  Somnauth.  The  Duke  is  a 
little  too  prolix,  perhaps,  for  the  general 
idea  of  his  laconic  style  of  talk,  but  there  is 
unquestionably  a  great  deal  of  character  in 
the  whole  of  this  conversation.  The  reader 
who  knows  any  thing  of  the  parties  will  6nd 
it  difficult  to  reconcile  himself  to  its  imaginary 
nature,  there  is  so  much  of  what  may  be 
considered  every-day  life  about  it.  If  he  will 
turn  with  us,  however,  to  those  pages  in 
which  we  are  brought  into  the  society  of 
Dante  and  Beatrice,  Tasso  and  his  sister 
Cornelia,  or  8ir  Philip  Sidney  and  Fulk 
Greville,  he  will  find  m  these  the  affluence 
of  that  genius  which  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree  lights  up  all  our  author's  writings. 
The  "  conversation  "  between  the  great  Flo- 
rentine and  his  youthful  mistress  has,  we 
think,  delicacies  of  feeling  and  beauties  of 
expression  peculiarly  its  own.  There  is  not 
a  single  sentence  of  it  at  variance  with  our 
idea  of  the  visionary  poet,  or  that  "  form  of 
unutterable  grace ''  which  is  presented  to  us 
in  the  "Divina  Commedia."  The  sentiments 
which  it  contains,  exquisite  in  themselves, 
are  all  the  more  beautiful  for  their  appro- 
priatenessfif  li  is  the  ideal  Beatrice,  the  ob- 
ject of  th*e  poet's  deep^  pure,  holy  affection, 
who  stands  before  us  ;  it  is  the  Dante  who 
"  regards  her  as  a  star"  who  speaks.  The 
dialogue  is  understood  to  take  place  imme- 
diately before  the  marriage  of  the  immortal 
Beatrice,  and  it  may  be  considered  her  last 
interview  with  her  poet-lover : — 

'^Dante. — 1  will  watch  over  you;  1  will  pray 
for  you  when  I  am  nearer  God,  and  purified  from 
the  8tain:4  of  earth  and  mortality.  He  will  permit 
me  to  behold  yoa,  lovely  as  when  I  left  yon. 
Angots  in  vain  shall  call  me  onward. 

** Beatrice. — Huph,  sweetest  Dante,  hush !  Is 
tbia  piety?  Is  this  wisdom?  O Dante!  And 
may  I  not  be  called  first  away  7 

*' Dante. — Alas!  Alas!  how  many  small  feet 
have  swept  off  the  early  dew  of  life,  ieavinj;  the 
pathway  black  behind  them  !  But  to  think  that 
you  should  go  before  me  !  It  sends  me  forward 
on  my  way  to  receive  and  welcome  you.  If,  in- 
deed, O  Beatrice  !  such  be  God's  immntable  will^ 
sometimes  look  down  on  me  when  the  song  to 
Him  is  suspended.  O !  look  often  on  me  with 
praver  and  pity,  for  there  all  prayers  are  accepted, 
ancf  all  pity  is  devoid  of  pain. 


**Bea/n«. — ^Yoa  have  stored  my  mind  with 
many  thoughts,  dear  because  they  are  yours,  and 
because  they  are  virtnous.  May  I  not,  O  Dante ! 
bring  some  of  them  back  again  to  your  bosom ;  u 
the  contadina  lets  down  the  string  from  the  cotr 
tage-beam  in  winter,  and  cnlls  a  few  bunches  of 
the  soundest  for  the  master  of  the  vineyard  7  Yoa 
have  not  given  me  glorv  that  the  world  should 
shudder  at  its  eclipse.  To  prove  that  I  am  wor- 
thy of  the  smallest  part  of  it,  I  must  obey  God; 
and,  under  God,  my  fathpr.  Surely  the  voice  of 
Heaven  comes  to  us  audibly  from  a  parent's  lips. 
Yon  shall  be  great,  and,  what  is  above  all  great- 
ness, good. 

^^Danle. — Rightly  and  wisely,  my  sweet  Bea- 
trice, have  you  spoken.  Greatness  is  to  goodness 
what  gravel  is  to  porphyry :  the  one  is  a  mova- 
ble accumulation,  swept  along  the  surface  of  the 
earth;  the  other  stands,  fixed,  and  solid,  and 
alone ;  above  all  that  is  residooos  of  a  wasted 
world.  Little  men  build  up  great  ones,  but  the 
snow  Coloasus  melts ;  the  good  stand  onder  the 
eye  of  God,  and  therefore  stand." 

The  reader  can  scarcely  fail  to  appreciate 
the  beauty  of  this  passage,  and  to  recognize 
in  it  a  fine  expression  of  the  ideal  characters 
of  the  speakers.  We  find  the  same  excel- 
lence in  the  dialogue  between  Tasso  and  bis 
sister  respecting  the  death  of  Leonora ;  and 
here,  we  think,  Mr.  Lander's  rmaginatioo 
takes  a  still  higher  flight.  The  strong  pas- 
sion— the  frenzy,  we  might  almost  say— 
which  pervades  some  parts  of  this  "con- 
versation," is  in  the  most  powerful  style  of 
dramatic  expression.  To  fee]  the  effect  of 
it  fully,  we  must  think  of  the  poor  forlorn 
Tasso,  stung  by  the  sorrows  of  a  wounded 
heart,  encircled  by  the  miseries  of  want,  and 
his  noble  spirit  reeling  on  its  throne  : — 

"jTh-wo. — She  told  me  to  rest  in  peace 

And  she  went  from  me.  Insatiable  love!  ever 
self-torturer,  never  self-destroydr  !  The  world, 
with  all  its  weight  of  miseries,  cannot  crosbllwe^ 
cannot  keep  tl^  down.  MeA^s  tears,  like  the 
droppings  of  certain  springs,  only  harden  and 
petrify  what  tliey  fall  on,  but  mine  sank  deep 
into  a  tender  heart,  and  were  its  very  blood. 
Never  will  I  believe  she  has  lefl  me  utterly. 
OAeutimes,  and  long  before  her  departure,  I  fan- 
cied we  were  in  heaven  together.  I  fancied  it  in 
the  fields,  in  the  gardens,  in  the  palace,  in  tba 
prison.  I  fancied  it  in  the  broad  daylight,  when 
my  eyes  were  open,  when  blessed  spirits  drew 
around  me  that  golden*  circle  which  one  only  of 
earth's  inhabitants  could  enter.  Oftentimes  in 
my  sleep  I  fancied  it ;  and  sometimes  in  the  in- 
termediate state,  in  that  security  which  breathes 
about  the  transported  sooJ,  enjoying  its  pure  and 
perfect  rest  a  space  below  the  feet  of  the  imaK>^ 
tal. 

"  Cornelia. — She  has  not  left  you  ;  do  not 
disturb  her  peace  by  these  repinings. 

"Tasso.— She  will  bear  with  them.     Thou 


1858.] 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 


466 


knowest  not  what  she  was,  Cornelia ;  for  I  wrote 
to  thee  about  her  when  she  seemed  bat  human. 
In  my  hoars  of  sadness,  not  only  her  beanttfa! 
form,  but*  her  very  voice,  bent  over  me.  .  .  .  But 
it  was  when  she  could  and  did  love  me  !  Un- 
changed must  ever  be  the  blessed  one  who  has 
leaned  in  fond  secarity  on  the  Unchangeable. 
The  purifying  flame  shoots  upward,  and  is  the 
glory  that  encircles  their  brows  when  we  meet 
above. 

**  Comdia. — Indulge  in  these  delightful  thoughts, 
my  Torquato !  and  nelieve  that  your  love  is,  and 
ought  to  be,  as  imperishable  as  your  glory. 
Generations  of  men  move  forward  in  endlefes 
procession  to  consecrate  and  commemorate  both. 
...  In  the  laurels  of  my  Torquato  there  will  al- 
ways be  one  leaf  above  man's  reach,  above  time's 
wrath  and  injury,  inscribed  with  the  name  of 

Leonora. 

...... 

"7\»50. — Cornelia,  Cornelia!  the  mind  has 
within  it  temples  and  porticoes,  and  palaces  and 
towers;  the  mind  has  under  it,  ready  for  the 
course,  steeds  brighter  than  the  sun  and  stronger 
than  the  storm ;  and  beside  them  stand  winged 
chariots,  more  in  number  than  the  psalmist  hath 
attributed  to  the  Almighty.  The  mind,  I  tell  thee, 
hath  its  hundred  gates;  and  all  these  hundred 
gates  can  genius  throw  open.  But  there  are 
some  that  groan  heavily  on  their  hinges,  and  the 
hand  of  G^  alone  can  close  them." 

Although  originality  is  not  always  an  evi- 
dence of  greatness,  there  is  evidence  enoi^h 
of  its  connection  with  solidity  and  strength  of 
thought  in  the  amount  of  true  wisdom — the 
number  of  suggestive  reflections  to  be  found 
in  the  volumes  before  us.  And  as  the 
limits  of  this  "  article  "  do  not  allow  us  to 
quote  so  fully  from  the  "  Imaginary  Conver- 
sations^' as  to  illustrate  their  character  with 
the  necessaiT  olearness,  we  may,  perhaps, 
give  the  reader  a  better  idea  of  the  intellec- 
tual wealth  which  he  will  find  in  Mr.  Lan- 
dor*s  works,  by  extracting  a  few  of  these 
reflections  at  random,  than  by  selecting 
particular  representations  of  historic  person- 
ality or  philosophical  abstractions.  Many 
of  the  "  Conversations/'  taken  as  a  whole, 
seem  to  us  to  demand  a  more  than  ordinarj^ 
acquaintance  with  remote  stores  of  kno^ 
ledge,  a  certain  approximation  to  the  standL- 
point  from  which  their  author  surveys  relaitivd.^ 
troths;  but  almost  all  of  them  contain  pas- 
sages which,  taken  in  the  form  of  aphorisms, 
will  be  appreciated  by  every  thoughtful 
reader.  Let  us  merely  premise,  then,  that 
the  extracts  we  are  about  to  give,  though 
losing  nothing  of  their  intrinsic  value  by  being 
detached  from  the  forms  which  they  adorn 
like  so  many  gems,  still  suffer  to  some  extent 
by  not  being  presented  in  their  natural  con- 
nection with  certain  themes.    Requesting  the 

VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


reader  to  bear  this  in  mind,  we  proceed  to 
pick  up  and  string  the  pearls : — 

FRIEVDSIHIP. 

"'Friendship  is  a  vase  which,  when  it  is  flawed 
by  heat,  or  violence,  or  accident,  may  as  well  be 
broken  at  once;  it  can  never  be  trusted  after. 
The  more  graceful  and  ornamental  it  was,  the 
morel  clearly  do  we  discern  the  hopelessness  of 
restoring  it  to  its  former  state.  Coarse  stones,  if 
they  are  fractured,  may  be  cemented  again  ;  pre- 
cious ones  never." — Lard  Broke  and  Sir  PhiUp 
Sidney. 

cHRisTiANrnr. 

"  Oar  Master  doth  not  permit  us  to  compromise 
and  quarter  with  another ;  He  doth  not  permit  us 
to  spend  an  hour  with  Him,  and  then  to  leave 
Him.  Either  our  actions  must  be  regulated  by 
Him  whollv,  both  individually  and  socially,  poli- 
tically ancf  morally,  or  He  turns  us  out.  We 
must  call  no  others  by  His  name,  until  those 
others  shall  possess  the  same  authority.  He  did 
not  place  Himself  on  the  tribnnltial  chair  with 
Cesar,  nor  on  the  judgment-seat  with  Felix  ;  He 
governed,  but  it  was  in  spirit ;  He  commanded, 
but  it  was  of  God.  Christianity  could  never  have 
been  brought  into  contempt  unless  she  had  been 
overlaid  with  false  ornaments,  and  conducted  by 
false  guides.  As  the  arrow  of  Paris  was  directed 
from  behind  the  brightest  and  most  glorious  of  the 
heathen  gods,  so  hath  ever  that  of  worldly  policy 
in  later  times  from  behind  the  fairer  image  of 
Chrietianity."— IViZ/iam  Penn  and  Lard  Peter- 
borough. 

SORROW  AND  RESIORATI09. 

"The  very  things  which  touch  us  the  most 
sensibly,  are  those  which  we  should  be  the  most 
reluctant  to  forget.  The  noble  mansion  is  most 
distinguished  by  the  beautiful  images  which  it  re- 
tains of  beinffs  passed  away ;  and  so  is  the  noble 
mind.  The  damps  of  autumn  sink  into  the  leaves, 
and  prepare  them  for  the  necessity  of  their  fall ; 
and  thus  insensibly  are  we,  as  years  close  around 
us,  detached  from  our  tenacity  of  life  by  the  gentle 
pressure  of  recorded  sorrows.  When  the  grace-- 
fal  dance  and  its  animating  music  is  over,  and 
the  clapping  of  hands,  so  lately  linked,  hath 
ceased ;  when  youth,  and  comeliness,  and  plea- 
santry are  departed — 

J     Who  woald  desire  to  spend  the  following  day 

Among  the  extinguish'd  lampSj  the  faded  Mrreaths, 
Thrust  and  desolation  left  benind? 

But,  whether  we  desire  or  not,  we  must  sub- 
,irfit.  '  He  who  hath  appointed  our  days  hath  placed 
their  contents  within  them,  and  our  efibrts  can 
neither  cast  them  out  nor  change  their  quality. 
— PerUameran, 


»> 


DEATH. 

"  Desth  can  only  take  away  the  sorrowful  from 
our  affections ;  the  flower  expands ;  the  colorless 
film  that  enveloped  it  falls  off  and  perishes." — 

Peniamef'ok' 

» 

LATE  REFBNTANCS. 

"  Heaven  lb  not  to  be  won  by  abort  hard  w 
SO 


466 


WALTESL  SAVAGE  LAimOB. 


[Dec.. 


ftt  the  last,  as  some  men  take  a  degree  at  the  niri- 
versity,  after  roach  irregularity  and  negligence. 
Let  us  take  a  steady  pace  from  the  outset  to  tlie 
end,  coming  in  cool,  and  dismounting  quietly.  I 
have  known  many  old  playfellows  of  the  bevil 
spring  up  suddenly  from  their  beds  and  strike  at 
him. —Andrew  Marvel  and  Bishop  Parker. 

THE  ERRORS  OF  GREAT  HER. 

**  It  is  difficult  to  sweep  away  anv  thin^,  and 
not  to  sweep  some  grains  of  gold-dust  with  it. 
The  great  man  has  cobwebs  hanging  in  his  work- 
shop, which  a  high  broom,  in  a  steady  hand,  may 
reach,  without  doing  mischief.  But  let  children, 
and  short  men,  and  unwary  ones,  stand  out  of  the 
way." — Southey  and  Landor. 

THE  SOUBCES  OF  HUMAN  TROUBLE. 

**  We  fancy  that  all  our  afflictions  are  sent  us 
directly  from  aboye;  sometimes  we  think  it  in  plely 
and  contrition,  but  oflener  in  moroseness  and  dis- 
content. It  would  be  well,  however,  if  we  at- 
tempted to  trace  the  causes  of  them  ;  we  should 
Erobably  find  their  origin  in  some  region  of  ihe 
eart  which  we  never  had  well  explored,  or  in 
which  we  had  secretly  deposited  our  worst  indul- 
gences. The  clouds  that  intercept  the  heavens 
from  us  come  not  from  the  heavens,  but  from  the 
etaih"—Iielancihon  and  Cahm. 

SELF-RESPECT. 

**  Unless  we  respect  ourselves,  our  respect  for 
superiors  is  prone  to  servility.  No  man  can  be 
thrown  by  another  from  such  a  height  as  he  can 
throw  himself  from.  I  never  have  observed  that 
ft  tendency  towards  the  powerful  was  a  sufficient 
check  to  spiritual  pride ;  and  extremely  few  have 
I  known  or  heard  of,  who,  tossing  up  their  nos- 
trils into  the  air,  and  giving  tongue  that  they  have 
bit  upon  the  trail  to  heaven,  could  distinffuish  hu- 
mility from  baseness.'* — RomiUy  and  WUber/orce, 

THE  LAW  OF  KINDNESS. 

**  Should  ye  at  any  time  overtake  the  erring, 
and  resolve  to  deliver  him  up,  I  will  tell  you  whi- 
ther to  conduct  him  :  conduct  him  to  his  Lord  and 
Master,  whose  household  he  hath  left.  Bring 
him  back  again,  the  strayed,  the  lost  one !  bring 
him  back  not  with  halberts  and  baiters,  but  gene- 
rously and  gently,  and  with  the  linking  of  the  arm. 
In  this  posture  shall  God  smile  upon  ye  ;  in  this 
posture  of  yours  did  he  recognize  his  beloved  Son 
upon  the  earth.  Do  ye  likewise,  and  depart  in 
peace." — Citation  and  Examination  of  WilUam 
Shakepere. 

Mr.  De  Qoincey  has  some  where  said,  t^at 
for  many  years  he  believed  himself  the  onlj 
man  in  England  who  had  read  "  Gebir,''  one 
of  the  earliest  and  longest  of  Mr.  Landor*s 
poems;  bat,  after  some  inquiry  among  his 
friends,  he  found  that  Southey  bad  also  ac- 
complished the  feat.  The  Englisb  Opium- 
Eiater's  disposition  to  be  pleasant  at  the  ex- 
pense of  others  is  considerably  at  fault  here, 
we  think ;  for,  although  the  work  in  question 
iraa  certainly  very  for  from  being  popular, 


and  is  not  likely  ever  to  be  so,  it  sufficiently 
indicated  its  author's  ability  to  attract  adnu- 
ration  at  a  time  when  poetry  was  more  fre- 
quently read  than  it  is  now.  It  is  interest- 
ing as  a  poetical  cariosity,  bad  it  no  higher 
merit ;  but  it  is  strongly  marked  by  or^nai 
power.  The  story  of  it  is  involved  and  ob- 
scare,  and  there  is  a  singular  blending  of  the 
sapernataral  with  the  natural  in  many  pas- 
sages of  it ;  its  length,  too,  combined  with 
the  circumstance  of  its  constraction  being 
by  no  means  of  a  highly  artistic  character, 
all  serve  to  deter  ordinary  readers  from  ven- 
turing upon  the  perusal  of  it.  There  is  much 
of  it,  however,  pervaded  by  the  light  of  a 
truly  poetic  genius.  An  almost  Spenserian 
richness  of  fancy  is  to  be  found,  for  example, 
in  the  following  lines,  descriptive  of  an  East- 
em  morning : — 

"  Now  to  Aurora,  borne  by  dappled  steeds. 
The  sacred  gate  of  Orient  pearl  and  gold, 
Smitten  by  Lucifer*s  Hght  silver  wand. 
Expanded  slow  to  strains  of  harmony  ; 
The  waves  beneath,  in  purpling  rows,  like  doves 
Glancing  with  wanton  coyness  toward  their  queen. 
Heaved  softly  ;  thus  the  damsel's  bosom  heaves. 
When  from  her  sleeping  lover's  downy  cheek. 
To  which  po  warily  her  own  she  brings 
Each  moment  nearer,  she  perceives  the  warmth 
Of  coming  kisses  fanned  by  playful  dreams ; 
Ocean,  and  earth,  and  heaven  held  jubilee." 

Again,  witb  what  a  wealth  of  poetic  beauty 
tbe  child's  fanciful  idea  of  the  reason  for  the 
murmuring  in  the  shell  is  turned  into  a  con- 
ception of  dignity  and  magnificence.  A  river 
nymph  says — 

'*  I  have  sinuous  shells  of  pearly  hue 

Within,  and  they  their  lustre  have  imbibed 

In  the  sun*s  palace  porch,  where,  when  unyoked, 

His  chariot-wheels  stand  midway  in  the  wave ; 

Shake  one,  and  it  awakens ;  then  apply 

Its  polish'd  lips  to  your  attentive  ear, 

And  it  remembers  its  august  abode. 

And  murmurs  as  the  ocean  murmurs  there.'* 

These  passages  will  suffice  to  show  that 
"  Gebir"  is  worthy  of  its  author;  many  others 
of  equal  beauty  might  be  quoted,  but  we  must 
pass  on  to  notice  Mr.  Landor's  dramatic 
works — a  form  of  poetical  composition  for 
which  his  genius  seems  to  us  far  more  suited 
than  for  the  epic.  Here,  however,  something 
very  like  caprice  has  prevented  our  author 
from  doing  what  he  might  have  done.  In 
one  of  the  volumes  before  us,  there  are  thir- 
teen dramatic  works,  and  yet  not  one  of  them 
can,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  be  called 
a  drama.  Several  of  them,  such  as  "  Count 
Julian,"  *' Andrea  of  Hungary,"  "  Giovanni 
of  Naples,"  and  **  Fra  Rupert,"  are  divided 


1358.] 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 


469 


into  the  proper  nomber  of  acts  and  scenes ; 
there  is  more  dramatic  power  to  be  found  in 
one  of  them,  perhaps,  than  in  the  majoritj 
of  modem  dramas;  but  Mr.  Landor's  con- 
tempt for  established  and  conventional  rules 
has  led  him  to  disregard  even  the  most  ordi- 
nary requirements  of  dramatic  action.     He 
has  not  the  slightest  hesitation,  even  in  the 
most  important  evolutions  of  that  action,  in 
introducing  some  element  which  either  mars 
it  altogether,  or  so  retards  it  as  wholly  to 
break  up  the  unity.     He  informs  us,  in  his 
introduction,  that  they  were  never  offered  to 
the  stage,  being  no  better  than  imaginary 
conversations  in  verse ;  but  they  are  better, 
80  far  as  the  manifestation  of  the  dramatic 
spii  it  is  concerned  ;  and  although  their  au- 
thor has  called  them  "Acts  and  Scenes,"  ob- 
viously with  the  view  of  anticipating  and 
turning  aside  the  objections  we  are  now  stat- 
ing, in  all  the  higher  elements  of  that  form 
of  poetical  composition  they  are  dramas,  and 
only  require  to  be  divested,  in  some  cases,  of 
extraneous  and  distracting  incidents  or  epi- 
sodes, in  order  to  be  considered  dramas  of  a 
very  high  character.  **  Count  Julian,''  found- 
ed on  the  well-known  incidents  connected 
with  Moorish  aggression  upon  Spain,  is  per- 
haps  the   noblest  of  them,  and,  upon  the 
whole,  the  most  complete.     It  abounds  not 
only  with  passages  of  lofty  poetry,  but  with 
great  dramatic  force.     The  characters  are 
fully  and  finely  evolved.     We  do  not  think 
that  in  the  whole  of  the  modem  drama — that 
of  recent  years  at  least — ^so  many  powerful 
scenes  could  be  pointed  out  as  the  reader 
will  find  in  this  work;  which  Mr.  Landor  has 
obviously  written  without  reference  to  repre- 
sentation.    It  is  something  more  than  a  dra- 
matic poem,  and  yet  it  is  not  a  drama ;  and 
this  distinction  may  be  said  to  apply  to  all 
the  more  sustained  efforts  which  he  has  class- 
ed under  the  title  "Acts  and  Scenes."     We 
could  not  present  even  such  illustrations  of 
Mr.  Landor's  poetry  as  the  scope  of  this  ar- 
ticle allows,  did    we   fail   to  extract  from 
"  Count  Julian"  one  or  two  specimens  of 
his  powerful  dramatic  verse.     In  the  last 
scene  of  the  tragedy,  the  recreant  but  lofty- 
spirited  Spaniard  is  represented  to  us  at  the 
mercy  of  Muza,  the  Moorish  leader,  whose 
wrath  he  has  aroused  by  procuring  the  escape 
of  King  Roderigo.  He  thus  meets  the  threats 
of  torture;  and  the  passage  also  affords  a 
picture  of  his  awful  isolation  as  the  betrayer 
of  his  country : — 

**Jtdian. — Man^s  only  relics  are  his  benefits : 
These,  be  there  ages,  be  there  worlds  between, 
Retain  him  in  communion  with  his  kind ; 


Hence  is  his  solace,  his  security, 

His  sustenance,  till  heavenly  truth  descends, 

Covering  with  brightness  and  beatitude 

The  frail  foundations  of  these  humbler  hopes ; 

And,  like  an  angel  guiding  us,  at  once 

Leaves  the  loose  chain  and  iron  gate  behind. 

^Muzcu — Take  thou  my  justice  first,  then  hope 

for  Heaven's : 
I,  who  can  bend  the  living  to  my  will, 
Fear  not  the  dead,  and  court  not  the  unborn : 
Their  arms  shall  never  reach  me,  nor  shall  thine. 

'^Abdahzis. — Pity,  release  him,  pardon  him,  my 

father ! 
Forget  how  much  thou  hatest  perfidy. 
Think  of  him  once  so  potent,  still  so  brave, 
So  calm,  so  self-dependent  in  distress; 
Mighty  must  be  that  man  who  can  forgive 

A  man  so  mighty 

He  fills  me  with  a  greater  awe  than  e'er 
The  field  of  battle,  with  himself  the  first. 
When  every  flag  that  waved  along  our  host 
Drooped  down  the  staff,  as  if  the  very  winds 
Hung  in  suspense  before  him.    Bid  him  go. 
And  peace  be  with  him,  or  let  me  depart. 
IjO  I  like  a  god,  sole  and  inscrutable, 
He  stands  above  our  pity. 

**3fuza. — Peace,  Abdalazis !    How  is  this  ?    He 

bears 
Nothing  that  warrants  him  invulnerable : 
Shall  1,  then,  shrink  to  smite  him  7    Shall  my 

fears 
Be  greatest  at  the  blow  that  ends  them  all  7 
Fears  7  no !  'tis  justice,  fair,  immutable, 
Whose  measured  step,  at  times  advancing  nigh. 
Appals  the  majesty  of  kings  themselves. 
Oh!  were  he  dead!  though  then  revenge  were  o'er." 

Another  powerful  picture  of  Julian's  woa 
is  given  in  the  following  description  of  his 
appearance  on  the  field  of  battle : — 

**  He  caird  on  God,  the  witness  of  his  cause, 
On  Spain,  the  partner  of  his  victories ; 
And  yet,  amid  these  animating  words, 
Rolled  the  huge  tear  down  his  unvizor'd  face. 
IRremendoua  was  the  smile  that  smote  ike  eyes 
0/ all  he  passed.    .     .    . 
*  Father,  and  general,  and  king,'  they  shout, 
And  would  proclaim  him  ;  back  he  cast  his  face, 
Pallid  with  grief,  and  one  loud  groan  burst  forth; 
And  soon  thev  scatter'd,  as  the  blasts  of  heaven 
Scatter  the  leaves  and  dust,  the  astonish'd  foe." 

"  Count  Julian"  abounds  with  passages  such 
as  these,  and  even  with  nobler  ones,  which 
would  suffer  by  being  detached.  Nor  are 
the  other  dramatic  pieces  in  Mr.  Landor's 
volumes,  considered  without  reference  to  their 
structure,  less  remarkable  for  the  beauty  of 
poetic  thought,  power  of  expression,  and  va- 
riety as  well  as  purity  of  imagery.  Since  we 
cannot  speak  of  them  otherwise  than  as  we 
have  done,  we  shall  set  aside  the  considerar 
tion  of  theur  partially  dramatic  form,  io  order 


468 


WALTER  BAYAOE  LANDOB. 


[Dee. 


to  present  the  reader  with  a  few  specimens  of 
the  poetry  they  contain. 

The  short  dramatic  sketch,  entitled  "Ip- 
polito  di  Eate,"  opens  with  the  following 
lines — a  lover's  thoughts  of  his  mistress  :-^ 

**  Stay !  here  she  stept ;  what  grace !  what  har- 
mony! 
It  seemed  that  every  accent,  every  note 
Of  all  the  choral  music  breathed  from  her; 
From  her  celestial  airiness  of  form 
I  could  have  fancied  purer  light  descended. 

She  has  been  here ;  I  saw  her  shadow  burst 
The  sunbeam  as  she  parted ;  a  strange  sound, 
A  sound  that  stupefiea  and  yet  aroused  me, 
Fiird  all  my  senses  :  such  was  never  felt 
Save  when  the  sword-girt  anffel  struck  the  gate, 
And  Paradise  wailM  loud,  and  closed  for  ever !" 

In  another  opening  scene,  that  of  **  Giovanni 
of  Naples/'  we  have  this  still  more  beautiful 
passage : — 

"Ah  !  every  gust  of  music,  every  air 
Breathing  its  freshness  over  youthful  breasts, 
Is  a  faint  prelude  to  the  choirs  above : 
And  Death  stands  in  the  darkened  space  between, 
To  some  with  invitations  free  and  meek, 
To  some  with  flames  athwart  an  angry  brow. 
To  others  holds  green  palm  and  laurel  crown, 
Dreadless  as  is  the  shadow  of  a  leaf." 

Many  of  Mr.  Landor's  shorter  poems  are 
simply  the  expression  of  some  passing  thought 
or  fancy,  and  not  a  few  of  them  are  purely 
personal,  hut  they  are  not  on  that  accouiit 
less  graceful  or  suggestive.  They  frequently 
give  >u8  a  hotter  idea  of  the  author's  opinions 
and  feelings  than  even  his  mpre  elaborate 
works ;  and  there  are  few  of  them  from  which 
the  lover  of  that  poetry  which  is  of  a  calm 
reflective  tone  rather  than  of  an  exciting 
character,  may  not  derive  an  unalloyed  de- 
light. In  some  cases  they  are  addressed  to 
his  friends,  and  there  are  a  few  verses  to  his 
children  which  have  always  seemed  to  us  full 
of  the  finest  feeling.  But  there  is  another 
class  of  his  Ivrics  in  which  the  hroader  and 
deeper  sympathies  of  the  poet  are  still  more 
fully  expressed.  We  have  already  said  that 
Mr.  Landor  has  always  been  distinguished 
for  his  enthusiastic  attachment  to  the  cause 
of  human  freedom.  The  struggling  or  suf- 
fering nations  of  Europe  have  had  no  more 
devoted  friend,  and  their  leaders  no  warmer 
sympathizer,  than  Walter  Savage  Landor. 
He  has  himself  swd,  the  hand  which  held 
that  of  Kosciusko's  in  the  grasp  of  friendship 
was  not  unworthy  of  being  held  out  to  Louis 
Kossuth ;  and  that  hand,  guided  by  a  spirit 
^f  no  common  power,  has  traced  not  a  few 
words  that  burn  with  the  fire  of  freedom. 


We  cannot  more  fitly  close  this  article  than 
by  transcribing  a  few  of  these,  and  our  first 
extract  shall  be  taken  from  the  last  of  a  se- 
ries of  poems  entitled  "  Hellenics."  The  lines 
have  always  appeared  to  us  among  the  most 
powerful  which  Mr.  Landor  has  written  : — 

**  We  are  what  suns,  and  winds,  and  waters  make 

us; 
The  mountains  are  our  sponsors,  and  the  rills 
Fashion  and  win  their  nursling  to  their  smiles ; 
But  where  the  land  is  dim  from  tyranny, 
There  tiny  pleasures  occupy  the  place 
Of  elories  and  of  duties,  as  the  feet 
Of  fabled  fairies,  when  the  sun  goes  down, 
Trip  oW  the  grass  where  wrestlers  strove  by  day. 
The  heart  is  hardest  in  the  softest  climes — 
The  passions  fiourisb,  the  affections  die. 

0  thou  vast  tablet  of  these  awful  truths. 
That  fillest  all  the  space  between  the  seas, 
Spreadim^  from  Venice's  deserted  coasts 
To  the  Tarentine  and  Hyd  ran  tine  mole — 
What  lifts  thee  up  ?  what  shakes  thee  ?    Tis  the 

breath 
Of  God.    Awake,  ye  nations !    Spring  to  life : 
Let  the  Isst  work  of  his  right  hand  appear 
Fresh  with  his  imsge,  Man." 

In  many  parts  of  the  vohimes  before  as, 
we  find  strong  and  passionate  expressions  of 
their  author's  detestation  of  tyranny,  as  it  has 
been  exemplified  in  the  history  of  Italy. 
Long  a  resident  in  that  land,  he  seems  to  feel 
her  wrongs  with  something  like  that  intensity 
of  feeling  which  might  bo  supposed  to  be 
experienced  by  one  of  her  exiled  sons.  And 
he  has  given  expression  to  this  in  a  series  of 
poems  called  "  Italics,"  which  have,  strictly 
speaking,  never  been  published.  The  sub- 
jects are  all  taken  from  what  may  be  called 
the  recent  history  of  Italy,  and  the  poems 
are  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  deep  feeling 
which  pervades  them.  The  one  we  are  about 
to  quote — and  it  is  the  last  quotation  we  shall 
give — is  characterized  by  a  stem,  we  might 
almost  say  dread,  strength  of  expression.  It 
is  professedly  the  experience  of  the  Italian 
patriot,  Gonfalonieri,  in  an  Austrian  dun- 
geon : — 

"  The  purest  breast  that  breathes  Ausonian  air 
UtterM  these  word?.    Hear  them,  all  lands !  re- 
peat, 
All  ages !  on  thy  heart  the  record  bear, 
Till  the  last  tyrant  gasp  beneath  thy  feet; 
Thou  who  hast  seen  in  quiet  death  lie  down 
The  skulking  recreant  of  the  changeling  crown. 

*  I  am  an  old  man  now,  and  yet  my  soul 
By  fifteen  years  is  younger  than  its  frame. 
Fifteen  I  lived  (if  life  it  was)  in  one 
Dark  dungeon,  ten  feet  square ;  alone  I  dwelt 
Six ;  then  another  entered  ;  by  his  voice 

1  knew  it  was  a  man ;  I  could  not  see 
Feature  or  figure  in  that  dismal  place. 


1863.] 


GHARLEB  JAHE3  NAPIBR. 


469 


One  year  we  talk'd  together  of  the  past, 

Of  joys  for  ever  gone — ay,  worse  than  gone : 

Remember*d,  pressed  into  our  hearts,  that  swell'd 

And  sorely  soden^d  under  them  ;  the  next 

We  ezehanged  what  thoughts  we  found ;  the  third, 

no  thought 
Was  left  us ;  memorv  alone  remain'd. 
The  fourth,  we  ask'a  each  other  if,  indeed, 
The  world  had  life  within  it,  life  and  joy 
As  when  we  left  it. 

Now  the  fifth  had  come, 
And  we  sat  silent — all  our  store  was  spent. 
When  the  sixth  jsnter'd,  he  had  dipappear'd. 
Either  for  death  or  doom  less  merciful. 
And  I  repin'd  not !  all  things  were  less  sad 
Than  that  dim  vision,  that  unshapen  form. 
A  year,  or  two  years  after,  (indistinct 
Was  time  as  light  was  in  that  cell,)  the  door 
Crept   open,  and    these   sounds   came    slowly 

through — 
^  His  majesty  the  emperor  and  king 
Informs  you  that,  twelve  months  ago,  your  wife 
Quitted  the  living !" 

I  did  hear  the  words 
All  ere  I  fell,  then  heard  not  bolt  nor  bar.'  " 

There  is  a  Dante-like  intensity  and  seve- 
rity of  expression  in  these  lines,  and  with 
them  we  take  our  leave  of  Mr.  Landor.  The 
reader  will  have  seen,  we  think,  from  the  ex- 
tracts that  have  been  given  throughout  this 


article,  that  the  writings  with  which  we  have 
endeavored  to  make  him  acquainted  are  of 
no  common  order.  We  are  glad  to  find,  in 
the  latest  of  them,  evidence  of  Mr.  Landor 
having  relinquished  some  of  the  peculiar  po* 
sitions  which  he  originally  took  up  in  regard 
to  historic  characters,  and  of  his  more  ex- 
treme opinions  having  been  tempered  by  a 
larger  experience.  His  singularities  (such, 
at  least,  they  used  to  be  considered)  in  or- 
thography we  have  retained  throughout  the 
quotations,  for  he  has  adhered  to  ihem  te- 
miciously,  and  in  many  cases  with  reason. 
They  have  ceased  to  be  considered  crotchets, 
and  some  of  them  have  been  adopted  by  the 
best  living  writers.  Mr.  Landor's  reasons 
for  them  may  be  found  in  some  of  his  *'  Con- 
versations ;"  and  they  are  not  to  be  classed 
with  those  illustrations  of  a  contempt  for 
established  usages  in  the  world  of  letters 
which  are  to  be  found  in  many  of  his  works. 
In  spite  of  these,  however,  we  feel  persuaded 
that  the  reader  will  bear  us  out  in  saying, 
that  very  few  of  our  modem  English  writers 
can  better  afford  to  wait  for  the  verdict  of 
the  future,  or  wait  for  it  with  more  confi- 
dence, than  Walter  Savage  Landor. 


-»♦• 


■♦-•- 


From    the   Biographical    Hagasine. 


CHARLES    JAMES    NAPIER. 


After  a  long  life  passed  in  stormy  conflicts, 
another  great  warrior  has  been  removed  in 
peace  from  the  world.  A  man  whose  "  poor 
shattered  body,"  as  his  brother  has  described 
it,  carried  seven  deep  wounds;  whose 
sword  had  cut  his  path  in  many  and  terrible 
strifes;  whose  name  was  associated  with 
deeds  of  reckless  daring  and  military  skill ; 
has  been  allowed  to  pass  through  Badajos 
and  Corunna,  Busaco  and  Fuentes  d'Onore, 
Meeanee  and  Hydrabad,  to  Oaklands ;  from 
battle-fields  to  his  quiet,  English  country-seat, 
that  he  might  die  there. 

The  Napiers  have  earned  for  their  name  a 
high  place  in  literary,  military,  and  scientific 
history.  The  living  generation  are  accus- 
tomed to  read  their  achievements  on  sea  and 
shore.    The  history  of  their  services  gains 


nothing  in  coloring  or  extent,  when  narrated 
by  one  of  themselves;  yet  our  best  military 
historian  is  a  Napier.  A  few  weeks  since, 
the  country  could  command  in  any  danger 
the  services  of  two  Sir  Charles  Napiers :  and 
both  of  these  leaders,  although  belonging  to 
different  professions,  could  officiate  in  either 
department.  They  had  brought  the  military 
and  naval  service  into  close  and  personal  al- 
liance ;  for  Admiral  Sir  Charles  Napier  oc- 
casionally made  inroads  on  the  land  service, 
and  General  Sir  Charles  James  Napier  had 
served,  like  a  marine,  on  land  and  water. 
Now  England  has  but  one  of  the  two ;  and 
the  loss  might  be  severely  felt  in  any  hour 
of  danger  and  dismay. 

It  seems  to  memory  but  a  little  time,  and 
in  reality  it  is  only  a  few  years,  since  th 


470 


CHARLES  JAMES  KAFIEB. 


pee. 


Aofflo-IndiRn  empire  was  considered  to  be 
shaken.  A  battle  had  been  lost — a  great 
battle — or  if  not  quite  lost,  it  had  not  been 
gained.  The  public  were  unaccustomed  to 
disaster ;  for  the  recollection  of  Affghanistan, 
and  the  gallant  men  who  died  at  Cabul,  had 
been  effaced.  Popular  names  may  fade  away 
and  be  foi^otten  in  seven  years.  Bumes  and 
MacNaugnten,  who  lived,  and  in  the  flower 
of  manhood  died  by  a  traitor's  hand,  close 
together,  once  the  hope  of  "  Young  India," 
were  not  remembered  then.  The  public 
dwelt  on  the  last  loss.  Politicians  wrote, 
statesmen  talked,  and  military  men  were 
compelled  to  act  in  the  new  crisis  of  Indian 
affairs.  The  conqueror  and  ex-governor  of 
Scinde  had  returned  home  in  a  bitter  mood 
with  Anglo-Indian  administration,  and  his 
anger  was  not  groundless.  The  panic  of  the 
year  had  even  entered  Apsley  House,  and 
the  Commander-in-chief  sent  for  Sir  Charles 
Napier.  The  conversation  was  short.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  offered  the  chief  com- 
mand  of  the  Indian  army.  The  owner  of 
Oaklands  began  his  usual  complaints  of  the 
civil  authorities  of  India ;  but  his  old  Gen- 
eral had  no  right  to  redress,  and  no  wish, 
therefore,  to  hear  them.  He  cut  short  every 
argument  with  the  announcement,  "  India  is 
probably  lost,  and  you  or  I  must  go ;  if  you 
cannot,  then  I  can."  The  command  was 
accepted.  Three  years  have  come  and  gone 
— the  grave  has  closed  over  the  peer  and  the 
commoner — St.  Paul's  has  the  first  and  Ports- 
mouth the  last,  and  who  would  now  save 
India  ?  for  Britain's  great  men  die  fast. 

The  death  of  Sir  Charles  Napier  leaves  a 
vacant  place  in  the  Army  List  that  will  not 
be  easily  occupied.  A  soldier  for  sixty  years 
and  from  boyhood,  he  was  ardently  attached 
to  his  profession.  His  zeal  for  the  character 
and  efficiency  of  the  army  rendered  him  a 
radical  reformer  of  military  abuses.  His 
education,  either  in,  or  attached  to  the  camp, 
produced  contempt  for  civil  administrators, 
which  was  strengthened  by  his  communica- 
tions with  corrupt  officials.  Bravery  in  bat- 
tle, combativeness  at  his  desk,  and  discipline 
of  the  strictest  character  in  all  circumstances 
and  at  all  seasons,  inherent  in  his  family, 
were  conspicuous  in  his  life.  These  qualities 
secured  for  him  that  esteem  in  the  army  es- 
sential to  successful  operations  in  the  field. 
The  conqueror  of  Scinde  has  left  no  leader 
in  the  British  forces  more  likely  to  inspire 
his  foes  with  dread  or  his  friends  with  cour- 
age ;  and  yet  he  has  gone  down  to  the  grave, 
in  a  time  of  peace,  an  untitled  soldier,  and 
until  the  Scinde  war  not  a  very  wealthy  man. 


Kingdoms,  or  their  writers,  have  contended 
regarding  the  descent  of  Sir  Charles  Napier, 
as  the  cities  of  Greece  contested  the  honor 
of  Homer's  nativity.  The  arguments  of 
different  claimants  in  reference"*  to  the  Gen- 
eral are  strong,  and  the  case  is  not  clear. 
He  belonged,  as  one  of  the  Napier  family, 
to  Scotland.  His  father  was  a  Scotsman. 
He  was  bom  in  England,  in  London,  in  White- 
hall ;  and  his  mother  was  an  Englishwoman. 
And  he  was  educated  in  Ireland,  at  Castle- 
town, county  of  Kildare ;  but  the  period  of 
education,  in  its  usual  meaning,  was  short. 
He  had  an  ensign's  commission  in  his  twelfth 
or  thirteenth  year;  and  like  Abercromby, 
Harris,  Moore,  and  other  distinguished  sol- 
diers, acquired  the  greater  part  of  the  know- 
ledge which  he  possessed  in  the  camp. 

The  private  biography  of  Sir  Charles  Na- 
pier, like  that  of  all  other  men,  might  be 
compressed  within  a  few  lines.  He  was  bom 
in  London,  on  the  10th  August,  1782.  and 
died  at  Oaklands,  his  country-seat,  near 
Portsmouth,  on  the  SOth  August,  1858,  in 
his  Tlst  year.  He  had,  indeed,  completed 
his  Vlst,  and  entered  a  few  weeks  upon  hb 
7 2d  year.  His  father  was  a  military  man — 
the  Hon.  Colonel  George  Napier ;  and  hb 
mother  was  a  daughter  of  the  second  Duke 
of  Richmond.  The  Hon.  Col.  George  Na- 
pier received  a  military  appointment  in  lie- 
land  ;  and  the  removal  of  the  family  to  that 
country  formed  the  only  connection  between 
Sir  Charles  Napier  and  that  island.  He  has 
left  two  brothers,  an  elder  and  a  younger, 
both  soldiers,  both  lieutenant-genemls,  both 
literary  men  and  writers  of  hiffh  standing : 
the  former  Lieutenant- General  Sir  George 
Thomas  Napier,  once  Governor  of  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope ;  and  the  latter,  Lieutenant- 
General  Sir  William  Francis  Napier,  the  dis- 
tinguished historian. 

Sir  Charles  J.  Napier  was  not  married 
until  1827,  when,  in  his  45th  year,  he  married 
the  widow  of  John  F.  Kelly,  Esq.,  who  died 
in  1883.  He  married,  in  1835,  the  widow 
of  Richard  Alcock,  Esq.,  R.M.  The  mutual 
attachment  of  the  Napiers  contributed  to 
their  domestic  happiness,  without  aiding  their 
progress  in  life.  They  have  admirably  served 
their  country,  without  securing  those  re- 
wards which  are  bestowed  on  men  less  gifted. 
The  remark  is  equally  applicable  to  their 
cousin.  Admiral  Sir  Charles  Napier.  Blunt 
speech  and  plain  writing  do  not  recommend 
officers  in  the  army  and  navy  ;  and  we  must 
allow,  that  the  rebukes  of  these  distinguished 
officers  have  been  less  courteous  than 
honest ;  and  that  they  have  been  involved  io 


1858.] 


GHARLEB  JAMES  KAPIEB. 


471 


many  dUpates,  which  either  more  cnniUDg 
or  greater  prudence  would  have  taught  them 
to  avoid. 

Although  Sir  Charles  J.  Napier  entered 
the  army  at  an  early  age,  his  progress  in  the 
profession  was  not  remarkably  rapid.  He 
was  a  captain  in  1808,  nine  years  after  he 
had  joined  the  service.  In  1806,  he  was 
major  in  the  60th  regiment;  in  1811,  be  was 
a  lieutenant-colonel.  Thirteen  years  after- 
wards, he  obtained  the  colonelcy  of  the  22d 
regiment.  After  the  peace  of  1816,  he  was 
named  governor  of  the  Ionian  Islands  ;  and 
li  he  did  not  succeed  in  pleasing  the  Coloni- 
al Office  and  the  Home  Government,  he  gave 
ffreat  satisfaction  to  the  Cepbalonians,  who 
have  not  yet  forgotten  the  man  whose  quali- 
ties of  mind  gained  the  hearts  of  strangers. 
Twelve  years  after  the  attainment  of  his 
colonelcy,  he  was,  in  1887,  a  major-general ; 
and,  in  1846,  he  attained  the  higher  step  of 
lieutenant-general.  He  passed  some  years 
of  his  life  peaceably  and  at  home,  in  the 
command  of  the  northern  district,  redressing 
abuses  and  reforming  evils  in  the  discipline 
of  the  regiments  which  came  within  his  cir- 
cle. Although  destined  to  perform  a  great 
part  in  India,  yet  he  had  reached  his  50th 
year  before  the  commencement  of  his  con- 
nection with  that  country.  He  then  received 
the  command  of  the  Bombay  army.  The 
events  that  color  in  brilliancy  and  brightness 
the  last  decennial  period  of  his  life  will  be 
more  fully  estimated  as  we  recede  from  the 
passions  of  the  time,  and  its  history  is 
studied  by  the  light  of  its  results. 

The  first  active  services  in  the  deceased 
General's  life  occurred  in  the  Irish  rebellion 
of  1798  ;  and  although  few  honors  could  be 
gathered,  in  a  civil  war,  yet  its  duties  were 
extremely  arduous.  This  rebellion  origin- 
ated partially  m  ecclesiastical  and  partially  in 
political  motives.  The  northern  malcontents 
were  actuated  exclusively  by  political  feelings. 
They  sought  the  establishment  of  an  entirely 
independent  government  for  Ireland ;  and  al- 
though they  did  not  sympathize  with  the 
demands  of  the  Irish  Roman  Catholics  at 
firstf  yet  they  were  compelled  by  the  exigen- 
cies of  their  position  ultimately  to  make  com- 
mon cause  with  the  men  of  the  south  and 
west.  The  hardest  fighting  occurred  in  the 
north  ;  and  although  Ensign  Napier  held  an 
inferior  position,  yet  his  ardent  mind  found 
hard  work  to  perform.  But  however  neces- 
sary the  measures  consequent  on  this  rebel- 
lion were  deemed,  they  were  permitted  to 
pass  without  an  efficient  record  ;  for  still 
greater  events  followed  rapidly,  spreading 


consternation  th];pugh  the  land ;  and  amid 
the  continental  convulsions,  forgetfulness  of 
the  Irish  battles  was  desirable. 

But  even  now,  when  more  than  half  a 
century  has  passed,  the  memory  of  the  dead 
survives  in  wearied  breasts,  much  longing 
for  their  promised  rest  in  those  qu^et  grave- 
yards that  sometimes  creep  down  to  the  edge 
of  the  lochs  that  deeply  indent  the  northern 
province — rest  long  promised,  long  withheld 
— beside  those  who  were  laid  there  in  a  red 
winding-sheet,  in  haste  and  bitter  sorrow, 
when  war  rent  asunder  the  families  of  the 
land.  Even  yet,  the  peasant  at  the  twilight 
time  passes  softly  by  dark  spots,  where  aged 
friends  have  told  him  that  a  gallows  was 
erected  for  the  brave,  if  also  they  were — as 
no  doubt  they  were — the  erring.  Even  now, 
in  brilliant  rooms,  when  the  day  is  over,  and 
the  hours  of  night  are  beguiled  by  song  or 
story,  when  mirth  and  music  chase  away 
many  cares,  deep  shadows  sit  on  old  brows, 
beneath  a  fringe  of  silvered  hair — and  these 
are  shadows  that  never  can  be  lightened ; 
for  old  men  will  tell  a  stranger  that  her  hus- 
band, or  father,  or  brother  were  out  in  ninety- 
eight,  were  shot  upon  a  dark  field,  or,  harder 
still,  were  hung  upon  a  darker  hill.  Rapidly 
rushes  the  foaming  tide  round  sharp  out-jut- 
ting rocks  in  those  deep  lochs  that  run  so  far 
into  the  land,  and  give  a  charm  to  the  scen- 
ery that  nothing  else  can  ever  supply.  Be- 
hind these  low  rocks  the  deep  green  sea 
wheels  and  whirls,  not  hastily,  but  in  slow 
and  solemn  circles ;  like  as  if  it  were  a  living 
creature  that  knew  its  irresistible  might,  and 
was  to  devour  its  prey  with  leisure.  Now 
and  then,  gurgling  and  gushing  upwards 
from  the  lowermost  recesses  of  deep  pits, 
waters  greener  still  than  those  that  float 
habitually  in  the  sunlight,  look  out  to  see 
this  world  of  light,  and  then  sink  again  to 
their  appointed  place  amid  the  long  green 
weeds,  greener  than  the  waters  themselves, 
that  kindly  fold  up  in  their  silken  threads 
many  mysteries,  many  secrets,  many  sins  and 
sorrows  connected  with  that  dark  time. 

Napier  was  very  joung  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  rebellion  and  the  French  inva- 
sion of  Ireland  ;  but  he  had  well  remembered 
the  deplorable  events  of  that  stormy  period, 
terminated  by  courts-martial,  by  military  ex- 
ecutions, and  military  rule  in  all  the  provinces 
of  that  island.  He  had  longed  for  a  change 
of  employment,  and  the  scene  shifts.  The 
French  foes  are  driven  out  of  Ireland,  or  they 
have  perished  beneath  bayonet  and  bullet,  or 
the  stormy  surf  of  its  angry  seas.  The  Irish 
rebels  are  beaten,  broken  or  scattered,  in 


412 


CHARLES  JAMEB  KAPIER. 


[Dee^ 


hopeless  exile,  over  the  Western  Continent, 
As  generally  occurs  in  such  cases,  villains 
have  escaped ;  but  the  chivalrous,  the  en- 
thusiastic, the  thoughtless,  and  the  young 
have  perished  in  a  fine  burst  of  patriotism. 
Oreen  were  then  the  wounds  caused  by  that 
rebellion ;  but  the  stricken  land  had  peace — 
a  few  precious  years  of  peace — during  which 
new  men  were  rising  to  be  sacrificed  on  those 
altars  of  war  that  were  in  preparation  for 
the  ofifering.  During  these  years  young  Na- 
pier waa  acquiring  that  general  knowledge 
which  in  after  life  rendered  him  a  dangerous 
and  ready  disputant  Often  we  may  suppose 
he  turned  his  thoughts  to  that  far-off  orien- 
tal land  where  a  young  Irish  officer  had  ac- 
quired and  was  acquiring  fame  and  fortune. 
The  romance  of  India  stirred  his  soul,  but 
the  strong  voice  of  necessity  said  ever,  "  Not 
yet,  not  yet ;"  a  time  was  to  come,  but  not 
then — a  time,  but  not  until  long  afterwards 
— when  the  name  of  the  dreamer  would  be 
enshrined  upon  the  Indus,  over  battle-fields 
equalling  Assaye,  or  Delhi,  or  Argaum,  in 
their  wonderful  history. 

Another  schemer,  meanwhile,  was  plan- 
ning work  for  the  Moores  and  the  Napiers  of 
the  day.  An  ambitious  eye  was  thrown  from 
the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  to  those  of  the 
Escurial.  The  ambition  that  had  plucked 
trophies  from  Germany  and  Italy  sought  to 
gather  them  on  Spanish  soil.  Opportunities 
were  easily  obtained.  The  royal  family  of 
Spain  abdicated.  The  House  of  Braganza 
fled.  The  former  accepted  a  pension,  and 
the  latter  sought  independenca  in  their  colo- 
nial possessions.  ^^^JJP  ™^7  %>  ^^^  ^^^ 
people  must  remain.  The  latter  have,  there- 
fore, the  larger  interest  in  peace.  Napoleon 
had  determined  to  appropriate  Spain  and 
Portugal ;  for  the  world  itself  was  rather 
too  limited  to  supply  the  wants  of  his  family; 
and  the  peninsular  peasantry  also  determined 
to  keep  their  own,  after  they  had  been  aban- 
doned by  their  princes. 

These  events  led  to  the  Peninsular  War. 
Sir  John  Moore,  in  the  interval  between  Ro- 
lica  and  Vimiera,  and  Wellesley's  second  de- 
scent on  the  peninsula,  received  the  com- 
mand of  the  British  army.  No  general  was 
ever  more  beloved  by  his  army  or  by  his 
countrymen,  and  yet  he  was  sacrificed  to 
jealousy  at  home  and  treachery  abroad. 
Amid  all  the  fast-shifting  scenes  of  his  rapid 
advance  from  Portugal,  and  still  more  rapid 
retreat  on  Corunna,  before  Napoleon,  the 
50th  regiment  of  infantry  and  their  major 
often  appear.  They  formed  the  rear-guard 
in  the  trying  march  upon  Corunna.    Napo- 1 


J 


leon  was  humbled  and  irritated  by  the  defeats 
of  his  forces  and  his  marshals  at  Rolica  and 
Vimiera,  and  still  more  by  the  Convention  of 
Gntra.  He  was  anxious  to  capture  or  to  de- 
stroy the  British  army  under  Sir  John  Moore. 
The  extent  of  his  forces,  the  horrible  roads, 
blocked  with  snow  when  they  were  not  flood- 
ed with  rain  ;  and  the  utter  incapacity  of  all 
their  Spanish  allies,  except  Romana,  rendered 
the  annihilation  of  Sir  John  Moore's  army 
highly  probable.  Major  Charles  Napier  was 
employed  to  cover  the  retreat.  In  that  ser- 
vice he  acquired  the  maxims  which  actuated 
him  in  his  reforms  of  the  Indian  army.  From 
the  passage  of  the  Esla  to  the  battle  before 
Corunna  he  was  acquiring  that  antipathy  to 
officers'  baggage  which  ultimately  appeared 
in  his  celebrated  opinion  against  any  thing 
more  than  two  shirts,  an  extra  pair  of  shoes, 
a  little  soap,  and  a  tooth-brush.  We  may 
often  trace  peculiarities  of  character  to  inci- 
dents in  life.     General  Sir   Charles  J.  Na- 

ier's  opinions  were  based  upon  Major  Charles 
Napier's  experience  in  three  weeks 
from  the  2l6t  December,  1808,  to  the  16th 
January,  1800.  Every  day  was  occupied  in 
marching  and  skirmishing.  Napoleon  origin- 
ally, and  Soult  after  New- Year's- Day  of 
1809,  left  the  retreating  army  no  time  for 
rest.  Combats  occurred  daily,  and  on  some 
days  almost  hourly  ;  until  Major  Napier  be- 
came rather  too  well  known  to  his  pursuers. 
On  the  'rth  January,  the  French  attacked  at 
Lugo,  and  were  repulsed  by  Sir  John  Moore 
in  person  with  a  heavy  loss.  On  the  16th, 
the  British  army  were  stationed  in  the  vil- 
lages around  Corunna,  and  the  British  fleet 
were  at  anchor  in  the  bay.  Spain  was  to  be 
abandoned  for  a  time,  but  Napoleon's  object 
had  not  been  achieved,  and  could  not  be 
gained,  unless  the  embarkation  of  the  army 
could  be  prevented.  Soult,  therefore,  deter- 
mined to  attack  them.  The  result  is  well 
known.  It  was  a  victory  dearer  than  any 
previously  achieved  by  the  British  forces, 
because  it  secured  nothing  except  a  retreat. 
Sir  John  Moore  was  mortally  wounded  by  a 
cannon-ball,  while  leading  on  the  42d  and 
50th  regiments  at  the  village  of  Elvina.  He 
was  carried  by  soldiers  of  the  42d  into  Co- 
runna, and  lived  to  know  that,  like  Aber- 
cromby  and  Wolfe,  he  died  in  victory.  Sir 
David  Baird  had  lost  an  arm  on  the  right, 
and  Sir  John  Hope,  on  whom  the  command 
devolved,  could  make  no  further  use  of  his 
success  than  to  bury  his  dead  and  embark  in 
peace. 

One  prisoner  was  left  behind,  to  whom  re- 
straint was  torture.    In  endeavoring  to  lead 


1858.] 


OHAALES  JAMES  KAPIER. 


478 


forward  the  50th  regiment,  he  had  been  sud- 
denly left  with  four  soldiers  in  the  presence 
of  a  large  body  of  the  enemy.  Three  of  his 
followers  were  at  once  shot  down,  and  the 
fourth  was  wounded.  Major  Napier  at- 
tempted to  assist  the  fourth  ;  and  while  doing 
so  he  was  struck  by  a  musket-ball  in  the  leg, 
and  some  of  the  bones  were  broken.  Using 
bis  sword  as  a  staff,  he  endeavored  to  get 
out  of  the  way  ;  but  a  French  soldier  stabbed 
him  in  the  back  with  his. bayonet.  The 
Major  turned,  and,  wounded  as  he  was,  rap- 
idly disarmed  his  opponent;  b\it  he  was  cut 
in  the  head  by  a  sabre,  some  of  his  ribs  were 
broken  by  a  cannon-ball ;  and  knocked  down 
at  last  by  the  butt-end  of  a  musket,  he  was 
dragged  out  of  the  fight,  insensible,  by  a 
benevolent  French  drummer.  Soult  treated 
bis  distinguished  prisoner  with  much  con- 
sideration. His  wounds  were  skilfully  tend- 
ed ;  and  when  the  Marshal  left  Ney  in  com- 
mand at  Corunna,  Major  Napier  was  nearly 
restored  to  health. 

An  English  frigate  ran  into  the  bay  one 
day  with  a  flag  of  truce.  The  captain  sought 
information  regarding  Major  Napier.  The 
request  was  reported  to  Ney  by  his  aide-de- 
camp ;  and  the  ''  bravest  of  the  brave"  di- 
rected that  officer  to  allow  his  countrymen 
an  interview  with  their  prisoner.  The  French 
captain  looked  closely  on  his  commander. 
"  General,"  said  he,  **  Major  Napier  has  a 
mother."  "  Has  he  ?"  was  Ney's  answer ; 
"  then  let  him  go  with  his  countrymen,  and 
he  can  take  twenty-five  British  soldiery  with 
him."  The  act  was  generous  and  noble  ;  at 
least  equal  to  the  erection  of  a  monument  to 
Moore  by  his  adversary  Soult;  and  it  was 
one  of  those  traits  in  the  character  of  Ney 
which  cast  around  his  own  fate  a  deeper 
tinge  of  sorrow  than  might  have  been  felt  for 
a  less  worthy  foe. 

Few  men  ever  acquire  the  experience 
gained  by  Major  Napier  in  life.  Upon  his 
return  to  England,  he  was  engaged  in  the 
transaction  of  unusual  business^  at  Doctors' 
Commons.  His  name  was  returned  in  the 
list  of  killed  at  Corunna.  His  friends  enter^ 
tained  no  doubt  of  his  fate,  and  his  heirs  ad- 
ministered to  his  property.  The  error  had 
to  be  corrected,  and  the  officer  marked  dead 
in  law  had  to  be  again  acknowledged  among 
the  living. 

At  this  period  he  was  unsuccessful  in  his 
applications  for  employment  at  the  Horse 
Guards.  No  young  officer  deserved  better 
of  his  country ;  but  even  the  exigencies  of 
the  service  could  not  always  overcome  the 
favoritism  of  faction ;  and  although,  as  the 


grandson  of  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  Major 
Napier  was  not  destitute  of  influence,  yet 
three  officers  had  to  be  provided  for  in  one 
family  ;  and  they  were  not  grateful,  accord- 
ing to  ministerial  notions.  They  could  fight. 
All  their  friends  and  foes  acknowledged  that 
they  fought  well ;  but  they  also  talked  and 
wrote,  and  their  opinions  were  crimes. 

Wearied  with  applications  which  brought 
no  positive  result,  Colonel  Napier  returned 
to  Spain  as  a  volunteer.  Early  in  1810,  he 
was  again  with  the  Allied  Army  on  the  bor- 
der land  between  Portugal  and  Spain.  He 
was  engaged  wilh  General  Crawford's  light 
division  in  a  severe  action  on  the  Coa,  near 
Almeida,  on  the  24th  of  May.  This  contest 
terminated  in  the  destruction  of  many  French 
soldiers  in  a  vain  effort  to  cross  the  Coa,  at  a 
ravine  in  front  of  Crawford's  divii«ion,and  bad 
no  result  except  the  death  of  so  many  men. 
The  summer  of  1810  passed  away  without 
active  operations;  and  a  man  of  Colonel 
Napier's  character  and  disposition  might  have 
been  as  agreeably  occupied  in  Piccadilly  as 
on  the  banks  of  the  Mondego  river ;  but  to- 
waMs  the  close  of  autumn,  Massena  having 
completed  his  arrangements,  and  obtained 
reinforcements,  determined  to  invade  Portu- 
gal. He  might  have  accomplished  this  ob- 
ject by  flanking  the  mountains  on  which  the 
British  army  at  the  time  were  stationed. 
Massena  decided  on  forcing  the  shorter  route, 
probably  because  he  knew  that  Wellington 
would  gather  all  the  harvest  before  the  lines 
of  Torres  Vedras  within  that  temporary  for- 
tification. 

The  battle  of  Busaco  commenced  early  on 
the  morning  of  the  27th  of  September,  1810. 
The  British  and  Portuguese  forces  were 
strongly  posted  on  the  Serra  de  Busaco,  a 
high  ridge,  with,  in  some  places,  thick  pine 
forests,  and  on  the  sloping  and  steep  gt-ound 
in  front.  They  were  greatly  outnumbered 
by  the  French  army  under  Massena,  assisted 
by  Marshals  Ney  and  Regnier.  Lord  Wel- 
lington might  have  been  attacked  at  great 
disadvantage  on  the  previous  evening;  bat 
Massena  was  engaged  with  Colonel  Trant 
and  the  Portuguese  partisans  in  his  rear.  The 
morning  of  Busaco  was  shrouded  in  mist,  and 
the  French  divisions  had  nearly  climbed  the 
heights  before  they  were  attacked.  The 
battle,  from  the  nature  of  the  ground,  did 
not  admit  of  scientific  movements,  and  it  was 
short  although  severe.  It  ended  with  the 
morning.  Before  noon  the  French  had  re- 
tired from  all  points  of  the  hill ;  and  during 
the  afternoon  they  were  peaceably  engaged 
in  the  removal  of  their  wounded  men.  Colo- 


474 


0HABLK8  JAMES  KAPISR. 


[Dee.. 


nel  C.  J.  Napier  was  severely  wounded  in 
the  conflict.  He  was  struck  in  the  face  by 
a  musket- shot.  The  ball  broke  his  jaw-bone, 
in  which  it  lodged.  After  the  battle,  the 
Colonel,  desirous  to  be  rid  of  this  incum- 
brance, mounted  his  horse  and  rode  for  two 
days,  to  obtain  good  medical  assistance.  The 
anecdote  illustrates  the  energy  of  the  man. 
We  may  also  add  that  it  illustrates  the  in- 
competency of  the  service,  at  that  time,  in 
the  medical  department.  An  army  which 
had  every  reason  to  live  in  daily  expectation 
of  broken  bones,  should  have  comprised  an 
efficient  surgical  staff,  and  rendered  Cplonel 
Napier's  hard  ride  entirely  superfluous. 

-  A  cold  and  dreary  winter  followed  within 
the  lines  of  Torres  Vedras;  but  while  the 
British  army  possessed  an  abundant  commis- 
sary, the  French,  Vithout  the  lines,  suffered 
dreadfully  from  disease  and  want.  Early  in 
March  of  the  following  year,'  1811,  Massena 
left  Santarem,  and  commenced  his  retreat 
into  Spain.  For  rather  more  than  a  month 
the  two  armies  had  daily  skirmishes,  of  which 
Colonel  Napier  had  more  than  a  fair  share. 
During  his  long  life  he  had  a  habit  of  falling 
into  hard,  and  to  himself  unprofitable,  fights 
ing ;  and  he  scarcely  ever  escaped  without 
some  contusion  or  wound.  Portugal  was 
finally  abandoned  by  the  French  early  in 
April.  The  celebrated  battle  of  Fuentes 
d'Onore  was  fought  on  the  6th  of  May,  and 
although  peculiarly  fatal  to  officers,  yet 
Colonel  Napier,  who  was  present  in  that  con- 
flict, reached  victory  without  a  wound,  an 
unusual  event  in  his  case.  That  month  of 
May  was  very  fatal  to  the  armies  engaged  in 
the  Peninsula ;  and  Albuera,  nearly  the  most 
bloody  battle  in  the  war,  was  fought  by  Mar- 
shal Beresford  on  the  16  th  ;  but  the  subse- 
quent months  were  not  distinguish^  by 
grand  operations,  although  skirmishing  was 
always  found  for  men  like  Colonel  Napier, 
few  in  number,  as  they  are,  in  all  armies. 

The  winter  of  1811  and  1812  was  extreme- 
ly severe ;  and  yet  in  the  midst  of  that  win- 
ter Lord  Wellington  formed  the  design  of 
storming  Ciudad  Rodrigo.  He  moved  his 
army  from  cantonments  on  the  8th  of  Janu- 
ary. On  the  1 0th  he  summoned  the  garri- 
son to  surrender.  A  stem  denial  was  his 
answer  ;  but  during  the  evening  he  stormed 
Ciudad  Rodrigo,  to  the  utter  amazement  of 
Marshal  Marmont,  who  was  approaching  with 
a  large  force,  to  raise  the  siege.  Colonel 
Napier  was  present  during  the  operations, 
but  one  of  the  two  storming  parties  was  led 
by  Major  George  Napier,  his  brother,  who 
was  severely  wounded.    The  brothers  were 


present  at  the  siege  of  Badajos  and  its  storm- 
ing three  months  after  the  fall  of  Ciudad 
Rodrigo;  but  although  Colonel  Napier  at- 
tracted the  regard  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
who  had  great  discrimination  in  the  selection 
of  his  officers,  yet  he  never  attained  a  very 
prominent  position  in  the  Peninsular  War; 
and  that  circumstance  explains  his  eagerness 
to  enter  upon  a  more  independent  field  of 
action  in  the  war  which  the  United  States, 
very  imprudently  and  ungenerously,  at  that 
moment  commenced  against  Great  Britsdn. 

Both  nations  understand  their  position 
better  now  than  they  did  in  1813  ;  and  a  re- 
petition of  hostilities  so  closely  resembling  a 
civil  war,  and  partaking  in  all  the  peculiarly 
harsh  features  of  internal  contests,  is,  we 
trust,  impossible ;  and  certainly  it  is  so  im- 
probable that  we  dislike  a  recurrence  to  the 
incidents  of  the  last  conflict,  honorable  as 
they  were  to  the  military  character  and  ex- 
perience of  Colonel  Napier.  But  peace  was 
declared — the  short  peace  of  1814 — and  in 
1815  he  was  informed  that  Napoleon  had 
escaped  from  Elba.  He  felt  that  the  French 
chieftain  must  again  involve  Europe  in  hos- 
tilities, and  hastened  homewards  in  the  hope 
of  obtaining  the  position  in  his  country's  de- 
fense richly  deserved  by  his  professional  tal- 
ents. When  he  arrived  in  England  he  found 
Europe  in  the  centre  of  a  new  crisis,  and  he 
hurried  onwards ;  but  steam-power  on  land 
and  water  was  then  unknown,  and  the  most 
active  traveller,  pressed  for  time,  on  errands 
of  life  or  death,  was  compelled  to  wait  for 
wind  and  tide.  England  expected  a  great 
battle,  but  not  so  soon  as  it  occurred  ;  and 
reinforcements  were  under  preparation  for 
the  army  in  Belgium.  Colonel  Napier  has- 
tened on.  When  he  reached  Ostend,  the  exi- 
gency appeared  still  greater.  As  he  advanced, 
crowds  of  fugitives  stopped  the  path.  Alarm 
and  dismay  appeared  in  the  villages,  towns, 
and  cities  which  he  passed.  He  hurried  on« 
quickening  his  speed  as  if  a  single  arm  could 
change  the  destiny  of  the  coming  day.  Then 
reports  of  Ligny  and  Quatre-Bras  met  him — 
disastrous  rumors ;  and  they  urged  him  for- 
ward— forward,  to  defeat,  it  might  be;  but 
not  to  dishonor— -onward,  to  die  in  the  last 
hour  of  a  great  battle  rather  than  that  the 
country  which  he  loved  bf.tter  than  it  had 
then  loved  him,  should  look  in  vain  for  aid 
from  one  of  her  sons,  when  his  assistance 
was  required.  An  impatient  rider  and  a 
panting  steed  are  met  by  fugitives,  now  aban- 
doning their  homes  in  sadness  of  heart  and 
sorrow.  A  third  battle  has  been  fought  and 
lost.    The  army  which  he  loved  is  beaten 


1858.] 


OHABLES  JAMES  KAPIRB. 


41$ 


and  flying  in  detached  fragments.  The  lead- 
ere  whom  he  followed  are  with  the  dead  or 
the  dying.  The  foemen  whom  he  had  often 
met  are  trampling  on  and  over  his  friends. 
Still  in  this  dark  hour,  courage  and  genius 
combined,  daring  to  conceive,  rapidity  to  ex- 
ecute, might  stop  the  flight  of  his  friends  or 
the  progress  of  his  foes ;  and  some  of  the 
best  British  regiments  were  behind  him,  fresh 
and  unbroken.  The  rider  hastened  on.  Now 
the  certain  character  of  the  rumor  changes. 
Wounded  men  from  Ligny  and  Qualre-oras 
pass  by,  but  they  do  not  think  that  they  are 
beaten ;  and  as  the  day  wears  on,  towards 
nififht  these  rumors  become  still  more  uncer- 
tam.  That  haze  in  the  distant  east,  on  which 
the  setting  sun  has  shone  out  for  a  few  min- 
Qtes,  hangs  over  the  distant  field  of  strife. 
By  and  by,  the  roar  of  artillery,  like  thunder 
far  away,  booms  on  the  ear;  or  the  rider 
thinks  so,  and  his  nervousness  increases :  and 
the  delays  of  the  road  wax  longer  and  worse. 
Wagons  full  of  wounded  men  choke  the 
way ;  but  they  bring  better  news  and  brighter 
hopes.  The  battle  was  not  lost  when  they 
left,  and  it  would  not  be  lost.  The  inspirited 
rider  struggles  on.  The  night  has  fallen 
over  the  vanquished  and  the  victorious;  a 
night  of  horrors  to  the  flying  and  broken 
squadrons  who  rallied  in  the  morning  around 
the  eagles  of  France.  Our  solitary  rider  still 
strives  against  a  thickening  current  of  horses 
and  vehicles ;  but  at  last  he  hears  that  the 
battle  is  won.  The  intelligence  that  even 
lights  up  the  eyes  of  the  dying  around 
scarcely  gives  pleasure  to  him.  The  grand 
contest  of  Europe  is  over,  and  he  had  no 
part  in  the  result.  Hereafter  men  will  speak 
respectfully  of  sold ie re  who  fought  at  Water- 
loo, and  he  had  only  struggled  hard  to  be 
present.  A  wayward  fate  it  seemed  that 
took  him  over  the  Atlantic  to  combat  pe'as- 
ants,  and  left  his  name  out  of  this  great  strife 
of  giants.  He  reported  himself  at  head- 
quarters on  the  morning  of  the  19th,  was 
present  at  some  of  the  combats  on  the  way 
to  Paris,  and  entered  that  city  with  the  Al- 
lied Armies. 

The  peace  that  followed  promised  to  be 
deep  and  long;  and  although  a  considerable 
English  army  was  left  in  France,  yet  Colonel 
Napier  sought  other  employment.  He  ob- 
tained the  governorehip  of  the  Ionian  Islands. 
His  military  capabilities  had  been  long  ac- 
knowledged ;  his  literary  talents,  if  less  con- 
spicuous than  those  of  his  younger  brother, 
were  evidently  respectable,  as  his  works  on 
colonies,  colonization,  and  Ireland  demon- 
strated;  but  he  was  now  tried  in  a  new 


sphere.  His  administrative  genius  shone 
brightly  in  his  management  of  the  Ionian 
Isles,  so  far  as  his  relations  with  the  islanders 
were  concerned ;  but  he  quarrelled  with  the 
Home  Government.  We  feel  that  a  governor 
of  a  distant  dependency  who  gains  the  esteem 
of  the  governed  and  the  antipathy  of  his  own 
government,  is  an  honest,  although  he  may 
be  a  mistaken,  man.  8ir  Charles  Napier 
succeeded  in  both  particulars.  He  gained 
the  love  of  the  Cephalonians,  and  he  did  not 
preserve  the  confidence  of  the  Colonial  and 
War  Offices.  He  -was  recalled,  but  his  mem- 
ory was  not  easily  obliterated  from  the  minds 
of  the  islanders,  who  adopted  the  means  in 
their  power  of  steadily  expressing  the  esteem 
in  which  one  of  their  governore  was  held. 

The  Greek  revolution  brought  Sir  Charles 
Napier  into  correspondence  with  the  late 
Lord  Byron,  with  Mr.  Hume,  and  other  Eng- 
lish friends  of  Grecian  independence.  They 
did  not  exactly  please  him  by  their  conduct, 
and  he  did  not  please  them  with  his  counsel ; 
but  he  knew  more  of  fighting,  and  probably 
of  Greeks  and  Turks  also,  than  the  great  poet 
or  the  famous  financier. 

He  passed  some  years  at  this  period  of 
his  life  in  England,  unemployed ;  and  even 
when  he  obtained  the  command  of  the  North* 
ern  Military  Division  of  England,  he  could 
only  exercise  his  influence  for  the  improve- 
ment of  discipline  in  the  regiments  under  his 
control.  Life  was  meanwhile  wearing  over. 
Peace  was  firmly  established  in  Europe  ;  and 
although  it  had  been  broken  repeatedly  on 
the  Continent,  yet  Sir  Charles  Napier  never 
ofifered  his  services  to  any  foreign  state,  even 
when  he  approved  the  cause  of  war.  He 
laid  the  foundation  of  many  reforms  in  the 
army.  He  improved  the  position  of  the  pri- 
vate soldier,  so  far  as  his  influence  and  power 
went.  He  enforced  very  strict  discipline  in 
barracks,  and  he  undoubtedly  made  changes 
in  their  physical  and  moral  circumstances  of 
a  favorable  nature. 

He  approached  his  sixtieth  year  before  the 
Bombay  command  was  ofifered  to  him ;  and 
he  left  England  for  the  presidency  in  1841. 
He  did  not  agree  cordially  with  any  gover- 
nor-general, during  his  Indian  connection,  ex- 
cept the  Earl  of  Ellenborough,  who  appreci- 
ated and  fully  underetood  his  character.  The 
reverses  in  Afifghanistan,  and  the  position  of 
the  Sikhs  on  the  upper  part. of  the  Indus, 
caused  great  anxiety  among  the  Anglo-In- 
dians and  in  this  country.  Scinde  was  under 
the  control  of  the  Ameere ;  and  their  power 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Indus  was  likely,  under 
any  reverse,  to  be  employed  against  the  Brit* 


496 


CHARLES  JAMES  NAPDCB. 


[Dec. 


ish  empire.  Suspicions  existed  on  good 
grounds  that  they  had  urged  the  Belooches 
to  attack  our  forces  in  the  mountain  passes. 
The  situation  of  affairs  was  peculiarly  embar- 
rassing. Defeat  in  Scinde  would  have  been 
ruinous,  and  yet  Sir  Charles  Napier  had 
scarcely  an  army.  He  had  only  a  respect- 
able detachment  for  the  conquest  of  a  ffreat 
csountry.  He  offered  his  terms  in  Scinde,  as 
an  invader,  with  3,000  men,  Europeans  and 
natives,  behind,  and  23,000  men  before  him. 
The  disparity  of  the  armies  caused  no  distrust 
in  his  dauntless  mind.  The  Ameers  did  not 
attacli  him,  he  did  not  attack  them,  but  en- 
deavored in  some  long,  weary  marches 
through  the  deserts  to  communicate  with 
Generals  Nott  and  Pollock,  then  engaged  in 
an  Affghanistan  campaign ;  and  he  seized  the 
fortresses  on  which  the  Ameers  relied  in 
these  marches,  thus  compelling  them  to  fight 
on  the  open  plain.  He  took  the  stronfg  for- 
tress of  Emaum  Ghur  with  only  300  men  of 
bis  Irish  regiment,  the  22d,  and  two  pieces 
of  artillery.  Mahommed  Khan,  who  had 
accumulated  stores  and  treasures  in  the  fort, 
fled  before  this  small  European  force ;  for  a 
very  salutary  dread  of  Sir  Charles  Napier 
depressed  the  courage  of  the  Ameers.  This 
fear  of  their  enemy  was  to  be  increased. 

The  small  army  under  his  command  was 
surrounded  by  opponents.  He  seemed  to 
be  cut  off  and  in  extreme  danger.  Therefore 
he  resolved  to  attack  1.6,000  Belooches, 
strongly  posted  at  Meanee,  before  they  could 
be  reinforced  by  other  divisions.  He  had 
2,600  men.  The  resolution,  therefore,  re- 
sembled despair,  but  his  calculations  were 
disappointed.  The  Belooches  succeeded  in 
joining  their  forces,  and  brought  into  the  field 
25,000  infantry  and  10,000  irregular  caval- 
ry. Sir  Charles  Napier  had  1,800  infantry, 
and  800  cavalry,  opposed  to  this  great  army. 
In  addition  to  numbers,  the  Belooches  had 
the  advantage  of  two  positions,  which  they 
had  selected  and  strengthened.  They  en- 
deavored to  draw  forward  the  small  band  of 
their  opponents  within  the  range  of  these 
mud  walls,  in  order  that  they  might  attack 
them  on  the  flank  and  rear.  Sir  Charles 
observed  the  opening  in  the  wall,  through 
which  their  ambuscade  was  to  sally,  and  he 
ordered  the  grenadier  company  of  the  22d 
to  seize  this  portal.  They  obeyed  his  order, 
and  although  their  captain  was  killed  in  the 
gate,  yet  this  company  of  eighty  men  cooped 
up  six  thousand  in  their  own  snare,  and  vir- 
tually gained  the  battle.  The  resistance  in 
front  was  tremendous.  The  Belooches  yrere 
brave  and  desperate  men.  They  charged  the 


.22d  with  vehemence,  although  the  superior 
practice  of  the  Irish  muskets  thinned  their 
ranks  rapidly,  or  laid  them  down  regularly 
where  they  had  stood.  The  English  artil- 
lery-men swept  the  flank  of  the  opposing 
army  with  continuous  showers  of  grape ;  but 
they  had  to  be  protected  from  the  fury  of 
their  wild  opponents,  who  absolutely  tore  at 
the  guns,  and  endeavored  to  overturn  them, 
while  they  were  being  blown  from  the  can- 
non's mouth  in  companies.  The  carnage  was 
appalling — the  courage  that  sustained  it  un- 
bending— but  the  Belooches  were  crowded 
in  struggling  masses,  among  whom  a  musket 
never  missed,  and  the  artillery  tore  up  bloody 
lanes  at  every  discharge.  The  physical  en- 
durance of  men  is,  however,  limited,  and 
after  bis  little  army  had  been  engaged  for 
more  than  three  hours  in  this  dreadful 
butchery.  Sir  Charles  Napier  saw  that  a  de- 
cisive effort  was  necessary.  He  ordered  his 
cavalry  to  charge.  The  fatal  artillery  played 
upon  the  thick  masses  of  flesh  and  blood  op- 
posed to  them  within  a  few  yards.  The  bay- 
onets and  the  bullets  of  the  22d  pressed  des- 
perately on  the  compact  ranks  around  them. 
It  was  the  last  struggle  for  victory,  and  the 
alternative  was  death.  Victory  was  obtained. 
The  army  of  the  Ameers  fled,  and  six  of 
these  chieftains  surrendered  after  the  battle. 
The .  slaughter  of  the  Belooches  had  been 
dreadful.  An  equal  number  of  men  had 
never  been  slain  in  a  modern  battle  by  an 
army  so  few  as  that  commanded  by  Sir 
Charles  Napier.  Six  thousand  men  were 
left  by  the  Ameers  on  the  field,  and  nearly 
all  of  them  perished.  The  battle  continued 
for  four  hours,  and  in  that  time  less  than  two 
thousand  men  had  slain  more  than  three 
times  their  own  number.  The  loss  of  the 
British  forces  was  comparatively  small,  but 
it  was  great  to  them.  Sixty  officers  and  two 
hundred  and  fifty  sergeants  and  privates  were 
disabled — nearly  one-fifth  of  their  army ;  and 
of  these,  six  officers  and  sixty  men  were  dead 
upon  the  field.  One- sixth  of  both  armies 
were  down.  Their  relative  proportions  stood 
as  at  the  commencement  at  the  close.  The 
victory  was,  therefore,  narrowly  won;  and 
if  the  battle  had  lasted  longer,  it  would  have 
ended  in  the  defeat  and  extirpation  of  this 
small  band.  The  odds  were  fifteen  to  one 
against  them  in  the  morning,  and  a  limit  ex- 
ists even  in  the  contests  of  disciplined  and 
fully  armed  soldiers  with  masses  of  brave 
men  ;  and  the  Belooches  were  brave. 

This  battle  of  Meanee,  fought  on  the  1 7th 
of  February,  1 843,  was  not  surpassedby  any 
former  contest  in  India,  full  as  the  history 


1858.] 


CHABLES  JAMES  JSfAPTESL 


477 


of  British  India  is  with  the  romance  of  war, 
either  in  the  vast  results  produced  by  slen- 
der means,  the  courage  of  the  general  and  his 
men,  the  intensity  of  the  struggle,  or  its  de- 
cisive termination. 

Wellington  gained  Assaye  with  nine  men 
*io  one  hundred  of  his  enemies  ;  and  he  lost 
one- third  of  his  force  in  killed  and  wounded, 
amounting  to  nearly  tw<:f  thousand,  in  inflict- 
ing a  loss  on  the  Mahrattas  not  greater  in 
numbers  than  the  Belooches  suffered  at  Mea- 
nee.  The  succeeding  victory  of  Wellington 
at  Argaum  was  decisive,  but  not  greater  in 
reference  to  the  proportionate  means  by 
which  the  end  was  achieved  than  Assaye,  and 
not  equal  to  Meanee. 

These  facts  should  not  be  forgotten  now 
by  those  who  value  military  services  and  re- 
ward them ;  for  we  feel,  and  all  men  feel, 
that  they  were  rather  overlooked  during  Sir 
Charles  Napier's  life. 

The  conquerer  of  Scinde  was  a  brave,  dar- 
ing, skilful  soldier,  but  he  was  not  a  reckless 
officer.  He  felt  the  embarrassing  nature  of 
bis  position  when  Hydrabad  was  opened  to 
his  little  army.  He  applied  to  Lord  Ellen- 
borough  for  reinforcements,  and  the  Gover- 
nor-General ordered  all  the  men  whom  he 
could  spare  from  other  emergencies  to  join 
the  army  of  Scinde.  Shere  Mahommed,  the 
greatest  of  the  Ameers,  known  in  his  own 
country  as  "  the  Lion,"  had  another  army 
ready,  or  the  remains  of  the  old  army  reor- 

Sanized,  in  little  more  than  a  month  after 
[eanee.  He  refused  to  surrender,  and  Sir 
Charles  Napier  met  him  at  Dubba,  near  Hy- 
drabad, on  the  24th  of  March.  The  British 
army  was  now  5,000  strong,  and  the  Beloo- 
ches numbered  nearly  25,000  men.  The 
disparity  was  great,  but  not  so  hopeless  as 
at  Meanee.  Still  three  hours'  hard  fighting 
and  a  terrible  slaughter  were  needed  before 
Shere  Mahommed  was  driven  from  his  strong 
position  at  Dubba,  and  Scinde  was  finally 
won.  The  battle  was  brilliantly  fought  and) 
victory  bravely  achieved ;  vet  the  result 
proved  the  necessity  for  those  reinforce- 
ments which  Sir  Charles  Napier  prudently 
demanded  and  Lord  Ellenborough  promptly 
supplied. 

That  governor-general  at  once  made  the 
conqueror  of  Scinde  its  governor ;  and  the 
resolution  was  amply  vindicated  by  the  re- 
sult. Sir  Charles  Napier  applied  his  admin- 
istrative talents  incessantly  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  resources  of  Scinde.  He  planned 
bridges,  canals,  and  roads.  He  provided 
means  for  the  protection  of  life  and  property. 
He    promoted   agriculture  and  commerce. 


Within  a  few  months  he  had  repressed  dis- 
order, secured  hidustry  in  its  rights,  sup- 
pressed the  banditti  formed  from  the  broken 
ranks  of  a  desperate  army,  and  turned  the 
lawless  and  wild  borderers  into  peaceable 
men  of  work.  Covered  with  wounds,  con- 
stitutionally weak,  somewhat  bent  by  years 
ami  fatigue,  but  mentally  active,  energetic, 
and  strong,  he  moved  incessantly  over  the 
vast  land  which  he  had  added  to  the  empire, 
corrected  abuses,  repaired  injuries,  and  sup- 
plied incentives  to  industry.  He  was  a  strict 
disciplinarian,  and  much  sentimental  writing 
was  employed  to  depict  and  denounce  his 
conduct  to  the  Ameers ;  but  he  never  bad 
promised  to  respect  the  claims,  further  than 
they  were  well  founded,  of  the  idle,  the  weak, 
and  worthless.  He  had  never  offered  en- 
couragement to  a  feudal  system  of  life.  His 
practice  always  vindicated  the  maxim,  that 
those  who  live  by,  should  also  live  for,  msn- 
kind.  The  Ameers,  therefore,  had  no  rea- 
son to  anticipate  any  exaggerated  regard 
from  a  man  who  lived  for  the  people  rather 
than  their  rulers.  In  Scinde  he  was  a  des- 
pot, but  one  of  a  beneficent  character ;  illus- 
trating the  opinion  of  some,  that  in  certain 
stages  of  society  a  despotic  government  would 
be  suitable  if  any  security  could  be  afforded 
for  its  quality.  A  good  and  wise  despot, 
however,  is  of  very  rare  occurrence. 

We  recur  to  the  battle  of  Dubba  only  to 
contrast  it  with  the  brilliant  victories  of  Lord 
Lake  at  Delhi,  Agra,  and  Laswaree.  The 
achievements  of  General  Lake  were  most 
decisive,  and  they  were  accomplished  with 
limited  means ;  but  neither  of  them  excelled 
the  victory  of  Dubba,  or  approached  the 
tremendous  fight  of  Meanee ;  yet  they  gained 
for  General  Lake  a  place  in  the  peerage.  No 
student  of  Indian  history  says  that  honors 
were  ill-bestowed  on  that  brave  man.  Few 
remember  without  regret  that  he  who  should 
have  borne,  and  could  have  well  sustained 
them,  died  early  in  the  olive  grove,  and  sleeps 
among  the  crags  and  rocks  of  Rolica.  But 
without  referring  to  the  deeds  performed  by 
living  men,  and  the  honors  awarded  to  them, 
it  is  scarcely  possible  to  recall  the  names  of 
great  Indian  leaders,  without  feeling  that  a 
sad  omission  has  occurred  in  this  case — one 
also  that  cannot  now  be  fully  rectified. 

The  defeat  of  regular  armies  in  the  field 
was  an  easier  matter  probably  than  the  effect- 
ual discomfiture  of  the  desert  chiefs  on  the 
borders,  who  had  lived  and  prospered  by 
plunder,  and  knew  no  better  means  of  replen- 
ishing their  larders.  This  object  was,  not- 
withstanding its  difficulty,  not  only  completed 


478 


0HABLES  JAMS  KAPiSB 


[Dec., 


by  Sir  Charles  Napier,  but  effected  in  a  spirit 
that  won  the  hearts  of  the  vanqaished  Sir- 
dars, who  first  named  their  conqueror  the 
Brother  of  the  Evil  One,  for  his  success  in 
war ;  and  then  gave  him  their  allegiance,  for 
the  lessons  he  taught  them  in  the  arts  of 
peace.  Two  swords  were  carried  upon  his 
coffin  at  Portsmouth.  One  of  them  was 
notched  and  worn,  for  it  was  his  father's; 
and  the  blade  had  suffered  no  disgrace  in  the 
keeping  of  the  son.  The  second  was  the 
''Sword  of  Peace,"  presented  to  Sir  Charles 
Napier  when  he  left  Scinde,  by  those  robber- 
chieftains  whom  he  had  turned  into  honest 
men. 

The  great  Sikh  war  broke  out  when  the 
hostilities  in  Scinde  were  quelled.  The  ac- 
tivity of  the  Governor  of  Scinde  was  shown 
by  the  magnitude  of  the  army  which  he  col- 
lected and  held  ready  to  march  upwards  to 
the  Sutlej.  Lord  Ellenborough  had  then  re- 
signed the  governor- generalship,  and  an  old 
soldier  occupied  that  high  position.  His 
plans  did  not  include  the  employment  of  the 
ocinde  army  in  the  Sutlej,  although  a  move- 
ment up  the  Indus  was,  we  think,  proposed 
by  Sir  Charles  Napier,  and  would  have  been 
effective.  Following  the  instructions  of  Sir 
Henry  Hardinge,  he  occupied  Bewalpore,  and 
thus  missed  the  great  battles  of  Ferozepore, 
Aliwal,  and  Sobraon ;  but  some  persons  be- 
lieved that  if  Sir  Charles  Napier's  corps,  then 
numbering  12,000  to  15,000  effective  men, 
had  been  drawn  up  the  Indus,  in  sufficient 
time,  under  their  gallant  chief,  Ferozepore, 
or  its  substitute,  would  have  been  more  de- 
cisive, and  no  Sobraon  would  have  been  re- 
quired. The  first  Sikh  campaign  was  more 
near  a  defeat  than  those  who  fought  at  So- 
braon willingly  admit ;  and  the  assistance 
offered  from  Scinde  would  have  greatly  re- 
duced, if  it  had  not  entirely  removed,  any 
doubt  of  its  issue  ever  entertained. 

Sir  Charles  Napier  resigned  the  governor- 
ship of  Scinde  and  returned  to  England  in 
1847.  He  found  his  country  suffering  under 
great  calamities,  and  meditating  grand  polit- 
ical changes ;  but  the  ardor  with  which  he 
was  welcomed  by  the  army  extended  also  to 
the  citizenship  of  the  land ;  and  his  country- 
men instinctively  recognized  in  him  a  great 
hero  and  a  great  man — a  man  who  was  never 
idle,  and  whose  engagements  were  invariably 
directed  against  abuses  and  corruption. 

The  conquest  and  annexation  of  Scinde 
present  Sir  Charles  Napier's  character  in 
three  distinct  departments :  as  a  soldier  per- 
forming prodigies  of  valor,  unrivalled  in  the 
disproportion  between  his  means  and  the  re- 


sults, by  any  preceding  achievements  in  In- 
dia: as  an  administratori^  who,  succeeding  to 
the  guidance  of  a  kingdom  in  a  state  of  anar- 
I  cby,  repelled  with  an  equitable,  although  a 
strong  hand,  the  crimes  of  an  armed  banditti; 
create  J  confidence  in  his  government ;  estab- 
lished peace,  law,  and  order;  elicited  the 
forgotten  resources  of  the  land,  and  increased 
the  means  of  the  population,  and  the  revenue 
of  the  state,  with  almost  inconceivable  and 
incredible  rapidity  :  and  as  a  writer,  defend- 
ing his  proceedings,  on  all  points,  against 
corrupted  and  unprincipled  adversaries.  The 
military,  when  contrasted  with  the  civil  sei^ 
vice  of  India,  is  poor  and  pure.  Charges 
originating  in  the  disappointment  of  those 
camp  followers  who  expect  an  enlargement 
of  pay  and  place  from  each  extension  of  the 
Indian  empire,  were  directed  at  Sir  Charles 
Napier's  conduct  in  India.  They  made  no 
gain,  and  therefore  they  asserted  that  the 
country  suffered  loss.  The  native  Ameers 
were  not  dethroned  to  make  room  for  English 
agents ;  and  therefore,  in  the  opinion  of  Bom- 
bay writers,  the  former  chiefs  of  Scinde 
should  not  have  been  displaced.  Their  con- 
queror organized  a  cheap  and  just,  which,  ac- 
cording to  his  critics,  could  not  be  a  good 
and  profitable,  government,  for  it  secured  no 
advancement  to  them  or  their  friends.  He 
established  public  works,  planned  canals, 
embankments  and  roads ;  proposed  irrigation 
on  an  extensive  scale,  and  sought  to  restore 
in  Scinde  the  palmy  days  of  Egyptian  agri- 
culture. These  views  were  not  shared  by 
men  who  searched  for  pleasure  and  riches  in 
the£ki9t;and  who  longed  for  the  hunting 
parties  of  the  expelled  Ameers,  who  were 
great  in  game-preserving,  at  any  cost  to  their 
subjects — a  science  of  which  their  practical 
successor  could  not  comprehend  the  profit. 
We  admit  that  the  brave  soldier  was  not  also 
a  patient  exponent  of  his  own  policy.  He 
met  censure  by  rebuke ;  but  if  his  answers 
were  sharp,  like  his  sword,  the  attacks  in 
which  they  originated  were  often  dastardly 
and  vindictive. 

The  discussion  of  the  Indian  bill  in  the 
present  year  has  furnished  convincing  evi- 
dence that  his  plans  for  the  government  of 
Scinde  comprised  all  that  is  deemed  essential 
for  an  enlightened  administration  of  Indian 
resources,  and  also  superabundant  proof  that 
the  civil  service  of  the  older  presidencies  has 
been  grievously  neglected.  A  very  short 
time  has  passed  since  his  death,  but  during 
that  interval  accounts  have  been  received  of 
the  business  transacted  at  the  fair  of  Kurra- 
chee.     Those  statements  of  "Manchester 


1668.] 


OHABLES  JAMES  NAFESB. 


479 


men,"  from  the  spot,  develop  a  new  explana- 
tion of  the  jealousy  of  Bombay  interests  at 
the  annexation  and   settlement  of  Sciode. 
Sir  Charles  Napier  expected  that  the  Indus 
would  be  turned  to  commercial  advantage 
when  he  completed  the  conquest  of  the  coun- 
try forming  in  some  measure  its  delta.    This 
great  river  almost  meets  the  Ganges  at  its 
springs ;  has  the  Sntlej,  comprising  the  five 
rivers  of  the  Ppnjaub,  for  its  tributary ;  ex- 
tends in  its  course  from  the  frozen  regions 
high  on  the  Himalaya  Mountains,  to  the  trop- 
ical verdure  of  the  Indian  plains;  and  must 
command   ultimately    the  goods   traffic    of 
central  Asia  and  the  north-western  provinces 
of  the  Anglo-Indian  empire.     The  experi- 
ence of  past  years,  and  especially  that  of  the 
present  season,  vindicates  the  accuracy  of  the 
opinion  entertained  by  Sir  Charles  Napier. 
His  opinion  has  been  shared  by  all  parties 
who  have  studied  the  subject ;  but  that  cir- 
cumstance could  not  disarm  the  local  enmity, 
or  enlarge  the  narrow  views  of  Bombay  mer- 
chants, who  infused  their  fears  into  the  Bom- 
bay press,  not  candidly  and  openly,  but  in 
strictures  on  the  war  in  Scinde,  which  they 
could   not  or  would  not  understand ;   and 
homilies  on  economy,  to  which,  in  the  man- 
agement of  public  affairs,  they  were  entirely 
unaccustomed.     The   Governor  of    Scinde 
never  possessed  the  gift  of  patience  under 
wrong,  in  an  eminent  degree.    An  ardent 
disposition  was  so  ingrained  into  a  generous 
nature,   that   the    conqueror  -of  I^drabad 
could  not  so  far  conquer  himself  as  to  remain 
quietly  under  injustice,  until  time  should  re- 
dress the  wrong.     He  thus  involved  himself 
in  anxieties  and  cares  which  calmer,  if  less  va- 
luable, men  would  have  escaped.     But  that 
fact  forms  no  apology  for  the  unjust  criti- 
cisms to  which  he  was  exposed,  or  the  errone- 
ous statements  employed  to  support  them. 

After  the  return  of  Sir  Charles  Napier 
from  India,  bis  time  was  occupied  in  promot- 
ing changes  in  the  system  of  government 
pursued  there,  in  correspondence  and  pamph- 
lets on  Indian  affairs,  and  in  his  military  re- 
forms. Reference  has  been  already  made  in 
this  sketch  to  the  second  Sikh  war.  Disas- 
ters seemed  again  impending  over  north- 
western India.  Lord  Gough  had  not  been 
successful,  and  confidence  was  not  felt  in  his 
policy.  The  ideas  entertained  regarding  his 
military  skill  were  perhaps  unjust ;  but  the 
stake  was  great  and  the  risk  imminent.  The 
government  of  the  day  required  the  late 
Duke  of  Wellington  to  supply  a  list  of  three 
names  from  whom  a  successor  could  be  ap- 
pointed.  It  b  said  that  he  wrote  Sir  Charles 


Napier's  name  thrice  upon  a  sheet  of  paper, 
and  enclosed  it.  The  precaution  was  not 
unnecessary.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  had 
a  practical  end  in  view ;  and  in  the  discharge 
of  a  great  trust,  he  determined  that  no  mis- 
take should  occur.  A  second  time,  and  when 
approaching  \ns  seventieth  year,  Sir  Charles 
Napier  crossed  to  India.  Before  his  arrival 
the  exigency  had  passed,  and  Lord  Gough 
had  defeated  the  Sikhs;  but  his  successor 
was  thus  enabled  to  carry  out  reforms  which 
he  had  planned,  in  the  Indian  army.  These 
changes  were  all  favorable  to  the  material  effi- 
ciency and  the  moral  improvement  of  the  for- 
ces. Extravagance  and  gambling  were  sup- 
pressed. Economy  and  simplicity  were  re- 
commended in  the  service.  Young  men  were 
taught,  by  example  and  precept,  the  means 
of  acquiring  independence ;  and  no  man  could 
lecture  better  on  that  subject  than  the  officer 
of  whom  it  has  been  said,  that  when  the 
messenger  from  the  India  House,  bearing  the 
dispatch  which  announced  his  appointment 
to  the  chief  command  of  the  Indian  army, 
called  at  his  residence  in  Berkeley  street,  he 
was  admitted  by  a  female  servant,  and  found 
the  general  at  dinner,  who  quietly  expressed 
his  regret  that  he  should  trouble  him  to  call 
again — but  added,  that  he  had  no  second 
apartment  in  which  he  could  invite -him  to 
wait. 

A  warm  welcome  to  India  was  followed 
soon  by  a  final  farewell ;  and  Sir  Charles 
Napier  left  its  shores  to  return  no  more ;  yet 
his  heart  was  in  that  land.  More  than  many 
British  statesmen,  he  fell  its  importance; 
more  than  many  Anglo-Indians,  who  had  ac- 
quired fame  and  fortune  on  its  plains,  he 
planned  and  studied  for  its  people's  advan- 
tage. Death  found  him  still  in  harness  and 
at  work.  His  last  pamphlet  on  Indian  affairs 
is,  and  now  will  ever  be,  an  unfinished  essay 
— a  fragment,  suspended  and  stopped  by  dis- 
eabe.  He  left  London  as  the  end  of  his 
days  approached,  by  his  physicians'  orders, 
in  the  hope  that  the  peace  of  Oaklands 
might  tend  to  restore  his  broken  health  ;  but 
all  the  battles  of  that  courageous  spirit,  ex- 
cept one,  were  passed ;  and  he  went  home 
only  to  die. 

The  character  of  this  man  is  not  easily 
drawn.  He  has  done  much  in  various  depart- 
ments, and  always  well.  He  finished  what- 
ever he  commenced,  and  no  enterprise  ap- 
peared too  great  for  his  mind.  We  must 
remember  that  his  active  life  began  early. 
Sixty  years  of  military  service  out  of  seventy- 
one  years  of  life  left  little  time  for  the  sys- 
tematic acquisition  of  knowledge ;  yet  he 


480 


THE  LOTTERY. 


n> 


•f 


knew  much,  and  was  not  often  caught  in 
error.  He  held  enlarged  views  on  our  colo- 
nial empire  at  an  early  period  of  life.  He 
had  studied  social  politics  carefully,  and 
could  expound  them  advantageously.  He 
loved  his  countrv  well,  and  never,  even  when 
neglected,  did  his  patriotism  suflfer  any  dim- 
inution. He  was  warmly  attached  to  his 
profession,  and  the  common  soldiers  followed 
and  regarded  him  as  a  friend.  He  was  se- 
vere and  simple  in  his  habits  of  life  ;  and  yet 
the  natives  of  India,  fond  of  display  and  os- 
tentation, were  soon  and  strongly  attached 
to  his  character.  He  was  eminently  brave, 
and  a  great  military  commander ;  but  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  he  was  not  equally 
great  as  an  administrator  and  organizer  of 
civil  government.  His  life  was  remarliably 
active,  his  labors  peculiarly  abundant;  and 
he  escaped  the  snares  and  temptations  of 
idleness.  His  frame  was  never  robust ;  and 
instead  of  his  death  now  causing  astonish- 
ment, it  is  surprising  that  he  lived  so  long. 
He  conquered  and  pacified  Scinde,  while  la- 
boring under  disease  that  would  have  con- 
fined ordinary  men  to  a  bed-chamber,  and 
enriched  their  physicians.  His  ardent  and 
energetic  mind  miffht  long  before  1853  have 
worn  out  the  frail  and  shattered  body,  in 
which,-  lacerated  as  it  was  by  steel,  torn  by 
lead,  and  broken  and  bruised  by  all  kinds  of 
weapons,  he  was  nevertheless,  consistent  with 
the  family  motto,  "  Ready,  aye  ready !"  to 
think  and  to  act,  to  bleed  and  suffer,  to  do 
or  die  for  his  country's  honor,  peace  and 
welfare. 

He  was  buried  at  Portsmouth,  and  it  little 
matters  where  that  sadly  cut  and  torn  body 
was  laid ;  but  Britain  has  no  dust  stored  in 


grand  and  national  edifices,  that  in  life  labor- 
ed more  or  labored  better  in  her  defense,  or 
for  her  prosperity.  He  was  carried  to  his 
grave  by  soldiers ;  and  strong-minded  men 
wept  as  they  lowered  his  coffin  to  its  place ; 
as  well  they  might,  for  in  all  that  pomp  of 
death  and  funereal  splendor,  England  was 
poorer  by  a  brave  spirit — a  noble  heart  lost 
to  the  land — a  reformer  in  peace — and  a 
leader  in  war  whose  name  was  strength  to 
her  friends  and  terror  to  her  foes.  The  lion- 
hearted  chief,  of  whom  it  might  be  truly 
said,  he  never  feared  the  face  of  man,  sleeps 
where  in  danger's  hour  he  would  have  lived 
or  died — not  m  the  centre  of  his  country — 
not  in  the  midst  of  her  millions,  but  in  the 
outpost,  the  foreground,  the  vanfiruard  of  all 
the  land.  His  friends  have  buried  him  where 
he  would  have  stood,  if  England  ever  had 
been  threatened  by  foreign  foes  ;  and  while 
men  long,  and  look,  and  pray  for  peace  on 
earth,  they  need  not  forget  that  often  peace 
is  threatened  by  evil  pasisions;  and  if  soon 
again  this  nation  has  to  encounter  the  shock 
of  battle  for  existence,  or  for  great  principles, 
the  eye  is  closed  that  would  have  directed 
her  armies ;  the  hand  is  cold  and  crumbling 
that  would  have  grasped  a  stiunless  but  a 
well-worn  sword  m  her  defense ;  and  that 
chivalrous  spirit  has  passed  from  us  for  ever, 
who  in  prosperity  was  often  neglected  by 
courtiers  and  politicians,  because  he  was  too 
honest  to  be  diplomatic;  but  on  whom,  in 
adverse  days,  all  trusted  once ;  and  all  again, 
in  darker  hours  and  greater  dangers,  would 
have  followed  eagerly  and  trusted  well. 

When  it  was  said  that  Sir  Charles  J.  Napier 
was  dead,  all  men  felt  that  England  could 
not  often  mourn  for  an  equal  loss. 


-♦♦- 


Tub  Loitert. — Before  that  national  evil, 
the  lottery,  was  abolished  in  France,  a  village 
curate  thought  it  his  duty  to  address  to  his 
flock  a  sermon  against  their  dangerous  in- 
fatuation for  this  privileged  form  of  gambling. 
His  auditory  consisted  of  a  crowd  of  misera- 
ble old  women,  ready  to  pawn  or  sell  their 
last  garment  to  secure  the  means  of  purchas- 
ing tickets.  Nevertheless  the  good  man 
flattered  himself  that  his  eloquence  was  not 
thrown  away,  for  his  flock  was  singularly 
attentive. 

"  You  cannot  deny,"  said  he,  addressing 
them,  "  that  if  one  of  you  were  to  dream  this 


night  of  lucky  numbers,  ten,  twenty,  fifty,  no 
matter  what,  instead  of  being  restrained  by 
your  duty  towards  your8elve3,  your  families, 
your  God,  you  would  rush  off  to  the  lottery 
office,  and  purchase  tickets." 

Satisfied  that  he  had  accomplished  more 
than  one  conversion  among  his  hearers,  the 
good  euri  stepped  down  from  his  pulpit: 
when  on  the  last  step,  the  hand  of  an  old 
hag  who  had  appeared  particularly  attentive 
to  bis  admonitions,  was  laid  on  his  arm. 

"  I  beg  your  reverence's  pardon,"  said  she, 
"  but  tohat  lucky  numbers  did  you  please  to 
say  we  were  likely  to  dream  of?" 


1658.] 


THOMAS  MOORE  AND  LORD  JOHN  RUB8ELL. 


481 


From  Hogg's  laitruetor. 


THOMAS  HOORE  AND  LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL. 


BY     QBOROS     OILFILLAK. 


Tbis  is  par  excellence  the  age  of  biogra- 
phies. And  yet  we  have  not  heard,  recently 
at  least,  of  any  systematio  inquiry  premised 
as  to  what  are  the  qualifications  and  the  du- 
ties of  a  genuine  biographier.  We  propose, 
ere  coming  to  Moore  and  his  noble  life- com- 
piler, to  prefix  a  few  rapid  remarks  upon  this 
subject. 

A  biographer  should  himself  have  lived. 
If  he  has  been  a  mere  stucco-man — a  Dr. 
Dryasdust,  conversing  with  folios,  rather  than 
with  facts  or  feelinffs,  or  the  ongoing  rush 
of  human  life — let  him  catalogue  books,  but 
avoid  the  biography  of  living  men.  There 
are  those,  too,  who  have  lived  ;  but  who,  like 
Coleridge,  have  lived  collaterally,  or  aside, 
who  have  not  properly  digested  into  intellec- 
tual chyle  the  facts  of  their  own  history,  and 
who  are  little  better  adapted  for  biography 
than  sleep-walkers  might  be.  A  biographer 
should,  if  possible,  have  lived  with  the  man 
whose  life  he  undertakes  to  write.  Dr. 
Johnson  has  added  his  weighty  ipse  dixit  to 
a  similar  statement,  and  no  one  has  served 
more  thoroughly  to  substantiate  it  than  his 
own  biographer ;  for  it  is  clear  that,  had  Bos- 
well  undertaken  to  write  the  life  of  one  with 
whom  he  had  not  lived,  it  had  justified  John- 
son's statement,  that  Bos  well  was  not  fit  to 
write  the  life  of  an  ephemeron.  Living  with 
a  man,  in  some  cases — ^although  we  grant 
these  are  rare  and  peculiar — is  nearly  equal 
to  all  other  qualifications  for  the  office  uf  a 
biographer,  and  can  almost  make  up  for  the 
want  of  them  all.  We  do  not,  however,  seek 
to  confound  liting  with  and  living  beside  a 
man.  It  were  possible  to  live  for  a  century 
beside  a  man,  and  yet  not  have  lived  with 
him  for  a  single  hour.  To  live  beside  a  man, 
requires  only  the  element  of  contiguity ;  to 
live  with  him,  implies  knowledge,  love,  sym- 
pathy, and  watchful  observation  of  his  char- 
acter. A  biographer  should  bear  a  certain 
specific  resemblance  to  the  subject  of  his 
work.  He  should  be  able  to  receive,  if  not 
to  equal,  his  author,  otherwise  he  may  write 

VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


a  book  of  the  size  of  the  "Universal  His- 
tory/' and  yet  not  utter  one  genuine  or  wor- 
thy word  about  him.  8ome  critics  have  dwelt 
on  the  disparities  between  Boswell  and  John- 
son. These  were  wide  and  obvious;  but  the 
resemblance^  were  stronger  and  subtler  far. 
As  to  intellect,  there  was  between  them  a 
**  great  gulf  fixed ;"  but  m  creed,  tempera- 
ment, moral  character,  native  tastes,  and  ac- 
quired predilections,  the  two  were  nearly 
identical.  So  that  Boswell's  Johnson  is  no 
paradox  in  literature :  it  is  the  inevitable  re- 
sult of  the  contact  of  two  minds  strangely 
dissimilar,  and  still  more  singularly  like  each 
other — as  inevitable  as  the .  connection  be- 
tween the  earth  and  the  sun.  A  biographer 
should  have  a  strong  lov^  and  admiration  for 
the  subject  of  the  life.  He  should  see  him 
as  he  is,  faults  and  virtues ;  but  should  have 
a  preponderating  estimate  of  the  excellences 
of  the  character.  He  should  go  to  his  task 
as  to  a  sacred  duty,  and  should  hold  hb  pen 
as  if  it  were  the  brand  of  an  altar.  A  biogra- 
phy like  that  of  Miss  Seward  by  Scott,  writ- 
ten without  any  sympathy,  real  or  pretended, 
with  the  person,  is  a  nuisance  on  the  earth. 
Boswell  was  in  many  things  a  second-rate  man ; 
but  in  love  for  his  theme  he  was  never  equal- 
led, and  this  has  given  him  his  great  biogra- 
phical eminence.  A  biographer,  again,  should 
understand  the  relation  existing  between  his 
hero  and  his  times,  and  should  be  able  philo- 
sophically to  adjust  him  in  position  to  his  con- 
temporaries. And,  in  fine,  he  should  see, 
and  fix  on,  and  paint  the  real  life  of  the  char- 
acter, shearing  off  all  superfluities,  general- 
izing minor  details,  seeking  to  show  the  ele- 
ment of  progress  and  growth  in  the  man's 
history,  and  striving  to  give  to  his  book  an 
artistic  unity. 

Assuming  this  high  standard,  very  few 
lives,  indeed,  come  up  to  the  mark.  Bps- 
well's  book  is  inimitably  like,  but  it  is  rather 
a  literal  likeness  than  a  work  of  high  art. 
Moore's  "  Sheridan"  is  a  flaring,  though  pow- 
erful daub.     His  "  Byron"  is  much  better  ia 


482 


THOMAS  MOORE  AND  LORD  JOHK  RUSSELL 


[Dec., 


composition,  but  has  a  certain  air  of  untruth- 
fulness and  special  pleading  around  it.  Joho- 
son'd  "  Savage"  is  a  splendid  representation 
of  a  worthless  subject — like  an  ass  or  a  pig 
from  the  pencil  of  Morland,  or  a  "  sad-dog 
bj  Land^oer.  Scott's  lives  are  gossipping 
and  sketchy,  without  much  force  or  firmness 
of  execution.  Cunningham's  are  racj,  but 
deficient  in  careful  finish.  Soutbey's  **  Nel- 
son" is  one  of  the  most  delightful,  and  Croly's 
"  Burke"  one  of  the  most  forcible,  of  biogra- 
phies. Macaul.iy's  articles  on  Clive,  Chat- 
bam«  and  Hastings  are,  in  reality,  brief  and 
brilliant  lives.  On  the  whole,  however,  our 
age  has  its  Plutarch  yet  to  seek,  and  has  not, 
we  are  sorry  to  say,  found  him  in  Lord  John 
Russell. 

Our  purpose,  however,  is  less  to  speak  of 
the  biographer  than  to  submit  some  remarks 
on  the  subject  of  the  biography  of  that  bril- 
liant but  not  bulky  son  of  Erin,  dear  "  Tom 
Little." 

The  literature  of  li-eland  has  been  charged 
with  a  certain  air  of  sternness  and  gloom, 
as  if  in  keeping  with  the  fate  and  fortunes  of 
that  beautiful  but  unlucky  land — that  land 
of  famine  and  fertility,  of  wit  and  folly,  of 
magni6cent  scenery  and  of  starving  souls — 
that  brilliant  blot,  that  splendid  degradation, 
that  bright  and  painful  paradox  among  the 
nations  of  the  world.  Gay,  indeed,  some- 
times their  writers  are,  but  their  gayety  is 
often  breaking  down,  dying  away  into  a 
'*  quaver  of  consternation ;"  and  the  three 
highest  writers,  incomparablvi  that  Ireland 
has  produced — Berkeley,  Burke, and  Swift — 
are  all  serious  in  essence,  although  the  last 
of  them  is  often  light  and  frivolous  in  man- 
ner. Even  with  Goldsmith's  humor  a  cer- 
tain sadness  at  times  mincrles.  Croly  is 
generally  lofty  and  fierce,  like  Hercules  ago- 
nizing under  Nessus'  shirt,  and  tussing  CEia's 
pines  into  the  air.  '  But  Moore  was  really  a 
lightsome  and  chirruping  being.  It  may  be 
that  he  had  not  depth  enough  to  be  other- 
wise ;  but  certainly  not  only  is  his  mirth 
never  melancholy,  but  his  serious  vein  is 
never  deeply  tragical.  He  touches  with  the 
same  light,  careless,  but  graceful  hand,  the 
springs  of  laughter  and  the  sources  of  tears. 
He  is,  perhups,  the  least  suggestive  of  all 
poetic  writers.  Musical,  picturesque,  elegant 
and  fanciful,  he  is  seldom  thoughtful  or  truly 
imaginative.  Who  would  give  much  ''for  the 
thought"  of  a  cricket  on  the  hearth,  or  of 
a  fire-fly  buzzing  through  the  midnight  ?  It 
is  enough  that  it  pursues  its  own  way  to 
music,  and  that  all  eyes  follow  with  pleasure 
its  tiny  procession. 


Smallness  is  some  how  inseparably  connect- 
ed with  our  notion  of  Moore,  as  well  as  with 
that  of  some  other  distinguished  men  of  the 
day.  All  about  him  is  as  small  as  it  is  bril- 
liant. His  clenched  fist  of  anger  is  just  a 
nut — his  love  is  an  intense  burning  drop-— 
the  dance  of  his  fancy  is  as  if  *'  on  the  point 
of  a  needle ;"  and  when  in  the  Anacreontic 
vein  he  tipples,  it  is  in  *'  thimblesful."  His 
spite  and  hatred,  again,  form  a  sting  small 
but  veiy  sharp,  and  which  never  spills  an  in- 
finitesimal drop  of  the  venom.  He  is,  in 
fact,  a  poetic  homoeopath,  and,  whether  he 
try  to  kill  you  with  laughter  or  to  cure  you 
by  sense,  he  must  deal  in  minute  and  in- 
tensely concentrated  doses.  And,  whatever 
may  be  the  case  in  medicine,  there  can  be  no 
question  that,  in  satire  and  song,  compound 
division  is  a  most  powerful,  almost  magical 
rule. 

Ireland's  writers  have  often  been  praised 
and  often  blamed  for  their  imagination  ;  but, 
in  fact,  not  above  two  or  three  of  them  have 
possessed  any  thing  more  than  a  vivid  fancy. 
Swift  had  plenty  of  wit,  and  inventiveness, 
and  coarse  fancy,  and  sense,  and  a  humor 
"  dry  as  a  remainder  biscuit  after  a  voyage ;" 
but  he  had  not  a  spark  of  the  fusing,  unify- 
ing, inspiring  imaginative  power.  Goldsmith 
rose  often  to  high  poetic  eloquence — he  was 
an  exquisite  artist,  but  hardly  in  the  full 
sense  a  bard.  Burke  possessed  the  true 
vatistic  gift,  but  it  was  often  wasted  on 
barren  fields  of  prophecy.  Berkeley's  power 
of  imagination  was  commensurate  with  his 
intellect,  but  both  were  in  some  measure 
thrown  away  upon  arenas  of  abstraction, 
where  no  grass  grew  or  corn  waved,  whatr 
ever  flowers  might  spring.  The  recent  popu- 
lar writers  or  speakers  of  Ireland — such  as 
Carleton,  Banim,  Lover,  Lever,  Shiel,  and  a 
hundred  more — are  profuse  in  fancy,  humor, 
wit,  and  talent,  but  have  not  given  us  much 
that  has,  in  earnestneAS,  depth  and  originality, 
the  elements  of  permanent  power.  Next  to 
Burke  and  Berkeley,  O'Connell,  after  all,  was 
the  greatest  poet  that  the  Green  Isle  has 
produced.  He  could  and  did,  at  times,  trifle 
with  the  subordinate  feelings  of  human 
nature,  and  use  them  at  his  wild  or  wicked 
will :  he  could  always  touch  and  command 
the  passions ;  but  he  sometimes  also  appeal- 
ed, with  overwhelming  power,  to  the  deepest 
springs  of  the  human  imagination,  and  the 
suul  of  his  hearers  rose  ever  and  anon,  like 
an  apparition,  at  his  bidding. 

Nor  did  Moore  possess  the  highest  order 
of  imagination.  He  was  rather  swift  than 
strong — rather  lively  than  profound — rather 


1858.] 


THOMAS  MOORE  A?7D  LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL. 


488 


a  mimic  of  exquisite  taste  and  universal  talent 
than  a  poet.  It  is  disgraceful  to  think  that, 
while  Shelley  and  Wordsworth  were  in  thoir 
lifetime  treated  either  with  cold  negkct  ur 
with  fierce  hostility,  Moore  was  a  very  ppt  of 
popularity.  For  this  we  are  disposed,  after 
all,  to  blame  not  only  the  public,  but  still 
more  the  critics  of  that  day.  We  have  all 
heard  of  Warwick  the  king-maker.  Jeffrey 
and  Gifford  were  the  poet-makers  of  that 
period,  and  neither  of  them  were  entirely 
worthy  of  their  high  vocation.  We  attach 
less  blame  to  the  latter  of  these,  for  he  was 
deficient  in  the  very  first  elements  of  poetical 
criticism,  and  his  verdicts  on  poetry  are  as 
worthless  as  those  of  a  blind  man  on  the 
paintings  of  Raphael,  or  those  of  one  desti- 
tute of  a  musical  ear  on  the  oratorios  of 
Handel.  He  could  only  bark  and  rave,  like 
a  disappointed  bloodhound,  i^round  that 
magic  circle  from  which  he  was  for  ever  ex- 
cluded. But  Jeffrey  was  deserving  of  far 
more  emphatic  condemnation,  since  he  per- 
mitted personal  and  party  feelings  to  inter- 
fere with  the  integrity  of  his  critical  jurisdic- 
tion. Crabbe,  the  Whig,  he  over- praised  ; 
Wordsworth,  the  Tory,  he  abused ;  Byron, 
the  lord,  he  magnified  considerably  above 
bis  merit ;  Burns,  the  ploughman  and  gau- 
ger,  he  sought  to  push  down  below  his  level, 
although  of  this  he  was  deeply  ashamed  be- 
fore his  death.  To  the  universally  popular 
Scott,  as  a  novelist,  he  did  ample  justice. 
To  the  outcast  son  of  Genius,  that  **  phan- 
tom among  men,"  the  brave,  gifted,  although 
unhappily  blinded,  Shelley,  he  never  once 
alluded,  till  he  had  been  seven  years  slum- 
bering in  the  Italian  dust.  M^ore  and 
Campbell,  as  sharers  of  his  politics  and 
pleasures,  he  contributed  to  exalt  to  unbound- 
ed popularity.  Southey  and  Coleridge,  the 
Conservative  Christians,  he  did  all  he  could 
to  crush.  Nor  was  this,  as  in  Gifford *s  case, 
the  effect  of  gross  iguorancCsof  what  poetry 
was  ;  for  this  plea  cannot  be  put  in  in  behalf 
of  one  who  has  so  exquiaitely  criticised 
Shakspere,  Ford,  and  others  who  were  poets, 
and  who  has  so  sternly  shown  that  Swift  was 
none.  It  was,  we  repeat,  the  effect  of  small 
spites,  and  piques,  and  the  like  contemptible 
feelings,  which  were  too  often  allowed  to 
blunt  his  unquestionable  ucuteness  of  intellect, 
and  to  deaden  his  as  unquestionable  warmth 
of  feeling  and  of  heart. 

Perhaps  we  may  at  this  point  be  asked,  if 
Moore  was  not  a  poet,  who  is,  and  wherein 
lies  the  differentia  of  a  poet?  Now  here, 
without  thinking,  if  possible,  about  any  for- 
mer definitions  or  descriptions  of  others,  let 


us  try  and  construct  an  outline  of  our  'own, 
which  may,  perhaps,  be  somewhat  better 
than  the  famous  Shaksperean  one — ''A  poet 
is — that  is  as  much  to  say,  is  a  poet." 

We  name  as  the  first  element  of  a  poet — 
first,  we  mean,  morally — the  element  of  ear- 
nestness. All  earnest  men  are  not  poets,  but 
overy  poet  must  be  an  earnest  man.  And  he 
must  feel  that  poetry  is  the  most  earnest  of 
all  things  next  to  religion.  Religion  is  the 
worship  of  the  True,  as  Goodness  going  up 
to  heaven  in  incense.  Poetry  is  the  worship 
of  the  True,  as  Beauty  going  up  to  heaven 
on  the  breath  of  flowers.  But  each  is  wor- 
ship, and  every  poet  should  regard  his  gift 
with  a  devout  eye.  The  column  of  his 
thought  should  not  only  be  large  and  bright, 
but  it  should  point  upward  like  a  sun-tipped 
spire,  or  the  fiame  of  a  sacrifice.  Not  only, 
too,  should  he  regard  his  art  as  an  act  of 
worship,  but  he  should  be  ever  working  at 
the  problem  of  uniting  it  with  Religion.  He 
should  feel,  that  not  till  Truth,  Beauty,  and 
Goodness  are  seen  to  be  one,  cart  Poetry  re- 
ceive her  final  consecration,  or  Religion  put 
on  her  softest  and  brightest  attire.  A  poet, 
2dly,  will  be  a  maker.  He  will  create  by 
breathing  bis  own  spirit,  which  is  a  far-off 
sigh  of  God,  into  the  waste  and  cold  vacui- 
ties of  mental  space.  He  will — if  we  dare 
apply  the  words,  in  a  very  subordinate  sense, 
of  course — •'  hang  his  earth  upon  nothing, 
and  stretch  out  his  glowing  north  over  the 
empty  space."  His  work,  wbeu  made,  will 
come  out  softly,  sweetly,  and  sure  of  welcome, 
as  a  new  star  amid  her  silent  sisterhood,  or 
as  the  moon  has  just  in  our  sight  appeared, 
like  an  expected  and  longed-for  lady  into  her 
room  of  state,  to  complete  the  glories  of  this 
resplendent  summer-eve.  His  poem,  displac- 
ing no  other,  copying  no  other,  interfering 
with  no  other,  takes  up  at  once,  gravely  or 
gaily,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  its  ap- 
pointed and  immortal  place.  Not  that  all 
men  at  once  see  its  glory  or  its  true  relation 
to  its  kindred  orbs.  But  it  is  seen  by  many, 
and  felt  by  more,  and  shall  at  last  be  acknow- 
ledged by  all.  When  a  "new  thing"  does 
thus  appear  on  t\m  earth,  there  is  sometimes 
only  silent  wonder,  and  sometimes  only  a  deep 
half- uttered  love,  and  sometimes  a  shout  of 
welcome,  (just  as  Christians  and  Mahomedans 
receive,  in  different  fashions  and  forms  of 
gladness,  the  same  sun  and  moon  coming 
forth  from  the  same  chambers  of  the  east,) 
but  at  last  all  three  are  united,  and,  by  being 
united,  are  intensified  and  increased.  3d,  A 
poet  should  be  a  philosopher.  Not  that  he 
should  be  expected  to  write  merely  didactic 


484 


THOMAS  HOOBE  AJSD  LOBD  JOHN  BUBSELL. 


[Dec, 


poemsk  as  ibey  are  called*  (so  oamed,  we  sap- 
pose,  as  lueu9  from  non  lueendo,  because  tbey 
teacb  nothing!)  but  that  his  works  should  be 
sufifused  with  the  deep,  sober  lustre  of  careful 
thought.  Wordsworth,  appreciating  from 
experience  this  last*  best  power  of  the  poet, 
speaks  of 

"Years  that  bring  the  pbiloaopbic  mind." 

But  its  coming  does  not  always  depend  upon 
years.  It  may,  and  does  often,  come  in  mo- 
ments. One  sudden  glance  at  earth  or  sky, 
at  man  or  woman,  often  accomplishes  the 
work ;  and  we  are  aware  of  a  Presence  who 
has  his  dwelling  '*in  the  light  of  setting 
suns,"  and  whom,  without  even  attempting 
to  measure,  we  are  able  to  see.  Not  every 
true  poet  has  been  permitted  to  attain  the 
full  philosophic  development,  and  all  who  do 
not,  die  they  at  what  age  they  may,  die 
young  poets  ;  but  the  germ  of  it  is  strong  in 
most  of  them,  and  comes  out  in  many.  The 
secret  of  it,  perhaps,  lies  in  a  proper  concep- 
tion of  the  wholeness  and  unity  of  things, 
and  in  the  attempt  to  imitate  and  reproduce 
this  in  the  effects  of  poetry. 

We  may,  perhaps,  arrange,  according  to 
these  thoughts,  poets,  so  oalied,  into  the  fol- 
lowing classes : — There  is,  first,  the  feeble 
rhymster,  who  has  neither  talent,  nor  clever- 
i.ess,  nor  genius ;  who  has  merely  words, 
plentiful  or  scarce,  musical  or  harsh,  to  ex- 
press commonplaces,  or  to  echo>  and  echo  ill, 
the  utterances  of  other  writers.  This  man, 
in  describing  a  river,  will  call  it  the  "  beau- 
tiful," the  "lovely,"  or  the  "glittering" 
stream.  A  mountain  is,  of  course,  the  "  lofty 
and  magnificent."  The  ocean  is  "the  se- 
rene," or  "  storm V,"  or  "  tremendous."  The 
sky  is  the  "  blue,^*  the  "  deep,"  the  "awful." 
Then  comes  the  clever  copyist,  the  elegant 
mimic  of  many  or  all  styles,  who  has  the 
power  of  representing  the  effects  of  genius 
so  successfully,  that  he  is  sometimes  mistaken 
for  a  universal  type  of  the  class.  This  writer 
will  imitate  Byron's  "Address  to  the  Rhine," 
Colerid^e*s  "  Ode  to  Mont  Blanc,"  Pollok's 
splendid  "Apostrophe  to  the  Ocean,"  and 
Shelley's  "  Cloud  or  Skylark."  The  third  is 
the  man  of  talent,  the  stern  literal  painter, 
who  represents,  and  represents  accurately, 
what  he  sees,  neither  less  nor  more,  omitting 
that  ideal  haze  or  halo  which,  to  the  eye  of 
imagination,  every  object  wears.  He  will 
faithfully  enumerate  the  old  castles  which 
crown  the  river's  side,  and  forget  none  of  the 
fine  seats  which  surround  it,  nor  any  of  the 
lakes  which  the  mountain's  brow  commands. 


nor  any  of  the  isles  which  gem  the  ocean's 
breast,  nor  shall  one  of  the  stars  of  midnight 
be  dropped  from  his  catalogue.  The  fourth 
is  the  artist,  who  does  look  upon  objects  at 
an  ideal  angle,  and  through  the  anointed  and 
anointing  medium  of  a  poet's  eve,  but  does 
not  see  them  in  their  religious  relation  or  uni- 
versal bearings.  The  river  to  him,  like  the 
Po  to  Byron,  is  the  river  of  his  "  ladye-iove," 
and  her  image  sleeps  in  and  softens  the 
waters.  The  mountain  is  the  mate  of  the 
storm,  and  the  nursery  of  the  eagle,  and  the 
stepping-stone  for  the  genii  of  the  elements, 
as  they  pass  alonff  from  zone  to  zone.  The 
ocean  is  the  "  melancholy  main"  of  Thom- 
son, melancholy  in  its  everlasting  wanderings 
and  the  shipwrecks  it  is  compelled  to  enact 
and  witness;  or  the  "  awful  penitent"  of  Alex- 
ander Smith,  scourged  by  the  relentless  winds 
for  some  secret  and  abysmal  crime  which  its 
every  froth-drop  feels,  but  which  all  its 
tongues  on  all  its  shores  are  unable  to  re- 
veal; and  the  sky  is  a  high  and  vaulted 
buckler  "bossed"  with  stars.  The  fifth  is 
the  prophet,  who  adds  to  the  power  where- 
with the  artist  paints  the  imaginative  or  fan- 
ciful aspects  of  nature  and  of  man,  an  earn- 
est conviction  and  a  clear  sight  of  the  moral 
purposes  and  lessons  they  are  struggling  to 
teach,  and  sees  all  things  under  the  solemn 
chiaro-scuro  of  the  Divinity.  To  him  the 
river  suggests,  now  the  "  mighty  stream  of 
moi'al  tendency"  stirred  by  the  breath  of 
God,  and  now  the  "clear  river  springing 
from  under  the  throne  of  the  Lamb."  The 
ocean  is  God's  Eye,  a  steadfast  watcher  and 
witness  of  the  sins  of  earth,  as  it  were  mir- 
roring them  upwards  to  the  moon,  as  she 
wore  softly  and  lingeringly  to  heaven.  The 
mountain  b  a  pillar  to  the  Eternal  Throne,  or 
an  altar  for  his  worship.  And  the  sky  is  the 
dome  of  his  temple,  and  the  emblem  of  his 
all-embracing  protection  and  love.  The  last 
variety  is  the  philosophic  poet,  who  tries,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  to  form  some  grand 
scheme  of  the  universe,  and  to  reflect  it  in 
his  poetry.  Him  the  river  reminds  of  the 
Milky  Way,  and  seems  at  once  as  mysterious 
and  as  clear  as  that  foaming  cataract  of  suns, 
and  reflects  the  ever-fluid  motion  and  recur- 
rence of  all  things  upon  themselves.  The 
mountain  will  h€  an  image  of  the  steadfast 
unity,  which  is  as  certain  as  the  perpetual 
progress  of  the  creation;  and  the  ocean 
below,  apparently  capricious,  but  really  fixed 
in  its  movements,  and  the  sky  above,  appa- 
rently stiff  as  iron,  but  in  reality  changeable 
as  water,  will  tell  him  strange  tidings,  and 
seem  strange  types  of  the  resemblances  and 


1853.] 


THOMAS  MOORE  AKD  LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL. 


485 


tbe  dissimilittidefl — ^the  apparent  difference 
and  real  identity  between  what  we  call  time 
and  what  we  call  eternity. 

The  best  and  truest  poets  are,  it  seems  to 
OS,  compounded  of  the  elements  of  the  three 
last  classes  we  have  attempted  thus  to  de- 
scribe :  these  elements  being  found,  of  course, 
existing  in  very  different  proportions.  To 
take  some  examples  from  modern  times : — 
Goethe  is  a  compound  of  the  artist  and  the 
philosopher,  having  little  or  nothing  of  the 
prophet.  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  are 
compounds  of  all  three,  the  prophet  some- 
what predominating  in  the  second,  and  the 
philosopher  in  the  first.  Shelley  combined, 
like  Goethe,  somewhat  of  all  three,  but  in 
proportions  unequal  and  disorganized ;  and 
this  is  true,  also,  with  a  modification  as  to 
the  degree  of  the  disorganization,  about  fiailey 
of  "  Festus  ;"  and  with  this,  too,  to  be  re- 
membered, that,  while  Shelley  had  not  come, 
ere  death,  to  believe  in  a  Living  Grod,  and  a 
Divine-Human  daviour,  Bailey  has  always 
believed  i^  both.  Tennyson,  again,  seems  a 
beautiful  miniature  of  Goethe — the  artist  and 
philosopher  are  both  in  him ;  but  both  are 
seen  as  if  through  a  microscope,  and  with 
not  a  trace  of  the  prophetic  element.  Ma- 
caulay,  alike  as  poet  and  prose- writer,  is 
pure  artist.  So  were  Campbell,  Rogers, 
Scott,  as  a  poet,  and  Crabbe.  Leigh  Hunt 
is  the  artist,  too,  but  with  an  almost  invisible 
tincture  of  the  prophet  and  the  philosopher. 
Ebenezer  Elliott  had  a  little  of  the  artist,  and 
a  great  deal  more  of  the  prophet.  Byron 
was  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  artists.  He 
bad  a  strong,  though  uncultured,  philosophic 
tendency.  He  thought  himself  a  prophet, 
and  he  was,  if  the  word  '^  false"  be  prefixed 
to  the  name.  Wondrous  was  the  sorcery  of 
his  genius,  but  it  was  sorcery — strange  the 
spell  and  sweetness  of  his  strain ;  but  they 
were  those  of  Balaam  predicting  from  Mount 
Peor  the  "  rising  of  the  Star  out  of  Jacob," 
the  coming  of  Christ  from  heaven,  while  all 
the  passions  of  hell  were  burning  in  his  own 
bosom.  The  perfect  poet  would  include  the 
elements  of  artist,  prophet,  and  philosopher, 
in  equal  proportions  and  finest  harmony,  but 
as  yet  echo  must  answer,  **  Where  is  he  ?" 

We  think  that  the  subject  of  this  article 
was  not  entitled  to  the  name  even  of  artist, 
according  to  our  ideal  of  it ;  that  is,  he  was 
not  a  poet  able  to  feel  and  adequately  to  ex- 
press the  **  fine  and  volatile  film  constituting 
the  life  of  life,  the  gloss  of  joy,  the  light  of 
darkness,  and  the  wild  sheen  of  death ;  that 
fine  or  terrible  something  which  is  really 
about  the  object,  but  which  the  eye  of  the 


gifted  only  can  see,  even  as  in  certain  atmo- 
spheres only  the  beams  of  the  sun  are  visible." 
His  poetry  is  not  eminently  original,  and  his 
sense  even  of  beauty,  far  more  of  truth  and 
harmony,  is  not  very  deep.  The  loveliness 
he  principally  admires  and  paints  is  of  a  mere- 
tricious cast.  His  art,  if  we  may  be  pardoned 
a  very  bad  pun,  is  rather  an  elegant  art  of 
pottery  than  of  poetry.  There  is  something 
essentially  light,  trivial,  and  purposeless  about 
all  his  brilliant  workmanship,  if  workmanship 
it  can  be  called,  and  not  rather  a  "  frolic  ar- 
chitecture," like  that  of  the  morning  mist  or 
the  enraptured  snow-drift.  We  have  ranked 
him  rather  with  the  second  class  in  our  list 
— the  airy  mimic  of  more  masculine  and 
powerful  minds.  We  often  see  the  clouds  at 
evening  assume  striking  resemblances  to  the 
mountains  over  which  they  rest,  as  if  they 
would  be  substantial  if  they  could.  Such  a 
similitude  to  poetry  do  Moore's  productions 
bear.  They  are  like  it,  they  are  near  it,  they 
seem  to  many  something  better  than  it,  but 
they  are  not  it.  We  can  conceive  the  ambi- 
tious member  of  a  fairy  family,  such  as  the 
White  Lady  of  Avenel,  aspiring  to  be  one  of 
the  human  race,  to  throb  with  their  great 
passions,  to  assume  their  strong  incarnation, 
and  to  share  in  their  immortal  destinies ;  and 
the  apparent  success  and  ultimate  failure  of 
the  impossible  endeavor  might  furnish^  a 
lively  type  of  Moore's  unsuccessful  ambition 
— '•  I  also  would  be  a  poet."  We  need  not 
add,  that  to  prophetic  earnestness  and  to 
philosophic  depth  he  does  not  even  pretend. 
The  merely  mechanical  powers  of  the  poet 
are  abundantly  his.  An  ordinary  painter  may 
possess  a  richer  box  of  colors  than  Titian, 
and  wield  a  finer  brush  than  Raphael.  Moore 
has  great  wealth  of  language,  great  fluency 
and  sweetness  of  versification,  much  fine 
imagery,  and  great  freedom,  and  ease,  and 
grace  of  movement.  His  language  is  not, 
indeed,  of  the  choicest  kind,  nor  will  it  bear 
very  close  analysis;  his  versification  is  too 
lusciously  sweet — it  has  not  the  psalm-like 
swell  of  our  higher  poets,  nor  the  linnet^like 
gushes  of  others ;  it  is  at  best  a  guitar  played 
by  a  high- bom  cavalier  to  a  beauty  under  an 
eve  of  Italy.  His  imagery  is  too  sensuous 
and  too  abundant  in  proportion  to  the  thought 
it  has  to  represent,  and  his  movement  is 
rather  that  of  a  dance  than  that  of  a  race, 
or  a  walk,  or  a  winged  sweep  through  the 
gulfs  of  ether.  In  constructive  faculty  he 
is  not  deficient,  but  not  eminently  gifted. 
The  wholes  he  makes  are  little,  not  large — 
stories,  not  epics  or  dramas.  Still,  as  more 
people  love  to  see  an  opera-girl  dancing  thao 


486 


THOMAS  MOORE  AND  liORD  JOHN  BUBSEIX. 


[Dec.» 


to  see  an  eagle  sailing  through  the  "  azure 
deep  of  air  ;  as  more  people  love  to  hear  a 
Bong  from  the  lips'  of  a  fine  lady,  than  ihe 
chant  of  a  monologizing  Coleridge,  so  the 
generality  of  the  public  have  always  delighted 
more  in  Moore  than  in  the  real  masters  of  the 
art.  He  has  tickled,  soothed,  melted,  lapped 
them  in  luxurious  sentimentalism  ;  and  like  a 
lover  seduced  by  the  charms  of  one  whom 
his  deeper  nature  despises,  have  they  yielded 
to  the  fascination.  And  to  this  his  faults 
have  contributed  even  more  than  his  merits. 

In  thorough  knowledge  of  where  his  great 
strength  lay,  he  sought  the  subject  of  his  two 
principal  poems  among  the  fanciful  mytholo- 
gies and  meretricious  manners  of  the  East. 
There  Byron  too,  Southey,  Beckford,  Hope, 
and  Scott,  have  gone  for  inspiration ;  and  they 
have  all  mated  with  those  parts  of  the  sub- 
ject  which  ber^t  suited  their  idiosyncrasy. 
Byrofi  has  monopolized  the  sun-heated  pas- 
sions of  love  and  revenge  which  burn  in  those 
sweltering  climes.  Southey  and  Beckford 
have  coped  with  their  darker  shapes  of  su- 
perstition, and  have  gone  down,  the  one  into 
Padalon,  and  the  other  into  the  more  tremen- 
dous hall  of  Eblis.  Hope  has  in  ''  Anas- 
tasius"  caught  the  tone  of  Oriental  manners, 
and  painted  powerfully  the  scenery  of  Turkey 
and  Greece  ;  and  Scott,  in  the  "  Talisman," 
has  fulfilled  the  very  difficult  task  of  at  once 
contrasting  and  harmonizing  into  beautiful 
artistic  efl^ct  the  religion  and  customs  of  East 
and  West,  as  they  met  together  for  a  season 
on  the  "  perilous  edge"  of  the  Crusades. 
Moore,  on  the  other  hand,  has  chosen  the 
more  fantastic  of  the  religious  dreams,  and 
the  more  luxurious  of  the  social  habits,  and 
the  lighter  of  the  poetic  measures  which  pre- 
vail in  Persia  and  India,  and  out  of  them 
Constructed  the  slight,  but  delicate  and  daz- 
zling, structures  of  "  Lalla  Rookh"  and  the 
"  Loves  of  the  Angels." 

On  the  special  merits  and  defects  of  these 
two  poems,  we  need  not  dwell.  They  are 
just  rhymed  **  Arabian  Nights'  Entertain- 
ments," without  the  nature,  however,  the 
simplicity,  and  the  humor  of  those  extraor- 
dinary tales.  More  delightful  reading  for 
loungers  under  such  Syrian  heats  as  are  at 
present  burning  over  our  heads  cannot  be 
conceived.  But  those  who  have  once  read 
seldom  recur  to  them,  and  few  of  their  lines 
ever  recur  to  men's  minds.  We,  at  least, 
remember  only  a  certain  vague,  delicious 
emotion,  which  seems  like  a  sweet  sin  to  the 
recollection ;  and  we  feel  as  if,  upon  rising 
up  from  their  raptured  perusal,  Homer,  Mil- 
ton, and  Wordsworth  must  have  looked  down 


from  their  busts  upon  us  with  indignation 
and  scorn. 

Nor  need  we  discuss  elaborately  the  merits 
or  defects  of  his  early  love-poems,  once  so 
popular,  and  deemed  so  pernicious,  now  so 
seldom  read,  and  so  lightly  esteemed : — of 
his  songs,  those  perfumed  and  tender  madri- 
gals  of  sentimental  love  and  skin-deep  pa- 
triotism; beautiful  exceedingly,  no  doubt,  in 
their  way,  but  how  far  inferior  to  those  of 
Burns  in  variety,  in  nature,  and  in  Doric 
strength  ;  to  those  of  Scott  in  boldness  and 
bardic  fire  ;  to  those  of  Campbell  in  exquisite 
finish  and  pathos  ;  and  to  those  of  Bulwer  in 
classic  polish  and  dignity ! — or  of  his  political 
squibs,  "  The  Fudge  Family,"  "  The  Two- 
penny Post-baff,"and  '^Cash,  Corn,  Currency, 
and  Catholics,  which  display  in  full  strength 
his  most  characteristic  qualities;  those,  name- 
ly, of  a  wit  nearly  as  rich  as  that  of  Butler, 
Swift,  and  Byron,  but  infinitely  better  pol- 
ished and  better  natured ;  a  humor,- waggish, 
genial ;  and  a  certain  high 'bred,  aristocratic 
air,  which  adds  a  peculiar  flavor  to  his  hu- 
morous sarcasm,  and  pungency  to  his  witty 
contempt.  He  is  a  polite  murderer,  a  smil- 
ing assassin.  He  kisses  ere  he  kills ;  he  bows 
to  his  victim  ere  he  leads  him  to  the  altar, 
and  ere,  as  with  an  oiled  dagger,  he  stabs 
him  to  the  heart.  His  prose  has  all  the  de- 
fects of  his  poetry,  and  not  all  its  merits.  It 
is  equally  florid  and  eloquent,  but  infinitely 
inferior  in  grace,  finish,  and  felicity. 

We  have  left  ourselves,  we  find,  little  space 
to  speak  of  the  manner  in  which  Lord  John 
Kussell  has  executed  his  task,  or  of  the  char- 
acter of  Moore,  the  man,  as  revealed  in  the 
copious  diary  here  preserved.  The  first  has 
very  generally  disappointed  the  public.  Lord 
John  has  done  but  little  in  these  volumes, 
and  that  little  not  well.  The  glorious  scenery 
near  Callender,  where  a  great  part  of  the 
book  was  written,  has  failed  to  mspire  him. 
He  has  evidently  had  little  heart  for  the  worL 
On  the  other  hand,  Moore's  character  neither 
rises  nor  sinks  much,  at  least  in  our  estima- 
tion. We  think  him  still,  as  we  thought  him 
long  ago,  an  excessively  clever,  a  warm- 
hearted, and  generous  man,  whose  early 
errors  were  atoned  for  by  his  well- spent  age, 
but  who  had  no  great  depth  of  soul,  and  who 
was  the  bound  slave  of  a  clique  in  literature. 
His  estimates  of  contemporary  genius  are 
more  or  less  contemptuous  and  contemptible. 
He  admits  Lamb  to  be  a  "  clever  fellow," 
and  Coleridge  to  have  **  told  a  tolerable  story 
or  two."  He  dilates  on  Wordsworth's  vanity, 
and  does  not  appreciate  the  high  estimate  he 
set  on  the  genius  of  Burke,  who,  in  Words- 


1853.] 


THOMAS  MOORE  AND  LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL 


487 


worth'si  opinion  and  ours,  was  superior  to  all 
the  statesmen  and  orators  of  that  and  the 
next  age  put  together.  And  he  seems  ac- 
tually to  believe  the  old  silly  story,  that 
Greenfield  was  the  main  author  of  the  Waver- 
ley  Novels. 

As  we  hear  this  stupid  tale  echoed  by  our 
excellent  contemporary  the  '*  Eclectic/'  we 
beg  leave  to  pause  for  a  moment  to  express 
our  profound  discredit  of  its  truth,  and  our 
regret  that  it  should  be  revived  at  preRent. 
Greenfield  was  a  roan  who  had  to  quit  Scot- 
land from  suspicion  of  unnatural  crimes,  and 
to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life  under  hiding. 
Was  this  a  man  to  write  novels,  on  the  whole 
so  pure,  and  humane,  and  virtuous  as  the 
Waverley  series  ?  We  believe  the  roan  had 
not  morale  to  have  written  one  of  their  chap- 
ters. And  where,  in  any  of  them,  are  there 
traces  which  speak  of  a  broken  character,  a 
bankrupt  reputation,  a  cloud  so  horrible  as 
was  resting  on  him  ?  Greenfield  died  about 
the  time  of  the  appearance  of  **  Quentin 
Durward,"  and  some  wiseacres  found  out  that 
from  that  date  the  novels  began  to  fall  off; 
and  we  remember  one  malignant  ninny,  in 
the  New  Monthly  Magazine,  openly  averring 
that  the  "  Tales  of  the  Crusaders"  (includ- 
ing, let  us  remember,  the  **•  Talisman,"  his 
finest  piece  of  art)  were  by  another  and  an 
inferior  hand.  Let  us  remember,  too,  that 
Scdtt  repeatedly  asserted  that  he  was  the 
sole  and  undivided  author ;  and  that  we  be- 
lieve the  MSS.,  written  out  in  his  own  hand, 
are  still  extant.  Our  Eclectic  friend  tells 
some  cock-and-bull  story  about  a  clergyman 
and  lady  on  the  Border  in  reference  to  this 
matter.  We  call  on  him  to  lose  no  time  in 
producing  their  names,  and  thus  give  the 
public  an  opportunity  of  sifting  the  case  to 
the  bottom.  Of  the  re  >ult  we  have  no  doubt. 
Of  course,  as  in  all  such  stories,  Greenfield, 
we  are  told,  left  a  lot  of  MS.  after  his  death, 
which  came,  like  the  rest,  into  Scott's  hands  ; 
and  he,  not  Sir  Walter,  is  the  author  of  the 
"  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,"  and  the  "  Highland 
Widow  ;"  and  we  suppose  our  brave  country- 
man died  transcribing  with  staggering  hand 
ihe  MS.  of  the  *'  Infamous  Exile  1"  This 
*'  will  never  do,''  any  more  than  to  tell  us 
that  the  poems  and  the  novels  are  from  dif- 
ferent pens,  after  what  Adolphus  has  writ- 
ten ;  or  that  Scott  had  no  time  to  write  the 
latter,  after  Basil  Hall  has  proved  that  he, 
a  bustling  man  of  the  world  and  copious 


litterateur,  wrote  habitually  in  his  journal 
alone  an  amount  of  matter  more  than  equal 
to  what  was  pouring  annually  from  the 
Waverley  press.  The  author  of  this  paper 
is  certain  that,  although  seldom  writing  more 
than  four  hours  a-day,  and  having  a  hundred 
private  and  public  duties  besides,  he  writes 
regularly  in  the  year  as  much  as  would  fill 
ten  of  the  small  volumes  in  which  the  Wa- 
verley series  at  first  appeared — a  number  this, 
be  it  remarked,  larger  than  was  the  usual 
issue  of  these  matchless  tales.  It  was  the 
quality,  not  the  quantity,  of  the  novels  that 
made  the  marvel.  But  Scott  is  known  never 
to  have  written  so  well  as  when  he  wrote 
fast.  We  are  jealous  generally  of  all  such 
attempted  transferences  of  literary  property. 
We  are  in  a  particular  manner  jealous,  for 
"  dear  auld  Scotland's  sake,"  of  these  tales, 
which  are  her  real  chronicle  and  crown,  and 
think  that,  instead  of  multiplying  suspicion 
by  suspicion,  and  charging  conjecture  on  con- 
jecture, nothing  but  the  strongest  evidence 
could  have  justified  any  such  disagreeable  and 
disenchanting  assertion. 

The  days,  thank  God,  of  Moores,  and  such 
as  Moore,  are  numbered.  A  butterfly  bard 
like  him  would  not  have  attracted  a  tithe  of 
the  notice,  if  he  had  not  appeared  early  in 
a/  istocratic  "  bowers,"  and  unless,  unlike  other 
butterflies,  he  had  worn  a  sting.  This  age 
requires  its  satirists  as  well  as  its  poets ;  but 
the  satirists  should  be  of  a  purer,  stronger 
type,  and  the  poets  of  a  deeper  and  a  more 
high-strung  lyre.  Let  the  history  of  Thomas 
Moore  be  a  lesson  to  our  young  bards.  Let 
it  teach  them  to  fill  their  minds  with  sacred 
principles,  and  their  hearts  with  holy  fire,  ere 
they  lift  their  voices.  Let  them  aim  also  at 
a  high,  stern,  calm  philosophy,  in  the  true 
eense  of  that  much-abused  term,  as  well  as 
at  a  lyrical  enthusiasm  ;  for  only  on  these 
conditions  can  they  outlive  the  brief  morning 
gleam  of  a  raw  reputation,  and  enter  on  the 
golden  noon-day  of  a  steadfast  and  ever- 
burning fame. 

P.S. — Since  writing  this  paper,  we  have 
read  Croker's  paper  on  Moore,  in  the  Quar- 
terly; and,  while  granting  that  much  of  it 
seems  terribly  true,  and  tending  deeply  to 
damage  the  poet's  reputation,  we  must  de- 
nounce the  almost  diabolic  spirit  which 
breathes  in  its  every  line.  Over  follies,  sins, 
and  mistakes,  what  a  portentous  chuckle  does 
be  raise! 


488 


WOLFOAKG  AMADSUB  MOZART. 


[Dec., 


From  Slisa  Cook*t  Journal. 


WOLFGANG  AMADEUS  MOZART 


Mozart,  the  great  muttical  composer,  was 
unquestionably  a  bom  genius.    Genius  comes 
we  know  not  how — like  the  wind,  it  blows 
whither  it  listeth — and  springs  up  alike  in 
the  hut  of  the  poor  man  and  in  the  chamber 
of  the  rich.     Mozart's  father  was  valet-mu- 
sician to  the  Archbishop  of  Salzburg*     This 
was  a  position  of  mean  servitude,  but  he 
ultimately  raised  himself  from  it  to  the  office 
of  vice- conductor  of  the  orchestra.     He  was 
a  man  of  considerable  intelligence,  and  was 
much  esteemed  for  hfs  proficiency  in  his  art 
— though  he  stuck  to  the  old  ruts,  and  never 
ventured  upon  untrodden  paths  in  harmony. 
He  was  not  a  genius  in  music,  like  his  son, 
but  a  diligent  student  and  a  laborious  learner. 
To  his  son,  the  child  Mozart,  born  in  1756, 
music  came  like  an  inspiration.     It  first  dis- 
played itself  when  he  was  only  three  years 
old,  when  he  delighted  himself  by  striking 
thirds  on  the  clavitre,  and  enjoying  the  mu- 
siciil  harmony  thus  produced.     At  four,  his 
father  began  giving  him  lessons :  he  did  it  at 
first  in  sport,  but  the  child  learned  rapidly, 
and  in  learning  to  play  he  learned  to  compose. 
Music  was  a  kind  of  natural  language  to  him. 
The  knowledge  of  melody,  rhythm,  and  sym- 
metry, which  others  acquire  with  difficulty, 
came  to  him  as  it  were  by  intuition.     While 
only  four  years  old  he  composed  little  pieces 
of  music,  which  his  father,  doubtless  proud 
of  his  precocious  child,  wrote  down  for  him ; 
and  the  pieces  are  still  preserved.     We  ven- 
ture to  say  that  the  little  Mozart's  health 
was  not  improved  by  this  too  early  excite- 
ment of  his  bsain.     But  what  parent  thinks 
of  this  while  admiring  the  up-springing  of 
genius  in  his  child  ?     We  are  told,  indeed, 
that  the  boy's  sensitiveness  was  extreme :  he 
would  ask  those  about  him  ten  times  a  day 
whether  they  loved  him ;  and  if  they  jesting- 
ly replied  in  the  negative,  his  eyes  would  fill 
with  tears.     Sensitiveness  is,  indeed,  a  source 
of  great  joy,  but  also  of  acute  sorrow,  espe- 
cially in  the  young.     There  are  compensa- 
tions in  all  states  of  being. 

Such  a  prodigy  was  not  to  be  neglected. 
There  was  money  to  be  made  by  him.     The 


father  took  him  to  the  Bavarian  Court  when 
he  was  six  years  old,  and  had  him  exhibited 
there.  Of  course,  every  body  was  astonished. 
The  wonderful  child  proceeded  to  write  con- 
certos with  a  full  score  of  accompaniments, 
and  even  '<  trumpets  and  drums.*'  Perhapa 
this  last  accompaniment,  however,  is  a  bio- 
graphical flourish ;  for  the  early  scores  of 
Mozart  which  have  been  preserved  show 
thst  in  his  accompaniments  be  confined  him- 
self to  oboes,  bassoons  and  horn». 

The  family  returned  to  Salzburg,  when  the 
boy  Mozart  began  to  learn  the  violin.  His 
fingers  being  not  yet  long  enough  to  grasp  the 
neck  of  the  ordinary  instrument,  a  very  small 
one  was  procured  for  him.  Before  he  had 
received  regular  lessons  on  the  instrument* 
a  quartette  party  met  at  bis  father's  house 
one  day,  when  the  little  Wolfganff  entreated 
that  he  mieht  play  the  second  violin.  The 
father  would  not  hear  of  it,  as  the  boy  bad 
had  no  instruction  on  the  violin.  But  the 
latter  replied  that  to  play  a  second  violin 

?art  it  was  not  necessary  to  be  instructed, 
he  father  at  this  became  impatient,  and  or- 
dered him  to  go  away  and  not  disturb  them. 
The  boy  cried  bitterly,  on  which  the  others 
entreated  he  might  be  allowed  to  accompany 
the  quartette.  The  father  consented,  only 
on  condition  that  Wolfgang  was  not  to  make 
a  noise.  But  so  wonderfully  did  the  little 
boy  play,  that  Herr  Senachtur,  who  played 
the  second  violin,  soon  laid  down  his  instru- 
ment, finding  himself  quite  superfluous.  The 
father  could  not  suppress  his  tears. 

More  exhibitions !  Another  tour  of  con- 
certs was  projected  by  the  father,  who  car- 
ried his  son  and  daughter  first  to  Passau  and 
Linz,  and  then  on  to  Vienna.  The  boy  was 
the  pet  of  the  ladies  every  where ;  and  the 
musical  prodigy  was  the  theme  of  general 
conversation.  It  was  a  wonder  the  boy's 
brain  stood  it  all.  At  Vienna  the  prodigy 
was  introduced  to  their  Majesties,  and  played 
before  them.  Little  Wolfgang  "  sprang  into 
the  lap  of  the  Empress,  took  her  round  the 
neck,  and  kissed  her  very  heartily."  To-day 
at  the  court,  to-morrow  at  the  French  am- 


1853] 


WOLFOAKG  AMABSUS  MOZART. 


489 


bassador'sy  next  day  at  some  great  count's, 
fetched  and  sent  back  "  in  the  carriages  of 
the  nobility" — so  writes  the  happy  father. 
The  little  musician  is  dressed  in  a  coat  of 
lily  color,  of  the  finest  cloth,  with  double 
broad  gold  borders,  originally  made  for  the 
Archduke  Maximilian.  The  Emperor  chIIs 
him  *'  the  little  magician,"  the  Empress  gives 
him  '*  nods  and  wreathed  smiles,"  and  all 
pet  and  praise  the  wonderful  prodigy.  His 
organization  still  continued  most  delicate, 
and  his  nervous  susceptibility  increased  so 
much  that  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  would  al- 
most throw  him  into  convulsions.  His  father 
thought  to  cure  him  by  accustoming  him  to 
the  sound,  and  one  day  commenced  the  expe- 
riment. At  the  first  blast  the  child  turned 
pale  and  sank  to  the  ground ;  he  was  with 
difficulty  recovered,  and  the  father  desisted 
from  the  further  prosecution  of  his  '*  cure." 
In  the  year  1763,  when  the  boy  was  about 
eight  years  old,  and  had  made  great  im- 
provement in  music,  by  almost  constant 
practice,  the  whole  family  set  out  on  a  mu- 
sical tour  of  Europe.  They  went  to  Munich, 
Augsburg,  Heidelberg,  Frankfort,  Mayence, 
Bonn,  and  Aixla-Chapelle — at  some  places 
making  money,  at  others  losing  it.  The  fa- 
ther, in  one  of  his  letters  to  a  friend  at  Salz- 
burg, writes— "At  Aix-la-Chapolle  there 
was  the  Princess  Amelia,  sister  of  the  King 
of  Prussia.  She  has,  however,  no  money. 
If  the  kisses  that  she  gave  my  children, 
especially  to  Master  Wolfgang,  had  been 
louts  d*or8,  we  should  have  been  well  off; 
but  neither  hosts  nor  postmasters  will  take 
kisses  for  current  coin."  The  family  pro- 
ceeded to  Paris,  where  they  were  favorably 
received.  The  little  Mozart  played  before 
the  Court  at  Versailles.  His  organ  perform- 
ance in  the  Chapel  Royal  was  even  more  ad- 
mired than  his  playing  on  the  claviere.  He 
also  gave  several  public  concerts  in  Paris, 
where  he  published  his  first  works — two  sets 
of  sonatos  for  the  claviire  and  violin.  Por- 
traits of  the  family  were  engraved,  poems 
were  written  upon  them,  and  they  became 
quite  the  rage.  "  The  people  are  all  crazy 
about  my  children,"  wrote  the  father  to  a 
friend. 

Those  who  would  know  something  of  the 
deplorable  state  of  society  in  France  at  the 
period  of  the  Mozarts'  visit,  some  twenty 
years  before  the  breaking  out  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, may  learn  some  cunous  information  on 
the  subject  in  Mozart  the  father's  letters  to 
his  friends.  He  found  domestic  society  with- 
out virtue,  but  abounding  in  "  etiquette ;" 
profligacy  among  the  courtiers  and  nobility. 


and  beggary  and  wretchedness  among  the 
people;  and  in  a  prophetic  strain  the  old 
man  wrote  thurf,  looking  at  the  scenes  trans- 
acted around  him — "  If  there  is  not  a  special 
mercy  of  Qod,  it  will  one  day  fare  with  the 
state  of  France  as  of  old  with  the  kingdom 
of  Persia."  Once,  when  at  Court  at  Ver- 
sailles, the  Mozarts  alone  *'  had  the  way 
cleared  for  them  to  the  royal  table,"  the 
Swiss  guard  marching  hefore  them.  Wolf- 
gang stood  near  the  Queen,  chatting  with  and 
amusing  her,  now  and  then  eating  something 
which  she  gave  him  from  the  table,  or  kiss- 
ing her  hand.  Madame  de  Pompadour  was 
the  reigning  beauty  at  the  time,  but  she 
would  not  allow  the  little  Mozart  to  kiss  her ; 
on  which  the  boy  exclaimed,  rather  angrily, 
'*  Who  is  this  that  will  not  kiss  me  ?  The 
Empress  kissed  me." 

The  Court,  however,  forgot  to  pay  the 
Mozarts,  for  the  royal  exchequer  was  not 
over  well  supplied  in  those  days,  notwith- 
standing the  odious  and  burdensome  taxes 
which  were  levied  on  the  people.  The  Mo- 
zarts, therefore,  set  out  for  England,  the  land 
of  money.  They  reached  London  in  April, 
1764,  remainipg  there  for  a  year.  They 
lodged  in  Frith  street,  Soho.  Their  Majes- 
ties heard  both  the  children  play  before 
them,  and  also  were  present  at  the  boy's 
performance  on  the  royal  organ  in  Windsor 
Chapel.  Then  the  family  gave  a  public  con- 
cert, which  was  very  well  patronized,  and 
proved  very  profitable.  Shortly  after,  a 
charity  concert  was  given,  at  which  the 
young  Mozart  gave  his  gratuitous  services. 
•'  I  have  permitted  Wolfgang,"  writes  the 
father,  "  to  play  the  British  pctriot,  and  per- 
form an  organ  concerto  on  this  occasion. 
Observe,  this  is  the  way  to  gain  the  love  of  the 
English"  The  boy  went  forward  with  his 
composition,  and  published  several  sets  of 
sonatas  while  in  London,  which  produced 
money  for  the  father.  Such  was  the  char- 
acter of  these  compositions,  that  the  Honor- 
able Daines  Barungton  strongly  suspected 
that  the  boy's  youth  was  exaggerated  by  his 
father;  but  one  day,  while  on  a  visit  to  the 
family,  the  child's-nature  of  the  little  Mo- 
zart unmistakably  showed  itself.  ''Whilst 
playing  to  me,"  writes  Barrington,  "  a  favor- 
ite cat  came  in,  on  which  he  left  his  harpsi- 
chord, nor  could  we  bring  him  back  for  a 
considerable  time.  He  would  also  sometimes 
run  about  the  room  with  a  stick  between  his 
legs  by  way  of  a  horse."  But  to  place  the 
matter  beyond  a  doubt,  Barrington  obtained 
the  certificate  of  the  boy's  birth  thVough  the 
Bavarian  ambassador,  by  which  his  repv' 


490 


WOLFGANG  AMADEUB  HOZABT. 


[Dec., 


tion  as  a  musical  prodigy  was  completely 
established.  Bat  the  Londoners  were  soon 
satiated  with  the  little  Mozart's  performances, 
and  his  concerts  failed  to  draw.  The  family, 
therefore,  went  abroad  again,  and  while  at 
the  Hague,  both  of  the  children  were  nearly 
carried  off  by  disease,  doubtless  the  conse- 
quence of  the  feverish  state  of  excitement  in 
which  they  were  kept  by  their  exhibitions. 
Rest,  however,  enabled  thera  to  rally,  and 
they  went  on  as  before,  giving  concerts  in 
all  the  large  towns  they  passed  through,  at 
length  reaching  Salzburg,  their  native  place, 
about  the  end  of  the  year  1766. 

Now   he  gave   himself  up  to  study  and 
hard  practice  in  the  works  of  the  great  mas- 
ters, composing  music  of  various  kinds, — 
masses,   cantatas,    concertos,    sonatas,    and 
symphonies,  which   he  threw  off  with  most 
amazing  fertility.      He  remained,  however, 
only   a  year  at  home;    and  we   6nd  him 
again   at    Vienna,    performing    before    the 
court  with  great  iclat.     He  was  now  twelve 
years  of  age ;  and  fortunately  at  this  time  he 
entered   with  great  vivacity   into  youthful 
sports,   taking  especial   delight  in  fencing, 
horsemanship,    billiards,    and    dancing,    by 
which     his     physical    constitution    became 
strengthened,  and  the  excessive  sensitiveness 
of  his  nervous  system  was  in  some  measure 
subdued.      The    professional   musicians    of 
Vienna   viewed   the   youthful    genius   with 
great  suspicion  and  jealousy,  and  entered 
into  cabals  against  him,  which  for  a  time 
were  successful.     To  retrieve   his  position, 
his  father  determined  on  bringing  out  an* 
original  opera  of  his  son's  composition,  and 
it  was  commenced  forthwith.     It  was  soon 
written.     La  Finta  Semplice  it  was  called  ; 
but  to  get  it  put  upon  the  stage  was  a  mat- 
ter of  the  greatest  difficulty.     The  cabal  of 
the  musicians  pursued  the  Mozarts  into  the 
theatre,   and  delays,   excuses,   evaded  pro- 
mises,  purposely  confused  rehearsals,  soon 
effectually  blasted  the  success  of  the  work. 
Mozart's  father  appealed   to  the  Emperor, 
who  interfered,  but  in  vain.     The  intrigue 
against  Mozart   prevailed,  and    the    opera 
could   not   be   brought  out.     But  the  boy 
went  on  with  other  compositions,  and  a  new 
mass  composed  by  him  was  performed  in 
presence  of  the  court,  to  their  entire  satis- 
faction. 

The  family  returned  to  Salzburg,  where 
Wolfgang  prosecuted  his  studies  in  the  higher 
departments  of  composition,  and  also  im- 
proved his  acquaintance  with  the  Italian 
language.'  He  was  appointed  concert- master 
to  the  Archbishop,  and  wrote  many  of  his 


masses  about  this  time.  But  be  ardently 
desired  to  visit  Italy,  then  the  land  of  clas- 
sical music  and  of  great  composers  ;  and  ac- 
cordingly he  and  his  father  set  out  for  Rome, 
passing  through  Verona,  Mantua,  Cremona, 
Milan,  and  Bologna,  giving  concerts  by  the 
way,  to  which  the  Italians  cn>wded  to  hear 
the  Giovenetto  Ammirahile.  They  arrived  in 
Rome  in  the  Holy  Week,  and  they  hurried 
to  the  Sistine  Chapel  to  hear  the  famous 
Miserere,  which  musicians  were  forbidden  to 
copy  or  take  away  on  pain  of  excommunica- 
tion. But  the  little  prodigy  copied  down  the 
piece  on  hearing  it  the  first  time,  though  the 
music  is  of  the  most  difficult  kind,  abounding 
in  imitation  and  traditional  effects,  and  per- 
formed by  a  double  choir.  Mozart  heard  it 
a  second  time,  when  he  corrected  his  MS. 
which  he  had  concealed  in  his  hat.  It  was 
soon  known  in  Rome  that  the  unexampled 
theft  of  the  Miserere  had  been  effected,  and 
the  boy  was  obliged  to  produce  it  at  a  large 
musical  party,  when  one  of  the  principal 
musicians  of  the  chapel  confirmed  its  correct- 
ness. The  generous  Italians  were  so  much 
delighted  at  the  feat  of  genius  in  the  boy, 
that  they  did  not  call  upon  the  Pope  to  ex- 
communicate the  culprit. 

From  Rome  the  Mozarts  went  to  Naples, 
where  they  made  the  acquaintance  of  Nel- 
son's Lady  Hamilton,  played  before  the  King, 
and  excited  a  perfect /wrortf  amongst  the  ex- 
citable  Italians.     They   returned   to  Rome, 
and  went  on  to  Milan,  the  boy  composing  at 
intervals,  gathering  strength,  and  imbuing 
his  mind  deeply  with  the  noble  church  music 
of  Italy.     At  Milan  he  stayed  to  compose 
the  first  opera  of  his  which  was  represented 
on  the  stage.     It  was  the  Mithridates,  and 
was  performed  twenty  times  successively  at 
La  Scala,  amid  hurricanes  of  applause.     On 
their  way  home  by  Venice  the  Mozarts  led  a 
gay  life,  receiving  a  succession  of  honors, 
entertainments,   and   polite  attentions  of  all 
sorts.     On  reaching  Salzburg,  Mozart  found 
a  letter  waiting  him,  inviting  him  to  compose 
a  grand  dramatic  sei'enata  in  honor  of  the 
nuptials  of  the  Archduke   Ferdinand,  and 
which  was  to  be  performed  at  Milan  in  the 
autumn.     To  throw  off  a  work  of  this  sort 
was  now  a  trifle  to  Mozart,  who  found  time 
besides  to  write  a  liUny,  a  regina  casli,  and 
several   symphonies  in  the  interval.      The 
serenata  was  composed  and  brought  out  with 
immense  klat  at  Milan  at  the  time  appointed, 
Hasse,  the  composer,  and  therival  of  Handel 
and  Porpora,  exclaiming,  when  he  heard  the 
work,   **This  boy  will  throw  us  all  into  the 
shade."    Two  other  works,  one  a  serenata, 


1858.] 


WOLFGANa  AMADSUB  MOZABT. 


401 


the  other  an  opera,  {Lucio  Silla,)  were  pro- 
duced hy  him  at  the  Milan  Theatre  shortly 
after;  and  he  proceeded  diligently  in  the 
work  of  self-culture  and  improvement.  Short- 
ly after,  he  returned  again  to  Salzburg,  from 
whence  he  proceeded  to  Munich  to  bring  out 
his  opera  buffa  La  Finta  Otardinieray  which 
was  a  great  advance  upon  his  previous  com- 
positions in  the  same  style.  Noth withstand- 
ing these  numerous  brilliant  works,  and  the 
profusion  of  sonatas,  concertos,  masses,  and 
other  pieces  which  he  composed  for  the' 
theatres  and  for  the  Archbishop  of  Salzburg's 
concerts,  Mozart  had  to  struggle  with  pover- 
ty. He  reaped  little  from  liis  operas  but 
honor,  and  the  pay  which  he  received  from 
the  Archbishop  for  several  years  was  only 
about  £l  Is.  a  year!  Still  he  wrote  on, 
determined  at  least  to  deserve  success.  But 
he  would  not  stay  longer  at  Salzburg,  where  he 
found  he  was  only  losing  time ;  and  in  the  year 
1777  he  accordingly  left  his  native  town — 
where  he  had  always  been  the  least  appreci- 
ated— in  search  of  better  fortune.  He  was  on 
this  occasion  accompanied  by  his  mother 
only,  his  father  remaining  at  home  to  perform 
the  duties  of  his  ill-remunerated  office  of 
capel'Tneister. 

Mozart  was  now  twenty -one  years  of  age, 
but  had  still  the  look  of  a  mere  boy.  Yet 
his  letters  written  to  his  father  in  the  course 
of  this  sixteen  months'  tour  show  that  he 
was  possessed  of  much  spirit,  vivacity,  and 
intelligence.  His  letters  are  full  of  character, 
and  display  strong  powers  of  observation,  as 
well  as  great  felicity  in  description.  The 
first  place  he  sojourned  at  was  Munich, 
but  though  he  delighted  the  court  by  his 
performances,  he  could  obtain  no  footing  in 
the  place,  and  passed  on  by  Augsburg  to 
Mannheim.  Here  his  reputation  was  known, 
and  he  excited  some  interest.  At  a  rehear- 
sal which  he  attended,  people  stared  at  him 
in  such  a  fashion  that  he  could  hardly  preserve 
his  gravity.  "  They  think,"  said  he,  '•  because 
I  am  little  and  young,  that  nothing  great  or 
old  can  be  in  me,  but  they  shall  soon  seeJ** 
One  Sunday  he  went  to  the  Elector's  Chapel, 
when,  after  mass  had  begun,  Mozart  pro- 
ceeded to  take  his  place  at  the  organ.  ''  I 
was  in  my  best  humor,"  said  he.  ^*  There 
is  always  a  voluntary  here  in  the  place  of  the 
Benedictus,  so  1  took  a  phrase  from  the 
Sanctus  and  fugued  upon  it.  There  they 
all  stood  making  faces."  Another  time  he 
went  into  the  Lutheran  church  and  played 
for  an  hour  and  a  half  on  the  organ  in  a  state 
of  ecstasy :  '<  It  came  right  from  the  heart," 
said  he.     His  criticism  on  a  new  mass,  by 


one  Vogler,  is  curious.  "  I  stayed,"  says  he, 
"  no  longer  than  the  Kyrie.  Such  music  I 
•never  before  heard  in  my  life ;  for  not  only 
is  the  harmony  frequently  wrong,  but  he 
goes  into  keys  as  if  he  would  tear  one  in  by  the 
hair  of  the  head;  not  in  an  artist-like  man- 
ner, or  in  any  way  that  would  repay  the 
trouble,  but  plump  and  without  preparation." 

Mozart  was  admired  at  court,  but  he  found 
court  patronage  so  beggarly  nn  affair  at  best, 
then  and  always,  that  he  contemplated  leav- 
ing Mannheim  for  Paris,  to  gain  his  living  by 
teaching.  But  he  made  a  last  effort  to  ob- 
tain work  from  the  Elector, — for  "  work," 
said  the  ardent  composer,  'Ms  my  pleasure." 
The  Elector,  however,  would  do  nothing  for 
him,  except  invite  him  to  play  at  court,  and 
accept  original  compositions  from  the  com- 
poser, which  he  forgot  to  pay  for.  At  last, 
Mozart,  finding  his  prospects  vain,  set  out  for 
Paris.  But  the  change  was  even  for  the 
worse.  Mozart  hated  Paris.  He  found  the 
Parisians  artificial,  heartless,  vicious,and  with- 
out any  feeling  or  love  for  music.  The  French 
paid  Mozart  in  compliments  only;  he  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  three  pupils,  one  of  them 
the  daughter  of  a  duke,  but  had  he  relied  on 
teaching,  he  would  have  starved ;  he  com- 
posed symphonies  fpr  open-air  concerts,  but, 
though  well  received,  they  produced  but 
little.  At  this  time  his  mother  died  ;  an  ear- 
nest invitation  from  his  father  reached  him  to 
return  to  Salzburg,  where  the  Archbishop 
was  willing  to  engage  him  as  his  concert- 
master,  at  the  liberal  salary  of  £42  a  year ! 
The  Archbishop,  however,  accompanied  his 
invitation  with  the  insulting  remark  that  "  he 
could  not  endure  the  wandering  about  on  beg- 
ging expeditions,"  which  was  a  hint  to  the 
Mozarts  that  they  must  confine  themselves 
to  Salzburg  and  the  Archbishop's  miserable 
parsimony.  On  these  prospects  the  young 
Mozart  consented  to  return  to  Salzburg. 

It  was  from  this  period  of  settling  down 
at  Salzburg  as  the  Archbishop's  concert- 
master  that  the  grand  genius  of  Mozart 
fairly  burst  forth.  Heretofore  he  had  ap- 
peared rather  in  the  light  of  a  musical 
prodigy,  possessed  of  remarkably  precocious 
powers,  both  of  composition  and  execution, 
than  as  a  great  origir^al  creator  in  music. 
The  first  work  which  he  composed  after  re- 
turning to  Salzburg  was  the  mass,  known  as 
No.  1  of  the  English  editions.  It  was  a 
thoroughly  original  and  striking  work,  and 
exhibited  a  marked  advance  in  his  genius 
within  a  very  few  months.  But  his  fir^t 
grand  work  in  the  field  in  which  he  after- 
wards became  the  most  extensively  known — 


492 


WOLFGANG  AMADEUB  MOZABT. 


[Deo., 


we  mean  the  operatic — was  his  Idomeneo,  a 
work  which  is  throughout  stamped  with  the 
genius  of  a  master.  He  was  engaged  to 
compose  this  work  by  the  Elector  of  Bavaria, 
and  it  was  to  be  performed  at  the  next  car- 
nival at  Munich.  The  Archbishop  allowed 
him  leave  of  absence  for  a  few  weeks  to  bring 
out  the  piece.  He  composed  it  with  an 
amazing  rapidity,  the  most  important  parts 
having  been  deferred  until  he  knew  the  cah'bre 
of  the  singers.  This  was  his  almost  universal 
practice.  His  father  wrote  to  him,—'*  Con- 
aider  that  for  every  dozen  real  connoisseurs, 
there  are  a  hundred  wholly  ignorant;  there- 
fore, do  not  overlook  the  popular  in  your 
style  of  composition,  nor  forget  to  tickle  the 
long  ears."  To  which  the  son  answered,— 
"Don't  be  apprehensive  respecting  the  favor 
of  the  crowd;  there  will  be  music  for  all 
sorts  of  people  in  my  opera,  but  nothing  for 
long  tars:'  And  it  was, so.  The  opera  was 
written  in  the  highest  style ;  and  though  it 
delighted  the  classical  ear,  it  also  secured 
the  applause  of  the  crowd.  It  was  produced 
amidst  the  wildest  enthusiasm.  Never  was 
there  such  a  triumph.  With  this  work,  so 
important  in  its  influence  on  music,  Mozart 
crowned  his  twenty-fifth  yetr. 

We  next  find  him  at  Vienna,  in  the  train 
of  his  Archbishop.  He  is  set  down  at  Uble 
with  cooks  and  valets,  and  treated  as  the 
veriest  menial.  Such  was  the  ordinary 
conduct  of  princes  towards  their  gifted  fol- 
lowers in  those  days.  Poor  Michael  Haydn, 
the  composer,  was  one  day  ordered  by  his 
princely  employer,  Esterhazy,  to  produce 
duets  for  the  violin  and  viola  before  a  certain 
day,  and  was  threatened  with  the  loss  of  his 
aalary  in  case  of  fail«ire.  Haydn  was  at  the 
time  too  ill  to  work,  so  Mozart  took  them  in 
band,  completed  them,  and  they  were  pre- 
sented in  Haydn's  name.  They  were  remark- 
ably successful,  but  Mozart  never  claimed 
them.  The  gifted  genius  at  length,  however, 
revolted  against  the  beggarly  insults  which 
his  employer  put  upon  him,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  assert  his  independence  at  all 
hazards.  He  threw  up  his  degradinjr  oflSce, 
began  to  take  pupils  at  five  shillings  a 
lesson,  Rud  set  up  as  a  musical  professor 
and  composer  on  his  own  account,  throwing 
himself  upon  the  public  for  fame  and  support. 
It  was,  however,  rather  too  early  in  the 
world's  history  for  that,  and  Mozart  endured 
a  long  struggle  with  poverty  and  difficul- 
ties. To  add  to  them,  he  married  a 
wife— Constance  Weber — to  whom  he  had 
been  long  attached.  Mozart  was  beset  by 
the  clamors  of  creditors,  whose   demands 


he  could  not  satisfy,  and  often  he  was  in 
extremity  for  the  means  of  supplying  his 
present  urgent  wants.  The  Emperor  Joseph 
heard  of  this,  and  one  day  said  to  Mozart, 
"  Why  did  you  not  marry  a  rich  wife  ?** 
To  which  the  composer,  with  that  dignity 
and  self-reliance  which  characterize  all  bis 
answers  to  the  great,  immediately  replied, 
"Sire,  I  trust  that  my  genius  will  always 
enable  me  to  support  the  woman  I  love." 

In  1782,  Mozart  produced  his  fine  opera 
Die  EntfUhrung  au9  dem  Serail,  which 
proved  completely  successful,  and  put  some 
money  in  his  purse.  In  this  opera  he 
struck  out  so  entirely  new  a  path,  that  it 
could  scarcely  be  believed  to  have  pro- 
ceeded from  the  same  pen  as  Idomtneo, 
He  now  lived  in  a  delirum  of  invention, 
often  working  so  hard  that,  as  he  expresses 
it,  he  scarcely  knows  whether  his  head  is 
on  or  off.  This  led  to  extreme  reaction, 
from  which  he  sought  relief  in  dissipation 
and  extravagant  amusements,  meanwhile 
composing  masses,  concertos,  and  operas, 
almost  without  number.  His  holidays  were 
days  of  jovial  abandonment,  in  which  he 
jested  and  played  the  harlequin,  danced 
and  sang,  drank,  and  revelled  to  his  own 
serious  after-cost.  Had  Mozart  been  con- 
tented to  settle  quietly  down  in  Vienna  as 
a  music  teacher,  he  might  have  avoided 
these  penalties;  but  then  we  should  have 
lost  the  fruits  of  his  magnificent  genius. 
Let  us  be  content,  and  deal  gently  with 
the  errors  and  vagaries  of  the  great  com- 
poser. Mozart,  in  his  fits  of  composition, 
lived  in  a  stale  of  the  most  feverish  anx- 
iety, and  in  his  later  years,  when  his  oon- 
stitution  was  less  able  to  answer  the 
demands  made  upon  it  by  the  irregularity 
of  his  life,  it  was  no  unusual  thing  for  him 
to  faint  at  his  desk. 

Mozart's  next  great  works  were,  his  Fi- 
garo, which  was  produced  at  Vienna  in 
1786,  but  proved  so  unremuneratlve  to  the 
author,  and  was  so  discouraging  to  him  in  all 
respects,  that  he  resolved  never  more  to  pro- 
duce an  opera  at  Vienna ;  his  Symphony  in 
D — a  great  work,  well  known  in  England  ; 
and  his  famous  Quartettes  in  C  major  and  D 
minor.  His  Figaro,  which  had  fallen  com- 
paratively fiat  on  the  ears  of  the  cognoscenti 
of  Vienna,  excited  such  extraordinary  enthu- 
siasm at  Prague,  where  it  was  next  produced, 
that  Mozart  was  encouraged  to  proceed  with 
the  composition  of  another  opera,  his  equally 
celebrated  Don  Giovanni,  which  was  pro- 
duced at  the  same  city  in  1787,  with  immense 
Mat    It  is  cited  as  an  extraordinary  instance 


1853.] 


WOLFGANG  AMADEUS  MOZABT. 


498 


of  the  wonderfal  power  of  Mozart  in  compo- 
sition, that  the  fine  overture  to  the  opera  was 
not  in  existence  on  the  night  previous  to  the 
production  of  the  piece.  It  was  onlj  com- 
menced about  midnight,  and  with  the  aid  of 
strong  punch  it  was  written  out  by  the 
morning.  The  copyists  had  it  in  hand  up  to 
the  hour  at  which  the  opera  was  to  commence, 
and  the  sheets  were  placed  before  the  musi- 
cians in  the  orchestra  while  the  ink  was  still 
damp.  The  overture,  as  well  as  the  opera 
itself,  proved  completely  successful.  Bui 
Mozart  only  received  about  one  hundred 
ducats  for  this  great  work. 

The  Emperor  of  Austria,  m  order  to  draw 
Mozart — whose  fame  was  now  so  great — 
back  to  Vienna,  offered  him  the  post  of 
Chamber  Composer  to  the  Court,  at  the 
munificent  salary  of  £06  per  annum,  which 
Mozart  was  glad  to  accept !  Such  was  the 
low  rate  of  remuneration  paid  to  the  greatest 
of  musical  geniuses  in  those  days.  In  this 
office  he  composed  multitudes  of  minuets, 
waltzes,  and  country-dance  tunes — most  of 
them  insignificant,  but  done  "to  order." 
About  the  same  time  he  produced  some  of 
bis  grandest  symphonies;  as,  for  instance, 
the  Jupiter,  showing  that  his  hand  still  re- 
tained its  cunning,  and  his  mind  its  power. 
Yet  these  grander  compositions  of  his  were 
altogether  unappreciated  by  the  public  of  his 
day.  ,They  were  considered  quite  outre  and 
extravagant,  at  variance  with  all  the  estab- 
lished laws  of  music.  Mozart  was,  indeed, 
far  before  his  age,  and  it  took  nearly  half  a 
century  before  the  world  came  up  to  where 
he  had  left  off.  The  music  publishers*  shops 
were  closed  to  him,  and  they  refused  to  ac- 
cept* his  compositions  unless  he  would  write 
them  in  a  popular  style.  To  such  an  appeal 
he  once  answered,  with  unusual  bitterness — 
*'  Then  I  can  make  no  more  by  my  pen,  and 
I  had  better  starve  and  go. to  destruction  at 
once."  He  began  to  think  of  death,  and  to 
long  for  it.  His  thoughts  became  desperate, 
and  his  habits  reckless.  Any  change  of 
scene  was  welcome  to  him,  and  he  indulged 
in  the  wildest  vagaries.  His  income  became 
more  irregular  in  consequence,  but  he  did  not 
cease  his  dissipations ;  and  his  life  threatened 
to  become  a  wreck.  Overworked  and  ill- 
rewarded,  he  sought  to  throw  off  the  cares 
of  vulgar  existence  by  resorting  to  balls, 
masquerades,  and  dancing  parties  of  all  sorts. 
He  composed  pantomimes  and  ballets,  and 
danced  in  them  himself.  At  the  carnival 
balls  he  generally  assumed  the  character  of 
Harlequin  or  Pierrot,  in  which  he  is  said  to 
have  been  incomparable.    Notwithstanding 


this  dangerous  round  of  excitements,  with 
which  our  colder  northern  notions  cannot 
sympathize,  he  preserved  a  steady  attach- 
ment to  his  own  home ;  and  in  spite  of  his 
poverty,  he  was  always  liberal  of  his  time 
and  labor  for  the  benefit  of  his  poorer  bre- 
thren in  the  musical  profession.  "  Nothing,*' 
says  one  of  his  biographers,  "  could  extin- 
guish his  compassion  for  the  unfortunate." 

Mozart  paid  a  visit  to  Berlin  in  1789,  on 
which  occasion  the  Prussian  monarch  was 
urgent  that  he  should  settle  in  that  city,  and 
he  offered  him  the  temptation  of  a  good  sal- 
ary. But  Mozart's  reply  was,  "  Can  I  leave 
my  good  emperor?" — the  good  emperor 
being  the  Austrian  Francis,  whose  treatment 
of  Mozart  throughout,  though  kindly  in  man- 
ner, was  shabby  in  the  extreme.  After  his 
return  to  Yienna,  in  the  following  year,  he 
produced  his  comic  opera,  Cost  fan  tutte.  It 
could  have  brought  him  little  money,  or,  if 
so,  it  was  soon  spent ;  for  shortly  after,  on 
making  a  professional  visit  to  Frankfort,  his 
finances  were  reduced  so  low  that  his  wife 
was  obliged  to  sell  the  most  valuable  articles 
of  her  toilet  to  enable  him  to  set  out.  Debts 
began  to  accumulate  about  him,  and  he  was 
often  thrown  into  fits  of  deep  dejection  on 
their  account.  Yet,  even  at  this  time,  if  any 
person  called  on  him  with  a  tale  of  distress, 
he  would  willingly  give  up  all  the  money  in 
his  purse.  In  worldly  business,  like  so  many 
other  men  of  genius,  Mozart  was  as  helpless 
as  a  child. 

During  his  later  years  his 'genius  became 
so  generally  acknowledged  throughout  G<^r- 
many,  Holland,  and  France,  and  so  many 
commissions  foi^  original  works  flowed  in 
upon  him,  that  he  began  to  indulge  in  the 
prospects  of  competency  for  his  family — 
only,  alas!  when  too  late.  The  last  works 
which  he  composed  were  the  Zauberfldtte, 
Clemema  di  Tito,  and  the  Requiem.  It  was 
while  composing  the  Zauherflotte  that  his 
constitution  began  to  exhibit  symptoms  of 
breaking  up.  During  its  composition,  which 
he  worked  at  by  day  and  night,  he  sank  into 
frequent  swoons,  in  which  he  remained  for 
some  time  before  consciousness  returned. 
He  suspended  his  labors  for  a  time,  produc- 
ing in  the  interval,  at  Baden,  his  beautiful 
Ave  Verum,  The  Clemema  di  Tito  was 
composed  for  the  coronation  of  the  Emperor 
Leopold  at  Prague.  He  composed  it  in  eight- 
een days,  and  during  the  whole  time  he  was 
ill,  and  taking  medicine  incessantly.  The 
Requiem  was  also  engrossing  his  thoughts, 
and  ho  had  the  conviction  from  the  first, 
that  he  was  writing  it  for  himself.    Such 


404 


THE  HOLT  PLACEBL 


[Dec., 


was  the  excitement  its  composition  caused, 
that  his  wife  took  awaj  the  score  of  the  Be- 
quiem,  and  he  seemed  to  rally  again.  Some 
time  after,  it  was  restored  to  him,  and  his 
illness  came  on  again.  His  hands  and  feet 
began  to  swell,  and  the  power  of  voluntary 
motion  almost  left  him.  His  intellectual  fac- 
ulties, however,  remained  unimpaired,  and 
he  could  not  restrain  his  passionate  exclama- 
tions as  to  the  unprotected  state  in  which  his 
death  would  leave  his  wife  and  children. 
''  Now  must  I  go,''  he  would  exclaim,  *'  just 
as  I  should  be  able  to  live  in  peace — now 
leave  my  art  when,  no  longer  the  slave  of 
fashion,  nor  the  tool  of  speculators,  I  could 
follow  the  dictates  of  my  own  feeling,  and 
write  whatever  my  heart  prompts :  1  must 
leave  my  family — my  poor  children — ^at  the 
very  instant  in  which  I  should  have  been 
able  to  provide  for  their  welfare." 

The  Requiem  lay  almost  constantly  on  his 
bed ;  and  he  excited  himself  in  explaining, 
to  certain  musicians  who  visited  him,  the 
particular  effects  which  he  wished  to  produce 


in  certain  passages.  Once  they  sang  the 
Requiem  round  the  dying  composer's  bed, 
himself  taking  the  alto  part.  While  singing 
the  first  bars  of  the  Laerymosa,  Mozart  was 
seized  with  a  violent  fit  of  weeping,  and  the 
score  was  put  aside.  It  was  his  last  expir- 
ing effort ;  the  light  was  already  flickering 
m  the  socket.  That  night  he  died,  the  Re- 
quiem laid  on  the  counterpane. 

Mozart  was  only  thirty-five  when  he  died; 
yet  how  many  sreat  and  enduring  works  has 
he  left  us !  His  funeral  was  arranged  by 
Baron  von  Levieten ;  but  it  was  shabby  to 
the  extent  of  meanness.  He  was  laid  by  his 
royal  patrons  in  a  common  grave  in  a  com- 
mon burying- ground  near  Vienna,  and  was 
left  there  without  a  mark  upon  his  resting- 
place  ;  and  twenty  years  after,  when  an  in- 
quiry was  made  of  the  sexton  as  to  where 
Mozart  was  buried,  it  was  found  that  all 
traces  of  his  grave  had  been  lost  amidst  the 
surrounding  heaps  of  undistinguished  dead. 
The  only  monument  of  the  great  composer 
is  his  works. 


-•«•- 


•♦♦- 


From  the  Qnarterly  Review. 


THE   HOLY    PLACES.* 


Br  one  of  those  sudden  turns  of  history 
which  from  time  to  time  take  the  world  by 
surprise,  the  whole  attention  of  Europe, 
after  an  interval  of  more  than  five  centuries, 
has  once  more  been  fixed  on  the  *'  Holy 
Places"  of  the  Eastern  world.  That  "mourn- 
ful and  solitary  silence"  which,  with  the 
brief  exception  of  1799  and  1840,  has  for 
more  than  five  hundred  years  "prevailed 
along  the  shore"  of  Palestine,  is  once  more 
broken  by  the  sound  of  "  the  worid's  debate," 
by  the  mighty  controversy  which,  beginning 
from  the  wrangles  of  Greek  and  Latin  monks 


*  1.  Solution  Nouvelle  de  la  Question  dea  Lieux 
Saints.    Par  M.  TAbb^  J.  M.  Michon.  Paris.  1862. 

2.  Bethlehem  inFalestina.  Yon  Dr.  Titna  Tobler. 
a  Gall.     1849 

8.  Oolgaiha,  Seine  Kirchen  und  Kldater.  Yon 
Dr.  TitoB  Tobler.    a  GalL     1861. 

4.  Die  Siloahquelle  und  der  Oelbercf.  Yon  Dr. 
Titna  Tobler.    S.  Gall.     1862. 


over  the  key  of  the  Convent  of  Bethlehem, 
and  the  dome  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  has  now  enclosed  within  its  circle 
the  statesmen  of  all  the  greatest  powers  in 
Europe. 

Into  that  controversy  we  do  not  purpose 
to  enter.  To  unfold  its  history  at  length, 
even  without  regard  to  those  recent  phases 
which  have  now  embroiled  the  world,  would 
require  a  volume.  Yet  a  few  words  may 
suffice  to  put  our  readers  in  possession  of  the 
leading  facts  of  the  past  on  which  it  rests. 
The  dispute  of  the  "  Holy  Places"  is  a  result 
and  an  epitome  of  that  Crusade  within  the 
Crusades  which  forms  so  curious  an  episode 
in  that  eventful  drama.  We  are  there  re- 
minded of  what  else  we  are  apt  to  forget^ 
that  the  chivalry  of  Europe  were  engaged^ 
not  only  in  the  mighty  conflict  with  the  fol- 
lowers of  Mahomet,  but  also  in  a  constant 
under-struggle  with  the  emperors  of  the 


1858.] 


THE  HOLY  PLAOK 


405 


great  city  they  encountered  in  their  midway 
progress.  The  capture  of  Constantinople  by 
the  Latins  in  the  fourth  Crusade  was  but  the 
same  hard  measure  to  the  Byzantine  Empire 
which  on  a  smaller  scale  they  had  already 
dealt  to  the  Byzfuitine  Church,  theD»  as  now, 
the  national  church  of  Palestine,  as  it  is  ge- 
nerally of  the  East.  The  Crusaders,  by  vir- 
tue of  their  conquest,  occupied  the  Holy 
Places  which  had  previously  been  in  the 
bands  of  the  Greeks;  and  the  Greeks  in 
turn,  when  the  Crusaders  were  ultimately 
expelled  by  the  Turks,  took  advantage  of 
the  influence  of  wealth  and  neighborhood  to 
regain  from  the  conquerors  that  share  in  the 
sanctuaries  of  which  the  European  princes 
had  deprived  them.  Copt  and  Uyrian, 
Georgian  and  Armenian,  have,  it  is  true, 
their  own  claims  to  maintain,  as  dissenters 
from  the  main  Byzantine  establishment  from 
which  they  have  successively  separated. 
But  the  one  standing  conflict  has  always 
been  between  the  descendants  of  the  crusad- 
ing invaders,  supported  by  France  or  Spain, 
and  the  descendants  of  the  original  Greek 
occupants,  supported  by  the  great  Northern 
Power  which  assumes  to  have  succeeded  to 
the  name  and  privileges  of  the  Eastern  Cffi- 
sars.  Neither  party  can  ever  forget  that 
once  the  whole  sanctuary  was  exclusively 
theirs ;  and  although  France  and  llussia  have 
doubtless  interposed  on  behalf  of  their  re- 
spective national  creeds  from  political  or 
commercial  motives,  yet  the  religious  pre- 
texts have  arisen  from  the  previous  juxta- 
position of  two  great  and  hostile  churches — 
here  brought  together  within  narrower  bounds 
than  any  two  sects  elsewhere  in  the  world. 
Once  only  besides  has  their  controversy  been 
waged  iu  equal  proximity ;  namely,  when 
the  Latin  Church,  headed  by  Augustine, 
found  itbelf,  in  our  own  island,  brought  into 
abrupt  collision  with  the  customs  and  tradi- 
tions of  the  Greeks,  in  the  ancient  British 
church  founded  by  Eastern  missionaries. 
What  in  the  extreme  West  was  decided  once 
for  all  by  a  short  and  bloody  struggle,  in 
Palestine  has  dragged  on  its  weary  length 
for  many  centuries.  And  this  long  conflict 
has  been  further  complicated  by  the  numer- 
ous treaties  which,  from  the  memorable 
epoch  when  Francis  L  startled  Christendom 
by  declaring  himself  an  ally  of  the  Sultan, 
have  been  concluded  between  France  and 
the  Porte  for  the  protection  of  the  Frank 
settlers  in  Syria  ;  and  yet  again,  by  the  va- 
cillations of  the  Turkish  Government,  partly 
from  ignorance,  and  partly  from  weakness. 


as  it  has  been  pressed  on  one  side  or  the 
other  by  the  claims  of  two  powerful  parties 
in  a  question  to  the  rights  of  which  it  is  by 
its  own  position  entirely  indifferent. 

Meanwhile,  it  may  be  of  more  general  in- 
terest to  give  a  summary  account  of  places 
whose  names,  though  long  familiar,  are  thus 
invested  for  the  moment  with  a  fresh  inte- 
rest, and  to  describe  briefly  what  is  and 
what  is  not  the  importance  belonging  to  the 
**  Holy  Places"  of  Palestine.  Many  even 
amongst  our  own  countrymen  still  regard 
them  with  an  exaggerated  reverence,  which 
is  a  serious  obstacle  to  the  progress  of  a 
calm  and  candid  inquiry  into  the  history  and 
geography  of  a  country  which  can  never  lo&e 
its  attractions  whilst  there  is  a  heart  in  Chris- 
tendom to  feel,  or  a  head  to  think.  Many, 
in  their  disgust  at  the  folly  and  ignorance 
with  which  those  sanctuaries  are  infested, 
not  only  deny  to  them  their  legitimate  place, 
but  extend  their  aversion  to  the  region  in 
which  they  are  situated,  perhaps  even  to  the 
religion  they  represent.  Many  are  ignorant 
altogether  of  their  nature,  their  claims,  or 
their  peculiar  relation  to  each  other,  or  to 
the  rest  of  the  world. 

Those  who  wish  to  study  the  subject  at 
length  cannot  do  better  than  peruse  the  vol- 
umes which  we  have  placed  at  the  head  of 
this  article.  The  Abb6  Michon's  little  work 
gives  the  most  perspicuous,  as  it  certainly  is 
the  most  condensed,  account  of  the  Holy 
Places  which  we  have  met;  and  his  *' New 
Solution"  gives  us  a  favorable  impression 
both  of  the  candor  and  the  charity  of  the 
author.  The  works  of  Tobler — a  German 
physician  from  the  shores  of  the  Lake  of 
Constance — exhibit  the  usual  qualities  of 
German  industry,  which  almost  always  make 
their  antiquarian  researches  useful  to  the 
student  even  when  unreadable  by  the  public 
at  large.  To  the  well-known  authorities  on 
these  subjects  in  our  own  language  we  shall 
refer  as  occasion  serves. 

The  term  "  Holy  Places,"  which,  applied 
in  its  most  extended  sense  to  the  scenes  of 
events  commemorated  in  sacred  history, 
would  be  only  another  word  for  the  geogra- 
phy of  Syria  and  Arabia,  is  limited  in  modem 
phraseology  to  the  special  localities  which 
the  Greek  and  Latin  Church,  singly  or  con- 
jointly, have  selected  for  the  objects  of  reli- 
gious pilgrimage.  Some  scenes  which  the 
bulk  of  the  Christian  world  would  regard  as 
most  sacred  are  almost  wholly  neglected  by 
the  mass  of  devotees.  Others,  which  rank 
high  in  the  estimation  of  local  and  ecclesias- 


496 


TBS  HOLT  FLAGEB. 


Pec., 


tical  tradition,  are  probably  unknown  beyond 
the  immediate  sphere  of  those  who  worship 
in  them. 

The  Abb6  Michon  succinctly  notices  twelve 
rach  places.  They  are  as  follows: — ]. 
Church  of  the  Nativity  at  Bethlehem  (com- 
mon). 2.  Church  of  the  Annunciation  at 
Nazareth  (Latin).  3.  Church  of  Jacob's 
Well  at  Shechem  (destroyed).  4.  Church 
at  Cana  (Oreek).  6.  Church  of  St.  Peter 
at  Tiberias  (Latin).  6.  Church  of  the  Presen- 
tation at  Jerusalem  (Mussulman).  7.  Church 
of  the  Flagellation  (Latin.).  8.  Grotto  (not 
the  garden  of  Gethsemane  (Latin).  0. 
Tomb  of  the  Virgin  (common).  10.  Church 
of  the  Ascension  (Mussulman).  11.  Church 
of  the  Apostles  (Mussulman).  12.  Church 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  (common.)  But,  as 
some  of  those  have  been  long  deserted,  and 
others  depend  for  their  support  entirely  on 
the  greater  sanctuaries  in  their  neighborhood, 
we  shall  confine  ourselves  to  those  which 
exist  in  BethlehenA,  Nazareth,  and  Jerusa- 
lem. 

L  Whether  from  being  usually  the  first 
seen,  or  from  its  own  intrinsic  solemnity, 
there  is  probably  none  of  the  Holy  Places 
which  produce  a  greater  impression  at  first 
sight  than  the  Convent  of  the  Nativity  at 
Bethlehem.  The  enormous  edifice,  which 
extends  along  the  narrow  crest  of  the  hill 
from  west  to  east,  consists  of  the  Church  of 
the  Nativity,  with  the  three  convents,  Latin, 
Greek,  and  Armenian,  abutting  respectively 
upon  its  north-eastern,  south-eastern,  and 
south-western  extremities.  Externally,  there 
is  nothing  to  command  attention  beyond  its 
size — the  more  imposing  from  the  meanness 
and  smallness  of  the  village,  which  hangs  as 
it  were  on  its  western  skirts.  But  the  vener- 
able nave  of  the  Church — now  deserted, 
bare,  discrowned — is  probably  the  most  an- 
cient monument  of  Christian  architecture  in 
Palestine,  we  may  almost  say  in  the  world  ; 
for  it  is  the  remnant  of  the  Basilica,  built  by 
Helena  herself,  and  the  prototype  of  the  Ba- 
silicas erected  by  her  iraperiHl  son — at  Jeru- 
salem beside  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  at  Rome 
over  the  graves  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  Peter. 
The  buildings  of  Constantine  have  perished : 
but  that  of  Helena*  still  in  part  remains ;  and 
those  who  have  visited  the  two  Churches  of 
St.  Apollinaris  at  Ravenna,  constructed  on 

f  Tobler  has  proved  that  a  gretX  part  of  the 
Church  of  Helena  has  been  eaperseded  hj  the  sao- 
oessive  edifioee  of  Justinian  and  Emanuel  Comme- 
nu8  (p.  104,  106).  But  there  seems  no  sufficient 
reason  for  disputing  the  antiquity  of  the  nave. 


the  same  model  two  centuries  later  by  the 
Byzantine  Emperors,  can  form  some  notion 
of  what  it  must  have  been  in  the  days  of  its 
splendor.  The  long  double  lines  of  Corin- 
thian pillars,  the  faded  mosaics,  dimly  visi- 
ble on  the  walla  above,  the  rough  yet  stately 
ceiling,  of  beams  of  cedar  from  Lebanon, 
probably  the  last  great  building  to  which 
those  venerable  forests  yielded  their  rafters, 
still  preserve  the  outlines  of  the  chorch, 
which  was  once*  rich  with  marble  and  bias- 
ing with  gold. 

From  the  nave,  which  is  the  only  interest- 
ing portion  of  the  upper  church,  we  descend 
to  the  subterraneous  compartment,  on  ac- 
count of  which  the  whole  stmoture  was 
erected.  At  the  entrance  of  a  long  winding 
passage,  excavated  out  of  the  limestone  rock 
of  which  the  hill  of  Bethlehem  is  composed, 
the  pilgrim  finds  himself  in  an  irregular 
chapel,  dimly  lighted  with  silver  lamps,  and 
containing  two  small  and  nearly  opposite  re- 
cesses. In  the  northernmost  of  these  is  a  mar- 
ble slab,  which  marks  the  supposed  spot  of 
the  Nativity.  In  the  southern  recess,  three 
steps  deeper  in  the  chapel,  is  the  alleged 
stall  in  which,  according  to  the  Latin  tradi- 
tion, was  discovered  the  wooden  manger  or 
"  prsosepe,"  now  deposited  in  the  magnificent 
Basilica  of  S.  Maria  Maggiore  at  Rome,  and 
there  displayed  to  the  faithful,  under  the  aus- 
pices of  the  Pope,  on  Christmas  Day. 

Let  us  pause  for  a  moment  in  the  dim 
vault  between  these  two  recesses;  let  us 
dismiss  the  consideration  of  the  lesser  memo- 
rials which  surround  us — the  altar  of  the 
Magi,  of  the  Shepherds,  of  Joseph,  of  the 
Innocents — to  which  few  would  now  attach 
any  other  than  an  imaginative  or  devotional 
importance,  and  ask  what  ground  there  b 
for  accepting  the  belief  which  invites  us  to 
confine  the  awful  associations  of  the  village 
of  Bethlehem  within  these  rocky  walls.  Of 
all  the  local  traditions  of  Palestine,  this  alone 
indisputably  reaches  beyond  the  time  of  Con- 
stantine. Already  in  the  second  century,  **  a 
cave  near  Bethlehem"  was  fixed  upon  as  the 
spot  in  which — "  there  being  no  place  in  the 
village  where  he  could  lodgef-— Joseph  abode, 
and  where  accordingly  Christ  was  born  and 
laid  in  a  manger."     The  same  tradition  seems 

^^~^-^— ^— ^-^-— ^^^— —  — II-  UJ__l__l_.l 1^-^^-^— ^^^^-^-^__^-^_^_^^,^_^.— ^-^-M" 

*  Tobler,  Bethlehem,  p.  110. 

J*  iiestdri  lutfii^  oux  $f')(sv  hf  rr^  nCniji  ixsivji 
iTou  xoLTokutfai,  iv  6s  <firi{Kdt(f)  nvi  (fCvsyY^g  ^^ 
xCiii'rigxariyvffe  xoLt  rors  avruv  ovrcjv  ixsi,  m^-oxsi 
4  Mapia  <rov  XpiVrov  xat  h  (parvji  auroy  stsWsxsi, 
— Justin,  Dial,  cum  TVypt.  78. 


1853.] 


THB  HOLT  PLAOEfiL 


407 


to  have  been  constant  in  the  next  generation,* 
even  amongst  those  who  were  noi  Christ iani;, 
and  to  have  been  uniformly  maintained  in  the 
strange  documentsf  which,  under  the  name 
of  the  Apocryphal  G-ospels,  long  exercised  so 
powerful  an  influence  over  the  popular  belief 
of  the  humbler  classes  of  the  Christian  world, 
both  in  the  Edst  and  the  West.  But  even 
this,  the  most  venerable  of  ecclesiAStical  tra- 
ditions, is  not  without  its  difficulties.  No 
one  can  overlook  the  deviations  from  Uie 
Gospel  narrative  ;  and  though  ingenuity  may 
force  a  harmony,  the  plain  impression  left  by 
the  account  of  Justin  is  not  that  the  Holy 
Family  were  driven  from  the  inn  to  the  man- 
ger, but  from  the  crowded  village  to  a  cave 
in  its  environs.^  The  story  looks  as  if  it  had 
been  varied  to  fit  the  locality.  The  circum- 
stance that  excavations  in  the  rock  were  com- 
monly used  in  Palestine  for  stabling  hoises 
and  cattle  is  of  little  weight  in  the  argument. 
Maundrell  has  justly  remarked  upon  the  sus- 
picion which  attaches  to  the  constant  con- 
nection of  remarkable  events  with  the  grottoes 
and  eaves  of  the  Holy  Land.  These  abide 
when  the  fragile  tenements  of  man  have  fallen 
to  decay;  and  if  the  genuine  caravanserai 
and  its  stable  had  been  swept  away  in  the 
convulsions  of  the  Jewish  war,  and  the  resi- 
dents at  Bethlehem  had  wished  to  give  a 
local  habitation  to  the  event  which  made 
their  village  illustrious,  they  would  inevitably 
have  fixed  on  such  a  strongly  marked  fea- 
ture as  the  grotto  at  Bethlehem.  A  second 
motive  for  the  choice  transpires  in  the  pas- 
sage of  Justin' — the  wish  to  obtain  support 
for  a  fancied  prediction  of  the  Messiah's  birth 
in  the  words  of  Isaiah,  xxxiii.  16,  '^He  shall 
dwell  on  high  ;  his  place  of  defense  shall  be 
the  munitions  of  rocks."  (  LXX.  iv  i^riku 
<f^ifiKa.Kf)  l(fxy^  v^Tpoj.) 

Perhaps  a  still  graver  objection  to   the 

*  Origen,  o.  Cela.  i.  51. 

f  The  Apocryphal  Qospel  of  St.  Jamea^  o.  xviil, 
ziz.,  and  the  Goepel  of  the  InfaDcy,  c.  ii.,  ill,  iv., 
represent  Joeeph  as  going  at  once  to  the  cave  before 
entering  the  village,  and  speak  of  all  the  subsequent 
events  recorded  in  the  early  chapters  of  St  Matthew 
and  St.  Luke  as  oocurrinff  in  the  cave.  In  the 
Gospel  of  the  Nativity  of  luary,  c.  iv.,  the  birth  is 
described  as  taking  place  in  the  cave,  and  the  man- 
ger as  being  outside  the  cave.  The  quotations  and 
arguments  are  well  summed  np  in  Thilo's  Codex 
Apooryphua,  p.  882,  888. 

I  U,  adopting  the  tradition  which  Justin  appears 
to  have  followed,  and  which  has  unquestionably 
prevailed  since  the  time  of  Jerome,  we  auppoee  the 
adoration  of  the  Magi  to  have  been  offered  on  the 
same  spoU  the  locality  would  then  be  absolutely  irre- 
ooDcilable  with  the  words  of  Sk  Matthew,  that  they 
oame  into  *'  the  house  where  the  young  child  wasr 

VOL.  XXX.    MO.  IV. 


identity  of  the  scene  remains  to  be  mentioned. 
During  the  troubled  period  of  the  invasion 
of  Ibrahim  Pasha,  the  Arab  population  of 
Bethlehem  took  possession  of  the  convent, 
and  dismantled  the  recess  of  the  gilding  and 
marble  which  has  proved  the  bane  of  so  many 
sanctuaries.  The  removal  of  the  casing  dis- 
closed, as  we  have  been  credibly  informed,  an 
ancient  sepulchre  hewn  in*  the  rock ;  and  it  is 
hardly  possible  that  a  cave  devoted  to  se- 
pulchral purposes  should  have  been  employed 
by  Jews,  whose  scruples  on  the  subject  are 
too  well  known  to  require  comment,  either  as 
a  stable  or  an  inn. 

Still  there  remains  the  remarkable  fact 
that,  here  alone  we  have  a  spot  known  to  be 
reverenced  by  Christians  in  eonneetion  with 
the  Gospel  History  two  centuries  before  the 
conversion  of  the  Empire,  and  before  the 
burst  of  local  religion  which  is  commonly  as- 
cribed to  the  visit  of  Helena.  The  sanctuary 
of  Bethlehem  is,  if  not  the  most  authentic,  at 
least  the  most  ancient  of  *'  the  Holy  Places." 
Yet  there  is  a  subordinate  train  of  associ- 
ations which  has  grown  out  of  the  earliest 
and  the  most  sacred  of  its  recollections ;  and 
which  has  at  least  the  advantage  of  being  un* 
qnestiosiably  grounded  on  fact.  If  the  tra- 
veller follows  the  windings  of  the  long  sub- 
terranean gallery,  he  will  find  himself  at  its 
close  in  a  rough  chamber  hewn  out  of  the 
rock.  It  was  in  this  cell  that,  in  all  proba- 
bility, lived  and  died  the  most  illustrious  pil- 
grim who  was  ever  attracted  to  the  cave  of 
Bethlehem — the  only  one  of  the  many  her'> 
mita  and  monks  who  from  the  time  of  Con- 
stantine  to  the  present  day  have  been  shel« 
tered  within  its  rocky  sides,  whose  name  has 
travelled  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Holy  Land. 
Here,  for  more  than  thirty  years,  beside  what 
he  believed  to  be  literally  the  cradle  of  the 
Christinn  faith,  Jerome  fasted,  prayed,  dream- 
ed, and  studied — here  he  gathered  round  him 
the  small  communities  which  formed  the  be- 
ginnings of  conventual  life  in  Palestine— here, 
the  fiery  spirit  which  he  had  brought  with 
him  from  his  Dalmatian  birthplace,  and  which 
had  been  first  roused  to  religious  fervor  on 
the  banks  of  the  Moselle,  vented  itself  in  the 
flood  of  treatises,  letters,  and  commentaries, 
which  he  poured  forth  from  his  retirement, 
to  terrify,  exasperate,  and  enlighten  the  West- 
ern world — here  also  he  composed  the  fa« 
mous  translation  of  the  Scriptures  which  is 
still  the  '*Bib}ia  Yulgata"  of  the  Latin 
Church ;  and  here  took  place  that  pathetic 
scene,  his  last  communion  and  death — at 
which  all  the  world  has  been  permitted  to  be 
present  in  the  wonderful  picture  of  Domeni- 
82 


498 


THE  HOLT  FLAOESl 


[Deo« 


chino,  wbioh  represents,  in  colors  never  to  be 
sarpassed,  the  attenuated  frame  of  the  weak 
and  sinking  flesh,  and  the  resignation  and 
devotion  of  the  almost  enfranciiised  spirit. 

II.  The  interest  of  Nazareth  is  of  a  kind 
dififerent  from  that  of  Bethlehem.  Its  chief 
sanctuary  is  the  Latin  Convent  at  the  south- 
eastern extremity  of  the  village,  so  well 
known  from  the  hospitable  reception  it  affords 
to  travellers  caught  in  the  storms  of  the  hills 
of  Gilboa,  or  attacked  by  the  Bedouins  of 
the  plain  of  Esdraelon ;  and  also»  we  may 
add,  for  the  im  press! veness  of  its  religious 
services,  acknowledged  even  by  the  stem 
Presbyterianism  of  Dr.  Robinson,  and  the  ex- 
clusive philosophy  of  Miss  Martineau ;  where 
wild  figures,  in  the  rough  drapery  of  the 
Bedouin  dress,  join  in  the  responses  of  Chris- 
tian worship,  and  the  chants  of  the  Latin 
Church  are  succeeded  by  a  sermon  addressed 
to  these  strange  converts  in  their  native 
Arabic  with  all  the  earnestness  and  solemnity 
of  the  preachers  of  Italy.  There  is  no  place 
in  Palestine  where  the  religious  services  seem 
80  worthy  of  the  sacredness  of  the  recoUec* 
dons.  But  neither  is  there  any  where  the 
traditional  pretensions  are  exposed  to  a  se- 
verer shock.*  However  discreditable  may 
be  the  contests  of  the  various  sects,  they 
have  yet  for  the  most  part  agreed  (and  in- 
deed this  very  agreement  is  the  occasion  of 
their  conflicts)  as  to  the  spots  they  are  to 
venerate.  At  Nazareth,  on  the  contrary, 
there  are  three  counter- theories — each  irre- 
concilable with  the  other — with  regard  to 
the  scene  which  is  selected  for  special  rever- 
ence. 

From  the  entrance  of  the  Franciscan 
church  a  flight  of  steps  descends  to  an  al- 
tar, which  stands  within  a  recess,  partly 
cased  in  marble,  but  partly  showing  the  na- 
tural rock  out  of  which  it  is  formed.  In 
front  of  the  altar,  a  marble  slab,  worn  with 
the  kisses  of  many  pilgrims,  bears  the  in- 
scription "  Verbum  euro  hie  factum  est/'  and 
is  intended  to  mark  the  spot  on  which  the 
Virgin  stood  when  she  received  the  angelic 
visitation.      Close   by  is  a   broken   pillar,f 

*  Besides  the  difficultiee  which  we  are  about  to 
notioe,  there  u  the  clumsy  legend  of  the  "Mountain 
of  Precipitation,''  too  well  known  to  need  farther 
comment  or  refntation.    See  Robineon,  iii.  p.  187. 

f  This  pillar  ia  one  out  of  numerous  instances  of 
what  may  be  called  the  extinction  of  a  traditional 
miracle,  m  deference  to  the  spirit  of  the  time.  To 
all  the  early  travellers  it  was  shown  as  a  supernatu- 
ral suspension  of  a  stone.  To  idl  later  travellers  it 
ia  exhibited  merely  as  what  it  is,  a  broken  column, 
— ^fractured  probably  in  one  of  the  many  assaults 
whieh  the  convent  has  suffered. 


which  is  pointed  out  as  indicaUng  the  space 
occupied  by  the  celestial  visitant,  who  is  sup- 
posed to  have  entered  through  a  hole  in  the 
rocky  wall  which  forms  the  western  front  of 
the  cave,  close  by  the  opening  which  now 
unites  it  with  the  church.  The  back,  or  east- 
ern side  of  the  grotto,  behind  the  altar,  leads 
by  a  narrow  passage  into  a  further  cave,  left 
much  more  nearly  in  its  natural  state,  and 
said  by  an  innocent  and  pleasing  tradition, 
which  no  one  probably  would  care  either  to 
assert  or  to  refute,  to  have  been  the  resi- 
dence of  a  neighbor  who  looked  after  the 
adjacent  house  when  Mary  was  absent  on 
her  visit  to  Elizabeth  in  Judsea. 

With  the  rivalry  which  prevails  in  the 
£ast  on  the  subject  of  the  Holy  Places,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  the  Greeks  excluded  from 
the  Latin  convent  should  have  established  a 
"  Church  of  the  Annunciation"  for  them- 
selves  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  town.  But 
it  would  be  an  injustice  to  them  to  suppose 
that  the  contradiction  was  exclusively  the 
result  of  jealousy.  Without  a  word  in  the 
Scripture  narrative  to  define  the  scene — with- 
out the  slightest  indication  whether  it  took 
place  by  day  or  night,  in  house  or  field — the 
Greeks  may  be  pardoned  for  clinging  to  the 
faint  tradition  which  lingers  in  the  apocry- 
phal Gospel  of  St.  James,  where  we  are  told 
that  the  first  salutation  of  the  angel  came 
to  Mary*  as  she  was  drawing  water  from  the 
spring  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  town. 
This  spring — and  there  is  but  one — still  bears 
her  name,  and  in  the  open  meadow  by  its 
side  stands  the  Greek  Church,  a  dull  and 
mournful  contrast  in  its  dosed  doors  and 
barbarous  architecture  to  the  solemn  yet  ani- 
mated worship  of  the  Franciscan  Convent — 
though  undoubtedly  with  the  better  claim  of 
the  two  to  be  considered  an  authentic  memo- 
rial of  the  Annunciation. 

But  the  tradition  of  the  Latin  Church  has 
to  undergo  a  ruder  trial  than  any  which 
arises  from  the  contiguous  sanctuary  of  the 
rival  Greeks,  There  is  a  third  scene  of  the 
Annunciation,  not  at  the  opposite  extremity 
of  the  little  town  of  Nazareth,  but  in  another 
continent — not  maintained  by  a  hostile  sect, 
but  fostered  by  the  Supreme  Head  of  the 
Roman  Church  itself.     On  the  slope  of  the 

*  Protev.  Jacobi,  c.  xi  No  special  locality  waa 
known  in  the  time  of  Jerome.  Paula,  he  telle  us^ 
"percurrit  Nazareth  nutriculara  Domini:"  evident- 
ly implving  that  the  villaf^e  generally,  and  not  any 
particular  object  within  it,  was  the  object  of  her 
pilgrimage,  {ffieron,  Epitaph,  PauL)  Even  as  lata 
as  11 86  the  grotto  alone  was  known  as  the  aanefeuary 
of  the  Church  of  Nasareth,  as  appears  from  tliie 
Itinerary  of  Phoeaa. 


1833.] 


THE  HOLT  PLAGES. 


490 


eastern  Apennines,  overlooking  the  Adriatic 
Gulf,  stands  what  may  without  exaggeration 
be  called  (if  we  adopt  the  Papal  belief)  the 
European  Nazareth.  Forti6ed  by  huge  bas- 
tions against  the  approach  of  Saracenic 
pirates,  a  vast  church,  which  is  still  gorgeous 
with  the  offerings  of  the  faithful,  contains 
the  '*  SanU  Casa/'  the  '*  Holy  House,"  in 
which  the  Virgin  lived,  and  (ns  is  attested 
by  the  same  inscription  as  at  Nazareth)  re- 
ceived the  angel  Gabriel.  The  ridicule  of 
one  half  the  world,  and  the  devotion  of  the 
other  half,  has  made  every  one  acquainted 
with  the  strange  story  of  the  House  of  Lo- 
retto,  whicb  is  written  in  all  the  languages  of 
Europe  round  the  walls  of  the  sanctuary : 
bow,  in  the  close  of  the  iSth  century,  it  was 
first  conveyed  by  angels  to  the  heights  above 
Fiume,at  the  head  of  the  Adriatic  Gulf,  then 
to  the  plain  of  Loretto,  and  lastly  to  its  pre- 
sent bill.  But,  though  "  the  wondrous  flit- 
ting" of  the  '*  Santa  Casa'*  is  with  us  the 
most  prominent  feature  in  its  history,  it  is  far 
otherwise  with  the  pilgrims  who  frequent  it. 
To  them  it  is  simply  a  portion  of  the  Holy 
Land — the  actual  spot  on  which  the  mystery 
of  the  Incarnation  was  announced  and  begun. 
In  proportion  to  the  sincerity  of  the  belief  is 
the  veneration  which  attaches  to  what  is  un- 
doubtedly the  most  frequented  sanctuary  of 
Christendom.  Not  to  mention  the  adoration 
displayed  on  the  great  festivals  of  the  Virgin, 
or  at  the  commemoration  of  its  miraculous 
descent  into  Italy,  the  devotion  of  pilgrims 
on  ordinary  week-days  exceeds  any  thing  that 
can  be  witnessed  at  the  holy  places  in  Pales- 
tine, if  we  except  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  at  Easter. 

Every  morning,  while  it  is  yet  dark,  the 
doors  of  the  church  at  Loretto  are  opened. 
A  few  lights  round  the  sacred  spot  break 
the  gloom,  and  disclose  the  kneeling  Capu- 
chins, who  have  been  there  through  the  night. 
Two  soldiers,  sword  in  hand,  take  their  place 
by  the  entrance  of  the  "  House,"  to  guard 
it  from  injury.  One  of  the  hundred  priests 
who  are  in  daily  attendance  commences  at 
the  high  altar  the  first  of  the  hundred  and 
twenty  masses  that  are  daily  repeated.  The 
"Santa  Casa"  itself  is  then  lighted,  the  pil- 
grims crowd  in,  and  from  that  hour  till  sun- 
set come  and  go  in  a  perpetual  stream.  The 
^*  House"  is  crowded  with  kneeling  or  pros- 
trate figures ;  the  pavement  round  it  is  deeply 
worn  with  the  passage  of  devotees,  who,  from 
the  humblest  peasant  of  the  Abruzzi  up  to 
the  King  of  Naples,  crawl  round  it  on  their 
knees,  while  the  nave  is  filled  with  bands  of 
worshippers,  who,  having  visited  the  sacred 


spot,  are  retiring  from  it  backwards,  as  from 
some  royal  presence.  On  the  Santa  Casa 
alone  depends  the  sacredness  of  the  whole 
locality  in  which  it  stands.  Loretto^whether 
the  name  is  derived  from  the  sacred  grove 
(Lauretum)  or  the  lady  (Loreta)  upon  whose 
land  the  house  is  believed  to  have  descended 
— had  no  existence  before  the  rise  of  this  ex- 
traordinary sanctuary.  The  long  street  with 
its  venders  of  rosaries,  the  palace  of  the 
Governor,  the  strong  walls  built  by  Pope 
Sixtus  IV.,  the  whole  property  of  the  rich 
plain  far  and  near,  are  mere  appendages  to 
the  humble  edifice  which  stands  within  the 
Church.  And  its  genuineness  and  sacred- 
ness has  been  affirmed  by  a  long  succession 
of  pontiffs^,  from  Boniface  VIII.  down  to 
Pius  IX. 

No  one  who  has  witnessed  the  devotion  of 
the  Italian  people  on  this  singular  spot  could 
wish  to  speak  lightly  of  the  feelings  it  in- 
spires. Vet  its  connection  with  the  question 
of  the  Holy  Places  of  Palestine,  as  well  as 
with  the  pretensions  of  the  Church  which 
fosters  the  double  claim  of  Loretto  and  of 
Nazareth,  demands  an  investigation  that,  un- 
der other  circumstances,  might  be  deemed 
gratuitous.  The  difficulty  is  not  evaded  by 
the  distinction  that  the  one  is  a  house,  and 
the  other  a  grotto,  because  both  house  and 
grotto  are  asserted  to  enclose  the  exact  lo- 
cality of  the  angelic  visitation — to  be  each 
the  scene  of  a  single  event  which  can  only 
have  happened  in  one.  But  this  is  not  all. 
If  it  were  practicable  for  either,  being  once 
committed,  to  abate  its  pretensions,  it  is  pal- 
pable to  every  traveller  who  compares  the 
sanctuaries  that  by  no  possibility  can  they 
ever  have  been  amalgamated.  The  "  Santa 
Casa"  at  Loretto  is  an  ediGce  of  36  feet  by 
)7:  its  walls,  though  externally  cased  in 
marble,  can  be  seen  in  their  original  state 
from  the  iuHide,  and  appear  to  be  of  a  dark- 
red  polished  stone.  The  west  face  has  one 
square  window,  through  which  it  is  affirmed 
the  angel  flew ;  the  east  contains  a  rude 
chimney,  in  front  of  which  is  a  block  of  ma- 
sonry, supposed  to  be  the  altar  on  which  St. 
Peter  said  mass,  when  the  Apostles,  after 
the  Ascension,  turned  the  house  into  a 
church.  On  the  north  side  is  (or  rather  was) 
a  door,  now  walled  up.*  Notwithstanding 
that  the  monks  of  Loretto  and  of  Nazareth 
have  but  a  dim  knowledge  of  the  sacred  lo* 
calities  of  each  other,  the  ecclesiastics  of 
Palestine  could  not  be  altogether  ignorant  of 

*  We  have  omitted,  for  the  sake  of  penipiemtj,  all 
the  oonfeflsedly  modem  alteratioot. 


600 


THE  HOLT  PLAGES. 


[Dec, 


the  distant  but  mighty  sanctuary  patronized 
by  the  highest  authority  of  their  Church. 
They  therefore  show  lo  any  inquiring  travel- 
ler ihe  space  which  wa,^  occupied  by  the 
Holy  House  before  its  flight — the  only  space 
certainly  on  which  it  could  have  stood  if 
either  the  Italian  or  Syrian  tradition  .were  to 
l)e  maintained.  This  space  is  a  vestibule  in 
front  of  the  grotto,  into  which  the  house  is 
alleged  to  have  opened.  The  alterations 
which  the  church  of  Nazareth  have  under- 
gone render  it  impossible  to  lay  any  stress 
on  the  variation  of  measurements.  But  the 
position  of  the  grotto  U,  and  must  always 
have  been,  absolutely  incompatible  with  any 
such  appendage  as  the  Santi  Casa.  Which- 
ever way  the  house  is  supposed  to  abut  on 
the  rock,  it  would  have  closed  up,  with  blank 
walls,  the  very  passages  by  which  alone  the 
communication  could  be  effected.  A  com- 
parison of  the  masonry  of  the  so-called 
workshop  of  Joseph  at  Nazareth,  with  the 
material  of  the  House  of  Loretto,  may  be 
considered  no  less  fatal  to  the  theory.  Whilst 
the  latter  is  of  a  kind  wholly  unlike  any  thing 
in  Palestine,  the  former  is  composed,  as 
might  be  expected,  of  the  gray  limestone  of 
the  country,  of  which,  no  doubt,  the  houses 
of  Nazareth  were  in  all  times  built. 

To  many  it  may  seem  superfluous  to 
attempt  a  serious  refutation  of  the  most  in- 
credible of  ecclesiastical  legends.  But  the 
claims  of  Loretto  have  been  so  strongly 
maintained  by  French  and  Italian  (we  happi-  ^ 
ly  cannot  yet  say  English)  writers  of  our 
own  times — the  faith  of  the  See  of  Rome  is 
80  deeply  pledged  to  its  genuineness  by  bulls 
and  indulgences,  as  well  as  by  custom  and 
tradition,  that  an  interest  attaches  to  it  far 
beyond  its  intrinsic  importance.  Even  if  the 
story  were  accepted,  the  embarrassment  re- 
mains, for  there  is  still  the  rival  sanctuary, 
which  is  equally  under  the  Papal  authority. 
If  the  question  of  the  genuineness  of  such  a 
relic,  and  the  truth  of  such  a  miracle,  can  be 
left  undecided,  it  either  follows  that  the  sys- 
tem of  local  sanctuaries  is  of  no  practical 
importance,  or  that  on  momentous  points  of 
practical  importance  the  Church  of  Rome  is 
as  little  capable  of  infallibly  guiding  its  mem- 
bers as  the  Church  of  England  or  the  Church 
of  Geneva. 

But  the  explanation  of  the  origin  of  the 
legend  has  also  a  value  as  a  general  illustra- 
tion of  the  history  of  "  Holy  Places."  Naz- 
areth was  taken  by  Sultan  Klialil  in  1291, 
when  he  stormed  the  last  refuge  of  the  Cru- 
saders in  the  neighboring  city  of  Acre.  From 
that  time,  not  Nazareth  only,  but  the  whole 


of  Pales  tin?,  was  closed  to  the  devotions  of 
Europe.  The  natural  longing  to  see  the 
scenes  of  the  events  of  the  Sacred  History — 
the  superstitious  craving  to  win  for  prayer 
the  favor  of  cons^ecrated  localities — did  not 
expire  with  the  Crusades.  The  demand  re- 
mained, though  the  supply  was  gone.  Can 
we  '"onder  that,  under  such  circumstances, 
there  should  have  arisen  first  the  desire,  and 
next  the  belief,  that  if  Mahomet  could  not  go 
to  the  mountain,  the  mountain  must  come  to 
Mahomet?  The  House  of  Loretto  is  the 
petrifaction,  so  to  speak,  of  the  "  Last  sigh 
of  the  Crusades;"  its  particular  form  sug- 
gested, possibly,  by  the  Holy  House  of  St, 
Francis  at  Assisi,  then  first  acquiring  its 
European  celebrity.  It  is  not,  indeed,  a 
matter  of  conjecture  that  in  Italy,  where  the 
temperament  of  the  people  most  craves  such 
stimulants,  there  were  devotees  who  actually 
endeavored  to  reproduce  within  their  own 
immediate  neighborhood  the  very  scenes  of 
Palestine.  One  such  example  is  the  Church 
of  St.  Stephen  at  Bologna,  within  whose 
walU  are  crowded  together  various  chapels 
and  courts,  representing  not  only,  as  in  the 
actual  Church  of  the  Sepulchre,  the  several 
scenes  of  the  Cruciflxion,  but  also  the  Trial 
and  Passion  ;  and  which  is  entitled,  in  a  long 
inscription  affixed  to  its  cloister,  the  *'  Sancta 
Sanctorum;"  nay,  literally,  "  the  JtrusaUnC^ 
of  Italy.*  Another  still  more  curious  in- 
stance may  be  seen  at  Varallo,  in  the  king- 
dom of  Piedmont.  Bernardino  Caimo,  re* 
turning  from  a  pilgrimage  to  Palestine  at  the 
close  of  the  fitieeirth  century,  resolved  to 
select  the  spot  in  Lorabardy  which  most  re- 
sembled the  Holy  Land,  in  order  that  bis 
countrymen  might  enjoy  the  advantages 
without  undergoing  the  privations  he  had 
suffered  himself.  Accordingly,  in  one  of  the 
beautiful  valleys  leading  down  from  the  roots 
of  Monte  Rosa,  he  chose  (it  must  be  con- 
fessed tb!it  the  resemblance  is  somewhat  like 
that  between  Monmouth  and  Macedon)  three 
hills,  which  should  represent  respectively 
Tabor,  Olivet,  and  Calvary ;  and  two  moun- 
tain streams,  which  should  in  like  manner 
personate  the  Kedron  and  Jordan.  Of  these 
the  central  hill.  Calvary,  became  the  "  Holy 
Place"  of  Lombardy.  It  was  frequented  by 
S.  Carlo  Borromeo,  and  under  hb  auspices 
was    studded   with   chapels,  in   which    the 

*  This  churoh  was,  at  least  in  its  foundation,  eon- 
siderablj  earlier  than  that  of  Loretto,  having  been 
firdt  erected  in  the  fifth  century.  There  is  an  ex- 
cellent account  of  it  in  Profesflor  Willis's  Essay  on 
the  Architectoral  History  of  the  Charohof  the  Holy 
Sepulehre. 


1858.] 


THE  HOLY  PLACES. 


501 


scenes  of  the  Passion  are  embodied  in  waxen 
figures  of  the  size  of  life.  The  entire  coun- 
try round  continues  to  this  hour  to  send  its 
peasants  by  thousands  as  pilgrims  to  the 
sacred  mount.  As  the  feelings  which  ac- 
tuated Bernardino  Caimo  would  naturally 
have  existed  in  a  more  fervid  state  two  cen- 
turies earlier,  when  the  loss  of  Palestine  was 
more  keenly  felt,  and  the  capture  of  Naz- 
areth was  fresh  in  every  one's  mind,  we  can 
easily  imagine  that  the  same  tendency  which 
produced  a  second  Jerusalem  at  Bologna,  and 
a  second  Palestine  at  Varallo,  would,  on  the 
secluded  shores  of  the  Adriatic,  by  some 
peasant's  dream,  or  the  return  of  some 
Croatian  chief  from  the  last  Crusade,  or  the 
story  of  some  Eastern  voyager  landing  on 
the  coast  of  Romagna,  produce  a  second 
Nazareth  at  Fiume  and  Loretto.  What  in 
a  more  ignorant  and  poetical  age  was  as- 
cribed, in  the  case  of  the  Holy  House,  to  the 
hands  of  angels,  was  intended  in  the  case  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  to  have  been  literally  ac- 
complished by  Sixtus  V.,  by  a  treaty  with  the 
Sublime  Porte  for  its  bodily  transference  to 
Rome,  that  so  Italy  might  glory  in  possess- 
ing the  actual  sites  of  the  conception,  the 
birth,  and  the  burial  of  our  Saviour. 

III.  Every  one  has  read  of  the  multitude 
of  Holy  Places  which  cluster  within  and 
around  the  walls  of  Jerusalem.  Ever  since 
the  occupation  of  the  city  by  the  Crusaders, 
the  same  localities  have,  age  after  age,  been 
jK)inted  out  to  pilgrims  and  travellers  with 
singular  uniformity.  Here  and  there  a  tradi- 
tion has  been  misplaced  by  accident,  or  trans- 
posed for  convenience,  or  suppressed  in  fear 
of  ridicule,  or,  may  be,  from  honest  doubts ; 
but,  on  the  whole,  what  was  shown  to  Maun- 
deville  in  the  fourteenth  century,  was,  with  a 
few  omissions,  shown  to  Maundrell  in  the 
seventeenth;  and  what  Maundrell  has  de- 
scribed with  the  dry  humor  characteristic  of 
his  age,  may  still  be  verified  by  travellers 
who  take  the  trouble  of  procuring  an  intelli- 
gent guide.  Such  localities  are  curious  as 
relics  of  that  remarkable  period  when,  for 
the  first  and  only  time,  Palestine  became  a 
European  province — as  the  scenes,  if  they 
may  be  so  called,  of  some  of  the  most  cele- 
brated works  of  European  art,  and  as  the 
fountain-head  of  some  of  the  most  extensive 
of  European  superstitions.  No  one  could  see 
without,  at  least,  a  passing  emotion,  the 
various  points  in  the  Via  Dolorosa,  which 
have  been  repeated  again  and  again,  in  pic- 
tures and  in  legends,  throughout  the  west- 
ern world ;  the  spot  where  v  eronica  is  said 
to  have  received  the  sacred  cloth,  for  which 


Lucca,  Turin,  and  Rome  contend —  the 
threshold  where  is  believed  to  have  stood 
the  Scala  Santa,  now  worn  by  the  ceaseless 
toil  of  Roman  pilgrims  in  front  of  St.  John 
Lateran.  On  these  lesser  sites  it  is  useless 
to  dwell  in  detail.  But  they  possess  one 
common  feature  which  it  is  worth  while 
briefly  to  notice.  Some  countries,  such  as 
Greece — some  cities,  such  as  Rome — lend 
themselves  with  great  facility  to  the  growth 
of  legends.  The  stalactite  figures  of  the 
Corycian  cave  at  once  explain  the  origin  of 
the  nymphs  who  are  said  to  have  dwelt  there. 
The  deserted  halls,  the  subterranean  houses, 
the  endless  catacombs  of  Rome,  afford  an 
ample  field  for  the  localization  of  the  numer- 
ous persons  and  events  with  which  the  early 
Roman  ecclesiastical  history  abounds.  But 
in  Jerusalem  it  is  not  so.  The  featureless 
rocks  without  the  walls,  the  mere  dust  and 
ashes  of  the  city  within,  repel  the  attempt  to 
amalgamate  them  with  the  fables  which  are 
affixed  to  them,  and  which,  by  the  very  fact 
of  their  almost  imperceptible  connection  with 
the  spots  in  question,  betray  their  foreign 
parentage.  A  fragment  of  old  sculpture 
lying  at  a  house  door  is  sufficient  to  mark 
the  abode  of  Veronica — a  broken  column, 
separated  from  its  companions  in  a  colonnade 
in  the  next  street,  is  pointed  out  as  that  to 
which  the  decree  of  Pilate  was  affixed,  or  on 
which  the  cock  crew — a  faint  line  on  the  sur- 
face of  a  rock  is  the  mark  of  the  girdle 
which  the  Virgin  dropt  to  convince  Thomas. 
There  is  no  attempt  at  subtle  fraud,  or  even 
at  probability.  The  only  handle,  perhaps, 
even  for  a  legendary  superstructure,  afforded 
by  the  scenes  themselves,  is  the  red  and  white 
color  of  the  limestone  rock,  which,  if  the 
Scala  Santa  or  any  part  of  it  were  ever  at 
Jerusalem,  may  have  suggested  the  marks. 
Criticism  and  belief  are  alike  disarmed  by  the 
child-like,  and  almost  playful  spirit,  in  which 
the  early  pilgrims  and  crusaders  must  have 
gone  to  and  fro,  seeking  for  places  in  which 
to  realize  the  dreams  of  their  own  imagina- 
tions,* 

'  From  these  lesser  memorials — the  mere 
sport  and  exuberance  of  monastic  traditions — 
we  pass  to  the  greater,  though  still  not  the 
greatest,  of  the  Holy  Places  of  Jerusalem. 
ThejT  are — the  Church,  or  rather  Mosque,  of 

*  An  iiutractive  example  of  the  readiness  with 
which  several  localities  were  invented  may  be  seen 
in  Sewnlf  8  nneonscionfl  acoonnt  of  the  acoommoda- 
tion  of  the  Mahomedan  relics  in  the  Mosque  of 
Omar  to  Christian  history  during  that  short  period 
in  the  twelfth  century  Wnen  it  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  CrasaderB.      (Early  English  Travellers,  p.  40.) 


602 


THE  HOLT  PLACES. 


[Dec,, 


the  Ascension,  on  the  top  of  Mount  Olivet ; 
Ihe  Church  containing  the  tomb  of  the  Virgin, 
at  its  foot ;  and  the  '^  Cosnaculum/'  or 
Church  of  the  Apostles,  on  Mount  Zion. 

1.  The  present  edifice  of  the  Church  of 
the  Ascension  has  no  claims  to  antiquity.  It 
is  a  small  octagon  chapel  situated  in  the 
court  of  a  mosque,  the  minaret  of  which  is 
ascended  by  every  traveller  for  the  sake  of 
the  celebrated  view,  to  which  the  world  can 
ofifer  no  equal.  Within  the  chapel  is  the 
rock  which  has  been  pointed  out  to  pilgrims, 
at  least  since*  ihe  seventh  century,  as  im- 
printed with  the  footstep  of  our  Saviour. 
There  is  no  memorial  to  which  we  more  joy- 
fully apply  our  observations  upon  the  slight- 
ness  of  ground  with  which  many  of  the 
sacred  localities  were  selected.  It  would  be 
painful  to  witness  any  symptom  of  fraud,  or 
even  the  adoption  of  some  fantastic  trick  of 
nature,  in  connection  with  such  an  event  as  is 
here  commemorated.  A  deep  repulsion  would 
be  created  in  all  but  the  coarsest  minds,  were 
there,  for  example,  any  such  impression  as 
that  which  is  shown  in  the  Chapel  of  Domine 
Quo  Yadis  at  Rome,  or  of  St.  Radegonde  at 
Poitiers,  where  well-defined  footmarks  in  the 
stone  indicate  the  spots  in  which  our  Saviour 
is  alleged  to  have  appeared  to  St.  Peter  and 
St.  Radegonde.  Here  there  is  only  a  simple 
cavity  in  the  rock,  which  has  no  more  resem- 
blance to  a  human  foot  than  to  any  thing 
else.  It  must  have  been  chosen  in  default  of 
any  thing  better  ;  and  could  never,  of  itself, 
have  suggested  the  connection. 

It  is  not  improbable  that  the  Church  of 
the  Ascension  marks  the  site  on  which  Helena 
built  one  of  the  only  two  churches  which 
Eusebitts  ascribes  to  her — the  church  "  on 
the  top  of  the  hilP'  whose  glittering  cross 
was  the  first  thing  that  caught  the  eye  of 
the  pilgrimsf  who,  in  the  a^e  of  Constantino 
and  of  Jerome,  approached  Jerusalem  from 
the  south  and  west.  At  the  same  time,  |  a 
circumstance  on  which  Eusebius  lays  great 
stress  has  been  strangely  overlooked  by  most 
of  those  who  have  treated  on  the  subject, 
and  which,  though  it  may  not  invalidate  the 
identity  of  the  position  of  the  ancient  church 
with  the  present  mosque,  certainly  throws  a 
new  light  upon  the  object  for  which  it  was 
erected.  "A  true  tradition,"  he  tells  us, 
"  maintains  that  our  Lord  had  initiated  bis 


*  Aroulf.  (Early  Engliah  Travellers,  p.  5.)  He 
apeaks  of  the  "  dtut*'  on  which  the  impresaion  re^ 
mains ;  but  probably  he  meant  the  same  thing. 

t  Hieronym.  Epitaph.  Paal. 

X  Eaeeb.  Vit.  Const,  iii.  41, 48;  Demonst  Evang., 
▼i.  18,  p.  288. 


disciples  in  his  secret  mysteries*'  before  the 
Ascension,  in  a  cave  to  which,  on  that  ac- 
count, pilgrimages  were  in  his  time  made 
from  all  parts  of  the  Empire ;  and  it  was  to 
honor  this  cave,  which  ConstanUne  himself 
also  adorned,  that  Helena  built  a  church,  in 
memory  of  the  Ascension,  on  the  summit  of 
the  mountain.  It  is  almost  certain  that 
Eusebius  must  refer  to  the  singular  cata- 
comb,  commonly  called  the  Tombs  of  the 
Prophets,  which  is  a  short  distance  below  the 
third  summit  of  Mount  Olivet,  and  was  first 
distinctly  noticed  by  Arculf  in  the  seventh 
century,  to  whom  were  shown  within  it 
"  four  stone  tables,  where  our  Lord  and  the 
Apostles  sate."*  In  the  next  century  the 
same  "  four  tables  of  His  Supper"  were 
seen  by  Bernard  the  Wise,  who  speaks  of  a 
church  being  erected  there  to  commemorate 
the  Betray aT.f  From  that  period  it  remain- 
ed unnoticed  till  attention  was  again  called 
to  it  by  the  travellers  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  in  whose  time  it  had  assumed  its 
present  rame. 

It  is  possible  that  what  Bernard  calls  the 
church  may  have  been  the  remains  of  the 
buildings  which  Constantino  erected,  and 
that  the  ruins,  still  discernible  on  the  third 
summit,  may  be  the  vestiges  of  the  sacred 
edifice  of  Helena.  It  is,  however,  possible 
also  (and  the  expression  "summit  of  the 
whole  mountain"  rather  leads  to  this  con- 
clusion) that,  though  in  connection  with  the 
cave,  her  church  was  built  on  the  site  which 
is  usually  assigned  to  it  within  the  precincts 
of  the  present  mosque.  But,  whichever  be 
the  case,  it  is  clear  from  the  language  of  Eu- 
sebius that  the  spot  which  she  meant  to 
honor  was  not  the  scene  of  the  Ascension  it- 
self, but  the  scene  of  the  conversations  which 
preceded  that  event,  and  which  were  believed 
to  have  occurred  in  the  cave.  Had  this  been 
clearly  perceived,  much  useless  controversy 
would  have  been  spared.  There  is  no  proof 
from  Eusebius  that  the  place  from  which 
our  Lord  might  be  presumed  to  have  as- 
cended was  ever  specified  at  all.  Here  was 
(as  usual)  the  tradition  of  the  eave,  and  no- 
thing besides,  and  Helena  fixed  upon  the  site 
of  her  church  partly  (no 'doubt)  from  its 
commanding  position,  partly  from  its  vicinity 
to  the  rocky  labyrinth  in  which  the  instruc- 
tions immediately  preceding  the  Ascension 
were  supposed  to  have  been  delivered.  It 
was  reservc^d  for  observant  travellers  of  oar 
own  time   to   perceive  the  impossibility  of 

*  Early  Travels  in  Palestine,  p.  4. 
t  Ibid.,  p.  24. 


1853] 


THE  HOLY  FLACBi 


603 


reconciling  what  is  at  present  alleged  to  be 
the  scene  of  the  Ascension  'with  the  words  of 
St.  Luke,  to  which  we  must  add  its  palpable 
contradiction  to  the  whole  character  of  the 
event.  Even  if  the  Evangelist  had  been  less 
explicit  in  stating  that  ''  Jesus  led  out  the 
disciples  as  far  as  Bethany/'  we  should  still 
have  maintained  that  the  secluded  hills* 
which  overhang  the  village  on  the  eastern 
slope  of  Olivet  are  as  evidently  appropriate 
to  the  entire  tenor  of  the  narrative,  as  the 
alartling,  we  might  almost  say  offensive, 
publicity  of  a  spot  in  full  view  of  the  city  of 
Jerusalem  is  wholly  inconsistent  with  it,  and 
(in  the  absence,  as  it  now  appears,  of  even 
traditional  support)  in  every  sense  untenable. 
2.  There  are  probably  not  many  English- 
men who,  before  the  diplomatical  contro- 
versy which  it  has  provoked,  knew  any  thing 
of  the  tomb  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  least 
known,  but  most  romantic,  sanctuary  of  any 
that  is  to  be  found  in  Palestine.  Yet  there 
are  few  travellers  whose  attention  is  not  ar- 
rested by  the  sight  of  a  venerable  chapel, 
approached  by  a  flight  of  steps,  which  lead 
from  the  rocky  roots  of  Olivet  among  which 
it  stands,  and  entered  by  yet  again  another 
and  deeper  descent,  under  the  low-browed 
arches  of  a  Gothic  roof,  producing  on  a 
smaller  scale  the  same  impression  of  awful 
gloom  that  is  so  remarkable  in  the  subterra- 
nean church  of  Assisi.  "  You  must  know,*' 
says  Maundeville,f 'Hhat  this  church  is  very 
low  in  the  earth,  and  a  part  is  quite  within 
the  earth.  But  I  imagine  that  it  was  not 
founded  so ;  but  since  Jerusalem  has  been 
so  often  destroyed,  and  the  walls  broken 
down,  and  levelled  with  the  valley,  and  that 
they  have  so  been  filled  again  and  the  ground 
raised,  for  that  reason  the  church  is  so  low  in 
the  earth.  Nevertheless,  men  say  there  com- 
monly, that  the  earth  hath  been  so  ever  since 
the  time  that  our  Lady  was  buried  there, 
and  men  also  say  there  that  it  grows  and 
increases  every  day  without  doubt."  Its 
history  is  comparatively  recent.  It  is  not 
mentioned  by  Jerome  amongst  the  sacred 
places  visited  by  Paula,  and,  if  on  such  mat- 
ters the  authority  of  the  Third  General 
Council^  is  supposed  to  have  weight,  the  tomb 
of  the  Virgin  ought  not  to  be  found  at  Jeru- 
sa]em>  but  at  Ephesus.  The  authority,  how- 
ever, of  a  General  Council  has  been  unable 

*  That  especially  to  which  Tobler  aadgns  the 
name  of  Djebel  Sajach.  (Siloahqnelle  and  Oelberg, 
p.  84.) 

t  Early  Travels  in  Palestine,  p.  176. 

t  Concil.  Hardouin,  torn.  i.  p.  143.  The  his- 
tory of  the  tradition  is  well  given  in  Mr.  Williams's 
Holy  City,  2d  ed.  vol.  ii.  p.  434. 


to  hold  its  ground  against  the  later  legend, 
which  placed  her  death  and  burial  at  the 
Holy  City.  Even  the  Greek  peasants  of 
Ephesus  itself,  though  still  pointing  to  the 
ruined  ediHce  on  the  heights  of  Coressus,  as 
the  tomb  of  the  Panaghia,  have  been  taught 
to  consider  it  as  commemorating  another 
Panaghia  than  the  "  Theotocos,  in  whom 
their  great  Council  exulted.  Greeks  and 
Latins,  unhappily  for  the  pence  of  Europe, 
unite  in  contending  for  the  possession  of  the 
rocky  sepulchre  at  the  foot  of  Olivet — the 
scene,  according  to  the  belief  of  both  church- 
es, of  that  "Assumption"  which  has  been 
immortalized  by  the  genius  of  Titian  and 
Raphael,  and  which,  in  our  later  ages,  has 
passed  from  the  region  of  poetry  and  devo- 
tion into  a  literal  doctrine.  ' 

Close,  however,  to  the  Church  of  the  Vir- 
gin is  a  spot  which,  as  it  is  omitted  in  Abb6 
Michon's  catalogue  of  Holy  Places,  we  ought 
in  consistency  to  pass  over.  Yet  a  few 
words — and  perhaps  the  fewer  the  better — 
must  be  devoted  to  the  Garden  of  Gethse- 
mane.  That  the  tradition  reaches  back  to 
the  age  of  Constantine  is  certain.  How  far 
it  agrees  with  the  slight  indications  of  its 
position  in  the  Gospel  narrative  will  be  judged 
by  the  impression  of  each  individual  travel- 
ler. Some  will  think  it  too  public.  Others 
will  see  an  argument  in  its  favor  from  its 
close  proximity  to  the  brook  Kedron.  None 
probably  will  be  disposed  to  receive  the  tra- 
ditional sites  which  surround  it — the  Grotto 
of  the  Agony,  the  rocky  bank  of  the  three 
Apostles,  the  "  terra  damnata"  of  the  Be- 
trayal. But  in  spite  of  all  the  doubts  that 
can  be  raised  against  their  antiquity  and  the 
genuineness  of  their  site,  the  eight  aged 
olive  trees — now  indeed  less  striking  in  the 
modern  garden- enclosure  than  when  they 
stood  free  and  unprotected  on  the  rough 
hill-side — will  remain,  so  long  as  their  al- 
ready protracted  life  is  spared,  the  most  ven- 
erable of  their  race  on  the  surface  of  the 
earth ;  of  all  the  sacred  memorials  in  or 
about  Jerusalem,  the  most  affecting,  and,  ex- 
cept the  everlasting  hills  themselves,  most 
nearly  earrying  back  the  thoughts  to  the 
events  which  they  commemorate. 

3.  On  the  brow  of  Mount  Zion  a  conspi- 
cuous minaret  is  pointed  out  froq[i  a  distance 
to  the  traveller  approaching  Jerusalem  from 
the  south,  as  marking  the  Mosque  of  the 
Tomb  of  David.  Within  the  precincts  of 
that  mosque  is  a  vaulted  Gothic  chamber, 
which  contains  within  its  four  walls  a  greater 
confluence  of  traditions  than  any  other  place 
in  Palestine,  after  the  Holy  Sepulchre,    t*  •- 


504 


THE  HOLT  PLAGia 


pec. 


said  to  occupy  the  site  of  the  edi6ce, — it 
cannot  of  course  be  the  very  church  itself, — 
which  Epiphanius  mentions  as  having  sur- 
vived the  capture  of  Jerusalem  by  Titus. 
That  in  the  days  of  Cyril  there  was  some 
such   building,  in   which   he  delivered   his 
famous  lectures,  is  evident  from  his  own  al- 
lusions.    But  it  is  startling  to  hear  that  this 
is  the  upper  chamber  of  the  Last  Supper, 
of  the  meeting  after  the  Resurrection,  of  the 
day  of  Pentecost,  of  the  residence  and  death 
of  the  Virgin,  of  the  burial  of  Stephen.     If 
it  were  not  for  the  antiquity  of  some  of  these 
pretensions — dating  as  far  back  as  the  fourth 
century,  and  the  interest  of  all  of  them — it 
would  be  hardly  worth  while  to  allude  to 
assumptions  which  rest  on  a  foundation  too 
fragile   to   bear  discussion.      A   conjecture 
might  almost  be  hnzarded,  that  the  building, 
being  in  ruins  or  of  palpably  earlier  date 
than  the  rest  of  the  city  as  rebuilt  by  Ha- 
drian, had  served  as  a  convenient  receptacle 
for  every  memorable  event  which  remained 
unattached.     It  is  impossible  at  least  that  it 
should  be  both  the  scene  of  the  "  Coenacu- 
lum,"  and   stand  within   the   precincts,  or 
rather  above  the  vault  of  the  Tomb  of  David. 
The  belief  that  here  is  the  burial-place  of 
the  Royal  Psalmist,  although  entertained  by 
Christians,  Jews,  and  Mussulmen  alike,  has 
given  it  a  special  sanctity  only  in  the  eyes  of 
the  last,  and  M.  De  Saulcy  has  endeavored, 
in  a  very  elaborate  argument,  to  set  up  in 
preference  the  catacomb  on  the  north  of  the 
city,  commonly  called   the  Tombs   of  the 
Kings.     But  the  old  site  is  maintained  by 
many  zealous  upholders  of  the  local  tradi- 
tions, as,  for  example,  by  Mr.  Williams,  in 
his  •*  Holy  City,***  and  all  that  we  assert  is 
the  incompatibility  of  the  claim  to  be  at  once 
the  scene  of  David's  burial  and  of  the  Last 
Supper.     The  Jewish  feeling,  at  the  com- 
mencement of    the   Gospel   history,   could 
never  have  permitted  a  residence  to  exist  in 
juxtaposition  with  the  Royal  Sepulchre. 

4.  We  now  approach  the  most  sacred  of 
the  Holy  Places ;  in  comparison  of  which,  if 
genuine,  all  the  rest  sink  into  insignificance, 
and  which,  even  if  spurious,  is  among  the 
most  interesting  spots  in  the  world.  It  is 
needless  to  attempt  on  the  present  occasion 
to  unravel  once  more  the  tangled  contro- 
versy of  the  identity  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.f 

•  Vol.  ii.  p.  608.  ~~^ 

t  The  question  has  already  been  discussed  by  us 
in  an  article  o^  Dr.  Robinson's  "  Biblical  Research- 
es." (Q.  R.  vol.  69,  pp.  169-176.)  A  summary  of 
both  sides  of  the  question  is  given  in  the  eighth 
number  of  the  "Museum  of  Classical  Antiquities," 
April,  1853. 


Every  thing,  we  believe,  which  can  be  altered 
against  the  claim  will  be  found  in  the  "  Bib- 
lical Researches"  of    Dr.  Robinson — every 
thing  which  can  be  said  in  its  favor  in  the 
"  Holy  City"  of  Mr.  Williams,  including,  as 
it  does,  the  able  discussion  by   Professor 
Willis  on  the  architectural  history  of  the 
church.     It  is  enough  to  remind  our  readers 
that  the  decision  mainly  turns  upon  the  so- 
lution of  two  questions,  one  historical,  the 
other  topographical.     It  is  commonly  con- 
fessed that  the  present  edifice  stands  on  the 
site  of  that  which  was  constructed  by  Con- 
stantine,  and  the  historical  question  is  the 
value  to  be  attached  to  the  allegation  that 
the  spot  was  marked  out  in  the  time  of  the 
latter  by  a  temple  or  statue  of  Venus,  which 
the  Emperor  Hadrian  had  erected  for  the 
purpose  of  polluting  the  spot  believed  to  be 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  by  the  Christians  of  his 
a^e.    The  Crucifixion,  as  we  all  know  on  the 
highest  authority,  being  without   the  city, 
and  the  tomb  in  a  garden  nigh  at  hand,  the 
topographical  question  is,  wh«>ther  it  is  pos- 
sible, from  its  position,  that  the  selected  lo- 
cality could  have  been  on  the  outer  side  of 
the  ancient  walls  of  Jerusalem.     On  the  his- 
torical branch  of  the  inquiry  we  will  merely 
remark  that  the  advocates  of  the  Sepulchre 
have  never  fairly  met  the  difficulty  well  urged 
by  the  learned  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,*  that  it  is 
hardly  conceivable  that  Hadrian  could  have 
had  any  motive  in  defiling  the  spot  with 
heathen  abominations,  when  his  whole  object 
in  establishing  his  Roman  colony  at  Jerusa- 
lem was  to  insult  the  Jews,  and  not  the 
Christians,  who  were  emphatically  divided 
from  them.    It  is  equally  affirmed  that  Ha- 
drian astablished  the  worship  of  Venus  upon 
the  scene  of  the  Nativity,  and  it  throws  a 
further  suspicion  upon  both  stories  that  there 
is  no  allusion,  either  by  Justin  or  by  Origen, 
to  the  desecration   at   Bethlehem,  though 
speaking  of  the  very  cave  over  which  the 
Pagan  temple  is  said  to  have  been  erected, 
and  within  a  century  of  its  erection.     In  the 
topographical  question,  while  admitting  the 
weight  of  the  objection  drawn   from   the 
proximity,  to  say  the  least,  of  the  present 
site  to  the  inhabited  portion  of  old  Jerusa- 
lem, we  yet  do  not  think  that  the  opponents 
of  the  Sepulchre  have  ever  done  justice  (o 
the  argument  stated  by  Lord  Nugent,  and 
pointedly  brought  out  by  Professor  Willis, 
which  is  derived  from  the  so-called  tombs  of 
Joseph  and   Nicodemus.     Underneath  the 
western  galleries  of  the  church  are  two  ex- 
•-  •  -  ■  ■* 

*  Mibnan's  History  of  Christianity,  voL  L  p.  417. 


1863.] 


THE  HOLT  PLAOE& 


606 


cavations  in  the  face  of  the  rock,  which  as 
clearly  form  an  ancient  Jewish  sepulchre  as 
any  that  can  be  seen  in  the  Valley  of  Hin- 
nom  or  in  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings.  That  they 
shonld  have  been  so  long  overlooked  both  by 
the  advocates  and  opponents  of  the  identity 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  can  only  he  explain- 
ed by  the  perverse  dulness  of  the  conventual 
guides,   who  call  attention  instead  to  two 

graves  sunk  in  the  floor,*  which  may  posst- 
ly,  like  similar  excavations  at  Petra,  be  of 
ancient  origin,  but  which,  as  Dr.  Schuiz  sug- 
gests, may  have  been  dug  at  a  later  period 
to  represent  the  graves,  when  the  real  object 
of  the  ancient  sepulchres  had  ceased  to  be 
intelligible — as  the  tombs  of  some  Mussul- 
man saints  are  fictitious  monuments  erected 
over  the  rude  sepulchres  hewn  in  the  rock 
beneath.  The  names  assigned  to  these  sep- 
ulchres are  fanciful  of  course,  but  their  ex- 
istence seems  a  conclusive  proof  that  at  some 
period  the  site  of  the  present  church  must 
have  been  without  the  walls,  and  lends  con- 
siderable probability  to  the  belief  that  the 
rocky  excavation,  which  exists  in  part  per- 
haps still,  and  once  existed  entire,  within  the 
marble  casing  of  the  chapel  of  the  Sepulchre, 
was  a  really  ancient  tomb,  and  not,  as  is 
often  rashly  asserted,  a  modern  imitation. 

Farther  than  this  we  believe  that  in  our 
present  state  of  knowledge  no  merely  topo- 
graphical considerations  can  bring  us.  Even 
if  these  tombs  should  prove  the  site  of  the 
present  church  to  have  been  outside  some 
wall,  they  do  not  prove  it  to  have  been  the 
wall  of  Herod;  for  it  may  have  been  the 
earlier  wall  of  the  ancient  monarchy;  and 
although  it  was  satisfactorily  established  that 
the  church  was  outside  the  wall  of  Herod, 
u  would  only  prove  the  possibility,  and  not 
the  probability,  of  its  identity  with  the  site 
of  the  Crucifixion.  But,  granting  to  the  full 
the  doubts — and  it  may  be  more  than  doubts 
— which  must  always  hang  over  the  highest 
claims  of  the  Church  of  the  Sepulchre,  we 
do  not  envy  the  feelings  of  the  man  who  can 
look  unmoved  on  what  has.  from  the  time  of 
Constantine,  been  revered  by  the  larger  part 
of  the  Christian  world  as  the  scene  of  the 
greatest    events    that  ever  occurred  upon 

*  Even  Mr.  Curzon,  whilst  arguing  for  the  anti- 
quity of  these  tomba»  in  his  graphic  account  of  the 
church,  speaks  of  them  as  "  in  the  floor.''  {Ecatem 
Monasteries^  p.  166.)  Another  slight  inaccuracy 
may  be  noticed,  (p.  203)  because  it  confuses  the 
tenor  of  a  very  interesting  narrative.  He  con- 
founds *'  the  stone  where  the  women  stood  during 
the  anointing"  with  "  the  stone  where  the  Virgin 
stood  during  the  Crucifixion."  The  two  spots  are 
wide  apart 


earth,  and  has  itself  become,  for  that  reason, 
the  centre  of  a  second  cycle  of  events, 
which,  if  of  incomparably  less  magnitude,  are 
yet  of  a  romantic  interest  almost  unequalled 
in  human  annals.  It  may  be  too  much  to 
expect  that  the  traveller,  who  sees  the  un- 
certainty of  the  whole  tradition,  should  par- 
take those  ardent  feelings  to  which  even  a 
man  so  skeptical  as  Dr.  Clarke  of  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  localities  confesses,  in  the 
striking  passage  in  which  he  describes  the 
entrance  of  himself  and  his  companion  into 
the  Chapel  of  the  Sepulchre ;  but  its  later 
associations  at  least  may  be  felt  by  every 
student  of  history  without  the  faintest  fear 
of  superstition  or  irreverence. 

Look  at  it  as  its  site  was  first  fixed  *  by 
the  extraordinary  man  who  from  so  many 
different  sides  deeply  afiFected  the  fortunes  of 
Christendom.  Whether  Golgotha  were  here 
or  far  away,  there  is  no  question  that  we  can 
still  trace,  as  Constantine  or  his  mother  first 
beheld  it,  the  sweep  of  rocky  hill,  in  the  face 
of  which  the  sepulchre  stood.  If  the  rough 
limestone  be  disputed,  which  some  maintain 
can  still  be  felt  in  the  interior  of  the  Chape] 
of  the  Sepulchre,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of 
the  rock  which  contains  the  "  tombs  of  Jo- 
seph and  Nicodemus ;"  none  of  that  which 
in  the  **  prison"  and  in  the  '*  entombment  of 
Adam's  head''  marks  the  foot  of  the  cliff  of 
the  present  Golgotha ;  or  of  that  which  is 
seen  at  its  summit  in  the  so-called  fissure  of 
the  "rocks  rent  by  the  earthquake;"  none, 
lastly,  of  that  through  which  a  long  descent 
conducts  the  pilgrim  to  the  subterraneous 
chapel  of  the  "  Invention  of  the  Cross."  In 
all  these  places  enough  can  be  seen  to  show 
what  the  natural  features  of  the  place  must 
have  been  before  the  native  stone  had  been 
"violated  by  the  marble"  of  Constantine; 
enough  to  show  that  we  have  at  least  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the  church  is 
built  on  the  native  hills  of  the  old  Jerusa- 
lem.f  On  these  cliffs  have  clustered  the 
successive  edifices  of  the  venerable  pile  which 
now  rises  in  almost  solitary  graudeur  from 
the  fallen  city.     The  two  domes,  between 

*  We  are,  of  eoune,  not  ignorant  of  Mr.  Fergus- 
son's  ingenious,  we  '.may  almost  eay,  brilliant  at- 
tempt to  disprove  even  the  Constantinian  origin  of 
the  present  site ;  bat  till  he  has  shown  (aa  his  ar- 
ffoment  requires)  that  the  market-place  of  Jerusa- 
lem was  at  that  time  in  the  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat, 
(to  omit  all  other  objections,)  we  cannot  think  that 
he  has  made  out  any  case. 

f  Perhaps  the  most  valuable  part  of  Professor 
Willis's  masterly  discussion  of  the  whole  subject  is 
his  attempt  to  restore  the  original  form  of  the 
ground.--(Section8 1  and  9.) 


606 


THB  HOLY  FLAOEa 


[Deo., 


which  the  Turkish  sheykh  was  established 
by  Saladin  to  watch  the  pilgrims  within — 
the  lesaer  dome  surmounting  the  Greek 
church  which  occupies  the  place  of  Constan- 
tine's  Basilica ;  the  larger  that  which  covers 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  itself,  and  for  the  privi- 
lege of  repairing  which  the  world  has  so 
nearly  been  roused  to  arms — the  Gothic  front 
of  the  Crusaders,  its  European  features 
strangely  blending  with  the  Oriental  imagery 
which  closes  it  on  everj  side ;  the  minaret  of 
Omar*  beside  the  Christian  belfry,  telling  its 
well-known  story  of  Arabian  devotion  and 
magnanimity ;  the  open  court  thronged  with 
buyers  and  sellers  of  relics  to  be  carried 
home  to  the  most  distant  regions  of  the 
earth ;  the  bridges  and  walls  and  stairs  by 
which  the  monks  of  the  adjacent  convents 
climb  into  the  galleries ;  the  chambers  of  all 
kinds  which  run  through  the  sacred  edifice  ; 
all  these,  and  many  like  appearances,  unfold 
more  clearly  than  any  book  the  long  series 
of  recollections  which  hang  around  the  tat- 
tered and  incongruous  mass.  Enter  the 
church,  and  the  impression  is  the  same. 
There  is  the  place  in  which  to  study  the 
diverse  rites  and  forms  of  the  older  churches 
of  the  world.  There  alone  (except  at  Beth- 
lehem) are  gathered  together  all  the  altars 
of  all  the  sects  which  existed  before  the 
Reformation.  There  is  the  barbaric  splen- 
dor of  the  Greek  Church,  exulting  in  its  pos- 
session of  Constantine's  Basilica  and  of  the 
rock  of  Calvary,  There  is  the  deep  poverty 
of  the  Coptic  and  Syrian  sects,  each  now 
confined  to  one  paltry  chapel,  and  which 
forcibly  contrast  with  the  large  portions  of 
the  edifice  which  have  been  gained  by  the 
Armenians  through  the  revenues  in  which 
that  church  of  merchants — the  Quakers  of 
the  East,  as  they  have  been  justly  called — ^so 
richly  abounds.  There  is  the  more  chastened 
and  familiar  worship  of  the  Latins,  here  re- 
duced from  the  gigantic  proportions  which  it 
bears  in  its  native  seat  to  a  humble  settle- 
ment in  a  foreign  land,  yet  still  securing  for 
itself  a  footing,  with  its  usual  energy,  even 
on  localities  which  its  rivals  seemed  most 
firmly  to  have  occupied.     High  on  the  plat- 

*  The  minaret  is  said  to  stand  on  the  spot  where 
Omar  prayed,  as  near  the  Church  as  was  compatible 
with  his  abstaining  from  its  appropriation  by  offer- 
ing up  his  prayers  within  it  The  story  is  ourionsly 
illustrated  by  the  account  which  Michon  (p.  72) 

S'ves  of  the  occupation  of  the  "  Coenaeulum'*  by  the 
ahometanSk  A  few  Muasulmen  in  the  last  centu- 
ry, who  were  determined  to  get  possession  of  the 
convent^  entered  it  on  the  plea  of  its  being  the 
tomb  of  David,  said  their  prayen  there,  and  from 
that  moment  it  became  a  Mahometan  sanctuary* 


form  of  Calvary,  beside  the  Greek  sanctuary 
of  the  Crucifixion,  it  has  claimed  a  separate 
altar  for  the  Exaltation  of  the  Cross.  Deep 
in  the  Armenian  chapel  of  St.  Helena  it  has 
seated  itself  in  the  corner  where  the  throne 
of  Helena  was  placed  during  the  "Inven- 
tion." In  the  Chapel  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
itself,  whilst  the  Greek  Church,  with  its 
characteristic  formality,  confines  its  masses 
to  the  antechapel,  where  its  priests  can  cele- 
brate towards  the  East,  the  Latin  Church, 
with  the  no  less  characteristic  boldness  of 
the  West,  has  rushed  into  the  vacant  space 
in  the  inner  shrine,  and,  regardless  of  all  the 
points  of  the  compass,  has  adopted  for  its 
altar  the  Holy  Tomb  itself.  For  good  or  for 
evil,  for  union  or  for  disunion,  the  older  forms 
of  Christendom  are  gathered  together,  as 
no  where  else  in  Europe  or  in  Asia,  within 
those  sacred  walls. 

It  would  bo  an  easy  though  a  melancholy 
task  to  dwell  on  the  bitter  dissensions  which 
have  thence  arisen — to  tell  how  the  Arme- 
nians stole  the  angel's  stone  from  the  ante- 
chapel of  the  Sepulchre — how  the  Latins 
procured  a  firman  to  stop  the  repairs  of  the 
dome  by  the  Greeks — how  the  Greeks  de- 
molished the  tombs  of  the  Latin  kings,  God- 
frey and  Baldwin,  in  the  resting-place  which 
those  two  heroic  chiefs  had  chosen  for  them- 
selves at  the  foot  of  Calvary — how  the  Eng- 
lish traveller  was  taunted  by  the  Latin  monks 
with  eating  the  bread  of  their  house,  and  not 
fighting  for  them  in  their  bloody  conflicts 
with  the  Greeks  at  Easter — how  the  Abys- 
sinian convent  was  left  vacant  for  the  latter 
in  the  panic  raised  when  a  drunken  Abys- 
sinian monk  shot  the  muezzin  going  hb 
rounds  on  the  top  of  Omar's  minaret — how, 
after  the  great  fire  of  1808,  which  the  Latins 
charge  to  the  ambition  of  their  rivals,  two 
years  of  time,  and  two-thirds  of  the  cost  of 
the  restoration  were  consumed  in  the  en- 
deavors of  each  party,  by  bribes  and  litiga- 
tions, to  overrule  and  eject  the  others  from 
the  places  they  had  respectively  occupied  in 
the  ancient  arrangement  of  the  churches — 
and  how  each  party  regards  the  infidel  Turk 
as  his  best  and  only  protector  from  his 
Cbrislian  foe.  These  dissensions,  however 
painful,  are  not  without  their  importance,  as 
exhibiting  in  a  palpable  form  the  contentions 
and  jealousies  which  from  the  earliest  times 
to  the  present  day  have  been  the  bane  of  the 
Christian  Church;  making  mutual  enemies 
dearer  than  rival  brethren,  and  the  common 
good  insignificant  in  comparison  with  the 
special  privileges  of  each  segment  of  the  cir- 
1  cle.     Yet  let  us  not  so  part.     Grievous  as 


186d.J 


THE  HOLY  PLAGES. 


607 


are  these  coDtentions,  we  canDot  but  think 
that  their  extent  has  been  somewhat  exag- 
gerated. Ecclesiastical  history  is  not  all 
controversy,  nor  is  the  area  of  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  at  all  times  and  in  all 
places  a  battle-field  of  sects.  On  ordinary 
occasions  it  exhibits  only  the  singular  sight 
of  different  nations,  kindreds,  and  languages 
worshipping,  each  with  its  peculiar  rites, 
round  what  they  unite  in  belieTing  to  be  the 
tomb  of  their  common  Lord — a  sight  edify- 
ing by  the  very  reason  of  its  singularity,  and 
suggestive  of  a  higher,  and  we  trust  the  day 
may  come  when  it  may  be  added,  a  truer 
image  of  the  Christian  Church  than  that 
which  is  DOW  too  often  derived  from  the  his- 
tory both  of  holy  places  and  holy  things. 

There  is  one  more  aspect  in  which  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  must  be  re- 
garded. It  is  not  only  the  church  of  all  the 
ancient  communions — it  is  also  in  a  special 
manner  the  Cathedral  of  Palestine  and  of 
the  East,  and  it  is  there  that  the  local  reli- 
gion which  attaches  to  all  the  Holy  Places 
reaches  its  highest  pitch,  receiving  its  color 
from  the  eastern  and  barbarous  nations  who 
are  the  principal  elements  in  the  congrega- 
tion. Most  of  our  readers  will  have  derived 
their  conception  of  the  Greek  Easter  at 
Jerusalem  from  Mr.  Curzon's  graphic  de- 
scription of  the  celebrated  catastrophe  of 
1834;  but  as  the  extraordmary  occurrences 
of  that  year  would  convey  a  mistaken  im- 
pression of  the  usual  routine,  it  may  be  well 
to  subjoin  an  account  of  the  more  customary 
celebration  of  the  festival.  The  time  to 
which  our  readers  must  transport  themselves 
is  the  morning  of  Easter  Eve,  which  by  a 
strange  anticipation,  here,  as  in  Spain,  eclipses 
Easter  Sunday.  The  place  is  the  gallery 
of  the  Latins,  whence  all  Frank  travellers 
view  the  spectacle, — on  the  northern  side  of 
the  great  Rotunda — the  model  of  so  many 
European  churches,  and  of  which  the  most 
remarkable,  perhaps,  that  of  Aix-la- Chapel le, 
was  built  in  express  imitation  of  the  famous 
original.  Above  is  the  dome  with  its  rents 
and  patches  waiting  to  be  repaired,  and  the 
sky  seen  through  the  opening  in  the  centre, 
which,  as  in  the  Pantheon,  admits  the  light 
and  air  of  day.  Below  is  the  Chapel  of  the 
Sepulchre — a  shapeless  edifice  of  brown 
marble ;  on  its  shabby  roof  a  meagre  cupola, 
tawdry  vases  with  tawdry  flowers,  and  a 
forest  of  slender  tapers  ;  whilst  a  blue  cur- 
tain is  drawn  across  its  top  to  intercept  the 
rain  admitted  through  the  dome.  It  is  di- 
vided into  two  chapels — that  on  the  west 
containing  the  Sepulchre,  that  on  the  east 


containing  the  "Stone  of  the  Angel."  Of 
these,  the  eastern  chapel  is  occupied  by  the 
Greeks  and  Armenians,  and  has  a  round  hole 
on  its  north  side,  from  which  the  Holy 
Fire  is  to  issue  for  the  Greeks,  and  a  corre- 
sponding aperture  for  the  Armenians  on  the 
south.  At  the  western  extremity  of  the 
Sepulchre,  but  attached  to  it  from  the  out* 
side,  is  the  little  wooden  chapel,  which  is  the 
only  portion  of  the  edifice  allotted  to  the 
Copts.  Yet  farther  west,  but  parted  from 
the  Sepulchre,  is  the  chapel,  equally  humble, 
of  the  Syrians,  whose  poverty  has  probably 
been  the  means  of  saving  from  marble  and 
decoration  the  so-called  tombs  of  Joseph  and 
Nicodemus  which  lie  in  their  precincts. 
The  Chapel  of  the  Sepulchre  itself  rises  from 
a  dense  mass  of  pilgrims  who  sit  or  stand 
wedged  together;  whilst  round  them,  and 
between  another  equally  dense  mass  which 
lines  the  walls  of  the  church,  a  circular  lane 
is  formed  by  two  circumferences  of  Turkish 
soldiers,  who  are  there  to  keep  order.  For 
the  first  two  hours  all  is  tranquil.  Nothing 
indicates  what  is  coming,  except  that  the 
two  or  three  pilgrims  who  have  got  close  to 
the  aperture  whence  the  fire  is  to  spring 
keep  their  hands  fixed  in  it  with  a  clench, 
which  is  never  an  instant  relaxed.  About 
noon,  this  circular  lane  is  suddenly  broken 
through  by  a  tangled  group  rushing  violent- 
ly  round  till  they  are  caught  by  one  of  the 
Turkish  soldiers.  It  seems  to  be  the  belief 
of  the  Arab  Greeks  that  unless  they  run  the 
circuit  of  the  Sepulchre  a  certain  number  of 
times,  the  fire  will  not  appear.  Accordingly, 
for  two  hours,  or  more,  a  succession  of  gam- 
bols takes  place,  which  an  Englishman  can 
only  compare  to  a  mixture  of  prisoner's  base, 
football,  and  leapfrog.*  He  sees  a  medley 
of  twenty,  thirty,  fifty  men,  some  of  them 
dressed  in  sheepskins,  some  almost  naked, 
racing  and  catching  hold  of  each  other,  lift- 
ing one  of  their  companions  on  their  shoul- 

*  It  is  pontble  that  in  these  performanoee  there 
may  be  some  reminisoence  of  the  an  dent  fonend 
games,  such  as  those  which  took  place  round  the  pile 
of  Fatrodnn  An  illustration  which  comes  more 
home  may  be  found  in  Tischendorf's  description  of 
the  races  at  the  tomb  of  the  great  Bedouin  saint^ 
Sheykh  Saleh,  io  the  Peninsula  of  Sinai,  (Reisen,  ii. 
p.  207-814,)  and  in  Jerome's  account  of  the  wild 
fanatics  who  performed  gambols  exactly  similar  to 
those  of  the  Greek  Easter  before  Uie  reputed  sepul- 
chres of  John  the  Baptist  and  Elisha,  at  Samana — 
ululare  more  loperum,  vocibus  latrare  canum— alios 
rotare  caputs  et  poet  tergum  terram  yertioe  tangere. 
{Epitaph,  Pavl,y  p.  US.)  Possibly  it  was  in  parody 
of  some  saoh  spectacles  that  the  lAtios  held  their 
dances  in  St  Sophia,  in  the  capture  of  Constantino- 
ple^ at  the  fourth  Crusade. 


508 


THE  HOLT  PLACES. 


[Dec., 


ders,  eometimes  on  tlieir  heads,  and  rushing 
on  with  him  till  he  leaps  on  the  ground, 
when  a  second  succeeds.  A  fugleman 
usually  precedes  the  rest,  clapping  his  hands, 
to  which  the  others  respond  by  the  like 
action,  adding  wild  howls,  of  which  the 
burden  is,  "  This  is  the  tomb  of  Jesus  Christ 
— God  save  the  Sultan" — "  Jesus  Christ  has 
redeemed  us."  What  begins  in  the  lesser 
groups  soon  grows  in  magnitude  and  extent, 
till  at  last  the  whole  of  the  passage  between 
the  troops  is  continuously  occupied  by  a  race, 
a  whirl,  a  torrent  of  these  wild  figures, 
wheeling  round  and  round  like  the  Sabbath 
of  the  Witches  in  Faust.  Gradually  the 
frenzy  subsides  or  is  checked  ;  the  race- 
course is  cleared,  and  out  of  the  Greek 
Church,  on  the  east  of  the  Rotunda,  a 
long  procession,  with  embroidered  banners, 
supplying  in  their  ritual  the  want  of  images, 
defiles  round  the  Sepulchre. 

The  excitement,  which  had  before  been 
confined  to  the  runners  and  dancers,  now  be- 
comes universal.  Hedged  in  by  the  soldiers, 
the  two  huge  masses  of  pilgrims  remain  in 
their  places,  but  all  join  in  a  wild  succession 
of  yells,  through  which  are  caught,  from  time 
to  time,  strangely  and  almost  affectingly  min- 
gled, the  chants  of  the  procession — the 
stately  chants  of  the  church  of  Basil  and 
Chrysostom — mingled  with  the  yell  of  sav- 
ages. Thrice  the  procession  paces  round ; 
and  at  the  third  circuit  the  two  lines  of 
Turkish  soldiers  join  and  fall  in  behind.  The 
crisis  of  the  day  is  approaching,  and  one 
great  movement  sways  the  multitude  from 
side  to  side.  The  presence  of  the  Turks  is 
believed  to  prevent  the  descent  of  the  fire, 
and  at  this  point  they  are  driven,  or  consent 
to  be  driven,  out  of  the  church.  It  is  difli- 
cult  to  describe  the  appearance,  as  of  a  bat- 
tle and  a  victory,  which  at  this  moment  per- 
vades the  church.  In  every  direction  the 
raging  mob  bursts  in  upon  the  troops,  who 
pour  out  of  the  building  at  the  south-east 
corner.  The  procession  js  broken  through — 
the  banners  stagger,  waver,  and  fall,  amidst 
the  flight  of  priests,  bishops,  and  standard- 
bearers  before  the  tremendous  rush.  In  a 
small  but  compact  band,  the  Bishop  of  Petra 
(who  is  on  this  occasion  the  Bishop  of  **  the 
Fire,"  the  representative  of  the  Patriarch) 
is  hurried  to  the  chapel  of  the  Sepulchre, 
and  the  door  is  closed  behind  him.  The 
whole  church  is  now  one  heaving  sea  of 
heads,  resounding  with  an  uproar  which  can 
be  compared  to  nothing  less  than  that  of  the 
Guildhall  of  London  at  a  nomination  for  the 
City.      A  single  vacant  space  is  left — a  nar- 


row lane  from  the  fire-hole  in  the  northern 
side  of  the  chapel  to  the  wall  of  the  church. 
By  the  aperture  itself  stands  a  priest  ta 
catch  the  flame;  and  on  each  side  of  the 
lane,  so  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  hundreds  of 
bare  arms  are  stretched  out  like  the  branches 
of  a  leafless  forest — Kke  the  branches  of  a 
forest  quivering  in  some  violent  tempest. 

In  earlier  and  bolder  times,  the  expectation 
of  the  Divine  presence  was  raised  at  this 
juncture  to  a  still  higher  pitch  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  dove  hovering  above  the  cupola 
of  the  chapel — to  indicate,  so  Maundrell 
was  told,*  and  doubtless  truly,  the  visible 
descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  This  extraordi- 
nary act,  whether  of  extravagant  symbolism 
or  of  daring  profaneness,  has  now  been  dis- 
continued ;  but  the  belief  remains — and  it  is 
only  from  the  knowledge  of  that  belief  that 
the  full  horror  of  the  scene,  and  intense  ex- 
citement of  the  next  few  moments,  can  be 
adequately  conceived.  Silent — awfully  silent 
— ^in  the  midst  of  the  frantic  uproar,  stands 
the  Chapel  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  If  any 
one  could  at  such  a  moment  be  convinced  of 
its  genuineness,  or  could  expect  a  display  of 
miraculous  power,  assuredly  it  would  be 
that  its  very  stones  would  cry  out  against 
the  wild  fanaticism  without,  and  the  fraud 
which  is  preparing  within.  At  last  it  comes. 
A  bright  flame  as  of  burning  wood  appears 
inside  the  hole — the  light,  as  every  educated 
Greek  knows  and  acknowledges,  kindled  by 
the  Bishop  in  the  chapel — the  light,  as  every 
pilgrim  believes,  of  the  descent  of  God  him- 
self upon  the  Holy  Tomb.  Slowly,  gradu- 
ally, the  fire  spreads  from  hand  to  hand,  from 
taper  to  taper,  till  at  last  the  entire  edifice, 
from  gallery  to  gallery,  as  well  as  through 
the  whole  of  the  area  below,  is  blazing  with 
thousands  of  burning  candles.  It  is  now 
that,  according  to  some  accounts,  the  Bishop 
or  Patriarch  is  carried  in  triumph  out  of  the 
Chapel,  on  the  shoulders  of  the  people,  in  a 
fainting  state,  "  to  give  the  impression  that 
he  is  overcome  by  the  glory  of  the  Almighty, 
from  whose  immediate  presence  he  is  believed 
to  have  come."f  It  is  now  that  a  mounted 
horseman,  stationed  at  the  gates  of  the 
Church,  gallops  off  with  a  lighted  taper  to 
communicate  the  sacred  fire  to  the  lamps  of 
the  Greek  Church  In  the  Convent  at  Bethle- 
hem. It  is  now  that  the  great  rush  to  escape 
from  the  rolling  smoke  and  suffocating  heat, 
and  to  carry  the  consecrated  tapers  into  the 

*  With  thifl  and  one  or  two  other  slighter  varia- 
tioDBthe  account  of  Maandrell,  in  the  17  th  century, 
is  an  almost  exact  transcript  of  what  is  still  seen. 

f  CnnEon's  Monasteries^  p  208. 


1858.] 


THE  HOLT  PLACES. 


500 


streets  and  houses  of  Jerusalem,  leads  at  t 
times  to  the  violent  pressure  at  the  single 
outlet  of  the  church,  which,  in  1884,  cost 
the  lives  of  hundreds.  For  a  short  time  the 
pilgrims  run  to  and  fro — ^ruhbing  their  faces 
and  breasts  against  the  fire  to  attest  its  re- 
puted harmlessness.  But  the  wild  enthusi- 
asm terminates  the  moment  after  the  fire  is 
co-^municated;  and  not  the  least  extraordinary 
part  of  the  spectacle  is  the  rapid  and  total 
subsidence  of  a  frenzy  so  intense — the  con- 
trast of  the  furious  agitation  of  the  morning 
with  the  profound  repose  of  the  evening, 
when  the  church  is  again  filled  through  the 
area  of  the  Rotunda,  through  the  chapels  of 
Copt  and  Syrian,  through  the  subterranean 
Church  of  Helena,  the  great  nave  of  Con- 
stantine*s  Basilica,  the  stairs  and  platform  of 
Calvary  itself ;  filled  in  every  part,  except  the 
one  Chapel  of  the  Latin  Church,  by  a  mass 
of  pilgrims,  who  are  wrapt  in  deep  sleep, 
awaiting  the  midnight  service. 

Such  is  the  celebration  of  the  Greek  Eas- 
ter— probably  the  greatest  moral  argument 
against  the  identity  of  the  spot  which  it 
professes  to  honor,  and  considering  the  place, 
the  time,  and  the  intention  of  the  professed 
miracle,  the  most  ofifensive  imposture  to 
be  found  in  the  world.  It  is  impossible  to 
give  a  precise  account  of  the  origin  of  the  rite. 
The  explanation  often  offered,  that  it  has  arisen 
from  a  misunderstanding  of  a  symbolical 
ceremony,  is  hardly  compatible  with  its 
remote  antiquity.  As  early  as  the  ninth  cen- 
tury it  was  believed  that  **  an  angel  came 
and  lighted  the  lamps  which  hung  over  the 
Sepulchre,  of  which  light  the  Patriarch  gave 
his  share  to  the  bishops  and  the  rest  ot  the 
people,  that  each  might  illuminate  his  own 
house."*  It  was  in  all  probability  an  imita- 
tion of  an  alleged  miraculous  appearance  of 
fire  in  ancient  times — ^suggested  perhaps  by 
some  actual  phenomenon  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, buch  as  that  which  is  mentioned  in 
Ammianus's  account  of  Julian's  rebuilding 
the  Temple,  and  assisted  by  the  belief  so 
common  in  the  East,  that  on  every  Friday  a 
supernatural  light  which  dazzles  the  behold- 
ers, and  supersedes  the  necessity  for  lamps, 
blazes  in  the  sepulchres  of  Mussulman  saints. 
It  is  a  remarkable  instance  of  a  great — it  may 
almost  be  said  awful — ^superstition  gradually 
deserted  by  its  supporters.  Originally  all 
the  sects  partook  in  the  ceremony,  but  one 

*  Bernard  the  Wise,  a.o.  867.  Early  Travels  in 
FaleBtine,  p.  26.  There  is  a  story  of  a  miraoalooa 
supply  of  oil  for  the  lighting  of  the  lampe  on  Easter 
Eve  at  Jernaalem,  as  early  as  the  2d  centoiy. — 
Stueb,  H,  E,  vL  9. 


by  one  they  have  fallen  away.  The  Roman 
Catholics,  after  their  exclusion  from  the 
church  by  the  Greeks,  denounced  it  as  an 
imposture,  and  have  never  resumed  it  since. 
Indeed^  next  to  the  delight  of  the  Greek  pil- 
grims at  receiving  the  fire,  is  now  the  delight 
of  the  Latins  in  deriding  what  in  the  "An- 
nals of  the  Propagation  of  the  Faith"  for  this 
very  year  they  describe  (forgetful  of  the  past 
and  of  8.  Januarius  at  Naples)  as  a  ''ridicu- 
lous and  superstitious  ceremony."  '<Ah ! 
vedete  la  fantasia,"  exclaim  the  happy  Fran- 
ciscans in  the  Latin  gallery,  **Ah  !  qual  fan- 
tasia I — ecco  gli  bruti  Greci — noi  non  facci- 
amo  cosi."  Later,  the  grave  Armenians  de- 
serted, or  only  with  reluctance  acquiesced  in 
the  fraud  ;  and  lastly,  unless  they  are  great- 
ly misrepresented,  the  enlightened  memberB 
of  the  Greek  Church  itself,  including,  it  b 
said,  no  less  a  person  than  the  Emperor 
Nicholas,  would  gladly  discontinue  the  cere- 
mony, could  they  but  venture  on  such  a  shock 
to  the  devotion  of  thousands  who  yearly  come 
from  far  and  near,  over  land  and  sea,  for  this 
sole  and  special  object. 

It  is  doubtless  a  wretched  thought  that 
for  such  an  end  as  this  Constantine  and  He- 
lena should  have  planned  and  builded — 
for  such  a  worship  Godfrey  and  Tancred, 
Richard  and  St.  Louis,  have  fought  aud  died. 
Yet,  in  justice  to  the  Greek  clergy,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  it  is  but  an  extreme  and  in- 
structive example  of  what  every  church  suf- 
fers which  has  to  bear  with  the  weakness  and 
fanaticism  of  its  members,  whether  brought 
about  by  its  own  corruption  or  by  long  and 
inveterate  ignorance.  And  however  repul- 
sive to  our  European  minds  may  be  the  fran- 
tic orgies  of  the  Arab  pilgrims,  we  ought 
rather,  perhaps,  to  wonder  that  these  wild 
creatures  should  be  Christians  at  all,  than 
that,  being  such,  they  should  take  this  mode 
of  expressing  their  devotion  at  this  great  an- 
niversary. The  very  violence  of  the  par- 
oxysm proves  its  temporary  character.  On 
every  other  occasion  their  conduct  is  sober 
and  decorous,  even  to  dulness,  as  though — 
according  to  the  happy  expression  of  one  of 
the  most  observant  of  Eastern  travellers* — 
they  were  not ''  working  out,"  but  traraaei- 
ing  the  great  business  of  salvation. 

It  may  seem  to  some  a  painful,  and  per- 
haps an  unexpected  result  of  our  inquiry, 
that  so  great  an  uncertainty  should  hang 
over  spotti  thus  intimately  connected  with  the 
great  events  of  the  Christian  religion, — that 
in  none  the  chain  of  tradition  should  be  un- 


*  Eothen,  p.  187-148. 


510 


THE  HOLT  PLAGES. 


[Dee:, 


broken,  and  in  most  oases  hardly  reach  be- 
yond the  age  of  Constantine.  Is  it  possible, 
it  is  frequently  asked,  that  the  disciples  of 
the  first  age  should  have  neglected  to  m?.rk 
and  commemorate  the  scenes  of  such  events  ? 
And  the  answer,  though  often  given,  cannot 
be  too  often  repeated,  that  it  not  only  was 
possible,  but  precisely  what  we  should  infer 
from  the  absence  of  any  allusion  to  local  sanc- 
tity in  the  writings  of  the  Evangelists  and 
Apostles,  who  were  too  profoundly  absorbed 
in  the  events  themselves  to  think  of  their  lo- 
calities, too  wrapt  in  the  spirit  to  pay  regard 
to  the  letter  or  the  place.  The  loss  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre,  thus  regarded,  is  a  testimony 
to  the  greatness  of  the  Resurrection.  The 
loss  of  the  manger  of  Bethlehem  is  a  witness 
to  the  universal  significance  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. The  sites  which  the  earliest  followers 
of  our  Lord  would  not  adore,  theirsuccess  ors 
could  not.  The  oblileration  of  the  very 
marks  which  identified  the  Holy  Places  was 
effected  a  little  later  by  what  may,  without 
presumption,  be  called  the  providential  events 
of  the  time.  The  Christians  of  the  second 
generation  of  believers,  even  had  they  been 
anxious  to  preserve  the  recollection  of  sites 
which  were  familiar  to  their  fathers,  would 
have  found  it  in  many  respects  an  impossible 
task  after  the  defacing  ruin  which  attended 
the  capture  of  Jerusalem  by  Titus.  The 
same  judgment  which  tore  up  by  the  roots 
the  local  religion  of  the  old  dispensation,  de- 
prived of  secure  basis  what  has  since  grown 
up  as  the  local  religion  of  the  new.  The  to- 
tal obliteration  of  the  scenes  in  some  instances 
is  at  least  a  proof  that  no  Divine  Providence, 
as  is  sometimes  urged,  could  have  watched 
over  them  in  others.  The  desolation  of  the 
lake  of  Gennesareth  has  swept  out  of  memory 
places  more  sacred  than  any  (with  the  one 
exception  of  those  at  Jerusalem)  thnt  are 
alleged  to  have  been  preserved.  The  cave  of 
Bethlehem  and  the  house  of  Nazareth,  where 
our  Lotd  passed  an  unconscious  infancy  and 
an  unknown  youth,  cannot  be  compared  for 
sanctity  with  that  "  house**  of  Capernaum 
which  was  the  home  of  his  maahood,  and  the 
chief  scene  of  his  words  and  works.  Yet  of 
that  sacred  habitation  every  vestige  has  per- 
ished as  though  it  had  never  been. 

But  the  doubts  which  envelop  the  lesser 
things  do  not  extend  to  the  greater, — they 
attach  to  the  '^  Holy  Places,'*  but  not  to  the 
•'  Holy  Land,"  The  clouds  which  cover  the 
special  localities  are  only  specks  in  the  clear 
light  which  invests  the  general  geography 
of  Palestine.  Not  only  are  the  sites  of  Jeru- 
salem, Nazareth,  and  Bethlehem  absolutely 


indisputable,  but  there  is  hardly  a  town  or 
village  of  note  mentioned  in  the  Old  and  New 
Testament  which  cannot  still  be  identified 
with  a  certainty  which  often  extends  to  the 
yerj  spots  which  are  signalized  in  the  his- 
tory. If  Sixtus  V.  had  succeeded  in  bis 
project  of  carrying  off  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
the  essential  interest  of  Jerusalem  would  have 
suffered  as  little  as  that  of  Bethlehem  by  the 
alleged  transference  of  the  manger  to  S.  Maria 
Maggiore,  or  as  that  of  Nazareth,  were  we 
to  share  the  belief  that  its  holy  house  were 
standing  far  away  on  the  hill  of  Loretto. 
The  very  notion  of  the  transference  being 
thought  desirable  or  possible,  is  a  proof  of 
the  slight  connection  existing  in  the  minds  of 
those  who  entertain  it  between  the  sanctuaries 
themselves  and  the  enduring  charm  which 
must  always  attach  to  the  real  scenes  of 
great  events.  It  shows  the  difference  (which 
is  often  confounded)  between  the  local  super- 
stition of  touching  and  handling— of  making 
topography  a  matter  of  religion — and  that 
reasonable  and  religious  instinct  which  leads 
us  to  investigate  the  natural  features  of  histor- 
ical scenes,  sacred  or  secular,  as  one  of  the 
best  helps  to  judging  of  the  events  of  which 
they  were  the  stage. 

These  "  Holy  Places"  have,  indeed,  a  his- 
tory of  their  own,  which,  whatever  be  their 
origin,  must  always  ^ve  them  a  position 
amongst  the  celebrated  spots  which  have  in- 
fluenced the  fortunes  of  the  globe.  The 
convent  of  Bethlehem  can  never  lose  the  as- 
sociations of  Jerome,  nor  can  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  ever  cease  to  be  bound 
up  with  the  recollections  of  the  Crusades,  or 
with  the  tears  and  prayers  of  thousands  of 
pilgrims,  which  of  themselves,  amidst  what- 
ever fanaticism  and  ignorance,  almost  conse- 
crate the  walls  withm  which  they  are  of- 
fered. 

But  these  reminiscences,  and  the  instruction 
which  they  convey,  bear  the  same  relation  to 
those  awakened  by  the  original  and  still  liv- 
ing geography  of  Palestine  as  the  later 
course  of  ecclesiastical  history  bears  to  its 
divine  source.  The  Church  of  the  Holy  Sep- 
ulchre, in  this,  as  in  other  aspects,  is  a  type 
of  the  history  of  the  Church  itself,  and  the 
contrast  thus  suggested  is  more  consoling 
than  melancholy.  Alike  in  sacred  topography 
and  in  sacred  history,  there  is  a  wide  and 
free  atmosphere  of  truth  above,  a  firm  ground 
of  reality  beneath,  which  no  doubts,  contro- 
versies, or  scandals,  concerning  this  or  that 
particular  spot,  this  or  that  particular  opinion 
or  sect,  can  affect  or  disturb.  The  churches 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  or  of  the  Holy  House 


1658.] 


THE  FASTNER— BKOOLLECTIONB  OF  A  POLIOE^FFIGER. 


611 


may  be  closed  against  us,  but  we  have  still 
the  Mount  of  Olives  and  the  Sea  of  Galilee  : 
the  sky,  the  flowers,  the  trees,  the  fields. 


which  suggested  the  Parables, — the  holy 
hills,  which  cannot  be  moved,  but  stand  fast 
for  ever. 


~*m- 


[From  Chamber  •'•  Journal.] 


THE  PARTNER— RECOLLECTIONS  OF  A  POLICE-OFFICER. 


I  HAD  virtually,  though  not  formally,  left 
the  force,  when  a  young  man,  of  gentlemanly 
but  somewhat  dinsipated  aspect,  and  looking 
very  pale  and  agitated,  called  upon  me  with 
a  note  from  one  of  the  commissioners,  enjoin- 
ing me  to  assist  the  bearer,  Mr.  Edmund 
Webster,  to  the  utmost  of  my  ability,  if,  upon 
examination,  I  saw  reason  to  place  reliance 
upon  bis  statement  relative  to  the  painful  and 
extraordinary  circumstances  in  which  he  was 
involved. 

''Mr.  Edmund  Webster,"  I  exclaimed  after 
glancing  at  the  note.  **  You  are  the  person, 
then,  accused  of  robbing  Mr.  Hutton,  the 
corn-merchant,  [the  reader  will,  of  course,  un- 
derstand that  I  make  use  of  fictitious  names,] 
and  whom  that  gentleman  refuses  to  prose- 
cute ?" 

"The  same,  Mr.  Waters.  But  although 
the  disgraceful  charge,  so  far  as  regards 
legal  pursuit,  appears  to  be  withdrawn,  or 
rather  is  not  pressed,  I  and  my  family  shall 
not  be  the  less  shamed  and  ruined  thereby,  un- 
less my  perfect  innocence  can  be  made  mani- 
fest before  the  world.  It  is  with  that  view  we 
have  been  advised  to  seek  vour  assistance  ; 
and  my  father  desires  me  to  say,  that  he  will 
hesitate  at  no  expense  necessary  for  the 
thorough  prosecution  of  the  inquiry." 

"  Very  well,  Mr.  Webster.  The  intimation 
of  the  commissioner  is,  however,  of  itself  all- 
potent  with  me,  although  I  hoped  to  be  con- 
cerned in  no  more  snch  investigations.  Have 
the  goodness,  therefore,  to  sit  down,  and  favor 
me  minutely  and  distinctly  with  your  version 
of  the  affair,  omitting,  if  you  please,  no  cir- 
cumstance, however  apparently  trivial,  in 
connection  with  it.  I  may  tell  you,"  I  added, 
openinff  the  note-book  from  which  I  am  now 
transcribing,  and  placing  it  before  me  in  readi- 
ness to  begin — *'  I  may  tell  yon,  by  way  of  some 
slight  encouragement,  that  the  defense  you 
volunteered  at  the  police-office  was,  in  my 


opinion,  too  improbable  to  be  an  invention  ; 
and  I,  as  you  know,  have  had  large  expe- 
rience in  such  matters.  That  also,  I  suspect, 
is  Mr.  Hutton's  opinion ;  and  hence  not  only 
his  refusal  to  prosecute,  but  the  expense  and 
trouble  he  has  been  at,  to  my  knowledge,  in 
preventing  either  his  own  or  your  name  from 
appearing  in  the  papers.  Now,  Sir,  if  jou 
please." 

^*  I  shall  relate  every  circumstance,  Mr. 
Waters,  as  clearly  and  truthfully  as  possible, 
for  my  own  sake,  in  order  that  you  may  not 
be  working  in  the  dark ;  and  first,  1  must 
beg  your  attention  to  one  or  two  family 
matters,  essential  to  a  thorough  appreciation 
of  the  position  in  which  I  am  placed." 

"Go  on.  Sir :  it  is  my  duty  to  hear  all  you 
have  to  say* 

''My  father,,'  proceeded  Mr.  Edmund 
Webster,  '^  who,  as  you  are  aware,  resides  in 
the  Regent's  Park,  retired  about  five  years 
ago  from  the  business  in  Mark  Lane,  which 
has  since  been  carried  on  by  the  former  ju- 
nior partner,  Mr.  Hutton.  Till  within  the 
last  six  months,  I  believed  myself  destined  for 
the  army,  the  purchase- money  of  a  cometcy 
having  been  lodged  at  the  Horse  Guards 
a  few  days  after  I  came  of  age.  Suddenly, 
however,  my  father  changed  his  mind,  insist- 
ed that  I  should  become  a  partner  of  Hut- 
ton's  in  the  corn- trade,  and  forthwith  withdrew 
the  money  lodged  for  the  commission.  I  am 
not  even  yet  cognizant  of  all  his  motives  for 
this  seeming  caprice ;  but  thos^  he  alleged 
were,  first,  my  spendthrift,  idle  habits — an 
imputation  for  which,  I  confess,  there  was 
too  much  foundation ;  though  as  to  whether 
the  discipline  of  the  counting-house  would, 
as  he  believed,  effect  a  beneficial  change, 
there  might  be  two  opinions.  Another,  and, 
I  have  no  doubt,  much  more  powerfully  in- 
ducing motive  with  him  was,  that  I  had 
formed  an  attachment  for  Miss  Ellen  Brams- 


512 


THE  PABTNER^-REOOLLECTIONS  OF  A  POUCB^FFIGER. 


[Dec 


toD»  the  second  daughter  of  Captain  Bramston, 
of  the  East  India  Company's  service,  residing 
at  Hampstead  upon  his  half- pay.  My  father 
strongly  disapproved  of  the  proposed  alliance : 
like  most  of  the  successful  City  men  I  have 
known  or  heard  of,  he  more  heartily  despises 
poverty  with  a  laced  coat  on  its  hack  than  in 
rags ;  and  he  knew  no  more  effectual  plan 
could  be  hit  upon  for  frustrating  my  wishes, 
than  by  transforming  my  expected  cornetcy 
into  a  partnership  in  the  corn-trade,  my  im- 
aginary sword  for  a  goose- quill  ;  Captain 
Bramston,  who  is  distantly  related  to  an  earl, 
being  even  prouder  than  he  is  poor,  and  a 
man  that  would  rather  see  his  daughter  in 
her  coffin  than  married  to  a  trader.  "  It  was 
condescension  enough,"  he  angrily  remarked, 
"  that  he  had  permitted  Ellen  Bramston  to 
encourage  the  addresses  of  the  son  of  a  City 
parvenue,  but  it  was  utterly  preposterous  to 
suppose  she  could  wed  an  actual  corn-chan- 
dler.' " 

"  Corn-chandler !" 

"  That  was  Captain  Bramston's  pleasant 
phrase,  when  I  informed  him  of  my  father's 
sudden  change  of  purpose.  The  proposed 
partnership  was  as  distasteful  to  myself  as  to 
Captain  Bramston  ;  but  my  father  proved  in- 
exorable— fiercely  so,  I  may  say — to  my  en- 
treaties, and  those  of  my  sisters ;  and  I  was 
placed  in  the  dilemma,  either  of  immediate 
banishment  from  home,  and  probable  forfeit- 
ure of  my  inheritance,  or  the  loss  of  Ellen 
Bramston,  to  whom,  with  all  my  follies,  I 
was  and  am  devotedly  attached.  After 
much  anxious  cogitation,  I  hit  upon  a  scheme, 
requiring  for  a  time  the  exercise  of  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  deceit  and  dissimulation, 
which  would,  I  flattered  myself,  ultimately 
reconcile  interest  with  inclination :  give  me 
Ellen,  and  not  lose  my  father." 

"  To  which  deceit  and  dissimu^tion  you 
are  doubtless  indebted  for  your  present  un- 
fortunate position." 

''You  have  rightly  anticipated.  But  to 
proceed.  Mr.  Uutton  himself,  I  must  tell 
you,  was  strongly  adverse  to  receiving  me  as 
a  partner,  though  for  some  reason  or  other, 
he  durst  not  openly  oppose  the  project ;  his 
son,  John  Hutton,  also  bitterly  objected  to 
it" • 

'*  His  son,  John  Hutton  1  I  know  the 
character  of  Hutton  senior  pretty  well ;  pray 
what  is  that  of  his  son  ?" 

''  Well,  like  myself,  he  is  rather  fast,  per- 
haps, but  not  the  less  a  good  sort  of  young 
fellow  enough.  He  sailed  the  week  before 
last  for  Riga,  on  business." 

"  Before  you  were  apprehended  ?" 


"  On  the  morning  of  the  same  day.  Let 
me  see,  where  was  I  ?  Oh — Mr.  Mutton's 
aversion  to  the  partnership,  the  knowledge 
of  which  suggested  my  plan  of  operation. 
I  induced  him  to  represent  to  my  father  that 
I  should  pass  at  least  two  or  three  months  in  the 
counting-house,  before  the  matter  was  irre- 
versibly concluded,  for  his,  Mr.  Hutton's  sake, 
in  order  that  it  might  be  ascertained  if  there 
was  any  possibility  of  taming  me  into  habits 
of  method  and  application  ;  and  I  hypocriti- 
cally enforced  his  argument — ^you  see  I  am 
perfectly  candid — by  promising  ultimate 
dutiful  submission  to  my  father's  Irishes,  pro- 
vided the  final  decision  were  thus  respited. 
The  main  object  I  thought  to  obtain  by  this 
apparent  compliance  was  the  effectual  loosen- 
ing, before  many  weeks  had  passed,  of  the 
old  gentleman's  purse*  strings,  which  had  of 
lateoeen  over- tightly  drawn.  I  had  several 
pressing  debts  of  honor,  as  they  are  called — 
defyis  of  dishonor  would,  according  to  my 
experience,  be  the  apter  phrase — which  it 
was  absolutely  necessary  to  discharge ;  and 
the  success,  moreover,  of  my  matrimonial 
project  entirely  depended  upon  mj  ability  to 
secure  a  very  considerable  sum  of  money." 

"  Your  matrimonial  project  ?" 

"  Yes :  it  was  at  last  arranged,  not  with- 
out much  reluctance  on  the  part  of  EUlen, 
but. I  have  good  reason  for  believing  with  the 
covert  approbation  of  Captain  Bramston,  that 
we  should  effect  a  stolen  marriage,  immedi- 
ately set  off  for  the  Continent,  and  reooain 
there  till  the  parental  storm,  which  on  my 
father *s  part  would,  I  knew,  be  tremendous, 
had  blown  over.  I  did  not  feel  much  dis- 
quieted as  to  the  final  result.  I  was  an  only 
son :  my  sisters  would  be  indefatigable  inter- 
cessors ;  and  we  all,  consequently,  were  pretty 
confident  that  a  general  reconciliation,  such 
as  usually  accompanies  the  ringing  down 
of  the  green  curtain  at  the  wind-up  of  a 
stage-coinedy,  would,  after  no  great  interval 
of  time,  take  place.  Money,  however,  was 
indispensable — money  for  the  wedding  ex- 
penses, the  flight  to  France,  and  living  there 
for  a  considerable  time  perhaps  ;  and  no  like- 
lier mode  of  obtaining  it  occurred  to  me  than 
that  of  cajoling  my  father  into  good- humor, 
by  affecting  to  acquiesce  in  his  wishes.  And 
here  I  may  remark,  in  passing,  that  had  I 
been  capable  of  the  infamous  deed  I  am  ac- 
cused of,  abundant  opportunities  of  plunder- 
ing Mr.  Hutton  presented  themselves  from 
the  first  hour  I  entered  hb  counting-house. 
Over  and  over  again  has  he  left  me  alone  in 
his  private  room,  with  the  keys  in  the  lock 
of  his  iron  safe,  where  large  sums  were  frer 


THE  PARTNER— RBGOLLECnOIilS  OF  A  POLIC&OPFIGER. 


1868.] 

qnently  deposited,  not  in  bank  notes  only, 
but  nntraceable  gold/' 

"  That  looks  like  a  singular  want  of  cau- 
tion in  so  precise  and  wary  a  man  as  Mr. 
Hutlon,"  I  remarked,  half  under  my  breaih. 
"Nothing  of  the  sort,"  rejoined  Mr. 
Edmund  Webster  with  some  heat,  and  his 
pallid  face  brightly  flushing.  "  It  only  shows 
that,  with  all  my  faults  and  follies,  it  was 
impossible  for  any  one  that  knew  me  to 
imagine  I  could  be  capable  of  perpetrating 
a  felony." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  Mr.  Webster ;  I 
meant  nothing  offensive  to  you :  the  remark 
was  merely  the  partly  involuntary  expression 
of  a  thought  which  suddenly  glanced  across 
my  mind." 

^  I  have  little  more  of  preliminary  detul  to 
relate,"  he  went  on  to  say.     *•  Contrary  to 
'  our  hopes  and  expectations,  my  father  be- 
came not  a  whit  more  liberal  with  his  purse 
than  before — the  reverse  rather ;  and  I  soon 
found  that  he  intended  to  keep  the  screw  on 
till  the  accomplishment  of  the  hated  partner- 
ship placed  an  insuperable  bar  between  me 
and   Ellen  Bramston.    I  used  to  converse 
frequently  upon  these    matters  with    Mr. 
Button,  as  unreservedly  as  I  do  now  with  you ; 
and  I   must  say  thaty  although   extremely 
anxious  to  avoid  any  appearance  of  opposi- 
tion to  my  father,  he  always  expressed  the 
warmest  sympathy  with  my  aims  and  wishes ; 
so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  I  at  last  ventured 
to  ask  him  for  the  lodn  of  about  five  hun- 
dred pounds,  that  being  the  least  sum  which 
would  enable  me  to  pay  off  the  most  press- 
ing of  the  claims  by  w.hich  1  was  harassed, 
and  carry  out  my  wedding  project.     That 
favor,  however,  he  flatly  refused,  under  the 
plea  that  his  having  done  so  would  sooner  or 
later  come  to  my  father's  knowledge." 

"And  did  Mr.  Huttm,  after  that  refusal, 
continue  to  afford  you  opportunities  of  help- 
ing yourself,  had  you  been  so  minded  V 

"  Yes  ;  unquestionably  he  did :  but  what 
of  that?"  sharply  replied  the  young  man', 
his  pale  face  again  suffused  with  an  angry 
flui»h. 

^*  Nothing,  Sir ;  nothing.  Go  on :  I  am 
all  attention." 

"Well,  I  made  application  to  several 
money-lenders  with  the  like  ill  success,  till 
last  Monday  fortnight,  when  I  was  accosted 
at  Mr.  Hutton's  place  of -business  in  the 
Corn -market,  where  I  happened  to  be  for  a 
few  minutes  alone,  by  a  respectable- looking 
middle-aged  man,  who  asked  me  if  I  was  the 
Mr.  Edmund  Webster  who  had  left  a  note  at 
Mr.  Curtis's,  of  Bishopgate  street,  on  the 
VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


613 


previous   Saturday,  requesting  the   loan  of 
five  hundred  pounds,  upon  my  own  accept- 
ance at  six  months'*  date.     I  eagerly  replied 
in  the  affirmative ;  upon  which  Mr.  Brown, 
as  the  man  called  himself,  asked  if  I  had  the 
promissory- note  for  five  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds,  as  1  had  proposed,  ready  drawn  ;  as, 
if  so,  he  would  give  me  the  cash  at  once.     I 
answered   in  a  nurry  of  joyous  excitement, 
that  I  had  not  the  note  drawn  nor  a  stamp 
with  me,  but  if  he  would  wait  a  few  minutes 
till  Mr.  Hutton  or  a  clerk  came  in,  I  would 
get  one  and  write  the  acceptance  immediately. 
He  hesitated  for  a  moment,  and  then  said : 
'  I  am  in  a  hurry  this  morning,  but  I  will 
wait  for  you  in  the  coffee-room  of  the  Bay 
Tree  Tavern:   have  the  kindness  to  be  as 
quick  as  you  can,  and  draw  the  note  in  favor 
of    Mr.   Brown.'      He  had  not  been  gone 
above  three  or  four  minutes,  when  a  clerk 
came  in.     I  instantly  hurried  to  a  stationer's, 
wrote  the  note  in  his  shop,  and  speeded  on 
with  it  to  the  Bay  Tree  Tavern.     The  coffee- 
room  was  full,  except  the  box  where  sat  Mr. 
Brown,  who,  after  glancing  at  the  acceptance, 
and  putting  it  quickly  up,  placed  a  roll  of 
notes  in  my  hand.      *  Do  not  display  your 
money/  he   said,  'before  all  these  people. 
You  can  count  the  notes  under  the  table.' 
I  did  so  :  they  were  quite  correct — ten  fifties ; 
and  I  forthwith  ordered  a  bottle  of  wine. 
Mr.  Brown,  however,  alleging  business  as  an 
excuse,  did  not  wait  till  it  was  brought — 
bade  me  good -day,  and  disappeared,  taking, 
in  his  hurry,  my  hat  instead  of  bis  own. 

**  I  was.  you  will  readily  believe,  exceed- 
ingly jubilant  at  this  lucky  turp  of  affairs ; 
and,  strange  as  it  must  appear  to  you,  and 
does  now  to  myself,  it  did  not  strike  me  at 
the  time  as  at  alt  extraordinary  or  unbusiness- 
like, that  I  should  have  five  hundred  pounds 
suddenly  placed  in  my  hands  by  a  man  to 
whom  I  was  personally  unknown,  and  who 
could  not,  therefore,  be  certain  that  I  waa  the 
Edmund  Webster  he  professed  to  be  in  search 
of.  What  with  the  effect  of  the  wine  I 
drank,  and  natural  exultation,  I  was,  I  well 
remember,  in  a  state  of  great  excitement 
when  I  left  the  tavern,  and  hardly  seemed  to 
feel  my  feet  as  I  hurried  away  to  Mark  Lane, 
to  inform  Mr.  Hutton  of  my  good-luck,  and 
bid  his  counting-house  and  the  corn-trade  a 
final  farewell.  He  was  not  at  home,  and  I 
went  in  and  seated  myself  in  his  private  room 
to  await  his  return.  I  have  no  doubt  that, 
as  the  clerk  has  since  deposed,  I  did  look  flus- 
tered, agitated ;  and  it  is  quite  true  also, 
that  after  vainly  waiting  for  upwards  of  an 
hour,  I  suddenly  left  the  place,  and,  as  it 

n 


514 


THE  PARTNER— REOOLLECTIONB  OF  A  FOUGKOFnCER. 


[Dec. 


happened,  uonoiiced  by  any  body.  Immedi* 
ately  upon  leaving  Mark  Lane»  I  hastened  to 
Uanipstead,  saw  Misa  Bramston;  and  as 
every  thing,  with  the  exception  of  the  money, 
had  been  for  some  time  in  readiness,  it  was 
soon  decided  that  we  should  take  wing  at 
dawn,  on  the  following  morning,  for  Scotland, 
and  thence  pass  over  to  France.  I  next  be- 
took myself  to  Regent's  Park,  where  I  dined, 
and  confided  every  thing  to  my  sisters  except 
as  to  how  I  had  obtained  the  necessary  funds. 
At  about  eight  in  the  evening,  I  took  a  cab 
as  far  as  the  Hay  market  for  the  purpose  of 
hiiing  a  post-chaise-and-four,  and  of  paying 
A  few  debts  of  honor  in  that  neighborhood. 
I  was  personally  unknown  to  the  postmaster ; 
it  was  therefore  necessary  to  prepay  the 
chaise  as  far  as  St.  Alban's,  and  I  presented 
him  with  one  of  the  fifty-pound  notes  for 
that  purpose.  He  did  not  appear  surprised 
at  the  largeness  of  the  sum,  but  requested 
me  to  place  my  name  and  address  at  the 
back  of  the  note  before  he  changed  it.  In 
my  absurd  anxiety  to  prevent  the  possibility 
of  our  flight  being  traced,  I  endorsed  the 
note  as  ^  Charles  Hart,  Great  Wimpole 
street/  and  the  man  left  the  yard. 

**  He  was  gone  a  considerable  time,  and  I 
was  getting  exceedingly  impatient,  when,  to 
my  surprise  and  consternation,  he  reentered 
the  yard  accompanied  by  a   police-oflScer. 
'You   are  the  gentleman  from  whom  Mr. 
Evans  received  this  fifty* pound  note  a  few 
minutes  ago — are  you  not?*     'Yes,  to  be 
sure/  I  answered-,  stammering  and  coloring, 
why,  I  scarcely  knew.      'Then    step  this 
way,  if  you  please,*  said  the  man.      *  That 
note,  with  nine  others  of  the  same  value,  is 
advertised  in  the  evening  papers  as  having 
been  stolen  from  a  gentleman's   counting- 
house  in  Mark  Lane/     I  thought  I  should 
have  fainted ;  and  when  a  paragraph  in  the 
Olobe  was  pointed  out  to  me,  offering  a  re- 
ward, on  the  part  of  Mr.  Hutton,  for  the  ap- 
prehension of  the  person  or  persons  who  had 
that  day  stolen  ten  fifty-pound  Bank-of-Eng- 
land  notes — the  dates  and  numbers  of  which 
were  given — from  his  office,  I  was  so  com- 
pletely stunned,  that  but  for  the  police-offi- 
cer I  should  have  dropped  upon  the  floor. 
'  This  perhaps  may  be  cleared  up,'  said  the 
officer,  'so  far  as  you,  Mr.  Hart^  are  con- 
cerned ;  and  I  will,  if  you  like,  go  with  you 
at  once  to  your  address  at  Great  Wimpole 
street/      It  was  of  course  necessary  to  ac- 
knowledge that  my  name  was  not  Hart,  and 
that  I  had  given  a  false  address.     This  was 
enough.     I  was  at  once  secured  and  taken 
off  to  the  station-house,  searched,  and  the 


other  nine  notes  being  found  upon  me,  no 
doubt  was  entertained  of  my  guilt.-  I  obsti- 
nately declined  giving  my  real  name — very 
foolishly  so,  as  I  now  perceive,  since  Mr. 
Hutton  8  clerk,  the  moment  he  saw  me  the 
next  day  at  the  police-court,  disclosed  it  as  a 
matter  of  course.  The  result  you  know.   Mr. 
Hutton,  when  he  heard  who  it  was  that  had 
been  taEen  into  custody,  kept  resolutely  out 
of  the  way;  and,  after  several   remands,  I 
was  set  at  liberty,  the  magistrate  remarking, 
that  he  knew  of  no  case  which  showed,  in  a 
more  striking  light,  the  need  of  a  public  pro- 
secutor in  this  country.     My  account  of  the 
way  in  which  I  berame  possessed  of  the 
notes  was,  as  you  know,  scouted,  and  quite 
naturally  ;  Mr.  Curtis,  of  Bishopsgate  street, 
having  denied  all  knowledge  of  Mr.  Brown, 
or  that  he  had  commissioned  any  one  to  pre- 
sent me  with  five  hundred  pounds  in  ex- 
change for  my  acceptance.    Thus  stigmatized 
and  disgraced,  I  returned  home  to  find  my 
father  struck  down,  in  what  was   at    first 
thought  would  prove  mortal  illness,  by  the 
blow — Captain  Bramston *b  door  shut  against 
me — and  the  settled  marriage  of  my  eldest 
sister,  Jane,  with  an  amiable  young  man,  per- 
emptorily broken  off  by  his  relatives  on  ac- 
count  of  the  assumed  criminality  of    her 
brother." 

"  This  is  indeed  a  sad,  mysterious  business, 
Mr.  Webster,**  I  remarked,  when  the  young 
man  had  ceased  speaking  ;  "  but  pray  tell  me, 
did  either  Mr.  Hutton  or  his  son  know  of 
your  application  to  Mr.  Curtis  ?" 

"  I  cannot  say  that  either  of  them  did, 
though  it  is  more  than  probable  that  I  men- 
tioned it  to  both  of  t£em." 

"  Well,  Mr.  Webster,  I  have  confidence  in 
your  veracity ;  but  it  is  essential  that  I  should 
see  your  father  before  engaging  iu  this  busi- 
ness." 

"  He  is  anxious  you  should  do  so,  and  as 
early  as  possible." 

It  was  then  arranged  that  I  should  call  on 
Webster,  senior,  at  three  o'clock  the  same  af- 
ternoon, and  announce  myself  to  the  servants 
as  Mr.  Thompson.  I  was  punctual  to  the 
time  appointed,  and  was  forthwith  ushered 
by  one  of  the  daughters  into  her  father's 
presence.  He  was  not  yet  sufficiently  re- 
covered to  leave  his  bed  ;  and  I  had  hardly 
exchanged  half-a-dozen  sentences  with  him, 
when  the  same  young  lady  by  whom  I  had 
been  introduced,  hastily  returned  to  say  Mr. 
Hutton  was  below,  and  requested  an  im- 
mediate interview.  Mr.  Webster  bade  his 
daughter  tell  Mr.  Hutton  be  was  engaged, 
and  could  not  be  interrupted ;  and  she  was 


1853.] 


THE  PARTNER— RECOLLECTIONS  OF  A  POLICE-OFFICER. 


515 


tnrning  away  to  do  so,  when  I  said  hastily : 
"  Excuse  me,  Mr.  Webster,  but  I  should  ex- 
ceedingly like  to  hear,  with  my  own  eiirs, 
what  Mr.  Hutton  has  to  say»  unobserved  by 
him." 

"  You  may  do  so  with  all  my  heart,"  he  re- 
plied ;  "  but  how  shall  we  manage  to  conceal 
yon  r 

'*  Easily  enough  under  the  bed ;"  and  suit- 
mg  the  action  to  the  word,  I  was  in  a  mo- 
ment out  of  sight.  Miss  Webster  was  then 
told  to  ask  Mr.  Hutton  to  walk  up,  and  in  a 
few  minutes  that  worthy  gentleman  entered 
the  room.  After  a  few  hypocritical  condo- 
lences upon  the  invalid's  state  of  health,  Mr. 
Hutton  came  to  the  point  at  once,  and  with 
a  vengeance. 

"  I  am  come,  Mr.  Webster,"  he  began,  in  a 
determined  tone,  "  to  say  that  I  will  endure 
this  shilly-shallying  no  longer.  Either  you 
give  up  the  bonds  you  hold  of  mine,  for  bor- 
rowed moneys" 

"  Eleven  thousand  pounds  and  upwards  !" 
groaned  the  sick  man. 

"About  that  sum,  I  am  aware,  including 
interest ;  in  discharge  of  which  load  of  debt 
I  was,  you  know,  to  have  given  a  third  share 
of  my  business  to  your  admirable  son.  Well, 
agree  at  once  to  cancel  those  bonds,  or  I 
forthwith  prosecute  your  son,  who  will  as  cer- 
tainly be  convicted,  and  transported  for  life." 

"  I  tell  you  again,"  retorted  the  excited  in- 
valid, "  that  I  will  not  purchase  mere  for- 
bearance to  prosecute  at  the  cost  of  a  single 
shilling.  The  accusation  would  always  be 
hanging  over  his  head,  and  we  should  remain 
for  ever  disgraced,  as  we  are  now,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world." 

*'  I  have  turned  that  over  in  my  mind,"  re- 
plied Hutton,  **  and  I  think  I  can  meet  your 
wishes.  Undertake  to  cancel  the  debt  I  owe 
you,  and  I  will  wait  publicly  to-morrow  upon 
the  magistrate  with  a  letter  in  my  hand  pur- 
porting to  be  from  my  son,  and  stating  that  it 
was  he  who  took  the  notes  from  my  desk,  and 
employed  a  man  of  the  name  of  Brown  to  ex- 
ohange  them  for  your  son's  acceptance,  he 
being  anxious  that  Mr.  Edmund  Webster 
should  not  become  his  father's  partner ;  a 
purpose  that  would  necessarily  be  frustrated 
if  he»  Edmund  Webster,  was  enabled  to  mar- 
ry and  leave  this  country." 

There  was  no  answer  to  this  audacious  pro- 
posal for  a  minute  or  two,  and  then  Mr.  Web- 
ster said  slowly  :  "  That  my  son  is  innocent,  I 
am  thoroughly  convinced  " 

"  Innocent  I"  exclaimed  Mr.  Hutton  with 
savage  derision.  "  Have  you  taken  leave  of 
your  senses  ?" 


"  Still,"  continued  the  invalid,  unmindful  of 
the  interruption,  "  it  might  be  impossible  to 
prove  him  so ;  and  your  proposition  has  a 
certain  plausibility  about  it.  I  must,  how- 
ever, have  time  to  consider  of  it." 

"  Certainly  ;  let  us  say  till  this  day  week. 
You  cannot  choose  but  comply ;  for  if  you 
do  not,  as  certainly  as  I  stand  here  a  living 
man,  your  son  shall,  immediately  after  the  ex- 
piration of  that  time,  be  on  the  high-road  to 
the  hulks."  Having  said  this,  Mr.  Hutton  . 
went  away,  and  I  emerged  from  my  very  un- 
digni6ed  lurking-place. 

"  I  begin  to  see  a  little  clearer  through  this 
hlack  affair,"  I  said  in  reply  to  the  old  gen- 
tleman's questioning  look  ;  "  and  I  trust  we 
may  yet  be  able  to  turn  the  tables  upon  the 
very  confident  gentleman  who  has  just  left 
us.  Now,  if  you  please,"  I  added,  address- 
ing Miss  Webster,  who  had  again  returned,  "I 
shall  be  glad  of  a  few  moments'  conversation 
with  your  brother."  She  led  the  way  down 
stairs,  and  I  found  Mr.  Edmund  Webster  in 
the  dining-room.  "Have  the  kindness,"  I 
said,  "  to  let  me  see  the  hat  Mr.  Brown  left 
behind  at  the  tavern  in  exchange  for  yours." 
The  young  man  seemed  surprised  at  the  ap- 
parent oddness  of  the  request,  but  immedi- 
ately complied  with  it.  "And  pray,  what 
maker  or  seller's  name  was  pasted  inside  the 
crown  of  t/our  hat,  Mr.  Webster." 

**  Lewis,  of  Bond  street,"  he  replied  :  "  I 
always  purchase  my  hats  there."- 

"  Very  good.   And  now  as  to  Mr.  Brown's 

personal  appearance.  What  is  he  at  all  like?" 

''A  stoutish  middle-aged  man,  with  very 

light  hair,  prominent  nose,  and  a  pale  face, 

considerably  pock-marked." 

"  That  will  do  for  the  present,  Mr.  Web- 
ster ;  and  let  me  beg  that,  till  you  see  me 
again,  not  a  soul  receives  a  hint  that  we  are 
moving  in  this  business." 

I  then  left  the  house.  The  hat  had  furnished 
an  important  piece  of  information,  the  printed 
label  inside  being,  "  Perkins,  Guilford,  Sur- 
rey ;"  and  at  the  Rose  and  Crown  Inn,  Guil- 
ford, Surrey,  I  alighted  the  very  next  day  at 
about  two  o'clock,  in  the  strong  hope  of 
meeting  in  its  steep  streets  or  adjacent  lanes 
with  a  stoutish  gentleman,  distinguished  by 
very  light  hair,  a  long  nose,  and  a  white, 
pock-marked  face.  The  chance  was,  at  all 
events,  worth  a  trial ;  and  I  very  diligently 
set  to  work  to  realize  it,  by  walking  about 
from  dawn  till  dark,  peering  at  every  head  I 
passed,  and  spending  the  evenings  in  the 
most  frequented  parlors  of  the  town.  Many 
a  bootless  chase  I  was  led  by  a  distant 
glimpse  of  light  or  red  hair ;  and  one  fellow 


516 


THE  PARTNER-REGOLLECnonS  OF  A  POLICE-OFFICER. 


[Dee., 


with  a  sandy  poll,  and  a  pair  of  the  longest 
legs  I  ever  saw,  tept  me  almost  at  a  run  for 
two  mortal  hours  one  sultry  hot  morning,  on 
the  road  to  Cherts^y,  before  I  headed  him, 
and  confronted  a  pair  of  fat  cheeks,  as  round 
and  red  as   an   apple,  between  which  lay, 
scarcely  visible,  a  short  snub- nose.    Patience 
and   perseverance  at  length,  however,  met 
with  their  reward.     I  recognized  my  man  as 
he  was  cheapening  a  joint  of  meat  in  the 
market-place.     He  answered  precisely  to  the 
description  given  me,  and  wore,  moreover,  a 
fashionable  hat,  strongly  suggestive  of  Bond 
street.      After   awhile  he   parted  from  his 
wife,  and  made  towards  a  public- house,  into 
the  parlor  of  which  I  entered  close  after  him. 
I  had  now  leisure  to  observe  him  more  close- 
ly.    He  appeared  to  be  a  respectable  sort  of 
man,  but  a  care-worn  expression   flitted  at 
times  over  his  face,  which  to  me,  an  iideptin 
such  signs,  indicated  with  sufficient  plainness 
much  anxiety  of  mind,  arising,  probably,  from 
pecuniary  embarrassment,  not,  I  judged,  from 
a  burdened  conscience.    I  presently  obtained 
further  and  decisive  proof,  though  that  was 
scarcely  needed,  that   Mr.  Skinner,  as  the 
waiter. called  him,  was  my  Mr.  Brown:  in 
rising  to  leave  the  room,  I  took  his  hat,  which 
he  had  hung  up,  in  apparent  mistake  for  my 
own,  and  in  the  half-minute   that  elapsed 
before  I   replaced   it,  saw,  plainly  enou|rh, 
"  Lewis,  Bond  street,  London,"  on  the  inside 
label.     The  only  question  now  was,  how  to 
best  avail  myself  of  the  lucky  turning  up  of 
Mr.  Brown  ;  and  whilst  I   was  meditating 
several  modes  of  action,  the  sight  of  a  board, 
upon  which  was  painted,  *'  This  ground  to  be 
let  in  Building  Leases;  Apply  to  Mr.  Skin- 
ner, Builder,"  at  once  decided  me.     I  called 
upon  Mr.  Skinner,  who  lived  about  half  a 
mile  out  of  Guilford,  the  next  morning,  in- 
quired as  to  the  conditions  of  the  said  leases, 
walked  with  him  over  the  ground  in  ques- 
tion, calculated  together  how  much  a  hand- 
some country-house  would  cost,  and  finally 
adjourned  to  the  Rose  and  Crown  to  discuss 
the  matter  further  over  a   bottle   of  wine. 
Skinner  was  as  free  a  soul,  I  found,  as  ever 
liquor  betrayed  into  indiscretion  ;  and  I  soon 
heard  that  he  had  lately  been  to  London,  and 
had  a  rich  brother-in-law  there  of  the  name 
of  Hutton,  with  other  less  interesting  particu* 
lars.     This  charming  confidence,  he  seemed 
to  think,  required  a  return  in  kind,  and  after 
he  had  essayed  half-a-dozen  indirect  ques- 
tions, I  came  frankly  out  with :  "  There  s  no 
occasion  to  beat  about  the  bush,  Mr.  Skinner : 
you  wish  to  know  who  I  am,  and  especially 
if  I  am  able  to  pay  for  the  fine  house  we 


have  been  talking  of.  Well,  then,  I  am  a 
money -dealer.  I  lend  cash,  sometimes,  on  se- 
curity." 

•*A  pawnbroker?"    queried  Mr.  Skinner 
doubtfully. 

*'  Not  exactly  that :  I  oftener  take  persons 
in  pledge,  than  goods.  What  I  mean  by 
money-dealer,  is  a  man  who  discounts  the 
signatures  of  fast  men  with  good  expecta- 
tions, who  don't  mind  paying  handsomely  ill 
the  end  for  present  accommodation." 
"  I  understand  ;  a  bill  discounter  ?" 
"  Precisely.  But  come,  drink,  and  pass  the 
decanter." 

A  gleam  that  shot  out  of  the  man's  gray 
eyes  strengthened  a  hope  I  had  hardly  dar^ 
entertain,  that  I  was  on  the  eve  of  a  great 
success  ;  but  the  trout,  it  was  clear,  required 
to  be  cautiously  played.  Mr.  Skinner  pre- 
sently fell  into  a  brown  study  which  I  did 
not  interrupt,  contenting  myself  with  refilling 
his  glass  as  fast  as  he  mechanically  emptied 
it.  "A  bill  discounter,"  said  he  at  last,  pat- 
ting down  his  pipe,  and  turning  towards  me 
with  a  settled  purpose  in  his  look.  "Is 
amount  and  length  of  time  to  run  of  any  con- 
sequence ?" 

^*  None  whatever,  if  the  parties  are  safe.'' 
"  Cash  down  on  the  nail  ?" 
"Cash  down  on  the  nail,  minus  of  course 
the  interest." 

"  Of  course.  Well,  then,  Mr.  Thompson, 
I  have  a  promissory-note  signed  by  a  Mr. 
Edmund  Webster  of  London,  for  five  hun- 
dred and  fifty  pounds,  at  six  months'  date, 
which  I  should  like  to  discount." 
"  Webster  of  the  Minories  ?" 
"  No ;  his  father  is  a  .retired  com-mer* 
chant  residing  in  the  Regent's  Park.  The 
bill 's  as  safe  as  a  Bank-ot-England  note." 

"  I  know  the  party.  But  why  doesn't  the 
rich  brother-in-law  you  spoke  of  cash  it  for 
you  ?" 

''  Well,"  replied  Skinner,  "  no  doubt  be 
would  ;  but  the  fact  is,  there  is  a  dispute 
between  us  about  this  very  note.  I  owe  him 
a  goodish  bit  of  money ;  and  jf  he  got  it  into 
his  hands,  he'd  of  course  be  for  deducting 
the  amount ;  .and  I've  been  obliged  to  put 
him  off  by  pretending  it  was  accidentally 
burned  soon  after  I  obtained  it. 

"  A  queer  story,  my  friend ;  but  if  the 
signature's  genuine,  I  don't  mind  that,  and 
you  shall  have  the  cash  at  once." 

«  Here  it  is,  then,'*  said  Skinner,  unclasp- 
ing a  stout  leather  pocket-book.     "  I  don't 
mind  throwing  back  the  odd  fifty  founds." 
I  eagerly  grasped  the  precious  document, 
glanced  at  it,  saw  it  was  all  right,  placed  it 


1853.] 


OORBIERES. 


517 


in  my  pocket,  and  then  suddenly  changing 
my  tone,  and  rising  from  the  table,  said — 
"  Now  then.  Skinner,  a/tos  Brown,  I  have  to 
inform  you  that  I  am  a  detective  f)olice- 
officer,  and  that  you  are  my  prisoner."' 

"  Police !  prisoner  !*'  shouted  the  astound- 
ed man,  as  he  leaped  to  his  feet :  "  what 
are  you  talking  of?" 

"  I  will  tell  you.  Your  brother-in-law 
employed  you  to  discount  the  note  now  in 
my  possession.  You  did  so,  pretending  to 
be  a  Mr.  Brown,  the  agent  of  a  Mr.  Curtis; 
but  the  villanous  sequel  of  the  transaction — 
the  charging  young  Mr.  Webster  with  hav- 
ing stolen  the  very  fifty-pound  notes  you 
gave  him  in  the  coffee-room  of  the  Bay  Tree 
Tavern — I  do  not  believe,  thanks  to  Master 
Hutton's  success  in  suppressing  the  names 
in  the  police  reports,  you  can  be  aware  of." 

The  bewildered  man  shook  as  with  ague  in 
every  limb,  and,  when  I  ceased  speaking, 
protested  earnestly  that  he  had  had  no  evil 
design  in  complying  with  his  brother-in- 
law's  wishes. 

'*!  am  willing  to  think  so,"  I  replied; 
''but,  at  all  events,  you  must  go  with  me  to 
London— quietly  were  best." 

To  this  he  at  last,  though  very  reluctantly, 
consented  ;  and  half  an  hour  afterwards  we 
were  in  the  train,  and  on  our  road  to  London. 

The  next  morning,  Mr.  Webster's  solicitors 
applied  to  Mr.  Button  for  the  immediate 
liquidation  of  the  bonds  held  by  their  client. 
This,  as  we  had  calculated,  rendered  him 
furious ;  and  Edmund  Webster  was  again 
arrested  on  the  former  charge,  and  taken  to 
the  Marlborough  street  police-office,  where 
his  father.  Captain  Bramston,  and  other 
friends,  impatiently  awaited  his  appearance. 
Mr.  Hutton  this  time  appeared  as  prosecutor, 


and  deposed  to  the  safe  custody  of  the  notes 
oq  the  morning  of  the  robbery. 

"And  you  swear,"  said  Mr.  Webster^s 
solicitor,  "  that  you  did  not  with  your  own 
hand9  give  the  pretended ly  stolen  notes  to 
Brown,  and  request  him  to  take  theoa  in  Mr. 
Curtis's  name  to  young  Mr.  Webster?" 

Hutton,  greatly  startled,  glanced  keenly 
in  the  questioner  s  face,  and  did  not  imme- 
diately answer.  - ''  No,  I  did  not,"  he  at  last 
replied,  in  a  low,  shaking  voice. 

**  Let  me  refresh  your  memory.  Did  you 
not  say  to  Brown,  or  rather  Skinner,  your 
brother-in-law" 

A  slight  scream  escaped  the  quivering  lips 
of  the  detected  conspirator,  and  a  blaze  of 
frenzied  anguish  and  alarm  swept  over  his 
countenance,  leaving  it  as  white  as  marble. 
No  further  answer  could  be  obtained  from 
him ;  and  as  soon  as  possible  he  left  the 
office,  followed  by  the  groans  and  Wia&es  of  the 
excited  auditory.  Skinner  was  then  brought 
forward  :  he  made  a  full  and  ample  confession, 
and  Edmund  Webster  was  at  once  discharg- 
ed, amid  th^  warm  felicitations  of  the  magis- 
trate and  the  uproarious  gratulations  of  his 
friends.  It  was  intended  to  indict  Mr.  Hut- 
ton for  perjury  ;  but  the  unhappy  man  chose 
to  appear  before  a  higher  tribunal  than  that 
of  the  Old  Bailey.  He  was  found  dead  in 
bis  bedroom  early  the  next  morning.  His 
affiEiirs  were  found  to  be  in  a  state  of  in- 
solvency, though  the  deficit  was  not  large — 
15«.  in  the  pound  having  been,  I  understood, 
ultimately  paid  to  the  creditors.  Miss  Ellen 
Bramston,  I  must  not  in  conclusion  omit  to 
state,  became  Mrs.  Edmund  Webster  shortly 
after  the  triumphant  vindication  of  her  lover's 
character;  and,  I  believe,  Miss  Webster  was 
made  a  wife  on  the  same  day. 


CoRBiERss. — ^Monsieur  de  Corbieres,  Min- 
ister of  the  Interior,  under  the  Restoration 
of  the  Bourbons,  having  risen  from  the 
humbler  ranks  of  life,  and  frequented  only 
the  society  of  the  middle  classes,  was,  though 
an  able  man,  naturally  ignorant  of  a  thousand 
minor  points  of  etiquette  which  emigrated, 
with  the  royal  family,  from  Versailles  to 
Hartwell,  and  returned  with  them  from  Hart- 
well  to  the  Tuileries.  The  Breton  lawyer 
was,  consequently,  perpetually  committing 
himself  by  lapses  of  politeness,  which  afford- 
ed much  laughter  to  the  King  and  court. 
But  his  ready  wit  never  failed  to  get  him  out 
of  the  scri^. 


One  day,  while  submitting  some  important 
plans  to  Louis  XVIII.,  so  pre-occupied  was 
he  by  the  subject  under  discussion,  that,  after 
taking  a  pinch  of  snuff,  he  placed  his  snuff- 
box on  the  table  among  the  papers ;  and,  im- 
mediately afterwards,  laid  his  pocket-hand- 
kerchief by  its  side. 

"  You  seem  to  be  emptying  your  pockets, 
Monsieur  de  Corbieres,"  remonstrated  the 
King,  with  offended  dignity. 

"A  fault  on  the  right  side  on  the  part  of 
a  minister.  Sire  I"  was  the  ready  retort.  **  I 
should  be  far  more  sorry  if  your  Majesty  had 
ac(yi8ed  me  oi  filling  them  !" 


518 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BRUNSWICK  IN  OERMAKY  AND  ENGLAND. 


[Dec. 


From    Frftiai'i^Margftxint. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BRUNSWICK  IN  GERMANY  AND  ENGLAND.* 


Tbe  pen  of  the  learned  Gibbon  wais  em- 
ployed upon  the  antiquities  of  the  noble 
House  of  Brunswick,  of  which  the  rojal 
family  of  England  are  a  younger  branch. 
Daring  the  middle  ages,  the  Guelphs  fought 
a  good  fight  against  tbe  Ghibelline  party, 
which  was,  however,  the  successful  one,  and 
for  a  long  time  the  Guelphs  had  to  feel  the 
oppression  of  their  foes.  But  their  star  was 
once  more  in  the  ascendant  during  the  reign 
of  £rnest  Augustus,  the  first  Elector  of  llano- 
ver,  whose  marriage  with  Sophia  Stuart,  the 
daughter  of  Frederick,  the  unfortunate  King 
of  Bohemia,  and  of  Elizabeth  Stuart,  opened 
to  the  small  House  of  Hanover  tlfe  succession 
to  the  English  throne. 

Sophia  Stuart's  youth  was  passed  in  the 
stormy  times  of  the  Thirty  Years*  War.  She 
was  born  in  Holland  in  1630,  the  year  when 
Gustavus  Adolphus  entered  Germany,  and 
was  educated  in  England.  She  was  one  of 
tbe  few  among  princes  who  turned  the 
misfortunes  and  miseries' of  her  youth  to  good 
account.  Her  greatest,  friend  in  after-life 
was  Liebnitz,who  never  called  her  by  any  other 
name  than  *'  our  great  Electress."  Her  shin- 
ing qualities  completely  cast  her  husband 
into  the  shade.  The  Great  Electress,  how- 
ever, never  lived  to  enjoy  the  honor  she  so 
much  coveted,  of  having  engraved  on  her 
tombstone,  "Sophia.  Queen  of  England." 
She  died  on  the  8th  June,  1714,  but  two 
short  months  before  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne  opened  the  succession  to  her.  She 
was  struck  by  apoplexy  in  her  garden  at 
Herrenhausen,  in  her  eighty-sixth  year.  It 
was  an  unusually  fine  evening,  and  she  had, 
as  was  her  custom,  been  walking  with  her  son 
George,  the  Elector,  in  full  health ;  a  shower 
came  on,  and  after  runniDg  in,  she  sank  on 
the  ground,  and  in  a  few  minutes  was  dead. 

We  will  not  folio  wDr.Vehse  in  his  account  of 
the  in  trigues  and  counter-intrigues  of  the  two 
rival  factions  into  which  England  was  split  at 
the  time  when  George  I.  ascended  the  throne, 

*  Geschichte  de  Hofe  dea  Hausea  JBrausehweig  in 
DeutBchland  und  England,  By  Dr.  Edward  Vefcae. 
4  Tola.    Hamhurg,  1868. 


more  especially  as  his  authorities  are  all  ac- 
cessible to  the  English  reader.  Dr.  Vehse 
has  laid  Walpole*8  Memoirs  and  Letters, 
WraxalPs  Memoirs,  the  Lexington  Correspon- 
dence, and  various  other  subsequent  English 
works,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  under 
heavy  contribution,  and  has  produced  ao 
amusing,  gossipping  book  out  of  these  ma- 
terials. His  estimate  of  the  German  House  of 
Hanover  is  high,  but  his  picture  of  the 
English  is  flattering  enough  to  our  national 
vanity  ;  much  of  the  interest  of  the  book  b 
derived  iVom  seeing  ourselves  so  favorably 
portrayed  through  German  spectacles. 

The  precautions  taken  by  the  Earl  of 
Shewsbury  and  his  party  in  the  Government, 
prevented  the  slightest  disturbances  when 
Queen  Anne  died,  on  the  12th  August,  1714, 
and  the  Elector  of  Hanover  was  proclaimed 
King  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 

Lord  Clarendon,  the  English  Minister  at 
the  Court  of  Hanover,  was  the  first  to  con- 
vey this  piece  of  news  to  George  I. 

It  was  an  important,  but  by  no  means  a  plea- 
sant announcement,  says  Dr.  Vehse,  the  intelli- 
gence that  the  people  of  England  expected  himaa 
their  king.  We  possess  testimony  lo  this  effect 
in  a  confidental  letter  written  by  Marshal  Schn- 
lenburg  to  Baron  Steinghens,  the  envoy  of  tbe 
Palatinate  in  London,  in  which,  under  the  date  of 
the  10th  August,  1714,  only  two  days  before  tbe 
death  of  Queen  Anne,  he  says, — **  It  is  quite 
evident  that  George  is  profoundly  indifferent  as  to 
the  upshot  of  this  question  of  succession ;  nay,  I 
woula  even  bet  that  when  it  really  comes  {to  the 
point  he  will  be  in  despair  at  having  to  five  up 
(lis  place  of  residence,  where  he  amuses  himself 
with  trifles,  in  order  to  assume  a  post  of  honor 
and  dignity.  He  is  endowed  with  all  the  qualities 
requisite  to  make  a  finished  nobleman,  but  he  lacks 
all  those  that  make  a  king."  George's  instinct 
tauffht  him  that  he  would  play  a  sorry  part  in  Eng- 
land. He,  a  petty  German  prince,  among  a  nation 
of  princes,  the  great  lords  and  the  rich  gentry.  He 
came  from  a  country  where  the  prince  was  almost 
absolute,  and  would  go  into  a  land  where  the 
people  treated  him  almost  on  the  footing  of  equal- 
ity ;  where  the  whole  of  the  best  society,  which 
had  the  entrS  at  court,  consisted  of  people  who 
united  the  courtier  with  the  repnblic&n,  the  DoUe 
with  tbe  rotnrier.    He  was  not  so  far  wrong  in 


1858.J 


THE  HOUBE  OF  BRUNSWICK  IK  GERMANY  AND  ENGLAND. 


510 


kwking^  forward  to  bia  entry  into  sach  a  country 
with  some  anxiety.  People  of  quality  were  not  to 
his  taste,  ceremony  was  not  to  his  liking. 

However,  spite  of  his  unwitlingnessy  go  he 
most.  He  put  off  his  departure  for  a  whole 
month.  On  the  11th  of  September  he  left 
Herrenhausen,  accompanied  by  his  son,  and 
Caroline  of  Anspach,  his  daughter-in-law. 
Their  children  followed  in  October. 

George  I.  (says  Dr.  Vehae)  appeared  to  the 
English  to  be  a  type  of  the  Stuarts,  after  the  Ger- 
man fashion,  tie  was  obstinate  and  tyrapnical, 
but  he  had  no  spark  of  that  romantic  spirit  which 
cost  Mary  Stuart  and  Charles  I.  their  heads,  and 
James  II.  his  throne.  George  I.  was  passionate, 
but  after  his  own  peculiar  manner ;  he  was  even 
cruel  and  hateful :  but  he  was  all  this,  as  it  seem- 
ed to  the  English,  after  a  middle-class  vulgar  fa- 
shion, without  any  trace  of  that  elegance  or  grace 
which  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  England  possess- 
ed, and  expected  to  fincTin  those  who  were  called 
to  reign  over  them.  But  George  was  a  Protestant, 
and  old  England  was  determined  to  remain  Pro. 
testant,  at  any  price.  It  therefore  put  up  with 
him.  Not  less  than  fifty-four  members  of  reign- 
ing houses  in  Europe,  who  all  had  a  better  title  to 
it  than  George  I.,  were  excluded  from  the  English 
throne.  .  .  .  Sophia  Stuart,  George's  mother,  the 
daughter  of  the  beautiful  Elizabeth  of  Bohemia, 
the  only  sister  of  the  beheaded  Charles,  came,  ac- 
cording to  actual  law,  after  all  these,  but  she  was 
the  only  one  who  happened  to  be  a  Protestant. 

George  was  deficient  in  intellectual  qualities, 
in  tact  and  dignity,  in  short,  in  all  the  attributes 
which  should  adorn  a  king,  or  even  a  subject;  but 
be  had  the  one  qualification  needed,  he  was  op- 
posed to  Catholicism,  and  an  enemy  to  France  and 
Louis  XIV.  So  he  was  selected  before  scores  of 
others,  who  had  a  better  right  to  the  throne  than  he. 

George  appeared  in  Engrland  with  a  seraglio  of 
hideous  old  women,  some  of  whom  came  with  him, 
and  others  joined  him  afterwards.  There  was  the 
Countess  Kielmansegge,  nick-named  the  "Ele- 
phant," and  the  "  May.pole,"  Schulenburg,  who 
had  her  two  nieces,  as  they  were  called,  with  her. 
The  King  of  England  shut  himself  up  with  them 
every  evening.  The  London  mob  surrounded  the 
coaches  of  these  German  women,  and  hissed  them, 
partly  for  their  total  want  of  beauty,  partly  be- 
cause it  was  soon  discovered  that  they  sold  their 
influence  with  the  King  for  money.  A  host  of 
broadsides  and  caricatures  issued  from  the  press. 

The  first  Elector,  Ernest  Augustus,  had  in- 
troduced into  Hanover  the  French  custom  of 
royal  mistresses.  He,  his  son  George  I., 
and  his  grandson,  took  their  favorites  from 
one  and  the  same  family.  For  nearly  one 
hundred  years,  the  family  of  Platen  supplied 
this  article  of  royal  luxury.  First,  there  was 
the  "  wicked  Countess  Platen,"  to  whom  we 
shall  presently  have  occasion  to  return ;  her 


daughter,  the  Countess  Kielmansegge,  who 
subsequently  was  created  Countess  of  Dar- 
lington ;  her  step-daughter,  the  younger 
Countess  Platen  ;  Frau  von  der  Bussche,  a 
sister  of  the  wicked  Countess  Platen ;  and  a 
fifth  lady.  Countess  Walmoden,  afterwards 
created  Countess  of  Yarmouth,  who  was 
grand-niece  of  the  same  "  wicked  Platen." 

In  1682,  George  I.,  then  Crown  Prince  of 
Hanover,  had  married  his  couiin,  Sophia 
Dorothea,  the  daughter  of  George,  Duke  of 
Zell,  of  whose  memoirs  an  English  version 
appeared  in    1845.     This   publication  was 
chiefly  founded  upon  a  biography  of  Sophia 
Dorothea,  entitled  A  short  Account  of  my 
Fate  and  Prison^  by  the  Princess  Dora  of 
Aquilon,  published  in  Hamburg,  in  1840 ; 
and  the  original  of  this  again  was  written  in 
French,  and  called  Precis  de  mon  Destin  et 
de  ma  Prison.    The  memoirs,  published  in 
London,  contain  this  autobiography,  and  an 
account,  written  by  the  Princesses  intimate 
friend   and    faithful    servant,  Fraulein   von 
Knesebeck,  to  the  Crown  Princess  of  Prussia, 
the  daughter  of  Sophia  Dorothea.    The  se* 
cond  volume  contains  the  **  Diury  of  Conver- 
sations."   The  biography  commences  with 
the  first  appearance  of  Count  Konigsmark  in 
Hanover,  in  the  year  1665,  and  ends  with 
the  last  days  of  Sophia  Dorothea's  imprison- 
ment in  the  fortress  of  Ahlden,  in  1726. 
From  this  place  she  took  the  name  of  Prin- 
cess of   Ahlden.     This  work    treats    the 
Princess  as  a  martyr,  but  these  illusions,  say^ 
Dr.  Vehse,  have  been  dispelled  by  some  let- 
ters between  the  Princess  and  her  lover, 
Konigsmark,  published  by  Professor  Palm- 
blad,in  Upsala,  in  184Y,  which  leave  scarcely 
any  doubt  as  to  the  intimate  connection  sub- 
sisting between  them.    The  Princess  of  Ahl- 
den obviously  meant  to  add  the  sanction  of 
marriage  to  her  connection  with  Konigsmurk, 
if  she  could  have  escaped  from  her  husband  ; 
but  the  catastrophe  took  place  shortly  before 
the  preparations  for  flight  were  finally  ar- 
ranged. 

Sophia  Dorothea,  the  Crown  Princess  of 
Hanover,  bom  in  the  year  1666,  the  daugh- 
ter of  George  William,  Duke  of  Zell,  and  his 
French  wife,  Eleonora  d'Olbreuse,  was  mar- 
ried at  sixteen,  in  1682,  to  her  cousin  George 
of  Hanover.  The  French  blood  that  flowed 
in  her  veins,  and  the  education  she  received 
at  the  gay  court  of  Zell,  had  their  effect. 
"  Her  mother,"  says  her  cousin,  the  Duchess 
of  Orleans,  "brought  her  up  to  coquetry 
and  gallantry."  She  was  clever,  excitable, 
and  full  of  imagination.  She  was  of  the 
I  middle  size,  and  of  exquisite  form,  with  fair 


520 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BRUNSWICK  IK  GEBMANY  XSJ>  ENGLAND. 


[Dec., 


brown  hair,  her  face  oval,  and  her  complexion 
good.     This  lively  young  girl  was  ill  suited 
to  her  silent,  dull  husband ;  and  their  mar- 
ried life  was  not  happy.     George  was  often 
absent  in  the  wars,  and  his  return  did  not 
improve  matters.     She  loved  pleasure,  he 
nothing  but  hunting  and  his  favorites — Frau 
von  der  Bussche,   Melusina    Schulenburg, 
afterwards  Duchess  of  Kendal,  and  Countess 
Kielmansegge.     Sophia  Dorothea  soon  be- 
stowed her  affections  upon  Count  Philip  of 
Konigsmark,  the  handsome  brother  of  Aurora, 
the  famous  mistress  of  Augustus  the  Strong, 
King  of  Poland,  and  the  mother  of  Marshal 
Saxe. 

Philip,  Count  Konigsmnrk,  was  descended 
from  an  old  Brandenburg  family.  Some  of 
the  race  had  settled  in  Sweden.     Philip's 

Grandfather,  Hans  Christopher,  had  made 
imself  a  name  during  the  Thirty  Years'  War, 
as  a  partisan-leader  under  Oustavus  Adol- 
phus  and  Wrangel.  After  the  peace  of 
Westphalia,  he  became  Governor  of  Bremen 
and  Yerden,  which  were  garrisoned  by  Swe- 
dish troops.  He  left  his  children  an  immense 
fortune,  won  by  his  right  hand.  At  the 
taking  of  Prague  he  acquired  great  booty. 
This  Count  Hans  Christopher,  like  all  his 
race,  was  herculean  in  form,  and  of  a  wild, 
savage  temper  :  when  inflamed  with  passion, 
his  face  assumed  the  most  hideous  aspect, 
his  hair  stood  on  end  like  the  bristles  of  a 
wild  boar,  and  he  inspired  terror  among  hia 
enemies. 

His  grandson,  Philip  of  Konigsmark,  was 
born   in  1662,  and  inherited   his  mother's 
beauty.     She  was  a  daughter  of  the  Swedish 
house  of  Wrangel,  famous  for  their  beauty. 
Philip  was  brought  up  at  the  Court  of  Zell, 
and  passed  much  of  his  youth  with  Sophia 
Dorothea,  for  whom  he  entertained  a  youth- 
ful passion.    Depuis  que  je  vous  ai  vue,  he 
writes  to  her  during  one  of  his  campaigns  on 
the  Rhine,  man  cceur  8*€8t  senti  toucki  sans 
oser  le  dire,  et  quoique  Ven/ance,  ou  fStaiSy 
rrCempechaii  de  vous  declarer  ma  passion,  je 
ne  vous  ai  pas  moins  aimi.     From  2^11  young 
Konigsmark  was  sent  to  finish  his  education 
in  England,  at  the  corrupt  court  of  Charles 
II.     In  this  country,  he  was  involved  with 
his  elder  brother  Charles  John,  in  a  scandal- 
ous matter — the  murder  of  Thomas  Thynne, 
''Tom  of  ten  thousand,"  as  he  was  called, 
who  bad  married  the  heiress  of  the  Percy 
family,  whom  Konigsmark  wanted  for  himself. 
This  murder  was  committed  on  the  12th  Feb- 
ruary, 1682,  in  the  public  streets,  in  Pall- 
Mall,  nearly  opposite  the  opera-house  colon- 
nade.   Thynne  was  shot  by  three  hired  mur- 


derers, George  Borosky,  Christopher  Yraats* 
and  John  Storn,  who  were  subsequently  all 
executed  for  the  murder:  the  principal, 
Charles  John  Count  Konigsmark,  fled,  but 
was  taken  at  Gravesend ;  Yraats  was  offered 
a  free  pardon  if  he  would  peach  against  the 
Konigsmarks ;  but  Yraats  held  his  peace,  and 
was  executed.  Charles  John  Count  Konigs- 
mark was  killed  fighting  against  the  Turks 
in  the  Morea,  in  1686  ;  and  the  subsequent 
catastrophe  of  Philip,  Count  Konigsmark,  was 
looked  upon  as  a  just  punishment  for  the 
share  he  had  in  this  transaction,  and  in  the 
sacrifice  of  Yraats's  life. 

Philip  of  Konigsmark  next  took  service,  in 
1685,  under  the  Elector  Ernest  Augustus  of 
Hanover,  and  renewed  his  old  acquaintance 
with  the  lively  Crown  Princess,  who  lived,  as 
we  have  said,  unhappily  with  her  cold  and 
uncongenial  husband. 

It  appears  from  the  correspondence  quoted 
by  Dr.  Yehse  that  the  lovers  met  in  secret: 
the  Princess  even  went  to  Konigsmark's  lodg- 
ings, which,  according  to  tradition,  were  m 
the   present  **  Hotel   de   Strelitz,"   on  the 
"Neumarkt."     In  one  of  his  letters,  K5n- 
igsmark  writes :     Demain  a   dix  keurta  je 
serai  au  rendezvous.    In  another :  Mon  anpe^ 
c*est  pour  toi  seule^  queje  vis  et  queje  respire. 
At  an  evening  party  Count  Koningsmark  lost 
out  of  his  hat  a  billet  dotix,  written  to  him  by 
the  Princess ;  great  was  his  consternation : 
he  did  not  fear  for  himself — but  to  lose  her 
for  ever!      The  Princess  consoles  him  by 
telling  him  that  if  he  thought  that  the  fear 
of  exposure  or  of  losing  her  reputation  (these 
words  were  written  in  cipher)  prevented  her 
from  seeing  him,  he  did  her  great  injustice. 
She  steadfastly  hoped  some  day  to  marry 
him,  and  to  withdraw  into  some  remote  cor- 
ner of  the  world,  while  Koningsmark  dreamt 
of  winning  her  and  a  position,  by  some  chir- 
alrous  enterprise.    He  was  jealous  when  she 
spoke  to  any   one  else — particularly  to  an 
Austrian,  Count  Yon  Piemont.     All  this  did 
not  escape  the  lynx  eyes  of  others.    The 
"  wicked  Countess  of  Platen"  (whose  ad- 
vances Count  Koningsmark  had    repelled) 
saw  in  this  the  means  of  wreaking  her  ven- 
geance on  one  who  had  spurned  her  love, 
and  on  a  hated  rival.   The  "  wicked  Countess 
Platen"  simulated   the  warmest  interest  in 
the  confiding   Princess,  and   pretended   to 
favor  the  intrigue,  while  she  'drew  the  net 
tighter  round  her  two  victims.      Konings- 
mark's  indiscretion,  in  boasting  at  a  dinner- 
table  of   his  connection  with  the  Princess, 
and  of  his  scorn  for  Countess  Platen — the 
spreta  injuria  fornuB — words  which  were 


18j»3.] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BRUNSWICK  IN  QJBRlfANY  AND  ENGLAND. 


521 


transmitted  forthwith  to  Countess  Platen, 
brought  matters  to  a  crisis :  the  scorned  one 
TOwed  to  ruin  Konigsmark  and  the  Prin« 
cess. 

The  Crown  Prince  was  about  to  proceed 
to  Berlin,  and  this  seemed  a  good  opportu- 
nity for  the  two  lovers  to  carry  their  long- 
cherished  plan  for  flight  into  execution ;  it 
was  proposed  by  Konigsmark  to  escape  by 
way  of  Hamburg  into  France ;  the  Princess 
preferred  seeking  shelter  at  the  court  of 
buke  Antony  Ulrich  of  Brunswick. 

On  the  1st  of  July,  1694,  between  ten  and 
eleven  at  night,  Konigsmark  paid  his  last 
visit  to  the  Princess  in  the  palace  at  Hano- 
ver. He  had  disguised  himself  in  "  a  pair  of 
old  grav  linen  trousers,  an  old  white  shirt, 
(camisol,)  and  a  brown  overcoat."  This 
visit  was  to  talk  over  the  arrangements  for 
their  flight,  Konigsmark's  servants  and  car- 
riages being  all  ready  for  instant  departure 
to  Dresden  or  elsewhere. 

The  interview  lasted  longer  than  was  pru- 
dent; the  Princess's  faithful  attendant,  Frau- 
lein  voh  Knesbeck,  frequently  urged  them  to 
bring  it  to  a  close.  At  .length  Kdnigsmark 
went  away,  and  the  rest  of  the  night  was 
passed  by  the  Princess  in  packing  up 
such  valuables  as  she  meant  to  take  with 
her. 

The  wicked  Countess  Platen  had  received 
notice  from  her  spies  that  Konigsmark  was 
with  the  Princess,  and  had  obtained  the 
Elector's  authority  to  have  him  arrested, 
under  the  plea  of  saving  the  honor  of  the 
princely  house. 

The  Crown  Princess  lived  in  that  part  of 
the  palace  at  Hanover  which  now  forms  the 
state  apartments.  A  corridor  leads  out  of 
these  apartments  by  the  Rittersaal,  a  large 
hall  which  joined  the  rooms  occupied  by  the 
Princess  to  those  inhabited  by  the  Crown 
Prince.  Konigsmark  went  along  this  corri- 
dor, humming  a  tune,  till  he  came  to  a  small 
door,  leading  down  some  steps  into  the  gar- 
den— a  door  which  was  usually  left  open ; 
but  this  time  he  found  it  locked.  He  then 
went  along  another  corridor,  running  along 
the  length  of  the  Rittersaal,  and  came  to  an 
ante-room  built  over  the  court  chapel,  where 
there  was  a  large  chimney  built  to  receive 
the  smoke  from  the  apparatus  to  heat  the 
chapel.  Four  halberdiers  had  been  posted 
in  this  dark  corner.  Countess  Platen  had 
charged  these  halberdiers  to  take  Kdnigsmark 
prisoner,  but  in  the  event  of  his  offering  any 
resistance,  they  were  to  use  their  weap- 
ons. It  appears  from  the  statement  after- 
wards made  by  one  of  these  halberdiers  to  a 


clergyman  of  the  name  of  Cromer,  that  Kd- 
nigsmark was  noi  without  suspicions  of  un- 
fair play,  as  he  had  unsheathed  his  sword, 
and,  when  attacked,  defended  himself  brave- 
ly, wounding  several  of  his  opponents,  until, 
his  sword  breaking,  he  was  overpowered. 
He  was  borne,  mortallv  wounded,  into  a 
room  close  by,  where  his  old  enemy  Count- 
ess Platen  was  ;  on  seeing  her,  he  collected 
his  last  remaining  strength  to  pour  his  exe- 
crations upon  her,  to  which  she  replied  by 
stamping  with  her  feet  upon  his  bleeding 
face.  Konigsmark  was  then  taken  into  a 
small  cellar,  which  could  be  filled  with  wa- 
ter by  means  of  a  pipe;  there  he  was 
drowned.  The  following  morning  his  body 
was  burned  in  an  oven,  and  this  was  wallea 
up. 

For  a  long  time  no  one  knew  what  had 
become  of  Konigsmark ;  the  most  extraordi- 
nary rumors  were  current  about  him  ;  ail  the 
inquiries  set  on  foot  by  the  Court  of  Dres- 
den, at  the  instigation  of  Aurora,  Konigs- 
mark*8  sister,  the  reigning  favorite  of  the 
new  Elector  of  Saxony,  were  fruitless.  Au- 
rora was  told  by  the  Elector  of  Hanover 
that  he  was  not  her  brother's  keeper. 

Tbe  Princess,  on  hearing  the  news  of  this 
horrible  catastrophe,  gave  way  to  the  most 
violent  expressions  of  grief;  "whereby," 
says  Fraulein  Knesbeck,  "  she  exposed  her- 
self to  the  suspicion  that  the  murdered  Count 
was  something  more  than  a  common  friend." 
She  declared  loudly  that -she  would  no  long- 
er live  among  barbarians  and  murderers.  She 
was  even  said  to  have  attempted  self-de- 
struction. The  breach  between  her  husband 
and  her  father-in-law  and  herself  was  made 
wider ;  the  scandal  was  notorious,  and  could 
no  longer  be  concealed.  Proceedings  were 
therefore  instituted  against  the  Princess ;  the 
reasons  given  for  the  separation  were  her 
attempts  at  flight,  and  the  Princess  was  con- 
demned to  imprisonment  for  life.  The 
circumstance  that  the  Princess  swore  in  the 
most  solemn  manner  that  she  had  kept  her 
marriage  vow,  and  that  her  lady-in-waiting 
confirmed  this  statement,  rendered  the  mat- 
ter of  the  Princess's  guilt  highly  problemati- 
cal, till  the  publication  of  the  letters  by  Palm- 
blad  and  others.  In  her  own  autobiogro- 
phy,  the  Princess  is  no  longer  the  ardent, 
mcautious  lover  of  former  years.  The  sepa- 
ration took  effect  at  Hanover  on  the  28th 
October,  1604,  and  the  Princess,  who  was 
then  eight-and-twenty,  was  carried  to  Ahl- 
den,  a  small  place  about  four  German  miles 
from  Zell,  the  residence  of  her  father  and 
mother. 


522 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BRUNSWICK  IN  GBRliANY  AND  ENGLAND. 


[Dec, 


The  Princess's  friend  and  companion, 
Frauleio  von  Knesbeck,  was  imprisoned  in  the 
fortress  of  Schwarzfels,  in  the  Harz  ;  bat 
escaped,  after  three  years'  durance.  She 
was  aided  in  her  escape  by  a  faithful  old 
servant,  disguised  as  a  tiler.  This  man  let 
himself  down  from  the  roof  in  front  of  her 
window,  entered  her  room,  and,  placing  her 
in  a  sort  of  rope  cradle,  let  her  down  into 
the  moat,  and  himself  after  her.  Horses 
had  been  prepared,  with  which  they  escaped, 
first  to  Wolfenbiitte],  and  then  to  Berlin, 
where  Fraulein  von  Knesbeck  entered  the 
service  of  the  Queen  of  Prussia.  The  Com- 
mander of  the  fortress  of  Schwarzfels  report- 
ed to  the  Elector  of  Hanover  that  the  Devil, 
in  the  shape  of  a  tiler,  had  carried  off  the 
Fraulein  through  a  hole  in  the  roof.  He 
could  not  account'for  her  escape  in  any  other 
way. 

Sophia  Dorothea  passed  two-and-thirty 
years  in  her  prison.  The  dea^h  of  her  father 
in  1705,  and  of  her  mother  in  1Y23,  gave 
her  a  very  tolerable  income.  The  company 
she  saw  consisted  of  two  ladies  and  a  gen- 
tleman-in-waiting, and  the  Commandant  of 
Ahlden,  who  dined  regularly  every  day  with 
her.  She  was  allowed  free  intercourse  with 
mechanics  and  tradesmen,  but  not  with  peo- 
ple of  the  higher  class.  She  employed 
herself  during  her  imprisonment  in  the  man- 
agement of  her  domains — the  inspection  of 
her  household  accounts — needle-work — read- 
ing, and  in  works  of  charity  and  the  offices 
of  religion. 

It  was  said  that  when  George  I.  ascended 
the  English  throne,  it  was  proposed  to  her  to 
quit  her  retreat ;  but  that  she  replied,  if  she 
were  guilty  she  was  unworthy  to  be  a  Queen ; 
and  if  innocent,  the  King  was  unfit  to  be 
her  husband  ;  and  thus  she  remained  at  Ahl- 
den.- At  first,  she  was  kept  a  close  prisoner  ; 
but  afterwards  she  was  allowed  to  drive  out 
some  miles  from  the  town,  but  always  with 
an  escort.  She  corresponded  with  her  son 
and  daughter,  and  frequently  saw  her  mother. 

The  Prjncess  once  made  an  attempt  to 
escape,  which  was  unsuccessful ;  a  certain 
Count  von  Bar,  of  an  Osnabruck  family,  re- 


ceived 125,000  florins  to  aid  her  in  her  flight. 
This  man  kept  the  money,  in  spite  of  an  ac* 
tion  at  law.  The  treason  of  one  in  whom 
she  trusted  affected  the  Princess  to  such  a 
degree  as  to  bring  on  a  fever,  which  carried 
her  off  at  the  age  of  sixty. 

George  I.  survived  her  one  year.  There 
was  a  sort  of  prophecy  that  he  would  not 
outlive  her  a  year,  and  her  death  made  a 

freat  impression  upon  him.  He  fell  into  a 
eep  melancholy,  and  expressed  a  strong 
anxiety  to  see  Hanover  once  more.  On  his 
way  thither,  with  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  be 
fell  ill  at  Bentheim ;  he  proceeded,  however, 
on  his  journey,  and  was  struck  with  apo- 
plexy at  Ippenburen,  in  Westphalia.  His 
eyes  became  glassy,  and  his  tongue  hung 
from  his  mouth ;  he  reached  Osnabruck  a 
corpse. 

According  to  vulgar  report,  Sophia  Doro-  • 
tliea,  on  her  death-bed,  summoned  her  hus- 
band to  appear  before  the  judgment-seat  of 
God  within  a  year  and  a  day.  This  letter 
was  not  delivered  to  him  in  England,  but  was 
kept  for  his  arrival  in  Germany.  He  opened 
it  in  the  carriage,  and  was  seized  with  faint- 
ing fits,  which  ended  in  a  stroke  of  apoplexy. 
The  appearance  of  his  face  caused  the  report 
to  be  spread  abroad  that  the  Devil  had  twist- 
ed his  neck  round. 

The  wicked  Countess  Platen,  the  murder- 
ess of  Count  Konigsmark,  was  blind  for  se- 
veral years  before  her  death,  which  took  place 
in  1706.  During  her  last  illness  she  was 
haunted  by  Konigsmark's  ghost  perpetually 
seated  at  her  bed-side. 

We  have  now  disposed  of  most  of  the 
dramatis  personoB  who  played  a  part  in  the 
catastrophe  of  the  Princess  of  Ahlden  and 
Count  Konigsmark,  and  can  only  refer  such 
of  our  readers  who  like  gossip  and  amusing 
scandal,  culled  from  various  sources,  to  Dr. 
Yehse's  work.  The  learned  Doctor  promises 
to  go  seriatim  through  all  the  petty  courts 
of  Germany.  Let  them  look  well  to  it,  for 
nothing  seems  to  escape  him.  He  has  a  keen 
nose  and  the  patience  of  the  sleuth-hound 
for  the  discovery  and  recording  of  royal  de- 
linquencies. 


1858.] 


THE  DUCHESS  OF  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WORKS. 


528 


From  the  Retrosp  ectiTe  Review. 


THE  DUCHESS  OP  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WORKS.* 


When  the  peculiarities  of  individual  ec- 
centricity are  thrust  upon  the  notice  of  the 
world  hy  the  boldness  of  authorship,  it  is  at 
least  well  for  those  whose  attention  is  thus 
publicly  arrested  when  honesty  of  purpose 
and  a  high  tone  of  virtuous  sentiment  are 
found  to  have  directed  the  feelings  and  intel- 
lect of  the  writer.  Nor  are  we  sure  that  in 
cases  where  a  spirit  of  truthfulness  is  mani- 
festly predominant,  a  conformity  with  th.e  re- 
ceived and  conventional  notions  of  the  day, 
or  even  with  those  of  the  world  at  large,  is 
the  most  propitious  vehicle  for  its  conveyance 
to  the  reader's  conscience  or  judgment.  It 
is  not  among  the  uneccentric  and  conformable 
that  we  may  hope  to  meet  with  the  most 
earnest  and  genuine  expression  of  character 
and  feeling.  We  have  been  led  into  these 
observations  by  a  consideration  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  remarkable  woman  whose  auto- 
biography forms  the  subject  of  the  present 
notice.  Vain,  pedantic,  utterly  wanting  in 
taste  and  judgment,  and  so  bitten  with  the 
Cacoethea  scribendi  as  to  have  brought  down 
upon  herself,  with  some  show  of  justice,  the 
unmiligated  contempt  and  ridicule  of  Wal- 
pole,  she  has  nevertheless  in  some  of  her 
numerous  productions  exhibited  an  exalted 
tone  of  moral  feeling  which  challenges  our 
admiration  and  respect,  while  its  utterance 
has,  in  oub  judgment,  derived  additional  pi- 
quancy and  life  from  those  very  foibles  whose 
fuller  development  exposed  her  to  ridicule. 
More  especially,  we  think,  does  this  prove  to 
be  the  case  when,  as  in  the  work  here  noticed, 
she  undertakes  to  describe  the  details  of  her 
own  character  and  the  realities  of  her  own 
history.  In  an  honestly  written  autobiogra- 
phy, the  facts  of  which  it  must  be  constructed 
serve  as  checks  upon  those  often  involuntary 
falsifiers  of  the  character,  pride,  ambition, 
and  vanity,  while  these  very  weaknesses  in 
their  turn  not  unfrequently  engender  a  sen- 
sitiveness to  all  appertaining  to  self,  which 

*A  true  Relation  of  the  Birth,  Breeding,  and 
Life  of  Margaret  Cavendish,  Jhteheee  of  Newcaetle. 
Written  hy  hereelf  extracted  from  her  folio  vol- 
ume entitled  ^Nature^e  Pictures  draion  hy  Fan- 
ejf»$  Pencil  to  the  Life.'    Fol.    London :  1666. 


supplies  the  memory  with  details,  and  the 
feelings  with  warmth  to  depict  them.  Sul- 
lied virtues  must  be  acknowledged  to  be  vir- 
tues still,  and  he  is  no  wise  man  who  rejects 
the  sterling  metal  for  the  tarnish  that  may 
happen  to  obscure  its  brilliancy.  Of  such 
metal  do  we  esteem  the  authoress  of  this  au- 
tobiography to  have  been  made.  She  was, 
it  is  true,  as  proud,  as  vain,  and  as  ambitious 
as  any  among  the  daughters  of  ambitious 
Eve,  nor  can  we  even  say  that  her  ambition 
or  her  pride  were  of  an  exalted  order,  inas- 
much as  they  appear  to  have  been  the  servants, 
rather  than  the  accomplices,  of  her  vanity  : 
nevertheless  we  are  bold  to  assert  that  this 
same  unworthy  vice  of  vanity,  being  itself  in 
her  the  bondmaid  of  truth,  was  forced  into 
most  beneficial  service  when  she  put  her 
hand  to  paper  to  write  **  The  true  Relation 
of  the  birth,  breeding,  and  life  of  Margaret 
Cavendish,  Duchess  of  Newcastle.''  Hear 
in  what  explicit  terms  of  submission  the  Vice 
makes  her  surrender  to  the  victorious  Virtue. 
"  I  fear  ambition,"  says  the  Duchess,  *'  in- 
clines to  vain-glory ;  for  I  am  very  ambi- 
tious ;  yet  it  is  neither  for  beauty,  wit,  titles, 
wealth,  or  power,  but  as  they  are  steps  to 
raise  me  to  Fancy's  Tower,  which  is  to  live 
by  remembrance  in  after  ages." 

But  as,  spite  of  the  numerous  productions 
by  which  she  aimed  at  securing  to  herself 
this  "  remembrance  in  after  ages, '  it  is  prob- 
able that  many  of  our  readers  may  not  have 
met  with  any  of  her  works,  except  perhaps 
a  few  lines,  descriptive  of  Melancholy,  quoted 
with  commendation  in  the  *'  Connoisseur," 
No.  69,  or  possibly  not  have  met  with  any 
notice  of  her  biography  beyond  the  few  inci- 
dental remarks  on  her  eccentricities  which 
occur  in  contemporaneous  history,  we  will  at 
once,  and  briefly,  introduce  them  to  her  lady- 
ship's acquaintance.  Margaret  Cavendish, 
second  wife  to  William,  the  first  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  was  the  youngest  daughter  of  Sir 
Charles  Lucas,  of  St.  John's,  near  Colches- 
ter. The  date  of  her  birth  is  never  specified, 
but  Anthony  k  Wood  (art.  Charlton]  makes 
her  fifty  when  she  died  ;  hence  she  was  bom 
in  1623.    To  use  her  own  words,  **  her  father 


524 


THB  DUCHESS  OF  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WQBEa 


[Dee. 


was  a  gentlemaD,  wbich  title  is  grounded  and 
given  by  merit,  not  by  princes,  and  'tis  tbe 
act  of  time,  not  favor  ;*'  a  remark,  as  Sir  Eger- 
ton  Brydges  observes,  which  had  already 
been  used  by  Lord  Bacon,  with  regard  to  old 
nobility  ;  "  and  though  my  father  was  not  a 
peer  of  the  realib,  yet  there  were  few  peers 
who  had  much  greater  estates,  or  lived  more 
noble  therewith  ;  yet  at  that  time  great  titles 
were  to  be  sold,  and  not  at  so  high  rates,  but 
that  his  estate  might  have  easily  purchased, 
and  was  prest  for  to  take ;  but  my  father 
did  not  esteem  titles,  unless  they  were  gained 
by  heroic  actions,  and  the  kingdom  being  in 
a  happy  peace  with  all  other  nations,  and  in 
itself  being  governed  by  a  wise  king  (King 
James),  there  was  no  employments  for  heroic 
spirits."  Towards  the  latter  end  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign  her  father  had  been  com- 
pelled to  flee  the  country,  and  the  severity 
of  the  Queen,  for  having  killed,  in  a  duel,  one 
Mr.  Brooks,  a  brother  of  Lord  Cobham,  **  a 
great  man  with  Queen  Eh'zabeth ;"  but,  on 
the  accession  of  King  James,  he  obtained  his 
pardon  and  leave  to  return  home,  where  "he 
lived  happily  and  died  peaceably,  leaving  a 
wife  and  ei^ht  children,  three  sons  and  five 
daughters,'  our  authoress  being  an  infant 
when  he  died. 

This  state  of  seclusion  and  restriction  na- 
naturally  engendered  a  reserve  which,  when 
a  separation  took  place  upon  her  becom- 
ing one  of  the  maids  of  honor  to  Queen  Hen- 
rietta Maria,  in  1643,  showed  itself  in  so  dis- 
tressing a  degree  of  tnauvaiae  honte,  that 
"  she  durst  neither  look  up  with  her  eyes, 
nor  speak,  nor  be  any  way  sociable,  insomuch 
as  she  was  thought  a  natural  fool."  The 
naivete  of  her  account  of  her  going  into  the 
world,  and  her  subsequent  attachment  and 
marriage  to  the  Marquis  of  Newcastle,  is 
truly  exquisite.  It  is  most  curious  to  contrast 
the  excessive  reserve  therein  described, 
doubtless  the  result  of  her  secluded  educa- 
tion, with  the  bold  eccentricity  of  demeanor 
exhibited  in  the  later  years  of  her  life  and 
subsequent  to  the  date  of  this  autobiography. 
It  is  hence  most  important  to  observe  the 
dates  at  which  these  different  manifestations 
of  the  character  of  this  strange  woman  are 
presented  to  our  notice,  and  thus  we  may 
find  a  clue  to  its  apparent  inconsistencies. 
We  are  inclined  to  believe  that  excessive  re- 
serve is  almost  always  based  upon  a  deep- 
seated  and  often  an  unconscious  pride,  and 
when  we  read  the  following  brief  snatches 
of  description  occurring  incidentally  in  Pepys' 
graphic  ^*  Diary,"  we  think  that  an  explana- 
tion must  be  looked  for  in  the  fact  that  the 
Duchess's  vanity  may  have  increased  and  her 


reserve  decreased  with  the  advance  of  life, 
and  especially  with  the  prosperity  of  her 
later  years. 

The  following  are  the  extracts  from  Pepys 
to  which  we  allude : 

•*  nth  April,  1667.— To  White  Hall,  thinking 
there  to  havn  seen  the  Duchesse  of  Newcastle 
coming  this  night  to  Court  to  make  a  visit  to  tbe 
Qaeene,  the  King  having  been  with  her  yester- 
day, to  make  her  a  visit  since  her  coining  to  Town. 
The  whole  story  of  this  lady  is  a  romance,  and  all 
she  does  is  romantic.  Her  footmen  in  velvet 
coats,  and  herself  in  an  antique  dress,  as  they 
say ;  and  was  the  other  day  at  her  own  play '  The 
Humorous  Lovers '  the  most  ridiculous  thing  that 
ever  was  wrote,  and  yet  she  and  her  Lord  might- 
ily pleased  with  it,  and  she  at  the, end  made  her 
respects  to  the  players  from  her  box,  and  did  give 
them  thanks.  There  is  as  much  expectation  of 
her  coming  to  Court,  that  so  people  may  come  to 
see  her,  as  if  it  were  the  Queene  of  Sheba ;  bat 
I  lost  my  labonr,  for  she  did  not  come  this  nij^ht. 

'*  26ih  of  April,  1667.— Met  my  Lady  ^ew- 
castle  going  with  her  coaches  and  footmen  all  in 
velvet ;  herself  whom  I  never  saw  before,  as  I 
have  heard  her  oflen  described,  for  all  tbe  town- 
talk  is  now-a-daysof  her  extravagancies,  with  her 
velvet  cap,  her  hair  about  her  ears,  many  black 
patches,  oecause  of  pimples  about  her  mouth, 
naked  necked,  without  any  thing  about  it,  and  a 
black  just-au-corps.  She  seemed  to  me  a  very 
comely  woman ;  but  I  hope  to  see  more  of  her  on 
May-day. 

"  Ist  May,  1667.— Thence  Sir  W.  Pen  and  I 
in  his  coach,  Tiburn  way  into  tbe  Park,  where  a 
horrid  dust  and  number  of  coaches,  without  plea- 
sure or  order.  That  which  we  and  aln.ost  all 
went  for,  was  to  see  my  Lady  Newcastle ;  which 
we  could  not,  she  being  followed  and  crowded 
upon  by  coaches  all  the  way  she  went,  that  no- 
body could  come  near  her ;  only  I  could  see  she 
was  in  a  large  black  coach  adorned  in  silver  in- 
stead of  gold,  and  so  white  curtains,  and  every- 
thing black  and  white,  and  herself  in  her  cap. 

"  10th  May,  1667.— Drove  hard  towards  Clerk- 
enwell,  thinking  to  have  overtaken  my  Lady  New- 
castle whom  I  saw  before  us  in  her  coach,  with 
100  boys  and  girls  running  looking  upon  her,  but 
I  could  not,  and  so  she  got  home  before  I  could 
come  up  to  her.  But  I  will  get  a  time  to  see 
her." 

This  affectation  is  confirmed  by  Granger, 
who  describes  a  portrait  of  her  at  Welbeck, 
one  of  the  Duke's  mansions,  attired  in  a  thea- 
trical habit,  wbich  she  usually  wore.  And 
Evelyn  also  states  that  when  he  went  to  make 
court  to  the  Duke  and  Duchess  at  thdr 
house  in  Glerkenwell,  "  he  was  much  pleas^ 
with  the  extraordinary  fanciful  habit,  garb, 
and  discourse  of  the  Duchess.''  And  on  a 
subsequent  occasion,  he  says,  "  went,  againe 
with  my  wife  to  the  Dutchess  of  Newcastle, 
who  received  her  in  a  kind  of  transport,  suit- 
able to  her  extravagant  humor  and  dresse 
which  was  very  singular." 


1858.] 


THE  DUOHEISS  OF  NEWOASTLE  AST)  HER  WOBSS. 


626 


There  is  an  excess  of  bizarrerie  ezbibited 
in  this  description  which  we  feel  inclined  to 
think  attached  to  the  later  and  more  prosper- 
ous years  of  her  life ;  but  while  contrasting  it 
with  the  reserve'  of  her  early  days,  it  is  re- 
markable to  notice  that  she  herself,  with 
apparent  unconsciousness  of  their  ineoogruitj, 
relates  these  two  peculiarities  in  her  charac- 
ter in  almost  the  same  breath,  aa  follows: 

*'  For  my  part  I  had  rather  sit  at  home  and  write 
or  walk  in  my  chamber  and  contemplate.  But  I 
hold  it  necessary  sometimes  to  appear  abroad ;  be- 
sides I  do  find  that  several  objects  do  bring  new 
materialls  for  my  thoughts  and  fancies  to  build 
upon.  Yet  I  must  say  this  in  the  behalf  of  my 
thoughts,  that  I  never  found  them  idle;  for  if  the 
senses  bring  no  work  in,  they  will  work  of  them- 
selves, like  silk-worms  that  spinn  out  of  their  own 
bowels.  Neither  can  I  say  I  think  the  time  tedi- 
ous when  I  am  alone,  so  I  be  neer  my  Lord  and 
know  he  is  well.  I  always  took  delight  in  a  singu- 
larity, even  in  accoutrements  of  habits;  but  what- 
soever I  was  addicted  to  either  in  fashions  of 
cloths,  contemplation  of  thoughts,  actions  of  life, 
they  were  lawful,  honest,  honorable,  and  modest ; 
of  which  I  can  avouch  to  the  world  with  a  great 
confidence,  because  it  is  a  pure  truth." 

If  there  be  vanity  in  the  following  frank 
delineation  of  personal  character,  we  must 
acknowledge  that  we  are  supplied  with  a 
picture  of  manifest  truthfulness  which  we 
might  hope  for  in  vain  from  the  hand  of  a 
would-be  modest  person. 

"As  for  my  disposition,  it  is  more  inclining  to 
be  melancholy  than  merry,  but  not  crabbed  or 
peevish  melancholy:  and  I  am  apt  to  weep  rather 
than  laugh ;  not  that  I  do  oHen  either  of  them. 
Also,  I  am  tender  natured ;  for  it  troubles  my  con- 
science to  kill  a  fly,  and  the  groans  of  a  dying 
beast  strfke  my  soul.  Also,  where  I  place  a  par- 
ticular affection,  I  love  extraordinarily  and  con- 
stantly, yet  not  fondly,  but  soberly  and  observ- 
ingly;  not  to  hang  about  them  as  a  trouble,  but  to 
wait  upon  them  as  a  servant ;  but  this  affection 
will  take  no  root,  but  where  I  think  or  find  merit, 
and  have  leave  both  from  Divine  and  Moral  laws; 
yet  I  find  this  passion  so  troublesome,  as  it  is  the 
only  torment  of  my  life,  for  fear  any  evil  misfor- 
tune, or  accident,  or  sickness,  or  death  should 
come  unto  them,  insomuch  as  I  am  never  freely 
at  rest.  Likewise  I  am  grateful,  for  I  never  re- 
ceived a  curtesy  but  I  am  impatient  and  troubled 
until  I  can  return  it ;  also  1  am  chaste,  both  by 
nature  and  education,  insomuch  as  I  do  abhor  an 
unchaste  thought ;  likewise  I  am  seldom  angry, 
as  my  servants  may  witness  for  me,  for  I  rather 
chose  to  suffer  some  inconveniences  than  disturb 
my  thoughts,  which  makes  me  wink  many  times 
at  their  faults  ;  but  I  am  easily  pacified,  if  it  be 
not  such  an  injury  as  may  create  a  hate;  like- 
wise I  am  neither  spiteful,  envious  nor  malicious ; 
1  repine  not  at  the  gifts  that  nature  or  fortune 


bestows  upon  others,  yet  I  am  a  great  emulator ; 
for  though  I  wish  none  worse  than  they  are,  yet 
it  is  lawful  forme  to  wish  myself  the  best,  and 
to  do  my  honest  endeavour  thereunto ;  for  I  think 
it  no  crime  to  wish  myself  the  exactest  of  Nature's 
works,  my  thread  of  life  the  longest,  my  chain  of 
destiny  the  strongest,  my  mind  the  peaceablest, 
my  life  the  pleasantest.  my  death  the  ea^est,  and 
[myself]  the  greatest  Saint  in  heaven." 

Her  marriage  with  the  Marquis  of  New- 
castle, at  that  time  a  widower,  took  place  in 
1645  at  Paris,  whither  she  had  accompanied 
Queen  Henrietta  Maria.  This  was  during  the 
Marquis's  exile,  he  having  abruptly  left  the 
country  after  the  fatal  battle  of  Marstoa 
Moor,  in  which  he  had  shown  his  usual  gal- 
lantry in  the  cause  of  the  King,  but  the  event 
of  which  was  the  almost  total  destruction  of 
his  infantry.  During  the  long  pei  iod  of  his 
exile,  in  which  he  often  labored  under  great 
pecuniary  distress,  no  less  than  after  his  re- 
turn with  his  royal  master  and  restoration  to 
wealth  and  honor  in  his  native  country,  his 
Duchess  presented  an  example  of  conjugal 
devotedness  and  affection  to  which,  unless 
perhaps  we  mention  Mrs.  Lucy  Hutchinson, 
we  should  scarcely  be  able  to  adduce  a  com- 
parison. 

The  following  passage  upon  her-  marriage 
is,  as  Sir  Egerton  Brydges  justly  remarks,  in 
spite  of  the  awkward  construction  of  some 
of  its  parts,  both  in  sentiment  and  the  spirit 
of  the  language,  highly  admirable,  eloquent, 
and  affecting. 

**  My  Lord  Marquis  of  Newcastle  did  approve 
of  those  bashful  fears  which  many  condemned, 
and  would  choose  such  a  wife  as  he  might  bring 
to  his  own  humours,  and  not  such  an  one  as  was 
wedded  to  self-conceit,  or  one  that  had  been  tem- 
pered to  the  humours  of  another;  for  which  he 
wooed  me  for  his  wife;  and  though  I  did  dread 
marriage,  and  shunned  men's  companies  as  much 
as  1  could,  yet  I  could  not,  nor  had  not  the  power 
to  refuse  him,  by  reason  my  affections  were  fixed 
on  him,  and  he  was  the  only  person  I  ever  was  in 
love  with.  Neither  was  I  ashamed  to  own  it,  but 
glorified  therein,  for  it  was  not  amorous  love ;  I 
never  was  infected  therewith ;  it  is  a  disease,  or 
a  passion,  or  both,  I  only  know  by  relation,  not  by 
experience ;  neither  could  title,  wealth,  power,  or 
person  entice  me  to  love ;  but  my  love  was  honest 
and  honorable,  being  placed  upon  merit,  with  affec- 
tion joyed  at  the  fame  of  his  worth,  pleased  with 
delight  in  his  wit,  proud  of  the  respect  he  used  to 
me,  and  triumphing  in  the  affections  he  nrofest 
for  me,  which  affections  he  hath  confirmed  to  me 
by  a  deed  of  time,  sealed  by  constancy,  and  as- 
signed by  an  nnalterable  decree  of  his  promise ; 
which  makes  me  happy  in  despight  of  Fortune's 
frowns,  for  thongh  misfortunes  may  and  do  oft 
dissolve  base,  wild,  loose,  and  ungrounded  affec- 
tions, yet  she  hath  no  power  of  those  that  are 


526 


THE  DUCHESS  OF  NEWCA8TLE  AND  HER  WOBEB. 


Pec., 


united  either  by  merit,  justice,  gratitude,  duty, 
fidelity,  or  the  like ;  and  thoujzh  my  lord  hath  lost 
his  estate,  and  banished  out  of  his  country  for  his 
loyalty  to  his  king  and  country,  yet  neither  dis- 

Eised  Poverty,  nor  pinching  Necessity  could  make 
im  break  the  bonds  of  friendship,  or  weaken  his 
loyal  duty  to  his  king  or  country." 

The  losses  which  the  .Marquis  sustained  by 
the  civil  war  were  computed  by  the  Marchio- 
ness at  the  enormous  sum,  especially  for  those 
times,  of  £941,303. 

Nor  was  it  in  her  wedded  life  alone  that 
the  Marchioness  -suffered  through  the  un- 
happy wars  of  the  period.  Her  mother  and 
brothers,  by  reason  of  their  unflinching  ad- 
herence to  the  royal  cause,  were  plundered  of 
their  "goods,  plate,  jewels, money,  corn,  cat- 
tle, and  the  like,"  and  her  two  younger  bro- 
thers. Sir  Thomas  and  Sir  Charles  Lucas, 
killed.  The  latter  was  shot  in  cold  blood, 
together  with  Sir  George  Lisle,  from  a  spirit 
of  vengeance  for  the  persevering  bravery 
with  wtiich  thev  maintained  the  defense  of 
Colchester,  the  last  city  which  held  out  in  the 
Ployalist  cause.  In  connection  with  these 
sufferings  the  Marchioness  uses  a  tone  of  rev- 
erence and  affection  in  describing  her  mo- 
ther's person  and  fortitude  under  affliction 
which  engages  our  deepest  respect  and  admi- 
ration, not  only  for  the  person  described,  but 
for  her  who  could  dictate  the  description. 

**  But  not  only  the  family  I  am  linkt  to  is  ruined 
but  the  family  from  which  1  sprung,  by  these  un- 
happy wars ;  which  ruin  my  mother  lived  to  see, 
and  then  died,  having  lived  a  widow  many  years, 
for  she  never  forgot  my  father  so  as  to  marry 
again  ;  indeed,  he  remained  so  lively  in  her  mem- 
ory, and  her  grief  was  so  lasting,  as  she  never 
mentioned  his  name,  though  she  spoke  oflen  of 
him,  but  love  and  grief  caused  tears  to  flow,  and 
tender  sighs  to  rise,  mourning  in  sad  complaints : 
she  made  her  house  her  cloyster,  inclosing  herself 
as  it  were  therein,  for  she  seldom  went  abroad, 
unless  to  church  ;  but  these  unhappy  wars  forced 
her  out,  by  reason  she  and  her  children  wer&  loyal 
to  the  king ;  for  which  they  plundered  her  and 
my  brothers  of  all  their  goods,  plate,  jewels,  money, 
corn,  cattle, and  the  like;  cut  down  their  woods, 
pulled  down  their  houses,  and  sequestered  them 
from  their  lands  and  livings;  but  in  such  misfor- 
tunes my  mother  was  of  an  heroic  spirit,  in  suf- 
fering patiently  where  there  is  no  remedy,  or  to 
be  industrious  where  she  thought  she  could  help; 
she  was  of  a  grave  behaviour,  and  had  such  a 
majestic  grandeur  as  it  were  continually  hung 
about  her,  that  it  would  strike  a  kind  of  an  awe 
to  the  beholders,  and  command  respect  from  the 
rudest;  1  mean  the  rudest  of  civilized  people.  I 
mean  not  such  barbarous  people  as  plundered 
her  and  used  her  cruelly,  for  they  would  have 
pulled  God  out  of  heaven,  had  they  had  power,  as 
they  did  Royalty  out  of  his  throne :    also  her 


beauty  was  beyond  the  ruin  of  Time,  for  she  had 
a  well-favoured  loveliness  in  her  face,  a  pleasing 
'sweetness  in  her  countenance,  and  a  well-tem- 
pered complexion,  as  neither  too  red  nor  too  pale, 
even  to  her  dying  hour,  although  in  years ;  and 
by  her  dying,  one  might  think  death  was  enam- 
oured with  her,  for  he  embraced  her  in  a  sleep, 
and  eo  gently,  as  if  he  were  afraid  to  hurt  her : 
also  she  was  an  affectionate  mother,  breeding  ber 
children  with  a  most  industrious  care,  and  tender 
love ;  and  having  eight  children,  three  eons  and 
five  daughters,  there  was  not  any  one  crooked,  or 
any  ways  deformed ;  neither  were  they  dwarfish, 
or  of  a  giant-like  stature,  but  every  ways  pro- 
portionable ;   likewise  well  featured,  clear  com- 
plexions, brown  hairs,  but  some  lighter  than  others, 
sound  teeth,  sweet  breaths,  plain  speeches,  tune- 
able voices,  I  mean  not  so  much  to  sing  as  in 
speaking,  as  not  stuttering,  nor  wharling  in  the 
throat,  or  speaking  through  the  nose,  or  hoarsely, 
unless  they  had  a  cold,  or  squeakingly,  which  im- 
pediments many  have ;  neither  were  their  voices  of 
too  low  a  strain,  or  too  high,  but  their  notes  and 
words  were  tuneable  and  timely ;  I  hope  this  truth 
will  not  offend  my  readers,  and  lest  they  should 
think  I  am  a  partial  register,  I  dare  not  commend 
my  sisters,  as  to  say  they  were  handsome ;  al- 
though  many  would  say  they  were  very  hand- 
some: but  this  I  dare  say,  their  beauty,  if  any 
they  had,  was  not  so  lasting  as  my  mother^s,  time 
making  suddener  ruin  in  their  faces  than  in  hers ; 
likewise  my  mother  was  a  good  mistress  to  her 
servants,  taking  care  of  her  servants  in   their 
sickness,  not  sparing  any  cost  she  was  able  to 
bestow  for  their  recovery  :  neither  did  she  exact 
from  them  more  in  their  health  than  what  they 
with  ease,  or  rather  like  pastime,  could  do :  she 
would  freely  pardon  a  fault,  and  forget  an  injury, 
yet  sometimes  she  would  be  angry ;  but  never 
with  her  children,  the  sight  of  them  would  pacify 
her,  neither  would  she  he  angry  with  otliers,  but 
when  she  had  cause,  as  with  negligent  or  knavish 
servants,  that  woald  lavishly  or  unnecessarily 
waste,  or  subtlely  or  thievishly  steal ;  and  though 
'she  would  often  complain  that  her  family  was  too 
great  for  her  weak  management,  and  often  pressed 
my  brother  to  take  it  upon  him,  yet  1  observe  she 
took  a  pleasure,  and  some  little  pride,  in  the  gov- 
erning thereof;  she  was  very  skilful  in   leases, 
and  setting  of  lands,  and  conrt-keeping,  ordering 
of  stewards,  and  the  like  affairs ;  also  I  observe 
that  my  mother,  nor  brothers,  before  these  wars, 
had  ever  any  law-suits,  but  what  an  attorney  dis- 
patched in  a  Term  with  small  cost:  but  if  they 
had,  it  was  more  than  I  knew  of :  but,  as  I  said, 
my  mother  lived  to  see  the  ruin  of  her  children, 
in  which  was  her  ruin,  and  then  died." 

So  straitened  were  the  circumstances  of 
the  noble  pair  during  their  stay  at  Antwerp, 
— in  which  city,  after  a  short  residence  of 
six  months  in  Rotterdam,  the  Marquis  set- 
tled himself  and  family,  '*  choosing  it  for  the 
most  pleasantest  and  quietest  place  to  retire 
himself  and  ruined  fortunes  in," — that  at 
last  necessity  enforced  the   Marchioness  to 


THE  DUCHEaS  OF  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WORESL 


1853.] 

▼isit  England,  in  the  hope  of  rescuing  some- 
thing from  the  sale  of  her  lord's  estate,  hut 
on  applying  at  Goldsmiths'  Hall,  received  an 
ahsotute  refusal,  "  by  reason  I  was  married 
since  my  lord  was  made  a  delinquent  I  could 
have  nothing  nor  should  have  anything,  he 
being  the  greatest  traitor  to  the  state,  which 
was  to  be  the  most  loyal  subject  to  his  king 
and  country ;  .  but  I  whisperingly  spoke  to 
my  brother  to  conduct  me  out  of  that  un- 
gentlemanly  place,  so  that  without  speaking 
to  them  one  word  good  or  bad,  I  returned 
to  my  lodgings,  and  as  that  committee  was 
the  first  so  was  it  the  last  I  ever  was  at  as  a 
petitioner." 

Her  ladyship  remained  a  year  and  a  half 
in  England,  during  which  she  wrote  her  poems 
and  her  **  Philosophical  Fancies,"  to  which  she 
made  large  additions  after  she  returned 
abroad.  It  was  after  her  return  also  that  she 
wrote  her  work  entitled  **  Nature's  Pictures, 
drawn  by  Fancy's  Pencil,"  to  which  her 
autobiography  was  added  as  an  appendix. 

We  cannot  help  feeling  that  a  tone  of  con- 
tempt or  derogation  is  not  lightly  to  be  used 
OD  the  score  of  subsequeni  extravagances, 
when  speaking  of  the  character  of  one  who, 
after  enjoying  exalted  rank  and  the  advan- 
tages of  a  splendid  fortune,  could  submit  to 
poverty,  exile,  and  even  political  disgrace  as 
regarded  her  beloved  lord,  with  the  expres- 
sion of  such  sentiments  as  the  following : 

"  Heaven  hitherto  hath  kept  us,  and  though  for- 
tune hath  been  cross,  yet  we  do  submit,  and  are 
both  content  with  what  is,  and  cannot  be  mended ; 
and  are  so  prepared,  that  the  worst  of  fortunes 
shall  not  afflict  oar  minds ;  so  as  to  make  us  un- 
happy, howsoever  it  doth  pinch  our  lives  with 
poverty,  for  if  tranquility  lives  in  an  honest  mind 
the  mind  lives  in  peace,  although  the  body  suffer." 

Sir  Egerton  Brydges  appropriately  re- 
marks, that  under  the  blighting  gloom  of 
such  oppression,  to  create  wealth  and  a  king- 
dom '*  within  the  mind"  shows  an  intellectual 
(and,  we  may  add,  a  moral)  energy  which 
ought  not  to  be  defrauded  of  its  praise.  At 
the  same  time  we  are  inclined  to  believe  that 
with  her,  as  with  us  all,  adversity  held  a  check 
upon  the  weaker  points  of  her  character,  to 
which  her  subsequent  height  of  prosperity 
unpropitiously  allowed  the  most  unlimited 
scope. 

Upon  the  reinstatement  of  her  husband  in 
his  fortunes  after  the  Restoration,  she  devoted 
the  greater  portion  of  her  time  to  the  com- 
position of  plays,  poems,  letters,  philosophi- 
cal discourses,  orations,  <&c.,  and  became  one 
of  the  most  voluminous  writers  of  her  sex 
upon  record. 


627 


That  she  had  a  power  of  intellect  beyond 
that  of  women  in  general,  rendered  promi- 
nent, it  is  likely,  mainly  from  the  very  exer- 
cise she  gave  it  from  her  thirst  for  fame,  we 
think  is  abundantly  manifest ;  but  her  works 
exhibit  an  indiscriminate  recklessness  and  a 
want  of  mental  discipline,  tact,  and  taste,  in 
condensing  and  applying  her  thoughts  and 
her  materials  to  the  purpose  of  her  pen, 
greatly  calculated  to  offend  the  exactor  judg- 
ment of  later  times.  We  have  already  sug- 
gested reasons  why  this  defect  should  be  less 
apparent  in  her  autobiography.  That  she 
was  not  deficient  in  poetical  fancy  will  be 
seen  from  the  following  extract,  taken  from 
"  The  Pastime  and  Recreation  of  the  Queen 
of  Fairies  in  Fairyland,  the  Centre  of  the 
Earth  :"— 

**  Queen  Mab  and  all  her  company 
Dance  on  a  pleas^ant  mole-hvil  high, 
To  small  straw-pipes,  wherein  great  pleasure 
Thev  take,  and  keep  just  time  and  measure  ; 
All  hand  in  hand,  around,  around, 
They  dance  upon  this  fairy  ground ; 
And  when  she  leaves  her  dancing-bdll, 
Slie  doth  for  her  attendants  call, 
To  wait  upon  her  to  a  bower, 
Where  she  doth  sit  under  a  flower, 
To  shade  her  from  the  moon^shine  bright, 
Where  gnats  do  ring  for  her  delight ; 
The  whilst  the  bat  doth  fly  about 
To  keep  in  order  all  the  roui. 
A  dewy  waving  leafs  made  fit 
For  the  Queen's  bath  where  she  doth  sit. 
And  her  white  limbs  in  beauty  show, 
Like  a  new  fallen  flake  of  snow  ; 
Her  maids  do  put  her  garments  on, 
Made  of  the  pure  light  from  the  sun, 
Which  do  80  many  colors  take^ 
As  various  objects  shadows  make. 

"Then  to  her  dinner  she  goes  strait, 
Where  fairies  all  in  order  wait : 
A  cover  of  a  cob-web  made, 
Is  there  upon  a  mush-room  laid  ; 
Her  stool  is  of  a  thistle  down, 
And  for  her  cup  an  acorn's  crown, 
Which  of  strong  nectar  full  isfilTd, 
That  from  sweet  flowers  is  distilPd. 
When  dined,  she  goes  to  take  the  air. 
In  coach,  which  is  a  nut-shell  fair ; 
The  lining's  sofl  and  rich  within, 
Made  of  a  glistering  adder's  skin ; 
And  there  six  crickets  draw  her  fast, 
When  she  a  journey  takes  in  haste ; 
But  if  she  will  a  hunting  go, 
Then  she  the  lizard  makes  the  doe, 
Which  is  BO  swift  and  fleet  in  chase. 
As  her  slow  coach  cannot  keep  pase ; 
Then  on  a  grasshopper  she'l  ride, 
And  gallop  in  the  forest  wide  :* 
Her  bow  is  of  a  willow  branch, 
To  shoot  the  lizard  on  the  haunch ; 
Her  arrow  sharp,  much  like  a  blade, 
Of  a  rose-roary  leaf  is  made ; 


528 


THE  DUGHiaaS  OF  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WORKS 


[Dec., 


And  when  the  morn  doth  hide  her  head, 
Tiieir  day  is  gone — she  goes  to  bed. 
Meteors  do  serve  when  they  are  bright, 
As  torches  do,  to  give  her  light. 
Glow-worrriM,  for  candles,  lighted  up, 
Stand  on  her  table,  while  she  doth  sup : — 
But  women,  that  inconstant  kind, 
Can  neVr  fix  in  one  place  their  mind; 
For  she  impatient  of  long  stay, 
Drived  to  the  upper  earth  away/'      9 

• 

Walpole,  who  seldom  speaks  of  her  with 
patience,  adduces  as  a  proof  of  her  unbounded 
pasbion  for  scribbling,  that  she  seldom  re- 
vised the  copies  of  her  works,  le&t  it  should 
disturb  her  following  conceptions;  but 
whether  this  charge  is  fairly  tenable  may  be 
judged  from  the  fact  that  copies  of  some  of 
ber  most  lengthy  publications  in  the  British 
Museum  contain  manuscript  evidence  of  her 
revision  of  them,  in  her  own  hand.  That  her 
first  inditing  of  them,  however,  was  hasty  and 
ill-digested,  is  shown  by  the  following  state- 
ment of  Dr.  Lort,  if  only  it  be  correct.  "  So 
fond,"  he  says,  **  was  her  Grace  of  these  con- 
ceptions, and  so  careful  lest  they  should  be 
still-born,  that  I  have  heard  or  read  some- 
where that  her  servant  John  was  ordered  to 
lie  in  a  truckle  bed  in  a  closet  within  her 
Grace's  bedchamber,  and  whenever  at  any 
time  she  gave  the  summons  by  calling  out 
^Johnl  I  conceive  I'  poor  John  was  to  get 
up  and  commit  to  writing  the  offspring  of  his 
mistresses  reveries." 

A  more  credible  story  is  related  of  the 
Duchesses  female  attendants  being  similarly 
required  to  arise  in  the  night  when  the 
Duchess  rung  her  hell  for  the  purpose  here 
described.  Dr.  Lort  does  not  seem  very 
accurate  in  his  statements  respecting  her,  as 
.  in  describing  a  beautiful  print  prefixed  to  one 
of  her  works,  he  says  that  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  are  sitting  at  a  table  with  their  child- 
ren, which  could  not  be,  as  they  had  none, 
the  Duke  having  had  but  one  child,  and  that 
by  his  former  wife.  She  herself  supplies  us 
with  a  description  of  her  habits  of  thinking 
and  writing  in  a  tone  full  of  candor  and  sim- 
plicity : — 

"  I  pass  my  time  rather  with  scribbling  than 
writing,  with  words  than  wit ;  not  that  I  speak 
much,  because  I  am  addicted  to  contemplation, 
unless  I  am  with  my  lord ;  yet  then  I  rather  at- 
tentively listen  to  what  he  says,  than  impertinently 
speak;  yet  when  I  am  writing,  and  sad  fained 
stories,  or  serious  humors,  or  melancholy  passions, 
I  am  forced  many  times  to  express  them  with  the 
tongue  before  I  can  write  them  with  the  pen,  by 
reason  those  thoughts  that  are  sad,  serious,  and 
melancholy,  are  apt  to  contract  and  to  draw  too 
much  back,  which  oppression  doth  as  it  were 


overpower  or  smother  the  conception  in  the  brain; 
but  when  some  of  those  thoughts  are  sent  out  in 
words,  they  give  the  rest  more  liberty  to  place 
themselves  in  a  more  methodical  order,  marching 
more  regularly  with  my  pen,  on  the  ground  of 
white  paper;  but  my  letters  beem  rather  as  a 
ragged  rout,  than  a  well  armed  body ;  for  the  brain 
being  quicker  in  creating  than  the  hand  in  writing, 
or  the  memory  in  retaining,  many  fancies  are  lost 
by  reason  they  odtimes  outrun  the  pen ;  where  I, 
to  keep  speed  in  the  race,  write  so  fast  as  I  stay 
not  so  long  as  to  write  my  letters  plain,  insomuch 
as  some  have  taken  my  hand-writing  for  some 
strange  character  ;  and  being  accustomed  ^o  to 
do,  I  cannot  now  write  very  plain,  when  ]  strive 
to  write  my  best ;  indeed,  my  ordinary  hand-writ- 
ing is  so  bad  as  few  can  read  it,  so  as  to  write  it 
fair  for  the  press ;  but,  however,  that  little  wit  I 
have  it  delights  me  to  scribble  k  out,  and  disperse 
it  about,  for  I  being  addicted  irom  my  childhood 
to  contemplation  rather  than  conversation,  to  soli- 
tariness rather  than  society,  to  melancholy  rather 
than  mirth,  to  write  with  the  pen  than  to  work 
with  a  needle,  passing  my  time  with  harmless 
fancies,  their  company  being  pleasing,  their  con- 
versation innocent,  in  which  I  take  such  pleasure, 
as  I  neglect  my  health ;  for  it  is  as  great  a  grief 
to  leave  their  society,  as  a  joy  to  be  in  their  com- 
pany ;  my  only  trouble  is,  lest  my  brain  should 
grow  barren,  or  that  the  rod  of  my  fancies  should 
become  insipid,  withering  into  a  dull  stupidity  for 
want  of  maturing  subjects  to  write  on ;  for  I  bieing 
of  a  lazy  nature,  and  not  of  an  active  disposition, 
as  some  are  that  love  to  journey  from  town  to  town, 
from  place  to  place,  from  house  to  house,  delights 
ing  in  variety  of  company,  making  still  one  where 
the  greatest  number  is;  likewise  in  playing  at 
cards, or  any  other  games,  in  which  I  neither  have 
practised,  nor  have  I  any  skill  therein :  as  for 
dancing,  although  it  be  a  graceful  art,  and  becom- 
eth  unmarried  persons  well,  yet  for  those  that 
are  married,  it  is  too  light  an  action,  disagreeing 
with  the  gravity  thereof;  and  for  revelling  I  am 
of  too  dull  a  nature  to  make  one  in  a  merry  soci- 
ety :  as  for  feasting,  it  would  never  agree  with 
my  humor  or  constiiuiion,  for  my  diet  is  for  the 
most  part  sparing,  as  a  Hule  boiled  chicken,  or  the 
like,  my  drink  most  commonly  water,  for  though 
I  have  an  indifferent  good  appetite,  yet  I  do  often 
fast,  out  of  an  opinion  that  if  I  should  eat  much, 
and  exercise  little,  which  I  do,  only  walking  a 
slow  pace  in  my  chamber,  whilst  my  thoughts  run 
apace  in  my  brain,  so  that  the  motions  of  my  mind 
hinders  the  active  exercises  of  my  body ;  for 
should  I  dance  or  run,  or  walk  apace,  1  should 
dance  my  thoughts  out  of  measure,  run  my  fancies 
out  of  breath,  and  tread  out  the  feet  of  my  num- 
bers." 

The  philosophical  specalations  of  the 
Duchess  certainly  constituted  the  most  tuI- 
nerable  part  of  her  literary  character.  An- 
thony k  Wood  informs  us  that  James  Bris- 
tow,  of  Corpus  Christt  College,  Oxford,  a  man 
of  admirable  parts,  had  begun  to  translate 
into  Latm  some  of  the  *'  Philosophy  of  Mar- 


1863.1 


THE  DtTGHESS  OF  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WORKS. 


520 


garet,  Ducbess  of  Newcastle,"  upon  the  de- 
sire of  those  whom  she  had  appointed  to  in- 
quire out  a  fit  person  for  such  a  matter ;  but 
he,  finding  great  difficulties  therein^  through 
the  confusedness  of  the  subject,  gave  over,  as 
being  a  matter  not  to  be  well  performed  by 
any.  Nor  is  this  to  be  wondered  at,  for  she 
confesses  that  she  was  near  forty  when  she 
applied  to  the  reading  of  philosophical 
authors,  in  order  to  learn  those  names  and 
words  of  art  that  are  used  in  schools.  Her 
desire  of  a  reputation  for  science  was  very 
great.  Dr.  Birch  records  a  resolution  of  the 
Royal  Society,  May  23,  1667,  that  the 
Duohess  of  Newcastle,  having  intimated  her 
desire  to  be  present  at  one  of  the  meetings 
of  the  Society,  be  entertained  with  some  ex- 
periments at  the  next  meeting,  and  that  Lord 
Berkeley  and  Dr.  Charlton  be  desired  to  give 
notice  of  it  to  her  Grace,  and  to  attend  her  to 
the  meeting  on  the  Thursday  following.  Of 
this  visit  Pepys  gives  the  following  humorous 
account : — 

<«  30th  May,  1667.— After  dinner  I  walked  to 
Arundel!  House,  the  way  very  dusty,  the  day  of 
the  meeting  of  the  [Royal]  Society  being  chang^ed 
from  Wednesday  to  Thursday,  which  I  Knew  not 
before,  because  the  Wednesday  is  a  Council  day, 
and  several  of  the  Council  are  of  the  Society,  and 
would  come  but  for  their  attending  the  King  at 
Council,  where  I  find  much  company  in  expecta- 
tion of  the  Duchess  of  Newcastle,  who  had 
desired  to  be  invited  to  the  Society,  and  was,  afler 
much  debate  rtro  and  con,  it  seems  many  bein^ 
against  it ;  and  we  do  believe  the  town  will  be  fun 
of  ballads  of  it.  Anon  comes  the  Duchess,  with 
her  women  attending  her;  among  others  the 
Ferabosco,*  of  whom  so  much  talk  is,  that  her 
lady  would  bid  her  show  her  face  and  kill  ^he 
gallants.  She  is  indeed  black,  and  hath  good 
black  little  eyes,  but  otherwise  a  very  ordinary 
woman  I  do  think,  but  they  say  sings  well.  The 
Duchess  hath  been  a  good,  comely  woman,  but 
her  dress  so  antick,  and  her  deportment  so  ordi- 
nary, that  I  do  not  like  her  at  all;  nor  do  I  hear 
her  say  anything  that  was  worth  hearing,  but  that 
she  was  full  of  admiration — ^all  admiration. 
Several  fine  experiments  were  shown  her  of 
colors,  loadstones,  microscopes,  and  of  liquors, 
among  others  of  one  that  did,  while  she  was  there, 
turn  a  piece  of  roasted  mutton  into  pure  blood, 
which  was  very  rare.  Here  was  Mrs.  Moore,  of 
Cambridge,  whom  I  had  not  seen  before,  and  I 
was  gladto  see  her,  as  also  a  very  black  boy  that 
run  up  and  down  the  room,  somebody's  child  in 
Arunaell  House.  Afler  they  had  shown  her  many 
experimenfs,  and  she  cried  still  she  was  full  of 
admiration,  she  departed,  being  led  out  and  in  by 
several  Lords  that  were  there,  among  others  Lord 

•  Note  by  Lord  Brajbrooke.  Was  she  of  the 
family  of  Alfonso  Ferrabosoo,  who,  in  1609,  pnb- 
liflhea  a  book  of  Ayers^  containing  a  sonnet  ad- 
dressed to  the  author  by  Ben  Jonson  ff 

VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


George  Barkeley  and  Earl  of  Carlisle,  and  a  very 
pretty  young  man,  the  Duke  of  Somerset.'* 

Perhaps  the  work  in  which  her  best  and 
worst  qualities  are  the  most  fally  portrayed,  is 
the  life  of  her  husband  the  Duke ;  and  while 
speaking  of  it,  we  cannot  refrain  from  smil- 
ing at  the  absurd  conceitedness  with  which 
she  touches  both  upon  his  and  her  own  cha- 
racter. No  sympathy  with  the  unmitigated 
devotedness  of  attachment  with  which  it 
teems,  can  avert  our  amusement  at  the  over- 
weening flattery  which  sometimes  compares 
him  to  Julius  Caesar ;  and  certes,  right  mer- 
rily did  the  worthy  couple  bandy  the  ball  of 
flattery  from  one  to  the  other.  Pepys  has 
given  us  the  following  droll  account  of  his 
impressions  on  reading  the  work  : — 

"ISth  of  March,  1668.  Thence  home  and 
there  in  favor  to  my  eyes  staid  at  hr.me,  reading 
the  ridiculous  History  of  my  Lord  Newcastle, 
wrote  by  his  wife,whicn  shows  her  to  be  a  mad,  con- 
ceited, ridiculous  woman,  and  he  an  asse  to  suffer 
her  to  write  what  she  writes  to  him  and  of  him." 

But  that  our  readers  may  judge  of  the 
sterling  merit  that  exists  in  the  work  in  spite 
of  its  eccentric  absurdities,  wo  quote  the 
opinion  of  one  whose  refined  taste  and 
graphic  criticism  will  never  cease  to  claim 
our  respectful  and  affectionate  attention. 
Charles  Lamb,  in  his  "  Essays  of  Elia,*'  when 
speaking  of  the  binding  of  a  book,  observes, 

"Bat  where  a  book  is  at  once  both  good  and 
rare,  where  the  individual  is  almost  the  species, 
and  when  that  perishes, 

We  know  not  where  is  that  Promethean  torch 
That  can  its  light  relumine. 

Such  a  book,  for  instance,  as  the  life  of  the  Duke 
of  Newcasde,  by  his  Duchess :  no  casket  is  rich 
enough,  no  casinff  sufficiently  durable,  to  honor 
and  keep  safe  such  a  jewel." 

The  romantic  character  of  the  Duke,  his 
loyalty  and  well-tested  bravery  in  the  peril- 
ous times  through  which  he  had  passed,  his 
skill  as  a  commander,  and  his  attachment  to 
literature,  were  well  calculated  to  make  him 
the  subject  of  earnest  and  glowing  laudation 
from  his  affectionate  Duchess.  We  think 
Walpole  perfectly  just  in  the  following  com- 
ment on  his  character.     He  calls  him 

^A  man  extremely  known  from  the  course  of 
life  into  which  he  was  forced,  and  who  would 
soon  have  been  forgotten  in  the  walk  of  fanae 
which  he  chose  for  himself.  Yet  as  an  authoi'  he 
is  familiar  to  those  who  scarce  know  any  other 
author — from  bis  book  of  horsemans  hip.  Though 
'amorous  in  poetry  and  music,*  as  my    Lord 

»4 


580 


THE  DUCHESS  OF  NEWCASTLE  AND  HER  WORKa 


[Decn 


Clarendon  sayp,  he  was  filter  to  break  Pegasus 
for  a  manage,  than  to  mount  him  on  the  steeps  of 
Parnassos.  Of  all  the  riders  of  that  steed,  per- 
haps  there  have  not  been  a  more  fantastic  couple 
than  hid  grace  or  his  faithful  Duchess,  who  was 
never  off  her  pillion." 

He  published  a  great  number  of  comedies, 
one  of  which  was  the  "  Humorous  Lovers," 
which  Walpole  a^serto  "  was  received  with 
great  applause,  and  esteemed  one  of  the  best 
plays  of  that  time."  Pepys,  however,  seem- 
ed to  think  differently,  but  erroneously 
ascribed  it,  as  already  shown  in  the  extract 
we  have  given  from  his  Diary,  to  the  pen  of 
the  Duchess. 

His  "  Triumphant  Widow"  was  so  much 
admired  by  the  Laureate  Thadwell,  that  he 
transcribed  part  of  it  into  his  "  Busy  Fair," 
one  of  his  most  successful  plays.  His  matter 
was  evidently  suggestive,  as  it  has  supplied 
materials  to  other  copyisU,  Langbaine,  among 
others,  acknowledging  his  obligations  to  bis 
works.  He  wrote  many  scenes  for  the  plays 
which  bear  the  Duchess's  name,  and  divers 
of    his  poems  are  scattered  amongst  her 

works. 

The  literary  labors  of  such  an  industrious 
life  as  that  of  the  Duchess,  especially  when 
her  sex  is  considered,  deserve  enumeration. 
To  the  following  list  are  added  some  obser- 
vations which,  we  believe,  have  never  belore 
appeared  in  print : 

The  World's  Olio.    London,  1655.    Folio. 

This  work  was  for  the  most  part  written 
at  Antwerp,  before  her  ladyship's  visit  to 
England.  At  the  end  of  a  copy  in  the 
British  Museum  occur  some  verses,  at  the 
foot  of  which  is  written  in  her  own  hand, — 

«  This  copy  of  verses  belongs  to  my  *  Philoso- 
phical Opinions.' 

In  another  copy  is  a  beaudful  full-length 
portrait  by  Diepenbeke,  of  Antwerp,  repre- 
senting  the  Duchess  stonding  in  a  niche. 

Orations  of  Divers  Sorts,  accommodated  to 
divers  places.    London,  1662.    Folio. 

Player     London,  1662.     Folio. 

Philosophical  Fancies.    London,  1653.     12mo. 

Philosophical  and  Physical  Opinions.  Lon- 
don, 1666.    Folio. 

To  this  volume  was  prefixed  by  the  Duke  a 
copy  of  verses  and  an  epistle  to  justify  the 
noble  authoress.  These  were  followed  up 
by  .her  Grace  by  an  address  to  the  reader, 
another  to  the  two  universities,  an  epilogue 
to  her  "  Philosophical  Opinions/'  an  epistle 


to  her  honorable  readers,  another  to  the 
reader  for  her  book  of  philosophy^  &c 
These  show  her  Grace's  solicitude,  as  Walpole 
says,  to  have  the  book  considered  as  the  pro- 
duce of  her  own  brain,  "  being  the  beloved  of 
all  her  works  and  preferring  il  as  her  master- 
piece." 

Another  edition,  bearing  the  title,  **  Grounds  of 
Natural  Philosophy,"  with  an  Appendix,  much 
altered  from  the  first  edition.  London,  16($3. 
Folio. 

Observations  upon  Experimental  Philosophy; 
to  which  is  added  the  Description  of  a  New  World. 
London,  [1666]  1668.    Folio. 

We  have  already  alluded  to  the  attempt- 
ed translation  of  these  philosophical  dis- 
courses into  Latin  by  Mr.  Bristow. 

Philosophical  Letters;  or  Modest  Reflections 
upon  some  opinions  in  Natural  Philosophy,  main- 
tained by  several  famous  and  learned  authors  of 
this  age,  expressed  by  way  of  Letters.  London, 
1664.    Folio. . 

Poems  and  Phancies.    London,  1663.    Folio* 

The  copy  in  the  British  Museum  has  MS. 
Notes  in  the  Duchess's  hand.  At  the  end 
of  some  prefatory  verses  is  the  following : 

"  Reader,  let  me  intreat  you  to  consider  only 
the  fancyes  in  this  my  book  of  poems,  and  not  the 
languagh,  numbers,  nor  rimes,  nor  fals  printing, 
for  if  you  doe,  you  will  be  my  condeming  judg, 
which  will  grive  me  much." 

Another  edition.    London,  1664.    Folio. 

CCXI  Sociable  Letters.    London,  1664.    Folia 

Observations  upon  Experimental  Philosophy. 
London,  1666.    Folia 

The  Life  of  William  Cavendish,  Duke,  Mar- 
quess, and  Earl  of  Newcastle.  London,  1667. 
Folia 

Another  edition.    London,  1675.    4to. 

Translated  into  Latin.    London,  1668.     Folio. 

The  copy  in  the  British  Museum  has  MS. 
Notes  in  the  Duchess's  hand. 


Plays  never  before  printed.  London,  1668. 
Folio. 

Her  plays  alone  are  nineteen  in  number, 
and  some  of  them  in  two  parts.  One  of 
them,  "  The  Blazing  World,  is  unfinished. 
In  another,  "The  Unnatural  Tragedy,"  a 
whole  scene  is  written  against  Camden's 
"  Britannia."  Walpole  suggests  that  her 
Grace  thought  a  geographic  satire  in  the 
middle  of  a  play  was  mixing  the  utile  with 
the  dulce.  Three  unpublished  MS.  plays  are 
reported  by  Gibber  to  have  been  in  the  pos- 
session of  Mr.  Thomas  Richardson  and  Bisnop 

wniis. 

Last  in  the  list  of  her  productiona,  as  con- 


1853.] 


THE  PUOHESS  OF  irBWOASTLB  AND  HER  WORKS. 


631 


taming  the  work   with  which  we  have  at 
present  most  to  do,  is  that  entitled 

"Nature's  Pictare  drawn  by  Fancy's  Pencil" 
to  the  Life.    London,  1666.    Folio. 

**  In  this  yolunne  (says  the  title)  are  several 
feigned  stories  of  natural  descriptions,  as  comical, 
tragical  and  tragi-comical,  poetical,  romancical, 
philosophical,  and  historical,  both  in  prose  and 
yerse,  some  all  yerse,  some  all  prose,  some  mixt, 
partly  prose  and  partly  verse.  Also,  there  are 
some  morals  and  some  dialogues,  but  they  are  as 
the  advantage  loaf  of  bread  to  the  baker's  dozen, 
and  a  true  story  at  the  latter  end,  wherein  there  is 
no  feigning." 

Upon  this  work  Walpole  remarks :  **  One 
may  guess  how  like  this  portrait  of  nature 
is  by  the  fantastic  bill  of  the  features."  In 
the  copy  of  this  work  in  the  Grenville 
Library  is  the  extremely  rare  and  exquisite 
print  by  Diepenbeke  of  Antwerp,  done  while 
the  noble  pair  were  resident  in  that  city, 
representing  the  Duke  and  Duchess  sitting 
at  a  table  with  sonde  children,  (not  her  own, 
ad  described  by  Dr.  Lort,  for  she  had  none,) 
to  whom  the  Duchess  is  telling  stories.  A 
proof  of  this  print  sold  at  Sir  M.  Syke's  sale 
for  £64  Is.  This  copy,  as  well  as  another 
in  the  British  Museum,  contains  MS.  notes 
in  the  Duchess's  own  hand,  pointing  out  the 
songs  and  passages  written  by  the  Duke, 
who  was  then  Marquis  of  Newcastle.  It  is 
to  this  work  that  the  memoir  now  under 
notice  is  attached,  and  even  Lord  Orford 
acknowledges  it  to  be  creditable  to  her  in 
every  point  of  view. 

This  memoir  was  reprinted  separately  in 
1814  by  Sir  E^erton  Brydges,  at  the  private 
press  of  Lee  Priory,  the  impression  being 
limited  to  one  hundred  copies  ;  Sir  Egerton, 
in  his  critical  preface,  remarking  that  these 
memoirs  appear  to  him  very  eminently  to 
possess  the  double  merit  of  entertaining  and 
mstructing. 

"  Whether,"  says  he,  **  they  confirm  or  refute 
the  character  of  the  literary  and  moral  qualities 
of  her  Grace  given  by  Lord  Orford,  I  must  leave 
the  reader  to  judge.  The  simplicity  by  which 
they  are  marked  will,  in  minds  constituted  like 
that  of  the  noble  critic,  seem  to  approximate  to 
folly ;  others,  less  inclined  to  sarcasm,  and  less 
infected  with  an  artificial  taste,  will  probably 
think  far  otherwise. 

"  That  the  Duchess  was  deficient  in  a  culti- 
vated judgment,  that  her  knowledge  was  more 
multifarious  than  exact,  and  that  her  powers  of 
fancy  and  sentiment  were  more  active  than  her 
powers  of  reajoning,  I  will  admit ;  but  that  her 
productions,  mmglea  as  they  are  with  great  ab- 


I  surdity,  are  wanting  either  in  talent  or  in  virtue, 
or  even  in  genius,  I  cannot  concede.  There  is 
an  ardent  ambition  which  may,  perhaps,  itself  be 
considered  to  prove  superiority  of  intellect." 

As  regards  the  vanity  which  may  be  con- 
sidered as  the  most  striking  defect  of  her 
autobiography,  we  would  remind  the  reader 
of  the  remark  of  Hume,  that  "  it  is  difficult 
for  a  man  [and  we  presume  he  did  not  ex- 
clude the  other  sex  from  the  observation]  to 
speak  long  of  himself  without  vanity,"  and 
the  Duchess,  wishing  to  defend  herself  from 
the  accusation,  gives  us  the  following  excul- 
pation at  the  close : 

**I  hope  my  readers  will  not  think  me  vain  for 
writing  my  life,  since  there  have  been  many  that 
have  done  the  like,  as  Csesar,  Ovid,  and  many 
more,  both  men  and  women ;  and  I  know  no  rear 
son  I  may  not  do  it  as  well  as  they :  but  I  verily 
believe  some  censuring  readers  will  scornfully 
say,  *  Why  hath  this  lady  writ  her  own  life  ? 
since  none  cares  to  know  whose  daughter  she 
was,  or  whose  wife  she  is,  or  how  she  was  bred, 
or  what  fortune  she  had,  or  how  she  lived,  or  what 
humor  or  disposition  she  was  of?'  I  answer  that 
it  is  true,  that  'tia  to  no  purpose  to  the  readers^ 
but  it  is  to  the  authoress,  because  1  writ  it  for  my 
own  sake,  not  theirs:  neither  did  I  intend  this 
piece  for  to  delight,  but  to  divulge ;  not  to  please 
the  fancy,  but  to  tell  the  truth,  lest  after  ages 
should  mistake,  in  not  knowing  I  was  daughter 
to  one  Master  Lucas  of  St.  John  s,  near  Colches- 
ter, in  Essex,  second  wife  to  the  Lord  Marquis  of 
Newcastle ;  for  my  lord  having  had  two  wives,  I 
might  easily  have  been  mistaken,  especially  if  I 
should  die,  and  my  lord  marry  again." 

It  is  remarkable  that  her  prognostic  was 
reall J  fal filled.  See  "The  Lounger's  Com- 
mon Place  Book,"  vol.  iii.  p.  398. 

Her  death,  which  preceded  that  of  the 
Duke  by  three  years,  took  place  in  1673, 
She  was  buried, m  Westminster  Abbey,  and 
upon  the  sumptuous  monument  which  covers 
the  remains  of  this  well-asisorted  pair  is  in- 
scribed the  following  epitaph,  containing  that 
remarkable  panegyric  on  her  family  noticed 
by  Addison  in  the  Spectator  : 

*'  Here  lyes  the  Royall  Duke  of  Newcastle  and 
his  Dutches,  his  second  wife,  by  whom  be  bad  no 
issue ;  her  name  was  Margarett  Lucas,  youngest 
sister  to  the  Lord  Lucas  of  Colchester,  a  noble 
familie,  for  all  the  Brothers  were  Valiant  and  all 
the  Sisters  Virtuous.  This  Dutches  was  a  wise, 
wittie,  and  learned  lady,  which  her  many  bookea 
well  testifie.  She  was  a  most  Virtuous  and  a 
Loveing  and  carefull  wife  and  was  with  her  Lord 
all  the  time  of  his  banishment  and  miseries,  and 
when  he  came  home  never  parted  from  him  ia. 
his  solitary  retirements." 


5S2 


OUVEB  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


[Dee. 


From  the  New  Monthlj  Magmsine. 


OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES 


Professor  Holmes  is  distinguished  in 
materia  medica  as  well  as  in  lays  and  lyrics. 
He  is  familiar  with  the  highways  and  byways 
of  those 

Realms  nnperfumed  by  the  breath  of  song, 
Where  flowers   ill-flavored  shed]  their    sweets 

around, 
And  bitterest  roots  invade  the  ungenlal  ground. 
Whose  gems  are  crystal  from  the  Epsom  mine, 
Whose  vineyards  flow  with  antimonial  wine, 
Whose  gates  admit  no  mirthful  feature  in, 
Save  one  gaunt  mocker,  the  Sardonic  grin* — 

and  with  rare  devotion  he  pursues  the  sternly 
prosaic  calls  of  the  healing  art — unable  as 
his  poetic  temperament  sometimes  may  be  to 
repress  a  sigh  for  the  beautiful,  or  a  sonnet 
on  the  sublime,  and,  in  passing  disgnst  at 
the  restraints  of  professional  study,  to  ask 
himself, 

Why  dream  I  here  within  these  csging  walls. 
Deaf  to  her  voice  while  blooming  Nature  calls ; 
Peering  and  eazing  with  insatiate  looks 
Through  blinding  lenses,  or  in  wearying  books  ?f , 

But,  resisting  temptation,  and  cleaving  with 
full  purpose  of  hieart  to  M.D.  mysteries,  with 
leech-like  tenacity  to  the  leech's  functions,  he 
secures  a  more  stable  place  in  medical  annals 
than  many  a  distinguished  medico- literary 
brother,  such  as  Goldsmith,  or  Smollett,  or 
Akenside.  Nor  can  the  temptation  have 
been  slight,  to  one  with  so  kindly  a  penchant 
towards  the  graces  of  good  fellowship,  and 
who  can  analyze  with  such  sympathetic  gusto 
what  he  calls  *'  the  warm,  champagny,  old- 
particular,  brandy-punchy  feeling" — and  who 
may  arrogate  a  special  mastery  of  the 

Quaint  trick  to  cram  the  pithy  line 
That  cracks  so  crisply  over  bubbling  wine. 

Evidently,  too,  he  is  perfectly  alive  to  the 
pleasure  and  pride  of  social  applause,  and 
accepts  the  "  three  times  three  of  round- 
table  glorification  as  rightly  bestowed.  In- 
deed, m  more  than  one  of  his  morceaux,  he 


*  Urania. 


f  Astriea. 


plumes  himself  on  a  certain  irresistible  power 
of  waggery,  and  even  thinks  it  expedient  to 
vow  never  to  give  his  jocosity  the  full  length 
of  its  tether,  lest  its  side-shaking  violence 
implicate  him  in  unjustifiable  homicide. 

His  versification  is  smooth  and  finished, 
without  being  tame  or  straitlaced.  He  takes 
pains  with  it,  because  to  the  poet's  paintings 
'lis 

Verse  bestows  the  varnish  and  the  frame — 

and  study,  and  a  naturally  musical  ear,  have 
taught  him  that 

Our  grating  English,  whose  Teutonic  jsi 
Shakes  the  racked  axle  of  Art*8  rattling  car, 
Fits  like  mosaic  in  the  lines  that  gird 
Fast  in  its  place  each  many-angled  word. 

In  his  own  "  Poetry :  a  Metrical  Essay,"  he 
marks  how 

The  proud  heroic;  with  its  pulse-like  beat. 
Rings  like  the  cymbals  clashing  as  they  meet ; 
The  sweet  Spenserian,  gathering  as  it  flows, 
Sweeps  gently  onward  to  its  dying  close. 
Where  waves  on  waves  in  long  succession  pooff 
Till  the  ninth  billow  melts  along  the  shore. 

His  management  of  the  "  proud  heroic/' 
in  serious  and  sustained  efiforts,  reminds  us 
more  of  Campbell  than  any  other  poet  we 
can  name.  But  it  is  in  that  school  of  grace- 
ful badinage  and  piquant  satire,  represented 
among  ourselves  by  such  writers  as  Frere, 
and  Spencer,  and  Mackworth  Praed,  that  Dr. 
Holmes  is  most  efficient.  Too  earnest  not  to 
be  sometimes  a  grave  censor,  too  thoughtful 
not  to  introduce  occasionally  didactic  pas- 
sages, too  humane  and  genial  a  spirit  to  in- 
dulge in  the  satirist's  scowl,  and  sneer,  and 
snappish  moroseness,  he  has  the  power  to  be 
pungent  and  mordant  in  sarcasm  to  an  alarm- 
ing degree,  while  his  will  is  to  temper  his 
irony  with  so  much  good-humor,  fun,  mercu- 
rial fancy,  and  generous  feeling,  that  the 
more  gentle  hearts  of  the  more  gentle  sex 
pronounce  him  excellent,  and  wish  only  he 
would  leave  physic  for  song. 


1808.] 


OUYEB  WElfDELL  HOLMBS. 


633 


la  some  of  his  poems  the  Doctor  is  not 
without  considerable  pomp  and  pretension — 
we  use  the  terms  in  no  slighting  tone. 
"Poetry  :  a  Metrical  Essay,"  parts  of  "Terp- 
sichore," "  Urania,"  and  "Astraea,"  "  Pitts- 
field  Cemetery,"  "The  Plouffhman,"  and 
various  pieces  among  the  lyricaTeffusions,  are 
marked  by  a  dignity,  precision,  and  sonorous 
elevation,  often  highly  effective.  The  diction 
occasionally  becomes  almost  too  ambitious — 
verging  on  the  efflorescence  of  a  certain  Eng- 
lish M.D.,  yclept  Erasmus  Darwin — so  that 
we  now  and  then  pause  to  make  sure  that  it 
is  not  the  satirist  in  his  bravura,  instead  of 
the  bard  in  his  solemnity,  that  we  hear.  Such 
passages  as  the  following  come  without  stint : 

If  passion's  hectic  in  thy  stanzas  glow, 
Thy  heart's  best  life-blood  ebbinff  as  they  flow ; 
If  with  thy  verse  thy  strength  ana  bloom  distil, 
Drained  by  the  pulses  of  the  fevered  thrill ; 
If  sound's  sweet  effluence  polarize  thy  brain, 
And  thoughts  turn  crystals  in  thy  fluid  strain — 
Nor  rolling  ocean,  nor  the  prairie  s  bloom, 
Nor  streaming  cliffs,  nor  ray  less  cavern's  gloom, 
Need'st  thou,  young  poet,  to  inform  thy  line ; 
Thy  own  broad  signet  stamps  thy  song  divine  !* 

Fragments  of  the  Lichfield  physician's 
''Botanic  Garden,"  and  "Loves  of  the 
Plants,"  seem  recalled — revised  and  cor- 
rected, if  you  will — in  lines  where  the  Boston 
physician  so  picturesquely  discriminates 

The  scythe's  broad  meadow  with  its  dusky  blush  ; 
The  sickle's  harvest  with  its  velvet  flush  ; 
The  men-haired  maize,  her  silken,  tresses  laid, 
In  soft  luxuriance,  on  her  harsh  brocade ; 
The  gourd  that  swells  beneath  her  tossing  plume ; 
The  coarser  wheat  that  rolls  in  lakes  of  bloom — 
Its  coral  stems  and  milkt white  flowers  alive 
With  the  wide  murmurs  of  the  scattered  hive; 
The  glossy  apple  with  the  pencilled  streak 
Of  morning  painted  on  its  southern  cheek : 
The  pear's  long  necklace,  strung  with  golden 

drops, 
Arched,  like  the   banyan,  o'er  its  hasty  props; 

&c.t 

Many  of  the  more  labored  efforts  of  his 
muse  have  an  imposing  eloquence — rather 
crude  land  unchastened,  however,  and  to  be 
ranked  perhaps  with  what  himself  now  calls 
his  ''questionable  extravagances."  To  the 
class  distinguished  by  tenderness  of  feeling, 
or  a  quietly  pervading  pathos,  belong — with 
varying  orders  of  merit — the  touching  stanzas 
entitled  "  Departed  Days,"  the  pensive  record 
of  "An  Evening  Thought,"  "  From  a  Bache- 
lor's Private  Journal,"  "  La  Grisctte,"  "  The 
Last  Reader,"  and  "A  Souvenir."     How 


*  Ursnia. 


t  Pittifield  Cemetery. 


natural  the  exclamation  in  one  for  the  first 
time  conscious  of  a  growing  chill  in  the  blood 
and  calmness  in  the  brain,  and  an  ebbing  of 
what  was  the  sunny  tide  of  youth : 

Oh,  when  love's  first  sweet,  stolen  kiss 

Bum«Hi  on  my  boyish  brow, 
Was  that  young  forehead  worn  as  this? 

Was  that  flushed  cheek  as  now  ? 
Were  that  wild  pulse  and  throbbing  heart 

Like  these,  which  vainly  strive. 
In  thankless  strains  of  soulless  art, 

To  dream  themselves  alive  ?* 

And  again  this  mournful  recognition  of 
life's  inexorable  onward  march,  and  the  "  dis- 
limning"  of  what  memory  most  cherishes : 

But,  like  a  child  in  ocean's  arms. 

We  strive  against  the  stream, 
Each  moment  farther  from  the  shore. 

Where  life's  young  fountains  gleam ; 
Each  moment  fainter  wave  the  fields. 

And  wider  rolls  the  sea ; 
The  mist  grows  dark — the  sun  goes  down-* 

Day  breaks — and  where  are  we  ?t 

An  interfusion  of  this  pathetic  vein  with 
quaint  humor  is  one  of  Dr.  Holmes's  most  no- 
table "  qualities,"  as  in  the  stanzas  called 
"  The  Last  Leaf,''  where  childhood  depicts 
old  age  tottering  through  the  streets — con* 
trasting  the  shrivelled  weakness  of  the  de- 
crepit man  with  the  well-vouched  tradition  of 
his  past  comeliness  and  vigor : 

But  now  he  walks  the  streets. 
And  he  looks  at  all  be  meets 

Sad  and  wan ; 
And  he  shakes  his  feeble  head. 
That  it  seems  as  if  he  said, 

**  They  are  gone." 

The  mossy  marbles  rest 
On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In  their  bloom. 
And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb. 

My  grandmamma  has  said, — 
Poor  old  lady,  she  is  dead 

Lon^  ago, — 
That  he  had  a  Roman  nose. 
And  his  cheek  was  like  a  rose 

In  the  snow. 

But  now  his  nose  is  thin, 
And  it  rests  upon  his  chin 

Like  a  staff, 
And  a  crook  is  in  his  back, 
And  a  melancholy  crack 

In  his  laugh. 

*  An  Evening  Thought        f  Departed  D^ 


634 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


[Dec. 


I  know  it  is  a  sin 
For  me  to  sit  and  grin 

At  him  here  ; 
But  the  old  three-cornered  ha% 
And  the  breeches,  and  all  that. 

Are  so  qaeer ! 

And  if  I  should  live  to  be 
Ttie  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 

In  the  spring, — 
Let  them  smile,  as  I  do  now, 
At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  I  cling. 

These  admirable  verses — set  in  so  aptly 
framed  a  metre  too — would  alone  suffice  to 
make  a  reputatioD.  In  a  like  spirit,  dashed 
with  a  few  drops  of  the  Thackeray  essence, 
are  the  lines  beaded  '*  Questions  and  An- 
swers,"— among  the  queries  and  responses 
being  these  sarcastic  sentimentalisms : 

Where,  O  where  are  the  visions  of  morning, 
Fresh  as  the  dews  of  our  prime  ? 

Gone,  like  tenants  that  quit  without  warning, 
Down  the  back  entry  of  time. 

Where,  0  where  are  life's  lilies  and  roses, 
Nursod  in  the  golden  dawn^s  smile  ? 

Dead  as  the  bulrushes  round  little  Moses, 
On  the  old  banks  of  the  Nile. 

Where  are  the  Marys,  and  Anns,  and  Elizas, 

Loving  and  lovely  of  yore  7 
Look  in  the  columns  of  old  Advertisers,-— 

Married  and  dead  by  the  score. 

In  such  alliance  of  the  humorous  and  fan- 
ciful lies  a  main  charm  iu  this  writer's  pro- 
ductions. Fancy  he  has  in  abundance,  as  be 
proves  on  all  occasions,  grave  and  gay. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  be  indulges  in  similes  that 
may  be  thought  rather  curious  than  felicit- 
ous;  as  where  he  speaks  of  the  "half-built 
tower,"  which,  thanks  to  Howe's  artillery. 

Wears  on  its  bosom,  as  a  bride  might  do, 

The  iron  breast-pin  which  the  '^Rebels"  threw.* 

A  steamboat  is  likened  to  a  wild  nymph, 
now  veiling  her  shadowy  form,  while  through 
the  storm  sounds  the  beating  of  her  restless 
heart — now  answering, 

like  a  courtly  dame 

The  reddening  surges  o'er. 
With  flying  scarf  of  spangled  flame, 

The  Pharos  of  the  shore.f 

Gazing  into  a  lady's  eyes,  he  sees  a  mat- 
ter of 

« 

Ten  thousand  angels  spread  their  wings 
Within  those  little  azure  rings. { 


fUratia.         f  The  Steamboat  Stanzas 


The  Spirit  of  Beauty  he  bids 

Come  from  the  bowers  where  summer's  life-blood 

flows 
Through  the  red  lips  of  June's  half-open  rose.* 

In  his  summary  of  metrical  forms : 

The  glittering  Ivric  bounds  elastic  by, 
With  flaahinff  ringlets  and  exulting  eye. 
While  every  image,  in  herairv  whirl, 
Gleams  like  a  diamond  on  a  uancing-girl.f 

We  are  told  how 

Health  flows  in  the  rills, 
As  their  ribbons  of  silver  unwind  from  the  hill84 

And  again,  of  a 

Stream  whose  silver-braided  rills 
Fling  their  unclasping  bracelets  from  the  hills.^ 

In  such  guise  moves  the  Ariel  fancy  of  the 
poet.  In  its  more  Puck- like,  tricksy,  mirth- 
ful mood,  it  is  correspondingly  sportive.  A 
comet  wanders 

Where  darkness  might  be  bottled  up  and  sold  for 
**  Tyrian  dye."|T 

Of  itinerant  musicians — the 

Discords  sting  through  Burns  and  Moore,  like 
hedgehogs  dressed  in  lace. IT 

A  post-prandial  orator  of  a  prononcS  face- 
tious turn,  is  warned  that 

All  the  Jack  Homers  of  metrical  buns 

Are  prying  and  fingering  to  pick  out  the  puns.** 

A  strayed  rustic  stares  through  the  wedged 
crowd. 

Where  in  one  cake  a  throng  of  faces  runs, 
All  stuck  together  like  a  sheet  of  buns.ff 

But  we  are  getting  Jack-Homerish,  and 
must  forbear ;  not  for  lack  of  plums,  though. 

The  wit  and  humor,  the  vers  de  sociiU  and 
the  jeuX'd' esprit  of  Dr.  Holmes,  bespeak  the 
gentleman.  Not  that  he  is  prim  or  particu- 
lar, by  any  means ;  on  the  contrary,  he  loves 
a  bit  of  racy  diction,  and  has  no  objection  to 
a  sally  of  slang.  Thus,  in  a  lecture  on  the 
toilet,  he  is  strict  about  the  article  of  gloves : 

Shave  like  the  goat,  if  so  your  fancy  bids. 
But  be  a  parent, — don't  neglect  your  kids.i{ 


*  Pittsfield  Cemetery. 

i  Song  for  a  Temperanoe  Diuner. 

g  Pittefield  Cemetery. 

^  The  Music  Grinders. 

•♦  VerBea  for  After  Dinner.         ft  Terpeichore. 

XI  Urania. 


t  Poetry. 
I  The  Comet 


1853.] 


OLIYEB  WENDELL  HOLBCEa 


535 


A  superlative  Mr.  Jolly  Green  is  shown  up. 

Whom  schoolboys  qaestion  if  his  walk  transcends ' 
The  last  advices  of  maternal  friends;* 

which  polite  periphrasis  is  discarded  where 
Achilles'  death  is  mourned : 

Accursed  heel  that  killed  a  hero  stout ! 
Oh,  had  your  mother  known  that  you  were  out. 
Death  had  not  entered  at  the  trifling  part 
That  still  defles  the  small  chirurgeon*s  art 
With  corns  and  bnnions.f 

The  last  passage  is  from  a  protracted  play 
upon  words,  in  which  poor  Hood  is  emulated 
—though  the  author  owns  that 

Hard  is  the  job  to  launch  the  desperate  pun«- 
A  pun-job  dangerous  as  the  Indian  one'" — 

in  unskilful  hands  turned  back  on  one's  self 
by  "thecurrent  of  some  stronger  wit,"  so  that, 

Like  the  strange  missile  which  the  Australian 

throws, 
Yoar  verbal  boomerang  slaps  you  on  the  nose. 

A  vunster,  however,  Dr.  Holmes  will  be — 
and  already  we  have  had  a  taste  of  his  quali- 
ty in  the  kid-glove  case;  so  again,  the 
*' bunions"  annexed  to  the  Achilles  catas- 
trophe reminds  him  to  explain,  that  he  refers 
not  to 

The  glorious  John 
Who  wrote  the  book  we  all  have  pondered  on, — 
But  other  bunion?,  bound  in  fleecy  hose, 
To  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  unrelenting  foes  !t 

A  gourmand,  sublimely  contemptuous  of 
feasts  of  reason,  argues  that 

Milton  to  Stilton  must  give  in,  and  Solomon  to 

Salmon, 
And  Roger  Bacon  be  a  bore,  and  Francis  Bacon 

gammon.  § 

And  the  irresistible  influence  of  collegiate 
convivial  associations  is  thus  illustrated : 

We're  all  alike ;— Vesuvius  flings  the  scorie  from 

his  fountain. 
But  down  they  come  in  volleying  rain  back  to  the 

burnini;  mountain ; 
We  leave,  like  those  volcanic  stones,  our  precious 

Alma  Mater, 
But  will  keep  dropping  in  again  to  see  the  dear 

old  crater.  II 

As  a  satirist,  to  shoot  Folly  as  it  flies.  Dr. 
Holmes  bends  a  bow  of  strength.     His  ar- 


*  Astnea.       f  A  Modest  Request 
Kuz  PostooBoatica. 


t  Ibi 
I  Ibi 


Ibid. 
Ibid. 


rows  are  polished,  neatly  pointed,  gaily  fea- 
thered, and  whirr  through  the  air  with  cut- 
ting emphasis.  And  he  hath  his  quiver  full 
of  them.  But,  to  his  honor  be  it  recorded, 
he  knows  how  and  when  to  stay  his  hand, 
and  checks  himself  if  about  to  use  a  shaft  of 
undue  size  and  weight,  or  dipped  in  gall  of 
bitterness.     Tiken  he  pauses,  and  says  : 

Come,  let  us  breathe ;  a  something  not  divine 
Has  mingled,  bitter,  with  the  flowing  lin< 


for  if  he  might  lash  and  lacerate  with  Swift, 
he  prefers  to  tickle  and  titillate  with  Addison, 
and  therefore  adds,  in  such  a  case. 

If  the  last  target  took  a  round  of  grape 
To  knock  its  beauty  something  out  of  shape. 
The  next  asks  only,  if  the  listener  please, 
A  schoolboy's  blowpipe  and  a  gill  of  pease.* 

Oenial  and  good-natured,  accordingly,  he 
appears  throughout — ^using  his  victims  as  old 
Izaak  did  his  bait,  as  though  he  loved  them — 
yet  taking  care  that  the  hook  shall  do  its 
work.  Amonff  the  irksome  shams  of  the  day, 
he  is  "  smart  *  upon  those  cant-mongers  who 

With  uncouth  phrases  tire  their  tender  lungs, 
The  same  bald  phrases  on  their  hundred  tongues ; 
"  Ever"  ♦*  The  Ages"  in  their  page  appear, 
"  Alway"  the  bedlamite  is  called  a  "  Seer  ;*' 
On  every  leaf  the  *'  earnest"  sage  may  scan. 
Portentous  bore !  their  *'  many-sided  man, — 
A  weak  eclectic,  groping  vague  and  dim, 
Whose  every  angle  is  a  half-starved  whim. 
Blind  as  a  mole  and  curious  as  a  lynx. 
Who  rides  a.beetle,  which  he  calls  a  *'  Sphinx. "f 

Here  is  another  home-thrust : 

The  pseudo-critic-editorial  race 
Owns  no  allegiance  but  the  law  of  place ; 
£ach  to  his  region  sticks  through  thick  and  thin, 
Stiff  as  a  beetle  spiked  upon  a  pin. 
Plant  him  in  Boston,  and  his  sheet  he  Alls 
With  all  the  slipslop  of  his  threefold  hi  Up; 
Talks  as  if  Nature  kept  her  choicest  smiles 
Within  his  radius  of  a  dozen  miles, 
And  nations  wailed  till  his  next  Review 
Had  made  it  plain  what  Providence  must  do. 
Would  you  believe  him,  water  is  not  damp 
Except  in  buckets  with  the  Hingham  stamp. 
And  Heaven  should  build  the  walls  of  Paradise 
Of  Quincy  granite  lined  with  Wenham  ice.^ 

Elsewhere  he  counsels  thm,  festina  lente,  his 
impetuous  compatriots : 

Don't  catch  the  fidgets;  yon  have  found  your  place 
Just  in  the  focus  of  a  nervous  race. 
Fretful  to  change,  and  rabid  to  discuss. 
Full  of  excitements,  always  in  a  fuss  ; — 


Astnea. 


t  Terpsichore. 


{Astnea. 


536 


8EM0NVILLB. 


Pec^ 


Think  of  the  patriarchs ;  then  compare  as  men 
These  lean-cheeked  maniacs  of  the  tongue  and 

pen! 
Ran,  if  you  h'ke,  hat  try  to  keep  yoar  breath ; 
Work  like  a  man,  bat  aon*t  be  worked  to  death ; 
And  with  new  notions — let  me  chan^  the  rale — 
Don't  strike  the  iron  till  it's  slightly  cool.* 

Once  more  :  there  is  pilhy  description  in  a 
list  be  furnishes  of 

Poems  that  shuffle  with  saperfloous  legs 
A  blindfold  minuet  over  addled  eggs. 
Where  all  the  syllables  that  end  in  ed, 
Like  old  dragoons,  have  cuts  across  the  head; 
Essays  so  dark,  Cham  poll  ion  might  despair 
To  guess  what  mummy  of  a  thought  was  there; 
Where  our  poor  English,  striped  with  foreign 

phrase, 
Tiooks  like  a  Zebra  in  a  parson's  chaise.  .  .  . 
Mesmeric  pamphlets,  which  to  facts  appeal, 
Each  fact  as  slippery  as  a  fiesh-caught  eel ; 

&c.,  &c.t 

There  is  pleasant  and  piquant  raillery  in 
the  stanzas  to  "My  Aunt,''  who,  mediseval  as 
she  is,  good  soul !  still  "  strains  the  aching 
clasp  that  binds  her  virgin  zone  :'* 

I  know  it  hurts  her, — ^though  she  looks  as  cheerful 

as  she  can ; 
Her  waist  is  ampler  than  her  life,  for  life  is  but  a 

span. 

My  aunt!  my  poor  deluded  aunt!  her  hair  is 

almost  gray: 
Why  will  she  train  that  winter  curl  in  such  a 

spring-like  way  ? 
How  can  she  lay  her  glasses  down,  and  say  she 

reads  as  well,  ^ 

When,  through  a  double  convex  lens,  she  just 

makes  out  to  spell  7 


*  Urania. 


t  Terpsichore. 


Que  dejolis  vers,  et  de  ipirituelUs  nudicea  ! 

And  60  again  in  "The  Parting  Word," 
which  maliciously  predicts,  sta^e  by  stage,  in 
gradual  but  rapid  succession,  the  feelings  of 
a  shallow-hearted  damosel  after  parting  with 
her  most  devoted — from  tearing  of  jetty 
locks  and  waking  with  inflamed  eyes,  to  com* 
placent  audience  of  a  new  swain,  three  weeks 
after  date.  We  like  Dr.  Holmes  hetter  in 
this  style  of  graceful  banter  than  when  he 
essays  the  more  broadly  comic — as  in  "  The 
Spectre  Pig,"  or  "  The  Stethoscope  Song." 
The  lines  "  On  Lending  a  Punch-bowl"  are 
already  widely  known  and  highly  esteemed 
by  British  readers^ — and  of  others  which  de- 
serve to  be  so,  let  us  add  those  entitled  ^'  Noz 
Postcoenatica,"  "The  Music- grinders,"  "The 
Dorchester  Giant,"  and  "  Daily  Trials,'*— 
which  chronicles  the  acoustic  afflictions  of  a 
sensitive  man,  beginning  at  d&ybreak  with 
yelping  pug-dog's  Memnonian  sun- ode,  clos- 
ing at  night  with  the  lonely  caterwaul. 

Tart  solo,  sour  daet,  and  general  squall 

of  feline  miscreants,  and  including  during  the 
day  the  accumulated  eloquence  of  women's 
tongues,  ''like  polar  needles, ever  on  the  jar/' 
and  drum-breating  children,  and  peripatetic 
hurdy-gurdies,  and  child-crying  bell- men — 
an  ascending  series  of  torments,  a  sorites  of 
woes  I 

On  the  whole,  here  we  have,  in  the  words 
of  a  French  critic,  "-un  poete  d'elite  et  qui 
comte  :  c'est  nne  nature  individuelie  tres-fine 
et  tre8-marqu6e" — one  to  whom  we  owe 
"  des  vers  gracieux  et  aimables,  vifs  et  16ger8» 
d'une  gaiety  nuanc^e  de  sentiment."  And 
one  that  we  hope  to  meet  again  and  again. 


-»♦■ 


■♦•■ 


Semonville. — Monsieur  de  Semonville, 
one  of  the  ablest  tacticians  of  his  time,  was 
remarkable  for  the  talent  with  which,  amidst 
the  crush  of  revolutions,  he  always  managed 
to  maintain  his  post,  and  take  care  of  his 
personal  interests.  He  knew  exactly  to 
whom  to  address  himself  for  support,  and 


the  right  time  for  availing  himself  of  it- 
When  Talleyrand,  one  of  his  most  intimate 
friends,  heard  of  his  death,  he  reflected  fo 
a  few  minutes,  and  then  drily  observed, — 
"  I  canH  for  the  life  of  me  make  out  what 
interest  Semonville  had  to  serye  by  dying 
just  now." 


1858.] 


THAGKBRAT'B  LEOTUBEB  OK  THE  ENGLISH  HUHOBIBm 


587 


From  Colburn's  New  Monthly. 


THACKERAY'S  LECTURES  ON  THE  ENGLISH  HUMORISTS. 


WITH  A   FORTBAIT  OF  MR.   THACKBRAT. 


"  Heroes  and  Hero-worship'* — ^a  subject 
chosen  by  Mr.  Carlyle,  when  he  arose  to  dis- 
course before  the  sweet- shady-sidesmen  of 
Pall  Mall  and  the  fair  of  Mayfair — is  not  all 
the  res  vexanda  one  would  predicate  for  a 
course  of  lectures  by  Mr.  Titmarsh.  If  the 
magnificence  of  the  hero  grows  small  by  de- 
grees and  beautifully  less  before  the  micro- 
scopic scrutiny  of  his  valet,  so  might  it  be  ex- 
pected to  end  in  a  minus  sign,  after  subjec- 
tion to  the  eliminating  process  of  the  '^  Book 
of  Snobs."  Yet  one  passage,  at  least,  there 
is  in  the  attractive  volume*  before  us,  in- 
stinct with  hero-worship,  and,  some  will 
think,  (as  coming  from  such  a  quarter,)  sur- 
charged with  enthusiasm, — where  the  lec- 
turer affirms,  "  I  should  like  to  have  been 
Shakspeare's  shoeblack — ^just  to  have  lived  in 
his  house,  just  to  have  worshipped  him — to 
have  run  on  his  errands,  and  seen  that  sweet 
serene  face."  At  which  sally,  we  can  im- 
agine nil  admirari'io\k&  exclaiming,  (if  they 
be  capable  of  an  exclamation,)  ''Oh,  you 
little  snob!"  Nevertheless,  that  sally  will 
go  far  to  propitiate  many  a  reader  hitherto 
steeled  against  the  showman  of  "Vanity 
Fair,"  as  an  inveterate  cynic — ^however  little 
of  real  ground  he  may  have  given  for  such 
a  prejudice.  Many,  we  believe,  who  resorted 
to  the  lectures  when  orally  delivered,  were 
agreeably  disappointed  in  findmg  so  much 
of  genial  humanity  in  the  matter  and  man- 
ner of  the  didaskalos — 

the  best  good  Christian  he, 

Although  they  knew  it  not. 

And  the  vastly  enlarged  circle  of  observers 
to  whom  this  volume  will  make  the  lectures 
known,  will  find  in  it  clear,  if  not  copious 
proof  of  the  man's  fine,  open,  loving  nature — 

*  The  ED|;liab  HamoHsts  of  the  Eighteenth  Gen- 
tfiry :  a  Senes  of  Leotares  deliverecT  in  England, 
SooUand,  and  the  United  States  of  America.  By 
W.  M.  Thackeray.  London:  Smith,  Elder  i 
Ca    1868. 


its  warmth,  and  depth,  and  earnestness — 
not  to  be  belied  by  an  outward  show  of  cap- 
tious irony,  a  pervading  presence  of  keen- 
witted raillery.  There  seems  a  ludicrously 
false  notion  rife  among  not  a  few,  that  Mr. 
Thackeray's  creed  is  of  close  kin  to  that  of 
our  laureate's  "  gray  and  gap-tooth'd  man  as 
lean  as  death,  who  slowly  rode  across  a 
wither'd  heath,  and  lighted  at  a  ruin'd  inn, 
and  said" — inter  alia — 

Virtue ! — to  be  good  and  just — 
Every  heart,  when  sifted  well, 

Is  A  clot  of  warmer  dost, 

Mix'd  with  cunning  imparks  of  hell. 

Fill  the  can,  and  fill  the  cup  : 
All  the  windy  ways  of  men 

Are  but  dust  that  rises  up, 
And  is  lightly  laid  again. 

Let  any  infatuated  sufferer  under  such  obsti- 
nate delusion  at  once  buy  and  study  this 
series  of  lectures,  and  learn  to  laugh  and 
love  with  the  lecturer,  and  so  satisfy  himself 
that  although  ever  and  anon  medio  defonte 
leporum  surgit  amari  aliquidy  there  is  heart 
as  well  as  brain  in  the  writer's  composition, 
and  that  simplicity,  and  sincerity,  and  faith 
are  ever  reverenced,  and  unhesitatingly  pre- 
ferred to  the  loftiest  intellectual  pretensions 
as  such. 

As  with  clerical  sermons,  so  with  laio  lec- 
tures, there  are  few  one  pines  to  see  in  print. 
In  the  present  instance,  those  who  were  of 
Mr.  Thackeray's  audience  will  probably,  in 
the  majority  of  cases,  own  to  a  sense  of  com- 
parative tameness  as  the  result  of  deliberate 
perusal.  Nerertheless,  the  book  could  be 
ill  spared,  as  books  go.  It  is  full  of  sound, 
healthy,  manly,  vigorous  writing — sagacious 
in  observation,  independent  and  thoughtful, 
earnest  in  sentiment,  in  style  pointed,  clear, 
and  straightforward.  The  illustrations  are 
aptly  selected,  and  the  bulky  array  of  foot- 
notes, (apparently  by  another  hand,)  though 
not  drawn  up  to   the  best  advantage,  will 


588 


THAOKBBATB  LEOrUBBB  OK  THE  ENOUBH  HUMORIBI& 


pec. 


interest  the  too  numerous  class  to  whom 
^' Queen  Anne's  men''  are  but  clerks  in  a 
dead-letter  office— out  of  date,  and  so  out  of 
fashion — out  of  sight,  on  upper  shelves,  and 
BO  out  of  mind,  as  a  thing  of  naught. 

If  we  cared  to  dwell  upon  them,  we  might, 
however,   make  exceptions  decided  if  not 

Slentifnl  against  parts  of  this  volume.    That 
[r.  Thackeray  can  be  pertinaciously  one- 
sided was  seen  in  his  "  Esmond"  draught  of 
the  Duke  of  Marlborough.    A  like  restriction 
of  vision  seems  here  to  distort  his  present- 
ment of  Sterne  and  of  Hogarth.     We  are 
ready  to  recognize  with  Lord  Jeffrey*  the 
flaws  of  ostentatious  absurdity,  affected  odd- 
ity, pert  familiarity,  broken  diction,  and  ex- 
aggerated sentiment,  in  '*  Tristram  Shandy ;" 
nor  have  we  any  delight  in  the  Reverend 
Lawrence,  whether  regarded  simply  as  a  man, 
or  as  a  man  in  cassock  and  bands.     It  is  in- 
deed as  men  rather  than  authors — it  is  in* 
deed   biographically  rather  than   critically, 
that  Mr.  Thackeray  treats  the  English  hu- 
morists who  come  before  him.     But  his  dis- 
like of  the  "  wretched  worn-out  old  scamp," 
as  he  calls  Sterne,  extends  fatally  to  the  old. 
scamp's  literary  as  well  as  social  characteris- 
tics.    We  are  told  how  the  lecturer  was  once 
in  the  company  of  a  French  actor,  who  be- 
gan after  dinner,  and  at  his  own  request,  to 
sing  "French  songs  of  the  sort  called »de8 
chansons  grivaises,  and  which   he  performed 
admirably,  and  to  the  dissatisfaction  of  most 
persons  present,"  and  who,  having  finished 
these,  began  a  sentimental  ballad,  and  sane 
it  so  charmingly  that  all  were  touched,  and 
none  so  much  as  the  singer  himself,  who  was 
"  snivelling  and  weeping  quite  genuine  tears" 
before  the  last  bar.     And  such  a  maudlin 
ballad-singer  we  are  instructed  was  Law- 
rence Sterne.     His  sensibility  was  artistical ; 
it  was  that  of  a  man  who  has  to  bring  his 
tears  and  laughter,  his  personal  griefs  and 
joys,  his  private  thoughts  and  feelings,  to 
market,  to  write  them  on  paper,  and  sell 
them  for  money.     "  He  used  to  blubber  per- 
petually in  his  study,  and  finding  his  tears 
infectious,  and  that  they  brought  him  a  great 
popularity,  he  exercised  the  lucrative  gift  of 
weeping,  he  utilized  it,  and  cried  on  every 
occasion.    I  own  that  I  don't  value  or  respect 
much  the  cheap  dribble  of  those  fountains." 
And  so  a^ain  with  the  reverend  gentleman's 
jests:    '*The  humor  of  Swift  and  Rabelais,t 

*~See  his  review  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister.^' 
f  This  comparison  of  Stenie  with  Rabelais  re- 
minds us  of  what  a  distinguished  French  critic  has 
said,  in  allusion  to  the  weuknown  story  of  Sterne's 
apology  to  a  lady  for  his  objectionable  freedoms  in 
eompoaiiion — ^moet  offensive,  we  aver,  and  qute 


whom  he  pretended  to  succeed,  poured  from 
them  as  naturally  as  song  does  from  a  bird ; 
they  lose  no  manly  dignity  with  it,  but  laugh 
their  hearty  great  laugh  out  of  their  broad 
chests,  as  nature  bade  them.  But  this  man — 
who  can  make  you  laugh,  who  can  make  you 
cry,  too — ^never  lets  his  reader  alone,  or  will 
permit  his  audience  to  repose ;  when  you  are 
quiet,  he  fancies  he  must  rouse  you,  and  turns 
over  head  and  heels,  or  sidles  up  and  whis- 
pers a  nasty  story.  The  man  is  a  great  jester, 
not  a  great  humorist.  He  goes  to  work 
systematically  and  of  cold  blood  ;  paints  his 
face,  puts  on  his  rough  and  motley  clothes, 
and  lays  down  his  carpet  and  tumbles  on  it." 
Sterne  is  properly  rated  for  whimpering 
^'  over  that  famous  dead  donkey,"  for  which 
Mr.  Thackeray  has  no  semblance  of  a  tear  to 
spare,  but  only  laughter  and  contempt ;  com- 
paring the  elegy  of  "  that  dead  jackass"  to 
the  cuisine  of  M.  de  Soubise's  campaign,  in 
such  fashion  does  Sterne  dress  it,  and  serve 
U  up  quite  tender,  and  with  a  very  piquant 
sauce.  "But  tears,  and  fine  feelings,  and  a 
white  pocket-handkerchief,  and  a  funeral 
sermon,  and  horses  and  feathers,  and  a  pro- 
cession of  mutes,  and  a  hearse  with  a  dead 
donkey  inside  I  Psha !  Mountebank  1  I'll  not 
give  thee  one  penny  more  for  that  trick, 
donkey  and  all !"  This,  and  similar  passages 
in  the  lecture,  will  jar  somewhat  on  the 
judgment  of  those  who  go  only  part  of  the 
way  with  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt,  in  his  affirma- 
tion,* that  to  accuse  Sterne  of  cant  and  sen- 
timentality, is  itself  a  cant  or  an  ignorance ; 
or  that,  at  least,  if  neither  of  these,  it  is  but 
to  misjudge  him  from  an  excess  of  manner 
here  and  there,  while  the  matter  always  con- 
tains the  solidest  substance  of  truth  and 
duty.  Such  readers  will  probably  be  un- 
shaken in  their  allegiance  to  one  of  proven 
sway  over  their  smiles  and  tears,  and  mur- 
mur to  themselves  the  closing  lines  of  a  son- 
net in  his  praise,  by  the  rigorous,  keen- 
scented  censorf  who  exposed,  unsparingly, 
his  plagiarisms  from  old  Burton  and  Rabelais : 

without  excuse,  but  mere  bagatelles  when  the  enor- 
mities of  the  Gaul  are  considered.  "Une  dame 
faisait  an  jour  reproche  a  Sterne,''  says  M.  Sainte 
Benve,  "des  naait6s  qui  se  trouvent  dans  son 
'  Tristram  Shandy ;'  au  mSme  moment,  un  enfant 
de  trois  ans  jouait  k  terre  et  se  montrait  en  touts 
innocence:  *Voyez!'  dit  Sterne,  *mon  livre;c'e8t 
cet  enfant  de  trois  ans  qui  se  roule  sur  le  tapis.' 
Mais,  avec  Rabelais^  I'enfisnt  a  grandi;  c'est  on 
homme,  c'est  un  g^ant,  c'estOargaDtua,c*eetPant«p 
gruel  ou  pour  le  moins  Fftnurge,  et  il  continue  de 
ne  rien  oaoher.''  That  Sterne,  neverthele8^  was 
inherently  a  purer-minded  roan  than  Rabelaifl^  it 
might  be  rash  to  assert. 
•  "  Table-Talk."  f  ^-  Ferriar. 


1853,] 


THAGKERAT'S  LEOTURIS  OK  THE  ENGLISH  HUHORIBia 


569 


But  the  quick  tear  that  checks  our  woDdering 
smile, 

In  suddeii  pause  or  unexpected  story. 

Owns  thy  true  mastery — and  Le  Pevre's  woes, 
Maria's  wanderings,  and  the  Prisoner's  throes, 

Fix  thee  conspicuous  on  the  throne  of  glory. 

As  for  Hogarthy  perhaps  the  most  em- 
phatic characterization  he  meets  with  from 
the  lecturer  lies  in  the  remark:  "There  is 
very  little  mistake  about  honest  Hogarth's 
satire;  if  he  has  to  paint  a  man  with  his 
throat  cut,  he  draws  him  with  bis  bead  al- 
most off."  No  man,  we  are  assured,  was 
ever  less  of  a  hero ;  he  was  but  a  hearty, 
plain* spoken  fellow,  loving  his  laugh,  bis 
friends,  his  glass,  bis  roast  beef  of  Old  Eng- 
land, and  hating  all  things  foreign — foreign 
painters  first  and  foremost.  The  tender,  the 
touching,  the  imaginative — never  mention 
any  thing  of  that  sort  in  connection  with  his 
name.  Another  scandal,  to  those  who  re- 
spond  to  Elia's  estimate  of  William  Hogarth, 
to  those  who,  like  Southey,  make  bold  to  im- 
paradise,  in  the  seventh  heaven  of  invention, 

•Hogarth,  who  followed  no  master, 


Nor  hy  pupil  shall  e*er  be  approached ;  alone  in 
his  greatness.* 

There  still  survive  sturdy  Britishers  who 
persist,  like  Hartley  Coleridge,f  in  setting 
bim  high  above  every  name  in  British  art,  or 
rather  who  would  separate  bim  altogether 
from  our  painters,  to  fix  his  seat  among  our 
greatest  poets. 

Swift,  who  comes  first  in  the  series,  is  the 
humorist  upon  whose  portraiture  most  care 
seems  to  have  been  bestowed.  He  at  least 
meets  with  his  full  deserts,  so  far  as  admira- 
tion is  concerned.  Some  pretty  hard  hits 
are  dealt  him,  notwithstanding.  Mr.  Thack- 
eray would  like,  as  we  have  seen,  to  have  been 
Shakspeare's  shoeblack  and  errand  boy — to 
have  "kept"  on  the  same  staircase  with 
Harry  Fielding,  to  help  him  up  to  bed  if  need 
be,  and  in  the  morning  shake  hands  with  him, 
and  hear  him  crack  jokes  over  his  mug  of 
small-beer  at  breakfast — to  hob-a-nob  with 
Dick  Steele — to  sit  a  fellow-clubman  with 
brave  old  Samuel  Johnson — to  go  holiday- 
making  with  Noll  Goldsmith.  But  Swift  ?— 
what  says  the  lecturer  to  "  hail  fellow"  in- 
timacy with  the  Dean  ?  Why,  this :  «*  If 
you  had  been  his  inferior  in  parts,  (and  that, 
with  a  great  respect  for  all  persons  present, 
I  fear  is  only  very  likely,)  bis  equal  in  mere 
social  station,  he  would  have  bullied,  scom- 

•  "A  Viaion  of  Jndgment/'  pt.  10. 
f  '^Eaaaya  and  Miurginalia :  Ignoramus  on  the 
FineArti.'^ 


ed, tod  insulted  you;  if,  undeterred  by  his 
great  reputation,  you  had  met  him  like  a  man, 
be  would  have  quailed  before  you,  and  not 
had  the  pluck  to  reply,  and  gone  home,  and 
years  after  written  a  foul  epigram  about  you 
— watched  for  you  in  a  sewer,  and  come  out 
to  assail  you  with  a  coward's  blow  and  a 
dirty  bludgeon.  If  you  had  been  a  lord  with 
a  blue  ribbon,  who  flattered  his  vanity,  or 
bould  help  bis  ambition,  he  would  have  been 
the  most  delightful  company  in  the  world. 
He  would  have  been  so  manly,  so  sarcastic, 
so  bright,  odd,  and  original,  that  you  might 
think  he  had  no  object  in  view  but  the  in« 
dulgence  of  bis  humor,  and  that  he  was  the 
most  reckless,  simple  creature  in  the  world. 
How  he  would  have  torn  your  enemies  to 
pieces  for  you !  and  made  fun  of  the  Opposi- 
tion I  His  servility  was  so  boisterous  that  it 
looked  like  independence ;  he  would  have 
done  your  errands,  but  with  the  air  of  patron- 
izing you;  and  after  fighting  your  battles 
masked  in  the  street  or  the  press,  would  have 
kept  on  bis  hat  before  your  wife  and  daugh- 
ters in  the  drawing-room,  content  to  take  that 
sost  of  pay  for  bis  tremendous  services  as  a 
bravo."  Excellent  is  the  conduct  of  the  me- 
taphor by  which  the  Dean  is  made  to  stand 
out  as  an  outlaw,  who  says,  "  These  are  my 
brains;  with  these  I'll  win  titles  and  com- 
pete with  fortune.  These  are  my  bullets; 
these  I'll  turn  into  gold," — and  who 
takes  the  road  accordingly,  like  Macheath, 
and  makes  society  stand  and  deliver,  easing 
my  Lord  Bishop  of  a  living,  and  his  Grace  of 
a  patent  place,  and  my  Lady  of  a  little  snug 
post  about  the  court,  and  gives  them  over  to 
followers  of  his  own.  "  The  great  prize  has 
not  come  yet.  The  coach  with  the  mitre 
and  crosier  in  it,  which  he  intends  to  have 
for  his  share,  has  been  delayed  on  the  way 
from  St.  James' ;  and  he  waits  and  waits  untd 
nightfall,  when  his  runners  come  and  tell  bim 
that  the  coach  has  taken  a  different  road,  and 
escaped  him.  So  he  fires  his  pistols  into  the 
air  with  a  curse,  and  rides  away  into  bis  own 
country."  A  bold  but  strikingly  significant 
figure  of  the  clerical  polemic — the  restless, 
scornful  heautontimoroumenost  whose  youth 
was  bitter,  "  as  that  of  a  great  genius  bound 
down  by  ignoble  ties,  and  powerless  in  a 
mean  dependence,"  and  whose  nge  was  bit- 
ter, 'Mike  that  of  a  great  genius  that  had 
fought  the  battle  and  nearly  won  it,  and  lost 
it,  and  thought  of  it  afterwards  writhing  in  a 
lonely  exile." 

Mr.  Thackeray  holds  that  Swift's  was  a 
reverent  and  pious  spirit — the  spirit  of  a  man 
who  could  love  ana  pray.     We  incline  to 


540 


THACKERATB  LEOTURBB  ON  THE  ENGLISH  HUHORISIB. 


[Dec, 


think,  with  Mr.  De  Quincey,*  that  Swift  was 
essenCfally  irreligious,  and  that  his  rigid  in- 
capacity for  dealing  with  the  grandeurs  of 
Bptritual  themes  is  signally  illustrated  by  his 
astonishment  at  Anne's  refusing  to  confer  a 
bishopric  on  one  who  had  treated  the  deep- 
est mysteries  of  Christianity,  not  with  mere 
skepticism,  or  casual  sneer,  but  with  set 
pompous  merriment  and  farcical  buffoonery — 
who,  in  full  canonicals,  had  made  himself  a 
regular  mountebank — who  seems  to  have 
thought  that  people  differed,  not  by  more  and 
less  religion,  but  by  more  and  less  dissimula- 
tion. But  Mr.  Thackeray  does  recognize  in  his 
clerical  career  a  "life-long  hypocrisy" — he 
does  see  that  Swift,  **  having  put  that  cassock 
on,  it  poisoned  him  :  he  was  strangled  in  his 
bands.  He  goes  through  life,  tearing,  like  a 
tnan  possessed  with  a  devil.  Like  Abudah 
in  the  Arabian  story,  he  is  always  looking 
out  for  the  Fury,  and  knows  that  the  night 
will  come  and  the  inevitable  ha^  with  it. 
What  a  night,  my  God,  it  was  I— what  a 
lonely  rage  and  long  agony ! — what  a  vulture, 
that  tore  the  heart  of  thai  giant  I"  And  it 
is  good  to  read  the  comment  on  the  fourth 
part  of  <*  Gulliver,"  and  the  denunciation  of 
Its  ''  Yahoo  language,"  its  gibbering  shrieks, 
and  gnashing  imprecations  against  mankind, 
— ^*  tearing  down  all  shreds  of  modesty,  past 
all  sense  of  manliness  and  shame ;  filthy  in 
word,  filthy  in  thought,  furious,  raging,  ob- 
scene." Well  may  it  be  called  a  "dreadful  al- 
legory," of  which  the  meaning^  is  that  man  is 
utterly  wicked,  desperate,  and  imbecile,  with 
passions  so  monstrous,  and  boasted  powers 
so  mean,  that  be  is,  and  deserves  to  be,  the 
slave  of  brutes,  and  ignorance  is  better  than 
his  vaunted  reason.  "  A  frightful  self-con- 
sciousness it  must  have  been,  which  looked 
on  mankind  so  darkly  through  those  keen 
eyes  of  Swift."  And  a  bitter  reaction  on 
himself  was  the  penalty  of  his  misanthropic 
wrath — ^as  was  said  to  the  Greek  tyrant, 

'Opyi]  X*P'^  ^®"f » ^  ^'  ^'^  Xof«iiv«rai. 

The  lecture  on  Congreve  is  Titmarsh  all 
over.  The  dramatist's  comic  feast  is  described 
as  flaring  with  lights,  with  the  worst  com- 
pany in  the  world,  without  a  pretense  of 
morals — Mirabel  or  Belmour  heading  the 
table,  dressed  in  the  French  fashion,  and 
waited  on  by  English  imitators  of  Scapin  and 
Mascarille.  The  young  sparks  are  born  to 
win  youth  and  beauty,  and  to  trip  up  old 
age — ^for  what  business  have  the  old  fools  to 

*  See  his  review  of  Schloaeer's  "  Literary  HiBtory 
of  the  Eighteenth  Gentory."    Tdt    1847. 


hoard  their  money,  or  lock  up  blushing 
eighteen  ?  "  Money  is  for  youth ;  love  is  for 
youth;  away  with  the  old  people."  Then 
comes  the  sigh  we  all  know  so  well:  "  Bat 
ah  1  it's  a  weary  feast,  that  banquet  of  wit 
where  no  love  is.  It  palls  very  soon  ;  sad 
indigestions  follow  it,  and  lonely  blank  head- 
aches in  the  morning."  The  banquet  is,  to 
this  observer,  but  a  dance  of  death  :  every 
madly-glancing  eye  at  that  orgy  is  artificial — 
every  tint  of  bloom  is  from  the  rouge-pot,  and 
savors  of  corruption — 

Every  face,  however  fall, 

Padded  round  with  fiesh  and  fat. 
Is  but  modell'd  on  a  skoli.* 

With  that  graphic  emphasis  which  makes  him 
at  his  best  so  memorably  impressive,  the  lec- 
turer likens  the  feelings  aroused  by  a  perusal 
•of  Congreve's  plays  to  those  excited  at  Pom- 
peii  by  an  inspection  of  Sallust's  house  and 
the  relics  of  a  Roman  ''spread" — "a  dried 
wine-jar  or  two,  a  charred  supper-table,  the 
breast  of  a  dancing-girl  pressed  against  the 
ashes,  the  laughing  skull  of  a  jester,  a  per- 
fect stillness  round  about,  as  the  Cicerone 
twangs  his  moral,  and  the  blue  sky  shines 
calmly  over  the  ruin.  The  Congrreve  muse  is 
dead,  and  her  song  choked  in  Timers  ashes. 
We  gaze  at  the  skeleton,  and  wonder  at  the 
life  which  once  revelled  in  its  mad  veins.  We 
take  the  skull  up,  and  muse  over  the  frolic 
and  daring,  the  wit,  scorn,  passion,  hope,  de- 
sire, with  which  that  empty  bowl  once  fer- 
mented. We  think  of  the  glances  that  allured, 
the  tears  that  melted,  of  the  bright  eyes  that 
shone  in  those  vacant  sockets,  and  of  lips 
whispering  love,  and  cheeks  dimpling  with 
smiles,  that  once  covered  yon  ghastly  frame- 
work. They  used  to  call  those  teeth  pearls 
once.  See !  there's  the  cup  she  drank  from, 
the  gold  chain  she  wore  on  her  neck,  the 
vase  which  held  the  rouge  for  her  cheeks, 
her  looking-glass,  and  the  harp  she  used  to 
dance  to.  Instead  of  a  feast,  we  find  a  grave- 
stone, and  in  place  of  a  mistress,  a  few  bones  I" 
How  tellingly  expressive,  and  how  like  the 
moralist,  whose  brightest  sallies  so  often  speak 
of  saddest  thought ! 

Addison  meets  with  warmer  eulogy  than 
might  have  been  anticipated.  He  is  inva- 
riably mentioned  with  loving  deference.  He 
is  pictured  as  one  of  the  finest  gentlemen  the 
world  ever  saw — at  all  moments  of  life  se- 
rene and  courteous,  cheerful  and  calm — ad- 
mirably wiser,  wittier,  calmer,  and  more  in- 
structed than  almost  every  man  he  met  with 

•Tennyson;  " Virion  of  SBnJ^ 


1853.] 


THAGEERATS  LECTURES  OK  THE  ENGLISH  HUHORISTSL 


541 


— one  who  could  scarcely  ever  have  had  a 
degrading  thought — and  as  for  that  "  little 
weakness  for  wine" — why,  without  it,  as  we 
could  scarcely  have  found  a  fault  with  him, 
so  neither  could  we  have  liked  him  as  we  do. 
The  criticism  on  his  papers  in  the  Spectator 
is  delightfully  genial  and  true ;  and  the  pero- 
ration of  the  lecture  has  a  sweetness  and  na- 
tural solemnity  of  affecting  reality,  where  al- 
lusion is  made  to  Addison's  heavenly  ode, 
(*<Tbe  spacious  firmament  on  high,")  whose 
"  sacred  music,"  known  and  endeared  from 
childhood,  none  can  hear  "  without  love  and 
awe" — verses  that  shine  like  the  stars,  ''  out 
of  a. deep  great  calm" — verses  enriched  with 
the  holy  serene  rapture  that  fills  Addison's 
pure  heart,  and  shines  from  his  kind  face, 
when  his  eye  seeks  converse  with  things  above: 
for,  '^  when  he  turns  to  heaven,  a  Sabbath 
comes  over  that  man's  mind:  and  his  face 
lights  up  from  it  with  a  glory  of  thanks  and 
prayer.'  We  have  not  the  heart  to  inquire, 
here,  whether  the  portrait,  as  a  whole-length, 
is  not  too  flattering  in  its  proportions,  and  too 
bright  in  coloring.  But  doubtless  the  lec- 
turer might,  and  many,  we  surmise,  expected 
that  he  would,  take  a  strangely  opposite  view 
of  Pope's  "Atticus." 

Steele  is  one  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  darlings. 
We  have  an  imaginary  record  of  Corporal 
Pick's  boyhood  —  his  experiences  at  the 
flogging-block  of  Charterhouse  School — his 
everlastingly  renewed  debts  to  the  tart-wo- 
man, and  I.O.U.  correspondence  withloUipop- 
▼enders  and  piemen — his  precocious  passion 
for  drinking  mum  and  sack — and  his  early 
instinct  for  borrowing  from  all  his  comrades 
who  had  money  to  lend.  In  brief,  "  Dick 
Steele,  the  schoolboy,  must  have  been  one 
of  the  most  generous,  good-for-nothing,  ami- 
able little  creatures  that  ever  Conjugated  the 
▼erb  tupto,  I  beat,  tuptomai,  I  am  whipped,  in 
any  school  in  Great  Britain."  His  reckless- 
ness and  good-humor  to  the  last  are  fondly 
dwelt  on — his  cordial  naturalness  is  eagerly 
appreciated  —  his  tenderness  and  humanity 
gracefully  enforced.  ''A  man  is  seldom  more 
manly,"  we  are  well  reminded,  *'  than  when 
he  is  what  you  call  unmanned — the  source  of 
bis  emotion  is  championship,  pity,  and  cour- 
age ;  the  instinctive  desire  to  cheri&h  those 
who  are  innocent  and  unhappy,  and  defend 
those  who  are  tender  and  weak.  If  Steele  is 
not  our  friend,  he  is  nothing.  He  is  by  no 
means  the  most  brilliant  of  wits,  nor  the  deep- 
est of  thinkers  :  but  he  is  our  friend  :  we  love 
him,  as  children  love  their  love  with  an  A., 
because  he  is  amiable.  Who  likes  a  man  best 
because  he  is.  the  cleverest  or  the  wisest  of 


mankind;   or  a  woman  because  she  is  the 
most  virtuous,  or  talks  French,  or  plays  the 
piano  better  than  the  rest  of  her  sex  ?    I 
ow:n  to  liking  Dick  Steele  the  man,  and  Dick 
Steele  the  author,  much  better  than  much 
better  men  and  much  better  authors."    In 
the  same  manner,  that  sad  rake  and  spend- 
thrift, Henry  Fielding,  is  sure  of  a  kind  word. 
The  great  novelist  is  not  made  a  hero  of,  but 
shown  as  he  is ;  not  robed  in  a  marble  toga, 
and  draped  and  polished  in  an  heroic  attitude, 
but  with  inked  ruffles,  and  claret  stains  on  his 
tarnished  laced  coat — but  then  we  are  bid 
observe  on  his  manly  face  the  marks  of  good 
fellowship,  of  illness,  of  kindness,  of  care;  and 
admonished  that,  wine-stained  as  we  see  him, 
and  worn  by  care  and  dissipation,  that  man 
retains  some  of  the  most  precious  and  splen- 
did human  qualities  and  endowmenUf.  Among 
them,  an  admirable  natural  love  of  truth,  and 
keenest  instinctive  scorn  of  hypocrisy  —  a 
wonderfully  wise  and  detective  wit — a  great- 
hearted, courageous  soul,  that  respects  female 
innocence  and  infantine  tenderness — a  large- 
handed  liberality,  a  disdain  of  all  disloyal 
arts,  an  unselfish  diligence  in  the  public  ser- 
vice.   And  then,  **  what  a  dauntless  and  con- 
stant cheerfulness  of  intellect,  that  burned 
bright  and  steady  through  all  ibe  storms  of 
his  life,  and  never  deserted  its  last  wreck  I 
It  is  wonderful  to  think  of  the  pains  and 
misery  which  the  man  suffered  ;  the  pressure 
of  want,  illness,  remorse,  which  he  endured  ; 
and  that  the  writer  was  neither  malignant  nor 
melancholy,  his  view  of  truth  never  warped, 
and  his  generous  human  kindness  never  sur- 
rendered."    Goldsmith,  again,  is  reviewed 
in  the  same  spirit — **  the  most  beloved  of 
English  writers" — "  whose  sweet  and  friendly 
nature  bloomed  kindly  always  in  the  midst  of 
a  life's  storm,  and  rain,  and  bitter  weather" — 
"  never  so  friendless  but  he  could  befriend 
some  one,  never  so  pinched  and  wretched,  but 
he  could  give  of  his  crust,  and  speak  his 
word  of  compassion" — enlivenidg  the  child- 
ren of  a  dreary  London  court  with  his  flute, 
giving  away  his  blankets  in  college  to  the 
poor  widow,  pawning  his  coat  to  save  his 
landlord  from  jail,  and  spending  his  earnings 
as  an  usher  in  treats  for  the  boys.     ^*  Think 
of  him  reckless,  thriftless,  vain,  if  you  like- 
but  merciful,  gentle,  generous,  full  of  love 
and  pity.     .     ,     .     Think  of  the  poor  pen- 
sioners weeping  at  his  grave ;  think  of  the 
noble  spirits  that  admired  and  deplored  him; 
think  of  the  righteous  pen  that  wrote  his  epi- 
taph, and  of  the  wonaerful  and  unanimous 
response  of  affection  with  which  the  world 
has  paid  back  the  love  he  gave  it."    Yet  is 


542 


THACBIERAT'S  LECTURES  ON  THE  ENGUBH  HUMORISTS. 


[Dec, 


Mr.  Thackeray  cautious  not  to  dismiss  the 
Steeles,  and  FieldiDgs,  and  Goldsmiths,  and 
kindred  literary  prodigals,  without  a  renewal 
of  his  much-discussed  protest  against  the 
license  claimed  for  them  as  such.  For  reck- 
less Imhits,  and  careless  lives,  the  wit,  he  in- 
sists, must  suffer,  and  justly,  like  the  dullest 
prodigal  th^t  ever  ran  in  debt,  and  moreover, 
must  expect  to  be  shunned  in  society,  and 
learn  that  reformation  must  begin  at  home. 

Prior,  Gay,  and  Pope  are  classed  together 
}n  one  lecture — a  highly  piquant  and  enter- 
taining one,  too.  The  ease  and  modern  air  of 
Mat  Prior's  lyrics  are  happily  asserted,  and 
Mat  himself  pronounced  a  world-philosopher 
of  no  small  genius,  good-nature,  and  acumen. 
John  Gay  is  a  favorite,  as  in  life,  and  enjoys 
a  good  place.  Such  a  natural  good  creature, 
80  kind,  so  gentle,  so  jocular,  so  delightfully 
brisk  at  times,  so  dismally  woe-begone  at 
others — lazy,  slovenly,  for  ever  eating  and 
saying  good  things ;  a  little,  round,  French 
abbi  of  a  man,  sleek,  soft-handed  and  soft- 
hearted. Honest  John's  pastorals  are  said  to 
be  to  poetry  '*  what  charming  little  Dresden 
china  figures  are  to  sculpture — ^graceful,  min- 
nikin,  fantastic,  with  a  certain  beauty  always 
accompanying  them.  The  pretty  little  per- 
sonages of  the  pastoral,  with  gold  clocks  to 
their  stockings,  and  fresh  satin  ribbons  to 
their  crooks,  and  waistcoats,  and  boddices, 
dance  their  loves  to  a  minuet-lune  played  on 
a  bird-organ,  approach  the  charmer,  or  rush 
from  the  false  one  daintily  on  their  red- heeled 
tiptoes,  and  die  of  despair  or  rapture,  with 
the  most  pathetic  little  grins  and  ogles ;  or 
repose,  simpering  at  each  other,  under  an 
arbor  of  pea-green  crockery ;  or  piping  to 
pretty  flocks  that  have  just  been  washed  with 
the  best  Naples  in  a  stream  of  Bergamot." 

To  Pope  is  freely  conceded  the  greatest 
name  on  the  lecturer's  list — the  highest  among 
the  poets,  and  among  the  English  wits  and 
humorists  here  assembled — the  greatest  lite- 
rary artist  t^at  England  has  seen — the  de- 
crepit Papist,  whom  the  great  St.  John  held 
to  be  one  of  the  best  and  greatest  of  men. 
Of  course  (and  there  is  a  warm  compliment 
in  this  of  course)  Mr.  Thackeray  dwells  ad- 
miringly on  Pope's  filial  devotion,  on  that 
constant  tenderness  and  fidelity  of  affection 
which  pervaded  and  sanctified  his  life.  The 
closing  lines  of  the  **  Dunciad"  are  quoted  as 


reaching  the  very  greatest  height  of  the 
sublime  in  verse,  and  proving  Pope  to  be 
"  the  equal  of  all  poets  of  all  times."  But 
the  satire  of  the  ''  Dunciad*'  is  charged,  on 
the  other  hand,  with  generating  and  estab- 
lishing among  us  "the  Grub-street  tradi- 
tion; and  the  *' ruthless  little  tyrant,"  who 
revelled  in  base  descriptions  of  poor  men's 
want,  is  accused  of  contributing  more  than 
any  man  who  ever  lived  to  depreciate  the 
literary  calling.  Grub-street,  until  Pope's 
feud  with  the  Dunces,  was  a  covert  offense — 
he  made  it  an  overt  one.  "  It  was  Pope  that 
dragged  into  light  all  this  poverty  and  mean- 
ness, and  held  up  those  wretched  shifts  and 
rags  to  public  ridicule,"  so  that  thenceforth 
the  reading  world  associated  together  author 
and  wretch,  author  and  rags,  author  and  dirt, 
author  and  gin,  tripe,  cowheel,  duns,  squalling 
children,  and  garret  concomitants. 

Smollett  is  assigned  a  place  between  Ho- 
garth and  Fielding,  and  is  honorably  en- 
treated as  a  manly,  kindly,  honest,  and  iras- 
cible spirit ;  worn  and  battered,  but  still 
brave  and  full  of  heart,  after  a  long  struggle 
against  a  hard  fortune — of  a  character  and 
fortune  aptly  symbolized  by  his  crest,  viz.,  a 
shattered  oak  tree,  with  green  leaves  yet 
springing  from  it.  Without  much  invention 
in  his  novels,  but  having  the  keenest  percep- 
tive faculty,  and  describing  what  he  saw  with 
wonderful  relish  and  delightful  broad  humor, 
and,  indeed,  giving  to  us  in  "Humphrey 
Clinker"  the  most  laughable  story  that  has 
ever  been  written  since  the  goodly  art  of 
novel-writing  began,  and  bequeathing  to  the 
world  of  readers,  in  the  letters  and  loves  of 
Tabitha  Bramble  and  Win  Jenkins,  **  a  per- 
petual fount  of  sparkling  laughter,  as  inex- 
haustible as  Bladud's  well." 

But  here  we  must  close  these  desultory 
notes,  and  commend  our  readers  to  the  volume 
itself,  if  they  have  not  forestalled  such  (in 
either  case  needless)  commendation.  Thej 
may  stumble  here  and  there — one  at  the  esti- 
mate of  Pope's  poetical  status,  another  at 
the  panegyric  on  Addison,  and  some  at  the 
scanty  acknowledgments  awarded  to  Hogarth 
and  to  Sterne.  But  none  will  put  down  the 
book  without  a  sense  of  growing  respect  for 
the  head  and  the  heart  of  its  author,  and  a 
glad  pride  in  him  as  one  of  the  Representa- 
tive Men  of  England's  current  literature. 


1858.] 


FLBGHDSR,  THB  FRENCH  P0LPIT  OBATOR. 


543 


[From  the  Eclectic  Review.] 


FLECHIER,  THE  FRENCH  PULPIT  ORATOR.* 


The  funeral  eulogiums  which  have  been 
handed  down  to  us  from  the  best  times  of 
antiquity  bear  a  considerable  resemblance  to 
certain  of  the  poems  of  Horace  and  Ana- 
creon,  wherein  we  find  Death  casting  his 
shadow  athwart  the  riotous  excesses  of  the 
banquet.  The  only  perceptible  difference 
between  these  two  styles  of  literature  is,  that 
the  one  is  more  lofty,  more  grave,  more 
closely  allied  to  great  and  solemn  thoughts, 
whilst  the  other  seems  only  to  delight,  like  a 
joyous  guest,  in  counting  the  flowers  which 
are  so  soon  to  wither.  Both,  however,  are 
bounded  by  the  same  horizon,  and  the  hero 
who,  by  Torce  of  artis  or  might  of  genius, 
has  traced  out  for  himself  a  brilliant  path- 
way upon  the  earth,  ends  like  the  sybarite 
who  has  all  his  lifetime  been  swimming  in  a 
sea  of  material  pleasures. 

The  hero  and  the  beggar,  the  sage  and  the 
fool,  the  useful  citizen,  as  well  as  the  sensual 
voluptuary,  on  the  completion  of  their  earth- 
ly course,  dash  alike  against  an  insurmount- 
able boundary — the  rig^d  marble  of  the  tomb. 
And  this  circumstance  explains  to  us  the 
reason  why  the  ancient  legislators  were  as 
careful  to  reward  all  as  to  punish  all.  They 
strove  to  offer  to  the  individual,  during  his 
sojourn  in  this  world,  those  indemnities 
which  the  Christian  is  taught  to  look  for  in 
the  next.  Their  Olympus  was  open  only  to 
the  gods  and  demi-godp ;  and  as  to  the  Ely- 
aian  Fields,  that  vague  and  fantastic  cloud- 
land,  it  is  with  difficulty  that  we  discern 
wandering  through  its  shadowy  meads  the 
few  heroes  who  have  been  unable  to  ascend 
higher.  Hence  it  was,  that  the  loss  of  a 
great  citizen  was  so  keenly  felt,  and  his  end 
deplored  in  such  moving  strains.  At  the 
present  day,  governments  occupy  themselves 
but  little  in  perpetuating  the  memory  of 
illustrious  noen;  in  France  we  find  that  to 
the  Church  is  left  the  task  of  apportioning  to 
the  good  as  well  as  to  the  evil  the  shares 
they  merit.     As  late  as  the  Revolution  of 

*  (Euvre$  ComplHe  de  FUchier,  10  tomes.  8vo* 
Paris.  2.  Let  OraitaM  Jf^nkhreB  di  FUeMer,  1 
lome.    12ma    Paris:   Didot 


*80,  the  French  priest  was  the  sole  dispenser 
of  praise  and  blame.  As  the  self-dubbed 
interpreter  of  the  Divine  Hill,  he  weighed  in 
a  balance — supposed  to  be  equitable — the 
vices  and  virtues  of  his  **  subject  ;*'  and,  while 
branding  human  foibles,  sought  to  excuse 
them  in  the  name  of  an  all-merciful  and  all- 
charitable  doctrine.  At  times,  however, 
there  would  get  mixed  up  with  that  holy  fire 
which  burned  upon  the  altar,  a  few  grains  of 
idolatrous  incense,  the  smoke  from  which 
would  not  unfrequently  prove  sufficiently 
dense  to  obscure  the  brilliancy  of  evangelical 
truth. 

Louis  XIV.p  that  monarch  who  so  power- 
fully contributed  to  the  unity  and  extension 
of  French  nationality,  and  whose  panegyric 
might  certainly  be  made  without  exposing 
the  eulogist  to  a  charge  of  flattery,  has  in 
many  pircumstanceb,  and  for  many  acts  of 
his  life,  richly  deserved  the  formidable  re- 
prisals of  the  Church.  Yet,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  few  rare  and  short  passages, 
wherein  the  too  vivid  tints  of  flattery  would 
seem  to  have  escaped  the  pencils  of  Flechier 
and  Bobsuet,  their  funeral  orations,  generally 
speaking,  in  nowise  materially  contradict  the 
"stubborn  facts"  of  truth  telling  history. 
They  abound,  moreover, in  solemn  warnings; 
and  we  ever  find  a  strain  of  the  loftiest 
morality  running  through,  and  as  it  were 
interlacing  the  minutest  details  of  the  lives  of 
those  princesses,  nobles,  and  great  men  of 
the  day,  whose  earthly  careers  one  might  at 
first  sight  have  imagined  would  aflbrd  merely 
vapid  subjects  of  eulogiums,  like  themselves, 
"stale,  flat  and  unprofitable."  Thus  the 
gap  existing  in  modern  legislations  has  been 
marvellously  filled  by  the  solemn  rites  of  a 
religion  which  feared  not  to  lend  itself  to  the 
exigences  of  poor  humanity. 

But  the  indulgence  which  this  religion  dis- 
played for  the  infirmities  of  its  disciples  was 
always  counterbalanced  by  the  high  moral  les- 
sons it  alone  had  the  right  of  giving.  If,  for 
example,  it  at  one  moment  placed  a  resplen- 
dent crown  upon  the  brow  of  the  hero  whose 
virtues  were  the  theme  of  praise,  it  was  onl^ 


544 


FLECHIER,  THE  PBBNCH  PULPIT  ORATOR. 


[Dec., 


at  the  next,  to  tarnish  its  ephemeral  lustre, 
and  to  deplore  the  rapid  and  irreparable 
flight  of  all  terrestrial  things.  It  built  up 
with  its  own  hands  a  pompous  catafalque,  on 
the  adornment  of  which  all  the  treasures  of 
art  had  been  profusely  lavished,  and  after 
having  for  an  instant  exalted  to  the  skies 
those  paltry  trappings  of  the  earth  which 
we  are  obliged  to  leave  behind  us  on  the 
brink  of  the  grave,  at  a  single  breath  it 
scattered  all  this  golden  dust  to  the  four 
winds  of  heaven.  It  raised  man  upon  a 
pedestal  which  immeasurably  increased  his 
stature ;  but  this  imaginary  Colossus  it  would 
afterwards  cast  down  from  its  elevation,  and 
display  to  the  assembled  crowd  of  hero- 
worshipperi  in  all  the  naked  deformity 
of  its  mean  and  ^^raceless  proportions.  Even 
while  flattering  earthly  hopes  and  earthly 
desires,  it  found  occasion  to  remind  all  men 
of  their  immortal  state.  It  reduced  itself, 
as  it  were,  to  the  level  of  carnal  understand- 
ings, but  only  for  the  purpose  of  better  rais- 
ing them  aloft  on  divine  wings,  and  bearing 
them  into  those  regions  of  endless  bliss 
where  nothing  passes  away,  and  where  all 
things  participate  in  the  eternity  of  the 
Creator. 

These  contrasts  between  the  perishable 
things  of  earth  and  the  unchangeable  beati- 
tudes of  heaven  are  very  beautifully  ex- 
hibited in  the  funeral  orations  of  Bossuet  and 
F16chier;  nor  does  the  panegyric  materially 
differ  from  the  sermon  either  in  the  general 
arrangement  of  the  subject,  th&  learned  con- 
texture of  the  discourse,  or  in  the  energetic 
conciseness  of  the  style.  Take  for  example 
the  funeral  oration  on  the  Duchess  of  Orleans, 
by  the  Bishop  of  Meaux,  and  compare  it 
with  the  admirable  sermon  by  the  same 
author,  composed  on  the  occask>n  of  the 
**  profession"  of  the  Duchess  de  la  Villiere  : 
we  defy  the  most  critical  eye  to  discern  the 
slightest  difference  in  style  between  these 
two  compositions.  We  might  interleave 
many  passages  of  the  funeral  oration  with 
those  of  the  sermon,  without  fearing  to  dis- 
turb the  general  harmony  of  the  orator's 
tone.  One  might  suppose  that  the  conform- 
ity of  the  subject  had  melted  into  one  effu- 
sion sentiments  capable  of  so  many  different 
expressions ;  for  we  cannot  doubt  that  the 
analogy  between  these  two  touching  figures, 
but  lately  surrounded  with  all  the  splendors 
of  a  court,  and  now  buried,  one  in  the  grave 
appointed  for  all  living,  the  other  in  the 
living  sepulchre  of  the  convent,  must  have 
vividly  struck  the  oriental  imagination  of 
Bossuet.      And  without    laymg    ourselves 


open  to  a  charge  of  French  sentimentality, 
we  cannot  but  think  that  this  great  man  must 
have  been  filled  with  sadness  at  the  sight  of 
these  fading  flowers  so  rudely  scattered  by 
the  wintry  blast,  while  tears  of  pity  must 
have  flowed  from  those  eyes  which  had 
proudly  contemplated  the  solar  rays  of  Louis's 
throne,  and  had  followed  the  great  Cood4 
amid  the  terrible  mUees  of  Rocroy  and  Nord- 
lingcn.  The  vigorous,  yet  eminently  fune- 
real pencil  of  the  Michael  Angelo  of  French 
pulpit  oratory,  has,  in  the  composition  of 
these  discourses,  found  tints  as  delicate  and 
tender  in  their  hues  as  could  have  been  em- 
ployed to  depict  the  two  women  whose  end 
he  deplores ;  and  the  Homeric  and  Dan- 
tesque  singer  of  the  Revolution  of  England 
and  the  wars  of  Louis  of  Bourbon,  we  find 
now,  as  it  were,  unconsciously  sighing  fortjb 
melodious  elegies. 

But  Bossuet^  is  the  only  one  among  the 
preachers  of  the  seventeenth  century  who 
equally  excelled  in  the  sermon,  properly  so 
called,  and  the  funeral  oration  ;  and  he  msy 
also  be  said  to  have  brought  th^se  two 
branches  of  Christian  literature  to  their 
highest  perfection-.;  ;  "Neither  Bourdalouenor 
Massillon  has  ever  composed  any  thing  su- 
perior to  his  sermon  upon  the  "  Unity  of  the 
Church,"  or  to  that  upon  •'  Honor. "  The  logic 
of  the  Bishop  of  Meaux  possesses  som^ing 
vivid  and  original,  which  revivifies  even  the 
most  threadbare  topics.  It  never  loses 
itself  in  those  subtle  mazes  of  abstract  rea- 
soning wherein  the  greater  number  of  the 
preacners  of  the  day  were  far  too  prone  to 
wander.  Straightforward  and  simple  as  the 
truth  he  enunciates,  be  rapidly  crosses  all 
useless  intermediary  spaces,  and  flies  toward 
the  end  in  view,  disdaining  to  pause  even  for 
an  instant  in  the  perilous  tread  of  a  formal 
antithesis.  It  is  very  evident  that  the  ser- 
mons of  Bossuet  cannot  be  proposed  as 
models  of  rhetoric,  for  all  the  rules  of  art 
are  so  completely  set  aside  in  their  compo- 
sition, that  no  man,  unless  gifted  with  the 
highest  genius,  could  possibly  attempt  their 
imitation.  But  let  us  leave  the  "  Ea^le  of 
Meaux"  to  explore  as  a  sublime  solitary 
those  far-off  regions  whose  conquest  he  has 
assured  to  himself,  not  hoping,  by  the  aid  of 
an  artificial  rhetoric,  to  impart  to  inferior 
minds  strength  sufficient  to  overstep  the 
boundaries  of  ordinary  conceptions.  A 
powerful  dialectician,  as  well  as  an  historian 
of  the  first  order,  such  are  the  two  qualities 
which  have  gained  so  brilliant  a  reputation 
for  the  eulogist  of  Cond6,  and  by  whose  aid 
he  has  acquired  undisputed  sovereignty  over 


1868.] 


FLEOHIEB,  THB  FRENCH  PULPIT  ORATOR. 


546 


the  two  great  domains  of  French  pulpit  ora- 
tory. If  Bourdaloue  and  Massillon,  who  dis- 
played Fo  much  talent  in  the  pulpit,  have 
remained  helow  themselves  in  the  funeral 
oration,  the  cause  of  this  inferiority  must,  in 
our  opinion,  he  traced  to  their  comparatively 
limited  acquaintance  with  the  philosophy  of 
history. 

Many  persons  are  apt  to  imagine  that  no- 
thing is  more  easy  than  to  compose  a  good 
uari  alive ;  yet  it  is  a  style  of  composition  de- 
manding perhaps  a  more  careful  treatment 
than  any  other.  A  peculiar  aptitude  for  this 
branch  of  literature  is  requisite,  to  enable  the 
writer  to  dispose  the  various  circumstances 
of  a  narrative  in  perspicuous  order,  to  omit 
all  unimportant  details,  and  to  bring  promi- 
nently forward  those  portions  more  especially 
deserving  of  attention.  That  writer  who  can 
handle  with  the  happiest  facility  the  most 
subtle  and  complicated  abstractions,  linking 
them  systematically  together  with  irreproach- 
able method,  is  frequently  embarrassed  in 
the  comparatively  light  and  trifling  incidents 
of  the  narrative,  and  succeeds  in  unravelling 
th^m  only  after  a  series  of  lame  and  awk- 
ward attempts.  Do  we  not  every  day  see 
advocates  obtaining  brilliant  triumphs  in 
causes  wherein  merely  a  clever  or  artful 
exposition  of  facts  is  essential  to  success,  and 
who  are  utterly  lost  so  soon  as  the  case  turns 
upon  dry  points  of  law?  That  species  of 
sagacity  which,  like  a  sunbeam,  can  penetrate 
the  complicated  labyrinth  of  philosophical 
inquiry,  shedding  a  floo4  of  light  over  its 
must  secret  recesses,  is  often  times  completely 
at  fault  on  the  broad  plains  of  historical  fact. 

And  when  history,  instead  of  being  exhib- 
ited to  us  in  all  its  truth,  with  its  equal  ad- 
mixture of  good  and  evil ;  instead  of  present- 
ing its  features  at  one  time  comic,  at  another 
sublime,  sometimes  impressed  with  heroic 
majesty,  more  frequently  hideous  and  blood- 
stained ;  when  history,  we  say,  having  puri- 
fied its  waters,  and  fertilized  on  its  banks  all 
the  thousand  treasures  of  a  luxuriant  vegeta- 
tion, presents  to  our  ear  only  murmurs  wor- 
thy by  their  sweetness  of  competing  with- 
the  blast  of  the  epic  trumpet,  how  much 
more  difficult  may  we  not  suppose  that  artist's 
task  must  be  who  makes  it  the  subject  of  his 
inspirations?  Now,  let  the  reader  turn  to 
the  funeral  oration  of  Cond6  by  Bossuet,  and 
that  of  Turenne  by  Fl^chier,  and  he  will  at 
once  be  convinced  that  the  exploits  of  these 
two  great  generals  have  in  these  discourses 
been  neither  minutely  nor  yet  coldly  related, 
as  they  have  been  in  the  greater  portion  of 
the  memoirs  of  the  time.   F16chier  and  Bos- 

VOI4  XXX,    NO.  IV. 


suet  have  here  left  to  military  men  those  8tra> 
tegetic  details  which  would  have  been  incom- 
prehensible to  the  majority  of  their  auditors ; 
they  have  also  very  properly  passed  over  in  si- 
lence the  host  of  insignificant  anecdotes  bear- 
ing on  the  lives  of  these  individuals;  anecdotes 
which,  though  they  mightexcite  the  curiosity, 
could  neither  shed  any  light  on  the  myste- 
ries of  the  human  heart,  nor  in  any  way  har- 
monize with  the  heroic  deeds  of  the  illustri- 
ous men  whose  loss  their  mourning  country 
deplored.  Attaching  themselves  exclusively 
to  the  more  salient  points  in  their  narrative, 
they  engraved  them  on  all  hearts  by  their 
vivid  and  forcible  treatment.  Language  be- 
came like  fire  in  their  hands,  communicating 
to  their  slightest  expressions  a  brilliancy 
almost  supernatural.  We  have  here  poetry 
and  history  united  in  a  fruitful  alliance,  the 
first  adorning,  with  all  the  treasures  of  its 
rich  and  varied  hues,  the  ruder  and  more 
solid  materials  of  the  second,  an  edifice  being 
by  these  means  erected  of  the  fairest  and 
most  beautiful  proportions.  We  do  not  exag- 
gerate when  we  affirm  that  the  orator  who 
celebrates  the  triumphs  of  a  hero  ought,  io 
addition  to  the  solid  qualities  of  the  historian, 
to  possess  also  the  more  brilliant  faculties  of 
the  poet.  We  know  that  F16chier,  before 
devoting  himself  exclusively  to  preaching, 
had  successfully  cultivated  Latin  poetry ; 
indeed,  it  was  through  his  classical  know- 
ledge that  he  obtained  his  early  successes  in 
Paris,  and  it  was  this  knowledge  also  which 
afterwards  opened  for  him  a  path  to  honors 
and  celebrity.  Elis  lines  upon  the  "Carrousel" 
of  1669  were  at  first  printed  in  folio  along 
with  those  by  Per rault  upon  the  "Carrousel**  of 
1662  In  this  composition  the  classical  schol- 
ars of  the  day  admired  the  exquisite  harmo- 
ny of  the  rhythm,  the  picturesque  choice  of 
expression,  and  the  facility  with  which  the 
author  had  triumphed  over  the  difficulties 
inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  his  subject, — 
a  subject  which,  more,  perhaps,  than  any 
other,  could  hardly  be  treated  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Romans,  seeing  that  they  had 
no  festival  analogous  to  a  French  carrousel 
In  this  little  composition  might  be  remarked 
the  germs  of  those  rare  merits  which,  later, 
acquired  for  F16chier  the  honor  of  being 
placed  for  an  instant  on  the  same  line  with 
Bossuet.  Besides  some  Latin  verses,  which 
are  still  read  with  pleasure  by  his  country- 
men, F16chier  had  also  attempted  history 
with  considerable  success.  His  ''Life  of  Theo- 
dosius  the  Great,'*  written  for  the  Dauphin, 
(son  of  Louis  XIV.,)  which  appeared  in  1679, 
though  not  by  any  means  to  be  compared  to 

85 


540 


FLECHIER,  THE  FRENCH  PULPIT  OBATOR. 


[Dec., 


Bossuet's  **  Discourse  on  Universal  History," 
is  for  all  that  an  excellent  work,  evidencing 
in  the  quiet  and  correct  style  of  its  composi- 
tion no  mean  talent,  as  well  as  considerable 
historical  research,  and  evincing,  moreover, 
in  the  writer  a  mind  well  trained  in  the  art  of 
classifying  facts  with  judgment  and  method. 
.  There  is  some  similarity  between  the  man- 
ner of  FI6chier  and  that  of  the  Abb6  Fleury. 
If  neither  of  these  writers  ever  descends 
into  the  mysterious  abysses  whence  social 
revolutions  take  their  rise,  nor  yet  ascends 
to  those  higher  considerations  which  sum  up 
in  a  few  words  the  most  complex  political  pro- 
blems ;  if  their  recitaU  never  strongly  move  us 
by  sudden  outbursts  of  impassioned  eloquence, 
on  the  other  hand  they  always  interest  by 
the  instructive  reflections  so  liberally  strewn 
throughout  the  narrative,  and  by  the  substan- 
tial, elegant,  and  perspicuous  style  of  the 
composition.  Fl^chier  possessed  in  a  remark- 
able degree  the  two  qualities  which  appear 
to  us  indispensable  to  the  orator  who  is 
called  to  sing  the  praises ^of  the  illustrious 
dead  beneath  the  roof  of  a  Christian  temple. 
As  a  poet  and  historian,  he  could  not  fail  of 
succeeding  in  the  funeral  oration  equally  with 
Bossuet,  whose  ardent  imagination  could 
color  and  animate  the  dry  details  of  histori- 
cal fact  with  wonderful  felicity ;  but,  on  the 
Other  hand,  it  would  be  difficult  to  cite  a 
single  sermon  of  F16chier's  which  can  add 
any  thing  to  bis  reputation.  Although  his 
sermons  at  the  period  of  their  delivery  were 
greeted  with  much  favor,  and  may  even  be 
considered  as  having  formed  the  basis  of  his 
oratorical  reputation,  they  evince  but  faint 
traces  of  that  talent  which  was  destined  to 
raise  him  to  so  high  a  position  among  the 
divines  of  his  country.  Logic  and  passion 
are  the  two  distinctive  merits  required  in  a 
sermon.  Now,  we  may  be  permitted  to  say 
that  Fl^chier  occupies  himself  more  exclu- 
sively with  the  symmetrical  arrangement  of 
bis  sentences  than  with  the  regular  and  lucid 
distribution  of  his  ideas.  His  excessive 
attention  to  form  and  detail  prevents  him 
bestowing  on  the  more  important  ground- 
work the  care  it  requires.  Like  a  patient 
artist,  he  enriches  with  the  most  elaborate 
workmanship  the  vilest  as  well  as  the  most 
precious  metals.  A  simple  note  from  his  pen 
was  written  in  a  style  as  pure  and  chaste  as 
the  funeral  oration  of  Turenne.  The  reader 
must  not  seek  the  brilliant  vegetation  of  the 
tropics  in  this  beautifully  laid -out  parterre, 
whose  simplest  flowers  are  the  objects  of  the 

Sardener's  daily  care  and  love ;  were  he  to 
o  so,  bis  labor  would  be  in  vain ;  he  will 


meet  with  only  well-known,  and  sometimes 
even  vety  common-place  shrubs,  but  which, 
however,  possess  all  the  charms  of  novelty 
through  the  learned  and  patient  cultare 
which  has  been  bestowed  on  them.  Fl^chier 
has  been  frequently  censured  for  the  too 
minute  and  labored  harmony  of  his  periods, 
but  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  this  cor- 
rect and  harmoniouH  diction  has  rescued  the 
name  of  F16chier  from  that  oblivion  which 
has  enveloped  many  of  the  most  illustrious 
minds  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  was, 
at  the  epoch  when  it  excited  such  universal 
admiration,  a  true  creation  of  genius. 

The  French  language  at  that  period  did 
not  possess  the  suitableness  of  expression, 
fitness,  and  musical  rhythm,  which,  in  the 
writings  of  the  Bishop  of  Nimes,  never  failed 
to  satisfy  the  taste,  as  well  as  charm  the  ear. 
At  the  present  day,  similar  qualities  are  in- 
sufficient to  assure  immortality  for  the  works 
of  modern  French  authors ;  the  idiom  of  the 
language  has  become  so  flexible  and  refined 
through  the  successive  eflforts  of  the  last  two 
centuries,  that  even  those  persons  who  do 
not  follow  the  career  of  letters  possess  ele- 
gance and  harmony  of  style.  But  we  must 
not  imagine  that  the  reputation  of  F16chier 
was  based  on  no  solid  foundation,  because 
the  secret  of  those  harmonious  periods, 
which  produced  so  lively  a  sensation  upon 
his  contemporaries,  has  been  discovered. 
Even  were  the  phraseology  of  the  present 
day  more  varied  and  ingenious  than  that  of 
this  admirable  writer,  he  would  no  less  pos- 
sess the  merit  of  having  been  one  of  the  most 
powerful  promoters  of  the  improvements  in 
style  and  language  obtained  after  his  time. 
We  perform  an  act  of  courage  in  defending 
the  reputation  of  those  who  have  preceded 
us  in  the  battle  of  life.  The  Frenchmen  of 
the  present  day,  we  cannot  help  thinking,  are 
far  too  much  absorbed  with  the  present^  which 
they  are  in  consequence  easily  led  to  regard 
as  an  epoch  of  unequalled  splendor  in  the 
annals  of  their  country.  We  are  far  from  being 
the  obstinate  partisans  of  a  past  age,  which  is 
now  but  a  phantom,  and  whose  extinct  glorj 
men  may  seek  in  vain  to  restore.  The  throne 
of  Louis  Quatorze  has  for  ever  lost  that  bril- 
liant retinue  of  intellect  which  formed  for  i( 
an  impregnable  barrier.  Where  sball  we 
now  find  those  illustrious  men  who  rendered 
the  very  name  of  France  glorious?  They 
have  not  only  passed  away  for  ever  from  the 
stage  of  life,  but  their  ashes  have  been 
scattered  abroad,  nor  can  the  four  winds  of 
heaven  now  tell  where  they  have  capriciously 
disposed  them. 


1858.] 


FLEGHIEB»  THB  FBENCH  PULPIT  OBATOB. 


547 


But  without  regarding  the  literature  of  the 
seventeenth  century  as  the  only  literature  of 
which  France  ought  to  be  proud,U  is  very  cer- 
tain that  it  does  not  enjoy  with  the  masses  that 
high  degree  of  popularity  it  in  many  respects 
80  eminently  deserves.  The  excutive  partisans 
of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau — still  very  nume- 
rous, though  their  ranks  are  sensibly  thinning 
— ^nourish  against  those  writers  who  have 
not  made  of  their  pens  instruments  of  demo- 
lition, certain  prejudices  which  will  be  eztin- 
gmshed,  perhaps,  only  with  the  breath  of  life 
which  animates  them.  Those  ardent  and 
fiery  spirits  who  take  an  interest  only  in 
passionate  polemics,  soon  weary  of  books 
which  reflect  world-wide  ideas  with  the 
serene  grandeur  of  those  rivers  in  whose 
placid  waters  the  marvels  of  the  firmament 
are  reflected  without  distortion.  For  the 
resty  a  work  interests  the  bulk  of  readers 
only  in  so  far  as  it  expresses  their  interests 
and  sympathies  of  the  moment.  Moral 
problems  cease  to  captivate  their  attention, 
unless  bearing  in  some  measure  on  the  squab- 
bles of  a  day,  that  hold  in  suspense  many 
minds  which  the  simple  truth  alone  would 
not  satisfy.  But,  it  may  be  asked,  if  the  ba- 
sis of  those  thoughts  which  we  find  scattered 
through  the  literature  of  the  great  century 
fails  to  satisfy  the  taste  of  a  public  absorbed 
in  contemporary  disputations,  the  form,  at 
least,  with  which  they  are  clothed  must  find 
favor  in  its  sight  ?  We  answer,  no :  it  iip- 
pears  too  stiff  and  formal,  or  rather,  it  is  in 
fact  too  simple  and  natural  for  these  effer- 
vescing imaginations,  which  even  the  mon- 
strous excesses  of  the  modern  school  of 
French  literature  have  not  succeeded  in  turn- 
ing back  to  more  sound  and  healthy  doc- 
trines. 

A  calm  and  even  flow  of  words,  develop- 
ing the  idea  with  a  certain  degree  of  slowness 
and  deliberation,  and  not  unfrequently  de- 
scribing a  winding  course  before  attaining  its 
end,  cannot,  it  is  evident,  possess  attractions 
for  those  readers  who  reach  forward  impa- 
tiently towards  the  goal,  and  who  prefer 
clearing  for  themselves  a  perilous  footway 
along  the  brinks  of  precipices  to  following  a 
sure  and  painless,  but  more  circuitous  route. 
Hence,  what  recklessness  of  style,  what 
strangeness  of  expression,  what  obsolete,  or 
else  newly-coined  phrases,  are  required  to 
attract  and  retain  the  attention,  excite  the 
sympathies,  and  please  the  vitiated  tastes  of 
these  furious  iconoclasts,  who  take  pleasure 
only  in  the  adoration  of  shapeless  fragments, 
and  turn  away  in  contempt  at  the  aspect  of 
an  harmonious  statue  I  We  consider  that  the 


writings  of  Fl^chier  well  deserve  being  read 
at  the  present  day,  and  that  an  attentive  study 
of  their  many  beauties  could  not  fail  of  exert- 
ing a  salutary  influence  upon  the  rainds  and 
tastes  of  the  rising  generation  of  authors. 

The  funeral  orations  of  Flechier,  and,  above 
all,  those  of  Turenne  and  the  Duke  of  Mon- 
tansier — on  both  of  which  we  purpose  offer- 
ing some  special  remark  before  we  conclude 
— present  excellent  examples  of  a  diction  at 
once  pure,  elegant  and  unaffected  ;  and  which, 
though  abounding  in  new  and  picturesque 
turns  of  expression,  never  sins  against  good 
taste.  True  it  is  that  the  same  oratorical 
tropes  and  figures  occasionally  return  with  a 
somewhat  fatiguing  monotony  under  the 
more  ingenious  than  creative  pen  of  the 
illustrious  prelate ;  but  we  recommend  the 
works  of  Fl^chier,  less  as  monuments,  where- 
in are  displayed  the  inexhaustible  genius  of 
invention,  than  as  regular  edifices,  having  the 
inconvenience,  it  is  true,  of  being  almost  all 
constructed  upon  the  same  plan,  and  of  never 
striking  the  imagination  by  novel  and  unfore- 
seen combinations,  but  which,  however,  fully 
satisfy  the  critical  eye  of  the  most  exacting 
spectator.  Although  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  harmony  of  tliis  somewhat  formal 
style  be  the  result  of  labor  rather  than  the 
outpouring  of  genius,  it  still  enchants  the 
ear,  and  not  unfrequently  insinuates  itself 
into  the  most  secret  recesses  of  the  heart. 

Fl^chier's  style  has  been  censured  by  many 
critics  as  abounding  too  much  in  antitheses 
and  symmetrical  contrasts,  and  this  we  admit 
is  a  defect  observable  in  his  writings ;  in  fact, 
he  almost  invariably  proceeds  by  means  of 
antitheses  ;  if  he  speak  of  the  mortal  lives  of 
his  heroes,  it  is  to  persuade  us  of  their  bless- 
ed immortality.  He  seeks  to  bring  to  our 
memory  the  graces  which  Providence  has  be- 
stowed upon  them,  in  order  that  wo  may 
adore  the  mercy  which  He  has  displayed 
towards  them.  He  seeks  to  edify  rather  than 
to  please.  He  announces  that  all  earthly 
things  must  have  an  end,  in  order  to  lead  us 
to  the  contemplation  of  God  and  heav* 
enly  things,  which  are  eternal.  He  recalls  to 
our  minds  the  fatal  curse  of  death,  in  order 
to  inspire  us  with  the  desire  of  a  holy  life. 
This  course,  it  must  be  owned,  is  the  very 
opposite  to  that  of  Bossuet.  These  two  pre* 
lates  h^ve  been  frequently  compared  togeth- 
er ;  we  know  not  if  they  were  rivals  during 
their  lives,  but  at  the  present  day  they  most 
certainly  are  not.  F16chier  possesses  rather 
the  art  and  mechanism  of  eloquence  than  its 
genius.  He  never  abandons  himself  to  its  in- 
spired influence;  his  discourses  never  lead 


548 


FLECHTER»  THE  FRENCH  PULPIT  ORATOR 


[Dec, 


us  to  feel  that  self  li&s  been  forgotten,  that 
the  orator  h  lost  in  the  subject ;  his  defect  is 
that  of  always  wriiing  and  never  speaking; 
he  methodically  arrangres  and  carefully  pol- 
ishes a  sentence,  proceeds  afterwards  to  an- 
other, applies  the  compass  to  it,  and  so  on  to 
a  third.  We  remark  and  feel  all  the  repose 
of  his  imagination,  whilst  the  discourses  of 
Bossuet,  and  perhaps  all  great  works  of  elo- 
quence, are,  or  at  least  appear,  like  those 
bronze  statues  which  the  artist  has  cast  at 
a  single  melting. 

After  these  strictures  on  some  of  Fl^chier's 
defects,  let  us  render  full  justice  to  his 
many  beauties.  F16chier  possessed  alt  those 
secondary  qualities  whose  brilliant  union 
would  seem  for  an  instant  almost  to  hold  the 
pUce  of  genius,  but  which  vainly  seek  to 
till  the  void  caused  by  the  absence  of  inspi- 
ration— that  emanation  of  the  creative  power 
of  (tod.  His  style,  though  never  impetuous, 
is  always  chaste;  in  default  of  strength,  he 
possesses  correctness  and  grace.  If  he  fails 
in  those  original  expressions,  of  which  one 
alone  frequently  represents  a  host  of  ideas, 
be  has  that  ever-equal  tone  of  color  which 
gives  value  to  little  things  without  disfigur- 
ing great  ones.  As  we  have  before  remarked, 
he  never  strongly  excites  the  imagination ; 
but  he  fixes  it.  His  ideas  rarely  ascend  very 
high;  but  they  are  always  just;  and  are 
frequently  also  brought  forward  with  a  de- 
gree of  ingenuity  which  arouses  the  intellec- 
tual faculties,  and  exercises  without  fatiguing 
them.  F16chier  appears  to  have  possessed 
a  deep  and  thorough  knowledge  of  men; 
every  where  he  judges  them  as  a  philosopher 
and  portrays  them  as  an  orator.  Finally, 
his  style  has  the  merit  of  a  double  harmony ; 
of  that  which,  by  the  happy  arrangement  of 
words,  is  destined  to  flatter  and  seduce  the 
ear,  and  of  that  which  seizes  the  analogy  of 
numbers  with  the  character  of  the  ideas,  and 
which,  by  the  suavity  or  the  force,  the  slow- 
ness or  the  rapidity  of  the  sounds  employed, 
paints  to  the  ear  at  the  same  time  as  the 
image  is  delineated  on  the  mind.  In  general, 
the  eloquence  of  Fl^chier  appears  to  be 
formed  of  the  harmony  and  art  of  Isocrates, 
the  genius  of  Pliny,  and  the  brilliant  iniiagi- 
nation  of  a  poet,  as  well  as  of  a  certain  im- 
posing gravity  and  deliberation,  in  nowise  out 
of  place  in  the  pulpit,  and  which  was,  besides, 
in  accordance  with  the  vocal  powers  of  the 
orator. 

Before  offering  a  few  observations  on  the 
more  remarkable  productions  of  our  author, 
we  will  briefly  glance  at  some  of  the  inci- 
dents of  his  life, — a  life,  however,  abounding 


in  no  extraordinary  events,  offering  as  it  does 
but  a  record  of  the  faithful  accomplishment 
of  episcopal  duties,  and  the  assiduous  and 
successful  culture  of  letters.  In  precise 
ratio  as  the  writers  of  the  sixteenth  century 
were  dissolute  in  their  habits  of  life,  those  of 
the  seventeenth  were  recommended  by  their 
irreproachable  morality  and  their  dignity  of 
character.  Born  at  Peme,  in  the  county  of 
Avignon,  on  the  10th  of  June,  1632,  Esprit 
Fl^chier  entered,  in  1648,  the  Congregation 
of  the  Christian  Doctrine,  where,  under  the 
direction  of  his  maternal  uncle.  Father 
Audiffret,  Superior  of  the  Order,  he  pursued 
his  studies  with  the  greatest  distinction. 
Intrusted  successively  with  the  management 
of  several  classes,  and  especially  with  that  of 
rhetoric,  at  Narbonne,  he  so  highly  distin- 
guished himself  among  his  brother  professors, 
that  on  him  was  conferred  the  honor  of  pro- 
nouncing the  funeral  oration  of  Monseignenr 
de  Rebi,  Archbishop  uf  the  diocese. 

In  1659  he  quitted  the  garb  of  "Doctri- 
naire," and  proceeded  to  Paris, — that  rendes- 
vous  for  all  talents  and  all  capacities.  We 
have  already  spoken  of  his  lines  on  the 
"Carrousel"  of  1669.  But  fresh  successes 
confirmed  that  which  he  owed  to  his  know- 
ledge of  Latin  poetry  ;  and  soon,  appointed 
almoner  in  ordinary  to  the  Dauphiness  and 
to  the  Abbey  of  Saint  Severin,  he  was  pro- 
moted to  the  bishopric  of  Levaur  in  1685, 
from  whence,  two  years  afterwards,  he  was 
translated  to  the  see  of  Nlmes.  Here  it  was 
that,  in  the  year  1710,  he  completed,  at  the 
age  of  seventy-eight  years,  an  existence  en- 
tirely devoted  to  the  conscientious  fulfilment 
of  his  religious  duties,  and  to  the  exercise  of 
the  Christian  virtues.  Full  of  years  and 
honors,  and  certain  of  transmitting  his  name 
to  the  most  distant  posterity,  the  good  old 
man  passed  away  from  the  scene  of  his 
earthly  pilgrimage,  restoring  to  his  Maker  a 
soul  whose  faculty  had,  during  a  long  and 
active  career,  been  consecrated  to  His  honor 
and  glory,  according  to  the  tenets  of  the 
Church  which  he  adorned. 

There  are  none  of  Fl^chier's  writings  in 
which  very  many  beauties  are  not  perceptible. 
The  funeral  orations  on  Madame  de  Montan- 
sier,  on  the  Duchess  of  Aiguillon,  and  on  Uie 
Dauphiness  of  Bavaria,  not  offering  scope, 
from  the  uneventful  character  of  the  lives  of 
these  personages,  for  the  display  of  "  moving 
incidents,"  abound  with  moral  ideas,  which 
are  presented  with  great  beauty  and  delicacy. 

The  funeral  oration  for  Maria  Theresa  is  in 
the  same  style,  and  displays  similar  beautiefu 
The  eulogium  of  a  queen,  removed  by  cha- 


1853.] 


FLEOHISBi  THE  FBBHCH  PULPIT  O&ATOB. 


549 


racier  as  well  as  by  circumstances  from  great 
interests  and  state  afifairs,  was  a  diflicult 
subject,  to  render  attractive,  and  we  must 
admire  the  talent  of  that  orator  who,  by  a 
correct  yet  animated  portraiture  of  the  man- 
ners of  the  day,  and  a  philosophy  at  once 
delicate  and  profound,  is  enabled  to  supply 
what  his  subject  has  denied  him. 

The  funeral  oration  of  M.  de  Lamoignon» 
first  president  of  the  parliament  under  Louis 
XIV.,  presents  throughout  the  portrait  of  a 
magistrate  and  a  sage.  This  picture,  which, 
perhaps,  fails  somewhat  in  brilliancy  of  color- 
ing, possesses  above  all  the  merit  of  truth. 
We  know  that  De  Lamoignon  was  as  cele- 
brated for  his  scholarship  as  he  was  for  his 
Christian  virtues.  The^e  were,  indeed,  the 
sole  means  by  which  he  attained  to  place  and 
power.  Under  Louis  XIV.  be  sustained  the 
nonor  of  the  French  magistracy,  as  did 
Turenne  and  Cond^  that  of  her  arms.  He 
was  closely  allied  also  with  the  greatest  men 
of  the  day, — a  fact  which  clearly  proves  that 
he  was  not  beneath  them  in  point  of  intellect; 
for  ignorance  and  mediocrity,  always  either 
insolent  or  timid,  are  ever  ready  to  repel  the 
talent  which  they  dread,  and  which  humil- 
iates them.  The  friendship  of  Racine  and 
of  Bourdaloue,  and  the  laudatory  poetry  of 
fioileau,  will  not  contribute  less  to  his  repu- 
tation than  will  this  funeral  oration,  and  they 
will  teach  posterity  that  the  orator  has  spo- 
ken like  his  century. 

But  we  must  pass  rapidly  over  all  these 
discourses  to  come  to  that  which  obtained, 
and  deservedly,  the  highest  reputation ;  we 
allude  to  the  funeral  oration  of  Marshal 
Turenne,  that  celebrated  soldier  who,  in  an 
age  the  most  fruitful  perhaps  of  any  in  great 
names,  had  no  superior,  and  but  one  rival ; 
who  was  as  modest  as  he  was  great;  as 
highly  esteemed  for  his  probity  as  he  was 
for  his  military  skill,  and  whose  faults  we 
may  all-  the  more  readily  pardon,  seeing  that 
he  never  made  a  vain  parade  of  his  many 
virtues ;  the  only  man,  in  short,  whose  death 
was  rega^-ded  by  the  people  as  a  public  ca- 
lamity, and  whose  ashes,  since  the  time  of 
Duguesclin,  were  judged  worthy  of  being 
mingled  with  those  of  kings.  Here  Fl^chier, 
as  has  often  been  remarked,  seemed  to  rise 
above  himself.  It  would  appear  as  though 
the  public  grief  had  imparted  a  more  than 
usual  activity  to  his  intellect ;  his  style 
warms,  his  imagination  rises,  his  images  as- 
sume a  more  imposing  form.  Yet  between 
this  funeral  oration  and  that  of  the  Great 
Cond6,  by  Bossuet,  there  is  the  same  differ- 
ence perceptible  as  between  the  characters  of 


the  men  themselves.  The  one  bears  the  im- 
press of  pnde,  and  seems  to  be  the  work  of 
inspiration  ;  the  other,  even  in  its  elevation, 
appears  the  fruit  of  an  art  perfected  by  ex- 
perience and  study.  Thus,  singularly  enough, 
these  two  great  men  found  in  their  panegyrists 
a  style  of  eloquence  analogous  to  their  indi- 
vidual characters  and  dispositions. 

The  funeral  oration  of  Marshal  Turenne  is 
no  less  one  of  the  gems  of  French  pulpit  ora- 
tory ;  the  exordium,  above  all,  will,  for  its 
majestic  and  solemn  character,  be  ever  cited 
as  a  masterpiece  of  harmonious  eloquence. 
The  two  6rst  parts  present  a  noble  image  of 
the  talents  of  the  general  and  the  virtues  of 
the  man ;  but  as  the  orator  draws  towards 
the  close,  he  seems  to  acquire  fresh  strength  ; 
he  depicts  with  a  rapid  hand  the  final  tri- 
umphs of  the  warrior ;  he  shows  us  Germany 
convulsed,  the  enemy  in  confusion,  the  eagle 
already  taking  wing,  and  preparing  for  its 
flight  into  the  mountains  ;  the  artillery  thun- 
dering from  either  flank  to  cover  the  retreat; 
France  and  Europe  awaiting  in  the  expecta- 
tion of  a  great  event.      Suddenly  the  orator 
pauses  ;  he  addres&es  himself  to  the  "God  of 
armies,''  who  disposes  alike  of  conquerors 
and  victories ;  then  he  presents  to  our  view 
the  pale  and  bleeding  form  of  the  great  cap- 
tain, stretched  upon  his  trophies,  and  points 
out  in  the  distance  the  sorrowing  images  of 
Religion  and  Fatherland.     ^'Turenne  dies  i" 
he  exclaims ;  "all  is  hushed  in  silent  sorrow,; 
Victory  droops  her  wearied   head  ;    Peace 
flees  away  ;  the  courage  of  the  troops,  at  one 
moment  overcome  with  grief,  is  at  the  next 
reanimated  by  vengeance ;  the  whole  camp 
is  motionless.    The  wounded   think  of  the 
loss  they  have  incurred,  not  of  the  wounds 
they  have  received,  while  dying  fathers  send 
their  sons  to  weep  over  the  remains  of  their 
dead  general." 

Yet,  despite  the  general  eloquence  and 
beauty  of  this  funeral  oration,  we  must  con- 
fess that  we  scarcely  find  in  it  the  "counter- 
feit presentment"  of  the  great  man  we  seek  ; 
it  may  be  that  the  tropes,  and  figures,  and 
pompous  trappings  of  rhetoric,  instead  of 
fully  exhibiting,  rather  in  some  measure  hide 
him  from  our  view  ;  for  there  are  many  dis- 
courses, as  there  are  many  ceremonies, 
wherein  the  object  of  laudation  is  actually 
eclipsed  by  the  pomp  with  which  he  is  sur- 
rounded ;  where  the  portrait  is  overpowered 
by  the  gorgeousness  of  the  fiame.  We  may, 
perhaps,  be  mistaken  in  our  view,  but,  in 
our  opinion,  the  few  reflections  bearing  on 
the  death  of  Turenne  which  we  find  scat- 
tered through  some  of  the  charming  letters 


652 


WIFE  OF  THE  GREAT  OOKDE, 


[Dec., 


From  Chambers's  lonmal. 


WIFE    OF    THE    GREAT    CONDE 


Thsrb  are  few  to  whom  the  name  and 
merits  of  the  great  Cond6  are  unknown,  and 
who  have  not  heard  of  the  great  deeds  per- 
formed by  the  victor  of  Rocroy  at  the  early 
age  of  twenty-one ;  but  there  may  be  some 
who  have  heard  litile  of  Cl^mence  de  Mnill^, 
his  wife,  save  that  she  was  the  niece  of  Car- 
dinal Richelieu :  her  virtues,  her  sufferings, 
her  heroism,  are  unrecorded  in  the  histories 
which  give  so  pompous  an  account  of  her 
husband's  deeds  of  arms. 

There  was  a  magnificent  ball  given  in  the 
palace  of  Cardinal  Richelieu  on  the  night  of  the 
7th  of  February,  1641.  The  whole  of  a  noble 
suite  of  rooms,  extending  round  three  'sides 
of  the  courtyard,  were  brilliantly  lighted  up, 
and  thrown  open  for  the  reception  of  the 
most  noble  and  distinguished  persons  in  Paris. 
There  was  every  where  the  sweetest  music 
swelling  through  the  lofty  rooms,  and  grace- 
ful bands  of  dancers  keeping  time  to  its 
strains :  there  were  light  gitlish  figures,  and 
stately  matronly  ones ;  young  men  dressed 
in  all  the  foppery  of  the  period,  whispering 
soft  nothings  to  the  young  and  beautiful ; 
and  grave  politicians  on  the  watch  to  observe 
whom  the  King  spoke  to,  and  Richelieu 
smiled  on.  There  was  Anne  of  Austria,  and 
her  enfeebled  husband,  Louis  XIII.,  the  beau- 
tiful Genevieve  de  Bourbon,  afterwards 
Duchesse  de*Longueviile,  Mademoiselle  de 
Monlpensier,  the  swarthy  Italian  Mazarin, 
and  many  others  distinguished  in  the  annals 
of  their  period.  But  why  happens  it  that 
so  gay  and  brilliant  a  company  is  this  night 
assembled  in  the  halls  of  the  Cardinal  de 
Richelieu?  Do  you  see  that  young  girl, 
apparently  not  more  than  thirteen  years  of 
age,  sitting  near  the  Queen  ? — she  is  rather 
pale,  though  extremely  fair,  with  large, 
thoughtful  blue  eyes,  and  rich  brown  hair. 
That  is  Clair6  Cl^mence  de  Maill6,  niece  of 
Richelieu :  and  do  you  see  standing  near  the 
farther  entrance  of  the  room  that  haughty- 
looking  young  man,  with  piercing  eyes, 
aquiline  nose,  and  severe  mouth?  He  is 
Louis,  Due  d*Enghien,  afterwards  Prince  de 
Gond6 ;  and  the  magnificent  f6te  is  to  cele- 


brate the  betrothal  of  the  first  Prince  of  the 
Blood  withHhe  niece  of  the  parvenu  minister. 
Ill-omened  engagement  I  From  time  to  time 
the  Duke  throws  a  satirical,  disdainful  glance 
at  the  poor  little  bride,  and  then  turns  away 
to  talk  with  the  distinguished-looking  group 
near  him.  Cl^mence,  who  has  sat  tolerably 
composed  and  undisturbed  all  the  evening,  is 
now  engaged  in  conversation  with  the  Queen 
and  a  splendid ly-attired  cavalier,  who  is 
standing  with  his  plumed  hat  in  his  hand 
before  them.  He  is  saying :  "  Now,  Made- 
moiselle, that  her  Majesty  has  condescended 
to  urge  my  request,  may  I  hope  no  longer 
to  sue  in  Tain  for  the  honor  of  being  your 
partner  in  the  next  courante  P 

The  color  came  and  went  in  the  cheeks  of 
the  child — for  such,  in  spite  of  her  engage- 
ment, she  must  be  termed — and  she  hurriedly 
said  :  **  she  hoped  the  Queen  and  Monsieur 
de  St.  Yalaye  would  excuse  her — she  had 
danced  so  little." 

''  Then  it  is  time  you  should  begin,  cKtrt 
petite,*^  replied  the  Queen :  "  you  must  no 
longer  be  considered  as  a  child.  I  much 
wish  to  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  dance 
this  courante  with  Monsieur  de  St.  Yalaye 
before  I  retire.*' 

The  tear  which  was  just  sparkling  in 
C16mence*s  eye  must,  I  fear,  have  pro- 
claimed her  a  child  still,  when  a  voice  behind 
settled  the  matter  for  her,  and  made  her 
swallow  her  tears  with  the  best  grace  she 
might,  by  saying :  "  My  niece  will  have  much 
pleasure  in  dancing  with  you.  Monsieur ;" 
and  then  turning  to  the  Queen,  Richelieu 
excused  her  bash  fulness  on  account  of  her 
secluded  education. 

Cl6mence  did  not  dream  of  disobeying  her 
uncle ;  she  rose  from  her  seat,  hnd  M.  de  St 
Yalaye,  touching  the  tips  of  the  little  fingers 
with  his,  led  hereto  her  place  in  the  dance. 
Diamonds  glittered,  and  rich  silks  rustled 
as  she  moved  along,  and  began  to  dance, 
ti  no  idly  indeed,  but  not  ungracefully  ;  and 
the  Queen  was  in  the  act  of  expressing  her 
admiration,  iq  answer  to  some  remark  of 
Rachelieu'sy  when,  alas  for  poor  Cldmence  1 


1868.] 


WIFE  OF  TH2  GREAT  OOKDE. 


563 


in  the  very  act  of  perform!  ng  a  deep  rever- 
ence, she  stumbled  and  fell ;  the  cause  of  her 
disaster  displayed  itself  at  the  same  time  in 
the  shape  of  so  enormously  high- heeled  a 
pair  of  shoes,  that  it  was  a  marvel  the  poor 
child  could  even  walk  in  them :  they  had  been 
given  her  to  increase  her  height.  No 
motives  of  kindness  or  good-breeding  could 
restrain  the  laughter  of  the  spectators ;  as 
M.  de  St.  Valaye  raised  her,  the  tears  which 
had  been  for  some  time  lurking  near,  burst 
forth,  for  she  had  hurt  herself  much,  falling 
on  the  hard  parquet- fioor ;  but  her  ear  caught 
the  sound  of  one  mocking  laugh  high  above 
the  rest,  and  looking  towards  the  place  where 
the  Due  d'Enghien  stood,  she  saw  the  sharp 
glance  of  contempt  and  dislike  he  threw  at 
her.  The  poor  girl  shuddered,  and  put  her 
hands  on  her  eyes.  Then,  recovering  her- 
self with  a  strong  effort,  she  turned  to  her 
partner,  gently  apologized  for  her  awkward- 
ness, and  insisted  on  finishing  the  dance, 
which  she  did  with  much  grace  and  self- 
possession. 

But  the  praises  which  Anne  of  Austria 
bestowed  on  her  when  she  returned  to  her 
seat  were  unheard.  That  mocking  laugh 
and  that  deadly  look  were  present  to  her 
imagination,  haunting  her,  like  a  fiigbtful 
vision  of  impending  evil,  for  many  a  long 
day: 

It  was  two  years  after  the  marriage  of  the 
youthful  Cl^mence  and  her  reluctant  bride- 
groom, that  a  large  family-party  was  assem- 
bled in  the  H6te]  de  Cond^,  to  ^reet  the 
return  of  the  victorious  Due  d'Enghien  from 
the  successful  campaign  of  Rocroy.  Cld- 
mence  was  there,  but  sitting  unnoticed  in  one 
of  the  deep  windew  recesses,  for  her  power- 
ful uncle  was  dead,  and  the  proud  family  of 
Conde  had  no  longer  an  inducement  to  treat 
with  any  distinction  his  orphan  niece. 
^  She  was  taller  than  when  we  saw  her  last, 
even  when  she  had  the  aid  of  her  high- heeled 
shoef:,  though  still  rather  under  the  middle 
height;  and  her  sweet  intellectual  counte- 
nance was  animated  by  a  more  tender  ex- 
pression than  ever,  as  she  gazed  on  her  child, 
an  infant  of  three  months  old,  who  was 
lying  on  her  lap.  Her  fair  young  cheek  was 
tinged  with  a  flush  of  excitement :  she  was 
waiting  the  moment  when  she  should  place 
her  child  in  the  arms  of  his  father,  and  be 
able  to  read  in  his  eyes  the  hope  that  for  its 
sake  he  would  give  her  the  love  she  had  so 
long  sought  in  vain. 

8he  had  borne  with  patience  his  cold  in- 
difference before  he  left  her ;  she  was  still 
80  much  a  child  as  hardly  to  know  or  value 


her  rights  of  affection ;  but  the  birth  of  the 
little  Henri  had  opened  to  her  thoughts  and 
feelings  she  had  not  before  experienced.  She 
had  learned,  with  a  heart  throbbing  with  pride, 
of  her  husband's  victories  and  his  glory ;  and 
she  now  hoped  to  gain  the  affection  of  the 
hero,  and  to  be  able  to  offer  in  words  the 
sympathy  her  heart  felt  so  deeply.  She 
longed  to  be  to  him  all  that  he  was  to  her, 
forgetting,  in  her  inexperience,  poor  child,  that 
the  love  which  is  the  sole  object  of  a  woman's 
life  makes  but  a  very  small  part  of  the  hopes 
and  cares  that  throng  the  busy  brain  of  a 
man. 

A  distant  huzza  was  heard  in  the  streets, 
then  the  sound  of  wheels  and  horses'  feet; 
and  accompanied  by  his  father  and  brother, 
and  greeted  by  the  enthusiastic  shouts  of  the 
populace,  the  young  Due  d'Enghein  rode 
proudly  into  the  courtyard,  and  in  a  few  mo- 
ments entered  the  saloon. 

One  by  one,  he  greeted  his  assembled  rela- 
tions ;  and  last  of  all,C16.mence,  having  placed 
her  child  in  his  nurse's  arms,  came  forward 
alone  with  her  dark-blue  eyes  gleaming 
through  tears  of  joy,  and  endeavored  to  take 
his  hand  and  put  it  to  her  lips.  He  drew  it 
almost  roughly  away;  and  turning  to  his 
infant  son,  caressed  him,  and  spoke  of  him 
with  evident  pleasure  to  his  mother  and  sister. 
Still,  not  a  word  to  his  poor  wife  the  whole  of 
that  long  evening,  not  even  a  kindly  glance. 

"  It  was  my  fault,"  thought  Cl^mence  ; 
**  it  was  so  silly  in  me  to  cry  ;  he  must  have 
thought  me  a  baby  still.  I  will  try  and  speak 
to  him.*' 

So  she  waited  till  the  guests  were  gone, 
and  then  coming  up  to  him,  as  he  stood  lean- 
ing against  the  lofty  chimney-piece,  she  said : 
"  Louis,  I  am  the  only  one  who  has  not  con- 
gratulated you  in  words  on  your  triumphant 
return ;  but,  believe  me,  no  one  has  felt  it 
more  than  I.  Every  time  I  heard  you  were 
going  to  attack  the  enemy,  how  my  heart 
trembled  with  anxiety — how  earnestly  I  en- 
treated God  to  preserve  you  unharmed ;  and 
then,  when  I  was  told  of  your  triumphs,  I  was 
so  happy,  I  felt  so  proud  in  being  the  wife 
of 

**  It  must  be  a  novel  sensation,  I  should 
imagine,"  interrupted  the  Due  d'Enghien, 
''  for  a  bourgeoiae  to  have  any  thing  to  be 
proud  of ;  but  it  may  diminish  in  some  de- 
gree your  triumph,  Madame,  to  know,  that 
had  it  in  the  least  depended  on  me,  you 
would  never  have  had  the  smallest  share  in 
the  dignities  of  the  house  of  Cond6 — honors 
which  have  remained  until  now  unsullied  by 
a  degrading  alliance/' 


654 


WIFE  OF  THE  6BSAT  OONDE. 


[Dec., 


"  It  was  not  my  fault,"  replied  CMraence 
mournfully;  '<  my  inclinations  were  no  more 
consulted  than  yours,  although  I  must  own 
to  feeling  pride  in  my  connection  with  a  fa- 
mily you  have  rendered  douhly  illustrious. 
Ah,  Monsieur,  forgive  my  involuntary  crime ; 
for  the  sake  of  my  little  Henri,  cast  me  not 
altogether  from  your  heart.  You  will  love 
him  at  least?"  she  added  hurriedly. 

"  I  have  no  intention,  Madame,  of  neglect- 
ing my  son  on  account  of  his  mother's  defects. 
Have  you  any  further  commands  for  me  ?  if 
not,  I  am  wearied,  and  will  retire ;"  and  with 
a  profound  how,  the  Duke  left  the  apart- 
ment. • 

An  interval  of  seven  years  elapsed  before  the 
scenes  took  place  we  are  now  about  to  sketch. 
The  wars  of  the  Fronde  have  commenced ; 
the  Due  d'Enghien,  now  become  Prince  de 
Cond6  by  his  father's  death,  at  first  the  idol 
of  the  court,  and  general  of  the  royal  armies, 
has  gradually  lost  favor ;  been  accused  of 
combining  with  the  Frondeurs,  and  through 
the  artifices  of  Mazarin  been  sent  to  the  cas- 
tle of  Vincennes,  together  with  his  brother 
the  Prince  de  Conti,  and  his  brother-in-law, 
the  Due  de  Longueville. 

The  Princess-dowager,  Madame  de  Lon- 
gueville, and  Clemence,  were  holding  a  me- 
lancholy council  at  the  Ch&teau  de  Chantilly, 
not  only  respecting  the  best  means  of  restor- 
ing the  princes  to  liberty,  but  of  providing  for 
their  own  safety — for  a  regiment  of  guards 
had  been  sent  towards  Chantilly  from  Sois- 
sons,  and  a  lettre-de-cachet  was  daily  expect- 
ed. Len6t,  the  faithful  adviser  of  the  unfor- 
tunate princesses,  proposed  taking  the  young 
duke  beyond  the  Loire,  and  endeavoring  to 
raise  there  a  party  in  his  father's  favor. 
Some  urged  submission,  some  resistance — 
none  asked  the  opinion  of  Clemence,  who 
was  still  treated  by  all  as  a  child,  when  her 
sweet  clear  voice  was  suddenly  heard  in  a 
pause  of  the  debate.  "I  am  not,"  she  said,  *'ei- 
ther  of  an  age  or  of  an  experience  that  should 
entitle  me  to  give  my  advice :  I  have  no  other 
wish  than  to  pay  all  deference  to  that  of  my 
mother-in-law;  but  I  entreat  her  most  humbly 
that  whatever  may  happen,  I  may  not  be 
separated  from  my  son — my  only  remaining 
hope.  I  will  follow  him  every  where  with 
joy,  whatever  dangers  I  may  have  to  en- 
counter ;  and  I  am  ready  to  expose  myself 
to  any  thing  for  the  service  of  the  prince,  my 
husband." 

Tears  filled  the  eyes  of  the  proud  daughter 
of  Montmorency  at  the  noble  words  of  the 
despised  Clemence.  "  Since  we  both,"  said 
she,  *'have  but  one  object,  we  will  both 


share  the  same  fate,  and  unite  in  bringing  up 
your  son  in  the  fear  of  God  and  the  service 
of  his  king." 

But  it  was  not  so  to  be :  the  aged  mother  of 
Cond6  died  of  grief  and  anxiety  long  before 
her  son  was  released  from  the  dreary  prison 
so  fatal  to  his  race ;  and  Clemence  and  her 
son  were  compelled  to  fiy  from  Chantilly  in 
disguise  almost  immediately  after,  leaving 
her  English  maid-of-honor,  Miss  Gerbier,  and 
the  gardener's  son,  to  personate  her  and  the 
young  duke.  She  retired  to  Montiond,  in 
Berri,  where,  with  the  utmost  skill  and  secre- 
Vsy,  she  succeeded  in  levying  a  considerable 
force,  and  in  exciting  the  neighboring  gen* 
try  to  her  cause.  When  at  length  obliged 
to  leave  Montiond,  she  went  to  Bordeaux, 
reaching  it  after  incredible  danger  and  fa* 
tigue — all  which  were  supported  with  the 
most  unflinching  heroism.  The  populace 
there  received  her  with  enthusiasm,  shouting 
as  she  and  her  son  passed  down  the  street : 
"Vive  le  roi,  et  les  princes,  et  a  has  Mazarin !" 
The  parliament  of  Bordeaux  were  not  equally 
enthusiastic ;  but  they  passed  a  decree,  per* 
mitting  her  residence  in  the  town. 

To  defray  the  expenses  of  the  war,  C16* 
mence  pawned  her  jewels ;  but  as  this  was 
still  insufficient,  Spain  was  applied  to  for 
help;  and  Don  Joseph  Ouzorio  was  sent 
with  three  frigates,  some  bullion,  and  more 
promises. 

The  arrival  of  the  Spaniards  irritated  ex* 
tremely  the  magistrates  of  Bordeaux,  who 
passed  a  decree  expressive  of  their  disappro- 
bation. The  populace,  excited  secretly  hj 
the  Due  de  Bouillon,  a  misjudging  adherent 
of  the  princess,  rose  against  the  parliament* 
and  nearly  massacred  the  members.  The 
Dues  de  Bouillon  and  de  Rochefoucauld  re- 
fused to  aid  in  restoring  order ;  but  Clemence 
never  shrank  from  a  duty  which  lay  before 
her,  and,  attended  only  by  a  single  equerry, 
she  went  to  the  palais,  where  all  was  con- 
fusion, every  one,  including  the  president, 
speaking  at  once. 

She  had  a  great  talent  for  public  speaking, 
and  there  was  none  there  but  felt  the  charm 
of  her  manner,  when,  falling  on  one  knee,  she 
implored  them  not  to  abandon  her  cause. 
"I  demand  justice  from  the  King,  in  your 
persons,  against  the  violence  of  Cardinal 
Mazarin,  and  place  myself  and  my  son  ia 
your  hands ;  he  is  the  only  one  of  his  house 
now  at  liberty :  his  father  is  in  irons.  Have 
compassion  on  the  most  unfortunate  and  the 
most  unjustly  persecuted  family  in  France." 

Still,   they  would  come  to  no  decision. 
:  Then  the  princess  offered  to  go  out»  and  en- 


1853.] 


VrjFR  OF  THB  GREAT  CONDE. 


566 


deavor  to  persuade  the  mob  to  disperse,  that 
they  might  deliberate  freely.  But  the  mo- 
ment she  reached  the  door,  some  of  the  fore- 
most rioters  hurled  her  back,  exclaiming  they 
would  not  allow  h^r  to  pass  till  she  had 
gained  all  she  wanted  from  the  parliament. 

<*  They  have  gpven  me  all  I  asked/'  she 
exclaimed ;  slill,  they  would  not  listen  to 
her,  but  shouted  at  the  top  of  their  lungs  : 
"  Vive  le  roi,  et  les  princes,  et  k  has  Maza- 
rin !"  She  returned  into  the  assembly,  hope- 
less of  making  herself  understood  by  her 
self-willed  friends.  On  the  way,  however, 
she  was  met  by  one  of  the  officials,  exclaim- 
ing :  "Ah,  Madame,  we  have  just  heard  that 
one  of  the  ^t^ra^tf  has  assembled  a  corps  of 
well-disposed  towns- people,  who  will  soon 
cut  down  this  rabble.  If  you  will  come  this 
way,  you  will  see  them  scattering  like  the 
leaves  from  the  vines  in  autumn,  when  the 
mistral  blows." 

But  Cl^mence  had  no  wish  to  see  blood 
flow  of  men  whose  ardor  in  her  behalf  had 
been  their  greatest  crime.  She  presented 
herself  again  at  the  door.  "  1  implore  you, 
my  friends,"  she  cried,  **  disperse  as  quickly 
and  quietly  as  possible.  You  will  be  fired 
on — you  will  be  slaughtered !  For  the  love 
of  Heaven,  go  1" 

"Not  till  you  have  obtained  satisfaction 
from  these  traitors,  Madame,"  said  a  burly 
vintner,  shaking  a  huge  club  he  held  in  hi^ 
hand.  "We  will  defend  you  against  them 
and  the  scoundrel  Mazarin,  to  the  last  drop 
of  our  blood  ;"  and  the  everlasting  cry,  "Vive 
le  roi,  et  les  princes,  et  k  bas  Mazarin !"  went 
round ;  for  there  is  nothing  a  mob,  and  a 
French  one  particularly^  are  so  constant  to 
as  a  form  of  words. 

"  Make  way — make  way  for  me  1"  cried 
CMmence :  "  do  not  let  your  blood  be  on  my 
head.'' 

She  saw  the  troops  of  the  jurat  advancing, 
and  exclaiming :  "  Let  those  who  love  me, 
follow !"  plunged  into  the  crowd,  followed 
by  a  few  gentlemen.  She  struggled  on, 
regardless  of  the  drawn  swords  that  were 
every  where  flashing  round  her ;  two  men 
were  killed  close  beside  her,  the  body  of  one 
falling  across  her  path.  Still,  she  pressed 
onwards,  till  she  arrived  at  the  spot  where 
the  troops  of  the  jurat  and  the  mob,  who 
had  formed  themselves  into  some  degree  of 
order,  were  confronting  each  other.  Their 
muskets  were  levelled,  and  the  order  to  fire 
was  within  a  moment  of  being  given  as  she 
rushed  into  the  space  between  the  combatants. 
"  Hold — hold  ! "  she  shrieked ;  "do  not  fire. 
Lay  down  your  arms,  I  entreat^-I  command 


you.  I  am  the  Princesse  de  Cond^,"  she 
continued,  observing  hesitation  in  the  faces 
of  some;  "and  oh,  can  it  be  for  my  sake 
that  the  inhabitants  of  so  noble  and  generous 
a  city  are  thus  arrayed  in  deadly  feud  against 
each  other?  There  are  enough  of  common 
enemies  without  the  walls  ;  the  troops  of 
Mazarin  will  soon  be  upon  us ;  direct  your 
energies  into  a  noble  defense  of  your  city  and 
your  rights,  instead  of  wasting  them  in  these 
miserable  dissensions.  Brave  Bordelais  I " 
— ^addressing  the  mob — **I  thank  you. from 
my  heart  for  your  zeal  in  my  son's  and  hus- 
band's behalf;  but,  believe  me,  you  can  best 
serve  us  now  by  returning  to  your  homes ; 
the  parliament  has  granted  me  all  I  could 
ask."  Then  turning  to  the  commander,  she 
entreated  him  to  withdraw  his  men,  pointing 
to  the  slowly  retiring  mob  in  proof  of  force 
being  no  longer  necessary. 

Thus  through  the  courage  and  presence 
of  mind  of  a  woman,  till  now  unused  to 
take  a  prominent  part  of  any  kind,  was  this 
dangerous  insurrection  quelled  with  scarcely 
any  bloodshed  ;  and  she  continued  to  be  the 
soul  of  all  the  movements  that  were  madQ 
in  her  husband's  favor  in  the  south  of  France. 
At  length  Cond6  was  set  at  liberty,  princi- 
pally through  the  heroic  exertions  of  his  de- 
spised and  neglected  wife. 

Surely  so  proved,  so  devoted  a  love,  de- 
served to  meet  with  some  return :  for  the 
moment,  even  the  hard  heart  of  Cond^  was 
moved,  and  for  a  few  months  Clemence  was 
treated  with  gentleness  and  respect.  The 
sequel  will  appear  in  the  following  scene  : — 
"Any  more  business  to  be  settled  to-day, 
Le  Tellier  ?"  said  Louis  XIV.,  at  the  close 
of  a  long  session  of  the  council.  "  I  think 
we  have  had  a  long  morning's  work  of  it." 

"  Only  one  aflair  more,  Sire,"  replied  the 
minister  ;  *'  this  letter,  addressed  to  me  by 
Monsieur  le  Prince  de  Cond^,  declaring  his 
determination  never  to  set  foot  in  Pans  so 
long  as  his  wife  remains  there;  he  desires,  I 
believe,  a  lettre-de* cachet  to  detain  her  pris- 
oner for  life." 

"  Pardieu !"  exclaimed  the  Grand  Mon- 
arque  ;  "  after  all  she  has  done  and  suffered 
for  him,  that  is  too  bad  ;  and  surely  he  makes 
her  suffer  enough  without  this.  Why,  I  am 
told  that  when  he  had  joined  the  Spaniards 
against  us,  after  she  crossed  the  sea  to  go 
to  him  and  her  son  in  Flanders,  at  the  immi- 
nent peril  of  her  life,  all  the  physicians 
telling  her  it  would  kill  her,  he  actually  re-- 
fused to  see  her;  and  she  remained  the 
whole  winter  by  herself  in  a  miserable  bour« 
geois  house  at  Valenciennes." 


5£6 


WIFE  OF  THJE  GREAT  CONDE. 


fDec.9 


"  Tes,"  said  Le  Tellier ;  "  and  for  the  sake 
of  joining  him,  she  refused  the  most  magnifi- 
cent offers  made  to  her  by  Mazarin,  to  induce 
her  to  remain  in  France." 

"And  sold  her  jewels  and  estates,  to  give 
him  money  to  support  the  war/'  added  Fou- 
quez. 

''  Well/*  replied  the  King, ''  I  am  of  opinion 
that  we  should  refuse  this  request  of  our 
worthy  cousin.  I  see  no  ground  for  imprison- 
ing the  poor  princess ;  and  what  will  her  son, 
D'Eoghien.  say  to  it  V* 

"  Your  Majesty  need  fear  no  opposition  on 
the  part  of  the  Due  d'Enghein,"  said  Le  Tel- 
lier, with  a  sarcastic  smile.  **  The  memory 
of  his  mother's  love  and  services  is  swallowed 
up  in  his  admiration  of  the  estates  of  the 
Mar^chal  de  Br^z6  [Clemence's  father] :  he 
is  most  active  in  urging  the  prince's  request.*' 

''Ah,  is  it  indeed  so?"  said  Louis,  much 
shocked,  for  his  conduct  to  his  own  mother 
had  been  exemplury.  "Then  may  Heaven 
help  the  poor  woman,  if  her  own  son  turns 
against  her !" 

**  Her  life  is  almost  that  of  a  prisoner  al- 
ready," pursued  Le  Tellier.  **  If  your  Ma- 
jesty grants  this,  you  will  greatly  oblige  the 
Prince  de  Cond^,  whom  it  is  important  to 
please ;  and  the  mere  change  of  place  can 
make  but  little  difterence  to  Madame  la  Prin- 
cesse." 

A  few  sophistries  of  this  sort  sufficed  for 
Louis,  who  was  seldom  very  eager  where  his 
own  interests  were  not  concerned ;  and  the 
lettre-de- cachet  was  signed  and  sealed,  con- 
taining, in  the  usual  form,  the  greeting  of  the 
monarch  to  his  well-beloved  subject,  Claire 
C16mence  de  Maille,  and  stating  that,  in  his 
condescending  care  for  her  health,  he  consid- 
ered a  residence  at  his  castle  of  Ch&teaurouz 
would  be  more  salutary  than  her  present 
abode ;  commanding  her  to  remain  there 
until  such  time  as  his  royal  pleasure  should 
be  further  made  known  to  her  on  the  sub- 
ject. 

The  castle  of  Ch^teauroux  stands  perched 
on  the  summit  of  a  gray,  precipitous  rock, 
with  the  town  to  which  it  gives  its  name  clus- 
tered behind  it  on  the  more  sloping  side. 
From  the  summit  of  the  gloomy  donjon,  the 
eye  wanders  over  as  lovely  a  scene  as  any 
that  is  to  be  found  in  France.  The  Indre 
winds  like  a  band  of  silver  studded  with  eme- 
ralds— for  beautiful  islands,  covered  with 
trees,  rise  here  from  its  bosom — through  the 

Slain ;  and  mingling  in  the  sunny  distance, 
e  vineyards,  orchards,  lowly  farm-buildings, 
and  stately  ch&teauz,  till  the  view  is  bounded 


by  those  blue  hills  whence  Cl^mence  had 
once  called  together  so  many  brave  hearta  ia 
defense  of  her  husband.  And  here,  on  a 
lovely  spring  evening  in  the  year  1671,  the 
first  evening  of  her  captivity,  Cl^mence  de 
Maill6  leaned  over  the  battlements,  with  eyes 
fixed  on  the  scene  below,  but  with  thoughts 
wandering  far  away. 

The  day  before,  a  helpless,  oppressed 
prisoner,  she  had  crossed  that  Loire  which, 
twice  before,  she  had  passed  at  the  head  of 
an  army,  in  the  defense  of  her  son  and  hus* 
band.  She  had  seen  that  son  and  husband 
treat  her  with  hatred  and  scorn,  anxious  only 
to  make  her  sign  the  deed  which  transferred 
her  property  to  them,  and  had  fainted  in  her 
son's  arms  on  bidding  him  farewell.  Then 
the  days  at  Bordeaux  rose  to  her  view,  when 
her  glance  animated  thousands,  and  her  word 
was  law,  and  she  herself  was  filled  with  the 
blissful,  buoyant  hope  of  gaining  the  love  and 
esteem  of  the  husband  for  whom  she  would 
willingly  have  died.  Now,  all  was  gone — 
husband,  child,  friends,  wealth,  fame,  station, 
liberty !     How  can  she  bear  it  ? 

*'  But  oh,  I  am  very,  very  wrong,"  she 
thought,  raising  her  eyes  to  the  clear  blue 
heaven.  "  If  God  gave  me  strength  then, 
when  I  was  a  mere  child  in  experience  and 
understanding,  to  plead  my  husband's  cause 
before  thousands,  and  encourage  armed  men 
to  battle  in  his  behalf,  He  will  not  fail  me 
now,  when  my  only  task  is  to  bear  patiently 
what  He  sees  fit  to  lay  upon  me.  But  oh, 
D'Enghien,  my  son !  my  son !  nature  should 
have  pleaded  for  me  in  your  heart.  O  God! 
give  me  grace,  give  me  fortitude,  to  bear  the 
heavy  grief  of  feeling  that  my  own  son  is  my 
bitterest  enemy."  And  strength  was  given 
to  the  desolate  one — strength  to  bear  twenty^ 
three  years  of  confinement;  for  her  dea^ 
which  took  place  in  1694,  was  her  only 
deliverance. 

She  survived  her  husband  eight  years ;  but 
his  decease  was  scrupulously  concealed  from 
her,  lest  she  should  endeavor  to  recover  her 
liberty.  They  might  have  spared  themselves 
the  trouble.  What  was  there  in  the  world 
to  tempt  CMmence  to  return  to  it?  Her 
friends  were  dead,  her  unnatural  son 
estranged — why  should  she  come  back,  like 
a  spirit  from  the  tomb,  among  the  gay  and 
thoughtless  Jiving  ?  She  died  in  the  gray 
old  walls  of  Ch^teauroux,  worn  out  with  in* 
firmities  and  sorrows,  thankful  and  happy 
that  the  long  trial  was  over,  and  that  the 
bright  day  of  reward,  so  long  looked  for,  had 
come  at  last. 


1858.] 


DB.  ABERMJCTUy. 


B6l 


From  BUba  Cook's  Joarnal. 


DR.    ABEMETHY.* 


Evert  body  has  beard  anecdotes  of  "  the 
late  celebrated  Dr.  Abemethy,"  and  formed 
certain  notions  of  a  rough,  blunt-spoken  man, 
who  referred  all  evils  to  the  stomach ;  who 
bad  written  a  *'  book,"  to  which  he  continu- 
ally referred  his  patients  for  instruction  and 
obedience ;  who  occasionally  ^ave  sixpences 
to  bis  iady  visitors  to  buy  skipping-ropes ; 
and  who  invented  the  odious  ''Abernethy  bis- 
cuits." Dr.  George  Macilwain,  an  old  pupil 
of  Abernethy's,  has  just  issued  two  volumes 
of  Memoirs,  which  will  be  eagerly  perused 
by  a  large  number  of  persons,  all  more  or 
less  opinionative  with  respect  to  the  memory 
of  the  Doctor. 

The  volumes  are  disappointing.  Few  ad- 
ditions in  the  way  of  anecdotes  will  gratify 
the  curious  hunter-up  of  such  veritables.  We 
read  patiently  through  many  pages  of  the 
author's  miscellaneous  reflections,  and  become 
inquiringly  hopeful  for  something  more  about 
our  subject.  Dr.  Macilwain,  however,  gives  us 
sandwich-like  chapters,  in  which  tongue  is 
abundant,  but  the  sacred  bread  of  **  life  " 
very  sparely  supplied.  Half  the  700  pages 
would  have  given  ample  space  for  the  Me- 
nunr$,\{  thegossipping  philosophy -made-easy 
bad  been  omitted.  Why  will  authors  make 
long  books  out  of  little  matter  ?  These  pnges 
recall  to  one's  mind  the  rural  experiences  of 
great  hedges  with  little  linen.  A  kind  of 
lecture-room  expository  moralizing  introduces 
us  to  all  the  facts  of  Abernethy's  life,  so  that 
throughout  we  are  kept  in  a  gentle  state  of 
wonder,  prepared  to  be  thankful  for  the  im- 
portant events  in  the  "  next  chapter." 

The  facts  of  Abemethy 's  life  offer  nothing 
remarkable.  He  was  of  mixed  Scotch  and 
Irish  descent,  bom  in  London,  on  the  3d 
April,  1764,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Stephens, 
Coleman  street  His  early  childhood  was 
passed  at  home,  but  when  about  ten  years 
old,  he  was  sent  to  Wolverhampton  Grammar 
School.     As  he  stood  in  the  sun  outside 

*  Memoirs  of  John  Abemethy,  X  Rs  S,,  with  a 
VUv  of  hie  Lectures,  Writinffs  and  Oh'trader,  By 
George  Macilwain,  F.  R.  C.  Sb  In  2  vols*  London: 
Hurst  A  Go.    1868. 


tbe  school,  carelessly  but  not  slovenly 
dressed,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
fingering  such  boyish  possessions  as  a  little 
money,  a  pencil,  a  broken  knife,  and  a  sketch 
of  "  old  Robertson's  wig,*'  there  was  an  indi- 
vidual character  about  the  lad  indicative  of 
no  ordinary  mind.  He  was  a  very  sharp  and 
a  very  passionate  boy,  too.  It  was  the  prac- 
tice in  those  times  to  "  knock  down ''  the  boys 
when  they  were  discovered  offending  by 
such  tricks  as  •* cribbing"  Latin  or  Greek 
translations.  "  To  a  boy  Who  was  naturally 
shy,  and  certainly  passionate,  such  mechani- 
cal illustrations  of  his  duty  were  likely  to 
augment  shyness  into  distrust,  and  to  exacer- 
bate an  irritable  temper  into  an  excitable 
disposition.  Abemethy,  in  chatting  over 
matters,  was  accustomed  jocularly  to  observe 
that,  for  bis  part,  he  thought  his  mind  had, 
on  some  subjects,  what  he  called  a  punctum 
saturationis  ;  so  that  '  if  you  -put  any  thing 
more  into  his  head,  you  pushed  something 
out.'  If  so,  we  may  readily  conceive  that 
this  plan  of  forcing  in  the  Greek  might  have 
forced  out  an  equivalent  quantity  of  patience 
or  self-possession.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine 
any  thing  less  appropriate  to  a  disposition  like 
Abernethy*8  than  the  discipline  in  question. 
It  was,  in  fact,  calculated  to  create  those 
very  infirmities  of  character  which  it  is  the 
object  of  education  to  correct  or  remove.'* 
He  contrived  to  learn  a  fuir  share  of  Latin 
and  some  Greek — rose  to  her  the  head  of  the 
school,  a  quick,  clever  boy,  and  more  than  an 
average  scholar.  He  left  Wolverhampton 
for  London  in  1778,  desirous  of  studying  for 
the  bar  in  that  world  of  life.  '<  Had  my  fa- 
ther let  me  be  a  lawyer,"  he  would  say,  "  I 
should  have  known  every  Act  of  Parliament 
by  heart."  This,  though  an  exaggerated 
speech,  had  truth  in  it,  for  one  of  bis  moat 
striking  characteristics  was  a  memory  equal- 
ly retentive  and  ready.  "A  gentleman,  din- 
ing with  him  on  a  birthday  of  Mrs.  Aberne- 
thy's,  had  composed  a  long  copy  of  verses  in 
honor  of.  the  occasion,  which  he  repeated  to 
the  family  circle  after  dinner.  '  Ah  1 '  said 
Abemethy,  8miliDg»  'that  is  a  good  jo^'' 


558 


DR  ABERNETH7. 


[Dec., 


now,  your  pretending  to  have  written  those 
verses.'  His  friend  simply  rejoined  that 
such  as  they  were,  they  were  certainly  his 
own.  After  a  little  good-natured  bantering, 
his  friend  began  to  evince  something  like  an- 
noyance at  Abernethy*s  apparent  incredulity ; 
80,  thinking  it  was  time  to  finish  the  joke, 
*  Why,'  said  Abernethy,  *  I  know  those  verses 
very  well,  and  could  say  them  by  heart,' 
His  friend  declared  it  to  be  impossible ; 
when  Abernethy  immediately  repeated  them 
throughout  correctly,  and  with  the  greatest 
apparent  ease." 

It  does  not  appear  why  the  boy  did  not 
follow  his  own  inclination,  and  study  for  the 
bar;  perhaps  it  was  the  accident  that  Sir 
Charles  Blicke,  a  surgeon  in  large  practice,  a 
near  neighbor  of  his  father's,  had  noticed  the 
**  sharp  boy,"  and  young  Abernethy,  know- 
ing that  Sir  Charles  rode  about  in  a  carriage,* 
saw  a  good  many  people,  and  took  a  good 
many  fees,  determined  to  be  apprenticed  to 
the  surgeon.  So  in  1779,  when  fifteen  years 
old,  he  was  bound  for  five  years  to  Sir  Charles. 
The  money-making  part  of  the  profession 
which  he  here  witnessed  had  but  few  charms 
for  him,  but  from  the  first  year  of  his  appren- 
ticeship he  was  diligent  in  noticing  and  ex- 
perimenting, and  early  perceived  the  impor- 
tance of  chemistry  in  investigating  the  func- 
tions of  different  organs,  and  in  aiding  gen- 
erally physiological  researches.  Attending 
the  lectures  of  Mr.  Pott  at  St.  Bartholomew's 
Hospital,  and  of  Sir  William  B lizard  at  the 
London  Hospital,  awakened  in  him  a  real  love 
for  his  profession.  When  lecturing  at  the 
College  of  Surgeons  in  1814,  Abernethy 
spoke  of  his  old  master  Sir  William  Blizard 
in  a  characteristic  way.  "  He  was  my  ear- 
liest instructor  in  anatomy  and  surgery,  and 
I  am  greatly  indebted  to  him  for  much  valu- 
able information.  My  warmest  thanks  are 
also  due  to  him  for  the  interest  he  excited  in 
my  mind  towards  these  studies,  and  for  his 
excellent  advice."  Again,  he  remarked  how 
Sir  William  excited  enthusiasm  by  the  beau 
ideal  which  he  drew  of  the  medical  charac- 
ter, how  it  should  never  be  tarnished  by  dis- 
ingenuous conduct,  or  by  even  the  semblance 
of  dishonor. 

That  special  qualifications  were  already 
discernible  in  Abernethy  may  be  inferred 
from  the  post  he  obtained  in  the  London  Hos- 
pital, as  anatomical  demonstrator,  while  only 
the  apprentice  of  a  surgeon  of  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's. It  was  not  long  before  Mr.  Pott 
resigned,  and  Sir  Charles  Blicke,  who  was 
assistant  surgeon,  succeeded  him,  thus  "open- 
ing to  Abernethy  an  arena  in  which  he  might 


further  mature  that  capacity  for  teaching  hts 
professMn  which  had  been,  as  we  learn  from 
his  own  testimony,  an  early  object  of  his  am- 
bition." Abernethy  was  elected  assistant 
surgeon  of  St.  Bartholomew's  in  July,  1787. 
But  this  position  was  a  miserably  cramped 
one  for  a  man  of  his  ability.  Except  in  the 
absence  of  his  senior,  he  had  officially  no- 
thing to  do.  Deriving  no  emolument  from 
the  hospital,  he  started  lectures  on  his  own 
account  in  Bartholomew  Close,  for  at  that 
time  there  was  no  proper  school  at  the  hos- 
pital. This  was  a  most  laborious  part  of 
Abernethy's  life,  and  hb  exertions  were  so 
great  and  continued,  that  doubtless  he  laid 
the  foundation  of  those  ailments  which  in 
comparatively  early  life  began  to  embitter  its 
enjoyment.  ''  His  common  practice  was  to 
rise  at  four  in  the  morning.  He  would  some- 
times go  away  into  the  country  that  he  might 
read  more  free  from  interruption." 

The  lectures  were  so  successful  that  a 
theatre  was  built  in  the  hospital,  and  Aber- 
nethy founded  the  ''school'*  by  giving 
courses  on  anatomy,  physiology  and  surgery 
in  October,  1791.  "  In  1793,  Abernethy,  by 
his  writings  and  his  lectures,  seems  to  have 
created  a  general  impression  that  he  was  a 
man  of  no  ordinary  talent.  His  papers  on 
Animal  Matter,  and  still  more  his  Eseay  <m 
the  Functions  of  the  Skin  and  Lungs,  had 
shown  that  he  was  no  longer  to  be  regarded 
merely  in  the  light  of  a  rising  surgeon,  bat 
as  one  laying  claim  to  the  additional  distinc- 
tion of  a  philosophical  physiologist.  He  now 
moved  from  St.  Mary  Axe  and  took  a  house 
in  St.  Mildred's  Court,  in  the  Poultry."  By 
1795  especial  value  was  attached  to  his 
opinion,  and  consultations  would  terminate 
for  a  time  by  some  one  observing,  "  Well, 
we  will  see  what  Mr.  Abernethy  says  on  the 
subject."  In  1796  he  became  a  Fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society,  and  in  1797  published 
the  third  part  of  the  Physiological  Essays. 
In  1799,  his  reputation  having  gone  on  rapid- 
ly increasing,  he  moved  to  Bedford  Row,  and 
never  again  changed  his  professional  residence. 

On  the  9th  January,  1800,  Abernethy 
married,  at  Edmonton,  Miss  Anne  Threlfali, 
the  daughter  of  a  retired  gentleman.  He 
had  met  her  at  Putney,  while  professionally 
visiting.  Naturally  shy  and  sensitive,  and 
wholly  absorbed  in  teaching,  studying  and 
practising,  he  wrote  the  lady  a  note,  giving 
her  a  fortnight  to  consider  his  proposal.  It 
was  successful,  and  he  obtained  a  wife  of  con- 
siderable personal  beauty  and  social  and 
moral  attractions. 

All   Abernethy   had   hitheirto  published 


DR.  ABEBNSTHT. 


1858.] 

^Tideneed  that  he  was  an  independent  think* 
er,  who  overlaid  established  conventionalisms 
with  opinions  of  his  own.  He  was  eliminat- 
ing principles  of  much  wider  application 
than  to  the  particular  cases  which  had  sug- 
gested them.  In  1804  he  published  his  ma- 
tured views  in  a  book  on  the  Constitutional 
Origin  of  Local  Diseases,  known  afterwards 
as  the  celebrated  "my  book."  In  1813 
he  accepted  the  surgeoncy  of  Christ's  Hos- 
piUl.  In  1814  he  was  appomtcd  Professor 
of  Anatomy  and  Surgery  to  the  College  of 
Surgeons.  In  1816  he  had  raised  the  school 
of  St.  Bartholomew'^  to  unrivalled  eminence 
in  its  peculiar  character. 

Lecturing  at  the  College  of  Surgeons, 
Abernethy  got  entangled  in  a  controversy 
with  Lawrence,  of  St.  Bartholomew's,  upon 
▼lews  of  life.  Lawrence  took  to  himself  per- 
sonally a  general  phrase  of  Abemethy's,  and 
soon  there  ensued  a  battle  of  words.  Phy- 
siology was  merged  into  theology.  Lawrence 
was  violent  and  scoffing ;  Abernethy  temper- 
ate and  dignified.  Dr.  Macilwain  sensibly 
says  on  this  subject :  •*  Lectures  on  compara- 
tive anatomy  do  not  render  it  necessary  to 
impugn  the  historical  correctness,  or  the  in- 
spired character,  of  the  Old  Testament^ 
Years  later  these  diflferences  were  softened 
down,  and  Abernethy  gave  a  casting-vote, 
electing  Lawrence  into  the  council  of  the 

College. 

Alter  twenty-eight  years  of  assistant  sur- 
geoncy, Abernethy,  in  1815i  was  appointed 
surgeon  to  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital.  There 
is  much  said  here  about  the  '*  hospital  sys- 
tem," into  which  we  will  not  enter,  as  being 
apart  from  the  purposes  of  our  sketch.    Al- 
though but  fifty,  Abernethy  was  complaining 
of  feeling  aged ;  he  had  led  a  fagging  life, 
and   had    never    been   remarkably    strong. 
About  this  time  he  took  a  house  at  £nfield, 
and  used  to  ride  home  from  Bedford  How  and 
its  botherations  on  his  favorite  mare  Jenny. 
The  quiet  was  very  grateful  to  him ;  from 
early  life  he  had  sutiered  from  an  irritable 
heart,   and  at   various  periods  of  life  had 
been  subjected  to  inflammatory  sore-throat. 
As  he  grew  older,  rheumatism  added  its  tor- 
;  ture  to  his  other  troubles.  •  In  1817  he  re- 
signed his  professorship  at  the  College ;  in 
1827  the  surgeoncy  to  St.  Bartholomew's, 
after  forty  years'  attachment;  in  1829  his 
appointments  at  the  College.     He  was  now 
lame,  and  walked  with  two  sticks ;  continued 
waning,  gradually  got  weaker,  and  died  on 
the  20th  April,  1881.     His  death  was  com- 
pletely tranquil.   *'  There  was  no  body  in  the 
room  with  him  but  his  servant,  to  whom  he 


569 


said :  '  Is  there  any  body  in  the  room  ?  '  His 
servant  replied :     *  No,   Sir.'       Abernethy 
then  laid  his  head  back,  and  in  a  few  seconds 
expired."     His  body  was  not  examined,  but 
valvular  disease  of  the  heart  was  suspected. 
A  private  funeral  in  Enfield  Church  followed. 
Dr.  Macilwain  declares  in  his  preface,  that 
*'  to  do  Abernethy  full  justice,  would  require 
a  republication  of  his  works,  with  an  elabo- 
rate commentary.*'     The   state   of  medical 
science  in  his  time  was  very  much  more  in- 
complete than  at  present.     The  hereditary 
system  of  symptomatic  treatment  found  an 
able  opponent  in  Abernethy  ;  and  since  his 
time  we  have  had  many  persevering  hnd  tal- 
ented men  still  further  breaking  up  the  old 
ground.     What  Abernethy   did  throughout 
his  life  was  to  insist  upon  combined  functions 
being  studied.     Cautious  and  logical  in  his 
reasonings,  free  from  any  biah,  he  gave  no 
undue  preference  to  what  are  usually  under- 
stood by  the  digestive  organs.     He  taught 
that  we  must  "  extend  our  idea  of  a  relation 
which  exists  between  two  organs,  to  tho&e 
which  exist  between  all  organs  ;  to  regard  as 
their  combined  functions  the  sustentution  of 
the  life  and  health  of  the  individual.  *  *  * 
The  absurd  idea  that  he  looked  chiefly  to  the 
stomach,  that  he  thought  of  nothing  but  blue 
pills  or  alterative  doses  of  mercury,  need 
scarcely  detain  us.     His  works  show,  and  his 
lectures  still  more  so,  that  there  was  no  or- 
gan in  the  body  which  had  not  been  the  ob- 
ject of  his  special  attention ;  in  almost  all 
cases  in  advance  of  his  time,  and  not  exceed- 
ed in  practical  value  by  any  thing  now  done, 
his  medical  treatment  was  always  very  sim- 
ple, and  if  its  more  salient  object  was  to  cor- 
rect disorders  of  the  liver,  it  was  because  he 
knew  that  the  important  relations  of  that  or- 
gan not  only  rendered  it  very  frequently  the 
cause  of  many  disorders,  but  that  there  could 
be  nothing  materially  wrong  in  the  animal 
economy,  by  which  it  must  not  be  more  or 
less  affected.     He  showed  that,  however  dis- 
similar, nervous  disturbance  was  the  essential 
element     of    disease ;    and    that    the    re- 
moval   of  that    disturbance    was    the    es- 
sential    element    of  cure."       Causes,   not 
symptoms,  must  have  been  his  watchword. 
Trephining,   aneurism,  tumors,   are  among 
the    surgery  which  he    greatly   reformed. 
Though  sensible  that  the  public  appreciation 
was  quicker  gained  by  the  fame  of  one  ampu- 
tation than  by  twenty  saved  limbs,  he  fagged 
in  teaching  and  practising  his  wiser  and  more 
humane  science,  and  would  pay  respect  to 
the  demands  for  consideration  from  all  tb* 
members  and  organs  of  our  bodies — pr^ ' 


66a 


DR.  ABERNETHY. 


[Dec, 


ring  to  restore  a  limb  rather  than  **  cut  it  off," 
lest,  in  cutting  it  off,  mortal  offense  should 
be  taken  by  some  obscure  though  influential 
constituent  of  our  little  repnblic. 

In  "the  book"  Abernethy  set  forth  the 
great  fact  of  the  reciprocal  influence  existing 
between  the  nerrou-i  system  and  the  digest- 
ive organs,  and  the  power  they  mutually 
exert  in  the  causation  and  cure  of  diseases. 
He  took  every  pains  to  show  that  the  whole 
body  sympilhizes  with  all  its  parts.  ''  That 
disturbance  of  ^  part  is  competent  to  disturb 
the  whole  system  ;  and  conversely,  that  dis- 
turbance of  the  whole  system  is  competent  to 
disturb  any  part,^^  The  nervous  origin  of 
disease,  and  ihe  necessary  tranquillizing 
treatment,  were  the  main  propositions  of  Ab- 
ernethy's  enforcement.  In  these  days  of 
physiological  classes  and  people's  anatomies, 
every  schoolboy  knows  something  true  and 
definite  about  lungs  and  stomach,  and  the 
catechisms  in  every  sensible  school  prepare 
him  to  understand  the  fuller  information  im- 
parted by  such  men  as  Abernethy  and  An- 
drew Combe.  When  Abernethy  published 
his  book,  few  but  professional  men  saw  it, 
though  its  progress  was  slow  and  quiet.  He 
got  the  reputation  of  being  clever,  but  theo- 
retical,, slightly  mad,  and  quite  enthusiastic. 
But  he  and  his  book  made  way.'  The  pub- 
lic **  got  hold  of  him,"  and  his  practice  be- 
came greater  than  he  could  attend  to.  Time 
was  invaluable ;  so,  when  patients  were 
tedious,  they  were  referred  to  "my  book, 
and  especially  page  72."  He  got  quizzed 
for  this,  of  course,  but  it  saved  time,  and 
gained  he-ilth,  too,  if  the  book  was  obeyed. 

The  public  stick  to  the  Abernethy  anec- 
dotes about  the  stomach,  and  no  doubt  feel, 
as  Englishmen,  a  gruff  pleasure  in  hearing 
tales  of  that  beloved  organ.  They  feed  it 
kindly  and  stupidly;  they  enconrage  it  to 
misbehave,  and  then  walk  it  off  to  the  doctor, 
prepared  to  hear  advice,  which  they  mean  to 
disobey,  and  to  wonder  (as  a  patient  of  Aber- 
nethy's  did)  that  if  they  do  eat  or  drink  too 
much,  "  what  the  devil  is  it  to  him  ?** 

"  Abernethy  would  sometimes  offend,  not 
80  much  by  the  manner  as  by  the  matter,  by 
saying  what  were  very  salutary,  but  very  un- 
pleasant truths,  and  of  which  the  patient  per- 
naps  only  felt  the  sting."  Many  anecdotes 
bear  his  spirit,  whose  authenticity  cannot  be 
proved.  To  his  hospital  patients  he  was  ever 
kind  and  courteous:  "Private  patients,  if 
they  do  not  like  me,  can  go  elsewhere ;  but 
the  poor  devils  in  the  hospital  I  am  bound  to 
take  care  of." 

There  is  complete  silence  upon  the  point 


of  Abemethy's  domestic  life.  His  marriage 
is  announced,  an  anecdote  appended,  and 
nothing  further  is  stated.  At  the  end  of  the 
book  there  is  this  sole  paragraph : — "  As  a 
companion,  Abernethy  was  most  agreeable 
and  social,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  that 
is,  not  gregarious.  Naturally  shy,  numbers 
neither  suited  his  taste  nor  his  ideas ;  but  the 
society  of  his  family,  or  a  few  social  friends 
with  whom  he  could  feel  unreserved,  was  bis 
greatest  pleasure.  On  such  occasions,  when 
in  health,  he  would  be  the  life  and  joy  of  his 
circle.  There  never  was,  perhaps,  any  one 
more  ministered  to  by  an  enduring  affection 
whilst  living,  nor  in  regard  to  whose  memory 
the  regrets  of  affection  have  been  more  com- 
bined with  the  hallowing  influences  of  respect 
and  veneration.  At  home  he  would  some- 
times be  as  hilarious  as  a  boy ;  at  other  times 
he  would  lie  down  on  the  rug  after  dinner, 
and  either  chat  or  sleep  away  the  short  time 
that  his  avocations  allowed  him  to  give  to 
that  indulgence.  Occasionally  he  would  go 
to  the  theatre,  which  he  sometimes  enjoyed 
very  much. 

"  One  circumstance  on  the  occasion  of  his 
marriage  is  very  characteristic  of  him,  namely, 
his  not  allowing  it  to  interrupt,  even  for  a  day, 
a  duty  with  which  he  rarely  suffered  any 
thing  to  interfere — namely,  the  lecture  at  the 
hospital.  ♦  •  •  Many  y  irs  after  this, 
I  met  him  coming  into  hospital  one  day,  a 
litlle  before  two,  (the  hour  of  the  lecture,) 
and  seeing  him  rather  smartly  dressed,  with 
a  white  waistcoat,  I  said : 

" '  You  are  very  gay  to-day.  Sir !' 

"  *  Ay  !'  said  he ;  *  one  of  the  girls  was  mar- 
ried this  morning.' 

"  '  Indeed,  Sir,'  said  I.  *  You  should  have 
given  yourself  a  holiday  on  such  an  occasion, 
and  not  come  down  to  lecture.' 

"  •  Nay,'  returned  he.  *  Egad  1  I  came 
down  to  lecture  the  day  I  was  married  my* 
self  1' 

"  On  another  occasion,  I  recollect  his  being 
sent  for  to  a  case  just  before  lecture.  The 
case  was  close  in  the  neighborhood,  and  it 
being  a  question  of  time,  he  hesitated  a  little ; 
but  being  pressed  to  go,  he  started  off.  He 
had,  however,  hardly  passed  the  gates  of  the 
hospital  before  the  clock  struck  two,  when, 

all  at  once,  he  said,  *  No,  Til  be if  1  do !' 

and  returned  to  the  lecture- room." 

Of  his  abilities  as  a  lecturer  we  have  fre- 
quent  mention.  By  the  way,  on  this  ques- 
tion of  lecturing  our  biographer  come^  in 
with  quite  a  natural  history  of  lecturers,  and 
goodness  knows  why  that  was  put  in,  or  what 
is  the  use  of  it,  in  Memoirs  of  John  Aber- 


1853.] 


DR.  ABBRNKTHY. 


661 


nethy.  Upon  many  other  subjects  we  are 
supplied  with  the  same  sort  of  preparatory 
essay.  This  would  be  passable  in  a  lecture- 
room,  whe^e  people  pay  their  shilliugs  and 
their  patience  to  learn  that  possibly  they  may 
possess  in  their  water-butts  at  home  a  hydra- 
headed  animalcule  like  the  restless  object  be- 
fore them;  but  when  such  exuberant  sen- 
tences preface  the  fact  of  a  marriage,  we 
begin  to  think  of  Gold  Stick  walking  before 
Trumpery.  To  a  natural  capacity  for  com- 
municating his  ideas  to  others,  Abemethy 
had  added  the  practical  experience  of  many 
years  of  study  and  observation.  Perfectly 
at  ease,  yet  without  presumption ;  strikingly 
dramatic,  but  free  from  grimace  or  gesticula- 
tion, he  was  cosy  with  his  audience,  as  if  they 
were  all  about  to  investigate  something  to^ 
gether,  and  not  as  if  they  were  going  to  be 
"  lectured  at"  at  all.  Quiet  liveliness  lighted 
up  his  face,  and  as  his  conversational  lecture 
proceeded,  you  saw  gleams  of  mirth,  arch- 
ness, and  benevolence;  always  the  same 
quaint,  unaffected  humor,  making  things  go 
very  amusingly.  <<  He  seemed  always  to  be 
telling  not  so  much  what  he  knew,  as  that 
which  he  did  not  know." 

In  consultation,  Abemethy  felt  his  supe- 
riority, but  never  forgot  the  world  of  know- 
ledge beyond  him,  or  set  himself  up  as  a 
standard.  He  had  a  practical  penetration 
into  facts  at  once,  and  went  straight  to  the 
point  with  which  alone  he  had  to  grapple. 
Of  his  humorous,  dramatic  expression,  no 
analysis  can  be  given.  '^Briliiant  as  his  en- 
dowments \^re,  they  were  graced  by  moral 
qualities  of  the  first  order." 

We  append  two  illustrative  anecdotes. 
'I  On  one  occasion,  Sir  James  Earle,  his 
senior,  was  reported  to  have  given  Abemethy 
to  understand,  that  on  the  occurrence  of  a 
certain  event,  on  which  he  would  obtain  an 
accession  of  property,  he.  Sir  James,  would 
certainly  resign  the  surgeoncy  of  the  hospi- 
tal. About  the  time  that  the  event  occurred. 
Sir  James,  happening  one  day  to  call  on 
Abemethy,  was  reminded  of  what  he  had 
been  understood  to  have  promised ;  Sir  James, 
however,  having,  we  suppose,  a  different  im- 
pression of  the  facts,  denied  ever  having  given 
any  such  pledge.  The  affirmative  and  nega- 
tive were  more  than  once  exchanged,  and  not 
in  the  most  courteous  manner.  When  Sir 
James  was  going  to  take  his  leave,  Abemethy 
opened  the  door  for  him,  and  as  he  had  al- 
ways something  quaint  or  humorous  to  close 
a  conversation  with,  he  said,  at  parting: 
'  Well,  Sir  James,  it  comes  to  this :  you  say 
VOL.  XXX.    NO.  IV. 


that  you  did  not  promise  to  resign  the  sur- 
geoncy at  the  hospital ;  I,  on  the  contrary, 
affirm  that  you  did ;  now  all  I  have  to  add  is, 
the.  liar !'  " 

"A  gentleman  had  met  with  a  severe  ac- 
cident, a  compound  dislocation  of  the  ankle, 
an  accident  that  Abernethy  was  the  chief 
means  of  redeeming  from  habitual  amputa- 
tion. The  accident  happened  near  Winter- 
slow  Hut,  on  the  road  between  Andover  and 
Salisbury ;  and  Mr.  Davis,  of*  Andover,  was 
called  in.  Mr.  Davis  placed  the  parts  ri^ht, 
and  then  said  to  the  patient:  'Now  wnen 
you  get  well,  and  have,  as  you  most  likely 
will,  a  stiff  joint,  your  friends  will  tell  you : 
'^Ahl  you  had  a  country  doctor;"  so.  Sir,  I 
would  advise  you  to  send  for  a  London  sur- 
geon to  eonfirm  or  correct  what  I  have  done.' 
The  patient  consented,  and  sent  to  London 
for  Abernethy,  who  reached  the  spot  by  the 
mail  about  two  in  the  morning.  He  looked 
carefully  at  the  limb,  and  saw  that  it  was  in 
a  good  position,  and  was  told  what  had  been 
done.  He  then  said :  '  I  am  come  a  long 
way,  Sir,  to  do  nothing.  I  jnight,  indeed, 
pretend  to  do  something ;  but  as  any  avoid- 
able motion  of  the  limb  must  necessarily  be 
mischievous,  I  should  only  do  harm.  You 
are  in  very  good  hands,  and  I  dare  stiy  will 
do  very  well.  You  may,  indeed,  come  home 
with  a  stiff  joint,  but  that  is  better  than  a 
wooden  leg.'  He  took  a  check  for  his  fee^ 
sixty  guineas,  and  made  his  way  back  to 
London." 

Abernethy  was  habitually  careless  of 
money,  and  though  he  left  his  family  com- 
fortably provided  for,  few  men,  we  thinks 
would  have  failed  to  make  much  more  money 
where  opportunity  was  so  available. 

Mystery  is  becoming  less  potent.  While 
all  other  sciences  are  popularized  and  pro- 
gressing, medicine  and  surgery  are  becoming 
less  recondite.  Our  own  bodies  ought  to  he 
known  to  us  and  receive  our  care.  More 
men  like  John  Abemethy  are  wanted,  and 
then  we  should  have  more  advances  towards 
a  science  of  life.  The  great  strides  into  al- 
most a  new  path  which  Dr.  Abernethy  made, 
testify  to  tKe  superiority  and  vigor  of  his  in- 
tellect. One  man  can  see  in  the  dark  about 
as  well  as  another.  Dr.  Abernethy,  how- 
ever, sought  to  remove  the  conjecture  and 
uncertainty  from  the  practice  of  medicine  and 
surgery.  Knowledge  has  gradually  risen  up 
U)  approve  and  recognize  his  efforts.  Quack- 
ery must  decrease  as  the  Unity  of  Life  is 
better  understood  by  the  profession  and  by 
the  public. 

se 


662       CAMILLE  DESMOULIHS.  THK  ATT0RNEY-GE5NERAL  OP  THE  LAMPPOST,       [Dec, 


From  Chmmbert's  Edinburgh  Journal. 

CAMILLE  DESMOULINS,  THE  ATTORNEY-GENERAL  OF  THE 

LAMP-POST. 


Thb  stigma  branded  on  the  revolutionary 
brow  of  Camille  Desmoalins  has  been  com- 
monly held  to  be — not  effaced  indeed — far 
enough  from  that — ^but  softened  and  sub- 
dued in  color  and  depth,  by  the  stand  he* 
finally  took  against  the  excesses  of  his  ultra 
cooperatives.  Such  survivors  of  the  Reign 
of  Terror  as  were  in  prison  during  the  De- 
cember of  1793  and  the  January  of  1794, 
have  borne  emphatic  witness  to  the  impres- 
sion produced  on  them  by  the  early  numbers 
of  his  Vieuz  Cordelier,  the  paper  in  which 
he  strove  to  inculcate  the  policy  of  mercy. 
Tbe  impression  was  compared  by  them  to  the 
first  ray  of  the  ^  sun  gleaming  athwart  their 
dungeon-bars.  *'  The  man,"  remarks  a  liv- 
ing French  essayist,  "  who  procured  for  his 
fellow-creatures,  bound  in  misery  and  iron, 
so  inspiring  a  light  of  hope,  and  who  paid 
the  penalty  of  that  good  work  with  his  blood, 
deserves  some  measure  of  forgiveness.  It 
must  be  added,  that  he  prodigiously  needs  it." 

A  life  of  this  ^'Attomey-GeDeral  of  the 
Lamp-post " — for  such  was  Camille's  nick- 
name— has  recently  been  publbhed  in  France 
by  M.  Edouard  Fleury.  Among  others, 
MM.  Cuvillier  Fleury  and  8t.  Beuve  have 
also  discussed  him  lately  in  their  character- 
istic '*  studies."  His  eight  volumes  of  re- 
publican polemics  were  appealed  to  by  him- 
self as  containing  a  complete  justification  of 
the  integrity  of  his  motives  and  the  consis- 
tency of  his  conduct,  and  as  forming,  to  use 
his  own  words,  "  a  pillow  whereon  his  con- 
science could  repose  in  peace,  while  awaiting 
the  award  of  his  judges  and  of  posterity. ' 
These  writings  are  the  chief  subject  investi- 
gated in  the  recent  biographies — writings  of 
which  Lord  Brougham  has  said,  that,  ex- 
cepting the  pamphlets  of  Si^yea,  they  are 
the  only  relics  of  that  countless  progeny 
with  which  the  revolutionary  press  swarmed, 
that  have  retained  any  celebrity.  This  ex- 
emption fiom  the  common  lot,  Camille  owes, 
n  his  Lordship's  opinion, ''  not  merely  to  the 
remarkable  crisis  in  which  his  letters  [in  the 


Vieux  Cordelier']  appeared,  the  beginning  of 
general  disgust  and  alarm  at  the  sanguinary 
reign  of  the  Triumvirate  [Robespierre,  Cou- 
thon,  and  St.  Just] ;  for  these  pieces  are  ex- 
ceedingly well  written,  with  great  vigor  of 
thought,  much  happy  classical  allusion,  and 
in  a  style  far  more  pure  than  the  ordinary 
herd  of  those  employed  who  pandered  for 
the  multitude."  This  comparative  kind  of 
eulogy,  when  the  objects  of  comparison  are 
considered,  is,  after  all,  of  equivocal  value ; 
and  we  fear  the  late  ventilation  of  Camille's 
life  and  literature  has  not  served  to  exalt  the 
public  estimate  of  either,  or  to  confirm,  by  a 
recommendation  to  mercy,  the  favorable  tone 
of  Lord  Brougham's  summing  up. 

Camille  Dosmoulins  was  borne  at  Ooise, 
in  Picardy,  in  the  year  1760.  Of  the  baili- 
wick of  that  town,  his  father  was  lieutenant- 
general.  Camille  was  educated  at  the  col- 
lege of  Louis-le-Grand,  and  distinguished 
himself  there,  especially  in  classics.  Robes- 
pierre was  a  fellow-student  f  and  it  waa 
noted,  that  throughout  his  college  course, 
the  young  "sea-green  incorrupUble '*  waa 
never  once  seen  to  smile,  but  passed  through 
his  terms  '*  gloomy,  solitary,  austere,  intent 
upon  his  work,  careless  of  relaxation,  averse 
to  amusement,  without  a  confidant,  or  friend, 
or  even  companion."  Camille,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  a  gay,  capricious,  volatile  bein^ — 
creature  of  impulse  and  "  mixed  moods  ' — 
yet  a  steady  student  of  those  antique  Ro- 
mans whom  he  was  one  day  to  quote  so 
largely  in  pamphlet  and  pasquinade. 

Col  lege- days  over,  he  entered  the  profes- 
sion of  the  law.  Unfortunately  for  his  am- 
bition in  that  capacity,  he  could  get  no  prac- 
tice ;  so  his  ambition  looked  out  for  another 
channel.  This  it  soon  found — and  a  turbid, 
blood-red,  overflowing  channel  it  proved — ^in 
the  excitement  of  the  year  1789.  The  Rev- 
olution had  begun,  and  Camille's  notoriety 
kept  pace  with  it — ^rew  with  its  growth,  and 
strengthened  with  its  strength.  He  com- 
menced, as  the  Revolutioft  also  commenoed — 


1853.]      CAMILLE  DESMOULINS^  THE  ATTORNETGENERAL  OF  THE  LAMP-POST.        563 


mildly.  His  d^but  was  even  in  the  subdued 
radiance  of  the  milky- way  of  verse — in  mawk- 
ish odes,  buch  as  that  wherein  he  sublimely 
compared  Necker,  just  then  the  all-popular 
lawgiver  of  France,  to  Moses  descending  from 
Sinai  with  the  sacred  tables  in  his  hands.  It 
was  Camille  who,  on  the  12 th  of  July,  1780, 
two  days  before  the  taking  of  the  Bastile, 
leaped  on  a  table,  a  sword  in  one  hand,  a  pis- 
tol in  the  other,  and  proclaimed  the  news  of 
Necker's  dismissal ;  then  lore  a  leaf  from  a 
tree,  as  a  cockade,  and  saw  with  delight  his 
example  followed  by  the  multitude  he  ha- 
rangued, until  the  trees  around  were  stripped. 
The  die  was  now  cast,  and  he  must  stand  the 
hazard  of  it. 

France  Enfranchised  was  his  first  pam- 
phlet, breathing  threatenings  and  slaughter 
against  every  shade  of  conservatism  in  the 
land.     St.  Beuve  denounces  it  as  both  insane 
and  atrocious.     There  is  no  foreshadowing  in 
it  of  the  opposition  to  wholesale  extermina- 
tion which  he  was  at  length  to  evince,  when 
too  late.     Next  came  his  Discourse  to  the 
Parisians  on  the  Lampposty*  in  which   he 
spocts  with  his  subject  in  flippant,  heartless 
insolence — a   brochure   "execrable  in  spirit 
and  tendency/'  but  full  of  sallies  infinitely 
delightful  to  those  he  addressed.     In  it  he 
jumbles    together,   in   his   wonted   fashion, 
things  old  and  new — the  Roman  classics  and 
the  sansculotte  press  ;  Louis  XVI.  and  The- 
odosius  the  Great ;  M.  Bailly  and  the  *'  May- 
or of  Thebes,"  Epaminondas.     His  perform- 
■  ance  has  been  compared  to  the  impudent 
gestures  of  a  Parisian  gamin,  boldly  strutting 
in  front  of  the  regimental  band,  mimicking 
fife  and  drum,  and    hitting  off  the    drum- 
major  to  the  life.     Such  a  gamin — merry, 
mischievous,  malicious,  was  Camille.     Mira- 
beau  saw  at  a  glance  the  importance  of  se- 
curing such  a  popular  agitator,  took  him  to 
Yerhailies,  and  employed  him  for  a  fortnight 
as   his   secretary.     Danlon,  too,  paid   him 
marked  attention,  won  him,  and  kept  and 
used  him  to  the  last.     He  echoed  in  print 
what  Danton  shouted  from  the  tribune.     As 
for  hi/nself,  Camille  was  no  orator ;  he  labored 
under  an  impediment  of  speech,  and  could 
take  hardly  any  part  in  the  public  debates. 
An  examination  of   these  and  his  other 

*  This  is  not  a  good  translation  of  lant&me — ^the 
lamp  which  swung  in  the  middle  of  the  etreet,  sus- 
pended by  a  rope,  extending  from  one  side  to  the 
other.  The  rope  was  long  enough  to  admit  of  the 
lamp  beipg  lowered  when  required ;  and  the  sup- 
plemental supply  was  a  convenient  resource  for  the 
Parisian  revolutionary  mob  when  they  desired  the 
ezoitement  of  an  execution.  Hence  the  ominous 
cry  of  the  period-^"  d  la  lanterner 


writings — such  as  the  JRevolutions  of  France 
and  Brabant,  (1789—91,)  Brissot  Un- 
masked,  History  of  the  Brissotins,  <fec. — will 
hardly  confirm  Lord  Brougham's  opinion, 
that  there  is  nothing  vile  or  low  in  Camille's 
taste,  "  nothing  like  that  most  base  style  of 
extravagant  figure  and  obscene  allusion  which 
disgusts  us  in  the  abominable  writings  of  the 
.Hcberts  and  Marats  f '  and  that  neither  are 
our  feelings  shocked  by  any  thing  of  the  same 
ferocity  which  reigned  through  their  con- 
stant appeals  to  the  brutal  passions  of  the 
mob.  What  difference  there  is,  is  of  degree, 
not  of  kind ;  Camille  is  more  spiriiuel  and 
piquant,  more  sportive  and  refined ;  but  he 
is  revoitingly  cruel,  notwithstanding,  and 
offensively  coarse.  His  Revolutions  of  France 
provoked  a  warning  from  Andr6  Cbenier  in 
August,  1790 — an  emphatic  and  severe  pro- 
test against  confounding  the  distinctions  be- 
tween patriotism  and  anarchy.  But  Camille 
believed  himself  equal  to  the  occasion — be- 
lieved himself  to  be  part  and  parcel  of  the 
solid,  unmovable  breakwater,  which  could 
and  would  take  up  its  parable  against  the 
waves,  and  say  :  **  Thus  far  ye  may  come, 
and  no  farther ;  here,  proud  waves,  shall  ye 
be  stayed !"  This  confidence  in  his  party 
and  in  himself  was  soon  to  be  shaken  and 
plucked  up  by  the  roots.  It  first  suffered  a 
heavy  blow  and  great  discouragement  by  the 
execution  of  the  Girondins. 

Against  them  his  own  voice  had  been 
savagely  and  systematically  uplifted.  But 
when  the  guillotine  thinned  their  ranks  with 
such  ominous  swiftness,  he  became  alarmed. 
Surely  that  dear  Robespierre  was  getting  a 
little  beyond  the  length  of  his  tether.  Ver- 
gniaud  gone,  and  the  Rolands,  and  all  that 
zealous  party,  whose  turn  would  come  next? 
Camille  had  been  what  Lamartine  calls  the 
'^Aristophanes  of  an  irritated  people,"  whom 
he  had  taught,  day  by  day,  and  line  upon 
line,  to  revile  good  order,  moderation,  and 
constitutional  measures.  ''The  day  came 
when  he  required  for  himself  and  young  wife, 
whom  he  adored,  that  pity  which  it  had  been 
his  cue  to  extirpate  from  the  popular  heart. 
He  found,  in  his  turn,  only  the  brutal  derision 
of  the  multitude,  and  he  himself  then  became 
sad  and  sorry  for  the  first  and  last  time."  It 
was  now  time  for  this  Aristophanes  to  give 
up  farce- writing.  Tragedy  was  the  order  of 
the  day,  and  in  tragedy  was  his  histrionic 
career  to  close. 

The  gay  temperament  of  the  man — so  op- 
posed to  that  of  Robespierre  or  St.  Just — 
conciliates  in  his  favor  many  who  will  give 
no  quarter  to  the  memory  of  his  fellow-re?-. 


594       CAMILLE  BESMOULIKS^  THE  ATT0RNET-6EKERAL  OF  THE  LAMP-POOT.       [Dec., 


olutionists.  "Poor  Camille"  is  a  not  unfa- 
miliar exclamation ;  but  who  says  "  Poor 
Danton."  or  "Poor  Robespierre,"  or  "Poor 
Marat?"  Carljle  sketches  him  as  ''he  with 
the  long  curling  locks,  with  the  face  of  dingy 
blackguardism,  wondrously  irradiated  with 
genius ;"  and  after  chnracterizing  him  as  "  a 
fellow  of  infinite  shrewdness,  wit,  nay,  hu- 
mor ;  one  of  the  sprightliest,  clearest  souls  tn 
all  those  millions,"  thus  apostrophizes  him: 
"  Thou,  poor  Camille  1  say  what  they  will  of 
thee,  it  were  but  falsehood  to  pretend  one 
did  not  almost  love  thee,  thou  headlong  light- 
ly sparkling  man!'*  Mignet's  eccount  of 
"  this  brilliant  and  fiery  young  man  "  is,  that 
although  approving  the  movements  of  the 
Revolution  in  all  its  exaggerations  up  to  this 
lime,  his  heart  was  "  tender  and  gentle  ;*' 
that  he  had  praised  the  revolutionary  regime 
because  he  believed  it  indispensable  for  the 
establishment  of  a  republic,  and  cooperated 
in  the  ruin  of  the  Gironde,  because  he  feared 
the  dissensions  of  the  republic  ;  that  for  the 
republic  he  bad  sacrificed  his  scruples  and 
wishes,  even  justice  and  humanity — giving 
all  to  his  party,  in  the  belief  that  his  party 
teas  the  republic,  sole  and  indivisible.  But 
the  wholesale  destruction  of  the  Qironde 
deputies  opened  his  eyes.  He  devoted  his 
pen  henceforth  to  more  righteous  ends — be- 
ginning in  December,  1793,  the  publication  of 
tire  famous  Vieux  Cordelier.  That  he  was 
not  violent  in  his  rta.tionary  measures  may, 
however,  be  significantly  illustrated  in  the 
fact,  that  in  the  early  numbers  he  is  civil 
enough  to  Marat  to  hail  him  as  "divine!" 
Indeed,  Robespierre  was  concerned  in  these 
earlier  numbers,  which  were  sent  to  him  for 
revisal  and  correction.  Camille  is  uneasily  so- 
licitous to  assure  every  one  that  he  still  exults 
in  the  bonr^i  rouge,  and  in  his  solicitude  pro- 
claims himself  still  a  sound  revolutionist — nay, 
more,  a  brigand — and  glories  in  the  name. 

But  gradually  he  takes  a  more  honorable 
and  decisive  stand.  To  him  belongs  the 
credit  of  being  the  first,  as  St.  Beuve  remarks, 
in  the  group  of  oppressors  and  terrorists,  to 
separate  himself  from  the  unclean  herd,  and 
to  say,  in  so  doing :  "  No,  Liberty  is  not  a 
ballet-girl,  or  a  bonnet  rouge,  or  foul  linen,  or 
rags  and  tatters.  Liberty  is  goodness,  is 
reason.  Would  you  have  me  acknowledge 
Liberty,  and  cast  myself  at  her  feet,  and 
pour  out  my  blood  to  the  last  drop  for  her 
sake  ?  Well,  then,  open  your  prisons,  and 
set  free  those  200,000  prisoners  whom  you 
call  suspects.*^  Again,  he  thus  appeals  to  the 
^Convention  against  Hebert's  vile  faction: 
"What!  while  the  1,200,000  soldiers  of  the 


French  people  daily  face  the  redoubts  bris- 
tling with  the  most  murderous  batteries,  and 
fly  from  victory  to  victory,  shall  we,  France's 
deputies  and  representatives — we,  who  can- 
not, like  soldiers,  fall  in  the  shades  of  night, 
killed  in  the  dark,  and  with  no  witness  of  our 
bravery — we,  whose  death  in  the  cause  of 
liberty  cannot  but  be  glorious,  impressive, 
and  exhibited  before  the  whole  nation,  before 
Europe,  before  posterity — shall  toe  be  more 
timid  than  our  troops?  Shall  we  fear  to 
expose  ourselves,  to  look  Bouchotte  [a  He- 
bertist]  in  the  face  ?  Shall  we  be  afraid 
of  braving  the  fury  of  Fire  Duchesne,  [He- 
bert's  literary  organ,]  when  by  so  doing  we 
may  win  the  victory  which  France  looks  for 
from  us — victory  over  ultra- revolutionists,  as 
well  as  counter-revolutionists — victory  over 
all  the  intriguers,  all  the  knaves,  all  the  ambi- 
tious, all  the  enemies  of  the  country  ?"  "  Let 
fools  and  fops,"  he  says  elsewhere,  "  call  me 
a  '  moderate '  if  they  will.  I  do  not  blush 
at  not  being  more  furious  than  Marcus  Bru- 
tus ;  and  observe  what  Brutus  wrote :  '  You 
would  do  better,  my  dear  Cicero,  to  strain 
every  nerve  to  wind  up  the  civil  wars,  than  to 
exercise  your  wrath  and  pursue  your  resent- 
ments against  the  vanquished.' " 

Something  must  be  done  with  this  Vieux 
Cordelier;  whose  arrows  were  as  hot  burning 
coals  to  the  objects  of  its  assault.  Hebert  de- 
nounced Camille  as  the  hireling  of  priests  and 
aristocrats,  and  demanded  his  expulsion  from 
the  Jacobin  Club.  Barr^re,  Secretary  of  the 
Committee  of  Public  Safety,  thundered 
against  him  before  Committee  and  Convention. 
Danton  found  it  convenient  for  a  while  to  dis- 
own him.  Robespierre,  that  dear  Robespierre, 
sternly  said  at  the  tribune  :  "  His  writings 
are  dangerous.  They  cherish  the  hope  of 
our  enemies.  They  court  public  malignity. 
He  is  a  child  led  away  by  bad  companions. 
We  must  be  severe  against  his  writings." 
And  the  speaker  ended  with  a  motion  to 
burn  the  collected  numbers  of  the  Vieux 
Cordelier.  Here  Camille  suggested  that  to 
bum  was  not  to  answer — ^and  reminded  his 
old  school- fellow  that  he  had  shared  in  the 
management  of  the  doomed  paper.  This 
was  adding  fuel  to  the  fire,  as  poor  Camille 
found  speedily  enough. 

Three  years  before,  when  Camille  had 
wedded  his  beautiful  and  youthful  Lucile, 
the  marriage  contract  had  been  signed  by  no 
fewer  than  sixty  of  his  political  friends  and 
allies — deputies,  journalists,  pamphleteers, 
<&c.  Now,  at  the  very  commencement  of  the 
Vieux  Cordelier,  there  remained  of  these 
threescore  publicists,  two  only — ^Danton  and 


]  853.]     GAMILLE  DESMOaUNS^  THE  ATTQSNET-OENERAL  OF  THE  LAMP-FOfiT.        56( 


Robespierre — all  the  reel  were  either  in  pri- 
son, or  guillotined,  or  in  exile.  It  is  thought 
that  Camille  might  have  eseaped  the  j)ro- 
scriptions  which  involved  Danton  and  his 
party,  so  far  as  Robespierre  was  concerned 
— Lord  Brougham  holding  it  certain  that 
Camille's  doctrine  in  favor  of  more  moderate 
courses  was  not  so  much  dreaded  by  that 
'  terrible  chief  as  by  others,  especially  St. 
Just.  "  But  a  sarcastic  expression  in  which 
he  indulged  at  the  expense  of  that  vain  and 
remorseless  fanatic,  sealed  his  doom.  St. 
Just  was  always  puflfed  up  with  his  sense  of 
self-importance,  and  showed  this  so  plainly 
in  his  demeanor,  that  Camille  said  he  '  car- 
ried his  headlike  the  holy  sacrament.'  'And 
I,'  said  St.  Just,  on  the  sneer  being  reported 
to  him — '  and  I  will  make  him  carry  kia  head 
like  St.  Denis' — alluding  to  the  legend  of 
that  saint  having  walked  from  Paris  to  his 
grave  carrying  his  head  under  his  arm." 
Accordingly,  by  St.  Just's  impeachment, 
Camille  was  included  with  Danton  and  the 
rest  in  the  order  of  arrest. 

On  the  last  night  of  March,  1794,  he  was 
awakened  by  the  clatter  of  the  butt-end  of 
a  musket  against  his  bed-room  door.  A 
guard  of  soldiers  had  come  for  him.  **  This, 
then,"  he  bitterly  cried,  •'  is  the  reward  of 
the  first  voice  of  the  Revolution  !"  For  the 
last  time  he  pressed  his  youDg  wife  to  his 
heart,  caressed  his  infant  child,  and  followed 
his  grim  captors  to  the  Luxembourg.  Lu- 
cile  wrote  a  passionate  letter  of  supplication 
to  Robespierre,  but  it  was  never  delivered. 
The  letters  of  Camille  to  her  form  a  touching 
episode  in  Lamartine's  prose  epic  of  the  Gi- 
rondins. 

At  his  trial,  Camille  rose  to  read  the  de- 
fense he  had  prepared,  but  was  forbidden  by 
the  president,  Hermann,  who  refused  him 
liberty  of  speech.  Camille  angrily  reseated 
himself,  and  tearing  up  his  manuscript,  tossed 
the  fragments  away.  Then,  like  the  impul- 
sive trifler  he  was,  he  changed  his  demeanor 
from  indignation  to  buffoonery,  and  stooping 
to- collect  again  the  scattered  bits  of  paper, 
he  rolled  them  into  **  globular  pellets,"  and 
began  throwing  them  at  the  head  of  his 
merciless  kinsman,  Fouquier-Tinville,  the 
public  accuser,  and  who  owed  to  Camille  his 
appointment  to  that  office  in  1793-94.  Dan- 
ton joined  his  fellow-prisoner  in  this  petty 
paper- war.  Of  course  they  were  found 
guilty,  and  condemned  to  death.  The  peo- 
ple were  disposed  to  side  with  them  against 
their  judges,  and  raised  a  movement  in  their 
favor,  which,  for  want  of  organization,  came 
to  naught ;  but  it  is  alleged  that  if  Lucile 


had  not  been  arrested  during  the  night — if 
she  had  given,  by  her  presence,  one  voice 
and  one  passion  more  to  the  tumult,  the  ac- 
cused would  have  been  saved  and  the  Com- 
mittee vanquished.  When  the  court  rose, 
Camille  clung  to  his  seat,  and  could  only  be 
removed  by  actual  force. 

The  agitation  of  his  last  hours  in  prison 
was  extreme.  He  tried  to  read  those  two 
dolorous  English  books.  Young's  Mghi 
Thoughts  and  Hervey's  Meditations;  but 
continually  the  volume  fell  from  his  feverish 
grasp — and  continually,  at  intervals  of  a  few 
minutes,  he  would  invoke  wiih  choking  voice 
the  names  of  his  wife  and  child :  "  0  my 
Lucile  I  0  my  Horace  1  what  will  become  of 
you  ?"  When  the  executioner  laid  hands  on 
him,  to  bind  him  previous  to  leaving  the 
prison,  he  struggled  as  if  for  his  life,  and  as 
though  by  such  struggle  life  was  jet  a  possi* 
biiity.  Oaths  and  curses  showered  from  his 
lips — his  fury  was  without  bounds — it  was 
found  necessary  to  prostrate  his  writhing 
body,  while  the  act  of  binding  him  and  crop- 
ping his  flowing  locks  was  performed.  On 
his  way  to  the  scaffold  he  kept  up  one  wild 
vociferation,  addressed  to  the  multitude: — 
*^  Generous  people  I  unhappy  people  f  you 
are  duped,  you  are  undone,  your  best  friends 
are  sacrificed  !  Recognize  me  !  Save  me  I 
I  am  Camille  Desmoulins !  It  was  I  who 
called  you  to  arms  on  the  fourteenth  of  July  ; 
I  it  was  who  gave  you  the  national  cockade." 
His  appeal  was  urged  with  convulsive  ges- 
tures, with  the  vehemence  of  absolute  frenzy  ; 
in  his  agonizing  fury  he  so  *'  loosened  his 
cords,  and  tore  and  tumbled  his  coat  and 
shirt,  that  his  thin  and  bony  chest  was  almost 
bare."  Lord  Broug^ham  says,  that  he  met 
death  with  *'  perfect  boldness,"  though  his 
'*  indignation  at  the  gross  perfidy  and  crying 
injustice  to  which  he  was  sacrificed  "  enraged 
him  so  as  to  make  his  demeanor  "  less  calm 
than  his  great  courage  would  have  prescribed." 
At  any  rate,  this  dismal  exhibition  told  against 
him.  The  mob  only  responded  wilh  hoot- 
ings.  Danton  reproached  him  for  his  seem- 
ing imitation  of  Madame  du  Barry,  and 
growled  impatiently  in  his  ear :  "  Be  quiet, 
and  never  mind  this  filthy  rabble  1" 

Under  the  shadow  of  the  guillotine  itself, 
he  recovered  in  some  measure  his  calmness. 
The  popular  herald  of  the  Revolution,  await- 
ing the  guillotine-stroke  of  the  Revolution — 
it  is  a  strange  sight,  and  an  instructive. 

Bat,  in  these  cases, 
We  btill  have  jadgroent  here ;  that  we  but  teach 
Bloody  instructions,  which,  being  taught,  return 


566 


ARAOO  AKD  AUOUBTB  ST.  HILAIBE. 


pec. 


To  plagne  the  inventor :  this  even-handed  jastice 
Commends  the  ingredients  of  oar  poisoned  chalice 
o  our  own  lipe. 

On  the  scaffold,  Camille  pressed   in  his 
hand  a  lock  of  his  wife's  hair,  which  he  had 
worn  next  his  breast,  and  which  Danton,  at 
his  entreaty,   had   taken   thence   when   the 
bonds  had  restrained   his  own  movements. 
It  WAS  his  last  consolation,  this  glossy  carl 
of  the  bride  at  whose  wedding  that  dear 
Robespierre  had  probably  danced,  and  per- 
haps almost  smiled.     And  now  Camille  drew 
near  to  the  fatal  machine,  whose  insatiable 
greed  for  gore  he  had  long  known  so  well. 
The  blade  was  streaming  with  the  blood  of 
bis  associates.     He  eyed  it  with  composure ; 
then  turning  towards  the  crowd,  cried  to  ears 
that  hearing  heard  not,  and  to  hearts  that 
would  not  understand  :  ''  Look  on,  and  mark 
the  end  of  the  first  apostle  of  liberty  !"     As 
though  he  had  said  with  the  babbler  in  the 
Viiion  of  Sin — in  bitter  irony — 

Greet  her  with  applausive  breath — 
Freedom — gaily  doth  she  tread ; 

In  her  right  a  civic  wreath, 
In  her  left  a  human  head. 

Let  her  go !  her  thirst  she  slakes 
Where  the  bloody  conduit  runs : 

Then  her  sweetest  meal  she  makes 
On  the  Jirsi'hom  of  her  sons. 


Small  acqa»ntance  with  inductive  philosophy, 
philosophy  teaching  by  example,  suflBced  to 
warrant  Camille's  prediction  :  '*The  monsters 
who  murder  me  will  not  survive  me  long." 
He  then  turned  to  the  executioner,  and  said : 
*''  Send  this  lock  of  hair  to  my  mother-in- 
law."  They  were  his  last  words.  Another 
minute,  and  his  head  was  in  the  basket,  and 
Danton  took  his  place.  It  was  the  5th  of 
April,  1794. 

Eight  days  after,  Lucile  Desmoulins  was 
conducted  to  the  scaffold.     She  there  said  to 
a  fellow-victim  :  '*'  The  cowards  are  about  to 
kill  me ;  but  they  know  not  that  a  woman's 
blood  excites  indignation  in  the  souls  of  ft 
people.     Was  it  not  the  blood  of  a  woman 
which  for  ever  expelled  from  Rome  the  Tar- 
quins  and  the  Decemvirs?     Let  them  kill 
me,  and  let  tyranny  fall  with  me."     She 
might  have  looked  back,  as  well  as  forwards, 
and  have  remembered  the  recent  time  when 
the  execution  of   a  woman,  by  name  Marie 
Antoinette,  and  of  another,  the  revolutionary 
Roland,  had  elicited  from  her  no  pity,  no 
shame,  no  remorse,  but  a  blind  delirium  of 
exultation.     But  it  is  thus  the  whirligig  of 
time  brings  round  its  revenges.     And  when 
the  time   was    fully   come,  and    that  was 
speedily,  the  judges  of  Camille  and  his  com- 
panions were  themselves  judged  in  their  turn, 
and  with  such  measure  as  they  had  measured 
withal,  was  their  doom  meted  out. 


-*♦- 


From  the  AthenaBam. 


ARA60    AND    AU&USTE    ST.    HILAIBE. 


Last  week  we  announced,  in  few  words, 
that  Dominique-Francois- Jean  Arago  is  num- 
bered with  the  illustrious  dead.  For  nearly 
half  a  century  he  has  maintained  an  extraor- 
dinary position  in  the  world  of  science. 
Owing  to  his  rare  quaIi6cations,  the  universal- 
ity of  his  genius,  and  his  remarkable  industry, 
he  placed  himself  in  the  relation  of  centre  to 
a  system, — and  became  the  guiding  and 
directing  power  to  an  extensive  class  of 
European  philosophers. 

It  becomes  our  duty,  when  such  a  man 
has  passed  away  from  the  scene  of  his  long 
labbrs,  to  give  a  record  of  the  work  which  he 
accomplished.    It  is  of  our  office  to  give 


"honor  due*'  to  all  such  manifestations  of 
intelligence ;  and  while  endeavoring  to  show 
the  extent  to  which  the  mental  prowess  of 
M.  Arago  was  effective  in  gaining  for  man- 
kind new  truths  from  Nature,  we  have  also 
to  examine  the  degree  in  which  such  a  mind 
as  his  was  influential,  by  suggestion  and  by 
example,  in  elevating  the  spirit  of  his  age. 

M.  Arago  was  born  in  the  village  of  Es- 
tagel,  near  Perpignan,  in  the  Pyrenees,  on 
the  26th  of  February,  1786, — and  he  died  at 
the  Observatory  in  Paris,  on  Sunday,  the  2d 
of  October: — consequently,  he  was  in  the 
sixty-eighth  year  of  his  age.  Gifted  by  na- 
ture with   powers  of  a  higher  order  than 


1853.] 


ABAOO  AND  AUGUBTE  ST.  HILAIREL 


567 


those  which  are  ordinarily  bestowed  on  man, 
be  possessed,  or  acquired,  habits  of  industry 
which  enabled  him  to  develop  them  in  all 
their  fulness.  Like  the  majority  of  really 
great  men,  he  was  the  architect  of  his  own 
fortune*  He  owed  little  to  fortuitous  cir- 
cumstances ; — and,  indeed,  achieved  much 
when  serious  obstacles  stood  in  his  path. 
Suffering  no  difficulty  to  bear  him  back,  he 
rose  always  superior  to  misfortune,  and  with 
ereat  honesty  of  purpose  and  indomitable 
independence  he  labored  towards  the  end 
which  he  had  in  view.  From  his  boyhood 
this  appears  to  have  been  his  character. 
"When  a  youth  in  the  College  of  Perpignan, 
his  ambition  was  excited  by  the  appearance 
of,  and  the  respect  paid  to,  an  engineer  en 
chef.  He  learned  that  this  honor  might  be 
obtained  by  means  of  the  Polytechnic  School, 
— and  that  a  searching  examination  in  ma- 
thematics must  be  gone  through  to  insure 
his  admission  to  that  institution.  Francois 
Arago,  then,  seriously  commenced  mathe- 
matical studies,  and  in  1804  he  entered  the 
school  in  question  with  the  highest  honors. 

In  1806,  when  only  twenty  years  of  age, 
so  much  had  he  distinguished  himself,  that 
he  was  appointed  a  Secretary  of  the  Board 
of  Longitude ;  and  almost  immediately  after- 
wards, his  acquirements  having  attracted  the 
attention  of  Monge,  he  was  recommended  as 
the  fitting  assistant  to  Biot  for  undertaking 
the  measurement  of  an  arc  of  the  meridian 
in  Spain.  This  scientific  labor  was  consider- 
ably advanced  in  180?,  when  Biot  returned 
to  Paris,  leaving  Arago  in  charge  of  the  im- 
portant work.  The  war  commencing  at  this 
time  between  France  and  Spain  put  an  end 
to  this  scientific  mission;  and  the  young 
mathematician  had  to  make  his  escape  from 
an  enraged  and  ignorant  peasantry  in  dis- 
guise. He  escaped  death  only  to  become  a 
prisoner;  and  when  eventually  liberated  by 
the  Spaniards,  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  an 
Algerine  corsair,  and  was  released  from  cap- 
tivity by  the  Dey  only  in  1809.  At  the  age 
of  twenty-three,  Arago  returned  to  Paris; 
and  as  a  reward  for  his  zeal,  he  was  elected 
a  Member  of  the  Institute  of  France — in  the 
Astronomical  Section — on  the  death  of  the 
great  astronomer  Lalande.  Within  a  very 
short  period,  he  was  also  appointed  Profess- 
or of  Analysis,  Geodesy  and  Social  Arith- 
metic to  the  Polytechnic  School ; — thus  at 
80  early  an  age  achieving  a  scientific  position 
of  the  highest  order,  and  fairly  entering  on 
that  remarkable  career  which,  after  many  a 
a  subsequent  trial,  has  just  terminated. 

During  this  period,  we  find  that  M.  Arago 


contributed  sixty  distinct  Memoirs  on  various 
branches  of  science.  With  a  view  of  show- 
ing the  variety  of  branches  which  claimed  his 
attention — and  to  all  of  which  he  gave  the 
most  searching  investigation — we  add  the 
titles  of  a  few  of  these  contributions  which 
appear  of  the  most  importance,  selected  from 
the  Annuaire  du  Bureau  des  Lonffitudes,  the 
Comptes  Rendus  Hebdomadaires  des  Siances 
de  VAcadimie  des  Sciences,  and  the  Annates 
de  Physique  et  de  Chimie, 

Arago's  first  work  was  read  before  the  In- 
stitute on  the  24th  of  March,  1806.  It  was 
an  investigation  in  which  he  was  assi^ed  by 
Biot,  "  On  the  Affinities  of  Bodies  for  Light, 
and  particularly  on  the  Refracting  Powers 
of  different  Gases."  With  M.  Petit,  Arago 
investigated  "  The  Refractive  Power^f  cer- 
tain Liquids,  and  of  the  Vapors  Tormed 
from  them."  With  Fresnel,  he  examined 
"  The  Action  which  the  Rays  of  Polarized 
Light  exercise  upon  each  other ;" — and  on 
those  subjects  much  valuable  matter  will  be 
found  in  his  Memoirs.  Omitting  from  our 
list  those  astronomical  notices  which  regu- 
larly appeared  in  the  Annuaire, — and  which, 
though  forming  a  part  of  his  official  duty, 
manifest,  nevertheless,  the  zeal  of  the  Secre- 
taiy  and  subsequent  Director  of  the  Bureau 
des  Longitudes, — we  would  refer  to  M.  Ara- 
go's memoirs  "  On  the  Comets  of  Short  Pe- 
riods,"— "  On  the  Pendulums  of  MM.  Bre- 
guet," — "  On  Chronometers,"  —  "  On  the 
Double  Stars," — and  on  the  vexed  question, 
"Does  the  Moon  exercise  any  appreciable 
Influence  on  our  Atmosphere?"  Passing 
from  astronomical  subjects,  we  find  several 
memoirs  : — "  On  Nocturnal  Radiation," — 
•*  The  Theory  of  the  Formation  of  Dew :" — 
and  on  allied  subjecU,— as  "  The  Utility  of 
the  Mats  with  which  Gardeners  cover  their 
Plants  by  Night,"—"  On  the  Artificial  form- 
ation of  Ice/'— and  "On  the  Fogs  which 
form  after  the  setting  of  the  Sun,  when  the 
Evening  is  calm  and  serene,  on  the  Borders 
of  Lakes  and  Rivers."  Indeed,  the  whole 
of  the  phenomena  to  which  Dr.  Wells  had 
directed  attention  in  his  excellent  work  "  On 
Dew  "  was  thoroughly  investigated  by  M. 
Arago. 

When  we  add  the  memoirs  on  "  The  An- 
cient Relation  of  the  different  Chains  of 
Mountains  in  Europe,"  "The  Absolute  Height 
of  the  most  Remarkable  Ridges  of  the  Cor- 
dilleras of  the  Andes,"  "  Historical  Notices 
of  the  Steam  Engine,"  "On  Explosions  of 
Steam  Boilers,"  "  Historical  Notices  of  the 
Voltaic  Pile," — those  which  are  connected 
with  the  Polarization  of  Light,  the  phenom- 


MB 


ARAGO  AND  AXTGUBTB  ST.  HTTjATRK 


[Dee^ 


ena  of  Magnetic  Rotation,  and  on  the  Egyp- 
tian Hieroglyphics,  we  think  we  indicate 
labors  of  a  most  varied  and  important  char- 
acter. 

The  French  nation  may  be  justly  proud  of 
such  a  man  as  Arago ;  but  in  their  eagerness 
to  do  honor  to  his  name  they  have  claimed 
for  their  philosopher  discoveries  to  which  his 
title  may  be  disputed.     Amongst  these,  we 
may  name  the  electro -magnet,  which  com- 
mon consent  has  allowed  to  be  the  invention 
of  poor  Sturgeon ; — and  again,  although  Ara- 
go extended  the  inquiry  into  the  remarkable 
phenomena  of  magnetic  rotation,  the  prelim- 
inary researches  of  Sir  W.  Snow   Harris 
should  not  be  forgotten.  The  weakness  here 
indicated  is  one  common  to  our  French  neigh- 
bors, and  from  which  the  distinguished  man 
of  whom  we  write  was  himself  far  from  free. 
On  several  occasions,  M.  Arago  endeavored 
to  claim  for  his  countrymen  discoveries  which 
had  long  previously  been  made  in  England 
and  elsewhere.     On  one  of  these,  when  dis- 
cussing  the  merits  of  the  discovery  of  a 
Frenchman,  he  was  reminded  that  an  Eng- 
lishman had  already,  through  M.  Biot,  made 
his  invention  known  in  France  by  a  commu- 
nication to  the  Academy  of  Sciences; — he 
declined,  however,  to  withdraw  the  claim,  on 
the  expressed  ground   that  it  was  for  the 
honor  of  France  that  he  should  maintain  it. 
The  same  feeling  was  shown  in  M.  Arago's 
"  Historical    Eloge    of   James    Watt," — in 
whicb  he  claimed  for  Papin  a  position  cer- 
tainly due  to  Savery,  Newcomen  and  Watt. 
With  his  usual  force  of  language,  he  prefaced 
his  iloge  by  the  following  words : — 

^  I  approach  this  inquiry  with  the  firm  deter- 
mination of  being  impartial — with  the  most  ear- 
nest solicitude  to  bestow  on  every  improver  the 
credit  which  is  his  due — and  with  the  fullest  con- 
viction that  I  am  a  stranger  to  every  considera- 
tion unworthy  of  the  commission  that  you  have 
conferred  on  me,  or  beneath  the  dignity  of  science, 
originating  in  national  prejudices.  1  declare,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  I  esteem  very  lightly  the  in- 
numerable decisions  which  have  alreadv  emanat- 
ed from  such  prejudiced  sources;  and^thatl  care, 
if  possible,  still  less  for  the  bitter  criticisms  which 
undoubtedly  await  me,  for  the  past  is  but  the  mir- 
ror of  the  future."  , 

After  this,  we  find  a  constant  efiPort  to  in- 
crease the  value  of  each  invention  of  Papin, 
and  to  lower  the  several  improvements  of 
Savery*  Newcomen  and  Watt.  We  have  no 
desire  to  depreciate  the  labors  of  Papin. 
His  inventions  were  important  steps  in '  the 
progress  of  the  steam-engine  ;  but  it  must 
not  DO  forgotten  that  Papin  abandoned  his 


own  engine  as  useless.  Papin  saw  the  power 
of  steam,  but  he  could  not  apply  it :  Watt 
diligently  sought  out  the  laws  regulating  the 
formation  and  condensation  of  steam,  and 
left  the  steam-engine  perfect.  M.  Arago 
could  not  deny  the  high  claims  of  Watt : 
yet  his  national  prejudices  led  him  to  place 
Pepin  and  Watt  on  the  same  pedestal. 
Having  said  what  was  fitting  at  the  time, 
and  in  the  fitting  tone,  it  is  not  over  the 
grave  of  Arago  that  we  will  renew  our  quar- 
rel with  him  for  the  part  which  he  took  in 
the  discussion  respecting  the  rival  claims  of 
Adams  and  Leverrier.  We  allude  to  these 
subjects  only  because,  as  honest  chroniclers 
and  critics,  we  are  bound  to  exhibit  the  un- 
philosophic  side  in  the  character  of  a  great 
philosopher,  to  whatever  nation  he  may  be- 
long. 

In  surveying  the  results  of  such  a  life  as 
that  of  M.  Arago,  we  cannot  overlook  his 
earnest  desire  to  give  to  the  public  all  the 
advantages  of  the  discoveries  of  science  with 
the  least  possible  delay,  and  with  the  ut- 
most freedom  from  mere  technicalities.  In 
1816,  he  established,  in  connection  with  M. 
Gay-Lussao,  the  Annates  de  Physique  et  de 
Chimie : — and,  on  his  pressing  representa- 
tion, on  the  13th  of  July,  1835,  the  Academy 
commenced,  in  charge  of  its  Perpetual  Se- 
cretaries, Lee  Comptes  Rendue  Hehdoma" 
dairee. 

In  1830,  Arago  was  made  Director  of  the 
Observatory, — and  he  succeeded  Fourier  as 
a  Perpetual  Secretary  of  the  Academy  of 
Sciences.  His  remarkable  activity  of  mind 
and  unwearying  industry  led  him  without 
difficulty  through  an  amount  of  labor  which 
would  have  overwhelmed  an  ordinary  man. 
There  was  a  remarkable  clearness  in  his  per- 
ception of  those  matters  to  which  his  atten- 
tion was  directed.  He  readQy  stripped  them 
of  any  adventitious  clouding  or  mystery  by 
which  they  might  be  8urrounded,and  fearless- 
ly and  energetically  expressed  his  convic- 
tions. As  a  writer,  we  may  remark  the  strong 
evidences  of  the  latter  in  his  firmness  of 
style, — and  the  clearness  of  his  perceptive 
faculties  is  shown  in  its  lucid  elegance.  It 
is  not  easy  to  render  the  delicate  beauties  of 
one  language  into  another ;  but  the  senti- 
ment expressed  in  the  following  passage  from 
M.  Arago's  **  Eloge  on  Watt^'  will  find  its 
response  in  every  earnest  mind  : — 

"We  have  long  been  in  the  habit  of  talking  of 
the  age  of  Auffustua  and  of  the  age  of  Louis  the 
Fourteenth.  Eminent  individuals  amongst  as 
have  Ukewise  held  that  we  miffht  with  propriety 
speak  of  the  age  of  Voltaire,  oi  Rousseau  and  of 


1853.] 


ARAGO  AND  AUGUSTE  ST.  HILAIRK. 


569 


Montesquieu.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  declare  my 
conviction,  that,  when  the  immense  services  al- 
ready rendered  by  the  steam-engine  shall  be 
added  to  all  the  marvels  which  it  hblds  out  to 
promise,  a  grateful  population  will  familiarly  talk 
of  the  age  of  Papin  and  of  Watt. 

We  have,  of  course,  little  to  say  on  the 
political  life  of  M.  Arago.  He  was  a  con- 
sistent philosophical  ref^ublican;  and  we 
find  in  his  "Lettre  a  MM.  les  Electeurs  de 
I'Arrondissement  de  Perpignan"  in  1831,  his 
''Lettre  sur  les  Forts  d(itach6s,"  and  his 
*<  Lettre  sur  rEmbastillement  de  Paris,"  in 
1833,  evidences  of  a  bold  and  liberal  mind, 
ever  alive  to  the  social  interests  of  his  fellow- 
men.  As  a  deputy,  M.  Arago  delivered  a 
great  number  of  speeches  to  the  Chamber. 
Speaking  of  these,  M.  Normenin  says — 
"There  is  something  perfectly  lucid  in  his 
demonstrations.  His  manner  is  so  expressive 
that  light  seems  to  issue  from  his  eyes,  from 
his  lips,  from  his  very  fingers.  He  inter- 
weaves in  his  discourses  the  most  caustic 
appeals  to  ministers — appeals  which  defy  all 
answer — the  most  piquant  anecdotes,  which 
seem  to  belong  naturally  to  the  subject,  and 
which  adorn  without  overloading  it. 

A  mind  so  active  as  that  of  M.  Arago  could 
not  be  idle  during  the  political  convulsions  of 
France.  In  1840  he  was  elected  a  member 
of  the  Council- General  of  the  Seine.  He 
was  named  a  member  of  the  Provisional 
Government,  and  Minister  of  War  and  Marine 
ad  interim.  He  labored  with  all  honesty  to 
subdue  the  tempest.  He  displayed  hiscour- 
rage  in  the  sad  days  of  July,  in  the  streets 
of  Paris— endeavoring,  but  in  vain,  to  stay 
the  hand  of  the  slayer ; — but  the  result  put 
an  end  to  the  political  career  of  the  philoso- 
pher. Another  strong  evidence  of  moral  snd 
golitical  courage  was  given  by  M.  Arago  in 
is  refusal  when  summoned  as  a  public  officer 
to  take  the  oaths  to  the  Government  of 
Louis  Napoleon.  Rather  than  sacrifice  his 
principles,  he  resolved  to  quit  the  Observa- 
tory, and,  in  his  old  age,  cast  himself  upon 
the  world.  This  resistance  was  made  the 
more  remarkable  by  its  result.  Before  his 
attitude  the  spirit  of  menace  retreated. 
Government  made  an  exception  in  his  favor: 
and  at  his  death  he  still  held  the  public  offices 
which  he  filled  so  well,  and  which  he  so 
highly  illustrated. 

The  troubles  of  his  latter  days— or  rather 
those  of  his  country — deeply  afflicted  M. 
Arago,  and  did  their  work  in  undermining 
his  robust  frame.  General  debility  gave  rise 
to  slow  disorganization  of  his  system, — his 
vital  powers  became  gradually  ezhaustedi — 


and  under  the  influence  of  a  general  dropsy, 
his  life  was  extinguished. 

We  have  spoken  freely  of  the  high  claims 
of  M.  Arago  as  a  man  of  science:  yet  we 
must  add  that,  when  the  world  shall  ask 
hereafter  what  great  discovery  Arago  made, 
it  will  he  difficult  to  give  an  answer  to  the 
question.  His  was  one  of  those  minds  which 
could  not  bind  itself  to  that  njinute  analysis 
which  led  »  Newton  to  the  discovery  of  the 
laws  of  gravitation,  or  that  investigation 
which  conducted  a  Davy  to  the  invention  of 
the  Safety  Lamp.  He  stood  the  busiest  man 
in  a  busy  age — the  great  expositor  of  Na- 
ture's truths  as  they  were  developed  by  the 
labors  of  experimentalists.  The  idea  given, 
Arago  saw  at  once  its  entire  bearing,  and 
advanced  himself  by  rapid  strides  to  the  elu- 
cidation of  the  fact.  His  suggestions  were 
the  guiding  stars  of  science  in  France, — his 
experiments  were  the  foundations  on  which 
new  sciences  were  to  be  built.  Arago  never 
aUowed  his  thoughts  to  be  involved  in  a 
theory;  he  accepted  a  theory  as  a  menus  of 
advancing,  hut  was  ever  ready  to  abandon 
it  when  it  was  found  that  facts  favored  a 
contrary  view.  In  the  History  of  Philosophy 
his  name  will  have  enduring  fame,  not  from 
the  discoveries  which  he  made,  but  from 
the  aid  which  he  gave  to  science  in  all  its  de- 
partments by  his  prompt  and  unfailing  pene- 
tration. A  member  of  nearly  all  the  scien- 
tific Societies  of  Europe,  he  was  the  point 
uniting  them  in  a  common  bond.  In  every 
part  of  the  civilized  world  his  name  was  re- 
garded with  reverence, — and  all  scientific 
communities  felt  that  they  had  lost  a  friend 
when  they  heard  of  the  death  of  the  Astro- 
nomer of  France. 

We  announced  last  week  the  loss  which  the 
circle  of  French  botanists  had  experienced 
in  the  death  of  M.  Auguste  St.  Hiluire.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Botanical  Section  of  the 
Academy  of  Sciences.  His  first  botanical  pub- 
lications were  on  the  local  vegetation  of 
France.  In  1812  he  published  a  notice  of 
seventy  species  of  phsenogamous  phnts  dis- 
covered in  the  department  of  the  Loiret.  In 
the  same  year  he  published  observations  on 
the  new  Flora  of  Paris.  In  1816  his  me- 
moir appeared  on  those  plants  which  have  a 
free  central  placenta.  At  this  time  he  went 
to  South  America  for  the  purpose  of  inves- 
tigating the  vegetation  of  this  vast  continent. 
He  remained  there  till  1822  ;  and  during  the 
time  of  his  residence  in  America  and  since, 
he  published  a  number  of  valuable  memoirs 
and  papers  on  the  plants  of  South  America. 
The  most  important  of  these  were: — 1.  A 


670 


LITERARY  MISCKLLANIE& 


[Dec, 


Hbtory  of  the  most  remarkable  Plants  of 
Brazil  and  Paraguay.  It  contained  figures 
of  the  plants,  and  was  published  in  Paris  in 
1824.  2.  The  Plants  used  economically  by 
the  Brazilians;  also  published  in  1824,  with 
plates.  3.  From  1825  to  1832  appeared  in 
parts,  illustrated  with  folio  plates,  his  *'  Flora 
Brazilian  Meridionalis."  In  this  and  in  the 
foregoing  works  M.  Saint-Hilaire  was  assisted 
by  MM.  A.  Me  Jussieu  and  J.  Cambepedes. 
They  comprise  by  far  the  most  complete  ac- 
count extant  of  the  exuberant  vegetation  of 


the  Brazils.  M.  Saint-Hilaire  has  also  pub- 
lished accounts  of  his  various  travels  in  South 
America.  In  1830  appeared  his  travels  in 
the  provinces  of  Rio  de  Janeiro  and  Minas 
Qeraes.  In  1833  he  publi>hed  an  account 
of  his  travels  in  the  diamond  districts  and  on 
the  shores  of  Brazil.  On  his  return  from  the 
Brazils,  his  herbarium  contained  seven  thou- 
sand species  of  plants  which  he  had  collected 
during  his  travels  in  South  America.  M. 
Saint-Hilaire  di«d  in  the  seventy  fourth  year 
of  his  age. 


1 1  ^  1 1 


LITERARY    MISCELLANIES. 


The  principal  issues  of  the  London  press  during 
the  past  month  are  embraoed  in  the  following  list : 

Anaong  books  of  travel,  which  constitute  the 
much  larger  share  of  the  new  works,  are  the  fol- 
lowing ; — 

Alfred Bann  in  America.  Old  England  and  New 
England.    By  Alfred  Bunn,  the  dramatists 

English  Notes;  or  Impressions  of  Europe.  By 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  These  two  works  have 
been  published  too  recently  for  any  critical  notices. 

A  Walk  across  the  French  Frontier.  By*  Lieut 
March,  R.Bl 

Traits  of  American- Indian  Life  and  Character. 
By  a  Fur  Trader. 

Rough  Notes  of  a  Trip  to  Reunion,  the  Mauritius^ 
and  Ceylon.    By  Frederick  J.  Mouat^  M.D. 

A  Cruise  in  the  .^ean.    By  Walter  Watson. 

Wanderings  through  the  Cities  of  Italy  in  1860 
and  1861.    By  A.  L.  Von  Rochau. 

Sea  Nile,  the  Desert^  and  Nigrttia;  Travels  in 
Company  with  Captain  Peel,  R.N.  1861-2.  De- 
scribed by  Joseph  H.  Churi. 

Narrative  of  a  Religious  Journey  in  the  East  in 
1850  and  1851.    By  the  Abb^  de  St.  Michon. 

This  work  the  Athenceitm  regards  but  little  bet- 
ter than  the  printed  pocke^book  of  a  railway  trav- 
eller from  London  to  St  Jean  d'Acre.  It  does  not 
sustain  the  interest  which  its  title  will  awaken  in 
many.  The  writer  seems  to  be  an  amiable  enthu- 
siast^ without  perception  of  character,  and  with 
that  niaUerie  which  results  from  indulging  in  the 
sentimental  egotism  peculiar  to  certain  French 
travellers  who  take  Chateaubriand  for  their  model 
in  style.  The  favorite  idea  of  the  Abb£  de  St 
Michon  is,  the  reconciliation  of  the  Protestant  and 
Roman  Catholic  Churches ;  and  it  appears  that  he 
addressed  a  long  memorial  to  the  present  Pope  on 
the  subject.  He  gives  us  in  several  pages  the  con- 
tents of  this  memorial : — ^which  we  need  not  fur- 
ther notice  than  by  saying  that  it  is  composed  in  a 
kindly  spirit  but  apparently  without  any  deep 
knowledge  of  the  innumerable  political  and  theo- 
logical obstacles  in  the  way  of  its  realization. 


A  Lad^*s  Visit  to  the  Gold  Diggings  of  Australia 
in  1852<a    By  Mrsi  Charlea  Clacy. 

Of  all  the  books  that  have  been  written  on  the 
Gold  Diggings  of  Australia,  the  Literary  QatetU 
says,  this  single  light  volume  by  a  lady,  '*  belonging 
to  the  pocket-edition  of  the  feminine  sex,*'  is  the 
most  pithy  and  entertaining.  The  authore^  went 
out  as  Miss  E ^  a  sprightly  Amazon,  in  a  wide- 
awake,— lolling  on  a  dray,  however,  instead  of  rid- 
ing on  horseback,— and  after  a  successful  routine  tA 
adventures,  along  with  a  brother  and  party  of 
friends,  at  Bendigo,  the  Black  Forest  Eagle  Hawk 
Gully,  Iron  Bark  Gully,  Forest  Creek,  and  Ballarat^ 
came  home  (after  a  change,  purely  personal,  which 
made  the  brother's  protection  no  longer  needed) 
Mrs.  Charles  Clacy,  full  of  pleasing  and  congenial 
feelings. 

Adventures  in  Australia  in  1852  and  1853.  By 
the  Rev.  H.  B.  Jones^ 

The  Critic  saya,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Berkeley  Jones 
aims  rather  at  usefulness  than  at  brilliancy.  He 
looks  at  facta  as  they  are,  and  reports  them  with  a 
sort  of  photographic  truth.  His  outlines  are  good, 
— his  details  accurate,  we  have  no  doubt ;  but  the 
scene,  as  he  presents  it,  is  wanting  in  light  and  play, 
color  and  motion.  The  artis^  the  man  of  fancy, 
will  learn  nothing  from  Mr.  Jones's  adventures. 
Indeed,  it  is  an  abuse  of  terms  to  call  such  common- 
place experiences  of  men  and  things,  "adventures." 
The  emigrant  however,  will  find  iu  this  record  of 
personal  observation  hints  for  his  guidance  of  no 
small  value. 

London  Homes,  a  new  work  by  Miss  Catherine 
Sinclair,  gets  the  following  "first-rate"  notice  from 
the  Athenceum  : 

"  The  publisher's  advertisement,  irftended  to  recom- 
mend this  book,  states  that  the  reception  given  in 
America  to  *  Beatrice,'  Miss  C.  Sinclair's  last  novel, 
*  has,  in  fact,  exceeded  that  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin" 
in  England.  Above  one  hundred  thousand  cop  ea 
were  sold  in  a  few  weeks.  A  pamphlet  was  pub- 
lished by  twenty-eight  clergymen  of  New  York, 
fdvising  that  each  of  their  congregation  should 
possess  a  copy.'  Recollecting  the  opinion  expressed 
of  'Beatrice  on  its  publication,  [Athen,  No.  ISOlJ 


1868.] 


LITBRABY  HISCBLLANIEB. 


671 


we  ean  only  regret  that  Kew  York  poeiewea  so 
Urge  a  ooogregation  of  foolien  clergymen.  Next 
oomes  MuB  BineUir's  own  prefftoe,  preparing  ue  (as 
indeed  the  title  of  her  new  book  had  in  parta  done) 
for  a  new  exposition  of  the  case  of  Palace  versus 
Garret,  St  James  versus  St.  Oilei^ — and  assuring 
OS  that  a  *  fervent  desire  for  usefulness  is  her  sole 
motive  for  writing/  Thirdly,  we  have  the  book 
itseli^  which  proves  to  be  an  <ila,  made  up  of  many 
thingd  ol.d  and  new.  Among  others^  there  are  *  a 
leffcnd  belonging  to  a  remote  district  of  country 
betongiog  to  Lord  Oas^lis,  betwixt  Ayrshire  and 
Galloway/ — an  absurd  scene  in  dialogue,  with  a 
sort  of  *  rum-ti-iddity*  chonu^  by  way  of  ^uia  on 
the  Humane  Society, — and  suoh  of  Miss  Sinclair's 
'Common-Sense  Tracts'  against  papistry  as  had 
already  appeared: — the  success  of  said  oommon- 
sense  apparently  not  having  warranted  the  fulfil- 
ment of  the  original  scheme^  which  contemplated 
the  publication  of  twelve  tracts.  What  all  this 
may  nave  to  do  with  *  the  condition  of  the  London 

EK>r/  or  with    'the   excellent  Secretary  to   the 
endicity  Society' — ^in  other  words»  with  the  busi- 
ness and  motives  announced  in  Miss  Sinclair  s  pre- 


leave  to  the  twenty-eiffht  reverend  gentle- 
men in  New  York  to  discover. 

The  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  English  Consti- 
tution. By  Prot  Creasy,  Barrtster-at-Law,  Author 
of  "The  Fifteen  Decisive  Battles  of  the  World." 

Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  the  Princess  Palatine, 
(Princess  of  Bohemia.)  Together  with  her  Corre- 
apondence  with  the  Great  Men  of  her  Day.  By  the 
Bturoness  Bluze  De  Bury,  Author  of  '*  Germania, 
its  Courts  and  Campa." 

Civil  Liberty  and  Self-Govemment.  By  Francis 
Lieber,  L.L.D.,  author  of  "Political  Ethica^"  "Ee- 
miniscences  of  Kiebuhr,"  Ao. 

The  British  (Quarterly  Review  thus  commends 
Mias  Bremer's  Homes  of  the  New  World,  which,  as 
contrasting  with  the  generally  unfavorable  notices 
of  the  press,  deserves  to  be  quoted :  "MIm  Bremer 
is  a  genial  soul,  rich  in  good-sense  and  good-nature. 
Wherever  agreeable  companionships  are  to  be  found, 
she  is  sure  to  find  them.  She  is  not  blind  to  the 
foibles  or  faults  of  the  human  beings  who  come  in 
her  way,  but  she  has  the  happy  secret  of  guarding 
against  one-sidednesi^  of  placing  the  good  over 
against  the  evil,  the  wise  over  against  the  foolish, 
uid  thus  'finds  the  world  to  be  much  more  full  of 
people  to  be  interested  about  and  to  like,  than  per- 
sons of  a  less  humanized  intelligence  can  give  our 
planet  the  credit  of  containing.  They  give  us  a 
Detter  idea  of  the  'Homes  o7  the  New  World' 
than  could  have  been  conveyed  bv  any  novel  or 
treatise  wrought  up  from  them.  We  accompany 
Miss  Bremer  Uirough  North  and  South,  through  free 
States  and  slave  States ;  we  hear  her  talk  with  and 
about  politicians  of  all  grades,  and  we  are  with  her 
in  her  intercourse  with  the  almost  endless  variety 
of  religionists  to  be  fuund  in  those  regions,  from 
Mr.  Waldo  Emerson  to  the  Shakers  and  the  Mor- 
mons. In  politics,  Miss  Bremer's  sympathies  are 
strongly  on  the  side  of  freedom  and  humanity.  In 
rdigion  she  is  tolerant  of  wide  diflferences^  if  only 
allied  with  honest  conviction  and  real  feeling.  We 
know  of  no  book  Uiat  does  really  give  you  so  uch 
of  the  'homes' — that  is^  of  the  home  manners, 
talkings^  and  feelingp  of  the  people  in  the  New 
World." 


The  Atheiusmn  thus  describes  our  Mr.  Hoffman's 
new  work : — 

'*  Chronicles  selected  from  the  Originals  of  Carta- 
philus^  the  Wandering  Jew :  embracing  a  period  of 
nearly  Nineteen  Centuries.  Now  first  revealed  to, 
and  edited  by,  David  Hoffman,  Hon.  J.U.D.  of 
Gottegen. 

'*  Mr.  Hoffman  is  clearly  one  of  those  transcen- 
dental philosophers  now  beginning  to  abound  both 
in  England  and  in  the  United  States,  who,  full  of 
great  notions  about  the  past,  present,  and  the  future, 
and  especially  adverse  to  the  progress  of  the  so- 
called  materialism  between  which  and  transcen- 
dentalism the  age  is  divided,  are  not  satisfied  with 
literary  attempts  on  the  ordinary  duodecimo  or 
octavo  scale,  — ■  but  desire  to  put  forth  *  revelations 
of  truths,'  in  which  the  '  totum  scibile,*  or  whole 
round  of  knowledge,  is  metaphysically  reorganized 
and  adapted  to  the  speculation  of  the  time.  The 
appearance  of  such  work^  under  such  names  as 
'Alpha,'  the  * Poughkeepsie  Seer,'  and  the  like, 
is  among  the  most  curious  of  the  intellectual  signs 
of  the  times — ^partly  hopeful,  partly  sad  enough. 
Mr.  Hoffman  is  far  more  rational  and  orderly  in 
his  views  than  most  of  these  philosophers  of  the 
'  totum  seihile,^  He  seems  to  be  a  very  orthodox 
Christian  gentleman,  with  a  system  of  theologico- 
metaphysical  tenets  which  he  has  worked  out  for 
himself  in  connection  with  the  doctrines  of  the 
Trinity,  Free  Will,  Original  Sin,  and  the  like  ;— 
entertaining,  moreover,  a  dread  of  the  progress  of 
Romanism  at  the  present  time,  and  a  faith  in  the 
speedy  advent  of  a  miilennariaa  epoch,  when  one 
pure  form  of  universal  belief  will  irradiate  the 
woild.  With  all  this  there  b  very  considerable 
intellectual  power,  some  originality,  no  small 
amount  of  learniog,  and  much  candor  and  fine 
feeling." 

The  Athenceum  also  thus  disposes  of  another 
American  work,  '  Mark  butherland'  by  Mrs  South- 
worth  : 

"  Mark  Sutherland  is  one  of  those  common-place 
American  tales  which  are  not  worth  reprinting.  It 
in  no  page  or  paragraph  tempts  us  to  mitigate  or 
modify  the  character  of  its  authoress  offered  not 
long  ago  in  the  Atherueum," 

Mr.  Saunders'  genial  little  work,  "  Salad  for  the 
Solitary,"  elicits  the  following  notice  from  the 
Literary  Oasette: 

"An  American  book,  'Salad  for  the  Solitary,' 
by  an  Epicure,  contains  under  this  figurative  title  a 
medley  of  light  literary  reading,  under  such  head- 
ings as  '  Facts  and  Fancies  about  Flowers,'  '  The 
Shrines  of  Geniw^'  '  Dying  Words  of  Distinguished 
Men,'  '  Pleasures  of  the  Pen,'  '  Citations  from  the 
Cemeteries^'  'Sleep  and  its  Mysteries.'  The  sub- 
jects are  varied  and  interesting,  but  the  author's 
style  is  not  good,  and  the  frequent  efforts  at  smart- 
ness and  pun-making  are  offensive  to  good  taste. 
He  has,  however,  collected  and  arranged  a  large 
amount  of  carious  literary  matter,  while  some  parts 
of  the  book,  as  the  chapter  on  '  The  Talkative  and 
Taciturn,'  display  acute  observation  of  character 
as  well  as  learned  research." 

The  Literary  Gazette  thus  compliments  Mr^ 
Tuckerman's  work,  "  Mental  Portraits ;  or,  Studies 
of  Character:" 

"This  volume  contains  a  series  of  literary  por- 
traits of  what  Mr.  Tuckerman's  oountryman,  Emer- 
son, would  oall  representative  men.     Southey,  the 


B12 


UTERABY  MI30ELLA5IBS. 


[Dec.,  1863.] 


man  of  letters ;  Savage,  the  literary  adrentarer ; 
D'Aseglio,  the  literary  Btatesman ;  L<^  Jeffrey,  the 
Reyiewer ;  Sir  David  Wilkie,  thepainter  of  cnarao- 
ter ;  Audubon,  the  ornithologist;  Waahisgton  Irving, 
the  humorist;  Jacques  Laltte,  the  financier;  and 
eight  or  ten  other  equally  marked  charaeter8»  are 
delineated.  In  these  biographical  essays  Mr.  Tuoker- 
man  displays  much  acuteness  of  observation  and 
soundness  of  judgment  In  so  great  a  range  of  sub- 
jects there  is  room  for  diversity  of  opinion,  and  there 
IB  inequality  of  merit  in  the  several  ^sketches,  but  on 
the  wnole  the  book  may  be  oommended  for  the 
faithfulness  and  spirit  of  the  mental  portraits.*' 

The    British     Qwirterly    R€mew    thus    notices 
Fanny  Fern : 

**  The  book  consists  of  a  series  of  short  articles^ 
having  little  or  no  connecUoa'  with  each  other,  but 
all  are  more  or  less  interesting,  and  out  of  the  grave 
and  the  gay  some  useful  leseon  generally  issues. 
The  pieces  have  appeared  for  the  most  part  in 
American  periodicals,  and  there  is  enough  in  the 
substance  and  literary  workmanship  of  them  to 
betray  their  transatlantic  origin.  We  say  to  our 
young  readers,  get  Fanny's  Portfolio ;  it  will  be 
pleasant  and  usetul  reading  as  snatched  in  a  rail- 
way, or  upon  a  rainy  day." 

Itxhs. 

Mr.  Hugh  Miller,  the  geologist,  is  giving,  in  the 
"Edinburgh  Witnen'^  newspaper,  of  which  he  is 
editor,  the  story  of  his  early  life,  under  the  title 
of  "  My  Schools  and  Schoolmasters ;  or,  the  Story 
of  my  Education.'*  The  series  of  papers  is  not  yet 
half  completed ;  but  the  work  is  already  announced 
for  publication  in  a  separate  volume  by  one  of  the 
chief  houses  in  Boston. 

The  "  Edinburgh  Review ^^^  the  oldest  of  the  ex- 
iating  quarterlies,  has  in  its  last  number,  the  200th, 
commenced  its  second  half-century.  Jeffrey  eave 
up  the  editorship  after  the  first  hundred  numoers 
were  published.  His  successors  have  been  Profea- 
Bor  Napier,  Professor  Empson,  and  Lord  Monteagle 
temporarily,  till  the  appointment  of  the  present 
editor. 

Mr.  Petermann  is  preparing  for  publication,  by 
authority  of  her  Majesty^  Government^  a  set  of 
mape  and  views,  with  descriptive  letterpress,  illus- 
trating the  progress  of  the  expedition  to  Central 
Africa,  from  1849  to  1868. 

A  manuscript  work  "  On  the  Natural  History  of 
Balmoral  and  its  Neighborhood,"  from  the  pen  of 
the  late  Dr.  Macgillivray,  Professor  of  Natural  His- 
tory in  Marisch^l  College  of  Aberdeen,  has  been 
purchased  from  the  executors  by  Prince  Albert 

The  Earl  of  Ellesmere  has  become  possessed  of  a 
complete  copy  of  an  important  English  work  relat- 
ing to  the  discovery  of  America.  It  is  entitled, 
"Divers  Voyages  touching  the  Discovery  of 
America,  and  the  Islands  adjacent  unto  the  same, 
Ac,"  and  was  printed  by  Thomas  Dawson  for 
Thomas  Woodcocke,  in  1582,  4to.  It  was  compiled 
and  prepared  by  the  celebrated  Richard  Hakluyt^ 
who  deoicAted  it  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 

A  French  paper  states  that  Lord  Brougham  has 
placed  the  following  inscription  over  the  entrance- 
door  of  his  chateau  at  Cannes : 

"  Inveni  portum ;  spe»  el  foriuna,  valete  ; 
Sat  me  lusistia  :  ludile  nunc  alios:*' 

Tl^e  noble  and  learned  Lord's  neighbors  oonatrue 


th]<  as  an  annonn^ment  of  his  intention  to  retire 
from  public  life^  and  to  pa^s  the  remainder  of  his 
^yt  •moDgrt  them  in  tJw  goiial  dimate  of  the 
Var. 

The  French  Government  has  just  granted  £6000 
sterling  towards  the  expenses  of  purchasing  and 
demoUflhing  houses  at  Yienne,  department  of  the 
Is^re,  for  the  purpose  of  exposing  to  public  view 
an  ancient  temple  of  Augustus  and  Livia.  Yet 
though  thus  liberal->-and  this  is  no  isolated  case — 
it  allows  a  large  sam  annually  for  the  restoration 
of  historical  monumenta. 

ARuaiuan  saivant^  M.  Jacobi,  has  invented  an 
apparatus  for  employing  electricity  in  attacking 
whales.  By  means  of  it,  several  snoceesive  shocks 
can  be  given  to  the  huge  leviathan,  and  it  ia  aa> 
sumed  that  it  will  thereby  be  rendered  powerU 


Madame  Ida  Pfeiffer,  the  great  traveller,  ha^  say 
the  German  papers,  written  to  friends  in  Berlin 
and  Vienna  to  say  that  she  intends  to  abandon  the 
prosecution  of  her  voyages  in  the  Indian  Archipel- 
ago, and  to  return  to  Europe  forthwith. 

M.  Lamartine  is  again  unwell,  owins  to  the  seve- 
rity of  his  literary  labors  M.  Michelet,  the  cele- 
brated professor  and  historian,  who  had  returned 
to  Paris  after  a  year's  residence  in  Brittany,  is  re- 
commended to  pass  the  winter  at  Nice,  on  acooilnt 
of  the  state  of  his  health. 

The  Prene  publishes  a  letter  illustrating  the  last 
tour  deforce  of  Alexandre  Dumas.  It  is  addressed  to 
M.  Hous8aye,director  of  the  Th^&tre  Fran^ais.  **Mon 
cher  Directeur :  I  have  just  travelled  from  Brus- 
sels, havine  heard  that  the  Jeuneste  de  Louis  XIV. 
has  been  interdicted  by  the  censorship.  This  b 
Tuesday :  be  good  enough  to  be  ready  for  the  read- 
ing of  a  new  play  on  Monday  next.  I'll  read  five 
acta.  What  it  will  be  like,  I  do  not  know,  for  I 
have  just  heard  of  the  interdict ;  however,  we'll 
call  it  the  Jeunesse  de  Louis  XV.  1  will  manage  to 
bring  in  the  scenery,  which  I  understand  you  have 
prepared.  I  need  not  say  that  this  play  will  not 
contain  a  word  of  the  other,  which  will  be  ready 
for  use,  should  the  censorship  be  one  day  more 
placable^ — Yours  entirely,  A.  Dumaa" 

The  scheme  for  erecting  a  statue  to  Prince  Albert, 
in  Hyde  Park,  on  the  site  of  the  building  of  the 
Great  Exhibition,  is  progressing  rapidly  towards 
completion.  The  subscribers  are  of  all  ranto^  and 
the  subscriptions  of  various  figures.  Dukes,  banken» 
men  of  letters  and  men  of  business,  painters  and 
poets^  brewers  and  botanists,  marquises  and  machi- 
nists, crowd  the  Ust  already* 

M.  Scribe,  the  dramatic  writer,  has  purchased  the 
estate  of  Courbetire,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Chateau- 
Thierry,  for  260,000fr.  Dr.  William  Freund,  the 
lexicographer,  has  returned  to  England  from  a  scien- 
tific tour  through  the  Grisons  and  l^rol,  the  ancient 
Rbsetia,  where  he  sojourned  during  the  summer  by 
order  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Berlin. 
The  results  of  his  researches,  ethnographic  and 
linguistic,  he  will  imbody  in  a  volume  which  he  ia 
now  prei^ng  for  the  press. 

The  first  Congress  of  Statistic  which  met  in  Brus* 
sela,  has  been  brought  to  a  close.  The  meetings 
have  been  well  attended  by  English,  French,  Ger- 
mans, and  others,  and  considerable  interest  has  been 
exeftM  by  their  proceedinga  among  the  inhabitaati 


I 


of  that  gay  and  picturesque  capital